Biggus Geekus: Aberrations

Last week's Biggus Geekus show was largely about aberrations, a monster category that is near and dear to my heart: most of the adventures I run have a horror influence, which is often rooted in the cosmic variety (and I vaguely recall a campaign I ran well over a decade ago that gave one of the players  nightmares due to body horror elements so we had to stop). Not that all aberrations need be lifted from a Lovecraftian tale, or even inspired by one, but when it comes to eldritch horrors it's typically the most suitable classification.

21 minutes into the show the aboleth is briefly brought up, which is a monster that I can only recall making a very brief appearance in the original 4th Edition Sundered World campaign, and while I can't recall why I never used or encountered it "back in the day", looking at it now I can safely say that I'd never use it as written: it's essentially a goofy fish monster with seemingly random abilities tacked on and no real motivation beyond "evil".

While aboleths made their debut in 1st Edition AD&D, I mostly got my start in 2nd Edition. There they had middling combat efficacy, with an average of 36 hit points and four tentacle attacks that inflicted a mere 1d6 damage. The only real danger was that each tentacle strike forced a save versus spell (for some reason) to avoid your skin turning translucent. This could be prevented with cure disease, but once the process was complete required a cure serious wounds spell. If you couldn't prevent or remove it, you had to keep your skin damp or suffer 1d12 damage every 10 minutes.

It could also generate very convincing illusions, which had no specified range or other limitations, but would only use these to lure creatures close enough for it to smack or enslave them. It could only try to enslave three creatures per day, because everything must abide by pseudo-Vancian nonsense, though if it managed to pull it off the creatures wouldn't fight for it. Instead, enslaved victims were possibly used to build underwater cities, which I'll get to in a bit.

Oh, I almost forgot the mucous cloud: this would appear around it when underwater, and if you inhaled it you could only breathe while underwater for 1d3 hours. I'm guessing this contrivance was included so that it's slaves could hang out with it underwater, maybe build stuff, and having to routinely take hits from the cloud in order to avoid dying.

I suppose I should mention its psionic powers. It had some. However, if you didn't own the psionics handbook you had no clue what the heck they did so couldn't use them, and if you did own it you probably thought they were "broken" and didn't use them, anyway.

The aboleth's motivation is that it is evil and hates "most" land-dwellers and seeks to enslave them. For what purpose? No definitive answer is given. Instead, there's only a rumor that they are used to build "huge underwater cities". Of course, none of them have been found but I do wonder why the hell aboleths would even bother: they can live just fine in underwater caves, and it's not a fucking Spongebob episode so it's not like they'd be bustling with people and have anything resembling a society or economy.

Another rumor is that they are said to know "ancient, horrible secrets that predate the existence of man", but apparently no one has bothered using something like contact other plane to confirm this. Something that is known, somehow, is that aboleth offspring not only know what their parent does, but if one eats an intelligent creature it also learns everything it knew.

As with most monsters, its transition to 3rd Edition provided it with a considerable boost in combat, which average hit points nearly doubling, and its tentacles inflicting a much more reasonable 1d6+8 damage. Most of its abilities aren't changed much, though enslaved targets get to make a save every day, and moving more than a mile immediately ends it. The biggest change is that while it still has powers labeled psionics, these are just normal wizard spells so you don't need to buy a supplement in order to use them.

However, its motivation remains just as shallow as it ever was: it hates all nonaquatic creatures for no particular reason and attempts to kill on sight. On the upside, there's no mention of building pointless underwater cities, and it's confirmed that they do in fact know many ancient and terrible secrets.

Adventure-wise I think aboleths have several clear uses: they know secrets so, barring a myriad of other methods and opportunities, characters could be forced to hunt one down and extort it for information (it could have even devoured someone that knew what the players need to know). Or, perhaps perform some sort of service for it, though in either case you'll just have to hope it's telling the truth.

It hoards treasure for no discernible purpose, so another option is that the characters need an item and it just so happens it's buried under aboleth shit underwater somewhere (though as a player I would want to know why it has them in the first place), and I suppose you could also just throw it at the party as a generic evil monster doing generic evil things, eating people and/or enslaving them or whatever.

It's technically usable, just...random and boring.

To be fair, in Dungeons & Delvers we didn't change much about them, but in watching this episode and analyzing it more critically I think it needs a major overhaul in 2nd Edition. For starters, given their inherent magical powers, penchant for enslaving others, and the ability to learn information from devoured creatures, I think it makes sense to tie their origins/habitat closely to mind flayers, a monstrous race that also has inherent magical powers, enjoys enslaving others, and at the least devours the brains of intelligent creatures.

What I find odd about the 2nd Edition mind flayer is that, despite how puny its tentacles appear they inflict a consistent 2 points of damage, which is absurd when compared to the considerably larger aboleth's 1d6 (though I also think that is far too low). However, its primary method of attack is a mind blast, which affects everyone in a cone, stunning them for 3d4 round on a failed save. And it should be noted that these are 2E rounds, which last an entire minute, meaning that on average if you fail a save the mind flayer will have around 10 minutes to do whatever the hell it wants to you.

Which, assuming there's no one to stop him, probably means that he'll latch on to your head and extract your brain.

This makes mind flayers far more dangerous than aboleths, and even better, they have a more cohesive theme going on, with their magical abilities allowing them to manipulate and read the minds of others, though they can also float, astrally project, and teleport to other planes of existence (which makes it pretty hard to pin down). There's a psionic mind flayer variant, which is fine since if you didn't own the book or didn't like psionics, you could just stick with the standard model and nothing is lost.

While mind flayers can't just magically enslave anyone, with an at-will charm they can use it to supplement managing slaves the good ol' fashioned way, and while this might not still be foolproof--especially given that the target will likely get to make a new save every few weeks or so--it would certainly make the job much easier.

Though they are typically found underground, at east they are encountered on land and I think this plus the fact that they can operate in communities makes it much easier to utilize them in not just individual adventures but entire campaigns: you can start with the party running into charmed minions, then a lone mind flayer (which will probably planeshift away to safety), then maybe they finally take a recurring mind flayer down, then have to content with a small group, and finally you can have them venture into a mind flayer city to defeat an elder brain.

A city that the mind flayers would actually need to, among other things, house each other, perform experiments, store supplies and other items, secure their elder brain and tadpole pools, torture captives, and observe their version of gladiatorial fights.

Unfortunately, mind flayers are one of a handful of monsters that WokeC won't let you use as-is, so even though I think they are on much more solid ground both literally and conceptually when compared to aboleths, we had to change them up in Dungeons & Delvers.

For starters we renamed them thulids. Thulids have an inherent fly speed, essentially able to use telekinesis on themselves. Their tentacles inflict a bunch of acid damage, which would make the job easier dissolving flesh and bone to get at a target's brain. Their primary form of attack is a single-target mind bolt, which inflicts a bunch of psychic damage and penalizes a target's Wisdom saves, making it more likely that he'll succumb to the thulid's powers on the following round.

I still think they need more changes. Not just to further distance them from mind flayers, but because I think it would make them far more interesting if they could, for starters, use telekinesis on other creatures and objects, absorb memories from creatures they eat, and modify and erase the memories of living creatures, which could be use to create full-on slaves that don't need to be spam-charmed.

Something we did change up quite a bit even though we didn't need to are mimics. In Dungeons & Dragons they are pretty straightforward ambush monsters, capable of physically transforming into various objects. Treasure chessts are the classic option, but 2nd Edition mentions a door frame as another example, and 3rd Edition also suggests a large bed.

In Dungeons & Delvers the role remains the same. However, mimics in our game can only mimic the color and texture of objects that they regularly consume. So, if a mimic wants to, well, mimic a wooden object, it needs to ingest and dissolve wood. Additionally, they must remain completely immobile when mimicking an object: any moving parts revert to the mimic's natural color and texture, which is pale and waxy (not the entire mimic, just the part that is moving).

To help with digestion of inorganic materials, mimics can produce acid anywhere on their bodies. In combat, they can add acid damage to their attacks. Worse, they can secrete it reflexively, so if you attack one with a melee weapon you might have to make a Dex save to avoid damage.

Fledging mimics lack precise control, and so cannot appear as detailed objects or one made of multiple materials. So, oddly shaped or composed objects might clue in characters to young mimics in the vicinity, as can partially dissolved objects. Oh, mimics of any age cannot adjust their weight, and regardless of appearance will always feel warm and rubbery to the touch. Though, by the time you touch a mimic it's probably too late.

Another thing we added that I don't recall seeing in Dungeons & Dragons, is that our mimics can stretch out and essentially "flow" through small openings, and can use their adhesive to quickly and easily scale walls and move across ceilings. This makes it easier to sneak around, as well as mimic objects you might find on a ceiling. Or even just as part of a ceiling, if you want to give it a lurker above vibe.

We didn't include a mimic queen in the monster section, but will in 2nd Edition. Otherwise I think they're in a good place and don't need much if any additional adjustments.

I'm assuming that beholders are brought up at some point in the show, but don't remember when. These were another monster that we had to change in Dungeons & Delvers. In our game we call them argons, and they were originally wizards that ended up getting transformed and fused with each other due to an overuse and reliance on transmutation magic. 

Each of their eyes features a different spell (which you can randomly generate using the spell tables in the back of the book), and they can swap out eyes as desired (eyes are gripped by hands, attached to telescoping limbs). They also use eyes as a sort of currency, and can even implant them in other creatures (something Melissa was tempted to do when she ran into one in our Age of Worms playtest campaign).

For 2nd Edition, we're going to remove the anti-magic central eye as a baked in option, as it doesn't make sense for every argon to have that. We're also going to give them inherent fleshsculpting abilities, which would be necessary to remove and replace eyes with other creatures. Should also put in some hard rules on having an implanted magical eye.

I vaguely recall gibbering mouthers getting a call out. We have one in Dugneons & Delvers as well, but someone mentioned the variants in 4th Edition, so we're going to look at those for additional inspiration.