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Crawling Apocalypse: D&D's Giant Mummified Octopus
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ส.ค. 2024
- Check out Sands of Doom on kickstarter: www.kickstarte...
The crawling apocalypse is a devastating undead monstrosity. This mummified kraken (or maybe giant octopus?) is every necromancer's dream. Originally printed in D&D 3.5 for the Sandstorm supplement, it has now been updated to Dungeons and Dragons 5e!
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The D&D 5E stat block for this monster - docs.google.co...
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00:00 - INTRO
00:54 - WHAT IS A CRAWLING APOCALYPSE?
08:18 - Sands of Doom ad
10:44 - COMBAT
16:19 - PLOT HOOKS
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Thanks for watching everyone! Is there a monster you'd like to see on the channel in the future? Let me know in the comments!
Also, don't forget to check out MrRhexx right here: www.youtube.com/@MrRhexx
Love your work Dungeon Dad, keep it up! Btw, somewhat related but what are your opinions on the One DND controversy?
That apocalypse needs to exercise more.could be a jogging apocalypse.
You could do a Rea and the Dire version.
Obsidian dragon plz
The idea with the Kraken-dungeon is genius - I'm making a map for one of those at this very moment😁
Thanks a lot for the input, cheers & keep up the great work😘
The idea of these things being captured Krakens just opens up so many possibilities. Even a fraction of a Kraken's vast intellect could be dangerous, and without their creators overseeing them, one could be looking to work around their programming and restore themselves to their former power.
Kraken lich! Kraken lich! Kraken lich!
@@msf2399I think you many Kraken liches. Also imagine having to find the vessel it’s soul is in. It would likely be underground as they do move primarily by burrowing. Also how would that even look? To my knowledge normal cephalopods don’t have bones and octopuses don’t have hard parts in their body besides their beak.
@@msf2399 In this case a Kraken Mummy Lord!!!
or looking to capitalise on their undeath and inherit their creators' domain... or both! Have one who wants to become a demigod of undeath and one who wants to break down the undeath that spawned them and pit them against each other. Kaiju cephalopod fight!
@@stingerjohnny9951 I mean full intellect, Kraken Lich is where the name Crawling Apocalypse really becomes fitting, isn't it?
Coming up with ideas now. Mostly the line “this isn’t a desert, it’s an ocean” when the adventurers realised that the deeper they delve below the sands the more they find of fish bones and other marine life. Older life.
Now I'm just imagining the backstory, where the desert the campaign takes place in eas once a vast, impossibly deep sea, home to massive, eldritch creatures.
And a now collapsed civilization, in their desire for power, found the preserved remains of one or these creatures, and, unaware of it's true nature, attempted to resurrect it to use as an undead thrall, only for them to create something far, far worse
Sunken Sea in Calamity lol
This is such a fun idea, imagine realising this sea of sand stretches for mile beneath you.
I'm not sure whether an undead ocean would be more fun or it being a living but alien ecosystem, potentially with intelligent life moving in strange ways through the crush sands.
You could have a magical submarine, maybe it vibrates in just such a way as to slip through sand like water.
Along with a kind of seismic sonar to navigate the depths.
After some adventures maybe you could get a set of magical diving suits that work in the same way.
It could make for wondrous but tense moments, navigating hazards knowing that if the protections fail a crushing death awaits as the full weight of the sand around and above you will suddenly seize up.
This is such a fun idea, imagine realising this sea of sand stretches for mile beneath you.
I'm not sure whether an undead ocean would be more fun or it being a living but alien ecosystem, potentially with intelligent life moving in strange ways through the crush sands.
You could have a magical submarine, maybe it vibrates in just such a way as to slip through sand like water.
Along with a kind of seismic sonar to navigate the depths.
After some adventures maybe you could get a set of magical diving suits that work in the same way.
It could make for wondrous but tense moments, navigating hazards knowing that if the protections fail a crushing death awaits as the full weight of the sand around and above you will suddenly seize up.
The spice must flow
Since mummification already involves removing some organs, a crawling apocalypse could be partially hollowed out for extra zombie transport capacity.
Also, a Maru artifact used to control one could make a great mc guffin - imagine the party and the big bad racing through ancient ruins to find the control rod, all the while trying to avoid the monster, which had been tasked with guarding its old master's resting place.
This has "Brendan Frasier" written all over it!
I picture mini encounters with arms or tentacles busting through walls... or from below while crossing a stone bridge.
Make it a lich's phylactery.
@@Mr-Moron The octopus, or the control rod?
@@bricknolty5478 Yes.
DM Tip: If your PCs put the Crawling Apocalypse on fire while in the dunes, using Alchemist's Fire or something similar, have it submerge itself into the sands and not appear for 1d4 - 1 rounds (minimum of 1 round). This will work as both a reward for executing a plan successfully since it made the monster go away but also a complication since your plan is foiled while additionally not knowing if the monster will return or not.
Random idea for a random counter: Crawling Apocalypses that are fighting against an evil being that are trying to force them to be soldiers or lead them to a temple.
@@ThefifthBishopofGord If It’s a Kraken and it kept enough of its old mind, it would be smart enough to revolt against its slavers
@@stingerjohnny9951 Cool
Imagine a territory dispute between 2 necromancers, one using this and the other using a Boneyard and you/your party come across it and they turn their attention, and thus their beasties, onto you.
Maybe one is slightly more reasonable than the other and is willing to reward or pay the adventurers for taking their side. This means they get to fight alongside one necromancer and their massive undead kaiju while battling the other mage and monster, in addition to a zombie army.
@@stingerjohnny9951 you can probably expand this idea to be a whole storyline where you actually get to choose a side and become a General or something
Redmond and Blutarch but as mummy lords
@@eggbag4182 "Push my brother to HELL!"
My homebrew setting has a massive dried out sea and I've been trying to dream up unspeakable terrors to populate the wastes and Dungeon Dad comes through
Sweet! Dad-made horrors from beyond our comprehension!
"Crawling Apocalypse" is what I began to call my nephew when he started breaking things
A fun spin on the appearance of the Crawling Apocalypse is to describe it with traits of prehistoric mollusks, like ammonites or orthicones. You could even have the Crawling Apocalypse be controlled by an enchanted spiral shell that can fit in the palm of your hand.
So like a siege crab from an earlier episode? It would make sense given this thing was meant to be a weapon. Imagine a party getting that shell and using it?
... I'd love to tweak it into a giant mummified crab.
Something something Lord Helix...
ALL HAIL THE MAGIC CONCH SHELL!
The problem of having all the monster lore on the same page is that a lot of lore got cut out because of space
If 2nd ed was willing to use six pages for Beholders and Beholder Kin, other editions can use more pages too
The put all the monster info on two pages. Don’t split pages between monsters
Damn, Cthulu just wanted to do some sunbathing, it's your fault for interrupting his vacation
I like the idea of the creature being a full fledged NPC. If we take some inspiration from real world octopi they are highly intelligent and love to get into/out of things (seriously, aquariums have a notoriously difficult time keeping them in their tanks). After a few centuries one has realized how to get into tombs, bypass traps, and taken the goodies. It may even regard an adventuring party with curiosity instead of hostility. If the group can communicate telepathically or with the undead they might even be able to barter with it and get some of its loot or have it guide the party across the endless sands. If not, well the Apocalypse has a couple of small sticks (magic staffs) in its arms and little rings (magic necklaces) on its tentacles. to use against the players.
yes!! something i've always liked about octopodes is the way they camouflage themselves, altering the color and texture of their skin.. and just watch u with its weird eyes like ~_~.. very curious and playful creatures 🥹
This is so bizarre. I am literally taking a break from reading an action/horror story, and the big bad has just released something that is reminiscent of this but worse. A Gestalt undead of thousands of corpses, able to Shadow Walk anywhere within 20 paces of a corpse, and had a strategy of throwing bodies over half a city to expand its ambush options. Could manipulate corpse matter into tentacles able to pierce through a solid wood barrier and an entire horse with ease. Best part, the brain is in the body of a living child, who is enamored with her 'daddy' that adopted her and fixed her legs. So now she plays with whoever daddy tells her to.
Sorry about that tangent, but I do have to say the Crawling Apocalypse is pretty awesome, and has a lot of potential!
I would, if running a dark sun campaign, use this as the "perfect" form for a long dead failed sorcerer king or as a natural far relm monster. The city the party is going to has the stone walls smashed in & all it's inhabedent's are now undead. Could also work in Amonket (MTG plane) as well, a primordial before the seas dried up
Inhabedent
A crawling apocalypse trap would also give the party a chance to soften it up, maybe cut off a few tentacles to reduce it’s number of attacks, thus allowing a party to fight one of these when they normally might not be leveled or equipped enough to face a Crawling Apocalypse in a straight-up fight.
Someone mentioned that since it's mummified the creature lacks some insides, combining that with the dungeon bit and you could have yourself a wandering dungeon your players could climb inside and explore for whatever reason you'd want
I had a secret desert castle creatively called the Sand Castle that was like Eldorado, city of gold and all that. No one could find it though I mean until the party needed to for story reasons. Turned out the reason why no one could find it was that a super giant crawling apocalypse had the castle chained to its back and it just dragged it across the sands.
I think it would be cool if it had that one ability that some octopi have to mimic the color and texture of other things. Then the party just comes across the odd circle of 8 obelisks with some thing in the center. Perhaps as they move toward the center, those with high perception notice that the obelisks behind them seem to get closer when not looking. Once they are close to the center and the thing it has to protect it springs into action as the players now find themselves on top of this utterly massive creature. Shenanigans ensue, maybe the “obelisks” give off its fear ability or a reduced version that makes them uncomfortable.
So it's a bigger undead version of Sarlac from Star Wars
That can actually move around
A truly terrifying thing indeed
Sarlacs can also move....at least younger Sarlacs can move.
Or a giant Graboid, because Tremors doesn't get enough love as a classic monster flick.
You’re hired by an archaeologist to explore an ancient tomb. On the walls you see artwork of tritons/merfolk worshipping a kraken, including a hallway with each panel depicting a step in mummification. Something in the tomb, maybe stealing this creature’s treasure horde, awakens it! Maybe the party can find kraken priest relics that initially cause it to be non-hostile.
This video gave me an idea for two new spells.
Salvation: a cleric/druid spell that can either act as a Remove Curse, but for all creatures in a wide area, or can remove a more powerful curse on a single creature. You could use it to cure lycanthropy (which in my opinion is much too strong for Remove Curse cast at 3rd level), or vampirism (true vampires are too far-gone, but vampire spawn could be saved).
Forced Breach: forces all creatures with the spell's AoE, up to a certain number of hit points (think the Sleep spell), to be forcefully moved to the surface of the non-gaseous, loose medium that they are moving through (sand, dirt, water, silt, ash), but not solid media (rock, metal, ice). This spell can be used to combat burrowing and swimming foes that like to either escape or hide within their chosen medium of transportation.
I remember having fought this freak before! I think the DM made it way stronger with like psionic powers cause it could fly and cast spells but it was a BEAST of a boss, which was kinda a prelude to the real monster of the campaign the Vasuthant, a really scary undead cloud thing that ripped my character's brain stem out and we had to perform mid combat surgery XD would love to see ya do a vid on the Vas that thing was so cool
AAAAAAWWWWWW YEEEEEEAAAAAH HERE'S OUR BOY
Don't tell me your party somehow adopted one of these things...
@@cardinvuong9742 ah no, I'm just one of the folks who asked him to cover it. But we Did somehow manage to adopt a few gods.
Man this has Tremors themed adventure written all over it!
As always, would love to see you cover the Tsochar from 3.5’a Lords of Madness
Seconding the Tsochar, they were really creepy.
It's on the list. Just a matter of time before he gets to it.
I think this would be great in a Spelljammer encounter in space. It's undead so it doesn't need to breathe. I'll be adding that to my random encounter table.
Not even a minute in and I laughed so hard I sneezed. Best part is it was a good 10 seconds after when it registered in my brain and I laughed.
Edit: The idea of using them to attack while also transporting spellcasters is brilliant. Who needs to destroy walls when you can stealthily sneak underneath the walls. You don’t need an army when the poor souls near the crawling apocalypse are already there to provide one.
It’s like a massive command tank that can crawl underground.
Always happy to see something nautical or mummy related, so I'm ecstatic to see something that is both.
Then again, I grew up on Pirates of the Caribbean and the Mummy films, so it's not exactly surprising.
The two kings of CGI undead 😜
My guy, you’re incredible. Love your stuff
Thanks for watching!
Agreed 100%
I feel like this is one of those times where dnd's insistence on undead being essentially constructs really gets in the way of an otherwise cool monster idea. When I heard "Mummified desert octopus" I immediately had visions of a long dried up seabed, grey, fossilized coral jutting up from the dunes, filled with the ruins of the underwater civilization that caused the great disaster that dried up the sea, and naturally mummified sea creatures roaming the desiccated ruins of their former home. Then I got hit with "Nope, actually, though mummification is an originally natural process, creating an undead mummy takes a lot of effort, so.. the ancient civilization(tm) did it. Also they just stole them from the ocean," Like, way to spoil the very unique flavor you were building up there, wizards.
change the flavor, love your idea, also, put a small fortress on it
To be fair we're talking about a mummy built for resurrection, what if the crawling apocalypse created itself?
i do wonder if the writers were aware that naturalk mummification is a thing.
Would love to learn more about those Marru Spawns Jackal people!
Could you do a video for them?
MrRhexx and you are the only two D&D content creators I consistently watch, and I am excited to see the kind of work you guys could accomplish together. Keep it up!
I recommend AJ Pickett as well.
Hey, have you considered making any videos for various undead dragons? Or maybe undead dragons as a whole? I feel like there are so many different things you could do with that. You could even make an undead dragon for each different type of dragons.
There are a couple of the request list on discord that D-Dad has his eyes on.
@@KevinVideo He's got zombie dragons on his requests from discord? This is making me so very happy. Undead dragons 🐉 for the win!
The best edited and entertaining monster description I have seen. I hope it gets an award. Great monster and campaign concept.
Thank you for the rendition of an old classic monster into 5th edition. I made some slight changes to the one you presented, but I could not help but use that one plan suggestion of having it be part of a dungeon for my players.
The party were seeking a dungeon that contained an artifact to help in tipping a political situation to their favor, basically gaining both right and legitimacy by obtaining an item that was lost to time. They were warned that this artifact was guarded by the last great necromancer lord's greatest creation and they should be ready for anything. Party were expecting things like a Mummy Lord or Vampires or something close to a Lich.
A few hours later, the party were busy dodging and weaving from giant tentacles that would occasionally erupt from the sandy ground below them to whack them and sometimes inflict Mummy Rot or other supernatural diseases and poisons. The party had to escape the dungeon a few times and realize that it was the ONLY thing in there that was attacking them. So with some careful planning and learning about the attack patterns of their foe. They eventually made it into the central burial chamber.
It was there they fought the Crawling Apocalypse and boy were they heaving for vengeance. A good 40 minutes of combat in real life time, and the party barely managed to defeat the Crawling Apocalypse and obtain access to the hard earned loot.
Players were both happy and somewhat peeve with such an enemy getting to sucker punch them throughout their dungeon crawling.
This will work amazing for my mid level majora mask esque campaign I have formulating.
Since pondering on for an hour. I've decided they're going to fight the sun eater, as the big bad who's trying to eat the Sun and, In order to help get there they have to get 4 champions of the world on board to be able to unlock the tomb. Each one from a different area. Probably going to have some sentient mommy Lord, some sort of arch fey, some sort of underwater thing, and for the human city the guardian is going to be a pink dragon in disguise running a comedy club because why not. XD
With all the weird shit that I have seen, gigantic octopus mummy is the last thing I expacted, but it's also not really that suprising.
The small town at the edge of the desert is frequented by explorers and adventurers looking to travers the seemingly endless sands nearby. One such explorer Nyle Sobe, found a strange sealed chamber deep within the desert. What he hoped was treasure was actually the activation point for an ancient abomination. Now danger is there for the nearby town as the sands stir and IT rises once more. The Unliving Weapon of legends Seasand the Crawling Apocalypse hungers for the destruction of the descendants of those that made it and those that sealed it away.
As luck would have it, I recently started a desert theme campaign for my players and this creature is giving me ideas. I might even revive an old idea I had from the beginning of the original campaign where I thought of making a boss that was an elder brain that had replaced the brain of a kraken.
I'll make a mummified version of it with this thing as its body
They kinda remind me of mindflayer nautiloids, which since they are technically alive could in theory become undead, I can imagine one crashing in a desert, its crew dead, and the ship dies and naturally mummifies. Some mummy lord performs some kind of ritual to make it undead and instead of flying around or going interplanar, the necro-nautiloid swims through the sand
That sounds like an awesome idea.
My player characters are going to be coming into a demi-plane that has a shallow ocean, 200ft deep, in place of the sky. There's going to be a series of demi-planes with monsters that the BBEG had been incubating; and each monster defeated will remove an ability the BBEG has in the final fight (the BBEG will consume the incubated monsters in a ritual to gain part of their essence).
I think I'm going to utilize this creature as a "sky kraken", replacing burrowing with swim (still slow) and tremor-sense with ocean-sense. The tentacle grabs will be elongated just a bit and will drag the party into the water on failed saves, but there will be pools of water on the "ground" for the party will escape to if they get out of the Apocalypse's grasp.
Misses/Dodges on a dex save will leave the tentacle wedged in the sand, allowing for melee damage by the party. Plus normal ranged attacks.
Any advice/input would be appreciated!
I've been wanting to get into dming, and now I think I will, my first campaign using a crawling apocalypse to start up the whole thing, as my underleveled party escapes a city being torn apart. Thanks for the idea!
As soon as you explained the Despair ability, I immediately had an encounter in mind. Perhaps the players are traversing a massive desert, and one uses a spy scope to view a distant settlement. Suddenly the player freezes up in terror, and the rest of the party has no idea whats happening before a deep rumbling emits from the ground below. Instant encounter with a level of terror for the players, and a way to leave clues to a possible Mummy Lords actions from how the settlement was attacked by the Crawling Apocolypse
"The antagonist of a Brendan Fraser film-"
My brain: "George of the Jungle? Bedazzled? Monkeybone!?"
I wish I was joking but in my defense I hadn't been paying attention
A spin on that dungeon rooms idea I had while listing to it, Instead of being traps and attacking its imprisoned and slumbering (thats something dead things do right?) with the rooms around it acting like a large tomb.
There would be hints that the connected rooms are part of a puzzle and that would make the players want to solve it. If they manage to solve the puzzles they are rewarded with the tomb opening and awakening the Crawling Apocalypse.
This could be a good or bad thing depending on how someone wants to use it. Maybe the Crawling Apocalypse isnt evil but was a force for good that was entombed there by a rival. But by now its to weak to do anything but with its last act it bestows upon the players something useful that it had on it.
Or it doesnt die and regains strength coming back to help the players against some big bad threat later. Put it on a random event table or something lol.
Or it could be that they just awoken a gigantic 50 foot mummy octopus that starts to destroy the tomb once the puzzles are solved. The players rush to the exist and see its massive form rising out of the rubble as it begins to drag itself to the nearest settlement.
A crawling apocalypse. How very daRUDE of you. Also, side tangent, was that rodeo clip from the Calgary Stampede? That'd be very stealthily Canadian if it was.
The Mummy movies are such a guilty pleasure for me. Brendan Fraser is such a good boy who didn't deserve the crap he went through. He's willing to do a fourth movie too and was asked to come back for a monster movie crossover, so maybe we'll see a version of this in that film.
Never used or fought this monster myself, but it would have been quite the battle. That attack range and mummy rot is nasty.
I agree with you that I'm not the biggest fan of the monsters bleeding into each other. That space could have been used better like we see in the later manuals with extra lore and "In Eberron, add this, and in Faerun, add that." I enjoyed see stuff like that. I think part of the reason why we don't see lore and stat bleeds now is because we now get the minimal. Pathfinder is bad for that too. Everything's about minimum word count.
While I know he's a friend of the channel, it's still a big deal that you got sponsored. Congrats.
This is actually my favorite channel on the whole platform. Great stuff!!
you and rhexx are my 2 favorite dnd peoples, you guys have made my campaign much, MUCH more interesting, and the days when i have a player character cancel and i can really bring out a fun toy, MUCH more deadly as well. my players are both terrified and excited for the megadungeon im building, and i just found its overlord ... seems like the kind of thing an old banished mages circle would have kept in the very very bottom level of their underground superfortress.
I love the irony that your channel was recommended to me a year ago because I am a fan of Rhexx.
Me: **Biting lip until it bleeds**
DM: Okay, you've been doing that for five minutes straight, just say whatever you're gonna say...
Me: So, we are fighting a gigantic dusty, dried up and mummified kraken right?
DM: Yes, and?
Me: ..._found yo mommas octopussy_
DM: Get. Out.
11:30 the way you edited this makes it look like your the 23rd gargantuan monster
Been watching MrRhexx for years and your videos were recently in the recommended videos. Can't believe I just found this channel! I've enjoyed going back and watching your older videos too. You've come a long way with production and having a particular style! :)
I just sent my players in the domain of Har'Akir and this video came at the right time. I guess my players will have to fight this now
Dude I would love to hunt down the control rods of any Crawling apocalypse
seeing you mention MrRhexx mad me flash back to his Skyrim lore videos
A combat against one of this monster could get a funny twist with it falling into water and getting even bigger due to rehydratation.
One of these days I'm actually going to play this game
I imagine a lich would like to capture something like this to fill a large room in his death trap dungeon to farm souls. Just a biiiiig sandbox with empty armor peices rusting. Then the sand moves....
I know this isn't related to the video but I have not been able to get it out of my head since yesterday. If the ogl 1.1 leak turns out to be true what are you going to do? I'm honestly a bit worried and would really like to hear your thoughts.
I genuinely am not sure! All I can really do atm is wait until the official document is released and we'll see what happens. I am fairly certain everything I do is covered by the fan content policy, but we'll have to wait and see! Rest assured though that the channel isn't going anywhere, I might just have to adjust my content a bit.
@@DungeonDad Thanks for your work but also if the leak is accurate then your monsters could be collected and they could sell your updates to the monsters. I am hoping they drop that part.
@@DungeonDad Interesting point. I hadn't really thought about how the new policy would affect content on youtube but it makes sense with monetization. Hope you're able to swing with the changes, if any. Also, I guess we might not be seeing as many plugs for things like Mr. Rhexx's book going forward. :/
I was kinda looking for a non-worm burrowing monster that could give Dune vibes, thanks!
Ok hear me out: desert Davy Jones and his sand kraken.
This is a slightly smaller...mobile sarlacc pit. Well time to brainstorm.
Okay, is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Obscure mummy monster. Let's get a lot of booze, and ferment this squid!
Sandstorm helped me make my first adventure. It got it on pdf for free. Later, I went on to buy it used on Amazon.
My mind was very tormented by champions taming the sand wurm by removing their venom spine. Seemed cruel like how we cut cats' nails.
So my BBEG has one of these, it can fly, because it was made from a dead nautaloid, it also has the ability to cast the Gate Spell, and the BBEG leads a swarm of boneyards raised by him into battle on the back of this thing
Very fitting monster for the sponsor xD Great job as usual!
Its really hard to think of an undead that is worse to look at, or to be, than one with no bones at all. its probably like a massive spider made of beef jerky.
Sandstorm, Stormwrack, and Frostburn were my favorite 3.5 splatbooks, and I even ported the Bhuka, the Asherati, and shapesand into my 5e campaign. I'd love to see more of these!
Give it a 40ft sand breath attack that deals necrotic damage and leaves a cloud of dust in the air that blinds those who are inside
When the apocalypse crawls we must run.-kahrdon rey -only survivor of the village of kattek-
That Eagles joke was just perfect!
You know, there's also the potential to use their ability to transit and, essentially, using things like quicksand in areas, attacking during traversal from far underneath, pulling them down into the sands...
Id say you could have it be a secluded World Threat for an end game boss. Have it so that an old party of Heros lured it into a dessert surrounded on most sides by a ring of volcanos. (Volcanoes because of its weakness to fire, making it unable to burrow out) Have them all have died luring it except their Wizard. Wizard used one of those big spells that we cant use no more since we got capped at 9th level (or just used wish but lost the ability to use it again) to cause a volcano to finish the ring of other Volcanoes and trapping it inside. As it has been centuries later the wizard can be on his death bed and worried that when he dies the volcanoes will cease being active allowing it to escape. Fine enough setup for my taste
I like how much MTG art that you used for this.
The wild "Darude" made me crack up so much x)
I used one of these back in the day in a dried up ocean salty desert, and the players never saw it coming and were so stunned by its appearance.
If you're playing Dark Sun, its a given encounter waiting to happen, no necromancer needed
Loving your Vile Villain’s shirt! Glad to see you’re a man of taste!
I'm going to throw this one out there: Crawling Apocalypse that was actually an Aboleth. Have it be an Aboleth that's trying to cheat death and having to reincarnate back in the plane of Water, but in doing so it had to give up a lot of itself just to do it. Whether or not it sees itself as a success in the attempt is up to you. You can do a few things with this:
Have the players offer to kill it so that it can reincarnate if it feels the experiment was a failure. This could give the players a really powerful ally in the Aboleth if they're able to make a deal.
The players fight the creature and finding out its an Aboleth that now has to reincarnate could give them another big bad to worry about as it might have found the experiment successful.
The Aboleth is so powered down that it becomes more a living weapon for the big bad which is always fun.
Gotta say, I only recently found your content and I love your monster conversions to 5e.
I just imagined a campaign based on investigating a mysterious desert with tons of ruins of an ancient super civilization which depicts the Crawling Apocalypse as a super weapon that got out of control and turned everyone into sand due to mummy rot, creating the desert in the first place. The BBEG would be searching this super weapon for conquest stuff or whatever and thinks that they can controll it but in a plot twist they die turning into sand as well and now the Crawling Apocalypse turns into a giant epic final boss
I don't know, that's just my opinion. The monster sounds cool tho, nice video
I was so looking forward to this one getting featured. Great work on doing this one justice!
personally i think you should do an episode on vampire muses, a complex and interesting monster
I have a little worldbuilding project right now which includes an ancient aquatic empire being destroyed by rising landmasses forming the mountains and deserts the story is set in. These, again, fit perfectly, thanks for this.
So these are basically your Minecraft dogs that were left in a random world you don't visit anymore....but, you know, way more powerfull
First off, I love this channel.
Secondly, the monster that I would most like to see updated to 5e is the ekolid, which to my knowledge makes its only appearance in Fiendish Codex 1: Hordes of the Abyss from either 3e or 3.5
However, there are a bunch more monsters that I feel it also need to be added to the list (the ekolid just managed to claim top spot for me), so here we go. *deep breath*
The Infernal from the Epic Level Handbook of 3e/3.5.
The shivhad from Frostburn of 3e/3.5.
The verrik from Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved.
The zeitgeist from Cityscape of 3e/3.5.
The spellscales from Races of the Dragon of 3e/3.5.
The synad from Complete Psion of 3e/3.5.
The fext, proteans, & sinspawn from the Pathfinder Bestiary's.
The addiction devil & rumor devil from Wayfinder Bestiary.
The dusk giant, cadaver golem, & unholy scion from Heroes of Horror of 3e/3.5.
The deadly dancer, deathshead, horned beast, roving mauler, tooth beast, painspeaker, & logokron devil from Tome of Magic of 3e/3.5.
The naityan rakshasa & reth dekala Tome of Battle of 3e/3.5.
The ectoplasmic vermin & ghosteater of the Ghostwalk setting.
The azurin, duskling, lost, rilkan, skarn souleater, & soulspark of Magic of Incarnum of 3e/3.5.
And to round last but not least, maybe an Empyreal Lord from the Pathfinder Bestiary's.
If anyone wants to comment that this is a lot, I've spent part of the last month or two whittling the list down to my absolute faves.
A small suggestion I'd like to make for the statblock if you run it in your game. A very slight "nerf" that also adds some interesting things to it.
Basically, with the apocalypse's reach.
- Attacks made within 15 feet (Or maybe just 10) using the Tentacles are made at disadvantage (or maybe they're not possible in the first place)
- Attacks with the Arms can push the target back 5 feet instead of knocking it prone when using its main attack. (probably choosing one or the other)
This means that Front-line combatants can stand toe to toe with the things if they need to. Backliners need to stay as far away from the thing as possible, while Front-line Fighters need to stay as close to the thing as possible to keep themselves out of reach of the big arms. This can make for a really interesting and dynamic encounter as the Apocalypse tries to get and keep the players in that perfect sweet spot where they can deal maximum damage, while the Players need to try to either stay ALL the way out of its reach, or keep as close to the thing as possible in order to bully it.
One of my favorite RPG channels not just dnd but overall
The forgotten realms book "undead" by Richard Lee byers has these monsters in it.
Oh this is going right in the deserts of my homebrew world. Especially on the saltflats.
Wow, I'm giving one of these to Ganondorf my zelda campeign. What more feared a servant of desert king of theives.
At this point you should do a Kickstarter to release a book of these updated monsters. Could have a name like "Dungeon Dads Forgotten Monsters"
Based on the description as having two major tentacles with many other smaller arms (as opposed to having a set of essentially equivalent appendages), it would seem like the species used to produce them would be more similar to a squid than an octopus.
So this makes me envision a vast desert dotted with plateaus of solid rock that house settlements. They build on the plateaus due to the Crawling Apocalypse. Kinda like the planet Arrakis from Dune with the Sand Worms.
20:50 I mean… they’re cephalopods, right? They can fit through any tunnel larger than their beak.
…And they’re undead. If you wanted to use it as a trap, just rip off the beak.
I dreamed up one of theese last night! My character has a fear of tentacles now! Trajic back story.
Idk man "flesh wars" is pretty badass
Now im thinking about...a mummy lord crawling apocalypse
Reminder: An octopus can squeeze its entire body through any hole as large as its beak would allow.
Even more so, an undead, hollowed out octopus that doesn't need a beak.
Envision a Gargantuan version of Boneless.
Thanks to a sequence of in-character events from one of our party members, our group of level 4 characters has just run into one of these. Good to know it can't keep up with us, because like hell are we sticking around to fight that thing. Shame about the town, though.
To create a mummy, you also need a duddy. Together they create a buby, thus becoming mummy and duddy of said buby.