This is a great example of what I like to call a "peril encounter," rather than a combat encounter. Yes, fighting is involved, but it feels a lot less like "I'm'a fight and kill the thing because that removes its threat" and more "Oh shit, oh God, gotta live! Gotta save so many things!"
@@MonarchsFactory Glad you like that! Only recently came to me as I realized I'd been throwing weird stuff at my party that they couldn't necessarily fight their way out of, but threatened their wellbeing nonetheless.
My favorite part of every D&D video is the way you say "that's fine" in the part where you inevitably go, "So the official designers did x.... And, you know, that's *fine*... But what if--"
(Also, thanks to discussing the kraken, I now have your Critical Role dumb-ways-to-die parody yet again stuck in my head. "Swallowed by a kraken, or swallowed by a kraken, or unconscious and drowning and swallowed by a kraken... Don't fight a kraken cuz it's quite possibly the dumbest way to die...")
As a Swede, I can confirm that the word "krake" does indeed exist and basically means "twisted creature". BUT!! It leans much more towards "pitiable" than "fearsome" (like, you'd be more likely to use the word krake for a sick dog than for a scary creature), which is why I've always thought the name to be a bit weird. Maybe the word has changed overtime and was used differently before?
Maybe it was a sort of 'godless' or 'damned' type of pity than a mundane sort of pity. It may be mighty in this world, but it's existence is pitiful in the grand scheme of things.
@@stefanhansen8623 Not sure if it's as old as the viking sagas. But the Kraken does live in the maelstrom near Lofoten according to some stories I've heard.
Here's a possible fun twist on this style of Kraken encounter: The Kraken being an ancient entity, remembers a time when mortals were more powerful, and posed an active threat to it. Because of this, it is actually very "gentle" as it grabs onto ships, being careful not to disturb the water such that there are swells and whirlpools. This causes modern seafarers to become overconfident, and set out to hunt for the Kraken. Clearly, the old myths have been greatly exaggerated. A fleet of ships baits the ocean with tons of dead, rotting fish, filling the water with sharks and gulls (and playing into the theme of a twisted creature), and lo and behold, the Kraken does appear. Battle begins, and the Kraken realizes it has been ambushed, and so, for the first time in thousands of years, it reveals its true form, emboldened by the revelation that the one ever-present threat has vanished. The PCs are level 1 deck hands on a vessel at the center of the formation. Dozens of ships, in a formation miles wide, are suddenly caged by tentacles marred with knotted scars from the Age of Myth, tentacles that the Kraken thought it needed to hide. It has realized it was wrong. The objective? Escape.
This is basically the whole conceit of my current D&D game. My players were on a ship that was destroyed by the Kraken, because it just grabs anything that comes near its Island. And in order to leave, they are going to have to neutralize it somehow so that a rescue ship may arrive
Octopi have amazing camouflage abilities, so I don't think you'd need it to be in a crevasse. Since the kraken would be both smart and terribly large, it could pretend to be the entire ruins instead.
This is an awesome idea! I love your thinking! "You hear a rumour about a massive underwater city that appeared overnight, and go to check it out...and when you get there, the city moves! Roll for initiative!"
I think the Cuttlefish would be better for this because it is significantly more notable for their camouflage capabilities but I also love the cuttlefish so much and it is probably my favourite animal.
Small detail for anyone trying to slip an octopus-style kracken into a crevice: An octopus can squeeze into any crevice wider than its beak, because that's the only hard part of its body. Unless something is different for yours, work out how bit it's maw is and that's the largest width of the space you need to hide it.
explains why a buncha fantasy krakens have many tiny tiny teeth instead of a beak (also i cannot fathom how that "anything bigger than its beak" can be true, because isnt the eye like, also important? and if i have a 60kg octopus how does it not bludgeon/rip if it goes through a 2cm hole??)
@@zioqqr4262 Nah, it's straight up true. Everything else can just squish and contort to fit. Same as a mouse can squeeze through anything smaller than it's skull, 'cos that's the largest solid thing. th-cam.com/video/E3N0i_KM8cI/w-d-xo.html
@@zioqqr4262 The eyes are definitely important, but there are two other things you have to keep in mind! One, an octopus doesn't need to keep its eyes in the same location as they usually are when the animal is at rest. Its eyes are, individually, no larger than its beak. They can be fed through the hole behind the beak one at a time in a line. And number two, vertebrate animals on land have wildly different eye structures from underwater mollusks! On land, we need to keep our eyes constantly wet and at a consistent internal pressure. The vertebrate eye is, essentially, simulating an ocean environment inside of a couple of paired organs. The octopus eye, though, is likely much more gelatinous, and more likely to be capable of changing its internal pressure to suit its environment, considering octopuses go up and down in the water column quite a bit, and their eyes don't burst at different depths! That says to me that they might be able to 'deflate' or 'inflate' their eyes slightly, to make for easier, er... squishing, I guess? And for better adaptation to different depths. Take point #2 with several thousand grains of salt, though, this is speculation based on vague knowledge I have about how eyes have evolved through the ages. Eyes evolved independently a whole lot of times - there is no one common ancestor that led to every type of eye on the earth! It's all convergent evolution! This makes for a lot of really interesting variation in how different organisms see, and how their sight works mechanically.
@@zioqqr4262 everything from their brain to their eyes is squishy and flexible. Their internal support it all based on tubes that can be filled with water or emptied and they can squish and stretch through any hole they fit the beak through. Squid cannot do this, as they have a chitinous "bone" or pen in their mantle
As someone who has been thinking about an all-aquatic campaign (all PCs are amphibious), I do agree that you need to vary your environments between open water and enclosed spaces. For one, even if you're adventuring underwater, you're still going to dungeon delve. The dungeons will just be underwater. Shipwrecks, sunken cities, ancient ruins of aquatic empires, deep crevices, or coral reefs. There's plenty of places to go into, where the ability to swim in three dimensions is only _partly_ a help.
I think it could also be a cool, crazy encounter to have the characters be chasing the evil wizard/god main villain of the campaign through a desert, and then they summon the Kraken into the desert and the players have to fight it on land.
Similar to how humans have helpful gut bacteria, I’ve always liked the idea of a giant behemoth creature, that’s potentially eons old, having mutualistic species around or in it. No one expects the pre digestion chamber of man sized slime covered strangle squids, waiting incase the food went down feisty!
Ari Lunarium on a similar note, i can imagine a creature as large as a kraken is likely to leave relatively large scraps of its prey around after its attack, prompting flocks of birds and such to follow and hover above it waiting to scavenge. An indicator a wise player could use to either steer clear of the beast or risk it all and see what they can find in the wreckage.
@@banishedpest115 Oow, your characters could discover to their horror the few that survive an attack in lifeboats or on large debris get literally picked off by the largest of the waiting birds above.
@@Arikayx13 I'm picturing some kind of Albatross variant of a Roc, massive and predatory, but largely bound to the skies and sea for a majority of their life.
As someone with thalassophobia, Krakens always creep me out! But their lore is so Lovecraftian at times I can't help but consider them my favorite. I love the details on "The Unseen"; a Kraken that lives in the darkest depths within the planet itself and is so large it's tentacles extend through the planet and has such mental abilities that any mortal on the surface that would attempt a slight brushing contact with it's mind would go insane!
I loved this one and the inspiration from it. For me The Kraken is the water equivalent for the Tarrasque, so I really like Dael's vibe and inspiration for it. I always love her food for thought vibe
For me The Kraken is something so utterly unkillable for anyone who is not a God/goddess that it would take characters of at least lvl 20 to even survive an encounter with such a creature. From my perspective the Kraken, if it even pays attention to you, is a death-sentence without escape. And to make clear my vision of what the Kraken is I need to clarify a few things. 1) Size. In my eyes, the Kraken is multiple kilometers long (if it were to be laid out lengthways) and some amount of hundred meters radius in the size of the main body. The implications for this titanic size would follow: tsunami-esque waves if it ever gets close to land, inescapable currents under the surface as it travels, temporary disruption to local sea-ecosystems which would lead to shortage of fish or other such food from the ocean (which would be an interesting plot hook I think), and lastly stormy seas if it ever swims fast near the surface. 2) Creepiness/alien factors. To emphasize the strangeness of the Kraken, I would add some additional factors to indicate just how strange this dweller of the deep is. For one I would give it bioluminescent elements such as arms which slowly pulsate down their length through chitin protrusions, strange and indecipherable patterns on its main body, and glowing eyes. Secondly, and speaking of eyes, there would not just be one or two eyes as is the case in a lot of media depictions, no, there would be so many as to cover the main torso evenly, and they would be appropriately sized for the creature. Lastly I would take inspiration from crustaceans and give the Kraken a finely meshed series of armour-plating on its torso to act as an exoskeleton, allowing it to be both impossible to penetrate from the outside and maneuverable enough. Its glowing parts would be powerful enough to function like an under-water beacon of danger, able to be seen from many kilometers away at night or on the darkest of days. Even if one is a significantly long distance from it, one would be able to see a faint glow in the distance from beyond the horizon. A graze with the Kraken would go something like this: "A sailor rings the ship's bell, frantic and hard. You are all awakened and take a moment to orient yourselves as it is the middle of the night. You grab your weapons and gear and head to the top deck expecting a fight with pirates or some other human threat, but as you exit onto the wet planks of the top deck you find there is no pirate vessel, no official warship of any nation, not even a raft. At a distance of 8 - 10 kilometers you see it, a slow, ever so slow pulse of light. The light seems to have no beginning or end, it just ripples from the horizon to horizon. The captain unhooks his spyglass and extends it as far as it can go. Moments later his jaw drops, and without word he hands the spyglass down the line of bewildered people. As you all get a closer look you see it, an enormous tentacle beneath the surface, distorted by the movement of the water. It lazily snakes its way north, slower than the sip on a windless day. It travels parallel with the ship and as you get closer to the direction of the light pulses a sense of dread washes over you, nothing magical or otherwise supernatural, but the sheer existence of a thing so large makes your stomach twist and freeze. Several glowing orbs come into view deep below the waters, jittering around, scanning their surroundings. As one sees the ship, all the eyes visible to you turn and gaze at the ship. [insert a check of some kind with nonlethal consequences for failure]. It stares for a bit, observing the object it sees, but loses interest and continues scanning the ocean. You travel with the titanic creature for a little while. [time for reactions/knowledge checks. If failure, then the captain explains the myths] [One of the players sees its eyes fixate on something else and most likely informs the others]. You all see the creature's gaze focus on something to the northeast, its gaze more intense now. A few moments later it changes direction and speeds up. It takes the creature seconds to travel faster than the ship, and yet seconds later it is faster than any ship in the world. Moments later its torso is gone, and within a minute the end of the tentacles leave your sight. Only a faint glow remains and it slowly fades until the only light remaining is the moon and stars far above."
Too many eyes feels Lovecraftian. If that's how you perceive it, by all means run with it. But if it were me I'd have it be 1 KM maximum length. And I would find a way to incorporate the Leviathan into the scenario as well. Like a battle between the two creatures that the ship and crew are just trying to survive and pass around.
I've seen the Kraken used as an actual deity. Not really one with an agenda, and a fairly biological god as such things go, but a primal force from way back before the creating forces narrowed down the whole "animal" thing to something reasonably manageable.
One simple thing to make it feel even stranger - make the kraken sing like whales do. You can have the encounter foreshadowed just minutes before tentacle panic by just this weird... drone noise. You could even use 52 Blue's song, which is really just a bassy rumble that you can barely hear (for those who don't know it, search for "52 hz whale" on youtube and wikipedia) Whale songs, man. One of the weirdest noises that can come out of this planet, for sure.
Dael, what you’re describing is basically what happens in the “Salvage Operation” adventure featured as one of the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The main featured encounter in that adventure is literally trying to get off of a sinking ship that’s being attacked by a gigantic octopus. You may want to look into it.
Occurs to me that maybe if theres one, singular Kraken, it occupies a similar place in the cosmos as the Tarrasque- maybe even to the point that they're connected. The Tarrasque for Land, and the Kraken for the Sea. Might even be a myth discussing how one feature of the End of the World will be a battle between the two.
Its kind of funny to think about a Kraken as just a big animal, total misunderstanding in that situation! Sailors "Why has this horrible beast chosen to forsake us? What have we done to deserve this!?!" Kraken "Was Dis?" O.o
Octopi's limbs are called arms because they have sucker the whole length, as opposed to smooth limbs with a sucker pad at the end with tentacles. Totally killing it with these ideas: just love the clear storm seas pre-kraken encounter; not to mention the whirlpool idea.
leaning into a cuttlefish angle could be really cool too. Like lull the players with a description of beautiful bioluminescence under the ship before asking for a wisdom save as the tentacles sneak up the walls of the ship.
Excellent rendition of the Kraken, three things that I would add: 1- Grapple rules for the tentacle's, with athletic and strength Skills checks. 2- Minions- Crabs or other sea type creatures fall onto the deck (Kind of like in the 'Cloverfield' film) 3: The ship may have Harpoons etc for hunting whales that can be turned against the Kraken. Thats just an extra thought. Thanks
Your description of getting swallowed by the kraken to hurt it from the inside is what my group refers to as "gastronauting". Yes, it happens that often.
Your video on Giants was super inspirational, and I'm planning on having a Giant fight, like the ones you described, in my campaign. Now I've got to find a way of getting a Kraken in there too
Anyone else thought of Drax jumping into the extra-dimentional monster in Gardians of the Galaxy Vol. II when Dael was describing fighting the Kraken from the inside?
There's always been something about the 5e Kraken that rubbed me the wrong way and took away a lot of my enthusiasm to use one, but I've never been able to put it into words. You've once again absolutely nailed it. Thank you.
Swing you move your hands and it's just your hands while you talk, ironcially enough, reminded me of the disimbodied octopus tentalces doing your own thing haha! The moment I realized that, I found that so damned funny.
As it includes a Kraken, Hybris and a drowned city, I quickly translated this north-German ballad; 'Trutz, Blanke Hans' (the later 2 words being the name of the embodiement of the Northsea): Today I sailed over Rungold, Lo! The city sank six hundred years ago, Here waves still crash wild and outraged, As on the day they destroyed the marshlands. And over the creaking and croaking of the battered ship. A voice rings eery from the depths and calls Dare to Defy, Blanke Hans... In the north-sea, the murderous sea, of the coast, Lie the Friesan Islands in peace. And the witnesses of world-drowning anger, The Hall-lays, emerge one after another from retreating tides. Here gulls squabble on growing tideland, There seals sunbathe on a sandy bank. Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. On the bottom of the sea sleeps up to this hour An ancient creature of awesome power. It's head lays couched close to England's sands, It's flipper plays with Brasil's surf. It draws it's breath for six full hours And pulls it forth for the following six. Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. But once every century it's gills open, entirely free, Shoot torrents of water into the sea. Then the beast fully breathes in, Sets off tall waves, and falls asleep again. Many a folk in the northland drown, Their rich cities sink, not to be found Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. Rungholt is rich and grows ever richer, Even the biggest store is filled to the brim. As in the hayday of old Rome, The streets crowded with the people there flow'n. Richly adorned strangers from lands a far, Come here to trade with long carried gold. Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. In every market and every alley, Are the shouting drunk masses, At evening they stream out, towards the dike: 'We Defy you, Blanke Hans, North-Sea-Pond!' And whilst they shake their fists and cuss, The kraken silently draws from the seabed it's claws. Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. The waters ebb, the birds are silent Even God moves with outmost caution The moon calmly follows it's path, Smiling while the Rungholders laugh From Brasil to Norway's Fjords, The calm sea gleams like fresh whet swords Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. And all over the peaceful seas and the lands Sudden, like the scream between a predators fangs The creature heaves and breathes deep in, Only to shut it's eyes and slumber again And roaring, black, long maned waves Come flying, thundering, like horses enraged Dare to defy, Blanke Hans. A sinlge scream - wholly sunk the town And hundred-thousand people drowned Where yesterday laughter and joy The next day swam fish silent and coy. Today I sailed over Rungholt, Lo! The city sank six hundred years ago. Dare to defy, Blanke Hans? The ballad was written in the 1880's by the poet Detlev von Liliencron and is based on a myth that sought to explain the great flood of 1362 AD, which "reclaimed" large swaths of land along the friesian coast to the sea. This translation is in parts rather shaky, especially due to some local or older German terms like: Trutz= (dare to) defy/resist, or Hallig= Hall-lay= partialy submerged island. I also didn't pay any attention whatsoever to the rhyming scheme, well, not much. Hope you still enjoyed it fellow humans.
Is the "its tissue is weaker on the inside" actually a thing? I can see it with like a scaled creature like a dragon where the scales are like armour but isn't something like an octopus the same sort of gelantanous all the way through?
I'm planning on having my party sail from one continent to another (not too far a distance though) and I want one of the "random encounters" to be the sight of what could be a Kraken miles and miles away from them. Then later on in the campaign when they have traverse the oceans again, I definitely want to use these mechanics in an encounter when they finally get a little too close to it. I love this tentacle motion mechanic.
Let's not forget that octopuses are so weird and alien that one of the most iconic monsters in d&d is the Mind Flayer. Basically an octopus as a head on a bipedal humanoid.
I think this a great video. You have shown a good idea of how to think through a “big bad” fight that doesn’t railroad anyone and gives multiple opportunities for heroics. Fantastic!
Dael Kingsmill and the High Seas of Adventure! The latest action epic from Monarchs Factory! Includes the amazing musical single, Swallowed by the Kraken! Best enjoyed with popcorn! Thank you for the smiles, Dael.
I once GMd a Kraken-centred one-shot for level 5 characters, where all the people of a town had gone missing and there was this creepy fog all around. Naturally the party goes to investigate and finds people turned into fish-like beings. They had to descend into an old linear dungeon that led deeper under water and into the ocean where it emerged on a small island where they fought a Kraken-Priest from an aquatic cult that was aiming to re-bind The Kraken that had spend multiple centuries bound beneath the ocean floor. My players decided to free the Kraken as they managed to communicate with it and come to an accord. The Kraken itself in my adventure was a sort of semi-divine personification of the vastness of the seas in physical form and only ever a small part of it was shown or described, as I made the beastie massive (with all the physical effects like water displacement and so on which Dael mentions). I made sure to make contact with its mind a similar experience of being faced with something vast, like "You have the impression that you, as a grain of sand, have suddenly garnered the attention of a mountain range."
One idea for a kraken encounter might be doing it at low levels. Instead of the party being in one main ship, have them be in a support or transport ship that's part of a fleet. The party doesn't even fight the kraken directly, but their lighter ship is getting knocked around in the wake of the kraken absolutely destroying the capital ship at the heart of whatever fleet they are in. In the aftermath of the skill challenges happening at the edge of the kraken battle maybe the party's ship sinks and they wash up on the shore of a tropical island infested with yuan ti or a couple young adult dragons. Maybe their ship survives and suddenly the party has to take command of what is left of the fleet to finish the mission. Maybe the campaign starts with the kraken battle at level 1 to 3 instead of the typical tavern scene.
Maybe the distance that the Kraken arms get along the ships in the first phase could influence the angle that the ship is tipped in the second phase. It would make sense because the further the tentacles go the more leverage they'd get. It would mean that every inch matters in the first phase. The angle of tipping could influence how hard it is to stay standing, how hard it is to hold...
I love your monster ideas. it's changed how I'm doing giants, it's changed how I handle redcaps, and the fae in general, and now it's changing how I'm doing the kraken. you mentioned not making things magical if they don't need to be, and I love that, but also, what if you start with that concept, but turned it up a bit? instead of just looking like part of a rock, it's blending in with some underwater ruins, perfectly mimicking other broken building, or even completing them (honestly, very similar to how a mimic does) act on the poisonous octopuses, and instead of having a contact poison, maybe give it an aura of poison. it's a massive, terrifying monster from the beginning of time, and it's been around long enough to be affected by the primordial magics that created and maintain this fantasy world
Near as I can find, the original kraken idea is acutally 2 islands and the strait between them. It refers to the islands as the jaws of the beast, exhaling out nutrients to lure fish into its maw, then, when enough fish have gathered, closing its mouth and swallowing them all. Stems from the common feature of fish gathering in such places and the dangers of fishing there - it's a big risk to fish in the kraken's mouth, but there's enough fish there that maybe it's worth risking getting eaten by the kraken (or, realistically, wrecking against one of the islands in the messy currents those kinds of straits have). The point about the big threat coming from the waves and whirlpools produced by the beast in its movement is very reminiscent of that mythological origin.
After seeing this video I randomly stumbled upon a different video with live footage of two octopuses fighting, except one of the two was *holding on to a shield to fend off the other* and now I want to make shield-bashing krakens a thing.
Presumably is the PCs cut off a tentacle the thing just keeps on trying to grab things to drag down to it's phantom body. Imagine how terrifying it would be to feel you just scored an important victory against this thing, only for the severed tentacle to grab you and drag you around the deck or overboard!
In building up to the kraken, you could have the players encounter the aftermath of a kraken attack. Maybe have the chance to save a witness from sharks. And then later, maybe in a different voyage, actually encounter the kraken.
Dael, take a look at "Sin" from Final Fantasy 10. The first time you encounter it is terrifying, and you can only see its fin, which is 10x larger than your boat. Gives a similar feel to what you've described.
First time leaving a comment, but long time viewer here. I just wanna say I love the way you overthink things and get these brand new and great ideas about simple things, like the tentacles exploring the deck of the ship. I can really visualise this scene and now I want to do a kraken adventure! Anyway, thank you for the videos and the inspiration.
21:45 I laughed for like a solid 30 minutes after watching this little clip of Dael just grasping at the air while staring blankly, I love it so much 😂
I love the thing about the octopus legs staying alive after being cut off. I would totally use that to introduce the players to the thought of a kraken being in the water. So they first fight only one tentacle and then they can start to fear finding the real thing
The main suggestion I got from this was: so what if your kraken has spent centuries severing and regenerating its own tentacles? And obviously it plants the severed tentacles to create a ‘grabby garden’ in its lair or hunting grounds.
This was great! Lots of good ideas! I have a Kraken for my big bad in my homebrew campaign. I was always disappointed by the size, because like Dael prefers, I wanted it a force of nature. I was always inspired by the monster manual picture of a kraken completely dwarfing a great white shark. I wanted the Kraken to be the embodiment of fear of the ocean. Which I think is kind of the proper form it takes in myth. It's not about a singular creature for a hero to slay. It's a constant unknown threat that is as vast as your lack of knowledge about the ocean. So suffice to say in my campaign Kraken takes up an entire combat map, the players never quite know the scope of it. Just that it's big enough to destroy cities and fleets. Also inspired by Darkest Dungeon. It's quite inevitable the the crew is eaten the Kraken. And just being inside the Kraken is a dungeon by itself as the crew try to explore the Kraken anatomy to find it's heart.
Excellent video. I'm using this idea for an encounter with the idea of not trying to kill a creature. But just to survive it or change its trajectory slightly.
The offhand comment about players not utilizing underwater space (or interesting environments in general) hits me in the heart, the frustration is palpable
My first thought of the inside-out damage was the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and of course the Kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean. Hmm...Now you've got me wondering where that trope originated.
If your players take off some of the tentacles in one campaign you could have those tentacles individually come back in the next campaign because they continue to live on for a long time you could make some sort of mini bosses
I hope someone out there said "Release the Kraken (video)" to MonarchsFactory. I love the idea of alien movement used in combat scenarios. Very well done. I liked and subscribed.
I really want to use the “no hp” idea. I think it’s really cool. I might give the kraken an hp abstraction to help know when it will give up and leave, and maybe that’s just 300 hp.
I would love to really lean on the ink cloud ability in the underwater setting, and try to emulate how disorienting that would be. When the players try to get their bearings, make them make wisdom saves. If they roll high enough (I would say give them a 40% chance of saving), they're able to figure out where they are in the context of the field, and where the monster is. If they roll lower than they, I would still allow them to figure out where they are in relation to the monster (just for the sake of 'I want to hit the monster' or 'I want to run directly away' not being too frustrating), but not know where they are in a tactical sense. So if they want to move to a specific space, ask them how far they wanna move and get them to roll a directional die (or a d8 as a substitute), and get them to move in that direction instead. And maybe if they nat 1 the roll, get them to roll directional for attacking/fleeing too. Personally, I would find something like that incredibly immersive (in theory), considering an ink cloud from a kraken would probably consume the whole space, but it's still a liquid moving through a liquid, so it won't be total coverage, and the gaps in the coverage would also be fluid.
So your idea is for a single kraken to be in existence. I like it. Sort of an underwater version of the tarrasque. Very interesting. Idk if you know about it, but there is a legend of kraken in D&D called The Unseen. A creature so massive and powerful that its limbs and tentacles are said to tunnel through the forgotten realms. It sleeps, waiting for its time to awaken. Perhaps that could be your kraken, and sure some people could like worship it, but in your setting it'd just be a massive creature. Venerating it does nothing for it. Idk, could be something to look at, although I'm pretty sure there are no stat blocks for it anywhere. You very well may have to come up with your own. And something that big would have to world threatening.
My pleasure. I really appreciate your videos on D&D, but I remember seeing your videos back in the Geek & Sundry days. You've come a long way, and I'm excited to continue seeing your work. 😊
What if your players decide to polymorph the kraken into a turtle or a sea slug? Being a beast, I doubt it will have resistance against that type of magic.
I'm already going so far as to not give it hitpoints, it doesn't seem much of a stretch from there to also make it auto succeed on a saving throw like that
Leaining into your underwater version, where the PCs are looking for the enteance to Atlantis or something, I'd be interested to try something where the Kraken is almost a Godzilla-esque thing that can travel between the world above and wherever the hell Atlantis is, like a hollow-Earth type deal. The PCs need to follow in the wake of the Kraken as it journeys to Atlantis, but it's so huge that even the wake of it can be devastating. Plus any scavenger creatures following along with it that try to attack you. I feel like having the ship physically hooked into the Kraken would be a good way to do this and not have to worry about keeping up with it. I wouldnt want thr Kraken being the thing your fighting, but more like the setting, with the scavengers being the actual enemies. Also, i feel like the Kraken should be huge. Like really goddamn huge. Like, the ship that the PCs are on is the size of the Kraken's pupil huge. The Kraken is not something that can be killed. The Kraken is a god that has grown tired of intellect. Fighting it is like fighting a continent, conpletely stupid to attempt.
I think it might be compelling to give individual tentacles their own turns. It helps to deal with the action economy and also it really enforces its scale. Like its turn is spread out across the whole turn instead of happening all at once. Also if you did want to have players kill it, mid battle map change. The Kraken is the second map or at least a significant part of it.
Miss Kingsmill... your Kraken is the BEST Kraken! I agree with not being able to kill it. If it were killed, like in the Pirates movies, there would just be less in the world. Of course, I feel the same about killing dragons too.
Dael, I certainly do take little pieces of your ideas for my very own. The juiciest sources harvested from your videos are related to fey. I am such a dwarf-lover that I find their alien nature so difficult to understand so I find your human insights into their existence have been so very useful. I do like the visual representation of the tentacle with the chain and the underwater encounter plan. The chain and its movements do a great job on conveying the uniqueness of this encounter. I just used theater of the mind when I used one on the surface but it was still a lot of fun. I struggled with what to do with kraken in my setting for a long time but based on how I typed it you know where I landed. I wanted power struggles under the waves just like they exist on the surface. I had established the role aboleths would play in my setting years before (hint: it involves the ulat-kini) but couldn’t really think of any major challenges from the same biome. Krakens seemed the logical choice. I stole two ideas to create them for my setting. First is the concept of age determining size and strength from dragons and then the limits to number of high level (or high CR in this case) critters from second edition druid rules. Basically, there are often tens of thousands of level one druids in a region but only one level fourteen druid in that region. In the entire world there is only one druid above level fourteen that is a member of the ‘hierarchy’ of the Druidic Order. Ooph. This is getting long and I didn’t even get to how krakens move up the chain or my kraken story in my game (when I didn’t use a chain on a boat map) also it didn’t die and it wasn’t even one of the old and big ones. Oh well I might be back if there’s an interest in more rambling.
As someone with quite a hefty chunk of thalassophobia, I think the kraken (or really any colossal sea monster) is probably the most powerful apparition of fear in the collective unconscious. Fear of the unknown, of the depths beyond understanding or any inkling of fathomable (haha) scale. The kraken is fate come to knock upon the hull of those who fear it.
Just found your channel, you've got some great thoughts on DMing! I also just read your article on death saves and your home brewed system for them, and I am most likely gonna impliment it into my own game. Thanks!
Woah! I was just watching your video on giants a day ago and was disappointed to find out there was no Kraken video, especially since I'm gonna be running a Kraken as my big bad for the upcoming session this weekend for the first time. How serendipitous.
As a norige. We have a decent divide between mythology and folklore. Norse Mythology, with the gods and Jormundgandr, Yggdrasil. And there are stories of the Gods running around and doing stuff. But in the Folklore, there aren't really stories as much as tales to scare children. And this is where the Nøkk, Kraken, Nisser, and general Væsen. They are sightings and more anecdotal, or just plain made up (again to scare children). I should note, the scaring of the children is to keep them safe. We have a lot of marshes and inland lakes that kids could wander of and fall into. As well as cautionary tales for sailors.
In nature apex predators will still usually go away if they suffer a little bit of a wound because they're just doing a probe attack. Using this idea I use the Kraken, or other such behemoth creatures, as you aren't supposed to kill it but it will leave you alone if you do X00 damage to it. Of course as you go up in level the X00 damage needed increases. Then with the Kraken yeah I would use the when it retreats it creates a whirlpool in its wake.
This is a great example of what I like to call a "peril encounter," rather than a combat encounter. Yes, fighting is involved, but it feels a lot less like "I'm'a fight and kill the thing because that removes its threat" and more "Oh shit, oh God, gotta live! Gotta save so many things!"
"Peril encounter," I love that!
@@MonarchsFactory Glad you like that! Only recently came to me as I realized I'd been throwing weird stuff at my party that they couldn't necessarily fight their way out of, but threatened their wellbeing nonetheless.
Woah, what a great idea. I'm definitely stealing the idea of peril encounters for unlucky random encounters in my campaign! thanks!
@@statics128 Aw thanks! Glad I could inspire!
My favorite part of every D&D video is the way you say "that's fine" in the part where you inevitably go, "So the official designers did x.... And, you know, that's *fine*... But what if--"
(Also, thanks to discussing the kraken, I now have your Critical Role dumb-ways-to-die parody yet again stuck in my head. "Swallowed by a kraken, or swallowed by a kraken, or unconscious and drowning and swallowed by a kraken... Don't fight a kraken cuz it's quite possibly the dumbest way to die...")
Dael: "...modern interpretation..."
My brain: "It's just a hen that did a lot of crack"
I am facepalming at myself right now.
As a Swede, I can confirm that the word "krake" does indeed exist and basically means "twisted creature". BUT!! It leans much more towards "pitiable" than "fearsome" (like, you'd be more likely to use the word krake for a sick dog than for a scary creature), which is why I've always thought the name to be a bit weird. Maybe the word has changed overtime and was used differently before?
Sounds likely. Words have a tendency to do that.
Stupid language, always constantly evolving and changing over time...
It is a monster from the viking sagas isent it
Maybe it was a sort of 'godless' or 'damned' type of pity than a mundane sort of pity. It may be mighty in this world, but it's existence is pitiful in the grand scheme of things.
@@stefanhansen8623 Not sure if it's as old as the viking sagas. But the Kraken does live in the maelstrom near Lofoten according to some stories I've heard.
Im almost 100 that its from the old sagas
Here's a possible fun twist on this style of Kraken encounter: The Kraken being an ancient entity, remembers a time when mortals were more powerful, and posed an active threat to it. Because of this, it is actually very "gentle" as it grabs onto ships, being careful not to disturb the water such that there are swells and whirlpools. This causes modern seafarers to become overconfident, and set out to hunt for the Kraken. Clearly, the old myths have been greatly exaggerated. A fleet of ships baits the ocean with tons of dead, rotting fish, filling the water with sharks and gulls (and playing into the theme of a twisted creature), and lo and behold, the Kraken does appear. Battle begins, and the Kraken realizes it has been ambushed, and so, for the first time in thousands of years, it reveals its true form, emboldened by the revelation that the one ever-present threat has vanished.
The PCs are level 1 deck hands on a vessel at the center of the formation. Dozens of ships, in a formation miles wide, are suddenly caged by tentacles marred with knotted scars from the Age of Myth, tentacles that the Kraken thought it needed to hide. It has realized it was wrong.
The objective? Escape.
This is basically the whole conceit of my current D&D game. My players were on a ship that was destroyed by the Kraken, because it just grabs anything that comes near its Island. And in order to leave, they are going to have to neutralize it somehow so that a rescue ship may arrive
Octopi have amazing camouflage abilities, so I don't think you'd need it to be in a crevasse. Since the kraken would be both smart and terribly large, it could pretend to be the entire ruins instead.
This is an awesome idea! I love your thinking!
"You hear a rumour about a massive underwater city that appeared overnight, and go to check it out...and when you get there, the city moves! Roll for initiative!"
I think the Cuttlefish would be better for this because it is significantly more notable for their camouflage capabilities but I also love the cuttlefish so much and it is probably my favourite animal.
@@TheNerdySimulation octopus can be pretty dang good th-cam.com/video/q8xJ13pAZNw/w-d-xo.html
Small detail for anyone trying to slip an octopus-style kracken into a crevice:
An octopus can squeeze into any crevice wider than its beak, because that's the only hard part of its body.
Unless something is different for yours, work out how bit it's maw is and that's the largest width of the space you need to hide it.
explains why a buncha fantasy krakens have many tiny tiny teeth instead of a beak
(also i cannot fathom how that "anything bigger than its beak" can be true, because isnt the eye like, also important? and if i have a 60kg octopus how does it not bludgeon/rip if it goes through a 2cm hole??)
@@zioqqr4262 also keen to here an answer to this question
@@zioqqr4262 Nah, it's straight up true. Everything else can just squish and contort to fit. Same as a mouse can squeeze through anything smaller than it's skull, 'cos that's the largest solid thing.
th-cam.com/video/E3N0i_KM8cI/w-d-xo.html
@@zioqqr4262 The eyes are definitely important, but there are two other things you have to keep in mind! One, an octopus doesn't need to keep its eyes in the same location as they usually are when the animal is at rest. Its eyes are, individually, no larger than its beak. They can be fed through the hole behind the beak one at a time in a line.
And number two, vertebrate animals on land have wildly different eye structures from underwater mollusks! On land, we need to keep our eyes constantly wet and at a consistent internal pressure. The vertebrate eye is, essentially, simulating an ocean environment inside of a couple of paired organs. The octopus eye, though, is likely much more gelatinous, and more likely to be capable of changing its internal pressure to suit its environment, considering octopuses go up and down in the water column quite a bit, and their eyes don't burst at different depths! That says to me that they might be able to 'deflate' or 'inflate' their eyes slightly, to make for easier, er... squishing, I guess? And for better adaptation to different depths.
Take point #2 with several thousand grains of salt, though, this is speculation based on vague knowledge I have about how eyes have evolved through the ages. Eyes evolved independently a whole lot of times - there is no one common ancestor that led to every type of eye on the earth! It's all convergent evolution! This makes for a lot of really interesting variation in how different organisms see, and how their sight works mechanically.
@@zioqqr4262 everything from their brain to their eyes is squishy and flexible. Their internal support it all based on tubes that can be filled with water or emptied and they can squish and stretch through any hole they fit the beak through.
Squid cannot do this, as they have a chitinous "bone" or pen in their mantle
As someone who has been thinking about an all-aquatic campaign (all PCs are amphibious), I do agree that you need to vary your environments between open water and enclosed spaces. For one, even if you're adventuring underwater, you're still going to dungeon delve. The dungeons will just be underwater. Shipwrecks, sunken cities, ancient ruins of aquatic empires, deep crevices, or coral reefs. There's plenty of places to go into, where the ability to swim in three dimensions is only _partly_ a help.
I think it could also be a cool, crazy encounter to have the characters be chasing the evil wizard/god main villain of the campaign through a desert, and then they summon the Kraken into the desert and the players have to fight it on land.
Similar to how humans have helpful gut bacteria, I’ve always liked the idea of a giant behemoth creature, that’s potentially eons old, having mutualistic species around or in it.
No one expects the pre digestion chamber of man sized slime covered strangle squids, waiting incase the food went down feisty!
Ari Lunarium on a similar note, i can imagine a creature as large as a kraken is likely to leave relatively large scraps of its prey around after its attack, prompting flocks of birds and such to follow and hover above it waiting to scavenge. An indicator a wise player could use to either steer clear of the beast or risk it all and see what they can find in the wreckage.
@@banishedpest115 Oow, your characters could discover to their horror the few that survive an attack in lifeboats or on large debris get literally picked off by the largest of the waiting birds above.
@@Arikayx13 I'm picturing some kind of Albatross variant of a Roc, massive and predatory, but largely bound to the skies and sea for a majority of their life.
That visual of the party hanging from the broken deck of the ship, trying desperately not to fall into the waiting beak of the kraken is so awesome
As someone with thalassophobia, Krakens always creep me out! But their lore is so Lovecraftian at times I can't help but consider them my favorite. I love the details on "The Unseen"; a Kraken that lives in the darkest depths within the planet itself and is so large it's tentacles extend through the planet and has such mental abilities that any mortal on the surface that would attempt a slight brushing contact with it's mind would go insane!
I loved this one and the inspiration from it. For me The Kraken is the water equivalent for the Tarrasque, so I really like Dael's vibe and inspiration for it.
I always love her food for thought vibe
For me The Kraken is something so utterly unkillable for anyone who is not a God/goddess that it would take characters of at least lvl 20 to even survive an encounter with such a creature. From my perspective the Kraken, if it even pays attention to you, is a death-sentence without escape. And to make clear my vision of what the Kraken is I need to clarify a few things.
1) Size.
In my eyes, the Kraken is multiple kilometers long (if it were to be laid out lengthways) and some amount of hundred meters radius in the size of the main body. The implications for this titanic size would follow: tsunami-esque waves if it ever gets close to land, inescapable currents under the surface as it travels, temporary disruption to local sea-ecosystems which would lead to shortage of fish or other such food from the ocean (which would be an interesting plot hook I think), and lastly stormy seas if it ever swims fast near the surface.
2) Creepiness/alien factors.
To emphasize the strangeness of the Kraken, I would add some additional factors to indicate just how strange this dweller of the deep is. For one I would give it bioluminescent elements such as arms which slowly pulsate down their length through chitin protrusions, strange and indecipherable patterns on its main body, and glowing eyes. Secondly, and speaking of eyes, there would not just be one or two eyes as is the case in a lot of media depictions, no, there would be so many as to cover the main torso evenly, and they would be appropriately sized for the creature. Lastly I would take inspiration from crustaceans and give the Kraken a finely meshed series of armour-plating on its torso to act as an exoskeleton, allowing it to be both impossible to penetrate from the outside and maneuverable enough.
Its glowing parts would be powerful enough to function like an under-water beacon of danger, able to be seen from many kilometers away at night or on the darkest of days. Even if one is a significantly long distance from it, one would be able to see a faint glow in the distance from beyond the horizon.
A graze with the Kraken would go something like this:
"A sailor rings the ship's bell, frantic and hard. You are all awakened and take a moment to orient yourselves as it is the middle of the night. You grab your weapons and gear and head to the top deck expecting a fight with pirates or some other human threat, but as you exit onto the wet planks of the top deck you find there is no pirate vessel, no official warship of any nation, not even a raft. At a distance of 8 - 10 kilometers you see it, a slow, ever so slow pulse of light. The light seems to have no beginning or end, it just ripples from the horizon to horizon. The captain unhooks his spyglass and extends it as far as it can go. Moments later his jaw drops, and without word he hands the spyglass down the line of bewildered people. As you all get a closer look you see it, an enormous tentacle beneath the surface, distorted by the movement of the water. It lazily snakes its way north, slower than the sip on a windless day. It travels parallel with the ship and as you get closer to the direction of the light pulses a sense of dread washes over you, nothing magical or otherwise supernatural, but the sheer existence of a thing so large makes your stomach twist and freeze. Several glowing orbs come into view deep below the waters, jittering around, scanning their surroundings. As one sees the ship, all the eyes visible to you turn and gaze at the ship. [insert a check of some kind with nonlethal consequences for failure]. It stares for a bit, observing the object it sees, but loses interest and continues scanning the ocean. You travel with the titanic creature for a little while. [time for reactions/knowledge checks. If failure, then the captain explains the myths] [One of the players sees its eyes fixate on something else and most likely informs the others]. You all see the creature's gaze focus on something to the northeast, its gaze more intense now. A few moments later it changes direction and speeds up. It takes the creature seconds to travel faster than the ship, and yet seconds later it is faster than any ship in the world. Moments later its torso is gone, and within a minute the end of the tentacles leave your sight. Only a faint glow remains and it slowly fades until the only light remaining is the moon and stars far above."
Terrifying. I love it.
Too many eyes feels Lovecraftian. If that's how you perceive it, by all means run with it.
But if it were me I'd have it be 1 KM maximum length. And I would find a way to incorporate the Leviathan into the scenario as well. Like a battle between the two creatures that the ship and crew are just trying to survive and pass around.
I've seen the Kraken used as an actual deity. Not really one with an agenda, and a fairly biological god as such things go, but a primal force from way back before the creating forces narrowed down the whole "animal" thing to something reasonably manageable.
@@Kasarii I think MrRhexx has a video on the Kraken that covers it being worshipped as a deity.
@@TheSkizz89 He does mention it being worshipped, but it's still the D&D kraken, a mortal, if powerful, entity.
One simple thing to make it feel even stranger - make the kraken sing like whales do. You can have the encounter foreshadowed just minutes before tentacle panic by just this weird... drone noise. You could even use 52 Blue's song, which is really just a bassy rumble that you can barely hear (for those who don't know it, search for "52 hz whale" on youtube and wikipedia)
Whale songs, man. One of the weirdest noises that can come out of this planet, for sure.
Dael, what you’re describing is basically what happens in the “Salvage Operation” adventure featured as one of the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. The main featured encounter in that adventure is literally trying to get off of a sinking ship that’s being attacked by a gigantic octopus. You may want to look into it.
Ha! Well there you go
Occurs to me that maybe if theres one, singular Kraken, it occupies a similar place in the cosmos as the Tarrasque- maybe even to the point that they're connected. The Tarrasque for Land, and the Kraken for the Sea. Might even be a myth discussing how one feature of the End of the World will be a battle between the two.
Tarrasque/Kraken like Groudon/Kyogre, which of course suggests the existence of something for the skies, akin to Rayquaza.
Its kind of funny to think about a Kraken as just a big animal, total misunderstanding in that situation!
Sailors "Why has this horrible beast chosen to forsake us? What have we done to deserve this!?!"
Kraken "Was Dis?" O.o
Hearing you actually say "MonarchsFactory" aloud is strange to me. It's like when someone in a movie says the title of the movie.
Riiiiiggggghhhhtttt!!!
actually
Now I want to do an encounter against just a kraken's severed limb that's trying to feed the party to a phantom kraken
Octopi's limbs are called arms because they have sucker the whole length, as opposed to smooth limbs with a sucker pad at the end with tentacles.
Totally killing it with these ideas: just love the clear storm seas pre-kraken encounter; not to mention the whirlpool idea.
leaning into a cuttlefish angle could be really cool too. Like lull the players with a description of beautiful bioluminescence under the ship before asking for a wisdom save as the tentacles sneak up the walls of the ship.
Excellent rendition of the Kraken, three things that I would add: 1- Grapple rules for the tentacle's, with athletic and strength Skills checks. 2- Minions- Crabs or other sea type creatures fall onto the deck (Kind of like in the 'Cloverfield' film) 3: The ship may have Harpoons etc for hunting whales that can be turned against the Kraken. Thats just an extra thought. Thanks
"A want it to be a SINGULAR threat!"
*Dael at herself*
Woow didn't know it did that...
Your description of getting swallowed by the kraken to hurt it from the inside is what my group refers to as "gastronauting". Yes, it happens that often.
Your video on Giants was super inspirational, and I'm planning on having a Giant fight, like the ones you described, in my campaign. Now I've got to find a way of getting a Kraken in there too
Now imagine the creature that required the kraken to develop camouflage and the ink escape tactic...
Dael: Yeah yeah do this for the end of the campaign
Me: HOT START KRAKEN ENCOUNTER
Incredible, 5 stars
Anyone else thought of Drax jumping into the extra-dimentional monster in Gardians of the Galaxy Vol. II when Dael was describing fighting the Kraken from the inside?
There's always been something about the 5e Kraken that rubbed me the wrong way and took away a lot of my enthusiasm to use one, but I've never been able to put it into words. You've once again absolutely nailed it. Thank you.
I got a good chuckle out of this before I even clicked on the video. Great video btw.
Swing you move your hands and it's just your hands while you talk, ironcially enough, reminded me of the disimbodied octopus tentalces doing your own thing haha! The moment I realized that, I found that so damned funny.
24:09 I know you mean hide from prey, but my mind immediately thought "Pft, what's it hiding from...
...
Oh God...."
As it includes a Kraken, Hybris and a drowned city, I quickly translated this north-German ballad; 'Trutz, Blanke Hans' (the later 2 words being the name of the embodiement of the Northsea):
Today I sailed over Rungold, Lo!
The city sank six hundred years ago,
Here waves still crash wild and outraged,
As on the day they destroyed the marshlands.
And over the creaking and croaking of the battered ship.
A voice rings eery from the depths and calls
Dare to Defy, Blanke Hans...
In the north-sea, the murderous sea, of the coast,
Lie the Friesan Islands in peace.
And the witnesses of world-drowning anger,
The Hall-lays, emerge one after another from retreating tides.
Here gulls squabble on growing tideland,
There seals sunbathe on a sandy bank.
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
On the bottom of the sea sleeps up to this hour
An ancient creature of awesome power.
It's head lays couched close to England's sands,
It's flipper plays with Brasil's surf.
It draws it's breath for six full hours
And pulls it forth for the following six.
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
But once every century it's gills open, entirely free,
Shoot torrents of water into the sea.
Then the beast fully breathes in,
Sets off tall waves, and falls asleep again.
Many a folk in the northland drown,
Their rich cities sink, not to be found
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
Rungholt is rich and grows ever richer,
Even the biggest store is filled to the brim.
As in the hayday of old Rome,
The streets crowded with the people there flow'n.
Richly adorned strangers from lands a far,
Come here to trade with long carried gold.
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
In every market and every alley,
Are the shouting drunk masses,
At evening they stream out, towards the dike:
'We Defy you, Blanke Hans, North-Sea-Pond!'
And whilst they shake their fists and cuss,
The kraken silently draws from the seabed it's claws.
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
The waters ebb, the birds are silent
Even God moves with outmost caution
The moon calmly follows it's path,
Smiling while the Rungholders laugh
From Brasil to Norway's Fjords,
The calm sea gleams like fresh whet swords
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
And all over the peaceful seas and the lands
Sudden, like the scream between a predators fangs
The creature heaves and breathes deep in,
Only to shut it's eyes and slumber again
And roaring, black, long maned waves
Come flying, thundering, like horses enraged
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans.
A sinlge scream - wholly sunk the town
And hundred-thousand people drowned
Where yesterday laughter and joy
The next day swam fish silent and coy.
Today I sailed over Rungholt, Lo!
The city sank six hundred years ago.
Dare to defy, Blanke Hans?
The ballad was written in the 1880's by the poet Detlev von Liliencron and is based on a myth that sought to explain the great flood of 1362 AD, which "reclaimed" large swaths of land along the friesian coast to the sea. This translation is in parts rather shaky, especially due to some local or older German terms like: Trutz= (dare to) defy/resist, or Hallig= Hall-lay= partialy submerged island. I also didn't pay any attention whatsoever to the rhyming scheme, well, not much. Hope you still enjoyed it fellow humans.
Is the "its tissue is weaker on the inside" actually a thing? I can see it with like a scaled creature like a dragon where the scales are like armour but isn't something like an octopus the same sort of gelantanous all the way through?
I'm planning on having my party sail from one continent to another (not too far a distance though) and I want one of the "random encounters" to be the sight of what could be a Kraken miles and miles away from them. Then later on in the campaign when they have traverse the oceans again, I definitely want to use these mechanics in an encounter when they finally get a little too close to it. I love this tentacle motion mechanic.
Let's not forget that octopuses are so weird and alien that one of the most iconic monsters in d&d is the Mind Flayer. Basically an octopus as a head on a bipedal humanoid.
each arm has its own subbrain and can act independantly. Imagine giving your arms orders to pick things up rather than just picking things up.
I really liked the map cam
I think this a great video. You have shown a good idea of how to think through a “big bad” fight that doesn’t railroad anyone and gives multiple opportunities for heroics. Fantastic!
Dael Kingsmill and the High Seas of Adventure! The latest action epic from Monarchs Factory! Includes the amazing musical single, Swallowed by the Kraken! Best enjoyed with popcorn! Thank you for the smiles, Dael.
I once GMd a Kraken-centred one-shot for level 5 characters, where all the people of a town had gone missing and there was this creepy fog all around. Naturally the party goes to investigate and finds people turned into fish-like beings. They had to descend into an old linear dungeon that led deeper under water and into the ocean where it emerged on a small island where they fought a Kraken-Priest from an aquatic cult that was aiming to re-bind The Kraken that had spend multiple centuries bound beneath the ocean floor. My players decided to free the Kraken as they managed to communicate with it and come to an accord. The Kraken itself in my adventure was a sort of semi-divine personification of the vastness of the seas in physical form and only ever a small part of it was shown or described, as I made the beastie massive (with all the physical effects like water displacement and so on which Dael mentions). I made sure to make contact with its mind a similar experience of being faced with something vast, like "You have the impression that you, as a grain of sand, have suddenly garnered the attention of a mountain range."
One idea for a kraken encounter might be doing it at low levels.
Instead of the party being in one main ship, have them be in a support or transport ship that's part of a fleet. The party doesn't even fight the kraken directly, but their lighter ship is getting knocked around in the wake of the kraken absolutely destroying the capital ship at the heart of whatever fleet they are in.
In the aftermath of the skill challenges happening at the edge of the kraken battle maybe the party's ship sinks and they wash up on the shore of a tropical island infested with yuan ti or a couple young adult dragons.
Maybe their ship survives and suddenly the party has to take command of what is left of the fleet to finish the mission.
Maybe the campaign starts with the kraken battle at level 1 to 3 instead of the typical tavern scene.
Maybe the distance that the Kraken arms get along the ships in the first phase could influence the angle that the ship is tipped in the second phase. It would make sense because the further the tentacles go the more leverage they'd get. It would mean that every inch matters in the first phase.
The angle of tipping could influence how hard it is to stay standing, how hard it is to hold...
if you want to come up with a way to make that work, go for it
I have to say I'm impressed with the cleverness of your channel name.
I love your monster ideas. it's changed how I'm doing giants, it's changed how I handle redcaps, and the fae in general, and now it's changing how I'm doing the kraken.
you mentioned not making things magical if they don't need to be, and I love that, but also, what if you start with that concept, but turned it up a bit?
instead of just looking like part of a rock, it's blending in with some underwater ruins, perfectly mimicking other broken building, or even completing them (honestly, very similar to how a mimic does) act on the poisonous octopuses, and instead of having a contact poison, maybe give it an aura of poison. it's a massive, terrifying monster from the beginning of time, and it's been around long enough to be affected by the primordial magics that created and maintain this fantasy world
Near as I can find, the original kraken idea is acutally 2 islands and the strait between them. It refers to the islands as the jaws of the beast, exhaling out nutrients to lure fish into its maw, then, when enough fish have gathered, closing its mouth and swallowing them all. Stems from the common feature of fish gathering in such places and the dangers of fishing there - it's a big risk to fish in the kraken's mouth, but there's enough fish there that maybe it's worth risking getting eaten by the kraken (or, realistically, wrecking against one of the islands in the messy currents those kinds of straits have). The point about the big threat coming from the waves and whirlpools produced by the beast in its movement is very reminiscent of that mythological origin.
After seeing this video I randomly stumbled upon a different video with live footage of two octopuses fighting, except one of the two was *holding on to a shield to fend off the other* and now I want to make shield-bashing krakens a thing.
One chance to wow your players with the Kraken... a showdown... a real Kraken-ing for the players
I'm running _the_ Kraken in my next campaign. You sorcerous oracle, you.
Presumably is the PCs cut off a tentacle the thing just keeps on trying to grab things to drag down to it's phantom body. Imagine how terrifying it would be to feel you just scored an important victory against this thing, only for the severed tentacle to grab you and drag you around the deck or overboard!
That chain movement idea is awesome!
In building up to the kraken, you could have the players encounter the aftermath of a kraken attack. Maybe have the chance to save a witness from sharks. And then later, maybe in a different voyage, actually encounter the kraken.
yesterday, i literally thought, "hmmm, i wonder if the kraken video's ever gonna come out." the universe has appeased me
Dael, take a look at "Sin" from Final Fantasy 10. The first time you encounter it is terrifying, and you can only see its fin, which is 10x larger than your boat. Gives a similar feel to what you've described.
First time leaving a comment, but long time viewer here. I just wanna say I love the way you overthink things and get these brand new and great ideas about simple things, like the tentacles exploring the deck of the ship. I can really visualise this scene and now I want to do a kraken adventure! Anyway, thank you for the videos and the inspiration.
21:45 I laughed for like a solid 30 minutes after watching this little clip of Dael just grasping at the air while staring blankly, I love it so much 😂
😂😂 I forgot I kept that in, I laughed so hard when I found it in the raw footage!
This is very similar to how I run the kraken and also the tarasque. It’s not a monster to be fought, it’s a natural disaster to survive
I love the thing about the octopus legs staying alive after being cut off. I would totally use that to introduce the players to the thought of a kraken being in the water. So they first fight only one tentacle and then they can start to fear finding the real thing
Sounds like a crackin' Kraken concept.
Ouch
The main suggestion I got from this was: so what if your kraken has spent centuries severing and regenerating its own tentacles? And obviously it plants the severed tentacles to create a ‘grabby garden’ in its lair or hunting grounds.
The battlemap part was SO helpful, thanks!
Swallowed by a kraken, then thrown up by a kraken, unconscious and drowning and swallowed by a kraken...
This was great! Lots of good ideas! I have a Kraken for my big bad in my homebrew campaign. I was always disappointed by the size, because like Dael prefers, I wanted it a force of nature. I was always inspired by the monster manual picture of a kraken completely dwarfing a great white shark. I wanted the Kraken to be the embodiment of fear of the ocean. Which I think is kind of the proper form it takes in myth. It's not about a singular creature for a hero to slay. It's a constant unknown threat that is as vast as your lack of knowledge about the ocean. So suffice to say in my campaign Kraken takes up an entire combat map, the players never quite know the scope of it. Just that it's big enough to destroy cities and fleets. Also inspired by Darkest Dungeon. It's quite inevitable the the crew is eaten the Kraken. And just being inside the Kraken is a dungeon by itself as the crew try to explore the Kraken anatomy to find it's heart.
I love this community so floccing much
I love when I introduce a new plane or big bad into the campaign then the next time I turn on TH-cam there’s a video on it.
Excellent video. I'm using this idea for an encounter with the idea of not trying to kill a creature. But just to survive it or change its trajectory slightly.
The offhand comment about players not utilizing underwater space (or interesting environments in general) hits me in the heart, the frustration is palpable
Best. Thumbnail. Ever.
Ironically, I now definitely want to add both of these encounters to my Giants campaign. :)
My first thought of the inside-out damage was the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and of course the Kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean. Hmm...Now you've got me wondering where that trope originated.
I really hope that Snorkel Down Under realized and intended the double entendre in their screenname, is all.
If your players take off some of the tentacles in one campaign you could have those tentacles individually come back in the next campaign because they continue to live on for a long time you could make some sort of mini bosses
Octopus, some kind of octopus
tearing my shell apart
letting the sea get in
you make my insides
outside
I hope someone out there said "Release the Kraken (video)" to MonarchsFactory. I love the idea of alien movement used in combat scenarios. Very well done. I liked and subscribed.
I really want to use the “no hp” idea. I think it’s really cool. I might give the kraken an hp abstraction to help know when it will give up and leave, and maybe that’s just 300 hp.
Yay! We finally got The Kraken video
Great video. Really like the tangible encounter. Love to hear how you do Fey combat encounters as your Fey video was great.
I would love to really lean on the ink cloud ability in the underwater setting, and try to emulate how disorienting that would be.
When the players try to get their bearings, make them make wisdom saves. If they roll high enough (I would say give them a 40% chance of saving), they're able to figure out where they are in the context of the field, and where the monster is. If they roll lower than they, I would still allow them to figure out where they are in relation to the monster (just for the sake of 'I want to hit the monster' or 'I want to run directly away' not being too frustrating), but not know where they are in a tactical sense. So if they want to move to a specific space, ask them how far they wanna move and get them to roll a directional die (or a d8 as a substitute), and get them to move in that direction instead. And maybe if they nat 1 the roll, get them to roll directional for attacking/fleeing too.
Personally, I would find something like that incredibly immersive (in theory), considering an ink cloud from a kraken would probably consume the whole space, but it's still a liquid moving through a liquid, so it won't be total coverage, and the gaps in the coverage would also be fluid.
Great video! The tentacle idea sounds amazing. I would love if you did a video on running a chase scene!
Monday morning at work is better with Dael Kingsmill. Thanks 😊
So your idea is for a single kraken to be in existence. I like it. Sort of an underwater version of the tarrasque. Very interesting. Idk if you know about it, but there is a legend of kraken in D&D called The Unseen. A creature so massive and powerful that its limbs and tentacles are said to tunnel through the forgotten realms. It sleeps, waiting for its time to awaken. Perhaps that could be your kraken, and sure some people could like worship it, but in your setting it'd just be a massive creature. Venerating it does nothing for it. Idk, could be something to look at, although I'm pretty sure there are no stat blocks for it anywhere. You very well may have to come up with your own. And something that big would have to world threatening.
Aha, but for my purposes no stat block is almost perfect! Thanks for the heads up
My pleasure. I really appreciate your videos on D&D, but I remember seeing your videos back in the Geek & Sundry days. You've come a long way, and I'm excited to continue seeing your work. 😊
Loved the chain idea! Brilliant!
I only found your channel recently but I am SO glad. Awesome. Love your DM brain. :D
What if your players decide to polymorph the kraken into a turtle or a sea slug? Being a beast, I doubt it will have resistance against that type of magic.
I'm already going so far as to not give it hitpoints, it doesn't seem much of a stretch from there to also make it auto succeed on a saving throw like that
@@MonarchsFactory Thank you for the answer :)
Leaining into your underwater version, where the PCs are looking for the enteance to Atlantis or something, I'd be interested to try something where the Kraken is almost a Godzilla-esque thing that can travel between the world above and wherever the hell Atlantis is, like a hollow-Earth type deal.
The PCs need to follow in the wake of the Kraken as it journeys to Atlantis, but it's so huge that even the wake of it can be devastating. Plus any scavenger creatures following along with it that try to attack you. I feel like having the ship physically hooked into the Kraken would be a good way to do this and not have to worry about keeping up with it. I wouldnt want thr Kraken being the thing your fighting, but more like the setting, with the scavengers being the actual enemies.
Also, i feel like the Kraken should be huge. Like really goddamn huge. Like, the ship that the PCs are on is the size of the Kraken's pupil huge. The Kraken is not something that can be killed. The Kraken is a god that has grown tired of intellect. Fighting it is like fighting a continent, conpletely stupid to attempt.
I think it might be compelling to give individual tentacles their own turns. It helps to deal with the action economy and also it really enforces its scale. Like its turn is spread out across the whole turn instead of happening all at once. Also if you did want to have players kill it, mid battle map change. The Kraken is the second map or at least a significant part of it.
Monarchs factory... Kings mill... mind BLOAN!
Miss Kingsmill... your Kraken is the BEST Kraken!
I agree with not being able to kill it. If it were killed, like in the Pirates movies, there would just be less in the world.
Of course, I feel the same about killing dragons too.
Dael, I certainly do take little pieces of your ideas for my very own. The juiciest sources harvested from your videos are related to fey. I am such a dwarf-lover that I find their alien nature so difficult to understand so I find your human insights into their existence have been so very useful. I do like the visual representation of the tentacle with the chain and the underwater encounter plan. The chain and its movements do a great job on conveying the uniqueness of this encounter. I just used theater of the mind when I used one on the surface but it was still a lot of fun.
I struggled with what to do with kraken in my setting for a long time but based on how I typed it you know where I landed. I wanted power struggles under the waves just like they exist on the surface. I had established the role aboleths would play in my setting years before (hint: it involves the ulat-kini) but couldn’t really think of any major challenges from the same biome. Krakens seemed the logical choice. I stole two ideas to create them for my setting. First is the concept of age determining size and strength from dragons and then the limits to number of high level (or high CR in this case) critters from second edition druid rules. Basically, there are often tens of thousands of level one druids in a region but only one level fourteen druid in that region. In the entire world there is only one druid above level fourteen that is a member of the ‘hierarchy’ of the Druidic Order.
Ooph. This is getting long and I didn’t even get to how krakens move up the chain or my kraken story in my game (when I didn’t use a chain on a boat map) also it didn’t die and it wasn’t even one of the old and big ones. Oh well I might be back if there’s an interest in more rambling.
This sounds like a great game of Dread. Or Monster of the Week. ANy non-DND format really...Thanks for all of this.
As someone with quite a hefty chunk of thalassophobia, I think the kraken (or really any colossal sea monster) is probably the most powerful apparition of fear in the collective unconscious. Fear of the unknown, of the depths beyond understanding or any inkling of fathomable (haha) scale. The kraken is fate come to knock upon the hull of those who fear it.
THE best explanation
Just found your channel, you've got some great thoughts on DMing!
I also just read your article on death saves and your home brewed system for them, and I am most likely gonna impliment it into my own game. Thanks!
It's kind of like Sin from FFX, in the sheer size, force of nature and the fights are mainly for survival way.
You really sold me on this kraken idea...
Woah! I was just watching your video on giants a day ago and was disappointed to find out there was no Kraken video, especially since I'm gonna be running a Kraken as my big bad for the upcoming session this weekend for the first time. How serendipitous.
As a norige. We have a decent divide between mythology and folklore. Norse Mythology, with the gods and Jormundgandr, Yggdrasil. And there are stories of the Gods running around and doing stuff. But in the Folklore, there aren't really stories as much as tales to scare children. And this is where the Nøkk, Kraken, Nisser, and general Væsen. They are sightings and more anecdotal, or just plain made up (again to scare children).
I should note, the scaring of the children is to keep them safe. We have a lot of marshes and inland lakes that kids could wander of and fall into. As well as cautionary tales for sailors.
In nature apex predators will still usually go away if they suffer a little bit of a wound because they're just doing a probe attack. Using this idea I use the Kraken, or other such behemoth creatures, as you aren't supposed to kill it but it will leave you alone if you do X00 damage to it. Of course as you go up in level the X00 damage needed increases. Then with the Kraken yeah I would use the when it retreats it creates a whirlpool in its wake.
I'm taking this and adding magic to turn it into a warlock patron