My party (level 4) fought one of these today. It was horrible, the druid and rouge were just straight up killed and everybody else nearly died. We decided to run
Well they do say discretion is the better part of valour. and rolling up new characters is always fun (once a few moments of moping about in the kitchen and muttering about how the dice hate you, are passed).
When I sent a Bullete against my 4th level party, the ranger straight up one-shot it thanks to an amazing crit coupled with the bleed effect from an optional crit table. It took a few rounds for it to die, and the Ranger died, but still... xD
I watched an early episode of Critical Role where around 8 PCs at level 8 fought one in the middle of another fight. The DM (Matt Mercer) might've buffed the bulette a little, but even they had a hard time taking it down.
using a bulette vs a party of level 4s (especially if the party only consists of 3 players) is just asking for dead players. they are made for level 5+ players, and level 4 to 5 is a huge power spike. level 3 spell slots and the extra attack feature.
When fighting a Land Shark in the close confines of a town, or a dungeon, don't forget that this creature is a living siege weapon, it will bring down walls (rock fall damage and chance of getting immobilised), it's burrowing will create difficult terrain and short pit traps, it is capable of spinning around and slapping sprays of smaller rocks and dirt at it's prey with that heavy, armored tail. The Bulette can kick with both back legs like a mule, it can flatten it's legs against it's body and twist that armored body around to bludgeon and increase it's armor class in the process. They are not hindered by water, so they can attack in the same way a crocodile might, plus their prodigious leaping ability can be used to launch themselves from a high vantage point, down onto their prey. For the extra leg attacks, I suggest you allow the Bulette to attack adjacent foes on the foes turn, with each leg only able to attack once per round, you could impose a movement penalty on the Bulette of 10ft for each leg that attacks that round, or perhaps use a recharge mechanic, or have it that the Bulette only attacks with all it's limbs when it is at more or less than half it's full hit points.
Hey it's me I know I asked for this but could you maybe do just one more video... It would be on siege monsters I looked on line for answers on what makes a siege monster and examples of siege monsters please and thank you :)
Trained "domesticated" Bulette's are siege weapons some dwarves in my campaign sell. The price of such animals drops over time as unsold ones are eventually killed, given Dwarf pragmatism. Such clans also sell alchemy components relative to them. This is the only way most of my campaigns use them.
A bullette attack I like is for it to burrow out an area under a cavern floor, then dig up through that floor, causing the floor to collapse into sink holes.
Dm here, the wizard decided to try and tame one after it intervened in a really deadly encounter, (one of my anti-tpk contingencies). It had 3 hp left and he healed it a little bit with some potions. It wasn’t aggressive because he healed it, and then they spent hours trying to tame it, so I let them go ahead with it. Bob the bullete came along for multiple combat sessions, and it was a nightmare trying to scale encounters with it. Then the wizard forgot about him and left him out in the woods for two weeks. This last session they discovered his discarded saddle underground, unaware that he has eaten the entire halfling village about two days south. He’ll probably make another appearance later on, possibly being a villain’s mount.
The creators of Baldur's Gate 3 have said it's going to have one of these in the Underdark, and it can attack players at random, even when they're already in a fight.
@@whitemale2230interestingly shadowheart pronounces it bullet when she passes a perception check on it. Wonder if that’s intentional or a voice actor oversight.
I'd like to clarify the out-of-universe origin of the bulette. Gygax bought a bag of plastic dinosaur figurines to use as models in some Proto-D&D game he was playing with coworkers, and the figurines in question were actually so cruddily made that they looked nothing like actual dinosaurs. thus the bulette, rust monster, and owlbear were invented on the spot.
You would have to train it to not submerge while you were on its back, that would suck something fierce! Unless you had some item/ability that allowed you to move thru earth as they do.
I see others have the same weird humor that I have. This was my first thought once I heard how it's pronounced properly. Now I have to include an odd, excentric Guy in my game, who has a pet Bulette with a weird mutation, that makes it a creamy white in colour, with its armor being a light caramel brown, that they lovingly call cremé.
one of my players threw some magic beans and the effect was 15 random creatures would spawn. I decided to let the roll a d100 and told them if you roll really high something awesome spawns if you roll low something horrible spawns. they were already in combat with earth cultist who used Bulettes as well. well they rolled a 1 out of a d100 and 15 bulettes burst from the ground. they did the smart thing an ran.
Feywild yes, not so much the plane of Earth, as they would not find most creatures there very digestible, also, there are much bigger predators than them there. You can find them on various outer planes as well.
Heh. I had a character that liked to cook and eat monsters, Bulette was his favorite meal, he actually started a Bulette ranch eventually, to sell the delicious meat.
Secular Beef! Bulette are so aggressive. I didn't know. Good thing no one is playing a halfling in my game. Even if you got one as a mount I imagine unfortunate misunderstandings. Maybe the magic in elves turns their stomach. Could be that drow taste so bad, bulette swear off all elves.
I would think perhaps that avoiding esting elves is a learned behaviour due to the preponderance of Drow in the Bulette's Underdark territory. They realise that munching on too many Drow will get them hunted down and killed for being a nuisance to a group of sadistic and violent killers who definitely enjoy vengeance and slaving in equal amounts. Coupled with the general lack of meat on an elf body; it's not worth it.
I thought it was _intended_ to be pronounced "boo-let" (similar to "bullet," but with a long "u"). It's a large pointed beast that charges straight ahead, exerting its mass at great speed: a living 'bullet.'
My DM just got the new beast heart book so I've been researching each of the 15 companions and your videos have been a great help now I want a halfling beastheart with a bullete companion that occasionally tries to eat him that or a warlock tiefling who's asked for power and their patron just gave them a poorly trained hell hound.
Just as the ancestors of the elephant and rhinoceros used to be covered in long fur to protect them from the cold of the ancient Ice Ages, so too did the ancestors of the bulette also used to be covered in a coarse fur coat. Similarly, just as the ancient mammals were called the wooly mammoth or the wooly rhinoceros, this creature's forbears are known as (cue music) ... Wooly bulette, Wooly bulette, Wooly bulette! Matty told Hatty, that's the thing to do Get you someone really to pull the wool with you. Wooly bulleeeeeeeeee, wooly bulette! Wooly bulette, Wooly bulette, Wooly bulette!
I rarely comment on anything. your ecologies are the best. I can barely wait for the next vids. An OTYUGH vid would be amazing. Thanks for being here. you are a well of inspiration.
-ette is pronounced et. -et is pronounced with the long a sound. So bulette as in Gillette the company. Thanks for the great video. Bulette have always been one of my favorite.
They are more like a Bear then a Wolf. Fast over short distances but not in it for the long haul. Bears can run fast over short distances but a Wolf can maintain speed for long distances up to several miles.
Going on to that comment at the beginning about the toy dinosaur. I used to have that as a kid. Thank you for reminding me of that. Always thought it was a weird thing and then I saw this creature in the monstrous manual. First thing I thought was, huh, so that was what that toy was. Followed by, why the hell was that in with dinosaurs?
Threw an undead one of these at my party along with an allip. It sent the monk into death saves with a single attack, after it had been slammed three times by the fighter who specialized in a homebrew weapon known as a dag'nah. He was dealing 3d6+7 repeatedly, and it still managed to nearly kill two of the party.
These have always been one of my favorite monsters. The villain for my next campaign does lots of experimentation on monsters, using golems to capture and train predators since they don't have meat or bleed. I wanted to include pygmy land sharks as one of his homebrew creations, used mostly as guard dogs for the ground floor of his labyrinthine tower. Selective breeding and magically stunting their growth has shrunk them all the way down to a small size category, about the size of an actual dog. This would obviously reduce their strength and constitution considerably, but allow them to harass intruders more easily with hit & run tactics. They still lack proper pack instincts, at best tolerating each other and at worst squabbling or cannibalizing, but will obey the commands of the golems that patrol their chambers, who can call "tamed" monsters into battle to assist them. Pygmy land sharks lack the punch of a full-grown bulette, but instead use opportunities created by their golem masters to lunge out of the ground and attempt to bite chunks out of any meat-filled creatures they can find before disappearing back underground. Im unsure if I should adjust the ground/digging speed of the pygmy bulettes though, or if their hit & run tactics would be just as effective without a speed increase due to their tactics. What do you think AJ, is pygmy bulette a good name or should I call them "dirt piranhas"?
Also, as part of this dungeon I planned on including cells where the parent species are kept, in this case regular bulette. If released alive, they will rampage- killing and eating the smaller species and attacking the guardian golems indiscriminately. The smaller captive bred species will flee from an alpha's territory or be hunted down, reducing their numbers considerably. As a result, golems trying to call one to battle might get no response, or worse, call the hostile parent species into combat instead.
I would never allow anybody to ride one of those things. I'm actually planning on using them as demons. Abyssal siege engines related to the tanari creations.
Gary Gygax pronounced it BULLET (like the ammunition) at Gregcon 85 and ,since HE *created* the creature, HE was right and everyone saying different is wrong.
I can picture animalistic borrowers like bulette and purple worms bursting out of the ground to capture one PC in its jaws then fleeing underground to eat their prey in peace.
I usually call them Bullies. Vorse encountered them before, well one that was constantly hounding and stalking a Halfling village. I decided to become bait and well... The Bully learned the hard way of not trying to eat a hoof Minotaur Paladin with a sharp great axe +2. Anyway we found its nest of eggs and... well Vorse had an omelet with the Halfling Chief.
One way I would help tame them is a Harness of Sustenance, with a saddle enchanted with earth gliding power. So that the Rider glides with the Bulette through the earth.
5th Edition does something I homebrewed, address their limbs as their being a burrowing monster... if they work as "land sharks", go through the dirt and rock as if swimming with limbs that big on top of how sharks actually work, they can leap with monstrous ability. Also, thier acid in their mouth on top of their burrowing is really downplayed... they eat earth as they burrow. That's a total hyper-acid that kills anything it swallows instantly. Dwarves and other beings who use their hyper-acid to uncover super-metals and other hard to destroy materials could also use that in their refining techiniques. And the Bulette being a hyper-predator that kills males it mates with that also abandons its young so it tends to not eat them would totally stop them from being an ecological disaster that even a magical fantasy world could not contain as a monster that operates within the realm's natural laws. Self-containing super-predators are good super-predators. The one thing 5th Edition does not do is to keep the Bull (or Tiger) Shark fantasy element as their land version... they have that fin sticking out for all to see when moving close, their rumble being their version of that "Jaws" terror music. Halflings being their favorite prey is because Jaws preferred places where people swam in mass numbers, and Halflings lived in homes that were in soft-earth burrows. Ankegs and other beasties made Bulletes fall out of most of the spotlight.
I actually imagined them to be somewhat like a duncleosteus, that it doesn't have teeth in the traditional sense, but instead its teeth are boneplates protruding from its skull/head armor, that will keep growing during its entire lifetime and are always sharp due to rubbing against the plates in the lower jaw. Imagine an underground civilisation, that has "domesticated" bulettes they use as beasts of burden. Or having the ground erupt before you, as one of these Beasts jumps out onto the street, attacking everything in front of it, and ducking out of the way to avoid the projectiles of the people in the Chariot, that is drawn by the bulette. Also, I have no idea why, but for some reason, when I try to imagine a well trained, "friendly" bulette, I can't help but imagine it to behave like Spike from the A Land before Time series.
ah, a fellow kaiju enjoyer! yeah, i personally suspect that Bulettes are a buncha mini-telesdons. they've got the same head, burrowing habits, and back spine.
I herd somewhere (I don’t remember where) that a Bulette is related to the armadillos. Just something I remembered. Kinda an interesting piece of alternative lore if you don’t want to use the other ecology. Oh! I just realized that a Bulette could be like an Owl-bear and be part shark and part armadillo I should have waited to see the end of the video before righting this comment
I can imagine one shooting up out of the ground, grabbing a buffalo in its jaws, doing a crocodile style death roll to kill the beast, and dragging it down into the ground with it as it returns home to eat or feed the unfortunate beast to its brood.
I took the stats of the bullete and put it toward a giant sized real world creature, the mole cricket. I saw one and it looked like a monster, so I made it one!
If you want to keep to shark biology you could say the males latch onto the females neck with his jaws while he positions himself to copulate and on many occasions if it’s a larger female and she’s not particularly in the mood she will eat the male (weather he’s finished or not)
its acid can be used to help get ores.. its egg laying habits make good fertilizer that would be a prime way to make money to keep some of things things alive
I had an idea that a Druidic character named ghrothen, found a land shark with an arrow in its head when it was a baby. Him, being a nature lover, took the little land shark to the town wizard to heal it. The wizard would agree, but in order to heal the land shark, a piece of ghrothens soul would be embedded into the land shark, turning it into an eidolon.
So do the bulette actually use their claws for burrowing? Or do they rely solely on their slime to break down the soil and move through it like a sandfish skink?
If you can find a link to that video, be sure to share, but including it in mine would have the copyright bots swarming all over it in seconds. It is a great sketch though, makes me laugh every time.
Anyone remember the old PS2 game, Bauldur's Gate: Dark Alliance? There was a swamp in Act 3 that was positively full of these things and it was awful! I hated that area and died so much.
Thank you AJ! The sound is great. Ya nailed it my man. I hope that it affects your following in a positive way. Keep it up & we will watch & Listen! T.Rust Monster \oo/
If he intended for it to be pronounced "boo-lay", then he badly misspelled it. Based on the spelling given, it should properly be "boo-let". One way or the other, but you either have to follow the spelling =>orfelicitous< options. (Technically, you >could< call it a "snarf-garble" despite the spelling, or take one of the above pronunciations and spell it "nnsdlixzsaeiou", and any number of other options, but only the two options presented address the actual issue; hence "felicitous".)
I found a description of the pronunciation th-cam.com/video/kPepszyjh3g/w-d-xo.html This doesn't really tell me that they meant for it to be "boo-lay," just that they were joking. So henceforth, I will pronounce it boo-lett as the French word should be pronounced.
There are only so many images of Bulettes, but I do try to match them to what I am talking about, such as the image of the gohlbrorn and another image that looks more like a cross between an armadillo and a snapping turtle. Sometimes there are loads of images to find, sometimes not (the Gorbel video in particular was very tricky).
The Tim Kask interview: th-cam.com/video/kPepszyjh3g/w-d-xo.html If I ever had buleltte moving into my territory my solution would be to drive off all the halflings.
Perhaps for a patreon video request, but I'm not likely to do much on character classes, particularly stuff that is not found in official books, on the channel, when there are still so many monsters to cover. I do believe Dawn Forged Cast did a series of vids on that class however.
Rather off-brand, in Baldurs Gate 3 you can use speak with animals to address a grumpy bullette in the underdark in a hole near a myconid colony, if it dies elsewhere the hole goes silent. It will threaten you, and tell you to run. I find this odd as The bulette has an intelligence score less than 3 and no language? heres a 5e excerpt. "Its strength and constitution are the most remarkable stats at 19 and 21 respectively. Intelligence and Charisma are the lowest at 2 and 5 respectively. This means that while the tank of the party will be doing much of the heavy lifting, the best characters to actually be effective are going to be your spellcasters..." Edit: Kou-Toa Bulette God anyone?
Aw, it's like a baby Tarrasque. How terrifying.
I never looked at it like that, thanks for the comment/idea/perspective.
That's a gre at idea.
My party (level 4) fought one of these today. It was horrible, the druid and rouge were just straight up killed and everybody else nearly died. We decided to run
Well they do say discretion is the better part of valour. and rolling up new characters is always fun (once a few moments of moping about in the kitchen and muttering about how the dice hate you, are passed).
When I sent a Bullete against my 4th level party, the ranger straight up one-shot it thanks to an amazing crit coupled with the bleed effect from an optional crit table.
It took a few rounds for it to die, and the Ranger died, but still... xD
I watched an early episode of Critical Role where around 8 PCs at level 8 fought one in the middle of another fight. The DM (Matt Mercer) might've buffed the bulette a little, but even they had a hard time taking it down.
That was a rough move by the DM. The thing is a CR 5. If he plays it intelligently and with no gimmes he will likely TPK 4 lvl 4s.
using a bulette vs a party of level 4s (especially if the party only consists of 3 players) is just asking for dead players. they are made for level 5+ players, and level 4 to 5 is a huge power spike. level 3 spell slots and the extra attack feature.
When fighting a Land Shark in the close confines of a town, or a dungeon, don't forget that this creature is a living siege weapon, it will bring down walls (rock fall damage and chance of getting immobilised), it's burrowing will create difficult terrain and short pit traps, it is capable of spinning around and slapping sprays of smaller rocks and dirt at it's prey with that heavy, armored tail. The Bulette can kick with both back legs like a mule, it can flatten it's legs against it's body and twist that armored body around to bludgeon and increase it's armor class in the process. They are not hindered by water, so they can attack in the same way a crocodile might, plus their prodigious leaping ability can be used to launch themselves from a high vantage point, down onto their prey. For the extra leg attacks, I suggest you allow the Bulette to attack adjacent foes on the foes turn, with each leg only able to attack once per round, you could impose a movement penalty on the Bulette of 10ft for each leg that attacks that round, or perhaps use a recharge mechanic, or have it that the Bulette only attacks with all it's limbs when it is at more or less than half it's full hit points.
Hey it's me I know I asked for this but could you maybe do just one more video...
It would be on siege monsters I looked on line for answers on what makes a siege monster and examples of siege monsters please and thank you :)
Oooo, thats a great idea for a video!
D&D 3.5 Races of Stone was were I learned that Goliath's could use them as mounts and feeding them ore like gold to subdue its apatite.
Trained "domesticated" Bulette's are siege weapons some dwarves in my campaign sell. The price of such animals drops over time as unsold ones are eventually killed, given Dwarf pragmatism. Such clans also sell alchemy components relative to them. This is the only way most of my campaigns use them.
A bullette attack I like is for it to burrow out an area under a cavern floor, then dig up through that floor, causing the floor to collapse into sink holes.
Dm here, the wizard decided to try and tame one after it intervened in a really deadly encounter, (one of my anti-tpk contingencies). It had 3 hp left and he healed it a little bit with some potions. It wasn’t aggressive because he healed it, and then they spent hours trying to tame it, so I let them go ahead with it. Bob the bullete came along for multiple combat sessions, and it was a nightmare trying to scale encounters with it. Then the wizard forgot about him and left him out in the woods for two weeks. This last session they discovered his discarded saddle underground, unaware that he has eaten the entire halfling village about two days south. He’ll probably make another appearance later on, possibly being a villain’s mount.
The creators of Baldur's Gate 3 have said it's going to have one of these in the Underdark, and it can attack players at random, even when they're already in a fight.
Sounds authentic.
I've experienced it fist hand and whenever I see its tunneling dirt pattern I run lol.
@@whitemale2230interestingly shadowheart pronounces it bullet when she passes a perception check on it. Wonder if that’s intentional or a voice actor oversight.
I'd like to clarify the out-of-universe origin of the bulette. Gygax bought a bag of plastic dinosaur figurines to use as models in some Proto-D&D game he was playing with coworkers, and the figurines in question were actually so cruddily made that they looked nothing like actual dinosaurs. thus the bulette, rust monster, and owlbear were invented on the spot.
A protection from hunger and thirst will work on them and a charm monster spell.....what an awesome mount it would make!
They will still murder any horse they encounter, it is just instinct.
AJ Pickett I don’t care I want my giant sand dhark
You would have to train it to not submerge while you were on its back, that would suck something fierce!
Unless you had some item/ability that allowed you to move thru earth as they do.
Can confirm best mount
Hobgoblin commandos mounted on Bulette are a serious regional threat. Woe to the party that ignores them.
I’ma call it the cremé bulette. Variant species. Politely ravenous. 😆
And tasty!
Only after you torch it....
albino as well right?
I see others have the same weird humor that I have.
This was my first thought once I heard how it's pronounced properly.
Now I have to include an odd, excentric Guy in my game, who has a pet Bulette with a weird mutation, that makes it a creamy white in colour, with its armor being a light caramel brown, that they lovingly call cremé.
one of my players threw some magic beans and the effect was 15 random creatures would spawn. I decided to let the roll a d100 and told them if you roll really high something awesome spawns if you roll low something horrible spawns. they were already in combat with earth cultist who used Bulettes as well. well they rolled a 1 out of a d100 and 15 bulettes burst from the ground. they did the smart thing an ran.
LOL!
Some players think they can outsmart me, maybe, maybe. I have yet to meet player who can outsmart boolet.
I am envisioning a party encountering a pack of bulette hunting centaurs.
These are quite scary.
Land shark is a fitting name.
This must be the creature that you encounter in the Rotting Bog in the Marsh of Chrlymber in Balders Gate: Dark Alliance
When a bear a shark Gator and armadillo get drunk .
Are creatures like this found mostly in the prime material realm, or would you find them in, say, the fey wilds, or the earth elemental plane?
Feywild yes, not so much the plane of Earth, as they would not find most creatures there very digestible, also, there are much bigger predators than them there. You can find them on various outer planes as well.
I just stick to "Landshark" because Landshark Lager is one of my main staples for D&D sessions. X3
I want to see a video of a rhino jumping like that, that just sounds so cool.
Baby Rhino jumping.
th-cam.com/video/PytpKAFYPDA/w-d-xo.html
Heh. I had a character that liked to cook and eat monsters, Bulette was his favorite meal, he actually started a Bulette ranch eventually, to sell the delicious meat.
Secular Beef! Bulette are so aggressive. I didn't know. Good thing no one is playing a halfling in my game.
Even if you got one as a mount I imagine unfortunate misunderstandings.
Maybe the magic in elves turns their stomach. Could be that drow taste so bad, bulette swear off all elves.
I know you probably don’t see these anymore but it Kinda does look like a Dino but over time it was changed the original looked like an Ankylosaurus
Until this moment, I called it the .
16:23 How did the Bulette and the Pertyon end up not fighting each other? X_x
"You ate the thing I was gonna eat! Die for your insolence!"
THANK YOU!!!!! Running an encounter this weekend featuring this beast - you just made it come to life. Rock on!
I would think perhaps that avoiding esting elves is a learned behaviour due to the preponderance of Drow in the Bulette's Underdark territory.
They realise that munching on too many Drow will get them hunted down and killed for being a nuisance to a group of sadistic and violent killers who definitely enjoy vengeance and slaving in equal amounts.
Coupled with the general lack of meat on an elf body; it's not worth it.
I thought it was _intended_ to be pronounced "boo-let" (similar to "bullet," but with a long "u"). It's a large pointed beast that charges straight ahead, exerting its mass at great speed: a living 'bullet.'
My DM just got the new beast heart book so I've been researching each of the 15 companions and your videos have been a great help now I want a halfling beastheart with a bullete companion that occasionally tries to eat him that or a warlock tiefling who's asked for power and their patron just gave them a poorly trained hell hound.
Just as the ancestors of the elephant and rhinoceros used to be covered in long fur to protect them from the cold of the ancient Ice Ages, so too did the ancestors of the bulette also used to be covered in a coarse fur coat. Similarly, just as the ancient mammals were called the wooly mammoth or the wooly rhinoceros, this creature's forbears are known as (cue music) ...
Wooly bulette,
Wooly bulette,
Wooly bulette!
Matty told Hatty, that's the thing to do
Get you someone really to pull the wool with you.
Wooly bulleeeeeeeeee, wooly bulette!
Wooly bulette,
Wooly bulette,
Wooly bulette!
I was looking at AD&D MM, & the opening image is on the first page in the book. I just broke out laughing.
As always great work Master Pickett! Best of 2017 to you!
Thanks Arthur, you to!
Oh my I have an idea now to basically run the plot of the movie tremors except with bullettes.
I rarely comment on anything. your ecologies are the best. I can barely wait for the next vids. An OTYUGH vid would be amazing. Thanks for being here. you are a well of inspiration.
Thank you! I can't believe I have not made a video about Otyugh yet! I use them all the time.
Heh ... the boo lay.
-ette is pronounced et. -et is pronounced with the long a sound. So bulette as in Gillette the company.
Thanks for the great video. Bulette have always been one of my favorite.
They are more like a Bear then a Wolf. Fast over short distances but not in it for the long haul. Bears can run fast over short distances but a Wolf can maintain speed for long distances up to several miles.
Going on to that comment at the beginning about the toy dinosaur. I used to have that as a kid. Thank you for reminding me of that. Always thought it was a weird thing and then I saw this creature in the monstrous manual. First thing I thought was, huh, so that was what that toy was. Followed by, why the hell was that in with dinosaurs?
i love how in 2e its scals could be forged into +3 shields by grandmaster dwarven armoursmiths
Threw an undead one of these at my party along with an allip. It sent the monk into death saves with a single attack, after it had been slammed three times by the fighter who specialized in a homebrew weapon known as a dag'nah. He was dealing 3d6+7 repeatedly, and it still managed to nearly kill two of the party.
Thanks AJ.
These have always been one of my favorite monsters. The villain for my next campaign does lots of experimentation on monsters, using golems to capture and train predators since they don't have meat or bleed. I wanted to include pygmy land sharks as one of his homebrew creations, used mostly as guard dogs for the ground floor of his labyrinthine tower. Selective breeding and magically stunting their growth has shrunk them all the way down to a small size category, about the size of an actual dog. This would obviously reduce their strength and constitution considerably, but allow them to harass intruders more easily with hit & run tactics. They still lack proper pack instincts, at best tolerating each other and at worst squabbling or cannibalizing, but will obey the commands of the golems that patrol their chambers, who can call "tamed" monsters into battle to assist them. Pygmy land sharks lack the punch of a full-grown bulette, but instead use opportunities created by their golem masters to lunge out of the ground and attempt to bite chunks out of any meat-filled creatures they can find before disappearing back underground. Im unsure if I should adjust the ground/digging speed of the pygmy bulettes though, or if their hit & run tactics would be just as effective without a speed increase due to their tactics. What do you think AJ, is pygmy bulette a good name or should I call them "dirt piranhas"?
Also, as part of this dungeon I planned on including cells where the parent species are kept, in this case regular bulette. If released alive, they will rampage- killing and eating the smaller species and attacking the guardian golems indiscriminately. The smaller captive bred species will flee from an alpha's territory or be hunted down, reducing their numbers considerably. As a result, golems trying to call one to battle might get no response, or worse, call the hostile parent species into combat instead.
Pic at the end made me think. Peryton!
I think that is a Peryton.
I got bullet as a figure. he looks cool. don't know about him.
Now you do :)
I imagine that dwarves use domestic breeds of these guys to pull their wagons and the like.
Could always get them a ring of sustenance so they are never hungry XD
We're going to need a bigger wagon! Get it?
Farewell and adieu to those sweet halfling ladies, farewell and adieu from the Talenta plains..
I would never allow anybody to ride one of those things. I'm actually planning on using them as demons. Abyssal siege engines related to the tanari creations.
I'm surprised there was no mention of its dorsal plate and its ability to be crafted into a shield.
I prefer umber hulk plates.
Gary Gygax pronounced it BULLET (like the ammunition) at Gregcon 85 and ,since HE *created* the creature, HE was right and everyone saying different is wrong.
It IS kind of bullet shaped.
I can picture animalistic borrowers like bulette and purple worms bursting out of the ground to capture one PC in its jaws then fleeing underground to eat their prey in peace.
Oh my gosh thank you so much for this :)
You are most welcome :)
I had that set of dinos ! from the late '60s I believe.
Looks like this was the inspiration for the Pokémon Gibble.
I usually call them Bullies.
Vorse encountered them before, well one that was constantly hounding and stalking a Halfling village. I decided to become bait and well... The Bully learned the hard way of not trying to eat a hoof Minotaur Paladin with a sharp great axe +2.
Anyway we found its nest of eggs and... well Vorse had an omelet with the Halfling Chief.
One way I would help tame them is a Harness of Sustenance, with a saddle enchanted with earth gliding power. So that the Rider glides with the Bulette through the earth.
honestly, i feel the teeth likely are hidden by the beak having developed a toothed maw sorta shape almost
5th Edition does something I homebrewed, address their limbs as their being a burrowing monster... if they work as "land sharks", go through the dirt and rock as if swimming with limbs that big on top of how sharks actually work, they can leap with monstrous ability. Also, thier acid in their mouth on top of their burrowing is really downplayed... they eat earth as they burrow. That's a total hyper-acid that kills anything it swallows instantly. Dwarves and other beings who use their hyper-acid to uncover super-metals and other hard to destroy materials could also use that in their refining techiniques. And the Bulette being a hyper-predator that kills males it mates with that also abandons its young so it tends to not eat them would totally stop them from being an ecological disaster that even a magical fantasy world could not contain as a monster that operates within the realm's natural laws. Self-containing super-predators are good super-predators. The one thing 5th Edition does not do is to keep the Bull (or Tiger) Shark fantasy element as their land version... they have that fin sticking out for all to see when moving close, their rumble being their version of that "Jaws" terror music. Halflings being their favorite prey is because Jaws preferred places where people swam in mass numbers, and Halflings lived in homes that were in soft-earth burrows. Ankegs and other beasties made Bulletes fall out of most of the spotlight.
I actually imagined them to be somewhat like a duncleosteus, that it doesn't have teeth in the traditional sense, but instead its teeth are boneplates protruding from its skull/head armor, that will keep growing during its entire lifetime and are always sharp due to rubbing against the plates in the lower jaw.
Imagine an underground civilisation, that has "domesticated" bulettes they use as beasts of burden.
Or having the ground erupt before you, as one of these Beasts jumps out onto the street, attacking everything in front of it, and ducking out of the way to avoid the projectiles of the people in the Chariot, that is drawn by the bulette.
Also, I have no idea why, but for some reason, when I try to imagine a well trained, "friendly" bulette, I can't help but imagine it to behave like Spike from the A Land before Time series.
I think this inspired a creature in the original 1966 Ultraman, a kaiju looks very similar to it.
ah, a fellow kaiju enjoyer! yeah, i personally suspect that Bulettes are a buncha mini-telesdons. they've got the same head, burrowing habits, and back spine.
In german the word "Bultette" means burger patty
When I first heard of bulettes in dnd I was like, wtf xD
Sir, there is a bulette approaching!
Fetch me buns and a slice of cheese!
Attack burger?
I herd somewhere (I don’t remember where) that a Bulette is related to the armadillos. Just something I remembered. Kinda an interesting piece of alternative lore if you don’t want to use the other ecology.
Oh! I just realized that a Bulette could be like an Owl-bear and be part shark and part armadillo
I should have waited to see the end of the video before righting this comment
I can imagine one shooting up out of the ground, grabbing a buffalo in its jaws, doing a crocodile style death roll to kill the beast, and dragging it down into the ground with it as it returns home to eat or feed the unfortunate beast to its brood.
Grand as always my dear fellow
I designed a Puntastic Bulette Cannon for launching sleeping Bulettes at fortresses. Best crazy mage idea.
Awesome! Thanks A.J.
Most welcome, thanks Jeffrey!
I dont know if it's just me, but the bulette is surprisingly cute to me
I imagine bulette leather would make excellent horse barding
Horses would Freak Out if they even smell that armor.
Bulette:
Ride Husband. Life good.
Husband fight back.
Kill Husband.
Husband gone.
Think about Husband.
Regret.......
I took the stats of the bullete and put it toward a giant sized real world creature, the mole cricket. I saw one and it looked like a monster, so I made it one!
When i lived in Pensacola, i saw a few mole crickets that were big enough to be juvenile bulettes!
If you want to keep to shark biology you could say the males latch onto the females neck with his jaws while he positions himself to copulate and on many occasions if it’s a larger female and she’s not particularly in the mood she will eat the male (weather he’s finished or not)
its acid can be used to help get ores.. its egg laying habits make good fertilizer that would be a prime way to make money to keep some of things things alive
I had an idea that a Druidic character named ghrothen, found a land shark with an arrow in its head when it was a baby. Him, being a nature lover, took the little land shark to the town wizard to heal it. The wizard would agree, but in order to heal the land shark, a piece of ghrothens soul would be embedded into the land shark, turning it into an eidolon.
I'm pretty sure centaur tribes would be terrified of these.
Great vids. Would love to see a Dark Sun ecology episode.
Ankheg problem? Send in the Bulettes; now its just a land shark problem.
So do the bulette actually use their claws for burrowing? Or do they rely solely on their slime to break down the soil and move through it like a sandfish skink?
Claws for burrowing, yes, and back plates.
There's cougars where I live, "kill the deer so the cougars don't come close to homes" isn't really an alien concept here.
great opportunistic predators them landsharks are
Haha.... Bulette.... mit senf und Ketchup XD.
You should of opened with SNL Land Shark Candygram video.
If you can find a link to that video, be sure to share, but including it in mine would have the copyright bots swarming all over it in seconds. It is a great sketch though, makes me laugh every time.
vid215.photobucket.com/albums/cc1/aveath/SNL-LandShark-ChevyChase.mp4
Anyone remember the old PS2 game, Bauldur's Gate: Dark Alliance? There was a swamp in Act 3 that was positively full of these things and it was awful! I hated that area and died so much.
Thank you AJ! The sound is great. Ya nailed it my man.
I hope that it affects your following in a positive way. Keep it up & we will watch & Listen!
T.Rust Monster \oo/
Oh good :) Thanks for letting me know Gary!
If he intended for it to be pronounced "boo-lay", then he badly misspelled it. Based on the spelling given, it should properly be "boo-let". One way or the other, but you either have to follow the spelling =>orfelicitous< options. (Technically, you >could< call it a "snarf-garble" despite the spelling, or take one of the above pronunciations and spell it "nnsdlixzsaeiou", and any number of other options, but only the two options presented address the actual issue; hence "felicitous".)
Elizabeth Alleman just call it a land shark.
Just watched a video of Cask (creator) calling it "boo-lay". Apparently it's french.
Its called French bruh. Or if youre nationalist then its Cajun. Either way it doesnt follow normal English pronunciation.
I found a description of the pronunciation
th-cam.com/video/kPepszyjh3g/w-d-xo.html
This doesn't really tell me that they meant for it to be "boo-lay," just that they were joking. So henceforth, I will pronounce it boo-lett as the French word should be pronounced.
Nobody is stopping you.
I really wanna see that rhino jump you mentioned
Save the buffalo! Lead them to the nearest Halfling town! :P
Thoughts on a sapiant / humanoid or lycanthropy variant of these beasties ?
maby have more images related to what your talking about, but really great videos keep them coming.
and sorry to be annoying but probably should put a disclaimer that you dont own the art or images being shown. ( just trying to look out for ya)
I clearly don't, never made a claim I need to dis, never been a problem. Thanks for the advice though :)
There are only so many images of Bulettes, but I do try to match them to what I am talking about, such as the image of the gohlbrorn and another image that looks more like a cross between an armadillo and a snapping turtle. Sometimes there are loads of images to find, sometimes not (the Gorbel video in particular was very tricky).
He said that a half-orc barbarian would aspire to ride a bulette right when I began writing one down on a character sheet
The Tim Kask interview:
th-cam.com/video/kPepszyjh3g/w-d-xo.html
If I ever had buleltte moving into my territory my solution would be to drive off all the halflings.
love this video could you do one on the blood hunter from 5E?
Perhaps for a patreon video request, but I'm not likely to do much on character classes, particularly stuff that is not found in official books, on the channel, when there are still so many monsters to cover. I do believe Dawn Forged Cast did a series of vids on that class however.
AJ Pickett yea that's true
boo-lay sounds French which means it sounds Elven, which means boo-lett is the more crass pronunciation, AKA Dwarven
We had them coming from the elemental plane of earth to make them a little more challenging to higher level players.
I've always wanted to get a bulette pet, mostly to name it Creme
Why???
@@firetarrasque4667 Google, 'Crème brûlée', it's type of dessert
@@angrygardengnome8383 Thank
Also . Ever Hurd of atlas animalia . There’s several species of bulette
Rather off-brand, in Baldurs Gate 3 you can use speak with animals to address a grumpy bullette in the underdark in a hole near a myconid colony, if it dies elsewhere the hole goes silent. It will threaten you, and tell you to run. I find this odd as The bulette has an intelligence score less than 3 and no language? heres a 5e excerpt. "Its strength and constitution are the most remarkable stats at 19 and 21 respectively. Intelligence and Charisma are the lowest at 2 and 5 respectively. This means that while the tank of the party will be doing much of the heavy lifting, the best characters to actually be effective are going to be your spellcasters..."
Edit: Kou-Toa Bulette God anyone?
Giant sized ring of sustenance for hunger issues
Fun fact, that only happens if the female praying mantis is not properly fed, sort of like with Ankeg's.
*Knock knock* “Candy-gram”
In French, Bulette would be pronounced "Boo-let".
A full party of halflings would look like a five dollar fill up meal from KFC in the eyes of a bulette.
Boolay! Watch it now, watch it, woolly bulette.