Psychedelic
We already talked about gaming under the influence back in Drinking Problems, so what do you say we take this one in another direction? Let’s talk about adorable baby monsters instead. Shit always goes wrong when you’re dealing with adorable baby monsters.
For example, do you remember when my group made a deal with those aboleths last week? Well one of the allied NPCs that became fish chow was a myconid sprout named Stool. We’d all grown attached to the little guy, and so began plotting ways to try and resurrect him. After the intra-party drama subsided we gathered up as many shroom chunks as we could before setting off in search of high-level divine magic. That’s when our sorcerer developed a sudden interest in cooking.
“Hey guys, let me make you some breakfast,” he said. “It’s good to have comfort food in these trying times.”
“Ummm… Sure?”
There was much note passing between the sorcerer and the GM. There was a dice roll. Suppressed giggling. Then we were tucking into steaming hot bowls of Underdark goulash.
“I feel like Stool will always be with us now,” said the sorcerer, chaotic random prick that he is. Turns out we didn’t have the resources to resurrect the little guy anyway, but it’s no fun finding out that you’ve been Scott Tenorman’d. Apparently it was tasty at least.
What about the rest of you guys? Have you ever adopted a baby monster? If so, what horrible malarkey did you have to deal with as a consequence? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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You guys ate Stool?? T__T
I’ve never adopted a child monster, but it sounds fun and is being added to my to-do list. A few sessions ago we did… adopt…? about a dozen human children though. You see, they had murdered their parents to appease some snake god, and then we murdered said snake god. With nowhere to go and nobody to look after them, we took them to Witcher school. We’ll see how letting 80% of them die and training them into murderers works out; we’re optimistic.
That is a gross mischaracterization! We unwittingly consumed his remains. >_>
As for your parriciddal wards, it sounds like they’re great candidates for murder school. I know just what kind of people they’ll grow up to be:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-13
I think you’re missing the joke that that phrasig makes your characters sound like scarab beetles
I did say it was a GROSS mischaracterization. 😀
I don’t think any of my groups ever adopted anything- at most we gave money to an orphanage on the way out of town or donated to some other charitable cause located far away from us. That was usually for the best.
Even if some of the party was well-intentioned and swore to raise the creature right, there’d almost inevitably be someone who wanted to dick around just to mess with other people. Get the tyke to say “All hail Wee-Jas!” to annoy the Paladin or something like that.
The trouble is that “lone wolf and cub” sounds like a cool premise on paper. It just sucks to have to deal with it at the table. The game eventually becomes a story about babysitting when all your really wanted to do is kill monsters. In consequence, I think that “we gave money to an orphanage on the way out of town” is a pretty good compromise.
Exactly! Some things work well as a story and some things work well as a game, and the two don’t always overlap.
Well bloody said! That is a key insight that some gamers go entire careers without ever understanding.
I have avoided introducing baby monsters to my players because I follow The Spoony One’s advice on the subject; just don’t. Somebody is going to want to kill them because they’re “evil”, other PCs are going to say they can’t leave them to die of exposure, and someone else is going to insist they do not kill BABIES, regardless of what alignment the Monster Manual says.
Then again, my current party are pirates, so they might just sell a baby monster into slavery/a zoo. I guess zoos are slavery too, but without most of the work.
Yeah… My last pirate campaign turned into Noah’s Ark. We adopted SO MANY animals. 🙁
My Dwarven Paladin wants to adopt a baby Grung (Poison Frog people) for licking purposes. His Dwarven ale is finite after all. He’s a Dwarf with 16 Con, he’ll be fine.
I actually designed drinking/drug rules that may require some modification to work outside 5E, but are pretty elegant.
Your tolerance is your constitution score. Double it if you’re resistant to poison damage, halve it if you’re vulnerable. Every drink/drug has a point value. Once you go over your tolerance, you are Poisoned, and must make a save to stay conscious for each subsequent drink. Saves start at DC 10, and
cumulatively increase by the value of every drink you take.
At 1/4th of you’re tolerance you’re buzzed/tipsy/ At 1/2 you’re drunk/stoned. When you’re making saves you’re hammered.
Good rules. It’s a bummer that there’s not a fatigue-track equivalent for the poisoned condition. You’d think that a mild penalty at buzzed > harsher penalty at drunk > poisoned condition at tolerance limit would be the ideal.
Buzzed and Drunk can be handled through simple roleplay. Possibly disadvantage on all Dex/Int/Wis checks at Drunk.
The closest our party had was a Barbarian who kept rations on him for nearly all animals since he could talk to them via magic. He got the praises and loyalty of a murder of crows so we jokingly called him crow jesus.
It never came up, except once and it was a bad situation, but my Sorcerer (and me) loved dragons. I feel if we ever came across an egg or a wyrmling my character would have tried to take care of it consequences be damned.
MotherOfDragons.gif
Our party ended up adopting everything under the sun and giving them living spaces in our out of the way mountain keep. We ended up with:
2 owl bear cubs our ranger adopted
A massive family of Goblin Trapmakers that boobytrapped every single nook and cranny our ranger also adopted.
A Behir inhabiting the caverns under the keep our ranger also also adopted.
Several incredibly deadly oozes in jars our wizard kept as a curiosity
A Roper we negotiated access with and lived in the caverns with the Behir
A Demilich in the adjacent shadow plane we often had tea and crumpets with .
We often joked that our little home-away-from-home was a future adventuring parties hell-dungeon.
It was then that we realized, after our murderhoboing and monster collecting and lair building was done, that we were the BBEGs all along.
Let me tell you about my first level character named “Strahd”. He’s only got 2 copper pieces and some leather armor right now, but some day he’ll be loved and respected throughout the land and have a totally awesome palace that other adventures come and throw raging parties at!
…I feel like some great stories could start with a hook like that.
We found 4 displaced beast cubs after killing mom. Raised them to full size. My cleric dwarf would ride it into battle. It always look like was kind of floughting in air since it’s displacing powers only worked on it’s self.
I’m trying to imagine the displacement effect on a mount, and it’s hurting my brain. Wouldn’t you just fall through?
NO. Displacement effect only made the cat look like it was 5 feet from it’s real position. What really made it funny was i toke one of my horns off my helmet and made a helmet for the cat. So we both had a horn sticking out of the front of our heads. The helmet did not displace ether
I had planned for my players to consistently run into this strange owl over the course of their adventures. Whenever they would finish a quest, or would be finishing a long fight, the owl would be there, watching them. It was going to report to its Fey mistress constantly, so later down the line, when the characters met the Fey Mistress, there would be a cool “Ohhh its your owl!” moment, and grow suspicious of the owl over the course of the campaign until that moment. Second session rolls up, the finish a fight, owl appears to watch them finish the fight, and my paladin player decides hes going to befriend it, train it, and have it fight with them. After some good animal handling rolls, he succeeds. I was already buying into the idea of them having a spy on the inside, so it wasn’t hard. Some of the players are still suspicious, but I’m super excited to keep dropping subtle hints and things, and leading into the reveal of the NPC I had been planning for all along.
Shady-ass double agent owl playing both sides! I love it, and am 100% picturing him in a little owl fedora and trench coat.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/744730618169331716/IR85BP6H_400x400.jpg
“Hoot Hoot. The Wind Fish will wake soon.”
Had something like that in an Eberron game where I had a Changeling Rogue pretending to be a young girl steal a spellbook the PCs needed from a tomb. The party then adopted her, bought her “hard luck” spiel hook, line and sinker, then proceeded to bring her around with them showing her how to be a “Good Adventurer.” After they had saved her from near death a few times, the Changeling considered herself part of the group and started actually helping, but never let on that she wasn’t a 16 year old human.
I wonder if that’s a common hazard for changelings? Pretend to be a thing long enough and it sort of sticks.
It’s hard to make friends with normies when you change your face as often as you wash your cloak. That being said, finding people who have your back as a Changeling is hard. That whole “but they’re all spies and assassins” thing gets played pretty hard in our games. This character in particular is one of my favorites, and she has only ended up revealing herself to 2 out of 5 parties. It is all about trust.
if it is a common hazard, depends on your style. Keelo runs a thieves’ guild in Aundair fine, though they are fuzzy on if he is a known changeling in the source material. My Gms are all somewhat biased by the way I play, and so the world ends up fearing changelings a bit more than they probably should. ^.^
Now that’s an interesting concept to me. Because your GMs are more familiar with the things that actually happen in their games, those elements tend to become more prominent in the secondary world. I think there’s a logical fallacy associated with that idea (i.e. because a thing exists it must be common), but I can’t for the life of me seem to recall its name. Cool to see it in action though.
I wonder if there’s a way your can purposefully harness that tendency? For example, making Shire-like settings more prominent in the fiction and so generating more interest in Shire-like settings among other players.
In one of my first games in Planescape, we ended up on the Quasi-elemental Plane of Radiance, nestled between the Planes of Fire and the Positive Energy Plane. In the cave our portal dropped us in, we saw some snake-like elemental creatures (think the Pokemon “Goomy”). They were eating these glowing crystals as we walked by and they seemed fun to play with, so I (a Bariaur Duskblade) picked one up.
The Elf Warmage made her knowledge checks and told me to put it back, or she would kill it. She said that the creatures were eating the magic in the crystals and we were loaded with magic items.
Anyway, I put the one I had back but found a tiny one that would fit in a cup. I fed it a couple Dancing Lights that night and in the morning, but the Warmage found me out. I made my sleight of hand check though, and managed to keep it for a few more days before I had to let it go.
It was a real shame too. I’ll always miss Crystal the animental.
Now that I’ve finally uninstalled the app, I find that Pokemon are primarily useful as a way to explain what D&D monsters look like.
Crystal sounds like a perfect candidate for showing up as a gargantuan-sized threat late in the campaign. Does it remember you? Will you attack or try to remind it of your friendship? Drama!
My players adopted a tiefling that resulted from them pouring horse liquid onto a ochre jelly. The tiefling immediately fell on spikes and died.
Also why is Inquisitor’s hair hands?
You’ve obviously never licked a myconid.
It’s a spell from a third-party sourcebook; you’ve probably never heard of it.
😛
Oh good lord. I’m in an Iron Gods campaign with one guy I’ve been gaming with for years, I don’t know, but we’re always on the same page.
In one of the first sections, you encounter a “cerebric fungus” a telepathic bulb of purple tentacles that has a taste for “red food”, as our DM put it. It was a little on the head since the bloodstains that covered the preceding hallway conspicuously vanish once you reach the fungus’ room.
Somehow, we all passed our saves against the “Gross and weird, KILL IT!!” impulse, and found it to be a passive creature. Without anything else to do we moved along with a promise to bring it more food later.
Later…
We found two small oozes in a nearby room, red in colour and roughly the consistency of congealed blood. With nary a glance between my buddy and I (we play on roll20), the oozes were promptly grappled and strongarmed back to the fungus. It quite enjoyed the oozes, it seems, and now trusts us enough to follow us a few feet outside its room. We called it Tychie, I look forwards to finding more food for our unusual friend. May we remember the good times when this inevitably goes horribly wrong.
I think I got a copy of Iron Gods in a humble bundle… I’ve heard that there are some early encounters vs. Hardness 10 constructs that seem a bit unfair though. What’s the concensus? Would your group recommend the AP?
Sounds like a fun monster in any case. Some monsters are a little like pugs: they’re so ugly they become cute again. I think players gravitate to horrible tentacle blood-eating mushrooms for that reason.
Iron gods is pretty fun so far. the Hardness 10 Constructs will likely be tough but a couple really deadly early encounters aren’t actually constructs, with a Juju Zombie and a Gargoyle (DR 10/magic before they can afford magic weapons)
But there are a couple battles ahead that seem pretty tough but also really fun. I’ve wanted to play Iron Gods ever since I learned about Numeria existing and I’ve been having a blast DMing it. The first book has a really good dungeon crawl from 1st to 4th level.
What is Ranger doing?
Tusken Raider impression.
Regarding characters getting high and tripping out, I recently had a funny idea for an NPC character:
A high ranking cleric of Olidammara (the Greyhawk campisgn setting god of rogues) whose vestments turn into a bong. Like, he wears a miter made out of glass or some kind of smoke-proof fabric or something that turns into the base of the bong and carries a hollow crosier that screws on and turns into the tube after screwing off the ornament on the top of the crosier which turns into the bowl and stem
I’m not sure if that’s a character concept or a Skymall product.
During a one off our DM tried to have us kill young Silver and Gold dragons. Needless to say, I’m still salty about that…
That’s a bit of an odd selection. It’s like killing Ned Flanders’s kids.
Yeah, we were bored and had nothing better to do, so he picked at random….
In my Exalted game, the Essence 6 Infernal is pregnant with the Essence 7 Lunar’s baby that was conceived while they were looking for a lost PC in the Labyrinth. So in ~9 months there will be… something… born.
Does that count? 🙂
If I recall correctly, the higher essence wins out in matters of heredity. It’s just a half-caste lunar. No infernal weirdness need apply.
Also yes, that still counts.
Lavender skin and Ju-On/Grudge hair is a great look for Inquisitor, though.
I agree, but sadly we can’t keep it. Thief would get jealous of the former and Witch of the latter. No encroaching on the other PCs’ shtick!
No baby monsters (yet, anwyays), but one module I’ve considered running for my group has manticore cubs in it. I am almost positive my group would try to adopt them, considering how they’ve previously reached amicable terms with a nothic, a goblin, a spectator, and a doppelganger.
Had one game I was GMing, before half the party moved to another state. They were in a dungeon, and, the way things went, they managed to get in the back end, and were going through things backwards (sneaking in and killing the BBEboss beholder before it knew they were there). It was then they found a baby beholder who the mother had been trying to kill, because it was a minor mutation of color (and beholders slay mutations), so they decided it was all right and adopted it.
Naturally, it was just as evil as all beholders, but knew a good deal when it saw one, already planning to use them to ride it’s way to power…
You see? It never works out! Orblings will kill you just as surely as mama beholder.
And speaking of orblings, you might appreciate Panel 5: https://www.deviantart.com/fishcapades/art/He-s-not-a-Pet-He-s-an-Animal-Companion-273296468
It probably says something that my first point of comparison when discussing unwilling cannibalism is Tantalus and not Eric Cartman, but I don’t think it’s as accurate as I might like it to be. Especially since my second is Arya Stark and not… googles Tấm Cám or King Astyages or Gudrun.