Goin' Through the Fiend Folio Part 15 (Shocker to Symbiotic Jelly)

Back at it again! Here's the last entry in this series, here's a link to the first post, etc. etc., time to pick back up where we last left off!

 

 

 

To begin with, however, I'd like to make some notes of a couple monsters that I accidentally missed had original versions in Fiend Factory! First, my overwhelming favorite from the last entry, the SHEET PHANTOM!!! You can't imagine my delight when I was scrolling through my pdf of the Factory column and saw this delightful illustration of the undead fabric that I had somehow completely missed. Content-wise, the Factory sheet phantom is just a simpler presentation of the phantom and ghoul in the Folio; I really appreciate the economy of language on display. For instance, the sheet ghoul is just one sentence rather than a whole separate entry. I could learn a thing or two from that!

On top of that (literally), it turned out that the berbalang, a Malay vampire that we covered much earlier in this series (like four years ago, embarrassingly enough), was also first present in Fiend Factory! I really like the way they rendered the name, with those cool bat wings on either side; and while the Russ Nicholson illustration in the Folio is distinctive, this one is pretty good too! The description is very similar to the Folio berbalang, so I don't really have anything to add there. Just wanted to make sure to note it!

Shocker

★★☆☆☆

Not the... worst monster I've seen, it's definitely very usable and I think there could be something interesting here, but the way its presented here leaves a Lot to be desired. Basically, its a hazy humanoid crackling with energy that has an electrical shock attack. That's about it; the only other interesting detail is that there are 1d4 gemstones within the shocker's body that will become apparent when it attacks; I quite like that, it feels kinda videogamey in a good way. Everything else is either incredibly basic and boring or just unnecessary. The entire first paragraph is a waste of ink, taking up almost half the creature's description just to say "we don't know where it comes from, maybe this plane, maybe that plane, who knows." Boring! Just commit to something interesting, please. Would be 1 star except I do think I'd use an electricity monster with gems inside, I just would want it to be more interesting than this.

 

Skeleton Warrior

★★★★☆

At first glance, this one looks really generic, typical of the overly taxonomic listings of various undead types in AD&D manuals; it's basically just a fighter class equivalent of the lich. While a fighter-lich might have some abstract value for gameplay, what I find more interesting and more compelling here is the tragic quality implicit in the skeleton warrior's description. They are "clad in the rich, but faded and rotting trappings of a powerful warrior," and are constantly in search of golden circlets which hold their soul similar to a lich's phylactery. Unlike the lich, the skeleton warrior doesn't necessarily know where this circlet is, and if one puts the circlet on their head and is within 240 feet of the skeleton warrior, they control the skeleton warrior's movements and actions. If the skeleton warrior is more than 240 feet away, or one takes off the circlet, the control goes away; and if the circlet is still in the possession of the skeleton warrior's former controller, they will rush at their former controller and attempt to kill them and take the circlet for themselves; for when they put the golden circlet on their head, they immediately die, and the circlet collapses into worthless dust. It also mentions that skeleton warriors will become aware of you the moment you acquire one such golden circlet even if you don't know how it works and seek you out too. This is amazing stuff! The implicit narrative here, of a long dead once-great warrior forced to cling to a pitiful existence while constantly at risk of being turned into little more than a puppet, violently seeking out his own destruction by seizing the golden circlet from its current owner at the first chance he gets, is incredibly compelling! I think that element alone makes me interested in putting a skeleton warrior in my game, although I'd probably make it somewhat unique rather than a whole "type" of undead; and maybe he will plead for the adventurers' mercy, begging to be allowed to collapse into dust, while being controlled by one of the players. 

Skulk

★★★☆☆

Just neat! Apparently, a people group known for cowardice can eventually evolve to develop chameleon-like camouflage powers (only a 10% chance of sighting one when they're not moving!). Who knew! They sneak and skulk (hehehe) around, stealing stuff to survive, using their heightened camouflage to blend into their surroundings. The note that these were once normal human beings who evolved chameleon-like powers makes them much more interesting than if they were just another demihuman race. The description is overwrought but that's to be expected I guess.

 

The five types of slaadi: clockwise from top left, Blue, Green, Red, Grey, and Death Slaadi

SLAAD

★★★★☆

The slaadi might be one of the best, most enduring, most distinctive and fun of the "races" of entities created for the Fiend Folio. I can't help but love an army of extradimensional color-coded frog-men, drawn in Russ Nicholson's delightfully grotty style each sporting somewhere between a shit-eating grin and a toothy grimace. While they dwell in the outer plane of Limbo along with the githzerai (who I explored the implications of in this previous installment), they can also be found "roaming the Prime Material Plane on missions of woe." MISSIONS OF WOE!!!! I love missions of woe!!

 

Even though there are five different types of slaadi, I'm bundling them all together because they're all basically the same. This is where I struggle; while I like the kind of videogamey color-coding of the ranks of malignant slaad, they take up just about two full pages of text to basically just say that this slaad has access to this spell list while this other kind has a this other spell list. It's incredibly unnecessary, and I think could be done in a much more succinct way. All slaadi have a gemstone-like symbol embedded in their skull which, when possessed, allows the holder to give the slaad three commands (although they must be rightfully rewarded for performing the commanded actions or else they'll kill you!). In addition, blue slaadi have sharp blades embedded in the backs of their hands that give them extra attacks, death slaadi are extra powerful (only four are known to exist), green slaadi reincarnate as blue slaadi if their bodies are destroyed but their symbol isn't (weird?), grey slaadi are the Executioners sent to the material plane to do the bidding of slaad leaders, and red slaadi have toxic pellets they inject when they attack that kill the target in 3-36 hours (weird range) on a failed save. Some of these are more distinctive than others; I'm docking one point mostly for the kinda annoying over-taxonomization of it all, but in general, as a concept I love the slaad... and that concept is only strengthened by the entities that lead this merry band of atrocious amphibians.

 

WOE BETIDE BEFORE SSENDAM

Ssendam - Lord of the Insane

★★★★★

The first of the two slaad lords is SSENDAM, a shapeshifter (the more powerful slaadi have the ability to shapeshift between their frog-like form and a human form) that appears either as a human with an accursed black sword or as a golden amoeba with a human brain instead of a nucleus. DUDE!!! That's SICK!!! In actuality, Ssendam's original form is just a golden frog-slaad unconscious in the plane of Limbo while his amoeboid form is in the Prime Material Plane, which I think is much more boring than if he was just a brain-amoeba all the time, but I gotta hand it to them for the amazing image of a shimmering slimy amoeba with a human brain floating at its center commanding an army of devil-frogs. I just love it!! He attacks with corrosive pseudopods, casts a lot of powerful spells, can summon any of the five types of slaadi, and regenerates 3 hp per round in combat, so he's a hefty opponent! Also: "When encountered, Ssendam always gives his true name, though woe betide he who tries to use it." I don't often get to the level of play where my players would be facing off against a creature as powerful as Ssendam, but in terms of high level monsters, this is a great one; I think I'd just make it so he's always in amoeba form (ooh or maybe he can shape his amoeba body into a vaguely humanoid silhouette rather than being able to shapeshift perfectly into a human).

 

COWER BEFORE "DEATH" IN THE CLAWS OF YGORL

Ygorl - Lord of Entropy

★★★★★

It's ya gorl! Just like with Ssendam, Ygorl is a slaad lord with a delightfully incongruent design: a pitch black, skeletal, bat-winged figure wielding a large scythe on the side of which is inscribed the word "DEATH", riding on an ancient brass dragon which the description informs us is named Shkiv. Ygorl doesn't change his form, unlike Ssendam, and nobody has seen his original frog-like form in Limbo (though the description includes speculation that it is a large black-colored slaad; again, I'd much rather Ygorl just always be the dark skeletal figure atop the dragon). Ygorl's death-scythe kills instantly on a failed save, and he attacks with it twice per round (in addition to Shkiv's presumed dragon-breath), as well as having a whole litany of spells and once-per-day powers (including power word: kill; maybe a bit overboard when your scythe already does basically the same thing!). Facing off against either Ssendam or Ygorl would be incredibly difficult, with all the various powers afforded them and their ability to summon other slaadi. I'd like to think that Ssendam and Ygorl are rivals; perhaps their interminable conflict (and whatever annoyance comes from the clone-like githzerai) is the only thing stopping the slaadi from completely overrunning the world; getting caught up in a space-faring extradimensional demon-frog cold war (with the gith as a wild card element) would make for an interesting higher level game!

Snyad (aka Pestie)

★☆☆☆☆

Mischievous and violent small humanoid #1589459. The description even notes that they're a cousin of the mite, which makes it even more obvious just how similar the two are! Not even the two grotty Russ Nicholson drawings featured alongside it can save this one. They dwell in tunnels dug into the sides of corridors that are really well hidden and only emerge to steal from adventuring parties, and never attack; they sometimes work with mites to lay traps, and have no spoken language yet somehow work together. Please just use a goblin.

 

Son of Kyuss

★★★★★

YEAHHH!!! The Son of Kyuss always stuck out to me, like some of the really iconic and distinctly "fiend folio" monsters from toward the beginning of the book. A staggering, shuddering walking corpse, animated by some evil priest long ago whose name still clings to them, with great big green worms writhing around in their eye sockets, nose hole, and mouth. It's an incredibly striking visual!! Just the simple addition of the worms takes this from Yet Another Undead to a unique type of undead that has its own distinctive associations. Mechanically, they're relatively simple yet distinct; they attack primarily by just flailing around their rotten fists which is so unsettling and gross, feeling less like an actual calculated attack and more like them just forcing their dead bulk on you, and there's a chance that the worms in their face-holes can jump out at a target and burrow into their flesh, beelining for the brain in 1d4 rounds. The worms end up feeling like they have more agency than the corpses themselves! On top of that, the Son of Kyuss's unfeeling fists cause LEPROSY. What's not to love! I think that the Sons of Kyuss would fit perfectly in the world of King of Kings, alongside my leprosy-causing assassin-geckos and parrot-fiends.

 

 

Hobbitses (aka silly little guys) are constantly in danger of being in the dungeon

Stunjelly

★★★☆☆

A relative of the gelatinous cube that trades the cube's transparent hallway-filling slime for a translucent surface that visually imitates the look of a stone wall. A lesser-known entrant into the "every single surface and object in the dungeon can and will kill you" genre! I personally find this less fun and evocative than the kinda weirder lurker above or trapper, but I guess it fills the space between those two! Paralyzes targets with a touch before trying to engulf and digest them. It's okay! 

 

Sussurus

★★★★★

The sussurus (taking its name from susurration, a term for a murmuring, whispering sound) is another Fiend Folio classic, a weird headless ape-thing made out of knotted thorny matter (it looks like a plant but the description doesn't say it is), criss-crossed with hollow tunnels that produce a droning sound when air moves through them. The sussurus "sees" through vibrations, feeds on the air, and is rendered briefly immobile by strong enough wind surging through its passageways. The "drone song" of the sussurus causes undead creatures to become placid, to enter a "sleep of the dead" where they stand there listlessly, only breaking out of it when attacked. Additionally, it hates fire; not because it is susceptible to burning, but because fire burns away oxygen! I just love how weird all of the various elements of the sussurus are, yet they feel just right all together, and mysterious enough to prompt interesting questions from the hypothetical players: where did these things come from, and why does the droning sound of their breathing cause undead to fall into a peaceful standing-sleep? I'd also recommend checking out this really great article over at Bogleech.com all about the various forms the sussurus has taken across the different editions of D&D!

 

Svirfneblin (aka Deep Gnome)

★★☆☆☆

Please Gary... no more demihuman races... there's too many of them... Svirfneblin first appear in the original series of adventure modules that first introduced the Underdark, the same origin point as the Drow and Kuo-Toa. Perhaps this is just due to my inclination toward weird evil things but the Svirfneblin feel like the weakest of the new subterranean races introduced in that line of modules. And yet, the Folio takes almost a page and a half to describe Deep Gnome powers and abilities, the weapons they carry, the makeup of their parties, etc. etc. It's a lot like the overwrought description for the Kuo-Toa honestly. Notably, they can summon earth elementals, and when the going gets tough they flee into tunnels carved exactly to their size (so I guess the players wouldn't be able to follow after... unless they were halflings or gnomes themselves?), and they'll only assist the players for a fee. The Russ Nicholson illustration does have a Jim Henson's Labyrinth quality to it which I like, but Svirfneblin are kinda meh... kinda like the name though! I think I'd just prefer something more like folkloric kobolds than yet-another-gnome-variant.

 

Symbiotic Jelly

★☆☆☆☆

Ahh... the furtive symbiotic jelly, so easily forgotten... and for good reason! I love weird slimes and oozes, I love monsters with very particular niches and lifestyles, but there is just Too Much going on with this monster in terms of what it does. The description itself isn't particularly long, but it proscribes such a particular mode of behavior for the jelly that I can't imagine ever actually putting it into a game. In basic terms, the symbiotic jelly has to feed on a carnivorous creature at the same time as the carnivore is feeding; weird, but alright. What it does to ensure this happens is, it hangs around in a monster's lair, and when the monster returns, it charms the creature and makes it attack whatever enters the lair afterward, and then uses a magical illusion power to make the carnivorous monster look weaker than it really is, and make the lair look like its filled with treasure when it isn't. I guess, to trick players into going into the lair because it'll seem like treasure that they can easily grab without having to worry about the monster. What is even the point of this. Moreso than the stunjelly or the lurker above or whatever, this monster seems like it only exists to fuck with the players. 

 

...strangely enough though, this player-fucking-with monster is actually our only creature in this post (not counting the ones I missed previously at the top) that has an original from the Fiend Factory; and the original name is So much better.

The CHAOTICUS SYMBIOTICUS??? I kinda really love the illustration here actually; the description is, as expected, much simpler, but basically hits the same notes as the Folio description. Don Turnbull loved this thing apparently:

Cheerio Fred! Perhaps his suggestion of only one per dungeon is a good one; I for one would only want one of these per campaign, if at all!

Now that was way more monsters than I originally planned on covering, but I didn't want to cut S into even smaller chunks. Sorry about that! I hope it's still interesting and fun to read :) Stay tuned next time for even more weirdos, starting with the letter T!

King of Kings Session 15 After Action Report

Been too long since my last post, and even longer since the last session report! Had the first King of Kings session in a full year like a month ago, but kept on putting off writing the after action report until now. Gonna get back to posting more regularly soon hopefully!

A bit of a shorter expedition this time, while we were getting back into the swing of things; trying to get back into running a game after a year's absence is kinda hard!

Dramatis Personae
Coro the Esoterian, level one magic-user
Ishthyromeda the Small, level one amazon
Manchugo Coldeswain, level one cleric dedicated to Damir, foreign god of the trade routes
and Parsani, scrawny son of a rural matriarch
...and quite a few hirelings! 9 in total, 6 of which were thugs from the streets of Tabur, one of which was a light-bearer boy, another a girl from the dye works of Tabur, and another which was the most pious street beggar Manchugo could find

Yeah, the party decided to shell out for hirelings for the first time! This made the decision making calculus a bit different, though I think the full impact won't be seen until later sessions.

So after spending probably too long figuring out hirelings and resupply (I'll need to figure out some way to streamline that), the party went off to the abandoned farmstead beneath which they found, at the last session, a massive subterranean structure spiraling down into the earth. In addition to the new hirelings, they brought with them three pounds of salt, in preparation to confront the giant slug that blocked their path one week previous.

(Unfortunately not very long after getting to the depths, Ish's player had a bad headache and had to leave, so it was decided that Ishthyromeda and Parsani would stay guard at the group's wagon aboveground while the rest delved.)

First, they kept an eye out for the aforementioned giant slug, in roughly thirty minutes coming upon the very spot where the mollusk lay across the slick algal-coated stone causeway. There was no slug in sight, however, only a wide swash of faintly yellow slime on the wall that goes up the wall and then turns around; presumably the slug descended down from where it was previously. 

Trilobites!

About another half hour later, slowly shuffling as a mass down the slimy walkway, the group heard an arthropoid chittering up ahead. Inching forward, the light of their torches revealed a pile of 13 trilobites! None of them had ever seen such strange bugs before, eyeless and mostly flat, tendrils flailing in the air. The things at first showed no interest in the group, but were attracted to the warmth of their torches as they approached. Coro lit a candle and threw it to the ground to distract them, while gesturing to the mercenaries and city youths to crawl around the arthropods single file, careful not to disturb them. It takes some time, but they ultimately are able to get around them.

Another twenty or thirty minutes later, having lost a few torches sputtering in the dark and forced to light new ones, they came across a square open tunnel in the wall of the structure. Before going in, Manchugo dropped an iron spike down the open side of the slimy walkway, to try and estimate how far down the bottom of the structure was. He only heard a distant wet splash after a full 45 seconds.

They then ventured into the square tunnel, flanked on either side by ancient metal doors with strange looking locks on them. The tunnel eventually made a hard turn to the right, right next to a door rusted off its hinges and with an insectile chittering behind it. Our adventurers decided to not deal with whatever was behind that door and ventured on, inspecting some of the metallic doors and finding little inside them but small dusty cells. Right before another right turn in the tunnel, they came across another door, this time with a wet burbling noise crawling out from within. As they approach the burbling room, they see a pitch black ooze clinging to the walls and filling up the floor in the little chamber, pushing the door out at its hinges, which immediately made them want to leave, despite the glittering emeralds revealed by the flickering torchlight that the slime recedes from. They were only able to force the door shut with the help of several of their hired thugs. 

The very sketchy map of this tunnel I drew since there was some confusion while describing it. The starred cell is the one with the insectile chirping, the crescent moon cell is the one with the burbling slime.

And that's where the session ended! Like I said, not a whole lot (which makes it doubly bad that it took me this long to finish writing this augh), but I'm just glad to have gotten back to King of Kings! The next session will open up in media res in the dungeon, picking up where we left off right after the second right turn in this tunnel.

Goin' Through the Fiend Folio Part 13 (Penanggalan to Qullan)

Been way too long on this! But, before we begin, I have to recognize a person very important to me, to Old School D&D, and to the Fiend Folio: Russ Nicholson.

Russ Nicholson, whose illustrations populate much of the Fiend Folio, passed away on May 10, 2023. His grotty, incredibly detailed art style is one of the most defining aesthetics in my mind for old school D&D, along with other great artists like Erol Otus, and more specifically an evocation of the messier, darker, more cynical, British approach to fantasy (he contributed art to Warhammer too!). Nicholson was active in making art for roleplaying games just about up to his passing, including Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials, and Through Ultan's Door. The Fiend Folio was, I believe, my first exposure to Russ Nicholson's art, and the Fiend Folio was one of the first AD&D books I ever had; Nicholson's art was one of the major reasons I got so into old school D&D, a visual aesthetic that spoke to me and grabbed me. I think Nicholson has to be given credit for getting a lot of people into old school D&D, or at least contributing to the image and aesthetic of going on an adventure into a decrepit dungeon with strange monsters. Rest In Peace to Russ Nicholson, we've lost a truly great artist and contributor to D&D and other roleplaying games.

A great example of art by Russ Nicholson!

Penanggalan

★★☆☆☆

The penanggalan is a longtime personal favorite monster of mine, ever since I first found out about it from a now ancient article on Bogleech.com! The image of a pale woman's head flying through the sky, entrails hanging down below, sucking blood and killing children through the thatched roofs of houses is just the best, and the idea of it being a normal woman during the day and leaving her body behind at night provides a fantastic narrative and seed for adventure. Malay vampires (and really Malay folklore monsters in general) are really cool, I might make some posts statting some more up. But uh... does this need a full page and a half of description??? This is, unfortunately, probably the most unwieldy and long monster description for any AD&D monster. A PAGE AND A HALF!! I do not think that the specifics of whether the penanggalan was a cleric when she was alive, or what a know alignment spell will do when cast on it, or the feeblemind effect of seeing the transformation from human woman to flying undead head, or the slow and steady effect of the penanggalan's feeding, its hypnosis, etc etc etc, none of that is necessary in this amount of detail. The penanggalan as written is an adventure in and of itself, a specific narrative arc that progresses from it selecting a victim to the victim's death and aftermath, and there's barely any deviation from that path other than "the party figures out its a penanggalan and fights and kills it OR finds the body and kills it." I can't believe the Fiend Folio, otherwise a great monster book, completely ruined one of the world's greatest folkloric creatures by making it a damn railroad. This is a 5/5 monster brought down to 2/5 by how awful the implementation is. Just cleave close to the folklore and keep it simple!!! That's all I ask!!

More Russ!

Pernicon

★★★★☆

Now THIS is a great and well implemented monster! A large, grasshopper like insect that dwells in deserts, prized for its water divining antennae but dangerous because of its deathgrip pincers. Sweet, simple, and effective. I think giving an animalistic monster some body part that is prized or valuable, whether monetarily or for a directly applicable use, is one of the best ways to make an otherwise mundane animal relevant to the players, and the pernicon's water divining antennae are a great example of the latter. Its antennae vibrate and give off a low hum when within 120 feet of water; very useful in a desert, especially if you're actually going to make water matter to the player characters! The pincers are also delightfully terrible, only dealing 3 points of damage but also taking a point of constitution from "drain[ing] the water and other body fluids from the victim,"; AND this repeats every round! The pernicon's pincers don't just let up, even after the victim dies it will continue to grip, and forcibly removing it will only deal an additional 1d4 damage. That might not sound like much, but these guys are encountered in numbers of 4 to 40! Nasty, but reasonably so! Also, interestingly enough, they are listed as semi intelligent, and the delightfully rendered Russ Nicholson illustration has its hand raised as if it were giving a speech; the description doesn't really describe them as intelligent, but that could be an interesting angle to take.

Phantom Stalker

★★☆☆☆

Not really that interesting. Basically just a weird summonable fire elemental that serves the summoner and, when the summoner is killed, disappears only to reappear "intent on vengeance" 1d4 hours later. They can shapeshift, are immune to fire and weak to cold, deal fire damage, yadda yadda. Nothing super notable. I like how the illustration makes them look like a kind of weird B movie monster, though. Very rubber suit esque. The description only calls their typical form a "reddish, 8' tall humanoid with huge fiery eyes," so I'm glad the illustrator went in this more alien direction.

Poltergeist

★★★☆☆

Very basic, but very effective. Yet another type of ghost (it's almost comical how AD&D statted up every synonym for "ghost" as a completely separate monster—ghost, specter, apparition, etc etc etc), but in this case it feels more earned since a poltergeist is such a specific image: an invisible ghost that can only act on the physical environment, throwing objects around. That the Folio poltergeist can't even deal damage with its thrown objects is kinda funny; all a successful hit does is cause a fear effect that makes the target flee, with a chance of dropping objects they are holding. I like fear effects and effects that force the PC to flee, they're fun. Otherwise, just another incorporeal undead; but does it need to be much more? A poltergeist can just be an immaterial force that throws stuff around! I think I might not stat it up though, treat it more like a room hazard; giving it HP feels kind of wrong.

Protein Polymorph

★★★☆☆

What a name!!! This hearkens back, to me at least, to some of the more sci-fi inspirations to early D&D; a "protein polymorph" feels like something that could have appeared in an episode of Star Trek or something. But what actually is it? Well, its a colonial organism made up of intelligent single cells that can take on the appearance of anything, including inanimate objects, living beings, even Groups of living beings (its described as joining these independent bodies together by a near invisible cord or film of protoplasm which is just so cool). So, it's a weirder doppelgänger with a wider range of transformative abilities. Not the most distinct niche for a monster, given the whole slew of other imitation creatures that already exist in D&D, but I think the weird colonial single celled organism angle and its ability to imitate groups of living creatures make it a bit more interesting. Also, it can't imitate noises nor accurately recreate facial expressions, which provides a much clearer way to identify whether something is an imitation; I always wonder how the hell you're supposed to figure out a doppelgänger is a doppelgänger. Really, I kinda think this is just a 2/5 creature, but it being a slime mold and the ability to imitate a group of creatures connected by a film of protoplasm bumps it up a star for me. I'm a sucker for a gooey guy.

Quaggoth

★☆☆☆☆

Kinda mid. Yet another tribal humanoid monster that dwells underground, except this time they are mysterious pale shaggy humanoids that uh... wait a minute, why not just use white apes? Yeah, literally just use white apes. These guys are just apemen except no they're not apemen they're like, weird little eared bear men, murderous care bear types. They have leaders, they wield axes and swords, they berserk when they reach a certain HP threshold (that part is at least kind of interesting I guess), and they hate surface dwelling elves and... become slaves of the drow to assist in their war on elves? That's really weird. Why wouldn't they just be allies of the dark elves? Why slaves? That feels weird, justifying themselves... enslaving themselves to the dark elves? Weird. I would just use like, white ape men or something.

Quipper

★☆☆☆☆

These are cold water piranhas. The description even explicitly calls them that. They are bloodthirsty and swarm ravenously if blood is spilt, up to twenty can attack a human sized target at once and it has an... incredibly cumbersome way to handle that. At first I thought it was pretty interesting, since it involved rolling a percentile die to see how many even attempt to attack, but as it turns out you still end up needing to roll an individual attack roll for every single damn fish. That's so stupid. By the way, did you know piranhas don't really do the whole "swarm uncontrollably if even a bit of blood is spilt in the water" thing? Piranhas don't actually devour large animals like humans, cows, etc to the bone under normal circumstances. That myth originated in a piranha attack coordinated by Brazilian fishermen when Theodore Roosevelt visited the country on a hunting trip in 1913 (they blocked off parts of the river and didn't feed them for a very long time so that they would be desperate for meat when they threw a cow into the water) and he wrote about it in a book that he published the next year, popularizing the image of the piranha as a killer fish for American audiences. Having a killer fish is valuable for a D&D bestiary, of course, but this implementation is boring.

Unfortunately also a Russ Nicholson... they can't all be winners

Qullan

★★☆☆☆

Uh oh!! Uh oh!!! This one looks really racist! A "seemingly insane" race of humanoids that just so happen to... wear animal skins and warpaint? Very unfortunate! I think this, along with the quaggoth, is another great example of the unnecessary inflation of different humanoid types in AD&D; when you get down to it, this is just a pretty overtly weirdly racist humanoid monster. Well, with the exception of its Two Kind Of Interesting Ideas. So, Qullans exude an aura of confusion that causes all attempts at communication and interchange between them and other intelligent peoples to fail; I fear that this is just a weird justification for unquestionable violence directed toward them, but I can't help but find the idea of a whole group of people cursed to supernaturally confuse those around them just interesting! Maybe that supernatural confusion is the cause of their seeming "insanity"? Also, they have swords that are so sharp that they deal +3 damage and have +3 to hit, and if someone manages to get one of these swords the bonuses sticks around... until the sword gets blunted, and unfortunately due to the confusion effect ruining all attempts at communication, nobody knows how they keep their swords so sharp. That's kinda cool actually! Very intriguing! I generally think that making bonuses be from nonmagical stuff is pretty cool, to keep magic sticking to the really genuinely weird stuff, and connecting this mysterious sharpness to their confusion effect makes it all feel very tight conceptually. Too bad its uh, really weird and unnecessary otherwise. This is really a 1/5 monster, but the combination of the confusion effect and the super sharp swords nets it another sword; I'm just more likely to steal those ideas for something else than use this monster as is.

The Taste Testers (A Monster for Gamma World)

Oozing along the crumbled alleyways of Gamma Ohio are the pitiful taste testers, half mobile and half intelligent, vaguely humanoid forms made from spewing vomit. They grasp at the air with the silhouettes of hands, dripping with sick, bubbling coughs that occasionally reach their permeable surfaces. They tend to congregate in small pitiful packs, huddling together in sewers and ruins, scraping every surface for food to sate their search for deliciousness that they can rarely find. They reach for interlopers' faces with their stinking puke paws, both to get an idea of what they look like since the taste testers lack eyes and to slurp up any dead skin cells or oils accumulated on a traveller's face. Unfortunately for the taste testers, however, most don't take kindly to having their faces fondled by living vomit.

Taste testers are unfortunately maligned and disgusting creatures born into the worst of circumstances. At their core they are ambulatory living entrails, a simple mouth, esophagus, stomach, and set of intestines to be exact, all perfectly human in genetics. Lacking a brain, the taste tester is instead animated by a neural net that it is able to extrude through its mouth in order to puppet objects, most often its own vomit. These accursed things were made this way by a long forgotten candy and chicken byproduct meal company, in house, in an effort to replace human taste testers for their product. Originally centered on the first production center in what was once Cincinnati, they later expanded in their use, including to companies bought up by the taste testers' parent firm. Thus, they were made as a genetically modified human clone, a hominid worm made up of the human digestive system and with the bare minimum of the rest of human anatomy, with the express intention of mass testing product for human consumption with simple binary outputs of acceptable or unacceptable, communicated through the only method left available: vomiting.

That was all before armageddon, of course. With the supply chains drying up and the factories collapsing in on themselves, the vermiform taste testers found themselves surprisingly resilient, fleeing into the sewers to proliferate. The unfortunate thing is, however, that what might be available to eat in sewers or post apocalyptic ruins is nothing compared to the mind numbingly delicious treats they were genetically engineered to taste test, leaving them constantly vomiting up whatever filth they ate. In time, however, the smarter of the taste testers figured out how to extrude their neural net to puppet around their puke, allowing them to venture further afield and be more discerning with what they put in their mouths. They do still have to eat awful things in order to produce the vomit that makes up their very own bodies, however; it is an awful cycle indeed.

Thus the taste tester of today is born: a squirming worm of guts controlling a puppet of puke vaguely shaped into a humanoid form by faint recollections of what their ancestors were and who they were around in the ancient factories. The product of the profit hungry hubris of ancient humanity clinging to existence as a blind pitiful gourmand of discerning taste and hazy memories.

Sometimes, taste testers are kept as an unusual pet by certain distasteful types, or they are taken in by the more well meaning cults and secret societies. They are unlikely to seriously hurt anyone individually, but some warlords and crime lords keep taste testers as torture devices, putting people in a room with an especially stinky vomitoid or keeping a well fed one as a mockery to prisoners they keep starving.

Taste Tester

Number Encountered: 2d6

Hit Dice: 1

Attacks: 1 vomit swipe (1d6)

Armor: none

Morale: 4

Reticent: Taste testers will never initiate combat, although they may approach the players and even touch them without realizing any problems with that.

Stench: Taste testers smell so bad. Those with sensitive senses of smell must save or puke themselves when close to them.

Oozing Body: Attacks to the main body of a taste tester deal no damage; all you're attacking is congealed vomit! To damage it, the worm like digestive system "true body" must be targeted, giving disadvantage to most attacks. When submerged in water or blasted with water, the vomit body dissipates.

Vomit Swipe: Taste testers can attack with a swipe of a pukey tentacle dripping with stomach acid. This weakens armor; for every 2 hits, -1 AC.

Taste Tester for GW 1e

No. Appearing: 2d6

Armor Class: 10

Movement: 5

Hit Dice: 2

These slimy humanoids are the half sapient pitiful result of corporate genetic engineering, now abandoned. They have worm like "true" body made of a stomach and intestines, and a false body made of vomit. They are constantly in search of good tasting food, and rarely find it. They are timid creatures and will never initiate combat. Their vomit bodies take no damage, but dissipate in water; their "true" body is hard to hit due to its relatively smaller size, giving you disadvantage on attempts to hit it. Their acidic swipe gives -1 to AC for every 2 hits.

Taste Tester for GW 2e

Number: 2d6

Morale: 3

Hit Dice: 2d6

Armor: 10

Speed: 5/300/2

MS: 1d6            IN: 1d4

DX: 1d6            CH: 1d4

CN: 1d10+8      PS: 1d6

Attacks: Vomit swipe

Mutations: N/A

Description: see description above

I also do realize that the above drawing takes a lot of cues from Sickly Stomach from Awful Hospital but I'm pretty sure I drew my original doodle of these guys before AH even started, I've had Gamma World vomit oozes kicking around in my head for a while

Too Much of a Good Thing (A Monster for King of Kings)

The alchemists of the First City, capital of the Enlightened Empire, have isolated the components of air. A foolish endeavor in the eyes of just about everyone else, nobody trusts them when they talk about such abstract notions as "oxygen" and "nitrogen", though there are rumors that agents in service of the Gnostic Elves are seeking out such treatises. It is common knowledge that air is simply a firmament through which the light of the holy blessed God travels. The alchemists are surely wrong.

In the antediluvian days, when the Sea Tyrants held sway over the whole of the world, they would poison the air and the water through mysterious means. Even to this day, there are patches of earth strangled by forgotten machinations, with no plant life clinging to the skeletal dusty dirt. Only the most learned scholars are aware of this fact and who did it.

Nobody knows how.

Oxygenator

Armor Class: 8

Hit Dice: 10 hp (mobile form) or 30 hp (sessile form)

Attacks: see below

To-Hit: N/A

Movement: 12' (4')

Saving Throws: D8/W9/P10/B10/S12

Morale: 12

Alignment: Neutral

XP: 100

Number Appearing: 2d6 (in mobile form unless otherwise specified)

Damage Resistance: Oxygenators take half damage from all bludgeoning weapons and all non-magical slashing and stabbing weapons.

Damage Weakness: Oxygenators take double damage from fire. They are weak to certain salves and rubs.

Hyperoxia: Oxygenators produce excessive amounts of oxygen, causing oxygen poisoning. Oxygen poisoning only begins to take effect if the oxygenators are in a small contained area or in direct contact with an air-breathing subject. For every turn (when in a contained space) or every round (when in direct contact), make a save vs. poison. Track how many failed saves have been made by each air-breathing subject in the area:

1: nausea and confusion (-1 to all rolls (incl. saves))

2: tunnel vision (-1 to attack rolls (-2 including the above penalty) and AC)

3: drowsiness (-1 to all rolls (incl. saves))

4: convulsions (disadvantage on attack rolls, half movement)

5: uncontrollable vomiting (cannot take any actions other than moving)

6: fall unconscious

7: amnesia (lose a level)

8: instant death

Mobility: Oxygenators can alternate between a slow oozelike mobile form and a sessile form in the appearance of a lumpy column. They cannot move when in the sessile form. It has a much lower HP amount in the mobile form, and any damage sustained in mobile form is maintained when it transforms into its sessile state. It will automatically switch to its sessile form if it reaches 2 HP. They are especially dangerous in the mobile form, since they can crawl onto the faces of air-breathing creatures to accelerate the process of hyperoxia.

The mobile form might look more or less like good ol' fashioned green slime (though more mobile so its not just doomed to dripping)

Okay breaking the whole in-character style of the beginning of this post to talk about what this thing actually is. The oxygenator is a colony of oxygenating bacteria held in a matrix of green algae and animated by sea tyrant sorcery. It was developed as a weapon of war during the incessant skirmishing between rival fish lords. Hyperoxia and oxygen poisoning are real conditions that were one of the largest inspirations behind this creature, and the effects of the failed saving throws are based directly on actual symptoms of oxygen poisoning (though usually it takes you longer than 80 minutes to die from it lol). This actually isn't the first time this creature has appeared in my game worlds; The World With No Name, which is the setting that I ran my games in in high school, featured an antediluvian empire of Cambrian overlords who used these bacterial beasts to make areas inhabitable in a nearly oxygen-less world. There are still Cambrian influences on the Sea Tyrants in King of Kings, but they're primarily Devonian and Carboniferous in inspiration, so turned the original purpose behind this thing's creation to one more suitable to the more developed/evolved antediluvian overlords.