D&D Ripped Off DUNE.

well it's pretty much unavoidable at this point everywhere you look you see nothing but advertisements for it so I guess this week we're going to be talking about a d andd monster inspired by the hit David Lynch film Dune the guild does not take your orders hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet that held up its end of the Dare pledge today we're going to be talking about the orange Seer a monster that represents a perfect example of how to extract something you like from a piece of media and inject it into D and D campaign as always we're going to cover the creatures lore and ecology as well as what it can do in battle and some ways you might use it to tell a story in your D and game and if you do decide to use it at your game table I've got you covered with some converted 5e stats and brand new artwork but if you're in need of a location for your adventuring party to square off against this big bad psychic monster our sponsor this week chaku has got 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page 32 and 33 respectively this article is entirely about how one might adapt aspects of the Frank Herbert novel Dune into your DND campaign specifically it focuses on translating what are probably the three most ubiquitous and wellknown elements of Dune into Dungeons and Dragons stats and mechanics those three elements being of course Giant sandworms space Navigators and spice Mage in Dragon magazine they have converted these three elements not really as one toone carbon copied lore but in ways that are obviously meant to be heavily inspired by Dune there's a section about sand worms which doesn't give a stat block really it just has some suggestions for how you could modify the purple worm stats in order to run them as a big old desert worm and it's got rules for spice mange as a substance that can be incorporated into a d and game where it acts as sort of like a drug in our DND D conversion they call it orange spice which is very like no one's getting sued here and it works very much the same way as spice does from the Dune novels orange spice is used primarily for two reasons first and foremost it extends your lifespan potentially by hundreds of years but more importantly it also allows you to see glimpses of the future but of course the abilities granted by orange spice to see what has yet to pass only become stronger as one increases the amount of spice they consume this is extremely useful but also very dangerous because once you start using spice it becomes intermingled with your very essence and you can't exactly stop using it I mean you can but the withdrawal is no good that's no good included with this article is a table that explains what benefits you might gain by using spice depending on your frequency whether you're a yearly monthly weekly or daily user determines whether you just get a little can trip As a treat or if you can straight up cast divination whenever you want without using a spell slot it's a real risk reward Bor situation but that also says nothing of the physical changes one undergo when using orange spice as you consume it more regularly your body starts to mutate in ways some subtle some less subtle it starts by changing the user's eyes to a bright blue color and then slowly begins to turn one's skin orange kind of like Arnold in that one episode of Magic School Bus where he eats all those fish snacks is it just me or are you totally orange I seeing things you people wouldn't believe eventually if you progress to the point where you're using orange spice every day it will cause extra eyes to emerge on your head which is kind of weird but for those who truly embrace the orange spice lifestyle and become hourly users meaning they take 24 doses of this stuff throughout the day their body changes into something barely recognizable the orange sear which is heavily inspired by The Navigators from Dune is a grotesque creature to look upon by consuming spice at a near constant rate their mind has transcended what is capable for most mortal beings however their body has mutated into what you now see before you their limbs are nearly vestigial and their torso has become bloated and misshapen with various Limbs and other body parts appearing in places they quite frankly have no business being in there was no official artwork ever made for this creature so big UPS to Maxwell poov our artist this week for bringing this thing to life based essentially on a paragraph of text from an old magazine such a creature isn't exercise in abject body horror to be sure but for some the gifts offered by this transformation are well worth the price but what exactly are those abilities I'm glad you asked probably the orange sear is an incredibly potent psychic but has very little to offer in the way of physicality they have a poor strength and dexterity score they they can only move 20 ft per round and their only melee attack hits for a whopping 1 D6 plus zero damage not only is that basically nothing it's pretty pathetic when you consider this is a cr6 monster but on the flip side their now untethered mind offers them all sorts of powerful and dangerous boom they've got a 26 in intelligence which is absolutely outrageous for a monster of this CR and this is really important because intelligence is the ability that fuels the orange Sear psychic powers that means that when they use a psionic lash attack not only does it deal a devastating 8 D6 Plus 8 damage it also has a plus 11 to hit the spell save DC of this creature is also brutal with a whopping 19 that's pretty high up there even at later levels and is going to be exceptionally challenging for a low-level opponent to contend with fortunately for anyone fighting this thing the orange Seer has no spells that cause actual direct damage they have access to both hold monster and hold person which under the right circumstance can certainly be debilitating but all of their other spells are focused more around seeing the future they can cast augre divination and guidance at will they get commune and dimension door three times per day and they get charm person scrying and suggestion once per day and these are all spells that are very useful outside of combat which is primarily where the orange Seer wants to remain dimension door is especially useful for getting out of battle given their abysmal movement speeds but when push comes to shove if the orange Seer absolutely has to fight it's got one trick up its sleeve that can turn the tide in a matter of seconds extract intellect is a once per day ability the orange Seer can use to drain the intelligence of All Creatures within 15 ft of it it only does one D4 damage to the intelligence of anyone caught in the blast however the orange Seager gains all of the drained intelligence and adds it to its own score if this would put their score above 30 which is the cap for most Monsters the excess stat points are turned into temp HP at a rate of 1 to5 meaning that for every Point Beyond 30 drained by the creature it gains five temporary hit points this ability will not only hinder the Sear's enemies but also make it a little bit more beefy and it has the added bonus of increasing the damage and spell save DC of all of its psionic attacks it's also worth mentioning that the Spells cast by the orange sear are immune to effects like counter spell and dispel magic due to the fact that they are psychic in nature and this magic aversion extends to the orange Seer itself granting the Abomination magic resistance lastly as you may have guessed the orange sear is entirely hooked on spice it literally starts to take necrotic damage and essentially shrivel up and die if it misses even a single dose to make life simple many seers simply spend all their time in a chamber that is constantly filled with air that contains a healthy amount of spice but outside of these Chambers they must consume at least a single dose every 60 minutes minutes and that's a huge drawback if they want to leave the confines of their lirer but there are plenty of ways around that and believe it or not they don't tend to get out much but that doesn't mean they can't be a diverse cast of characters to add to a DND d game so let's talk about a few the orange sear falls into one of my favorite monster Arc types that being a creature who serves a specific purpose I think it can be really fun for the DM and the players to see creatures like that show up in both expected and unexpected ways running the monster as written it's sort of designed to be an oracle esque creature contracted out to an organization or extremely wealthy individual it turns out that being able to see the future is a very useful ability so any creature that can do that to the same degree that an orange Seer can is essentially able to name their price when it comes to getting paid because of this many seers live extravagantly wealthy Lifestyles and very few can keep them on the pay rooll for too long so considering that imagine the most wealthy individual or organization in your DND campaign good or evil has access to an orange Seer what would they do if they were granted the ability to predict and anticipate the future if this is an organization your adventuring party is in contention with it might start to feel like they're always one step ahead how can the enemy possibly know their every move they might start to suspect they're being scried on or perhaps that there's a traitor in their midst but whatever they the case it should somehow leak to them that evil organization X has a creature in their employee that is allowing them to see the future so then the overall mission pivots before we have a hope of actually taking them down we need to destroy that Advantage breaking into a guild secure compound to assassinated Giant Orange flesh monster that can see the future might not be conventional DND but it does sound really interesting they could also try simply gathering enough wealth to buy the orange sear loyalty for themselves after all most sear are just in it for the money unless of course they're not maybe they're heading up the guild itself or even worse perhaps a council of Sears is sitting at top of the pyramid scheming and plotting using their precognitive abilities to twist fate towards their own end that would make them very dangerous but something else to consider is that depending on the setting some gods of fate and destiny might not like that very much specifically Theos comes to mind I can imagine the goddess clus would want to put a stop to that immediately so maybe she or some other God of Fate contracts the party to take down the Sears and is somehow able to Shield them from the Sears future sight in order to give them a fighting chance or hell maybe the point of the game is to find an artifact that will allow them to remain outside the Sear's vision and Achieve Victory through the use of magic items but for a less adversarial role the orange Seer can also very easily slip into the role of an oracle or a group of witches that can see the future maybe an orange Seer has a Temple dedicated to itself where it will offer Travelers a glimpse into the future if an offering is made to them in kind and on the topic of temples and the Divine maybe the orange Seer is actually an agent of a greater power perhaps the clergy of a God who holds domain over fate and destiny partake of orange spice as a sort of ritual to become closer with the entity they worship and the most dedicated clerics among them seek to become orange seers and serve as guides to the church itself and that's another thing worth touching on the orange Seer just by its existence implies the existence of orange spice so it's important to decide ahead of time to what degree that chemical is going to play in your story is it something that just kind of exists in the background like it's the substance that people partake of don't think about it too much if so that's totally fine but the production and supply chain of that orange spice could very easily be a point of contention even if an orange sear isn't involved after all this stuff is highly addictive and presents some pretty good benefits even if if you're not someone who's interested in the psychic power side of things just extending your lifespan is something I think most people would at least be intrigued by in my fifth edition conversion I did include an updated table for the orange spice stuff there's enough there so that if you decide to incorporate this in your game you can kind of run it and there's Mechanics for what you can roll to attain such powers and how often you have to use it all that stuff but you could very easily use that as kind of a central tension to build a campaign around and if you want to do that I highly encourage you to take the idea and run with it but back to the topic at hand if you're planning an upcoming Dungeon Crawl perhaps the sear was cut off and isolated within the dungeon during some kind of cataclysmic event and the only reason they've been able to survive is because of all the spice that was trapped down there with them whether they mean to help or harm could make for an interesting random encounter and if you happen to be running spell Jammer right now just rip off Dune wholesale the creatures The Seer is based on is an entity called a navigator in the Dune universe space travel over long distances is exceptional Ally dangerous so they use Navigators in order to find safe Passage through the cosmos following that same train of thought an orange Seer serving on a spell jamming vessel could be an invaluable member of the crew they could travel to the most dangerous parts of the astral plane in search of who knows what and do so safely it could be the best kept secret of a ship captain who never seems to run into trouble no matter what dangerous parts of space they go to but whatever you choose to do if you do want to use this monster Link in the description down below is a Google document that contains all of the fifth edition stats that you will need to successfully run this creature at your game table and if you are one of my lovely patrons over on the dungeon dad patreon page you can find the highres PDF stat block which contains the same information but has the new fancy schy layout and gives you something nice to bring to the game table but most of all it helps support me in the channel and the work I'm doing here so if you like these videos consider checking it out another thing you could consider doing is leaving a like or comment on the video that cost 0 but the gods of the algorithm sure do like it also I just genuinely like hearing what plot Hooks and other ideas you guys come up with but I almost forgot it's time for patron of the week this week's randomly selected Patron is Andy thank you so much for the support Andy I would surely write your name on the bottom of my boot any day and thank you for watching as always if there is a monster from a previous edition of d and or other tabletop game you would like to see featured on this channel leave a comment let me know or let me know in the monster suggestions channel in the dungeon dad Discord which is also linked down there somewhere and it will be added to the monster suggestions list and who knows you might just see it show up on a future episode of Monster of the week this week's creature was a super weird one came completely out of left field but given the recent cinematic release of David Lynch's new Dune film it felt only appropriate to talk about something topical the algorithm Gods like that stuff too but I do think it provides a really interesting glimpse into something that we don't see often which is professional people within the industry ripping off popular culture just like the rest of us I that's like half the reason I even watch movies anymore just get inspired for cool stuff to add to my D and D game in any case once again thank you for watching see you in the next one till [Music] then dungeon dad delves deep into the Earth in search of rare Metals what emerges is something no nonsense and ready to enact atrocities for the [Music] greater tune in next time for lots more fan service

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Id: CcylD-MWeAs

Length: 17min 53sec (1073 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2024