The Bulette - The Scariest Monster in Dungeons and Dragons

said to come from the combination of a snapping turtle and an armadillo this walking Fortress of a monster devours everything in its path it is feared by virtually All Creatures including other powerful monsters and even others of its kind and wherever it goes it is followed by earthquakes landslides and sink holes this is the Boule and yes that's how it's pronounced I was also shocked here is the monster manual entry for the Boule let's go through it real quick we are told that the are an enormous Predator that many call a land shark that lives only to feed they are quick to anger and are known to be greedy and they fear no other creature and attack with no regard for enemy numbers or strength and here they tell us why they're called land sharks ble have the ability to Tunnel underground thanks to their powerful claws in their tunneling they uproot trees cause llight and leave sinkles behind them wherever they go then when they sense vibrations in the earth originating from the surface they burst out from the ground in order to eat whoever it is making them now over here we're told that Bulet dislike the Flesh of elves and dwarves which is interesting they also tell us that they love halfling meat the most and particularly love to hunt them it's always fascinating that the different kinds of human noids appear to taste so different to monsters but anyways uh bouet have no layer they simply roam territories of up to 30 m in length eventually living the territory when they have exhausted usted all of the food in the area only to then find another territory with which to exhaust in particular they seem to favor finding humanoid settlements terrorizing them until the residents of all either fled or the Beast has been killed now this part here is of particular note All Creatures sha bouet which treat anything that moves as food even other predators and bouet I can totally see a a a mighty and powerful Dragon legitimately fearing a ble I mean sure you're going to win that encounter most probably but the ble is going to bite your hand off so in the end is that even a victory better to just run away if that's the case this makes perfect sense to me now the last portion of lore that we have here says that sages believe that the Boule came about as a result of an experiment one that crossbred a snapping turtle and an armadillo with just a bit of demonic iur infused in there uh the reason people think that is because and this part is very important because they're young are almost never seen oh it'll be very fun to get to that in a bit but let's just finish the monster Mel here in this stat block we can see that these guys are freaking fast 40 feet of movement speed means that they're not going to outspeed a horse but the vast majority of creatures that exist will have no way to outrun this thing but that's not even the really impressive part 40 speed of borrow spe speed is actually cracked you might not know but there's only one group of creatures that can borrow that fast and those are the ancient dragons that can borrow literally no other creature in the monster manual can borrow faster than 30 ft and that includes creatures like the Earth Elemental and the Dao who can just materialize through the Earth this thing can borrow faster than most creatures can even Sprint now the monster manual doesn't actually Explain how now or why that is but we will cover that later and we can see that the creature is strong and durable but very very dumb now here this is interesting look at his perception that is not Proficiency in perception that is expertise in perception these are rare in the muser manual so that combined with Tremor sense means that nothing can hide from these guys now here by the end we see that the Boule is great at jumping being able to jump up to 30 ft in long jump and 15 ft in high jump but the interesting bit is that it does not require a running start to do so that's fascinating yet they don't tell us why that is how is it able to do that but anyways uh this jump is used in conjunction with their deadly leap feature where they can land on top of creatures in order to deal both bludgeoning and slashing damage uh this is actually the reason why so many DMS kill players with bullet based on the damage that abule can do with this ability the creature should have a higher CR than five cuz considering that I mean this can easily deal up to 60 points of damage spread around two Targets or maybe even 90 points of damage spread around three targets which is just insane uh the fact that there is no limit to how many times the Boule can do this is also pretty nuts but hey that's guess just part of what makes it so scary and lastly we have it bite a formidable uh average of 30 points of damage with its M just nothing else to see here o but there you go that's the monster manual entry so now as always let's talk about what the Monster manual did not tell you about the Boule but first before we do that this video is brought to you by a huge friend of the channel the dungeon coach who has just released his greatest project as of yet a new tabletop RPG called dc20 dc20 is a dunge and Dragons Style game that functions very much like DND but has several really interesting changes that spices up the game playay and takes a great many strides forward in the design space for the genre in dz2 instead of a single action you have four actions Each of which you can use to move make attacks disengage Dodge or cast spells basically anything that you can do in DND D with an action you can in dc20 except that you got four actions to do so allowing you to mix and match several moves together into an epic cinematic turn same thing applies to monsters and villains now with four actions enemies can have moves that cause multiple actions creating depth and strategy these extra actions can also be spent to Grant yourself advantage on an attack or a check and get this those advantages stack so if you needed to 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sturdy you actually get to select what features your dwarf gets dc20 is about to enter beta and I am so incredibly excited for this I had a great time playing dc20 with dungeon go D and D shorts D4 Deep dive and launch break Heroes uh the link if you want to see the game is on the description uh but I had such an incredible blast doing so dc20 is entering beta on Kickstarter right now so go over over to the link below and check out dc20 on Kickstarter using my link below everyone who pledges gets access to the beta at the end of the kickstarter so you have to take advantage now and try this game with your friends dc20 right now on Kickstarter use the link below thank you guys so much and now back to the video quote the buet has a devastating effect on the echo system of any area it inhabits literally nothing that moves is safe from it man animal or monster in the process of hunting and roaming the land shark will oper trees of considerable size in Healy and Rocky regions the underground movements of a boule can start small landslides ogres trolls and even some Giants all move off in search of Greener and safe pastures when a boule appears a boule can turn a peaceful farming Community into a wasteland in a few short weeks for no saying human or demium will remain in a region where a boule has been cited end quote I usually don't mind it too much when the fifth edition monster manual omits certain things after all lore can be mostly flavor it's just particularly sad when something is omitted that is either crucial for the understanding of the monster or how it behaves or something with a real tangible mechanical application that has always made the monster Pop the blet is called the land show shark and it is not just because it swims under the ground like a submarine travels through the water it is because it has a Crest and that Crest occasionally pops out into the surface when the creature is hunting underground uh much how a shark has a fin that protrudes out from the water the land shark has a metallic Crest that does so as well from the official Dart in fifth edition it almost looks like they drew it here but it's unclear and the lore certainly makes absolutely no mention of it uh the Crest is important not just because it is part of the creature's identity and is what gives it the the land shark name after all but also because the Crest is meant to hold the main weak spot of the creature every aror monster has a weak spot a place in their body where the plates don't quite mesh where a person could with the right angle and aim cut through the armor and strike at the flesh inside of the Beast for the Boule the Aras sits right behind the crest right in here if you could somehow strike that area the AC of the Boule would basically drop all the way down to 10 from 17 uh the crest however is typically only raised High during moments of intense action so it would be unlikely that you would be able to say surprise a boule that is sleeping by hitting the weak spot now another reason why the Boule is called a land shark is because much like sharks they do not die of old age and the older a boule gets the bigger it grows now I do not know if we still believe that that's true for sharks anymore but but I digress adventurers have noted seeing bouet being as big as 11 ft tall they just keep growing now the life cycles of bouet are actually interesting because not much is known about them the fifth edition monster manual claims babies are rarely ever seen first and second edition claimed that quote no one is certain how or where the young are born or hatched end quote even the D and Dragons Dragon magazines have no clue where the bouet come from then going back to fifth edition we are told quote bouet come together only to mate resulting in a bloody Act of claw and teeth that usually ends with the male's death and consumption end quote what is going on here well it is true that neither a pregnant Boule nor a boule egg has ever been seen there's also a reason why no one has been able to gaze at the meeting ritual of a male and a female ble but that reason is not what the fifth edition monster manual tells you monster manual lore is Cannon of course but forgun Realms lore is more Canon at least to us cuz Forgotten Realms is what I'm interested in a a cool little book called elminster's ecologies has the answers for us in an entry for the region of cormanthor you are you are really going to want to listen to this but before we do that a few interesting bits of lore that are again Forgotten Realms Cannon the Boule tends to eat prey feet first and they don't always finish their meals leaving torsos and heads splattered about and sometimes they only eat the legs leaving people squirming and screaming while still alive also blazs are notorious for falling asleep in the places they eat sometimes surrounded by cavers sometimes with still screaming people half ited in their mths and now that we got those terrifying factors out of the way a fun one blaz breathe with a wheezing sound and then drool when they exhale how fun but the real Topic at hand reproduction in the Forgotten Realms uh the male will find a prop territory to begin its mating ritual in this territory it will kill everything it can then spread the cavers around the area in the circle this inevitably attracts Predators which are then subsequently also killed by the Boule and then their caders will join the circle as well once the boundary of the mating territory is complete the ble will dig a shallow pit in the in the center in which it will then grab a bunch of the bones from the victims and slowly turn the into bone dust in order to create a little pile this will usually last about a week with the Boule just sort of sitting there just knowing at the bones and then spreading the pile of dust everywhere uh within a month's time the pungent smell of death in the area will attract a female Bay which inevitably will find the mating area both the male and the female then will mate at top the pit and on top of the bone Ash uh and eventually the male will leave and the female will stay now here is the fasinating part and the part that has made it so difficult for for BS and sages to figure out the the reproduction of the blets see the gestation period for the female Boule is only a few hours that very same evening after she mates she will lay up to a dozen rockard spine covered eggs those eggs will only stay as eggs for one night one single night before they hatch in the morning now in the morning once the babies hatch the mother will make a loud bellowing sound like an elephant it's unclear why she does this the Lord doesn't really explain it but it might be to just let the babies know exactly where she is the reason for that is that as soon as the babies hatch they all attack the mother in a hungry Furious battle the mother fights back to of course slaughtering and eating the children a fight to the death between both mother and children that doesn't end unless says either the mother is dead or all the children have been called uh usually the children win and when they do only two to three babies tend to survive these babies will then proceed to eat both their dead mother and their dead siblings and that's that's how they that's how they reproduce so as you can see dear God the reason nobody knows anything about this is because first literally everything in the area is murdered by the Boule before the ritual can even begin and those that stumble into the area after the fact are also murdered as part of the ritual so as you can see no one gets to see how the meeting occurs because they would probably just die but then uh no one had ever seen a boule egg because they only stay as eggs for a few hours before they hatch so there you go mystery solved though that doesn't explain why seeing a boule baby is so rare maybe by the time that they're done eating their mother they are already old enough to look like adults but who knows the lore certainly doesn't explain that though I will also mention that the the birthing liquid uh from the eggs the I guess the yolk when combined with the bone dust of the mating ritual makes for a powerful fertilizer it seems allegedly when fed to a tree it will make it grow twice as tall and may even be powerful enough to make trees produce twice as many fruits uh make a rose bloom in Winter or even make wheat sprout in sand very very powerful combination you might just have to deal with an hungry Boule baby to get it oh by the way I did mention that the weising sounds of a boule breathing uh bullets do indeed breathe air so they do have to come out to the surface to to breathe every so often or at least have an air tunnel from their burrow all the way up to the surface it's just something that you don't really think about too much with creatures like these it's also Worth to point out that they are warm-blooded now when it comes to their desires for food the moner Manuel told us that they hate elves and dwarves but love eating halflings unfortunately there is no lore reason for this that I could find other than the fact that many monsters do indeed love eating halflings and many of those same monsters also do hate eating dwarfs so there must be something about their taste uh however I did find outside of halflings uh bouet do love the taste of hores Apparently one of the reasons why they find themselves fighting so many group of adventurers and why they are known to always pick fights with large groups of well-defended Caravans is just to eat one or two of their horses further according to the second edition monster manual whenever they eat people they're not picky at all about what goes inside of their gallet alongside those people meaning they will eat you alongside your weapons armor clothing belongings anything that you're wearing apparently their digestive asset is so strong that it can dissolve virtually anything including magical items this leads them to a eat first think about it later type of mentality which is why they can sometimes be seen eating normally inedible objects such as bags of coin or wagons but now to end the video uh the reason why bullets can dig through the ground just so damn fast faster than literally any other creature in existence outside of ancient dragons the reason for that is because when they dig the blaze secrete a form of slime out of their skin that attaches to both their armored plates and to the ground around them the Slime magically dissolves Earth into a malleable muddy texture that allows the Boule to partially swim in order to move rather than to just dig as some sources even claim that the claws of the Boule are barely used at all in its underground movement instead they utilize their powerful Tail as a form of propeller like how a fish might swim in the water the arms get this can be retracted into their body which creates a a more aerodynamic form to swim through the ground it definitely more now like a land shark doesn't it uh the lore doesn't say this uh but this would also explain how these creatures are able to jump so high even without a running start if they are able to retract their legs into their body it is possible that they may have a a muscle mechanism to Spring their legs out fast and with power allowing for a great jump without any additional momentum but that's just me spitting that out it just sounds like it could be a thing anyhow this slime that they secrete to suffen Earth can be collected but not from the Beast instead you would have to go into the tunnel that the Boule created by collecting the soft Earth from the tunnel if you were able to extract the Slime from it then you could use it and it would function as a spell transmute Rock except that instead of transmuting rock to Mud you would transmute Earth to mud a farming communities that suffer from the attacks of a boule before the creature was slain are actually known to collect the Earth from the creatures tunnels in order to rub the soft Earth into their plows because it allows their plows to cut through the Earth as easy as a hand can cut through water I hope you guys enjoyed the video do please make sure to click the link in the video description and check out dc20 right now on Kickstarter the game was an absolute blast to play with and I can not wait to see the full release get access to the beta by pledging on Kickstarter using my link in the description below dc20 guys do not miss out on this and thank you so much dungeon coach for supporting the channel really appreciate it thank you all once again and I will see you all next time

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Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2024