The Fetch: D&D's Coolest Monster You've Never Heard of

that is so fetch gretchen stop trying to make fetch happen it's not going to happen despite what the mean girls would have you believe fetch actually has been happening since 1990 at least in the world of d d welcome to monster of the week the show where we dig up old creatures from the history of dnd talk about their lore convert them to 5th edition and go over some plot hooks and other ideas about how you might actually use these creatures in your own dnd campaign this week i've got one of the most obscure monsters i think i've ever covered on the channel for you recommended to me by none other than artie pavlov over on twitter the fetch is a hidden diamond in the rough from the old school rpg days of dungeons and dragons the fetch is extremely insidious as it is creative and i just love it it looks like a shadowy humanoid at first glance but do not let its looks deceive you it is indeed quite solid it is however a mostly invisible creature which means that it's nearly impossible to see i only say nearly impossible because things like true sight and other shenanigans exist but outside of magical means or some type of supernatural powers you ain't gonna see it it lives in the abyss the local neighborhood of horrid demons as well as all kinds of other evil guys and it is able to create a portal between that world and the material plane which only it can travel through once it creates this portal the entrance of course is on the abyss and the exit is a reflective surface on the material plane that's right folks it can jump out of any reflective material so we're talking mirrors obviously we're talking lakes we're talking shiny pieces of armor but that's not even the best part earlier i said it's mostly invisible which is still technically true but one of the means by which it can be seen is that the person it is specifically coming through this abyssal mira portal to try and kill can actually see the fetch in the reflection of other reflective surfaces in the room so that means that whenever the fetch comes to the material plane to kill someone like you do nobody can see it except for its intended murder victim that's pretty creepy but we've still only just scratched the surface of why this monster is truly amazing the fetch made its first appearance in dungeons and dragons as part of the monstrous compendium of dragon lance released in 1990. this was a supplement meant to include creatures from dragonlance all across the world of crin a big part of why this monster is so obscure is because it's over 30 years old but that can't be right 30 years 1990 was 30 years ago is that true okay anyways being part of d d's early history and seeing as it was only ever reprinted once in the year 2003 for the d d third edition dragon lance setting book it's no surprise we haven't seen nor heard from this guy in a while also if you'll indulge me for just one singular moment of rage listen up wizards of the coast stop naming your coolest monsters benign [ __ ] words like fetch do you have any idea how hard it is to research a creature named fetch let's name a monster table or how about box go right now go google the words dungeons and dragons fetch monster and see what comes up i felt like i was on an episode of [ __ ] csi miami trying to reverse image search to find this thing so if anyone who happens to work at wizards of the coast is watching this channel which based on everything you've released in the past year [ __ ] no one is stop doing this please your lore masters will thank you and i guess by that i mean like me and four other people who are making videos like this on youtube what the [ __ ] so we know that these guys can jump through mirrors and be scary but before we move on and talk about some proper encounters and uses for the fetch we need to understand just exactly what it's capable of in combat and the mechanics it has to back up its abilities so in order to do that we need to roll initiative and talk about some as always there is a fifth edition conversion of this monster below i've already taken all those third edition stats and converted them to fifth edition so that you can use them in your own home game if you want to check that out and kind of follow along as we go over what its abilities are you can find that linked in the form of a google document in the description directly below this video and if you don't care about that right now and you just want to listen to my calming voice as i explain in great detail why this monster is [ __ ] terrifying then please keep watching so the fetch is cr5 which puts it right in that sweet spot of difficulty for me anyways it's great because you can use it as a single big threat for a weaker party but you can also mix it up and throw a gang of them against a much higher level party and still be using the same monster but creating an appropriate level of threat in terms of attacks it only has one which is called soul rend because i mean if it's only gonna have one attack and when this will [ __ ] render your soul i guess we're not messing around with claws or bites we're just cutting straight to rending people's souls i guess in previous versions of the game this touch attack that the fetch would make would actually cause negative levels to compound on its targets since we're now playing 5th edition and we've moved on from things like negative levels i instead opted to just have this ability hit like a truck for a ton of damage in much the same fashion that negative levels hit once upon a time it can swing 2 times for 2d8 plus 4 necrotic damage which means on average if it hits both attacks it's going to be dealing about 26 damage per round something really important to note here is that because the fetch is invisible almost every attack it makes is going to be made at advantage despite what any players out there may be thinking no having dark vision will not help you see it better but be sure to remind your dm that you have it anyway just in case they forgot its other action is called mirror portals and this is simply meant to be a way to codify its mirror portals and explain how they work in game mechanical terms basically it's able to create a portal in the material world as i've explained already it has to be on a mirrored surface like i don't know a mirror however once it creates that portal it can't just pop right through it it has to wait the portal is dormant at first once a sentient humanoid creature looks into the mirror then it is able to activate the portal and come out to try to kill the person who looked into the mirror so many bards are gonna die to this monster man even before someone looks into the mirror however the fetch is still able to see and hear through the mirror so it can use these mirrored surfaces as a way to kind of gauge where the other side of this portal will lead them and also which mirrored surfaces are likely to have high traffic it's not going to use the reflective surface of a puddle somewhere in the middle of a forest where nobody is likely to wander through but it might set up a portal on a mirror laying underneath a sheet in the basement of a dungeon where lots of treasure is hidden for example because of the way that this reflective surface ability works the fetch is able to turn virtually any mirrored surface into a trap and as i mentioned the fetch's reflection is only visible to its intended murder victim meaning that if it pulls off its trap without a hitch no one will have any idea what happened there won't even be a body left behind and that's because the fetch once it kills its victim wants to drag them back through the mirror why does it do this you may ask well because it's terrifying and quite frankly whoever made this monster has a lot of issues to work through don't worry i'm absolutely going to cover what they do with those bodies but we're not at that point in the video yet speaking of invisibility let's talk about just exactly how this other invisibility trait functions if we look at the text it's all explained right there but it's really long and the tldr of what we're looking at here is that the fetch is only visible via its reflection to the creature it's trying to kill if there are any other reflective surfaces in the room which we know there's got to be at least one because the fetch is using it as a portal the creature it's attacking can see the fetch's reflection and it can use that information to pinpoint its exact location this is pretty neat because it means that in order to overcome your opponent being literally invisible your party's gonna have to work together let's say that the gang stumbles upon an old mirror in a dungeon but unfortunately the rogue who was checking for traps ended up pulling a sheet off an old mirror and looking into it for one second too long the trap is now sprunk and because the rogue is the one who looked in the mirror it means that they are the intended victim which means that they're the only one who's able to see what's happening and they're going to have to call out to the party where this thing is and the party is going to have to just take their word for it since they can't see anything there at all anytime a monster encourages your party communicating like this both in and out of game i think it's really fun because it makes the party feel like a cohesive unit a band of adventurers and less like a group of random people who all have supernatural abilities and that's not always something that we get from combat in dnd another detail i would be sure to include here because it's just that extra little bit of creepy frosting on this horror cake is that the fetch also takes on the appearance of its intended victim so what the rogue in this scenario we just discussed is actually going to see is not that shadowy mass i described earlier but a pale version of themselves with sunken features a twisted grin an otherwise slightly wrong appearance that's just terrifying why i guess that's why but still i don't like it and yes if you happen to run into a situation where the entire party say looks into a giant mirrored surface stretched out in front of them and a fetch is haunting that surface and chooses to come through it's pretty much up to you as the dm who the fetch is going to be targeting the original monster entry actually says that it usually goes after simply whoever is closest and if there's a bunch of creatures that are equally close to it and each other it just picks one at random fetch don't care fetch out here trying to kill somebody fetch don't care who it is now as if all that mirror murder wasn't bad enough the fetch isn't simply just out for blood it wants the victim's body and their soul as well told you we would come back to this the primary goal of the fetch on the attack is to kill its target and then drag their body back through the mirror into the abyss if it is successful in doing so after 1 d4 days the victim's soul is utterly destroyed and its body transforms into you guessed it a new fetch why do horrors of the abyss always propagate themselves in the worst ways imaginable it's like one big [ __ ] up competition down there where everyone competes to see who can make more of themselves without just doing a sex like the rest of the multiverse except elves i mean they probably just lay eggs or do something equally elven so the fetch seems like a brutal and literally invisible assassin which it absolutely is but it's not without a few weak points for starters it only has a 20 foot movement speed which makes it relatively slow it of course is able to kind of make up for this by using ambush tactics but if its target simply chooses to sprint away at maximum speed it's probably not going to be able to catch up to them that said as a fiend it won't tire as quickly as the mortal and it's only a matter of time before its prey has to go to sleep and it might just choose to ambush them again and that's a pretty terrifying prospect because that might happen when the party is resting out in a forest somewhere and there might not be any reflective surfaces around to see what's even coming it's also got a pretty low hit point pool considering its challenge rating it clocks in at 66 hp which will definitely allow it to take a few big hits but against a well-equipped party you're gonna see that health pool just burn away its armor class is also abysmal but this is mostly because as an invisible creature almost all attacks made against it are going to be at disadvantage because even if its intended murder victim is able to say he's in that square over there if anyone else in the party is taking a swing against it they still can't see it they just know its general area so they still have disadvantage unless they cast fireball there's no disadvantage on fireball i didn't ask how big the room was i said i cast fireball all in all i think that the fetch is pretty well rounded stat wise especially when it's able to get the drop on somebody which it almost always will be able to do there are so many ways that you can use this creature so i think it's high time we move on and talk about a few [Music] the fetch is a brutal killer and i highly encourage you to treat it as such it's really intelligent too so rest assured it is going to set up some of the most insidious traps your dnd table has ever seen at its most basic application the fetch is a really interesting trap for a dungeon crawl the party might come across a massive old dusty mirror for example only to realize that it is being observed from the other side by a fetch just waiting for someone foolish enough to stare into that mirrored surface for just one second too long if you don't mind playing with the lore a little bit you could even add in some mirror methods as backup to the encounter while mirror methods come from the plane of mirrors because we need a plane for literally everything apparently and they don't come from the abyss maybe for this encounter you include a demonic variant of the little methods or maybe you just adjust the fetch to make it a native denizen of the plane of mirrors instead of the abyss because that would also make complete sense something really interesting about the fetch is that despite living on the abyss and being a fiend it's technically not actually a demon it hangs out in the place where demons come from but it's just a bizarre evil entity separate from demon kind but that doesn't mean it won't cohort with the demons of the abyss see fetches make incredible assassins and what better way is there for a demon lord to easily knock off a pesky mortal on the material plane than having a fetch do its bidding in exchange for some kind of trivial reward see providing a fetch with a powerful magical item in exchange for its services as a child's play to a demon lord getting to the material plane is a little bit trickier so if some powerful demon knows of a group of upstart adventurers that are trying to thwart its plans on the material plane maybe it sends a fetch or two after them i also just want to make a point to not limit ourselves to mirrors i know i mentioned some other reflective surfaces but really the sky is the limit it can make use of any reflective surface so we're talking lakes we're talking shiny armor we're talking glass windows puddles of water really just anything coated in shiny metal is fair game there's a whole slew of potential death traps out there imagine the sheer horror of a fetch emerging from the paladin's plate male armor just to have a try and murder the cleric and then drag them back through said armor that has potential to be a tremendously memorable encounter if the fetch is working on behalf of a demon lord maybe that demon lord's cultists on the material plane have kind of set up a trap for your players who upon crashing the cult's lair find a room of bizarre mirrors coating every surface and within moments a gang of fetches is on top of the party and they have little room for escape in that kind of a situation who boy or maybe a particularly evil fetch has decided to create a portal in a hall of mirrors not the plane of mirrors a hall of mirrors now suddenly that carnival funhouse attraction at the local circus becomes its new hunting ground people go in and never come out so the party has to go in and find them as if you needed another reason to avoid the circus you could also use the fetch as a neat twist on the monster in the lake kind of trope perhaps people are going missing near the local water source and the party is investigating just what exactly is going on and they're expecting some type of bog monster to be lurking at the bottom of the lake coming up and killing people but in reality there's a fetch using the lake's surface as a portal to drag the distracted townsfolk in thus creating more fetches and thus exacerbating the problem these guys are so mean and that's kind of what i like about them fetches are profoundly upsetting i think that that is just wonderful if you're watching this and you think that the fetch sounds cool and you want to use it in your game as i mentioned there is that stat block in the description below which will contain everything you need to run it successfully in a 5th edition campaign for playing 3rd edition it exists in the dragon lance 3rd edition setting book so you can find it there and if you think that the fetch might seem cool but you've got a cooler monster from an older version of dnd that you'd like to see me cover on the channel please leave a comment telling me what monsters you would like to see show up in future episodes and they will be added to the rapidly growing list of creatures i have yet to cover there's a lot of weird stuff out there and we're we're getting through it we're gonna get there someday also i should mention a special shout out to all of you lovely folks over on patreon who helped make these videos happen it means a lot and i am seriously grateful to all you guys if you are one of my lovely patrons i guess you probably already know this but there is a 5th edition monster manual style stat block that has the artwork with a nifty stat block and all the lore and stuff on the patreon page which for three bucks a month if you want to be a patron you get all those stat blocks and more so if you're not already a patron consider checking that out too since i'm now standing up all the time for some reason i really need to get another light and a lav mic to make filming these videos a little bit easier so check out the patreon page if that sounds even a little bit interesting to you but all in all thank you guys so much for watching i really do appreciate it this year was a pretty big year in terms of growth on the channel both number wise but also i'm seeing a lot more activity in the community and seeing a lot more recommendations which is awesome and also a little bit daunting but it's it's been really cool to watch the the community grow around these videos and the monsters and all that cool stuff and i've gotten to do some really fun collabs this year so 2021 wasn't all bad i mean it was mostly pretty bad but it wasn't all bad so just thank you for being here and i sincerely wish you a happy holiday whatever it is you are celebrating and an excellent start to the new year so i guess i will see you guys in the next year until then [Music] you

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Keywords: How to play Dungeons and Dragons, dungeons and dragons lore, dungeons and dragons combat, d&d lore, d&d story, d&d online, d&d basics, d&d battle, dnd monsters, d&d monsters lore, dnd monsters explained, dnd monsters for level 1, d&d game breaking monsters, best d&d monsters, d&d cool monsters, creepy d&d monsters, d&d 5e custom monsters, classic d&d monsters, Dungeon Dad, Monster of the Week, D&D 5e, Dungeons and Dragons 5E, aj pickett, mr rhexx, D&D explained, homebrew

Id: 4xkF_MjMVSQ

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 30 2021