The Sexiest D&D Ooze in Faerûn Revealed - Ghaunadan - Monster of the Week

hello and welcome to monster of the week the show that is oozing with content is that really where we're at now that's how i want to start this video hello and welcome to monster of the week the show where we dig up old creatures from past editions of dnd and convert them into 5th edition so you can use them in your current 5e campaign my name is josiah known here as a dungeon dad and today we're looking at a creature that originally entered the game in ad and d the guanodon was originally introduced as an ooze but not just a regular ooze it was meant to be an intelligent ooze so you have your gelatinous cubes and your okra jellies and your black puddings whatever all doing their uzi slime thing you know breaking down flesh turning people into skeletons that float around in them all mysterious like but the guanodon was meant to be a little bit different these creatures are intelligent more intelligent even than your average person and they aren't just smart slimes they're smart slimes that can also transform their bodies to take on the appearance of a humanoid so imagine your gelatinous acidic cube of jello but it can also turn into a guy that's pretty much what iguanodon is at its core and most broken down form but there's a lot to unpack here in terms of how their society functions where they even came from in the first place and there's a million different ways that you can use these guys in your actual game whether as a major plot hook or just as kind of a one-off encounter for your party to run into all of which are super fun and interesting and i'm really excited to talk about these guys and as always if you think this monster sounds really cool and you want to try using it in your dnd campaign well there is a stat block in the description below which you can click on to check this guy out which i have personally converted from a d and d and also 3.5 in this case into 5th edition so today we're going to talk about how this creature fights in from a mechanical perspective how you can use it to create some fun encounters and then we're gonna talk about plot hooks and storytelling in ways that you can incorporate into your game that way so before i get too ahead of myself here though why don't you take a seat grab a bowl of jello give it a poke make sure it's not sentient and settle in for a moment while we talk about if you're following along with the stat block as i know some of you guys do when i talk about my monsters something that you will notice immediately which should catch you by surprise is that this creature has a very high charisma score i don't want to paint all oozes with a broad brush here but they're not exactly known for being the most charismatic folks the guanodon however is of course the exception to that they are not only intelligent oozes but they're also very good at articulating themselves and are quite charismatic the book goes as far to say that their humanoid forms are actually quite beautiful in a certain way and that description isn't just fluff it actually informs one of their most notorious abilities which is that of the friendly gaze which basically means anytime a creature looks directly into this thing's eyes it can effectively enchant them or charm them with an effect equivalent to a friend's spell in my conversion of the document i've kind of tuned it up a little bit to make it matter a little bit more in combat for example if it does manage to charm someone they're going to have disadvantage and attack roles against it but effectively it can do that whole like vampire thing look into my eyes were cool now but it's a slime so that is very interesting and then when you couple that with the fact that it can change shape between literally a slime and a humanoid creature that is made up of said slime you kind of start to get a picture of how these creatures operate their ability to kind of sneak into areas potentially undetected is unprecedented because of course as an ooze it is amorphous and has that immutable form trait which means that it can't have its physicality purposefully shifted by any type of magic and it also means that it can you know squeeze between cracks and walls or a crack under the door very tight spaces as narrow as an inch wide to get specific without having to squeeze or really cause any harm to itself a creature like that could pretty easily slip into any place that it wants to be and if it runs into any resistance maybe it can enchant the guards or whoever seems to spot it and you know make them forget what they saw send them on their way and call it a day however when it comes to actually fighting in a brawl the guanodon is no slouch it has a few options at its disposal for starters the way that this thing sees is with blind sight it has blind sight out to 60 feet which is both kind of a blessing and a curse in specific situations that can actually work against this creature because it can only see out to 60 feet and is effectively blind beyond that but what that does mean is that you effectively have this sphere within 60 feet in every direction that the guanodon knows exactly what's going on its entire body functions as a sensory organ so this thing is going to be almost impossible to sneak up on it also means that some tricks that your party might employ such as blinding the creature with magic or even something physical like a flash bomb it's not gonna work it also means the creature can't be deafened because it doesn't rely on sound to hear so to speak so this method of experiencing the world through blind sight is something that can destroy a party who's not prepared for it who tries a few tricks that normally work on other things not realizing that it's not going to work on this creature but if the party knows about this it can also be exploited as a weakness in terms of actually dealing damage it has that beloved pseudo-pod attack which almost every slime creature has whether it's in its ooze form or its humanoid form a giant lash of this slime can kind of come out of its body from anywhere really smack a creature for some bludgeoning damage and of course because it is an acidic slime it can cause that creature to become paralyzed potentially so that's a pretty neat trick but one thing that we need to keep in mind here is that this creature has a humanoid form it can use weapons it can wear armor by default in the stat block i've included a long sword attack because that's just kind of our go-to middle-of-the-road solid melee weapon and if you're just running this thing for a quick combat like a long sword that's going to take you pretty far of course it can't use these weapons when it's in its pseudopod form i imagine the long sword is kind of floating around in its body and then it transitions into its humanoid form sword at the ready but if you think that this monster's armor class might be a little bit low for an encounter you're planning it can have a suit of plate mail floating around inside of it you know you want to do more damage give it a great sword you want to mix things up a little bit give it two short swords you can even give it ranged weapons anything that a humanoid creature can do this creature can also do that's something very important to keep in mind when you're looking at the stat block not just this but any humanoid creature that's always like the baseline normal average guy on the side of the road that you just bump into version of that creature right so you can add anything that any human or elf or dwarf would be able to do on top of this creature if you feel like it i mean if you wanted to have one of these guys who was a mage of some kind or a cleric or something you could even assign them spells give them a staff the options really are unlimited in terms of what you can do with a humanoid type monster just keep in mind you'll have to explain those things are floating around inside of its body when it's in the ooze form and depending on what it has equipped with it it might make it a little bit more difficult to slide and slink into certain places sneaking between a crack and a wall with a long sword is one thing sneaking in with a giant maul and a full set of plate armor is a little bit more challenging so it has a few different options at its disposal but one of the most fun things that this creature can do which i think is really cool is something that i have called the disarming strike see as an ooze that's able to change its body composition in seconds something it can do that might catch some of your players off guard is steal their weapons it can adjust the hardness of its body in a microsecond meaning that if your fighter comes up and skewers this thing with their sword it can then harden its body around the sword wound so that when your fighter goes to pull back suddenly that sword doesn't come out mechanically the way this works is the attacking creature has to make an athletics check and if they roll under a 17 their weapon is now stuck inside the guanodons body if they roll over a 17 then they manage to strong arm it back out and pull it despite the guan's attempt to keep it inside of itself this is a really neat ability because it will catch melee characters off guard and it kind of creates an oh moment like what else do i have that i can fight this thing with and then suddenly your fighter who's been relying on their great sword for the entire campaign is looking for daggers or short swords or whatever random weapons they happen to have in their pack while the campaign was going on and they were just collecting stuff and if they don't have any of that stuff i guess we're fist fighting now a side note on that if a creature makes an unarmed strike against the ooze and fails that athletics check then the creature's grappled because the ooze literally pulls them and grabs onto their arm or their foot or whatever it is they're trying to strike the ooze with so it can be just as dangerous something else i love about this ability which should not be overlooked is that the sword or mace or whatever the weapon is that gets stuck inside of the ooze doesn't just disappear it's still lodged in their body so that character can come and try to take it out or whatever and get their weapon back if they want to but let's say you have someone with a really great magic weapon and they stab a guanodon and it manages to rest it out of their hands the guanodon is trained in martial weapons maybe it drops that crappy long sword it's been lugging around and says hey i have a plus three long sword now this is awesome you can literally turn the magic weapons your party is using against them if they're unable to make those saving throws and that is not only kind of hilarious but is a really fun and interesting way to mix up combat and that pretty much sums up the gist of how you're going to want to run the guanodon in combat they can be stealthy when they need to they can make a quick getaway and slide into a crack if they're outmatched and they're gonna try to take those weapons away while targeting the creatures who don't need weapons to fight and i mean don't get me wrong i'm as down for an all-out brawl as the next dm but the most interesting thing about these guys i think is the implications in plot hooks and how we can use them in our stories so without further ado let's talk about some [Music] so what could have caused a puddle of slime to become intelligent and what could have caused the puddle of slime to become intelligent and also gain this semi-chaotic ability to turn into a guy the answer to that question lies with none other than guanadar who's gwanadar you may be asking well guanadar is of course an elder god he is the god of slimes of oozes and wait i you're probably thinking of jui blacks when i talk about the god of slams and oozes he's the demon lord of slimes and oozes guanadar is the god of slimes and oozes who is attached to jeweblex in one way or another it's a lot all you really need to know about guanadar is he was the patron deity of slimes and oozes and chaos and destruction and he was very upset with wealth one time i think and lashed out and through this grand strike of his pseudo-pod bestowed a bunch of slimes in the area with malice and sentience whether he did that on purpose or not hard to say there's a lot of really interesting lore around gwanadar actually because he kind of defies a lot of what we know to be true about deities in the canon forgotten realms d setting but that's not what this video is about so i'm not going to get way into that right now however i will link down below to a pretty cool lore video that you should check out if that sounds interesting to you but in any case that is the in canon explanation for why the guanodon became sentient in the first place and in the forgotten realms that is why the guanadong are completely loyal to him you know they do whatever he wants whenever he wants them to do it and most of the time that is nothing but sometimes he calls them to action to go crusade against the humans or the elves or the dwarves or whatever all of that stuff can be really interesting because it paints the guanodon in a very fascinating light they're able to put on these perfect humanoid guises so that they appear human or they appear dwarvish or they appear elvish whatever the case may be but just beneath the surface is truly what a guanidon is which is an ooze sentient one a smart one but ultimately still a predator and all of this charm and this ability to kind of schmooze their way into society is a tool to them it's like a switch and they can turn it on and off in an instant the second that someone reveals themselves as a threat to the guanodon or whatever its goal happens to be at that time they can lash out and completely destroy that creature leaving nothing behind bones and all and that's scary not only is that scary that's great potential for a villainous npc iguanodon would make an excellent high-ranking member or even leader of a thieves guild or some type of shadow network beneath the city streets able to blend in and polite society but no one knows their true identity or you could even do a kind of a murder mystery jack the ripper hannibal lecter style campaign with your party where the mass murderer they're chasing down actually happens to be a sentient slime person and i mean hey as i say with literally every monster i've ever covered that's the canon explanation we can throw all of that in the bin if we want to and in some cases i suggest you do because there's a lot more that can be done with iguanodon other than having them be this treacherous kind of beauties only skin deep type villain well that does make a really great villain maybe in your world they just evolved naturally and weren't the result of some evil god lashing out and giving the ooze sentience perhaps they're not necessarily all evil in your world perhaps you have some of these guys that do indeed live in this kind of shadow network underneath the city streets or at the fringes of society where they won't be found but they only do so because they know people would be terrified of them if they were to discover their true nature the world might just not be ready for sentient slime people yet i would even take it a step further and say that in the right campaign if you want to put in a little bit of work as a dm it could be a really cool player race obviously when you're including weird player race options like this into your campaign you have to do it with care and thought and consider your players at the table and whether they're going to be able to kind of take on some of the work of developing that but it could be a really fun option at the very least you could include one of these guys as a cool npc who's meant to interact with the party and by virtue of the fact that the guanodon can turn into any humanoid race it can be anybody it could be the party patron it could be the party's villain it could be a side character it can be someone who's meant there to hinder them it could be someone who's been there to assist them it could just be someone who's meant there to interact with at the bar whatever the case is you can make anyone iguanodon and it's just kind of like a fun interesting thing to throw into that character's backstory and who knows how that could be relevant is that npc connected to this shadow network of pseudo-pod men that live under the streets maybe that shadow network does exist and they've segregated themselves from it because they don't believe in the bad stuff that's going on with them or maybe they're just a one-off and their people live far away and they're completely detached from them and they're just keeping their identity secret because they don't know how everyone would feel about that here there's a million different ways you could spin that and all of them are pretty fun in my opinion something else worth mentioning here as well is that when a guanodon turns into its humanoid form it's not like a doppelganger that can just become anyone at any time and switch between being an elf and a human it is an identity when the guanodon shifts into its humanoid form for the first time that's what its humanoid form is it can't swap its appearance or change things willy-nilly any more than you or i can it just happens to also be an ooze some of the time so this means that there are some limitations on what the guanodon is able to do i mean you could always ignore that rule if you had a specific idea that you wanted to explore with a guanodon npc but rules as written that's typically how they work now whether that identity is chosen by the guanodon or if it's something that they just naturally have happened to them that really depends on you as the dm because there's nothing really about that there's nothing really about how they reproduce either as oozes i imagine they reproduce the same way most other oozes do which is when they've absorbed a certain amount of matter they just split off a part of themselves and who knows maybe they do have families and their children who used to be part of them change into the same type of creature that their humanoid form is you know like a guanodon who turns into a drow elf will beget other guanodons that turn into drow elves something like that personally i kind of like the idea that they get to craft their own identity that maybe when iguanodon changes into its humanoid form for the first time it gets to choose every little bit about how it looks and how it identifies itself and i think there's something kind of neat about that the only other thing i'll really say about that is when it comes to damage that one of these creatures have taken i do think it makes logical sense that they would be able to reform their humanoid version of themselves perfectly which could be a tip off to some of your players maybe they have an encounter with one of these guys and he refrains from using his pseudo-pot attack and when he does get struck they notice that he kind of bleeds this weird like caustic green blood and they just might not really know what's going on with that maybe there's magic involved maybe he's got some undead necromancy about him who knows it could be a million things in a fantasy world but let's say they give him a really nasty scar across his face and they're like oh man like he got away this time but we really messed him up and then the next time they encounter that villain that scar is completely gone i think that makes sense because as it reforms its body eventually when it's like ooze form has time to heal and reconstitute itself that's what makes up the body that it transforms into so it would make sense that scars and permanent wounds like losing a hand or something like that wouldn't be permanent for this creature so that can be a fun way to kind of tip off your players that something is going on beyond what they're seeing in any case that is all i've really got to say about these guys today i think the guanodon are super cool um if you like this creature and you want to use it like i said there is a stat block in the description below in the form of a google document and if you are one of my lovely patrons of course you got the whole monster manual style stat block posted over on the patreon page if you're not a patron check it out it's a small little bonus makes this that block a little bit easier to look at but ultimately it does help me out a lot and help support the channel and of course as i have said many a time the one thing you can do to support this channel more than anything is tell your friends no other community shows up the way you guys do to these videos and i appreciate that so much to pull back the youtube analytics curtain a little bit with the amount of subscribers that this channel has versus the amount of views that every one of these monster of the week videos gets it's unprecedented like the ratio there you guys always show up and i appreciate that so much and if you've got a monster you'd like to see featured on this channel from add 3.5 3.0 fourth edition pathfinder whatever the case is leave a comment and i'll definitely investigate it and add it to the ever-growing monster request list maybe you'll see it show up on the channel sometime but thank you all so much for watching and i'll catch you in the next one until then punch

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Keywords: dungeons and dragons lore, d&d lore, d&d story, d&d campaign, d&d online, d&d basics, d&d battle, dnd monsters, d&d monsters lore, dnd monsters explained, d&d game breaking monsters, best d&d monsters, creating 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, ooze, slime, ghaunadar, doppelganger, the blob, aj pickett, sentient monster, sentient ooze

Id: 8TBs1N57ipo

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021