This D&D Monster Is Bloody Horrific

hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet that advocates for donating blood every single day just think of all the free cookies you'll get and speaking of blood today we're talking about a creature who is made from it the blood Elemental wait it's an elemental made from blood oh okay as always today we'll be taking a deep dive into the blood Elemental maybe that's not the best way to word this but we are going to talk about its lore ecology and everything else you need to know regarding one of the most disgusting creatures in the game also as always I've converted it into fifth edition so no matter which version of d d you're playing you can unleash this bloody horror on your players I'll tell you what though folks that's bloody noise so make sure your hemoglobin levels are optimal and settle in for the long journey ahead because we're about to take a bit of a blood drive [Music] it should come as no surprise that a creature like the blood Elemental got its start in the shadow of the Hedgehog of d d settings ravenloft debuting in the first Monster appendix of Raven Loft creatures the blood Elemental can be found amongst other Raven Loft Elementals not a lot of people watching probably know this already but ravenloft had a full Suite of horror-themed Elementals that kind of bend the rules about what an elemental even is each one of them was meant to be a bit of a more raven-loft-esque take on the four primary types of Elementals we see in the monster manual instead of Earth Elementals we had grave Elementals fire Elementals became higher Elementals and air Elementals were reimagined as Mist Elementals then of course in place of water Elementals we had the blood Elemental which in my opinion is the strongest one-to-one conversion of Concepts present here these guys are already pretty similar to water Elementals just in the way they move around and in the fact that they're made out of liquid but of course they are perfect they're typically formed via a summoning ritual that is very similar to the one used to summon a water Elemental however instead of summoning the creature through a body of water you are summoning the creature through red water extracted from bodies I'm talking about blood you some of them threw a giant pool of blood one weird little detail here as well is in the original text it does specify in lieu of blood you can use water extracted from the lungs of people who have died due to Drowning that seems like a lot of trouble to me to go through just summon an elemental but hey to each their own now once the blood Elemental is on the scene anybody nearby who wants to keep their blood inside their body needs to be very careful due to the nature of the magic involved in their summoning blood Elementals are extremely hard to control see most Elemental spells bind the spirit of the elemental to the Summoner but for whatever reason that's not really the case with the blood Elemental they are still Bound in a way and have to follow the commands of the creature that summoned them for sure but they also have an overwhelming urge to consume the blood of living creatures I mean I guess it's not really consuming it's subsuming but semantics aside they want to get more blood into themselves get in my belly so if you as the Summoner fail to supply your blood Elemental pet with enough victim sacrifices or blood donations to keep it happy eventually that urge to subsume more blood will override the control you have over it and it's liable to turn on you which is bad now this creature may have gotten its start in a d d but that was certainly not the last time it would ever appear in a DND product ever its other two appearances are so obscure I will actually be impressed if someone watching knows about this already in Third Edition the blood Elemental was published exclusively online on the old Wizards of the Coast website that was active while Third Edition of 3.5 were still being played even into the fourth edition days they used to host a ton of different content there a lot of the times it was just cut content that didn't make it into the most recent book for one reason or another and other times it was just because someone who worked at Wizards of the Coast felt like putting something up and available for everyone to use in the case of the blood Elemental I'm not really sure what happened here because those pages have long since been been lost to time but thanks to websites like Realms helps its Third Edition stats are at least still available to be used however the original article or whatever they were put up as a part of on the website all that stuff is long gone to my knowledge there was no new artwork or any additional lore provided as part of this creature being put on the website and you're going to notice that this is a bit of a trend going forward especially the no artwork thing because in fourth edition the blood Elemental would show up once again in a book called open grave secrets of the undead as you can imagine a lot of Undead stuff was in this book no and in a section about a collection of Cults called the blood Scion heresy we'd see our goopy boy make a return blood Elementals appear here as minions utilized by Cults that are devoted to vampire Lords which is honestly kind of awesome but once again no artwork to be found in the description of the creature itself is quite minimal so that means across three editions of d d the only Canon depiction of a blood Elemental we have is this thing just a black and white shape Mash into this tiny low-res image alongside the grave Elemental I mean until now of course big shout out to our artist Tam for breathing some new lifeblood into this monster I think they crushed it and speaking of crushing things I need to tell you guys about what the blood Elemental might get up to in combat because it's just you'll see blood Elementals are among some of the most brutal enemies you can go up against in battle they clock in with a challenge rating of 5 which puts them on even footing with all the other basic Elementals from d and d5e yet somehow they seem a bit more vicious in combat the primary tactic of a blood Elemental is to chase down their enemy and drown them in its own body and if drowning in sentient blood isn't on your top 10 list of fears probably should be mechanically this works in a very similar way to the water Elemental they want to move into another creature's space and use their bloodbath action which attempts to Grapple and restrain those creatures while they're inside of them if you fail that save you're promptly going to begin to drown in blood which is bad button again [Music] so how do you like my swimming but these creatures trapped within the blood elemental's body are also going to be taking some necrotic damage as the blood Elemental literally sucks out the blood from their body that's really bad granted this does only affect creatures with blood so War forged are immune to that last part and as if all that wasn't bad enough whether you end up failing your saving throw or not this creature is going to attempt to poison you and you think a constitution-saving throw just from being inside of its space for some reason inhaling cursed blood from who knows how many other creatures tends to have that effect and if all else fails the blood Elemental can always rely on Old Faithful Old Faithful being a pair of Slam attacks that cause necrotic damage and while this emphasis on The Chronic damage you may ask well due to the blood drain trait of this monster anytime it deals necrotic damage to another creature it gains temporary HP equal to half the amount of damage dealt in the creature's maximum HP is reduced by the amount of necrotic damage that they take until they finish a long rest this is meant to represent the lifeblood literally being drawn out of the creature's victims but sucking back blood like some kind of infernal Kool-Aid man isn't the only trick up this Monster's sleeves it can use an action called cause Insanity wherein it attempts to warp the mind as a creature that can speed and it was within a certain range this this Elemental casting the confusion spell which if you're not familiar with it can be a real pain in the ass to deal with if you are confused you start your turn by Rolling a d10 on a 9 to 10 you're fine on a seven to eight you attack a random Target which might be a bad guy but also might be one of your friends and on a one to six you literally do nothing as you just kind of stammer around and I mean I guess if a sentient pile of blood that was vaguely shaped like a 12 foot tall guy was trying to suck away my life Essence I'd be pretty confused too now let's talk about how to best traumatize I mean build an engaging encounter for your players foreign [Applause] Elementals are unique in that they are very seldom encountered on their own unless your party ends up in the elemental plane of blood which is something I don't even want to think about any blood Elemental they encounter will at some point have been created by a ritual or other Arcane phenomenon so perhaps you have one of those aforementioned blood Cults in your DND Game World a cult dedicated to a vampire or some other evil entity with a fixation on blood is literally an out of the box perfect fit for this monster you could even use an escaped blood elemental gun Rogue as a foray into such an adventure maybe the cult summoned one of these things but they couldn't keep up with its appetite for blood so it escaped and began attacking nearby townsfolk when the players begin to investigate where this Blood Elemental came from they might find their first clue leading them to discover the calls and if the primary antagonist of your campaign happens to be a vampire what whether you use the cult angle or not a blood Elemental is a great minion for them to have at their disposal perhaps the blood of lesser enemies the vampire doesn't consider acceptable to its refined palette ends up in a summoning pool for creating blood Elementals maybe to combat this problem of the blood Elemental turning on its Master the creature is using and deploying blood Elementals don't have blood of their own a skeletal Lich or some other kind of Undead without blood would be very fitting and to follow that idea just another step further maybe their Master is a war Forge bent on causing some destruction if you're in a world like eberron especially perhaps there is some kind of War forged Army that uses blood Elementals As Weapons since the monsters pose no real danger to them but assuming some kind of necromancy is at play here as there often is when body parts and fluids are involved my biggest question is what happens to the rest of the body I mean obviously these evil Necromancer guys are using the blood of their victims to summon blood Elementals but what about the corpse itself maybe the evil Necromancer has a bunch of minions comprised of all the assorted body parts now separated they could have a legion of forsaken shells made from the skin of their victims and perhaps swarms of crawling hands fashioned from all the chopped off limbs it may be even a Bone Yard or two fashioned from all of the remaining skeletons those are all monsters I've covered in previous videos so if you want to build your Undead Necromancer Army today you know where to look and I actually love this as the setup for a powerful villain just a very prudent Necromancer who truly believes in the concept of reduce reuse and recycle but on that note I think it is worth mentioning there's a few ways we could use this creature and not make it entirely evil let's say you've got a small town and the people there have discovered some kind of ancient scroll which holds the secret to the creation of a blood Elemental but instead of sacrificing and draining unwilling victims like most bad guys would all the townsfolk come together and donate a pint of blood at the central well anytime their little town gets into trouble then through their combined efforts using this ancient spell scroll they will summon a blood Elemental to help defend them against whatever is causing trouble it feels like something that would totally happen in a place like I don't know ravenloft where the blood Elemental is originally from I'm also a big fan of using this monster as a sort of urban legend maybe you create some kind of Mythos borrowing from stories like Bloody Mary where if you prick your finger and drop blood into the wash basin while saying some sort of incantation a blood Elemental will appear this is all just myths and legends up until some teenagers actually do it one night and manage to summon a blood Elemental which is now wreaking havoc in town maybe the creature even starts out small and grows and grows as it devours the blood of more victims chupacabra style now the last thing I want to talk about regarding this monster which I couldn't really find a place to organically anywhere else in the video so we're just gonna talk about it now is the fact that they definitely sting as in they smell very bad distinct they smell like blood it's mentioned in the original Monster entry but I feel like this is something worth really emphasizing when you describe this monster to your players that much blood all in one place out in the open air is gonna have a really distinct odor to it now personally I've been fortunate enough that I've never had to inhale the air surrounding a giant guy made of blood but anyone who has been around blood and even a small capacity that's been exposed to the open air will be able to tell you that it reeks with a very distinct metallic scent this is due to the oxidization in the iron molecules present in Blood and for some reason I just feel like this is such a visceral detail DMS myself included often don't put enough emphasis on the sense that players are experiencing around them when they describe their environments we always mention texture temperature the way things feel the way things look all that kind of stuff but for some reason the way that an environment smells is usually left kind of unexplored except for the odd descriptor of musty air in an old tomb or dungeon so basically what I'm saying is be sure to get into graphic detail when explaining that the horrible blood monster smells like a nightmare come to life your players will love that blood Elementals are sincerely one of the grossest monsters out there for the hemophiliacs in the room who are still watching I'm proud of you you did it we made it to the end of the video well done and I'm sure we'll have something much less disgusting and horrible next week what's what's the monster next week oh oh oh next week we'll be talking about something that's a DND monster but I wouldn't be here talking about d d monsters at all if it weren't for all you incredible patrons throwing your support my way I sincerely appreciate it thank you so much guys and a special thanks this week to our randomly selected patron of the week this week we're giving a shout out to Christina Dusky thank you so much for the support it warms my heart to know that you've got my back from Dusky till Donny and thank you for watching as always there is a link in the description down below to a Google Document which contains all the fifth edition stats for this monster so everything you need to run this creature successfully at your table is all down there and if you are one of my lovely patrons also in the description down below you can find a link to the dungeon dad patreon page where you can find the dungeon dad patreon style stat block which is a high-res PDF document that contains high-res version of the new artwork and all kinds of fancy bells and whistles it's all the same information as what's in the Google Document but it's presented in a much nicer and more fanciful way for those of you just as my way of saying thanks for throwing some extra support my way and of course if you've got an idea for a monster you think would make for a great episode of Monster of the week let me know either in the comments down below or in the dungeon dad Discord and the monster suggestions Channel over there and it will be added to the master list of monster suggestions and who knows you might just see it show up on an episode of Monster of the week also want a brand new way to support the channel I mean it's been brand new for like three videos now I don't know time isn't real but I have merch I have this shirt available over on the dungeon dad merch shop which you can find linked down below along with the famous D and D's not shirt you guys seem to love that one and the dungeon dad branded shirts and all that kind of stuff and the sales of that all of course gets you something cool and it helps me keep all these very hot lights on it's so hot in this office summertime is for the birds anyways thank you guys so much for watching I'll see you in the next video until then [Music] in the depths of the dungeon something unlike anything you've ever seen before lies in weight a monster so volatile its very nature spawns creatures of all varieties but what happens when they're introduced to new genetic material next episode deep spawn tune in next time for lots more fan service

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Id: nwJk0djQyTc

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023