This D&D Monster Is Every Hero's Worst Nightmare

this video is sponsored by the Fable makers deck of many things now live on Kickstarter hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet broadcast directly into your dreams with spooky month officially underway today we're going to be talking about one of my all-time favorite classic d and d monsters that also just so happens to be literal nightmare fuel I am talking of course about the dream vestage we're going to talk about its very odd publication history as well as the creatures lore and ecology then we're we're going to go over how you might build an encounter with the dream vestage and talk about some plot Hooks and story ideas for your D andd campaign and as always we'll convert this bad boy into D and D fifth edition so it'll be ready for the game table next time you sit down to roll some dice I know a lot of you watching are going to be able to find a place for this monster because it's just such a classic creature that I've had the pleasure of using a few times in the past and it never disappoints honestly I kind of can't believe it's taken me this long to give it the spotlight light but I'm glad I get to tell you about it today you could almost say it was sort of faded to happen this way kind of like how this week's sponsor was faded to end up on this video God I've been crushing it with these Segways lately a careful decision lies ahead will you find the key that unlocks many doors gamble on a Jester or be illuminated by the star pick the star illustrated by Eisner award nominated artist Yoshi yoshitani the Fable makers deck of many things features 4 six foil cards in full color and monochrome variant as well as an oracle guide book with new effects for your 5e roleplaying games every card features stunning foil accents that reflect alongside you as you explore their meanings with themes such as isolation Injustice desire and ambition you can discover new ways to overcome hurdles in your path expand your journey with bundles including Don John D20 spinning pins reading mats and more pull your Delight or your doom pledge today at the deck of many things.com or by using the link in the description down below this deck of cards looks straight up beautiful and as someone who runs curse of stru at least once a year at this point it feels like I am very excited to incorporate them into my next run through that campaign so thank you so much to the fabl makers deck of many things for sponsoring this ghoulish episode of Monster of the week now do your best to stay alert and don't get lulled into a false sense of of security because the monster the likes of which you've never seen is stalking the [Music] [Music] night a mighty River of fog streams forward like an evil waterfall swollen with storm and spray accompanying the shape is a sueras of dreamlike voices that murmur cry and rail against some terrible fate slender tendrils of mist extend from the mass patting and feeling for sustenance there is something truly Arcane about dreams and by extension nightmares D and D has certainly flirted with the plane of Dreams in the past but we've never gotten a full definitive explanation of the dream plane or the many worlds potentially within and maybe that's for the best because after all dreams are meant to be somewhat nebulous and everchanging but once in a while one of the D and D writers decides to stick their hand into the plane of dreams and pull something out and the dream vestage is one such something once again we're returning to libris mortise the book of Undead from D and D Third Edition to dredge up this week's horror much like last week's monster the weep our dream vestage was a one-off creature only ever printed in a single edition of the game turning to page 96 we are greeted with this fantastic artwork depicting a fog of angry Souls roiling over a tombstone this art has such a wild energy to it it's great so what exactly is a dream vestage basically it's a massive amalgamation of cursed Souls the vestage is Undead huge in size and from afar they appear as a writhing cloud of fog up close within this fog Cloud can be seen hundreds of Twisted bodies and faces all climbing across one another like a den of snakes the first dream vestage was born due to a lethal curse afflicting an entire city all of the people living within the city died overnight in a cursed sleep racked with horrible nightmares that ultimately sent the entire population to an untimely grave however due to the nature of the curse their souls were bound together in a tremendous Undead knot forced to relive their worst nightmares over over and over again eternally Amalgamated as a singular Undead creature the exact origin of this curse is largely unknown but a lot of people think orcus is to blame and I mean it's easy to understand why but whether the demon Prince of undeath actually had something to do with the creation of the first Dream vestage or not this was literally only the beginning the dream vestage has an inescapable craving for bodies it seeks out as many other creatures as it can to use its accursed tendrils to attack by lashing out and dissolving whatever bodies it can find incorporating them into its foggy Mass once dissolved and Incorporated assuming the creature had a soul that Soul becomes trapped as another victim within the dream vestage but Soul or no the body itself is what the dream vestage is actually after because even if it doesn't subsume a soul bearing creature creature any body will allow it to grow physically in size and that includes bodies belonging to other Undead creatures for this reason the dream vestage is feared by both the living and unliving alike it's just as happy feasting on poor towns folk as it is on a horde of zombies and I find that really fascinating another thing that makes this monster so interesting is that it's intelligent like really intelligent they have an inch score of 18 which puts them leagues above the likes of a death knight one step above your average vampire and just one little step below the Lich which is terrifying while on the surface this creature might simply look like an Amalgamated ball of souls chaotically seeking the next creature it can devour there is a unified malicious intellect at work here an overall personality potentially with goals and plans of its own the lore here is a little fuzzy on how the creature's personality actually manifest but I like to imagine it in one of two ways either the dream ves's personality is a unique but literal amalgamation of all the creatures it has consumed Twisted in on death and sort of summed together or whichever personality among the writhing mass of souls has the strongest force of will they're able to take control of the Swarm and assume control of the creature's greater will this might even be a role that changes over time as new souls are Incorporated with stronger wills and more intense drive to assert power but whatever the case and however you decide to play this monster as the dungeon master we're dealing with a very powerful and highly intelligent Undead creature the other major thing that makes the dream vestage interesting to me is its connection with the plane of Dreams the curse that created the first Dream vestage not only killed an entire population overnight but it used their nightmares as some sort sort of fuel to power the curse itself this means that the curse was fueled by the same type of Dream Magic that a circle of Dreams Druid might be tapping into so whether intended or not the dream vestage is not just Undead but also inexorably tied to the plane of Dreams mechanically this means that it has the ability to move between the material plane and the plane of Dreams in much the same way that a more typical ghost might move between the material plane and the a plane but it also has some really interesting implications for example someone using ethereal site expecting to see the ghostly Undead wouldn't actually see [ __ ] because they're looking in the wrong place conversely it may be possible that a circle of Dreams Druid using one of their two abilities that allow travel through dream space might encounter a dream vestage that's hiding in weight but this is all starting to get into the mechanics of the creature so let's just move along and talk about what its actual abilities [Music] are the dream vestage is a big powerful boss monster in every sense of the word clocking in with a CR of 15 this bad boy is likely going to either be the Supreme threat of your game or a very large obstacle on the path to something even greater it's capable of some really nasty stuff and there's a lot to cover here so let's just jump in for starters this monster much like the ghost has no regular move speed but a 40t flying speed its HP sits at an average of 209 which is a little lean for a monster of this level admittedly however it is either resistant or straight up immune to so many different types of damage that it more than makes up for it in my opinion if you want to get through for a regular amount of damage you need to be either swinging a magic weapon or casting a spell that deals Force psychic or radiant damage everything else is going to be either resisted or straight up ignored it's also immune to all the typical conditions of a high level Undead meaning it can't be Charmed exhausted paralyzed petrified or poisoned and because it's literally a sentient fog it can't be grappled restrained or knocked prone in terms of offensive abilities the dream vestage has one primary method of dealing damage and that is by using its tendril attack four times per round it gets an attack where it reaches out with one of its ghostly foggy tentacles and each one of them deals 3 D6 plus 5 necrotic damage now that's not a ton of power even considering it gets to attack four times but the real danger here is that every time it connects with one of those tendrils it begins absorbing the creature into its form this is represented by a 1 D4 reduction to the target's intelligence score that's right every time this thing touches you you lose between 1 and four points of intelligence this reduction might only last for 1 hour but if it manages to drain you down to zero you die but not only do you die your soul gets sucked into the vestage and your body is entirely disintegrated meaning you don't get to come back to life unless the party is willing to spring for a casting of true resurrection and even then the Soul is trapped until the vestage is destroyed so the majority of the time this is it anytime you're dealing with a creature that drains one of your stats it's terrifying the example I always go to is the shadow because it's such a weak creature on paper and should be very easy to deal with but I've seen a pack of these things rip a party to pieces at high level more than once because once that snowball starts rolling and people's stats start getting drained away it can turn ugly real fast Indian d5e we have so many tools to manage hit point loss but very few to to deal with ability drain attacking intelligence is especially mean because the two classes most often suited to dealing with Undead paladins and clerics often dump intelligence since they don't really need it for any of their class's spells or abilities the other benefit of this attack is that anytime the dream vestage drains intelligence from a Target no matter how much it actually drains the vestage gains five temporary hit points and unlike normal temp HP temporary hit points gained by The Dream vestage are cumulative meaning that if it has say 5 temp HP and then it somehow gains 10 temporary hit points rather than taking 10 the larger of the two numbers it adds them together for a total of 15 which is not how temporary hit points normally work this of course is meant to mechanically represent the dream vestage growing larger as it consumes more creatures it's also how these things propagate earlier I mentioned that the first Dream vested was created by this unknown curse of sleep and while it's not impossible such a thing could conceivably happen again most dream vestages are just pieces of that original creature when the dream vestage reaches a total number of temporary hit points equal to its maximum hit point total the creature divides into two separate vestages now this is very unlikely to happen in the middle of combat unless things go really wrong for a really long time but if the vestages say just murdering a bunch of commoners in some Town assuming it has 209 normal hit points it would only need to connect 42 times with its tendril attack to have enough temp HP to split in two with four attacks per round that's only 11 rounds of combat which in real time translates to 66 seconds even if we assume the vestage somehow misses half its attacks and we double that number that means every 2 minutes and 12 seconds the dream vestage is splitting into two distinct entities so just imagine the consequences of one of these things being set loose on a massive City with thousands of occupants after just 30 minutes and 48 seconds how many dream vestages do you think could be created 10 100 a thousand how about 16,384 and remember that's assuming they miss half of their attacks against commoners which is very unlikely if they always hit we reach that number in just over 15 minutes now obviously that's assuming there are no powerful good guys around to put a stop to it and that they don't just run out of people to kill but the point I'm trying to make here is even just one of these things being left unchecked for long enough is an existential threat to an entire Kingdom we're talking about an apocalyptic event wiping a nation off the map potentially overnight it is of course worth mentioning though that this doesn't really make them more dangerous when we're rolling an initiative and having a battle with the players but the players having an understanding of how fast this thing can ramp out of control should they fail to destroy or contain it that's going to up the stakes a thousandfold because should your group of Heroes fail this thing might consume everything and everyone that they know but existential threats to Life as we know it aside this thing has a few other abilities that are bound to spice up combat a bit they exude an aura of desecration that effectively makes the area within 20 ft of the creature desecrated ground now desecrated ground is something that doesn't come up a lot and it's something a lot of folks playing D and D fifth edition might not even be aware of is a thing but I assure you it is a specific rule in the dungeon Master's guide read your Bible People page 110 an area of desecrated ground can be be any size and to detect evil and good spell cast within range reveals its presence Undead standing on desecrated ground have advantage on all saving throws a vial of holy water purifies a 10t square of desecrated ground when sprinkled on it and a hallow spell purifies desecrated ground within its area so in other words it gives advantage on all saving throws to any Undead that are within that 20t sphere of desecration including itself and as an added spicy bonus it gives advantage on attack roles to any other Undead that are within the area so that's cool until the vestage decides to eat them the vestage also has the frightful presence action which works exactly the same way as it does for Dragons I mean it makes sense if a fog rolls into town comprised of damned Souls people are going to be a little put off and it also has that action which I alluded to earlier that allows it to travel through the realm of Dreams mechanically this lets the vestage jump between the physical world and the dream space with an action and while in the dream space it can move a lot faster in fact it can move up to 300 mph in the dream world so not only is it generally safer there it can also travel extremely fast and that is essentially it for what we get in the original Monsters entry however I did feel like there were a few missed opportunities in terms of flavorful spells that a dream vage might be able to cast that would add a little jusa to the encounter so my conversion also includes a short spell list for one fog Cloud seems like a no-brainer especially when you consider that the vestage has blind sight coding an area in fog before descending to wreak havoc seems very onb brained to me I also gave it access to both dream and sleep these are two situational spells that at high level won't be incredibly impactful in combat but I think both add a a lot of flavor to the monster and I mean come on this creature being able to cast dream just makes sense since they are intelligent if they know a pesky adventuring group is after them messing with them in their dreams is mandatory as far as I'm concerned lastly I gave it fantasmal killer because that just seemed on brand truthfully this spell is decidedly just all right but if you ever want to give your players a break from the intelligence draining tendril attacks for a round having the creature project a nightmare into someone's brain seems like a cool way to spend a turn and if you don't want to use any spells with your dream vestage encounter just ignore them I feel like this creature can function completely without spells and still be really awesome and memorable but I just wanted to give the option so if you feel inspired to use some of these spells or maybe add some spells of your own it's right there but in either case the complete picture of this creature in combat is absolute Terror anytime this monster shows up in an encounter it is going to steal the show and become the most imminent threat almost always even if there's a more important enemy at play anytime something threatens ability drain that just has to be the primary target but outside of the actual combat encounter itself let's talk a little bit about how you might use the dream vestage in your [Music] campaign the first place I always look for inspiration when it comes to these old classic monsters is where official DND modules have used them in the past and the dream vestage despite being a one-off monster does show up in a couple places the first is an a module called anaro the Empire of shade the vestage makes a minor appearance in an old haunted Chapel ruin it's pretty standard stuff a fog Creeps in over the chapel tiles the vestage stalks the party and then strikes from the Shadows this is an adventure for characters level 99 to 13 so using the dream vestage as basically a random encounter makes sense here but the much weirder and in my opinion more interesting appearance of this monster isn't actually from a module it's from one of the DND novels in book two of the Haunted Lanes Trilogy by Richard Lee buers simply called Undead the dream vestage is a major player in the plot you can even see it on the cover looming over the horde of Undead soldiers Below in this novel [ __ ] zast t archit Supreme the scary red guy from the D and D movie in zulkir of necromancy takes it upon himself to create a dream vestage the characters in the book are horrified by this new creation and it reeks Havoc at one point there's this huge battle taking place where zazam is squaring off against a literal Army and he sends his dream vestage to deal with the Enemy Navy and the dream vestage just rolls in from ship to ship absolutely decimating everyone and everything on board it's especially creepy because the ships themselves aren't destroyed they're just kind of left floating there completely empty derelict and devoid of life because everyone has been disintegrated and absorbed by this Fog Monster but anyways in this novel The Heroes defeat this dream vestage due to one specific character's sacrifice this sole individual fighting on behalf of the heroes realizes that all of the souls trapped within the vestage are so Twisted with fear and anger that they all actually hate each other so while the unified entities being controlled by zast Tam and lashing out and killing other people the individual souls are still kind of clawing at one another somewhat so instead of trying to destroy it from the outside he allows himself to be incorporated into the dream vestage and through his own force of will turns the souls on one another causing the vestage to essentially tear itself apart for good there might not be any specific mechanics to make this possible in in the tabletop role playing game but if a player ever told me that they would like to allow themselves to be incorporated into the dream vestage so they can try and use their force of will to cause the creature to self-destruct I would at least allow them to make a wisdom save but this of course also brings up a great plot hook perhaps the dream vestage in your game is the creation of a powerful Necromancer and while someone like Zas Tam is certainly going to be the end boss of your campaign maybe the Necromancer in question isn't quite that powerful perhaps they just stumbled upon the discovery of a scroll that taught them how to cast this cursed sleep ritual and create a vestage so while the individual Necromancer responsible isn't the be all end all threat their creation certainly is and if that Necromancer isn't strong enough to maintain control over their creation remember dream vestages are intelligent sentient beings so this thing might just up and turn on its Master perhaps your players even even end up allied with the Necromancer temporarily to help destroy this thing that imposes such a catastrophic threat to everything living and Undead alike or maybe the actual creation of the dream vestage is your campaign's fail State just a looming threat in the background like a fully powered up dragon goddess in Rise of tiod this could be a cool way to incorporate the lore of this monster for a lower level Campaign where the party just has to stop the creature from being manifested alog together and if they fail suddenly their goal pivots from stopping the creation of a dream vestage to saving as many people in town as they can that might be a somewhat dark and even tragic ending but hey you just set up the next villain for the subsequent campaign the destruction of a dream vestage could also make for a great Mission given out by a cleric or Paladin order destroying the vestage and setting all those tortured Souls free would be a wonderful excuse for a Dungeon Crawl the players would be tasked with delving into an ancient catacomb and exercising the evil that has awakened there and only once they fight through the hordes of Undead and destroy this huge terrifying Undead Abomination is the area safe for now or for something a bit more unusual maybe the dream vestage isn't an enemy at all but an ally perhaps the players encounter a dream vestage who's being controlled by a good-natured soul when the creature was set loose ages ago a mighty warrior stepped forth and gave their life to become one with the vestage and through sheer force of will they've been able to keep the creature subdued this could make for a really interesting NPC you could even draw from some MTG lore in the plane of innistrad perhaps making the dream vestage a sort of protective Force for a city still dangerous to be sure but something that is not malicious towards innocence or those it considers under its protection like the sturmgeist of nephalia at night the haunted fog Creeps in from the shore and bathes the city streets if the vestage believes you are not meant to be here it will remove you from the city one way or another and lastly given this creature's connection with the realm of Dreams perhaps you run an entire Adventure in the dream space this could range from something akin to Nightmare on Elm Street to a story inspired by Sandman the realm of Dreams is pretty vague in its description but we know it is a real place that some magic users can access so you could have the dream vestage acting as this sort of nightmare amalgamation gradually twisting all of the dream realm into a world of nothing but nightmares if it's successful the dream space will become this ever terrifying realm and maybe even start to leak out into the mysterial world so the party has to undergo a long-term sleep spell to enter the realm of dreams and put a stop to it I honestly love this as the setup for kind of a whole campaign maybe the players are even people that aren't very powerful in the real world they could even be kids but because they have such active imaginations they're able to enter this dream world and the version of themsel that they're adventuring as in the dream space is like their character like this big powerful buff Barbarian but in real life they're just like a snot-nosed kid that likes to play pretend you literally be role playing a character role playing as another character I think that could be fun but however you choose to use this creature I hope you get a chance to drop it in a d and d game sometime because it is an incredibly unique and horrific monster as always if you do want to use this monster in your game there's a link to a fifth edition stat conversion in the description below and of course if you are one of my lovely patrons over on the dungeon dad patreon page you can find the dungeon dad style highres PDF stat block that has all the same information but a bit fancier presentation and of course that beautiful artwork this week done by Maxwell poov he took this concept and just ran with it and I think he absolutely crushed it this time and if you're not a Patron consider checking it out it's three bucks a month you get some cool stat sheets and it helps me keep this channel running like the poorly oiled machine it is but for real thank you so much to all the patrons out there who helped make this channel possible and thank you so much to our patron of the week this week's randomly selected Patron is Olli Ford thank you so much for ol the support my friend it helps me stay driven and thank you for watching as always if you enjoy this content you like what I'm doing here please consider leaving a like or comment or subscribing if you're not subscribed already all that stuff helps me out a ton and of course if there's a monster from a previous edition of D and D or another role playing game such as Pathfinder numera whatever please let me know in the comments down below or over on the dungeon dad Discord in the creature suggestions chat and I will add it to the list of suggested monsters and who knows you might just see that monster show up on a future episode of Monster of the week also if you're not already on the dungeon dad Discord it is worth jumping over there because cuz the folks from packs unplugged have given me five badges to give away so if you're thinking about attending packs unplugged you have a chance in the giveaways chat and the dungeon dad Discord to get a weekend pass that's the all three days of the convention it's 3 days I think right all three days of the convention for free so if you're thinking about going to packs definitely check that out and shouts out to the packs unplugg team for giving us those badges to give away to the community all in all I think that's everything I've got for you this week I highly recommend watching until the very end of this video for our preview of what's coming next week because it is a monster I guarantee none of you have heard of before because it is an original creature made by me so once again thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next week for a very special [Music] episode [Music] what could be lurking within the merky swamp a coven of hags have been seen concocting strange potions and what could they possibly be doing with that dragon egg something unlike anything you've ever seen before is waiting in the dark next episode hag Dragon tune in next time for lots more spooky scary fan service h

Channel: Dungeon Dad

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Id: y2re6rbUWho

Length: 29min 31sec (1771 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 07 2023