What Happens When a Wizard in D&D Gets TOO Ambitious?

hello and welcome to monster of the week the only show on the internet that thinks all dogs are boys and all cats are girls today I have the pleasure of talking to you about one of the weirdest monsters to ever be printed in a DND D book look I know we've covered a lot of strange creatures on this channel over the years but this week's monster is by far the most out there the wingless wonder is a creature from ad and that just defies all expectation so as always we're going to go over this creature's insane lore and ecology then we're going to go over how we might use it in a dndd campaign and of course convert it from Old School Dungeons and Dragons into fifth edition I can't stress enough how much of an odity this week's monster is and I'm very excited to get into it so without further Ado let's talk about the wingless [Music] Wonder last camera action the wingless Wonder or Al qaa as it is known among sages first appeared back in issue 40 of dragon magazine put to print in August of 1980 and it was created by none other than fellow Canadian Ed Greenwood you know the guy who wrote The Forgotten realm setting and while Ed's many contributions to D and are truly countless I feel like the wingless W might just be the Crown Jewel so what exactly is a wingless Wonder well as described in the original Dragon magazine article they are small creatures with bulbous egg-shaped bodies they have two very weird suction cup feet a nest of tentacles for a hair and a pair of very small arms that the creature constantly flaps about as if trying to fly hence the name wingless Wonder despite having two massive eyes this creature is utterly blind Beyond a 10t radius so they just kind of stumble their way through life using the tentacles on their head to help navigate and explore but not only is this creature clumsy legally blind and kind of weird looking they're also really stupid however they do have a couple natural defenses to help them out for one they emit an aura of anti-magic within 10 ft that completely shuts down all sources of the Arcane effectively making this creature immune to anything magical they also have a built in deterrent known colloquially as the death scream where when they die they have emit a wave of psychic energy that only harms creatures who have harmed it and their flesh is highly poisonous meaning they don't often fall victim to predation so with all that said what exactly does a wingless wonder do well not much they are intensely curious but given their lack of faculties the only way they have to really explore the world around them is to just sort of meander around checking things out with their tentacles they are omnivorous so they can and will eat pretty much whatever they come across but they are especially fond of gems and other shiny objects these shiny objects don't provide the Wonder with any amount of sustenance mind you but that doesn't stop them from eating shiny rocks regardless in terms of relations with other members of their species according to the magazine entry they are bisexual icons wow every wingless Wonder seems to be down to get down with any other member of their species and when such a thing occurs the end result is often both wonders carrying around a fertilized egg which they keep inside them for 6 months until it's time to lay the egg which then promptly hatches into a baby wonder the babies will follow their parents until they are large enough to fend for themselves and eventually wander off in their own Direction now at this point you may be wondering why did Ed Greenwood make this creature and why am I talking about it why are we still here just to suffer well as Ed explains in a video on his YouTube channel the original entry in Dragon 40 was a stripped down version of the wingless wonder that didn't contain any of the Realms lore stuff he'd written for it but fortunately all of that lore was still preserved elsewhere and real quick I just want to give a shout out to Ed Greenwood's YouTube channel he's been uploading lots of cool lore stuff about the Forgotten realm so if you're at all into that there is literally no better Source than the man himself I'll leave a link to Ed's channel in the comment on this video and I highly encourage you to go check it out and tell I said hi now back to the Wonder the next time they would appear would be in the menzo banen box set released in 1992 as you might imagine this set was all about the famed under dark city menzo baren here we get a much more indepth account of this monster all the stuff we've gone over remains true however there is also a really interesting detail added it turns out that between 20 and 25% of wingless wonders are actually Wizards or other spellcasters who were transformed against their will into this form see there's this Nifty little spell called Thor's wonder that when cast on a Target acts sort of like true polymorph except it only transforms the target into a wingless Wonder apparently in the Forgotten Realms it was somewhat of a fad among Wizards who had won a spellcasting duel to transform their defeated enemy into a wingless wonder and set them loose while transformed the victim has all of their stats and abilities replaced by those of a wingless Wonder except for their intelligence and this transformation is entirely permanent at least until someone cast to spell magic or remove curse on the affected Wonder but since wonders can't speak the transformed wizard has no way to communicate this with anybody around it and that's horrific in the box set it actually states that some Dr spellcasters transform Wizards using this spell to keep them as prisoners diminishing them into these harmless creatures but not killing them outright on the off chance that they ever need to use them for their magical prowess in the future now they would ultimately show up one last time in secrets of the Magister a book printed in February of 2000 the information here is pretty much the same but I felt like it was worth mentioning since we would never see this creature in a DND D product ever again at least until now this is by far one of the weirdest conversions I've ever had had to do into fifth edition for this show but I'm very excited to tell you all about it so let's jump into the nitty-gritty and talk about some stats it should come as no surprise that the wingless wonder is an exceptionally weak creature clocking in with a challenge rating of 1/2 they are not much of an immediate threat when left to their own devices they will literally never engage in combat however if forced to fight they will still lash out with their tentacles for a whopping 1 D4 minus1 damage this attack does also grapple the creature however if it takes any damage it immediately ends the grapple the real Intrigue with this creature though is not in its actions but in its traits as I mentioned it of course has immunity to all spells aside from dispel magic and remove curse and it has a tremendously long ability that just puts into text how its anti-magic Aura works the short version of this trait is that magic just doesn't function within 10 ft of the creature however there are so many weird edge cases when it comes to a magic system like what we have in DND D so I felt like it was important to include all of the language that specifies what happens with different types of magic so if something does come up rest assured it's in there the last two traits poisonous flesh and psionic lash just explain what happens if you bite the creature eat its body or happen to stick around when it dies and does the big psychic explosion all in all very straightforward they're also immune to fire apparently but a lot of the time that's not going to matter because wingless wonders are extremely averse to combat they tend to very shyly make their way through life so if at all possible they're likely going to avoid combat and try to find some new shiny rocks to eat instead but I mean Grand strategy isn't exactly why I decided to cover this thing this is a monster with so much plot hook potential and I'm really excited to dive into that so let's move on and talk about how we might use this creature at the game table when it comes to plot hooks there are basically two categories a wingless Wonder can fall into stories where the Wonder is a cursed Wizard and stories where it's just a dumbass silly little guy to start off with the latter something mentioned in secrets of the Magister is that there are some people who sort of collect wingless wonders as pets the way it's described makes it sound a lot like the Viva Pinata Xbox game but basically you just have these curators who construct fenced in yards and curate them to provide a nice home for the Wonders and I think that's just swell if you wanted to put a more villainous Twist on it maybe you have a powerful wizard who just keeps all their former Rivals as pets in their backyard that would be supremely messed up but also a really good story beat speaking of supremely messed up ideas you know with a creature like this that some one somewhere would manage to find an industrious use for the AL qaeda's anti-magic Aura it only has a radius of 10 ft but it can still function as a really costeffective way to shut down powerful magic maybe you've even got a villain who protects himself by building a fortress where the walls are all lined in caged alcas to act as a sort of makeshift barrier or for something a bit less awful perhaps a local temple uses an Alca as a means of removing curses and other malefic Arcane effects or maybe the W's just eaten a powerful magical item completely unaware of what it was this is great because not only is it fully in character for a wingless Wonder to just eat some random shiny object it found completely uncaring about the side effects but because of its natural anti-magic Aura any magical effects of that item would be shut down while it is inside the creature's gut that would make it nearly impossible to detect this item using any kind of Mag mag at all and not only that but now you have this bumbling little creature wandering around with a potential doomsday device nestled away in its stomach crossing over into our second category of wingless Wonder plots maybe the Wonder carrying around this magic item is actually a wizard trapped in Wonder form this wizard knows the danger of the magic item in its possession so it's keeping it hidden until it finds a group of worthy adventurers it believes has a chance to destroy the object permanently by toxic into a volcano or something could you imagine if in The Lord of the Rings instead of Gandalf you had this thing bumbling around with a ring of power in its stomach Saron would be so pissed but on the topic of Wizardry maybe the party is looking for a specific NPC who they believe is trapped in Wonder form the only problem is when they venture to their last known location there are just dozens of Wonders wandering around so then they have to track down the specific creature they believe to be this NPC and set them free but one thing to keep in mind is that as time passes an individual trapped in Wonder form will slowly start to go mad so while the person they are looking for might be freed from this Wonder form depending on how long they were trapped they could have some quirks ranging from just being a weird guy all the way to full-blown Insanity insane I tell [Applause] you I mean it's hard to blame them it's like the goofiest version of I have no mouth but I must scream I think this whole concept can also work really well just as a random encounter especially in a dungeon a trapped wizard obviously wants to be free so a wingless Wonder trying to convey to the party that it needs them to cast remove curse could be a really fun roleplay encounter maybe it's even managed to find a scroll and it just needs to get the party to cast the scroll on them but there's no telling who or what might emerge Madness aside it's possible that the trapped wizard is benevolent and rewards the party with a magic item or maybe even joins them for the rest of the dungeon the wizard might even know the location of a secret passage or hidden treasure and that would be welcomed by players to be sure you can even set up a puzzle that the party is il equipped to deal with such as overcoming a massive Chasm they can't get across however if they free this trapped wizard it's able to cast fly on them thus allowing them to press forward but it's also possible that the Wonder is a horribly Evil wizard locked away in this dungeon for good reason I actually love that as the start to to an entire campaign the part is just investigating this ancient dungeon and finds a wingless Wonder frees the wizard trapped inside only to unleash like a level 20 Necromancer hellbent on taking over the kingdom and now they're also totally insane so suddenly the main quest becomes a mission to take down the wizard they inadvertently set loose on the realm God I just love this weird little dude I should also mention that in my fifth edition conversion I've included my interpretation of what the spell f 's Wonder might look like in fifth edition so this week you're not just getting a stab block but also a powerful transmutation spell whether you want to give your player's access to that spell or just keep it in your back pocket in case a wizard PC gets squirely is totally up to you but no matter how you choose to use this creature I had a ton of fun researching this monster for the video and I hope you enjoyed listening to me talk about this weird egg-shaped friend who can potentially also be a horrible body horror experience if you do want to use this creature Linked In the pin comment down below is a Google Document containing everything you will need to run this monster at the game table and if you are one of my lovely patrons over on the dungeon dad patreon page you can find the highres PDF that contains all the same information as the Google Document but it's presented in a much more fanciful way and includes the new artwork and everything speaking of artwork thank you so much to Maxwell POF this week's artist for knocking it out of the park and a massive shout out to all you patrons watching thank you so much for believing in me and supporting what I do here it truly means the most I wouldn't be able to do this without you and a special Thanks goes out to our patron of the week this week's randomly selected Patron is lore junkie thank you so much for coming to me each week to get your fix and thank you for watching as always please consider leaving a like or a comment on this video If you're not subscribed already that also helps me out a ton but most importantly if there's a monster from a previous edition of D and D or another table top role playing game you would like to see brought into fifth edition complete with a deep dive into its lore and history let me know in the comments below or let me know in the creature suggestions Channel over on the dungeon. Discord and who knows you might just see it show up in a future episode of Monster of the week and that's all I got for you this week once again thank you so much for watching I truly appreciate it stick around to the very end for a preview of what's coming next week and I'll see you [Music] then [Music] there's a new band coming to town try and get tickets while you still can these musical malifa may play an enchanting tune on their flute but this song is a conduit to the gods of undeath next episode cryp chanter tune in next time for lots more fan service

Channel: Dungeon Dad

Views: 81,209

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: E_Ocugz2Wlc

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023