What They Don't Tell You About Owlbears - D&D

vicious ravenous aggressive and evil tempered at all times the angry owl bear is one of the most iconic dungeons and dragons monsters of all time probably the crossbred creation of some demented wizard the owlbear is a mix between a giant owl and a bear it does sound a bit silly as a concept but it has become a staple of fantasy with games like world of warcraft final fantasy everquest and more utilizing it but now before we go deeper let's go ahead and first see what the 5th edition monster manual says about it as you can see we do get a full page dedicated to it and there's quite a lot of paragraphs in here which is always good when they do this starting up it says that an owl bears screech echoes through dark valleys and benighted forests piercing the quiet night to announce the death of its prey i think you guys are gonna get a kick as to which parts are owl and which parts are bare but yeah as you can see the face is basically all owl so you get the famous owl screech but this one is particularly loud down here we're told of the owl bear's reputation for ferocity aggression stubbornness and sheer ill temper it says here that there is nothing in el bear fierce and that even monsters that outmatch an owl bear in size and strength avoid tangling with it for this creature cares nothing about a foe's superior strength as it attacks without provocation down here we're told it emerges from its den around sunset and hunts into the darkest hours of the night it screeches to flush out its prey or to search for a mate it drags partially devoured kills back to its den storing portions of the carcass among the surrounding rocks bushes and trees the scent attracts scavengers which then become more prey to the owl bear although they are more intelligent than most animals owl bears are difficult to tame however with enough time food and luck an intelligent creature can train an owl bear to recognize it as a master making it an unflinching guard or a fast and hardy mount funnily enough it says that people of remote frontier settlements have even succeeded at racing owl bears which is awesome we get more examples down here of just how different people use owl bears after they domesticate them some of them use them as pets whereas others use them to defend their homes and then lastly we get an entry as to the origin of the owl bear it says that scholars have long debated the origins of the creature the most common theory is that a demented wizard created the first specimen by crossing a giant owl with a bear however venerable elves claim to have known these creatures for thousands of years and some fey insists that owlbears have always existed in the feywild we will of course talk a little bit more about this in a bit but for now let's move on to the character sheet they are fairly bulky as you can see but nothing that a solid veteran couldn't take out on its own you can see here too that they are very fast though please note the absent climbing speed owl bears are not tree climbers though we will talk about that later as well they do have a proficiency in perception they have dark vision and they have keen sight and smell the keen sight and smell guys is crucial owl bears have some of the best senses in the forest the way that they are described in the lore leads one to believe that it is typically near impossible to sneak up on them remember that having advantage on perception checks means that you get a plus five on your passive perception so the owl bear actually gets an 18 passive perception that relies on cider smell that's very important to know lastly we have their attacks which are just simple claws and peak attacks but now without further ado let's talk about what the monster manual does not tell you about the albers first let's talk about the one important part that they completely left out in the attacks for the owl bear and that is their main strategy for actually defeating enemies elbers don't just casually beak at you in the middle of a fight i mean that's just kind of silly what they do is they bear hug you pushing you deep into his chest crush your bones as they beat you in the face to maim you and kill you see owl bears actually spend a large portion of the battle standing in two feet you'll actually notice that a lot of the old official art for the owl bear does have it standing and it is for a good reason the owl bear uses his considerable weight thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred pounds of it to make its claw attack the most powerful that it can be the elbara stands upright then comes down at you with all of its weight to almost punch you with its claws most often than not the single strike will kill a human in a single hit the monster manual does a good representation of this by having the average damage of the attack b14 which is more than a normal commoner will have in health but in cases where that is not enough to kill it is typically enough to maim what the owl bear actually wants to do is stun you so then he can grab you hug you and then crush you in his grasp while beaking you in the face this strategy of grappling was a feature of the owl bear in literally every single edition except fifth edition for some reason in theory the owl bear would never beak you unless you were already grappled quote owl bears like humans can rotate their forearms and this gives them great strength and agility in ceasing their prey it is perhaps this feature alone which gives the owl bear its deadly ability to hug its opponents and allows them to make powerful side swipes with their wicked claws end quote the owl bear is also supposed to have a 120 feet of dark vision which is what normal owls get but that's less important what i do consider important though is the representation of how the creature is supposed to look like more specifically how the eyes are supposed to look like the eyes of the aloe bear are odd because they have been described throughout the editions in one way but none of the art has ever shown it to be that way and now the fifth edition muddles it even further in fifth edition the eyes are described as limpet it says here the limpet pupils of its great round eyes stare furiously from its owl-ish head so limpet means unclouded clear and the art shows simple crystal black eyes it's confusing because in the description it says pupils not the iris nor the entire eye but then the art shows the entire eye just being pitch black which doesn't make any sense it doesn't make any sense based on the description that we're given but it also doesn't make any sense with the description that we were given on any of the previous editions in the picture they make you believe that owl bears just have simple black eyes but in reality they do have irises in their eyes and they are supposed to be red rimmed this is described in first second and third edition it is annoying though because even though the eyes were described in those editions their art in those editions also didn't use it which is just even more confusing so this is how the eyes of owls actually look like in real life owl bears have this type of eye red rimmed eyes they are described in the lore as being terrifying particularly horrifying when seen in the middle of the night most of the fan art that you will see around will use the orange or yellow instead which i believe is just the most common type of eye that you typically see in owls but it's just weird that 5th edition went with full black and some of the other editions like third edition went with full white which is even more bizarre anyways this is just one of those things that confused me greatly i hate being a hater but i just wanted to point out those inconsistencies i know this series can sometimes come across as a fifth edition hate piece which is definitely not the case not what i want to do but this is a great example of all additions just kind of dropping the ball on something this art is actually probably in my top five best art pieces for monsters in the monster manual i actually love it the albert looks so cool in this art even though owl bears are not really purple either but i'm not going down that road the lore described them as being brownish black to yellow brown and foreign feathers oh and i should also point out that there is actually bear like fur beneath the feathers even if they're difficult to see in every single piece of art the beaks are also generally yellow to ivory and like i said before the eyes are red rimmed and quote exceedingly terrible to behold end quote they're just supposed to look really scary in the eyes basically owl bears speak their own language with just how the fifth edition master manual described them they are very loud screeches of varying length and pitch that they use to communicate mostly to find mates in the forest now the mating situation of owl bears is interesting because now we're entering into the part of how much of the owl bear is bare and how much is owl even though the backside of the owl bear is all bare you will be surprised to know that they actually don't deliver live babies instead owl bears hatch from eggs which is something that masterminder completely omitted and i'm sure you'll be delighted to know going even farther owl bears have no nipples unlike real female bears which obviously do in real life baby bears receive milk from their moms but not owl bears from birth owl bears are full-blown carnivores and will need to receive chunks of fresh meat from their parents from the moment that they are born surprisingly these guys take much more from owls than they do from bears quote albert eggs are near perfect spheres there will be from one to six eggs in a clutch the eggs are laid several days apart the yong will be raised by the mother for the first two years during which time she will teach the cub how to hunt for themselves after the end of the second year the cops will go off on their own and stake out their own territory end quote the monster manual did talk about the art of domesticating owl bears but they didn't mention how expensive it is to do that because of how useful a domesticated owl bear is the eggs are worth quite a fortune a single owl bear egg is worth from 2 000 to 3 000 gold pieces whereas the baby owl bear of less than a year old fetches for almost 5 000 gold pieces in the open market and that is just to get the specimen the training itself goes for another 2 000 gold pieces and that's because of how difficult it is to actually tame an albert we actually got the difficulty challenge in third edition the dc to train a young albert is 23. you need to pass a check of 23 in order to succeed at trading it and that is why they charge so much because this is really difficult and the reason that you need a baby albert in order to even try is because attempting to train an adult increases the dc to 30 which according to the dmg that number is considered an impossible task now owl bears have a lifespan of about 20 years they prey on anything from rabbits to bears to trolls to snakes and reptiles anything that is alive and edible they will try and kill and eat like the monster manual describe them if they see a prey they go for the prey quote an albert's main weakness is also its greatest strength it's ferocity because owl bears are so bad tempered they stop at nothing to kill a target it is not difficult to trick an owl bear into hurling itself off a cliff or into a trap provided you can find one end quote as a hybrid of two different animals one diurnal and the other nocturnal they have an unusual active time the mushroom manual described that they typically leave their caves at sunset but generally speaking they're already active way before then the general active period of an owl bear starts with them waking up at midday they try and then hunt day animals during the day and then at night they haunt night animals before falling asleep roughly around midnight one factor that they take from their bare side another outside is they are only active during the summer and they hibernate during the winter which is something that owls typically don't do owls are generally active all around the year now there is however a completely distinct winter species of owl bears a combination of a polar bear and winter owls like the great gray owl which is considered to be the largest species of owl in the world not much is known about this particular species of winter owl bear but its existence was alluded in both the second edition monster manual and in dragon magazine number 214 now for the longest time this mysterious winter species of albert was supposed to be this thing that people knew existed but nobody had ever been able to confirm it and now finally though it seems that we might actually see one in the next adventure for fifth edition so that's gonna be exciting now you'll be surprised to know that there is also a winged variation of the albert though much like the polar owl bear and this one is not really seen very often though interestingly enough we do have official stats for it it's here on the screen if you want to see it another thing that the monster manual omitted which i personally think is awesome as hell and makes the creature so much cooler even even if it's a bit silly is the fact that just like owls can an owl bear can rotate its head all the way around to its back so that it can see behind itself an owl bear can turn its head a full 270 degrees versus a human's 180. this is done thanks to the fact that the creature has twice as many neck bones as does a human they can also snap its neck from one position to another almost instantaneously see the reason that this is necessary for the owl bear is because an albert can't actually move its eyes at all a human can look around by moving its eyes without necessarily moving its head an owl bearer actually can't do that their eyes are static and always looking forward so they have to move their head in order to be able to see further the eyes of the owl bear are protected in ways that a human's eye is not quote owl bears have a transparent third eyelid also called a nictitating membrane that they can flip across their eyes at will this protects their sensitive eyes from dust grit and the light it also protects them from strong light light spells are therefore ineffectual as blending attacks against an albert end quote i described it before how the owl bear has the eyes of an owl which are already incredible but they also have the keen senses of both the bear and the owl granting quadruple normal hearing quote in fact the owl bear's hearing is so finely developed that it can attack normally in total darkness and similarly can attack invisible creatures without penalty of course they can be nullified with a silence spell end quote so acute is the owlbear's sense of hearing that even in melee it's almost impossible to sneak up on one owlbear's ears are somewhat unique in that they are asymmetrical one ear is higher than the other and this makes it extremely efficient in pinpointing exactly where a particular sound is coming from quote this fact has no doubt proven to be very unnerving to many a thief who tried using his ability to move silently to move past an albert end quote this is what makes encountering an albert to be so problematic sneaking is typically not an option because of their insane senses and running away is also typically not advisable because of how fast they are this is why it is common knowledge amongst townsfolk and rangers the best way to avoid one is to climb a tree because of how massive owl bears are they're not good tree climbers but you have to make sure that you pick a tree sturdy enough that the creature can't just tear down which is definitely something that it can do thanks to its obnoxiously strong strength because owl bears are so temperamental and sovereign though they will simply wait you out you will never see an owl bear simply get bored and leave if they have to they will just try and claw out the tree for hours until the tree falls or until something else pisses it off more than you this is why avoiding albert territories is crucial for the survival of the members of a community and typically there are two ways to tell that you are in one the first one is by finding scratches on trees the creatures claw at selected trees with their front paws in order to keep their claws sharp and to mark off their territory the other way is to find what we call owlbear pellets see the mouth of an owl bear is basically owl as you can see so the way that they eat is very owl-like all bears tear their food into chunks and then swallow those chunks whole because they obviously can't chew their food without teeth this means that their stomach is also more owl than bare what happens here is that the non-meat that enters their stomach cannot be fully digested things like bones fur feathers and insect shells will instead sit in their stomach these undigested objects will then be turned into circular pellets and regurgitated by the beast generally speaking this is done in and around the layer so if you see these pellets on the floor then you know that you're very close to the layer of the owl bear and should probably walk the other direction now in the owl bear's body the one thing that is still very much bare is the massive tongue of the creature owl bears use this long tongue to fetch honey just how real bears do and they are protected from the stings of the bees by their thick coating of feather and fur this is the only non-carnivorous thing that they actually do eat and is one of the few things in their body that is basically bare because most of their bodies is owl lastly you should also know if you intent on hunting an owl bear that because of their rugged constitution and their combat rage they have something very similar to what the barbarian has where the owl bear can actually keep on fighting even if it has reached zero hit points simply because its rage keeps it going too stubborn to simply die i suppose they can last from one to four rounds chugging along before they actually perish that's it for this video guys thank you so much for watching i apologize if i sound different my voice is completely shot i've been sick all week um just been kind of dealing with this cold so uh you know i apologize for that if it was very noticeable but in any case i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters zack bowell ricardo fan barry maskind 5e magic shop daniel umar rusty rain biotechnofrag dania luna duck feeder brett salazar terry culp the great codini walker motley omega scales karates the bulwark zirin king ozol ariel nelson alex cookson griffin pierce faulky 951 benjamin busters mr salty thomas hunt drayden tesla coil the role-playing junkies podcast silent choppa prince daylight morning crown jericho dark star sabine kurshab troll skull dude 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Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020