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

quote considered by some to be the very embodiment of evil fractious Oz donate all the encounter as masterful manipulators powerful sorcerers and terrible foes greedy treasures immortal beings rakshasas delight in plotting the downfall of others while racing their own status in addition to their own abilities rakshasas are charismatic individuals who draw large numbers of minions into their service surrounding themselves with cadres of deadly in varied servitors clever and deceitful by nature rakshasas are the bane of righteous creatures as they prefer hiding in the shadows and using layers of lies corruption and double crosses to keep themselves safe it is very curious how this is one of those monsters that I feel like everybody knows most players seem to recognize the name Rakshasa and generally it seems like they know what to expect when you present them with one this is one of those things that would probably attribute to critical role of course the famous D&D show where this monster makes an appearance so most of the introductory stuff you will already know including how they are supposed to look like they are humanoid Tiger hybrids with very powerful sorceress abilities they are fiends with a devilish background who happened to be immune to most spells which is probably what they're the most famous for rakshasas cannot be hit by any spell lower than seventh level but to make matters even worse they also happen to be immune to non magical attacks this translates into a foal that is literally invincible for most starting adventurers this is also coupled with the fact that when a Rakshasa dies that is not truly the end of it instead it is merely a setback and a long painful setback as the body of the monster materializes nin nine hails before I can find its way back to the material world I should also mention that a particularly defining feature of the Rakshasa outside of the obvious tiger body is the fact that it's hands are upside down that being the palm of its hand is where the back of your hand would be as you can see here in the picture now when it comes to behavior rakshasas use subtlety and misdirection to dominate people they use their considerable intellect charisma and magics to sway the weak of mind into working for them using these features they almost always end up becoming merchant kings or nobles and live a life of decadence ii-in power and of course they would living life on the Material Plane and abuse it is all that they ever wanted for rakshasas used to be powerful Devils in the nine hells who perform secret and dark rituals to free their essence from their fiendish bodies in order to escape the older Plains and now that they are free the hills they roam the real world and fermented further absolute gain I have just described to you the entry of the Rakshasa in the monster manual basically everything that we just talked about was directly taken from here but believe you me there is so much more about these monsters that the monster manual does not tell you but hey that is why we are here let's go ahead and talk about what the most reminder does not tell you about Rex asses what I think is the most expected but still the most considerable surprise about these creatures is that there really isn't as much uniformity between the way that they look as much as you would think their hands being upside down is but one example the second edition of ladies and dragons claims that it is a very common occurrence between rakshasas that they have these upside-down hands but that it is by no means something that all of them suffer the biggest thing however would be the hybrid nests of their bodies it turns out that the tiger type of Rakshasa is but simply one style in fact there are actually many types of rakshasas there are excesses with carnivorous ape heads which are actually very common but there have even been sites of those that possess mantis heads out there it is literally described to us that the tiger head rakshasas are only slightly more common than the rest and not even by a lot see rakshasas venerate a mysterious God called Ravana which is known to have over 10 heads which forms part of the culture of these particular monsters in that they can each have different types and styles of heads in fact some rakshasas get this can even have more than one head it is described to us that some of the more powerful rakshasas like the ones that lead entire clans of them have two or even three heads now of course most times that a Rakshasa deals with humanoids it is doing so under either illusion magic or through one of their many transformations rare will it be the time when you will actually get to see one's true body now let's talk about the eyes quote rakshasas eyes berry vastly from the gold and black slits of Tiger - the multifaceted protruding orbs of insects depending on the individual animalistic visage regardless of the shape the eyes burned with a slight infernal light failed with a deep cunning and intellect that most mortals will find extremely disturbing and quote now rakshasas do have communities in clans where they live together though we're not really described much of what a day-to-day life of the Rakshasa might look under those premises what we are actually told is that their society is bound by very rigid castes whereas each Rakshasa is born into a particular role in life and cannot advance for example we are very explicitly told that females who are called Rakshasi are fed only to be consorts and are honored only by their faithfulness and the fighting ability of their children and it's a particularly rigid patriarchy where only the male rakshasas are allowed to rule in spite of the fact that females greatly advanced li outnumber males sometimes up to a ratio of three to one we also know that those of honoured birth are called rooks which roughly translates to Knights these are believed to be the guardians of the Rakshasa community the great warriors on top of them are we call the Raja or Lords who are the patriarchs and leaders of the local clan and then on top of those we finally have the Maharajah's or the Dukes which are the leaders of several clans put together or of a single large powerful clan as far as we are aware there has never been the need to name a king Rakshasa as there has probably never been one for the most part these monsters are very solitary and they seldom gather in large groups like these when they do however what you do end up seeing our island nations of a couple of hundred Rakshasa now the way rakshasas gain notoriety in their culture is very interesting because like I said before generally you are born into a caste system and you're basically just stuck there forever you can't really get wealthy and buy yourself a good house in a better part of town so to speak you can't just become famous by doing something cool and then marry well if you are from a lesser castithan you can only live where the lesser caste lives and you can only work where the lesser caste works that's just the way the system is designed the only way for a Rakshasa to gain honor within this style of society is essentially through the manipulation of humanoids that being if you raksasa through politics and stuff as the leader of a major human city then other excesses will respect him regardless of caste see this should explain this better quote Rakshasa society could be described as a malevolent meritocracy where only the fittest survive rakshasas constantly rank each other based on the power that they accumulate their cunning and subtlety and their willingness to show a complete lack of morals female rakshasas raise their young alone punctuating their children's lives with dhating price constant tests harsh discipline and ruthless training I say young Rakshasa matures it learns the meaning of both loss and power that which is gained might be easily be taken away often by those who gave it in the first place one see Rakshasa reaches maturity it's already well on its way to carving out an empire of crime and evil newly independent Rakshasa is commonly head out for unknown territories far from their parents or any other excesses reach using a variety of this guy says the Rakshasa spends years investigating a new area erection instinctively six out a safe house from which to operate decorating his interior in ostentatious displays of its wealth it then begins creating a network of spies informants and easily bribed officials from which to establish his domain as well as creating a small cadre of loyal easily influenced lackeys the Rakshasa then creates or takes over a local feast mercenary units and other undesirables often doing so under one disguise or another it rarely reveals his true nature to anyone but utterly dedicated lieutenants whose loyalties rakshasa constantly monitors both via spies and its own ability to read thoughts and quote as a Rakshasa builds its empire it is inevitable really that it will encounter one such as itself when this happens this when you see something more akin to a mafia movie where a shadowy war of intrigue and misinformation starts a battle of criminal politics where it will only end with either the complete domination of one of them or the other one's death with the winner taking over the network of the other this is how truly a Rakshasa grows in honor in erection a society as it grows in power and dominates more of its kin eventually it'll start gaining prestigious titles titles like rook like Raja or even the mighty Maharaja rakshasas obsession with humanoids is interesting because it is all over the place they like to dominate them they like to enslave them to rule over them but more than all they just like being around them a fractious a living with other excesses it is one thing but you would never see one living by itself somewhere out there secluded it just needs us it loves the clothes that we make our wines or pillows our music but most of all our flesh don't ever delude yourself into thinking that it is all about our culture or all about domination to them the biggest drive is and will always be our flesh rakshasas are carnivores and their favorite food is humanoid flesh something that they go through all kinds of troubles and ruses simply to obtain what makes it harder for them and the reason that they need all kinds of illusions and tricks to obtain it it's because of the fact that they like it not just fresh but while the meal is still alive they cease in living people with fresh and rare spices exotic side dishes and other expensive delicacies as they eat them if the meal is not squirming and screaming then it is just not the same this is why they require complex tricks as they would rather do the killing themselves in the comfort of their dining table and of course even better if they don't stay in their favorite expensive clothes with someone else's blood while in the process one of the most successful tricks in the Rakshasa arsenal is their ability to take in the form of a person that you trust see rakshasas famously have what we call ESP extrasensory perception or a sixth sense basically they have the ability to perceive things not just through touch or smell or sight or taste or sound but through a sixth sense specifically rakshasas have the natural ability to read minds and sends your emotions now this is still magical I know that the way that I described it sounds like psyonix but that's just the way it is described just do keep in mind that it is still 100% magical this is simply basically just a more natural thing that these rakshasas can do and do 24/7 it is always active for this creature so when you meet a Rakshasa the creature can actually sense in your mind who is a person that you trust or a type of person that you trust and then he abuses it for example if you're the type of person who trusts city guards explicitly then the Rakshasa my transformed into one just to lower your defenses and then each you if given enough time to read through your mind in my transforming to a loved one in order to fool you and so on and so forth it actually uses this very powerful ability in order to sense who is loyal to him and who isn't and it uses this to form tight inner circles that will not betray it rakshasas go out of their way to make sure that their empires are run tight that there are no squeaky wheels and that nobody will betray him but isn't that quite interesting you look at the Rakshasa and you see what it is capable of and yet sometimes it feels like it just cowers in fear behind walls and minions it fears that it will be betrayed it does everything with subtlety why it cannot be hurt by any spell lower than seventh level which basically eliminates the vast majority of spell casters in the world it has the ability to read minds which means that he figuratively cannot be stabbed in the back and he also happens to be immune to mundane non magical weapons which means that he literally cannot be stabbed in the back so what's up what's the deal with all of this protection you would think that this guy could turn into the invincible overlord and just rule his own kingdom with an iron fist so why doesn't he but the answer is kind of a secret a secret that not many actually know and the clues to this secret actually lie in the monster manual itself in the stat block of the Rakshasa you have this very interesting weakness it says right here that the rakshasas are vulnerable to piercing magical weapons wielded by good creatures now this is actually new it was added to the fifth edition entry for the Rakshasa the creature actually never really had this weakness in any of the previous editions but it did have something relatively similar see this weakness is meant to mask the actual thing in reality according to 5th 2nd and 3rd edition and according to the ecology of the Rakshasa from the dungeon magazine and according to the creator of the news and Dragons rakshasas suffer from a crippling weakness very similar to that of vampires you know how vampires are one of the most powerful creatures in the world able to regenerate more than almost any other monster being virtually unkillable but they have this insane weakness to a simple wooden stake that can be used to completely incapacitate them or rakshasas have something very similar fractious as have a weakness to crossbow bolts infused with a holy blessing if a blast crossbow bolt were to - flesh of a Rakshasa the monster will be slain instantaneously let's go ahead and read it this is the entry for the Rakshasa from first edition quote they are not affected by spells under the eighth level rakshasas cannot be harmed by non magical weapons Massacre weapons below +3 do 1/2 damage but crossbow bolts blessed by a cleric killed them and quote this is the entry for the rakshasas in 2nd edition and here it is quote a hit by any blessed crossbow bolt kills a Rakshasa instantly end quote this ladies and gentlemen is why a Rakshasa never goes over Lord even if the armies fighting him don't actually know about this secret which is likely he's still bound to be hit by a single blast crossbow bolt from a cleric I mean the chances are actually pretty high when you're facing an army now this is the part where you all debate in the comments section about why a crossbow bolt does an arrow work just as well what about a blessed bullet from a gun the reality is that I actually don't want to answer that because I legitimately think that it is going to ruin the mystery because I well it kind of ruined it for me what I can say is what is written and what's written is that a crossbow bolt that is blessed by a cleric will instantly simply kill a Rakshasa while another kind of piercing weapon blessed by a cleric will go through the rakshasas immunities and actually hurt to the creature and then on top of that we have what the fifth edition' monster Merril actually says which is that you don't even technically need a blessing the creature using the piercing weapon just has to be good and the weapon will go through the defenses of the Rakshasa like always the fifth edition' Monster Manual softens everything and makes things just not a school but there you go lastly before I go I want to leave you with a fun twist according to the book the races of fair rune there are actually tea flings with the blood of rakshasas seen it is a common misconception that tea Flinx are basically human plus devil in reality the actual definition of a tea fling is human plus outsider outsider technically being anything born outside of the Material Plane now the common usage of the term outsider in firoun it generally reserves itself for outsiders of the evil persuasion so that generally translates to human plus evil outsider that makes a tea flame now what does that actually mean well it means that you can be a tea fling if you get a human mating with a devil but also if you get a human mating with many other things like a human and a demon for example produces a tiefling a human and an evil God it can produce it aflame a human and a night hag for example is another possible option that creates a tiefling but of course the actual pertinent example a human and the Rakshasa mating and creating a baby will produce a tea flame now depending on the type of outsider that made with the human you of course get different traits the common devil tiefling has the reddish skin with the horns in the tail the night hag tiefling has bruised bluish skin for example in the Rakshasa tiefling gets Tiger fur all over their body and feline eyes if you ever felt like you wanted to play a Tabac see but you would rather have a charisma based character rather than a texture debased character then you can just easily play a tea fling with Rakshasa ancestry easy-peasy now I would like to personally thank my patron supporters Ricardo fan doctor cowbell skits you boy major fail gaming why man bury mask aunt 5e magic shop Ryan ward Daniel Umar Morgan Johnson Zac Powell Simon Holman rusty rain biotech no frag and mediocre at best for supporting me on patreon at the $25 level if you would like to support me as well then police headin over to patreon.com slash mr. Rex to support guys for a second time thank you so much for watching and I will see you all on the next video thank you for waiting cuz it was a while before my last video but there you go you and the next one bye-bye

Channel: MrRhexx

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Keywords: mrrhexx, rhexx, dungeons and dragons, d&d, rakshasa

Id: R6i6X3jY6T4

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019