What They Don't Tell You About The Flumphs - D&D

this strange creature is shaped like a pale greenish-yellow disk the size of a barrel lid in the center of the disc is a twitching orifice adjoined by a pair of four-inch eyestalks a shock of reedy spikes and thin rubbery tentacles trail from the creature's belly this here is a flumph one of the weakest and most pathetic creatures in donuts and dragons it appears that we are on a roll in talking about fragile and feeble creatures though unlike the sturch you really don't get to see these ones very often and very much like the sturge there are plenty of super soon cover for these guys as well but before we get into it let's talk about our sponsor today this video is brought to you by grim hollow the monster grimoire a book holding over 400 new monsters of the type you like the dark grimdark style just look at some of this art it's really some of their best attributes it helps tremendously to bring this genre right into the limelight i mean honestly not many good grim dark books going out right now so when good ones do come out you gotta get right in and grim hollow does a fantastic job at that even more when their kickstarter was popping off i got so interested in being part that i ended up creating some monsters for them as well i created a hack that uses illusory magic to slowly seduce you and if she gets to have sex with you then she puts a nasty curse on you there's also a really cool coven version of that hack which is hilarious i mean again if this is not your typical dnd monster book this is greedy dark stuff which is why it's so awesome i am so very happy that they allowed me to create some monsters for them i also created a dark version of a pixie called a puck which is what happens to a pixie that gets mistreated and tortured by humans i also did a bunch of other stuff with dark trees and corrupted trees and psionic plants if you're interested in this book check out the link below to pre-order your copy of grim hollow monster grimoire and add some dark greedy stuff back into dungeons and dragons but now back to the video the flumph is without a doubt what one could consider something of an oddball for a monster in the monster manual it's frankly an unpopular monster not many people know of it and even less people use it it's interesting because there are only so many pages in the monster manual i mean you have to believe that much discussion must have been had about which monsters to bring in into fifth edition knowing full well the vast roster of creatures that dunes and dragons has and knowing full well that many will have to be cut i mean someone actually said what if we put in the flumph but harry if we put in the flumph we won't have space for the elder brain on the monster manual we already had to scrap putting in bodaks cranium rats and all the avishai look harry if we just put our heads together i am sure that we can figure out a way to include the gem dragons our fans love gem dragons don't be an idiot jeff nobody really likes gem dragons we should give the people what they really want goddammit i would rather let this brand burn to the ground that i have a monster manual without flumps it's hard to envision a world without flumps nowadays to be honest because they are part of the original first release monster manual for fifth edition so most dungeon masters know them by now but you might not know that this is actually the first edition in which the flums had made it to the first monster manual of a particular edition what do i mean there is not a single monster manual in fourth or third edition with a flumph in it in fact i'm not even sure if there is a single dnd book with a flumph in any of those editions at least where a flumph is described or does anything meaningful there is an adventure in fourth edition with a flumph but it came out in dungeon magazine and it was as an april fool's joke unbelievable in first edition they made their debut on the fiend folio which is kind of like their second monster manual though they must have been not very popular even back then because in second edition they didn't come out with a flumph for a long long time they did like 20 different monster books throughout the span of 6 years or so before they reintroduced the flumph it's just not a very popular monster and well that is why it is so interesting to see them here now they do have a purpose of course i mean how many operations do you see with a lawful good alignment and that should be good enough to make it interesting and the flumph is interesting don't get me wrong it was just a very peculiar and purposeful decision to have them here especially considering all the monsters that they had to cut and i am very interested in the why now i actually asked christopher perkins on twitter who was the monster manual lead what was the decision behind adding the fluff i was just very curious but alas no answer see guys my twitter is a joke i barely use it and never promote it so i have virtually no following there and you guys should actually follow me on twitter so that i can actually ask these questions to the developers and have them deem me worthy so that i don't get ghosted hard at mr rex on twitter boys help me out so that i can start asking the important questions to the important people if you guys do i promise that i'll actually start using it now who did respond to me however were the people from jetpack 7 who worked on the concept art for the flumps apparently there were the guys who actually drew the thing for the monster manual and what was interesting is that they were not told any color references for the flumph and that's why they drew them the way that they are now which is mega curious considering that color is important to the flumph and not for the reasons described in the monster manual but for other much cooler reasons but i suppose this late on the video we should probably start talking about what is in the monster manual first they tell us that flums levitate by using jets of air which is where their name comes from they glow faintly with different colors of glow reflecting their mood pink for amused blue for sad green for curiosity and then crimson for anger and down here they say that they talk telepathically they have great intelligence and wisdom and even consider themselves philosophers and with great knowledge in religion and math they feed on the mental energy from psionic creatures but they do so passively without alerting their victims and they also don't require much to feed so their victims feel no loss or discomfort lastly down here they tell us that flames live in complex societies where each flumph has a place and a purpose where each contribute to the society in their own way here's a stat sheet of course once again you can see that they are lawful good for an aberration which is of course what makes them so interesting from the get-go and they're also extremely weak with the same amount of hit points as a goblin now they are vulnerable to psychic which is interesting considering that they literally just told us here that they eat psionic energies they're also immune to many psionic abilities like thought reading emotion sensing and many other divination spells so it is a very peculiar weakness to have considering what their strengths are now here is where we enter the font stuff prone deficiency if you don't know the context then this feature will kind of seem weird to you probably but if the flumph is knocked prone you roll a die on an odd result the fluff lands upside down and is incapacitated at the end of each of his turns the fluff can make a dc10 dexterity saving throw riding itself and ending the incapacitated condition if it succeeds they don't really elaborate it here but slums are kind of like turtles in the sense that if you knock them upside down they are comically useless and cannot get back up we will of course talk more about that in a few minutes now as far as attacks go they appear to have two their tendrils which you can see here on the picture have the ability to produce acid damage which can be quite difficult to remove ironically the tendrils are not their main way of attack but neither is their stench spray they actually have left out how they really attack which is just pure sadness in any case they do have that stench spray this is the funny thing about when designers keep the abilities of a monster but actually change the design of the monster and they tell you that there is a stench spray but they don't really tell you where the spray is actually coming from now you might deduce that it probably comes from that mouth over here but that's not actually it see the thing is they removed a big part of the fluff or i should say multiple things one of which is where the spray comes from it's just not there on the picture in any case the flame can produce a foul smelling liquid which can be ejected and coated you with if you get touched by this you become sickened as the smell is rancid and stays for hours and the smell is so bad that it poisons you and anyone nearby who can smell you and you can only remove the stench by thoroughly bathing with either water alcohol or vinegar but there it is the monster manual entry for the flumph you know i do a lot of these videos where we you know go through the fifth edition entry for a particular monster and then compare it with our previous entries and generally what we tend to see is that they just didn't have the space to cover everything that they should have covered for the monster it's hard to give them slack for that obviously since there's really only so much space that they have and most monsters have rich back stories and lore that they can't just possibly fit on a single page but this entry is one of the few where it really feels like they either did not know their own lore or they purposefully decided to change the monster i guess i wouldn't blame them too much for wanting to change a monster that was universally unpopular but i would reckon that the reason it wasn't popular is simply because it was never used in actual content because the monster is really cool see in this entry they attempted to make the flumph be all cool and stuff this entire section about them being psionic siphons yeah that's nowhere on any of their previous entries in any of the lore it might seem possible that it was part of some obscure adventure but i certainly haven't seen any indication of that being the case and they're not supposed to be psionic parasites they're not supposed to be able to communicate easily using telepathy they are not psionics they are clerics that is why they live in complex organized groups called cloisters that's where the term comes from they have their own cute bishops and abbotts and clerics and some flums can even cast lyric spells they worship unknown lawful good gods it is so sad flubs were honestly kind of cool and they just kind of didn't talk about any of it it's interesting because in my attempt to contact someone on wizards to see if they could clarify on whether they wanted to change the flums i actually did get that response from jetpack 7 which are the people that allegedly created the art for the monster manual and it's so weird that they were not given any color references for the creature which they were designing it's bizarre because color is crucial for the flumph the color is what dictates whether or not the flumph is a normal fluff or the ones who are clerics boy this will be an episode i just expected for this to be like the sturg video you know where we're just covering a silly weak creature and simply have a little bit of fun but not today fun is not allowed let's go ahead and talk about how they massacred my boy and what they don't tell you about the flumps first of all holy crap this is how the flumph is supposed to look like you will notice a few different things you see that it doesn't have just one mouth but instead many most of which are on the side also pay close attention to literal spikes that come out from the bottom of the creature these are hugely important lastly notice that its tentacles don't really have spikes every single one of these three differences are crucial and i will explain why a floam zone actually attacked with their tentacles because they are weak and useless and they are not supposed to have any spikes in them in fact we have a lot of official art for the flames and only the fifth edition versions show any kind of spikes see the tentacles are a last resort if you bypass all of its other abilities and the creature is cornered then it will resort to using his tentacles but that's because it is its least effective weapon look at how the tentacles are supposed to look they are smooth and smothered with the acid the best thing that they can do is slap you and then just hope that the acid sticks the reason this asset even exists in the first place is because they use it to feed no phloems are not supposed to feed on ionic energies at least not on any addition other than fifth edition flums are omnivores they feed on almost anything the lore is not clear as to which is their favorite food but they tend to prefer minerals and rodents when they kill a rodent they use their acid to dissolve the critter into a paste and then they absorb it through their tentacles their tentacles are kind of like the mindflayer tentacles which are hollow inside and function like straws which they use to suck on substance into their bodies the same applies to minerals like salt they break down the minerals into a thick sludge with their acid and then they absorb it through their tentacles the acid is formed on the flum's lower body cavity so if you're fighting a prone flumph or if you attack it and cut it from below you will then be hit by a shower of acid which will spray out from the body the acid is also supposed to be highly potent since it is meant to completely dissolve bodies for the creature to feed on so technically you're not supposed to simply muscle your way out of the acid when it gets to you instead you're supposed to wash it with two to eight gallons of water it's also described that simple immersion in water is not good enough you would have to scrub it real good now the way that they actually attack is by using those spikes that lie under their bodies they fly above their enemies and then quickly land on them dealing damage with the spikes it is easily dodgeable but if it does land on you it hurts pretty bad because your tentacles are coated with acid much of that acid is also present on the spikes as well now let's talk about the mouths the big opening that you see at the top only functions for air intake it absorbs air from the top and then it is supposed to release it at the bottom this is why the flump has multiple other mouths on the side it is through these other mouths where the air comes out from allowing the creature to propel itself upwards by simply blowing the air downwards the mouths are placed equidistant around the body so that the creature can blow air from any side of its body and move in whatever direction it desires now plot twist this is where the foul smelling stench liquid comes from it cannot come out from the top since that hole needs to be constantly taken in air non-stop for the creature to stay levitating that hole is also only able to draw air in not excel it so it would be impossible anyways now one of these holes is instead the front hole of the creature adventurers can't really tell which one it is because they all look the same but one hole is always the front hole and it is through there where the flumph can project its nasty liquid the liquid is described as smelling like a melange of skunk musk combined with rotting cabbages and the unwashed armpits of sweaty overweight orcs this ability exists because flums are passive lawful good creatures with a good heart who actually do not wish to harm even those who would want to kill them so when faced with danger they would rather incapacitate them than attack them so the notion that a flumph would use acid against someone is just not true because acid is painful and cruel a lawful good creature does not want to put acid on someone else that would be insanely cruel so as flump attacking you with acid just does not make any sense this spray is also a lot worse than described in 5th edition the whole point of the spray is that it is supposed to incapacitate you so that the fluff can run away if it just poisons you then well that doesn't really do anything does it in reality it is supposed to make you quote become nauseated reeling and unable to attack for two to five rounds end quote it is supposed to function like spells like tasha serious laughter where you're just reeling on the floor second potentially vomiting from how bad it is though do you know what will not make you nauseated or leave you reeling in this appointment our beautiful orcas jackets available now at mrx.com that is mrx.com look at this art look at this drip i love it you get it now and you will attract all the flumps that you could ever want looking this good now you might notice something interesting by looking at both the stat sheet of the flumph from first and second edition if you're looking closely here you will see that it says its armor class is zero but the armor class of the underside is eight now that probably doesn't make any sense if you've only played third fourth or fifth edition see in first and second edition the lowered your armor class the better your armor class you actually wanted to have a low armor class back then well a zero armor class is amazing to compare it a look at the stats of a green dragon in second edition it also has a zero armor class in essence the body of a fluff is supposed to be crazy hard but only at the top the underside of the body has an ac of 8 which is pretty mediocre to translate this into 5th edition the ac of 12 is supposed to be for the underside of the body of the fluff including potentially things like its tentacles and its eye stalks whereas the actual top side of the disc like body would probably have an armor class of about 17 it's meant to be crazy hard that is why when flumps sleep they can simply lay down and burrow themselves up so that only the top side of their bodies lies vulnerable because they know that that is their strongest part most of the time they go up to a tree and then wrap their tentacles around a tree branch in such a way so that only their top side is exposed their eye stalks are also retractable so they can pull them both inside of their bodies if they need to but typically they don't flames have the ability to sleep with their eyes open because they have no eyelids and so technically they can't close their eyes and so they sleep with both of their eyes pointing in different directions to always stay alert their sleep is also very light so they can always jump up and start combat immediately without being surprised the flames are nocturnal so they sleep during the day and roam about at night which is why you see them very often in the underdark they are fairly susceptible to light based attacks because they prefer the dark and well obviously also because they can't close their eyes at all though you should know that the flums can regrow their eye stalks if they are ever cut though it typically takes them about a week or so to do so now the flum's greatest weakness is to be flipped on its side like we talked about in the beginning of the video when a flumph gets flipped in this way it is virtually useless its eyes are stuck on the ground which prevents them from seeing its upper mouth cannot absorb any air because it is also stuck on the ground and because it cannot see it really can't use any tentacles at all which are no good at attacking anyways but it can also not produce any of its acid its main form of attack which are their spikes are also completely useless as you can imagine now the funny thing is that it cannot even use this liquid spray when flipped around because it relies on getting air from its upper mouth in order to obtain the liquid pressure needed in order to project that liquid so the best that it can do is just drool the nasty thing it's actually extremely pathetic the thing is in the monster manual here they made it seem as if the flumph can just try and write itself up and that it can attempt that basically every single turn effectively making it so that getting flipped over is mostly deadly in combat but outside of combat it is just an inconvenience the reality is that it is not supposed to be that easy the flov actually is not supposed to be able to write itself up on its own because its tentacles are just not meant to be used in that way its syntacols don't have any grip strength so we cannot use them to write itself up when a flumph becomes flipped it has to rely on either lock or in another flumph to help them get back up otherwise they are extremely screwed in fact it is described in the lore that they can only try a check to write itself up once a day and the check is crazy hard basically if they get flipped over it is literally the end for them they are screwed oh and before i forget you should also know that the stench spray that they have also attracts other flums they can sense it so when they feel that a flumph has squirted nearby they all go to try and help their fellow comrade this is why even though they cannot use their stench spray properly when they are flipped over they still drool it around so that they can get help from their friends now talking about flumph friends let's talk about communication flumps communicate using a very complex form of sign language using their many tentacles a language that is virtually impossible to be learned by humanoids because it requires many many many hands that move in impossible ways for a jointed humanoid to perform now it is not impossible for a flumph to learning language since it technically does possess a mouth like orifice but it is very difficult for them to do so and generally well they have no reason to since they don't really hang out with non-flumps every day and these creatures are extremely shy and reserved and they can however with great practice learn how to force air out of their rimholes in a way that resembles words it is crude and difficult to understand but they can form synthesis in this way quote a speaking monastic flumph sounds like it just took in a long full of helium and is trying to do a mickey mouse impression end quote yep that is a that uh that's a real quote now there are two types of flumps there's the common flumph and then there's the monastic flumph the intelligence that you see here represented on the fifth edition monster manual is meant to be attributed to the high class of flumps which are the monastics these are the guys that have complex societies like it is described in the manual the other flums are not quite as intelligent and mostly roam around feeding and sleeping the common flumps are pure white in color while the monastic ones are a pale yellow or green with darker tentacles this is why i was saying that the color of the plums actually does matter because there's a big difference between the two quote the seldom seen monastic plums are more advanced creatures that can cast spells as if they were clerics of level equal to their hit dice they gathering cloisters to share knowledge and to worship deities unknown to humanoids a cloister is usually in a large cavern or in swamps and grasslands a large nest-like bower constructed of grass and mud the inside of the cloister is decorated with fine colorful paintings made by flums dabbing natural pigments with their tentacles the paintings are usually abstract showing spirals and other curved lines though some are vaguely representational of flumps engaged in hunting each cloister is led by an abbot a flumph with five hit die the abbott is aided by one prior per six flumps in the cloister a prior has three or four hit die the remainder of the floms are monks each with two hit die on occasion a small group of common films can be found near a cloister bringing food as an offering in return for healing or guidance end quote so if we go back to fifth edition monster manual we will see that this particular flumph has two hit die so this flumph would be representative of a monk within the cloister the lowest monastic flam style this means that you could technically give this flumph two levels in cleric if you wanted to follow the lore so this flumph would have the ability to cast two or three first level cleric spells quote monastic floms are a higher order of love able to cast priest spells as if they were clerics of equal level to their hit die these spells are modified versions of the spells known to player characters requiring only somatic gestures which they perform with consummate scale with their numerous tentacles monastic flames have a larger number of tentacles than their common flums while this enables them to cast spells it also leaves less room on their on their sides for spikes and as a result monastic floms cause only 1 d6 hit point damage instead of the common flam's 1d8 little is known about the mysterious monastic flumps they gather together in large caverns to worship unknown lawful good deities monastic floms are not a higher order of love so much as normal flams are a lower order of monastic flames specifically their idiot mutant children end quote see the original flums were actually the monastic version they reproduced by butting off a part of their body which then grows into full flames however there is a 10 chance that the baby will instead be special these are much less intelligent and devoid of the original natural color of the flamps being pure white these special flumps create more of themselves when they reproduce and because of that the original variation of love have slowly over time become the minority amongst these species with the lesser versions now being the majority and hence the term common flumph in the scientific community within the world of drones and dragons there has been a fair amount of debate as to where the flumps come from and many scholars have noted the interesting similarities between them and the grails both of which are aberrations that float in the air have many tentacles and attack by ambushing from above further both creatures are inherently nomadic and both have genetical variations where one kind is solitary and the other is a social and colony type there is another creature that sages have studied one that did not appear in the monster manual but its name is the bilabra this is a jellyfish type creature that glides by leaping 30 feet at a time it has tentacles a strong upper body shell eye stalks and reproduces by body much like the flumph essages speculate that the bulabra is an older possible ancestor of both the flumph and the growl with clear genetic ties in any case unlike the grail whose brain is well i mean all of it the flumph has his brain in a small organ located just under the creature's upper shell midway between his mouth and the rear rim hole what's interesting is that the brain of a flumph can be pulverized in a laboratory and when done so it produces an interesting liquid that is useful in the production of potions of levitation a flam's brain is typically enough to produce three of these potions speaking of magic items the inner layer of a hollow tentacle of a flop can be removed and used as a main ingredient in oil of acid resistance though it takes many tentacles to produce this effect you need around 20 of these tentacles for a single application of the oil lastly the gland that stores the flum's defensive spray can be used as an alternate material component for the stinking cloud spell though if used in this fashion the spell will still attract floms in the area as if the liquid had been sprayed it is can of course be very useful in luring flumps out of their hiding spots well there it is guys what was supposed to be a quick 14 minute long video ended with a big rant about how they changed my baby boy fluff but if you liked this video make sure to please check out our store at mrrex.com and buy yourself this sexy attractive orcas jacket which looks freaking incredible i would also like to personally thank my patreon supporters barry maskan 5v magic shop morgan johnson rusty rayne doc theater the great codini omega scales alex cookson benjamin bosters faulky 951 or doric prince daylight morning crown sabine kurshabs lawrence's thomas hunt nathan mccomb soulless writer lost crusader mr salty stalia jd green olaf cleb treb909 bran camp chad aga john the wicket steven tony rc famine 52 george fortland sovereign mind trevor hess drake lugia 5 the living guild pack michael walker street blow describe herbert johnson the wizard's vault dragon 19 guy 97 james the perverted shoddycast hiram at questing under their influence podcast horror bound j free a alexander jesse valeziano john caglio and haley and vantaman for supporting me on patreon at the 25 dollar level if you would like to support me as well then please please head on over to patreon.com mr rex to support all right guys thank you for watching thank you for being here and being just awesome and i'll see you all next time

Channel: MrRhexx

Views: 199,643

Keywords:

Id: H3geYjmFjhU

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021