Nightwalker: *Appears* High lvl Necromancer Wizard: "You're mine now."

3:25 Devourer 8:20 Purple Worm 14:30 Retriever 18:00 Nightwalker 22:45 Marut

I can just imagine a high level Wizard PC signing a fiendish contract, his soul when he dies in exchange for knowledge; and the Wizard thinks becoming a Lich would save him from his contract.... but then the Marut comes

The Nightwalker also poses a very interesting and tempting opportunity for PC Necromancers, because it’s at CR20 PCs would normally be at at least level 15 when they face it, and the Control Undead ability that Necromancy Wizards gain at level 14 gives them the chance to snag this huge threat and make the Nightwalker their permanent thrall.

As we know the only way to avoid a purple worm is to walk without rhythm

Maruts would be excellent for a Warlock in breach of contract! Not to pummel, although it might serve as a reminder, but the storytelling possibilities are phenomenal. What better time for a trial session, than a Patron seeking restitution for real (or perceived) abuses of contract?

when you outsmart the outsmarting challenges of your DM but then you realize he outsmarted your oursmarting by actually making you outsmarting him as part of his plan to outsmart you

I almost slaughtered my whole party with 2 normal Yeti and 1 Abominable Yeti. Big scary monsters are great, but sometimes a simple group of average monsters can do the job well enough.

7:54 I’d rule that on reviving a character whose soul is being consumed by a devourer, the character would have to make a contested WIS check against the devourer to gain the effects of the spell (like a grapple check)

Ahhh, a Purple Worm would've been the perfect cap to an encounter with a pack of Bulettes I ran for a 20th level one-shot

"Before you stands a spider made out of pure metal... in fact it seems to be made of gold... what you have stumbled upon is the one and only... the legendary GOLDEN RETRIEVER"

*Purple worm exists* Me: "IT'S AN ALASKAN BULL WORM!!!"

im running an undead campaign and you guys just gave me my end game enemies, thanks : 3

RE: Devourer. With respect to healing an imprisoned character. The answer may lay in the question : "What happens if it passes it Death saves ?" Sure it's unlikely, but it should be in the rules.

Epic list guys! Thanks! *plans next encounter where PC have to fight all 5 monsters at once*

I love the monster topics you guys do.

You can short-circuit a purple worm encounter if one of your casters has banish prepared. It'll be difficult for the worm to make that DC 18 or so Charisma save with its -3 modifier. That will give you a minute to skedaddle before it comes back, confused and angry.

First hearing the " nightwalker" description made me think of the character "death " in the 80's arcade game " gauntlet "

Me: sees title Also me: it’s time to give my bbeg some minions

Running Storm King's Thunder in the finale and there is a nursery of baby purple worms in the lair of the big bad. I decided to make it a bit more challenging on the party and included two adult worms. They killed one of them, and forced the other to escape (it couldn't get far as it was magically chained to an area it was in). But it made for a challenging battle, none the less! Was very fun to finally get to use them in a campaign!

You know, I always look at a Retriever and think to myself as a DM, "Hmm... I wonder if my targetted player would actually have a fighting chance if put into a 1-on-1 situation with it." Only recently did I realize that my party's Oath of Devotion Paladin (who pissed off a powerful drow noble) is borderline the perfect counter to it at his current level of 13. Mostly because he's a mounted combatant and makes excellent use of Freedom of Movement the first chance he gets. The force damage will certainly be a problem for him, but if I had to put my bets on anyone: Either him or the Swashbuckler Rogue.

Just got into D&D with some friends and have watched probably 40-50 hours worth of Dungeon Dudes content the past few weeks! Love you guys! One question: what app/program is the Drakkenheim party using on the tablets?

I would love for my level 20 Necromancer to fight a nightwalker. Because, the command undead just takes control of him perminantly

Man the devourer makes me think of relinquish from Yu-Gi-Oh

Not sponsored, but I genuinely love world anvil. I had an isolated planet for one of my campaigns, but with world anvil it’s so much more complex now. Before it was just a planet for the characters to be on. Now it has an in-depth creation story, 4 new subclasses, 4 new subraces, SO MANY MAGIC ITEMS, and much, much more.

3.5 art just takes me instantly back to being a kid reading thru these entries for fun. I had no idea how game mechanics worked then, just loved the monsters themselves. So fun to get to go back to them with added dimension now.

All great and classic monsters, it's good to see them outlined as such in this video. Great job guys!

Night walkers would be a terrifying addition to a death tyrant encounter, just say it's dreams tore a hole into the negative energy plane and your players must now deal with varying eye beams, complete negation of healing, paralysis, and max hp reduction.

The facial hair just like the d&d knowledge bombs, very on point and appreciated. Thanks bros!

The Paladin breaks their oath, expecting to become an oathbreaker. But instead a Marut shows up and teleports them to an Ace Attorney style encounter.

For the marut, you could have a plot where your PCs have to tempt and trick a extremely difficult or if not unbeatable villain into breaking an un-breakable contract and get dragged off by a marut.

The Devourer reminds me of the character Decompose from the 80’s cartoon series Inhumanoids. Great video. Glad I found this channel!

Getting healed while inside the Devourer seems strange. I'd consider the humanoid either "worn or carried", thereby uneffected by most spells, or I'd rule that there is no unobstructed line towards the target and as far as I know, most spells need that line

Question for you guys (and everyone in the comments): As the DM, how do you handle splitting the party? In the Examples you gave you had a Purple Worm swallowing a player and the borrowing away or the Retriever incapacitating a player and plane shifting away. How would that be handled game wise? Would you just take turns role playing with the party and the removed party member? Thank you. Keep up the great videos!

A DM i had sent a devourer after a party, along with other things. And we had 3 players. Highest was level 8 (me) and I got one hit. We should have died from the unfair fight however we somehow survive

Regarding a 17th level (+) party, using the most dirty tactic in the book, can OTK the Marut though. If you're not familuar with the strategy, it's basicly as such; *-* Preform actions that force the [target] to expend all Legenday Resistances (Can be anything, but generally something that forces them to use it or suffer greatly. Optimally; just repeat the next point untill sucsess.) *-* Any spellcaster with the abillity to cast *Polymorph* (Wisdom saving throw) use that against the *[target]*, turning it into a slug. *-* 17th level spellcaster w/ *Power Word Kill* casts said spell against the slug, and since the target for PWK has less than 100 HP, it straight out dies. (not dealing damage, mind you, the target just dies) But hey, that's not a fun way to play either. It is just a stupid broken combo that can even *kill a Terrasque* :P

prank the lich lord by being a necromancy wizard and turning his nightwalker against him

Great suggestions! You guys always have such detailed thoughts and strategies for each creature you discuss, it's fantastic to listen to you talk about it. And it gives me great ideas for my own game.

great episode as always lads!! thank you for your amazing content!!

With a purple worm in a desert, you could have it work like an antlion, making a sand trap to drag the party into it's mouth

I think it could be really cool to have a desert setting campaign based on dune with purple worms as sand worms reflaourved

Always wanted to throw a Nightwalker at my players. So damn scary

My favourite way to use a Marut is straight from the beginning, like Mister X in RE2 it's always there slowly but surely stalking them through their adventure as the PC's play a desperate race against time against the karmic justice nipping at their heels.

Loved the video, guys! If I could put in my two cents, however, I would LOVE to see more videos on sub-class guides like your Gloom Stalker or Divination Wizard ones! Maybe something on the Inquisitive, or something Druid related?

0:44 Got ya

"Surprise round" -triggering intensifies

Love your videos guy lots of good info wat better then just reading monsters or spells also I used the underrated spell trick you taught me in a game I was playing a orv barbarian and a mage had enlarge so I had him shrink me then had him use maghand to throw/guide me into a dragons mouth then he enlarged me while inside the dragon and I killed it from the inside my most epic dnd moment. (Magehand is cantrip so he managed to do both on one turn) his spell plus cantrip.

Okay so i had used a Marut in an evil campaign where a LOT of deals got made by the group wizard and he broke all of them except one. That one along with the sheer batshit insane magical research that he did and barely survived allowed him to willingly be taken by a Marut after the party tried to fight it(they didnt want to let their buddy go to what was probably his death). When he got there he released a logic plague powered by the entirety of the Far Realms. The one contract he did not break was the one with every single higher entity in there. And basically destroyed Sigil. Well turned it into a realm of chaos and horror even greater then the Far Realms.

Retriever: Somebody really wants you in their lab Nightwalker: Somebody really DOESN'T want you in their lab Marut: Somebody (possibly the DM) is officially fucking sick of your bullshit

Great video! I wish you had pictures of the monsters to introduce them though.

What monster would best suit being flavored as a ancient, long imprisoned, dark god? I plan on having a campaign where the PCs have to get legendary items, allies and power (levels and abilities) in order to stop a evil predicted to arrive by a prophecy. Btw: A large part of the dark gods power is sealed away in a sword. If he gets it the heroes pretty much lose.

I love the idea of a Marut as a slow lumbering consequence for an encounter. Like the party needs to accomplish something but they are under constant duress that this fucking behemoth will pummel them into oblivion if they fuck around.

One thing of note worth mentioning, is the fact that a Nightwalker comes from the Negative Energy Plane and is usually released into the Material Plane, when some fool travels into the Negative Plane (for whatever bizarre purpose) and survives. The Nightwalker is then released on a 'swap' scenario. This has great story elements to it for high level players as they may perhaps be chasing/guarding the individual that makes the jump (on purpose or by actions of an enemy). If they slay the Nightwalker, that dude is perma-lost in the Negative Plane but if the PCs can lure the Nightwalker back to the Negative Plane instead of killing it, the dude can be released from the Plane. Awesome plot devices there!

I know what that one-eyed Construct in the Thumbnail is. Always hits and does 60 force damage. It has 2 attacks and thus has an automatic 120 Force Damage per round.

Theorycrafters: I have infinite AC! Most DM's: Saving throws. Dungeon Dudes: Marut.

Have a fear of spiders. Sees the Retriever. "Aww, hell no."

The Marut makes me want the party to enter an impossible contract and have someone taken by him when they default

I can't help but think that those are going to appear in Shadows of Drakkenheim

I’d love to have the chance to run a high-level monster sometime.

Also, I'd love to see you guys review third party products, like "5 deadliest creatures from Kobold Press' Creature Codex," or "MCDM's Strongholds and Followers - a guide to playing with strongholds" etc.

I’d love to see what you two think makes a great party buffer (instead of an enemy debuffer)

I agree with you guys but I'd actually add Orcus to this list. He's pretty much invincible. He can by RAW call up to 3 liches and a Death Tyrant to serve him as minions. Probably can be beaten by a party of 8 to 12 level 20 characters though, but still a unreasonable challenge nonetheless. Luv you guys, keep the good work!

Yeay it’s Thursday, time for DM school!!!

My plan for the purple worm was to have the players fight a homebrewed monster that deals a lot of thunder damage and have the worm drawn to the noise

what I think of each creature 3:25 the Devourer: hes not very sturdy is he? I mean 16AC with 178 HP? and only +1 dex? that is like one fighter action surge with sharpshooter or GWM you would need like 5-6 to even start to challenge a high level group, not to mention its a fiend so if the group has a paladin they can pretty much cut its HP in half with one attack! so give it like a 1/10 8:20 purple worm: this is a bit more like it with 18 AC and 247 HP with the threat of the poison damage on each of its +14 to hit, I would say for a party of 4 use 2, split the multiattacks inbetween players DON'T FOCUS ON ONE PLAYER WITH BOTH ATTACKS, spread the panic, if you just try to kill one guy than they go down and someone casts healing word and they are back up and there is no threat 14:30 retriever: always run 2-3 with a group of 4 or more drow of any type otherwise they are kind of big targets, with only a +5 preceptions can be easily bested by a rogue with a magic bow 18:00 nightwalker: more impressive on paper but really just slows groups down, its low AC make it extremely vulnerable to attack rolls of any type, fought two at once in a game once and they got killed super hard super easy (6 rounds) the warlock kept spaming eldritch blast with agonizing blast, repelling blast and lance of lethargy witch locked it out of combat while the rest of the group kited the other one my character able to fly backwards (with my boots of flight) and fire off my double crossbow with sharpshooter and maneuvers and we just did that again for the other one, they are only scary up close, lock down there movement and fire bows and spells (has acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder resistance) till it dies ex pz marut: now this one will give players a HUGE challenge mostly because there is no way to stop its damage and it has a high AC and HP pool, even high level players will think twice before engaging this creature because it damage is so high and unavoidable, almost nothing has resistance to radiant or force damage so have a bear totem barbarian handy, on top of that it can either deal 45 damage with a stun (wisdom save dc 20!) or 60 damage on two creatures or 120 on one, that is alot of missing HP on one creature, I DO NOT recommend running more than one at a time but I do recommend teaming it up with CR 15-20 creatures for backup

About healing a PC inside the devourer. Is the PC visible? The art work suggests that there could be holes in skin or a not completely covered stomach / rib cage. If you can see it, and there is no invisible object or force blocking, then yes I believe it would be healed. Then wrestle out like other swallow types. Otherwise, if the target is not visible, can it be targeted by a healing spell? When an enemy has full cover, it can’t be targeted at all. Unless something like Sacred Flame says so. So does this apply to PCs? Further more, the magic must have a path. J. Crawford confirmed that sight alone is not good enough. You have to have a path free of obstruction. The example used was looking through a window and trying to fireball the room. JC says the fireball would instead go off at the window. TL;DR if the healer can see the PC and has an unobstructed path for the spell to travel, yes the PC can be healed. If not, good luck.

Reading through some of the comments on your other videos, someone mentioned a video on deities. Would love to see this. I know you’ve touched on the topic in your cleric video, but I’d love to hear how you handle them in your campaigns. Comparison to elder scrolls, are they more like the divine who act through the devoted, or more like daedra whom take the more direct approach?

The first time I heard of a Nightwalker I immediately printed it! I cannot wait to unleash it!

Being a gigantic beast, i don't think that a purple worm burrowing into the ground would go unnoticed...everybody would sense something similar to an earthquake , giving the party the time to maybe flee or do something. At the very least they would not be surprised...it's not som random best that scratch the earth, it's a titanic monster that it's literally causing a earthquake

*Please do a sequel for each of these videos ( they are awesome ) .*

Imagine using a Marut as a means of introducing a quest giver that kidnaps people that he or she wants to give a quest to.

because a nightwalker is spawned whenever a creature passes into the negative realm, a high level necromancer could sacrifice victims to the negative realm, then enthrall the nightwalkers as great beasts of death and destruction.

Love you guys!!

We fought a purple worm and my black dragonborn warlock got the brilliant idea to get intentionally swallowed by the worm so she could cast fireball inside of it, figuring her acid resistance would keep her more or less safe.

I would love to meet these guys in person, or even better, play in a session with them!

I'm thinking of monsters I can pair together. Like goblins and phase spiders. Goblin Phase Spider Riders.

Nightwalkers are fun :> But it's a very solid list altogether and I like some tips how the encounters should be run, like with the purple worm. Good stuff, Dudes!

8:07 Here is another rather nasty nasty: what if you put an imprisoned devourer (but not really imprisoned) in an area where there are a bunch of npc bad guy flunkies? The characters are thrashing the flunkies and the devourer comes to the "rescue", only to use the flunkies and food to repair itself each time the characters helpfully reduce each flunky to 0 hp.

I had to use a Marut on my players recently after they signed a contract with an NPC and never fulfilled their end of the bargain. To make a long story short never sign a contract with Trixie the Pixie, she has powerful friends.

Question: I want to use a purple worm for an encounter, but I need to contain it to a particular area. Ideas? Purple worms can go through earth, sand, and water. What prevents it from movement outside of a bounded space? I have heard that some Underdark cities are warded against purple works, but I can find no specific mechanism. I dislike just using “because magic” with no specific explanation for players.

Thanks for the video! For the Devourer, would a shape-changed druid still be considered a humanoid for the Soul Rend damage?

Nightwalkers sound absolutely terrifying. Add that with not being able to heal and it being a cr20 creature... I welcome death

Another great vid, idk what determines the videos you make but has anyone asked on how you adjudicate passive checks vs active checks? Like when you would use passive Perception, Investigation, and Insight? And even the difference between Passive Perception and Investigation. Just having a little problem at my table I DM for. I've got a player with 20 Passive Perception and Investigation and a 16 Passive insight and unless I make the DC over 20 for some stuff he just automatically knows were everything hidden is in a room he walks in and almost always can tell if someone lies to him. Just a question. Love the content!

I remember a fight where we fought some devourers.. or were they bodaks.. that were mounted on undead trexs..

Very inspiring. I just scripted my next 3 sessions using these monsters. Thanks Dudes!

@18:12 Kelly: "The Nightwalker." Me: damnit, thought they were unique to the King of Shadows

I just pictured some dark elves sending out a golden retriever to hunt down an enemy.

I would love to see a great video about how to run good low level mini bosses in dungeons or labyrinths. Like a minotaur as the final boss of a low level party's adventure in a labyrinth. Seeing monsters like that, brute force but can be used interestingly like since it knows all the passage ways using it to run circles around the party before busting through a thin wall and goring a party member. Then running around a corner. Leaving the party a decision. Chase or wait. As it keeps stomping around them.

Hey!! It's Anthony Jr. from the Sopranos and a dude. Good to see the pitfalls of child-stardom didn't drive him to its common vices.

hmm..can you imagine a group of devourers vs a nightwalker..

I wouldn’t be able to use any of these creatures effectively without frustrating my party. People use things like purple worms as brutes cause if you were tactical with them, your players would have little chance. Something I struggle with all the time as DM is how much I should be challenging my players without making things feel hopeless.

I put a purple worm agaist my lvl1 12th party and for story reasons this was happening in the plane of fire. Fight ended in one turn when the cleric banished it back to its home plane

I feel like a purple worm could easily be a much more threatening creature like you said but I find it hard to make it fair for players to deal with a creature that can move 50 feet through existing tunnels with a pretty much doomed player in its mouth. I also find it hard to justify that the purple worm would find its appetite satisfied by a single medium sized creature when it can fit an entire army of medium creatures in its space

With the new Tasha's manual also warlock can cast wish if they have the genie patron and I love it

I had a DM try to convince me the Nightwalker was the hardest non-legendary-anything foe he had in any of his books. For fun, I made a Lv. 20 Fallen Aasimar (Hexblade Warlock 3 / Conquest Paladin 17) with no fighting style selected, no magic items or consumables, and one feat / ability score increase not chosen. The massive amounts of fear effects and necrotic damage offered by the combination was rendered useless, yet in a slugfest the Paladin won the fight with 65% HP and roughly half their spell slots remaining. If given a short rest, this one single completely sub-optimal character could've taken two Nightwalkers back to back.

Thursdays are so great!

Maruts really are a plot device. Overpowering one is hardly ever the question ; they make me think of the old 2nd ed Solars. So you can use them to keep your players on the run, or force them to confront some sort of court ruling in Sigil. Or they could be protecting a NPC that is being hunted by a Marut ; but hey, inevitable is in its title. The very fact it isn’t a “legendary monster” indicates it simply isn’t designed to end up on a PC’s trophy wall.

Way to go guys!

Great video! Also really enjoy these types of ya'lls videos. Don't most healing spells require being able to see the target? Presumably you couldn't use any of those b/c you can't see the target if they are inside the devourer. For healing spells that don't necessitate either contact or a sight line should be ok though.

You should add a photo of them when you mention them!