My lazy-ass way when i forgot to make a clue for False Hydra : "So, you make a leather helmet? Okay, do a safe check" Its so fun when the player confused about whats going on (It determined whenever the leather helmet tight enough to block the song)

Haha, false hydra are the best. I run one every Halloween for my current play group. It not as fun with a party that knows about it. So, we try to invite new players into our group. Even if you have only one player that has never heard of a false hydra before it can still be fun and everyone else is in on the joke. I love starting it with the mysteries travel sack in the group that belongs to another pc they don't remember. Or like a letter that is addressed to one of the members, but they don't remember the person that signed it.

That, FUCKING other pc thing is AWESOME

My friend DM’d a false hydra for our campaign. I had never heard of a false hydra before and most of our players never thought he would actually DM one. So my friends and I (the players) role into the town as part of a greater quest to kill the BBEG as theres someone in this town conducting research for BBEG and we need to find and interrogate them for information. Stop at town and find the village is only half populated with broken down stores and homes but then again the world we were in wasn’t exactly all sun shines and rainbows so I assumed it just another feature. What little of the towns inhabitants are there are lead by a an older gentlemen whose a priest in the new cult of the BBEG (most followers of BBEG have not been combatants and our characters did not have evil or neutral alignments so no murder hobo’s and we had long learned by this point that most followers would not be swayed and would turn radically violent and unpredictable when their ‘god’ was questioned or even debunked) we just smiled and nodded and played the part of wandering pilgrims wanting to know more about the area and the ‘new god’ that was the BBEG as we hadn’t found out where our HVI was. Get religous cult nonsense poured in our ears that turns out to be nothing burgers except for some throwaway lines revealing that the town is not safe and the priest is protecting the people the best he can. Not being assholes we decide to find out what’s making the town dangerous. Cue dramatic stop to white noise playing constantly in background. DM has us all role wisdom saves. Everyone fails except me because my roll was good and my tiefling warlock/druid had spec’d entirely into wisdom because of tragic back story tm. My character sees a blood trail on the ground leading into a house. Others only see puddles and mud. I go to investigate what the others are complaining to only just be a deserted house but to me was a well maintained house with a shattered front door and a horrifying blood trail. Enter inside the house intent to look for clues and-. Failed wisdom save. ‘Why am I in an abandoned rundown house looking at water?’. IRL we were all freaking out because my wisdom rolls had been bordering on god like and even I was fucking failing for some reason. Party finds nothing useful that day and beds down at the local inn. Shortly before our parties paladin beds in for the night along with his hat named smeargul that’s sentient and can change its shape at will and talk starts acting strange to paladin. Why is there water all over that other bed and that spare pack too?’ Paladin doesn’t think anything of it goes over closes the window and commits to long rest. The next day things get more intense, frustrated and needing to get on with BBEG we focus on that instead going to the local temple for the BBEG that the priest held service in. Service was boring regular church stuff and my character wanted to poke around the town a bit more so was outside when the service started. Roll wisdom saves. Party fails except for me. I hear a singing that borders on demonic but isn’t because my demon hunting tiefling speaks abyssal and infernal fluently. Singing is coming by the church. Go towards the church. Roll wisdom save. Fail at first on god tier roll but then remember I had feat that would give me a +4 to one roll a in game day and use it. Pass save. Turn the corner on main-street and look towards the church. Roll wisdom save. Fail despite my roll being just as high as my last one, party members donate their inspirations to me twice. Roll nat 20 on last try. I look to the church and the DM pulls me away from the table and shows me a picture of the thing doesn’t tell me a name for it and I myself don’t recognize it because it’s not in the monster manual despite me having been a DM myself for nearly a decade. Go back to table resume session. See the beast grab someone and fucking munch on them in the middle of service as everyone is singing inside despite the fact that everyone in the church should have been fucking freaking out at the monster eating a member of the crowd like it was a giraffe eating from a tall tree. Make to attack and-. Fail wisdom save. I’m standing in the middle of the road with the party around me looking at me concerned. ‘You ok?’. Fuck no there’s this huge fuck off monster that just broke the window and ate somebody did you not see it?!’ My character says pointing at window. Wisdom saves for the rest, they fail predictably. ‘That window has always been broken.’ What about ‘npc’,?! He just got eaten while you were all there!’ (NPC had been a funny chap that had shared some funny banter in a working party I had tagged along in on our first day of nosing through the village with 2 other members of the party). ‘Who the fuck is ‘NPC’? Entire table irl is getting headaches or hitting their drinks a little harder to get over their frustration. ‘What did the monster look like’? I describe the monster and paladin breaks character after a moment of recognition crosses his face and then he gets pissed irl and starts going off on DM about using thing he refuses to name while me and rest of the party are clueless and DM is chuckling while being yelled at angrily. Break session until next week. Come back and after some more poking around the village we find out our target is an a facility outside the village. As soon as we get a few miles from the village the wisdom saves at random moments stop but whenever party tries to remember past critical events now we do so with huge wisdom save disadvantages and a shit ton of fails. Find researcher in creepy as deserted facility except for for researcher driven mad with grief. Researcher keeps speaking about paying for the abomination she has made for BBEG. I have greater restoration and use it to heal her mind. It works! Researcher immediately and desperately pleads with the party to leave the place but we need her as well and she’s our prisoner for interrogation. She refuses to speak while on the island and says that we could happily torture the fuck out of her when on mainland but we had to leave NOW. Cue return of white noise in background. Wisdom saves. All fail. Researcher then breaks the spell by saying the name of the creature is a false hydra. Party can now pass wisdom saves. See the creature lurking out of a window and once it notices that we are looking right at it, it runs into tunnels beneath the island. Fucker was massive easily the size of an ancient dragon. Party decides we can’t leave the thing behind and interrogate researcher on the spot. Get plot relevant information on BBEG. Had choice to leave this small dying irrelevant island to its fate. Party agrees this abomination of flesh needs to be destroyed. Hunt it down. Long extremely difficult fight occurs, my character and that of our archer get killed. I get returned by nature goddess after making deal to become a full Druid and convert my levels of warlock into Druid sticking it to the demon that killed my wife and getting freedom and life back. Irl got so fucking pissed about the scenario in game that I threatened to quit the game if DM pulled this bitch out again. “I fear no man, but…that thing? …it scares me.”

Yeah, the problem with the false Hydra Is that if a player knows about It, the party will stream roll the campain

If you have a bard or afew bards it could be intresting to try counter its singing with your own music. Dont know how it would work but it'd be pretty cool if a bunch of bards joined together in singing to try buy enough time for the party and toen guards to foght back

Good video, I might have to try this.

Here’s an idea: Say one of the players’ characters is either deaf or has really bad hearing. You can then have the hydra appear to the party, but the only one who can see it is the previously mentioned character. This will cause the others to think that the character is either messing with them or going mad. It’ll create chaos and distrust within the party, paving the way to other “fun” opportunities.

I'm gonna run a false hydra and the plan is to have everything be ok first, then the population of the towns in the area start dwindling. I'm doing it in the NeverWinter region so I'm using the Dragon of IceSpire peak as a framework for the entirety and the dragon mechanic where he can just show up is the perfect red herring