I feel like the original 'can only see magic' version is far more interesting than the other versions

Used this monster in a 3.5 campaign where players were traveling through a tunnel system. A Druid scouted a side passage and was able to glimpse this monsters tentacles on the ceiling. They walked backwards, used stone shape to seal off the passage and told the other party members that way was a dead end lmao

The danger of this monster increases with the lack of information that players may have about it because it is not popular at all, most would have no idea what they are facing

A predator monster that specifically targets spellcasters? Interesting concept.

The perfect red herring side quest. "Oh you're looking for this place?" As a effect that's really scary

The balhanoth really does feel like it matches its description. It's supposed to be a monster that is the perfect predator of drow, mind flyers, beholder, and pretty much all of the Underdark's most magically gifted species. It's a terrifying opponent, if used properly. I also love how it's CR is 10ish, when it can easily swing well above that comfortably if played right.

I actually really love the style of this monster. How lore wise it causes illusions to give you a false sense of hope and stuff. Super cool.

Love the old baalhanoth art; the 4e and 5e looks less savage and slimy

This is literally "Rocks fall, everyone does" in monster form Edit: lmao I am not gonna change it, this peak auto correct.

Interesting that you mentioned Nyarlathotep in your campaign. A villain in my campaign was driven to insanity after an encounter with one of Nyarlathotep's relatives, specifically Tawil at'Umr, the physical manifestation of Yog-Sothoth. Ever since then, the villain has been desperately trying to stop the old ones from returning to the Material Plane, and he's resorted to some pretty heinous methods to keep them at bay. As they are beings of madness and chaos, the villain wishes for the Material Plane to become a domain of law and clarity as to negate the influence of the old ones, and his method for achieving that is... Well, its to enslave all living beings and eliminate free will. I could definitely see a Balhannoth trapping this villain and the party with its various abilities, and they have to temporarily put aside their differences to combat the more immediate threat.

That's what a call mechanicly well designed monster!

Can teleport anyone sixty feet to a place of its choosing. Like, into a large chest, a small branch caver just big enough to not crush a player, underwater or into the stomach of an underwater creature, ten feet under lava? That part seems extremely OP given the right environment.

As soon as I heard about the interdimensional lock aura I immediately thought of using magitech to extend the range of that ability, trapping the creature on a spell jammer ship, and using some sort of contraption capable of insta killing the creature, preserving its remains for long periods of time, and having someone cast rivivify on it to make some kind of interdictor ship

At tier 4 levels, it can be very difficult to challenge a party, this sounds like a monster for that situation

YEEEEEE, LOVE FOR THE BALHANOTH!!! Super underrated monster. Matt Colville actually ran one in his "The Chain of Acheron" campaign on KZfaq. Got demolished by the PCs, but I still got so giddy when I realized what the monster was.

gloves of the balhannoth: gives antimagic effect when grappling allows the user to cast detect magic at will, without material components gives advantage to grappling requires attunement

The Masked One is one the greatest patrons I've ever seen in play. tLoDaN was an epic campaign :) The first thing that TPKed my first party by a damned ogre. We were kids and mainly relied on our friend the DM's ADND knowledge. Missing all around, and him killing 9 of us (yes, we were 14 kids).

Eh, too much of a DM fiat creature for my liking. Anti-magic, anti-teleport, can restrain for free, has advantage for free, can turn invisible for free, can teleport massive distances (most maps are never that big even and it nullifies range combat), has spider-climb (bye melee), lair actions, has legendary actions, regional actions, can casually force a 1v1 encounter and can just show up whenever it wants while knowing EVERYTHING about the players? Pass. Even wyrms would be jealous of this thing.

I used this monster and mixed it with a displacer beast in my plane hopping campaign. The party hunted it for several sessions and the fight was epic

Nice! I used once a Balhannoth in some caves behind a Portal to the shadowfell. It lurked there and tried to split the group. An Illusionist was a servant of it. So the Balhannoth teleported Party Members in small caves and the Illusionist made illusionary walls. My group got really scared. They were split up and put to round caves without an exit. Even two of them had no Darksight, so trapped in a dark chamber without an Exit. Yes, it is a really scary killer.

Bhaelenoths are nightmares. If you run them right its so brutal.

I've used a 5e version as a boss fight foe my players one time and it was such an amazing fight. A great arena, being a fake library, 4 powerful players, it was the best.

BG3 introducing to everything DND multiverse is such a gift.

Well, players are certainly have advantage over everything in the campaign, and while i see why its a thing in such "High magic" world i still can't get off the feeling that all this "anti-magic" stuff like "Oh, now you cant use magic" "Oh, your spell completely disappears without any trace or consequences. Why? Dunno - antimagic" is still sounds like a BS

This is, perhaps, the most gnarly ambushing creature I've ever heard of. Nastier even than the old Deepspawn I ran in AD&D 2e.

Thank you!!! I have been looking for some aberation monsters to surprise my party with. This is the first time I've heard about this creature and the way to use it. Inspiring!

Never heard of this monster, sounds terrifying lol. Great vid man 👍

this is the perfect monster to negate a certain min-maxer in my group. Such an ingeniously built enemy! ty!

A lot of monsters are a lot tougher when played right, at least in 2nd. For instance, people always forgot that dragons could cast spells. The worst was probably when we fought a demon. It spent every turn gating in lower level demons. Which spent their turn gating in even more. Etc.

Damn - nearly forgot about this unit of a monster, thanks! I loved your description of the fight where it teleported away while having a character grabbed and then throwing him into a pit, hehe...

Another great video thanks Esper!

An extremely deadly ambush predator. I don't know where they prefer to live, but they put cave fishers to shame. XD

Gonna agree with a lot of comments. This thing has way too many toys that makes it really easy to TPK. If I was in a game and this attacked my group and the DM did nothing to warn me or the party I would be most unhappy. This is the kind of things that make players quit.

Sounds like this Balhannoth is a monster worthy of being included in something as horrifying for a party of adventurers as the infamous Tomb of Horrors D&D module, with not only its lethal attacking and surprise capabilities, but also its ability to both lure unsuspecting prey towards it, and to add insult to injury, to deny its prey the ability to cast spells, including a means of quickly escaping from the encounter via magical means. If I wanted to run an encounter with a monster like this, even as a solo boss monster encounter without any other monsters to support it (only considering additional monster support for epic-level parties around level 20), I'd 1st need to train the party on how they could hope to not necessarily defeat one, but to at least survive an encounter with one without anyone dying. To accomplish this, I'd need to get the party used to doing the following: - 1. Dealing with enemies that could either teleport themselves or teleport or pull party members towards themselves, or towards certain death (whether it's a bottomless pit, lava, or a vortex leading to a dimension of death), so that the party could hopefully find ways to counter such tactics by the time they encounter a Balhannoth. - 2. Dealing with encounters where magical abilities that would've allowed the party to leave the scene via teleportation or dimensional door wouldn't work (such as the final boss fights at the end of each chapter of Neverwinter Nights). - 3. Dealing with potentially complex and/or deadly encounters while under the influence of an anti-magic field. - 4. Understanding that magical items give off signatures that can be detected by means outside of mere sight, sound, smell, or touch, and using that knowledge to not only detect magic themselves, but to avoid detection by, or mislead, enemies that can themselves detect magic. - 5. Getting into the habit of viewing situations that would tempt their greed or desperation with suspicion or distrust, and to suspect that anything that seems too good to be true, such as a dragon's hoard, minus the dragon, could be an elaborate illusion or disguise (such as a Mimic), perhaps to a point where they might become paranoid when a Balhannoth attempts to lure them to whatever they desire the most. Even if I had felt that the party was ready to possibly encounter a Balhannoth, I'd still give them ample warnings about what's to come, such as terrifying tales and accounts of NPC survivors (including races that are themselves powerful compared to PC races, such as Drow, Duergar, and even Mind Flayers) of expeditions being lured in by hunches that something of great wealth or power could be obtained (such as a long dead and forgotten dragon's hoard for example), or even the prospect of a safe haven, only to then flee, barely, after what they sought was an illusion, and that most of the members of their parties were slain by a horrifying entity, easily as terrifying as a dragon, though for different reasons, with some even revealing that their party members had tried to fight back or flee using magic, including dimension door, misty step, or teleport, but couldn't due to some kind of anti-magical effect that was present around the monster.

The people I played with in 3.5 (and in some cases still do) were... aware of the balhannoth, to the point where I was pretty sure that was it when I saw the title. It was pretty universally agreed to be under-CR'd. The combination of having a grapple modifier higher than most frontline characters at that level are likely to have, while being able to shut down most other methods of getting out of a grapple, is a little obscene. There is an argument that Freedom of Movement works, since Antimagic Grapple says it shuts down magic items and the victim's ability to use magic, but not spells placed on the victim. That's a bit of a "follow the letter and not the spirit" justification, but I think it was a loophole people agreed not to peer too closely at.

This is why I love your channel. I love lore for dnd, warhammer, etc. and channels like yours and a few others help me learn about new monster or aspects of those things. Very cool video. Are they only in the under dark? Or can they be used by beings on the overworld by summoning?

One of my all-time favorites (Preceded only to Aboleths and Illithids). Very well presented.

Great content, Esper.

great video title and thumbnail

Great topic, as always.

I used one of these once in a 3.5 game, a looooooong time ago. It wasn't a wipe, but mostly because the party incidentally happened to collectively have abilities and items that helped counter its strengths.

Aberrations make great nightmare fuel.

I’ll be honest I think I’ve seen this things stats once or twice but always shied away from using for one reason or another. Though now that a think about it adventure where this thing has been drawing in magic users and killing them but no one knows what it is could be fun. Thanks for the idea

I'll steal this. I'm in the middle of converting just about every Underdark monster in history to 5e for the Out of the Abyss community. I need to get on this one.

Loved running this monster in 5e. It's ability to move around the battle made it a great challenge. Especially when combined with its ability to customize the map.

Fascinating, thank you.

Are you telling me that a creature that shuts down everyone's "build" specialties, like insta-healing, battlefield control, misty-step teleportation and "MUH TIME CLERIC/BARB WILL USE HIS BLAH BLAH BLAH..." is an actual danger to the group? Hunh!

I hadn't heard of it before, and it sounds great!

Never has something made D&D sound so unpleasant to play. I’m not sure I’d continue associating with someone who put that in a campaign I was in.

The 3.x version is especially rude because in 3.x the players require magic items to keep up with the monsters statistically. That magic-negating grapple would be absolutely crippling.

The art in your videos has soared. This creature is phenomenal. 😢 I would like to see this as a guard dog to the Illythid compound. Illythid in my games were one of the deadliest monsters. They were psionic specialists with great natural mental abilities as per the old psionics handbook and psionic accessory books too. Great content. ❤

Well you gave me an idea about my fantasy world building project's underground ecology. A creature that has no eyes but detects things that alter surrounding magic fields. Not only which emit magic fields themselves but which obstruct, conduct and reemit, alter, or distort the fields coming off of potent magical ores.

Two monsters my party has trouble with is the Pit Fiend devil, as it casts wall of fire and fireball ad nauseam, and the Goristro demon, with its impossible skill to hit and three powerful attacks per round. Everything else, they smash in one round like nothing.

My kids group encountered one despite warnings not to go deeper into the caves, they were level 7 and a party of two. They didn’t die, or kill it but did defeat it anc forced it to retreat. Their secret: they just kept getting critical hits back to back, four attacks a round total and two or three were crits like clockwork, was one of those “dice gods decided you win anyway” after a certain point I had it retreat to live another day, which oddly enough their new group which has three people now have about a 25% chance they end up at its new layer while hunting dragons.

It sounds like elements of Stephen Kings IT! I think I have a placement for this! Thank you for sharing and explanation.

I'm sorry. I have to. "Dwee-oh-mer," meaning spell. Literally "spell-sight" Dwemer are the deep elves of the elder scrolls series.

How to give your players PTSD with just one monster:

I love videos like this. I can only read the monster manual so many times. Hmmm. Maybe that could be my next PC. An arcane zoologist or something. To the handbook!

Prepping for Out of the Abyss, which I'm running as a survival/psychological horror campaign; this will be the perfect monster to ambush my party with! Thank you for the video!

It's a very powerful monster in most of it's designs. I just wish it was a more uniform philosophy between editions.

Partway through, I kept hearing the old 'Manha Manha' song whenever you said the creature's name.

My "TPK every time" monster is the Seugathi from Pathfinder. Those of you who have played Shattered Star know what I'm talking about.

I remember the first time my players ran into a Bodak. They still freak when they see one on the mat

My character captured one and was able to “convince “ ( as in charm and coerce ) it to do special effects for our concert in the fey wild if we fed it enough . The competing bard never stood a chance . In fact we trounced there bardic champion so hard that not only did the fey lord remove the curse on one of our friends ( what we came here for ) but he gave us a special gift where we essentially got the eladrin teleport once per day .

Linear fighters, -quadratic wizards- squishy commoner.

This is just Tomb of Annihilation. This is Tomb of Annihilation as a monster. It’s built from the ground up to engineer a TPK, it has abilities to lock down EVERY CHARACTER ARCHETYPE, one of it’s regional effects is to lure a party of adventurers to their doom. Like, this isn’t even as interesting as Annihilation because it’s ONE MONSTER. At least the Tomb is an entire dungeon so the party can try to handle each insane deathtrap individually and maybe leave when things go sour. This is all of them all at once and it can chase your party and never let them leave. This doesn’t feel like a monster you challenge your players with, it feels like one you PUNISH them with. As a DM some 10+ years now, no thank you.

Great vid! Now I’ve gotta find a good place to use one of these things…

The only time I’ve ever seen this creature used was on Dice, Camera, Action. I think it may have been the only time in the series where characters were killed in combat (not including narrative deaths). Granted, they blew themselves up with a fireball, but the balhannoth still got the best of them.

I do remember watching that stream. Poor nox..

I've also been playing 3.5e D&D for many, many years and my regular group plays pretty optimized characters. I wasn't immediately familiar with the creature and looked up the entry. The speed is impressive--a 50 ft climb speed is quite nice. It's melee capabilities are pretty good for it's CR: two slams and a bite with a respectable attack roll, combined with a large size and a 15-foot reach. It's grapple check gives it a decent advantage on characters that have maxed Escape Artist, and it wins handily against anyone else. I like it, overall. It would probably make an interesting encounter for a 10th or 11th level part, especially grouped with a couple other creatures. But as a TPK threat to an optimized party? I doubt very much. First problem is the Dweomersight only goes out to 120 feet, and it's totally blind to anything beyond that. That sounds like a lot, but that's short range for a longbow. Any optimized ranged attacker could comfortably sharpshoot at it's Flat-footed AC all day. Additionally, since the entry for the ability says it otherwise functions as blindsense, that means a character with the Darkstalker feat is effectively invisible to it, as it cannot make Spot checks at all and only has a +6 to Listen. Second, it has no ranged abilities at all. A Jump of +17 and a 50 foot movement speed means that the maximum vertical height it can reach by rolling a Natural 20 on a check is 29 feet. Any creature capable of remaining 30 feet in the air is completely safe from this monster. And third, I think you may have misread the entry in Monster Manual IV (either that or my version includes an errata). The Antimagic Grapple feature only suppresses the properties of magic items its opponent wears and prevents them from casting spells. It does not suppress ongoing magical effects. Freedom of Movement is a 4th-level spell, which the party has had access to for three levels now, and it causes a creature to automatically succeeds at all opposed grapple checks to escape or to avoid being grappled. So even if it surprises the party, if more than one person has access to Freedom of Movement, it won't be able to grab anyone. That removes a significant portion of its threat. Obviously, you can mitigate the first two problems by designing the encounter with favorable terrain to the creature which is simple enough as its preferred environment is underground. But its biggest problem lies in its ability scores. Here's how an encounter with this creature would go against our party under ideal conditions for the creature: -The given that the creature has the same bonus to Hide as a 10th-level character has to Spot, it's unlikely that no one in our party sees it. We roll initiative as normal, and on the first round our resident skill monkey identifies the creature with a Knowledge: Dungeoneering check and notes it's vital statistics and capabilities. Our Wizard then casts Assay Spell Resistance as a swift action, followed up by Ray of Stupidity, dealing 1d4+1 points of damage to the creature's Intelligence score. The creature only has 3 Intelligence, so on a roll of a 2 or higher, it's Intelligence is reduced to zero and it immediately falls unconscious until it can rest overnight to heal at least one point of the damage. Our melee character then gets into position to coup-de-grace the creature, at which point it likely dies. It's a good find and definitely something I'll keep in mind. But I definitely would tell nervous DM's not to worry about the survival of any party that's appropriately prepared for a 10th-level encounter.

Sounds like a fun one!

>Lives in such darkness it doesn't develop eyes >Changes the skin tone like a chameleon wat

This monster is for an army encounter, not a adventuring party. Like forcing a siege/NPC TPK on a place and then the players fleeing to later deal with the monster with lots of preparation - discovering its weak points, details of its habilities, what it can do, etc.

Nyarlathotep is pronounced: "nee · aar · laa · thuh · tep"

They should call this thing the mage slayer. I wonder how it would do against a party comprised of fighters, barbarians, rangers, rogues, and so on.

I was playing a cleric in a party going through a cave system. Someone spots something on the ceiling; the GM describes it as a tentacled aberration, clinging to stalactites overhead. I then cast *Grease* at the ceiling. The aberration lost it's grip and fell far down to the floor below where we were, trying to crawl away. The GM was not happy. I think I cost her a big encounter.

Chris Perkins threw the 5e version of this against the Dice Camera Action crew - and commented how very surprised he was how much it punched above its CR. Far more dangerous & effective than he expected. I remember thinking it could have been a TPK if he had not subtly steered away from that.

Actually used it in a 3.5 campaign a long while ago. It was technically a baby/pet of a Dragon so i changed it a bit and it was kinda guarding the entrance to his hidden hoard they were pointed to.

I could imagine a Balhanoth being an amazing mastermind of a guild. What better way to reinforce the illusions & get fresh food than to have others draw in your victims, and provide actual treasures for people to look for. Imagine, for instance, that Hogwarts of the Harry Potter series was actually some ancient, Lawful Good / Lawful Neutral Balhanoth (explaining things like the moving staircases, the room of requirement, the chamber of secrets, and the generally nonsensical design elements of the school). Or, similarly, imagine such is the case for Casita in Encanto.

Beholder nest including nearly every type of beholder type that exists + Groundhog Day. This one shot I created proved to be one of the most intriguing quests my friends got to experience with me. Back in the days of Arch-Magi, I came up with a devilish plot and this was born from it.

Okay, this guy's pretty good, but my favorite "ending-in-oth" monster still has to be the Ultroloth. It just has this cool Michael Moorcock vibe to it, like a bunch of mini Mabelrode the Faceless running around.

You're the ending of my life, you're the aberration!

This monster reads like a recipe for TPK flavoured cake.

This is one of the few monsters that was actually nerfed in monsters of the multiverse, although it's not a huge nerf, they just lowered it's damage per round slightly.

Overlooked cuz we DMs want our players not to hate us

Anything that comes with a build into anti magci effect is lethal as hell.

So you've got every ability under the sun? Yeah well....I've got first strike and deathtouch?

This sounds like a fun creature to smarten a cocky party up.

Run it again! I come from a time when tpk was normal

Awesome as it is, the 3e balhannoth would likely have met its match with one of my characters, a githzerai monk/psychic warrior who specialised in grappling. By among other things growing to huge size. And who had a psionic teleport.

Also i feel like a baby version of this with watered down abilities would be fun

Me when I cast Magic Aura and am no longer considered a humanoid for the purposes of spells and magical effects:

I have thought about using this monster in the past and every time I look at its abilities I say "nope, that's a tpk" and don't use it. I love the monster though.

Oh ive had tpk monsters that i found out were just plain broken for their CR. Hydrolisk comes to mind.

Only problem with this type of monster is you have to have the right players for it. This thing is such a monster than it will always get that ambush surprise factor and put the party on a REALLY nasty back foot immediately. Which is fine BUT it can lead easily to a TPK and players feeling like "the game was rigged from the start" aspects. This happens sometimes regardless with a TKP but when the monster has like for example Greater Invisibility or Flight an the party isn't prepared properly there is just nothing they can do an scramble to make up a terrible solution on the spot (I splash water around hoping to find him) or I hold my action till he flies down (only for the boss to instead do a breath attack) . I like bosses like this but it can really hurt players feelings. Or sour an entire campaign with a bad TKP. (usually happens with "ambush" encounters) Like had a similar monster encounter once that basically dragged off the wizard Round once and killed him before the party could save him then proceeded to pick the rest off one at a time due to its ability to fly and use spells.

Yes Drake body was in his own bag of holding before being brought back

Hey Esper, have you considered doing a Top 10 of your favorite monsters? I’d like to see that.

This sounds awful. I mean if it had just one of these features, it would be fine, but this is just absurd.

I ran this monster recently though I flavored it as a carnivorous plant that guarded a groove. Nearly wiped the fresh party I threw it at.

These videos are so cool! Better than normal ranking videos.