Yeah that's what I was thinking when he mentioned it. If it eats a whole person, perfect clone, no real starting issues. But if it's like only a hand, then the clone would be weaker, and less intelligent. Granted since they can make multiple copies of the same thing, obviously it means that the first few clones even from just a hand eaten, would still be pretty viable as minions. But if it was even less, like say only the tip of a finger, then the starting clone would be very basic, and it'd probably get mutations or be deformed after only a few clones are made.
what i see this as is giving some weird ecconomic potential. what if the deep spawn cant create new genetic material? this sounds like it would go against the design but it doesnt. if they cant create more material and the clones themselves can be used as clean slates, then you have a counter ballance thing. speed of reproduction- if it eats a whole adventurer it could basicly rez it after a short period. this would be useful in combat. but if it takes longer to make a reproduction then less base material could be used. so you could have two perfect clones in terms of stats but they would take twice as long to gestate. as the number of clones increases the amount of time it requires to put out another being also increases. this matches organizational growth in natural organizations you could have a large number of spawn but that would take a large amount of biomass. or a large amount of time. and if you give it an overmind personality of modifying spawn, not just having degradation, you could have it start rather bizare events. it could have an early epoch of a bunch of clones of a stray adventurer. and then it could start cloning ants, and then it could scale up the size of the ants. and it could send out swarms and hives to search for bizare things, and bring back some zombifying spore. it could use this on a target, to try vastly improving power, and then when it consumes the contaminated biomass, it could become infected by this super ordinal disposition. then you have a pretty interesting basis for a civil war. both physical ideologies and interests coincide over the same beings leading to schizoid actions. if the ribbon of the 'overmind' decides to promote a trait or reduce a trait, then you could have clones which are stylisticly different. like having different hair color, and with a focus on gestation time then the closer you get to teh overmind as a party, the more you have to deal with progressively more malformed beings, cause they are just like different levels of fetus development. you could have the amount of a victem eaten change how degraded they are, but also you could have the degradedness be the degree of being under developed. they need more time executus, and yet you bring cretins to my wedded comb? i might end up using this for some litterary fiction.
A Deep Spawn and a False Hydra sound like natural enemies. Imagine these two long-lived rivals trying to outgaslight the other with the party and lead them to their rival's lair
the false hydra eats someone, the next day that exact same person reappears thus confusing the false hydra. mindflayers farm a deep spawn for infinite hosts. what other horrific monsters could live in a symbiotic relationship with this thing to make the absolute worst town to visit? maybe an aboleth or a coven of hags?
Long ago the elves built an underground city in the heart of an island with the help of the dwarves. The beautiful natural cave flower with nurturing waters and underground grottoes of healthy fungi. However, a false hydra took over this realm. The heroes of the city sacrificed themselves to temporarily seal the hydra, but werre devoured and forgotten. Many years pass, and a trading city is built on top of the underground caves. The humans flourish from the trade. Eventually a deep spawn finds its way there and infiltrates the seedy mob that formed on the docks. The deep spawn eats and replaced the mob boss. Uses him as figurehead to gain political power in the city. Then the hydra starts to slither back. It eats people here and they, and they are forgotten. But the deep spawn can still make copies of some of them, even though he's forgotten who they were. Eventually the PCs come to a city with very few real people left. It's not the bustling trade center it once was and it seems to be run by idiots. The deep spawn doesn't know what it's fighting, but it keeps making more bodies. The hydra keeps eating. Traders are perplexed and they can't remember their old trading contacts, but they know they use to get great bargains here. As the PCs explore the caves of the island to rid it of pirates, they find the huge city underneath. Ad they explore and get more loot, eventually can't remember who sells them magic items anymore. It's a race against time to find the false hydra before the city is overrun with idiots or the hydra emerges.
Now I'm imagining a prestigious monster slayer's guild which is oddly devoid of taxidermied beasts. They claim they're doing it for the safety of the realm and not the glory, but in reality a deep spawn is eating their carcasses for its own purposes.
That could even be their means of training; The Deepspawn creates clones that the hunters fight for practise, letting them get abnormal amounts of experience observing and combatting all sorts of rare magical creatures.
Adventurer's guild members must bring back the head of the monster or criminals as proof. Plus the head makes its creations more intelligent than just a finger.
I used a deepspawn once, as a minion to a powerful red dragon. The dragon used him to prepare a themed dungeon for the party, as part of an elaborate revenge scheme. First, he populated the dungeon with multiple copies of an annoying miniboss the party had killed in the previous story arc. (he got him ressurected once to get a fresh body) Then, when the party refused to walk into a trap, he felt so insulted, he took a hostage they didn't save and fed her to the deepspawn so he could repeatedly snack on her.
@@Mr.C710. The player's mentor used to be his regular foe, but died before any revenge could be taken (the dragon was Lord Firkraag - I had a player who hadn't played much computer games, so I converted Baldur's Gate into a 3.5 campaign)
Presumably, like their Beholder Cousins, the Deep Spawn are usually, shall we say, A bit mentally unstable. Imagine a Deep Spawn that was influenced by a Paladin to do good...A bit like Flower, but with a paladin instead of a wizard. So the Deep Spawn basically turns a dungeon into the equivalent of a Hippie Commune. All of its minions know that the Deep Spawn will be upset if anything evil goes on, so you could have some pretty bizarre situations. Cleric: Did that troll just invite us in for tea and cookies and promise it wouldn't hurt anyone? In the Paladin's Aura of Truth?
Actually, it'd be really cool if there was a Deep Spawn interested in nothing but exceptionally rare species and have it turn itself into the heart of a Garden of Eden of sorts where clones of these rare monsters can continue existing even after the species is extinct, like a living archive
That sounds like both quest giver and area boss. "You may destroy this beautiful sanctuary, and end the 'threat'. Or you can work for this sanctuary and bring the rarest morsels here. The choice is yours, traveler."
I'd imagine that these have some horrible ties to beholders. -Meatballs with a bunch of eyes -Tentacles with face bits on them -Can clone stuff -Tactical -Abberations So you know if a beholder dreams of another beholder, it spawns a clone of itself? What if these guys come from a beholder's nightmare? Like, those weird ones where you see a creepy doppelganger version of yourself, that kind of thing?
That is a totally plausible origin. The alpha DS would have to be terrifying to have survived its "birth" without any minions and escape its beholder parent. I imagine that any beholder that encounters one would be utterly genocidal with terror, as it probably sees Deep Spawn as something akin to one of us seeing a creature that's a cross between a sibling, Slenderman, and the Corinthian from Sandman with his toothy mouth-eyes. Hell, knowing about this origin for DS and figuring out how to use it in illusions would probably be _the_ force multiplier that a party would need to defeat a beholder.
Massive plot twist you could have in your game is revealing that the party actually lost a fight with a Deep Spawn and its minions, being sent back out into the world as sleeper agents once they had been cloned. Perhaps they were somehow cloned *too* perfectly, allowing them to chip away at the mental shackles binding them to their new father/mother. Maybe they only realize what happened when something they find temporarily disrupts the enthrallment. They are still beholden to the Deep Spawn, but now a sliver of their soul has begun to rebel against it.
In the second campaign I was ever involved in our dm used a deep spawn in a fairly early encounter of ours. We did decent but clearly were on our way to a tpk so we got out of the sewers it was hiding in and alerted the local slayers guild and that was the end of it for us. And a way time later we finally went back to our roots and returned to our first "Hub City" as we called it and the city was thriving as it was before thanks to it's agricultural and smithing focus. But there was seemingly a boom in technology in the last two years while we were gone, nearly more so than the last two-hundred years the city as been established. And so we investigated and we learned of a new faction that specialized in technological advancements in the city that had become nearly adjacent to the slayers guild and so we went to them and learned that anyone belonging to the new faction was never seen speaking or without a mask on. Which of course we thought was suspicious but nobody seemed to mind since they took commissions and would at least try and normally succeed at making what was requested. And due to some "base level mind reading," our buddy heard him say something on the lines of "why does this one not wear the uniform, has this one betrayed mother?" So our rougue did his thing and followed him to their headquarters (pretty much just an estate) and after some patience, he watched three of them take of their masks and boom. Three people that looked identical to our artificer then one more, then two more, and that's when he came back and told us. And I have never since then seen a table so crazy yet silent before, bouncing around yet we couldn't find our words. So we went talked to our old friend the king and with a small party of his royal guard, we took the estate with their help and they stayed on guard while we interrogated one of the clones. Got him to tell us about a secret tunnel and we found the foe that nearly killed us way long ago. And still to this day, it was my favorite dnd moment at the table because it showed me how insane dnd can really be. So happy you've covered one of my all time favorites!
The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about the psychology of the clones. What does it feel like to be so fiercely loyal to their Deepspawn? How do they justify their attachment or make sense of it in their head? What if the original creature hated Deepspawns, how does it affect the clone? Do they have mixed feelings about it? What happens to the clones once their Deepspawn dies? Do they just wander off and reintegrate into society the best they can? Do they mourn the death of their creator? All I’m saying is that this is a really interesting backstory for a PC for those who like to go heavy on roleplay and such. Imagine playing as a clone whose Deepspawn was killed and who is now conflicted about their identity and path in life. Torn between feeling like they should return back to the original character’s life, loved ones, and their responsibilities and wanting to be their own person and make their own path in life, all while dealing with the psychological turmoil of losing their creator, who was an objectively evil monster, but who they still feel lingering loyalty towards. But also, imagine a kingdom in which the crown prince disappears and the party is sent to find and bring him back. They find and kill a Deepspawn and discover that it made multiple copies of the prince. Now all these copies return back to the kingdom and throw it into chaos by fighting for the title of “next in line for the crown.” What will the current ruling king do? What will the younger siblings of the original crown prince do? What will the neighboring kingdoms do? There is SO MUCH potential for political intrigue, drama, royal murders, civil uprisings, scheming, spying, invasions, betrayal, etc.! The possibilities are so numerous that it’s overwhelming.
I immediately thought of a Warlock whose patron is a Deep Spawn, and the warlock is a creature spawned from the Deep Spawn, plus you say that Deep Spawn are “typically” Chaotic Evil, so one could easily be of a neutral or good alignment. Edit: Since Kythons are native to the material plane I can see a Deep Spawn eating a Kython Slaymaster and creating a copy which starts laying eggs, soon the Deep Spawn has a huge colony of assassins who are fiercely loyal to it with no need to spawn any more copies.
Fun idea, though in my own campaign settings I'd probably rule them out for patrons as lacking the kind of supernatural/magical gravitas to be proper patrons. BUT you could still have a Deep Spawned Warlock running around confused why this supernatural being they barely remember (their original 'proper' patron) insists they obey and please it or else...
Plot Idea: Have a Deepspawn unknowingly follow the players as they travel. The Deepspawn eats everything the players kill. When it's time for the Deepspawn to makes it's presents known, the players then fight everything that they had slain so far. This could also be a good tool to show players that killing someone or something can have repercussions in this world.
Unless I missed it, there's nothing that says their spawn will stop existing after the deep spawn dies, so it could be possible that after the players destroy one they may get attacked at some point by it's vengeful children.
Or better yet, the players are clones of original adventurers whose Deep Spawn master was killed by another group of adventurers. The first quest of the campaign is the clones going out to get revenge on the ones who killed their master...then they go about being adventurers because what else are they gonna do, they have no master Deep Spawn and they succeeded in killing its killer.
I was curious about that as well. What happens to the clones when the deep spawn dies? Go on and live their life remembering Mommy Spawn? What happens if their clones have children.... how is that for an origin of an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer?
Now the question is.... What if a Deep Spawn eats another Deep Spawn? Can Deep Spawn A spawn multiple copies of Deep Spawn B? Will Deep Spawn B be able to spawn copies of monsters it ate before it was eaten by Deep Spawn A? Or even worse... What if the Deep Spawn eats it's own tentacle that an adventurer managed to sever? Can it now spawn copies of itself which if eaten can now infinitely spawn copies that create copies like the Dooplers in Star Trek Lower Decks?
A deep spawn clone as a player character sounds really interesting. You could totally have a low level adventuring party get munched by the deep spawn and then each of them gets sent back to join other parties, as a sort of twist on the motivation "I'm doing this to support my family".
You could have it so they (the character, not the player) *doesn't even know.* They talk reverently about how much they love their family, but when asked for specifics (what does your father look like? What does your sister do?) they get confused and frustrated and change the subject.
Ok, but imagine using this as a player in your backstory. I could see being an aberrant mind sorcerer who was spawned by one of these. Totally awesome, and encountering clones of that character later would be a compelling and creepy plot point.
I've got a plot Idea thanks to your videos. A deepspawn has an entire town it controls. But, it seeks out a group of adventurers for help, as something plaguing Its town and its spawn. It wouldnt reveal itself, as it does use this town to lure travelers, merchants and adventurers. But it really needs help, as its town's population seems to be less and less despite it generating more and more spawn to expand said town. And what is actually going on, is the Deepspawn's town is being preyed upon by a False Hydra. a war over a town where neither of the two sides are even aware that theyre fighting each other in the first place. The party getting caught in the middle.
To make things more interesting, you could add a third faction, such as mindflayers or vampires, that was in an uneasy truce with the Deep Spawn until the False Hydra shows up and kicks off a three-way faction war. That would give you more options for plotlines (such as one faction blaming the other but the culprit was the third) and it would give the PCs a chance to choose which faction they support... if any.
@@goddessbraxia If there are only two sides in a conflict, it will easily tip one way or the other the moment an advantage forms. This is a good option for a one-shot or single encounter that you want to get through fast. If there are three factions, any time one faction gets ahead the other two can gang up on it to return things to stalemate. This gives the DM more ability to fine-tune and flesh out the situation, and would fit for a larger setting that is experienced over time or through multiple encounters.
Imagine a session that ends with an encounter with a deep spawn, but the next one starts with waking up with a foggy recollection of the last session, and suddenly your new goal is to protect the deepspawn and do it’s bidding, with the players eventually finding out they’re clones
It might be cruel of me but I was imagining the deep spawn having asked a previous heroic party that has defeated a tarrasque a piece of his flesh so over the years he had amassed a small army of them, maybe one hiding underneath each city as the deep spawn wants to be the true king of the continent with the current party trying to find him and kill him without raising suspicion or else a tarrasque might have to come for them
I'm imagining a deep spawn slowly eating and cloning an entire country until the party is traveling through and notices something off about the people. Also do you think it could clone itself if it bit off one of its tentacles, I think that could be cool.
@@DungeonDad Could also work with 2 deep spawn, with them each eating a tentacle from the other to produce a child or 2. So the children aren't just a clone/spawn of 1 parent but a proper offspring with 2 parents for genetic diversity. And since their limbs grow back after a number of days there's no permanent issues.. well besides the resulting offspring.
The creature needs to be originated from the prime material plane, as the deep spawn is originary from the far realms, they would not reproduce so simply. the way they reproduce is probably a mystery, sadly, unless we got a source, we can't say. But assuming its from the Far realms, it gotta be f***ed up.
now imagine an adventuring party who have a very hazy recollection of their past, and have been tasked by their shared father to hunt numerous creatures which inexplicably become the party's allies after being hunted, even if what the pwrty brought back was a corpse then, the party discover that another adventuring party who are mysteriously similar to them, but just so happen to be missing body parts. this then leads to the party discovering what their father truly is, and, by proxy, themselves.
I'd use a deep spawn to be a guardian put into place to keep a greater evil being imprisoned/at bay whether it be a dracolich, demon, or aboleth. Say a neutral deity put this deep spawn in this position as guardian or to keep tabs on the imprisoned being to either prevent them from escaping or for studying said monsters and reporting their findings to that deity. The players are led to believe that this deep spawn is the monster terrorizing a town by a warlock whose patron is either the dracolich, demon, or aboleth so imprisoned. It could be played out in so many ways.
Ooh yeah. Imagine an order of paladins or a holy temple who use a deep spawn as a necessary evil to give themselves enough members to continue their eternal vigil around an imprisoned demon lord. But it’s been a couple of centuries and the clones are getting poor quality, so the deep spawn is cloning whatever it can get to keep the defenses up…
Definitely needs an organisation built around it. I doubt most players would even question your settings adventure/questing/hunters/dungeoneers/explorers guild and the bounties they've placed upon everything useful and edible. "I hear the strongest and highest ranked guild members go through a special ceremony..." "Did you hear the tale about the Shining spears routing orc bands down Ashford way?" "I thought they died to a man last week in Barrowshire?" "I swear I saw that minister in Everglade last week, what are the chances twins ended up working for opposing kingdoms?"
two words; Circus Horror. Clown monsters progressively getting more mangled and disheveled as the team tries to find the cause of the chaos sounds like a fun 1 shot
So the possibility of a Deepspawn that is actually a righteous entity or maybe even serves a god that saved it in the past is amazing. Monster officially yoinked.
I kinda want to have a Deepspawn now and have it act as a sort of alternative to necromancers. "Oh, your (insert person you liked) died? I can bring them back if you let me have a nibble of their body."
Damn. This creature does indeed have a lot of possibilities. The first one that came to mind for me was the party looking for a way to revive someone such as a party member. Which eventually leads them to a Deep Spawn. It offers to replicate that person, but they first need to bring them the body. After the Deep Spawn replicates the person the party wanted to revive, it obviously betrays the party, using the body of the person the party wanted to revive.
It could betray them immediately. Or it could simply wait. It can make more than one copy. Then a few sessions later that party member is accused of various crimes he didn't commit, all over the land. (I know technically the player should be a mindless clone as well, but you can make an exception for them to increase the tension and confusion.)
It would be incredibly cool to see a special Deepspawn that could mix and match creature parts. Like some kind of Far Realm Dr.Frankenstein on a quest to birth the ultimate life-form.
A truly fun idea i had was a deep spawn working with dragon and they scheme together. Not to mentjon the free horde protection the deep spawn can provide when the dragon is out hunting
I love the idea of the Deep Spawn being utilized as a last ditch defense effort for some impending invasion from a greater evil, like a portal to the abyss opened
What if all the players were spawn and they got sent out together to try and capture or kill a powerful monster. It could be a whole part of the campaign trying to get the creature back without rousing suspicion and it’d be really cool role playing as new spawn fanatically devoted to the creature that killed them, and seeing the traces of their previous lives. All this while they’re still trying to figure out who they are and develop their own personalities after forgetting who they once were.
reborn could functionally do it but i dont see how they actually resolve the issue of breaking their binding from the deep spawn without dm intervention
The moment you described that the clones only have fuzzy memories of their original's life, my mind was swarming with the idea of using that as a plot twist for an amnesiac PC. Was a bit dampened when you mentioned the fanatic loyalty part, but there's always a way to get around that.
Immediately this makes me want an "elder deep spawn" whose copies have perfect copies of its victims minds, memories and personalities, to the point that the copy doesn't know about the deep spawn until intentionally "activated" - imagine a tpk then the adventure just resumes but turns out the players got replaced ans have been playing spawn for a session or so
In 3E, the Deep Spawn could create a magic item that casts the spell _Magic Jar_ (5th level Sorcerer/Wizard spell) that loads the holder's soul into some kind of storage medium that the Deep Spawn can later use as a reference for casting _Mindrape_ (9th level Sorcerer/Wizard spell from "The Book of Vile Darkness") on gestated copies to restore their mind.
Plot hook: The party visit a traveling doctor only to find out that instead of healing his patients he feeds them to his tamed deep spawn and discharges the clones rather than the person slowly controlling the region and gaining lots of gold in the process
Imagine a kingdom taking captive deepspawns into war, cloning the opposing army, and sending them back as if they won. You now have a large chunk of an opposing kingdom's population all acting as spies, or maybe causing civil unrest
Ok, this one is amazing, so there is a kobold that was eaten by a deep spawn along side a magical creature (an arm of a wizard, an azimar, whatever) so this spawn has wild magic because of the mix of DNA. But the adventuring party kills the deep spawn when the kobold was a "newborn". So now there is this pup that has no master and is now out there trying to find its place in the world. NEW CHARACTER. It also works with warloks, any sorcerer sub class really. So thank you @DungeonDad
I love the idea of a party of adventurers being sent to find some missing villagers, only to find the villagers(clones) just chilling in a cave and just straight up lying about the whats and whys to get the party to leave before they find out about the deepspawn
my first thought for how to boost the danger of the deep spawn, before the council of spawn was mentioned, was to have one powerful deepspawn consume and recreate smaller spawn. These spawned spawn would be fanatically loyal to the greater spawn and each one would increase the production capacity for lesser monsters and minions who would be fanatically loyal to spawn fanatically loyal to the greater spawn. This could also allow for more spawned clones without the loss of mental faculties by cutting up one creature into as many portions as there are spawn.
Disappointed to see you leaked out one of my favorite monsters :)...just kidding of course. I have used this creature for ages after learning about a hunter in a Neverwinter Forest who used to sell hunting guided tours and have a Deepspawn spit out creatures for people to hunt (1st edition or 2nd edition if I remember correctly). This is one of my favorite antagonist allies Ed Greenwood ever created. Thanks for blowing the dust off this gem and sharing it with all of us.
Love the idea of a city of spawn minions with a deep spawn at the center but they're... Entirely peaceful. The deepspawn just wants to chill and even has it's children seek out good relations and trade with normal towns
Here's a homebrew I wrote that you might want to cover; The Snatcher. Walking into the big city for some sweet sweet expensive loot to spend their treasures on, the party was impressed that not many rats scurried underfoot or slunk into alleyways, and very few shadowy figures lurked in the dark corners. They must have good exterminators and justice department!... The rogue was not so impressed. Crime abhorrs a vacuum, especially in the big city, and he could tell what organized crime there was here was afraid of the streets... and if the mob was afraid, you should be too... As if on queue, he felt his coin pouch get tugged on and lighten, a cutpurse! As he dashed in the direction of the thieving arm, his dagger at the ready, He felt strong arms wrap around his mouth and neck, cutting off his scream and slamming his head against the pavement. "How were so many thugs hiding?" Was his last thought as he faded off into unconsciousness... Three and a half city blocks later, the cleric noticed their resident brooder was missing from behind them, and alerted the paladin. The party pulled to a stop in the crowded street, and with the gnone wizard on his shoulders, the paladin began to retrace their steps to where they'd last seen theor missing rogue... Awakening with a start, the Rogue found himself being carried on his back down a dark tunnel, a quiet scrabbling noise beneath him, like many grabbing fingers. Attemting to move, he felt dozens of hands hold him still as the scrabbling stopped, and a brick in hand knocked him out once more. As the party found where the Rogue had undoubtedly been taken, the local bum surprisingly helpful, and scared, they noticed how smooth the ground around the sewer grate had been worn. With no other choices, the nearest inn five blocks away, and the sun setting, the paladin heaved the grate out of the sewer entrance, noting that while heavy, it had not been attached, and no stink came from this tunnel, as the party trecked into the dark after their lost member. Almost an hour later, and approximately directly under the city center, the paladin stood upright as they entered a larger tunnel, apparently leading to a chamber ahead, dim moonlight glowing from the crack under the door, as what they had thought was the sound of water flowing was now heard to be the distinct scrabbling noise of thousands upon thousands of hands from within the chamber beyond. Charging in ready to fight for their lives, the party beheld a sea of writhing, interlocking arms, all ending at the mid-forearm, holding glass shards and bent cutlery and rusty nails and gleaming daggers, all manner of salvaged sharp object arrayed against them by thousands of hands, some of which palm-out, with beady little clusters of black eyes staring the party down, and some hands rubbing together excitedly, ready for this feast, the Rogue's shortsword spotted in the arsenal, the torn tatters of his cloak slowly being dissolved by a sticky, slimy, oozing core of wet flesh, which grumbled hungrily as the miriad arms of The Snatcher prepared to incapacitate and devour its next precious bauble of a meal... The Snatcher is a monstrosity that manifests at rest as a large pile of dozens to hundreds of humanoid hands, each one ending at the mid-forearm, surrounding a gooey, gray, sticky core. When active, the hands interlock into whatever shapes are necessary for their task. Large pillars of interlocking hands acting as muscles in an arm ending with fist-like ball, daisy-chains of hands holding the base of other hands reach very, very far, acting as long tentacular structures, hands can line its underside to crawl rapidly over nearly any surface, eyes sprout from the palms of a few, and groups of clawed hands tear away at prey, killing them messily but efficiently, if no sharp utensils are in its possession. A Snatcher that gets its many hands on a cutlery box or a silverware drawer can be quite lethal in close quarters. An urban ambush predator, The Snatcher will lure humanoid prey to dark alleyways with glittering coins or enchanted weapons placed on the edge of the shadows, where it grabs the curious humanoid by the head, covering their mouth, eyes, and ears, and pulling them through a nearby window, doorway, hall, drain cover, trapdoor, Sewer grate, or other opening where they are pulled and carried back to its den, along with the bait. It then uses clawed hands or sharp utensils to kill and slice up its prey, dropping the meat chunks into its gooey core, which then spits out more hands for the pile. A city with a snatcher infestation will be characterized by streets surprisingly clear of rats, stray dogs, or homeless people, almost all of which snatched up long ago, and while few thieves hide in the alleys, party members will find coin pouches cut off and pockets pilfered if they rest very long on a city street. A very lethal threat to any greedy party rogue, the Snatcher will happily devour any adventurer foolish enough to walk over to that perfectly good sword someone just left there...
Sounds like a dope Warlock Patron. Comes with a built in 'mysterious resurrection' mechanism that doubles as a slide toward existential doom after too many deaths. A BBEG that won't stay down until you drop its boss, a Pc with a martyr reflex, an allied npc that miraculously survives offscreen dangers, the possibilities are myriad.
Here's a homebrew I wrote that you might enjoy covering; the Admirer. The toughest fighter in all the land limps through the doorway, drinking his last health potion and holding the door open for his friends, before slamming it closed on one of the ghouls' heads, as the horde of supercharged undead monstrosities behind them slowly lose interest, and they all catch their breath. The cleric uses his last spell slot to heal the wizard, who casts an upcast cone of cold back out the hallway, and shouts obscenities at the now frozen solid and no longer stubbornly refusing to die corpses, kicking one over. The rogue goes out and loots them, stuffing dozens of enchanted weapons into the handy haversack, and tosssing the barbarian a warhammer of thunder, before they finally explore the room they just happened upon, and behold the treasure they fought through seven layers of trapped dungeon and a small army for, The Hoard of Xal'Hackthul; A pile of gold to make dragons jealous and dwarves swoon, a full _three hundred_ feet high, and exactly why they brought along four handy haversacks (which may still take several trips) stands gleaming before them, wreathed at the base with a veritable _fortification_ of magic items; a sack overflowing with decanters of endless water, a pile of foldable boats on what looks like a MASSIVE foldable boat, several golden coat-racks of various magical cloaks, dozens upon dozens of magic staffs, a pile of enough magic armor to suit a small army, and mirriad enchanted swords, warhammers, bows, crossbows, instruments, and countless more treasures, all laying on a floor LITERALLY PAVED in gemstones. However, before they can even begin to take inventory, a Booming voice echoes down from the top of the pile so loud it scatters coins flying, saying; "FOR CENTURIES MY EYES AND MINE ALONE HAVE GAZED UPON THIS HOARD, AND I WILL NOT LET SOME UPSTART INTRUDERS DEFILE IT WITH THEIR GAZE; PREPARE TO _DIE!!!"_ And to their horror, the party sees the horrible visage, of Xal'Hackthul, the Dragon-eater; A maw to rival tales of the terrasque houses hundreds of massive teeth, its breath coiling purple waves of antimagic around its jaws, dripping with saliva, the eyes, dear god the eyes! Two dozen of them deformedly twisting from the horn-like stalks of many colors sprouting from all over the floating head, their pupils burst open to jaws lined with teeth like some eldritch horror, each of them brimming with their unique magic, the largest eye in the center Glaring with menacing greed amd anticipation, as the beast ROARS a bellow that shakes the party to its bones, and a prismatic array of magic radiates from its screeching eye-maws like the corona of a twisted god, and the fighter feels true terror for the first time. When a beholder dreams of losing its curioes and its life to a dragon, it begins a metamorphosis that may never truly end, as it becomes an Admirer. Driven by a frantic need for the power to protect its curioes from even the mightiest of dragons, it sets out on frantic wings it didn't have before to devour every dragon it can find. When it does so, it grows another eye stalk that emits the dragon's breath attack, and its mouth grows into the snout of a dragon. After eating 5 young or older dragons, all its pupils grotesquely split open to jaws, though the eyes still work, its wings grow into dragon's wings, it gains 30ft of flight movespeed, and its mouth gains a special antimagic breath attack that inflicts large amounts of force damage upon any magic item or spellcaster, exploding them if it destroys the item or reduces the caster's HP to zero; the magic item's HP determined by its value. after eating 20 dragons, all the eye stalks double in power, and the Admirer grows one size. This occurs twice more; once after eating 50, and then once more after eating 100 dragons; after 50 it must use its wings to stay aloft and loses 30ft of flight movespeed, and after 100 it loses the ability to fly alltogether, and gains massive claws on the ends of 4 scaled legs, which give it 30 feet of walking speed, and attack with the force of an acient dragon. Ever the collector, it will enthrall mortals to help haul and carry with its telekinesis the hoards of the dragons it eats back to its lair, expanding the traps and minions within over time. If you use one, first roll a d100 with disadvantage to see how many dragons it has eaten, or decide yourself if you so choose.
Love the art lore! Would love to see more about that with some other creatures, especially when the 5th edition popularity might narrow people's view of some of them. I adore seeing different artist's interpretations
Honestly the idea of one of these not being at all hostile, and like, only taking "donations" either from the willing for sapients, or already deceased animals seems like it could be the neat leader of a community.
My first thought is a Deep Spawn that's learned how to mix and match DNA from the various creatures they've consumed to make hybrid chimera that have unique combinations of abilities. This would be especially useful for one that has a limited variety of creatures they have access to.
Now I am imagining a warlock character who becomes an adventurer to get information and pieces of monsters it helps kill to send back to a deepspawn to create copies of them. And eventually as the warlock gets more world experience and seeing more monsters he realizes that something is weird about his situation and about the deepspawn. He can hear someone talk about them or find them in a book and he eventually can question his loyalty towards it and try to escape from its control or tell the party about it to try and kill it to set himself free and stop this growing army of monsters.
This thing gives me an idea for a sort of NightMare Enterprises kind of faction that goes around outfitting morally dubious nobles with monsters and even assassins and warriors that are 100% loyal to them, so long as the fee is paid. Not a main antagonist per se, but something that makes an adventure trickier if not dealt with
For real. Discovered the channel a few months ago and have since watched every monster of the week on the channel and been watching the new ones on the day of or day after release. Probably my favorite DnD channel right now as a DM
In my homebrew setting, there's a lot of monsters running around that were the result of people in the distant past getting too into biomancy. This is immediately going in that category.
These videos give me so many ideas and make me really want to see them in a game. For the dragon scenario I imagine the deep spawn hiding its true identity, maybe using some kind of a proxy to talk to the party so that they only know that this person wants a dragon egg/ baby and that they'll be handsomely rewarded, but they don't know why they want it. Then once they have retrieved the dragon and given their reward the deep spawn reveals itself and eats the dragon in front of them and only then is the potential gravity of what they've done revealed to them.
Imagine a deepspawn getting its tentacles on an elder brain. If it can make dozens if copies of anything it eats, it could strategically place elder brains such the hivemind covers the entire continent. Then they all start producing mindflayers...
From a mechanics point of view with this monster, I think the best way to handle it's ability to copy living things would be that two parameters are met: 1) It's eaten some portion of it (say an eighth of a pound worth). 2) The specific creature is dead. This undermines _some_ potential scenarios (taking a bite out of someone, retreating, then sending in a clone to mess up their lives), but also gives a reasonable idea on why everything is so vague about how much it has to eat. Generally speaking, the reason people are unclear is that _usually_ if this thing bites something _and_ manages to copy it, it's because it _ate_ the entire creature. It's just that this doesn't _have to be_ the case. All that's required is that the original is dead. As for what to do with a Deep Spawn, I think I'd be inclined to try an adventure with a slight modification. I'd have the main characters go into a dungeon and black out. When they woke up, they'd be okay and discover the dungeon had a few minor baddies in it that they could clear out. No explanation. Upon their return, they'd be referred to someone else who wanted to see them, a striking, wonderful person who wants to hire them to take down several small villages of orcs or whatever that are causing problems, including giving them access to several magical items do make it easier. After wiping out all the villages, they'd start to feel off, and upon return, the 'striking' person would seem to shift into the Deep Spawn and explain that they were only copies, but that whatever broke in them so they were unaware has also caused them to degrade. Part of this problem breakage means they're all hallucinating. That's why they saw the Deep Spawn as a person, and why the various villages they wiped out seemed to be populated by orcs or whatever instead of the regular people, farmers and so on, that were actually there. It's okay, though, it'll just make more copies of the adventurers later until their degraded forms can no longer serve. This would be where the adventure ends. (It's a horror story, obviously.)
I can easily see this implemented as some sort of entity tied to a cult. "You must rid yourself of your corrupted flesh and be born anew." Could either be a sadistic group that intentionally sacrifices others or maybe a group of fanatics that genuinely believe they are helping people, like they feed the sick or cripple to it and they come out healed. Maybe they don't even know what's actually happening behind the curtain, with only a select few being in on what is actually happening to these individuals.
Heres one: The Party is currently trying to overthrow a vicious and tyrannical Empire, but they dont have the numbers for a straight up fight. They then encounter a Deep Spawn and it offers a trade: a Purple Dragon Egg/Wyrmling in exchange, it will provide troops for their war.
Very good episode! I especially approve of the fluffy guest co-host. It would be fun to take a spin on the Dwarven/ Deep Spawn history. The story begins with a party of adventurers, sent as trade diplomats from a local surface town, arriving at a clan mountain citadel. Their mission is to negotiate an alliance with the Dwarf settlement to combat a local Goblin horde. When they arrive there is a feast and mysteriously the dwarven Lord is murdered. The citadel goes on lockdown and the adventurers must do investigative work to not only help the Dwarves and save the alliance but also prove their own innocence because everyone is suspicious of them as outsiders. Now comes a fun homage to Shakespeare, for something is rotten in this state of Dwarvendom. The slain king's brother takes the throne but few suspect him of foul play because his relationship with his brother was a good one with even a mistress and blood relatives swearing his true nature. But there are also rumours of angry disagreements between the brothers leading up to the feast. There are a myriad of other suspects however; a court spy master, ambitious cousins, the royal chef, colonel Mustard with a candlestick and even Goblin assassins sneaking into the citadel. It all really hits the fan when the new king starts to crack under the pressure and his cleric asks the PCs for a private audience. The king is starting to be visited by the ghost of his dead brother each night. Through further investigation the PCs discover there really is no ghost as the new king is going mad, becoming a rambling mess. Through many trials and tribulations of possible imprisonment and escape the PCs find the mad king being confronted by the "ghost" of his brother in his chambers. He flees and the mad king confesses to knowledge of a secret passage where an ancient evil secret is kept, a family curse that cannot be destroyed. He mentions his brother was a ghost long before the feast and had made a devilish pact to save his people. Stricken with grief and unable to confront his fears, the mad king downs a vial of manticore poison, leaving the PCs with little choice but to take a diary of clues, the king's ramblings and a secret passage to clear their name. Traps, a few Underdark horrors and a puzzle or two separate their path from solving the mystery. They find something of a cross between an ancient temple and a prison with our celebrity monster inside accompanied the previous king... and just in time for the Deep Spawn to purge another not-so-fresh copy. Then we have our epic battle with various manuscripts, the king's diary and lore from the remaining Dwarf nobility to explain the exposition dump to follow once the monster is slain. Long ago this noble family had sealed away a magically bound Deep Spawn when they were supposed to destroy it. With the rising threat of annihilation from a goblin horde the previous king uncovered this lore and had the desperate plan to 3D print an army. His brother rebelled against the idea, they fought in the hidden chamber and broke the magic seal binding the Deep Spawn, which immediately ate the old king. Clones kept making their way up to the citadel however and the brother was forced to kill his sibling repeatedly till he has the clone publicly poisoned at the feast. This sends him over the deep end (pun intended) and gives a lot of fun Hamlet connections to play with. With the beast slain the curse is wiped clean, as are the reputations of the PCs and the alliance can move forward between the Dwarf and surface kingdom. Of course the story could play out differently if the PCs choose to back a Dwarf civil war, help the Deep Spawn or strike a deal with Goblin infiltrators in the Citadel but that's up to the DM!
A deep spawn would make for such a cool horror story. Imagine, your characters start in a town where you do normal quests and story stuff. Meeting people and all that. But things start to get weird when people you know start acting, off. Subtly off, but nothing in your face. This slowly keeps happeing as you return from quests, and eventully gets to the point where even the quests start getting weird. (Find outsiders, and bring them to the tavern so that they may "become citizens of our nice little town". Dont kill any bandits or orks or anyone for that matter, just bring them here and we will "show them the light") The thing is, these quests all work too. And then, they express how much they apprechiate all your help, and ask that YOU become perminant citizens. They even have a party waiting for you.
Here's an adventure idea I came up with after watching this video: A Royal Mausoleum once housed the greatest heroes of the land. Each of whom was entombed in a special coffin made to function as a "Chest of Preserving" so that each body is perfectly preserved. A window over each coffin would allow people to pay their respects to the fallen hero. It was seen as the greatest honor in the Kingdom to be entombed here as only the greatest most accomplished of heroes would go there. Each year the Mausoleum would be opened during a special celebration akin to the Day of the Dead where the people could leave offerings for the heroes of old. As a whole, the celebtration helped to solidify a patriotic attitude among the people so was heavily funded. This year, however, when the tomb was unsealed 2 weeks prior to the event it was learned that all of the bodies were missing. Generations of heroes gone without a trace. A full thousand in total. The entire situation is such a potential scandal that the royal family can't hire locals to deal with the problem for fear that the general public would learn of what happened. At the same time they aren't sure if any of the soldiers were party to the desecration so it's decided to hire a party of wandering adventurers to investigate the problem. A heft bonus is promised for each hero returned to the tomb. Even if the body is decayed the royal famiily can use a variation of a Mending spell to repair the bodies. It's explained if asked that most of the heroes who fall on the battle field are badly damaged, but spells are used to put them in the best possible quality for display. (think of it like a healing spell meets embalming) That much is the adventure hook at least. The party eventually finds and meets what appears to be all 1000 heroes of old and all apparently fully alive. If checked, no signs of resurrection magick or necromancy appears to have been used. The heroes won't know that they were from a Mausoleum. They will have a vague sense of being a great hero, but if questioned won't really be able to remember anything specific about their accomplishments. They just appear to draw blanks. The party will eventually learn that the heroes were produced using Deep Spawn. "But wait..." a simple bit of math will reveal that if it takes 2 weeks for a single Deep Spawn to produce a single clone they are dealing with quite an army of Deep Spawn. If they were stolen recently that could represent a thousand deep spawn, but if stolen immediately after last year's event would mean that each deep spawn could have created 25 copies in that time. Doing the math there must be at least 40 Deep Spawn. The party will eventually learn that the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) has been raising Deep Spawn for many years and with a sizable collection of 40 Deep Spawn adults set in motion a plan to steal the bodies of the heroes to mass produce them. The plan went into motion right after last year's event to give just enough time to create a complete collection of heroes before the Kingdom would learn of what happened. The bodies are still kept preserved in their "Coffins of Preserving" though. The BBEG would sever a part of a body and feed it to a Deep Spawn instructing it to creating a clone of it. The body would then be repaired with Magick. The same unique Magick, in fact, that the Kingdom has long used to repair the bodies of the heroes suggesting who the traitor likely is. It's fairly obvious that the BBEG is planning to use fresh parts on a rotating basis so that there are no imperfections. It won't be copies of copies. It will be a single copy for each time it was fed part of a body. There are multiple potential outcomes of this adventure. Given the sheer combat potential a direct confrontation would likely result in a TPK. Murder hobo tactics would not work here. Here are a few suggested resolutions: 1.) The party could discover the magical apparatus used to steal the bodies in the first place. Either by evading detection via stealth or by actually joining the BBEG organization undercover. Once the bodies have been transported back the party could report to the Royal Family that the bodies were returned, who took them, for what purpose, and why. If they learn of who the traitor was they could also reveal this information as well for an additional bonus. 2.) The party could learn of a fail safe established just in case the Deep Spawns turned traitor. While the BBEG would not want to harm the Deep Spawn directly, the housing for the heroes all have poison gas traps. If the party triggers it they could kill the entire army and then just use those bodies in place of the original heroes. 3. The party could seek to take control over one or more Deep Spawn either through ancient Dwarven Magick or through some other skill that can persuade them. None of the Deep Spawn are currently under magical control. They only follow the BBEG because they were raised as the children of the BBEG. However, if the party doesn't learn of the gas before turning even a portion of the clone army against the BBEG the gas will be released and depending on where the party is when that occurs they could die with the army. There will be no gas where the Deep Spawn dwell so it's safest there. Depending on the outcome of this scenario the party could die from gas or could fight the BBEG without an army of heroes to contend with. 3.) The party could work out a deal with the BBEG. In this case the BBEG will agree to magically return all of the original heroes magically to where they belong. The BEEG won't tell the party, however, that a secret room exists with many chests of preserving each with enough material to create hundreds of thousands of original first generation copies to grow the army. For this reason, if in a corner, the BBEG may even try to negotiate by agreeing to gas the heroes and playing the sympathy card via a tragic backstory which may or may not be true. If the party doesn't learn of the backups this could result in the BBEG coming back later in the campaign with serious consequences. 4.) The party could join the BBEG organization as spies and then decide that the benefits and treatment is pretty good and actually side with the BBEG. Propaganda within the organization, which may or may not be true, will paint the Royal Family in a very unflattering light. If the party decides that the Royal Family deserves to fall and that the BBEG is actually in the right that could lead to an entirely new campaign direction. ... This is a first draft of the idea at least. What do you think? Is it good as is? Does it need anything?
BBEG tried to get his revenge with his former adventuring party by his side, but his party died and he was the only survivor. He managed to steal their bodies and dominate a deep spawn to sort of bring them back to finish his plan. But this time he has given the deep spawn a finger of his so as to create three more of himself along with his cloned squad. They now are hitting three places simultaneously so as to make his revenge easier to obtain. The party would first fight his first cloned squad only to find that same squad “back to life” in another area. So they must free the deep spawn to keep the BBEG’s forces from respawning. BBEG in the mean time has been gathering materials for enough resurrections for his actual former friends so they can train by fighting themselves and getting the necessary training to be strong enough to finally achieve their revenge.
Wild suggestion for a future MotW video: The Ormyrr. They are large slug-like monsters with arms (think Jabba the Hutt) with heavy Elemental Earth associations. They crave magical items as they are not really good with magic themselves, but especially magical items that let them fly, which is very quirky. How do I know of this creature? Back in the 90's, DnD's original home company, TSR, produced a collectible dice game called Dragon Dice. Its dice are beautfiul, and the setting, while separate from DnD at large, cribbed many things from it, particularly the monsters. You can get a frikkin' Ettercap die, for instance. Or a Remorhaz die. Or, of course, an Ormyr die, infamous for its rarity. It belongs to the Serpent Men faction and it is... pretty bad. Go figure. But it is a surviving bit of merchandise that tells of this obscure creature.
I used one of these back in 3.5. It was almost a total party wipe with only the rogue getting away. Sometime later the rogue and her new party wind up bumping into the “old party,” including all the gear that was left behind. That led to a fun encounter fighting clones of their old PCs.
I could see this as an opportunity to have a really brutal encounter for the players, to the point of there likely being a TPK if they don't coordinate well. If they lose, they wake up as clones of their original characters with the same stats and gear but now with the agenda of serving the deep one (or could even swap to playing a monster race potentially!). But if some of the party escape while others fall... then mysteriously find their friends return to town, then the ball starts rolling on some sinister shenanigans as well. Things as normal except the players who died know they now have an ulterior motive that the survivors don't, which could trigger some point later down the line. Basically it's cool that the consequences for death with this monster are so different.
Always a pleasure to see a new video :) You've given me quite a few creatures to run. Was there ever a time golem? Similair to the time elemental, but actually made by a chronomancer to guard their hideout
I like the idea of a more limited version of the cloning power where the quality of the clone is based on how much of the original it consumed. If it bites off somebody's arm, all the clones would have that arm perfectly replicated, but the rest of their body would look oddly bland and generic. You could have weird quirks in clones that have some minor deformities, characters who NEVER take off their gloves, or people who just reek "generic NPC human" because the Deepspawn only got a nibble.
Heh, remember this one from a friends old Monster Manual or something as kids. Along with all the Beholder varients. What is it about balls with a bunch of eyes and tentacles?
Question/Idea: What if a highly intelligent Deep Spawn was a patron for a Warlock? What if said Warlock is a clone? Would it make sense for a plot twist like that to happen to a PC that has no recollection of his past/amnesia? What if said Deep Spawn was not inherently evil and just wanted to see the world through PCs eyes?
I like the idea of a deep spawn in conflict with another force, such as a mindflayer colony. The party could encounter its layer, which is filled with degenerate monsters as the deep spawn master struggles to maintain a supply of fresh material in its endless battles with the mindflayers. The deep spawn wants nothing more than to eat the flesh of the elder brain, and the mindflayers want to take control of it to build themselves an army. Can make for a scenario that lends itself well to classic dungeon crawling or outright horror. Bonus points if this is all within one massive cavern/dudgeon, and the players have the opportunity to pit either side against the other to advance their own interests.
Imagine the monster ambushes the party, takes a small bite from each of them then flees. They’re confused and on guard but it doesn’t come back. Weeks later after they’ve all forgotten they arrive in a new town and are arrested on sight. The reason being the deepspawn made clones and have been kidnapping people and causing havoc. Now the party has to figure out what is happening and then fight a mirror match with themselves.
This monster will be great to use as a reason for an unlikely alliance such as mind flayers and orcs working together in a dungeon because they are deep spawn clones.
Run a dark game where a village is fully taken over by a deep spawn. The heroes win, then in an outer limits twist they find out the whole world is actually deep spawn clones, including them, and they are just part of a conflict between deep spawn Lords.
This creature is so wild! I was already thinking up ideas for a deep dungeon crawl with this thing while I was listening, so thanks for the inspiration! 😁👍
Imagine making a PC that thinks they're just a normal adventurer, but truthfully they're just a clone. The deep spawn is having the PC go off, find a powerful adventuring party, befriend them as ally's, and lure them back so the deep spawn can eat them 👀
These would make for a truly wild high level boss battle with a dragon, beholder, giant, and other random creatures that do not belong together. Reminds me of the Necromancer fight from Castle Crashers for those who played it.
Been looking forward to this video my friend and I came up with the idea of these guys being used in a war in their setting by wizards to clone neo-orogs (orc ogre hybrid) to fight against armies of constructs inspired by Star Wars
Now I'm imagining a campaign or one-shot where everyone plays devotees of this god, going around and saving the day, before finding out that they are clones of the real heroes.
Imagine an evil artificer (lets call him Frankenstein) who's well versed in golems, enchantment, general magitek/artificer goodness, and he's entrapped a deepspawn as a slave; he feeds prisoners and bandits to the deepspawn, the deepspawn creates clones, and the artificer just scoops out the clones brains to replace the brains with magical equivalents to computers. This removes the problem of progressively dumber clones and makes the clones loyal to the artificer, not the deepspawn. Best of all, the artificer is likely not going to be the obvious villain, so the party is going to spend a lot of time going after the deepspawn only for the big reveal later on that the monster was just the middle-man to the *actual* monster - a mentally deranged and power hungry scientist.
Well me and a friend of mine like to play matched characters, sometimes brothers sometimes close friends/allies. This gave me a new idea, a lizardfolk tribe had an agreement with a deepspawn where in times of trouble it would bite a small chunk from the tail of some of the tribespeople and give them a 'sibling' to boost the tribe's numbers. Unfortunately the tribe drew the ire of (Insert BBEG's or BBEG's second in command's name here) and lost the battle. Now the tribe is scattered to the winds and it's deepspawn lies slain. The paired PC's are an original and its cloned 'sibling' working with the rest of the party to exact the toll of blood for blood, life for life on those that wronged them.
Plot idea: a deep spawn parent hires you to find their dead kid so they can eat them and bring them back to life. As horrible and sad it would be to work towards cloning a dead deep spawn, i think it could be a compelling story.
I used one of these once to explain a party of adventurers who all started out bereft of gear and with no memories. The players learned class skills as they went as dim sparks of some kind of poorly remembered past returned to them. They never knew they were the progeny of a defectively killed deepspawn. Sadly, though I was working up to the big reveal, the game was cancelled.
A couple of comments have mentioned the deepspawn eating each other to reproduce, but as they are genderless they could pit their spawns against each other to earn the right of being the one replicated like how some snails fight to determine which one gets impregnated, which would be such a cool plot hook of a party coming across a fighting league of spawns as each deepspawn tries to prove itself is better than the other with some weird romantic undertones.
DM: Alright, Mr. Pardu, remember how you were raised in an orphanage and never knew your parents. Well here **it** is. You now are no longer fiercely loyal to your squad.
now this is the shuckle evolution we need
His mega-MEGA evolution
Hahaha!
That is exactly what I said when I saw the thumbnail
Shit shuckle finally evolved
They gave Primal Shuckle Substitute, Thunderwave, and Recover 💀
I like the idea that the less of a victim a deep spawn eats the more degraded the first clone starts at.
Yeah that's what I was thinking when he mentioned it. If it eats a whole person, perfect clone, no real starting issues. But if it's like only a hand, then the clone would be weaker, and less intelligent. Granted since they can make multiple copies of the same thing, obviously it means that the first few clones even from just a hand eaten, would still be pretty viable as minions. But if it was even less, like say only the tip of a finger, then the starting clone would be very basic, and it'd probably get mutations or be deformed after only a few clones are made.
what i see this as is giving some weird ecconomic potential.
what if the deep spawn cant create new genetic material?
this sounds like it would go against the design but it doesnt.
if they cant create more material and the clones themselves can be used as clean slates, then you have a counter ballance thing.
speed of reproduction- if it eats a whole adventurer it could basicly rez it after a short period. this would be useful in combat.
but if it takes longer to make a reproduction then less base material could be used. so you could have two perfect clones in terms of stats but they would take twice as long to gestate. as the number of clones increases the amount of time it requires to put out another being also increases.
this matches organizational growth in natural organizations you could have a large number of spawn but that would take a large amount of biomass. or a large amount of time.
and if you give it an overmind personality of modifying spawn, not just having degradation, you could have it start rather bizare events. it could have an early epoch of a bunch of clones of a stray adventurer. and then it could start cloning ants, and then it could scale up the size of the ants. and it could send out swarms and hives to search for bizare things, and bring back some zombifying spore. it could use this on a target, to try vastly improving power, and then when it consumes the contaminated biomass, it could become infected by this super ordinal disposition.
then you have a pretty interesting basis for a civil war. both physical ideologies and interests coincide over the same beings leading to schizoid actions.
if the ribbon of the 'overmind' decides to promote a trait or reduce a trait, then you could have clones which are stylisticly different. like having different hair color, and with a focus on gestation time then the closer you get to teh overmind as a party, the more you have to deal with progressively more malformed beings, cause they are just like different levels of fetus development.
you could have the amount of a victem eaten change how degraded they are, but also you could have the degradedness be the degree of being under developed. they need more time executus, and yet you bring cretins to my wedded comb?
i might end up using this for some litterary fiction.
A Deep Spawn and a False Hydra sound like natural enemies. Imagine these two long-lived rivals trying to outgaslight the other with the party and lead them to their rival's lair
Ah yes
The Great Gaslight War of the Humongous Eldritch Horrors.
Sounds like a perfect idea.
@@banette0819 I've seen Illithids and Neogi have some ugly fights in Spelljammer stories...
the false hydra eats someone, the next day that exact same person reappears thus confusing the false hydra. mindflayers farm a deep spawn for infinite hosts. what other horrific monsters could live in a symbiotic relationship with this thing to make the absolute worst town to visit? maybe an aboleth or a coven of hags?
Long ago the elves built an underground city in the heart of an island with the help of the dwarves. The beautiful natural cave flower with nurturing waters and underground grottoes of healthy fungi. However, a false hydra took over this realm. The heroes of the city sacrificed themselves to temporarily seal the hydra, but werre devoured and forgotten.
Many years pass, and a trading city is built on top of the underground caves. The humans flourish from the trade. Eventually a deep spawn finds its way there and infiltrates the seedy mob that formed on the docks. The deep spawn eats and replaced the mob boss. Uses him as figurehead to gain political power in the city.
Then the hydra starts to slither back. It eats people here and they, and they are forgotten. But the deep spawn can still make copies of some of them, even though he's forgotten who they were.
Eventually the PCs come to a city with very few real people left. It's not the bustling trade center it once was and it seems to be run by idiots. The deep spawn doesn't know what it's fighting, but it keeps making more bodies. The hydra keeps eating. Traders are perplexed and they can't remember their old trading contacts, but they know they use to get great bargains here.
As the PCs explore the caves of the island to rid it of pirates, they find the huge city underneath. Ad they explore and get more loot, eventually can't remember who sells them magic items anymore. It's a race against time to find the false hydra before the city is overrun with idiots or the hydra emerges.
That idea is awesome!
"Now if you're like me, and I know I am" is SUCH a line. 10/10, one of the lines of all time
Now I'm imagining a prestigious monster slayer's guild which is oddly devoid of taxidermied beasts. They claim they're doing it for the safety of the realm and not the glory, but in reality a deep spawn is eating their carcasses for its own purposes.
That could even be their means of training; The Deepspawn creates clones that the hunters fight for practise, letting them get abnormal amounts of experience observing and combatting all sorts of rare magical creatures.
Or it could be their way of earning money, creating problems that they get paid to solve
Adventurer's guild members must bring back the head of the monster or criminals as proof. Plus the head makes its creations more intelligent than just a finger.
@@warrenokuma7264and if the people running the quild have also been eaten and copied by the deep spawn that is no longer an issue.
We can't be copied, because we have a bounty on deep spawn.
That is such a calm kitty. You obviously raised him well.
He’s an extremely sweet boy
I used a deepspawn once, as a minion to a powerful red dragon.
The dragon used him to prepare a themed dungeon for the party, as part of an elaborate revenge scheme.
First, he populated the dungeon with multiple copies of an annoying miniboss the party had killed in the previous story arc. (he got him ressurected once to get a fresh body)
Then, when the party refused to walk into a trap, he felt so insulted, he took a hostage they didn't save and fed her
to the deepspawn so he could repeatedly snack on her.
That's kinda effed and I love it
that is one very vindictive dragon...what did the party do to piss off the dragon so much?
@@Mr.C710. Missed its birthday party? 🎉
@@Mr.C710. The player's mentor used to be his regular foe, but died before any revenge could be taken (the dragon was Lord Firkraag - I had a player who hadn't played much computer games, so I converted Baldur's Gate into a 3.5 campaign)
@@heterodoxic then its a very petty dragon..
Presumably, like their Beholder Cousins, the Deep Spawn are usually, shall we say, A bit mentally unstable.
Imagine a Deep Spawn that was influenced by a Paladin to do good...A bit like Flower, but with a paladin instead of a wizard. So the Deep Spawn basically turns a dungeon into the equivalent of a Hippie Commune. All of its minions know that the Deep Spawn will be upset if anything evil goes on, so you could have some pretty bizarre situations.
Cleric: Did that troll just invite us in for tea and cookies and promise it wouldn't hurt anyone? In the Paladin's Aura of Truth?
ok, but what if that deep spawn ate a beholder such as xanathar?
@@nashbellow5430 thats a really interesting idea, the clones are prefect clones
The interesting thing about a hippie dungeon is that you don't know whether it turns out to be the Manson Family.
Actually, it'd be really cool if there was a Deep Spawn interested in nothing but exceptionally rare species and have it turn itself into the heart of a Garden of Eden of sorts where clones of these rare monsters can continue existing even after the species is extinct, like a living archive
Neat, I'ma steal that.
@@indiana47 _hell yeah_
Picture this. A forgotten Goosebumps book creature: The Flesh Curator.
"It says you belong in a museum."
That sounds like both quest giver and area boss.
"You may destroy this beautiful sanctuary, and end the 'threat'. Or you can work for this sanctuary and bring the rarest morsels here.
The choice is yours, traveler."
The encyclopod from Futurama!
I'd imagine that these have some horrible ties to beholders.
-Meatballs with a bunch of eyes
-Tentacles with face bits on them
-Can clone stuff
-Tactical
-Abberations
So you know if a beholder dreams of another beholder, it spawns a clone of itself? What if these guys come from a beholder's nightmare? Like, those weird ones where you see a creepy doppelganger version of yourself, that kind of thing?
That is a totally plausible origin. The alpha DS would have to be terrifying to have survived its "birth" without any minions and escape its beholder parent. I imagine that any beholder that encounters one would be utterly genocidal with terror, as it probably sees Deep Spawn as something akin to one of us seeing a creature that's a cross between a sibling, Slenderman, and the Corinthian from Sandman with his toothy mouth-eyes.
Hell, knowing about this origin for DS and figuring out how to use it in illusions would probably be _the_ force multiplier that a party would need to defeat a beholder.
Massive plot twist you could have in your game is revealing that the party actually lost a fight with a Deep Spawn and its minions, being sent back out into the world as sleeper agents once they had been cloned.
Perhaps they were somehow cloned *too* perfectly, allowing them to chip away at the mental shackles binding them to their new father/mother. Maybe they only realize what happened when something they find temporarily disrupts the enthrallment. They are still beholden to the Deep Spawn, but now a sliver of their soul has begun to rebel against it.
Or, they're perfectly typical clones, but continuing their adventures is exactly what they were cloned for.
This is a lovely plot twist and will work extremely well with players who have no idea what a Deep Spawn is / does.
and after several sessions, on some random sidequest they suddenly run into the exact same party - themself
"Giant tentacle mouth meatball" has to be one of the most apt descriptions I've heard.
In the second campaign I was ever involved in our dm used a deep spawn in a fairly early encounter of ours. We did decent but clearly were on our way to a tpk so we got out of the sewers it was hiding in and alerted the local slayers guild and that was the end of it for us. And a way time later we finally went back to our roots and returned to our first "Hub City" as we called it and the city was thriving as it was before thanks to it's agricultural and smithing focus. But there was seemingly a boom in technology in the last two years while we were gone, nearly more so than the last two-hundred years the city as been established. And so we investigated and we learned of a new faction that specialized in technological advancements in the city that had become nearly adjacent to the slayers guild and so we went to them and learned that anyone belonging to the new faction was never seen speaking or without a mask on. Which of course we thought was suspicious but nobody seemed to mind since they took commissions and would at least try and normally succeed at making what was requested. And due to some "base level mind reading," our buddy heard him say something on the lines of "why does this one not wear the uniform, has this one betrayed mother?" So our rougue did his thing and followed him to their headquarters (pretty much just an estate) and after some patience, he watched three of them take of their masks and boom. Three people that looked identical to our artificer then one more, then two more, and that's when he came back and told us. And I have never since then seen a table so crazy yet silent before, bouncing around yet we couldn't find our words. So we went talked to our old friend the king and with a small party of his royal guard, we took the estate with their help and they stayed on guard while we interrogated one of the clones. Got him to tell us about a secret tunnel and we found the foe that nearly killed us way long ago. And still to this day, it was my favorite dnd moment at the table because it showed me how insane dnd can really be. So happy you've covered one of my all time favorites!
You had an awesome DM. That is an amazing plot twist.
All of what you just described sounds incredibly fucking awesome
I'm just shocked that a party had the sense to run away from a fight they were woefully unprepared for.
Bro I would watch the absolute hell out of a DND movie or series based on that campaign
Very epic. However, question. The deepspawn only improved the city, so it didn't do any bad did it? Unless you don't mention it
The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about the psychology of the clones. What does it feel like to be so fiercely loyal to their Deepspawn? How do they justify their attachment or make sense of it in their head? What if the original creature hated Deepspawns, how does it affect the clone? Do they have mixed feelings about it? What happens to the clones once their Deepspawn dies? Do they just wander off and reintegrate into society the best they can? Do they mourn the death of their creator? All I’m saying is that this is a really interesting backstory for a PC for those who like to go heavy on roleplay and such. Imagine playing as a clone whose Deepspawn was killed and who is now conflicted about their identity and path in life. Torn between feeling like they should return back to the original character’s life, loved ones, and their responsibilities and wanting to be their own person and make their own path in life, all while dealing with the psychological turmoil of losing their creator, who was an objectively evil monster, but who they still feel lingering loyalty towards.
But also, imagine a kingdom in which the crown prince disappears and the party is sent to find and bring him back. They find and kill a Deepspawn and discover that it made multiple copies of the prince. Now all these copies return back to the kingdom and throw it into chaos by fighting for the title of “next in line for the crown.” What will the current ruling king do? What will the younger siblings of the original crown prince do? What will the neighboring kingdoms do? There is SO MUCH potential for political intrigue, drama, royal murders, civil uprisings, scheming, spying, invasions, betrayal, etc.! The possibilities are so numerous that it’s overwhelming.
I immediately thought of a Warlock whose patron is a Deep Spawn, and the warlock is a creature spawned from the Deep Spawn, plus you say that Deep Spawn are “typically” Chaotic Evil, so one could easily be of a neutral or good alignment.
Edit: Since Kythons are native to the material plane I can see a Deep Spawn eating a Kython Slaymaster and creating a copy which starts laying eggs, soon the Deep Spawn has a huge colony of assassins who are fiercely loyal to it with no need to spawn any more copies.
That is a VERY interesting idea for a character!
@@DungeonDadThanks, and I hope your cat makes it.
I love unique patron ideas like that.
I'm glad someone else had this thought!
Fun idea, though in my own campaign settings I'd probably rule them out for patrons as lacking the kind of supernatural/magical gravitas to be proper patrons. BUT you could still have a Deep Spawned Warlock running around confused why this supernatural being they barely remember (their original 'proper' patron) insists they obey and please it or else...
Plot Idea:
Have a Deepspawn unknowingly follow the players as they travel. The Deepspawn eats everything the players kill. When it's time for the Deepspawn to makes it's presents known, the players then fight everything that they had slain so far. This could also be a good tool to show players that killing someone or something can have repercussions in this world.
Unless I missed it, there's nothing that says their spawn will stop existing after the deep spawn dies, so it could be possible that after the players destroy one they may get attacked at some point by it's vengeful children.
100%
@@DungeonDad But that would mean Hollywood movies have lied to me, and when the "Queen" monster dies it doesn't wrap it all up in a neat bow!
Or better yet, the players are clones of original adventurers whose Deep Spawn master was killed by another group of adventurers. The first quest of the campaign is the clones going out to get revenge on the ones who killed their master...then they go about being adventurers because what else are they gonna do, they have no master Deep Spawn and they succeeded in killing its killer.
I was curious about that as well. What happens to the clones when the deep spawn dies? Go on and live their life remembering Mommy Spawn? What happens if their clones have children.... how is that for an origin of an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer?
Now the question is.... What if a Deep Spawn eats another Deep Spawn? Can Deep Spawn A spawn multiple copies of Deep Spawn B? Will Deep Spawn B be able to spawn copies of monsters it ate before it was eaten by Deep Spawn A?
Or even worse... What if the Deep Spawn eats it's own tentacle that an adventurer managed to sever? Can it now spawn copies of itself which if eaten can now infinitely spawn copies that create copies like the Dooplers in Star Trek Lower Decks?
A deep spawn clone as a player character sounds really interesting. You could totally have a low level adventuring party get munched by the deep spawn and then each of them gets sent back to join other parties, as a sort of twist on the motivation "I'm doing this to support my family".
You could have it so they (the character, not the player) *doesn't even know.* They talk reverently about how much they love their family, but when asked for specifics (what does your father look like? What does your sister do?) they get confused and frustrated and change the subject.
Ooh also, a deepspawn making itself a bunch of mimics and doppelgänger clones could turn into a real funhouse dungeon real fast
And it's a level 20 illusion wizard or has one in its possession.
Feed it dragon eggs...
Or one who just eats the already dead of endangered species to keep them from going extinct, fuck wirh the players and make one good
Feed it the BBEG.
@@THG-3141I just imagine eggs popping out of it only to never hatch. Or wyrmlings fed to it to die of old age while still being wyrmlings.
Ok, but imagine using this as a player in your backstory. I could see being an aberrant mind sorcerer who was spawned by one of these. Totally awesome, and encountering clones of that character later would be a compelling and creepy plot point.
I've got a plot Idea thanks to your videos. A deepspawn has an entire town it controls. But, it seeks out a group of adventurers for help, as something plaguing Its town and its spawn. It wouldnt reveal itself, as it does use this town to lure travelers, merchants and adventurers. But it really needs help, as its town's population seems to be less and less despite it generating more and more spawn to expand said town. And what is actually going on, is the Deepspawn's town is being preyed upon by a False Hydra. a war over a town where neither of the two sides are even aware that theyre fighting each other in the first place. The party getting caught in the middle.
Genius. I'm so steal- BORROWING this idea for my own games
@@redman7775 thief! how dare!
To make things more interesting, you could add a third faction, such as mindflayers or vampires, that was in an uneasy truce with the Deep Spawn until the False Hydra shows up and kicks off a three-way faction war. That would give you more options for plotlines (such as one faction blaming the other but the culprit was the third) and it would give the PCs a chance to choose which faction they support... if any.
@@HenriFaust that would be tricky as it'd likely over complicate things. more isnt always better.
@@goddessbraxia If there are only two sides in a conflict, it will easily tip one way or the other the moment an advantage forms. This is a good option for a one-shot or single encounter that you want to get through fast.
If there are three factions, any time one faction gets ahead the other two can gang up on it to return things to stalemate. This gives the DM more ability to fine-tune and flesh out the situation, and would fit for a larger setting that is experienced over time or through multiple encounters.
Imagine a session that ends with an encounter with a deep spawn, but the next one starts with waking up with a foggy recollection of the last session, and suddenly your new goal is to protect the deepspawn and do it’s bidding, with the players eventually finding out they’re clones
You had better not do that without first giving your party a chance to fight it in combat or resist using a skill challenge.
It might be cruel of me but I was imagining the deep spawn having asked a previous heroic party that has defeated a tarrasque a piece of his flesh so over the years he had amassed a small army of them, maybe one hiding underneath each city as the deep spawn wants to be the true king of the continent with the current party trying to find him and kill him without raising suspicion or else a tarrasque might have to come for them
the deepspawn could order an entire rumbling on the continent then
@@superscheire Pretty much yea! I did not try to make an AoT refrence on purpose there lol
"This is what you want, right?"
Yes. We hunger for the wiggly gaslighter beasts.
I'm imagining a deep spawn slowly eating and cloning an entire country until the party is traveling through and notices something off about the people. Also do you think it could clone itself if it bit off one of its tentacles, I think that could be cool.
That's a really interesting question. Rules as written I would say yes. In fact this is likely how they reproduce.
@@DungeonDad Could also work with 2 deep spawn, with them each eating a tentacle from the other to produce a child or 2. So the children aren't just a clone/spawn of 1 parent but a proper offspring with 2 parents for genetic diversity. And since their limbs grow back after a number of days there's no permanent issues.. well besides the resulting offspring.
I really like this body-snatchers idea, straight up terrifying
The creature needs to be originated from the prime material plane, as the deep spawn is originary from the far realms, they would not reproduce so simply. the way they reproduce is probably a mystery, sadly, unless we got a source, we can't say. But assuming its from the Far realms, it gotta be f***ed up.
That's some analog horror stuff there.
now imagine an adventuring party who have a very hazy recollection of their past, and have been tasked by their shared father to hunt numerous creatures which inexplicably become the party's allies after being hunted, even if what the pwrty brought back was a corpse
then, the party discover that another adventuring party who are mysteriously similar to them, but just so happen to be missing body parts. this then leads to the party discovering what their father truly is, and, by proxy, themselves.
I'd use a deep spawn to be a guardian put into place to keep a greater evil being imprisoned/at bay whether it be a dracolich, demon, or aboleth. Say a neutral deity put this deep spawn in this position as guardian or to keep tabs on the imprisoned being to either prevent them from escaping or for studying said monsters and reporting their findings to that deity. The players are led to believe that this deep spawn is the monster terrorizing a town by a warlock whose patron is either the dracolich, demon, or aboleth so imprisoned. It could be played out in so many ways.
Ooh yeah. Imagine an order of paladins or a holy temple who use a deep spawn as a necessary evil to give themselves enough members to continue their eternal vigil around an imprisoned demon lord. But it’s been a couple of centuries and the clones are getting poor quality, so the deep spawn is cloning whatever it can get to keep the defenses up…
Definitely needs an organisation built around it. I doubt most players would even question your settings adventure/questing/hunters/dungeoneers/explorers guild and the bounties they've placed upon everything useful and edible.
"I hear the strongest and highest ranked guild members go through a special ceremony..."
"Did you hear the tale about the Shining spears routing orc bands down Ashford way?" "I thought they died to a man last week in Barrowshire?"
"I swear I saw that minister in Everglade last week, what are the chances twins ended up working for opposing kingdoms?"
If anything this has inspired me to make a homebrew shuckle monster
two words; Circus Horror. Clown monsters progressively getting more mangled and disheveled as the team tries to find the cause of the chaos sounds like a fun 1 shot
So the possibility of a Deepspawn that is actually a righteous entity or maybe even serves a god that saved it in the past is amazing. Monster officially yoinked.
I kinda want to have a Deepspawn now and have it act as a sort of alternative to necromancers. "Oh, your (insert person you liked) died? I can bring them back if you let me have a nibble of their body."
Damn. This creature does indeed have a lot of possibilities. The first one that came to mind for me was the party looking for a way to revive someone such as a party member. Which eventually leads them to a Deep Spawn. It offers to replicate that person, but they first need to bring them the body. After the Deep Spawn replicates the person the party wanted to revive, it obviously betrays the party, using the body of the person the party wanted to revive.
It could betray them immediately. Or it could simply wait. It can make more than one copy.
Then a few sessions later that party member is accused of various crimes he didn't commit, all over the land.
(I know technically the player should be a mindless clone as well, but you can make an exception for them to increase the tension and confusion.)
It would be incredibly cool to see a special Deepspawn that could mix and match creature parts. Like some kind of Far Realm Dr.Frankenstein on a quest to birth the ultimate life-form.
That's getting into Chimera Ants from HunterXHunter territory.
Deep Spawn × Sibriex
A truly fun idea i had was a deep spawn working with dragon and they scheme together. Not to mentjon the free horde protection the deep spawn can provide when the dragon is out hunting
I love the idea of the Deep Spawn being utilized as a last ditch defense effort for some impending invasion from a greater evil, like a portal to the abyss opened
What if all the players were spawn and they got sent out together to try and capture or kill a powerful monster. It could be a whole part of the campaign trying to get the creature back without rousing suspicion and it’d be really cool role playing as new spawn fanatically devoted to the creature that killed them, and seeing the traces of their previous lives. All this while they’re still trying to figure out who they are and develop their own personalities after forgetting who they once were.
reborn could functionally do it but i dont see how they actually resolve the issue of breaking their binding from the deep spawn without dm intervention
@@MVCx_xBpersonally I don’t think they need to break the deep spawns influence by the end of the campaign
The moment you described that the clones only have fuzzy memories of their original's life, my mind was swarming with the idea of using that as a plot twist for an amnesiac PC.
Was a bit dampened when you mentioned the fanatic loyalty part, but there's always a way to get around that.
Immediately this makes me want an "elder deep spawn" whose copies have perfect copies of its victims minds, memories and personalities, to the point that the copy doesn't know about the deep spawn until intentionally "activated" - imagine a tpk then the adventure just resumes but turns out the players got replaced ans have been playing spawn for a session or so
In 3E, the Deep Spawn could create a magic item that casts the spell _Magic Jar_ (5th level Sorcerer/Wizard spell) that loads the holder's soul into some kind of storage medium that the Deep Spawn can later use as a reference for casting _Mindrape_ (9th level Sorcerer/Wizard spell from "The Book of Vile Darkness") on gestated copies to restore their mind.
@@HenriFaustmindwhat? Oh boy, the old editions were really out there...
@@LoarvicLoarvic It was published before safetyism ravaged American media.
@@HenriFaust to be honest, something like "Mindbreak" would be far more appropriate name
Plot hook: The party visit a traveling doctor only to find out that instead of healing his patients he feeds them to his tamed deep spawn and discharges the clones rather than the person slowly controlling the region and gaining lots of gold in the process
Congratulations on the 100k bro! 🎉🎉
Thanks so much man!
Imagine a kingdom taking captive deepspawns into war, cloning the opposing army, and sending them back as if they won. You now have a large chunk of an opposing kingdom's population all acting as spies, or maybe causing civil unrest
Ok, this one is amazing, so there is a kobold that was eaten by a deep spawn along side a magical creature (an arm of a wizard, an azimar, whatever) so this spawn has wild magic because of the mix of DNA. But the adventuring party kills the deep spawn when the kobold was a "newborn". So now there is this pup that has no master and is now out there trying to find its place in the world. NEW CHARACTER.
It also works with warloks, any sorcerer sub class really. So thank you @DungeonDad
I love the idea of a party of adventurers being sent to find some missing villagers, only to find the villagers(clones) just chilling in a cave and just straight up lying about the whats and whys to get the party to leave before they find out about the deepspawn
Surprise this monster never returned. This is great stuff.
my first thought for how to boost the danger of the deep spawn, before the council of spawn was mentioned, was to have one powerful deepspawn consume and recreate smaller spawn. These spawned spawn would be fanatically loyal to the greater spawn and each one would increase the production capacity for lesser monsters and minions who would be fanatically loyal to spawn fanatically loyal to the greater spawn. This could also allow for more spawned clones without the loss of mental faculties by cutting up one creature into as many portions as there are spawn.
Disappointed to see you leaked out one of my favorite monsters :)...just kidding of course. I have used this creature for ages after learning about a hunter in a Neverwinter Forest who used to sell hunting guided tours and have a Deepspawn spit out creatures for people to hunt (1st edition or 2nd edition if I remember correctly). This is one of my favorite antagonist allies Ed Greenwood ever created. Thanks for blowing the dust off this gem and sharing it with all of us.
Love the idea of a city of spawn minions with a deep spawn at the center but they're... Entirely peaceful. The deepspawn just wants to chill and even has it's children seek out good relations and trade with normal towns
Yeah, that would be brilliant.
Kudos to Ed Greenwood for creating them! (It’s his birthday today btw)
I saw that on Twitter! I didn't plan that ahead of time but it worked out! haha
Wow! I wonder if there is a way to send him a thank you card...he was a huge part of my role-playing development :) Thanks for telling us!
Happy birthday, Ed!
Here's a homebrew I wrote that you might want to cover; The Snatcher.
Walking into the big city for some sweet sweet expensive loot to spend their treasures on, the party was impressed that not many rats scurried underfoot or slunk into alleyways, and very few shadowy figures lurked in the dark corners. They must have good exterminators and justice department!... The rogue was not so impressed. Crime abhorrs a vacuum, especially in the big city, and he could tell what organized crime there was here was afraid of the streets... and if the mob was afraid, you should be too... As if on queue, he felt his coin pouch get tugged on and lighten, a cutpurse! As he dashed in the direction of the thieving arm, his dagger at the ready, He felt strong arms wrap around his mouth and neck, cutting off his scream and slamming his head against the pavement. "How were so many thugs hiding?" Was his last thought as he faded off into unconsciousness...
Three and a half city blocks later, the cleric noticed their resident brooder was missing from behind them, and alerted the paladin. The party pulled to a stop in the crowded street, and with the gnone wizard on his shoulders, the paladin began to retrace their steps to where they'd last seen theor missing rogue...
Awakening with a start, the Rogue found himself being carried on his back down a dark tunnel, a quiet scrabbling noise beneath him, like many grabbing fingers. Attemting to move, he felt dozens of hands hold him still as the scrabbling stopped, and a brick in hand knocked him out once more.
As the party found where the Rogue had undoubtedly been taken, the local bum surprisingly helpful, and scared, they noticed how smooth the ground around the sewer grate had been worn. With no other choices, the nearest inn five blocks away, and the sun setting, the paladin heaved the grate out of the sewer entrance, noting that while heavy, it had not been attached, and no stink came from this tunnel, as the party trecked into the dark after their lost member.
Almost an hour later, and approximately directly under the city center, the paladin stood upright as they entered a larger tunnel, apparently leading to a chamber ahead, dim moonlight glowing from the crack under the door, as what they had thought was the sound of water flowing was now heard to be the distinct scrabbling noise of thousands upon thousands of hands from within the chamber beyond.
Charging in ready to fight for their lives, the party beheld a sea of writhing, interlocking arms, all ending at the mid-forearm, holding glass shards and bent cutlery and rusty nails and gleaming daggers, all manner of salvaged sharp object arrayed against them by thousands of hands, some of which palm-out, with beady little clusters of black eyes staring the party down, and some hands rubbing together excitedly, ready for this feast, the Rogue's shortsword spotted in the arsenal, the torn tatters of his cloak slowly being dissolved by a sticky, slimy, oozing core of wet flesh, which grumbled hungrily as the miriad arms of The Snatcher prepared to incapacitate and devour its next precious bauble of a meal...
The Snatcher is a monstrosity that manifests at rest as a large pile of dozens to hundreds of humanoid hands, each one ending at the mid-forearm, surrounding a gooey, gray, sticky core. When active, the hands interlock into whatever shapes are necessary for their task. Large pillars of interlocking hands acting as muscles in an arm ending with fist-like ball, daisy-chains of hands holding the base of other hands reach very, very far, acting as long tentacular structures, hands can line its underside to crawl rapidly over nearly any surface, eyes sprout from the palms of a few, and groups of clawed hands tear away at prey, killing them messily but efficiently, if no sharp utensils are in its possession. A Snatcher that gets its many hands on a cutlery box or a silverware drawer can be quite lethal in close quarters.
An urban ambush predator, The Snatcher will lure humanoid prey to dark alleyways with glittering coins or enchanted weapons placed on the edge of the shadows, where it grabs the curious humanoid by the head, covering their mouth, eyes, and ears, and pulling them through a nearby window, doorway, hall, drain cover, trapdoor, Sewer grate, or other opening where they are pulled and carried back to its den, along with the bait. It then uses clawed hands or sharp utensils to kill and slice up its prey, dropping the meat chunks into its gooey core, which then spits out more hands for the pile.
A city with a snatcher infestation will be characterized by streets surprisingly clear of rats, stray dogs, or homeless people, almost all of which snatched up long ago, and while few thieves hide in the alleys, party members will find coin pouches cut off and pockets pilfered if they rest very long on a city street.
A very lethal threat to any greedy party rogue, the Snatcher will happily devour any adventurer foolish enough to walk over to that perfectly good sword someone just left there...
Sounds like a dope Warlock Patron. Comes with a built in 'mysterious resurrection' mechanism that doubles as a slide toward existential doom after too many deaths. A BBEG that won't stay down until you drop its boss, a Pc with a martyr reflex, an allied npc that miraculously survives offscreen dangers, the possibilities are myriad.
Here's a homebrew I wrote that you might enjoy covering; the Admirer.
The toughest fighter in all the land limps through the doorway, drinking his last health potion and holding the door open for his friends, before slamming it closed on one of the ghouls' heads, as the horde of supercharged undead monstrosities behind them slowly lose interest, and they all catch their breath. The cleric uses his last spell slot to heal the wizard, who casts an upcast cone of cold back out the hallway, and shouts obscenities at the now frozen solid and no longer stubbornly refusing to die corpses, kicking one over. The rogue goes out and loots them, stuffing dozens of enchanted weapons into the handy haversack, and tosssing the barbarian a warhammer of thunder, before they finally explore the room they just happened upon, and behold the treasure they fought through seven layers of trapped dungeon and a small army for, The Hoard of Xal'Hackthul;
A pile of gold to make dragons jealous and dwarves swoon, a full _three hundred_ feet high, and exactly why they brought along four handy haversacks (which may still take several trips) stands gleaming before them, wreathed at the base with a veritable _fortification_ of magic items; a sack overflowing with decanters of endless water, a pile of foldable boats on what looks like a MASSIVE foldable boat, several golden coat-racks of various magical cloaks, dozens upon dozens of magic staffs, a pile of enough magic armor to suit a small army, and mirriad enchanted swords, warhammers, bows, crossbows, instruments, and countless more treasures, all laying on a floor LITERALLY PAVED in gemstones.
However, before they can even begin to take inventory, a Booming voice echoes down from the top of the pile so loud it scatters coins flying, saying;
"FOR CENTURIES MY EYES AND MINE ALONE HAVE GAZED UPON THIS HOARD, AND I WILL NOT LET SOME UPSTART INTRUDERS DEFILE IT WITH THEIR GAZE; PREPARE TO _DIE!!!"_
And to their horror, the party sees the horrible visage, of Xal'Hackthul, the Dragon-eater;
A maw to rival tales of the terrasque houses hundreds of massive teeth, its breath coiling purple waves of antimagic around its jaws, dripping with saliva, the eyes, dear god the eyes! Two dozen of them deformedly twisting from the horn-like stalks of many colors sprouting from all over the floating head, their pupils burst open to jaws lined with teeth like some eldritch horror, each of them brimming with their unique magic, the largest eye in the center Glaring with menacing greed amd anticipation, as the beast ROARS a bellow that shakes the party to its bones, and a prismatic array of magic radiates from its screeching eye-maws like the corona of a twisted god, and the fighter feels true terror for the first time.
When a beholder dreams of losing its curioes and its life to a dragon, it begins a metamorphosis that may never truly end, as it becomes an Admirer. Driven by a frantic need for the power to protect its curioes from even the mightiest of dragons, it sets out on frantic wings it didn't have before to devour every dragon it can find. When it does so, it grows another eye stalk that emits the dragon's breath attack, and its mouth grows into the snout of a dragon. After eating 5 young or older dragons, all its pupils grotesquely split open to jaws, though the eyes still work, its wings grow into dragon's wings, it gains 30ft of flight movespeed, and its mouth gains a special antimagic breath attack that inflicts large amounts of force damage upon any magic item or spellcaster, exploding them if it destroys the item or reduces the caster's HP to zero; the magic item's HP determined by its value.
after eating 20 dragons, all the eye stalks double in power, and the Admirer grows one size. This occurs twice more; once after eating 50, and then once more after eating 100 dragons; after 50 it must use its wings to stay aloft and loses 30ft of flight movespeed, and after 100 it loses the ability to fly alltogether, and gains massive claws on the ends of 4 scaled legs, which give it 30 feet of walking speed, and attack with the force of an acient dragon.
Ever the collector, it will enthrall mortals to help haul and carry with its telekinesis the hoards of the dragons it eats back to its lair, expanding the traps and minions within over time.
If you use one, first roll a d100 with disadvantage to see how many dragons it has eaten, or decide yourself if you so choose.
Love the art lore! Would love to see more about that with some other creatures, especially when the 5th edition popularity might narrow people's view of some of them. I adore seeing different artist's interpretations
Honestly the idea of one of these not being at all hostile, and like, only taking "donations" either from the willing for sapients, or already deceased animals seems like it could be the neat leader of a community.
My first thought is a Deep Spawn that's learned how to mix and match DNA from the various creatures they've consumed to make hybrid chimera that have unique combinations of abilities. This would be especially useful for one that has a limited variety of creatures they have access to.
Now I am imagining a warlock character who becomes an adventurer to get information and pieces of monsters it helps kill to send back to a deepspawn to create copies of them. And eventually as the warlock gets more world experience and seeing more monsters he realizes that something is weird about his situation and about the deepspawn. He can hear someone talk about them or find them in a book and he eventually can question his loyalty towards it and try to escape from its control or tell the party about it to try and kill it to set himself free and stop this growing army of monsters.
Pokemon mystery dungeon has really been revamped! Cool shuckle variant!
This thing gives me an idea for a sort of NightMare Enterprises kind of faction that goes around outfitting morally dubious nobles with monsters and even assassins and warriors that are 100% loyal to them, so long as the fee is paid. Not a main antagonist per se, but something that makes an adventure trickier if not dealt with
It's a good day when new Dungeon Dad drops.
For real. Discovered the channel a few months ago and have since watched every monster of the week on the channel and been watching the new ones on the day of or day after release. Probably my favorite DnD channel right now as a DM
In my homebrew setting, there's a lot of monsters running around that were the result of people in the distant past getting too into biomancy. This is immediately going in that category.
These videos give me so many ideas and make me really want to see them in a game. For the dragon scenario I imagine the deep spawn hiding its true identity, maybe using some kind of a proxy to talk to the party so that they only know that this person wants a dragon egg/ baby and that they'll be handsomely rewarded, but they don't know why they want it. Then once they have retrieved the dragon and given their reward the deep spawn reveals itself and eats the dragon in front of them and only then is the potential gravity of what they've done revealed to them.
Imagine a deepspawn getting its tentacles on an elder brain. If it can make dozens if copies of anything it eats, it could strategically place elder brains such the hivemind covers the entire continent.
Then they all start producing mindflayers...
Glad to see your channel reached 100k, you definitely deserve it! And best of luck for your cat's surgery, hope it goes well!
Thank you! Manky has actually had his surgery already and fortunately everything worked out okay
@@DungeonDadglad to hear it.
@@DungeonDad thats great to hear!
@@lapras3255 Good to hear. Long Life to the Furball.
From a mechanics point of view with this monster, I think the best way to handle it's ability to copy living things would be that two parameters are met:
1) It's eaten some portion of it (say an eighth of a pound worth).
2) The specific creature is dead.
This undermines _some_ potential scenarios (taking a bite out of someone, retreating, then sending in a clone to mess up their lives), but also gives a reasonable idea on why everything is so vague about how much it has to eat. Generally speaking, the reason people are unclear is that _usually_ if this thing bites something _and_ manages to copy it, it's because it _ate_ the entire creature. It's just that this doesn't _have to be_ the case. All that's required is that the original is dead.
As for what to do with a Deep Spawn, I think I'd be inclined to try an adventure with a slight modification. I'd have the main characters go into a dungeon and black out. When they woke up, they'd be okay and discover the dungeon had a few minor baddies in it that they could clear out. No explanation. Upon their return, they'd be referred to someone else who wanted to see them, a striking, wonderful person who wants to hire them to take down several small villages of orcs or whatever that are causing problems, including giving them access to several magical items do make it easier. After wiping out all the villages, they'd start to feel off, and upon return, the 'striking' person would seem to shift into the Deep Spawn and explain that they were only copies, but that whatever broke in them so they were unaware has also caused them to degrade. Part of this problem breakage means they're all hallucinating. That's why they saw the Deep Spawn as a person, and why the various villages they wiped out seemed to be populated by orcs or whatever instead of the regular people, farmers and so on, that were actually there. It's okay, though, it'll just make more copies of the adventurers later until their degraded forms can no longer serve. This would be where the adventure ends. (It's a horror story, obviously.)
I can easily see this implemented as some sort of entity tied to a cult. "You must rid yourself of your corrupted flesh and be born anew."
Could either be a sadistic group that intentionally sacrifices others or maybe a group of fanatics that genuinely believe they are helping people, like they feed the sick or cripple to it and they come out healed. Maybe they don't even know what's actually happening behind the curtain, with only a select few being in on what is actually happening to these individuals.
The comment section was already a goldmine, but holy shit this is the coolest thing I've ever read.
Heres one:
The Party is currently trying to overthrow a vicious and tyrannical Empire, but they dont have the numbers for a straight up fight.
They then encounter a Deep Spawn and it offers a trade: a Purple Dragon Egg/Wyrmling in exchange, it will provide troops for their war.
Very good episode! I especially approve of the fluffy guest co-host.
It would be fun to take a spin on the Dwarven/ Deep Spawn history. The story begins with a party of adventurers, sent as trade diplomats from a local surface town, arriving at a clan mountain citadel. Their mission is to negotiate an alliance with the Dwarf settlement to combat a local Goblin horde. When they arrive there is a feast and mysteriously the dwarven Lord is murdered. The citadel goes on lockdown and the adventurers must do investigative work to not only help the Dwarves and save the alliance but also prove their own innocence because everyone is suspicious of them as outsiders.
Now comes a fun homage to Shakespeare, for something is rotten in this state of Dwarvendom. The slain king's brother takes the throne but few suspect him of foul play because his relationship with his brother was a good one with even a mistress and blood relatives swearing his true nature. But there are also rumours of angry disagreements between the brothers leading up to the feast. There are a myriad of other suspects however; a court spy master, ambitious cousins, the royal chef, colonel Mustard with a candlestick and even Goblin assassins sneaking into the citadel. It all really hits the fan when the new king starts to crack under the pressure and his cleric asks the PCs for a private audience. The king is starting to be visited by the ghost of his dead brother each night.
Through further investigation the PCs discover there really is no ghost as the new king is going mad, becoming a rambling mess. Through many trials and tribulations of possible imprisonment and escape the PCs find the mad king being confronted by the "ghost" of his brother in his chambers. He flees and the mad king confesses to knowledge of a secret passage where an ancient evil secret is kept, a family curse that cannot be destroyed. He mentions his brother was a ghost long before the feast and had made a devilish pact to save his people.
Stricken with grief and unable to confront his fears, the mad king downs a vial of manticore poison, leaving the PCs with little choice but to take a diary of clues, the king's ramblings and a secret passage to clear their name. Traps, a few Underdark horrors and a puzzle or two separate their path from solving the mystery. They find something of a cross between an ancient temple and a prison with our celebrity monster inside accompanied the previous king... and just in time for the Deep Spawn to purge another not-so-fresh copy.
Then we have our epic battle with various manuscripts, the king's diary and lore from the remaining Dwarf nobility to explain the exposition dump to follow once the monster is slain. Long ago this noble family had sealed away a magically bound Deep Spawn when they were supposed to destroy it. With the rising threat of annihilation from a goblin horde the previous king uncovered this lore and had the desperate plan to 3D print an army. His brother rebelled against the idea, they fought in the hidden chamber and broke the magic seal binding the Deep Spawn, which immediately ate the old king. Clones kept making their way up to the citadel however and the brother was forced to kill his sibling repeatedly till he has the clone publicly poisoned at the feast. This sends him over the deep end (pun intended) and gives a lot of fun Hamlet connections to play with.
With the beast slain the curse is wiped clean, as are the reputations of the PCs and the alliance can move forward between the Dwarf and surface kingdom. Of course the story could play out differently if the PCs choose to back a Dwarf civil war, help the Deep Spawn or strike a deal with Goblin infiltrators in the Citadel but that's up to the DM!
A deep spawn would make for such a cool horror story.
Imagine, your characters start in a town where you do normal quests and story stuff. Meeting people and all that.
But things start to get weird when people you know start acting, off. Subtly off, but nothing in your face.
This slowly keeps happeing as you return from quests, and eventully gets to the point where even the quests start getting weird. (Find outsiders, and bring them to the tavern so that they may "become citizens of our nice little town". Dont kill any bandits or orks or anyone for that matter, just bring them here and we will "show them the light")
The thing is, these quests all work too.
And then, they express how much they apprechiate all your help, and ask that YOU become perminant citizens. They even have a party waiting for you.
Here's an adventure idea I came up with after watching this video:
A Royal Mausoleum once housed the greatest heroes of the land. Each of whom was entombed in a special coffin made to function as a "Chest of Preserving" so that each body is perfectly preserved. A window over each coffin would allow people to pay their respects to the fallen hero. It was seen as the greatest honor in the Kingdom to be entombed here as only the greatest most accomplished of heroes would go there.
Each year the Mausoleum would be opened during a special celebration akin to the Day of the Dead where the people could leave offerings for the heroes of old. As a whole, the celebtration helped to solidify a patriotic attitude among the people so was heavily funded. This year, however, when the tomb was unsealed 2 weeks prior to the event it was learned that all of the bodies were missing. Generations of heroes gone without a trace. A full thousand in total.
The entire situation is such a potential scandal that the royal family can't hire locals to deal with the problem for fear that the general public would learn of what happened. At the same time they aren't sure if any of the soldiers were party to the desecration so it's decided to hire a party of wandering adventurers to investigate the problem. A heft bonus is promised for each hero returned to the tomb. Even if the body is decayed the royal famiily can use a variation of a Mending spell to repair the bodies. It's explained if asked that most of the heroes who fall on the battle field are badly damaged, but spells are used to put them in the best possible quality for display. (think of it like a healing spell meets embalming)
That much is the adventure hook at least.
The party eventually finds and meets what appears to be all 1000 heroes of old and all apparently fully alive. If checked, no signs of resurrection magick or necromancy appears to have been used. The heroes won't know that they were from a Mausoleum. They will have a vague sense of being a great hero, but if questioned won't really be able to remember anything specific about their accomplishments. They just appear to draw blanks.
The party will eventually learn that the heroes were produced using Deep Spawn. "But wait..." a simple bit of math will reveal that if it takes 2 weeks for a single Deep Spawn to produce a single clone they are dealing with quite an army of Deep Spawn. If they were stolen recently that could represent a thousand deep spawn, but if stolen immediately after last year's event would mean that each deep spawn could have created 25 copies in that time. Doing the math there must be at least 40 Deep Spawn.
The party will eventually learn that the Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG) has been raising Deep Spawn for many years and with a sizable collection of 40 Deep Spawn adults set in motion a plan to steal the bodies of the heroes to mass produce them. The plan went into motion right after last year's event to give just enough time to create a complete collection of heroes before the Kingdom would learn of what happened. The bodies are still kept preserved in their "Coffins of Preserving" though. The BBEG would sever a part of a body and feed it to a Deep Spawn instructing it to creating a clone of it. The body would then be repaired with Magick. The same unique Magick, in fact, that the Kingdom has long used to repair the bodies of the heroes suggesting who the traitor likely is. It's fairly obvious that the BBEG is planning to use fresh parts on a rotating basis so that there are no imperfections. It won't be copies of copies. It will be a single copy for each time it was fed part of a body.
There are multiple potential outcomes of this adventure. Given the sheer combat potential a direct confrontation would likely result in a TPK. Murder hobo tactics would not work here. Here are a few suggested resolutions:
1.) The party could discover the magical apparatus used to steal the bodies in the first place. Either by evading detection via stealth or by actually joining the BBEG organization undercover. Once the bodies have been transported back the party could report to the Royal Family that the bodies were returned, who took them, for what purpose, and why. If they learn of who the traitor was they could also reveal this information as well for an additional bonus.
2.) The party could learn of a fail safe established just in case the Deep Spawns turned traitor. While the BBEG would not want to harm the Deep Spawn directly, the housing for the heroes all have poison gas traps. If the party triggers it they could kill the entire army and then just use those bodies in place of the original heroes.
3. The party could seek to take control over one or more Deep Spawn either through ancient Dwarven Magick or through some other skill that can persuade them. None of the Deep Spawn are currently under magical control. They only follow the BBEG because they were raised as the children of the BBEG. However, if the party doesn't learn of the gas before turning even a portion of the clone army against the BBEG the gas will be released and depending on where the party is when that occurs they could die with the army. There will be no gas where the Deep Spawn dwell so it's safest there. Depending on the outcome of this scenario the party could die from gas or could fight the BBEG without an army of heroes to contend with.
3.) The party could work out a deal with the BBEG. In this case the BBEG will agree to magically return all of the original heroes magically to where they belong. The BEEG won't tell the party, however, that a secret room exists with many chests of preserving each with enough material to create hundreds of thousands of original first generation copies to grow the army. For this reason, if in a corner, the BBEG may even try to negotiate by agreeing to gas the heroes and playing the sympathy card via a tragic backstory which may or may not be true. If the party doesn't learn of the backups this could result in the BBEG coming back later in the campaign with serious consequences.
4.) The party could join the BBEG organization as spies and then decide that the benefits and treatment is pretty good and actually side with the BBEG. Propaganda within the organization, which may or may not be true, will paint the Royal Family in a very unflattering light. If the party decides that the Royal Family deserves to fall and that the BBEG is actually in the right that could lead to an entirely new campaign direction.
...
This is a first draft of the idea at least. What do you think? Is it good as is? Does it need anything?
BBEG tried to get his revenge with his former adventuring party by his side, but his party died and he was the only survivor. He managed to steal their bodies and dominate a deep spawn to sort of bring them back to finish his plan. But this time he has given the deep spawn a finger of his so as to create three more of himself along with his cloned squad. They now are hitting three places simultaneously so as to make his revenge easier to obtain. The party would first fight his first cloned squad only to find that same squad “back to life” in another area. So they must free the deep spawn to keep the BBEG’s forces from respawning. BBEG in the mean time has been gathering materials for enough resurrections for his actual former friends so they can train by fighting themselves and getting the necessary training to be strong enough to finally achieve their revenge.
Wild suggestion for a future MotW video: The Ormyrr. They are large slug-like monsters with arms (think Jabba the Hutt) with heavy Elemental Earth associations. They crave magical items as they are not really good with magic themselves, but especially magical items that let them fly, which is very quirky.
How do I know of this creature? Back in the 90's, DnD's original home company, TSR, produced a collectible dice game called Dragon Dice. Its dice are beautfiul, and the setting, while separate from DnD at large, cribbed many things from it, particularly the monsters. You can get a frikkin' Ettercap die, for instance. Or a Remorhaz die. Or, of course, an Ormyr die, infamous for its rarity. It belongs to the Serpent Men faction and it is... pretty bad. Go figure. But it is a surviving bit of merchandise that tells of this obscure creature.
It's now been added to the suggestion list.
I used one of these back in 3.5. It was almost a total party wipe with only the rogue getting away. Sometime later the rogue and her new party wind up bumping into the “old party,” including all the gear that was left behind. That led to a fun encounter fighting clones of their old PCs.
This is why I love this channel. You entertainingly go through a very weird, interesting monster, saving me time researching.
I could see this as an opportunity to have a really brutal encounter for the players, to the point of there likely being a TPK if they don't coordinate well. If they lose, they wake up as clones of their original characters with the same stats and gear but now with the agenda of serving the deep one (or could even swap to playing a monster race potentially!). But if some of the party escape while others fall... then mysteriously find their friends return to town, then the ball starts rolling on some sinister shenanigans as well. Things as normal except the players who died know they now have an ulterior motive that the survivors don't, which could trigger some point later down the line.
Basically it's cool that the consequences for death with this monster are so different.
Always a pleasure to see a new video :)
You've given me quite a few creatures to run. Was there ever a time golem? Similair to the time elemental, but actually made by a chronomancer to guard their hideout
I like the idea of a more limited version of the cloning power where the quality of the clone is based on how much of the original it consumed. If it bites off somebody's arm, all the clones would have that arm perfectly replicated, but the rest of their body would look oddly bland and generic.
You could have weird quirks in clones that have some minor deformities, characters who NEVER take off their gloves, or people who just reek "generic NPC human" because the Deepspawn only got a nibble.
FINALLY! My fave monster in D&D gets some spotlight. Thanks for this! 👏
Heh, remember this one from a friends old Monster Manual or something as kids. Along with all the Beholder varients. What is it about balls with a bunch of eyes and tentacles?
Question/Idea:
What if a highly intelligent Deep Spawn was a patron for a Warlock? What if said Warlock is a clone? Would it make sense for a plot twist like that to happen to a PC that has no recollection of his past/amnesia? What if said Deep Spawn was not inherently evil and just wanted to see the world through PCs eyes?
I like the idea of a deep spawn in conflict with another force, such as a mindflayer colony. The party could encounter its layer, which is filled with degenerate monsters as the deep spawn master struggles to maintain a supply of fresh material in its endless battles with the mindflayers. The deep spawn wants nothing more than to eat the flesh of the elder brain, and the mindflayers want to take control of it to build themselves an army. Can make for a scenario that lends itself well to classic dungeon crawling or outright horror. Bonus points if this is all within one massive cavern/dudgeon, and the players have the opportunity to pit either side against the other to advance their own interests.
Imagine the monster ambushes the party, takes a small bite from each of them then flees. They’re confused and on guard but it doesn’t come back. Weeks later after they’ve all forgotten they arrive in a new town and are arrested on sight. The reason being the deepspawn made clones and have been kidnapping people and causing havoc. Now the party has to figure out what is happening and then fight a mirror match with themselves.
This monster will be great to use as a reason for an unlikely alliance such as mind flayers and orcs working together in a dungeon because they are deep spawn clones.
Or they could have put aside their differences on a Tolkien-esque quest to defeat the Deep Spawn that has bred supersoldiers.
Run a dark game where a village is fully taken over by a deep spawn. The heroes win, then in an outer limits twist they find out the whole world is actually deep spawn clones, including them, and they are just part of a conflict between deep spawn Lords.
This creature is so wild! I was already thinking up ideas for a deep dungeon crawl with this thing while I was listening, so thanks for the inspiration! 😁👍
Imagine making a PC that thinks they're just a normal adventurer, but truthfully they're just a clone. The deep spawn is having the PC go off, find a powerful adventuring party, befriend them as ally's, and lure them back so the deep spawn can eat them 👀
These would make for a truly wild high level boss battle with a dragon, beholder, giant, and other random creatures that do not belong together.
Reminds me of the Necromancer fight from Castle Crashers for those who played it.
I think what is even more fascinating is that Junji Ito inspired artwork shown at the beginning (and in the thumbnail).
Been looking forward to this video my friend and I came up with the idea of these guys being used in a war in their setting by wizards to clone neo-orogs (orc ogre hybrid) to fight against armies of constructs inspired by Star Wars
That is an excellent use of this creature.
Now I'm imagining a campaign or one-shot where everyone plays devotees of this god, going around and saving the day, before finding out that they are clones of the real heroes.
Imagine an evil artificer (lets call him Frankenstein) who's well versed in golems, enchantment, general magitek/artificer goodness, and he's entrapped a deepspawn as a slave; he feeds prisoners and bandits to the deepspawn, the deepspawn creates clones, and the artificer just scoops out the clones brains to replace the brains with magical equivalents to computers.
This removes the problem of progressively dumber clones and makes the clones loyal to the artificer, not the deepspawn. Best of all, the artificer is likely not going to be the obvious villain, so the party is going to spend a lot of time going after the deepspawn only for the big reveal later on that the monster was just the middle-man to the *actual* monster - a mentally deranged and power hungry scientist.
Well me and a friend of mine like to play matched characters, sometimes brothers sometimes close friends/allies. This gave me a new idea, a lizardfolk tribe had an agreement with a deepspawn where in times of trouble it would bite a small chunk from the tail of some of the tribespeople and give them a 'sibling' to boost the tribe's numbers. Unfortunately the tribe drew the ire of (Insert BBEG's or BBEG's second in command's name here) and lost the battle. Now the tribe is scattered to the winds and it's deepspawn lies slain. The paired PC's are an original and its cloned 'sibling' working with the rest of the party to exact the toll of blood for blood, life for life on those that wronged them.
Plot idea: a deep spawn parent hires you to find their dead kid so they can eat them and bring them back to life. As horrible and sad it would be to work towards cloning a dead deep spawn, i think it could be a compelling story.
I used one of these once to explain a party of adventurers who all started out bereft of gear and with no memories. The players learned class skills as they went as dim sparks of some kind of poorly remembered past returned to them.
They never knew they were the progeny of a defectively killed deepspawn. Sadly, though I was working up to the big reveal, the game was cancelled.
Okay, the Deep Spawn as SO many possibilities. Easily the coolest monster I've seen yet. I'm gonna use this!
im about to start an episodic 5e campaign when i stumbled onto your channel. this has been an absolute gold mine, thank you.
I've been waiting for you to talk about them for so long! dungeon masters deserve this knowledge
I'm glad that kitty is ok! ❤
A couple of comments have mentioned the deepspawn eating each other to reproduce, but as they are genderless they could pit their spawns against each other to earn the right of being the one replicated like how some snails fight to determine which one gets impregnated, which would be such a cool plot hook of a party coming across a fighting league of spawns as each deepspawn tries to prove itself is better than the other with some weird romantic undertones.
This is amazing
Rather than impregnation, wouldn't the Deep Spawn just take a bite out of their partner and gestate them the same way as their minions?
@@HenriFaustYeah, and they would argue over which one should be bitten and made a copy of!
The Umm Actually part really got me. Never seen a random reference to CH
I was already planning to use this guy in upcoming sessions and now I’m even more excited for it
DM: Alright, Mr. Pardu, remember how you were raised in an orphanage and never knew your parents. Well here **it** is. You now are no longer fiercely loyal to your squad.