September 8, 2025 • 13 mins
Today’s episode looks at one of the strangest items in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Apparatus of Kwalish. At first glance it’s just a big iron barrel, but inside it’s a full-on magical crab-submarine with levers, pincers, and a whole lot of chaos waiting to happen. I’ll cover how it works, how to use it in your game, and why this contraption can be one of the most entertaining magic items ever put into AD&D.
#ADnD #Kwalish #MagicItems
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:18):
Hey, welcome back to the podcast, the Evil Dungeon
Masters AD and D Universe Podcast, and I'm your host, the
Evil Dungeon Master. Vince, it is Monday.
It is time for another fabulous podcast for AD and D Advanced
Dungeons and Dragons. Hopefully you're doing quite
well out there. If you're not, hopefully your
day is going to get better for you.
But today we are talking a little bit about what you came
(00:41):
here for, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and little things that I
found inside the book. But first, the evil dm.com is my
website. Askthedm@theevildm.com is my
e-mail address. patreon.com/the Evil DM is where you can go and
support me if you'd like, or youtube.com/the Evil
dmorrumble.com/the Evil DM. Now that we've gotten all of
(01:05):
that out of the way, today we'regoing to flip to page 137 of the
Dungeon Masters Guide under Miscellaneous Magical Treasure.
There's an item in here that I completely, absolutely forgot
about and I've probably not seentoo many times in a campaign,
and it's called the Apparatus ofthe Koalish.
(01:27):
So when this is initially found,this item appears as a large
iron barrel. It has a secret catch in it
which opens a hatch on one end. So it's interesting that this
barrel just comes up and you as the players have to figure out
what this is. It looks like an ordinary giant
barrel type thing. And then when you expect it a
(01:49):
little closer, there's a hatch on it which you can unhitch
with, you know, finding the secret compartment in it.
And inside there are 10 levers, and the 10 levers do 10
different things. One of them extends the legs and
tails and retracts some. Uncover #2 uncover forward
porthole cover, same uncover side portholes, extend pincers
(02:14):
and feelers, snap pincers forward, left, right, backwards.
Basically it's a giant crab. It has even has open eyes in
quotes with a continual light soyou can see, raise, levitate and
sync. Open hatch and close hatch so
you can actually get protected inside there or close it up if
(02:35):
you really want to. The apparatus moves forward at 3
and speed backwards at six. The two pinchers extend forward
about four feet and snap for 26 points of damage if you hit
something 25% chance. No reduction for armor, but
dexterity reduction does apply. The device can operate in waters
(02:57):
up to 900 feet deep. It can hold 2 human sized
persons and enough air to operate for about two to five
hours at maximum capacity. The apparatus is an AC0 and will
take 100 hit points of damage to'cause even just a leak 200 on
its side before it becomes pretty much destroyed when the
(03:20):
device is fully operating in a hole.
And hole appears to be somethinglike a giant lobster or a crab.
So it's pretty giant in here, and there's a couple ways I was
thinking about how you can use it in your campaign.
The players find what looks likea huge iron barrel that washed
up on shore. I mean, this is a giant barrel
inside the apparatus. They have to figure out what it
(03:45):
does, or does an MPC activate itfirst?
Or they could fool around with it, try to find out there's
what's going on with this giant apparatus.
This becomes a exploratory type trial and error type thing going
on with the player characters having a little fun with this
new apparatus, giant apparatus they have.
(04:06):
Another thing I was thinking about is maybe a yeah, they have
an apparatus in the Kingdom where they are, and an evil
magic user who knows how to use the apparatus wants to use it as
a weapon of war. And now they players have to
fight off this magic user and his army before he comes and
(04:30):
tries to take the giant metal lobster from them.
I mean, you could drop this in the middle of a dungeon without
any instructions and players need to figure out what the
levers do and how to get out of it while the room is flooding up
and becoming dangerously to killthem.
(04:50):
So the only way to get it, it becomes a probable panic problem
solving type thing going on where they have to figure out
what this metal, giant metal apparatus does that could fit
two people and how they can use it to get out of the room.
Smash their way out of the room with this thing, I don't know,
but it's filling up with water. What are you guys going to do?
(05:13):
Well you can also think about this.
Since it's a giant lobster like creature or crab like creature,
you could use it as a thing to carry treasure.
I don't know why not. You are say you go to 1 island
and you find a lot of treasure and you don't have the way or
means to transport it back but you find this giant apparatus
(05:35):
thing this thing can use. You could use this thing, excuse
me, to haul loot through dangerous waters as you use the
the lobster claws that maybe hold on to things or you know,
put it inside of it while one player gets in there and
navigates this giant beast through the water to go back to
(05:55):
your home base. So another one, another thing I
was thinking about is the thing washes up or appears on the
shore and it's kind of damaged alittle bit, but it still works.
So the pretty much the players have to figure out how to fix it
and how to use it and if it evenis usable because it means
(06:17):
risking suffocation, crushing pressure, pressure as you go
underwater, being stranded if the wrong lever gets pulled or
the wrong lever doesn't work correctly.
They could possibly die in this contraption underwater.
Maybe a magic user after doing some scrying, this is the final
(06:39):
thing I thought of. The magic user does some scrying
and he finds the apparatus underwater, kind of like, you
know, a sunken ship or a sunken treasure.
And he tells the king about it. And the king, well, I want this
thing opposite because you know,the king wants the new shiny.
So he hires the adventurers to go out into the waters and
figure out where this thing is and retrieve it and bring it
(07:01):
back. Now the players have to remember
the characters. I'm sorry, same players, I guess
you could say the same thing. But they have to decide if they
really want to return this afterfinding it.
Because now the the creature of the creature, the apparatus is
pretty powerful when it works properly.
And think of all the things theycan do.
(07:21):
So they want to return it and get the whatever the king is
paying. Or do they say they never found
it, they can't find it and keep it for themselves?
Maybe it's underwater, guarded by like dangerous fish, like
sharks and stuff like that. And it becomes a whole
underwater type episode that theplayers have to figure out a way
(07:44):
to get around or battle these creatures.
And now you have a, you know, a seafaring battle adventure going
on here, which I kind of think is interesting.
I like sea adventures. So anything to do with being on
a ship and, you know, navigatingthe seas and having a fun time
with the I always I always enjoyadventures like that.
(08:04):
But that's not for everybody. Not everybody likes being stuck
on ships and stuff like that, though they've made plenty of
games in the recent years that would buy involve pirates and
stuff that people actually really like.
So it really depends on your flavor of like here.
Every time I I'm thinking about this creature and getting a
picture in my head and the only thing I could think of is that
(08:26):
stupid freaking giant spider from the Wild Wild West movie
with Will Smith. Yeah, that movie.
But I don't know, could you justimagine this giant like barrel
thing turning into a giant crab lobster thing and come jumping
onto the shore and it's just a Kong Kong, Kong Kong over the
snapping pincers going after you.
(08:49):
And you know, your your characters are like, what the
hell is this? And then so armor class 0.
So anything they hit with it just clangs off at unless they
get a really good hit on it. And then they still have to at
least get 100 hit points worth of damage on this crazy thing.
So it could be used to lead leadto lead into battles.
I mean, it'd be like the frontline thing just smashing
(09:12):
through just about anything thatgets in its way.
So it's not like it's not a powerful type thing going on
here. I was kind of curious after
seeing the description what thismight actually be worth as far
as experience points and gold points.
And it wasn't. I mean, it's worth 8000
(09:34):
experience points and 35,000 gold.
Now I was looking at that and comparing to other items in
there and I'm just like, you know what?
This type of item I think would be worth a lot more than 35,000
gold pieces for one experience points.
OK, that yeah, I mean the bolt, the the boat, the folding boat
(09:55):
is worth 10,000 experience points and it doesn't even have
half the things that this crab apparatus thing has.
So I don't know. I mean, these numbers that they
have here in the experience point value and goal point
value, we're just random numbersaccording to what the TSR alum
basically said. And there were no patterns or I
(10:18):
mean, I've asked multiple times of mentor and the rest if these
numbers had a certain pattern orcertain formula and they all
just admitted, you know, there was no real formula behind all
these things. So it was just whatever they
thought and I, I guess when theymade this thing up this, that's
what they decided the the apparatus of koalas was worth
(10:41):
8035 thousand gold points. I don't know, tell what you
think of the comments about thisgiant apparatus creature thing,
Crab, lobster, whatever you wantto call it.
How would you use it in your campaign?
How would you present it to yourplayers without making them too
(11:01):
overpowered when it comes to this thing?
Because this thing could change the tide easily.
If this thing was given to your group and it all of a sudden
became it's, it's kind of like if you're playing a military
game and or like Twilight 2000 and you give your Group A tank
all of a sudden and they know how to operate the tank after
(11:23):
some exploration about it. So now they're going through and
using this tank to their advantage now.
Sure, when it comes to military games, someone is going to have
an anti tank weapon or figure out or know that you know the
rear end of most tanks have a vulnerability.
Now, when it comes to this thing, the apparatus itself,
(11:45):
there is no real knowledge aboutit other than what the people
know who operated. It doesn't actually like come
with a, you know, instruction book or it doesn't come with
knowledge that people know over time from, you know, books and
stuff like that. This is kind of like, I don't
even know how it doesn't even explain how it was made.
(12:07):
So I'm going to do some more research on that as well and see
if they actually did any more knowledge or you know,
background on who created this exactly and what purpose was it
didn't actually have to begin with.
Now, if you know what it is out there, I appreciate if you drop
that in the comments because I'dlove to know and that's what I
(12:31):
ask of you guys out there. If you know anything more than I
do. And I don't know everything
about AD and DI just play AD andD and love it since you know,
the 80s. So anytime I can continue
playing the game and enjoying the game, you know, but I'm not
going to be one of those people that know everything unless it
like something like this comes up.
I really want to know what it is.
(12:52):
So now, now that I'm thinking more about it, I'm probably
going to see if I can hunt down some information.
And I'm sure in later editions, if this was in later editions,
they probably gave us more information.
But again, I really don't play later editions.
I think my later edition knowledge for playing did go as
far as 5E, but I didn't dive into 5E and four EI didn't play
(13:13):
a lot of I played a lot of 3E, not 3.5.
So that's kind of where my knowledge drops.
So anyway, with that said, I'm going to head out.
Hope you have a great day. Keep original, keep it old
school. Goodnight and God bless
everybody.
Hey, welcome back to the podcast, the Evil Dungeon
Masters AD and D Universe Podcast, and I'm your host, the
Evil Dungeon Master. Vince, it is Monday.
It is time for another fabulous podcast for AD and D Advanced
Dungeons and Dragons. Hopefully you're doing quite
well out there. If you're not, hopefully your
day is going to get better for you.
But today we are talking a little bit about what you came
(00:41):
here for, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and little things that I
found inside the book. But first, the evil dm.com is my
website. Askthedm@theevildm.com is my
e-mail address. patreon.com/the Evil DM is where you can go and
support me if you'd like, or youtube.com/the Evil
dmorrumble.com/the Evil DM. Now that we've gotten all of
(01:05):
that out of the way, today we'regoing to flip to page 137 of the
Dungeon Masters Guide under Miscellaneous Magical Treasure.
There's an item in here that I completely, absolutely forgot
about and I've probably not seentoo many times in a campaign,
and it's called the Apparatus ofthe Koalish.
(01:27):
So when this is initially found,this item appears as a large
iron barrel. It has a secret catch in it
which opens a hatch on one end. So it's interesting that this
barrel just comes up and you as the players have to figure out
what this is. It looks like an ordinary giant
barrel type thing. And then when you expect it a
(01:49):
little closer, there's a hatch on it which you can unhitch
with, you know, finding the secret compartment in it.
And inside there are 10 levers, and the 10 levers do 10
different things. One of them extends the legs and
tails and retracts some. Uncover #2 uncover forward
porthole cover, same uncover side portholes, extend pincers
(02:14):
and feelers, snap pincers forward, left, right, backwards.
Basically it's a giant crab. It has even has open eyes in
quotes with a continual light soyou can see, raise, levitate and
sync. Open hatch and close hatch so
you can actually get protected inside there or close it up if
(02:35):
you really want to. The apparatus moves forward at 3
and speed backwards at six. The two pinchers extend forward
about four feet and snap for 26 points of damage if you hit
something 25% chance. No reduction for armor, but
dexterity reduction does apply. The device can operate in waters
(02:57):
up to 900 feet deep. It can hold 2 human sized
persons and enough air to operate for about two to five
hours at maximum capacity. The apparatus is an AC0 and will
take 100 hit points of damage to'cause even just a leak 200 on
its side before it becomes pretty much destroyed when the
(03:20):
device is fully operating in a hole.
And hole appears to be somethinglike a giant lobster or a crab.
So it's pretty giant in here, and there's a couple ways I was
thinking about how you can use it in your campaign.
The players find what looks likea huge iron barrel that washed
up on shore. I mean, this is a giant barrel
inside the apparatus. They have to figure out what it
(03:45):
does, or does an MPC activate itfirst?
Or they could fool around with it, try to find out there's
what's going on with this giant apparatus.
This becomes a exploratory type trial and error type thing going
on with the player characters having a little fun with this
new apparatus, giant apparatus they have.
(04:06):
Another thing I was thinking about is maybe a yeah, they have
an apparatus in the Kingdom where they are, and an evil
magic user who knows how to use the apparatus wants to use it as
a weapon of war. And now they players have to
fight off this magic user and his army before he comes and
(04:30):
tries to take the giant metal lobster from them.
I mean, you could drop this in the middle of a dungeon without
any instructions and players need to figure out what the
levers do and how to get out of it while the room is flooding up
and becoming dangerously to killthem.
(04:50):
So the only way to get it, it becomes a probable panic problem
solving type thing going on where they have to figure out
what this metal, giant metal apparatus does that could fit
two people and how they can use it to get out of the room.
Smash their way out of the room with this thing, I don't know,
but it's filling up with water. What are you guys going to do?
(05:13):
Well you can also think about this.
Since it's a giant lobster like creature or crab like creature,
you could use it as a thing to carry treasure.
I don't know why not. You are say you go to 1 island
and you find a lot of treasure and you don't have the way or
means to transport it back but you find this giant apparatus
(05:35):
thing this thing can use. You could use this thing, excuse
me, to haul loot through dangerous waters as you use the
the lobster claws that maybe hold on to things or you know,
put it inside of it while one player gets in there and
navigates this giant beast through the water to go back to
(05:55):
your home base. So another one, another thing I
was thinking about is the thing washes up or appears on the
shore and it's kind of damaged alittle bit, but it still works.
So the pretty much the players have to figure out how to fix it
and how to use it and if it evenis usable because it means
(06:17):
risking suffocation, crushing pressure, pressure as you go
underwater, being stranded if the wrong lever gets pulled or
the wrong lever doesn't work correctly.
They could possibly die in this contraption underwater.
Maybe a magic user after doing some scrying, this is the final
(06:39):
thing I thought of. The magic user does some scrying
and he finds the apparatus underwater, kind of like, you
know, a sunken ship or a sunken treasure.
And he tells the king about it. And the king, well, I want this
thing opposite because you know,the king wants the new shiny.
So he hires the adventurers to go out into the waters and
figure out where this thing is and retrieve it and bring it
(07:01):
back. Now the players have to remember
the characters. I'm sorry, same players, I guess
you could say the same thing. But they have to decide if they
really want to return this afterfinding it.
Because now the the creature of the creature, the apparatus is
pretty powerful when it works properly.
And think of all the things theycan do.
(07:21):
So they want to return it and get the whatever the king is
paying. Or do they say they never found
it, they can't find it and keep it for themselves?
Maybe it's underwater, guarded by like dangerous fish, like
sharks and stuff like that. And it becomes a whole
underwater type episode that theplayers have to figure out a way
(07:44):
to get around or battle these creatures.
And now you have a, you know, a seafaring battle adventure going
on here, which I kind of think is interesting.
I like sea adventures. So anything to do with being on
a ship and, you know, navigatingthe seas and having a fun time
with the I always I always enjoyadventures like that.
(08:04):
But that's not for everybody. Not everybody likes being stuck
on ships and stuff like that, though they've made plenty of
games in the recent years that would buy involve pirates and
stuff that people actually really like.
So it really depends on your flavor of like here.
Every time I I'm thinking about this creature and getting a
picture in my head and the only thing I could think of is that
(08:26):
stupid freaking giant spider from the Wild Wild West movie
with Will Smith. Yeah, that movie.
But I don't know, could you justimagine this giant like barrel
thing turning into a giant crab lobster thing and come jumping
onto the shore and it's just a Kong Kong, Kong Kong over the
snapping pincers going after you.
(08:49):
And you know, your your characters are like, what the
hell is this? And then so armor class 0.
So anything they hit with it just clangs off at unless they
get a really good hit on it. And then they still have to at
least get 100 hit points worth of damage on this crazy thing.
So it could be used to lead leadto lead into battles.
I mean, it'd be like the frontline thing just smashing
(09:12):
through just about anything thatgets in its way.
So it's not like it's not a powerful type thing going on
here. I was kind of curious after
seeing the description what thismight actually be worth as far
as experience points and gold points.
And it wasn't. I mean, it's worth 8000
(09:34):
experience points and 35,000 gold.
Now I was looking at that and comparing to other items in
there and I'm just like, you know what?
This type of item I think would be worth a lot more than 35,000
gold pieces for one experience points.
OK, that yeah, I mean the bolt, the the boat, the folding boat
(09:55):
is worth 10,000 experience points and it doesn't even have
half the things that this crab apparatus thing has.
So I don't know. I mean, these numbers that they
have here in the experience point value and goal point
value, we're just random numbersaccording to what the TSR alum
basically said. And there were no patterns or I
(10:18):
mean, I've asked multiple times of mentor and the rest if these
numbers had a certain pattern orcertain formula and they all
just admitted, you know, there was no real formula behind all
these things. So it was just whatever they
thought and I, I guess when theymade this thing up this, that's
what they decided the the apparatus of koalas was worth
(10:41):
8035 thousand gold points. I don't know, tell what you
think of the comments about thisgiant apparatus creature thing,
Crab, lobster, whatever you wantto call it.
How would you use it in your campaign?
How would you present it to yourplayers without making them too
(11:01):
overpowered when it comes to this thing?
Because this thing could change the tide easily.
If this thing was given to your group and it all of a sudden
became it's, it's kind of like if you're playing a military
game and or like Twilight 2000 and you give your Group A tank
all of a sudden and they know how to operate the tank after
(11:23):
some exploration about it. So now they're going through and
using this tank to their advantage now.
Sure, when it comes to military games, someone is going to have
an anti tank weapon or figure out or know that you know the
rear end of most tanks have a vulnerability.
Now, when it comes to this thing, the apparatus itself,
(11:45):
there is no real knowledge aboutit other than what the people
know who operated. It doesn't actually like come
with a, you know, instruction book or it doesn't come with
knowledge that people know over time from, you know, books and
stuff like that. This is kind of like, I don't
even know how it doesn't even explain how it was made.
(12:07):
So I'm going to do some more research on that as well and see
if they actually did any more knowledge or you know,
background on who created this exactly and what purpose was it
didn't actually have to begin with.
Now, if you know what it is out there, I appreciate if you drop
that in the comments because I'dlove to know and that's what I
(12:31):
ask of you guys out there. If you know anything more than I
do. And I don't know everything
about AD and DI just play AD andD and love it since you know,
the 80s. So anytime I can continue
playing the game and enjoying the game, you know, but I'm not
going to be one of those people that know everything unless it
like something like this comes up.
I really want to know what it is.
(12:52):
So now, now that I'm thinking more about it, I'm probably
going to see if I can hunt down some information.
And I'm sure in later editions, if this was in later editions,
they probably gave us more information.
But again, I really don't play later editions.
I think my later edition knowledge for playing did go as
far as 5E, but I didn't dive into 5E and four EI didn't play
(13:13):
a lot of I played a lot of 3E, not 3.5.
So that's kind of where my knowledge drops.
So anyway, with that said, I'm going to head out.
Hope you have a great day. Keep original, keep it old
school. Goodnight and God bless
everybody.
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