August 13, 2025 • 10 mins
Today’s episode is for Drake, who suggested this unusual magical item from the AD&D 2e era. Arabel’s Huggable Bear looks like a child’s stuffed toy, but it is one of the most protective and peaceful magic items you can hand to a party. I will talk about its sphere of protection, the double healing rate, and how to use it as a story tool instead of just a bonus to sleep.
#ADnD #ArabelsHuggableBear #MagicItems
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Master Universe
Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well
today. It is Wednesday.
It is time for a new podcast in the AD and D universe here that
we call AD and D Universe. So that's right. evildm.com.
(00:38):
theevildm.com is my website andaskvdm@theevildm.com is my
e-mail address. patreon.com/the Evil DM youtube.com/evil
dmrumble.com/evil DM Alright, I got all the crap out of the way.
Now we can get into the podcast,right?
So I got a request the other dayfrom one of my viewers named
(01:04):
Drake. He asked me to review a magical
item. You wanted my thoughts on it on
this magical item that came out during the second edition era of
gaming of AD and D. Now, I don't normally cover AD
and D2D things, but these magical items pretty much can be
(01:25):
used in any edition as far as upto 5 E for all that matters.
But this one was in Polyhedron magazine #82 now I don't have
polyhedron #82. I have quite a bit of them that
I have for my collection when I was younger, but I don't have
82. I may have lost it, or I don't
(01:47):
know what happened to it, but I was able to procure APDF of it
from the Internet Archive because Internet Archive has
everything. It has almost all the Polyhedron
magazines, and this one is Arabelle's Huggable Bear.
Now it seems like a harmless nothing bear, to be honest.
It's kind of, I guess, sweet. This comes from an actual player
(02:12):
at the time they named Cheryl McNally French, so she's the one
that created this one. This huggable and lovable
stuffed magical bear is made of White Herman.
It's sports an Onyx nose SAF your eyes and it's stuffed with
owl Owl bear down feathers. During the slumber hours, this
(02:35):
small bear radiates A3 yard radius sphere of protection.
OK, that sounds cool. This sphere keeps invading
forces from entering the mind ofany sleeping person, ESP and
mine affecting spells, includingpsionics, will not work on any
sleeping subjects within the bear's domain.
(02:57):
The stuffed animal also preventsthose in its area of effect from
suffering bad dreams, so you won't have a bad dream.
Because of this restful nature of the sleeping while slumbering
near the bear, hip points are restarted, restored at twice the
normal rate if anything. XP value is 3000 gold value is
(03:20):
30,000 gold pieces. If anything, this bear is
absolutely worth it for the hip point restore at twice the
normal rate. Snuggle this little bear at
night when you go into your, youknow, your camping encampment at
night, little wounded. Next morning, you know, boom,
hip points are restored normally.
(03:40):
You know at least some of it is depending on your DM.
If you have a light hearted DM when he doesn't care it'll just
restore the hit points. But if you have a stickler for
Adm, at least you have this bearthat'll accelerate the healing
possibilities of the bear. Now I was trying to figure out
ways to use this bear and we could do it.
(04:03):
Like maybe it's an heirloom and the bear has been in the family
for generations but now has gonemissing.
Recovering it is a personal quest for an MPC and the bears
protective magic hints at a larger danger.
Maybe the party is dispatched totry to go find this bear for
this prince's, I don't know kid,or maybe even the Prince
(04:25):
himself. Other ways of thinking.
A group of assassins want this bear because they cannot reach
the target while it's in the sphere of protection.
So maybe they hire the party to steal the bear, or the the bear
must be defended. The party is hired to defend the
(04:46):
bear because the assassins keep attacking and they're trying to
steal this bear. Maybe the bear is somewhat of a
false trap. The power The bear's powers work
perfectly until someone sleeps in near it in three nights in a
row. On the fourth night a creature
is drawn to the bears magic likea beacon maybe a dark evil
(05:09):
creature that seeks out this bear and is slowly creeping its
way to where it is located. It's like just like it's just a
beacon and it's flashing at night in the darkness and only
this creature can see this beacon.
And the creature slowly is tracking the party down every
(05:31):
night, getting closer and closerto where the bear is.
I kind of like that idea. Kind of maybe.
Yeah. I like that idea of a just evil,
like, I don't know, pus filled creature that's in the night and
it's, I don't know, black and oily and kind of just oozes its
(05:51):
way towards you real slowly. I like that.
Maybe another way. This bear is a key to helping a
curse. Maybe somebody in the party or
maybe an MPC has been cursed andthey've been plagued with
nightmares that cannot regain spells or heal properly.
So the bear is the only thing that allows them to rest.
Finding it becomes a major objective for the party.
(06:13):
So the party has to find this bear for the person that's
cursed. And this is the only way to, you
know, resolve the curse or remove the curse is go fetch
this bear. So maybe it's come type of a
relic in a village. A local superstitious village
thinks the bear is cursed. The truth is the opposite.
(06:34):
But convincing them is not easy.So maybe you have to convince
these primitive villagers that this bear is nothing more than
actually helping them out. Meanwhile they think it's evil
and have it locked away somewhere.
Meanwhile, the bear is giving them nice little dreams and
everything. Why don't we take a, you know, a
step back and reinvent the bear for a moment.
(06:57):
And now the bear, while it seemsharmless and innocent, those
that sleep near the bear are targeted in their dreams from a
Freddy like creature that stalksthem at night.
And every night they fall asleepthey have these bad dreams of
this giant bear. I don't know this man, this evil
(07:20):
warrior that stalks them and tries to kill them in their
sleep. And he doesn't at first get to
anything more than just torture them in dreams and maybe slash
at them and make sure that they don't sleep well.
So when they wake up the next day, they aren't sleeping at
all. They aren't ready to move on at
all. And you know, they get negatives
for not being able to sleep to the point where the point where
(07:43):
the party doesn't want to sleep at all because the moment they
go to sleep, they have these dreams.
So now we're in the classic situation of a Freddie Nightmare
in Elm Street movie with Freddiestalking the kids.
Now they're stock. This creature is stalking the
party in their dreams so now they don't want to sleep because
(08:04):
they can't control their dreams and this creature in their
dreams is just completely torturing them and draining them
of their will to go on. So imagine how tired you are and
this is happening. So now they have to figure out
what is what is causing this andwhat or how defeated.
Meanwhile, they didn't they don't know it's this innocent
(08:25):
little bear that they picked up is the whole cause of the thing.
And now getting rid of this bearis not as easy as just tossing
it in the trash. So I mean, they could just be
like, yeah, I throw it out or I throw it into the fire.
They burn it or something to throw it out.
But then there you bear reappears right inside their
backpack or right inside there, you know, their treasure loot
(08:48):
hole, wherever the the the partyis, that bear winds up going to
someone in that party. So it's a curse and it's a
reinvention of the bear now becomes a nightmare bear.
And being evil as I am, I would probably use this item.
And now that people from my party are listening to this,
they're probably like, don't youdare.
(09:10):
So people in my group, I should say, are listening to this,
probably saying, no, don't you dare use this on us because we
know now we know. But that'd be meta gaming now
wouldn't it be? Anyway, tell me what you think
about this magical item, Arabell's Huggable Bear.
Have you used it in your campaigns?
Would you use it in your campaign and tell me ways you
(09:31):
would use it? I'd like to hear your inventive
DM ideas for using this and how you would display it in your
campaign. Like I came up with a bunch of
ideas, I want to hear yours. So with that said, I'm going to
head out. Keep it original.
If you want to send in ideas, please do.
Keep it old school. Good night, God bless everybody
and hopefully we'll see you later.
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Master Universe
Podcast. I'm your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well
today. It is Wednesday.
It is time for a new podcast in the AD and D universe here that
we call AD and D Universe. So that's right. evildm.com.
(00:38):
theevildm.com is my website andaskvdm@theevildm.com is my
e-mail address. patreon.com/the Evil DM youtube.com/evil
dmrumble.com/evil DM Alright, I got all the crap out of the way.
Now we can get into the podcast,right?
So I got a request the other dayfrom one of my viewers named
(01:04):
Drake. He asked me to review a magical
item. You wanted my thoughts on it on
this magical item that came out during the second edition era of
gaming of AD and D. Now, I don't normally cover AD
and D2D things, but these magical items pretty much can be
(01:25):
used in any edition as far as upto 5 E for all that matters.
But this one was in Polyhedron magazine #82 now I don't have
polyhedron #82. I have quite a bit of them that
I have for my collection when I was younger, but I don't have
82. I may have lost it, or I don't
(01:47):
know what happened to it, but I was able to procure APDF of it
from the Internet Archive because Internet Archive has
everything. It has almost all the Polyhedron
magazines, and this one is Arabelle's Huggable Bear.
Now it seems like a harmless nothing bear, to be honest.
It's kind of, I guess, sweet. This comes from an actual player
(02:12):
at the time they named Cheryl McNally French, so she's the one
that created this one. This huggable and lovable
stuffed magical bear is made of White Herman.
It's sports an Onyx nose SAF your eyes and it's stuffed with
owl Owl bear down feathers. During the slumber hours, this
(02:35):
small bear radiates A3 yard radius sphere of protection.
OK, that sounds cool. This sphere keeps invading
forces from entering the mind ofany sleeping person, ESP and
mine affecting spells, includingpsionics, will not work on any
sleeping subjects within the bear's domain.
(02:57):
The stuffed animal also preventsthose in its area of effect from
suffering bad dreams, so you won't have a bad dream.
Because of this restful nature of the sleeping while slumbering
near the bear, hip points are restarted, restored at twice the
normal rate if anything. XP value is 3000 gold value is
(03:20):
30,000 gold pieces. If anything, this bear is
absolutely worth it for the hip point restore at twice the
normal rate. Snuggle this little bear at
night when you go into your, youknow, your camping encampment at
night, little wounded. Next morning, you know, boom,
hip points are restored normally.
(03:40):
You know at least some of it is depending on your DM.
If you have a light hearted DM when he doesn't care it'll just
restore the hit points. But if you have a stickler for
Adm, at least you have this bearthat'll accelerate the healing
possibilities of the bear. Now I was trying to figure out
ways to use this bear and we could do it.
(04:03):
Like maybe it's an heirloom and the bear has been in the family
for generations but now has gonemissing.
Recovering it is a personal quest for an MPC and the bears
protective magic hints at a larger danger.
Maybe the party is dispatched totry to go find this bear for
this prince's, I don't know kid,or maybe even the Prince
(04:25):
himself. Other ways of thinking.
A group of assassins want this bear because they cannot reach
the target while it's in the sphere of protection.
So maybe they hire the party to steal the bear, or the the bear
must be defended. The party is hired to defend the
(04:46):
bear because the assassins keep attacking and they're trying to
steal this bear. Maybe the bear is somewhat of a
false trap. The power The bear's powers work
perfectly until someone sleeps in near it in three nights in a
row. On the fourth night a creature
is drawn to the bears magic likea beacon maybe a dark evil
(05:09):
creature that seeks out this bear and is slowly creeping its
way to where it is located. It's like just like it's just a
beacon and it's flashing at night in the darkness and only
this creature can see this beacon.
And the creature slowly is tracking the party down every
(05:31):
night, getting closer and closerto where the bear is.
I kind of like that idea. Kind of maybe.
Yeah. I like that idea of a just evil,
like, I don't know, pus filled creature that's in the night and
it's, I don't know, black and oily and kind of just oozes its
(05:51):
way towards you real slowly. I like that.
Maybe another way. This bear is a key to helping a
curse. Maybe somebody in the party or
maybe an MPC has been cursed andthey've been plagued with
nightmares that cannot regain spells or heal properly.
So the bear is the only thing that allows them to rest.
Finding it becomes a major objective for the party.
(06:13):
So the party has to find this bear for the person that's
cursed. And this is the only way to, you
know, resolve the curse or remove the curse is go fetch
this bear. So maybe it's come type of a
relic in a village. A local superstitious village
thinks the bear is cursed. The truth is the opposite.
(06:34):
But convincing them is not easy.So maybe you have to convince
these primitive villagers that this bear is nothing more than
actually helping them out. Meanwhile they think it's evil
and have it locked away somewhere.
Meanwhile, the bear is giving them nice little dreams and
everything. Why don't we take a, you know, a
step back and reinvent the bear for a moment.
(06:57):
And now the bear, while it seemsharmless and innocent, those
that sleep near the bear are targeted in their dreams from a
Freddy like creature that stalksthem at night.
And every night they fall asleepthey have these bad dreams of
this giant bear. I don't know this man, this evil
(07:20):
warrior that stalks them and tries to kill them in their
sleep. And he doesn't at first get to
anything more than just torture them in dreams and maybe slash
at them and make sure that they don't sleep well.
So when they wake up the next day, they aren't sleeping at
all. They aren't ready to move on at
all. And you know, they get negatives
for not being able to sleep to the point where the point where
(07:43):
the party doesn't want to sleep at all because the moment they
go to sleep, they have these dreams.
So now we're in the classic situation of a Freddie Nightmare
in Elm Street movie with Freddiestalking the kids.
Now they're stock. This creature is stalking the
party in their dreams so now they don't want to sleep because
(08:04):
they can't control their dreams and this creature in their
dreams is just completely torturing them and draining them
of their will to go on. So imagine how tired you are and
this is happening. So now they have to figure out
what is what is causing this andwhat or how defeated.
Meanwhile, they didn't they don't know it's this innocent
(08:25):
little bear that they picked up is the whole cause of the thing.
And now getting rid of this bearis not as easy as just tossing
it in the trash. So I mean, they could just be
like, yeah, I throw it out or I throw it into the fire.
They burn it or something to throw it out.
But then there you bear reappears right inside their
backpack or right inside there, you know, their treasure loot
(08:48):
hole, wherever the the the partyis, that bear winds up going to
someone in that party. So it's a curse and it's a
reinvention of the bear now becomes a nightmare bear.
And being evil as I am, I would probably use this item.
And now that people from my party are listening to this,
they're probably like, don't youdare.
(09:10):
So people in my group, I should say, are listening to this,
probably saying, no, don't you dare use this on us because we
know now we know. But that'd be meta gaming now
wouldn't it be? Anyway, tell me what you think
about this magical item, Arabell's Huggable Bear.
Have you used it in your campaigns?
Would you use it in your campaign and tell me ways you
(09:31):
would use it? I'd like to hear your inventive
DM ideas for using this and how you would display it in your
campaign. Like I came up with a bunch of
ideas, I want to hear yours. So with that said, I'm going to
head out. Keep it original.
If you want to send in ideas, please do.
Keep it old school. Good night, God bless everybody
and hopefully we'll see you later.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.