August 8, 2025 • 14 mins
Today we shine a light on one of the nastiest creatures hiding in the Monster Manual. The Catoblepas is slow, ugly, and looks like it should be easy to kill. It isn’t. One look in its eyes and you are dead. No, not dying. Dead. I’ll walk through the stats, how to use it in your game without making it a cheap “gotcha” monster, and why this ugly swamp beast is a perfect old-school horror encounter.
#ADnD #Catoblepas #MonsterManual
https://solo.to/TheEvilDM
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:17):
Hey, welcome back to the podcast, the Evil Dungeon Master
Universe AD and D Podcast. I am your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well out
there. Today is Friday, It's time for a
new AD and D podcast for today. The Evil dm.com is my website
andaskthedm@theevildm.com is my e-mail address.
(00:42):
You can support me by going to patreon.com/theevilDM check out
my YouTube channel youtube.com/the Evil DM and my
backup channel rumble.com/the Evil DM if you want to check out
videos about AD and D and other wonderful stuff.
Before we get into our topic today I got in a message from
(01:06):
someone on Substack named Saint Lazare and he he proposed a new
D&D setting with his Co writer Jennifer Gori.
It is called Dwayne Hollow if you're interested in checking
that out. It is an interesting setting
that has three different time periods you could start in
starting in 15581758 and looks like the near future.
(01:32):
It is an interesting setting, has dark origins in it.
It is part of a chronology. Chronology.
Wow, I can't speak this morning.And this campaign will immerse
the players in an atmosphere of historical dark fantasy which
mixes horror and mystery. If you're interested in that, go
ahead and take a look at the link.
(01:53):
I'm going to leave in the show notes on the evil dm.com website
when you see this post and checkit out.
Other than that, let's get on totoday's topic.
Today we're going to be talking about a really, I want to say
loathsome, nightmarish creature today.
You ever gone dipping back into the monster book?
(02:15):
Today we're going to talk a little bit about an unknown,
unused monster called the Cato Bleepas.
Now I think I'm pronouncing thatright because the name is
partially Greek in origin, whichliterally means look downwards
Cato downwards Bleepo to look, so the name is fitting in
(02:38):
mythology. In the ADAD Monster Manual, the
creature's head is so heavy thatit hangs low to the ground.
The danger comes when it lifts its head just enough to meet
your eyes, because that's when it gives the death gaze, and
that's when it takes effect. This version that Gygax included
in the ADD draws from the plentythe elder description in the
(03:02):
Natural History, where it's sluggish swamp dwelling beast
feared for its lethal stare and poisonous breath.
This makes it one of those rare monsters with direct roots and
classic classic mythology, not just something made-up for AD
and D, which is why it's probably perfect for this
spotlight for monsters. So looking at the creature
(03:25):
itself, it's very rare appearingone to three armored class of 7,
movement of six hit dices of 6 +260% chance you're going to run
into it in it's layer. Treasure is AC, number of
attacks one damage is 1D6 plus stun.
Special attack gaze causes death.
Magic existence is standard. It is semi intelligent,
(03:49):
interesting. It is neutrally aligned.
It is considered a large creature standing at six feet
shoulder height. This nightmare creature is
loathsome beyond description andhas no redeeming features.
Its body resembles that of a huge bloated Buffalo and gives
it an offensive odor. The neck is long and thin and
(04:10):
perched. The top with big.
It is sorry, long and thin and perched.
The top is a big head, uglier than that of a warthog.
Its legs are thick and stumpy, much like a hippopotamus.
The creatures tall and strong and sneaky however, and moves
with an amazing swiftness to strike enemies.
Any creature that has, excuse me, a base of 75% chance of
(04:34):
being stunned one to 10 merely arounds the base chance of being
modified just the bound word by 5% for every level or hit dive
monster above 1. Thus, if an 11th level character
is struck by the tail, there is only a 25% chance of being
stunned, so the gaze is equal todeath ray extending 6 inches
(04:57):
from the eyes, even into the Astral and Ethyl planes.
Any creature which meets this gaze without any chance.
Sorry. Any creature which meets this
gaze dies without any chance to save itself.
Complete surprise on A2 in six sided dice.
Meaning one of the party membersencountering this monster has
(05:19):
met its gaze. Otherwise, the very weak neck of
the creature has only a 25% chance of raising its head high
enough to use its eyes. If both parties are still this,
I'm sorry. If both parties are still this
chance increases 15% per mealy around.
(05:39):
If the monster must follow quickmovements, or if it's shambling
along the pursuit of a prey, there's only a 10% of melee
chance per round. The neck is raising its head
strictly high enough to fix its gaze.
A fleeing victim, even with his eyes overted, is subjective to
the deadly effects of its eyes, although there is a saving
(06:01):
throne involved. So if you run into this creature
and meet its gaze on a surprise round, you, well, pretty much
are dead. So this creature surprises you,
You're dead. There's nothing about it here.
There's there's chances that he probably won't raise his head.
(06:23):
That DM has to roll. So if you're encountering this
creature, sorry, your character's going to be dead.
It's a pretty nasty little nightmarish creature.
And I was thinking of ways to possibly use this in the
campaign. Now, one of the ways was a swamp
idol. A local cult worships this as a
(06:45):
God. They bring it sacrifices in
exchange for quote UN quote protection from other monsters.
And of course, the player characters arrive in town just
before the next offering. Gee, I wonder what's going to
happen there. So I find it interesting that a
(07:06):
cult would do this. They would worship this creature
and not look at this creature, of course, because it doesn't
raise its head and the creature is just like, you know what,
you're feeding me these things, I'm going to take it.
You can worship me. It's semi intelligent.
It knows what this is, It knows what it's getting itself into.
(07:28):
So I think it's perfectly fine in my opinion.
I would definitely use that as acampaign, like side adventure or
something. This player character stumble
into this little swampy village along the way in their path
again, if you're using this creature, you're pretty much
looking to give your party a death or the entire party a
(07:51):
death or you're just looking to,you know, challenge them a
little bit. So another interesting way I was
thinking about how we can use this creature is again, there is
a village or a cult or whatever that worships this creature and
they erected this statue in its honor and they used what are
(08:16):
they nice, madely, finely crafted or whatever, gems for
eyes. They leave the statue as a
tribute in the middle of the swampy area.
The party be knowing stumbles into this statue, not knowing
what it is and sees the gems. Chances are they're probably
going to want to take these gemsbecause they're very valuable.
(08:40):
Pricey. Now they're probably some little
debate amongst some of the players of should we bother
touching this, it's probably cursed things like that.
They'll do their usual magic detections on it, or detect
curse or whatever else they wantto do, examine it for traps and
see none of those things, and probably take these gems because
(09:02):
they're easily can be removed. Once taking the gems, what
happens? They actually anger the real one
that lives nearby, the one that actually goes by all the time
and admires its own statue, its own tribute in the middle of the
swamp. So the player characters steal
(09:22):
the eyes and now the real one starts hunting them inside the
swamp area and tracks them down to get back what belongs to him.
I think that's pretty interesting.
What do you guys think out there?
Comment below and then you can go with some like a little bit
of traditional type thing. There is a noble in the town and
(09:46):
the creature is harassing the town.
Maybe every once in a while willcome in and put its gaze onto
something to grab a quick meal and leave.
Everybody's afraid because once it lifts its head, obviously
they know the gays will kill them, or at least they think so.
(10:06):
So the royal in town decides to hire the party to take care of
this thing and kill it so that the village will, you know,
successfully live and move on tolive another day.
Kind of your traditional setup of, you know, here's the
monster, please help our village.
And you are heroes. So you will do it.
Of course, we will give you goldor whatever, you know, women or
(10:29):
whatever we have as a reward. So don't worry about it.
It's a couple ways you could useit in your campaign.
And it's an interesting creaturethat I've probably just kind of
passed over and not use based just kind of on the picture and
what they say the picture kind of sells the creature.
And this picture didn't really inspire me a lot when looking at
(10:51):
it. I'm sure I've, you know, looked
at it and maybe used it. I don't recall using it, but
reading it now and and and wanting to use this creature, I
could figure out lots of ways touse this creature and it's death
gaze is probably the best feature out there.
(11:16):
I, as an evil DMI, like the evilthe evil gaze.
Yes, it's the evil gaze. I like the gaze on a complete
surprise, which means that somebody encountering the
monster has met its gaze and death.
And obviously you can change howthat works as a dungeon master
if you don't want to be that harsh, if you don't want your
(11:40):
party surprised and death on surprise, you can remove that
completely and just play the monster out as you know, as if
he raises his head and he's going to look up and boom.
Your players would probably knowthis.
There's quite a few players thatread your books back-to-back,
cover to cover, which is fuckingannoying in my opinion.
(12:03):
But what are you going to do? Characters will not know what
this creature is unless somehow you tip them off through
suggestions or unless you just rumors in town or maybe signs of
maybe bodies laying around in the area and they can kind of
figure it outgoing from there. But no.
(12:27):
And any player that's like, Oh my God, it's this creature and
this is what you can do, you instantly tell them that their
character does not know that andseparate that knowledge.
And I find that quite a few players, unless they're veterans
and that Dicks, understand the whole separation of metagaming
and player knowledge versus character knowledge and wouldn't
(12:51):
know to avert their eyes. So it really depends on how you
want to play it in your game. You can, you can dumb down some
of the things if you don't thinkit's fair giving people a saving
throw if you want, because even flinging victims get a saving
throw even though they're not looking directly at this
creature. So I guess that's the effect of
(13:13):
the his eyes just shooting the beams out.
I don't know, maybe he shoots out beams out of his ass.
I have no idea. But but you know, Tom, what you
think about this creature in thecomments and how you would use
it in your campaign if you wouldchange it.
I don't know if this creature made it forward to any other
editions. I would assume second edition
probably had this creature in it.
(13:34):
I don't recall it in 3rd editionthough.
I know I have some people who play Pathfinder in 3E games
listen to the podcast and on my channel so they can chime in on
the comments. And I appreciate you doing that
because I like to learn along the way as well about things
that you know, I'm not too sure about and y'all help me out with
that. So I appreciate it.
(13:56):
All righty, I'm going to head out.
Hope you have a great weekend and hopefully you have a game
this weekend. If you don't, hopefully you have
some gaming planned as far as maybe sitting down with a book
or two and writing out a module or a, you know, a maze or a
dungeon or just creating something inside your Dungeon
(14:17):
Master book that makes you smile.
With that said, I'm going to head out.
So keep it original, keep it oldschool and goodnight and God
bless everybody.
Hey, welcome back to the podcast, the Evil Dungeon Master
Universe AD and D Podcast. I am your host, Evil Dungeon
Master Vince. Hopefully you're doing well out
there. Today is Friday, It's time for a
new AD and D podcast for today. The Evil dm.com is my website
andaskthedm@theevildm.com is my e-mail address.
(00:42):
You can support me by going to patreon.com/theevilDM check out
my YouTube channel youtube.com/the Evil DM and my
backup channel rumble.com/the Evil DM if you want to check out
videos about AD and D and other wonderful stuff.
Before we get into our topic today I got in a message from
(01:06):
someone on Substack named Saint Lazare and he he proposed a new
D&D setting with his Co writer Jennifer Gori.
It is called Dwayne Hollow if you're interested in checking
that out. It is an interesting setting
that has three different time periods you could start in
starting in 15581758 and looks like the near future.
(01:32):
It is an interesting setting, has dark origins in it.
It is part of a chronology. Chronology.
Wow, I can't speak this morning.And this campaign will immerse
the players in an atmosphere of historical dark fantasy which
mixes horror and mystery. If you're interested in that, go
ahead and take a look at the link.
(01:53):
I'm going to leave in the show notes on the evil dm.com website
when you see this post and checkit out.
Other than that, let's get on totoday's topic.
Today we're going to be talking about a really, I want to say
loathsome, nightmarish creature today.
You ever gone dipping back into the monster book?
(02:15):
Today we're going to talk a little bit about an unknown,
unused monster called the Cato Bleepas.
Now I think I'm pronouncing thatright because the name is
partially Greek in origin, whichliterally means look downwards
Cato downwards Bleepo to look, so the name is fitting in
(02:38):
mythology. In the ADAD Monster Manual, the
creature's head is so heavy thatit hangs low to the ground.
The danger comes when it lifts its head just enough to meet
your eyes, because that's when it gives the death gaze, and
that's when it takes effect. This version that Gygax included
in the ADD draws from the plentythe elder description in the
(03:02):
Natural History, where it's sluggish swamp dwelling beast
feared for its lethal stare and poisonous breath.
This makes it one of those rare monsters with direct roots and
classic classic mythology, not just something made-up for AD
and D, which is why it's probably perfect for this
spotlight for monsters. So looking at the creature
(03:25):
itself, it's very rare appearingone to three armored class of 7,
movement of six hit dices of 6 +260% chance you're going to run
into it in it's layer. Treasure is AC, number of
attacks one damage is 1D6 plus stun.
Special attack gaze causes death.
Magic existence is standard. It is semi intelligent,
(03:49):
interesting. It is neutrally aligned.
It is considered a large creature standing at six feet
shoulder height. This nightmare creature is
loathsome beyond description andhas no redeeming features.
Its body resembles that of a huge bloated Buffalo and gives
it an offensive odor. The neck is long and thin and
(04:10):
perched. The top with big.
It is sorry, long and thin and perched.
The top is a big head, uglier than that of a warthog.
Its legs are thick and stumpy, much like a hippopotamus.
The creatures tall and strong and sneaky however, and moves
with an amazing swiftness to strike enemies.
Any creature that has, excuse me, a base of 75% chance of
(04:34):
being stunned one to 10 merely arounds the base chance of being
modified just the bound word by 5% for every level or hit dive
monster above 1. Thus, if an 11th level character
is struck by the tail, there is only a 25% chance of being
stunned, so the gaze is equal todeath ray extending 6 inches
(04:57):
from the eyes, even into the Astral and Ethyl planes.
Any creature which meets this gaze without any chance.
Sorry. Any creature which meets this
gaze dies without any chance to save itself.
Complete surprise on A2 in six sided dice.
Meaning one of the party membersencountering this monster has
(05:19):
met its gaze. Otherwise, the very weak neck of
the creature has only a 25% chance of raising its head high
enough to use its eyes. If both parties are still this,
I'm sorry. If both parties are still this
chance increases 15% per mealy around.
(05:39):
If the monster must follow quickmovements, or if it's shambling
along the pursuit of a prey, there's only a 10% of melee
chance per round. The neck is raising its head
strictly high enough to fix its gaze.
A fleeing victim, even with his eyes overted, is subjective to
the deadly effects of its eyes, although there is a saving
(06:01):
throne involved. So if you run into this creature
and meet its gaze on a surprise round, you, well, pretty much
are dead. So this creature surprises you,
You're dead. There's nothing about it here.
There's there's chances that he probably won't raise his head.
(06:23):
That DM has to roll. So if you're encountering this
creature, sorry, your character's going to be dead.
It's a pretty nasty little nightmarish creature.
And I was thinking of ways to possibly use this in the
campaign. Now, one of the ways was a swamp
idol. A local cult worships this as a
(06:45):
God. They bring it sacrifices in
exchange for quote UN quote protection from other monsters.
And of course, the player characters arrive in town just
before the next offering. Gee, I wonder what's going to
happen there. So I find it interesting that a
(07:06):
cult would do this. They would worship this creature
and not look at this creature, of course, because it doesn't
raise its head and the creature is just like, you know what,
you're feeding me these things, I'm going to take it.
You can worship me. It's semi intelligent.
It knows what this is, It knows what it's getting itself into.
(07:28):
So I think it's perfectly fine in my opinion.
I would definitely use that as acampaign, like side adventure or
something. This player character stumble
into this little swampy village along the way in their path
again, if you're using this creature, you're pretty much
looking to give your party a death or the entire party a
(07:51):
death or you're just looking to,you know, challenge them a
little bit. So another interesting way I was
thinking about how we can use this creature is again, there is
a village or a cult or whatever that worships this creature and
they erected this statue in its honor and they used what are
(08:16):
they nice, madely, finely crafted or whatever, gems for
eyes. They leave the statue as a
tribute in the middle of the swampy area.
The party be knowing stumbles into this statue, not knowing
what it is and sees the gems. Chances are they're probably
going to want to take these gemsbecause they're very valuable.
(08:40):
Pricey. Now they're probably some little
debate amongst some of the players of should we bother
touching this, it's probably cursed things like that.
They'll do their usual magic detections on it, or detect
curse or whatever else they wantto do, examine it for traps and
see none of those things, and probably take these gems because
(09:02):
they're easily can be removed. Once taking the gems, what
happens? They actually anger the real one
that lives nearby, the one that actually goes by all the time
and admires its own statue, its own tribute in the middle of the
swamp. So the player characters steal
(09:22):
the eyes and now the real one starts hunting them inside the
swamp area and tracks them down to get back what belongs to him.
I think that's pretty interesting.
What do you guys think out there?
Comment below and then you can go with some like a little bit
of traditional type thing. There is a noble in the town and
(09:46):
the creature is harassing the town.
Maybe every once in a while willcome in and put its gaze onto
something to grab a quick meal and leave.
Everybody's afraid because once it lifts its head, obviously
they know the gays will kill them, or at least they think so.
(10:06):
So the royal in town decides to hire the party to take care of
this thing and kill it so that the village will, you know,
successfully live and move on tolive another day.
Kind of your traditional setup of, you know, here's the
monster, please help our village.
And you are heroes. So you will do it.
Of course, we will give you goldor whatever, you know, women or
(10:29):
whatever we have as a reward. So don't worry about it.
It's a couple ways you could useit in your campaign.
And it's an interesting creaturethat I've probably just kind of
passed over and not use based just kind of on the picture and
what they say the picture kind of sells the creature.
And this picture didn't really inspire me a lot when looking at
(10:51):
it. I'm sure I've, you know, looked
at it and maybe used it. I don't recall using it, but
reading it now and and and wanting to use this creature, I
could figure out lots of ways touse this creature and it's death
gaze is probably the best feature out there.
(11:16):
I, as an evil DMI, like the evilthe evil gaze.
Yes, it's the evil gaze. I like the gaze on a complete
surprise, which means that somebody encountering the
monster has met its gaze and death.
And obviously you can change howthat works as a dungeon master
if you don't want to be that harsh, if you don't want your
(11:40):
party surprised and death on surprise, you can remove that
completely and just play the monster out as you know, as if
he raises his head and he's going to look up and boom.
Your players would probably knowthis.
There's quite a few players thatread your books back-to-back,
cover to cover, which is fuckingannoying in my opinion.
(12:03):
But what are you going to do? Characters will not know what
this creature is unless somehow you tip them off through
suggestions or unless you just rumors in town or maybe signs of
maybe bodies laying around in the area and they can kind of
figure it outgoing from there. But no.
(12:27):
And any player that's like, Oh my God, it's this creature and
this is what you can do, you instantly tell them that their
character does not know that andseparate that knowledge.
And I find that quite a few players, unless they're veterans
and that Dicks, understand the whole separation of metagaming
and player knowledge versus character knowledge and wouldn't
(12:51):
know to avert their eyes. So it really depends on how you
want to play it in your game. You can, you can dumb down some
of the things if you don't thinkit's fair giving people a saving
throw if you want, because even flinging victims get a saving
throw even though they're not looking directly at this
creature. So I guess that's the effect of
(13:13):
the his eyes just shooting the beams out.
I don't know, maybe he shoots out beams out of his ass.
I have no idea. But but you know, Tom, what you
think about this creature in thecomments and how you would use
it in your campaign if you wouldchange it.
I don't know if this creature made it forward to any other
editions. I would assume second edition
probably had this creature in it.
(13:34):
I don't recall it in 3rd editionthough.
I know I have some people who play Pathfinder in 3E games
listen to the podcast and on my channel so they can chime in on
the comments. And I appreciate you doing that
because I like to learn along the way as well about things
that you know, I'm not too sure about and y'all help me out with
that. So I appreciate it.
(13:56):
All righty, I'm going to head out.
Hope you have a great weekend and hopefully you have a game
this weekend. If you don't, hopefully you have
some gaming planned as far as maybe sitting down with a book
or two and writing out a module or a, you know, a maze or a
dungeon or just creating something inside your Dungeon
(14:17):
Master book that makes you smile.
With that said, I'm going to head out.
So keep it original, keep it oldschool and goodnight and God
bless everybody.
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