May 20, 2024 • 25 mins
In this podcast episode, Dungeon Masters Jason Portizo, Joe McCall, and Jim Crocker examine the intriguing world of Owlbears, iconic monsters from Dungeons & Dragons. They discuss the origins, characteristics, and ecology of Owlbears, including their role in campaigns and their place in popular culture. The episode delves into Owlbear behavior, combat tactics, and notable encounters, while also addressing the creature's surprising rise in popularity, especially after the 2023 D&D movie. The hosts share insights from primary sources and discuss various Owlbear variants and mythologies.
Sources:
https://www.cbr.com/dnd-anatomy-owlbears/
https://www.cbr.com/facts-dungeons-dragons-owlbears/
https://www.themonstersknow.com/owlbear-tactics/
Owlbear-Themed One-Shot by DMDave:
https://dmdave.com/free-adventure-owlbear-wood/
tell us your mom's favorite monster! helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadventurerspodcast.com/voice
Sources:
https://www.cbr.com/dnd-anatomy-owlbears/
https://www.cbr.com/facts-dungeons-dragons-owlbears/
https://www.themonstersknow.com/owlbear-tactics/
Owlbear-Themed One-Shot by DMDave:
https://dmdave.com/free-adventure-owlbear-wood/
tell us your mom's favorite monster! helloadventurerspodcast@gmail.com or helloadventurerspodcast.com/voice
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:20):
Hello adventurers. The podcast words roleplayers and game masters have level up.
You're a game We are your dunkmaster's. I'm I'm Joe McCall and so
we're going to continue our little elementaryschool style book report series today. I
stopped calling these actual deep dies becausewe like to have a little more.
I like a little I like alittle more like I'm picturing like the kid
(00:42):
from up kind of like with hislither is like shuffling his papers. And
you know, I did my report, which are studying for a merit badge.
I would say we weighed, wewade into these topics. I wouldn't
say we deep die. We waded, and yeah, we shallow shuffle in.
There's a lot of do you havefor us this week, Jason,
(01:03):
I was gonna try to work theword roar into a response, but yeah,
I got nothing. So I'm justgoing to let's say today we're doing
another icon of D and D monsters. This is one that is almost popular
enough to be in general pop culture, but within geeked them and definitely within
within D and D players, thisis one of the most iconic monsters.
You have their own rodeo, youdo, but today's all about owl bears.
(01:26):
So it featured in the movie.Well, we're gonna get to that.
Sorry, that's that's one alert,So we are going to get to
that. So I was trying tothink of, like if we were to
kind of like put tears and levelsto like icon icon ability of monsters,
and like I would kind of putthis in categories of like general pop culture,
(01:46):
where like if you ask my mother, like what this thing looked like,
she could probably describe it. No, not an owl bear, oh
right, all right, but likeyou know, a dragon. Yeah,
all of our mouths can describe adragon. Everyone knows what a dragon looks
like. Yeah, but my mothercould probably describe what a mimic looks like.
My wouldn't be able to you knowthat. That's like that's your next
(02:07):
tier down. So I think Albert'sare the next tier down from that to
where like anybody who's even like dabbledin D and D or even most general
fantasy can probably tell you what anAlbert looks like. So they they're pretty
they're pretty iconic to where like,you know, general pop culture wouldn't really
know what those words mean. SoI think this is this is a really
(02:28):
cool one to get into. Ithink they're They're an important part of early
lower level campaigns and one of thefirst monsters ever designed by Guyex. So
let's get into Albert are and letlet's for deep dive. We're just gonna
call this cool facts about Albert.First one, these are monstrosities. They
(02:51):
are not beasts. They're not aliens. They're not an extra planner, they're
not humanoid. Really, they're notreally anything else. They are monstrosities.
The term monstrosity is used to compassany kind of monster that is just a
monster. And this has important implicationsthat we are going to get to later
with its typing. But like youknow, a beast like you cannot have
an Albert companion if you are aranger unless your DM is super super super
(03:14):
super super cool actually awesome by theway, and your and your various abilities
that work on beasts are not gonnalike an Albert is not going to listen
to you talking to it the waya regular bear would. Right. Yeah,
they're not owls, they're not bears. These are they're they're biliteral definition
of their monsters. Yeah, andthat's going to get us to our next
two points here. They are fromunknown origins, so canonically no one's really
(03:36):
certain where albars come from. There'ssome stories in certain modules that a wizard
may have tried to create some sortof some sort of like fusion spell on
an owl and a bear, thatthere is a lich named Fesslar who at
one point claimed clans responsibility for creatingthe first al bears, but he was
not very trustworthy, and that isunconfirmed. Huh untrustworthy lich. Yeah,
(03:57):
right, we're certain l say thatthey predate recorded history and may go back
to the dawn of time. Andwhile meanwhile there's fairies that will claim that
they have more of a fay wildorigin and migrated into material playing through fake
crossings. That so and and they'reall plausible. I don't think we're using
(04:18):
real world biology. I don't thinkthey happened naturally. So we're gonna go
with definitely bread Well, honey,when an owl and a bear love each
other very much, yea, whatis what is the equivalent? What is
the equivalent here of an owl bear? Like? Because there's something that's like,
(04:39):
wait, that small little thing andthat that big giant thing, like
you can you can put those togetherand make something certain dog MutS stinard.
Yeah yeah great, Yeah you're you'reyou're like corky husky. Yeah that's truscky.
Yeah, hilarious dogs, super asuper super stubborn, the two worst
(05:02):
breeds, but so also going alongwith the with the monstrosity bit. They
are straight up mean. They are. These things are nasty. They get
belligerent. Is the word yea thatI feel like best describes them. Well
there, I've been described as bloodrenbefore they are. They're pure agro,
super aggressive and all too happy tokill anyone who comes near their cave,
(05:26):
doubly so if their cubs or companionare nearby. So they're kind of designed
to be difficult encounters for low levelparties. So they are CR three,
so not too difficult to defeat alevels two and three. But you know
a couple of bad Diye rolls isa down or even a dead player.
You know, they they hunt alone, so if you catch them out in
the wild, they're probably by themselvesand a low level party can surround it
(05:49):
and use very basic tactics to takeit down. But if you go hunting
for them and find them in theircave, their companion is probably with them.
And their cub is there, andthey're going to instantly attack if you're
anywhere near their cub. And thenso a cr three. They're not super
terrible, but cobol pressed Home ofBeasts Volume three includes stats for a dire
(06:10):
owl. Bear them up at Okay, I was gonna ask, can you
pump these babies up? And thenthere's at least that one out there,
and then you know, there's allkinds of waste the Tome of Beasts,
I have to they're all good ones. And the way to pump them up
is make them hunting packs. Theyhunt alone, but they can travel in
packs. And we're going to getto their family make up a little bit
later, but they could be travelingwith their companion or even other you know,
(06:32):
others from their family. Well,so let's get into the family.
So they are there, fighters andlovers. They they do mate for life,
kind of like penguins. After amate passes, they will not seek
another mate. Once a cub decidesto leave the cave. They can travel
pretty far, so their caves canbe pretty spaced out among your world.
(06:57):
They will hunt separately, but willspend a lot of time with their family
and if anything threatens the family atall, they will fly into a very
very violent rate. See our previouspoint. They're mean, yeah, despite
all of that, smarter than youthink. So after they're hunting, they'll
(07:17):
drive the carcass back to feed,but they will purposely leave a carcass near
the cave entrance and even decorate theinterior of the cave with bones. Oh
and what's happening is they're leaving thecarcass out and so the smell of the
rotting carcass will attract other hunters andscavengers and then they will then ambush them.
Nice. Yeah, so in yourgame, pretty intelligent then as far
(07:40):
as our predators go, Yeah,yeah they are. Their intelligence is a
three. So, like you know, they're not to understand languages or anything,
but they are smart enough to knowhow to hunt using some sort of
like animal instinct level tactic. Right, it's not pure you know violence,
although once a time the fight eightis pure violence. Will get into that
later too, as far as,like, you know, leaving the carcass
(08:01):
out. If you need a wayto have a cave in your wilderness instantly
be recognizable as an Albert cave withoutyou know, having a big sign that
says Albert is inside, having thecarcass out, having the eggs, having
tracks are all ways that you canstart start dropping clues so that players who
even fail their their's FIBAL checks canhave some sort of clue what's going on.
(08:26):
So in the development of them,they were designed out there a knockoff
toy. Can you know about theother background on this, Yeah, the
like half a dozen of the mosticonic D and D monsters come from like
a cheap bag of like weird youknow, like whatever, like like like
like Chinese little plastic miniatures the Gygaxfound and then designed creatures around them.
(08:48):
The rust monster has its origins inthat. The I think the like the
Zorn like I think that the threethe three sided critter I think is is
in that. But certainly, youknow, some of your more iconic D
and D monster, like the weirderones that kind of come out of left
field, Yeah, are from mostYeah, found a bag of cheap knockoff
(09:13):
toys that you'll find like twenty fivecent machines and they were labeled as dinosaurs.
Yeah, but there were right,Yeah, but they were actually knockoff
Godzilla Kaiju. Oh nice. Yeah, So you get these like you know,
Walmart brands, you know, uh, you know, wish dot com
level poorly melted, poorly put together, a badly painted, wrong color everything
(09:35):
bad Godzilla toys, and he justkind of repurposed them. Those are the
dollar just to be clear, Ohfor Godzilla that's already so has such a
cheesy history. Yeah, perfectly.Yeah, I wanted to be campy as
campy as can be. So somy god, No, God's a little
ultraman type of stuff. And yeah, the the Albert and you mentioned a
couple of others, but he foundit while he was working on the early
(09:58):
versions of what would be a firstedition. So once now that we have
a design for the character, adesign for the monster, and they're trying
to make a fate within his youknow, the wilderness of the early D
and D settings, he envisioned themas being like the roaming wandering monster.
And this goes back to you know, to old storytelling and eventually into some
(10:20):
early video game RPGs where like,you know, random encounter has happened in
the overworld all the time, soyou're Albert would be like the de facto
wandering monster for random encounters, andactually having random encounter charts in the books.
It was a perfect way to getthem feeling like they could be anywhere.
They are not particularly sneaky, butthey are silent when they're hunting,
(10:45):
so like you know, they're they'rehuge, but then and they're not trying
to hide. But like but aplayers who are who are caught lacking could
catch up, could find themselves withan Albert on their hands. And like
this was like in the in theearly games, like when you know the
the ideas of advanced dming weren't reallythere yet. We didn't have books like
how to write a venture modules thatdon't suck. We didn't have books like
(11:05):
the Lazy DM Guide. There wouldbe some like you know, some boring
sessions with a lot of overworld travelat twenty three miles a day and with
a lot of callback episodes here,and like having just the wandering roaming monster
was the way to break it upright now in a well crafted campaign.
In my personal opinion, this mightbe a lukewarm take. I think that's
the worst part of the game,but a lot's changed in fifty years.
(11:28):
I offended it's good, but itwas. It was a simple, but
not easy simple to kill, butnot always easy to kill. Yeah,
and it was just perfect for thosethe lower parties. Yeah, it's a
big bag of hit points that justyou lay a little attrition on the party
before they, you know, getto the big bad guy at the end.
(11:48):
Yep. And again like you know, a couple of bad roles and
a couple of good roles from theDM. These things can really dishdd a
lot of dammit clock claub byte yep, yep, have multi tax against us.
I guess a level two or threeparty like it's in that bear hug
and it's all exactly Actually that waspostly part of the lovers and fighters that
they love the hug. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you
(12:13):
guys that we're actively looking for submissionsfor our Hello DMS episode that gets reported
every month. Send us your burningD and D questions the Helloadventurers podcast at
gmail dot com, or send usa voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com
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(12:35):
your questions today that's Helloadventurers Podcast atgmail dot com or you the voice at
helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice.Now let's get back to the show.
And and so this is why we'restarted going before. So at a low
intelligence I think it's only intelligence three. So it's it's not like a language
(12:58):
language. But they do communicate witheach other with a complex system of screeches.
So even among other AWL bears,especially with their with their family screeches
body language, they have a particularscreech for finding a mate and then with
that mate they would communicate with likegrunts, nuzzles and grumbles and like there's
(13:18):
a way to really like No,it's it's not pure instinct with them,
they are communicating with each other.I'm not probably on the same level that
like bees are communicating with each otherwith with with dances and things like that.
But it's enough to say, honey, I'm going hunting. I'll be
back in a while. Yeah,it's at least enough to know, Okay,
you protect the egg, I'm gonnago hunt. And you know,
they can at least communicate like that. In d and the official material,
(13:41):
there's we only see the basic Awlbear, and I mentioned in Toma Beest
three there is the dire Awlbear.But as far as official stat blocks go,
that's all we have. It's supercommon for dms to make up their
own variants of it at least,but these are most usually paint jobs that
are just like putting a fresh coatof paint on an un existing albar.
But there are some third party materialthat will give us like an Arctic version
(14:03):
of an albar, a winged owlbear. These are actually from very early Dungeon
Dragon magazines to find the the Arcticand the winged owl bears. And there's
a couple of other like third partycreators out there that'll make like scaled up
higher CR versions. There's a coupleI can see on D and D Beyond
from like icewind Dale Snowy Albar.But I mean just looking at it as
(14:26):
the same ac, same hit point, so I think it's so these are
in the the module books. Yeah, okay, I was look at the
Monster Manual and uh and and Monthof Multiverse. Yeah yeah I did.
I did not go into the campaignbooks. You know, Portal has a
reduced threat albar Excellent. Infernal MachineRebuild has a skeletal albear, and it
(14:48):
also has a headed nice pretty coolwe call that we call the owls bears
anyway. So, but there arebut in other games. So so the
idea of the Albert has gone beyondD and D and the most interesting ones
that I saw on in in thesearticles came from Pathfinder. Pathfinder gave us
(15:11):
a an Albert that was designed tosurvive underground, one that is designed to
survive in the chaotic dimension. There'sa variant that was developed by Orcs to
be used as a siege weapon,called the siege albar O. I love
that. I'm terrified. I almostdon't want to look it up, but
I'm going to. And there's aslime owl bear that formed a symbiotic relationship
(15:31):
with a green slime monster and itgives it a sticky defense layer. It's
a venom albear. It's just slimy. Oh okay, so it's got like
a sticky too. So say,anytime I hear symbiot and slimy shortly,
oh that's venom work or carnage.I guess sure. I didn't look up
specific stats on this one. Andof course Pathfinder is going to be a
little bit different than than the Dand D stats I'm used to, but
(15:54):
this could give it something like theadhesive property that the mimics would have,
making them that much harder. Ilooked them up in the in the Keith
of mom books will have links tothe article below as well. As far
as their tactics go, they havesuper high strength and constitution. They do.
They have a twenty strength so againstthe even a level three or two
party going against something with a plusfive strength is going to hit hard.
(16:18):
Good constitution, so they'll have highhigh hit points and making them make concieves
will be not very successful. Theydo have very low decks and intelligence,
so you can hit them that way. They're not sneaky, but they do
have very high perception. I thinkit's a plus seven or so on a
basic stat block, so they're alittle harder to sneak up on if they're
not hibernating. If they're hibernating,then obviously you'll have a lot more advantage
(16:41):
in there. But if you catchthem all they're awake, they'll probably sense
that you're coming up on them.They're highly reactive and will act purely on
instinct, so it won't prioritize anyparticular target, just whoever it clocks first,
either the closest one to it,or whoever feel like you can do
a group cell check, whoever's gotthe lowest you can you can handle this
(17:03):
however you want, but whichever onenotices first it is going after that target
and will continue to pound on thattarget until your the target is dead or
unconscious and we can get into thatin a second, or something else hits
it in the versus attention away,Yeah, getting its face now. You
like, if you do it properly, you can kind of kind of sub
in somebody who hasn't gotten beaten downyet to take hits for a few turns
(17:26):
to as you wear it down.Yeah, so like you send in your
barbarian to get to you know,take the reduced damage for a while,
and when it gets be too much, someone else hit it with an arrow
and then just be just be carefulof getting this attention on you from too
close. They do have a speedof forty, so it's going to be
faster than most PCs except maybe yourmonk and maybe you're high level barbarian.
(17:47):
Yeah, that's all those things thattell you not to try to outrun a
bear in real life. Yep,you know by the games, do not
try to outrun an out bear yep. Yeah yeah, if you climb it,
it'll just knock it down with thattwenty strength. So right, if
you encounter in its den, itwill fight to the death, both both
yours or its own. But ifyou catch it in the wild, if
(18:11):
you get it down to a lowenough HP somewhere in the twenty to twenty
five range, I will try toretreat. They are instinctual enough to go
back to their cave. But ifthey're in their cave, they're already on
their home turf. They will fightto the death. And if it downs
a PC and is not hit beforeit's next turn, I will then collect
the body of the down player inits beak and take dash actions towards back
(18:33):
towards its cave. Oh nice,potentially bringing it back for dinner like that.
Yeah, so this is a greatopportunity for rescue side quest. Yeah,
you're one player down and I haveto go into an albert nest.
Come on, this is awesome.Well, and that's that's also the thing
that the desperate farmer can come runningup to you as you're walking down the
(18:53):
street and you know, tell youthey need help with Yeah, yeah,
great, great side quest starter.Yeah. These are just like really cool
big bosses for your low level partiesand really cool for fodder for your mid
level parties. Yep, just waysof just ways of depleting their hit points
and resources on their way to thebigger fight. So the last section I
(19:17):
have here is just pop culture,which we can we kind of touched on
before. I put these in thehigher side of recognizability for those who at
least familiar with fantasy and just generalgeek them. I wouldn't expect my mother
to recognize it by name, butif I start to draw one, she
could probably figure it out. Butthey're popular enough to have a lot of
third party merchandise. I've seen shirts, pins, I think I have a
(19:37):
plushy. You do I have thatplushy? I don't get I don't have
that one, but I do have. I've got some. I got some
how some Albert stuff lying around.But they got a huge boost of popularity
with last year's D and D movie, and this is something that we wanted
to come back to. So I'mjust gonna read it exactly from my notes
because I can't say anything better thanthis, a huge boosts in Albert's popularity
(20:00):
from the two thousand and three Dand D move the twenty twenty three D
and D movie. Apparently I cansay it better than this by putting the
correct hear when the Druid would regularlywild shape into one despite being a monstrosity,
and wild shape can only turn youinto beasts. But that's another podcast.
Yeah, one of the handful ofliberties that was taken in that movie.
She does a wild shape into alot of different beasts, but she
turns to an Albert as her asher big bad form, but she doesn't
(20:25):
cast any single spell throughout the movie. So like this could be potentially the
DM saying, Okay, you canturn to Antar. Yeah, he jokes
on you. She wasn't wild shaping, She's aware Albre Nope. So these
things are fun. And I'm alsogoing to leave a link to a module
(20:45):
that I've run before called Albert wouldby a creator by a DM. By
a Dungeon creator that I've mentioned onthe show before is DM Dave. He
does have free versions of this,but the paid version will have more levels
available. His instagram was also great, fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, one
of my favorite creators, and Iwill happily and for free keep mentioning his
(21:06):
stuff. Better than for free,I support my Patreon, I actually pay
for it. So that's that's mylittle little minibook report on on Albert's Thank
you. Any questions, I don'tknow if I can answer them, But
do you have any No, youactually really went into I mean you went
in depth here with the origin ofit and everything. I think for me,
(21:27):
there is one thing that I wantto say, which is like kind
of kind of a little bit ofa trope through kind of the history of
D and D and love tropes andmaybe gosh, there might have been some
of this stuff in that that wouldla the order of the stick comic that
I love. But the idea thatlike you could get eggs from an owlbear
nest, hatch them and then somehowraise pet albars or team albars or something
(21:52):
like that, Like, I feellike we should just dispense with that idea,
and that if you if you takean egg from an awlbear and net
and you try to hatch it,what you're going to get is something that
is going to want to eat yourface. For its entire life, no
matter how nice to it you are. Yeah, but you know, the
the challenge of you know, oneof those kinds of quests that you can
(22:14):
get is you know, Wizard withesoteric you know agenda says to you,
I need an owl bear egg,Go get me one. Yeah, you
know, and the challenge is notjust you know, fight off, you
know, like can you get theegg without having to fight the Albera?
Can you distract and lead the Albertaway from there? And then you know
how big is an albar egg?What does it look like? Do you
(22:34):
have to keep it warm? What'sthe challenge of getting it intact back to
the Wizard? And that's kind ofa that's like the idea that these huge
monstrous creatures lay eggs is you know, sort of a little bit of an
interesting thing that you can well makea little bit of adventure fodder from as
well. So I got so manycomments on that bolt super for off the
(22:57):
air, But yeah, Albert eggsare are usually very valuable and highly sought
after, So that's yeah, theyusing them as a fetch quest and not
just a rescue mission is also agood one. Or is a wandering monster?
Yeah, and in the Balder's Gategame, there is an Albert cub
that you can befriend. And Ihaven't found any other articles confirming this.
(23:19):
I'm just going by what my experiencein Balder's Kate three that Albert cubs in
particular can be kindibalistic. So yeah, the idea that they lay a clutch
of like a dozen eggs, butthe Albert that emerges is the one that
like eats all its you know,brothers and sisters. Oh so, mild
(23:41):
spoilers, very mild spoilers or Balderskatethree. I would say skip ahead thirty
seconds if you haven't gotten this faryet. There's a scene of the Albert
cub starts eating the carcass of itsmother. Oh okay, sure, there
we go, strong and spoilers aredone. Yeah, unsentimental is what you're
saying. Yes, yeah, okay, so I mean, I mean that
could be it, but yeah,there is there is some some cannibalism.
(24:03):
Anything else. They had nothing,So I got most of these from two
different articles from CBR dot com.I'll have links to those resources, and
of course the monsters know dot comand I'll have a link to the d
M D of owl Bear would aswell. I think that's gonna wrap it
(24:23):
up for today, Thanks Jason.So thanks for listening to my little book
before. Guys. I worked reallyhard on it for like an hour last
night. Cool. So if youhave a favorite encounter with an owl bear
or any monster that we should alsocover, let us know Hello Adventures Podcast
at you month dot com or justlet us know at Hello Adventurers podcast dot
com slash voice which which monsters?Would your mom know that? What's your
(24:48):
mom's favorite months? Ye, I'masking for a lot of reasons. Tell
me your tell me your grandma's favoritedn D monster. But I think it's
gonna wrap it up today. That'sthat's it's Albert's and they they're they're,
They're one of my favorites there.They're nice and iconic. Never a bad
time when you see one unless theycatch you. But let's wrap it up,
guys, Thank you so much forlistening to Hello Adventurers. We're your
host Jason Portiso, Jimmy Crocker andJoe McCall, producer, editor and engineer
(25:10):
Jason Portiso. Music by Nick Sprayer, artwork by Kris and Broderick. You
can me chat to us with anyfeedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast
at gmail dot com. Hello Adventuresis a JTP audio production. Goodbye Adventures
Hello adventurers. The podcast words roleplayers and game masters have level up.
You're a game We are your dunkmaster's. I'm I'm Joe McCall and so
we're going to continue our little elementaryschool style book report series today. I
stopped calling these actual deep dies becausewe like to have a little more.
I like a little I like alittle more like I'm picturing like the kid
(00:42):
from up kind of like with hislither is like shuffling his papers. And
you know, I did my report, which are studying for a merit badge.
I would say we weighed, wewade into these topics. I wouldn't
say we deep die. We waded, and yeah, we shallow shuffle in.
There's a lot of do you havefor us this week, Jason,
(01:03):
I was gonna try to work theword roar into a response, but yeah,
I got nothing. So I'm justgoing to let's say today we're doing
another icon of D and D monsters. This is one that is almost popular
enough to be in general pop culture, but within geeked them and definitely within
within D and D players, thisis one of the most iconic monsters.
You have their own rodeo, youdo, but today's all about owl bears.
(01:26):
So it featured in the movie.Well, we're gonna get to that.
Sorry, that's that's one alert,So we are going to get to
that. So I was trying tothink of, like if we were to
kind of like put tears and levelsto like icon icon ability of monsters,
and like I would kind of putthis in categories of like general pop culture,
(01:46):
where like if you ask my mother, like what this thing looked like,
she could probably describe it. No, not an owl bear, oh
right, all right, but likeyou know, a dragon. Yeah,
all of our mouths can describe adragon. Everyone knows what a dragon looks
like. Yeah, but my mothercould probably describe what a mimic looks like.
My wouldn't be able to you knowthat. That's like that's your next
(02:07):
tier down. So I think Albert'sare the next tier down from that to
where like anybody who's even like dabbledin D and D or even most general
fantasy can probably tell you what anAlbert looks like. So they they're pretty
they're pretty iconic to where like,you know, general pop culture wouldn't really
know what those words mean. SoI think this is this is a really
(02:28):
cool one to get into. Ithink they're They're an important part of early
lower level campaigns and one of thefirst monsters ever designed by Guyex. So
let's get into Albert are and letlet's for deep dive. We're just gonna
call this cool facts about Albert.First one, these are monstrosities. They
(02:51):
are not beasts. They're not aliens. They're not an extra planner, they're
not humanoid. Really, they're notreally anything else. They are monstrosities.
The term monstrosity is used to compassany kind of monster that is just a
monster. And this has important implicationsthat we are going to get to later
with its typing. But like youknow, a beast like you cannot have
an Albert companion if you are aranger unless your DM is super super super
(03:14):
super super cool actually awesome by theway, and your and your various abilities
that work on beasts are not gonnalike an Albert is not going to listen
to you talking to it the waya regular bear would. Right. Yeah,
they're not owls, they're not bears. These are they're they're biliteral definition
of their monsters. Yeah, andthat's going to get us to our next
two points here. They are fromunknown origins, so canonically no one's really
(03:36):
certain where albars come from. There'ssome stories in certain modules that a wizard
may have tried to create some sortof some sort of like fusion spell on
an owl and a bear, thatthere is a lich named Fesslar who at
one point claimed clans responsibility for creatingthe first al bears, but he was
not very trustworthy, and that isunconfirmed. Huh untrustworthy lich. Yeah,
(03:57):
right, we're certain l say thatthey predate recorded history and may go back
to the dawn of time. Andwhile meanwhile there's fairies that will claim that
they have more of a fay wildorigin and migrated into material playing through fake
crossings. That so and and they'reall plausible. I don't think we're using
(04:18):
real world biology. I don't thinkthey happened naturally. So we're gonna go
with definitely bread Well, honey,when an owl and a bear love each
other very much, yea, whatis what is the equivalent? What is
the equivalent here of an owl bear? Like? Because there's something that's like,
(04:39):
wait, that small little thing andthat that big giant thing, like
you can you can put those togetherand make something certain dog MutS stinard.
Yeah yeah great, Yeah you're you'reyou're like corky husky. Yeah that's truscky.
Yeah, hilarious dogs, super asuper super stubborn, the two worst
(05:02):
breeds, but so also going alongwith the with the monstrosity bit. They
are straight up mean. They are. These things are nasty. They get
belligerent. Is the word yea thatI feel like best describes them. Well
there, I've been described as bloodrenbefore they are. They're pure agro,
super aggressive and all too happy tokill anyone who comes near their cave,
(05:26):
doubly so if their cubs or companionare nearby. So they're kind of designed
to be difficult encounters for low levelparties. So they are CR three,
so not too difficult to defeat alevels two and three. But you know
a couple of bad Diye rolls isa down or even a dead player.
You know, they they hunt alone, so if you catch them out in
the wild, they're probably by themselvesand a low level party can surround it
(05:49):
and use very basic tactics to takeit down. But if you go hunting
for them and find them in theircave, their companion is probably with them.
And their cub is there, andthey're going to instantly attack if you're
anywhere near their cub. And thenso a cr three. They're not super
terrible, but cobol pressed Home ofBeasts Volume three includes stats for a dire
(06:10):
owl. Bear them up at Okay, I was gonna ask, can you
pump these babies up? And thenthere's at least that one out there,
and then you know, there's allkinds of waste the Tome of Beasts,
I have to they're all good ones. And the way to pump them up
is make them hunting packs. Theyhunt alone, but they can travel in
packs. And we're going to getto their family make up a little bit
later, but they could be travelingwith their companion or even other you know,
(06:32):
others from their family. Well,so let's get into the family.
So they are there, fighters andlovers. They they do mate for life,
kind of like penguins. After amate passes, they will not seek
another mate. Once a cub decidesto leave the cave. They can travel
pretty far, so their caves canbe pretty spaced out among your world.
(06:57):
They will hunt separately, but willspend a lot of time with their family
and if anything threatens the family atall, they will fly into a very
very violent rate. See our previouspoint. They're mean, yeah, despite
all of that, smarter than youthink. So after they're hunting, they'll
(07:17):
drive the carcass back to feed,but they will purposely leave a carcass near
the cave entrance and even decorate theinterior of the cave with bones. Oh
and what's happening is they're leaving thecarcass out and so the smell of the
rotting carcass will attract other hunters andscavengers and then they will then ambush them.
Nice. Yeah, so in yourgame, pretty intelligent then as far
(07:40):
as our predators go, Yeah,yeah they are. Their intelligence is a
three. So, like you know, they're not to understand languages or anything,
but they are smart enough to knowhow to hunt using some sort of
like animal instinct level tactic. Right, it's not pure you know violence,
although once a time the fight eightis pure violence. Will get into that
later too, as far as,like, you know, leaving the carcass
(08:01):
out. If you need a wayto have a cave in your wilderness instantly
be recognizable as an Albert cave withoutyou know, having a big sign that
says Albert is inside, having thecarcass out, having the eggs, having
tracks are all ways that you canstart start dropping clues so that players who
even fail their their's FIBAL checks canhave some sort of clue what's going on.
(08:26):
So in the development of them,they were designed out there a knockoff
toy. Can you know about theother background on this, Yeah, the
like half a dozen of the mosticonic D and D monsters come from like
a cheap bag of like weird youknow, like whatever, like like like
like Chinese little plastic miniatures the Gygaxfound and then designed creatures around them.
(08:48):
The rust monster has its origins inthat. The I think the like the
Zorn like I think that the threethe three sided critter I think is is
in that. But certainly, youknow, some of your more iconic D
and D monster, like the weirderones that kind of come out of left
field, Yeah, are from mostYeah, found a bag of cheap knockoff
(09:13):
toys that you'll find like twenty fivecent machines and they were labeled as dinosaurs.
Yeah, but there were right,Yeah, but they were actually knockoff
Godzilla Kaiju. Oh nice. Yeah, So you get these like you know,
Walmart brands, you know, uh, you know, wish dot com
level poorly melted, poorly put together, a badly painted, wrong color everything
(09:35):
bad Godzilla toys, and he justkind of repurposed them. Those are the
dollar just to be clear, Ohfor Godzilla that's already so has such a
cheesy history. Yeah, perfectly.Yeah, I wanted to be campy as
campy as can be. So somy god, No, God's a little
ultraman type of stuff. And yeah, the the Albert and you mentioned a
couple of others, but he foundit while he was working on the early
(09:58):
versions of what would be a firstedition. So once now that we have
a design for the character, adesign for the monster, and they're trying
to make a fate within his youknow, the wilderness of the early D
and D settings, he envisioned themas being like the roaming wandering monster.
And this goes back to you know, to old storytelling and eventually into some
(10:20):
early video game RPGs where like,you know, random encounter has happened in
the overworld all the time, soyou're Albert would be like the de facto
wandering monster for random encounters, andactually having random encounter charts in the books.
It was a perfect way to getthem feeling like they could be anywhere.
They are not particularly sneaky, butthey are silent when they're hunting,
(10:45):
so like you know, they're they'rehuge, but then and they're not trying
to hide. But like but aplayers who are who are caught lacking could
catch up, could find themselves withan Albert on their hands. And like
this was like in the in theearly games, like when you know the
the ideas of advanced dming weren't reallythere yet. We didn't have books like
how to write a venture modules thatdon't suck. We didn't have books like
(11:05):
the Lazy DM Guide. There wouldbe some like you know, some boring
sessions with a lot of overworld travelat twenty three miles a day and with
a lot of callback episodes here,and like having just the wandering roaming monster
was the way to break it upright now in a well crafted campaign.
In my personal opinion, this mightbe a lukewarm take. I think that's
the worst part of the game,but a lot's changed in fifty years.
(11:28):
I offended it's good, but itwas. It was a simple, but
not easy simple to kill, butnot always easy to kill. Yeah,
and it was just perfect for thosethe lower parties. Yeah, it's a
big bag of hit points that justyou lay a little attrition on the party
before they, you know, getto the big bad guy at the end.
(11:48):
Yep. And again like you know, a couple of bad roles and
a couple of good roles from theDM. These things can really dishdd a
lot of dammit clock claub byte yep, yep, have multi tax against us.
I guess a level two or threeparty like it's in that bear hug
and it's all exactly Actually that waspostly part of the lovers and fighters that
they love the hug. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you
(12:13):
guys that we're actively looking for submissionsfor our Hello DMS episode that gets reported
every month. Send us your burningD and D questions the Helloadventurers podcast at
gmail dot com, or send usa voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com
slash voice. Don't forget to beginyour message with Hello DMS. You can't
wait to get your questions to talkabout them on the show. Send us
(12:35):
your questions today that's Helloadventurers Podcast atgmail dot com or you the voice at
helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice.Now let's get back to the show.
And and so this is why we'restarted going before. So at a low
intelligence I think it's only intelligence three. So it's it's not like a language
(12:58):
language. But they do communicate witheach other with a complex system of screeches.
So even among other AWL bears,especially with their with their family screeches
body language, they have a particularscreech for finding a mate and then with
that mate they would communicate with likegrunts, nuzzles and grumbles and like there's
(13:18):
a way to really like No,it's it's not pure instinct with them,
they are communicating with each other.I'm not probably on the same level that
like bees are communicating with each otherwith with with dances and things like that.
But it's enough to say, honey, I'm going hunting. I'll be
back in a while. Yeah,it's at least enough to know, Okay,
you protect the egg, I'm gonnago hunt. And you know,
they can at least communicate like that. In d and the official material,
(13:41):
there's we only see the basic Awlbear, and I mentioned in Toma Beest
three there is the dire Awlbear.But as far as official stat blocks go,
that's all we have. It's supercommon for dms to make up their
own variants of it at least,but these are most usually paint jobs that
are just like putting a fresh coatof paint on an un existing albar.
But there are some third party materialthat will give us like an Arctic version
(14:03):
of an albar, a winged owlbear. These are actually from very early Dungeon
Dragon magazines to find the the Arcticand the winged owl bears. And there's
a couple of other like third partycreators out there that'll make like scaled up
higher CR versions. There's a coupleI can see on D and D Beyond
from like icewind Dale Snowy Albar.But I mean just looking at it as
(14:26):
the same ac, same hit point, so I think it's so these are
in the the module books. Yeah, okay, I was look at the
Monster Manual and uh and and Monthof Multiverse. Yeah yeah I did.
I did not go into the campaignbooks. You know, Portal has a
reduced threat albar Excellent. Infernal MachineRebuild has a skeletal albear, and it
(14:48):
also has a headed nice pretty coolwe call that we call the owls bears
anyway. So, but there arebut in other games. So so the
idea of the Albert has gone beyondD and D and the most interesting ones
that I saw on in in thesearticles came from Pathfinder. Pathfinder gave us
(15:11):
a an Albert that was designed tosurvive underground, one that is designed to
survive in the chaotic dimension. There'sa variant that was developed by Orcs to
be used as a siege weapon,called the siege albar O. I love
that. I'm terrified. I almostdon't want to look it up, but
I'm going to. And there's aslime owl bear that formed a symbiotic relationship
(15:31):
with a green slime monster and itgives it a sticky defense layer. It's
a venom albear. It's just slimy. Oh okay, so it's got like
a sticky too. So say,anytime I hear symbiot and slimy shortly,
oh that's venom work or carnage.I guess sure. I didn't look up
specific stats on this one. Andof course Pathfinder is going to be a
little bit different than than the Dand D stats I'm used to, but
(15:54):
this could give it something like theadhesive property that the mimics would have,
making them that much harder. Ilooked them up in the in the Keith
of mom books will have links tothe article below as well. As far
as their tactics go, they havesuper high strength and constitution. They do.
They have a twenty strength so againstthe even a level three or two
party going against something with a plusfive strength is going to hit hard.
(16:18):
Good constitution, so they'll have highhigh hit points and making them make concieves
will be not very successful. Theydo have very low decks and intelligence,
so you can hit them that way. They're not sneaky, but they do
have very high perception. I thinkit's a plus seven or so on a
basic stat block, so they're alittle harder to sneak up on if they're
not hibernating. If they're hibernating,then obviously you'll have a lot more advantage
(16:41):
in there. But if you catchthem all they're awake, they'll probably sense
that you're coming up on them.They're highly reactive and will act purely on
instinct, so it won't prioritize anyparticular target, just whoever it clocks first,
either the closest one to it,or whoever feel like you can do
a group cell check, whoever's gotthe lowest you can you can handle this
(17:03):
however you want, but whichever onenotices first it is going after that target
and will continue to pound on thattarget until your the target is dead or
unconscious and we can get into thatin a second, or something else hits
it in the versus attention away,Yeah, getting its face now. You
like, if you do it properly, you can kind of kind of sub
in somebody who hasn't gotten beaten downyet to take hits for a few turns
(17:26):
to as you wear it down.Yeah, so like you send in your
barbarian to get to you know,take the reduced damage for a while,
and when it gets be too much, someone else hit it with an arrow
and then just be just be carefulof getting this attention on you from too
close. They do have a speedof forty, so it's going to be
faster than most PCs except maybe yourmonk and maybe you're high level barbarian.
(17:47):
Yeah, that's all those things thattell you not to try to outrun a
bear in real life. Yep,you know by the games, do not
try to outrun an out bear yep. Yeah yeah, if you climb it,
it'll just knock it down with thattwenty strength. So right, if
you encounter in its den, itwill fight to the death, both both
yours or its own. But ifyou catch it in the wild, if
(18:11):
you get it down to a lowenough HP somewhere in the twenty to twenty
five range, I will try toretreat. They are instinctual enough to go
back to their cave. But ifthey're in their cave, they're already on
their home turf. They will fightto the death. And if it downs
a PC and is not hit beforeit's next turn, I will then collect
the body of the down player inits beak and take dash actions towards back
(18:33):
towards its cave. Oh nice,potentially bringing it back for dinner like that.
Yeah, so this is a greatopportunity for rescue side quest. Yeah,
you're one player down and I haveto go into an albert nest.
Come on, this is awesome.Well, and that's that's also the thing
that the desperate farmer can come runningup to you as you're walking down the
(18:53):
street and you know, tell youthey need help with Yeah, yeah,
great, great side quest starter.Yeah. These are just like really cool
big bosses for your low level partiesand really cool for fodder for your mid
level parties. Yep, just waysof just ways of depleting their hit points
and resources on their way to thebigger fight. So the last section I
(19:17):
have here is just pop culture,which we can we kind of touched on
before. I put these in thehigher side of recognizability for those who at
least familiar with fantasy and just generalgeek them. I wouldn't expect my mother
to recognize it by name, butif I start to draw one, she
could probably figure it out. Butthey're popular enough to have a lot of
third party merchandise. I've seen shirts, pins, I think I have a
(19:37):
plushy. You do I have thatplushy? I don't get I don't have
that one, but I do have. I've got some. I got some
how some Albert stuff lying around.But they got a huge boost of popularity
with last year's D and D movie, and this is something that we wanted
to come back to. So I'mjust gonna read it exactly from my notes
because I can't say anything better thanthis, a huge boosts in Albert's popularity
(20:00):
from the two thousand and three Dand D move the twenty twenty three D
and D movie. Apparently I cansay it better than this by putting the
correct hear when the Druid would regularlywild shape into one despite being a monstrosity,
and wild shape can only turn youinto beasts. But that's another podcast.
Yeah, one of the handful ofliberties that was taken in that movie.
She does a wild shape into alot of different beasts, but she
turns to an Albert as her asher big bad form, but she doesn't
(20:25):
cast any single spell throughout the movie. So like this could be potentially the
DM saying, Okay, you canturn to Antar. Yeah, he jokes
on you. She wasn't wild shaping, She's aware Albre Nope. So these
things are fun. And I'm alsogoing to leave a link to a module
(20:45):
that I've run before called Albert wouldby a creator by a DM. By
a Dungeon creator that I've mentioned onthe show before is DM Dave. He
does have free versions of this,but the paid version will have more levels
available. His instagram was also great, fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, one
of my favorite creators, and Iwill happily and for free keep mentioning his
(21:06):
stuff. Better than for free,I support my Patreon, I actually pay
for it. So that's that's mylittle little minibook report on on Albert's Thank
you. Any questions, I don'tknow if I can answer them, But
do you have any No, youactually really went into I mean you went
in depth here with the origin ofit and everything. I think for me,
(21:27):
there is one thing that I wantto say, which is like kind
of kind of a little bit ofa trope through kind of the history of
D and D and love tropes andmaybe gosh, there might have been some
of this stuff in that that wouldla the order of the stick comic that
I love. But the idea thatlike you could get eggs from an owlbear
nest, hatch them and then somehowraise pet albars or team albars or something
(21:52):
like that, Like, I feellike we should just dispense with that idea,
and that if you if you takean egg from an awlbear and net
and you try to hatch it,what you're going to get is something that
is going to want to eat yourface. For its entire life, no
matter how nice to it you are. Yeah, but you know, the
the challenge of you know, oneof those kinds of quests that you can
(22:14):
get is you know, Wizard withesoteric you know agenda says to you,
I need an owl bear egg,Go get me one. Yeah, you
know, and the challenge is notjust you know, fight off, you
know, like can you get theegg without having to fight the Albera?
Can you distract and lead the Albertaway from there? And then you know
how big is an albar egg?What does it look like? Do you
(22:34):
have to keep it warm? What'sthe challenge of getting it intact back to
the Wizard? And that's kind ofa that's like the idea that these huge
monstrous creatures lay eggs is you know, sort of a little bit of an
interesting thing that you can well makea little bit of adventure fodder from as
well. So I got so manycomments on that bolt super for off the
(22:57):
air, But yeah, Albert eggsare are usually very valuable and highly sought
after, So that's yeah, theyusing them as a fetch quest and not
just a rescue mission is also agood one. Or is a wandering monster?
Yeah, and in the Balder's Gategame, there is an Albert cub
that you can befriend. And Ihaven't found any other articles confirming this.
(23:19):
I'm just going by what my experiencein Balder's Kate three that Albert cubs in
particular can be kindibalistic. So yeah, the idea that they lay a clutch
of like a dozen eggs, butthe Albert that emerges is the one that
like eats all its you know,brothers and sisters. Oh so, mild
(23:41):
spoilers, very mild spoilers or Balderskatethree. I would say skip ahead thirty
seconds if you haven't gotten this faryet. There's a scene of the Albert
cub starts eating the carcass of itsmother. Oh okay, sure, there
we go, strong and spoilers aredone. Yeah, unsentimental is what you're
saying. Yes, yeah, okay, so I mean, I mean that
could be it, but yeah,there is there is some some cannibalism.
(24:03):
Anything else. They had nothing,So I got most of these from two
different articles from CBR dot com.I'll have links to those resources, and
of course the monsters know dot comand I'll have a link to the d
M D of owl Bear would aswell. I think that's gonna wrap it
(24:23):
up for today, Thanks Jason.So thanks for listening to my little book
before. Guys. I worked reallyhard on it for like an hour last
night. Cool. So if youhave a favorite encounter with an owl bear
or any monster that we should alsocover, let us know Hello Adventures Podcast
at you month dot com or justlet us know at Hello Adventurers podcast dot
com slash voice which which monsters?Would your mom know that? What's your
(24:48):
mom's favorite months? Ye, I'masking for a lot of reasons. Tell
me your tell me your grandma's favoritedn D monster. But I think it's
gonna wrap it up today. That'sthat's it's Albert's and they they're they're,
They're one of my favorites there.They're nice and iconic. Never a bad
time when you see one unless theycatch you. But let's wrap it up,
guys, Thank you so much forlistening to Hello Adventurers. We're your
host Jason Portiso, Jimmy Crocker andJoe McCall, producer, editor and engineer
(25:10):
Jason Portiso. Music by Nick Sprayer, artwork by Kris and Broderick. You
can me chat to us with anyfeedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast
at gmail dot com. Hello Adventuresis a JTP audio production. Goodbye Adventures
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