There's a recent article over at Polygon about a newer D&D release (the name won't be mentioned because of potential spoilers) with a sentence that got me thinking.

Talking about an adventure with an Obliviax, it says

" it uses a really interesting monster that you can only find in Dungeons & Dragons".

Which triggered my immediate reaction

"... except in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, that is".

And that got me thinking about a possible connection between the two. While Wolfe, as far as I know, was not an avid D&D player, being as well versed in all things fantastical as he was, I could well imagine BOTNS being read by, and an inspiration to, D&D writers.

The release dates do line up, I suppose? If my - admittedly somewhat superficial - research is correct, the Obliviax first appeared in "Monster Cards, Vol 4", which was published in 1982. (I'm not sure of the exact date.) "The Sword of The Lictor", in which the Alzabo has its most memorable appearance, came out in 1981. (Wikipedia incorrectly gives the date as 1982 ; you can find a scan of the first edition on the Internet Archive which confirms the 1981 release date). And the Alzabo is, of course, mentioned prominently in the first and second volumes of BOTNS, published in 1980 and 1981 respectively.

Sooo... I just wanted to ask if anyone has read any sources that might confirm this hypothesis? Are the Obliviax the floral offspring of the Alzabo? Or is it just a case of great minds thinking alike?

Either way, a hell of a concept if used well.

A monster cat creature that stalks the dark caves of my campaign. They are extremely blood thirsty and use their cuteness to lure in unsuspecting adventures and cave divers.

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Something that I've been wanting to play around with is creating some lower level boss encounters that were more than just pinatas and minion swarms, so I came up with this guardian of the desert to try and make things a bit more challenging for my party. This is intended as a boss encounter for a party of six level four adventurers. I am inexperienced when it comes to creating balanced stat blocks since I tend to adjust on the fly to ensure a challenge, but not a TPK unless its well deserved, so critiques and suggestions are very much welcomed. I'll also be glad to make this a cleaner monster page once it's a bit more fleshed out.

I'm doing a dnd campaign set a 1930s-esque city and for the longest time I wanted to do a sewers dungeon based on the "alligators / monsters in the sewers" trope. In the world, the warforged were designed to be slave labor within the factories but recently gained sentience. Before this though many were discarded and thrown into the water system only to be washed into the sewers to create a huge mess of Warforged akin to Rat-kings, the amalgamation of multiple rats getting their tails interconnected and tangled up.

Here are some things to note.

- This Monster is built for a level 8 party with 6 members (Hexblade/Paladin, Alchemist Artificer, Battlemaster/Swashbuckler, Stars Druid /Life Cleric, Tragedy Bard, and a Ancestor Barbarian)

- Needs to be built off the idea that multiple warforged formed into 1 being with a singular conciseness.

First Time DM Hi, im a first time DM, new to DnD in general and I have this idea but I need help finding what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a monster who has the ability to create a “false reality” so to speak, the story will be the party has already been trapped by the monster but they don’t know that yet, but they wake up in this “fake world” created by the monster. Is anything capable of that?

I’m putting together a campaign setting and centered around a swamp/bog/marshland. I imagine it animating poisonous plant life, reanimating the dead, now with plant powers or something, and controlling the more “bad” animals. It’s wanting the swamp to kill the town that profits from it.

Anything like that already in existence?