Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 74 - Monster Series - Owlbears

Episode Date: May 23, 2021

Owlbears - one of my favorite monstrosities to throw at my players.  Sneaky ambushers?  Nah.  Subtlety is for chumps.  In this episode we talk about the history of the owlbear, its properties, and how DMs can use them in their campaigns.

Thank you for tuning in to episode 74 of the Taking 20 podcast, continuing the monster series this week all about owlbears. Our sponsor this week is the Cake It Easy Bakery. Wedding cake so good that it won't be the only thing in tears. The drawing for the $50 Amazon gift card is this Friday, with the winner announced next week. If you'd like to enter for a chance to win, please just send an email to contest at taking20podcast.com. There are no requirements for the contents of the email, but if you want to provide feedback or a show idea, I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, I promise not to sell or give away your contact information, nor will I send you another email in the future. I just need a way to contact you to let you know if you've won. In the interest of full disclosure, I had a completely different topic in mind all the way up until yesterday, the Tarrasque. The problem I ran into is that some of the best material are copyrighted, and I haven't received permission to use any of that material. So when I got done with it, the episode just felt thin, and it wasn't up to my standard mediocre quality, so that episode will just have to wait. I hope to get permissions in the future, and I'll pad that episode up and hopefully release that somewhere down the line. As a fallback, I'd been wanting to do an episode on owlbears anyway, so you're stuck with that this week. An owlbear, as you can imagine by the name,

so you're stuck with that this week. An owlbear, as you can imagine by the name, looks like an unnatural fusing of owl's features with a bear's body. The overall body shape is ursine, which is a fancy word meaning bear-like, but it has an enormous owl-like head, feathers in place of fur on most of its body, vicious bear-like claws, and a large beak. Owlbears were originally designed by Gary Gygax for the original Greyhawk D&D supplement. Legend has it that Gygax was looking for inspirations for new monsters. He went and bought a package of little plastic toys that were based on kaiju. One of them looked like this bear-bird hybrid and the owlbear was born. Also in that package of cheap plastic monsters were the inspirations for the Rust Monster, Purple Worm, Carrion Crawler, and Umber Hulk.

5th edition describes owlbears as ferocious fighters, deadly predators, and extremely territorial, attacking interlopers on sight. Pathfinder describes them as bloodthirsty killers, well known for their short tempers, aggression, and savage nature. They attack without provocation, slaughtering any living creatures that cross their paths. They consider anything bigger than a mouse potential prey. Both game systems describe them as size large, meaning they will take up four squares on your battle mat. They have extremely keen eyesight and sense of smell, which makes them excellent nocturnal hunters. Both game systems are also consistent in that we don't know where they came from. The general belief is that they were an experiment by some spellcaster in the past,

but no one really knows for sure. And as a tip to DMs that are listening, anytime something is labeled as we don't know for sure, that's a prime candidate to make it whatever you want. Then again, for that matter, if you don't like the origin story or backstory about anything in your campaign world, you can change that too. You don't have to go with the wizard creation origin story for owlbears. They could be the result of a curse thousands of years ago. It could be magical bleed over from the Feywild,

a creature who escaped a devil's breeding ground, the result of a drunken creature creation contest between two gods. Owlbears could be the natural product of evolution, creating a more powerful predator in an area that needed one to maintain the balance of nature. Or you can go with the Piers Anthony explanation of, quote, the love spring, end quote. Where two different creatures meet at a certain spring, Barry White music plays, insert an ellipsis here, we fade to black, and three months later, bam, owlbear. Or eagle wolf. Or a male human and a female horse show up at the spring at the same time. Now you have an unusual couple, a baby centaur, and one pissed off wife. What is unusual is that both game systems say that owlbears can be domesticated in certain circumstances. Pathfinder states that young owl bears are

expensive but more easily trained than their adult counterparts. Further explanations tell you that elves sometimes keep owl bears as pets, nesting at the base of their trees. They serve as great nighttime guardians. Owl bears tend to have a single mate and mate for life. They will raise between one and six juveniles at a time, and these juveniles can fetch a pretty penny on the markets of big cities, provided you can get them there alive, and they don't kill you in the process. Supposedly, there are areas of the world of 5th edition where owlbear racing is a thing. You can bet on who will win the race, and which rider will be eaten first. And down the stretch they come. will be eaten first. And down the stretch they come. In the lead is Hoot Roar, followed by Screet Rage, followed by Slash Stomp, and bringing up the rear is Along Came Zeus, who has taken his

rider Pippi as a snack. That is unfortunate. He should have known better than the drip barbecue sauce on his jockey outfit. Owl bears are extremely strong, especially for what level creature they are, but they have a relatively low intelligence. That doesn't mean they aren't capable of thinking at all. They have the same intelligence score as dogs, badgers, deer, horses, and wild animals. You don't want them writing your master's thesis, but they don't have to be mindless killing machines either. Owl bears tend to lair in caves and thick forests. They don't clean out their previous kills, and the lair likely contains bones and inevitable remains of previous kills. This could be because they have an intelligence of two, and they can't call a cleaning service.

Hello? Mr. Owlbear, I said we wouldn't be taking you on as a cleaning client. Because your lair contains scraps of fur, bones, and evidence that you killed at least one person from a competing cleaning service, sir. There's no call for that kind of language, sir, and I will thank you to not speak to me that way. Another possible reason why their lair contains rotting meat is an attempt to draw carrion eaters close to the den to become prey for the owlbear. to draw carrion eaters close to the den to become prey for the owlbear. Scavenger eaters like vultures, certain wolves and cats, and maybe even atiugs could come looking for an easy meal and become a meal themselves. Further enhancing their nocturnal skills is the fact that owlbears

have great dark vision and they tend to be active at night. While I can't find it stated in so many words, it would make sense that if they're that active at night, they would sleep during parts of the day. So, let's talk about owlbears in combat. They are CR3 creatures in 5th edition and CR4 creatures in Pathfinder. While CR isn't an absolute guarantee of how difficult an encounter will be for your party, it is a decent measuring stick. In combat, it's said that the owlbear's eyes go wild and they single-mindedly attack a creature until it's dead or downed. They don't prioritize opponents and aren't smart enough to go for a particular combatant first. They are an I-see-prey, I-kill-prey kind of combatant.

There's not a lot of subtlety to the way they fight. They don't set up traps. They don't look for the best place to attack to take advantage of terrain. They will aggressively attack potential prey or invaders to its territory immediately and without mercy. They will screech and crash through the forest underbrush to quickly kill. Owlbears tend to focus on a single target until they're hit by something else. Now you have options as a DM when it comes to their combat morale. You could have them attempt to drag a kill off to the den as soon as it's down, ignoring getting hit by anything else. Or

in combat, they attack everything that's potential prey, and then only when they're all dead, the owlbear sorts it out and decides who it's going to bring back to eat. Like any wild animal, owlbears are smart enough to know when they're overmatched and will go looking for prey elsewhere if they start taking a lot of damage. Owlbears may be a little slow on the uptake to realize this since they're used to being one of the biggest hunters in the area, but they will run when they're overmatched. The only time they will dig in and fight to the death, no matter what,

is if they're fighting in their lairs or protecting their young. So DMs, how can you use owlbears in your campaign? Starting off, they make excellent tough fights for low-level PCs. Again, they're CR3 or CR4, so they are a good fight for a third and fourth level party. Owlbears are great against parties with a lot of ranged weapons, and it will really get the party members heart rates up. This creature can hunt them close to melee very very quickly with a dash action in fifth edition and decent movement speed in Pathfinder. Get up close and personal with the ranged fighters and start wrecking their faces. Owlbears are great cave dwelling monsters. If the PCs are trying to sneak into somewhere via a cave system, sprinkle in an owlbear family somewhere in the cave system, and you've got a great encounter

waiting for them as they think they're being all sneaky-sneak. I'm a huge proponent, though, of creating variant versions of creatures, especially if you have veteran players. One of your players, oh, an owlbear, yes, they have an armor class of 13, and they have about 60 hit points, blah, blah, blah, because they've fought owlbears a dozen times. So let's mix it up a little, or as Zorg said it, let's change the beat. Pathfinder comes with some freaky owlbear variants pre-built for you. How about an owlbear that's built like a polar bear rather than a brown bear, so it can hide in snow and has a swim speed?

Or one that is pale, lives exclusively underground, has the scent ability and tremor sense, meaning they can detect anything that touches the ground within a radius around them. Yep, sounds good. How about an owl bear with hollow bones that can fly? Or some that have oversized claws and a climb speed, so suddenly you've got a three-quarter ton drop bear falling out of large trees onto the party. Owl bears whose shrieks can cause sonic damage. Chaos owl bears whose insides constantly shift so they're immune to critical hits and transformation magic. How about you take the big strong owl bear, make it sleeker, slimmer, faster. It's not as strong, but man, it's fast and it can close

distances in a hurry. What about ethereal owl bears? Ghost owl bear out of nowhere, straight phasing through a wall. Undead owl bears. They're still fast, but now they spread diseases like ghoul fever or mummy rot when they bite. Ooh, they're also surrounded by swarms of meat-eating flies, so you have bears that are surrounded by these stinging, biting insects. That's about as close as I can get to bears that shoot bees out of their mouth, at least for this episode. I'm sure you could come up with your own variant, and if you do, feel free to send me an email to let me know.

Finally, my favorite version from a Pathfinder book was the owlbear that's developed a symbiotic relationship with green slime, so when they're in melee, the green slime jumps onto you and starts digesting you from the outside while the bear is trying to open you up. 5th edition DMs, not to worry. Any of these sound cool? Then borrow, borrow, borrow, steal, steal, steal. Got an idea for an owlbear that's immune to fire and bursts into flames in combat? Holy shit, that sounds really fun. An owlbear that vomits acid, swims underwater,

or has a paralyzing bite attack? Stat them up. Increase the CR a little bit since these will be tougher than your garden variety owlbear and turn them loose on your players. Watch, oh, it's an owlbear, become, what the fuck do you mean it's on fire?

I received some feedback this week from a listener named Daniel, and thank you so much for writing in. He suggested that in these monster series episodes, I also include how I use these monsters in my games. Here's how I use owlbears. My favorite and classic method of using it are wandering monsters at night. I'm convinced this is why they were made to begin with all the way back in the Greyhawk supplement. Owlbears are tough as nails, they used to be able to grapple you to death, and were primarily active at night. They certainly can add spice to a nighttime encounter, gaining advantage over the PCs who don't see in the dark very well, and punishing adventuring

groups who don't know to give owlbear territories a very wide berth. So owlbears can be used to interrupt rest. Sure, CR 3 or 4 creature, not really that tough to higher level adventuring parties, but if the party is sleeping, that means they're not in their armor, they don't have their magic items handy, and a couple of owlbears can really ruin their night. Another way I use owlbe bears is I will give the occasional intelligent baddie an owl bear mount. This adds a little spice to the encounter because the owl bear might turn on the rider at the inopportune time. Wait, to clarify, when I say it might turn on the rider, I mean it might attack the rider, not go all I'm feeling fine baby and saxophone music starts. Or maybe it does. Who am I to judge?

You run your campaign however you want to run it. But my players keep asking, Hey, Jeremy, why are you rolling a die at the beginning of every round? No reason. Three rounds later. So the owlbear turns on its rider, who'd been hitting it with a shock stick, and tries to bite his head off. Ooh, natural 20. That's a possible crit.

I've used owlbears as an unexpected complication if the party leaves a lot of corpses around, or if they can't carry something so they leave it on a corpse, only to return a few hours after dusk, and the corpse is gone. It's dragged into a cave for convenient dinner. One of my favorite ways to use owlbears, especially if the party has never encountered them before, is to have them come across the cute little owl bear babies. Aww, they look like fat furry owls with these little bitty claws wandering around sniffing and finding things interesting. Until mama shows up, all 1600 pounds of claws, razor sharp beak, and I don't give a fuck attitude. In one of my son's campaigns, the party killed an

owl bear and were in the process of skinning it, only to have one of my son's campaigns, the party killed an owlbear and were in the process of skinning it, only to have one of the other party members discover its pair of hiding cubs. Is that the right word? Cubs? Chickies? Chickens? Cub chickies? That sounds like a snack you have at Wrigley Field. Let's go with young. The DM let the party adopt the young as pets, and the party named them Teddy and Graham. I was off-screen listening in while my son played via Zoom, and I had to fight not to laugh out loud. Another way I use owlbears is I will give them to large humanoids like giants and trolls as pets. Again, they're nocturnal, so they can watch over a base at night while the humanoids sleep,

and even if they're well-fed, they will attack intruders on sight. Finally, since owlbears are so strong, some humanoid groups revere or honor them. In a campaign long ago, a nation had some ferocious battle-hardened troops, the 3rd Forest Battalion. They called themselves the Owlbears as a squad moniker. Intelligent creatures living in the forest will likely place marks so they can recognize the area that owlbears as a squad moniker. Intelligent creatures living in the forest will likely place marks so they can recognize the area that Owlbears live and they don't accidentally wander into Owlbear territory. A mark on the tree that basically says, here there be feathery death

to anyone who can read the mark. Finally, some primitive peoples may actually treat Owlbears as forces of nature and give them offerings and food. They can actually serve as a boss fight, if you will, if the party is trying to steal something from this primitive group of people, but they keep it in an owlbear nest for safekeeping. Owlbears are fun combatants if you want a straight-up, no-holds-barred, subtlety-out-the-window creature that wants to feed itself, its mate, and its... cub chickies. Fuck it, I'm going with that. There's little DM prep required. They are convenient, quick-build encounters that you can drop in whenever you need. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe to us and rate us wherever fine

podcasts can be found, or this one can be found. Tune in next week where we'll talk about character backstories, advice for players in creating them, and for DMs on how to integrate them into your campaign world. This has been Episode 74, continuing the monster series all about owlbears. This week's sponsor was the Cake at Easy Bakery. A day with a cake is good, no matter how you slice it. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.