Monster Deep Dive: Owlbears

0:20 Hello adventurers. The podcast words role players and game masters have level up. You're a game We are your dunk master's. I'm I'm Joe McCall and so we're going to continue our little elementary school style book report series today. I stopped calling these actual deep dies because we like to have a little more. I like a little I like a little more like I'm picturing like the kid from up kind of like with his lither is like shuffling his papers. And you know, I did my report, which are studying for a merit badge. I would say we weighed, we wade 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 have for us this week, Jason, I was gonna try to work the word roar into a response, but yeah, I got nothing. So I'm just going 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, this is one of the most iconic monsters.

1:22 You have their own rodeo, you do, but today's all about owl bears. 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 to think of, like if we were to kind of like put tears and levels to like icon icon ability of monsters, and like I would kind of put this in categories of like general pop culture, 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 like you know, a dragon. Yeah, all of our mouths can describe a dragon. Everyone knows what a dragon looks like. Yeah, but my mother could probably describe what a mimic looks like.

2:04 My wouldn't be able to you know that. That's like that's your next tier down. So I think Albert's are the next tier down from that to where like anybody who's even like dabbled in D and D or even most general fantasy can probably tell you what an Albert 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. So I think this is this is a really cool one to get into. I think they're They're an important part of early lower level campaigns and one of the first monsters ever designed by Guyex. So let's get into Albert are and let let's for deep dive. We're just gonna call this cool facts about Albert. First one, these are monstrosities. They are not beasts. They're not aliens. They're not an extra planner, they're not humanoid. Really, they're not really anything else. They are monstrosities.

2:58 The term monstrosity is used to compass any kind of monster that is just a monster. And this has important implications that we are going to get to later with its typing. But like you know, a beast like you cannot have an Albert companion if you are a ranger unless your DM is super super super super super cool actually awesome by the way, and your and your various abilities that work on beasts are not gonna like an Albert is not going to listen to you talking to it the way a 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, and that's going to get us to our next two points here. They are from unknown origins, so canonically no one's really certain where albars come from. There's some stories in certain modules that a wizard may have tried to create some sort of some sort of like fusion spell on an owl and a bear, that there is a lich named Fesslar who at one point claimed clans responsibility for creating the first al bears, but he was not very trustworthy, and that is unconfirmed. Huh untrustworthy lich. Yeah, right, we're certain l say that they predate recorded history and may go back to the dawn of time. And while meanwhile there's fairies that will claim that they have more of a fay wild origin and migrated into material playing through fake crossings. That so and and they're all plausible. I don't think we're using real world biology. I don't think they happened naturally. So we're gonna go with definitely bread Well, honey, when an owl and a bear love each other very much, yea, what is what is the equivalent? What is

4:34 the equivalent here of an owl bear? Like? Because there's something that's like, wait, that small little thing and that that big giant thing, like you can you can put those together and make something certain dog MutS stinard. Yeah yeah great, Yeah you're you're you're like corky husky. Yeah that's truscky. Yeah, hilarious dogs, super a super super stubborn, the two worst breeds, but so also going along with the with the monstrosity bit. They are straight up mean. They are. These things are nasty. They get belligerent. Is the word yea that I feel like best describes them. Well there, I've been described as bloodren before they are. They're pure agro, super aggressive and all too happy to kill anyone who comes near their cave, doubly so if their cubs or companion are nearby. So they're kind of designed to be difficult encounters for low level parties. So they are CR three, so not too difficult to defeat a levels two and three. But you know a couple of bad Diye rolls is a down or even a dead player.

5:43 You know, they they hunt alone, so if you catch them out in the wild, they're probably by themselves and a low level party can surround it and use very basic tactics to take it down. But if you go hunting for them and find them in their cave, their companion is probably with them. And their cub is there, and they're going to instantly attack if you're anywhere near their cub. And then so a cr three. They're not super terrible, but cobol pressed Home of Beasts Volume three includes stats for a dire owl. Bear them up at Okay, I was gonna ask, can you pump these babies up? And then there's at least that one out there, and then you know, there's all kinds 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. They hunt alone, but they can travel in packs. And we're going to get to their family make up a little bit later, but they could be traveling with their companion or even other you know, others from their family. Well, so let's get into the family.

6:38 So they are there, fighters and lovers. They they do mate for life, kind of like penguins. After a mate passes, they will not seek another mate. Once a cub decides to leave the cave. They can travel pretty far, so their caves can be pretty spaced out among your world. They will hunt separately, but will spend a lot of time with their family and if anything threatens the family at all, they will fly into a very very violent rate. See our previous point. They're mean, yeah, despite all of that, smarter than you think. So after they're hunting, they'll drive the carcass back to feed, but they will purposely leave a carcass near the cave entrance and even decorate the interior of the cave with bones. Oh and what's happening is they're leaving the carcass out and so the smell of the rotting carcass will attract other hunters and scavengers and then they will then ambush them.

7:35 Nice. Yeah, so in your game, pretty intelligent then as far 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 know how 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 eight is pure violence. Will get into that later too, as far as, like, you know, leaving the carcass out. If you need a way to have a cave in your wilderness instantly be recognizable as an Albert cave without you know, having a big sign that says Albert is inside, having the carcass out, having the eggs, having tracks are all ways that you can start start dropping clues so that players who even fail their their's FIBAL checks can have some sort of clue what's going on.

8:26 So in the development of them, they were designed out there a knockoff toy. Can you know about the other background on this, Yeah, the like half a dozen of the most iconic D and D monsters come from like a cheap bag of like weird you know, like whatever, like like like like Chinese little plastic miniatures the Gygax found and then designed creatures around them. The rust monster has its origins in that. The I think the like the Zorn like I think that the three the three sided critter I think is is in that. But certainly, you know, some of your more iconic D and D monster, like the weirder ones that kind of come out of left field, Yeah, are from most Yeah, found a bag of cheap knockoff toys that you'll find like twenty five cent machines and they were labeled as dinosaurs.

9:18 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 bad Godzilla toys, and he just kind of repurposed them. Those are the dollar just to be clear, Oh for Godzilla that's already so has such a cheesy history. Yeah, perfectly. Yeah, I wanted to be campy as campy as can be. So so my god, No, God's a little ultraman type of stuff. And yeah, the the Albert and you mentioned a couple of others, but he found it while he was working on the early versions of what would be a first edition. So once now that we have a design for the character, a design for the monster, and they're trying to make a fate within his you know, the wilderness of the early D and D settings, he envisioned them as being like the roaming wandering monster.

10:15 And this goes back to you know, to old storytelling and eventually into some early video game RPGs where like, you know, random encounter has happened in the overworld all the time, so you're Albert would be like the de facto wandering monster for random encounters, and actually having random encounter charts in the books. It was a perfect way to get them feeling like they could be anywhere. They are not particularly sneaky, but they are silent when they're hunting, so like you know, they're they're huge, but then and they're not trying to hide. But like but a players who are who are caught lacking could catch up, could find themselves with an Albert on their hands. And like this was like in the in the early games, like when you know the the ideas of advanced dming weren't really there yet. We didn't have books like how to write a venture modules that don't suck. We didn't have books like the Lazy DM Guide. There would be some like you know, some boring sessions with a lot of overworld travel at 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 up right now in a well crafted campaign.

11:22 In my personal opinion, this might be a lukewarm take. I think that's the worst part of the game, but a lot's changed in fifty years. I offended it's good, but it was. It was a simple, but not easy simple to kill, but not always easy to kill. Yeah, and it was just perfect for those the lower parties. Yeah, it's a big bag of hit points that just you lay a little attrition on the party before they, you know, get to the big bad guy at the end. Yep. And again like you know, a couple of bad roles and a couple of good roles from the DM. 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 three party like it's in that bear hug and it's all exactly Actually that was postly part of the lovers and fighters that they love the hug. Hello Adventurers, just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions the Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting Helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS. You can't wait to get your questions to talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today that's Helloadventurers Podcast at gmail dot com or you the voice at helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now let's get back to the show.

12:50 And and so this is why we're started going before. So at a low intelligence I think it's only intelligence three. So it's it's not like a language language. But they do communicate with each 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 particular screech for finding a mate and then with that mate they would communicate with like grunts, nuzzles and grumbles and like there's 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 other with 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 gonna go hunt. And you know, they can at least communicate like that. In d and the official material, there's we only see the basic Awl bear, 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 super common 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 coat of paint on an un existing albar.

14:00 But there are some third party material that will give us like an Arctic version of an albar, a winged owlbear. These are actually from very early Dungeon Dragon magazines to find the the Arctic and the winged owl bears. And there's a couple of other like third party creators out there that'll make like scaled up higher CR versions. There's a couple I can see on D and D Beyond from like icewind Dale Snowy Albar. But I mean just looking at it as 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 Month of Multiverse. Yeah yeah I did. I did not go into the campaign books. You know, Portal has a reduced threat albar Excellent. Infernal Machine Rebuild has a skeletal albear, and it also has a headed nice pretty cool we call that we call the owls bears anyway. So, but there are but in other games. So so the idea of the Albert has gone beyond D and D and the most interesting ones that I saw on in in these articles came from Pathfinder. Pathfinder gave us a an Albert that was designed to survive underground, one that is designed to survive in the chaotic dimension. There's a 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 almost don't want to look it up, but I'm going to. And there's a slime owl bear that formed a symbiotic relationship

15:31 with a green slime monster and it gives 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. And of course Pathfinder is going to be a little bit different than than the D and D stats I'm used to, but this could give it something like the adhesive property that the mimics would have, making them that much harder. I looked them up in the in the Keith of mom books will have links to the article below as well. As far as their tactics go, they have super high strength and constitution. They do. They have a twenty strength so against the even a level three or two party going against something with a plus five strength is going to hit hard.

16:18 Good constitution, so they'll have high high hit points and making them make concieves will be not very successful. They do 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 think it's a plus seven or so on a basic stat block, so they're a little harder to sneak up on if they're not hibernating. If they're hibernating, then obviously you'll have a lot more advantage in there. But if you catch them 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 any particular 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 got the lowest you can you can handle this however you want, but whichever one notices first it is going after that target and will continue to pound on that target until your the target is dead or unconscious and we can get into that in 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 down yet to take hits for a few turns 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 careful of getting this attention on you from too close. They do have a speed of forty, so it's going to be faster than most PCs except maybe your monk and maybe you're high level barbarian.

17:47 Yeah, that's all those things that tell 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 that twenty strength. So right, if you encounter in its den, it will fight to the death, both both yours or its own. But if you catch it in the wild, if you get it down to a low enough HP somewhere in the twenty to twenty five range, I will try to retreat. They are instinctual enough to go back to their cave. But if they're in their cave, they're already on their home turf. They will fight to the death. And if it downs a PC and is not hit before it's next turn, I will then collect the body of the down player in its beak and take dash actions towards back towards its cave. Oh nice, potentially bringing it back for dinner like that.

18:38 Yeah, so this is a great opportunity for rescue side quest. Yeah, you're one player down and I have to 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 running up to you as you're walking down the street and you know, tell you they need help with Yeah, yeah, great, great side quest starter. Yeah. These are just like really cool big bosses for your low level parties and really cool for fodder for your mid level parties. Yep, just ways of just ways of depleting their hit points and resources on their way to the bigger fight. So the last section I have here is just pop culture, which we can we kind of touched on before. I put these in the higher side of recognizability for those who at least familiar with fantasy and just general geek them. I wouldn't expect my mother to recognize it by name, but if I start to draw one, she could probably figure it out. But they're popular enough to have a lot of third party merchandise. I've seen shirts, pins, I think I have a plushy. You do I have that plushy? 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'm just gonna read it exactly from my notes because I can't say anything better than this, a huge boosts in Albert's popularity from the two thousand and three D and D move the twenty twenty three D and D movie. Apparently I can say it better than this by putting the correct hear when the Druid would regularly wild shape into one despite being a monstrosity,

20:11 and wild shape can only turn you into beasts. But that's another podcast. Yeah, one of the handful of liberties that was taken in that movie. She does a wild shape into a lot of different beasts, but she turns to an Albert as her as her big bad form, but she doesn't cast any single spell throughout the movie. So like this could be potentially the DM saying, Okay, you can turn 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 also going to leave a link to a module that I've run before called Albert would by a creator by a DM. By a Dungeon creator that I've mentioned on the 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 I will happily and for free keep mentioning his stuff. Better than for free, I support my Patreon, I actually pay for it. So that's that's my little little minibook report on on Albert's Thank you. Any questions, I don't know if I can answer them, But do you have any No, you actually really went into I mean you went in depth here with the origin of it and everything. I think for me, there is one thing that I want to say, which is like kind of kind of a little bit of a trope through kind of the history of D and D and love tropes and maybe gosh, there might have been some of this stuff in that that would la the order of the stick comic that I love. But the idea that like you could get eggs from an owlbear

21:45 nest, hatch them and then somehow raise pet albars or team albars or something like that, Like, I feel like we should just dispense with that idea, and that if you if you take an 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 your face. For its entire life, no matter how nice to it you are. Yeah, but you know, the the challenge of you know, one of those kinds of quests that you can get is you know, Wizard with esoteric you know agenda says to you, I need an owl bear egg, Go get me one. Yeah, you know, and the challenge is not just you know, fight off, you know, like can you get the egg without having to fight the Albera?

22:29 Can you distract and lead the Albert away from there? And then you know how big is an albar egg? What does it look like? Do you have to keep it warm? What's the challenge of getting it intact back to the Wizard? And that's kind of a 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 make a little bit of adventure fodder from as well. So I got so many comments on that bolt super for off the air, But yeah, Albert eggs are are usually very valuable and highly sought after, So that's yeah, they using them as a fetch quest and not just a rescue mission is also a good one. Or is a wandering monster? Yeah, and in the Balder's Gate game, there is an Albert cub that you can befriend. And I haven't found any other articles confirming this.

23:19 I'm just going by what my experience in 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, but the Albert that emerges is the one that like eats all its you know, brothers and sisters. Oh so, mild spoilers, very mild spoilers or Balderskate three. I would say skip ahead thirty seconds if you haven't gotten this far yet. There's a scene of the Albert cub starts eating the carcass of its mother. Oh okay, sure, there we go, strong and spoilers are done. 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 com and I'll have a link to the d M D of owl Bear would as well. I think that's gonna wrap it up for today, Thanks Jason. So thanks for listening to my little book before. Guys. I worked really hard on it for like an hour last night. Cool. So if you have a favorite encounter with an owl bear or any monster that we should also cover, let us know Hello Adventures Podcast at you month dot com or just let us know at Hello Adventurers podcast dot com slash voice which which monsters? Would your mom know that? What's your mom's favorite months? Ye, I'm asking for a lot of reasons. Tell me your tell me your grandma's favorite dn D monster. But I think it's gonna wrap it up today. That's that'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 they catch you. But let's wrap it up, guys, Thank you so much for listening to Hello Adventurers. We're your host Jason Portiso, Jimmy Crocker and Joe McCall, producer, editor and engineer Jason Portiso. Music by Nick Sprayer, artwork by Kris and Broderick. You can me chat to us with any feedback or suggestions by emailing Hello Adventurers podcast at gmail dot com. Hello Adventures is a JTP audio production. Goodbye Adventures