Aboleth Encounters

[Mikeavelli]

As at least one other person noticed, Aboleths are right near the top of most people's list of Scariest monsters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182393), what are some good ideas for encounters with them? Especially ones that play up how scary they are.



I've only used one Aboleth in all my DM'ing so far. A mad wizard was keeping a partially lobotomized Aboleth in a tank in his basement. It was supposed to be a harmless source of exposition about what the wizard was studying that drove him mad. Once the players realized what it was, even though they were aware it was harmless (due to the partial lobotomy taking away all its powers) - they proceeded to nuke it with everything they had.

This isn't just because my players are sociopaths, they're also terrified of the fish-fiends like everyone else.

[begooler]

I was going to use one as a device for my PC's to learn more about the history of the campaign world they're in.

They also may learn that
said aboleth invented the church of Wee Jas out of boredom. The church's followers seek out important, powerful, and intelligent people to donate their bodies to 'research.' They give the bodies to the aboleth to eat and it absorbs their memories.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

In a campaign I ran, they had to get to various elemental temples that had been appropriately desecrated and inhabited.

The fire temple resided in a volcano, which had formed a caldera island. The entrance to said temple was at the bottom of the lake in the middle. It was a twisty-wisty 3d maze (I started with some maps from the old Descent games, and went from there). And therein resided an Aboleth.

It was an intelligent aboleth, and of course, an arcane caster. This was it's turf, so it was intimately familiar with every last inch of the place.

It used hit-and-run tactics, it led them into traps, it used Shape Stone... not to close them in, but to start playing with their heads when the path didn't match the map they were carefully making. The party wizard almost became snot.

To this day, if I mention the words 'underwater tunnel', half of my players will physically blanch, and the other half will excuse themselves from the table.

[TheCountAlucard]

I used Aboleths once. Specifically, they'd used magic to carefully shape an iceberg around an aquatic elf city, which they took and adapted for their own use; following that, it served as a mobile fortress from which they could start a campaign against the sahuagin for dominance of the oceans. It was a complex little plot involving bringing the land-based races under their control to bolster their forces.

And, of course, the PCs knew none of this; the most they learned was, "iceberg bad, it has psychic tentacled sharks." It was still enough to mess them up for a while. :smalltongue:

[FMArthur]

After handing out a Necklace of Adaptation, Bottle of Air, Cloak of the Manta Ray and a Pearl of the Sirines over the course of a short Underdark dungeon, I had a four-man party following a big staircase that lead into a flooded cavern and just kept going down into the water in the huge room - a dark cavern so large that even above the surface they could not see its walls. The water hampered their eyesight significantly. But they knew that all they had to do was follow the path...

You guys are afraid of Aboleths coming up from the depths? How do you think you'd feel about encountering an Aboleth in its element?

After the routine pre-battle realization of impending disaster when they noticed something quite large was swimming around and was evidently aware of them, the party fell for a number of illusions that led them off the path and had to battle an Aboleth and its merfolk minions as well as illusions of each in open water while grossly unprepared.

They tried to finagle experience points out of me for the Wizard successfully grabbing two player corpses and Teleporting out of there. I didn't have the heart to deny them at this point, having accidentally engineered pretty much the most perfect possible catastrophe for their ECL.

On a side note it was a good test for the various underwater elements introduced in that session. The Bottle of Air was horrendously limiting. The Cloak of the Manta Ray cripples one's physical stats too much. The Necklace of Adaptation almost cut it, and the Pearl was genuinely useful. And Aboleths can make creepy deep-water exploration absolutely terrifying.

[Cuaqchi]

I've used Aboleth twice. Once was a poorly developed slugfest with a pair of them that went poorly for me. The second was in the basement of a flooded and ruined temple where the creature had Veiled it self and used a Programed Illusion of a lowering water level to draw the heroes into its trap as they fought his Skum guards... Almost ended in a TPK if not for the Bard realizing that whatever creature was down there, it wouldn't willingly beach itself for the fight.

[valadil]

I've got Aboleths in my current game. They're a background threat, as the PCs aren't really able to deal with Aboleths yet.

What they have been able to deal with is the Adventures for the Abolishment of Aboleths, or AAA for short. This is a group of NPCs who make their living hunting Aboleths with harpoons. The PCs are respectfully terrified of these guys and happen to owe them money. They figure that anyone who actually chooses to fight Aboleths must be badass or stupid, and since these guys do it repeatedly they must be badass. What the PCs don't realize is that the AAA all got their minds taken over by Aboleths years ago, on their very first Aboleth hunting expedition. I'm not entirely sure how I'll reveal this to the players but I'm certainly looking forward to it.

[Beheld]

The party enters into a big cavern, and has to jump down (or float) to reach the floor. From there, they ground is slightly wet, and sloped down a small amount towards a corridor on the other end. Once they reach the corridor, and move about half way into it, it turns out that some of the water is a Shaboath, a mindless construct of water tainted by aboleth ooze. It starts by triggering a pressure plate that causes the ceiling in the previous room to open, pouring water down on top of the party in a rush, forcing saves against be washed down the corridor.

If they fail the saves, they are washed into the end of the corridor, which becomes a large pit straight down over several hundred feet, until they hit bottom or avoid it somehow. This primarily splits the party. But might kill a particularly unlucky or inept non flier.

Meanwhile, in with the water, comes an Aboleth, modified to use Psionic variant and slightly advanced. Throws down a wall of ectoplasm, further splitting the party, and trapping some who managed to stay in the first room in a room completely filled with dark water (water is dirty, hard to see obviously hard to breathe unless you breath water).

Meanwhile, the Aboleth takes advantage of hide skill and false sensory input, and tremendous circumstance bonuses to hide from the remaining party member(s) doing hit and run attacks like "moving by and mucusing them" or "you ended in Full attack range, here is a bucket of slime covered tentacle attacks" and "Pile of Psionics including Dominate."

End result: Party is split into up to 3 groups, fighting a construct in one place, that is good at pounding damage, and it is likely the best construct deniers will be elsewhere. Others are dropped down a well, and do not take part, and others are trapped in a completely watertight room, being fought by an Aboleth they can't even see most of the time. At then end, one of the party might be dominated by an Aboleth who ran away, some may be incapable of being dry without taking damage, and some may be unable to breathe air.

Lots of healing/Cure Diseases/Dispels needed, and a lot of work getting back together. And that's the first fight in a really big complex designed to house a powerful demon who arranges for ambushes throughout the complex.

In the end, it's an EL 11 encounter. So not even very far above CR for a level 10 party.

EDIT: Can be modified to provide a constant stream of water, and use the standard Aboleth for way more Illusory effects, and no Wall fo Ectoplasm Block.

[some guy]

I like all these stories/suggestions/implementations, but I think this one...

I've got Aboleths in my current game. They're a background threat, as the PCs aren't really able to deal with Aboleths yet.

What they have been able to deal with is the Adventures for the Abolishment of Aboleths, or AAA for short. This is a group of NPCs who make their living hunting Aboleths with harpoons. The PCs are respectfully terrified of these guys and happen to owe them money. They figure that anyone who actually chooses to fight Aboleths must be badass or stupid, and since these guys do it repeatedly they must be badass. What the PCs don't realize is that the AAA all got their minds taken over by Aboleths years ago, on their very first Aboleth hunting expedition. I'm not entirely sure how I'll reveal this to the players but I'm certainly looking forward to it.
...has the most Lovecraftian feel to it.

By the by, I'm guessing aboleths don't need material components for their psionics, do they?
'Cause imagining an aboleth holding a tiny doll version (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/projectImage.htm) of itself is hilarious.

[BadJuJu]

We had a CR 19 party damn near wipe to an aboleth. It got the beefy fighters with mind control and made it a nasty fight. The casters were grappled underwater and unable to escape. Killed two party members.