My players characters are currently exploring some truly ancient underground ruins of a sunken city (the setting is Ptolus, if it matters), and the PCs are trying to find the sites of some temples of various gods to explore.
Next up on the list are temples of ancient gods of knowledge and magic, and when I searched for thematically appropriate monsters to populate them, I came across Nothics. They have a pretty good base concept, but I need some more ideas to make exploring a ruin filled with them interesting. Things I am looking for in particular include:
- D&D lore about the Nothics (this doesn’t have to be from 5E)
- Ways of personalizing them and their environment, emphasizing how weird and creepy they are
- Variant stat blocks that might make encounters with them more interesting
- Creatures that might co-exist with them
But feel free to throw any ideas you have out here - I am still in an early brainstorming phase!
For statblocks my go to are ones made by Conflux Creatures: Nothics, including some bits of lore and tactics.
The temple would surely have some Animated Objects as well!
I have used a Nothic in one of my games for some pretty good effect. My players found a mysterious library filled with strange books which had a Nothic inside. They say something in the shadows with their perception checks and then the Nothic used it’s strange insight on them. The strange check is what got them hooked especially when I made them tell me a character secret. They kept coming back for the weird check and the fact the shadowy figure kept saying cryptic nothings.
If I was running this I would have the Nothics selling these secrets to your dungeons BBEG. I would give the player some secret disadvantage based on the number of secrets stolen which isn’t relieved until that fight. Scatter them around the dungeon and make them a minion in that fight. I would make my BBEG something related to Vecna so an evil wizard. Allips would fit thematically as well
…sounds like a great opportunity to mash-up allip features for extra-spicy nothics…
People are turned into nothics by the god Vecna when they discover secrets that mortals should not know (particularly RE the elder god Tharzidun) to keep the knowledge from spreading. If youre putting a bunch of nothics in one place you should establish how and why all these people gained forbidden knowledge and why turning the first few didn’t stop the others. You could maybe make special nothics who used to be specific characters before turning and have kept some of their old abilities. If Tharzidun is involved you have an easy explanation for the presence of any aberrations, especially beholders and beholderkin. Any one eyed aberration is probably related to Tharzidun somehow.
A nothic that has discovered a ring of invisibility and a ring of mind shielding. It lives in the walls of the king’s palace, and wears the rings to listen in on war meetings and diplomatic visits.
The king has no idea how state secrets keep escaping his confidence, and he’s begun to turn paranoid and anxious, firing and exiling advisors left and right. The nothic is taking advantage of this, and is gleefully driving an entire nation into ruin and revelling in the fact that this secret belongs to it and it alone.
I used the nothic in phendelver. My players were intrigued and terrified with a green flavoured mind monster.
If you had a city of them, I’d imagine you’d have this cacophony of mental discussions. Kind of like being in a crowd, but noone being around. This could create some healthy speculation amongst the group. Maybe you could make some of the players more sensitive to the talk giving them lore, but a disadvantage if it gets too loud.
Darkness was the main pull of the lair in phendelver, so I’d lean on that. Lots of hiding spots and mind speak makes the monsters seem hard to find which adds tension.
Let us know how you do.
