Monster of the Week: Aboleth

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Aboleths are large and intelligent marine creatures not to be confused with an Axolotl, another strange fishy creature also starting with ‘A’. However, rather than having legs, an Aboleth has psionic powers and another nasty stuff. They look something like this:

That took a while.

Anyway, Aboleths are one of the more obscure D&D monsters, despite having been around for a while. Well, who can blame everyone: they’re giant psionic fish! Even without anything else, aquatic creatures tend to get used less than others because they’re often a pain the in neck to fight against, so unless you’re playing an aquatic campaign… anyway, secondly, they apparently roam the Underdark and other such areas, so they’re even less likely to be encountered. Throw in the fact that they’re a complicated creature to DM, it’s really no surprise.

So what can they do? Well, the technicalities vary a lot based on the edition, or even what source book you’re using (there’s regular and psionic versions of the 3.5 one), but there’s a couple of main similarities:

• Highly intelligent
• Very evil
• Can dominate creatures
• Slimy! Has tentacles, too.

They also have another cool ability, which for some stupid reason isn’t even in the 4E MM, but existed beforehand: They get the memories of everyone they eat. They also get all their parents memories at birth. Your average Aboleth is going to have the memories of thousands of people, stretching back generations. If an Aboleth ever needs to know something, it just goes out and eats someone who knows it. You can basically assume an Aboleth knows everything about everything. There is a lot of potential for this if the Aboleth is a big bad evil guy.

Despite the MMs saying they live in the Underdark, it does actually make sense for them to come to the surface. If they hide some watery cave near a town or city, their powers are enough to both protect them and avoid detection, and there’s a massive pile of walking food. Naturally, such tendencies are great for D&D campaigns: random monster nearby, causing trouble, go kill.

For example: People have been disappearing, strange things happening, and the PCs have to investigate. They trace all the disappearances to a single watery hideout, and charge in, only to find a small army of dominated townsfolk, in various levels of decaying into slimy minions. Whether the Aboleth is actually visible… depends on the edition.

Before I get into the edition specific stuff, one more thing: Aboleths are aquatic, and aren’t amphibious, and thus can’t breathe air: they suffocate in air. However, this isn’t technically true in 4E: they aquatic type doesn’t mean they can’t breathe air. Since all the other 4E aquatic creatures probably would be amphibious, I think it’s probably an oversight. I’d be inclined to keep the air suffocation, to reward players who can be creative enough to get the Aboleth out of the water.

3.5 Edition

I’m going to just discuss regular Aboleth, because I really don’t know anything about psionics. However, at a quick glance at the psionic Aboleth, it looks like it handles a bit more like the 4E version (perma-domination + no Illusions). It does have Modify Memory, which could lead to awesome shenanigans.

The enslave ability is a bit weak. Creatures can break the domination after a day, so the Aboleth has to keep a close eye on minions or use them then eat them within a day. However, the Illusions mean that the 3.5 Aboleth does not need to rely on minions for defence.

The key feature of the 3.5 Aboleth is its spell-like psionic abilities, all usable At-Will:

Hypnotic Pattern: Meh, whatever.

Illusory Wall: Permanent! The Aboleth’s lair should be a maze of real and Illusory walls!

Mirage Arcana: Make something look, feel, smell, and sound completely different. Make the entire cave system look like a sand dune.

Persistent Image: The PCs should never find the real Aboleth without seeing plenty of Illusions

Programmed Image: The PCs find the real Aboleth! It’s even mocking them! Oh, wait, it’s an Illusion too…

Project Image : The PCs find the real Aboleth! It’s even casting spells at them! And reacting! Oh, wait… still no.

Veil: Get the PCs good and lots with the above Illusions, separate them, then make use Veil to make them all look like watery minions (eg: Skum). They’ll attack each other! For even more fun, Dominate one so they keep attacking even after the PCs start realising what’s going on. Throw some real water minions, and you’ve got a confusing situation for everyone involved. Alternatively, make the Aboleth look, feel, and smell just like a… well, non-Aboleth. A captured damsel, say.

If you use models for combat, don’t do so for this: you want the players to get confused as to where everything is, with all the illusions.

If the players can pull out a True Seeing spell, it’ll negate basically all of this. That’s fine: reward players if they happen to be properly prepared for something. If they don’t have True Seeing, then chucking a few area Dispels around would probably be a good tactic.

Once the players catch up with the real Aboleth, only allow it to escape if it’s the big bad evil guy of the campaign. By the time they get to the Aboleth, the players are going to want to kill something: make sure they take it out on the in-game creature, not you as DM. Give them lots of loot, too.

4th Edition

Well, in standard 4E style we’ve got 3 Aboleths. The first, Aboleth Lasher wierd… it’s a Brute. It does, however, work okay in conjunction with other Aboleths. The second, the Aboleth Slime Mage (Artillery) is fine, but the Aboleth Overseer (Elite Controller) cooler, I reckon.

The Aboleth Slime Mage can Dominate people (1 at a time), and can cause okay damage. Use in conjunction with Aboleth Lashers, I suppose. Something like Kuo-toas, which sometimes worship Aboleths, would be a good creature to throw into the mix.

The Aboleth Overseer is cooler because it can do what you really want it to: Dominate as many people as it wants, for as long as it wants. It can control more than enough to defend itself. A fight against an Aboleth Overseer is interesting because, apart from the powerful combo of Controller + underlings, the players may have to consider that many of their foes may be merely dominated, and thus Good PCs shouldn’t really kill them…

The 4E Aboleths are easier to use than the 3.5 Aboleth, mainly because there are a lot less abilities to deal with.

Overall, Aboleths are pretty neat. Next time you need a side quest, why not throw one in? Come back next week for another Monster, and keep reading Dice of Doom!

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