This Plan-dom Encounter isn’t going to be situations you can drop your Gibbering Mouther into but rather some tips for making the most out of an encounter with one of these globs of nightmare fuel!
5 Tips for Gibbering Mouthers:
- Aberrant Ground: Don’t forget that the ground in a 10′ radius from the Gibbering Mouther is “Aberrant Ground”. The Monster Manual describes it as “doughy”. Let’s break that down a 10′ radius means that 4 sqaures in each direction from the Gibbering Mouther is difficult terrain! Since the Mouther moves pretty slowly that becomes VERY important. Also…”doughy”. The barbarian’s foot sinks into the STONE FLOOR of the dungeon like it’s thick gooey mud. Play up that description to make the Gibbering Mouther feel as alien as it is!
- Gibbering: Because this blob of freaky eyes and mouths is constantly, well… gibbering away to itself and the universe; any creature that starts it’s turn within 20′ has to make a wisdom saving throw. Granted it’s a low DC (DC 10) but it’s not a save and be immune for the next 24 hours. It’s Every turn that you start within 20′ of this freaky thing! If you fail you do weird stuff… like: nothing (literally nothing at all on your turn, you just stand there), or walk in a random direction, or hit something close to you with an attack. When using Gibbering Mouthers we like to let the scouts of the group make a perception check as they approach. If they succeed we describe “a chorus of eerie whispers, like 100 mad-men and women are all huddled together telling secrets” – or something like that. We’re big proponents of telegraphing a creatures powers before PCs learn them without any foreshadowing.
- Ameboid Form: While not technically an ooze it’s ooze-like in it’s structure. If you want to add to the horror effect have your Gibbering Mouther come squelching out of an opening. Maybe a drain pipe 6″ across, or a dark opening less than a foot across in the ceiling of the room. Use that to your advantage. Also, since things like Quick-Sand don’t slow down Gibbering Mouthers…. make quick-sand an issue as well.
- All Consuming: The Monster Manual gives us a particularly vivid description of how Gibbering Mouthers dispatch those who find themselves in their gooey reach… They consume ALL of them. But the last thing their surviving friends see is their eyes and mouth as they slide across the amorphous body of the Mouther and… BECOME PART OF IT! Holy Cthulhu-Farts! That’s some messed up stuff right there! Also since they do devour their victims completely if someone drops into death saves have it keep munchin’ on them. A hit made to an unconscious character is an auto-crit so, with its two attacks per round… one round of chomping and whoever it just dropped should be a gonner!
- Weird it up! Whatever you do, make your descriptions leading up to the Mouther and during the encounter feel weird. The masterful Matt Colville has described characters coming upon an area where an odd sort of growth is on the walls, the growth (like a slimy lichen) has tiny mouths on it… That’s some weird stuff! Release your inner H.P. Lovecraft on your adventurers!
The main thing: Make an encounter with a Gibbering Mouther (or any aberration for that matter) feel like a living nightmare and you can’t go wrong. You and your players will be talking about that encounter for years to come!
TOTMrpg 