Xixecal: The Biggest D&D Elemental
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- Elementals are a fascinating caste of Dungeons and Dragons monsters. They vary on the spectrum a fair amount, and this week, we're looking at one of the most interesting D&D elementals ever put to print. Cold as ice, the xixecal is quite possibly the largest monster we've ever had on the channel. It is one of the craziest D&D mounters I've ever seen, elemental or otherwise. Originally printed in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, it is now in D&D 5E! Stay awhile and listen while I unpack the incredible monster that is the xixecal!
#DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #Monsters #MonsterLore #Elemental
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The D&D 5E stat block for this monster - docs.google.com/document/d/1H...
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0:00 - INTRO
04:05 - COMBAT
13:22 - PLOT HOOKS
Trinston was here..
Trinston is the only one who can take down the Xixecal
He surely did
You don't fight this as a monster with a stat block, it's a mountain-sized behemoth approaching the capital city your players must figure out how to take down
100% how monsters like this should be used most of the time. I just think it's cool that if a player ever says "I can take it" you then get to say "you can try" and pull out the stat sheet.
@@DungeonDad "Ah, you did 50 damage? The creature continues forward, ignoring your presence, one of the ancient dragons swoops down and hits you for... shit the dice fell"
Unless they are literally giant size.
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 Those adult white dragons were giant sized, and they look like flies hanging around it.
Giant ain't cutting it.
Get them gargantuan and it might register your presence.
@@pooppoop6337 I meant enormous, not the giant size category.
But yes, I agree. They would need to be as tall as the maximum lengths of 30 ancient dragons combined.
You're the only person I've seen actually describe bounded accuracy instead of just saying the term over and over. Thank you.
You’re very welcome!
Visibility is cut in half . . . I can already see it: "Your walking through a forest, a blizzard that came out of nowhere cuts Visibility in half and as you come into a clearing in the trees, you see a giant shadow in the storm . . ."
If I recall the Xixecal wasn't even listed as an elemental with the other elder elementals in the epic level handbook. It sat with the abominations which were entities that were the mistakes of gods and were locked away to be forgoten with fear as each one could kill the gods themselves.
Yep, and it wasn't even one of the weird abominations.
As someone who has ran a Xixecal a couple of times, I can safely assure you that even the archomental Cyronax would be willing to help the party cause even he doesn't stand a chance against a colossal primordial being. I caution getting rid of dire winter only because as an epic creature it has more than earned its world ending status and it purposefully limits the pcs. you're fighting it on it's terms. I only caution cause my PC's purposefully erupted volcanos. The look on their faces when the avalanche of lava froze was pretty great and they won by launching full on gates to the plane of fire a la cannon style. Haha.
Ah man that’s brilliant!
And just how do you erupt volcanoes? I'm asking for... academic purposes, totally not planning a character that will derail a DM's campaign and cause mass destruction to the world.
@@TheFoxfiend there are a few old 10th level spells like mavis create volcano but you need multiple casters to do it since level 10-12 spells were banned by mystra
@@TheFoxfiend In 5th edition, you need your DM to give you a way to do that, via explosives or legendary magical devices / special artifacts.
Perhaps the xixical is the ancient guardian of a settlement in the frozen north, waiting to be summoned in a time of great need.
I like that idea a lot!
Or worn as a dress
He is the body that fell to create the base of land that Ten Towns is built on in Icewind Dale 👌🏼that could be some cool lore imo
that sounds like the legend of ogier the dane (holger danske). it is said that when denmark is in dire need, when the people need him the most. he will be awakened and he will protect the people of denmark.
I like this perticularly if you tie it within the frost maiden where it’s there to defend the local from the tarresk.
For added chaos you can upgrade the white dragons to the rare catastrophic Blizzard dragon, since catastrophic dragons were treated by elementals and giants and what’s better they ALSO have a blizzard aura so now the encounter is a literal white out ^_^ have fun on hoth
The world needs people like you
@@DungeonDad I do what I can
This feels like one of those monsters you don't fight, for getting close enough to "fight" it would be a bad idea. I'm imagining this thing being more of a "this force of nature is on the move, get out of its way while the top mages are devising a way to banish it" which can be used to herd your players in the direction of relevant plot, creating swaths of near impassible terrain. The party gets tasked with gathering rare components and escorting researchers as well as aiding convincing kingdoms to take in refuges. In the end this culminates in a quest where they are geared up in the best cold weather gear possible and tasked with climbing this thing Shadow of the Colossus style while they plant sigils and components for a massive spell. Throw in some fights with white dragons using this thing as the battlefield itself and you got a final act that could last several sessions itself where they are fighting the cold, the dragons, and possibly time itself.
First time I saw this guy, he was a colossal + 90-or-so HD Epic monster. The 3.5 stat block said something about adult white dragons flying around it like (I forget the way it describes it, but essentially fruit flies around a banana) and suggested the thing was large enough for them to live in its crevices without its notice. So...I agree with Lion Bryce: this mob ain't an end-of-the session boss fight. It's a goddamn event. It IS the session 😨
So the Dragons got lice status?
It would basically classify as a dungeon crawl climbing this titan
Paraelemental planes actually predate the manual of the planes by about a decade. They're from old AD&D's planescape setting. They're mentioned in Planescape Torment too.
That’s true! I guess specifically I meant in 3.5, but you’re absolutely right
They are even older than that, appearing in the 1st edition Deities & Demigods. Paraelementals are yet older, appearing Dragon #32, with proto-paraelementals appearing in Dragon #27.
When you finally kill one of these lads, the DM should roll to determine which direction its lifeless corpse falls and the characters/creatures in that direction should have to roll to avoid being crushed by the mountain of falling ice. I can't imagine most characters/monsters could survive the thousands and thousands of pounds of this monster collapsing on top of them.
Yeah no kidding, the sheer force of its corpse collapsing would be like an explosion
Kill it? Why kill it when you can wear him?
Bear Totem Barbarian: *Tis but a scratch!*
Evil dms be like:
The Prometheus school of running away from things
Why do I feel like if one of these guys was summoned to the material plain Aurl the frostmaidan would be laughing her ass off while the world froze over.
Genuinely just having the time of her life
In 3.5 lore, these guys aren't so much elder elementals, as unwanted children of winter gods, often dumped somewhere where their own frost aura keeps them eternally embedded in ice. This thing is pretty much an equivalent to an atrophal.
Well, this is an interesting one: On the one hand an moving glacier with the intelligence of a normal glacier makes one of the worst villains imaginable. But for the world building this thing is great. A civilization dying because of an approaching ice age would be an interesting setting for a campaign. Will our heroes fight winter itself? And if they win, what are the consequences? Will they melting ice flood everything they wanted to protect?
Or will they avoid fighting and instead help finding new, warmer places to settle?
Also a low fantasy prehistoric campaign could work, just because I want to see a neanderthal barbarian wrestling a glacier....
Yes! These guys would be awesome for a prehistoric game!
Think I might steal this
I'd absolutely need to lean into the weather effects for this thing. On size difference alone it shouldn't even notice people most of the time, so it's primary threat should be its mere presence. Make it mostly terrain, a mountain surrounded in perpetual storm, and set a smaller campaign on it. Maybe pursuing a white dragon back to its nest. The PC's have to find a way to 'disarm' the magical 'storm barrier' while the dragon launches guerilla attacks. Cap it all off with some massive set piece. Their plan 'succeeds', before a massive block of ice falls from the sky, crushing the device, (maybe the dragon as well) and as the sky clears for a moment they watch in stupefied horror as the _mountain turns to look at them._
Yeah at this point I feel like treating it like a changing terrain should be the play, lots of cracks the size of chasms in the ice appear sometimes in a matter of minutes and your party has to actually run for their life every time there’s one forming under them
Fun fact. The "Rend" attack effect is very similar to sticking your tongue on an ice cold pole. Except it's your whole body!
Vey fun indeed!
Fun fact: para-elementals (and iirc, the existence of the para-elementals planes) existed way back in AD&D 1st edition, Monster Manual II
Surprised that D&D 5e doesn’t cater to experienced players. There needs to be epic level campaigns.
Well y’see, WoTC doesn’t give a fuck anymore, they just want to pander to the wider audiences. I still play 3.5e, and I am by no means experienced (been playing for 2 years) but let me tell you, the amount of polish puts 5e to shame
5e basically runs on 3rd party content. Entire campaigns boil down to 'make it up'. There are entire product lines on Dungeon Masters Guild dedicated to fleshing out campaigns with such 'trivial things' as 'what is the Feywild?' for the book ABOUT THE FEYWILD
@@gatekeeper6720 yes, because when I think D&D, I want an entire book dedicated to... being a part time barest trying to pay off my student loans... I shit you not, that is most of the Strixhaven book and Adventurers Guild content for the book.
Eh they do have a epic level handbook for 3.5
I know this is a really old comment, but there is a logic to it. WotC doesn't cater to epic level players because less than 10% of games last that long. So they prefer to just spend their infinite resources on 1-12 instead of anything past that. It's also just ridiculously hard to balance epic level stuff in 5e because everything boils down to either players oneshotting everything or exclusively save or die abilities.
I imagine the Frost Giants of the Forgotten Realms under Jarl Storvald's rule would love nothing more than to summon one of these bad boys into the material plane to bring about eternal winter. Same for Auril!
That’s a great point. This would be Auril’s frozen dream
Long story short but I had to pause my Storm King’s Thunder campaign and started to run a Tomb of Annihilation campaign. My players are mostly the same in both campaigns and just ran into Artus Cimber with the Ring of Winter. When we resume SKT and they go “the Ring’s fine in Chult lol, the Frost Giants aren’t a threat” I’ll reveal to them the Frost Giants are crazy enough to summon one of these big bois as a backup plan. Can’t wait!
Perhaps a question more interesting than "How do we defeat something like this appearing on the Prime Material" is "How did everyone from the Inevitables to the Rilmani completely drop the ball on this situation".
Really though, I think the idea of it being a semi-sentient winter is the most viable.
I'd also possibly use it as a walking base for, say, a Demi-Lich..
There is a great adventure online where you go through the body of a Tarrasque to find it's heart to kill it, a similar adventure could be done with you shadow of the colossus style scaling the Xixecal going through a vertical style dungeon and encounters
Thanks for watching everyone! Have a great weekend!
Guys, use GMBinder for the stat block! Or adapt it in Beyond! It will so cool to have them there!
I found your channel yesterday, and I'm enjoying it.
I realize this is a year after your uploaded, but I wanted to encourage you by saying. I love how you kept complaining about the heat of all the winter clothing and then removing it. I chose to envision your need to remove your scarf and coat as you suffering from hypothermia instead of the heat from filming.
"Mad guy with an axe"
*"I would like to rage."*
I have no idea how your channel only has about 7k subscribers. You should have at least 10x that many based on the quality of your videos.
Thank you for saying so and for watching
@@DungeonDad I will make sure to do that. Also, have you ever heard of the genius loci? It's a really cool monster from 3.5e I think, a giant slime that blends in with the landscape. It would be really cool to see you cover another ooze, as they are one of my favorite monster types but so few of them exist it seems. Keep up the great work, your channel is awesome!
Guess what, now he has even more then that! Very much deserved
Oh man I see so much potential to put things like this and this itself into a world where titans are battling with mortals
Real primal kaiju hours!
Love your video! Dropping by to share that I incorporated the Xixecal into my Feywild setting I've been running campaigns in for a little while now.
This Xixecal was conjured by a winter archfey during a war between the various fey courts to guard the borders of the Yulelands. When the war ended, rather than banish the massive elemental, the archfey instead put it into a magically induced slumber at the border of its domain. A couple millennia later, borders have shifted, and the dormant elemental came to reside well within the Yulelands. Its legend had been passed down through generations of fey, but its continued existence on the Feywild, much less its location, has largely been forgotten due to a combination of a passage of time, fey being easily bored, and fey also hoarding knowledge and secrets even when there is no practical reason to do so.
One day a lowly old fey goblin "affectionately" called Old Man Shiverbones makes his home on an icy mountain far from the festive winter villages he hailed from. Shiverbones was basically the Grinch analogue for a long time until some sprites came upon his cabin and thought it would be a fun prank to burn it down with him inside. The heat from the burning cabin, however, would awake the Xixecal slumbering beneath, causing it to rise from where it was partially buried under rock, soil, and snow, and begin patrolling its old route around borders that are no longer there.
Most fey, specifically the ones "not in the know", believe that Shiverbones' spirit animated the mountain his home was built on, and that the relatively misanthropic old man's ghost is what drives the massive elemental to pace circles around the Yulelands. Those "in the know" keep up the story, treating its existence as an inside joke. As such, the massive elemental has the whimsical name of Old Man Shiverbones.
This is really cool! (no pun intended)
Definitely going to include myths about "Old Shiverbones" for my players
Yeah, I'm steali-ah, borrowing this
I like the idea of creatures like these and other primordial elementals like the one in Gauntalgrym's volcano being like ancient forces of nature. I kinda like the idea of the Elemental Princes taking over the Elemental Planes or a Material Plane and the party having to free or awaken these more ancient beings to fight them in a godzilla threshold struggle
I am always down for a kaiju battle
...c-can we kaiju it, Dungeon Dad-senpai? uwu
Seriously though, I'd love to make the other paraelemental versions of this thing, with the mud elder being a literal shitstorm.
(Also, loved the Doxy voiceover! I wish I could make it to your streams more!)
Oh man, I never thought to make a kaiju kaiju....
Thanks for watching! She's been doing a bunch of little stuff like that for me lately so I'm sure you'll hear her again soon!
Can you imagine using that photo for scale?
If an adult white dragon is that size compared to the Xixecal, to put a "miniature" of that thing on the table I'll just dump a can of light blue paint over my head and step onto de table myself.
This could work so well in my homebrew campaign as a waiting, lurking threat. I love it!
Eeeeexcellent
Idea: Have the Xixecal as iceberg Bury in the middle of a dessert. Around it a Group of dragon Cultist build around it. They either try summoning to awakening the Xixecal(Which the party could try to stop early game) or get themselves killed by a white dragon who take up living within the Xixecal and reaping havoc on local towns in the area. You could have the run a who game around this weird anomaly of an iceberg in the middle of the dessert and it only the tip of the finger(No really it the tip of his finger, his pinky, Thing be huge). Meanwhile some cult, wizard, or what not has been drawing power from it slumbering form below. mmmmm. I have some work to do. "Rubs hands menacingly"
That is an amazing setup!
Appreciate you committing to the bit for as long as you did. Your jacket is awesome. Mine's just a your standard down-filled parka. The prairies are stupid cold.
For anyone interested, there's a 3.5 adventure with the xixceal in Oerth Journal 22 that can be found online.
I respect your decision to make it a CR 22 and remove both the epic level spell as well as the dragon summoning ability. Also, it's nice to know how to pronounce the creature's name.
As for someone who'd summon such a creature, I would think that Demon Lord Kostchtchie would be at the forefront of such a thing. Maybe a bunch of his followers (namely frost giants and white dragons) are trying to dig up a xixecal so that they can bring back their lord who is banished from the Material Plane. That would definitely be a horrifying turn of events.
White Dragos aren't that big, I can take them.
In a fight, right? Right?
The best thing about your content is every video shows a ton of improvement. You're never satisfied and it shows with your work constantly getting better and better. Proud of you bud.
Appreciate you man ❤️
I plan to run it as a final monster in my level 20 gestalt oneshot. hopefully will turn into full length campain.....With a snowstorm and 2 adult white dragons. It has invaded the Fey wilds because the Snow elfs who just moved there are being persecuted for not being love and light and growing and they are being told to stop killing things due to things not surviving or liking the snow elfs cold abilities.
Hell yeah, sounds epic!
This has now inspired me to run a game where the elemental planes are all at war because some elder elementals were somehow Awakened and now they want to conquer their own planes- and the paraelemental planes touching theirs, too!
That 300+ HP is just his heart. You firstly have to excavate ice to get to it. Scale it first, Then excavate. Then you can harm it...
I am planning to use it as a mountain (which cast eternal winter on the whole world) on the overland map which moves. Players have to spot it out of place and only then they can fight it.
Bit late to the party, but I've actually combined the Xixecal and some other older edition creatures into an existing lore for Forgotten Realms, the Seven Lost Gods. They were demigods that are now imprisoned by the god Bane, and while five of these gods are known, there are still two that are unknown. And what better very pissed off demigod than a walking glacier ready to just kill everything.
Let me start off by saying that I love your videos (including this one) and am very grateful for the 5e conversions. These have been my favorite thing to watch before going to sleep or while working. That being said I feel like the Xixecal might have been undercut in power and challenge considering it's lore/background. I was looking at some of my books and their are monsters that live shorter lifespans with similar magical attunement that accumulate much greater power (ex: Chromatic/Metalic/Gem Greatwyrm, Ancient Dragon Turtle, etc.) It seems to me that a challenge rating in the 30s would be appropriate since this thing towers over ancient dragons. That's just my opinion on the matter.
If you want a truly massive creature, look no further than the draeden, which are approximately 20 to 40 miles across. (The 1e DDG lists Jormumgandr (25000 miles) and Azathoth (inconceivable) as being even larger, but they might be beyond the scope of these videos.)
Those aren't monsters, those are campaign settings that move sometimes.
@@DungeonDad To-may-to, to-mah-to...
@@tomkerruish2982 I'm blanking on the name (of course) but Spelljammer had a monster so big that could be mistaken for a constellation. As in a group of stars...
@@KS-PNW The Constellate.
a word before giving my thoughts:
1)beautiful video, the first ever video i see by you, you got a subscriber instantly
2)i'm not an expert on d&d 5e as i played mostly 3.5 and only a bit of 5
I loved the monster and it's adaptation to d&d 5e is pretty good but for a few things...
the xixecal is not an elemental, it's a god, as it is the child of one or more god with [evil] and [ice] or [winter] or [cold] domains making it at the very least a demigod;
and not only that but a xixecal by all means is meant to be a walking apocalypse so "nerfing" it to a meager cr 22 is a really big jump i know it's meant to be accessibility first but it's still a REALLY big jump especially since it puts it lower/weaker than dragons which is a bold Statement.
That said this could actually make for a good "new born" or really juvenile member of it's species, for anyone that wants to bump up the CR i would recommend to simply add back it's 2 main combat strategies by the name of spellcasting and criticals.
A xixecal can normally cast 5 times per day the spell meteor storm, and counting that it's not the "weakened" version of 5e (where you could be affected by only 1 meteor per cast) it was a LOT of damage in a big range and area, i would maybe give a stronger xixecal some sorcerer spellcasting to bump up it's combat strategies.
Also one of the main strategies of the xixecal is to crit with it's claws that normally critted on a roll of 19-20 because not only it would do an extra d6 of damage on top of already doubling damage (and depending on how you interpreted the extra d6 it could become an entire 4d6 extra damage using size modifiers to damage), it would also heal 40 hp (instead of the normal 20) with it's biting cold ability and it could instantly kill the poor adventurer on a pretty tough fortitude (constitution) saving throw, basically having a vorpal blade effect on saving throws on it's claws.
Another thing kinda omitted from this is that the xixecal was extremely hard to kill, with an AC of 58,an average of 1.6 k HP, debuffs from it's spell and effects, natural regeneration, natural lifesteal and a really hard to bypass damage reduction (20 less damage from every weapon that was not GOOD EPIC and ADAMANTINE all at the same time!) fire was the only reliable way to deal damage to it and even then the xixecal not being exactly stupid (12 is more than a average commoner) it could focus the poor fire wielder pretty easily; oh did i mention that 3.5 regeneration implied that any kind of damage that did not bypass it was non-lethal? yeah the xixecal was a though boy.
All in all this was a good port especially considered that 5e seems more on the low/mid fantasy theme and 3.5 was instead on the High/epic fantasy thematic.
I hope everyone has a great day and happy adventuring!
I am so grateful to you for going over these old monsters. I wish I saved some of my old D&D manuals. They are so hard to come by now lol.
A cool way could be that there's old tales of how there was a mountain that once came to life and walked the land. And during the adventure the party or villain awakens the monster in some way as it starts to move as a force of nature, now the party must try to redirect it or convince the walking mountain to return to its resting place.
These are super cool. I used to spend hours reading the 3.5 monster manual. Far more than I spent actually playing.
Gotta love the Abominations getting some love here. I've only recently stumbled onto your channel here, but it's quite fun to listen to even if I don't end up throwing any of these monsters at my players. Maybe I'm too nice a GM.
I was surprised to see you gloss over the fact that, according to 3.5e lore at least, these things were like the children of gods. I'm sure that could have interesting implications as well in a campaign.
My immediate thought was that the party doesn’t encounter it face to face but more so they see a distant mountain range blanketed in a never ending blizzard, and within that blizzard something is moving, something massive.
Perhaps there was a tear between the planes and it slipped into the material plane and just stayed within the mountain range becoming a sort of landmark and cautionary tale to stay away from the mountains.
Honestly, I love these videos of recreating strange and powerful creatures from 3e! If I could suggest another creature from I believe the same book as this one, I'd absolutely love to see you cover the Uvuudaum.
A very, very dangerous stealth session trying to climb it without alerting it
I imagined a scenario where an intelligent xixical is essentially just bored with everything due to his long life and only helps the main antagonist because he hopes it will cure his unconquerable bordom.
Yesss!!! I love this.
I hope you do more epic level handbook monsters, because i love them ^^
There is some WILD stuff in there!
@@DungeonDad Indeed! hopefully they're not too bad to convert.
Just discovered your videos yesterday. You’re immediately among my favorite dnd creators. These videos are excellently done! Sharing the hell out of it with all my dnd friends
I want you to know I ran this monster as the fortress of a frozen lich. The party had to fly around it on giant eagles slinging spells and dropping bombs on it. After they barely managed to inhibit this elemental titan they had to enter into the beast for what essentially became a Boss rush all the way to the frozen lich BBEG. It was a part of the campaign they all to this day still praise as one of their favorites. Thank you for the inspiration and awesome monster!
This character is perfect for me, I’ve got a tidally locked planet with the north being entirely frozen so this guy would definitely be at the very top of the pole where it is coldest
I love the idea of ether the villain of the campaign piloting it like a mech or the players piloting it to fight other elder elementals.
i didn't play frostpunk, but this sounds like a good setup for that kind of survival game play. also just remembered there are ice worms in D&D that have fire damage, maybe one is just mad because its infested?
Oh man, a bunch of remorhaz burrowing into and around this thing would be AWESOME.
You already inspired me to start a campaign with Kythons as the focal point (first session starts next month). I placed it in the frozen north Kingdom of Vaasa.
Now i'm relatively certain that a Xixecal is going to be AS A MINIMUM making an appearance somewhere in the lore.
This is legendary I can't wait to use it in my campaign.
Thanks for the inspiration, good job.
Gosh damn this is good work. Really digging your new format. You are next level awesome, my friend. Thank you for entertaining me! :-)
Thank YOU for being so kind and supportive.
I love these videos. I started with 5e, so I've never heard of most of these creatures. Most of them are very interesting and flavorful. Plus, you're very entertaining to watch. Keep up the good work!
So, building on your iceberg joke, and the concept of it summoning white dragons, I'm reminded of Project Habakkuk. In WW2, there was a plan to develop a gigantic supercarrier, largely made of pykrete (a mix of ice and wood pulp). So, maybe the xixecal is actually sort of a walking ice base, housing armies of elementals & mephits, and squadrons of white dragons.
Great idea that I haven't seen mentioned, is what if the bbeg base/castle/pleasure palace, was built ON the Xixecal, and the party had to find a way to climb this thing while fending off it's storm, dragons, or whatever the hell else you wanna throw at them as they try to get to the bbeg's store-house of anime booba
While you're covering ridiculously powerful monsters, why not try converting the hecatoncheires?
They've been on my list for awhile. That's going to be an undertaking but we are definitely going to get there soon!
Or the Hagunemnon pg 196 epic lvl handbook
What a cool channel and niche on other d&d creators. First video of yours I've seen and I've subscribed.
Thank you, sir, for taking the time of your life to make these
Also, praise on sound quality, music is a banger, and visuals are great quality.
It'd make a fantastic location as well for the BBEG. With it being so massive I can see a layer being built into it
Found your channel a month or so ago. Love it! As a father myself who is dm'ing a star wars/d&d mashup, youve given me a lot of info that im going to use!
the cool thing is to see these monsters and think that we can create our version of him, for example a plant xixecal, while he was asleep he was a huge forest that was even populated
This makes me want to make a campaign where players are going on adventures on top of this thing and other things like the Dragon Turtle, not knowing that the continents they're on are actually creatures.
No joke, I was trying to remember this thing’s name for almost a year. Thank you.
I used it with my players but not to fight them. They traveled to Abeir where elementals and dragons lived. It was a social encounter, but Xixecal was a creature who did not listen to charisma, only to wisdom of a character. No loud words or beautiful sentences, only life experience. So the druid got to use some persuasion with wisdom mod.
My group fought a Xixecal on an campaign setting in the forgotten realms, on the context of a series of cataclysms happening during the time of troubles. It was to this day, one of the most Epic battles we had. We were on the epic level of course, and it was still the 3.5e
Most of my campaigns don't really last up too 20th lvl. So a fun idea is haveing a town that holds a ceremony/celebration to guide a just woken xixical to a new resting spot. Or just to watch him move from place to place. I could be that they worship it. Stuff like that where the party isn't expected to fight more just to survive or even just have a fun party with a visualy stunning ending.
Lore-wise I might make a White-dragon encounter that after escaping a sudden cave in, you see the Xixecal walking over to the ocean to drift asleed as an iceberg as it had before becoming part of the frozen mountain
New follower here! I absolutely love these videos and I find elder elementals like these absolutely fascinating! I'd love to see one on an Elder Shadow Elemental.
Welcome to the channel!
i have an arc im prepping for an upcomming campaing in which, if the badguy gets his way, i plan to unleash a global monsterpocalypse of all sorts of ancient elementals, feinds, and abberations. i wont actually expect my players to fight this thing but it will make a good set peice for the background to have abunch of angels holding something like this back.
thank you, Josiah!
In 5th edition? They would probably just remove 80 HP give them 5inch bat wings from head to toe and make them yellow.
We call that game design
2:21 I was worried how you ran the clock into OT, but you brought it all home with the sick New Jersey burn. Worth it.
I think you just gave me lore (and maybe a final boss) for my arctic wasteland campaign. Thank you for this narrative (definitely not bullying) device.
While this is unrelated to the Xixecal, one of the media monsters I can imagine being imported into a D&D campaign would be The Nowhere King from Centaur World. A good rundown of him without having to watch the whole show is given on a CZcams video by TheDireGentelmen called "The Nowhere King: A Flawed Show's Perfect Villain." He has a backstory & ending as tragic as any Dark Lord of Ravenloft & is a monster trapped in an Ethereal Prison. He also has a creepy lullaby about him that foreshadows the protagonists actually meeting him, which in a disturbing sing songy way could greatly unnerve players.
Hush now, hide, all you little ones.
Rush now, into the middle of nowhere,
Where singing and laughter will die.
Dreamless sleep, follows the Nowhere King.
When his kingdom comes, darkness is nigh.
Quiet, crawl to the in-between.
Silent, secretive feeling,
Of fearsome hatred that reaches the skies.
You will bring joy to the Nowhere King,
When he sees the light leaving your eyes.
Damn. I just discovered your channel and I live the idea of D&D🙂
I still play 3.5e in my home game, and I've got all the books, but I still like the twists you put on things man
Makes monsters so much more interesting
Thank You for the inspiration 🧐 💡
I coincidentally a while ago made a similar (though less world threatening) elemental called a Glacial Colossus. It was a while ago so I definitely need to rework it, so this'll give me some ideas! Fun fact as well, the campaign I run takes place on modern day earth and it actually was a Glacial Colossus that sunk the Titanic
This is such a cool monster, while I cannot use it currently, this is definitely on my list on things to use, maybe in a one-shot I can use it!
Here, you deserve some fun so have a watch-suggest: Sci Man Dan!
Yo, that Roll20 dice effect tho 😍
I love the low-key strip-tease between each scene😂
I really like the way you did this monster
Why 12d6 for the breath weapon? Seems a little low when compared to adult/ancient/great wyrm breath weapons.
So I actually am going to use this as a victim as someone’s goal was to lure it out and then drain its elemental magic to power something so the parties goal is going to be to somehow stop it from going to its death and saving the villages they’ve grown fond of and the antagonists are gonna be the dragons protecting the xixecal so it makes it difficult to tell the creature of its impending doom and protect the villages! Honestly this is just the kind of creature I needed
That sounds awesome! 👏🏽
Awwww yiss! Epic level handbook! :3
"The New Jersey of Elemental Planes" I felt that.
this gave me a fantastic quest idea
I've used the xixecal before but not as a monster but an elemental hazard when my group was searching for pieces of a cubic gate to be able to travel to the elemental planes to stop a future invasion I had the are guarded by white dragons and white half dragons in ice fortresses and only once they reached the bottom of the chasm did they find out that the entire underground mountain was an actual creature.
Another interesting colossal creature like this would be the Genius Loci which is technically a colossal ooze but looks like a mountain this one is fun as more an environmental hazard as well
Fire video 🔥🔥
Great video.
I dont play DnD but I started watching these vids to get some nice ideas for stories
Heck yeah! Inspiration is everywhere, I'm glad you've found them useful for your purposes!
I actually made something akin to this creature, except that it was a wind elemental whose essence had splintered. One of my players has a semi-sentient weapon that contains one of those splinters, she can essentially turn into thor but only thunder a few times per day (think barbarian level 11 cheat death scaling). It was really difficult to balance such an item so I just... kinda went overboard. Now my whole party is busted, but the enemies that face them are too, it's like two glass cannons being fired at eachother. I have fun, my players have fun (and get to live out their class fantasies to the extreme), and I can't wait to PLAY in the next campaign this time.
Living spell!!
Please do a video on the living spells. They are an amazing thing that really adds flavor to any adventure.
Tasha's Cauldron offEverything has stats for a Supernaturally Cursed Blizzard, Thyrm's Howl. That could help matters
I have run one of these for an old 3.5 Epic adventure. Characters were all ~25th lvl.The biggest issue half the party dealt with was that all of the terrain, on ground and in the air was difficult terrain for a mile around it. I think that would be a good addition for a 5e addition. Maybe difficult terrain within 300' (the same as it's breath attack). Certainly, Freedom of Movement deals with that, but that is a resource used up from the party.
On a side note, the party did defeat it by opening a Gate to the deep elemental Plane of Fire. Then all but one of them died to drowning in the mountain sized avalanche of slushy ice. The one who survived had Quickened Teleport ready. It was the final game of the campaign, so everyone was cool with it. Neverwinter saved. Frostmaiden Thwarted. Good times.