Threw this at my party a few months ago, just popped up on my recommended again. The party was level 9 but were 6 strong, and had complained previously about the encounters they went up against not being challenging enough. So when they entered the dark forest in search of a long lost ally, guess what they ran into? Six entered the woods... one left with his life intact. I’ll never hear the end of it
No, but seriously, they were only level 9. They stood no chance. Its _Annihilating Aura_ ability alone shaves off about 50 HP in 4 turns! Enervating Focus just picks off any stragglers. It doesn't matter that there were 6 of them. XD
@@TheTsugnawmi2010 Oh absolutely, I feel really terrible about the whole thing. In my defense though, I had planned this to be a late game enemy towards the ends of the campaign and worked a whole bunch of the lore to make sense with a creature composed of negative energy living in a dark forest. BUT they went down the road of looking for the one dude that was trapped in the woods and went in to find him. Things did not go as they had planned from then onwards. Miraculously though, the party was able to continue on after the encounter, and now I'm looking down the path of my party heading back into the forest for revenge! I'm incredibly excited.
The nightcrawler descends down on you and swallows you whole. Every nerve in your body explodes with pain. You experience your body dissolve by pure entropy. But it does not end there. As your soul leaves your body it is sucked into what can only be described as the end of everything. No heaven, no hell. Just an endless descent into a timeless, formless existence. You lose every scrap of sanity as countless ages pass in total darkness. A total lack of energy, form or substance. You long for something you can not even grasp with what is left of what you once were. You remain in a state of perpetual panic and hunger for unknown things. And then some fucking necromancer on the prime material plane summons you into what can only be described as an acid trip, while on fire, falling off a cliff. You are a skeleton.
yesss night walkers are my favourite monsters. In 5e I LOVE how they look, and the idea they have a flying speed without wings is weird. When I threw it against my players, I described it as the PC's flew into the air, the creature started to walk upwards towards them as if it was following them on an invisible staircase.
My brother threw one of these at me and my Mom once. My Mom turned it into a fish and I chopped it up into sushi. That was the best dnd moment I've ever had.
I once had an Ooblex do a ritual that would summon the nightwalker that involved using blood from each of the players that would spill into smaller slimes and they would crawl over and attempt to bring blood to the alter, to keep the ritual from completing they had to stop all the slimes that carried blood else the ritual would complete. They in fact did not succeed in doing so, and had to now flee a night walker that was consuming all the natural and artificial light made in the area. The only thing they had to illuminate their path was a pendant that grew for 10 feet in a direction ahead of the player when there was no other source of light. It was basically running a horror movie and it was great
I made a homebrew story where I gave the Warlock Hexblade a magic item that held this creature inside it as it's pact weapon. Every night, when the character went to sleep, this being would show up in his dreams(more like a nightmare). They would learn more about each other(thus the character is talking in his sleep for the other PC's to listen in during night watch), and the nightwalker would be bone thin and get beefier(+learn more about itself) after devouring more souls. Later on, the nightwalker remembers that it met the Raven Queen, and asked of her to go to the material realm in secret, to go on an adventure as being godlike stops him from interacting with people normally. He wanted to interact with humans mostly because he found them interesting after witnessing the Raven Queen meddling with fate and restoring souls to the material realm. The joy of watching this rags to riches story as these adventurers are given a glimmer of power brings intrigue to the Queen, and the Night Walker. The Nightwalker enjoys these shows regardless, adventurers are high stake gamblers, either the adventurers will be filled with terror and destroyed, or they will prevail and slay all before them, maybe a mix where a dear friend is lost. The queen longs for adventure but must stay and guard the Shadowfell against those who want to take her place. While the Nightwalker needs to be hidden from the god's and other humans so they can enjoy the material plane and it's adventures. The Nightwalker asks the Raven Queen to become a weapon, a weapon of shadows where nobody knows it's secret, thus the gods and mortals don't bother, it's just a tool, like a golem. Once the contract with a mortal is fulfilled(the adventurer reaches level 20 Hexblade), the Nightwalker will be released, and return to the Raven Queen to tell her what he's seen. The blade first bonds with a person when it senses blood and negative emotion, before this event happens, it's just a rusty weapon found in heaps of gold. It's only fear is not being used, being stuck, but with the brilliant Raven Queen's help, that won't be an issue. Explaining what the Hexblades are made of, why the raven queen is the only one who can create them, and why the relationship is between hero and blade, not the Raven Queen. The weapon will prefer to stay in the scabbard or hidden away during sunlight and hates it when someone steps on his shadow :P Do mind, I'm a beginning DM, so this might be pretty lame(Oh you find a rusty sword buried in treasure, it must be trash! No, it's probably really important). I hope someone finds this interesting or might use it.
For a beginning DM, this is really good. Don't poop on yourself and call it lame. It's not a good look. Be confidant because you can make a really good story.
This is great! Keep at it! This is way way better than what I did during my first ever campaign lol, and being a DM for 4 years I can say this even rivals the stuff I do now!
Warlock The Undying Patron (Nightwalker). But the twist is the invocations and class features arent gifts from the patron. The boons are instead the lingering effects of the connection the character has with the nightwalker which was banished back. The nightwalker is using this connection to slowly turn the player to a nightwalker-esk being as a sort of twisted revenge.
Thanx AJ! I didn't know these monsters were still in AD&D lore. My players were confused when they saw that 3 temples collaborated to hire adventurers to "purge the darkness" from a cursed nearby ruin that even a lich lord abandoned. They were temples that went to a goddess of life, birth, motherhood, and healing; the god of nature and reincarnation (among other things); and the god of death. Yes, the god of death. Most people don't know that gods of death and undeath often oppose each other. The priests of the death god explained that death is part of the individual's journey in all things, a balancing point in nature itself. And those super-destructive undead beings go beyond death and into obliteration, a profanity they saw as vile as immortality.
Priests of kelemvor on Faerun are just like that, stalwart enemies of the undead. They are "death is a journey", while priests of Myrkul are more "death is the destination".
One of my old GMs used a Nightwalker as a Demilich's "Plan Eff It All". The little bugger plane shifted one of the PCs to the Negative Material specifically to have one of these things pop in while the Demilich dropped down a 100 foot shaft to escape.
The look on the Swashbucklers face when this creature grabbed his +2 poisoning sword and turned it into frozen dust in his hands, was only matched by the look on the Eldritch Knight's face when she cast Hideous laughter on it not knowing it can't be prone. So I granted it a Terrifying Presence as it flew towards her laughing maniacally with a voice that sounded of broken dreams, true hopelessness and total emptiness.
@@pepsicrusader535 sure. If you had someone go necromancy wizard to the tier of play where this thing is going to come in, that's mostly going to be one of the big campaign-ending beats, which I kind of love. Otherwise, this thing is just a terrifying undead creature that really tells the party a different kind of essence to undeath.
What a sight to behold Orcus striding across the Prime Material with a rotten retinue of nightshades, corpse gatherers, devourers, liches, crawling heads, death knights, and hullathoins. With legions of "lesser" intelligent undead like bodaks, vampires, mummies, and skull lords beefed up with plenty of class levels. Mmm. That's a rancid necrotic meatball of terror for any high level campaign. Really good episode AJ. X3
Imagine if the Negative Energy Plane wasn't innately evil, just a different world, like the shadowfell. Some Nightwalker is making dinner for their family, their kid is getting ready for Night School, and suddenly the Nightwalker disappears and some random mortal wizard appears in their place while the poor Nightwalker gets tossed out into the material plane.
My current party ran across one these. The only reason we survived was we "Captain Kirked" this particular Kobiyashi Maru test. The DM was cool about it and even commended our original thinking, lol. It involved changing it to a rat and a Bag of Devouring. I'm just the dumb warforged fighter in the party but our druid is definitely the hero of that encounter, lol.
@@AJPickett I'll ask Steve and Disco the particulars as I'm a rookie player. Steve's the DM and Disco is the druid. Funny, Disco is a New Zealander too. Don't know how he manages the time difference, the rest are either 'Muricans like me or Canadian.
@@AJPickett Got the story. Our druid tried a polymorph spell on it and unbelievably the nightwalker failed it's saving throw. Now I'm not up on all the rules of magic but that's what I was just told. Then while it was a rat, our barbarian simply picked it up and put it in her Bag of Devouring. That's the story I got lol.
"Will there come a time when we can traverse the negative energy plane? Or is the problem unsolvable in all conceivable circumstances?" "NO PROBLEM IS UNSOLVABLE IN ALL CONCEIVABLE CIRCUMSTANCES."
The cult in the game I'm running is trying to summon 12 of these. If just one reaches the center of the city then it dies and summons ITS master, the bbeg. So far the players have prevented 3 from having the chance of being summoned, but only have less than two weeks left to find the rest of the hidden cultist and stop them before they can perform this ritual.
So thought experiment, A Lich targets the low Charisma Hero with Plane Shift to the negative energy plane..... Now there's a Nightwalk. Is this viable? Would the nightwalker be on the Lich's side since it's undead as well? Should every Lich now use this tactic against stronger parties?
Remember those old wax bottle sweets with the sugar water inside? That's a lich in the eyes of the Nightwalker... twist the head off and crush the body, then slurp up all the yummy negative energy.
I have an idea for a Nightwalker BBEG that been permanently trapped in the Prime Material and has come to realise that it cannot end this horrible reality by continuing to aimlessly kill. It got smart and started working on ways to end life more efficiently and permanently
You don’t usually think about the Negative Energy Plane as a place with its own types of creatures. However, I feel the entire Nightshade subtype of undead creatures is perfect for representing the plane. Similar to material plane creatures in appearance but utterly designed to eradicate life.
I recently ran one of these. I used it as an entity that had made its way into the shadowfell centuries earlier. Since its arrival it had been gathering lost travelers and Shadder Kai and draining all hope from them, transforming them into sorrow sworn. The creature has become know as the Dark Shepherd to the residents of Gloomwrought. It was drawn to my party by there positive emotions like a beacon. They had fought the sorrow sworn before but had only heard tales of the Dark Shepherd that kept the flock. The distortion of the creature alone with its towering height and long dark horns sent the party into full getaway mode. The druid transformed into a faint eagle and grabbed two companions (a cleric and rogue). The artificer took flight as well with a pair of winged boots . Leaving the fighter and halfling sorcerer. The sorcerer cast fly on the fighter and the chase began. The party was surprised at the speed and flight capability of the nightwalker. They were fast but, it became evident after a couple rounds of combat, some were not fast enough to get away. The aura was draining them as they ran. The quick thinking cleric atop the giant eagle cast a radiant wall which impeded the nightwalker and bought them sombre ground. In a lady ditch effort to stop the retreat the nightwalker used its finger of doom on the druid (in eagle form). The druid's save was an 18 total... not enough until you add the +4 from flash of genius (bah darn artificer). The getaway was a success but the Dark Shepherd is still out there, gathering his flock 🕵️♂️. Thanks for reading and thanks for the awesome videos!
I love the negative plane. A place of complete absence and void. A place where the lifetime of a universe goes by unnoticed. A place where the shadows of things that existed outlived them and gained form. At the end of all time, after a span of time so unfathomably long that might as well be called "forever" the faded imprint that a soul has left on the universe is filled with negative energy and gains form. The negative energy sticking to the only thing left in existence to create a being of Un-life, a mold of an imprint, that is content to sit in the dark, waiting, forever and always...
Could you, hypothetically speaking, yeet someone into the negative energy plane in order to summon a Nightwalker? If so, could a powerful enough mage banish a whole village to summon a whole army of those things?
Summoning an army of these things would be fairly easy, controlling said army would be nigh impossible tho. I imagine if more then 3 or 4 of these things popped up in one spot they could probably level a kingdom, a villages worth would probably end the world without divine intervention
Idea to make the name "Nightwalker" thematically appropriate: it is perfectly capable of walking around during the day, but it's field of negative energy acts as a limited black hole to a good deal of the Sun's light. This effectively causes a pocket of reduced light akin to night time, to follow it around wherever it goes. You may even choose to have this reduced vision apply to even characters with night/dark vision abilities making it even harder to hit. Just an idea so that the name isn't out of place. . If you wanted to make it more fearsome, have it absorb some of the intelligence of those it kills with it's aura, it would also absorb & manifest the worst parts of their personality. This would mean one that had absorbed a bunch of Paladins would be extra WRATHFUL to the wicked, & of course it would see everyone as wicked in some way or another, but it would be screaming out to the the party in a dozen stolen voices of the sins that they have committed. I'll let your imagination run with other classes/people, but this also makes it fueled by vendettas of dozens of people for any real or imagined slight. I can also see any of these creatures using these stolen emotions & memories in a potent form of psychic attack, where they assault anyone in their aura range with a wave of negative emotions, & terrible memories. Perhaps this would be a good descriptive way to describe the aura of negative energy. The amalgamation of the worst parts of everyone's souls these undead have absorbed is in a way borrowed from Wraith: The Oblivion's concept of The Onceborn, who are spectral amalgamations based around a theme that was a kernel of negative emotion by the first soul that started forming them. Even the Onceborn in that setting are weak compared to the Neverborn, who are anti-titans, from the void that existed before reality.
Hey AJ, excellent video! 20:38 I really liked the Columbus looking ship near land and the Giant NightCrawler bursting out of the mountainside, going straight for the ship. That pic is one of those moments when you realize "I messed-up!" or "My moma said there would be days like this!" Thanks AJ & have a wonderful day.
18:55 Also describes what it would be like with a Purple Dragon flying around. That Night Flier feature is bomb for the building of suspense. Same here with the Nightwing. O_o
I've now got an idea thanks to you. Imagine a magical nuke fueled by the Negative Energy Plane. Now imagine a being born from the death and carnage, which would have a modified Nightwalker stat block.
I always liked to think that banishment wouldn’t work on Nightwalkers due to the victim they replaced acting as a sort of anchor to their native plane. Or at least banishment would treat the Nightwalker’s native plane as the creature’s native plane instead of returning it to the negative plane.
Once again your explanation of what the Negative Energy Plane is interesting (It's the end of time). And telling us what it's like for a being living in there, is a nice Chill Touch.
Next to the shadow, probably the freakiest creature in 5e you can unleash on your players. It just looks like something out of H R Giger's nightmares. Definitely one for DM's to keep in your pocket when the party thinks they have the upper hand in the situation and get too cocky. 🤯😉
I am currently using one of these in my campaign. I gave it an ability where all sound within 1500 feet of it is cancelled out creating an aura of silence. Basically, everyone in the radius can't hear.
The easiest way to weaken / kill any undead is to sever the Negative plane connection. Or sever the head. Said being does not get a saving throw. Dissolve remains in holy water. Nightwalker be finished.
In one of my campaigns, I had each night have a chance for an event called the Blood Moon. Every Blood Moon, the Nightwalker would be summoned and scour the ruins of the city, searching for life to extinguish. The party thought they could take him, and he wound up killing one of them with his Finger of Doom. They changed their minds and fled for cover, where they were hopefully safe.
The necromancer control undead ability should probably specify it doesn’t work on creatures with legendary resistance even if they have low int. No mundane 14th level necromancer should be taking control of a night Walker for ever. Or weirder still in my opinion a lich for a day. A dm is fully in the right to say that command undead doesn’t work on any legendary undead
The control undead thing does specify however that any undead with Int 8 or higher has advantage and can repeat the saving throw every hour. So it wouldn't be indefinite if the nightwalker has higher than Int 8
The small problem there is even with that rule in play a necromancer can still control it permanently because it doesn’t have legendary resistances or legendary actions
@@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar afaik it’s the only CR 20+ monster in MToF that has neither legendary actions or resistances. At least the wizard is limited to one only
@@AJPickett agreed, would love to see it though! (From VERY far away) my friends and I somtimes used to roll up epic monsters or gods and have godly clashes, thinking I may do somthing involving these 2.
"Straight out of 'Fell One of a kind Stalking its victim Don't look below you Nightcrawler Beware the worm in black Nightcrawler You know it's coming back NightCrawler" Judas Priest's "Night Crawler" but modified for THE Nightcrawler.
I remember my first time using these Night Walkers on my 5e players while using my own template of them based on 3.5 edition. The party didn't think it was a dangerous threat until it showed cunning intelligence and focus on dealing with the party with its freshly summoned Shades and Wights.
I was so excited to see this. We're plating a campaign with one PC playing a minor god in the Shadow Realm with a personal army playing as an opponent to the rest of the player character party. Sending this to the chat
Weird theory what if the dark powers are actually night Walkers that are so old and impossibly powerful or that the nightwakers are merely fragments of them or like there avatars
Probably not, Nightwalkers are agents of the Entrophic Immortals. Cause they're mystara monsters originally, they were added to forgotten realms cause i guess they just want everything from every setting.
Funnily enough, with Tasha's Cauldron, there is a 6th level spell that renders Nightwalkers completely ineffective: Tasha's Otherworldly Guise, which has the option to completely be immune to Necrotic damage, which is.... you know, the only type of damage Nightwalkers can do.
@@banzaikoowaid9301 well, alright XD One thing I didn't accoutn for, though is that the Nightwalker doesn't need to do damage to inflict the Paralysed condition upon you. That's one way of ending the spell prematurely, but still.
They would then proceed to glide over and pick you, and all of your magical items up, crumpling everything in one hand like an empty positive-material plane beercan. And probably laying the Finger of Doom on the paladin standing nearby with the other hand, as he shakes in his armor.
Imagine being a 20th level necromancy wizard and taking full control over this big boyo, it would be practically eternal doom. Theoretically this ability isn't a spell and is a natural obligation ability, so if a DM stays strict to the rules you have a quite powerful pet now, if a DM is good enough and bending rules may let you have a nerfed one if controlled, if a DM wants you to swear at him for being unfair (totally ironic, I'm just joking) they'll say just no.
I’ve heard some DMs use the nightwalker as a servant to a bigger threat like a Deity, Lich, or high tier Necromancer who purposely threw an innocent person into the Negative Material Plane jus to get such a powerful servant. The hard part is finding someone who would survive the trip to the Negative Material Plane in order to get such a servant. This is where certain PCs or NPCs may come into place and become targets
Pathfinder also features a shark version, a gargantuan CR 20+ undead megalodon. Not sure on the lore of it but I guess they wanted you to not be able to ever escape these fully; they can follow you underwater.
I had a nightmare of this once four figures standing underneath an orb the orbs surface bubbling up like some foul soup of tendrils , arms , legs and faces screams all shouting louder then the other to where it was almost like white noise the figures standing taller then the tree line turning there heads twords me just pointing a figure no feeling pain just cold and empty
Here is an idea: night crawlers produce a substance like the spice melange from Dune, but instead of granting prescience and extend life, it either utterly destroys you or turns you into a night walker/intelligent undead
Nah, it should do both. It allows you to bend time and space with your mind, and extends your life across long, long years, stretching your soul out so thin its like a wisp of smoke, then you change, but by then you're so far gone you don't even notice.
Here is some theory crafting that I'm interested hearing some opinions of: If demons ( and maybe the Abyss itself ) are Tharizdun's dream given physical form then isn't it likely that gods used weakness of his this way fragmented mind in order to imprison his mind? The kicker is if this is so then if forces of good and order would ever thin the number of the demons and diminish area of the abyss the Tharizdun's mind would be able to focus again and bypass the prison. Ultimately this would mean dawn war 2 and only way to stop the big T would be let the abyss and demons grow in numbers enough to exploit restored fragmentation of T's mind again. From this we learn few things: 1) Blood war must be eternal stalemate. 2) None of forces of good and order must ever be able to wipe the demons or abyss out. 3) To avoid unnecessary suffering of good and morally neutral the evil entities are convenient sacrifice to fuel the blood war. 4) the big T must be stopped (how?) or all the sentient entities must flee.
This is where the machinations of Primus and the forces of Neutrality suddenly come into very sharp focus... the status quo MUST be preserved at all costs.
Yet in Exandria Tharzidun is seeking to be freed. So if Tharzidun gets free in one universe it would be a matter of time before other versions of Tharzidun break free.
I literally went "Yaaas!" in excitement when I saw this in my list just now. Time to devour that tasty lore! Thanks AJ! I've been curious about these scary giants since I got the tome of foes. :)
Fascinating video love how much detail you go into while still presenting the knowledge in a storytelling style to keep us interested and attentive Great work 🎉
There’s something terrifying about seeing the nightwalker emerge from the Lich or Arch Necromancer’s Sphere of Annihilation and dragon them soul and all screaming in to the howling void