Here's Why The Puzzle Golem is D&D's Best Golem 

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I love the idea of a council of wizards who each have a puzzle golem, and when their city is under threat they voltron their golems to become the gargantuan guardian

If your puzzle golem gets big enough, it can be your house staff AND your house.

Creating the puzzle golems stat block was a puzzle in itself.

Imagine the party finds a small puzzle golem with a key in a dungeon and it flees then later they corner it and a bunch of other puzzle golem parts run in and combine to make a large one and it starts a boss fight

I like the idea of this being a non-combat thing early on, say, capture a bunch of tiny puzzle golems so you can put them together to solve a puzzle somehow. Then much later on you encounter say a terrasque, the party cannot take it on, but then remember the puzzle golem and have to gather a bunch of them to make a gargantuan one to fight the terrasque for/with them.

Please do the alchemical golem at some point, that sounds cool

puzzle golems sound like they could make a very fun reoccurring enemy for a long-term campaign, just scale them to part level with their sizes!

I was curious where that one puzzle piece that is always missing from every box went. Good to know.

That Alchemical Gollum looked wild! I want to see an episode on that!

My immediate thought was "what if I had a group of these and the components of each were interchangeable with any others?" Imagine just a swarm of pieces that could each combine or split at will. That would be tremendously versatile in combat. P.S. I really liked your ideas about these lads using some of their own body mass as a projectile that spawns a smaller version and also the idea of combining them into a truly leviathan foe. Keep up the outstanding work, bro. ✌️🙂

Had an idea for a chimera-like.puzzle golem. The party had to find three puzzle golems that are each designed to be part of an animal. Once they are brought to the center room, they will fuse together to create a chimera puzzle golem and if the golem is made of the three wrong animals, then it will attack the party. If it makes the right combo, the golem will split into tinier forms and go behind a very small hole in a room filled with a substance that does not hurt the golem, but kills anything else that walks in. The golems will then reassemble and press a switch that opens the door to the next part of the dungeon.

Definitely starting the golem as a bunch of tiny ones that build into each other as “waves” of combat ending with a massive one

Ogre 1: Which do you like better, my good looks or my good smile? Ogre 2: Your good sense of humor

Building off the Metroplex gargantuan puzzle golem concept, it could act as a great walking dungeon, sort of like the one in Earthbound.

You are a genius (perhaps an evil genius) for scaling it up to gargantuan. Fantastic idea! I love this golem and how much its size plays a role with its combat mechanics!!

With the way 5e works that gargantuan golem making an army is terrifying in character and in a meta sense.

For a future monster episode, could you make a video on the Island Giants or the Wang Liang? There isnt enough info on them but I think they look cool

Some ideas, have either the party employ the gargantuan puzzle golem to fight off the xixecal as a distraction or to just hold it off while something else is going down, or just have them be like hirelings rented out by the local spellcaster

Imagine if these guys came in small variants with different magitech weapons - you could then combine them to generate different mobile weapons platforms fit for different battles

So you created a Kaiju golem that can reassemble itself from even the smallest bits. You could make a campaign around trying to prevent the reassembly of a war construct that assaults cities when it is combined. Having to deal with some mad wizard's dead man switch and hunting down the threat that can persist and advance naturally throughout a party's journey.

Huh didn't know 5E did creature HD by size category.. in 3e & 3.5e (that I normally play) it's by creature type for example all dragons regardless of size get d12 for HD and Fey get a d6 for HD. Though the bigger monsters tend to get more HD and Con for more HPs. Still nice work on the conversions as always.

Dude i’ve got limerence for you now because you worked out the gargantuan stats. You just saved me some much work for a thing i wanted to figure out. A library where if it’s damaged or attacked the rubble becomes golems.

Puzzle Golem is super cool and I love the idea of using a couple in place of a team of butlers and maids. But can I just say: HECK YAH IRON DRAGONS! Definitely hyped to see your take on them.

Never disappointed, I've put some of your other adaptations into my campaigns but this one I'm designing a dungeon around. Makes for a dynamic fight, which I always love

I was enjoying a simple night listening about golems and thinking on what to do for a golem maker's lab. But that hurl move made me rethink defense systems as a whole.

Didn't know about the Transformer Metroplex. Learned something new today!

As someone who didn’t play older editions of D&D, I appreciate this a lot. It’s super cool to hear about the older edition stuff I missed.

Halfway through the video, and phenomenal work as always! ...but also its now occurring to me that the term "walking army" is a weird thing to specify when you think about it lol Like most armies can do that I think

This is perfect. I’d already worked on a similar concept for an animated armour that combined with more suits of armour to be a mega-multi-limbed-weapon-wielding-warrior, that could fling whole animated armours from itself, like the puzzle golem!

3.5 hit dice was not just "whatever" for all of them, some of specific types (notably undead and constructs) always had d12s, which were the highest, but that was technically a balancing mechanic against their lack of a Constitution score (they literally had a "-" instead of a number)

I love Monster of the Week. It’s so cool to see so many strange D&D monsters from previous editions get adapted to 5e alongside a full explanation of what the creature is and how to use it. Keep up the good work!

You're amazing Dungeon Dad! Always excited for another monster when I see you drop a new video!

For some reason I can't help but imagine an ancient wizard hell bent on revenge, and has adapted his plan and his laboratory to churn out a horde of these guys, and then utilize the combined pieces as a mobile fortress. Each gargantuan golem incorporates a portion of his fortress at it's core, each portion is accessible via linked teleportation portals, and each portal core also provides a buff that maximizes the golems healing factor until shut down. This allows for the blunt force approach but requires teamwork and prep.

Put this in a tech setting, like Neon Dynasty Kamigawa and you get combiners! Devastator! Menasor! Puzzle Golems attack! Edit: Blast! Dungeon Dad beat me to the idea!

I love the idea of having a couple huge ones that act as separate buildings/watch towers/statue guards and that just disassemble when under attack or roam around day to day. (Not in the walls, but stationed around.) Maybe The wizards lawn ornament just disappears each morning and reappears each night as it dies daily errands.

Golems are one of my favorite monster groups (can’t call them a Type)

This kind of golem could act as "maintenance" for an old dungeon, explaining why it isn't in ruins, why the torches are lit, etc. It could also serve as an interesting "puzzle" if you give to each of the little versions an ability (elemental affinity, magical power, some tool) and the players have to make them split or merge to achieve different effects (an electric one can power machines, merging it with a metal one you can create circuits for more complex problems, etc). Or you can use the idea of them being part of a city, add spanners and other mimics and create a magical living city where everything is being taken care of by the creatures, until it's not and the mages need help (because they are all useless in anything not magical)

I love this golem! This thing is so fun. You can modify this to be Soundwave. Flinging pieces of itself is the cassettes!

A couple ideas on how to use this monster: If you have a campaign in space, you could do a fusion between this monster and the genius loci, to make a planet/moon sized golem, that is the secret weapon of a super powerfull final boss or a really powerful organization. You could borrow some from the previous idea and make a death star that's just a bunch of puzzle golems You could make the Dr. Wondertainment's Little Misters from the SCP universe, just have a wizard craft a gargantuan golem and divide it until they are the size of a toy, maybe one category smaller than the current lower limit, and "sell" 'em to kid's parents. This wizard could be the only one who ever created a puzzle golem and now a king wants the party to collect all the tiny pieces to make the golem and use it as a weapon, or, perhaps, it is like a legend and the final boss is trying to assemble the golem back to conquer the lands. It could also be used like the hours, minutes and seconds from Alice through the looking glass My favorite one is to have a city of golems, all of the small category, and each one has its own personality, family and life, but they are part of a larger golem who is hunting them down to restore his full power and the players have to fight the larger golem to defend the city.

As someone just starting out on the dnd monster lore, I was coming into this video expecting a golem who has a set fondness for puzzles and puzzling questions/riddles because their creators had a beautifully warped sense of humor

@DungeonDad Complete Puzzle Golem has the "Rejoin" & "Split" actions from Huge Puzzle Golem and Huge has the "Split" action from Complete.

I have to say I appreciate these videos so much because I had an idea for a Golem type encounter for a campaign I'm running and this guy fits in perfectly for it! I'm super hyped to run this now thank you so much!

Thanks for including my art again dude! Definitely including these bois in my games ASAP

6:13 Actually, I believe the hit die type was dependant on creature's Type or class levels (if applicable), and thus all Constructs (i.e. golems) would always get the same HD type of d10, all Undead got d12, all Outsiders got d8, etc. It was even written in guidelines for creating new monsters as "A creature's type determines the size of its Hit Dice". The only exception was humanoids without racial hit dice, but with class levels (in a PC or NPC class).

I love the idea of an evil wizard having a bunch of puzzle golems and basically becoming the villian from big hero six

An underground vault guarded by a puzzle golem, with kobold-sized tunnels it can easily navigate, and bigger hub rooms where it can assemble to confront intruders if need be. The final obstacle is a giant vault door - most creatures strong enough to pull it open won't fit through the passages, and the chamber has countermeasures against polymorph.

I love it! Imagine a big, friendly golem tossing off a piece if itself before sacrificing itself for the party/a town/etc. Party gets a little NPC friend for a bit as it recovers.

This thing is quite a PUZZLING creature, i love it and puns

Campaign idea; the players must collect tiny puzzle golems to assemble them into a gargantuan golem to confront some sort of threat

Imagine you're a party off to fight the "Construct King", a tyrant who rules with an iron fist and a golem army. You encounter various types of golems as you adventure to the capital city on a mountain, only for an old man to tell you the mountain appeared overnight, the city the next day, and all the golems managing the city look the same. Nothing like the big bad hiding in a castle made from a Complete Puzzle Golem turned into the city, policed and maintained by another complete puzzle golem split into medium or small sizes, on the back of another complete Puzzle Golem as the mountain. A good way to dissuade murder-hoboing and finally getting the party to play along on a stealth-based campaign.

Feels like it is an golem with an elemental from a para-elemental plane of ooze enchanted inside.

Actually, hit dice in 3rd edition and derivatives is determined by creature *type* - so fey had d6, animals had d8, constructs had d10, and dragons had d12, for example.

I think of Castlevania's Legion as it's multiple clay humanoids which fuses into a giant sphere of humanoid golems with a laser shooting core

absolutelly loved it. In my case i did a couple modifications to make it even scarier. I changed Split and Rejoin to be bonus actions and added a "healing ability" to the rejoining ( one hit dice of the category joining the other golem part, never exceding the HP maximum of the largest involved) That way the party may be keen to finish off the smaller ones as soon as they can and the golem has a good motive to wanting to rejoin instead of just enjoyng multiple initiative trackers. I also changed the Hurl attack to make the larger gollem decide on whichever smaller size golem it want to toss and track the number of splits made to reduce its size accordingly. (One large decides to throw a tiny golem, them later a smal one, them its reduced to medium but could throw one more tiny without having its size reduced, Apply HP changes for every throw) Much harder to track and very situational, but could sometime come in handy

Thanks for including the CR 24 version. This is very helpful for my party of level 16 gestalt (dual classed but normal everything else) characters in a very high magic setting. Being able to include the little ones as cute roleplaying encounters, familiars, pets, and little friends for the characters as well as having them all voltron into a gigantic big boi for combat (either helpful in defending against some actually credible threat or as an adversary fight in a dungeon of some kind) is wonderful and super helpful, because a lot of CR20+ monsters are a bit too over the top to use a lot of the time, and my party is near pathologically cautious all the time (I have always warned them about potential dangers, and yet they always pick to rock the boat as little as possible, so I'm confident I didn't terribly traumatize them.

In a similar vein, I was looking up the Manual of Golems one day and thought up the "Golem of Manuals", which is exactly what it sounds like. You can give it a complex task, it takes out the manual from it's body, and uses that to complete the assignment.

*Cups my hands and shouts* "Suel Lich, the coolest Lich"

So, just hear me out here: Remember that Sibillic Guardian plot hook, where they informed the party that a demon army would invade in five years’ time? Seems like the sort of threat that just might warrant the party tracking down the thirty-two pieces of an ancient super weapon that were sealed away in dungeons scattered all across the continent!

I am totally going to have a wizard with a complete version seige my heros in their base of operations if they start to get too comfortable in one place, it splits into a few large golems to break down the walls then they split into a raiding party to clear the place out.

I simply can't not see this as a megazord-like monster. Having specialized mini golems that combine into massive powered golem would be so awesome.

I would keep splitting for 1d10 Mini and even 1d5 Micro sizes. And if you have multiple puzzle golems, if they share a creator and orders, they can merge. Heck, having a bunch of the littlest ones as runners to carry orders to the half sized ones, merging which allows the most complex instructions to be passed in a turn. Of course, a bunch of them from the same creator, and they each have a pierce of the others, they could gestalt. The Complete size could just due to cube-square limits, if you got 6 (or 8) of these, and they swap the parts.... they'll feel the pain of damage from when when they are merged, but they are still a group mind.

I've always wondered what an iron dragon would be like. Living in mountains eating iron deposits and veins. Breathing rust that it clean off of itself. Might even be territorial for the usually good aligned metallic dragons. Can't wait to see how close I am or what other people thought up.

a plothook i instantly thought of when you mentioned going up to maximum megasize is that the people of a city buy small puzzle golems as personal assistants... but the puzzle golems have a hidden underlying instruction to merge on a given date and destroy the city, with the players having to find out when and what the threat to the city actually is, and somehow deal with it before the golems can merge into a city-ending threat, since it'd probably be easier to deal with smaller bunches of small golems rather than one, two or three cr24s...

Ok, An age ago during a long forgotten war, a golem factory was made as able bodied wizards grew fewer by the day. Victorious however, the wizards shut it down when it was no longer needed. One day, a nameless tomb raider delves in and reactivates it, causing war ready golems to scour the lands looking for enemies of their forgotten masters, be that every race besides one or whatever.

I love the idea that there is a city called puzzle city or somthing and everyone has small puzzle golem servants and later it is revealed the entire city is just made out of inactive puzzle golems ordered to change themselves into the form of a city, mabe the party can watch people slip through doors that form in sold walls or see villains rearange entire houses around them to slowly put it together.

Weird idea for this monster The puzzle golem is the holder and key to a powerful item The 8 tiny golem each hold a part of an item in their body The item is highly complex taking a 21 intelligence check and 2 days to put it together right without some thing happening .(evil LOL) The golems can put the item together flawlessly as long as one is still whole. From here you can play it many ways but for a long haul campaign. This would be fun. Each golem/item is a magic item together along with a "key" to control them. The golems have modes which the hold of the key can choose. The modes are ,run and hid , magic items ,seeker, unite, command . Run and hide is the base mode in which the golem goal is not to be found by anyone. So it will hide or fight off any one that come near it. Magic item mode in which it turns into a magic item that can't move on it own and anyone can used without the "key". Seeker mode is a mode in which it becomes a compass to find it's other parts. It can only point to the way it nearest part. Unite modes is the mode which the combine the pieces of the item together. Set requirements for this one or be derailed real quick . Range ,number of users needed and or any thing to keep one person with just one key from doing it ease. Command mode is them working like normal golems. Now this is where it can get wild you can choose to combine the golems into larger golem to get a more powerful magic item. So you can start with +1 one dagger then combine into a +1dagger that shoot fire-bolt. Next a +2sword that shoot fire-bolt and so forth till you get an item that would level a city

It’s 3:52 am in Orlando Florida. I just got to the Airbnb from a music festival. It’s a 3 day event and I’m ending day one with Dungeon Daddy. Life is good

I'm doing a campaign where the main villain is a Shardmind and I'm definitely going to re flavor one of these guys to be a recurring enemy. Probably going to make them Crystal or something.

I am not sure which is scarier, fighting a gargantuan golem that could fuck me up or fighting 32 tiny little golems that would bash me to death with pure numbers

I like the idea of the golem but I think we could do something really fun with this guy that I thought was missing. As stated in the video The puzzle golem is capable of tearing itself apart to make more golems. But it still reforms to look the exact same but with less mass. So to me it seems like the golem is made of wet clay or some malleable material that can easily be reshaped. So what I'm imagining is a more intelligent version of this golem that utilizes this ability and as a result can end up just as dangerous as the bbeg. If you haven't caught on yet, what I'm getting at is that the golem could reshaped itself to look like anyone or almost anything. Like imagine if you see a house that has tons of small golems pretending to be potted plants. Or what about a golem that painted itself to look like another creature. I mean on a close inspection it should be obvious or if something damages the paint it should give them away. Or what about a gargantuan golem pretending to be a mountain. Maybe one that's infested the city and started replacing people with itself. Maybe one is a merchant in every city (like nurse joy in Pokemon. They're almost all the exact same but different) I can see this being used in so many ways with how versatile it is. I mean it was versatile before this would make it insanely versatile.

Hit dice size in 3.5 is based on a monster's type (or class, if it has class levels)

Puzzle golem: my new standard maintenance golem. Small enough to re-mortar the bricks in the drain pipes and big enough to replace a rotting beam in the great hall without scaffolding.

I recall back in AD&D there was a stained-glass golem. I'd like to see a video covering the stained-glass golem. Some more monsters you could cover are the lion-based wemic and the lamassu.

Player character origin idea: They're a Warforged that's a 'lost piece' of the larger puzzle golem. Family wants them back.

I like the idea of a central golem “maintaining” an old ruin who has split himself off into smaller bits who are mindlessly (and peacefully) working against each other dismantling what one of the others just repaired in order to restore something else. The party can provide raw resources to end the cycle, but if they choose violence now the whole ruin is unified on a single problem… Them.

This should have a grapple. Imagine being grappled by a smaller iteration, then it reforms and you're stuck inside the larger golem!

I've played a ttrpg puzel board game. Basically D&D but before the movement phase of your turn you also get to add a tile to the map and roll a D4 and D100 to see what's on it. It could be a monster, treasure, a puzzle/trap, or nothing.

This is definitely a cool monster and I'm glad you highlighted it. For simplicity, I probably would have given it a variation of the ooze split ability and scaled down the damage dice on the monster's slam attacks depending on its size.

Mann, this is my favorite one for a long time, great work and wonderful video as always! I have so many fun ideas involving Puzzle Golems!

What if your party has a nemesis; a wizard who starts the campaign with a small Puzzle Golem that acts as his muscle and, over the course of the campaign, he slowly adds onto it up until the final encounter where he unleashes this absolute colossus on the party who now has to beat this Puzzle Golem one final time. Perhaps this Puzzle Golem even has some form of limited sentience. It still follows its creator, but has developed a personality. Maybe it/they even have a bit of a conscience. Or, building on the theme of sentience, what if Puzzle Golem who has gained sentience isn't just one personality, but a collection of personalities, and they've decided to unionize within their service to their master, and they seek out a party of adventurers willing to help convince their master to treat them fairly and offer them appropriate compensation.

The puzzle mechanic sounds really rad, and it can be translated to other kinds of creatures. It could work for jelly monsters, fungi monster (think physarum blob), bug swarms, some kinds of elementals, weird robots ...

Two Gargantuan Puzzles combining? Colossal Returns! The question is what would it be called since the Gargantuan is already "Complete"? Perfect? Ultimate? Excess?

A really cool idea is some large council of wizards building a city entirely made of puzzle golems. So, whenever a house or something breaks, one brick shaped smaller puzzle golem just pops out, gathers materials to make more of itself to repair the broken piece of its house. Imagine this and then some terrible apocalypse happens, and all the denizens of the city die and most of the city is destroyed. The puzzle golems will just continue carrying out their tasks and slowly repair the city. Hundreds of years later some adventurers can come across this completely built city that completely empty of people.

I could see this working in a shop, with the little guys as shop assistants. But, more interestingly, I could see this being used for a modular dungeon boss- that gets harder or easier for how many tiny/small/medium puzzle golems they let get away or kill. To that end, this feels like it would be better served as a template or used with one, though, as a whole dungeon with all of the encounters being puzzle golems, while fascinating, has the potential to get stale, considering it's the same enemy with a very limited amount and types of attack. You could have different puzzle golems with different abilities, and if the players let those golems get away- the final boss at the end of the dungeon will have those abilities, making it more modular and dangerous.

Golems used to pour me as a concept because of the way they were portrayed in superhero cartoon, mostly but one day I think I was just sitting around an elementary school, and I looked up the definition, and they function similarly to SNL year of a witch but it’s a little more abstract and interesting than that. So many things can be classified as golem‘s, and when I started watching different media and more so when I read this book from the library. I can’t remember when I was a bad, but it kind of had a really creepy non-traditional Gollum creature that is all spindly and spiky and collapsing on itself and real creepy witchy things but also very surreal. I’m thinking of Ronald dollars which is for some reason but I know it wasn’t Tampa. Period I remember the book wasn’t even really attempting to have a goal on concept. It just so happen to fit, but then the definition of one if you stare at it at a certain lense.

Bless the Dungeon Dad

I love the idea of a powerful benefactor of the party requesting retrieval of an ancient form of Golem who's creation process has been lost to the ages, but the recurring villain is after it too. The players could get to the end of a dungeon, only to see the main antagonist plucking another puzzle golem fragment, leaving them with an activated trap or a slowly growing enemy puzzle golem while they poof away time and again.

This is one of my favorite channels, keep going!

You just essentially made a megazord as a MOTW. Imagine a MMPR based campaign where your party, after being gathered together by a lawfully good Wizard stuck in a giant crystal, have to fight giant moon monsters and small clay golems ( sent by an evil sorceress who resides on the moon) using a themed giant puzzle golem based out of various classes in the PHB. Class suggestions for " ranger colors": Black: Barbarian Pink: Bard Blue: Artificer Yellow: Monk Red: Paladin Green/ white: Ranger

I love seeing all the dragon age pics, always nice seeing my favorite get even just the most bare attention lol

So what you're saying is I can now use the Puzzle Golem to put zords and megazords into my games As for actually using them in my games, my world's warforged are called cobals (after cobalite/cobalium, the magical material that made their invention possible) and have a very similar creation and revolt against the people that created them story as Omnics from Overwatch with a touch of "factories running themselves with a mind of their own" stuff from Horizon Zero Dawn. There's a lot of "non civilian" models that exist as constructs instead of humanoids, mostly as a way to have warforged/autognomes be the player playable cobals, but allow me to have NPC cobals that are monsters and NPCs, so the puzzle golem would be great to adapt as one of these cobals. Literal walking "hangars" of cobal soldiers that just become a big dude for transport. Have the big gargantuan guy punch a hole through the city's exterior wall and then separate into a bunch of smaller ones that flood through the opening.

An idea for regularly "encountering" them is maybe a guild or some organization uses them as training dummies. Say the fighter learned a new feat or the wizard has a new evocation spell and they want to test them out, they can use the puzzle golems to test their effectiveness on single, large targets or on many smaller ones.

Once again you come out with a creature the exact moment I needed one and I intend to use this tomorrow for my first ever one shot. Thank you. Also gonna ask for ethergaunts once again. Keep it up

You could totally do the "evil cult tries to summon their god" thing here where a cult of Primus is tricked into thinking they need to rebuild it by the bbeg and the PCs need to stop them before the bbeg gets control of a gargantuan Puzzle Golem.

I've used a similar gimmick with elementals in my homebrew setting. Only the main four types, and only the generic ones, not oddities like mephits and so on. This was in 3e/3.5 when there were stats for elementals of all sizes, so it was easy to implement them being able to merge or divide as needed.

I could see an interesting mid-campaign dungeon that was originally some magical monastery or school. Perhaps it was originally partially or completely aboveground, but is now a subterranean vault lit only by continual flame torches and kept swept and in (internal) repair by a small cadre of identical golems in the shape of some archaic idea of a pageboy. The golems were only ever instructed on how to maintain the inside of the building, so the structure sees continual repair and cleaning, but only on the inside. With the perfect reformation ability, even if the party sweeps through and takes out the small puzzle golems (as well as their medium and large counterparts), they will be back eventually as they have been back after every invader over the ages. The hook comes from the fact that there may be knowledge that would allow one to command the golems somewhere in the world, and if the party finds it they can assemble the humble servants into a mighty behemoth that can... Whatever you want, really. Moving heavy objects to open up a better passageway to some place important to the party at that point seems to be the best option. Also, being able to reprogram literally eternal servants, even if you wisely magically locked them to the premises, would be pretty neat.

Plot Idea: The puzzle Golem is a mindless big bad for a campaign arc. In an old war, medium size puzzle golems were the prime heavy unit of the losing side. Most were destroyed, but someone unearths a handful of functioning tiny sized ones. Maybe in a box in an attic or something. One or more escapes, and the party needs to run them down as they scavenge their fallen compatriots to continue the war. Only once the large size shows up does anyone realize they can go bigger than medium and might not have a cap at all.

The puzzle golem is the epitome of "send dudes"

I've been using a Living City monster for a while (unbeknownst to the players) and never even thought about Metroplex.