Let’s Read the 4e Monster Manual/Vault: Gibbering Beast

This article is part of a series! Click here to see the other entries.

Gibbering beasts used to be several different monster entries that originally appeared throughout AD&D and 3.x in different places. Here they were quite sensibly collected together. They appear only on the Monster Manual, but received an MV-style update in Dungeon #192, so we’ll look at them there too.

The Lore

A gibbering beast is a slimy, amorphous, oozelike creature covered in eyes and mouths. And eyes with mouths. And mouths with eyes. And eyes inside mouths. And is that a bunch of teeth just kinda sprouting from that quivering protuberance?

They crawl or float around, looking every which way with their eyes and constantly spouting nonsense from their mouths, which they also use to attack and eat other creatures. The nonsense can be just as dangerous as the bites, as it warps the minds of those who hear it and makes them easy prey for the beast.

The lesser varieties of gibbering beast spontaneously generate when something dies in places touched by the influence of the Far Realm, which causes the corpse’s face to detach and become a newborn beast. Over time they can grow and become both smarter and more powerful. Sometimes the strongest varieties travel directly from the Far Realm to the world, bent on enacting some insane scheme of their own.

The Numbers

Gibbering beasts are Aberrant Magical Beasts, and they all have All-Around Vision and Darkvision. Creatures with All-Around Vision can’t be flanked, which makes it a lot harder to get combat advantage against them.

Their other signature trait is their incessant Gibbering, a free action that happens at the start of their turns: Close Burst 5 vs. Will, a hit dazes the targets for a turn. Deafened creatures are immune to this.

All Gibbering Beasts are Unaligned, which is very appropriate for truly alien aberrant entities.

Gibbering Mouther

The weakest and most classic among these entries, the gibbering mouther is Medium and a Level 10 Controller with 110 HP. It moves at speed 5 on land, and can swim at the same speed. Its mere presence warps the space around it, which works as an Aura 3 that acts as difficult terrain against enemies.

The mouther’s basic attack is a bite that deals physical damage and ongoing 5 acid damage (save ends). Its Gibbering works as described above, and opens the way for Gibbering Feast (Close Burst 5), a power which causes unnatural mouths to appear on any dazed creatures in the area and perform a basic bite attack against them. Now that’s an aberrant creature! “Your left hand grows a mouth and tries to eat your face” is top-notch horror imagery.

Gibbering mouthers have Int 4, and are sapient enough to work with other aberrant or even non-aberrant creatures if they see advantage in doing so. The Dungeon update is identical aside from the fixed damage numbers and the lack of the Gibbering Feast’s colorful description.

Gibbering Abomination

A bigger mouther. It’s still Medium, but it’s a Level 18 Controller with 168 HP. It’s faster and trades some buoyancy for flight, with a land speed of 6 and a flight speed of 4 (hover, maximum altitude 1).

Its Unnatural Utterances work as an Aura 5 that inflicts a -2 attack penalty on any enemies caught within. They periodically increase in intensity to perform the standard Gibbering attack.

The abomination’s basic attack is a Reach 2 Tentacle that does immediate physical and ongoing psychic damage (save ends). It can also stare at you really hard with the Eye of Despair (Ranged 10 vs. Will; Recharge 3-6), which does psychic damage and immobilizes (save ends).

The gibbering abomination does extra “sneak attack” damage against creatures it has combat advantage against, but it sadly lacks an extra-creepy ability like Gibbering Feast. It does have Int 11, meaning it will make more complex (though no less insane) plans than the mouther. The Dungeon update simply fixes its damage totals.

Gibbering Orb

This Huge Level 27 Solo Controller has 1230 HP and has arrived directly from the Far Realm to do Cthulhu-knows-what. With its Int 17, it’s capable of hatching elaborate schemes. Given that it has a whole suite of eye rays, it might give you an idea of what beholders were like before migrating to the world and being mutated by the trip. It flies at speed 8 (hover).

The orb’s Merciless Eyes work like an Aura 5; anyone who starts their turn inside and visible gets targetted by a random eye ray.

The orb’s basic bite attack does damage and causes the mouth that made it to detach and automatically attack the target again at the start of the orb’s subsequent turns! This lasts until the mouth misses with an attack, at which point it falls off and rots.

The Gibbering works as for the other monsters, but is a Close Burst 10.

The orb can also spend its standard action to make two different eye ray attacks in addition to any automatic ones from Merciless Eyes. The orb can choose which rays it uses when it does this, from the following selection:

Mindcarving: Ranged 10 vs. Will; psychic damage and daze (save ends).
Fleshtearing: Ranged 10 vs. Fort; necrotic damage and ongoing necrotic damage (save ends).
Bonewarping: Ranged 10 vs. Fort; physical damage and weakness (save ends).
Bloodfeasting: Ranged 10 vs. Reflex; physical damage and ongoing physical damave (save ends).
Farsending: Ranged 10 vs. Reflex; transported to the Far Realm for a turn; on return, takes psychic damage and suffers a -5 penalty to attacks until the end of the encounter.
Souleating: Ranged 10 vs. Will; slows (save ends); worsens to immobilization on first failed save; target dies on second failed save.

That’s a pretty fearsome selection, and the names do a lot to evoke that body horror feeling. It’s less varied than the rays available to a Beholder Eye Tyrant, but every ray does damage, there’s two different ongoing damage effects that can stack with each other and a daze to catch people the Gibbering misses.

The farsending ray is also pretty brutal, since it instantly removes a character from play for the whole next turn and saddles then with a long-lasting attack penalty. Not quite as bad as death, but worse than a stun effect. And of course there’s a gradual death effect.

Gibbering Orbs are boss battle material for a level 23 or 24 party, and with a bit of leveling could be promoted to the “campaign end boss” role as one of those Outer Gods that orbit Azathoth or the equivalent.

The Dungeon update reduces their HP to 984, and the radius of its Gibbering to the standard 5 squares. It also fixes its damage, increasing it considerably.

Sample Encounters

Gibbering beasts go well with any other aberrant or aberrant-adjacent creature (like cultists and such). Even the gibbering mouther knows the value of cooperation, and they certainly might be bullied into service by more powerful monsters.

Unlike the other, lesser beasts, gibbering orbs prefer to work alone and don’t seek out alliances. However, their presence generates spontaneous phenomena and attracts creatures that end up effectively acting as its heralds and harbingers.

The sample encounters in the book are:

Level 10: 2 gibbering mouthers, 1 foulspawn seer, 2 foulspawn berserkers, and 1 chuul.
Level 18: 1 gibbering abomination, 2 nabassu gargoyles, 1 aboleth lasher and 2 kuo-toa guards.

Final Impressions

One constant theme in the comments I’ve been getting in these entries are that few of the aberrant monsters seen so far seem worthy of that origin, being far less alien than what someone would expect from the Far Realm.

I feel that if there’s one family of monsters worthy of the “Aberrant” title, it’s the gibbering beasts. The Gibbering Orb is awesome in that role, and the “basic” Gibbering Mouther is actually better at evoking horror than the abomination, with its “your body grows mouths and tries to eat itself” attack.