Building Better Monsters | Animated Armor

Every time I watch one of these videos I am absolutely blown away by your art. Amazing! And it includes great DMing advice to boot.

Damn dude I cannot believe your channel sometimes. The research, the academic seriousness with which you appraise these concepts. That poem was fire also, great find

I love the art and the concepts you come up with to spice up monsters! It’s very intriguing and thought provoking to think about these kinds of monsters in new ways

Great stuff, loved the Wrathful Deity faces on the armour, damn. The idea of using Japanese Kami is very good and fun; it hits that Toy Story bone of personifying random objects that I think a lot of us have hahahaha One of my favourite interpretations of the living armour trope comes from Delicious in Dungeon manga, in which it's actually a form of colony of mollusk that lurk inside the armour (as in, between one plate and the other) and perform the function of the muscles. Inside the armour is the egg sacs of the colony, so that's why the armour attacks: the colony of mollusks inside the armour is protecting the egg sacs within. Also, when the egg sacs hatch they start to make their own armour and the old armour is discarded. It's a more zoological take, but one I appreciate =)

Animated armors always get me thinking about what other stuff can come to life. What about a river that refuses to let people take water from it? or a bed in a tavern that wants to experience its softness for itself, creating a person-like spirit that steals the blanket away? Why can't the floorboards and the ceiling have a angles vs devils dynamic with who is above/below the other? Great work as always, building better monsters is definitely one of my favorite series on the platform. Video Ideas: Building Better Witches (What is the intent behind all that potion brewing and children eating?) Building Better Creatures of the Deep (Do krakens swim upstream to lay their eggs, like salmon? Do Merfolk even know how far down their lake goes? What stops the Merfolk who do go down from ever coming back up again?)

This makes me think about what I'm doing with all of my character's stuff I've acquired over ~2 years of weekly adventuring. I appreciate the new outlook on the game you gave me. Thanks! As for building better monsters, I'd like to see your take on the different Genies - Marid, Dao, Efreeti, and Djinni. The lore for them in the monster manual is okay, but could be better IMO.

Love the idea of getting notes from your bag of holding regarding the removal of the ork heads you threw in 9 sessions ago. By the by in the way of suggestions for future videos, I never know what to do with Gargoyles

My thoughts went to the trope of cursed objects possessing a will of their own. Maybe the animated armor wants to be worn by the players to enforce its curse upon them!

A suit of armor that is looking for a worthy person to wear them could be fun! Amazing illustration and wonderful, thoughtful video as always!

I thought mollusks animating the armor was weird, but revolutionary leader certainly wins.

It makes your objects go wild

After revisiting this, I can say that I've been playing my character off of what he'd really be like and should revisit their inventory. Thank you for helping me see the RPG world through different eyes. Baptiste comes from a clan in the freezing forests that have a sustenance-based style of living. After a year of weekly adventuring, he's accrued multiple items that he no longer uses in a typical "adventuring day." That's antithetical to the "waste not, want not" kind of upbringing he had.

The group awakens to find that everyone in the party is missing something, but not anything they'll miss. It seems that at some point in the night someone robbed them, but mysteriously they only took the items they don't care about anymore. The Frostbrand that's been languishing in a Bag of Holding since the Hexadin found a more powerful weapon. A Helm of Tongues that the bard's been meaning to sell next time they were in town, for the past five times they were in town. The Cleric's missing a whole sack full of healing potions she just had no idea what to do with... After taking a serious inventory of what's available, they realize it's all junk. Nothing they will miss, and they've got bigger fish to fry. In a nearby cave, the items in question form an unholy union, bound by their growing jealousy and rage at having been set aside so callously. The items together are stronger than they ever were alone, and now with their combined might they form a sort of unified ego with the will to hunt those that spurned them.

Great video! I’d love to see a reimagined version of Hags, particularly the Green Hag, because, you know, Halloween spooky witches ooooooo 👻 Might be a bit challenging, but I think you could handle it 🤝

After just starting to read Delicious in Dungeon, I was expecting something much different than this take. Great video, per usual! I'd be curious to hear your take on merfolk/mermaid/kuo-toa/fishy humans. I bet you'd go somewhere fun with it.

I love love love the idea here. I've been fascinated by progression systems that are based on loot instead of XP. And this concept really adds a dimension to this. Loot needs a purpose. Without a purpose loot becomes unstable and possibly dangerous. You can't just discard loot, it might be offended by that and haunt you. You want to upgrade to better loot but the old items you posess need to be dealt with eventually.

I liked the van richers guide to ravenloft idea of having a swarm enemy inside them, when the armor is defeated the swarn bursts out and attacks

I love this idea! Also probably one of your strongest illustrations yet!!

So glad you mentioned tsukumogami in a video about animated objects. Yokai in general are such an interesting angle to take inspiration from when coming up with ideas!

I'm so happy to have found your channel!