I first learned about the false hydra a few weeks ago. My first thought was, "that's terrifying"; my second thought was, "I can't wait to traumatize my party with this." 😈
My sister's party runs their games over discord and they have an "NPC Art" tab where the DM uploads pictures so they can imagine the characters better. Sneakily, the DM was deleting art from the NPC tab as the hydra grew stronger. Sis realised this when she asked about the mayor's wife and the mayor denied ever having a wife, despite having two children. Then when she insisted, all the other players couldn't find the wife's art in the tab and genuinely thought she was going crazy. They actually, genuinely _forgot_ about the mayor's wife!
One of my first one shots was with a false hydra and i loved the mystery, suspense, and reveal in the end. Nearly killed our party but i definitely think it's an amazing monster.
Your meme is so perfect oml. When I do run the false hydra now it's going to be because when the party mistakingly gets Pepe's mail, and tries to track him down only to find that the man no longer exists!
False Hydra: the canon retcon tool for parties everywhere. For the low low price of one party member you to can rewrite your groups relationship dynamics.
Buddy of mine ran a game where a dune worm got transformed into a false hydra and gained sentience. It hated its abilities however, because nobody could remember its existence. The creature liked singing in this one particular town at night, and was a great singer, but nobody could hear it unless there was absolute silence, and even those that do hear it, will forget it once it ends. Another player whos character was a detective put the pieces together, and we figured out that the creature only desired an audience. So the party decided to throw a concert in the town, requesting that all audience members remain silent for the performance. When it was done, the false hydra showed its appreciation to the party, and elected to become a traveling musician. Hoping that it would get another audience in another town. This legendary creature, was named Fergus. And Fergus' legacy is continued in written stories and pictures drawn. Anyways tldr buddy of mine managed to turn a False Hydra encounter in a surprisingly sad but also wholesome encounter. Fergus, the musical false hydra, may he receive another audience some day.
Okay, but a business run by someone feeding a False Hydra to take out their competitors and occasionally it eats an employee who gets too close to the truth would go hard as a plot point. Imagine you're playing Shadowrun and all of a sudden This Thing from a completely different game shows up.
I remember having a campaign where a False Hydra ends up becoming a crime boss of sorts for a dragon group and ends up using his song to make people forget he existed.
Ran a false hydra game. Randomly had die rolls just go in their favor, health potions cut out if monsters (hey I figured you guys needed a little help to keep it moving we are all friends here), random bits of guidance, certain things going their way. Last session they tied themselves with ropes to make sure even if one of them got "erased" they would know they were being attacked by the monster. Player at the end after a random sewer troll encounter was told to make a strength saving throw. After succeeding he turned around to find a length of rope that wasn't there before and a mostly eaten corpse of a large half-orc. A small journal coveres blood revealed this whole time they had a cleric in their party and all the weirdness was their minds making sense all the clerics actions before this moment. ^_^ was worth pulling out the written journal about their adventure so far from their half-orc cleric raised by dwarves perspective.
This is so funny, cause I'm currently running a one-shot where the bbeg is a false hydra and seeing my players run around the town trying to figure it all out by interrogating the townspeople 🤣
My brother ran something like that for us the other day, when I realized what was happening I freaked the hell out. We were in a church outside the town when we realized.
The false hydra seems like an amazing way to introduce a new player. Once it's defeated, you can pretend as if they've been there the whole time, but the players just forgot.
@@MegaOscarmendezas in. The false hydra tried and failed to take down this one player, but seperated the party long enough to make em forget about them. So when the player gets back... They're a stranger, the party never had a human fighter, go back to farming or whatever we've got stuff to do. Thus. When the false hydra's dead and everything comes back together. "Oh damn... That guy... That's Jakey.... Down to earth farmhand dude who joined up at the start of this all and we FORGOT him!" Truly. You can do some TRAGIC stuff with it.
Play a false hydra campaign, but have everyone but one person know. Then gaslight the last person relentlessly that certain characters just never existed. Forge notes, re-write plot points. Then, finally, have all the players "remember" and make the player know they're not crazy and they're somehow immune.
Have players have “commitments come up” one per week, with a fake rule about writing characters out if they can’t be back before the BBEG, let the others listen in with a discord call and watch the board, with them sending msgs of how to drop hints and stuff
Depends how you run it. It's tricky, but if you're clever you can pull off the False Hydra twist even to a party of experienced players. Just takes a bit of wit and not being upfront. Plus, if players do guess, they get to feel a sense of accomplishment. Remember, just because the players know about it, that doesn't mean their characters do nor that the False Hydra song is what causes the mind-tricks.
I am making my players think that there is a false hydra, when really there is a different kind of homebrewed creature that just happens to share some abilities
It's really fun, our DM just revealed that the false hydra has been after us for over 20 years and that we used to have a lot of other party members that we forgot about, our DM also made the situation really spooky with a mystery setting where we had no clue as to why we were forgetting or why months had suddenly gone by, hope it goes well for you
As a DM of several years, I really don't recommend the false hydra. Its mechanics, while interesting for sure, can easily dip into railroady behavior that leaves players hopeless and clueless as to what to do next. Only run it if you have a group of players that actually like high difficulty mysteries, and FOR THE LOVE OF GARY GYGAX, DON'T GET INTO A POWER TRIP WITH THE MONSTER.
I’d say make sure the players know what it is and what it does, just make the characters don’t. Have them witness it eating a random npc, describe to them that they no longer remember it. If a player character dies fighting it, make sure the other characters take notice, even if they can’t remember. Have the players describe the ways they notice something. An extra bed at the inn they’re staying at. Things in their closet that don’t belong to them. For extremely close party members, a listlessness, like they had a part of themself removed. The players can describe how they notice something is off. This gives their characters motivation to get down to it.
@@Boarbatrice absolutely, those are all great points for how to run the monster. My point was just more than those things are all more advanced than a lot of D&D play most players and DMs are used to. The inherent meta nature of the monster is just hard to balance correctly
If I may I'd like to offer a potential solution. Use it if/when the party is under the effect of the silence spell fighting something/ someone else, assuming their ready to fight it. Also probably better to make any other characters flee assuming they are also affected by it/ weren't hunting it, for balance.
Ok... Here's what you do. You pull the reverse false hydra. An in-game bard tells the PCs about False Hydras. Weaving a tale about an ancient city that was destroyed to prevent its spread. You have them make a history check. "Yeah, there was an ancient town by that name, it was destroyed when a wizard pulled a whole asteroid down on it, but there's no record of why, just a big impact creator" Anyway the bard tells his tale, he's doing a great job, but the obvious problem is, if the false hydra causes all memory to be removed how does he know about it. If the players don't think of this, an NPC heckles the bard, how he keeps telling stupid young adventurers this story and how it's full of holes, and so on. The bard say "Hey look I'm working here, I don't come down to the stables while your mucking out and mess with your work!" Yeah, well maybe if you did some honest work blah blah blah tip your bard. Anyway, later on, the players reach the next village. The towns folk are convinced that they are being plagued by a false hydra. They are living in absolute misery, afraid all the time, totally convinced of the false hydra narrative. The players will point out that if it was a false hydra they wouldn't remember about the false hydra. "But ... but, we don't remember the black smith", says the town elder, as he points at the forge. "There's no blacksmith, but there's the forge! no one knows the black smith, we've never had a black smith, we always just bought from traders! and those three empty houses! No one remembers who lives in them, but there they are! with clothes and food in the larder..." He becomes hysterical and locks himself back into his house. Lay on the false hydra narrative very hard. If the players try to investigate and stay in the town, the next morning there are 4 empty house, and now no one remembers ever having a rope maker, but there's "still a rope-walk", no one remembers the rope maker. But what is going onm! It can't be a false hydra because every is remembering the false hydra story, but people keep discovering signs of people that they don't remember living there. Will-o-the-whisps are nourished by fear and dread, and other emotions. Every lamp in the town is a whisp. No one is disappearing, the whisps have hired a bunch of kobolds to sneak into town at night while everyone is hiding and build new buildings, to fuel the hysteria. Can the kobolds really build a house overnight? No. They build them underground, and jack them up from underground. Then back fill the space underneath the building.
@aster1760 "Your name means king! King of what? An empty town that was destroyed because YOU didn't realize your notes and inventory were changing! YOU were the ones who didn't find the explanations odd at all. Now look at the town and people you were supposed to save!"
I like to imagine this is from a low level "the office" style d and d session Where they were joking and having fun until people started disappearing. Now it's up to the players to figure out what's going on.
I already told you what a false hydra is, how did you forget? (It's a homebrew monster from ages ago. It's whole thing is that it makes you forget things, so it's basically gaslighting: the monster.)
@@Onio_Saiyan I’ll leave this here in case the curiosity overwhelms you…also because it’s a good D&D channel lol. ua-cam.com/video/PydSva7lHdk/v-deo.htmlsi=24NyifGNyFd1Kyrx
False hydra is so esoteric that dnd is one of the worst ttrpg systems to try and run it on. And it can easily turn non-fun fast unless you are careful as a dm. Even cats and dogs will stop playing with their toys if you make them too hard to get.
There are a lot of sit-coms where the characters act awful and kind of get away with it. In Always Sunny, they don't. They can be so terrible that it can be hard to watch, but it can also surprise you with deeply moving moments. There's no other sitcom quite like it.
I first learned about the false hydra a few weeks ago. My first thought was, "that's terrifying"; my second thought was, "I can't wait to traumatize my party with this." 😈
The third thought was "...what was I thinking again?"
You made me think that maybe I don't have adhd, maybe I have a pet false hydra 😂
@@darioidan I did?
Oh. But you already have.
All that player group is gone.
@@purpledevilr7463 What do you mean? I don't remember that. I don't...
No... oh no! 😨
The false hydra is everyone's favourite monster that doesn't actually exist.
I’d hate to be the one to tell you but none of the monsters on dnd exist
@@matthewgallaway3675 You do not, in fact, hate to tell me that. You greatly enjoyed telling me that. 😋
@@matthewgallaway3675 Thanks Captain Obvious, did you just figure that out for yourself?
@@smithynoir9980 how did you know I am a captain?
@@Cyberzombie23 I do 😊
My sister's party runs their games over discord and they have an "NPC Art" tab where the DM uploads pictures so they can imagine the characters better. Sneakily, the DM was deleting art from the NPC tab as the hydra grew stronger. Sis realised this when she asked about the mayor's wife and the mayor denied ever having a wife, despite having two children. Then when she insisted, all the other players couldn't find the wife's art in the tab and genuinely thought she was going crazy. They actually, genuinely _forgot_ about the mayor's wife!
When the monster starts affecting real life, you may want to check the page again
Cognito hazard ⚠️
That is so fucking dastardly. Props to the DM, they must have been laughing their asses off.
One of my first one shots was with a false hydra and i loved the mystery, suspense, and reveal in the end. Nearly killed our party but i definitely think it's an amazing monster.
Your meme is so perfect oml. When I do run the false hydra now it's going to be because when the party mistakingly gets Pepe's mail, and tries to track him down only to find that the man no longer exists!
its crazy how well this fits
The deaf npc going insane wondering where the hell everyone went while eveyone else knows for a fact that there never was a Frank Frankfurt
TCW: you realize you've traveled to a region where most people are born deaf
False Hydra: the canon retcon tool for parties everywhere. For the low low price of one party member you to can rewrite your groups relationship dynamics.
Buddy of mine ran a game where a dune worm got transformed into a false hydra and gained sentience. It hated its abilities however, because nobody could remember its existence. The creature liked singing in this one particular town at night, and was a great singer, but nobody could hear it unless there was absolute silence, and even those that do hear it, will forget it once it ends. Another player whos character was a detective put the pieces together, and we figured out that the creature only desired an audience. So the party decided to throw a concert in the town, requesting that all audience members remain silent for the performance. When it was done, the false hydra showed its appreciation to the party, and elected to become a traveling musician. Hoping that it would get another audience in another town. This legendary creature, was named Fergus. And Fergus' legacy is continued in written stories and pictures drawn.
Anyways tldr buddy of mine managed to turn a False Hydra encounter in a surprisingly sad but also wholesome encounter. Fergus, the musical false hydra, may he receive another audience some day.
Ohgie good crafter vibes
Okay, but a business run by someone feeding a False Hydra to take out their competitors and occasionally it eats an employee who gets too close to the truth would go hard as a plot point. Imagine you're playing Shadowrun and all of a sudden This Thing from a completely different game shows up.
Was just about to say that would make a great Shadowrun plot hook but you beat me to it lol.
I did not know what a false hydra was but now that I looked it up I am glad I never encountered one.
not that you remember.....
I remember having a campaign where a False Hydra ends up becoming a crime boss of sorts for a dragon group and ends up using his song to make people forget he existed.
The False Hydra is hands down the greatest homebrew monster ever conceived.
Ran a false hydra game. Randomly had die rolls just go in their favor, health potions cut out if monsters (hey I figured you guys needed a little help to keep it moving we are all friends here), random bits of guidance, certain things going their way. Last session they tied themselves with ropes to make sure even if one of them got "erased" they would know they were being attacked by the monster. Player at the end after a random sewer troll encounter was told to make a strength saving throw.
After succeeding he turned around to find a length of rope that wasn't there before and a mostly eaten corpse of a large half-orc. A small journal coveres blood revealed this whole time they had a cleric in their party and all the weirdness was their minds making sense all the clerics actions before this moment.
^_^ was worth pulling out the written journal about their adventure so far from their half-orc cleric raised by dwarves perspective.
God that’s so sick
JESUS FUCK DUDE THAT IS JUST FUCKED
You, my friend, are a gold-standard DM!
Imma steal this
Aaaand I'm stealing that
This is so funny, cause I'm currently running a one-shot where the bbeg is a false hydra and seeing my players run around the town trying to figure it all out by interrogating the townspeople 🤣
My brother ran something like that for us the other day, when I realized what was happening I freaked the hell out. We were in a church outside the town when we realized.
The false hydra seems like an amazing way to introduce a new player. Once it's defeated, you can pretend as if they've been there the whole time, but the players just forgot.
Huh?
@@MegaOscarmendezas in.
The false hydra tried and failed to take down this one player, but seperated the party long enough to make em forget about them. So when the player gets back... They're a stranger, the party never had a human fighter, go back to farming or whatever we've got stuff to do.
Thus. When the false hydra's dead and everything comes back together.
"Oh damn... That guy... That's Jakey.... Down to earth farmhand dude who joined up at the start of this all and we FORGOT him!"
Truly. You can do some TRAGIC stuff with it.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. The effect only takes hold after it's killed and eaten a victim. Survivors don't get forgotten.
Play a false hydra campaign, but have everyone but one person know. Then gaslight the last person relentlessly that certain characters just never existed. Forge notes, re-write plot points. Then, finally, have all the players "remember" and make the player know they're not crazy and they're somehow immune.
Do that but with changeling as well as mimics.
Have players have “commitments come up” one per week, with a fake rule about writing characters out if they can’t be back before the BBEG, let the others listen in with a discord call and watch the board, with them sending msgs of how to drop hints and stuff
Gaslight, gatekeep, false Hydra.
I did a spit take. Nice work.
The problem with making things about false hydros is that people know about false hydras
Which is why I’m so lucky I’m DMing for a party of new players
Depends how you run it. It's tricky, but if you're clever you can pull off the False Hydra twist even to a party of experienced players. Just takes a bit of wit and not being upfront. Plus, if players do guess, they get to feel a sense of accomplishment. Remember, just because the players know about it, that doesn't mean their characters do nor that the False Hydra song is what causes the mind-tricks.
@@retrobot-wm4ed I would not consider myself lucky being the one that introduces false hydra's to new players, but you do you. 😂
I am making my players think that there is a false hydra, when really there is a different kind of homebrewed creature that just happens to share some abilities
That's when you pull out the false false hydra.
About to run a False Hydra arc. Insanely excited to break their minds.
It's really fun, our DM just revealed that the false hydra has been after us for over 20 years and that we used to have a lot of other party members that we forgot about, our DM also made the situation really spooky with a mystery setting where we had no clue as to why we were forgetting or why months had suddenly gone by, hope it goes well for you
As a DM of several years, I really don't recommend the false hydra. Its mechanics, while interesting for sure, can easily dip into railroady behavior that leaves players hopeless and clueless as to what to do next. Only run it if you have a group of players that actually like high difficulty mysteries, and FOR THE LOVE OF GARY GYGAX, DON'T GET INTO A POWER TRIP WITH THE MONSTER.
a good false hydra is a fat false hydra that's lazy because of it's ability, a bad false hydra is a metagamer that powergames because of it's ability.
I’d say make sure the players know what it is and what it does, just make the characters don’t. Have them witness it eating a random npc, describe to them that they no longer remember it. If a player character dies fighting it, make sure the other characters take notice, even if they can’t remember. Have the players describe the ways they notice something. An extra bed at the inn they’re staying at. Things in their closet that don’t belong to them. For extremely close party members, a listlessness, like they had a part of themself removed. The players can describe how they notice something is off. This gives their characters motivation to get down to it.
@@Boarbatrice absolutely, those are all great points for how to run the monster. My point was just more than those things are all more advanced than a lot of D&D play most players and DMs are used to. The inherent meta nature of the monster is just hard to balance correctly
As someone who's played in a false hydra side quest, and ran 2 seperate ones....
Completely accurate
Idk why but the coffeelock caption is just funny to me.
As much as people talk about the False Hydra I'll never be able to use it. Everyone I play with has heard about it too. It kinda ruins the surprise...
If I may I'd like to offer a potential solution. Use it if/when the party is under the effect of the silence spell fighting something/ someone else, assuming their ready to fight it. Also probably better to make any other characters flee assuming they are also affected by it/ weren't hunting it, for balance.
Ok... Here's what you do. You pull the reverse false hydra.
An in-game bard tells the PCs about False Hydras. Weaving a tale about an ancient city that was destroyed to prevent its spread.
You have them make a history check. "Yeah, there was an ancient town by that name, it was destroyed when a wizard pulled a whole asteroid down on it, but there's no record of why, just a big impact creator"
Anyway the bard tells his tale, he's doing a great job, but the obvious problem is, if the false hydra causes all memory to be removed how does he know about it.
If the players don't think of this, an NPC heckles the bard, how he keeps telling stupid young adventurers this story and how it's full of holes, and so on. The bard say "Hey look I'm working here, I don't come down to the stables while your mucking out and mess with your work!" Yeah, well maybe if you did some honest work blah blah blah tip your bard.
Anyway, later on, the players reach the next village. The towns folk are convinced that they are being plagued by a false hydra.
They are living in absolute misery, afraid all the time, totally convinced of the false hydra narrative.
The players will point out that if it was a false hydra they wouldn't remember about the false hydra.
"But ... but, we don't remember the black smith", says the town elder, as he points at the forge. "There's no blacksmith, but there's the forge! no one knows the black smith, we've never had a black smith, we always just bought from traders! and those three empty houses! No one remembers who lives in them, but there they are! with clothes and food in the larder..."
He becomes hysterical and locks himself back into his house.
Lay on the false hydra narrative very hard.
If the players try to investigate and stay in the town, the next morning there are 4 empty house, and now no one remembers ever having a rope maker, but there's "still a rope-walk", no one remembers the rope maker.
But what is going onm!
It can't be a false hydra because every is remembering the false hydra story, but people keep discovering signs of people that they don't remember living there.
Will-o-the-whisps are nourished by fear and dread, and other emotions. Every lamp in the town is a whisp. No one is disappearing, the whisps have hired a bunch of kobolds to sneak into town at night while everyone is hiding and build new buildings, to fuel the hysteria. Can the kobolds really build a house overnight? No. They build them underground, and jack them up from underground.
Then back fill the space underneath the building.
@@chrisflanagan7564that is hilarious
@@chrisflanagan7564Bravo. Beautifully done
Gotta run a False Hydra encounter quick, before everyone hears about it.
And don't tell anyone about Oni or Sap Demon!
False hydra? Theres no such thing as a false hydra.
Yeah. I would remember if there was a false hydra...
False hydra appears of this forgotten message
…do you guys hear singing?
We had a false hydra in our last campaign. I hope I never meet one again.
I wanna do something where there is a false hydra, but theres a even bigger one hidden underneath
False Hydra eats the false hydra and begins the cycle anew
Thanks for reminding me to run a False Hydra game
The false Hydra, for when Crimson-1 is your DM.
Just remmember. You, solely, are responsible for this.
@aster1760 "Your name means king! King of what? An empty town that was destroyed because YOU didn't realize your notes and inventory were changing! YOU were the ones who didn't find the explanations odd at all. Now look at the town and people you were supposed to save!"
im about to run a game where this meme fits TOO well, copied for when they can see it lol
I like to imagine this is from a low level "the office" style d and d session Where they were joking and having fun until people started disappearing. Now it's up to the players to figure out what's going on.
This literally happened to us
I don’t know what a false hydra is and I’m not sure I want to find out.
I already told you what a false hydra is, how did you forget?
(It's a homebrew monster from ages ago. It's whole thing is that it makes you forget things, so it's basically gaslighting: the monster.)
@@teball31 lol
@@Onio_Saiyan I’ll leave this here in case the curiosity overwhelms you…also because it’s a good D&D channel lol.
ua-cam.com/video/PydSva7lHdk/v-deo.htmlsi=24NyifGNyFd1Kyrx
I ran a session 0 as a prologue session with a False Hydra and only 1 survivor in the party.
The plot of world of warcraft
Was it's name Alpharius?
oh my god i can make a Warhammer campainha with noone knowing its a Warhammer campaing
False hydra is so esoteric that dnd is one of the worst ttrpg systems to try and run it on. And it can easily turn non-fun fast unless you are careful as a dm. Even cats and dogs will stop playing with their toys if you make them too hard to get.
The shstem is irelevent to how its played its purely down to dm false hydra is one those creatures that if it fails its the dms fault period
Try using 3.5 for it, 5e just… does not have the “right equipment” so to say…
@@demonic_myst4503Wrong
Good meme
God, the False Hydra is so ANNOYING
What is the series?
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Super funny, but part of the point is they're all horrible people so fair warning if that ain't your thing.
There are a lot of sit-coms where the characters act awful and kind of get away with it. In Always Sunny, they don't. They can be so terrible that it can be hard to watch, but it can also surprise you with deeply moving moments. There's no other sitcom quite like it.
Hey, those clips are from a series or a movie? i seen the meme so many times and i need to know
Tv show. Think it’s - always sunny in Philadelphia
Specifically the episode sweet dee has a heart attack
@JackOfNone97 you mean sweet dee?
@@DevilsShoesOnSon yes thank you
Is the joke about blind song?