A favorite session of myself and my players was when I put a mimic disguised as a swan shaped paddle boat in my game. By now, players know to be suspicious of treasure chests, but nobody can resist messing with a swan boat. And when the cockpit grew teeth, and the swan neck began flailing around like a giant tongue, my players lost it.
Something i once saw was the non-goofy art for a health potion mimic, one of the creepiest concept for a low level monster i ever saw. Imagine drinking a potions when you are near death, being attacked by it while you are drinking it and becoming infested by its offsprings. Or even worse, drinking it while you are relatively well and have them fester for months in your body. trully devilish
That reminds me of the unconventional mimics by pocketss. They have some really creative looking mimic artwork, like a sword, a scroll, a beartrap, and even a gold pouch mimic. Really cool looking.
One of my favorite Mimic designs I've seen was the map mimic. When found it looks like an ordinary treasure map guiding the reader to promised riches. What they'll find at that location, much to their horror, is instead the mimic's nesting site where the entire hoard is waiting for their next meal to be delivered to them.
I recall playing a Mimic as a PC back in ye Olde 3.5 days. Chester Drawers was just a simple being out to taste the world, and ended up as a Spelljammer crewman, a dungeon delver, and finally, a food critic.
I have a personal rule that mimics will always shift into a man made object but they can only morph to look like naturally occurring materials. A chest with a stone lock, a circular fur rug, a row boat carved from a singe log. I want to give just the slightest hint to my players that this is a mimic. Usually, mimics are smart and know their own limitations. Can't turn into finely minted coins or perfectly cut gems, but they can look like gold ore and gemstones and lay in a mine cart. I even came up with a bit of a horror story about an ex adventurer who lost his legs to a mimic. It was disguised as a boat and didn't attack until they were half way across the river. The worst part is he was wearing boots of haste, and he knows the mimic knows how to use them.
Thank you for the video! A good time for me to remember timeless classic: Bartender asked: "Why we carry swords in tavern?" "Mimics" - we answered; than we laughed. Bartender laughed too; then table laughed. We killed the table. It was a good time!
Had a party that adopted a mini mimic that was intelligent. I played it that "Jeffrey" slowly lost intelligence as he grew larger with every feeding. Eventually, they were afraid he'd become beastial like the one in the PHB. It was great
@Maxime Fourton we ended up not finishing the campaign so instead I've made him a reoccurring cameo in my current campaign. Currently, he's disguised as a human male, wandering from town to town, wearing a Helm of intellect to keep his intelligence up. He's fairly amiable to people, and is a good source of information.
@@maximefourton7155 indeed. My players were happy to see him again. A little "nudge nudge" this guy named Jeffrey offers to tell you where to go and they all giggle like it's some secret lol
I had this session where the party met the "Beast tamer" a wanderer merchant with a nice and cute sales stall who sold lots of good stuff for decorating or combat and thought their friends were his pets. He was accompanied by a plasmoid in a medieval armor called "Voracio", who likes to trick people into thinking is a normal armor to then trick them into thinking he is a possessed armor because why wouldn't he do that; a big fish-folk catfish called "Gimmiefoo" which later on turned to be a yokai, but that is another story; and a homebrew leech-folk blood mage and probably the most normal out all of the three. The thing is that the party really liked them and buyed some stuff from them, but when they went to sleep our bard was woken up by his newly bought accordion bouncing his way to the door, and when the whole party followed the things they bought, they discovered that EVERYTHING they have bought by the group were mimics trying to come back to the merchant. So yeah, I made the whole party to got scammed with mimics that made a pact with the Beast tamer so they scammed adventurers and the money they got from it would be destined to feeding everyone in the group. In the end everyone were friends and they helped the Beast tamer group to close their character stories in the best way possible.
I think part of the reason mimics are so iconic is because they're pretty simple, when you get down to it. A container with teeth is a pretty recognizable and recreateable design, making it ideal for circulation, and their behavior isn't particularly hard to understand either.
There is actually a creature from 3e called a phasm that could shapeshift into objects and other creatures. It's an obscure monster though and it's not called a mimic so I am not surprised that it isn't mentioned here. Great video as always esper! I never knew about that tower mimic before.
@@blackmark2899 Thanks for the insight! That might be it as I wasn't aware such thing existed. Imdb reports a good rating so it's worth to check it out :)
My party's dm once had us wake up in what looked like the starting town, half the party joined after the original 3 left it, it looked almost like how the 3 left it and the people were acting like they should.... turned out to be a bunch of giant mimics and doppelgangers and soon after we got away from them we fought a roper.
An npc I made for a campaign for friends was a hyper intelligent mimic named Minki Minks. He owned a magic dimension hopping armor and magic shop called Minki Minks’s Many Minis. He also had a shield guardian named Greg that acted as a janitor/help in the store. His backstory was that he was created by a wizard to guard their magic artifacts and books in his body. The magic caused Minki Minks to then gain intelligence, and after reading the magic books, decided to eat the wizard and steal their stuff. He was fun to do a voice for
in one campaign I had some newbies to DnD so I introduced the concept of a mimic to them early on via a basic treasure chest encounter, then later on there was a room with a treasure chest on top of a sofa. They thinking at the time that mimics could only be treasure chests were incredibly careful of the chest, when they got close to the chest nothing happened so they thought it was safe... I jebaited them... the sofa was the mimic!!! well technically so was the chest, see the chest was attached to the sofa mimic via a lure like an angler fishes lure! the sofa mimic could also split in half if it was cut, though to stop it being OP it can only split once and the smaller sofa mimics were less powerful only being half as powerful when they're split. gotta teach em young.
Junior Mimic should be an option for a familiar. Stick it to a wall and have it disguise itself as a small painting. "I swear it's eyes follow you wherever you go"
Personally, I really like the Pathfinder 1E mimic. it's a Medium Aberration (though size changing isn't hard in 1E), with a slam/adhesive attack and a constrict special action. All in all, a decent CR4 monster. What's interesting, though, is that the STANDARD mimic has an Int of 10, Neutral alignment, and speaks Common. The Ecology splat for it says that the mimicry and preying on intelligent creatures, including attacking them, is less from an evil heart or a need to feed, but rather from an innate desire to completely fool creatures. Think of it as the thrill of the chase, but not a chase in this case, and the actual attack is the ultimate culmination of this. All put together, you get the impression of an intelligent, self-willed, non-evil creature who's simply so different in fundamental psychology and physiology as to be completely incompatible with and alien to civilization. It's a truly alien existence, and done well.
Wow, I was not expecting a new tier video so soon. Haven't finished yet. I think in one of the older editions it was only child mimics that mimicked objects, the adult mimics only mimiced people.
If you are going to do monster ranking, i suggest doing a ranking of creatures from Carceri. Its one of my favorite of the lower planes and is often forgotten
There were always mysterious debatable areas that Mimics had between Doppelgängers, Slimes, and related monsters. Originally, the Mimic was a construct created by wizards that mimicked objects, most likely taking a long time to build its body to be such a convincing construct with some parts able to spring into animation as an effective attack. Later editions forgot the role of the OG Mimic and fell to the gray area between it being akin to slimes, changelings, and living walls. The Mimic was never originally imagined as nothing more than the fake treasure chest that attacks you... that was just how they were pigeonholed into being.
Lately, I switched my 5e home games Doppelgangers to the Aberration type, because I use a Sanity mechanic that occurs when the PCs encounter Aberrations - things from beyond space and understanding. I like the new flavour it gives to classic encounters {Mind flayers, Beholders Aboleths etc}. And in this vein I have lately been considering where Mimics come from, and I'm toying with the concept that; A mimic is spawned by a doppelganger, and hidden away to grow. It can go its whole lifespan just consuming prey and turning into more appealing shapes to lure in more prey. But under certain very rare circumstances (maybe it consumes a particularly powerful humanoid, or consumes a great number of humanoids in a single instance), it sheds its inanimate disguise, moulting into a Doppelganger. The doppelganger then goes through its life switching faces and personas, but occasionally they lose their own sense of self. Becoming unable to hold their form together as the different identities congeal into a mad writhing mass of clashing personalities. Forming a Gibbering Mouther.
It would be cool if that tower mimic takes the form of a castle. It’ll have someone like a noble living there and build up a reputation and they’ll have a big ball to get as many people at once as possible
Another thing you can do. If you do a winter setting, you can actually recreate the movie It by having mimics pretend to be dead bodies since the dead body is considered 5e and animate object. Heard that on a Reddit form
You could make a whole mimic region with the Core, the impersonators and the colonies. They could pass a town and go to the tower, win maybe just to make camp on town where perils still abound without them knowing.
Hey, I didn't even know there were different variations of mimics! I'd love to implement them, and also stay creative on their appearance. Not just a chest, but also equipment. Gauntlets, for example, or potions.
In 3e you don't need stats for a slightly bigger mimic because you already have rules for adding hit dices and increasing the size. But I agree that there could have been rules for some mimic variants, that's why I use unofficial material from various sources, and THERE there are definitely a lot
Mimics are one of my favorite monster archetypes. This is why Amoongus and Voltorb are such great Pokemon. My first exposure to the concept were the Micro-Goombas in Super Mario Bros. 3 who hide inside of what look like normal breakable blocks, but bounce around and try to jump on you. Then there's the mimics and canniboxes in Dragon Warrior 3, which tend to be pretty simple enemies (just attacking REALLY hard, often hitting hard enough to outright kill a party member in one turn, maybe having some magic resistances but otherwise being straightforward) and the Trick Bag/Jewel Bag enemies, which are mimics imitating sacks of treasure that focus on inflicting status conditions (random wandering monsters rather than triggered by searching hanging sacks on the walls, unfortunately, reducing their "surprise monster" value).
Mimics are my favorite creatures in all of fantasy, i have always wondered why they don't count as Oozes in D&D, seems like a no brainer, they function in every way like oozes, just, they can imitate things..maybe Aberrant oozes. Fun Fact- with the optional sidekick rules... you could potentially PLAY AS the juvenile mimic if you were so inclined.....as..i...am. very strange that the horde mimic lost its acid immunity...i could totally have imagined a hoard mimic having made friends with a black dragon being the REASON it speaks draconic! it hangs out in its treasure hoard and acts as the dragons only friend, that would be a sick dynamic in my opinion. Just saying....the wandering tower is actually perfect for a Stranger Things fight with Vecna if you wanted to run it... the living house with restraining walls, the birds being those crazy bat things.. the core i suppose Vecna himself, very cool.
My favourite use of the juvenile mimic in 5e is to use sidekick class levels with it to give it enhanced abilities as either a rogue-adjacent, or a spell caster, and having the mimic disguise as a spellbook.
I love mimics and their whole concept, it's a shame they don't appear more often or serve a more "central" role, like with the wandering tower. It's great.
My idea spawned from mimics is Living-Outerwear, the big-impractical-fashion-statements like a billowing scarf without a breeze, or pointlessly long cape fluttering just off the ground, or huge trailing fabric belt in perfect composure despite being a dozen feet long; specialized mimics that work like clothing until their own turns: for instance, A hooded thick coarse robe, with its own accord, able to grasp grapple attack steal spy defend and restrain enemies or players while its host is occupied in battle.
That last entry, oh boy dose that sound like a fun hook. The last potental hook for the last monster, has a flavor of Faifard and Grey Mouser, The Bazar Bazar.
Small mimic that takes the form of a "cursed" sword. The adventurers encounter it for the first time in the hands of an enemy that needs to be disarmed instead of killed, but despite all their efforts cannot seem to release the sword from the opponents grip. Finally they get the sword free and pick it up, only to find when they try to sheath the sword they're unable to release said sword themselves. Suddenly the sword speaks, it's voice a bubbly, distorted mockery of speech, the blade itself splitting into a long, thin, toothy mouth filled with a stiletto thin, warty tongue. "Feed me the blood of many, or your blood I will consume instead. Knowledge of beasts and men are mine, shared in kind to feed our thirst." Unlike a normal cursed intelligent weapon it doesn't dominate the player. It threatens and sometimes demands action, and will share its knowledge about creatures willingly if it leads to combat, but it's only truly dangerous if the player refuses to use it in combat and will either break or dull other weapons to prevent the use of those items in its stead. Play it chaotic neutral. It's not really an evil creature, it just wants to be fed and combat in the hands of an adventuring party is simply the most efficient method.
A gargantuan, intelligent, mimic that has teamed up with an elder oblex. It pretends to be a roadhouse where, if you go to sleep, you're unlikely to wake up. Play a one-shot where, at the end of the adventure, the party are relaxing at a roadhouse. Start a campaign where people matching the description of the previous party have gone missing. If the party find their way back to the roadhouse, they are met by their previous characters, who act weirdly, perhaps taking on each other's personalities.
As I recall, it can be inferred that in the story of Eric and the Gazebo (of 1985+) , that Eric's DM retconned the (building) Gazebo (that Eric insisted on attacking) to it instead become a sleeping massive Mimic shapeshifted as a Gazebo.
Great video, Esper. I suppose that since humans tend to eat their meat after the animal has died than it makes since for a mimic to be a coffin and feed on a human that has already passed away. Just saying. I am reading a young adult series called Dungeon Academy about a girl who attends a school for monster, disguised poorly as a minotaur, and has monster best friends, and a mimic best friend named Bauble. Illustrations all throughout. Might not be for everyone, maybe too cutesy, but I'm having fun.
All I can think of is the post I saw once "The party was sitting in a tavern telling stories about recent adventures. 'turns out it was a mimic all along', says the bard. They all start laughing. The party laughs, the barkeep laughs, the table laughs, the party pulls out their weapons and kills the table. Fun all around."
Not a Mimic, but our Dungeon Master surprised us after the bossfight against the Goblin-Pirates with two Gold-Elementals, that were disguised as treasure. Unexpected and after a boss-battle with most ressources spent, it was quiet dangerous.
The mimic is like the potato of DnD encounters. You can just drop a handful of them in a dark damp room at the bottom of the BBEG's lair and make a serviceable, albeit uninspired, encounter. Or you can expend some mental effort as a DM and create absolutely amazing and memorable encounters using only mimics.
Idk if you forgot or left it out but there's a original Spelljammer mimic that can read minds, learn magic, shift betweem planes of reality and just be so crazy
Someone likely done coffin mimics with mystery of funerary home, where corpses go missing... Which would turn either case of corpse robbers or coffin mimics...
Not many out there will remember the dungeon magazine with the adventure called the vanishing village great 2nd Ed game and can be upgraded into higher
I would love to play as a mimic. Acting as a wooden shield and latching onto tge first creature to hit said shield. Eventually growing into a wierd looking full armor and eating whoever hits me first. If no food found and no promise of food found soon. Start eating the wielder
The effectiveness of the Mimic comes from the DM's ability to use it. A versatile ambush predator that can hide anywhere, as anything. The only limits are the DM's imagination. As an ambush predator, the Mimic - even if not terribly intelligent - will prefer to attack when it thinks it can win. Drawing in lone creatures, or waiting until a member of a group lags behind. Sitting in narrow corridors, where numbers cannot overwhelm it. Having escape routes very close by (we're talking 5-10 ft), so it can retreat if outmatched. And, in environments where creatures are strong or numerous, gathering together into groups so they can gang up on groups of prey. Honestly, the ability to change shape as a bonus action should be standard for all Mimics. If the party falls back around a corner, waiting for a Mimic to give chase, they might peek around again to find the creature is hiding again. A new shape. Were the PCs/Players paying attention to the contents of the room the first time it was described? Mimics love crowded rooms, filled with stuff. All the better to blend in. With a Mimic's transformation being (in 5e) perfect, it becomes all the more important for Players to employ deductive reasoning. They won't find the answer to the Mimic problem on their character sheet, but in their capacity for logic and to ask questions.
I a character who seems to be a kindly grandmother who lives in a Mimic house because is a former war criminal to a whole bunch of kingdoms and the house eats the assassins who come for her so they each benefit.
Hi Esper the Bard just Watch your D&D Monster Rankings about Oozes. It was Great and You know that You Miss Four Rare Oozes to Add. 1 - Hungry Fog 2 - Skitterhaunt 3 - Bloodfire Ooze 4 - Deathreap Ooze
5:40 Back in the day before the advent of D&D, wargamers called the mechanic associated with minions "hits". Gamers soon realized that some monsters and characters should not die in one attack, so they started counting the number of "hits" a character could receive before dying using a points system, AKA "hit points". This is why "health points" is a misnomer. The fact that minions weren't talked up as "resurrecting the glories of the past" or "a return to form" tells me that the designers rediscovered the mechanic independently. It's ironic to see WotC forgot about this bit of history before they designed 4E, but using inexperienced and/unqualified hires seems to be par for the course nowadays. I think AI will eventually fix this problem.
Funny you made this particular topic, I'm almost ready to release a mod that adds chests to this game, Daggerfall. While the initial release won't have mimics, I definitely have that as a plan for a future update, lol.
@@esperthebard Yeah, Daggerfall is a much different game than Morrowind. Morrowind was a much more polished "focused" experience. Daggerfall was an overly ambitious game that really strived to be more of a "Fantasy Life Simulation" sandbox more than anything. But due to time and development contraints really never fleshed out most of those grand ambitions. But with Daggerfall Unity, hopefully the modding community can make those ambitions a reality, at the very least in some form, lol. (Also if you do download Daggerfall Unity, do NOT use the "GOG Cut" from GOG, it's scuffed.)
I would like to see more info on doppelgangers. There were lesser, standard and greater at one time. And why can't a Mimic roll? It seems like it's speed would be a little better. All the variants, legs, suctions, tentacle options?!?
Give me a mimic that takes the form of a sexy marble or metallic female statue razor sharp talents, wings and razor knives tip elongated tail that can cook and clean then you got a waifu
Fun thing to note for all you Pathfinder nuts: The Mimic in Pathfinder 1e? It has an Intelligence of 10. It is MORE than capable of human speech, and is even labelled as knowing how to understand and speak Common. One could, in theory, run a Mimic as more than just a monster, and as something like a typical NPC... Here's a dumb idea for all you DMs out there: A Mimic banker or shopkeep! Who better as a proprietor of high-quality goods or surveyor of finances than someone who's preferred form consists of a treasure chest?
So, I'm like 90% sure that 3.5 only had one mimic because it was the D&D equivalent of Ditto Using the rules for monster hit die advancement, and the mimic's maniacally morphic morphology, you could ostensibly make a 3.5 mimic into *ANYTHING.* Period. My setting has a shop where not only is the shop building a mimic (the elder), but so is the proprietor and many of the wares on display (immature mimiclings). Want to buy an item? Want to trade one of theirs for one of yours? Cool. Want to steal? *CHOMP.* I daresay that 3.5 only ever _needed_ the one mimic, because any other mimic you want to make... the baseline mimic can just _turn into._ (Other than the spitter and tower's mimics with their special abilities. You'd admittedly have to homebrew that much at least) Also, the 3.5 mimic has an Int of 10 and speaks common at baseline, so-
A favorite session of myself and my players was when I put a mimic disguised as a swan shaped paddle boat in my game. By now, players know to be suspicious of treasure chests, but nobody can resist messing with a swan boat. And when the cockpit grew teeth, and the swan neck began flailing around like a giant tongue, my players lost it.
What a fowl ambush!
Reminds me of the super mutant goliath in fallout 4 xD
@@Sovann_the_MightyFO4 Player: “Oh awesome! It’s a park and there’s a swan boat!” 🛤️ ⛲️ 🦢
Swan: “ *S W A N ! ! !* ” 🦢 👹 🪨
FO4 Player: ☢️ 💀 ☢️
Oh dear, there seems to be something really wrong with this coraswan!
Something i once saw was the non-goofy art for a health potion mimic, one of the creepiest concept for a low level monster i ever saw. Imagine drinking a potions when you are near death, being attacked by it while you are drinking it and becoming infested by its offsprings. Or even worse, drinking it while you are relatively well and have them fester for months in your body. trully devilish
That is insidiously horrific. Do you have a link to that?
@@richardthepastamancer6619 Link?
@AGS 363 yes, that's the art I saw
@@esperthebard no idea why it doesn't let me comment with the link, AGS shared it
That reminds me of the unconventional mimics by pocketss. They have some really creative looking mimic artwork, like a sword, a scroll, a beartrap, and even a gold pouch mimic. Really cool looking.
One of my favorite Mimic designs I've seen was the map mimic. When found it looks like an ordinary treasure map guiding the reader to promised riches. What they'll find at that location, much to their horror, is instead the mimic's nesting site where the entire hoard is waiting for their next meal to be delivered to them.
That is crazy smart and I might use that if I get annoyed enough
I recall playing a Mimic as a PC back in ye Olde 3.5 days. Chester Drawers was just a simple being out to taste the world, and ended up as a Spelljammer crewman, a dungeon delver, and finally, a food critic.
Absolutely love it
My dude best name ever
I have a personal rule that mimics will always shift into a man made object but they can only morph to look like naturally occurring materials. A chest with a stone lock, a circular fur rug, a row boat carved from a singe log. I want to give just the slightest hint to my players that this is a mimic. Usually, mimics are smart and know their own limitations. Can't turn into finely minted coins or perfectly cut gems, but they can look like gold ore and gemstones and lay in a mine cart.
I even came up with a bit of a horror story about an ex adventurer who lost his legs to a mimic. It was disguised as a boat and didn't attack until they were half way across the river. The worst part is he was wearing boots of haste, and he knows the mimic knows how to use them.
Iron is natural though, just not in the form of steel or as part of an alloy.
Thank you for the video!
A good time for me to remember timeless classic:
Bartender asked: "Why we carry swords in tavern?"
"Mimics" - we answered; than we laughed.
Bartender laughed too; then table laughed.
We killed the table. It was a good time!
Had a party that adopted a mini mimic that was intelligent. I played it that "Jeffrey" slowly lost intelligence as he grew larger with every feeding. Eventually, they were afraid he'd become beastial like the one in the PHB. It was great
You cannot leave your story unfinished like that ! What happened to Jeffrey ?
@Maxime Fourton we ended up not finishing the campaign so instead I've made him a reoccurring cameo in my current campaign.
Currently, he's disguised as a human male, wandering from town to town, wearing a Helm of intellect to keep his intelligence up. He's fairly amiable to people, and is a good source of information.
@@ClarkyClark Yeah ! 😁 Happy ending ! 🎉
I'm willing to bet he didn't kill himself 😉
@@maximefourton7155 indeed. My players were happy to see him again. A little "nudge nudge" this guy named Jeffrey offers to tell you where to go and they all giggle like it's some secret lol
I had this session where the party met the "Beast tamer" a wanderer merchant with a nice and cute sales stall who sold lots of good stuff for decorating or combat and thought their friends were his pets. He was accompanied by a plasmoid in a medieval armor called "Voracio", who likes to trick people into thinking is a normal armor to then trick them into thinking he is a possessed armor because why wouldn't he do that; a big fish-folk catfish called "Gimmiefoo" which later on turned to be a yokai, but that is another story; and a homebrew leech-folk blood mage and probably the most normal out all of the three.
The thing is that the party really liked them and buyed some stuff from them, but when they went to sleep our bard was woken up by his newly bought accordion bouncing his way to the door, and when the whole party followed the things they bought, they discovered that EVERYTHING they have bought by the group were mimics trying to come back to the merchant. So yeah, I made the whole party to got scammed with mimics that made a pact with the Beast tamer so they scammed adventurers and the money they got from it would be destined to feeding everyone in the group.
In the end everyone were friends and they helped the Beast tamer group to close their character stories in the best way possible.
I love the concept of mimic, and I think they could be anything. A very interesting monsters that stimulate creativity.
I also loved the turning of pages when you narrate
I think part of the reason mimics are so iconic is because they're pretty simple, when you get down to it. A container with teeth is a pretty recognizable and recreateable design, making it ideal for circulation, and their behavior isn't particularly hard to understand either.
That might be part of it, but I always wonder about deeper elements. I'm suspecting that the mimic is a symbol for greed hurting or even killing us.
@@esperthebard Dark Souls' mimics and the lore description of The Symbol Of Avarice come to mind with that idea.
28:52 really nice pun, I have to applaud xD
There is actually a creature from 3e called a phasm that could shapeshift into objects and other creatures. It's an obscure monster though and it's not called a mimic so I am not surprised that it isn't mentioned here. Great video as always esper! I never knew about that tower mimic before.
That "house" mimic is impressive! I wish somebody would create a horror/mystery high budget movie about it.
Isn't Monster House basically that exact thing?
@@blackmark2899 Thanks for the insight! That might be it as I wasn't aware such thing existed. Imdb reports a good rating so it's worth to check it out :)
Would also recommend Monster House, fun movie, decent script and VA performances, absolutely beautiful stop motion effects.
@@WeWillAlwaysHaveVALIS Cheers! Now we really have to check it out :D
My party's dm once had us wake up in what looked like the starting town, half the party joined after the original 3 left it, it looked almost like how the 3 left it and the people were acting like they should.... turned out to be a bunch of giant mimics and doppelgangers and soon after we got away from them we fought a roper.
An npc I made for a campaign for friends was a hyper intelligent mimic named Minki Minks. He owned a magic dimension hopping armor and magic shop called Minki Minks’s Many Minis. He also had a shield guardian named Greg that acted as a janitor/help in the store. His backstory was that he was created by a wizard to guard their magic artifacts and books in his body. The magic caused Minki Minks to then gain intelligence, and after reading the magic books, decided to eat the wizard and steal their stuff. He was fun to do a voice for
in one campaign I had some newbies to DnD so I introduced the concept of a mimic to them early on via a basic treasure chest encounter, then later on there was a room with a treasure chest on top of a sofa.
They thinking at the time that mimics could only be treasure chests were incredibly careful of the chest, when they got close to the chest nothing happened so they thought it was safe...
I jebaited them... the sofa was the mimic!!!
well technically so was the chest, see the chest was attached to the sofa mimic via a lure like an angler fishes lure!
the sofa mimic could also split in half if it was cut, though to stop it being OP it can only split once and the smaller sofa mimics were less powerful only being half as powerful when they're split.
gotta teach em young.
Posting all these rankings while still working on your race book; glad things are going so well. Love your videos
I'm trying to stay productive! Thanks Artyom!
@@esperthebard you are my crush.
Junior Mimic should be an option for a familiar. Stick it to a wall and have it disguise itself as a small painting. "I swear it's eyes follow you wherever you go"
Personally, I really like the Pathfinder 1E mimic. it's a Medium Aberration (though size changing isn't hard in 1E), with a slam/adhesive attack and a constrict special action. All in all, a decent CR4 monster. What's interesting, though, is that the STANDARD mimic has an Int of 10, Neutral alignment, and speaks Common. The Ecology splat for it says that the mimicry and preying on intelligent creatures, including attacking them, is less from an evil heart or a need to feed, but rather from an innate desire to completely fool creatures. Think of it as the thrill of the chase, but not a chase in this case, and the actual attack is the ultimate culmination of this.
All put together, you get the impression of an intelligent, self-willed, non-evil creature who's simply so different in fundamental psychology and physiology as to be completely incompatible with and alien to civilization. It's a truly alien existence, and done well.
I played in a campaign that had a lot of mimics. The most memorable was a ship mimic that disguised itself as a vessel lost at sea.
Wow, I was not expecting a new tier video so soon. Haven't finished yet. I think in one of the older editions it was only child mimics that mimicked objects, the adult mimics only mimiced people.
I could see a crone or evil wizard using mimic colonies as a roving home. Imagine it being like Baba Yaga's home.
The Mimic has more than widely multiplied and spread throughout the wide world of gaming, teaching valuable lessons to many adventurers.
If you are going to do monster ranking, i suggest doing a ranking of creatures from Carceri. Its one of my favorite of the lower planes and is often forgotten
There were always mysterious debatable areas that Mimics had between Doppelgängers, Slimes, and related monsters. Originally, the Mimic was a construct created by wizards that mimicked objects, most likely taking a long time to build its body to be such a convincing construct with some parts able to spring into animation as an effective attack. Later editions forgot the role of the OG Mimic and fell to the gray area between it being akin to slimes, changelings, and living walls. The Mimic was never originally imagined as nothing more than the fake treasure chest that attacks you... that was just how they were pigeonholed into being.
The wondering tower is an amazing piece of creativity.
Lately, I switched my 5e home games Doppelgangers to the Aberration type, because I use a Sanity mechanic that occurs when the PCs encounter Aberrations - things from beyond space and understanding. I like the new flavour it gives to classic encounters {Mind flayers, Beholders Aboleths etc}.
And in this vein I have lately been considering where Mimics come from, and I'm toying with the concept that;
A mimic is spawned by a doppelganger, and hidden away to grow. It can go its whole lifespan just consuming prey and turning into more appealing shapes to lure in more prey. But under certain very rare circumstances (maybe it consumes a particularly powerful humanoid, or consumes a great number of humanoids in a single instance), it sheds its inanimate disguise, moulting into a Doppelganger.
The doppelganger then goes through its life switching faces and personas, but occasionally they lose their own sense of self. Becoming unable to hold their form together as the different identities congeal into a mad writhing mass of clashing personalities. Forming a Gibbering Mouther.
The impersonator mimic really gives you a The Thing vibe.
It would be cool if that tower mimic takes the form of a castle. It’ll have someone like a noble living there and build up a reputation and they’ll have a big ball to get as many people at once as possible
Another thing you can do. If you do a winter setting, you can actually recreate the movie It by having mimics pretend to be dead bodies since the dead body is considered 5e and animate object. Heard that on a Reddit form
You could make a whole mimic region with the Core, the impersonators and the colonies. They could pass a town and go to the tower, win maybe just to make camp on town where perils still abound without them knowing.
Mimics are so good at hiding even WotC can't find most of their varients
Hey, I didn't even know there were different variations of mimics! I'd love to implement them, and also stay creative on their appearance. Not just a chest, but also equipment. Gauntlets, for example, or potions.
Could you please make a tier list of 3e's epic handbook monsters? Those things are wild, really cool, and I don't think they're talked about enough.
In 3e you don't need stats for a slightly bigger mimic because you already have rules for adding hit dices and increasing the size.
But I agree that there could have been rules for some mimic variants, that's why I use unofficial material from various sources, and THERE there are definitely a lot
Mimics are one of my favorite monster archetypes. This is why Amoongus and Voltorb are such great Pokemon.
My first exposure to the concept were the Micro-Goombas in Super Mario Bros. 3 who hide inside of what look like normal breakable blocks, but bounce around and try to jump on you. Then there's the mimics and canniboxes in Dragon Warrior 3, which tend to be pretty simple enemies (just attacking REALLY hard, often hitting hard enough to outright kill a party member in one turn, maybe having some magic resistances but otherwise being straightforward) and the Trick Bag/Jewel Bag enemies, which are mimics imitating sacks of treasure that focus on inflicting status conditions (random wandering monsters rather than triggered by searching hanging sacks on the walls, unfortunately, reducing their "surprise monster" value).
Mimics are my favorite creatures in all of fantasy, i have always wondered why they don't count as Oozes in D&D, seems like a no brainer, they function in every way like oozes, just, they can imitate things..maybe Aberrant oozes.
Fun Fact- with the optional sidekick rules... you could potentially PLAY AS the juvenile mimic if you were so inclined.....as..i...am.
very strange that the horde mimic lost its acid immunity...i could totally have imagined a hoard mimic having made friends with a black dragon being the REASON it speaks draconic! it hangs out in its treasure hoard and acts as the dragons only friend, that would be a sick dynamic in my opinion.
Just saying....the wandering tower is actually perfect for a Stranger Things fight with Vecna if you wanted to run it... the living house with restraining walls, the birds being those crazy bat things.. the core i suppose Vecna himself, very cool.
My favourite use of the juvenile mimic in 5e is to use sidekick class levels with it to give it enhanced abilities as either a rogue-adjacent, or a spell caster, and having the mimic disguise as a spellbook.
Bring on the Amazing tierss! I d love a lovecraftian Monster tier from you!
I love mimics and their whole concept, it's a shame they don't appear more often or serve a more "central" role, like with the wandering tower. It's great.
My idea spawned from mimics is Living-Outerwear, the big-impractical-fashion-statements like a billowing scarf without a breeze, or pointlessly long cape fluttering just off the ground, or huge trailing fabric belt in perfect composure despite being a dozen feet long; specialized mimics that work like clothing until their own turns: for instance, A hooded thick coarse robe, with its own accord, able to grasp grapple attack steal spy defend and restrain enemies or players while its host is occupied in battle.
25:35 This is incredible. Didn't hear of this up until now!
This was a really cool ranking. An amazing video once again, Esper. Thanks.
Thanks Jason!
That last entry, oh boy dose that sound like a fun hook. The last potental hook for the last monster, has a flavor of Faifard and Grey Mouser, The Bazar Bazar.
Small mimic that takes the form of a "cursed" sword. The adventurers encounter it for the first time in the hands of an enemy that needs to be disarmed instead of killed, but despite all their efforts cannot seem to release the sword from the opponents grip. Finally they get the sword free and pick it up, only to find when they try to sheath the sword they're unable to release said sword themselves. Suddenly the sword speaks, it's voice a bubbly, distorted mockery of speech, the blade itself splitting into a long, thin, toothy mouth filled with a stiletto thin, warty tongue.
"Feed me the blood of many, or your blood I will consume instead. Knowledge of beasts and men are mine, shared in kind to feed our thirst."
Unlike a normal cursed intelligent weapon it doesn't dominate the player. It threatens and sometimes demands action, and will share its knowledge about creatures willingly if it leads to combat, but it's only truly dangerous if the player refuses to use it in combat and will either break or dull other weapons to prevent the use of those items in its stead. Play it chaotic neutral. It's not really an evil creature, it just wants to be fed and combat in the hands of an adventuring party is simply the most efficient method.
A gargantuan, intelligent, mimic that has teamed up with an elder oblex. It pretends to be a roadhouse where, if you go to sleep, you're unlikely to wake up.
Play a one-shot where, at the end of the adventure, the party are relaxing at a roadhouse. Start a campaign where people matching the description of the previous party have gone missing. If the party find their way back to the roadhouse, they are met by their previous characters, who act weirdly, perhaps taking on each other's personalities.
Ah, one more I got to say that I just freakin' love your tier videos... Thanks a big damn lot for all your great content...
Just bought an unpainted mini of a mimic as an outhouse. Pretty funny. Looking forward to painting it 😎
As I recall, it can be inferred that in the story of Eric and the Gazebo (of 1985+) , that Eric's DM retconned the (building) Gazebo (that Eric insisted on attacking) to it instead become a sleeping massive Mimic shapeshifted as a Gazebo.
For so few entries, a surprisingly deep pool of thoughts to think after watching this one.
Thanks Zachary! I thought this was going to be a fairly short video and a fast script to write, but I ended up getting a lot out of it.
Great video, Esper. I suppose that since humans tend to eat their meat after the animal has died than it makes since for a mimic to be a coffin and feed on a human that has already passed away. Just saying. I am reading a young adult series called Dungeon Academy about a girl who attends a school for monster, disguised poorly as a minotaur, and has monster best friends, and a mimic best friend named Bauble. Illustrations all throughout. Might not be for everyone, maybe too cutesy, but I'm having fun.
All I can think of is the post I saw once
"The party was sitting in a tavern telling stories about recent adventures. 'turns out it was a mimic all along', says the bard. They all start laughing. The party laughs, the barkeep laughs, the table laughs, the party pulls out their weapons and kills the table. Fun all around."
I love in tashas it tells how you can get a mimic familiar animal companion.
I love your videos Esper and I hope we can get more livestreamed campaigns as well.
Not a Mimic, but our Dungeon Master surprised us after the bossfight against the Goblin-Pirates with two Gold-Elementals, that were disguised as treasure.
Unexpected and after a boss-battle with most ressources spent, it was quiet dangerous.
The mimic is like the potato of DnD encounters. You can just drop a handful of them in a dark damp room at the bottom of the BBEG's lair and make a serviceable, albeit uninspired, encounter. Or you can expend some mental effort as a DM and create absolutely amazing and memorable encounters using only mimics.
Idk if you forgot or left it out but there's a original Spelljammer mimic that can read minds, learn magic, shift betweem planes of reality and just be so crazy
Someone likely done coffin mimics with mystery of funerary home, where corpses go missing...
Which would turn either case of corpse robbers or coffin mimics...
One of my favorite monsters! I would absolutely pester the DM about wanting a (small) pet mimic to take with me in our adventures. :D
Not many out there will remember the dungeon magazine with the adventure called the vanishing village great 2nd Ed game and can be upgraded into higher
I would love to play as a mimic.
Acting as a wooden shield and latching onto tge first creature to hit said shield. Eventually growing into a wierd looking full armor and eating whoever hits me first. If no food found and no promise of food found soon. Start eating the wielder
The effectiveness of the Mimic comes from the DM's ability to use it. A versatile ambush predator that can hide anywhere, as anything. The only limits are the DM's imagination.
As an ambush predator, the Mimic - even if not terribly intelligent - will prefer to attack when it thinks it can win. Drawing in lone creatures, or waiting until a member of a group lags behind. Sitting in narrow corridors, where numbers cannot overwhelm it. Having escape routes very close by (we're talking 5-10 ft), so it can retreat if outmatched. And, in environments where creatures are strong or numerous, gathering together into groups so they can gang up on groups of prey.
Honestly, the ability to change shape as a bonus action should be standard for all Mimics. If the party falls back around a corner, waiting for a Mimic to give chase, they might peek around again to find the creature is hiding again. A new shape. Were the PCs/Players paying attention to the contents of the room the first time it was described? Mimics love crowded rooms, filled with stuff. All the better to blend in.
With a Mimic's transformation being (in 5e) perfect, it becomes all the more important for Players to employ deductive reasoning. They won't find the answer to the Mimic problem on their character sheet, but in their capacity for logic and to ask questions.
A certain knight remembers that tower mimic all too well. He used fire to cough himself out of the monster's maw.
I a character who seems to be a kindly grandmother who lives in a Mimic house because is a former war criminal to a whole bunch of kingdoms and the house eats the assassins who come for her so they each benefit.
3.5 look up Living Vault. A particularly large mimic and there was a mini mimic that could be kept as a pet.
Hi Esper the Bard just Watch your D&D Monster Rankings about Oozes. It was Great and You know that You Miss Four Rare Oozes to Add.
1 - Hungry Fog
2 - Skitterhaunt
3 - Bloodfire Ooze
4 - Deathreap Ooze
Mirror mimic fight with a vampire owner had the vamp charm the barb and tell him to copy the mimic clones for chaos
mimic idea: an ominous health potion that when used turns itself into stone inside of the player's throat
My party killed a mimic, had it taxidermied with a bag of holding stitched into it, and the barbarian wore it as a backpack.
5:40 Back in the day before the advent of D&D, wargamers called the mechanic associated with minions "hits". Gamers soon realized that some monsters and characters should not die in one attack, so they started counting the number of "hits" a character could receive before dying using a points system, AKA "hit points". This is why "health points" is a misnomer.
The fact that minions weren't talked up as "resurrecting the glories of the past" or "a return to form" tells me that the designers rediscovered the mechanic independently. It's ironic to see WotC forgot about this bit of history before they designed 4E, but using inexperienced and/unqualified hires seems to be par for the course nowadays. I think AI will eventually fix this problem.
Funny you made this particular topic, I'm almost ready to release a mod that adds chests to this game, Daggerfall. While the initial release won't have mimics, I definitely have that as a plan for a future update, lol.
Daggerfall, as in the Elder Scrolls?
@@esperthebard Indeed, in this case "Daggerfall Unity" specifically, which is a fan recreation of the original using the Unity Engine.
@@CaptmagiKono Interesting, I just took a look at some gameplay. I've never played Daggerfall, but Morrowind is one of my all-time favorite games.
@@esperthebard Yeah, Daggerfall is a much different game than Morrowind. Morrowind was a much more polished "focused" experience. Daggerfall was an overly ambitious game that really strived to be more of a "Fantasy Life Simulation" sandbox more than anything. But due to time and development contraints really never fleshed out most of those grand ambitions. But with Daggerfall Unity, hopefully the modding community can make those ambitions a reality, at the very least in some form, lol. (Also if you do download Daggerfall Unity, do NOT use the "GOG Cut" from GOG, it's scuffed.)
I go off of final fantasy where they are bug monsters so I place them as polymorphic bugs so both ooze like and bug like.
Mimics inspired my OOC as it's part Cephalopod
I had no idea there are so many kinds of mimics.
Imagine bringing back the wandering tower in future editions.
Another ranking monster, awesome.
Boxxy T. (middle name is Trap) Morningwood! Everybody Loves Large Chests series by Neven Iliev. If you like Mimics, go read!
love the intro tune
Don't forget there's a mimic piano in Mario 64, and in Dark Souls series.
You left out Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing and House Hunter!
The Oasis Mimic from Kobold Press 👌👌👌
I would like to see more info on doppelgangers.
There were lesser, standard and greater at one time.
And why can't a Mimic roll? It seems like it's speed would be a little better. All the variants, legs, suctions, tentacle options?!?
I made one a ship with small mimics as the crew
Trappers are kinda my bigger mimic that can transform into small buildings and entire floors.
would be a fun way to make a howls moving castle type incounter
Give me a mimic that takes the form of a sexy marble or metallic female statue razor sharp talents, wings and razor knives tip elongated tail that can cook and clean then you got a waifu
I feel like a Balhannoth is a mimic in all but name
19:48 Mirror-mic
That reminds me, I really need to get the balhannoth in a video. It is a monster that tpk'd the party in games I ran in 3e, 4e, and 5e.
Start each campaign by telling your players that there is one mimic in your campaign. Let them stress about opening every chest and armoire.
An outhouse would be devious
Ngl, seeing Elvis songs as the tier names threw me for a loop
I was apprehensive about hitting the like button. Thought it might grab my finger.
when the like button hits you back ...
Impressive. Very nice.
Here we go again
...Mimic teirs
My brain: ENDIN 'ING
forgotten relams had rules where a mimic could even be a house or a cave ..
Fun thing to note for all you Pathfinder nuts:
The Mimic in Pathfinder 1e? It has an Intelligence of 10. It is MORE than capable of human speech, and is even labelled as knowing how to understand and speak Common. One could, in theory, run a Mimic as more than just a monster, and as something like a typical NPC...
Here's a dumb idea for all you DMs out there: A Mimic banker or shopkeep! Who better as a proprietor of high-quality goods or surveyor of finances than someone who's preferred form consists of a treasure chest?
First hour gang
We 🆙
Hail vanguard!
Awesome
Mimic outhouse
Mimic Tear hype
So, I'm like 90% sure that 3.5 only had one mimic because it was the D&D equivalent of Ditto
Using the rules for monster hit die advancement, and the mimic's maniacally morphic morphology, you could ostensibly make a 3.5 mimic into *ANYTHING.* Period.
My setting has a shop where not only is the shop building a mimic (the elder), but so is the proprietor and many of the wares on display (immature mimiclings). Want to buy an item? Want to trade one of theirs for one of yours? Cool. Want to steal? *CHOMP.*
I daresay that 3.5 only ever _needed_ the one mimic, because any other mimic you want to make... the baseline mimic can just _turn into._ (Other than the spitter and tower's mimics with their special abilities. You'd admittedly have to homebrew that much at least)
Also, the 3.5 mimic has an Int of 10 and speaks common at baseline, so-