Gibbering Orb, Lesser

Large aberration, chaotic evil

Armor Class 16 (natural armor)
Hit Points 136 (16d10 + 48)
Speed 5 ft., fly 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
16 (+3)	17 (+3)	17 (+3)	20 (+5)	14 (+2)	21 (+5)

Skills Perception +12
Condition Immunities prone
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 12
Languages all
Challenge 14 (11,500 XP)

Special Traits

• Hyper-Awareness. A lesser gibbering orb can see in all directions at once and cannot be surprised.
• Flyby. The lesser gibbering orb doesn’t provoke an opportunity attack when it flies out of an enemy’s reach.
• Gibbering. The gibbering orb babbles incoherently while it can see any creature and isn’t incapacitated. Each creature that starts its turn within 20 feet of the orb that can hear the gibbering must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the creature can’t take reactions until the start of its next turn and rolls a d8 to determine what it does during its turn. On a 1 to 4, the creature does nothing. On a 5 or 6, the creature takes no action or bonus action and uses all its movement to move in a randomly determined direction. On a 7 or 8, the creature makes a melee attack against a randomly determined creature within its reach or does nothing if it can’t make such an attack.
• Esoteric Theft. When a creature dies by being swallowed whole (or when a creature killed by the lesser gibbering orb in some other fashion is eaten by it), the lesser gibbering orb absorbs the creature’s known spells, prepared spells, and innate magic abilities. The orb can use one of the absorbed abilities per turn as a bonus action. Each originates from an eye that is not producing an eye ray that round. Stolen spells and innate magic abilities are lost after 24 hours.

Actions

• • Multiattack. The lesser gibbering orb makes three bite attacks.
  • Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 21 (4d8 + 3) piercing damage. The target is grappled (escape DC 13) if the lesser gibbering orb isn’t already grappling a creature, and the target is restrained until the grapple ends.
  • Swallow. The lesser gibbering orb makes one bite attack against a Medium or smaller target it is grappling. If the attack hits, the target is swallowed, and the grapple ends. The swallowed target is blinded and restrained, it has total cover against attacks and other effects outside the gibbering orb, and it takes 10 (3d6) acid damage at the start of each of the lesser gibbering orb’s turns. The gibbering orb can have only one target swallowed at a time. If the gibbering orb takes 30 damage or more on a single turn from the swallowed creature, the gibbering orb must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw at the end of that turn or regurgitate the creature, which falls prone in a space within 10 feet of the orb. If the lesser gibbering orb dies, a swallowed creature is no longer restrained by it and can escape from the corpse using 5 feet of movement, exiting prone.
  • Eye Rays. The orb casts three of the following spells as eye rays at random (reroll duplicates), choosing one to three targets it can see within 150 ft. of it. The spells have a save DC of 18 and a +10 to hit.

d20	Eye Ray
1	acid arrow
2	blindness/deafness
3	chill touch
4	color spray
5	enthrall
6	dispel magic
7	flaming sphere
8	grease
9	hypnotic pattern
10	inflict wounds
11	bestow curse
12	magic missile
13	ray of enfeeblement
14	ray of frost
15	shatter
16	sleep
17	slow
18	scorching ray
19	lightning bolt
20	hideous laughter

About

These hideous masses of floating flesh appear to be covered with staring eyes and hungry mouths. The lesser gibbering orb is a pulsing mass of sickly greyish-green flesh, roughly 8 feet in diameter. The orb seems to fly in starts and fits, but this is a ruse, for the creature is nimble for its bulk. It may be a distant cousin to the eye of the deep or similarly orbed entities.

The lesser gibbering orb is either a smaller or younger version of the gibbering orb, or so similar it makes no difference for naming purposes.

These odd beasts are not quite the force of nature their larger brethren are, but they are every bit as chaotic and hungry as the larger version. These creatures are very distinct, and no two lesser gibbering orbs encountered are the same, if the encounter is survived at all!

The gibbering orb has the ability to bite its foes by extending a pseudopod with one of its mouths protruding from the end. The orb can extend two of these at any one foe, or a total of six in any given round. At the same time, the legions of eyes have the ability to cast a host of spells at a rapid rate.

Like their larger kin, lesser gibbering orbs speak any language, and constantly babble and gurgle unintelligible gibberish to confuse and disorient their foes.