Gibbering Orb

Family: Gibbering Orb

Huge aberration, chaotic evil

Armor Class 26 (natural armor)
Hit Points 420 (29d12 + 232)
Speed 5 ft., fly 20 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
30 (+10)	30 (+10)	26 (+8)	30 (+10)	23 (+6)	21 (+5)

Saving Throws Intelligence +19, Wisdom +15, Charisma +14
Skills Arcana +19, Perception +15
Damage Resistances cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons
Condition Immunities charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone
Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 30
Languages all
Challenge 30 (155,000 XP)

Special Traits

• Hyper-Awareness. A gibbering orb can see in all directions at once and cannot be surprised.
• Flyby. The 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 and 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.
• Magic Resistance. The gibbering orb has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
• Esoteric Theft. When a creature dies by being swallowed whole (or when a creature killed by the gibbering orb in some other fashion is eaten by it), the 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 gibbering orb makes six bite attacks.
• Bites. Melee Weapon Attack: +19 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 37 (6d8 + 10) piercing damage. The target is grappled (escape DC 25) if the gibbering orb isn’t already grappling a creature, and the target is restrained until the grapple ends.
• Swallow. The gibbering orb makes one bite attack against a Large 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 21 (6d6) acid damage at the start of each of the gibbering orb’s turns. The gibbering orb can have only one target swallowed at a time. If the 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 22 and +14 to hit.

d20	Eye Ray
1	acid arrow
2	blindness/deafness
3	chill touch
4	prismatic spray
5	forcecage
6	dispel magic
7	irresistible dance
8	feeblemind
9	hypnotic pattern
10	inflict wounds
11	bestow curse
12	magic missile
13	ray of enfeeblement
14	ray of frost
15	finger of death
16	disintegrate
17	slow
18	scorching ray
19	lightning bolt
20	power word stun

About

These great masses of floating amorphous flesh appear to be covered in bloodshot, weeping eyes and disgustingly vile mouths. The gibbering orb is a pulsing mass of sickly greyish-green flesh, roughly 20 ft. in diameter.

The orb distends and undulates as it flies, seeming to spasm through the air rather than fly. The creature does not seem to have a top or bottom, nor does it have any form of appendages for handling objects.

These great harbingers of insanity and chaos are fortunately very rare indeed. Locked away by whatever powers preserve order and sanity, the gibbering orbs occasionally make their way to the civilized world to satiate its ravenous hunger for sentient beings. While the gibbering orb looks like a mass of chaotic, insanely impossible flesh, it is a clever and very intelligent adversary. If any being is so foolish as to attack a gibbering orb, it hurls itself at its foes with complete abandon, somehow making tactical decisions despite its completely random approach to destruction.

Gibbering orbs speak all languages and frequently speak in several tongues at once to disorient their opponents. Gibbering orbs are incapable of speaking in a non-dominant role, their egos are too vast.

Gibbering orbs are 20 feet or more in diameter, weighing at least 8,000 pounds. Their coloration varies from a sickly, mottled gray to luminescent green or deep magenta at random intervals. The orbs flesh spasms and twitches constantly, and the entire surface is covered with eyes, mouths, and other incomprehensible appendages. The orb has no obvious top or bottom; as it hovers, the entire mass continuously rotates so no one side is ever in direct contact with opponents for longer than a few seconds.

Gibbering orbs are planar travelers; fortunately, they grow bored of one place quickly. The only time gibbering orbs maintain a residence for long in any one place is if they are guarding some location for their own amusement, or if they are stranded or bound to a location. Woe to those who stumble upon an orb that cannot leave of its own free will!

Gibbering orbs in combat are forces of nature. They attack with seeming abandon. Although they are incredibly intelligent, their ego does not allow them to comprehend the concept that other beings are as powerful as they are. Gibbering orbs consume their foes fully, drawing them into their various mouths; thus, any treasure found with a gibbering orb is on the inside of the creature.

Gibbering orbs are never found together. It is unknown how they reproduce, and such an event would most likely take place in a very secluded lair.