Hey, welcome back to the podcast, the Evil Dungeon Masters AD and D Universe Podcast, and I'm your host, the Evil Dungeon Master.

Vince, it is Monday.

It is time for another fabulous podcast for AD and D Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

Hopefully you're doing quite well out there.

If you're not, hopefully your day is going to get better for you.

But today we are talking a little bit about what you came here for, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and little things that I found inside the book.

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Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, today we're going to flip to page 137 of the Dungeon Masters Guide under Miscellaneous Magical Treasure.

There's an item in here that I completely, absolutely forgot about and I've probably not seen too many times in a campaign, and it's called the Apparatus of the Koalish.

So when this is initially found, this item appears as a large iron barrel.

It has a secret catch in it which opens a hatch on one end.

So it's interesting that this barrel just comes up and you as the players have to figure out what this is.

It looks like an ordinary giant barrel type thing.

And then when you expect it a little closer, there's a hatch on it which you can unhitch with, you know, finding the secret compartment in it.

And inside there are 10 levers, and the 10 levers do 10 different things.

One of them extends the legs and tails and retracts some.

Uncover #2 uncover forward porthole cover, same uncover side portholes, extend pincers and feelers, snap pincers forward, left, right, backwards.

Basically it's a giant crab.

It has even has open eyes in quotes with a continual light so you can see, raise, levitate and sync.

Open hatch and close hatch so you can actually get protected inside there or close it up if you really want to.

The apparatus moves forward at 3 and speed backwards at six.

The two pinchers extend forward about four feet and snap for 26 points of damage if you hit something 25% chance.

No reduction for armor, but dexterity reduction does apply.

The device can operate in waters up to 900 feet deep.

It can hold 2 human sized persons and enough air to operate for about two to five hours at maximum capacity.

The apparatus is an AC0 and will take 100 hit points of damage to 'cause even just a leak 200 on its side before it becomes pretty much destroyed when the device is fully operating in a hole.

And hole appears to be something like a giant lobster or a crab.

So it's pretty giant in here, and there's a couple ways I was thinking about how you can use it in your campaign.

The players find what looks like a huge iron barrel that washed up on shore.

I mean, this is a giant barrel inside the apparatus.

They have to figure out what it does, or does an MPC activate it first?

Or they could fool around with it, try to find out there's what's going on with this giant apparatus.

This becomes a exploratory type trial and error type thing going on with the player characters having a little fun with this new apparatus, giant apparatus they have.

Another thing I was thinking about is maybe a yeah, they have an apparatus in the Kingdom where they are, and an evil magic user who knows how to use the apparatus wants to use it as a weapon of war.

And now they players have to fight off this magic user and his army before he comes and tries to take the giant metal lobster from them.

I mean, you could drop this in the middle of a dungeon without any instructions and players need to figure out what the levers do and how to get out of it while the room is flooding up and becoming dangerously to kill them.

So the only way to get it, it becomes a probable panic problem solving type thing going on where they have to figure out what this metal, giant metal apparatus does that could fit two people and how they can use it to get out of the room.

Smash their way out of the room with this thing, I don't know, but it's filling up with water.

What are you guys going to do?

Well you can also think about this.

Since it's a giant lobster like creature or crab like creature, you could use it as a thing to carry treasure.

I don't know why not.

You are say you go to 1 island and you find a lot of treasure and you don't have the way or means to transport it back but you find this giant apparatus thing this thing can use.

You could use this thing, excuse me, to haul loot through dangerous waters as you use the the lobster claws that maybe hold on to things or you know, put it inside of it while one player gets in there and navigates this giant beast through the water to go back to your home base.

So another one, another thing I was thinking about is the thing washes up or appears on the shore and it's kind of damaged a little bit, but it still works.

So the pretty much the players have to figure out how to fix it and how to use it and if it even is usable because it means risking suffocation, crushing pressure, pressure as you go underwater, being stranded if the wrong lever gets pulled or the wrong lever doesn't work correctly.

They could possibly die in this contraption underwater.

Maybe a magic user after doing some scrying, this is the final thing I thought of.

The magic user does some scrying and he finds the apparatus underwater, kind of like, you know, a sunken ship or a sunken treasure.

And he tells the king about it.

And the king, well, I want this thing opposite because you know, the king wants the new shiny.

So he hires the adventurers to go out into the waters and figure out where this thing is and retrieve it and bring it back.

Now the players have to remember the characters.

I'm sorry, same players, I guess you could say the same thing.

But they have to decide if they really want to return this after finding it.

Because now the the creature of the creature, the apparatus is pretty powerful when it works properly.

And think of all the things they can do.

So they want to return it and get the whatever the king is paying.

Or do they say they never found it, they can't find it and keep it for themselves?

Maybe it's underwater, guarded by like dangerous fish, like sharks and stuff like that.

And it becomes a whole underwater type episode that the players have to figure out a way to get around or battle these creatures.

And now you have a, you know, a seafaring battle adventure going on here, which I kind of think is interesting.

I like sea adventures.

So anything to do with being on a ship and, you know, navigating the seas and having a fun time with the I always I always enjoy adventures like that.

But that's not for everybody.

Not everybody likes being stuck on ships and stuff like that, though they've made plenty of games in the recent years that would buy involve pirates and stuff that people actually really like.

So it really depends on your flavor of like here.

Every time I I'm thinking about this creature and getting a picture in my head and the only thing I could think of is that stupid freaking giant spider from the Wild Wild West movie with Will Smith.

Yeah, that movie.

But I don't know, could you just imagine this giant like barrel thing turning into a giant crab lobster thing and come jumping onto the shore and it's just a Kong Kong, Kong Kong over the snapping pincers going after you.

And you know, your your characters are like, what the hell is this?

And then so armor class 0.

So anything they hit with it just clangs off at unless they get a really good hit on it.

And then they still have to at least get 100 hit points worth of damage on this crazy thing.

So it could be used to lead lead to lead into battles.

I mean, it'd be like the frontline thing just smashing through just about anything that gets in its way.

So it's not like it's not a powerful type thing going on here.

I was kind of curious after seeing the description what this might actually be worth as far as experience points and gold points.

And it wasn't.

I mean, it's worth 8000 experience points and 35,000 gold.

Now I was looking at that and comparing to other items in there and I'm just like, you know what?

This type of item I think would be worth a lot more than 35,000 gold pieces for one experience points.

OK, that yeah, I mean the bolt, the the boat, the folding boat is worth 10,000 experience points and it doesn't even have half the things that this crab apparatus thing has.

So I don't know.

I mean, these numbers that they have here in the experience point value and goal point value, we're just random numbers according to what the TSR alum basically said.

And there were no patterns or I mean, I've asked multiple times of mentor and the rest if these numbers had a certain pattern or certain formula and they all just admitted, you know, there was no real formula behind all these things.

So it was just whatever they thought and I, I guess when they made this thing up this, that's what they decided the the apparatus of koalas was worth 8035 thousand gold points.

I don't know, tell what you think of the comments about this giant apparatus creature thing, Crab, lobster, whatever you want to call it.

How would you use it in your campaign?

How would you present it to your players without making them too overpowered when it comes to this thing?

Because this thing could change the tide easily.

If this thing was given to your group and it all of a sudden became it's, it's kind of like if you're playing a military game and or like Twilight 2000 and you give your Group A tank all of a sudden and they know how to operate the tank after some exploration about it.

So now they're going through and using this tank to their advantage now.

Sure, when it comes to military games, someone is going to have an anti tank weapon or figure out or know that you know the rear end of most tanks have a vulnerability.

Now, when it comes to this thing, the apparatus itself, there is no real knowledge about it other than what the people know who operated.

It doesn't actually like come with a, you know, instruction book or it doesn't come with knowledge that people know over time from, you know, books and stuff like that.

This is kind of like, I don't even know how it doesn't even explain how it was made.

So I'm going to do some more research on that as well and see if they actually did any more knowledge or you know, background on who created this exactly and what purpose was it didn't actually have to begin with.

Now, if you know what it is out there, I appreciate if you drop that in the comments because I'd love to know and that's what I ask of you guys out there.

If you know anything more than I do.

And I don't know everything about AD and DI just play AD and D and love it since you know, the 80s.

So anytime I can continue playing the game and enjoying the game, you know, but I'm not going to be one of those people that know everything unless it like something like this comes up.

I really want to know what it is.

So now, now that I'm thinking more about it, I'm probably going to see if I can hunt down some information.

And I'm sure in later editions, if this was in later editions, they probably gave us more information.

But again, I really don't play later editions.

I think my later edition knowledge for playing did go as far as 5E, but I didn't dive into 5E and four EI didn't play a lot of I played a lot of 3E, not 3.5.

So that's kind of where my knowledge drops.

So anyway, with that said, I'm going to head out.

Hope you have a great day.

Keep original, keep it old school.

Goodnight and God bless everybody.