Dissecting the 5E D&D Aberration Creature Type

Salutations, nerds! I’m going to get a little bit eldritch and talk about the aberration creature type in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. What they do, what unifies this creature type, what they generally feel like. You know the drill. We’re also going to highlight five iconic aberrations, so make sure to stay tuned for the end of the article for that!

Aberration creatures in 5E D&D

Aberrations are described as alien beings that draw power from their strange nature rather than magic as we know it. A lot of aberrations have powers associated with brain stuff and minds that cannot be read or a penchant for devouring brains. Regardless, the scary thing about an aberration is their unfathomable motives. These things crawled straight out of a Lovecraftian short story.

Most aberrations in 5E D&D are evil (though the flumph is a notable exception) and many tend to be very old as a carry over from a time before time. There’s a certain kind of creepiness you get from an aberration you just can’t find in anything else. Suffice it to say aberrations were voted Most Likely to have Face Tentacles in the year book.

“Aberrations are utterly alien beings. Many of them have innate magical abilities drawn from the creature’s alien mind rather than the mystical forces of the world. The quintessential aberrations are aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, and slaadi.” — from the 5E D&D Monster Manual

Things Aberrations Do

Aberrations tend toward both spellcasting and stopping you from spellcasting. Anyone whose ever been in a beholder’s antimagic cone can attest this is a big pain in the behind for most adventurers.

A large number of aberrations have the ability to read your thoughts, or at the very least prevent themselves from having their thoughts read by you. As yet there’s no proper psionics in 5E D&D but you can get pretty close to the flavor of them with the right combination of aberrations.

Really the scariest thing about an aberration isn’t that all it wants to do is eat your brains but the fact it completely donks up how your character plays. It can shut off your magic, it can shut off your healing, it can make you succumb to tHe AbSoLuTe MaDnEsS oH tHe HuMaNiTy until you can finally pass a saving throw and shake it off. It can even make you see things that aren’t there in the area around you.

All of these things are set up to make an encounter with an aberration feel just plain weird.

Five Aberrations of Note

1. Aboleth. An aberration, but wet. It can give you a disease that makes you wet too, and kills you if you ever get dry. It makes mind slaves and its sheer presence makes the area out to a mile around it wet as well. Not useful wet, either. If you drink aboleth water it makes you puke. These things don’t even do anything good for the environment like pest control.
2. Cloaker. This thing pretends to be a nice toasty leather cloak and then tries to eat you. It can make psychic copies of itself to make you not sure which one you’re aiming at and it can also moan and make you scared. Yeah, you heard me right. I said moan. When it’s attached to you, you take half the damage it would take so while you’re screaming, “Get it off, get it off!” and flailing your arms, you’re also getting hurt by your well meaning allies. This thing really should have just pretended to be a bedspread. I’m pretty sure that’s what it really wanted.
3. Beholder. This one is a giant eye with a bunch of other eyes, and each of them does something different when it looks at you. This is the big offender in terms of turning your magic off. Eye beam effects range in nastiness from making you really like the beholder to reducing you to a pile of dust. From looking at you. Absolute nightmare bastards. Oh, also? They make the area around them within their lair wet too.
4. Flumph. Not every aberration is trying to eat your mind. Flumphs are the cutest aberration in the game. They are smol (and also small) psychic fart pillows who just want to be good beans and help people. Unfortunately, not only is this an unusual thing for an aberration, it is also an unusual thing in the Underdark where they live. But they are precious babies and can do no wrong and I will fight you.
5. Mind Flayer. This one REALLY wants to eat your brains. Or maybe plant a squid tadpole into it so that can eat your brain and then hatch out of your skull like its an egg to make a new mindflayer. These guys are serious business. They do beaucoup brain damage in a 60 foot cone, cast spells and will absolutely grapple you just for the sake of pulling all your grey matter out of your skull and having a delicious adventurer mindshake. Also their spellcasting is explicitly described as psionics.

Now that I’m done writing this I’m going to have to go take a shower. Get in the comments and tell me about how you feel about the squidboys. If you fail your Wisdom save, you must do this for me. Also, walk to your sink and make your hands damp. I can’t actually do it for you. No seriously, wash your hands. How long has it been since you last did that? All right, all right, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — A selection of aberrations of note from 5E D&D — the aboleth, cloaker, beholder, flumph and mindflayer. Aberrations are truly bizarre and frightening creatures. Some other aberrations we’ve explored further here at Nerdarchy the Website include the sinister slaad and the ghastly gibbering mouther. [Composite images courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

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