Dungeons & Dragons Monsters — Beware the Bulette AKA Land Shark
Hello my fans out there, It is I Nerdarchist Ted with another exciting edition of Dungeons and Dragons Monsters.
Today we are going to talk about the Burrowing Bulette (pronounced boo-lay). The Bulette is a magical beast and is commonly referred to as a land shark.
It has the ability to burrow in soft soil and actually has a burrow speed. Now though it posses an animal intelligence and has its similarities to trolls in that it only lives to eat and breed. You need not use it as a mindless strait forward killing machine.
In the Dungeons and Dragons mythos, little is known about the origins of this strange creature. Because of this you can look at this in one of two ways. Either you can alter the creature, scare your players, and actually make the creatures intelligent, or you can use serious tactics.
The Bulette has evolved over the years and thankfully so have the toys.
Here is an example of an early Bulette Miniature and the current Dungeons and Dragons Monsters miniature.
As you can see a big improvement!
As a DM/GM you hold great power. Why settle for a simple mindless killer when you can have it be cunning? It can slowly stalk the party leaving little sign of its passing. You can have it single out players that leaves the group pulling them under ground with a grapple.
Another option is to be able use it in a role-playing situation. It says on the Forgotten Realms Wiki:Bulette -about 
some of the mating practices and you could even have a party come upon some newly hatched Bulettes.
Maybe you have a ranger or Druid in the party and here you could possibly break tradition and allow them to be taken as an animal companion.
You can also have a mage or a smith as an adventure hook seeking these creatures. Their incredible hide could be used as fantastic armor maybe an armor made of Bulette hide grants a burrow speed of 5ft. Maybe the mage is looking to be the first to have a baby Bulette as a familiar, but wants the party to find one and bring it back.
In one of the homebrew campaigns we ran in for a while The dwarves of Stoneholme used “sharksteel” manufactured from the hide of Bulette. It was a high quality metal comparable in durability to mithral. It had an opalescent/electric blue sheen to the metal that made it obvious to any onlooker. No dwarf would make anything less than Masterwork quality out of the material.
Perhaps in your world this magical creature is possessed of human or beyond human intelligence and could actually role-play with the party. You could have all Bulettes in your world act this way or maybe this one is unique. The effect of some wild magic, magical experimentation or just a simple awaken spell.
However you decide to use these fantastic Dungeons and Dragons Monsters, I urge you to step out side of the box and not have the Bulette be just another mindless killing machine.
So there you are my take on Dungeons and Dragons Monsters- The Bulette
Until next time stay Nerdy my friends.
Nerdarchist Ted.
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Toby Vandal
September 16, 2014 at 6:07 pm"However you decide to use these fantastic Dungeons and Dragons Monsters, I urge you to step out side of the box and not have the Bulette be just another mindless killing machine."
I like your take on it, and I know the Idea is to put a new twist on it, and while it's cool, in this case I have trouble.
The Bulette, created by Gygax back in his chainmail days, was originally described as a creature that had a love for horseflesh and halflings, but disliked the taste of dwarves and would not eat elves. They were also described as being very stupid!
In my opinion, they are called landsharks because, like the shark, they only care about feeding. They are just as likely to attack a group of well armed knights as a band of peasants, as long as their's horse meat at stake.
Just like a shark, it can lurk about, and when it jumps out at you, it can seem to come out of nowhere, but to have it rush in for the kill without regard for it's own "skin" is what makes it so terrifying, in my opinion.
Toby Vandal
September 16, 2014 at 6:23 pmOh, and maybe you can help me on this:
I keep hearing that Bulette is pronounced BOO-LAY …
Being French Canadian, to me this sounds preposterous, like an Englishman trying to pronounce french words. I don't remember, nor can I find it on the web, but I remember the term "Bulette" in french, and it is a burrowing animal if not mistaken…. and it would make sense regarding the subject of the discussion.
The right pronunciation would be, as best I can describe: BU (pronounced like BUE in ferris BUEller's day off) LETTE (Pronounced like Let as in the verb to let)
So, my questions:
Where does this weird pronunciation mentioned earlier come from, and does anyone have information on the animal I'm refuting to? Trying to research it and coming up blank, do my childhood memories mislead me?
Dave Friant
September 18, 2014 at 7:39 amI believe in the monster description from the monster manual the pronunciation was give and that is why we say it that way.
dragonmasterdean
February 10, 2015 at 4:30 pmDarn that wild magic. My players will hate you. 🙂 As the bulette is one my favorite crunchy critters (they go crunch when they bite) I am going to use a couple of those suggestions next time the party gets near a bulette hunting range.