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. Roll a d20 to determine the effects:

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

large

aberration

cr14

tome-of-horrors

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