Have you seen an Aboleth in game?

[Voadam]

I used an aboleth mage/loremaster in my high level game. It was the prisoner of a rakshasa sorcerer the party had killed and was investigating. He kept the aboleth in his basement (along with others in different rooms) chained and hooded. He had it do legend lore once a week for him to provide info on those he dealt with. He also had it covered by an illusion so it appeared as a chained and blindfolded scantily clad beautiful woman held neck deep floating in a glass pool. The truesight ability of the party paladin's artefact sword served him well there, otherwise he would have went to rescue the bound prisoner and things would have turned uglier. instead they left her but found the illusion covered interrogation journals and the loremaster's crystal spellbook that worked by creating disturbing images in the mind of those who touched it.

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

I ran one during the last few levels of my old 3.5 Spelljammer game. It was made even better because during character creation for that game one of the players was asking for advice on skill point allocation and another player told him “Why would you need swim in a space game?”

 

[Grazzt]

I have seen them used in an adventure as a player and used them myself as a DM.

Same here, though not since we played 1e or 2e honestly.

 

[RangerWickett]

I ran Night Below, and when writing War of the Burning Sky I made sure to find an excuse to put in an aboleth -- even if that aboleth had the ability to attack through the icy surface of a glacial pool made up of frozen aboleth slime.

I also ran into one in the sewers of Sharn. My character was dominated, but had on protection from evil, so I was able to escape while the rest of the party died. However, I didn't manage to make it back to civilization before the protection from evil wore off, so the domination took control of me, and I became the aboleth's slave.

 

[RangerWickett]

A couple of weeks ago the party fought an aboleth in War of the Burning Sky.

It wasn't a standard one; I have never encountered one straight out of the Monster Manual.

Hey, how'd that encounter go? I was really enthusiastic about the author's inclusion of a 'devil bargaining' component to the battle.

 

[stonegod]

My wife's first game she DM'd had an aboleth as its ultimate BBEG... because that was the first monster she found in the 3.0 MM. Didn't know that for 15 levels though. She convinced us it was the odd "really old orc" that didn't act orc-like at all (due to being a slave). Damn fish.

 

[Clavis]

One of the secrets of my First Edition campaign world was that the Aboleth were the sole native intelligent race on the planet. Every other intelligent race was either descended form ancient invaders from Outer Space, or was the result of ancient genetic manipulation by one of the invader races. The Aboleth planned to one day rise up from the underworld and "cleanse" the planet of all other races.

 

[ExploderWizard]

OK. Now for the scary question: Who has seen an aboleth out of game?

 

[justanobody]

OK. Now for the scary question: Who has seen an aboleth out of game?

Think I dated one once.

 

[Vael]

I voted no, but then I remembered that I have once encountered one. We were doing some one-off combat challenges in 3.5, and our party was engaged by one. Can't remember if it was a TPK or not, but there were a few PCs downed in the battle.