D&D 5E How do you kill a Nilbog...?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Elderbrain
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iirc The original Nilbog started degenerating when you hit it (like a troll, but backwards). So you just had to keep it from harm (and especially fire and acid) until it died. You could use charm or hold person. But the usual approach was to offer to burn it with your torch if it promised to behave itself afterwards.
 

In the Volo's version though, doesn't the nilbog spirit just possess another goblin? So really to kill a nilbog (or get rid of it anyway), you first have to kill all the goblins around, then gang up on the nilbog.
 

Well that was a long time before Volo, or even the forgotten realms for that matter.

Anyway why would any of us want to kill the Nilbog? It's funny and fantastic. Mind you I'm a bit worried someone else might hurt it. You know what the <targets> do to goblins.

(Bard deception vs. Nilbog wisdom save at -1)
 



Nilbog's were so fun!! I use them sometimes but finding the original write up has escaped me as I lost my Fiend Folio in a purge a couple of decades ago!! Yikes!!
 

Asking how you kill a Nilbog is like asking how you kill Bugs Bunny. You don't. Offering violence has never once worked for Elmer Fudd and in fact always makes things worse.

When you've attracted the attention of a semi-immortal trickster spirit there's really only two good solutions. One is to join in its revelries until you can train its attention on another more deserving target and then quietly slip away. The other is to prove yourself No Fun At All, either by being impossibly dull or by out-pranking the trickster, although these can be risky because they invite the trickster to escalate their antics. In both cases, the goal is to get the trickster to leave you alone of its own volition. This is the only way to "defeat" this sort of creature.
 


Banishment might be a good tool here. If 'gang up on the pesky feller' doesn't fully solve the problem.
 

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