AD&D Nilbog: Hit Me Again, It Feels Great
It’s Independence Day, so let’s talk about a goblin that doesn’t follow any rules. The Nilbog doesn’t care about your combat system, your spell damage, or your carefully balanced dungeon. It’s here to flip the game upside down and laugh while you try to fix it.
Looks like a goblin. Acts like a curse.
Hit it with a sword? It heals. Cast magic missile? It smiles. The Nilbog takes everything you know about combat and reverses it. Players go in confident and come out confused. This is the kind of monster that makes parties stop and argue mid-round. Which is exactly what it wants.
It’s not just the healing either. Its presence twists reality. NPCs start acting strange. Party members feel like something is off but can’t explain it. Directions change. Logic breaks. The rules feel loose. That’s the Nilbog effect.
And no one really knows why.
You can’t kill it the usual way. Healing spells hurt it. That’s the only way to bring it down. Or hope your cleric knows how to cast remove curse while dodging goblin arrows.
But here’s the beauty of it. The Nilbog isn’t evil. It’s just wrong. That opens up a ton of ways to use it.
Make it a weird goblin prophet leading a tribe that worships pain as pleasure. Make it the reason a town has turned inside out. Use it to mess with a dungeon that’s too serious. Or just drop it in the middle of a boss fight and watch everything fall apart.
It’s a Fourth of July explosion of confusion, right at your table.
So go ahead. Hit it again. It feels great. Until it doesn’t.
This is a great subject for an episode, I did see a side quest adventure that presented the Nilbog effect slightly differently, in the same way adventurers intent on pillaging the Nilbog lair would inadvertently replenish it, instead if the Nilbog is attacked the attacker would inadvertently target one of their companions instead, basically the DM would subvert any action by the characters into unintended consequences, which sounds a lot more fun.
A Nilbog lurking in the basement of the inn causes the innkeeper to serve dirty dishwater instead of beer, no matter how hard he tries, etc.
Suggestion for another unusual Fiend Folio denizen would be h Tween.
Fiend Folio!