CBUB / Database / Fantasy / M / Mimic (D&D)

Mimic (D&D)

CBUB Wins: 0
CBUB Losses: 0
Win Percentage: 0%

Added by: SSJRuss

Read more about Mimic (D&D) at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Wizards Of The Coast

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the mimic is a type of fictional monster. It is portrayed as being able to change its shape to disguise its body as an inanimate object, commonly a chest. The mimic has a powerful adhesive that holds fast to creatures that touch it, allowing the mimic to beat its victims with its powerful pseudopods. The mimic was introduced in the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game's original Monster Manual. The mimic has appeared in subsequent editions. Several variants of the creature have been introduced, with a variety of abilities and sizes.

The mimic made its first appearance in the original Monster Manual (1977), by Gary Gygax. This book described mimics as "subterranean creatures which cannot stand the light of the sun. They are able to perfectly mimic stone or wood." According to the book, mimics thus pose as items such as stonework, doors, or chests; when a character or creature touches the disguised mimic, the mimic can lash out with a bludgeoning pseudopod. A mimic excretes an adhesive glue to hold fast whatever touches it. The book states that all mimics move about constantly in search of prey. Mimics are described as neutral in alignment.

The Monster Manual mentions that there are two types of mimic encountered in the game. The slightly smaller version is more intelligent, and is generally friendly if offered food, usually telling a player character about what it has seen nearby. These creatures have their own language and can usually speak several other tongues. The book described the larger variety of mimic as a carnivorous creature called a "killer mimic". This creature does not speak, and will attack anything which is nearby. The Monster Manual was reviewed by Don Turnbull in the British magazine White Dwarf No. 8 (August/September 1978). As part of his review, Turnbull comments on several new monsters introduced in the book, referring to the mimic as a thing which adventurers from his Greenlands dungeon "are not going to be best placed to meet".

The July 1983 issue of Dragon magazine (No. 75) featured the article "The Ecology of the Mimic", by Ed Greenwood. This article provides additional in-game descriptions of the mimic, with the information purported as having come from "the Journals of Maerlun the Scholar". The article states that a mimic's hide is naturally gray in hue, with a smooth very hard outer skin that appears stone-like; a mimic is able to change the color and texture of its outer surface to resemble wood-grain by shifting a brown pigmented liquid between its interior and exterior body cells to fill the many capillaries lying just beneath the skin surface, while the creature can empty these capillaries to revert to its normal stone-like appearance. A mimic is amorphous, able to alter the external configuration of its form at will, and the more intelligent ones can even assume the shape of a partition wall, overhanging arch, or rough rock wall; this feat is accomplished by the creature's mode of travel, which involves extending its strong pseudopods, which exude a sticky "glue", and pulling itself along ("unsticking" its own glue at will), traveling on walls and ceilings as easily as it can on floors. The article also describes how a mimic observes its surroundings through its very sensitive "eyespots" (patches of pigment that are sensitive to heat, light, and vibration) all over its skin; bright sunlight effectively blinds a mimic by overwhelming these sensory spots, which is why mimics are almost always found in areas where the sun never reaches. Austin Wood of PC Gamer described Greenwood's article as "probably the closest thing to science to ever come out of D&D".

Mimic (D&D) has not been a contender in any CBUB matches.