The old "illusion of damsels" dungeon ruse

[UniversalMonster]

Illusion of damsels (and better yet, actual chained down damsels) is a D&D classic. Check out the original AD&D2 Haunted Halls of Eveningstar for a great version of this.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've fallen victim to this. In Undermountain there was a room with a mermaid chained to a wall at the bottom of a pool. My monk jumped in to free her. The pool was acid and the mermaid was an illusion. In my defense, we had seen much stranger things in Undermountain and something about the way the DM presented it made me throw caution to the wind.

*high fives your DM*

 

[Chaoszero]

I am proud to say that I did dupe my PCs into this illusion a number of times. (You'd think they'd learn, but they do play good aligned characters well). Golems that seemed to be damsels, a succubus adventuring with the party for several months without anyone noticing, and one damsel (a mentor to the party sorcerer) was secretly a silver dragon.

The most infamous one, though, was when they were questing to rescue an old party member who had been trapped inside a fiendish prison on the lower planes. It was a prison meant for the worst of the fiends, like Gwar's "Eighth Lock". They saw a riddle on the prison's door warning about three perticular inmates, but either didn't care or didn't understand the prose.

When they found their former companion, there were three naked women chained with silver in the next room begging to be set free. The PCs strongly suspected these three were not what they appeared, but the "women" had a perfect story and made their bluff checks, so the PCs set them free and even teleported them to the Material Plane. These three women were so happy they returned to face the PCs in their true form: as Mariliths (in the same fight the PCs were battling the Tarrasque!)

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Damsel in locked cell. Standing back in the dark interrior. Yeah, a Medusa. (I was actually expecting something of the sort, but my character had just hit 2nd level and hadn't run into anything to make her sufficiently paranoid yet. A Ranger, so Good, of course.)

 

[Henry]

In Keep on the Borderlands, there's another one:

[sblock]Female prisoner, when you get to the cell door, all you can see are up to her shoulders, and her shapely legs -- Medusa, of course. [/sblock]

but it's a trope in mythology, too. Anyone remember the sirens and the Argonauts?

I do have to admit, the one with the harem in the middle of a dungeon is kinda silly (TANSTAAFL and all that), but can you imagine the DM who changes it up and puts an actual bordello or brothel in the middle of a dungeon, and the freak-out a bunch of players would have? Now, if you can come up with a plausible reason there's an actual bordello in the middle of a dungeon... It could turn into some weird parody of "Very Bad Things"...

 

[Rechan]

Reading this thread, it makes me actually want to use honest to goodness damsels, with no catch.

Given that it's 1) Novelty (hey, the DM isn't trying to get us!), 2) A test. If the PCs are too paranoid and do kill or leave the prisoners, they will be shown their error and it creates nice drama, 3) Realistic AND classic heroics, and 4) To set them up of course for it happening later. Maybe even 5) Romantic interests and/or creating recurring NPCs.

This is actually getting my wheels turning. Illusionary harems not meant to trap, but meant for the dungeon denizens (hey, they get lonely too!). Not to mention illusions that, for whatever reason, have suddenly gained sentience but don't realize they are illusions.

Hell, I can't remember any module ever that had a traditional "Save the Princess" mode, except for that one AD&D module back in the day with the princess that was tied up with her hair.

 

[Orius]

My first DM I think may have been into this. He said at one point that his favorite monsters were medusas; he'd keep them in the shadows or something and describe the hot sexy woman that would lure the PCs in before they noticed the snaky bits on her head.

After hearing this, the players broke out a 2e PHB for character creation and told EVERYONE who could to take Blind-fighting as a NWP.

 

[CapnZapp]

The new adventure (

Spoiler

Oasis of the Golden Peacock

) also does this in a way that feels rather fresh imo.

One problem (when attempting this usig the current ruleset) is how some characters are practically immune to illusion ruse attempts.

For instance, my group's Shaman has a passive Perception that is through the roof. A monster needs to be rather high-level for her illusion not to be instantly and automatically pierced by this PC.

 

[Derren]

Damsel in distress traps are easy to detect with OOC knowledge (not that I promote that).

When you are in the middle of a dungeon crawl with no exit in sight, the last thing the DM will do is to have a NPC non combatant accompany you.

 

[haakon1]

Damsel in distress traps are easy to detect with OOC knowledge (not that I promote that).

When you are in the middle of a dungeon crawl with no exit in sight, the last thing the DM will do is to have a NPC non combatant accompany you.

That's very meta-gamey -- assuming having an NPC along would be a drag for the DM, so they wouldn't do it.

I actually like having NPC's along, and sometimes I hand over the character sheet to the players to run them.

If I heard super-meta-gamey comments like this, I'd be inclined to do the damsel in distress, hand them an innocent character sheet, like Human Aristocrat 2 or something like that, and then later on pull out the REAL character sheet for what it actually is. Bwahahaha!