A damsel in distress!

[lukelightning]

I can't believe you didn't include doppleganger in the poll!

I knew I was forgetting something. But doppelgangers seem to like to be old men instead of damsels. I guess it's an excuse for them to have 3-round pauses in conversation while they attempt to read the PCs thoughts with detect thoughts ("I'm reading this guy's mind...he's thinking how come I am staring into space and concentrating for three rounds and wondering if it's a spell...")

I like how doppelgangers' modus operandi is mostly "murder someone and take their place" and yet they are still "neutral." Why? Because the DMs don't want detect evil to spot them. Yeah, doppelgangers aren't always murdering people but many doppelganger adventures explicitly say the d-ganger killed someone. Often an old man.

If I was a player and encountered some doppelganger that had done the typical "murder and replace" bit, and didn't detect as evil I'd be pissed. Or just say "fine, my neutral wizard murders the barkeep and uses disguise self to impersonate him!"

 

[Goblyn]

Huh. I had exactly this happen in my game about amonth ago. THe damsel is a dragon. A silver dragon, but the PCs don't know it yet. They just suspect she's more than she seems.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I voted lycanthrope only because doppelganger wasn't an option.

 

[Mycanid]

Yeah Luke - never was completely sure whether or no Dopplegangers actually ate their victims or they were some strange creature with their own mind/designs/whatever ... sorta like the illithids in the sense that you can never tell what their long term goals are if you get my meaning (although don't push the comparison too far). If they just eat the victim somehow then I could buy the neutral alignment thing ... but I don't remember if it has ever been explicitely said that they did....

 

[lukelightning]

If they just eat the victim somehow then I could buy the neutral alignment thing ... but I don't remember if it has ever been explicitely said that they did....

Why would eating them make them neutral? One of the reasons mind flayers are evil is because they like to eat sentient beings' brains. Eating people is evil, at least that's what my DM said when my wizard said "it's a shame to waste all this dead bandit meat." You can only get away with it if you are too dumb to know better (e.g. animals and some monsters).

 

[Kid Socrates]

Other - An appologetic mycanoid.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. This got the biggest laugh out of me.

 

[lukelightning]

One time, years ago, I was playing a game in which we encountered a Damsel in Distress. I was highly suspicous but nobody else was; even if she was harmless I didn't want to have to guard her or bring her back to town.

So what did I do? I pretended she enchanted my character into attacking the rest of the party, so they killed her to break the "spell." And, of course, she was just a plain old damsel (some merchant's daughter).

 

[Luthien Greyspear]

I would have chosen doppelganger, 'cause I just love using those crafty lil' buggers.

Sadly, as they weren't available, I went with succubus.

 

[dren]

The last time I ran this scenaio, the damsel was actually a fey who was in desperate trouble. She was quite a flirt and everyone except the "dumb" fighter didn't believe that the dryad was actually a dryad. But she was, and they reluctantly helped, and she gave the fighter an innocent peck on the check as part of the reward. The other players were dumbfounded that a prisoner could actually be what they saw with their eyes, and for the longest time, the character always used the kiss as proof that he could be smarter than the cleric and wizard combined!

 

[Barak]

What's wrong with male medusas? I was going to make one that was kind of dwarvish-looking, with a beard of snakes.

They did have male medusas in AD&D second edition, but they were fairly lame. No snakes whatsoever, they were basically decent fighters with immunity to petrification as their sole "special ability".