Does this give too much away?

[Corbert]

Currently, one of my players has a set of goggles that lets him see if a creature is alive, undead, or a construct.
The group encountered a cow that was possessed by an incorporeal extra-planar creature, so since it has no body of it's own it's lifeforce should overlap the cow's. So, I told the player he saw two lifeforces in the cow. Fortunatly, he assumed the cow was pregnant.

Later the cow was killed by the PCs, and the entity possessed a fox, then later a seagull. By now the PCs knew something was up with these strange animals that would cause chaos in the group. The clleric tied the gull up and the group walked off, so its gone and can't catch up. At some point the group is going to come up against a creature possessed by a fiend, and I'm thinking the character should see the same thing. Does that give too much away?

 

[Infiniti2000]

The way you made the item makes it an instant possession detector. That's not so big a deal except that it totally nerfs the creature you designed. It's too late to change the item now (retcon sucks), but I'd say that in hindsight your choice on the item wasn't a good idea (yes, it gives too much away). Identifying the actual creature would be good enough and allowing it to see something so flavor-oriented like "lifeforce" was too much.

 

[Felix]

I'd say the effect is fine, as long as the character can't keep those things on all the time. Like, allow him to see the life forces of creatures he has line of effect to, but don't let him see the chair, the sign on the door, the city... only the life forces. That'll mean he'll have to switch back and forth, he won't have it on always, and he'll be suceptable to attack when he's not wearing the goggles.

I'm sure that since he gets to keep the power to sense life forces, he'll accept the wrinkle of not being able to see inanimate objects.

 

[Corbert]

The way you made the item makes it an instant possession detector. That's not so big a deal except that it totally nerfs the creature you designed. It's too late to change the item now (retcon sucks), but I'd say that in hindsight your choice on the item wasn't a good idea (yes, it gives too much away). Identifying the actual creature would be good enough and allowing it to see something so flavor-oriented like "lifeforce" was too much.

I guess I should have mentioned this in my first post, but the goggles are from Libris Mortis, and the monster is from an online adventure I found called The Hellcow by Keith Baker www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/hellcow.rtf. The goggles were rolled up as random treasure. They looked fine at the time, but could cause problems down the road.

 

[Three_Haligonians]

I'm not really sure about this, but there might be a magic item somewhere that could hide the lifeforce. I suppose Mind Blank wouldn't work, but maybe you could invent something that would. If it's a powerful enough fiend and these goggles are fairly common, it seems like a good idea.

R from Three Haligonians

 

[Shin Okada]

I see no problem about it.

Are you expecting any trouble on giving challenges and adventures onto PCs by giving such information?

 

[Jack Simth]

Don't forget - there's only two lifeforces in there if the invading one permits the original to stay.....

 

[Corbert]

I see no problem about it.

Are you expecting any trouble on giving challenges and adventures onto PCs by giving such information?

It will probably reveal the fiend sooner that I want, it won't be able to get away with causing as much evil as it could.

 

[Arkhandus]

I should think that such an item would only detect living/undead/construct in creatures that the character can already see. If a ghost comes floating by ethereally, or a pixie flits past the character, they shouldn't see it's lifeforce or whatnot unless they have See Invisibility active.

 

[Lord Wyrm]

there's always Dispel Magic. My players know when the dispels start going off somethings going to get wonky.

Kind of like the electricity going off in a horror flick.