In yesterday's session, the PCs fought some doppelgangers. It's the first time I've used doppelgangers for about 20 years, and it was fun.
In the previous session, the sorcerer PC had been amassing chaos energy to try to infuse it into himself and/or items. This worked - he imbued himself with the Gift of Flame and also transmuted a jewelled horn the party was carrying into a Fire Horn. (Mechanically, this was resolved as an Arcana-based skill challenge while the rest of the party fought off the mooncalves who had been attracted by the chaotic forces.)
He also realised that, as well as the chaos energy leaking from the body of the dead dragon Calastryx (on which he was standing) and leaking from a nearby portal to the Elemental Chaos, there was elemental chaos flowing south from the mountains to the north. And as he stood in his chaotic vortex on the body of Calastryx, the apparent distance between him and the mountains closed, and he could sense the chaos leaching up from the underdark. And he could see a plateau surrounded by a ring of mountains, where an army of hobgoblins was encamped next to a temple to Torog cut into the mountainside - prompting the thought that the chaos energy was escaping because Torog had dug too deep into the world.
Now the PCs have for many levels been fighting against the hobgoblins, and the players have been planning to try and raid the army to the north, and so they decided to step through the vortex and cover the distance immediately, rather than have to spend a week or more climbing up through the mountains. They were a little concerned about arriving in the middle of the army - having only two or three healing surges across the whole party and two or three party members already being bloodied - and the player of the chaos sorcerer was getting ready to make more Arcana checks to try to shift the destination of his distance-spanning vortex.
But the wizard PC decided to use his Sceptre of Erathis (= 3 parts, so far, of the Rod of 7 Parts) to try and master the chaos - which )after a successful Religion check) resulted in the focus of the vortex shifting, to an ancient Nerathi stair at the bottom of the plateau, and at the base of a waterfall. (One property of the sceptre is its tendency to point out lost Nerathi paths and ruins.) So the PCs stepped through the vortex - taking 10 damage in the process, which most could not heal (and which left the ranger with 3 hp).
On the other side of the vortex, at the base of the stairs up the side of the waterfall, they took a short rest and then decided to look for somewhere to take an extended rest. They first spoke with the statues at the base of the stair (which I described by reference to the Argonath in LotR, only at the bottom rather than the top of a (more modest) waterfall) – I used the "dealing with the guardians" component of the running river (?) skill challenge in the DMG2 for this – and then climbed the stair to a ruined watchhouse on a bridge spanning the river at its top. And decided to rest there. (The stair, plateau, river etc are all from the old B/X module "Night's Dark Terror".)
While they were resting they were attacked by doppelgangers. This encounter incorporated elements of two encounters in the Heathen adventure from Dungeon 155 (the first free 4e edition of Dungeon) – the "Blades in the Night" doppelganger encounter, and the "Friend of My Enemy" solo tiefling encounter. I restatted the 4th level solo tiefling lurker as a 15th level solo doppelganger lurker, and added in one doppelganger infiltrator from the Monster Vault, increased to 15th level.
The encounter actually happened in two parts. The doppelgangers attacked the party resting in the watchhouse. They didn't get total surprise, because the sorcerer, being a drow, was meditating rather than sleeping. But the solo took the form of the PC paladin, the other the form of the PC wizard - these two being at opposite ends of the watchhouse, and the doppelgangers having used their Stealth to sneak along the bridge, the solo climbing all the way around the outside while the other waited on what was, for the doppelgangers, the nearer side.
The solo had initiative, and I introduced him first in a dream being had by the paladin. It had already been established in previous sessions that the Nerathi towns and ruins in this part of the world are built on the former dragonborn empire, and the paladin - a tiefling - had recognised the name of the plateau ("Hutaka") as figuring in tiefling legends as a last redoubt of the dragonborn, never taken by Bael Turath. So the player had specified that, before sleeping, the paladin was going to meditate on the battles that had been fought here, and commune with his god (The Raven Queen) to pay homage to the tieflings who had been killed here fighting the vile dragonborn. And so I described dreams of battles between tieflings and dragonborn, which became increasingly vivid until he suddenly felt himself part of the battle, and being assailed by a dragonborn wielding twin scimitars - which then shifted into reality as he was stabbed by the twin shortswords of the doppelganger, who in fact looked like him.
Because the meditating drow could see where the attacking doppelganger had come from relative to the sleeping paladin, the confusion caused by the duplication was minimal - especially when one of the two suffered the radiant damage from the paladin's challenge for using an attack against another PC. And so it only took a round or so for the solo doppelganger to be pushed over the bridge (by the sorcerer's Demonsoul Bolts) into the rushing water, to be carried down the waterfall. The players assumed this was the end of that Doppelganger, but I applied 110 hp damage (for a 200' fall, at 1d10 per 10 feet) and then applied the benefits of a surge expenditure, which left the solo hurt but well above bloodied, and ready for an unexpected return later in the night.
Meanwhile, the other doppleganger, having taken the form of the wizard, attempted to sow confusion. Which worked to a reasonable extent, as it took advantage of its ability to swap places when attacked with the wizard whom it had copied. Although the players always knew which was which (because I changed the token when the swap took place, so that the player of the wizard would know where his PC was) they did a good job of playing their PCs as confused. Some good Bluff rolls by the doppelganger, which only the paladin's passive insight was able to beat, also helped - so when the wizard summoned his familiar, for example, hoping to thereby signal that he was not the doppelganger, only the paladin was confident that the doppelganger was lying when it protested that "The shapechanger has used a charm to take control of my dragonling!"
Eventually, though, they worked out which was the real wizard and which the doppelganger. But only after the wizard had been knocked unconscious. And in response to which the doppelganger then took the form of the ranger. And this actually worked better for me (as GM), because the player of the ranger was away on a family camping trip and the ranger was being played by committee, and so I didn't feel the same imperative to communicate to any player at the table where the real ranger was located. And so when an attack was made against the doppelganger and it once again pulled its switch, I didn't move the tokens but just applied the damage appropriately - which dropped the 3 hp ranger unconscious. At which point - given that prior to that point they knew the doppelganger was not bloodied - they thought "oops" - particularly as the ranger (who is a hybrid cleric) was the only one who could help the wizard (who had 1 surge left, and thus could be revived with a Healing Word).
The doppelganger then started running for it, heading across the bridge and along the path up into the mountains. But in a deft series of maneouvres the PCs revived the ranger with a healing potion, who then used a minor action to heal the wizard, spent an action point, and then took two attacks against the fleeing doppelganger - Biting Volley and Twin Strike - and of the four attacks got 2 crits, which even without hunter's quarry were enough to bring it down.
The PCs then took a short rest, the paladin spent the last healing surge in the party, and went back to resting. Some time later the solo doppelganger returned, causing some surprise (the players didn't seem surprised by another attack, but it took a little time for them all to realise that it was the same enemy, having climbed back up after surviving the waterfall Moriarty-style). Because of the way that I'd statted the solo this played less like a classic doppelganger encounter. There was quite a bit of invisibility on the doppelganger's part, and the PC's retaliated with Eye for an Eye and Orbmaster's Umbral Assault, meaning that it was an encounter involving a lot of total concealment, which overall advantaged the PCs due to their strong ranger of close and area attacks. The doppelganger's "Teleport 5 sq and turn invisible power" recharged while it was still inside the Umbral zone, and it was pretty low on hit points the next round when the zone dropped and it teleport out. And it then got dropped by a combination of Blazing Starfall and Combined Fire (or maybe just Twin Strike) from the ranger before it could run away down the stairs.
The session ended with the PCs using their last healing potion (which, like the Mordenkainen's Emporium potions, permits recovery without a surge while bloodied) to revive the fighter - the only PC knocked unconscious by the second doppelganger assault - before then taking their extended rest, this time without interruption. Next session will (I imagine) be their attack on/inflitration of the army and the temple of Torog.
Anyway, the doppelgangers played well. As is often the case with shapechanging monsters, there were some funny rules moments where it wasn't clear exactly how things are meant to work - when the two-sword wielding doppelganger takes the form of the paladin, for example (who wields a shield and a khopesh), how exactly is its attack meant to work? I fudged some of this a bit - letting swings of two swords look like an aggressive use of sword and shield. Similarly, when the other doppelganger had taken the form of the mage, I described its dagger attack as being a point blank blast of magic missile from a staff. But the players were good sports about it, and the whole "am I attacking my friend or my enemy" vibe certainly made it an interesting encounter.
In the previous session, the sorcerer PC had been amassing chaos energy to try to infuse it into himself and/or items. This worked - he imbued himself with the Gift of Flame and also transmuted a jewelled horn the party was carrying into a Fire Horn. (Mechanically, this was resolved as an Arcana-based skill challenge while the rest of the party fought off the mooncalves who had been attracted by the chaotic forces.)
He also realised that, as well as the chaos energy leaking from the body of the dead dragon Calastryx (on which he was standing) and leaking from a nearby portal to the Elemental Chaos, there was elemental chaos flowing south from the mountains to the north. And as he stood in his chaotic vortex on the body of Calastryx, the apparent distance between him and the mountains closed, and he could sense the chaos leaching up from the underdark. And he could see a plateau surrounded by a ring of mountains, where an army of hobgoblins was encamped next to a temple to Torog cut into the mountainside - prompting the thought that the chaos energy was escaping because Torog had dug too deep into the world.
Now the PCs have for many levels been fighting against the hobgoblins, and the players have been planning to try and raid the army to the north, and so they decided to step through the vortex and cover the distance immediately, rather than have to spend a week or more climbing up through the mountains. They were a little concerned about arriving in the middle of the army - having only two or three healing surges across the whole party and two or three party members already being bloodied - and the player of the chaos sorcerer was getting ready to make more Arcana checks to try to shift the destination of his distance-spanning vortex.
But the wizard PC decided to use his Sceptre of Erathis (= 3 parts, so far, of the Rod of 7 Parts) to try and master the chaos - which )after a successful Religion check) resulted in the focus of the vortex shifting, to an ancient Nerathi stair at the bottom of the plateau, and at the base of a waterfall. (One property of the sceptre is its tendency to point out lost Nerathi paths and ruins.) So the PCs stepped through the vortex - taking 10 damage in the process, which most could not heal (and which left the ranger with 3 hp).
On the other side of the vortex, at the base of the stairs up the side of the waterfall, they took a short rest and then decided to look for somewhere to take an extended rest. They first spoke with the statues at the base of the stair (which I described by reference to the Argonath in LotR, only at the bottom rather than the top of a (more modest) waterfall) – I used the "dealing with the guardians" component of the running river (?) skill challenge in the DMG2 for this – and then climbed the stair to a ruined watchhouse on a bridge spanning the river at its top. And decided to rest there. (The stair, plateau, river etc are all from the old B/X module "Night's Dark Terror".)
While they were resting they were attacked by doppelgangers. This encounter incorporated elements of two encounters in the Heathen adventure from Dungeon 155 (the first free 4e edition of Dungeon) – the "Blades in the Night" doppelganger encounter, and the "Friend of My Enemy" solo tiefling encounter. I restatted the 4th level solo tiefling lurker as a 15th level solo doppelganger lurker, and added in one doppelganger infiltrator from the Monster Vault, increased to 15th level.
The encounter actually happened in two parts. The doppelgangers attacked the party resting in the watchhouse. They didn't get total surprise, because the sorcerer, being a drow, was meditating rather than sleeping. But the solo took the form of the PC paladin, the other the form of the PC wizard - these two being at opposite ends of the watchhouse, and the doppelgangers having used their Stealth to sneak along the bridge, the solo climbing all the way around the outside while the other waited on what was, for the doppelgangers, the nearer side.
The solo had initiative, and I introduced him first in a dream being had by the paladin. It had already been established in previous sessions that the Nerathi towns and ruins in this part of the world are built on the former dragonborn empire, and the paladin - a tiefling - had recognised the name of the plateau ("Hutaka") as figuring in tiefling legends as a last redoubt of the dragonborn, never taken by Bael Turath. So the player had specified that, before sleeping, the paladin was going to meditate on the battles that had been fought here, and commune with his god (The Raven Queen) to pay homage to the tieflings who had been killed here fighting the vile dragonborn. And so I described dreams of battles between tieflings and dragonborn, which became increasingly vivid until he suddenly felt himself part of the battle, and being assailed by a dragonborn wielding twin scimitars - which then shifted into reality as he was stabbed by the twin shortswords of the doppelganger, who in fact looked like him.
Because the meditating drow could see where the attacking doppelganger had come from relative to the sleeping paladin, the confusion caused by the duplication was minimal - especially when one of the two suffered the radiant damage from the paladin's challenge for using an attack against another PC. And so it only took a round or so for the solo doppelganger to be pushed over the bridge (by the sorcerer's Demonsoul Bolts) into the rushing water, to be carried down the waterfall. The players assumed this was the end of that Doppelganger, but I applied 110 hp damage (for a 200' fall, at 1d10 per 10 feet) and then applied the benefits of a surge expenditure, which left the solo hurt but well above bloodied, and ready for an unexpected return later in the night.
Meanwhile, the other doppleganger, having taken the form of the wizard, attempted to sow confusion. Which worked to a reasonable extent, as it took advantage of its ability to swap places when attacked with the wizard whom it had copied. Although the players always knew which was which (because I changed the token when the swap took place, so that the player of the wizard would know where his PC was) they did a good job of playing their PCs as confused. Some good Bluff rolls by the doppelganger, which only the paladin's passive insight was able to beat, also helped - so when the wizard summoned his familiar, for example, hoping to thereby signal that he was not the doppelganger, only the paladin was confident that the doppelganger was lying when it protested that "The shapechanger has used a charm to take control of my dragonling!"
Eventually, though, they worked out which was the real wizard and which the doppelganger. But only after the wizard had been knocked unconscious. And in response to which the doppelganger then took the form of the ranger. And this actually worked better for me (as GM), because the player of the ranger was away on a family camping trip and the ranger was being played by committee, and so I didn't feel the same imperative to communicate to any player at the table where the real ranger was located. And so when an attack was made against the doppelganger and it once again pulled its switch, I didn't move the tokens but just applied the damage appropriately - which dropped the 3 hp ranger unconscious. At which point - given that prior to that point they knew the doppelganger was not bloodied - they thought "oops" - particularly as the ranger (who is a hybrid cleric) was the only one who could help the wizard (who had 1 surge left, and thus could be revived with a Healing Word).
The doppelganger then started running for it, heading across the bridge and along the path up into the mountains. But in a deft series of maneouvres the PCs revived the ranger with a healing potion, who then used a minor action to heal the wizard, spent an action point, and then took two attacks against the fleeing doppelganger - Biting Volley and Twin Strike - and of the four attacks got 2 crits, which even without hunter's quarry were enough to bring it down.
The PCs then took a short rest, the paladin spent the last healing surge in the party, and went back to resting. Some time later the solo doppelganger returned, causing some surprise (the players didn't seem surprised by another attack, but it took a little time for them all to realise that it was the same enemy, having climbed back up after surviving the waterfall Moriarty-style). Because of the way that I'd statted the solo this played less like a classic doppelganger encounter. There was quite a bit of invisibility on the doppelganger's part, and the PC's retaliated with Eye for an Eye and Orbmaster's Umbral Assault, meaning that it was an encounter involving a lot of total concealment, which overall advantaged the PCs due to their strong ranger of close and area attacks. The doppelganger's "Teleport 5 sq and turn invisible power" recharged while it was still inside the Umbral zone, and it was pretty low on hit points the next round when the zone dropped and it teleport out. And it then got dropped by a combination of Blazing Starfall and Combined Fire (or maybe just Twin Strike) from the ranger before it could run away down the stairs.
The session ended with the PCs using their last healing potion (which, like the Mordenkainen's Emporium potions, permits recovery without a surge while bloodied) to revive the fighter - the only PC knocked unconscious by the second doppelganger assault - before then taking their extended rest, this time without interruption. Next session will (I imagine) be their attack on/inflitration of the army and the temple of Torog.
Anyway, the doppelgangers played well. As is often the case with shapechanging monsters, there were some funny rules moments where it wasn't clear exactly how things are meant to work - when the two-sword wielding doppelganger takes the form of the paladin, for example (who wields a shield and a khopesh), how exactly is its attack meant to work? I fudged some of this a bit - letting swings of two swords look like an aggressive use of sword and shield. Similarly, when the other doppelganger had taken the form of the mage, I described its dagger attack as being a point blank blast of magic missile from a staff. But the players were good sports about it, and the whole "am I attacking my friend or my enemy" vibe certainly made it an interesting encounter.
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