D&D 5E dream warrior attacking single character

[CapnZapp]

I have this idea for a cursed item, that the first night the specific character that ends up with the item in his or her possession is attacked through her dreams by a dream warrior of sorts.
The nature of the attacks could be anything, but in this case I have an ancient Orc relic in mind, so the sequence of dream attacks could be: an Orc, an Orog, and then an Orc War Chief. (The party is all third level). If all three dream warriors are defeated, the curse dissipates and the item become loot.

Now, I'd like your help in what possibilities and hindrances there are, given a fairly standard D&D campaign.

First: the issue of the single target. I'm thinking there needs to be some way for the others to intervene, if only after the first (easy) attack. I am aware of the angel of death thing from the Deck of Many Cards or whassis-name, where each intervening character gets its own monster copy to fight. (This might still be useful for a squishie character; that is, two PCs are probably better off against two boogies, than one PC against one boogie; depending on the PC of course)

Should the attacks take place in the Ethereal plane? Or on a dream plane? Or merely have the attackers be ghostly but otherwise fully targetable by allies?

Then: elves. It would be kind of cool if the party could simply give the idol to the party elf. No dreams, no attacks. But perhaps the Orc Gods won't stand for being cheated by their hated elf enemies?

How do you help out? Will See Invis help? Perhaps a wake? Or a protection from evil will shunt the dream warrior out in the open where everybody can bash it?

How would you implement this? What solutions would you allow? Any links to similar items or effects from any previous edition welcome!

I'm thinking the lone character wakes up in the middle of the night, having defeated the first dream warrior. Then they do a bit of experimenting, and even if they haven't come up with something clever, the character with the item will probably beat warrior #2 during night #2. But when it comes to night #3, they really need to have come up with a plan to bring in more heroes into the fight, or things are going to get deadly. Is the idea.

(As in all of these threads, the answer "your world, your rules" is entirely unhelpful. I am specifically asking for tips and tricks that show off a knowledge of how things have been done in D&D, for that cool patina of officialness.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Now, I'd like your help in what possibilities and hindrances there are, given a fairly standard D&D campaign.

First: the issue of the single target. I'm thinking there needs to be some way for the others to intervene, if only after the first (easy) attack.

Yeah, you don't want to fall into 'netrunner syndrome' or anything. 5e PCs are typically combat-capable enough to handle an orc, so the first dream is safe-ish, regardless. You could simply have defeat in the dream have a consequence that still makes for an interesting story - possession of the wielder by the item seems an obvious one.

I am aware of the angel of death thing from the Deck of Many Cards or whassis-name, where each intervening character gets its own monster copy to fight. (This might still be useful for a squishie character; that is, two PCs are probably better off against two boogies, than one PC against one boogie; depending on the PC of course)

I've actually run in spirit-realms and dream-realms quite a bit, going back to an old 1e AD&D campaign. I did a variety of things, like having mental stats replace physical ones (CHA:STR, INTEX, WIS:CON) and otherwise using rules for physical conflict (combat), or like letting the dreamers change form/size or alter the environment if they were 'lucid.'

Should the attacks take place in the Ethereal plane? Or on a dream plane? Or merely have the attackers be ghostly but otherwise fully targetable by allies?

Dream plane or 'in the victim's head' sound appropriate. An actual Ethereal attacker 'summoned' by the item and present in its own right, maybe drawing a dream-self of the victim into the Ethereal could work, though, it would let PCs able to interact with that plane intervene - but, can anyone do that in the party?

Then: elves. It would be kind of cool if the party could simply give the idol to the party elf. No dreams, no attacks. But perhaps the Orc Gods won't stand for being cheated by their hated elf enemies?

It could just 'burn' the elf that touches it or something. Orc artifact, anathema to elves fits.

How do you help out? Will See Invis help? Perhaps a wake? Or a protection from evil will shunt the dream warrior out in the open where everybody can bash it?

How would you implement this? What solutions would you allow? Any links to similar items or effects from any previous edition welcome!

I ran a vaguely similar scenario not long ago. The party was attacking a BBEG that was not native to reality, itself, it existed in a void, the only attribute it shared with the PCs was consciousness. When the party breached it's realm, they each found themselves, individually, in a 'mindscape' (like a dream), facing a hated enemy. When they were able to telepathically contact eachother, they started merging dreamscapes and were finally able to confront the true enemy.

The upshot for your scenario I have in mind is letting the victim bring other PCs into his dream. It could be a check on either or both their parts, a Mystic power or spell, or it could be based on RP, having to evoke the relationship between the characters to get a helper to appear in the shared dream.

I'm thinking the lone character wakes up in the middle of the night, having defeated the first dream warrior. Then they do a bit of experimenting, and even if they haven't come up with something clever, the character with the item will probably beat warrior #2 during night #2. But when it comes to night #3, they really need to have come up with a plan to bring in more heroes into the fight, or things are going to get deadly. Is the idea.

( I am specifically asking for tips and tricks that show off a knowledge of how things have been done in D&D, for that cool patina of officialness.)

You and your officialdom fetish... (ooh, that doesn't look quite right typed out). ;P

The Night Hag has attacked victims in their dreams in past editions, check those out. The 5e version's Nightmare Haunting prevents a rest & reduces maximum hps, which could easily be worse than the consequence of fighting an orc or orog, even if those consequences were entirely real. The 4e version did psychic damage. The 3.x version drained CON. The AD&D version essentially drained CON, but also strangled victims to death. All allowed intervention in some way.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

In my last campaign, there was a character that had a similar trait. Under certain circumstances, he would have shared nightmares that would draw in other creatures.

In prior editions elves could both sleep and dream, although they didn't have to, in 5e it's easier to just say it's something either than sleep/dreaming and it's simply a curse that pulls them into another dimension temporarily. The character in question could conceivably avoid the "dreams" via magic, or drugs, but that was only helpful once they figured out what triggered them. This isn't an issue if you specifically want elves to be excluded.

Because it was like a dreamworld, they also eventually learned that they had some control over the dreamworld. They could alter things, bring things in, and also take things out.

In your case, to make it last longer and be a bit more interesting, I'd say that there's a copy of the item within the demiplane. If they recover that copy, then the curse is broken.

So the initial battle might be the one individual, battling it out. The other characters might notice he's having a bad dream, and wake him up. But make sure something follows him out of the dream world. It could be damage, but I like to avoid that. There were a couple of really deadly encounters I threw at the PCs and they were convinced they were dead. The best was one where we had to complete the encounter at the start of the next session. They were convinced they were all going to die, and were working on strategies between sessions, only to find it was a dream when they woke up after they were killed. As cliche as it is, it worked amazingly well. Future difficult encounters were suspect, and while they often suspected a dream, they were wrong as often as they were right, if not more.

Sometimes the dreams included creatures or NPCs they had just killed. Either as undead, or alive again. One of the characters was brought into he campaign in a dream sequence. The character had a half-brother (and didn't know it, and it wasn't obvious at first), and he unwittingly sucked him into the dream world.

So you have a lot of possibilities. But I would suggest starting with pulling all of the characters into the initial dream sequence. It will be totally unexpected and you'll get the most effect out of that first one. The sequence can last a few minutes, or even a few sessions.

They don't really need to learn the source or even what really happened (other than it wasn't entirely real), after the first sequence. But make sure you have a definable trigger, or triggers, so they can work out when it will happen. They might still not know why it's happening.

Then, in one of the sequences, they can see the Orc War Chief wielding the same object, but not be able to get to him or kill him yet. That should be enough for them to figure out what's doing it. But you can add more clues if needed.

Then it's up to you to decide if something like remove curse is sufficient to rid themselves of the item or not. Also, I'd design in some detrimental effects that are easy to determine if they don't choose to confront it. For example, perhaps the Orc War Chief is a fiendish creature that can attempt to possess the wielder, or that the item feeds off of a creature's life-force, with the implication that at some point, the item can take control, or the fiend within will be releases. Something to provide a reason that they will be more likely to attempt to deal with it, rather than just throw it away.

Perhaps the item was created to be a prison for the fiendish war chief, and that the demiplane is within the item itself. Destroying the item is one option, but it is also possible to kill the War Chief within the item, and seize it for themselves. But this really means that the item has a greater possibility of controlling the wielder and that it must eventually be destroyed anyway.

If you go with the idea that elves are unaffected by the dream state, then there can be some other effect that affects only elves. Like the other effects, perhaps the curse can only be removed when the item is destroyed. Otherwise a remove curse just removes the bad effects for 24 hours.

Another possibility is that the item is not a true way into the demiplane, but another entrance exists and once you find that, you can destroy the item within the demiplane. Also, you should determine if there is a way for them to be trapped in the demiplane and not get out. At least not the way they came in.

Another cool feature I used it for, is that the "dream" often took place within the very dungeon they were in. So they were able to explore and find things. When they had a bit more control (and wanted to risk the often significant consequences), they would use the demiplane to explore and retrieve things to avoid something in the real dungeon that wasn't in the dream world version. That didn't allow them to stay in a new location (since they woke up where they were), but they could use it for reconnaissance, and sometimes to retrieve an item.

I find that for things like this, cliche and common tropes are your friend. The players will have to figure out some of this on their own and it's much easier if there are similarities to things they will know. I also find that you don't have to define everything up front. Only what you need to know to get the ball rolling. You can expand on it as needed.

You don't always have to trigger it when "sleeping" either. At one point they were traveling by ship, and they didn't realize that the fog they were in had rendered them unconscious. Everything past that point for a period was part of the dream world. The crew had turned against them, only to find when the crew woke them later. That didn't keep them from being suspicious of the crew, especially since some of the things they learned (about the contraband for cargo) was true.

I like things like this to spark new threads in a campaign. Obviously, the characters have found something powerful and that would be very bad to unleash, but it's not a save-the-world event, just something that would be very, very bad over a small region. Because they are the ones that found the item, there are obvious reasons why they are now the heroes that must destroy it.

You might very well have to home-brew some material - spells (that may no longer be able to be found or cast today, but still function in the context of the item), monsters, and the nature of the demiplane itself are the obvious ones to me. I prefer to write rules/descriptions for everything in my campaign so there is no question (to me) as to how that weird thing happened, even if it's not something the PCs themselves can achieve.

Oh, and any night in which they have such an encounter, they cannot benefit from a long rest. Within the demiplane it might seem like it lasted minutes, but tick off a number of hours in the game-world. Maybe 4 or 6. This works even better if you have rules for lack of sleep.

 

[CapnZapp]

Okay, so etherealness would be cool, but alas - at low level there is no way to interact with the ghost plane. Not using official rules anyway. (See Invisible is a spell few sorcerers would ever pick, and since it isn't in the wizard's spellbook I might have to give it to him. That way, magic missiles and other force spells would be able to help).

Never mind. I'll probably have them try to sleep with more than one character holding the gold idol, and will reward that with both/all of them drawn in.

Of course, they could always leave the loot behind (yeah, like that would ever happen). Since this would be a crude depiction of Baghtru the leg-breaker, I'm thinking they could reshape the gold into magic +1 knuckle-dusters for the monk.