Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 4076729" data-attributes="member: 1861">Good Gaming Supplement: Doppelgangers and the Juin Hypothesis.Before we open the article, some sad news; I have not received enough entries to make a sporting contest.  Sadly, I have to discontinue our contest for now, and then work on getting something together later . . . even though I now have enough cash to throw a decent enough (even if small) prize for it.  Ehh, c’est la vie.  Instead we will be returning to those other articles at the completion of the Doppelganger series.  Now, onto the Juin hypothesis.  This theory, as listed in our most recent article, states that Doppelgangers can form into a collective body which then can produce more of themselves, or take on forms beyond a standard doppelganger.  The Juin type of doppelganger is asexual, but enters into a reproductive state which produces copies of the mass of doppelgangers currently in a collective.  The Juin-style of doppelganger is similar to the race of Changelings presented in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which have a similar collective known as <a href="http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Great_Link" target="_blank">The Great Link</a>.  However, there are many different forms of Juin-type doppelganger.  Probably the most interesting Juin-type would be the Living City doppelganger.  The first time I personally ran into the concept was in a friend’s off-and-on 2nd Edition game.  Each player was a doppelganger (we crudely pieced them together with abilities and different ‘nifty’ talents) which was a youngling of one of the Masters of a large evershifting city.   The city, known as <High Place> (due to the ability to detect thoughts, most of the names and concepts in the game were set down by the DM as thought pictures rather than names themselves), was hidden atop a mountain, kept from the rigors of other societies.  I played a changeling who could alter its shape and style, and after gaining a certain magical item I was able to learn how to mimic other’s attacks, using these attacks in small bursts or extended over the day as I learned more and more of them.  When I saw the <a href="http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20041210b" target="_blank">Chameleon</a> Prestige class I was almost sad that we never ported that game into 3.X for some more play.  I really do miss my little <Flowing Trickster> quite a bit, because he was fun to play with.The Juin-type of doppelganger gives some really interesting devices.  In my own campaign, the doppelgangers of Primdeka are one of two sources for flowing silver; though most think that it is quicksilver enchanted, it is actually the remains of fallen doppelgangers or those who are punished for crimes against a collective.  In the hands of an able mage, psion or artificer, the material can act with alarming changes; weapons can change on a moment’s notice to deal different damage, armor can become spiked at will, a heavy torc can be activated and spread across the body as reactive armor.  Thankfully, most of these items are easily patched into your game using the Magic Item<a href="http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=54389" target="_blank">Magic Item Compendium</a>, which in and of itself is a great tool.Next installment, we will cover the use of the third and final (Infernal/Angelic/Chaotic/Lawful Doppelgangers) along with some appearances in mythology of the Changeling and similar creatures.  This is a short article I know . . . but due to schedule issues this is the length I can do in the time I have <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />.Until Next Time,Good Gaming,Slainte,-Loonook</blockquote>

Verification