Help me stop my Player!

[gabrion]

In a RL (real life, not ravenloft) campaign I'm running, I ran into an interesting question from one of my players. For a bit of background info, the players are all evil and the plot revolves around them doing the bidding of various demons. Last session one of the characters was reading through the monster's manual and came across the shadow. He was intrigued by the Shadow's create spawn ability and cooked up a plan.

He wants to purchase a scroll or two of shapechange and turn into a shadow, gaining the create spawn ability. Before shapechanging he plans to sneak into a house in a small village and use a sap to disable the members of the household. When they are unconscious he will turn into a shadow and do enough STR damage to each of them to turn them into shadows, under his control. After accumulating several of these followers, they will go through the village and simultaneously attack more sleeping individuals, create even more spawn. The end result...an army of undead shadows.

My question is obviously whether or not this is legal, and if not what are the sticking points. From a DM perspective I already have ways of dealing with it should he carry through with the plan (he wont be able to escape notice if he does somethig like this and various people will hunt for the culprit), but it seems like the tactic should have a hole in it somewhere. I'm just wondering if anyone sees something I'm missing that prevents this tactic from working.

BTW-It will be pretty tough for the character to make the UMD check for the scroll in the first place, but I'm not really concerned with that. For the purpose of this discussion please assume the check is made.

 

[Taloras]

Hmm....legally, his plan will work, at least for getting to be a shadow and creating spawn. however, once that shapechange spell wears off (or he changes to any form other than shadow), id say he no longer controls them. Then he has to deal with being surrounded by a bunch of shadows.....what happens anytime someone has complete control over someone and its suddenly broken? they attack.

 

[Viashimo]

I would suggest, let this run it's course. I mean, let him do it.

It doesn't matter, people notice when half a village or more of people disappear, especially in a world with a smaller population. Then send an army of clerics and paladins to destroy the evil menace. Otherwise, persuade him outside the game to not do it. There are probably other ways of handling it. Perhaps a seer or visionary predicted his arrival and the villagers were awake and called for mystical defense.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Well ...

This spell functions like polymorph, except that it enables you to assume the form of any single nonunique creature (of any type) from Fine to Colossal size. The assumed form cannot have more than your caster level in Hit Dice (to a maximum of 25 HD). Unlike polymorph, this spell allows incorporeal or gaseous forms to be assumed.
You gain all extraordinary and supernatural abilities (both attacks and qualities) of the assumed form, but you lose your own supernatural abilities.

Strength Damage (Su): The touch of a shadow deals 1d6 points of Strength damage to a living foe. A creature reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow dies. This is a negative energy effect.
Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow becomes a shadow under the control of its killer within 1d4 rounds.

Looks, at least on the surface, that it's legal.

 

[Prince Atom]

I take it, then, that shapechange is a different spell than polymorph? With the latter, you can't turn into undead. Is it possible with the former?

TWK

 

[Einan]

I would suggest, let this run it's course. I mean, let him do it.

It doesn't matter, people notice when half a village or more of people disappear, especially in a world with a smaller population. Then send an army of clerics and paladins to destroy the evil menace. Otherwise, persuade him outside the game to not do it. There are probably other ways of handling it. Perhaps a seer or visionary predicted his arrival and the villagers were awake and called for mystical defense.

Hear, hear!

What a magnificent role playing experience! He changes back to human, gets attacked by the shadows and has to deal with the deaths of half a village attracting paladins, clerics and angels to boot. Let it ride!
Einan

 

[calypso15]

Hear, hear!

What a magnificent role playing experience! He changes back to human, gets attacked by the shadows and has to deal with the deaths of half a village attracting paladins, clerics and angels to boot. Let it ride!
Einan

Not to mention being rebuffed (read: tortured) by the demons for drawing so much attention to them.

Calypso

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Note that the shadow's ability states, "under control of its killer." Reverting to human form would not necessarily break this control.

 

[gabrion]

Hey thanks for the input everyone. I probably should have named the thread something else, since I do plan to allow this if the character really wants to go through with it and it's legal, but I was not so secretly hoping that it wouldn't be possible.

On the topic of having the shadows attack him, does anyone have a particualr reason why this would happen? Originally I thought the ability read such that the spawn were controlled by the "shadow" that killed them, but upon inspection (and all of you can see it in Patryn's post), the wording just says they are under control of the killer. It seems like this would mean that the killer doesn't need to stay in shadow form to maintain control.

As for what to do if the plan works for him, people will notice and since one of the governing bodies of the land is a church, he will no doubt be hunted. I don't know about introducing celestials into the mix, since I think they would more likely send there followers to handle it, but if you all have any more suggestions of how to handle this I would love to hear them!

Edit: Patryn beat me to the punch on the control thing

 

[Goolpsy]

Note that the shadow's ability states, "under control of its killer." Reverting to human form would not necessarily break this control.

tecnically he would be able to control them, and wouldn't

"Under control of its killer" sure he could control them... but

As it is stated under the special ability ***That he loses when reverting to human form***
he also lose that part of the sentense... It could be ruled in both ways