D&D 5E Some clever ideas wanted for a twist my players threw at me

[Unwise]

Ooh just had a thought. The well is a wishing well. You can throw in a coin and make a wish, but it consumes you totally to do so.

So Reginald wished for his family to get over the plague, it worked, but he is now bound to the well. A trade he is happy with. His grandkids have moved to another town though and he wants to be moved there to keep watching over them.

One day somebody will make a wish, Reginald will spend the last of his power to make it happen. Then he can move on and the next supplicant takes his place. It is not a trap, the well clearly states its price.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I'm thinking that as a ferret, Reginald cannot cast spells unless they have only a verbal component. He can talk, and recite poetry, and sing, however.

Now, unless your girlfriend is playing a rock gnome, there could be some kind of interest in her new toy on behalf of the rock gnome community, opening up adventures for (or against) them.

I also cannot shake the image of ferret-Reg being able to Optimus Prime himself into a ferret-sized mecha Reginald. Perhaps when he reaches level 7 or even once the party collects a cumulative amount of Inspiration (which can be spent, it's the earning it that's important) - how much you give out in a typical game will guide you on a suitable target.

Once in Transformer mode, he can cast spells as normal but only for a certain time - say, the duration of the full moon which is reflected into his 'home' pool. Thus they will need to protect the pool and/or move the water in it to a safe place. I dunno, it's a thought. Or for 24 hours, after which he must recoup his energy by resting for 2 days, during which time the ferret becomes just a mechanical ferret with no speech/bardic inspiration abilities.

Also, not being familiar with the module, there may be unfinished business on the part of either Reginald or whoever put his soul in there on the first place.

Being mechanical, the ferret will need winding (runs out of power until a long or short rest). But there will need to be some sort of phylactery device modded into the ferret to put his soul, which is an adventure in itself (esp if it involves 'acquiring' it from the gnomes.

He will always make the ferret jump into water at every opportunity as he has become used to the element, which could cause some issues with the workings of the ferret?

Anyhow, love the idea of a mecha-ferret-bard.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Read up on Animancy from the game Pillars of Eternity. Lots of good stuff to steal.

Specifically, the curve I'd throw is that in order to perform the soul transfer they need to locate and win the help of an expert in souls. In this case, a necromancer. So throw them into some fun and creepy investigation, and then some good RP trying to convince this person that they're not tracking him down in order to kill him, but rather, to hire him. Then some moral dilemma when it becomes clear that the techniques he's using, while benign for the pool-ferret thing, were obviously developed for more nefarious purposes. A real ends-justifies-the-means moral pivot.

That's if you want to go heavy.

If you want to go light, I'd send them down an entirely different path of objects-infused-with-life. Like, they need to find a child who truly believes his stuffed puppy is a real puppy, and somehow convince this child to truly believe that the mechanical ferret is a real ferret. Add a dash of fairy magic / Peter Pan vibe. The fact that the soul is a bard is actually a good affinity if you go this route. Maybe reveal, at the end, that the bard has a tragic tie to children (like, his own kid accidentally drowned in that pool, or something) and turn it into a redemption story, where the bard finally acknowledges that terrible accidents sometimes happen, and forgives himself for that loss.

Bring kleenex to the game.

 

[Wik]

So many great ideas here! I'm looking forward to my prep time tomorrow, where I can nail this all down!

Since it's come up, Reginald's haunting of the pool has already been established. Basically, while the keep was still being built, Reginald and his buddy (the keep's master) were defending the main tower from a pirate invasion. Reginald got an arrow in the back and collapsed in the marble fountain. His friends couldn't get to him in time, and he drowned in the pool.

His body, for some reason, cannot be raised or resurrected.

As regards the arcane trickster/ferret: the character actually IS a rock gnome, and she's a member of the tinker's guild (where she is trying to constantly one-up her old master, a golem maker). While the player has been very interested in this idea of a mechanical ferret that her character is constantly tinkering with, it was HER idea originally to try and fuse reginald with the ferret, so I have a pretty strong feeling that I can throw a good plotline for her to deal with. She has a soft spot in her heart for broken/weird NPCs (the clockwork librarian from Rise of the Runelords is another favourite NPC of hers).

 

[Tanaka Chris]

Give the Ferret a Cantrip......
Vicious Mockery, have fun saying what Regi-ferret would say

 

[Herobizkit]

Turn him into a magic genie lamp, but he materializes as a misty mouthpiece instead of a djinn?

 

[The_Gneech]

Give the Ferret a Cantrip......
Vicious Mockery, have fun saying what Regi-ferret would say

I love this one.

-TG

 

[BoldItalic]

What sort of musical instrument does the mechanical ferret Reginald bard use as its magic focus?

 

[Lanefan]

Give the Ferret a Cantrip......
Vicious Mockery, have fun saying what Regi-ferret would say

Having gamed with [MENTION=40177]Wik[/MENTION], I can vouch that if he uses this idea his game is going to grind to a halt every few minutes until people stop laughing.

Otherwise, the suggestions from [MENTION=98008]Unwise[/MENTION] in post #2 are pure brilliance.

Lan-"but does the party have an engineer, is the question"-efan

 

[Wik]

So, an update: The PCs will research this ferret in the next spat of downtime. Until then, it's "just" a mechanical ferret a la find familiar... just, all steampunk-ey and whatnot. I'm going to go with a variant on the "fill the ferret up with water from the pool" approach, making reginald ferret something of a squirt gun. I'm thinking having the ferret bathe in the pool might be a fun idea... I'll probably do my usual thing, and have about three conflicting ideas written down on a piece of paper, and see which way the wind blows come game day.

Mechanically, I'll have the ferret be about three levels below the party, making it a slightly more powerful find familiar, sure. But if I curb the ferret's spells, I'm not too worried... especially if I key his actions off his handler. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

The player has an interest in the ferret being a bit of a pickpocket, and I think that compulson might "seep" into Reginald when he takes the ferret form. As in, he had no idea he did it. I also think it'd be fun to have him be a bit of a flirt... though my games are pretty much rated G when it comes to the flirtation side of the game, so it'd be more along the lines of pepe lepew than anything too risque.

Oh, and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - you know the rule. Only bards are allowed to pun or make dumb insults. It's why I played one in the first place.