Have you ever "kissed the monster?"

[DRD1812]

I talk about the trope below the comic over here (http://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/deniability), but what I'm referring to is the old green hag shtick: "Some green hags prefer to reveal their true natures to their lovers at a moment precisely engineered to drive the man mad with horror and shame." This might look like a disguised dragon, vampire, succubus, or any other version of the, "Wait a minute... That cute half-elf in the bar is a WHAT!?"

So how about it? Has it ever come up in a game? Any good build-around encounters for this sort of thing? Any tales of regret from you bardic philanderers out there?

[BowStreetRunner]

I was DM in a game where the party heard a blood-curdling scream from the cleric's room and ran in to find him standing naked brandishing a weapon at the naked female vampire across the bed from him. :smallbiggrin: For those who are wondering - no he was not a priest of a religion that had vows of celibacy, so at least he didn't have to explain that part. :smallamused:

Kissing the monster is always a good trope to introduce when you have players who like to run PCs who are a bit prone to putting the moves on every attractive NPC they encounter. :smallcool:

[AvatarVecna]

I was DM in a game where the party heard a blood-curdling scream from the cleric's room and ran in to find him standing naked brandishing a weapon at the naked female vampire across the bed from him. :smallbiggrin: For those who are wondering - no he was not a priest of a religion that had vows of celibacy, so at least he didn't have to explain that part. :smallamused:

Kissing the monster is always a good trope to introduce when you have players who like to run PCs who are a bit prone to putting the moves on every attractive NPC they encounter. :smallcool:

A note on this approach, from my experience: this works a great deal better if the character in question is merely a prolific flirt, as opposed to pansexual. If they are the latter, they may very well go out of their way to kiss the monster. :smalltongue:

[Quertus]

Does doing so in my backstory count? The more I hear of GMs quibbling over what PCs have experience with (for polymorph, summoning, etc), the more I'm making my backstory include, "the thousand year old, NI level Wizard who trained me made sure that I was intimately familiar with every creature imaginable".

[Khedrac]

I have played in an LG game where one of the party's information sources was a hag of legend (I think green) - everyone in the party had to kill her, but we got to choose whether it was hand, cheek or lips (and yes, players have looked at the way their character has been played up to that point and gone for the lips).

In Expedition to Castle Greyhawk there is a flirty priestess who helps the party at the start
She happens to be a demon and I was looking forward to having half the party dominated when they finally fight her. Sadly the player who always plays that sort of character didn't for that campaign, and the one who did go with her, well I had pre-rolled D20s for all characters and his next two rolls were a 20 and a 1 - so I decided that he had made his save, but then when she cast forget and he forgot everything, but she then stayed clear of the party romantically worried by the one who had saved.

[BowStreetRunner]

...everyone in the party had to kill her...Freudian??

[Blue Jay]

I play regularly at a continuous game at Myth-Weavers where DMs post missions at a crossroads-type interplanar tavern, and players can sign up for the mission ads with different PCs they get approved. The first mission I designed for that game (about 2 years ago now) involved one of my PC's (a flirty mermaid bard) getting kidnapped by a vampire. Her rich father hired a party of other PCs to rescue her. My mermaid's sister aided the party in getting travel arrangements and finding leads for the investigation, and one of the PCs started a relationship with her.

The big reveal at the end was, when they rescued my kidnapped mermaid, she revealed that she didn't have a sister. It turned out the girl who was pretending to be her sister was actually the vampire himself (who also happened to be a doppelganger). It was kind of cruel, because the player who'd started the relationship with her is a total sucker for romance stories, and I manipulated him with it. He was a good sport about it though, and now his character has kinda-sorta hooked up with the real mermaid PC in sequel missions.

[Thealtruistorc]

Several particularly interesting stories.

1. At one point the rogue started flirting with an evil transmuter and then proceeded to have on heckuva rollicking night with her (using the whole array of both of their magical abilities). The rogue was quite pissed the next session when she discovered she was pregnant with some kind of human-dragon-lycanthrope hybrid abomination.

2. One of my players spent the first arc of the campaign searching for his wife (a psion). He eventually found her when it was revealed that she was one of the primary antagonists of the campaign.

3. Probably one of the most messed-up ways I've ever killed an npc: having my ghoul french-kiss them until they contracted ghoul fever and then sending them to stumble back to their village while betting with the other PCs as to whether or not they will make it.

4. At one point an aberrant sorcerer was captured by the party and started flirting with the warder (she had a negative wisdom modifier and assumed the feeling was mutual until he tried to kill her). There were some wierd and kinky things that they discovered she could do using the unnatural reach ability.

[Zanos]

I don't use the trope that often when I DM, because it's so overplayed. In my experience an adventure having sex with anyone that seems normal is the surest way for them to get killed or enchanted. Not that I run an ERP, but I'm not going to punish people for having a little bit of fade to black fun. One of my PCs became a father though, which added some drama

I don't tend to play particularly flirtatious characters, but many of the games I've been in pretty much any seemingly innocent NPC one of the PCs expresses interest in turns into hag, vampire, or demon. I remember one guy got his bits torn off and we had to go on a quest to find someone who could cast regeneration.

[Draconi Redfir]

at one point, three hags had disguised themselves as angels or some kind of celestial trio of women in a cave or dungeon, i think we knew there were celestial in the cave who would see us through the quest, but the hags killed them and disguised themselves as them.

They tried some shpeil on my paladin and his party "Congratulations on completing your quest brave heroes!" etc.

right as one was moving in to kiss / hug my paladin, he made his willsave, stabbing her through the gut while shouting "you DARE impersonate the divine!?" or something along those lines.

everyone else was very surprised at the paladin stabbing a celestial being.

[Khedrac]

Freudian??

I don't think so, just bad typing...

Come to think of it, I've also had the game where the party bard "stayed the night" with the succubus ruler of a demon city (Red Veil? - something like that) - we were quite surprised when they came back the following morning. What we didn't find out until the end of the campaign was that instead of being a fairly high level bard they were now a low level succubus bard, since the campaign was the Paizo adveture path where one is going after Demogorgon, said succubus bard is now the Prince of Demons...

(One of the tricks they used to fool us was having a "spell failure chance" on casting spells - something they didn't do that often anyway - which always seemed to cause boosts to bard song to fail and seemed to be a nuisance curse form their night of fun. Of course, they were actually casting the spell successfully just to get their bard song boost back up to were it used to be...)

[Greymane]

I may have mentioned it on here once before, but yeah. This has come up in a few times in some of my home games, and once personally for me.

One time we met and captured a succubus who was manipulating a group of duergar. The party elf wizard wanted to play a different character, so for his night on watch, he got to have a killer romp with her.

Another time, when I was playing a wizard, my imp familiar spiked a young noblewoman's drink with a love potion, ensuring the party bard got lucky that night. This one involved time travel. We were in the past. When we got back to the present, we discovered that earlier in the campaign he'd hit on and propositioned his own daughter. Laughs were had. This is only vaguely kissing a monster, though, due to the daughter turning out to be a tiefling.

For me personally, our party had gotten captured by a female drider while fleeing a battle with some mindflayers we had been losing. I was playing a Paladin devoted to Ilmater, and the party rogue had indicated to me I needed to keep her busy while he did his "wiggle/cut out of the web, and free the party" bit. I didn't ICly know anything about driders or drow, so, I tried to, uh, flirt with her. I tried to play it up as awkward, but she took it hook, line, and sinker. The DM apparently used a chart for quick personalities for things like random encounters, and apparently got "romantic" and "lonely" for his rolls.

When we escaped, neither the drider or my character had it in us to go back to trying to kill each other. She came with, we went on a quest to undo her terrible Lolth curse at some point, turning her back into a normal drow. And at the end of the game my paladin and her settled down. First time romance sparked from a random encounter.

Probably one of the few times 'kissing the monster' worked out, given the other female creatures that could qualify have been succubi or medusae in our games.

[unseenmage]

Upon learning of a prophesy which said my mythic PF technologist and alchemificer would be at war with his deity, the lovely clockwork Brigh, my character proposed to and married her to turn a potential war into a simple marital spat.

Turns out this triggered his ascension to true godhood (the PCs were already being worshipped throughout the galaxy).

Meanwhile the party's undead bard rode his spacefaring artifact sailing ship into the Test of the Stardtone with all of the firearms, technology, alchemical items, and clockwork s on Golarion turned to animated objects and trailing behind him like a awesome cloak or the continent spanning wake of his vessel.

Campaign over. Good job all around. See you next time.

So yeah, wherein the clockwork goddess was the 'monster', my character kissed her.

[Deophaun]

Come to think of it, I've also had the game where the party bard "stayed the night" with the succubus ruler of a demon city (Red Veil? - something like that) - we were quite surprised when they came back the following morning. What we didn't find out until the end of the campaign was that instead of being a fairly high level bard they were now a low level succubus bard, since the campaign was the Paizo adveture path where one is going after Demogorgon, said succubus bard is now the Prince of Demons...
If that's Savage Tide, I had a Dread Necromancer that decided to end that game with her by "kissing" one of her succubi in front of her. Fun fact: Dread Necromancers have death ward. Succubi do not. That actually impressed her.

Only problem was I forgot that you never want to impress a demon lord.

[DRD1812]

Only problem was I forgot that you never want to impress a demon lord.

New plan: Make out with the demon lord! It's just demonic snogging all the way down.

[Calthropstu]

I was DM in a game where the party heard a blood-curdling scream from the cleric's room and ran in to find him standing naked brandishing a weapon at the naked female vampire across the bed from him. :smallbiggrin: For those who are wondering - no he was not a priest of a religion that had vows of celibacy, so at least he didn't have to explain that part. :smallamused:

Kissing the monster is always a good trope to introduce when you have players who like to run PCs who are a bit prone to putting the moves on every attractive NPC they encounter. :smallcool:

My response would be *protection from negative energy* and say, totally not a deal breaker.

[BowStreetRunner]

My response would be *protection from negative energy* and say, totally not a deal breaker.
Going to need something a bit stronger than that. "Negative energy effects that don't deal hit point damage to the subject, such as an energy drain spell, affect the subject normally." All that spell does is reduce hit point damage from negative energy effects. Vampires' Bood Drain does CON damage, and Energy Drain deals negative levels.