Help needed with a puzzle for my players

[Skyflare19]

So in my current campaign, the players, a Druid and a Wizard, both of whom are level 4 just met back up with the DMPC, named Eleanor, that I am using. They are currently travelling with an NPC, named Sifi, that grew up with the DMPC. Eleanor is different now than she was before, namely having healed from all of her major injuries, most notably, a missing right arm, a major scar going down the length of her left forearm, and a large would on her back, as well as several small scars, mostly also on her left arm. She had also been cursed with something like a black blood that I am using as a driving force in the campaign.

The players instantly questioned her sudden recovery after going with one of the main villains and being missing for one day. They didn't approach her directly with the questions at first, but when the did, she revealed that she had also unlocked psychic powers, and that she had no memory after first seeing the villain, not even knowing who he was.

Soon the party will be approached by another Eleanor, this one has all of the injuries that she had sustained, and seems to be a little more hurt. She will approach the party and stop upon seeing her doppelganger (I only say doppelganger as a catch-all term). This second, injured Eleanor is going to have memories of meeting up with the villain, going to his base and even some of the things that she saw there. It is going to be up to the party to ask questions, or simply act in order to discover which one of them is real. Who would you all choose to trust and why? I'm hoping that with someone else's input, I will be able to improve the difficulty of the task, or decrease it, depending on the answers I am given.

Here is the solution, but I would like to ask that you find your own answer before looking at the solution. The real Eleanor is the uninjured one. She was given a cloned body made by the villains while they are experimenting on her original body.

[Orc_Lord]

I have a counter question. What do you want your party to feel? Paranoia? Hope? Surprise?

[Skyflare19]

I have a counter question. What do you want your party to feel? Paranoia? Hope? Surprise?

Counter questions are definitely welcome, if it helps you can ask a question from the point of view of a player in the situation. As for your question though, I want something along the lines of shock, and then maybe paranoia or fear about choosing the wrong one.

[Unoriginal]

I'm not seeing the puzzle, sorry. Do they have to figure out which of the women is real, between the who now has black blood and no injuries or missing limbs, and the one who just showed up but with the injuries and scars


Well, not reading the solution, I'd guess *both* are different from the woman they originally met, and she's been either transformed or replaced, with the second being either the transformed original or another replacement impostor.


EDIT



Well, I was right, though I admit I was not going into specifics.

I honestly don't think the PCs would have a way of figuring that, unless they somehow know the bad guys have that kind of powers, and that the DMPC is willing to trade with those bad guys.

[Skyflare19]

I'm not seeing the puzzle, sorry. Do they have to figure out which of the women is real, between the who now has black blood and no injuries or missing limbs, and the one who just showed up but with the injuries and scars


Well, not reading the solution, I'd guess *both* are different from the woman they originally met, and she's been either transformed or replaced, with the second being either the transformed original or another replacement impostor.

It isn't much of a puzzle, but I couldn't come up with better wording for it, and believe me, I sat there, staring at the title spot for about 5 minutes, and that was probably my fourth attempt at naming the post.

But to your answer, you would assume that both of them are fakes? I can see the point, but you only give elaboration on the second, injured version of Eleanor.

[Rukelnikov]

Take into account that detect thoughts is a 2nd lvl spell, IDK if your wizard has it, but if he does, it will be over pretty soon, unless neither of them is lying during the questioning.

[Skyflare19]

Take into account that detect thoughts is a 2nd lvl spell, IDK if your wizard has it, but if he does, it will be over pretty soon, unless neither of them is lying during the questioning.

The problem with detect thoughts, which I am unsure as to whether the player knows it or not, but I doubt that she does, is that I am uncertain as to whether or not certain things could be perceived as lying, since they both share the same mind and memories, with the second Eleanor, the injured one, having a few more about her time while she was missing. Would detect thoughts bypass the "true from a certain point of view" loophole that Zone of Truth gives?

[Skyflare19]

Well, I was right, though I admit I was not going into specifics.

I honestly don't think the PCs would have a way of figuring that, unless they somehow know the bad guys have that kind of powers, and that the DMPC is willing to trade with those bad guys.

The DMPC was running out of time. The curse of the black blood was killing her, and even gave her the urge to kill others. She hated that, but she couldn't help it. She met with the villain after killing three people in an underground fight, and having no other solutions, not even knowing what she was going to do for him, went with him and promised to do whatever he wanted. It was her only chance of survival and she was afraid.

[Rukelnikov]

The problem with detect thoughts, which I am unsure as to whether the player knows it or not, but I doubt that she does, is that I am uncertain as to whether or not certain things could be perceived as lying, since they both share the same mind and memories, with the second Eleanor, the injured one, having a few more about her time while she was missing. Would detect thoughts bypass the "true from a certain point of view" loophole that Zone of Truth gives?

Yeah. Its a lengthy description, but you should read it if you think it may come up.

Basically, you can read the surface thoughts of nearby creatures with no roll of anything. If you try to dig in their mind, they get a saving throw. So ofc the injured one could try and resist having her mind read, however that would raise suspicion. And if it fails or doesn't resist "you gain insight into its reasoning (if any), its emotional state, and something that looms large in its mind (such as something it worries over, loves, or hates)".

The most complicated fix you can do is something like say "black blood makes you immune to mind reading" having bot being immune to it. However that may change A LOT of stuff in your campaign and would make Elanor even more of a Mary Sue.

The easiest fix is having the injured one have no real malice and fuzzy memories too, but idk if that serves your purpose either.

[Skyflare19]

Yeah. Its a lengthy description, but you should read it if you think it may come up.

Basically, you can read the surface thoughts of nearby creatures with no roll of anything. If you try to dig in their mind, they get a saving throw. So ofc the injured one could try and resist having her mind read, however that would raise suspicion. And if it fails or doesn't resist "you gain insight into its reasoning (if any), its emotional state, and something that looms large in its mind (such as something it worries over, loves, or hates)".

The most complicated fix you can do is something like say "black blood makes you immune to mind reading" having bot being immune to it. However that may change A LOT of stuff in your campaign and would make Elanor even more of a Mary Sue.

I just a few minutes ago got an answer from that player, confirming that the spell Detect Thoughts is not in her spellbook. So that does clear up one threat. My thing about this though, is that I want to make it feasible, but challenging to discern who is the real person, and who is the fake. It's more about the villain attempting to psychologically break the party, then it is me trying to trick them. I hope that I am being clear on that.

[Rukelnikov]

Well, tbh without having played the adventure it would be hard to know whether your players can notice it or not, you are the most qualified to know such a thing outside of them.

I would start by questioning, specifically about very personal stuff that happened between us, an inside joke or something of the sort. If both passed scrutiny, I guess I would travel with both of them until I can ascertain something.

[Wryte]

I would guess that the woman was somehow split into two entities that each represent half of her, and start looking for ways to put her back together.

[Skyflare19]

Well, tbh without having played the adventure it would be hard to know whether your players can notice it or not, you are the most qualified to know such a thing outside of them.

I would start by questioning, specifically about very personal stuff that happened between us, an inside joke or something of the sort. If both passed scrutiny, I guess I would travel with both of them until I can ascertain something.

All right, thank you for the answer. I am mostly just looking for what other people might do in the situation, so that I can try to push my players toward the solution without the usual blunt force technique that they require I use.

[Skyflare19]

I would guess that the woman was somehow split into two entities that each represent half of her, and start looking for ways to put her back together.

I had actually done this before, so that wouldn't be completely unheard of. My character from 3 campaigns ago had an artificial twin that suffered all wounds that the PC version did, which eventually led the evil one to track down the good one so that they wouldn't get hurt anymore, thus preventing major injuries from happening to the evil one.

[Keravath]

As far as I can tell, the PCs have no way of telling which body has the correct person since they are both correct.

1) original body ... no idea about the mind occupying it but you mentioned it remembers everything ... does it have memories of Eleanor before going to the base?
2) cloned body ... original mind without memories of going to meet the villain.

The players have no way to figure it out. Real one with amnesia? Fake one with amnesia. The only ways they can actually figure it out are with spells that might reveal that one knows they are not the real one. If that is not the case then the problem is insoluble.

Also, and just as a general comment, it is usually not a good idea to make DMPCs a significant factor in the plot. The story should not be rotating around your DMPC, it should rotate around the characters. Unless you folks alternate DMs, I would get rid of the DMPC (assuming we are usng the term the same way) and just give the party NPCs of some sort (either NPCs from the monster manual or a leveled NPC). (Note: I usually use DMPC to denote NPCs that are played by the DM more like a PC rather than an NPC in terms of their interactions with the characters).

Finally, what is the narrative point of this "puzzle". From my perspective, it seems like the DMPC has been healed of their illness (by the villain for no reason I can see) ... restored to health including missing limbs ... and given psychic abilities unavailable to the characters. Altogether a significant power bump and change in plot direction.

If I was one of these characters, how would I react? A former party member returns from the lair of the villain apparently restored with special abilities. A second injured version appears. One is the original body and the other the original mind ... the original body somehow still has a mind. At this point, the characters are going to think that neither can be trusted. Even if they can be positively identified there is no way to tell what further damage has been done. The character may now be a spy or uncounciously influenced to work against the party. I would want to put both into the care/custody of a high level cleric to sort out the issue and then get on with whatever we were doing before the DMPC resurfaced (perhaps greater restoration and other spells might help the situation?). The DMPC clearly needs help and I don't know that the party is capable of providing it ... and they certainly can't be trusted.

[Skyflare19]

As far as I can tell, the PCs have no way of telling which body has the correct person since they are both correct.

1) original body ... no idea about the mind occupying it but you mentioned it remembers everything ... does it have memories of Eleanor before going to the base?
2) cloned body ... original mind without memories of going to meet the villain.

The players have no way to figure it out. Real one with amnesia? Fake one with amnesia. The only ways they can actually figure it out are with spells that might reveal that one knows they are not the real one. If that is not the case then the problem is insoluble.

Also, and just as a general comment, it is usually not a good idea to make DMPCs a significant factor in the plot. The story should not be rotating around your DMPC, it should rotate around the characters. Unless you folks alternate DMs, I would get rid of the DMPC (assuming we are usng the term the same way) and just give the party NPCs of some sort (either NPCs from the monster manual or a leveled NPC). (Note: I usually use DMPC to denote NPCs that are played by the DM more like a PC rather than an NPC in terms of their interactions with the characters).

Finally, what is the narrative point of this "puzzle". From my perspective, it seems like the DMPC has been healed of their illness (by the villain for no reason I can see) ... restored to health including missing limbs ... and given psychic abilities unavailable to the characters. Altogether a significant power bump and change in plot direction.

If I was one of these characters, how would I react? A former party member returns from the lair of the villain apparently restored with special abilities. A second injured version appears. One is the original body and the other the original mind ... the original body somehow still has a mind. At this point, the characters are going to think that neither can be trusted. Even if they can be positively identified there is no way to tell what further damage has been done. The character may now be a spy or uncounciously influenced to work against the party. I would want to put both into the care/custody of a high level cleric to sort out the issue and then get on with whatever we were doing before the DMPC resurfaced (perhaps greater restoration and other spells might help the situation?). The DMPC clearly needs help and I don't know that the party is capable of providing it ... and they certainly can't be trusted.

The way that I use DMPC is an NPC, mostly a little extra DPS through player class levels. Due to a small party size, the extra character comes in handy, and in my opinion is preferable to the original idea that I'd had, mostly being that the Players ran 2 PCs each. That resulted in too many times that only one would be involved in anything, or one simply being a joke character, not that they don't still both play joke characters every time anyway. My DMPCs only function as DPS and something to help point the players in the right direction on occasion, and the only reason that this occurred to the DMPC is that my players chose to leave her behind when stepping out of a town in order to turn in a quest. Now they have a tendency to never leave her alone, be it with the NPC friend, or one of the players trailing her when she wanders off.

For the question in your first point, They both share the same memories, but the mannerisms will have to be attempted to be replicated by the fake.

As for your answer, The uninjured Eleanor is not the original necessarily, but a cloned body and soul (the soul being cloned via a homebrew spell that I have, but not one that I will use to give immortality to the villains). The injured Eleanor, however, is a villain possessing the body of a clone, which had been prepared ahead of time to have the exact injuries that Eleanor had sustained (this is done through Magic Jar, since the clone has no soul, it auto fails the Charisma Save). The original Eleanor is still being held at the villains' lair, and experimented on. The uninjured one is just as much Eleanor as the one that left them, which will also leave the players to question which one is more real once they realize that the one with them is also a clone. Both have the same body, though in different states, both share the same memories, and both share the same soul, making the question a little harder, and as for that one, I will go with whatever the players decide.
Plus the paranoia that you relayed in your answer is almost exactly what I want them to fear.

[Unoriginal]

As long you're fine with the PCs killing both...

[Skyflare19]

As long you're fine with the PCs killing both...

The PCs aren't strong enough to take out one of them, one of the BBEGs. If the other does, then oh well.

[Unoriginal]

The PCs aren't strong enough to take out one of them, one of the BBEGs. If the other does, then oh well.

Players: "Obviously they're both up to no good, and just leaving them be would be suicide given the infos they can give to our enemies. We start planning to kill them."

DM: " You can't beat my DMPC, and there's two of them."

Players: "Then I guess we die. Campaign's over."

And then the players stop playing with the DM because they came to do D&D, not be non-paid actors for the DM's novel.


I get it's not your intent, but you are still leaving the PCs in an unwinnable situation.

No matter which they choose, including choosing both or neither, they get wrekt. And If they try to flee, they'll get rekt sooner or later.

So not only there is no good options, even the bad options are just "get destroyed now" and "get destroyed later".

[Skyflare19]

Players: "Obviously they're both up to no good, and just leaving them be would be suicide given the infos they can give to our enemies. We start planning to kill them."

DM: " You can't beat my DMPC, and there's two of them."

Players: "Then I guess we die. Campaign's over."

And then the players stop playing with the DM because they came to do D&D, not be non-paid actors for the DM's novel.


I get it's not your intent, but you are still leaving the PCs in an unwinnable situation.

No matter which they choose, including choosing both or neither, they get wrekt. And If they try to flee, they'll get rekt sooner or later.

So not only there is no good options, even the bad options are just "get destroyed now" and "get destroyed later".

They could easily take the DMPC, and after she died BBEG would leave. The villains have no interest in most of the party, only the one with black blood.

The villains mostly ignore the party, though the party is going after them. At the moment though, the party is inconsequential, the real threat is their benefactor on the other side of the continent.

I also run my players as having protected characters, so if they would die, I come up with some fun alternative, as long as it isn't something like what killed one of them in session 3, namely catching on fire and tackling dynamite.

[Unoriginal]

So if the PCs are so inconsequential, why doesn't the BBEG just kill/capture the DMPC and be done with it?

[Skyflare19]

So if the PCs are so inconsequential, why doesn't the BBEG just kill/capture the DMPC and be done with it?

They did. She was cloned and the uninjured DMPC is is a clone, the original is being experimented on. The BBEG released a clone of the DMPC to experiment in a different way.

[Laserlight]

My solution would be "okay, I can't trust either of them, so I stop travelling with them." I suppose that might change if I have a strong history with the DMPC, but if I ask both of them "remember what you did to me at the pool when we were in seventh grade?" questions and they both know the answer, then...at least one, possibly both, have been manipulated and I still can't trust either of them. I'm not going adventuring with someone who is obviously a possible spy / assassin.

[Skyflare19]

My solution would be "okay, I can't trust either of them, so I stop travelling with them." I suppose that might change if I have a strong history with the DMPC, but if I ask both of them "remember what you did to me at the pool when we were in seventh grade?" questions and they both know the answer, then...at least one, possibly both, have been manipulated and I still can't trust either of them. I'm not going adventuring with someone who is obviously a possible spy / assassin.

That's a fair point, and a possibility that I hadn't considered. Thank you.

[Particle_Man]

Kill them both and let Speak with Dead sort it out. :smallbiggrin:

[Man_Over_Game]

Eh, I feel like it's a pretty poor puzzle, honestly. The only reason you'd pick the uninjured one is if the players knew why she might be uninjured/scarred. Otherwise, they'd just go with the one that actually knows them.

Puzzles need to have a bit more hints, I feel. A lack of information doesn't make a puzzle or a mystery. It needs to have a few more pieces to make it all fit together.

What I'd do is add a few things that the fake can do that the real one can't, and have the fake reveal a flaw in its personality when it starts feeling cocky. Maybe it shows off its memory a bit *too* much in order to appear real. While doing this, make sure the real one is starting to panic, as the confusion and chaos in the scenario will prevent any one direction from being obvious. When a scarred woman with no memory and an injured woman with too much are both yelling at you and each other, it makes it hard to focus enough to come to an easy conclusion.

That's the trick. It can't be easy, but it has to be obvious. Your players have to go "oh, yeah, that makes sense now" AFTER the reveal. Otherwise, they'll just blame you for giving them bad riddles and controlling the narrative with an overly complicated coin toss. Which is about as irresponsible of a DM decision as a Deck of Many Things.

[Skyflare19]

Kill them both and let Speak with Dead sort it out. :smallbiggrin:

I don't think that the alignment of the characters would allow for this. The Wizard is Neutral Good and the Druid is Lawful Good. Also neither player has the 3rd level spell slot, or the class that would let them cast it. I mean, they could kill the real one, but the fake would just leave, probably laughing at the fun she is planning to have afterward.

[Skyflare19]

Eh, I feel like it's a pretty poor puzzle, honestly. The only reason you'd pick the uninjured one is if the players knew why she might be uninjured/scarred. Otherwise, they'd just go with the one that actually knows them.

Puzzles need to have a bit more hints, I feel. A lack of information doesn't make a puzzle or a mystery. It needs to have a few more pieces to make it all fit together.

What I'd do is add a few things that the fake can do that the real one can't, and have the fake reveal a flaw in its personality when it starts feeling cocky. Maybe it shows off its memory a bit *too* much in order to appear real. While doing this, make sure the real one is starting to panic, as the confusion and chaos in the scenario will prevent any one direction from being obvious. When a scarred woman with no memory and an injured woman with too much are both yelling at you and each other, it makes it hard to focus enough to come to an easy conclusion.

That's the trick. It can't be easy, but it has to be obvious. Your players have to go "oh, yeah, that makes sense now" AFTER the reveal. Otherwise, they'll just blame you for giving them bad riddles and controlling the narrative with an overly complicated coin toss. Which is about as irresponsible of a DM decision as a Deck of Many Things.

I appreciate the answer, and I will explain some of my vagueness here. It is hard to fully relay the information from the campaign all through here, and so I just gave what I thought were the most important details. The main purpose of this was to look into possible ways that my players might handle the situation. For the most part, I expect them to question the two different Eleanors, but I wasn't sure which one that they would trust more, and given my knowledge of what is going to be following this, as well as some of the details preceding and happening in tandem with the encounter, make it impossible for me to really give my thoughts, which is why I hid the answer behind a spoiler, in order to get an instant, first impression from a wider audience than the two or three people that I can really talk to this about IRL.

The shouting between the two was definitely something that I was planning to utilize. Since both PCs care about the character that they are dealing with here.

The whole comment about it not being easy, but it still being obvious is some really good advice, and I really appreciate that. This might be the hardest part though, since, while I know my players and I know their characters, they can still be unpredictable, and there are fewer ideas floating around, since there are only two of them. I also know exactly what you mean with the whole Deck of Many Things comment. One time, my DM gave that to one of my unstable characters, who drew three cards from it every day, and some bad things happened. I knew what was happening, but my character didn't.