Kemptock
2019-05-30, 07:20 PM
The Portable Parasite, or how to become an elite infiltrator with Magic Jar
Disclaimer: Mostly effective against humanoids.
So I've been dwelling on this scheme for a while and, not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of the results. This is my own personal setup of how to operate as a nearly flawless arcane infiltrator/assassin/kidnapper/spy with two wizards and other spells of 6th level and below. Although if another wizard isn't available, then you just need an 8th level Simulacrum instead - though depending on how much you're willing to compromise on your safety net, you might not require either. So first of all, here's a list of all the spells and optional spells you might be using in the course of your endeavors:
* Magic Jar, Drawmij's Instant Summons, See Invisibility, Nystul's Magic Aura, Invisibility, Simulacrum, Find Familiar, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Sending, Contingency, Non-detection, Disguise Self, Alter Self, Gaseous Form, Rope Trick, Glyph of Warding, Arcane Lock
Sounds like quite a lot, but most of these are optional and it all depends on a variety of factors based on how you want to accomplish your mission. We'll start with the initialization of the exercise, wherein you should have your party and assistant find somewhere safe to form your 'Field Command' in - preferably in the plane you're going to operate on for the time being, but otherwise it can be pretty much anything - a Leomund's Tiny Hut, a house, an underground tunnel, and as far or close from your target destination as you'd like, though for some utilities you'll need to be closer.
What you want to do next ( though there are a couple of variations which I'll expand on soon enough ) is to have your familiar at hand, usually a flying animal depending on the distance, though a spider or rat or other animal might work better depending on the occasion, and have yourself or your assistant cast Nystul's Magic Aura ( False Aura to non-magical if necessary, and Mask to appropriate beast type ) as well as Nondetection on it. If you think you can finish your mission quickly, you or your assistant can cast Rary's Telepathic Bond on yourselves and other party members, and your assistant could also cast Invisibility on your familiar. Being in this state will conceal your familiar even from humanoids who cast See Invisibility or True Seeing (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/11/16/does-nondetection-plus-invisibility-beat-true-seeing/), but not creatures with Truesight.
The second step involves Magic Jar, but before describing it, pay heed to the wording of the spell by which any "ornamental container" worth at least 500g can serve as the material component - with "container" probably meaning practically any object you choose as the container for your soul, seeing as how it puts gems and crystals on the same list before adding "or some other ornamental container". At worst you just need something hollow to qualify, and you can easily make something tiny ( much like with a gem ) be worth 500g by commissioning it super-expensive with gem studding and linings and intricate carvings from an artisan, or a costly enchantment, or just a precious small antique, etc. None of this even necessarily matters that much, but we'll discuss it eventually.
Have yourself or much more preferably an assistant if there is one cast non-detection on your Magic Jar component, your Arcane Focus and a component pouch if you'd like. So far that's 4 level 3 slots, 2 level 2 slots and a ritual, so if you don't have an assistant or just want to minimally expend spells, you could just forfeit non-detection on everything if you wanted. Now we're pretty much done with secondary precautions and can move on to the core of the combination. Have your assistant cast "Drawmij's Instant Summons" on your Magic Jar object, and instruct someone to tie your Arcane Focus ( Which should be small, like a crystal ) as a necklace around your familiar or have it carry it on it's back or some other way if it's a rat or something, along with your component pouch if you oped for it, and the tiny jar when you're done. Your familiars can carry 15 times their strength score, and even by the variant of 5 times before encumbrance, each of the individual items you gave them will probably hardly even weigh a pound, so it's not a problem.
Arrange for a 'safeword' with your assistant, which upon telepathic conveying ( With Sending, if need be, and a confirmation of message received ), he will wait a few seconds for you to use your action and return to your container, before crushing his sapphire and extracting you in an instant. Proceed to cast Magic Jar, your body safely becoming catatonic at your headquarters, and inhabit the object, which upon being placed on your familiar with everything else, all turn invisible. Congratulations, you are now a primed parasite ready for departure. Telepathically direct your familiar to set off for the desired destination.
Upon your arrival in a humanoid-dense target area, you're essentially a ghost with the pick of the litter for possession. You can attempt to possess as many humanoids as you want that you can see within 100 feet if one fails and becomes immune, and RAW nothing says they'd even notice a failure, which means nothing special occurs aside from the attempt failing - certain spells which alert a target upon failure ( like Detect Thoughts ) say so in their description. But even if your DM wants to conjure up some kind of queasy feeling, most targets should still have no idea what just happened out of nowhere. Anyway, upon scouting around from the grip of your familiar and warping into a target, nothing should seem amiss, other than the target's soul gazing powerlessly and helplessly from what to it must seem like a random third-person camera as you adjust yourself to it's body.
At this point you're completely free to maybe just wander into a side-room or find some private space, or even just order your familiar to drop it a pocket or bag if they're discreet enough, and retrieve your Arcane Focus, Component Pouch and container, tucking them into your clothes or something while also smiling at the trapped soul as you stuff it somewhere it can't see anything, then dismiss your familiar. Now you don't have to worry about invisibility lasting. Though if you're using Rary's Telepathic Bond, that would run out eventually with your party, though they might have better alternatives depending on their class or items, not to mention higher level spells if you're higher level.
From here onwards the possibilities are obviously endless depending on what your objectives are, and all of your remaining spells ( Which are quite a few if you never used non-detection and had an assistant do some of the stuff ), but spells like Disguise Self, Alter Self and others could help you a fair bit, though it's advisable to apply Nystul's Magic Aura at all times to evade detection. I will briefly cover the prospects of kidnapping someone and how to switch between hosts when you decide to. While clearly bringing your host body back could be done in any number of ways, I'd recommend Gaseous Form when possible - just find some private space, vanish into mist, and drift away far enough before making it back to HQ. Switching is more interesting, as nominally you just need to use an action to get back, but the issue of course is that the vessel also gets his soul back, so it needs to be silenced or disposed of somehow.
There are like, an infinite number of ways to do it really, involving either suicide or incapacitation. Get to a very high place ( maybe via a spell ) and drop off, snapping back to your container a 100 feet away ( Whether you placed it there or re-summoned your familiar to carry it ) just as the body is about to hit the ground. Paralyzing poisons held aloft above an open mouth or tip of the tongue followed by a snap to the container as you release, a mouth gag and a noose or some way to affix your had in a water tub or something, and snapping back to a container. All of which by the way can even be done more subtly inside a Rope Trick space. Less violent solution might include becoming extremely drunk until the body is about to faint, or tie and gag yourself - Arcane Lock can prove useful here, and another really good way might also be picking a fight with someone, waiting until they have the upper hand, then starting to whimper before snapping back to the container. Now they have to plead to being possessed when they did it. Works best with pre-existing rivalries. Then you also have damage over time spells that you can apply to yourself, and if you want to commit acts of terrorism, you could also place explosive/other Glyph of Warding where you are being conditioned to trigger against your own body when your return or against others.
When you find a new host, you could always go back to a bound up target and continue with further actions, or maybe do something like cast Modify Memory on them ( But eventually you'll need to have a 'final host' that you get rid of ). If for some reason you want absolutely 'Perfect Murder' that probably no one will ever be able to figure out, even moreso than a disappearance, you could arrange for a 'Death-word' instead of a safeword with your party back at the base, and while inhabiting a body, find an ideal spot, maybe even add a bunch of fantasy drugs around or pull your pants down or whatever you want to inspire a conjecture, tell your familiar to move 120 feet away and cast Dispel Magic either on yourself (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/128697/what-do-you-have-to-target-to-dispel-magic-jar-with-dispel-magic) or on the jar ( Selecting the magical effect of Jar rather than Summons ) until the spell ends, sending word back to your party just prior. When that happens, your target's body ( and you ) just immediately die. A cleric or Paladin in the party can quickly revivify your body back at HQ which will restore your soul into it. Which by the way is also an arrangement you can have while maintaining communication if you really fear being captured before extraction or accidentally walking into an anti-magic zone.
Finally, if you're high enough level and have the spell slot to spare, you can always cast Contingency for Dimension Door or even Sending itself while in a host if you'd like to. As for handling the container after the death/removal of a host, you can either just place it somewhere where plenty of targets are available if you're fine with that, or re-summon your familiar, which even while not invisible might still be able to blend in pretty well in places. And of course, once you're ready for extraction, just send the word and pop back into the container.
Alright, that was most of it, just with a few caveats as I said before, there's a 'poor man's version' of this method by which you don't have to cast invisibility at all, and you could just design your container to look like a coin, or acorn, or whatever you need it to be - likewise it doesn't have to be carried by a familiar, you could easily be loaded off with an Arcane Focus onto a cart or pouch or any other means of smuggling a small object somewhere. And if you're confident about escaping easily, the Instant Summons is optional too. You might try having a familiar carry you off, but of course it's riskier. There are also a bunch of abilities and spells from other classes that a party might use if they want to keep contact with you. Then of course we have the 'rich, high-level's man's version' which really gets powerful with things like Telepathy, Teleports, Sequester, Clone for safeguarding, and other options I won't get into since they entail heavy usage of high-level spells, while the original can all be kept under 6th level and without too many spell slots used, depending on how you go about it.
There are obviously some enemy countermeasures, especially from highly intelligent Spellcasters that might prove troublesome, like Forbiddance and the like when using a familiar, but you could always linger at the outskirts and find a host to infiltrate with. Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum could pose a problem to Instant Summons if you consider it teleportation, so you might want to dispel it or instead invoke the "Death Protocol" and extract through Revivify. Anti-Magic Zones will naturally be the bane of any spellcasting endeavor and will kill you instantly, but it's an 8th level spell even for just a small radius around a caster and only a handful creatures even have it naturally, so Anti-Magic Zones are normally not just spruced about in every humanoid location. Either way, you can always just tell your familiar to place you somewhere and scout ahead, or just enchant a tiny scrap of paper or something with Illusory Script and have your familiar throw/roll it ahead casually to see if it fades, or just attach some reed thin 'probe' to it with invisibility that it will lose as soon as it touches anti-magic zones. But again, all of this is only a concern with world-class arcane organizations.
So there you have it, fellow upstart parasitical spies. Hope you like the idea, there's always more to talk about but I think I typed long enough.
Disclaimer: Mostly effective against humanoids.
So I've been dwelling on this scheme for a while and, not going to lie, I'm pretty proud of the results. This is my own personal setup of how to operate as a nearly flawless arcane infiltrator/assassin/kidnapper/spy with two wizards and other spells of 6th level and below. Although if another wizard isn't available, then you just need an 8th level Simulacrum instead - though depending on how much you're willing to compromise on your safety net, you might not require either. So first of all, here's a list of all the spells and optional spells you might be using in the course of your endeavors:
* Magic Jar, Drawmij's Instant Summons, See Invisibility, Nystul's Magic Aura, Invisibility, Simulacrum, Find Familiar, Rary's Telepathic Bond, Sending, Contingency, Non-detection, Disguise Self, Alter Self, Gaseous Form, Rope Trick, Glyph of Warding, Arcane Lock
Sounds like quite a lot, but most of these are optional and it all depends on a variety of factors based on how you want to accomplish your mission. We'll start with the initialization of the exercise, wherein you should have your party and assistant find somewhere safe to form your 'Field Command' in - preferably in the plane you're going to operate on for the time being, but otherwise it can be pretty much anything - a Leomund's Tiny Hut, a house, an underground tunnel, and as far or close from your target destination as you'd like, though for some utilities you'll need to be closer.
What you want to do next ( though there are a couple of variations which I'll expand on soon enough ) is to have your familiar at hand, usually a flying animal depending on the distance, though a spider or rat or other animal might work better depending on the occasion, and have yourself or your assistant cast Nystul's Magic Aura ( False Aura to non-magical if necessary, and Mask to appropriate beast type ) as well as Nondetection on it. If you think you can finish your mission quickly, you or your assistant can cast Rary's Telepathic Bond on yourselves and other party members, and your assistant could also cast Invisibility on your familiar. Being in this state will conceal your familiar even from humanoids who cast See Invisibility or True Seeing (https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/11/16/does-nondetection-plus-invisibility-beat-true-seeing/), but not creatures with Truesight.
The second step involves Magic Jar, but before describing it, pay heed to the wording of the spell by which any "ornamental container" worth at least 500g can serve as the material component - with "container" probably meaning practically any object you choose as the container for your soul, seeing as how it puts gems and crystals on the same list before adding "or some other ornamental container". At worst you just need something hollow to qualify, and you can easily make something tiny ( much like with a gem ) be worth 500g by commissioning it super-expensive with gem studding and linings and intricate carvings from an artisan, or a costly enchantment, or just a precious small antique, etc. None of this even necessarily matters that much, but we'll discuss it eventually.
Have yourself or much more preferably an assistant if there is one cast non-detection on your Magic Jar component, your Arcane Focus and a component pouch if you'd like. So far that's 4 level 3 slots, 2 level 2 slots and a ritual, so if you don't have an assistant or just want to minimally expend spells, you could just forfeit non-detection on everything if you wanted. Now we're pretty much done with secondary precautions and can move on to the core of the combination. Have your assistant cast "Drawmij's Instant Summons" on your Magic Jar object, and instruct someone to tie your Arcane Focus ( Which should be small, like a crystal ) as a necklace around your familiar or have it carry it on it's back or some other way if it's a rat or something, along with your component pouch if you oped for it, and the tiny jar when you're done. Your familiars can carry 15 times their strength score, and even by the variant of 5 times before encumbrance, each of the individual items you gave them will probably hardly even weigh a pound, so it's not a problem.
Arrange for a 'safeword' with your assistant, which upon telepathic conveying ( With Sending, if need be, and a confirmation of message received ), he will wait a few seconds for you to use your action and return to your container, before crushing his sapphire and extracting you in an instant. Proceed to cast Magic Jar, your body safely becoming catatonic at your headquarters, and inhabit the object, which upon being placed on your familiar with everything else, all turn invisible. Congratulations, you are now a primed parasite ready for departure. Telepathically direct your familiar to set off for the desired destination.
Upon your arrival in a humanoid-dense target area, you're essentially a ghost with the pick of the litter for possession. You can attempt to possess as many humanoids as you want that you can see within 100 feet if one fails and becomes immune, and RAW nothing says they'd even notice a failure, which means nothing special occurs aside from the attempt failing - certain spells which alert a target upon failure ( like Detect Thoughts ) say so in their description. But even if your DM wants to conjure up some kind of queasy feeling, most targets should still have no idea what just happened out of nowhere. Anyway, upon scouting around from the grip of your familiar and warping into a target, nothing should seem amiss, other than the target's soul gazing powerlessly and helplessly from what to it must seem like a random third-person camera as you adjust yourself to it's body.
At this point you're completely free to maybe just wander into a side-room or find some private space, or even just order your familiar to drop it a pocket or bag if they're discreet enough, and retrieve your Arcane Focus, Component Pouch and container, tucking them into your clothes or something while also smiling at the trapped soul as you stuff it somewhere it can't see anything, then dismiss your familiar. Now you don't have to worry about invisibility lasting. Though if you're using Rary's Telepathic Bond, that would run out eventually with your party, though they might have better alternatives depending on their class or items, not to mention higher level spells if you're higher level.
From here onwards the possibilities are obviously endless depending on what your objectives are, and all of your remaining spells ( Which are quite a few if you never used non-detection and had an assistant do some of the stuff ), but spells like Disguise Self, Alter Self and others could help you a fair bit, though it's advisable to apply Nystul's Magic Aura at all times to evade detection. I will briefly cover the prospects of kidnapping someone and how to switch between hosts when you decide to. While clearly bringing your host body back could be done in any number of ways, I'd recommend Gaseous Form when possible - just find some private space, vanish into mist, and drift away far enough before making it back to HQ. Switching is more interesting, as nominally you just need to use an action to get back, but the issue of course is that the vessel also gets his soul back, so it needs to be silenced or disposed of somehow.
There are like, an infinite number of ways to do it really, involving either suicide or incapacitation. Get to a very high place ( maybe via a spell ) and drop off, snapping back to your container a 100 feet away ( Whether you placed it there or re-summoned your familiar to carry it ) just as the body is about to hit the ground. Paralyzing poisons held aloft above an open mouth or tip of the tongue followed by a snap to the container as you release, a mouth gag and a noose or some way to affix your had in a water tub or something, and snapping back to a container. All of which by the way can even be done more subtly inside a Rope Trick space. Less violent solution might include becoming extremely drunk until the body is about to faint, or tie and gag yourself - Arcane Lock can prove useful here, and another really good way might also be picking a fight with someone, waiting until they have the upper hand, then starting to whimper before snapping back to the container. Now they have to plead to being possessed when they did it. Works best with pre-existing rivalries. Then you also have damage over time spells that you can apply to yourself, and if you want to commit acts of terrorism, you could also place explosive/other Glyph of Warding where you are being conditioned to trigger against your own body when your return or against others.
When you find a new host, you could always go back to a bound up target and continue with further actions, or maybe do something like cast Modify Memory on them ( But eventually you'll need to have a 'final host' that you get rid of ). If for some reason you want absolutely 'Perfect Murder' that probably no one will ever be able to figure out, even moreso than a disappearance, you could arrange for a 'Death-word' instead of a safeword with your party back at the base, and while inhabiting a body, find an ideal spot, maybe even add a bunch of fantasy drugs around or pull your pants down or whatever you want to inspire a conjecture, tell your familiar to move 120 feet away and cast Dispel Magic either on yourself (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/128697/what-do-you-have-to-target-to-dispel-magic-jar-with-dispel-magic) or on the jar ( Selecting the magical effect of Jar rather than Summons ) until the spell ends, sending word back to your party just prior. When that happens, your target's body ( and you ) just immediately die. A cleric or Paladin in the party can quickly revivify your body back at HQ which will restore your soul into it. Which by the way is also an arrangement you can have while maintaining communication if you really fear being captured before extraction or accidentally walking into an anti-magic zone.
Finally, if you're high enough level and have the spell slot to spare, you can always cast Contingency for Dimension Door or even Sending itself while in a host if you'd like to. As for handling the container after the death/removal of a host, you can either just place it somewhere where plenty of targets are available if you're fine with that, or re-summon your familiar, which even while not invisible might still be able to blend in pretty well in places. And of course, once you're ready for extraction, just send the word and pop back into the container.
Alright, that was most of it, just with a few caveats as I said before, there's a 'poor man's version' of this method by which you don't have to cast invisibility at all, and you could just design your container to look like a coin, or acorn, or whatever you need it to be - likewise it doesn't have to be carried by a familiar, you could easily be loaded off with an Arcane Focus onto a cart or pouch or any other means of smuggling a small object somewhere. And if you're confident about escaping easily, the Instant Summons is optional too. You might try having a familiar carry you off, but of course it's riskier. There are also a bunch of abilities and spells from other classes that a party might use if they want to keep contact with you. Then of course we have the 'rich, high-level's man's version' which really gets powerful with things like Telepathy, Teleports, Sequester, Clone for safeguarding, and other options I won't get into since they entail heavy usage of high-level spells, while the original can all be kept under 6th level and without too many spell slots used, depending on how you go about it.
There are obviously some enemy countermeasures, especially from highly intelligent Spellcasters that might prove troublesome, like Forbiddance and the like when using a familiar, but you could always linger at the outskirts and find a host to infiltrate with. Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum could pose a problem to Instant Summons if you consider it teleportation, so you might want to dispel it or instead invoke the "Death Protocol" and extract through Revivify. Anti-Magic Zones will naturally be the bane of any spellcasting endeavor and will kill you instantly, but it's an 8th level spell even for just a small radius around a caster and only a handful creatures even have it naturally, so Anti-Magic Zones are normally not just spruced about in every humanoid location. Either way, you can always just tell your familiar to place you somewhere and scout ahead, or just enchant a tiny scrap of paper or something with Illusory Script and have your familiar throw/roll it ahead casually to see if it fades, or just attach some reed thin 'probe' to it with invisibility that it will lose as soon as it touches anti-magic zones. But again, all of this is only a concern with world-class arcane organizations.
So there you have it, fellow upstart parasitical spies. Hope you like the idea, there's always more to talk about but I think I typed long enough.