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View Full Version : DM Help My players discovered my shapeshifter villain too soon



kingcheesepants
2020-07-23, 08:53 AM
Hello all I'm looking for a little feedback on how you think I ought to proceed with a game I'm DMing. Long story short I had a plan to do a whole figure out who the shapeshifter is before they run off with the macguffin type session. But just a session before I had one player who needed to drop out due to real life reasons and a new player come in. This new player picked a paladin as his class and I totally forgot about that divine sense ability. So when they got to the room where everyone (including the shapeshifting badguy) was he just used his divine sense and picked her out immediately (she's a succubus). So the whole slyly interrogating and picking up subtle clues and watching the behavior and such to figure out who's the impostor is right out the window. I'm thinking maybe she'll just flatly deny it and they'll have to get some evidence that she isn't who she says she is (investigate to find the person she's impersonating) but if you guys have any more ideas on better ways to proceed I'd like to hear them.
Some general info that might be helpful, system is D&D5e, they're at a well to do dwarven wedding and don't know anyone except for some of the cousins who they saved from gnolls a couple sessions back. The macguffin is in a safe across from the vault wherein all the wedding presents are being kept and the proprietor of the vault has the key (the succubus is going to steal it off of him unless the players intervene). Also the players were initially pretty into the whole heist idea but it seems that they're now leaning more toward just explaining to the owner that the macguffin is dangerous and then asking him for it nicely cause they would feel bad about actually stealing anything. They haven't confronted the succubus yet and they might actually just watch her and wait for her to make a move. I was thinking I might have a couple of the other guests already charmed but I haven't decided yet.
Anyways any ideas on how to make this more fun and exciting for my players would be welcome.

Segev
2020-07-23, 10:23 AM
What have they done with the information? Does the succubus know they know? Do they know she's a succubus, or just that she's a shapeshifter? Do they know the person she's pretending to be is not a shapeshifter? (That is, could, "Well, yes, I'm a shapeshifter; this is just how I like to present myself. I really am [so-and-so]," be a believable lie, or is it something that would be worse for her ploy than denying the claim outright?)

If the succubus doesn't even know she's been detected, she'll probably keep acting as she otherwise would. If the party doesn't know what she is, you could play up - deliberately on her part or just "coincidentally" - hints and suggestions that she's a Thing that is super dangerous and that being outed might make her start slaughtering things...including the PCs.

Alternatively, she could recognize the threat a paladin poses and deliberately try charming and seducing him. Get him on her side. The "Yes, I'm a shapeshifter; I've always been one, but I really am [so-and-so]" lie might work on just the party if they're Charmed. Of course, that's heavy-handed, because your players will not share their PCs' mental fog, but...it's a possibility.

A lot of this depends on what the players have already done, and will do. The ways to play this are still myriad.

If she knows she's been discovered, but they haven't outed her, yet, she could even disguise herself as one of them long enough to make a public accusation that one of the other important guests is a shapeshifter. If she does this a few times, each time claiming "I never said so-and-so was one; only such-and-such" changing each such-and-such each time, by the time the party starts accusing her of being a shapeshifter, they're crazy liars trying to gaslight the whole wedding party.

Heck, if she Charms the right people, she could make THEM level "that's a shapeshifter" accusations. Or claim that the PCs told them somebody else was a shapeshifter.

Basically, if she knows she's discovered but not yet fingered to the whole group, stir up confusion and accusations so that "Lady Whoever is a shapeshifter" is just another of many lies. Best if she can wrap the PCs up in a web such that they look either crazy or like they're the ones up to something by leveling these spurious accusations.

LibraryOgre
2020-07-23, 10:40 AM
Also consider that they may have caught her at the ONE TIME she doesn't have her defenses up. Usually, she's got a ring or amulet or spell that would protect her from such detections, but it was just stolen! Now, she hires the party to go after her stolen object, and once she gets it back, she disappears from the sense.

Or, alternatively, she gets it back, doesn't tell anyone, and plants it on the party, framing them for stealing her stuff, making any accusations against her seem defensive.

Darth Credence
2020-07-23, 11:58 AM
It really depends on just how much they know. I'm assuming that they know she is a succubus, since the divine sense allows a Paladin to determine the type, but it could be that they just know it's a fiend.
Could she possibly get a lesser fiend to take her place, shapeshifted to look the same, while she switches to someone else? Maybe have that lesser fiend expose its nature, then fight and be killed, leading to a false sense of security? In addition, in her new form, the major clue that she's not right is that she always stays at least 60 feet away from the paladin? Or behind cover? Could she perhaps create an illusion at some point that would pass the divine sense, showing that this is the actual person, before stepping back into the role?
Edit - I was just looking at various spells, and there is a way to prevent the paladin for sensing her in the future, if you could reset it. Arcanist's magic aura lasts for a day, and fools divine sense.

kingcheesepants
2020-07-23, 05:33 PM
In response to questions, the PCs knew beforehand that she was likely to be there (as they interrogated a minion earlier who told them as much) and they've previously dealt with this particular succubus so they have very good reason to know her whole deal. But technically they just have some suspicions and magical confirmation that there is a fiend. The paladin is new so she wasn't expecting the party to be able to magically sense her and therefore there were no special precautions taken. I like the idea that she might shapeshift and sow disinformation in order to discredit the PCs and I also like the idea of sacrificing another fiend so as to put the PCs in a false sense of security. Do you know off hand which lesser fiends can take on human appearance?

Dr paradox
2020-07-24, 03:13 AM
A succubus has a lot of tricks to play, particularly if she's been embedded in cover for any length of time. She might have several important persons enthralled already, or could make them so in short order to preempt accusations. If she suspects she's been made, she might compel a few of her "conquests" to accuse members of the party of some crime or another, or better yet just start tossing accusations all over the place so that she just gets lost in the noise.

That kind of chaos is a pain to run in a game, though, unless you'll jump straight to duels in the streets, houseguards trying to enforce order, failure of law and order stuff, in which case it turns into a frenzied chase.

TheStranger
2020-07-24, 06:32 AM
How about this: the succubus initially denies it, and there’s not enough proof to resolve it on the spot, but the PCs are clearly on to her now. So, run a mini-arc where they gather enough evidence to bring her down. It won’t be hard; she was clearly overconfident here. The whole thing culminates with the PCs storming her apartments, leading to a few combat encounters and a suitably depraved hidden dungeon/seraglio with several prisoners/thralls/playthings. Play this up, because the plot from here depends on the players not questioning this. The succubus is unmasked and defeated, or at least forced to flee.

The twist is that the succubus, once she realized the paladin had spotted her, called in a favor from another fiend (possibly another succubus, but not necessarily). By the time the PCs storm her sanctum, the succubus has been replaced with this other fiend. If the players are attentive, there may be some hints that this isn’t the same succubus they have history with, but they could easily miss them. Meanwhile, the primary succubus, now forewarned and well-shielded from divine sense, is disguised as one of the prisoners.

One way to run it is that the rescued prisoner the succubus is impersonating is the same person she had been impersonating, since that persona is now above suspicion (at least until the actual body is found). Any lingering clues pointing to her can be explained as left over from the previous impersonation. And of course, as the newly-rescued survivor of this horrible ordeal, she’s going to get a lot of sympathetic visitors who can be charmed. Some of them are likely to be very important people, too. And you don’t have to rework too much of your campaign, which is nice.

The downside to this is that genre-savvy players will jump to this conclusion the instant they realize the succubus is still operating. You can lean into that and have a situation where they know who she is, she knows they know, they know she knows they know, etc., but getting enough proof/certainty to do anything about it is the hard part. Or you can have the succubus be somebody else and the rescued prisoner be exactly who she seems to be so that the players spend a bunch of time chasing a red herring and look like absolute heels for persecuting this poor woman.

Either way, run an unrelated mini-quest or two and let the players bask in the satisfaction of a job well done for a little bit. Then they start finding clues that the succubus’s plans are still unfolding...

kingcheesepants
2020-07-24, 09:31 PM
So we had our session and it went pretty well over all. I tried the idea of having the succubus becoming different people, charming some of the other guests and sowing disinformation. Having her switch identities after being detected and charming others allowed her to split the party long enough to get the barbarian alone and then charm and drain kiss him to death. The other party members managed to rally and drive her away but she went into the ethereal plane and will be back sometime soon. I like the idea of her getting a friend to pose as her while she poses as a "prisoner" while using a spell or magic item to conceal herself. She's actually just a lieutenant of the BBEG but she's killed a party member and escaped them twice so she's fast becoming the most noteworthy villain in our game.

Squire Doodad
2020-07-25, 05:04 PM
So we had our session and it went pretty well over all. I tried the idea of having the succubus becoming different people, charming some of the other guests and sowing disinformation. Having her switch identities after being detected and charming others allowed her to split the party long enough to get the barbarian alone and then charm and drain kiss him to death. The other party members managed to rally and drive her away but she went into the ethereal plane and will be back sometime soon. I like the idea of her getting a friend to pose as her while she poses as a "prisoner" while using a spell or magic item to conceal herself. She's actually just a lieutenant of the BBEG but she's killed a party member and escaped them twice so she's fast becoming the most noteworthy villain in our game.

Sounds like you've done a great job with it then, kudos!