Renduaz
2021-03-27, 07:23 PM
Foreword
I was thinking back to a trick which I proposed in my Mechapilot Build (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?628785-The-Mechapilot-(-18-Creation-Bard-2-Genielock-Variants)) where I commented on how the Creation Bard's Animating Performance synergizes with Major Image by creating a substantial construct of any shape or material that can provide physicality for an illusory creature or machine.
But it occurs me that I haven't fully explored the ability's potential, seeing as how aside from just adding weight to a pre-existing illusion, a piloted or remotely controlled Dancing Item without an accompanying visual illusion might just be the only way in DND, at least to my knowledge, of masquerading as a wide variety of creature types in a way that fools truesight, not to mention other magical detectors.
Under normal circumstances, and to my knowledge as far as any DND player might be concerned up to the writing of this post, the use of magic for fantastical impersonation of monstrous creatures or else an 'illusory' animated decoy against creatures with Truesight has been though to be, and seemingly intended by WOTC to be impossible. Its the end-all be-all to mind tricks - All visual illusions are automatically detected, and the original forms of all shapechangers and creatures transformed by magic can be seen. That blows almost everything right out of the water.
Sure, you still have access to some old-fashioned nonmagical methods, but these are extremely limited: You can use a Disguise Kit in a pinch to make yourself like another member of your race or similar race ( e.g Human to Elf ), or at best with hours of work and countless materials at hand, you might pass hard a check to appear as a somewhat convincing Gnoll or Xvart or other complex humanoids with some prosthetics, materials, coloring and so on. Some Humanoids will still be outright impossible.
Similarly, trying to puppeteer costumes of creatures with vastly different limbs, physicality, etc sounds laughable and much as any cardbkard cutoit or sculpture you might put up, is likely only useful as a distant decoy or a brief distraction. You also have Magic Jar, but once again, Humanoid only and actually having to find and inhabit whatever you impersonate is a whole can of worms that is separate from a successful illusion on the fly.
But what if there was a better way?
Constructed Doppelganger
A Dancing Item, animated from an nonmagical object created by Performance of Creation, it is not an illusion and very much real, it is not a shapechanger, nor is it in fact a creature transformed by magic, certainly not by appearance - it is an object transformed by magic, into a creature, with its form as a creature being the only one it had ever had. Regardless, any attempt to perceive its original form reveals no differences - its original form is the very same 'body', or non-magical object targeted, save for the gifts of limited sentience, movement, and statistics.
Creation of Performance's only limitations are Size ( Up to Large for Dancing Items ) and price, the latter also eliminated with Creative Crescendo. Unlike spells such as Fabricate, you don't have a threshold for complexity, and the creation can be of any design, shape and materials that you have the gold for if only you can imagine it. That means you can make Madame Tussaud style perfect impressions of any creature you saw or imagine. It can be actual wax ( Turning it into a magical construct will prevent it from losing integrity ), it can be a combination of any other substances, anything that resembles the right textures and firmness, obviously shaded and colored as you imagine.
There is some debate as to whether some organic materials, especially flesh, can constitute objects. We already know from spells like Creation and DMG objects that organic matter can be, because of vegetable matter, wood, shells, etc. We know bones and skulls count from modules and so forth. At this point there is little scientific or linguistic reason to distinguish thing slike tendons or fat or muscles and claim fhat a stake on a plate is 'not an object' and can't be interacted with as such.
Usually the biggest ruling issues is about corpses, and whether formerly living creatures or parts of them are objects, but that doesn't even concern us because we are creating the materials from thin air. Its more like synthetic meat, and you aren't really creating life when turning it into a construct, the movements are all imitations powered solely by magic.
At any rate, organic materials or not, we now have a construct which is a pretty accurate representation of a much broader number of monsters ( Don't forget you can also clothe it as desired and add accessories ) and can walk or fly and hover around at our command from inside or outside, by Telepathic spell/ability or other means, but is still missing the vital elements of sound and smell, perhaps a unique mode of locomotion or extra authenticity, and there are still some creatures whose magical essence, like Elementals and so forth, makes them impossible to fully replocate by material alone. Fear not, for we can solve a lot of those problems as well in the next section.
Special Effects
Every good model needs a special effects department, and I have compiled a list of spells, even some races and feats which can help with that. I will refrain including class abilities as I don't want this to be confined to specific builds other than the Creation Bard's features, but they also exist in abundance. But we already have enough of what we need, and a Creation Bard can grab spells from any list.
Races
Kenku if you are piloting the construct, or using a Chain familiar from inside or invisibly outside to do so, useful for imitating creature voices and even implanting messages.
Air Genasi Unending Breath helps a lot if you want to avoid accidentally making a noise or sit in a totally airtight construct for long..
Ghostwise Halfling is also Small and gives you free telepathic communication for creatures which would use it.
Tiefling has free Thaumaturgy if you don't want to grab it
Feats
Actor for the same reasons as a Kenku
Keen Mind for completely flawless model visualization or special effect recreation
Metamagic Adept for Subtle spells on the fly or Twinned spells
Ritual Caster for spells
Magic Initiate for spells
Telekinetic to feign Psionic powers
Telepathic to speal telepathically
General Spells
Major Image is the bread and butter of the special effects. Not for the image, silly, for the sounds, smells and temperature, which Truesight can't detect because it isn't visual. We actually don't want any visual illusions in sight or we're busted, so what you want to do is create a visual phenomena around the Dancing Item that is essentially a transparent outline or made of microscopic dots/lines. Better yet, place that inside the creature so it reaches near all the right edges. Its like those lines and points of a model in an animation software.
Personally I wouldn't recommend just going for a mirror image illusion on top of the actual construct because that could backfire if your character can't orchestrate it with enough dexterity. Anyway, your special effects will be moved alongside the image, and you can carry convedsations or make different sounds as necessary that will originate from the doppelganger. Also, with a 6th level slot, all of that can be done until dispelled without concentration, opening rooms for other special effects.
Unless you are piloting the construct as a controlled mount, doing so does take an action, so you'll just have to ready an action for when the construct moves right after your turn, and you can still use a bonus action if you wish to make it interact with objects or even attack and so on.
Enlarge/Reduce to create Huge sized impersonators. Sadly Garangutan is beyond our scope for now.
Thaumaturgy as a poor man's Major Image. You can amplify your voice appropriately, works great for Kenkus, and cause tremors in the ground as you move or other sound effects.
Tongues to carry out conversations
Water Breatning for Underwater interactions
Skill Emppwerement for various acrobatic or athletic feats mostly
True Seeing for yourself. If imitating a creature with Truesight and all that is expected of it.
Magic Mouth is another important tool, especially if a DM deems that your Dancing Item can't close or open its mouth, or maybe not smoothly per movement or command. In that case, cast Magic Mouth on the object you will be animating ( This does not turn it into a magic item by the way, spells which do say so, like magic weapon, it is merely a nonmagical item with a spell) (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/94615/does-casting-a-spell-on-a-weapon-make-it-count-as-magic-for-bypassing-immunities) and implant an inaudible volume sound, lasting a fraction of a second, set to activate upon you/your illusion making a sound or speaking., and to repeat whenever the trigger occurs.
The Doppelganger's mouth will now move to speak naturally whenever you or your Major Image speak, instantly closing between pauses and new words and back again. This does not hold up to lip syncing scrutiny though, so if forced to use it, might wanna focus on creatures that don't rely on specific movements or don't pay attention as much, or find an excuse to cover your mouth, turn around, speak from afar, etc.
Alternatively you can just implant a real sentence or sound for short interactions, or if you are a talented puppeteer, create a mechanism in the construct or a mouth prosthetic donned on it that lets you lip sync conversations with your hands. Magic Mouth also works well for low-level as pebbles with various messages to be recited.
Don't worry about it being your voice if you are a Kenku or have Tongues and so on.
Locomotive Spells
These are used if your Dancing Item's existing speeds are insufficient or do not properly resemble a certain creature's movement speed or mode.
Jump, Longstrider, Spider Climb, Fly, Water Walk, Haste
Thematic Spells
Thematic spells derive their special effects from the 'fluff' of some spell descriptions or cosmetic spells. These are used to impersonate creatures which exude effects or auras that overlap their physical forms like Celestials or Elementals. Some of them require you to pilot the construct personally, as they are centered in a radius around yourself and encompass the creature, as long as you made some tiny holes or slits to ensure it isn't totally covered.
Others are applied to an object, and can be applied to the entire construct pre-animation, or to separate items worn or attached as prosthetics/apparel afterwards ( Creative Crescendo lets you create them innthe same casting. So you might create a model with only the eyesockets, and cast Light or Continual Flame on the prosthetic eyes, then insert them for a glowing/burning eyes effect i stead of the whole construct glowing or burning. You can even use any number of spells to mimic creature's power of presence, like healing or damaging auras.
Some models, such as elementals, require aome creative thinking as far as the physical body goes to fit in well with the special effects. So for instance, an Air Elemental could be a bunch of transluscent fabrics tied with loose ends twirling in the winds, a water elemental could have a crystal/ice body with swirling patterns and foamy materials, and so forth.
Light, Aura of Vitality, Dawn, Holy Aura - Celestial style mimicry
Control Water, Shape Water - You'll need some volume of water to pour on your construct or place near it and then start animating it around it on the move.
Continual Flame, Control Flames - Fire effects
Gust, Warding Wind, Control Wind - Air effects
Barkskin - Plant effect
Darkness, Sickening Radiance - Necrotic effects
Globe of Invulnerability - If you are pretending to be a Rakshasa
Utility Spells
Rary's Telepathic Bond, Message, Telepathy - For communicating with a doppelganger from afar. There are also a bunch of race and class ways to do it like Aberrant Mind Sorcs or Chainlocks that I won't get into
Nystul's Magic Aura - This completely proofs your construct and any objects upon it, and you too against Detect Magic or other abilities that would divine your true nature or reveal magical properties. A caster might still see the magic emanating from an aura effect, but won't be able to ascertain its source.
Technical Details
For a comprehensive overview of how to pilot constructs from within, see the linked build in the beginning. If you do not have an external sensor or sensory telepathy with the construct, you can cleverly design viewing ports like shaded glass for eyes, tiny holes, mirrored periscopes camouflouged in shoulders or clothes, etc.
You can pilot Small creatures by Reducing yourself as a Small creature for a minute. You can theoretically even smuggle yourself inside tiny ones with the use of spells like Magic Jar or a Genielocks's Bottled Respite and giving general orders of movement via Sending, though it is less reliable. To command the doppelganger from outside, establish some silent or telepathic communication, hide well and control it as you would a Major Image.
Conclusion
If Creation Bards weren't incredible enough, they can now be counted as creators of cutting-edge doppelgangers. There are still some monsters of the ephemeral or dazzling varieties that will always be beyond our grasp, bit when it comes to the Truesight Test, we've expanded our options fromma couple of humanoids to thousands of others. Beholders, Fiends, we've got the right matter, movement and effects to try and copy them.
The abilities are missing of course, but impersonation usually isn't meant for a fight, though you can always try to pull off attacking fhrough some viewports cover with a specific spell as if it came from the creature's body parts I suppose, but the action economy will be challenging, and fhe chances of detection much higher. Aura Effects are perfect though.
Finally, for DM's, consider that the suspicion level of a being with Truesight might be dramatically lower, and their perception DC's higher or disadvantaged when it comes to spotting irregularities by virtue of sheer confidence or arrogance, and who could blame them? These are creatures which are used to effortlessly catch and snort at the attempts of Illusionists and Shapechangers to deceive them. This is a class-specific plot that requires tremendous originality and pondering to come up with and pull off.
Their first thought at seeing one of those creations coming toward them, and no puny humanoid hiding underneath a layer of illusion wisps, is probably going to be "Oh snap, its real!" and that mindset maintained almost dogmatically because to them, this being a fakery does not seem logically or arcanely possible. They'll be much less attentive than someone who is wary of illusion spells or shapechangers.
I was thinking back to a trick which I proposed in my Mechapilot Build (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?628785-The-Mechapilot-(-18-Creation-Bard-2-Genielock-Variants)) where I commented on how the Creation Bard's Animating Performance synergizes with Major Image by creating a substantial construct of any shape or material that can provide physicality for an illusory creature or machine.
But it occurs me that I haven't fully explored the ability's potential, seeing as how aside from just adding weight to a pre-existing illusion, a piloted or remotely controlled Dancing Item without an accompanying visual illusion might just be the only way in DND, at least to my knowledge, of masquerading as a wide variety of creature types in a way that fools truesight, not to mention other magical detectors.
Under normal circumstances, and to my knowledge as far as any DND player might be concerned up to the writing of this post, the use of magic for fantastical impersonation of monstrous creatures or else an 'illusory' animated decoy against creatures with Truesight has been though to be, and seemingly intended by WOTC to be impossible. Its the end-all be-all to mind tricks - All visual illusions are automatically detected, and the original forms of all shapechangers and creatures transformed by magic can be seen. That blows almost everything right out of the water.
Sure, you still have access to some old-fashioned nonmagical methods, but these are extremely limited: You can use a Disguise Kit in a pinch to make yourself like another member of your race or similar race ( e.g Human to Elf ), or at best with hours of work and countless materials at hand, you might pass hard a check to appear as a somewhat convincing Gnoll or Xvart or other complex humanoids with some prosthetics, materials, coloring and so on. Some Humanoids will still be outright impossible.
Similarly, trying to puppeteer costumes of creatures with vastly different limbs, physicality, etc sounds laughable and much as any cardbkard cutoit or sculpture you might put up, is likely only useful as a distant decoy or a brief distraction. You also have Magic Jar, but once again, Humanoid only and actually having to find and inhabit whatever you impersonate is a whole can of worms that is separate from a successful illusion on the fly.
But what if there was a better way?
Constructed Doppelganger
A Dancing Item, animated from an nonmagical object created by Performance of Creation, it is not an illusion and very much real, it is not a shapechanger, nor is it in fact a creature transformed by magic, certainly not by appearance - it is an object transformed by magic, into a creature, with its form as a creature being the only one it had ever had. Regardless, any attempt to perceive its original form reveals no differences - its original form is the very same 'body', or non-magical object targeted, save for the gifts of limited sentience, movement, and statistics.
Creation of Performance's only limitations are Size ( Up to Large for Dancing Items ) and price, the latter also eliminated with Creative Crescendo. Unlike spells such as Fabricate, you don't have a threshold for complexity, and the creation can be of any design, shape and materials that you have the gold for if only you can imagine it. That means you can make Madame Tussaud style perfect impressions of any creature you saw or imagine. It can be actual wax ( Turning it into a magical construct will prevent it from losing integrity ), it can be a combination of any other substances, anything that resembles the right textures and firmness, obviously shaded and colored as you imagine.
There is some debate as to whether some organic materials, especially flesh, can constitute objects. We already know from spells like Creation and DMG objects that organic matter can be, because of vegetable matter, wood, shells, etc. We know bones and skulls count from modules and so forth. At this point there is little scientific or linguistic reason to distinguish thing slike tendons or fat or muscles and claim fhat a stake on a plate is 'not an object' and can't be interacted with as such.
Usually the biggest ruling issues is about corpses, and whether formerly living creatures or parts of them are objects, but that doesn't even concern us because we are creating the materials from thin air. Its more like synthetic meat, and you aren't really creating life when turning it into a construct, the movements are all imitations powered solely by magic.
At any rate, organic materials or not, we now have a construct which is a pretty accurate representation of a much broader number of monsters ( Don't forget you can also clothe it as desired and add accessories ) and can walk or fly and hover around at our command from inside or outside, by Telepathic spell/ability or other means, but is still missing the vital elements of sound and smell, perhaps a unique mode of locomotion or extra authenticity, and there are still some creatures whose magical essence, like Elementals and so forth, makes them impossible to fully replocate by material alone. Fear not, for we can solve a lot of those problems as well in the next section.
Special Effects
Every good model needs a special effects department, and I have compiled a list of spells, even some races and feats which can help with that. I will refrain including class abilities as I don't want this to be confined to specific builds other than the Creation Bard's features, but they also exist in abundance. But we already have enough of what we need, and a Creation Bard can grab spells from any list.
Races
Kenku if you are piloting the construct, or using a Chain familiar from inside or invisibly outside to do so, useful for imitating creature voices and even implanting messages.
Air Genasi Unending Breath helps a lot if you want to avoid accidentally making a noise or sit in a totally airtight construct for long..
Ghostwise Halfling is also Small and gives you free telepathic communication for creatures which would use it.
Tiefling has free Thaumaturgy if you don't want to grab it
Feats
Actor for the same reasons as a Kenku
Keen Mind for completely flawless model visualization or special effect recreation
Metamagic Adept for Subtle spells on the fly or Twinned spells
Ritual Caster for spells
Magic Initiate for spells
Telekinetic to feign Psionic powers
Telepathic to speal telepathically
General Spells
Major Image is the bread and butter of the special effects. Not for the image, silly, for the sounds, smells and temperature, which Truesight can't detect because it isn't visual. We actually don't want any visual illusions in sight or we're busted, so what you want to do is create a visual phenomena around the Dancing Item that is essentially a transparent outline or made of microscopic dots/lines. Better yet, place that inside the creature so it reaches near all the right edges. Its like those lines and points of a model in an animation software.
Personally I wouldn't recommend just going for a mirror image illusion on top of the actual construct because that could backfire if your character can't orchestrate it with enough dexterity. Anyway, your special effects will be moved alongside the image, and you can carry convedsations or make different sounds as necessary that will originate from the doppelganger. Also, with a 6th level slot, all of that can be done until dispelled without concentration, opening rooms for other special effects.
Unless you are piloting the construct as a controlled mount, doing so does take an action, so you'll just have to ready an action for when the construct moves right after your turn, and you can still use a bonus action if you wish to make it interact with objects or even attack and so on.
Enlarge/Reduce to create Huge sized impersonators. Sadly Garangutan is beyond our scope for now.
Thaumaturgy as a poor man's Major Image. You can amplify your voice appropriately, works great for Kenkus, and cause tremors in the ground as you move or other sound effects.
Tongues to carry out conversations
Water Breatning for Underwater interactions
Skill Emppwerement for various acrobatic or athletic feats mostly
True Seeing for yourself. If imitating a creature with Truesight and all that is expected of it.
Magic Mouth is another important tool, especially if a DM deems that your Dancing Item can't close or open its mouth, or maybe not smoothly per movement or command. In that case, cast Magic Mouth on the object you will be animating ( This does not turn it into a magic item by the way, spells which do say so, like magic weapon, it is merely a nonmagical item with a spell) (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/94615/does-casting-a-spell-on-a-weapon-make-it-count-as-magic-for-bypassing-immunities) and implant an inaudible volume sound, lasting a fraction of a second, set to activate upon you/your illusion making a sound or speaking., and to repeat whenever the trigger occurs.
The Doppelganger's mouth will now move to speak naturally whenever you or your Major Image speak, instantly closing between pauses and new words and back again. This does not hold up to lip syncing scrutiny though, so if forced to use it, might wanna focus on creatures that don't rely on specific movements or don't pay attention as much, or find an excuse to cover your mouth, turn around, speak from afar, etc.
Alternatively you can just implant a real sentence or sound for short interactions, or if you are a talented puppeteer, create a mechanism in the construct or a mouth prosthetic donned on it that lets you lip sync conversations with your hands. Magic Mouth also works well for low-level as pebbles with various messages to be recited.
Don't worry about it being your voice if you are a Kenku or have Tongues and so on.
Locomotive Spells
These are used if your Dancing Item's existing speeds are insufficient or do not properly resemble a certain creature's movement speed or mode.
Jump, Longstrider, Spider Climb, Fly, Water Walk, Haste
Thematic Spells
Thematic spells derive their special effects from the 'fluff' of some spell descriptions or cosmetic spells. These are used to impersonate creatures which exude effects or auras that overlap their physical forms like Celestials or Elementals. Some of them require you to pilot the construct personally, as they are centered in a radius around yourself and encompass the creature, as long as you made some tiny holes or slits to ensure it isn't totally covered.
Others are applied to an object, and can be applied to the entire construct pre-animation, or to separate items worn or attached as prosthetics/apparel afterwards ( Creative Crescendo lets you create them innthe same casting. So you might create a model with only the eyesockets, and cast Light or Continual Flame on the prosthetic eyes, then insert them for a glowing/burning eyes effect i stead of the whole construct glowing or burning. You can even use any number of spells to mimic creature's power of presence, like healing or damaging auras.
Some models, such as elementals, require aome creative thinking as far as the physical body goes to fit in well with the special effects. So for instance, an Air Elemental could be a bunch of transluscent fabrics tied with loose ends twirling in the winds, a water elemental could have a crystal/ice body with swirling patterns and foamy materials, and so forth.
Light, Aura of Vitality, Dawn, Holy Aura - Celestial style mimicry
Control Water, Shape Water - You'll need some volume of water to pour on your construct or place near it and then start animating it around it on the move.
Continual Flame, Control Flames - Fire effects
Gust, Warding Wind, Control Wind - Air effects
Barkskin - Plant effect
Darkness, Sickening Radiance - Necrotic effects
Globe of Invulnerability - If you are pretending to be a Rakshasa
Utility Spells
Rary's Telepathic Bond, Message, Telepathy - For communicating with a doppelganger from afar. There are also a bunch of race and class ways to do it like Aberrant Mind Sorcs or Chainlocks that I won't get into
Nystul's Magic Aura - This completely proofs your construct and any objects upon it, and you too against Detect Magic or other abilities that would divine your true nature or reveal magical properties. A caster might still see the magic emanating from an aura effect, but won't be able to ascertain its source.
Technical Details
For a comprehensive overview of how to pilot constructs from within, see the linked build in the beginning. If you do not have an external sensor or sensory telepathy with the construct, you can cleverly design viewing ports like shaded glass for eyes, tiny holes, mirrored periscopes camouflouged in shoulders or clothes, etc.
You can pilot Small creatures by Reducing yourself as a Small creature for a minute. You can theoretically even smuggle yourself inside tiny ones with the use of spells like Magic Jar or a Genielocks's Bottled Respite and giving general orders of movement via Sending, though it is less reliable. To command the doppelganger from outside, establish some silent or telepathic communication, hide well and control it as you would a Major Image.
Conclusion
If Creation Bards weren't incredible enough, they can now be counted as creators of cutting-edge doppelgangers. There are still some monsters of the ephemeral or dazzling varieties that will always be beyond our grasp, bit when it comes to the Truesight Test, we've expanded our options fromma couple of humanoids to thousands of others. Beholders, Fiends, we've got the right matter, movement and effects to try and copy them.
The abilities are missing of course, but impersonation usually isn't meant for a fight, though you can always try to pull off attacking fhrough some viewports cover with a specific spell as if it came from the creature's body parts I suppose, but the action economy will be challenging, and fhe chances of detection much higher. Aura Effects are perfect though.
Finally, for DM's, consider that the suspicion level of a being with Truesight might be dramatically lower, and their perception DC's higher or disadvantaged when it comes to spotting irregularities by virtue of sheer confidence or arrogance, and who could blame them? These are creatures which are used to effortlessly catch and snort at the attempts of Illusionists and Shapechangers to deceive them. This is a class-specific plot that requires tremendous originality and pondering to come up with and pull off.
Their first thought at seeing one of those creations coming toward them, and no puny humanoid hiding underneath a layer of illusion wisps, is probably going to be "Oh snap, its real!" and that mindset maintained almost dogmatically because to them, this being a fakery does not seem logically or arcanely possible. They'll be much less attentive than someone who is wary of illusion spells or shapechangers.