Any ideas for quests with ''fake'' danger?

[Swaoeaeieu]

So my players have encountered a fey spirit that they mistakenly thought was the NPC they were looking for who also lives in a forest.
This spirit would just like to keep the party around sending them on little missions that sound dangerous but arent at all.
Something like King Bumi did in ATLA for those familiar with the show.

I am looking for more ideas and tips on how to run this.

Little fake quests like ''Perform a very complex and tricky ritual to make this special plant bloom'' but the plant will just bloom when the sun goes down anyway.
Or ''Retrieve an artifact from the lake with the giant serpent in it'' but the creature just wants to play fetch.

How do i make something look and feel very dangerous and hard, but make it have an easy and ultimately harmless solution?
(The party of 5 is level 3 for what its worth)

thanks in advance for any and all ideas.

[Unoriginal]

So my players have encountered a fey spirit that they mistakenly thought was the NPC they were looking for who also lives in a forest.
This spirit would just like to keep the party around sending them on little missions that sound dangerous but arent at all.
Something like King Bumi did in ATLA for those familiar with the show.

I am looking for more ideas and tips on how to run this.

Little fake quests like ''Perform a very complex and tricky ritual to make this special plant bloom'' but the plant will just bloom when the sun goes down anyway.
Or ''Retrieve an artifact from the lake with the giant serpent in it'' but the creature just wants to play fetch.

How do i make something look and feel very dangerous and hard, but make it have an easy and ultimately harmless solution?
(The party of 5 is level 3 for what its worth)

thanks in advance for any and all ideas.

Something to keep in mind is that King Bumi's tests weren't harmless, they were all dangerous and difficult, it is just that they could be solved more easily if one thought laterally rather than doing the obvious.

It's important to note that, because the situation was engineered to help Aang grow as a person and as a combatant.

A Fey trickster lying to the PCs just for their own amusement can be fun, but it can also result in frustrated and displeased players, especially if they invest a lot of session time into it.

That being said, here's a few ideas:

The Trial of Eggs: there is a bird nest somewhere in the forest, and the Fey want at least one of the eggs. However, the eggs must be transported back to the Fey using only the enchanted spoons provided by the Fey, who also informs them that any direct contact or indirect contact with something else than the spoons will have DIRE CONSEQUENCES.

The Trial of the Stables: the PCs must go clean the stables of a ranch near the forest, with the Fey informing them the horses are all Deadly, Flesh-Eating Mares, and that the cleaning must also be done without the owners or employees because obviously anyone keeping Deadly, Flesh-Eating Mares should be avoided. The ranch, the people living there and its horses are all perfectly normal.

The Trial of Fire: The Fey gives the PC a match, and tell the PCs to light it and keep the resulting fire going until the Fey's return, warning that there will be DIRE CONSEQUENCES if the PCs fail to control the resulting fire. The Fey plans to hide close-ish and come back only after the fire goes out and the PCs got just long enough to freak out about what they were gonna do.

[JonBeowulf]

A Fey trickster lying to the PCs just for their own amusement can be fun, but it can also result in frustrated and displeased players, especially if they invest a lot of session time into it.

This right here.


That being said, here's a few ideas:

The Trial of Eggs: there is a bird nest somewhere in the forest, and the Fey want at least one of the eggs. However, the eggs must be transported back to the Fey using only the enchanted spoons provided by the Fey, who also informs them that any direct contact or indirect contact with something else than the spoons will have DIRE CONSEQUENCES.

The Trial of the Stables: the PCs must go clean the stables of a ranch near the forest, with the Fey informing them the horses are all Deadly, Flesh-Eating Mares, and that the cleaning must also be done without the owners or employees because obviously anyone keeping Deadly, Flesh-Eating Mares should be avoided. The ranch, the people living there and its horses are all perfectly normal.

The Trial of Fire: The Fey gives the PC a match, and tell the PCs to light it and keep the resulting fire going until the Fey's return, warning that there will be DIRE CONSEQUENCES if the PCs fail to control the resulting fire. The Fey plans to hide close-ish and come back only after the fire goes out and the PCs got just long enough to freak out about what they were gonna do.

These are good and sound fun, but as a player I'd expect this to lead somewhere. Keep your finger on the pulse of the game and be ready to shift gears.

[Unoriginal]

These are good and sound fun, but as a player I'd expect this to lead somewhere. Keep your finger on the pulse of the game and be ready to shift gears.

Having the actual NPC the group is here to find show up and bonk the Fey with a stick would immediately endear them to the group, at least.

[JLandan]

I once ran an adventure that featured the PCs coming across a village that was broke from paying tribute to a dragon. As it turned out the "dragon" was actually a contraption built by some kobolds to scare the villagers and extort some money out of them. Fake danger.

[Mastikator]

Some ideas:

Objective: collect the rainbow berries that grow behind the rainbow waterfall.
They are given a map to the rainbow waterfall, on the map there is a road that leads the way. What's not on the map is the fork in the road, one way leads into an open beautiful meadow, the other into a putrid festering swamp.
If they go into the meadow they'll find the rainbow waterfall quickly.
If they go into the swamp they'll be assailed by giant toads and redcaps and whatnot, and the road through the swamp eventually leads into the meadow.
The trick is that there's no trick, just follow the nice path, the map should even indicate that the meadow is the correct path.

[sithlordnergal]

I think my best fake danger quest involved a young red dragon. The party learned that a dragon was attacking a small village. It was stealing live stock, burning fields, destroying buildings, and had recently demanded a sacrifics.

Party went out to kill the dragon...only to discover a somewhat burnt feast, a poorly made banner welcoming the dragon's new wife/husband, and a very confused dragon that thought they were following proper Human Mating rituals to find a wife/husband.

Instead of slaying the dragon, the party had to:

A) Teach the dragon proper Human rituals

B) Convince the dragon to wait till they were older

C) Help the dragon make peace with the townsfolk

and

D) Get the dragon to help fix the damage they accidentally caused due to not realizing Human buildings were not built to hold up against dragons

[titi]

"a dragon is terrorising the neighborhood" except it's a pseudodragon and the neighborhood are the local rabbits.

[Bohandas]

You could do like a high-fantasy Scooby Doo type thing where the high level monster is actually a trick by a low-level illusionist

[awa]

I did one where the players were professional monster slayers and were hired to explore some tunnels that were found when some people were doing construction in the city. However they were merely hired to see if their were any problems and would thus get paid for just spotting a single monster and returning, they were not being hired to kill anything at this point.
This put the idea in the pc head that there must be a real dangerous monster down here such that they couldn't just run away. I then played into that impression by giving challenges like "their are a bunch of broken bottles at a low point in the ceiling you can spend a bunch of time moving the glass carefully, sweep it away quickly or try and make skill checks to crawl through it without hurting yourself". This implied that time and noise were important and in many of my adventures they are so they were primed for this. They crawled through the glass.
Lastly I stuck a bunch of ominous and strange things in the dungeon like a chest full of human hair.

In the end there weren't actually any enemies in the dungeon at all just a weird group of magic librarians who happened to use human hair to bind books. They were friendly and happy to answer questions and give the pcs plot relevant exposition when asked.

[crabwizard77]

You could do like a high-fantasy Scooby Doo type thing where the high level monster is actually a trick by a low-level illusionist

This is honestly the first thing I thought of.

Another thing you could do is give them this "very important" document, and say that if it falls into the wrong hands it could cause horrible things to happen (It is actually just a pie recipe and the "wrong hands" are inexperienced bakers. Oh no, they might make the pie badly :smalltongue:)

[Laserlight]

Back in AD&D days, one of my roomies was in a party which went into a dungeon. Every so often, they'd discover inanimate skeletons--maybe one, maybe a few, but always fallen facing the entrance, maybe reaching through bars or clutching a door, trying to get out. Every single one had apparently died trying to escape. No other monsters, no traps, just that. He said it was as spooky a dungeon as they'd ever been in, and I think they eventually decided that maybe they should get out before they found whatever all the dead had been fleeing.

Your fey could give them a fetch quest to get something like the Eye of the Dreadful King, a big piece of amber or other semi precious stone on a large statue. Maybe the other eye is already gone.

[Bohandas]

What if it was something really mundane but they said it in an ominous tone? "We want a shrubbery" and that sort of thing


This is honestly the first thing I thought of.

Another thing you could do is give them this "very important" document, and say that if it falls into the wrong hands it could cause horrible things to happen (It is actually just a pie recipe and the "wrong hands" are inexperienced bakers

or a rival bakery