How to Reveal a Shapeshifting Villain? - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

How to Reveal a Shapeshifting Villain?

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
tufrat
Feb 24, 2010 9:46:14 How do I get my players clued-in and suspicious that the current ephemeral bad guys might be a Rhakshasa who just let them "win" to advance a nefarious plot? And how do I get them suspecting they are being manipulated?

I need some creative ways to start indicating and detecting that the party has been fooled again without detracing from the wily cunning of this type of villain.

------------------

I'm running an Eberron Game where the major villains are Rakshasas. One is the final epic battle baddie that ends the campaign (The Shadow in the Flame/Bel Shalor). One is the epic tier bad guy (The Wyrmbreaker, his exarch), and one is the Paragon Tier threat, a Fang of Khyber.

But what I'm really after is this: I want to start having the Rhakshasas directly "mess with" the party, but I don't want to do a cheesy shapeshift-to- true-form-laugh-and-run every time. Nor can I allow the party to try to take on a threat they are not ready for...

The heroic tier is coming to a close without the players directly interacting with any of the major villains (as far as they know). I have some ideas for information I can feed them that will suggest that some of their Heroic tier villains were agents of the Rakshasas.
#2
LordofKhyber
Feb 24, 2010 12:36:43 Give him a strange attraction to catnip. That'll tip them off. Trust me we shapeshifting evil cat villains love our catnip.
#3
David
Feb 24, 2010 12:40:15 ''Kill'' one of the PCs, only to reveal he was a Rakshasha all along.

Ofcourse the PC is not really dead. He is abducted by the Rakshasha, who then took his place in the party.
#4
johnsnow
Feb 24, 2010 18:25:31 The first thing to do is to start making them paranoid. If your main villain is a shapeshifter, one easy one to slip in is the "he's not what he seems" angle. This is pretty easy in Eberron if you play up the noir angle of the setting.

The party gets hired by a particular individual to do something. Through the course of completing their mission, they need to get double-crossed (more often is better). After you've run a few double-crosses, they'll decide to track down the lousy bastard to get even, they find him - only to discover that he's been dead for weeks. But they were just hired by the same guy last week. Or were they? That'll put "shapeshifter" in their heads. Now they'll be suspicious of changelings, humans with the disguise skill, and everyone else. All you need to do after that is drop some hints as to the TRUE nature of their adversary (or adversaries).

Just be mindful to only have it actually be the Rakshasa when you're pretty sure he's going to escape. No straight reveals in front of them. That might mean you'll have to play fast and loose with whether this villain who betrays them is actually the Rakshasa - or just some other double-crossing prick. Of course, the Rakshasa can be revealed to have been behind it all in the end - making him even more loathsome.

Betrayal works great to cement an adversary and an adventure as memorable. Trust me, by the time of the big reveal, you'll have them hating your villain - and totally involved in the story.

An alternative that a particularly clever adversary might use, is to pose as a henchman or hireling to really mess with the party. If he's truly diabolical, he might fake "the henchman's" death so they feel responsible for getting him killed. Of course, it works better if there's an actual supporting character (that the PCs like!) for him to replace. Then he kills (or kidnaps) the person before taking their place. But then by faking said character's death, he gets to torment them. Then, they keep "seeing a ghost" as he pops into vision, ducks around a corner, and shapeshifts. They follow him and find....nothing. After a few of those, they'll realize they're being screwed with.

Of course, after a while, the actual person's body has to turn up in circumstances totally unconnected to his "on-camera" death (like throat slit when the henchman fell off a cliff). Or the body can be a fresh kill. The PCs will (eventually) work out that there's a shapeshifter involved. From the villain's perspective, this is lovely, as they've gone through it twice...at least. Once when they see him die...then they think he isn't dead, only to find out that he is. And then finally they discover that their grieving in the first place was a waste. So now the Rakshasa has made them suffer for this death over and over and over again. Which is certainly an evil enough motivation to make it worth the trouble.

Just a few thoughts.
#5
saethone
Feb 28, 2010 18:17:57 You could, if the players get a chance to speak with the villian at some point, let him slip information that he shouldn't know. They may not even recognize it at first, but then another NPC can point it out..."How could he have known about that?"
#6
itsme4eva1
Feb 28, 2010 18:51:39 A good way to clue them in is to have the Rakshassa send them on a quest into a cave or dungeon or something of that nature. In there have a book that summons a spirit to tell them of the ploy so they will realize that the person is not what they seem to be. Send them in after a powerful item that could help defeat the Rakshassa and they only want it so they will be nearly unstoppable. Now that they realize the enemy they can work to stop them.
#7
feyberry
Mar 01, 2010 3:13:00 There's a perfect way, but I can't show you until I get home. It's from a very NOT SAFE FOR WORK webcomic that is just perfect for shapeshifters. The specific panels/comic that suits this thread is perfectly fine, but others aren't.
#8
xiahouxu
Mar 04, 2010 8:25:33 Perhaps there is a telltale physical trait that all his shapeshifts have? Every single time you describe an NPC who happens to be this badguy, maybe mention, just as a throwaway comment, the colour of his eyes (Make sure to do it for the other NPCs too, so it doesn't seem out of character or too obvious).
Then, when the reveal is pulled, some of the suggestions already are brilliant, the entire party will start to think 'Oh man... How many blue eyed guys have we passed in the last few months? How many of those can we trust? How many of them are this guy?'

The sheer chaos a shapeshifter can cause is rife. Maybe, in fact, some of the blue eyed men they've met aren't the shapeshifter, but maybe some employees of his, or maybe completely unrelated too... Just to put the fear in em.
#9
MWSAber
Mar 04, 2010 11:42:02 I'd suggest two NPC's that can never be in the same place at the same time. When the party goes to see "them" one of them has always "just stepped out". Maybe bring it up in a Royal Court type setting where they need a moderate to Hard DC to catch the quick change/notice that one is missing when the other is there
#10
adun_irving
Mar 06, 2010 18:21:43 Another way is to have the villain appear as several different people, and make "unintentional" references to the players' operations that the NPC could not possibly know. If the players are paying attention, they'll begin to wonder why that merchant seems to know about a secret mission they undertook in a rival barony.
#11
dannoe
Mar 13, 2010 6:12:59 Don't explain at all. Just have the bad guy do things that he ought not be able to do. Make it conspicuous, and your players will get it. You'll be surprised how clever folks can be.
#12
samuraichicken
Mar 15, 2010 17:00:50 When it comes to shapechanging villains, heres an idea I've had but never got around to running it in a game:

Your shapechanging villan is a mastermind, and through shapechanging as different people, managed to be the lord/guildmaster/top-dog of more than one organization. For example, he could be the Captain of the Watch, the boss of a powerful street gang, and the head cultist of a secret cult within the same city - nobody knew because of his shapechanging powers. His goal was to pit the gang and the cultists against each other, manipulating everyone so the gang and cultists take each other out, with the law enforcement coming in to clean up whatever is left. That was the plan, until the PCs come in.
The shapechanger at first thinks he can make use of the PCs, since they can help take out both the gang and the cultists. This plan backfires when the PCs catch the shapechanger off guard by storming into the gang or cultist headquarters unexpectedly. In the battle, the PCs slay the shapechanger (and his true form is revealed). The PCs don't think much of this, as it makes sense that such a shapechanger would manipulate others.
What the PCs don't expect is the discovery that the other gang/cult leader has gone missing, as well as the Captain of the Watch. While this does seem odd, the PCs slowly discover through clues and eye-witness accounts that all three people were most likely the same person.

I never got around to fleshing out all the details, so I hope what little I have here helps you out.
#13
grumpycelt
Mar 16, 2010 15:27:10 His pants fall down and everyone sees he's got tiger legs, not the legs of a man.

#14
hanzo187
Mar 16, 2010 16:28:55 Linguistics would be useful for tipping off the party. Rakshashas have lived forever, and while there's little doubt they know many know many languages, it's doubtful they have MASTERED all of them.

One way of going about it would be to have someone in the party speak a particular phrase or have a conversation. A native might notice a few differences with the words, a slipping of the accent, etc., that might give away that this person may not be as he/she seems. If the rakshasa also claims to come from a certain district within the city (and another character came from a nearby, perhaps some reminiscing will reveal the rakshasa is not really a native of the area.

The party might also find the rakshasa a little nervy about anti-illusion traps or what-have-you, such as the Banish Illusions ritual, or at least more than he should be (in a way a vampire in the old tales might suddenly retract from a holy symbol). Setting up the ritual as a trap would be a neat way of catching a rakshasa off-guard.
#15
uhf
Mar 17, 2010 0:11:55 I'm using several changeling lackies in my campaign (Rogue&Archer). They run errands and kill people for the boss. Many bits and pieces in the campaign don't add up. You'd think there was an army of bad guys.

The first direct contact was an assasination attempt. Dagger in back, wizard pitches over nearly dead. The would be killer runs out the tavern door. The first PC to go out the door nearly drops from an arrow, as the thrid player made it out. The second player pitches over unconscious.. arrow deep in chest. Third player... decided to pull his friend back.

The players figured something was up because it was a 'local girl' from a near by town, who nearly took out the wizard. The guys in the tavern couldn't figure out why she didn't want to talk with them. (Remember that all the skins mean something to other people as well.)

Just lots of clues. "You got that armour form a bandit? I sold it to Jerydd the Ranger just 2 weeks ago. I wonder how they got it?"

At the final battle the picture of what was going on was pretty complete.

You know talking about a reveal seems wrong. Its like 'monologuing' in The Incredibles. Just let the bad guys keep doing things, and try to think of reasonable clues to find. This is a job for Role playing, not Roll playing.

I guess in my case this is easy to do... its a small town. Clues don't hide if you ask around.
#16
Chiba_Monkey
Mar 20, 2010 2:44:49 A Changeling villain who works for the Lords of Dust would work well as a heroic-tier villain.

Especially if several shapechanging agents use the same identity, the players could think that their recurrin villain keeps coming back to life after they kill him.
#17
archaeologist
Mar 20, 2010 2:55:09 Players are ridiculously clever, and will pick up on the SLIGHTEST hint. Even just a casual slip of the tongue will doom your reveal. Watch. Out.

In a campaign I read about recently, the PC's stumbled across a Magic Dagger as some treasure loot. However the Dagger was actually a horrible monsterous Shapeshifter in disguise that would kill them once they fell asleep.

The problem? In a random unpredictable fit of Player "LOGIC", they gave away the Dagger as part of a deal with a Crime Boss that they didn't have enough gold to pay for. They essentially pawned off a murderous assasin that was supposed to advance the plotline.

The Dm found this so hilarious he just started laughing, but refused to reveal just what exactly his players had done. So a session and a few extended rests later the DM reveals that the Crime Boss was found horribly murdered in his sleep by what appears to have been some kind of Tiger-like killing machine (judging by the claw marks.)

He's now building up to revealing the Dagger as a villain at the end of the campaign, with dialogue along the lines of "YOUUUUUUUU..... DENSE....MOTHER******S" after the PC's charge into the room expecting a final showdown with the BBEG only to find a Dagger lying on a small table.
#18
storminmormon
Mar 21, 2010 19:09:39 In my previous campaign I had my players get the Coat of Eyes, a Daelkyr artifact. One put it on to keep it out of the hands of a another bad guy. The players patron was a Raksasha who was trying to bring about the rise of Dagon, using the players to gather important artifacts. The Daelkyr lord didn't want that so the player wearing the coat receive telepathic comments from the Daelkyr lord, some of which were explicit comments not to trust their patron, other things were comments on how oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips were awesome, or hats made out of puppies are cuddly.

The player essentially didn't know if they should trust the crazy coat, or their friendly patron.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 tufrat Feb 24, 2010 9:46:14	How do I get my players clued-in and suspicious that the current ephemeral bad guys might be a Rhakshasa who just let them "win" to advance a nefarious plot? And how do I get them suspecting they are being manipulated? I need some creative ways to start indicating and detecting that the party has been fooled again without detracing from the wily cunning of this type of villain. ------------------ I'm running an Eberron Game where the major villains are Rakshasas. One is the final epic battle baddie that ends the campaign (The Shadow in the Flame/Bel Shalor). One is the epic tier bad guy (The Wyrmbreaker, his exarch), and one is the Paragon Tier threat, a Fang of Khyber. But what I'm really after is this: I want to start having the Rhakshasas directly "mess with" the party, but I don't want to do a cheesy shapeshift-to- true-form-laugh-and-run every time. Nor can I allow the party to try to take on a threat they are not ready for... The heroic tier is coming to a close without the players directly interacting with any of the major villains (as far as they know). I have some ideas for information I can feed them that will suggest that some of their Heroic tier villains were agents of the Rakshasas.
#2 LordofKhyber Feb 24, 2010 12:36:43	Give him a strange attraction to catnip. That'll tip them off. Trust me we shapeshifting evil cat villains love our catnip.
#3 David Feb 24, 2010 12:40:15	''Kill'' one of the PCs, only to reveal he was a Rakshasha all along. Ofcourse the PC is not really dead. He is abducted by the Rakshasha, who then took his place in the party.
#4 johnsnow Feb 24, 2010 18:25:31	The first thing to do is to start making them paranoid. If your main villain is a shapeshifter, one easy one to slip in is the "he's not what he seems" angle. This is pretty easy in Eberron if you play up the noir angle of the setting. The party gets hired by a particular individual to do something. Through the course of completing their mission, they need to get double-crossed (more often is better). After you've run a few double-crosses, they'll decide to track down the lousy bastard to get even, they find him - only to discover that he's been dead for weeks. But they were just hired by the same guy last week. Or were they? That'll put "shapeshifter" in their heads. Now they'll be suspicious of changelings, humans with the disguise skill, and everyone else. All you need to do after that is drop some hints as to the TRUE nature of their adversary (or adversaries). Just be mindful to only have it actually be the Rakshasa when you're pretty sure he's going to escape. No straight reveals in front of them. That might mean you'll have to play fast and loose with whether this villain who betrays them is actually the Rakshasa - or just some other double-crossing prick. Of course, the Rakshasa can be revealed to have been behind it all in the end - making him even more loathsome. Betrayal works great to cement an adversary and an adventure as memorable. Trust me, by the time of the big reveal, you'll have them hating your villain - and totally involved in the story. An alternative that a particularly clever adversary might use, is to pose as a henchman or hireling to really mess with the party. If he's truly diabolical, he might fake "the henchman's" death so they feel responsible for getting him killed. Of course, it works better if there's an actual supporting character (that the PCs like!) for him to replace. Then he kills (or kidnaps) the person before taking their place. But then by faking said character's death, he gets to torment them. Then, they keep "seeing a ghost" as he pops into vision, ducks around a corner, and shapeshifts. They follow him and find....nothing. After a few of those, they'll realize they're being screwed with. Of course, after a while, the actual person's body has to turn up in circumstances totally unconnected to his "on-camera" death (like throat slit when the henchman fell off a cliff). Or the body can be a fresh kill. The PCs will (eventually) work out that there's a shapeshifter involved. From the villain's perspective, this is lovely, as they've gone through it twice...at least. Once when they see him die...then they think he isn't dead, only to find out that he is. And then finally they discover that their grieving in the first place was a waste. So now the Rakshasa has made them suffer for this death over and over and over again. Which is certainly an evil enough motivation to make it worth the trouble. Just a few thoughts.
#5 saethone Feb 28, 2010 18:17:57	You could, if the players get a chance to speak with the villian at some point, let him slip information that he shouldn't know. They may not even recognize it at first, but then another NPC can point it out..."How could he have known about that?"
#6 itsme4eva1 Feb 28, 2010 18:51:39	A good way to clue them in is to have the Rakshassa send them on a quest into a cave or dungeon or something of that nature. In there have a book that summons a spirit to tell them of the ploy so they will realize that the person is not what they seem to be. Send them in after a powerful item that could help defeat the Rakshassa and they only want it so they will be nearly unstoppable. Now that they realize the enemy they can work to stop them.
#7 feyberry Mar 01, 2010 3:13:00	There's a perfect way, but I can't show you until I get home. It's from a very NOT SAFE FOR WORK webcomic that is just perfect for shapeshifters. The specific panels/comic that suits this thread is perfectly fine, but others aren't.
#8 xiahouxu Mar 04, 2010 8:25:33	Perhaps there is a telltale physical trait that all his shapeshifts have? Every single time you describe an NPC who happens to be this badguy, maybe mention, just as a throwaway comment, the colour of his eyes (Make sure to do it for the other NPCs too, so it doesn't seem out of character or too obvious). Then, when the reveal is pulled, some of the suggestions already are brilliant, the entire party will start to think 'Oh man... How many blue eyed guys have we passed in the last few months? How many of those can we trust? How many of them are this guy?' The sheer chaos a shapeshifter can cause is rife. Maybe, in fact, some of the blue eyed men they've met aren't the shapeshifter, but maybe some employees of his, or maybe completely unrelated too... Just to put the fear in em.
#9 MWSAber Mar 04, 2010 11:42:02	I'd suggest two NPC's that can never be in the same place at the same time. When the party goes to see "them" one of them has always "just stepped out". Maybe bring it up in a Royal Court type setting where they need a moderate to Hard DC to catch the quick change/notice that one is missing when the other is there
#10 adun_irving Mar 06, 2010 18:21:43	Another way is to have the villain appear as several different people, and make "unintentional" references to the players' operations that the NPC could not possibly know. If the players are paying attention, they'll begin to wonder why that merchant seems to know about a secret mission they undertook in a rival barony.
#11 dannoe Mar 13, 2010 6:12:59	Don't explain at all. Just have the bad guy do things that he ought not be able to do. Make it conspicuous, and your players will get it. You'll be surprised how clever folks can be.
#12 samuraichicken Mar 15, 2010 17:00:50	When it comes to shapechanging villains, heres an idea I've had but never got around to running it in a game: Your shapechanging villan is a mastermind, and through shapechanging as different people, managed to be the lord/guildmaster/top-dog of more than one organization. For example, he could be the Captain of the Watch, the boss of a powerful street gang, and the head cultist of a secret cult within the same city - nobody knew because of his shapechanging powers. His goal was to pit the gang and the cultists against each other, manipulating everyone so the gang and cultists take each other out, with the law enforcement coming in to clean up whatever is left. That was the plan, until the PCs come in. The shapechanger at first thinks he can make use of the PCs, since they can help take out both the gang and the cultists. This plan backfires when the PCs catch the shapechanger off guard by storming into the gang or cultist headquarters unexpectedly. In the battle, the PCs slay the shapechanger (and his true form is revealed). The PCs don't think much of this, as it makes sense that such a shapechanger would manipulate others. What the PCs don't expect is the discovery that the other gang/cult leader has gone missing, as well as the Captain of the Watch. While this does seem odd, the PCs slowly discover through clues and eye-witness accounts that all three people were most likely the same person. I never got around to fleshing out all the details, so I hope what little I have here helps you out.
#13 grumpycelt Mar 16, 2010 15:27:10	His pants fall down and everyone sees he's got tiger legs, not the legs of a man.
#14 hanzo187 Mar 16, 2010 16:28:55	Linguistics would be useful for tipping off the party. Rakshashas have lived forever, and while there's little doubt they know many know many languages, it's doubtful they have MASTERED all of them. One way of going about it would be to have someone in the party speak a particular phrase or have a conversation. A native might notice a few differences with the words, a slipping of the accent, etc., that might give away that this person may not be as he/she seems. If the rakshasa also claims to come from a certain district within the city (and another character came from a nearby, perhaps some reminiscing will reveal the rakshasa is not really a native of the area. The party might also find the rakshasa a little nervy about anti-illusion traps or what-have-you, such as the Banish Illusions ritual, or at least more than he should be (in a way a vampire in the old tales might suddenly retract from a holy symbol). Setting up the ritual as a trap would be a neat way of catching a rakshasa off-guard.
#15 uhf Mar 17, 2010 0:11:55	I'm using several changeling lackies in my campaign (Rogue&Archer). They run errands and kill people for the boss. Many bits and pieces in the campaign don't add up. You'd think there was an army of bad guys. The first direct contact was an assasination attempt. Dagger in back, wizard pitches over nearly dead. The would be killer runs out the tavern door. The first PC to go out the door nearly drops from an arrow, as the thrid player made it out. The second player pitches over unconscious.. arrow deep in chest. Third player... decided to pull his friend back. The players figured something was up because it was a 'local girl' from a near by town, who nearly took out the wizard. The guys in the tavern couldn't figure out why she didn't want to talk with them. (Remember that all the skins mean something to other people as well.) Just lots of clues. "You got that armour form a bandit? I sold it to Jerydd the Ranger just 2 weeks ago. I wonder how they got it?" At the final battle the picture of what was going on was pretty complete. You know talking about a reveal seems wrong. Its like 'monologuing' in The Incredibles. Just let the bad guys keep doing things, and try to think of reasonable clues to find. This is a job for Role playing, not Roll playing. I guess in my case this is easy to do... its a small town. Clues don't hide if you ask around.
#16 Chiba_Monkey Mar 20, 2010 2:44:49	A Changeling villain who works for the Lords of Dust would work well as a heroic-tier villain. Especially if several shapechanging agents use the same identity, the players could think that their recurrin villain keeps coming back to life after they kill him.
#17 archaeologist Mar 20, 2010 2:55:09	Players are ridiculously clever, and will pick up on the SLIGHTEST hint. Even just a casual slip of the tongue will doom your reveal. Watch. Out. In a campaign I read about recently, the PC's stumbled across a Magic Dagger as some treasure loot. However the Dagger was actually a horrible monsterous Shapeshifter in disguise that would kill them once they fell asleep. The problem? In a random unpredictable fit of Player "LOGIC", they gave away the Dagger as part of a deal with a Crime Boss that they didn't have enough gold to pay for. They essentially pawned off a murderous assasin that was supposed to advance the plotline. The Dm found this so hilarious he just started laughing, but refused to reveal just what exactly his players had done. So a session and a few extended rests later the DM reveals that the Crime Boss was found horribly murdered in his sleep by what appears to have been some kind of Tiger-like killing machine (judging by the claw marks.) He's now building up to revealing the Dagger as a villain at the end of the campaign, with dialogue along the lines of "YOUUUUUUUU..... DENSE....MOTHER******S" after the PC's charge into the room expecting a final showdown with the BBEG only to find a Dagger lying on a small table.
#18 storminmormon Mar 21, 2010 19:09:39	In my previous campaign I had my players get the Coat of Eyes, a Daelkyr artifact. One put it on to keep it out of the hands of a another bad guy. The players patron was a Raksasha who was trying to bring about the rise of Dagon, using the players to gather important artifacts. The Daelkyr lord didn't want that so the player wearing the coat receive telepathic comments from the Daelkyr lord, some of which were explicit comments not to trust their patron, other things were comments on how oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips were awesome, or hats made out of puppies are cuddly. The player essentially didn't know if they should trust the crazy coat, or their friendly patron.