Unexpected Intelligence
The thing about intelligent animals is that it only surprises the party once. The second that familiar gets identified as a spy or that suspicious cow is outed as a druid, the paranoia sets in. And once the suspicion is there it remains for the rest of the campaign.
This is exactly what happened to me last time I played Exalted. We were a bunch of newly-minted Solar Exalts out to kick ass and take names. Being a bunch of deposed kings of Creation (and so possessing all manner of god-like acumen and superhuman senses), we were embarrassed to get taken in by the first adorable pupper to cross our path. Dude turned out to be someone’s Lunar Mate in shapeshifted form, and we were so busy scratching his ears and trying to find the poor, scrawny mutt a snack that no one so much as rolled to notice his decidedly un-doglike intelligence.
Despite the Lunar in question being a solid dude, we resolved to never be fooled again.
From that point on we questioned each and every animal we ran into. Wild foxes, random rats, the occasional passing yeddim… it didn’t matter! They were all the targets of our unreasonable assumption that each and every creature that appeared in our journey had a hidden, shape-shifting past.
And so we asked each suspicious critter we passed: “Are you always a horse? What about on weekends? Under the full moon? How can we be certain that you aren’t just really good at bluffing that hay tastes delicious?”
What about the rest of you guys? Have you ever discovered animal spies in your midst? And if so, what did they turn out to be? Sound off with your best talking critter tales down in the comments!
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Now see, if Drow Priestess was smart, she’d be more concerned for herself.
If she ever does manage to kill the main party, there will be nothing to stop Inquisitor and her dad from taking her out…
It would be interesting to run a “reverse Out of the Abyss” game. You’re a bunch of drow captured on the surface. The only known entrance to the Underdark in the region has collapsed. You’ve got to travel across a hostile surface world to find a passage that might lead you back home.
Meanwhile,a horde of powerful angels has been trapped in the world by the foolish overreaching of a powerful high elven archmage, and are in the process of purging it of all evil… and Chaos… and neutrality.
Ultimately, when you return to the underdark you’re summoned by the Duergar King of Gracklestugh and begged to assist in an expedition to defeat these tedious do-gooders once and for all!
Not gonna lie, it would be a fun game.
Yep, I’m very tempted to do that now.
Well, one of my campaigns is a Mummy campaign (WoD) in which all the players are indeed intelligent animals. They were mummified, and now work for the high priests of several temples as a trouble shooting team. Because, you know, who is going to notice that cat lying in the sun, or that ibis up on the roof, or that jackal near the offal pile, which also happens to be near that unreachable window beneath which those villains are hatching their plans…
But now I might have an idea for the next session in which some of those villains might be aware of this secret group of troubleshooters. Sort of the reverse of the situation you sketched above.
You’d think mummification would make it rather hard for you to pass as a regular animal. Even if you’ve been unwrapped, the process leaves one a bit… thin.
I assume Arisen have some kind of magic that makes that sort of thing easier. Otherwise, the range of stuff they could do in the world would be fairly limited—the Masquerade isn’t limited to Vampire, y’know.
Well, World of Darkness mummies are a little different, depending on which edition you follow. You are either sort of re-animated, and look like you were in live, or, in a later version, you are a person from today, that misses part of its soul, which is then provided by an ancient person, that was mummified. We, of course, play the earlier thing, so the mummy is more or less indistinguishable from a living being. And as the animal specimens that were mummified were usually prime examples of their sort, the animal mummies actually might look slightly better than a living one.
I dunno. There’s a cute aesthetic if you go the other way with it….
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DkGr9C_XsAAGAUa.png
Looks good, yes, but rather a dead (pun more or less intended) giveaway for a supposed undercover agent….
One of my more evil DM actions partially involved this.
It was my Ravenloft campaign, and the party had been shipwrecked on an island mental asylum (horror trope in full force). The asylum was run by a unique type of vampire that drunk cerebral fluid instead of blood, and the party were allowed to stay in the guest accommodations while waiting the next boat to the mainland. Of course, the ‘doctors’ had no intention of letting them leave, and went full force into attempting to drive the party insane, so they could be forcibly incarcerated (DM note – gaslighting your players at the table is a fun and surprisingly effective tactic, probably not safe to use too often though!).
The Vampires had multiple means of keeping the party under surveillance, including psionics and scrying, but without doubt the most successful (and funniest for me) method was their shapechange ability, because instead of bats, this breed of vampires transformed into seagulls. And boy, did I make sure to mention the seagulls in every bit of flavour text and descriptive information when the party thought they had cleverly found a secret place to plot their next escape attempt. On one particular occasion, the party used feeding a ‘particularly brave and inquisitive’ seagull as cover for their huddled strategy meeting, completely unaware one of their captors was stood in the middle of their little huddle :).
Ima need details. Was this stuff like, “No, I did not just ask you for a Perception check. Why would you think I did?” *creepy stare*
As the NPC’s were deliberately trying to loosen the parties grip on their sanity, I just removed the safety bar of being a reliable memory for them. For example, when the NPC’s erased a note they made and changed what it said, I just ‘played along’ by claiming thats what I noted down they had written (and proved it by showing my notes, which I had of course written differently at the time). They were sure I was lying… but not completely, and there was definitely a few occasions when the players were starting to doubt themselves.
Now, I will admit under any normal circumstances, i would call that a DM foul, but under the situation, it really helped change the table atmosphere, and bring the horror feel to the fore, and I probably wouldn’t repeat the activity again.
Hey, if you’ve got that level of trust in place with your table, no foul at all. The only downside is that it might damage said trust in future games. That can make it harder to collaborate without suspicion in a more cooperative style of storytelling, but it seems perfectly appropriate to a game of horror and madness.
I’m surprised Drow Priestess doesn’t consider just stealing LE and buggering off (nobody else has a mount, so they’re unlikely to catch her without fancy speed magics). Is there a Geas keeping her ’employed’?
Well, for one thing, it’s possible she doesn’t have ranks in Ride. Not a lot of ponies in the Underdark.
(And more seriously, it’s not easy to get a horse—or most domestic animals—to abandon humans it sees as part of its herd/pack. And it’s even harder to get a unicorn to leave someone light Fighter unattended.)
She might not have ponies in the Underdark, but she would have giant spiders, dire bats and enslaved Driders as Underdark transportation to justify ride ranks.
She might also have ride (humanoid) due to the unique… Social standards of the Drow.
It’s also possible she doesn’t know that LE is a magical Unicorn rather than a very pretty rhino.
To be fair, even if she tries, he’ll just say no. And/or arrest her as he’s a hero.
Dude’s got a moral obligation.
The Priestess is so bad at this it may genuinely be her best asset. She’s so obviously evil and so bad at hiding it that people see her as predictable, controllable and non-threatening
A clever schemer could exploit that. An unclever one could potentially blunder into exploiting that
Well, if I remember correctly, Wizard did hire her because she was threatening to kill them in their sleep, and that’s just the kind of drama Wizard wants from the hired help.
I want to see a side adventure where DP and the rest of the followers try to go on a crime spree and accidentally do more good/heroics than the PC party.
I don’t think that’d be too hard, to be honest.
Is Drow Priestess coming full circle? Is such an NPC actually a good idea?
That happened to the group I DM for. They were walking through the wilderness, when they noticed a panicked-looking owl hooting at a hole in a tree. One of the player decided to climb the tree, thinking something had gotten in the owl’s nest and wanting to take a look.
Which is when the druid turned back to human form, commanded her animated tree to attack, and called for her awakened animals reinforcements.
It was just a random encounter, but the surprise attack turned it into one of the most dangerous fight they ever had in the campaign. So now they suspect most animal they see out in the wilderness. And since infiltrated druids and awakened animal are a common thing in the campaign, it’s probably a good thing they do.
Not gonna lie, I love the idea of an owl druid piloting a tree like a mech.
“Squirrel missile pods… launch!”
If my time playing MtG taught me anything, it’s that the squirrels are by far the most dangerous part.
Interrogating the yeddim is probably a good plan. Big, dumb and docile… they’re the perfect disguise for a Lunar looking to keep an eye on the Guild trade caravans.
Yeddim are huge gossips. Or possibly gargantuan.
I can’t think of any time the players have been fooled by animal disguises, but I can think of times that they have tried to fool people with animal disguises.
UnFortunately, the players in question tend to either be terrible actors or are stuck with animals entirely inappropriate for the environment (like a parrot in a temperate forest).That’s the same trope as far as I’m concerned. I mean OK sure, one is fairytale themed and the other is shapeshifting wizards, but the ultimate effect is the same. That fox is watching you just a little too closely….
https://31.media.tumblr.com/96d62e1622468de67f752eabc448c81d/tumblr_n4swd8CHpg1qhc0olo2_250.gif
I did jump the gun on it. We were dealing with Yuan-Ti. Sneeple have the power to turn into snakes. I rolled a good intelligence check, and so the party knew to go St. Patrick on any snakes we saw in case they were spies.
Did you just portmanteau “snakes” and “people?”
https://youtu.be/g941kTWyoqs
Blindly trusting animals is one thing, but we had rather the opposite problem. Our party sorcerer, fully unprompted, shot a raven that was minding its own business. In Curse of Strahd. The truth came out shortly after, and she still hasn’t lived it down.
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
Ooh. Ravens. One party I DM’d for had the opposite opposite problem: a compelling, but false, local legend (lifted from REH’s short story, “Pigeons From Hell”) and several failed Listen and Sense Motive checks led the PCs (and players) to steadfastly believe that the flocks of perfectly normal ravens in the area were too dangerous and powerful to fight. They purchased livestock to deliver as offerings to the ravens if they would only let the party pass safely.
The dangerous undead that were the original big-bads of the adventure? Nah, the players had all seen John Carpenter’s The Fog and thought that encounter was derivative and boring.
“Those ravens though…” (shudder) 🙂
Curse of Strahd, in the winery. Goddamn familiars…
Gotta be careful of specific buildings like that. If it’s a generic tavern or an inn, you’re safe. If it’s something specific like a “winery” or a “gambling den” or whatever, you know you’re about to have a set piece encounter.
Especially when they’d specifically said there’d been issues going on prior to us going there.
A dead giveaway!
Wait, what services or goods could LE blackmail DP for? It’s not like she (or the rest of the NPCs) get a reasonable salary (hell, DP might not even have that, given her acquisition).
MOAR BRUSHING!
Sugar cubes. His weight in sugar cubes.
Drow have the concept of sugar? I assume it’s like expecting the forces of evil to know of ice-cream.
I feel that Coldstone Creamery’s hands-on methodology of f**king with your ice cream is the epitome of Evil…so yeah, Evil knows ice cream. Drow sugar probably just involves sucking blood-flavored droplets from the backsides of driders, like from honey ants.
I can’t be certain, but I suspect that Coldstone Creamery does not use drider butt juice.
As a DM, my favorite shaggy dog story involves a lovable mutt that would frequently stroll into a wizards-only bar, hop onto a barstool, and promptly be served a bowl of beer. The dog would finish his drink, then hop down and vanish out another door.
No one ever managed to find out the true nature or identity of the dog, much less whether or not he spoke. (In my mind, it was merely a well-trained pet, added to the locale as set-dressing.) The players, however, were forever hyper-wary of every pigeon and squirrel, lest it be something ominous.
Did you have a story prepped and ready, or was it just an indefinite detail you never got around to fleshing out?
My plan (never realized) was to have them finally accept the animal as nothing but a well-trained dog. Then, once (if) they had infantilized the pup and spoken openly around him as though he was a dumb beast, have him offer a key piece of information or insight at a crucial moment. In AD&D rules, I think I’d decided that in that case he would be the result of a normal dog lapping up two potions (including a philter of glibness), “DISCOVERY! The admixture of the two potions has caused a special formula which will cause only one of the two potions to function, but its effects will be permanent upon the imbiber.”
–> Very much in the vein of the old vaudeville joke “No Dog Acts” where the pooch, after responding to inane questions with answers like “Rough” “Roof” “Bark,” and finally (“Who’s the greatest baseball player?”) “Ruth!” asks his partner “Sorry, should I have said ‘DiMaggio’?”
There should be more vaudeville in D&D. Certainly it would make the bards happy.
No, because the animal spies are usually ours… which of course just means we never caught the enemy’s animal spies.
What if your animal spies are double spies?
Then they went doubly uncaught!
Wizard: Mr Mittens how could you sell us out? You’re my familiar!
Mr Mittens: inscrutable meow
Wizard: What do you mean “catnip”? But I give you catnip?
Mr Mittens: greedy maaaow
Wizard: “What about tomorrow?” What the hell? Do you have any loyalties?
Mr Mittens: satisfied mrrrring
Wizard: “Only to the nip?” That’s it, I’m getting a dog…
Mr Mittens: Hiss! Hiss-hiss-hiss!
Can you imagine actually getting betrayed by your familiar? Like, you’re all captured by the BBEG and that shitlord cat goes up and nuzzles his pantleg? Friggin’ dead to me bro.
No. If shapeshifters try to sneak our DM always throw a clue or two. Never have used talking common animal on a campaign because that sound like something from a kids show 🙂
I like the cut of your jib here! I tend to view adventuring as a study in reading comprehension, with valuable clues and foreshadowing buried in the room description.
Never mind. Your jib is judgy.
My jib is a Karen and she wants to speak with the manager 😛
My druid in Curse of Strahd used the form of a housecat to get info in several of the townhouses. Guard dogs and skeletal cats cut a few of those info-gathering sessions short, though.
That one of my favorite things about shapeshifting PCs. In the same way that “Divinity: Original Sin” became more interesting if you had the “talk to animals” talent, you suddenly enter into a richer world of NPCs when you begin to move in critter circles. The world just has different interactions at that scale.
I’m just waiting for the alternate universe where Elf Princess is a vigilante as well, and like a certain legendary story of the Queen, knows it and knows exactly what she wants.
But that isn’t a topic for THIS handbook, now is it.
O_O
Are we to assume what’s happening in the tent behind them is also fodder for the other handbook? Thief and fighter, drinking, in a tent, at night, with wizard nowhere to be seen? HUSSY!
Naw. They’re just murderhobo pals. We don’t get to play that angle too often, but it’s there:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/entrepreneurial
I’m perpetually amused by the idea that Thief secretly thinks Fighter’s murderhoboing is hilarious.
This is really just an extension of the mimic problem. Once you show one to the party, they’ll ALWAYS be on the lookout for them.
It’s very important to throw in several red herrings, especially if you can prompt a “What are you DOING?!? That [misc thing] is priceless!”
They can be suspicious and even paranoid, but it’s important to teach that there’s a reason evidence is gathered BEFORE passing sentence.
This problem?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-living-room
Absolutely. This is another way for a GM to hide danger in narrative. At that level, adventuring is almost an exercise looking for the “interactive text” inside the GM’s descriptions.
“Wait… You mentioned that the raven seems to be looking at us. Is there any way to spot a familiar?”
Solution: Create a room full of artificial mimics (i.e. statues and artwork that looks like an unconvincing/obvious mimic) that the owner/artist of chastises the PCs if they damage them.
And then someone casts animate object on them and they start beating the shit out of the PCs anyway.
It’ll never work. They cast “detect magic” before they roll Perception half the time. Those animation spells will never stay hidden!
I once saw a seagull attacking our Arcane Trickters owl familiar, and thus decided to do the only sane thing and fireball it. Everyone at the table called me out for “Excessive use of fireballs” (Like there is such a thing), but it turned out the seagull was a druid in wildshape.
Our DM had actually just wanted to include them as a bit of a joke because we rolled really well on our travel check, and hadn´t expected us to actually end up interacting with them.
So wait… Why was the seagull attacking? What can a seagull even do to an owl besides annoy it?
I really like the alt-text by the way. I can clearly picture JE’s grin and DP’s pained, pissed-off expression.
Sometimes I wish this was a tow-panel comic. 🙂