Game Report: The Doppelganger

The party are standing above Riley’s body and trying to figure out what was going on. They discovered that his being quartered had nothing to do with his death, it happened after he was killed. No, he seemed to have been killed by stabbing. With this knowledge in mind, and reviewing their myriad of options, they gently repose the poor guy and carry his body via Tenser’s Floating Disc* out of the estate and back towards the dragonborn base for a proper burial.

They make a ways before they come across some foulspawn, a leader and a fighter, who demanding an absurd toll to allow the party passage. The party obviously demurs, only to be jumped by a multi-armed assailant who tries to stab the fighter and fails. From another rooftop another smaller creature tries to launch a psychic attack, and the fight is in full swing.

The party easily sidesteps and halts the stabby rogue, and is able to hold off the swordsman no problem. The grue** on the rooftop gets frozen and then forcibly dragged off the roof, leaving him out of combat while the party gets grossed out by an area effect spell. They quickly recover, even though most of them are dazed, and swing the tide within two turns, leaving only the grue to stand around and get slapped around by the party. They defeat everything and find a handful of gems, and then rest for the evening…or day, or whatever wacky sleep schedule they are on. It’s remarkably unreliable.

They travel a bit further, only to see an object approaching from the north. It appears to be an attractive elven woman being pursued by fiery angels. The woman hides behind the party while the angels line up, swords drawn. The party calls a truce, and tries to figure out what’s going on. The woman says that these angels are after her sword, and the angels say that the sword belongs to their god, Pelor. There’s a great deal of pussyfooting, which involves the woman giving the sword to the PCs, the PCs trying to give the sword to the angels, the woman reappearing and revealing herself as a doppelganger, ringing a little bell, and causing the angels to start swinging.

The party acts confused for a round, even trying to freeze the angels to death, only to instead knock the doppelganger unconscious and call off the heavenly host. They take a look at the sword, and the angels sheepishly admit that this wasn’t the sword that was taken from them. The PCs wake the doppelganger, who transforms back into the elf lady, and she says that she swapped the sword with an associate some half-mile back, and led the angels off the path. The PCs, exasperated, offer to get the sword back in exchange for bringing Riley’s body back to the dragonborn. The angels agree, but only after having their god cast as geas on both the doppelganger and Kasul, the cleric.***

With that…sorted, the doppelganger is ready to go and marches them to the nearest teleportation pad owned by the Company, who she was previously working for, which is in the same building the party stumbled into a few days ago. They walk in easily, with the doppelganger playing as Riley to smooth and the deal, and she guides them into the heart of the company.

Lessons learned: That I haven’t learned enough lessons at all. This session was a mess, only lasting about two hours, with a couple of confusing encounters and me playing everything completely by ear, and in my attempt to piece together something playable I introduced some confusing and ridiculous elements. Probably my biggest mistake was assuming that my mostly good party would willingly fight a team of angels, and this led to some huge railroading that I eventually just had to scrap and let the party take the lead. It was pure luck that they wanted to dig a little deeper into these circumstances, and it led some place I eventually wanted them to go anyway. It’s just unfortunate that my complete lack of planning had caused me to do a bit of veil-revealing sooner than I had hoped…but that’s what I get.

So, the biggest lesson is…prepare! Always be prepared, even if you have no idea what is going to happen. Whatever you do, don’t implement an encounter a full minute after you think of it.

I apologize to the party for this disaster, but I promised that I’ll make it up to you somehow. Anybody want an airship? No, you can’t have one, nevermind.

*This isn’t apropos to anything, and it’s been said before, but how come the only spells that are named in D&D are extremely lame? Why are the creators of the generally unnecessary and unimaginative spells the only one’s immortalized? Tenser’s name has graced nerd lips for decades, despite the fact that basically invented a wheelbarrow, Bigby has that whole hand motif going, which just go to show you what twisted things he was interested in, if you know what I mean, and Mordenkainen was so cheap he wouldn’t even pay rent, instead preferring to live in an elaborate mansion that only he could see. (I guess he had that sword and that weird counterspell too, but still, penny-pinching asshole.)

** That’s what they call the thing, even though it’s small sized, only level 5, doesn’t involve an eating-flavored power, and can clearly be seen in the daylight. While it’s an evocative name, it also carries a lot of baggage, and even though I thought that was cool at first, the name starts to grate on me every time I see it.

***Thoroughly confused? Yeah, me too.