Okay so I'm coming up with an encounter for my players in the Witchlight campaign and I want to have my players come across a coven of fate hags, the Sisters of Fate, since the fate hag leans into that Greek mythos. Where I need some help is coming up with coven variant powers for them. Not really sure as to how to choose what spells best suit them.
The way I plan on running the encounter is the fate hags regularly, but not always, breaking the 4th wall and talk to the players directly and treating the character like merely puppets on a string. The encounter isn't ment to be combative but a way to get some extra magic items or information, though knowing my players there is a good chance combat may break out and I want to be prepared.
This is coming off a killmoulis (CR 0 creature with 7 hp and is shy and timid unless angered that sneaks into camp and steals 1 days worth of rations and gives the party temp hp.as payment for its meal) encounter that ended badly, one player who was keeping watch tried to interact with it causing it to run off cursing the party instead of giving them the boon of 10 temp hp, right before the story beat of dealing with agdon longscarf.
In lieu of that mess I'm trying to keep this encounter more tamed in effort to prevent a similar scenario with the hags.
Breaking the fourth wall doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I'd just use them for foreshadowing and setting up the rest of the adventure. But you do you, it's your campaign and you know your players best.
If combat does begin, they're the Hags of Fate. Treat them like amped up divination wizards. They have 1 through 20 available to them. If one of the players attacks or is making a saving throw, one of the hags plucks a red string and you decide what the roll is going to be. "You roll a 3, with your modifiers you miss." Once a number has been used it can't be used again. This gives you a chance to give them a boon as well. If the player characters end on friendly terms, you can gift them with a guaranteed number to use for a future roll.
kinda agree with the comment above, if their comments are directed at the players and not the party then they'll look for spoilers to the campaign.
If I was doing this I'd borrow from time travel tropes from other media, the hags have some predetermined information for the players which they can give without damaging the future. but if they give too much then the future they see when scrying will change making their prophesy pointless. this way there's things the party can learn but it won't derail your later ideas.
as for combat, if the hags can see the future and the party then they know combat is happening. So they'll be prepared, a teleport circle, one use they can run too and escape, possible they spent the previous day enacting a ritual to create a version of time stop, maybe the remnants of the ritual are still visible to the party to warn them the hags have a plan in place should they attack. this could be foreshadowed a bit if there's a trap on the way to the hags and they have put a sign up to warn the party to avoid it. this would tell the party the hags, know they are coming, what route they take and what lies ahead. the party may also assume this is a fake and investigate anyway
If you actually want to give them a stat block, then spells like "clairvoyance" would thematically make sense, as or combat, "silvery barbs" would be something every hag would have as if they see the future then they see the strands of fate leading to the attack and would seek spells to alter the outcome. after that pick a hag statblock from the monster manual that is CR appropriate to the party
The cat is already out of the bag on the spoilers ability, I'm running the variant rule on the deck of many things where each card has a single effect and one of my players drew the sage card as an item they found.
If you're not familiar with that variant in here it is from the book of many things.
"A Deck of Many Things typically appears not as individual cards, but as a collection of cards characters can draw from. But this doesn’t have to be true; you can give each card a property as a standalone item, so characters who find only one card can still enjoy this famed item and use the card on adventures.
This approach is particularly useful if you make a Deck of Many Things the object of a quest; as the characters explore, each card they find grants them a magical ability they can use in subsequent adventures to find the cards that remain. Eventually the heroes assemble the entire deck, which they can then use in the traditional manner, drawing transformative cards from it in a fitting climax to the campaign."
Here's the card that player drew
"Sage. As an action, you can brandish this card and use it to cast the Contact Other Plane spell. When you cast the spell in this way, your questions are answered by the mysterious figure depicted on the card. Once this property is used, it can’t be used again until the next dawn."
Now I know this player well enough that I know he won't abuse this. So I feel fine with him having that card.
Honestly I'm for my player breaking the campaign, they even self impose limits as I tell them when they try to use spells in an unethical way that they can BUT that opens them up to having it used on them in the same manner in the future. Think create/destroy water and you get the idea.
The way I intend for the hags to talk to the players is more or less to interact with the players directly instead of through their characters, as in they can overhear what the players say and talk to them in response, not in combat obviously.
On that note an amped up divination wizard sounds like it might work.
Also the rule of 3 is in effect due to the players being in the feywilds, hospitality, reciprocity and ownership. So it's not going to be the case of freely given information or items, the information I think should cost my players trinkets, the currency of the feywilds, where as items are going to be contracts with an archfey level depending on what the player asks for.
I'm using domains of delight: a feywild accessory supplement to help run the campaign.
Also for a bit of context, the fate hag is a legendary creature, typically neutral, who live in the feywilds or shadowfell or near one of the crossings between the realms and material plane.
Okay so I'm coming up with an encounter for my players in the Witchlight campaign and I want to have my players come across a coven of fate hags, the Sisters of Fate, since the fate hag leans into that Greek mythos. Where I need some help is coming up with coven variant powers for them. Not really sure as to how to choose what spells best suit them.
The way I plan on running the encounter is the fate hags regularly, but not always, breaking the 4th wall and talk to the players directly and treating the character like merely puppets on a string. The encounter isn't ment to be combative but a way to get some extra magic items or information, though knowing my players there is a good chance combat may break out and I want to be prepared.
This is coming off a killmoulis (CR 0 creature with 7 hp and is shy and timid unless angered that sneaks into camp and steals 1 days worth of rations and gives the party temp hp.as payment for its meal) encounter that ended badly, one player who was keeping watch tried to interact with it causing it to run off cursing the party instead of giving them the boon of 10 temp hp, right before the story beat of dealing with agdon longscarf.
In lieu of that mess I'm trying to keep this encounter more tamed in effort to prevent a similar scenario with the hags.
Breaking the fourth wall doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I'd just use them for foreshadowing and setting up the rest of the adventure. But you do you, it's your campaign and you know your players best.
If combat does begin, they're the Hags of Fate. Treat them like amped up divination wizards. They have 1 through 20 available to them. If one of the players attacks or is making a saving throw, one of the hags plucks a red string and you decide what the roll is going to be. "You roll a 3, with your modifiers you miss." Once a number has been used it can't be used again. This gives you a chance to give them a boon as well. If the player characters end on friendly terms, you can gift them with a guaranteed number to use for a future roll.
kinda agree with the comment above, if their comments are directed at the players and not the party then they'll look for spoilers to the campaign.
If I was doing this I'd borrow from time travel tropes from other media, the hags have some predetermined information for the players which they can give without damaging the future. but if they give too much then the future they see when scrying will change making their prophesy pointless. this way there's things the party can learn but it won't derail your later ideas.
as for combat, if the hags can see the future and the party then they know combat is happening. So they'll be prepared, a teleport circle, one use they can run too and escape, possible they spent the previous day enacting a ritual to create a version of time stop, maybe the remnants of the ritual are still visible to the party to warn them the hags have a plan in place should they attack. this could be foreshadowed a bit if there's a trap on the way to the hags and they have put a sign up to warn the party to avoid it. this would tell the party the hags, know they are coming, what route they take and what lies ahead. the party may also assume this is a fake and investigate anyway
If you actually want to give them a stat block, then spells like "clairvoyance" would thematically make sense, as or combat, "silvery barbs" would be something every hag would have as if they see the future then they see the strands of fate leading to the attack and would seek spells to alter the outcome. after that pick a hag statblock from the monster manual that is CR appropriate to the party
The cat is already out of the bag on the spoilers ability, I'm running the variant rule on the deck of many things where each card has a single effect and one of my players drew the sage card as an item they found.
If you're not familiar with that variant in here it is from the book of many things.
"A Deck of Many Things typically appears not as individual cards, but as a collection of cards characters can draw from. But this doesn’t have to be true; you can give each card a property as a standalone item, so characters who find only one card can still enjoy this famed item and use the card on adventures.
This approach is particularly useful if you make a Deck of Many Things the object of a quest; as the characters explore, each card they find grants them a magical ability they can use in subsequent adventures to find the cards that remain. Eventually the heroes assemble the entire deck, which they can then use in the traditional manner, drawing transformative cards from it in a fitting climax to the campaign."
Here's the card that player drew
"Sage. As an action, you can brandish this card and use it to cast the Contact Other Plane spell. When you cast the spell in this way, your questions are answered by the mysterious figure depicted on the card. Once this property is used, it can’t be used again until the next dawn."
Now I know this player well enough that I know he won't abuse this. So I feel fine with him having that card.
Honestly I'm for my player breaking the campaign, they even self impose limits as I tell them when they try to use spells in an unethical way that they can BUT that opens them up to having it used on them in the same manner in the future. Think create/destroy water and you get the idea.
The way I intend for the hags to talk to the players is more or less to interact with the players directly instead of through their characters, as in they can overhear what the players say and talk to them in response, not in combat obviously.
On that note an amped up divination wizard sounds like it might work.
Also the rule of 3 is in effect due to the players being in the feywilds, hospitality, reciprocity and ownership. So it's not going to be the case of freely given information or items, the information I think should cost my players trinkets, the currency of the feywilds, where as items are going to be contracts with an archfey level depending on what the player asks for.
I'm using domains of delight: a feywild accessory supplement to help run the campaign.
Also for a bit of context, the fate hag is a legendary creature, typically neutral, who live in the feywilds or shadowfell or near one of the crossings between the realms and material plane.
Here's the official stat block:
Fate Hag