I was pretty loose with stuff at the beginning of my campaign and I'm trying to tighten it up a bit now, but I've got no idea how to work through the specifics of this.
I've got a player with the Haunted One background, she was possessed by a fiend as a kid and still has the fiend, though weakened, clinging to her. She killed another child while blacked out and "snapped out of it" after, with the blood still on her hands. Her little trinket is a broken silver dragon pendant, cold to the touch - it was whole before her fiend took over.
I was vaguely thinking that the fiend had been part of a curse from her family, and the necklace was given to her as a baby to protect her or slow the growth of its hold on her. When the fiend was finally able to lash out, the necklace broke and something activated to grant her back control of herself, but it wasn't enough to kill the fiend, just cripple it.
Now that I'm trying to put it into mechanical terms, all I can really think of is a glyph of warding and a protection from fiends scroll, but that seems a bit lackluster to me. Is there something a little less boring I could have it do? The player has recently found another similar broken pendant and is hoping to find an intact one eventually, so I need to figure out what it's capable of eventually just in case.
(Solutions don't have to be Ravenloft specific, but it is a Curse of Strahd campaign and I'd love a way to tie Argynvost/holt into it somehow. Maybe her parents bought it off some Vistani back in the day?)
I wish I knew what they'd intended by putting it on the table for the background. I haven't been able to find any possession mechanics besides on ghost blocks, and it's not quite what I was hoping for. Maybe trawling through some older editions will give me something to work with :p
In dnd lore, the spells in the Player's Handbook and it's expansions are not meant to account for the sum total of magic in the world. It's more like a repository of magic frequently used specifically by adventurers, for adventuring purposes. There might be professional Mage-scholars, for example, who are acknowledged as the preeminent mages in their field, who can barely spark a fireball but can use fourth-dimensional casting to run complex theoretical meta-spells (forgive the arcano-babble). Just like how not every scientist could build a bomb-- some just specialize in tech, or theory, or medicine.
All that to say, when DM-ing, not everything your NPC's do needs to come from the RAW rules for a spell. Especially for powerful beings like fiends, they should have abilities that are at times beyond what the players are capable of. If you're DM-ing and a cool story bit doesn't line up with any extant spells in the game, don't worry. All you have to say for a thing to exist in your game is to say "this exists."
This isn't a cop out either. This is how you're meant to play. Sauron doesn't have to justify himself if "Create Ring" isn't a spell available to Frodo; Sauron's power is requisite for the story, so he simply can "create ring".
I wish I knew what they'd intended by putting it on the table for the background. I haven't been able to find any possession mechanics besides on ghost blocks, and it's not quite what I was hoping for. Maybe trawling through some older editions will give me something to work with :p
The trinket one gets from their background is purely for fluff, it's not intended to have an actual mechanical effect.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I know the trinket is just flavor, I meant the fiend possession part of the Haunted One background.
"A fiend possessed you as a child. You were locked away but escaped. The fiend is still inside you, but now you try to keep it locked away."
The background has a lot of references to finding a way to overcome what haunts you before it destroys you. It's an active struggle. I thought that meant it was intended to be handled as part of the PC's character arc, which is why I'm surprised there's no mechanics for it whatsoever.
Adding function to the trinket's flavor was just me trying to make it make sense.
Thank you for this. One of the other players at my table can be a bit heavy on the rules-lawyering at times, so I try to keep things as "in the box" as I can with magic sometimes. I'll use that exact "create ring" example if he decides to complain about this, it's very to the point and it might just work lol
And if they say "fiends in the MM can't possess people though!" You can hit them back with "the stat blocks in the manual are just the *typical* version of the monster. You must've been possessed by a special one."
Though idk why really they would choose a background and then try to pick holes in it.
I'm actually partially wrong: demons do have a possession ability... which lacks any specific mechanics, though treating it as a chaotic evil sentient magic item is probably fair.
Bound Demons. The Book of Vile Darkness, the Black Scrolls of Ahm, and the Demonomicon of Iggwilv are the foremost authorities on demonic matters. These ancient tomes describe techniques that can trap the essence of a demon on the Material Plane, placing it within a weapon, idol, or piece of jewelry and preventing the fiend’s return to the Abyss.
An object that binds a demon must be specially prepared with unholy incantations and innocent blood. It radiates a palpable evil, chilling and fouling the air around it. A creature that handles such an object experiences unsettling dreams and wicked impulses, but is able to control the demon whose essence is trapped within the object. Destroying the object frees the demon, which immediately seeks revenge against its binder.
Demonic Possession. No matter how secure its bindings, a powerful demon often finds a way to escape an object that holds it. When a demonic essence emerges from its container, it can possess a mortal host. Sometimes a fiend employs stealth to hide a successful possession. Other times, it unleashes the full brunt of its fiendish drives through its new form.
As long as the demon remains in possession of its host, the soul of that host is in danger of being dragged to the Abyss with the demon if it is exorcised from the flesh, or if the host dies. If a demon possesses a creature and the object binding the demon is destroyed, the possession lasts until powerful magic is used to drive the demonic spirit out of its host.
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I was pretty loose with stuff at the beginning of my campaign and I'm trying to tighten it up a bit now, but I've got no idea how to work through the specifics of this.
I've got a player with the Haunted One background, she was possessed by a fiend as a kid and still has the fiend, though weakened, clinging to her. She killed another child while blacked out and "snapped out of it" after, with the blood still on her hands. Her little trinket is a broken silver dragon pendant, cold to the touch - it was whole before her fiend took over.
I was vaguely thinking that the fiend had been part of a curse from her family, and the necklace was given to her as a baby to protect her or slow the growth of its hold on her. When the fiend was finally able to lash out, the necklace broke and something activated to grant her back control of herself, but it wasn't enough to kill the fiend, just cripple it.
Now that I'm trying to put it into mechanical terms, all I can really think of is a glyph of warding and a protection from fiends scroll, but that seems a bit lackluster to me. Is there something a little less boring I could have it do? The player has recently found another similar broken pendant and is hoping to find an intact one eventually, so I need to figure out what it's capable of eventually just in case.
(Solutions don't have to be Ravenloft specific, but it is a Curse of Strahd campaign and I'd love a way to tie Argynvost/holt into it somehow. Maybe her parents bought it off some Vistani back in the day?)
That's a custom magic item that's firmly in the "just wing it" category. Fiends in 5e don't even have a listed possession power.
I wish I knew what they'd intended by putting it on the table for the background. I haven't been able to find any possession mechanics besides on ghost blocks, and it's not quite what I was hoping for. Maybe trawling through some older editions will give me something to work with :p
They meant the pop culture concept.
In dnd lore, the spells in the Player's Handbook and it's expansions are not meant to account for the sum total of magic in the world. It's more like a repository of magic frequently used specifically by adventurers, for adventuring purposes. There might be professional Mage-scholars, for example, who are acknowledged as the preeminent mages in their field, who can barely spark a fireball but can use fourth-dimensional casting to run complex theoretical meta-spells (forgive the arcano-babble). Just like how not every scientist could build a bomb-- some just specialize in tech, or theory, or medicine.
All that to say, when DM-ing, not everything your NPC's do needs to come from the RAW rules for a spell. Especially for powerful beings like fiends, they should have abilities that are at times beyond what the players are capable of. If you're DM-ing and a cool story bit doesn't line up with any extant spells in the game, don't worry. All you have to say for a thing to exist in your game is to say "this exists."
This isn't a cop out either. This is how you're meant to play. Sauron doesn't have to justify himself if "Create Ring" isn't a spell available to Frodo; Sauron's power is requisite for the story, so he simply can "create ring".
The trinket one gets from their background is purely for fluff, it's not intended to have an actual mechanical effect.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I know the trinket is just flavor, I meant the fiend possession part of the Haunted One background.
"A fiend possessed you as a child. You were locked away but escaped. The fiend is still inside you, but now you try to keep it locked away."
The background has a lot of references to finding a way to overcome what haunts you before it destroys you. It's an active struggle. I thought that meant it was intended to be handled as part of the PC's character arc, which is why I'm surprised there's no mechanics for it whatsoever.
Adding function to the trinket's flavor was just me trying to make it make sense.
Thank you for this. One of the other players at my table can be a bit heavy on the rules-lawyering at times, so I try to keep things as "in the box" as I can with magic sometimes. I'll use that exact "create ring" example if he decides to complain about this, it's very to the point and it might just work lol
And if they say "fiends in the MM can't possess people though!" You can hit them back with "the stat blocks in the manual are just the *typical* version of the monster. You must've been possessed by a special one."
Though idk why really they would choose a background and then try to pick holes in it.
Have a look at the Ring of Mind shielding. Now imagine it as a cursed item with a „fiend soul“ in it…
Attack: [roll]3d20dl2+6[/roll] Damage: [roll](if([roll:-1:critical], =0, 1d8, 2{1d8}.expand()))+4[/roll] Sneakattack: [roll](if([roll:-2:critical], =0, 2d6, 2{2d6}.expand()))[/roll]I'm actually partially wrong: demons do have a possession ability... which lacks any specific mechanics, though treating it as a chaotic evil sentient magic item is probably fair.