I am having a doppelganger interrogate the players after they got arrested. And it has the read thoughts ability. How do you deal with that without making it too obvious? Do you ask the players to tell you what their characters think? Or do you decided what your NPC learns based on what you as DM already know the players know?
When it says: “The doppelganger magically reads the surface thoughts of one creature within 60 feet of it” that is just the narrative reason for the rule. The actual mechanical function of the rule is: “While reading the target's mind, the doppelganger has advantage on Wisdom (Insight) and Charisma (Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion) checks against the target.”
So I let the dice decide how good a read the Doppelgänger gets on the target, and then I decide what it learns through (Insight), or how much of what I know as the DM it could have possibly sifted to use for the (Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion) checks. If I roll super high for their Intimidation, then I might have them say something personally “threatening” to the PC to get into their player's head a little.
I don't know how clear all that was so if it wasn't I'm sorry. I hope it helped.
Mostly the latter. But then you use that to get them talking about even more stuff. If you can, separate them and then use little details about one character to convince the other characters that they're flipping on them. Then use what you get from them and go to the next character and do the same thing. Watch Bunk on The Wire doing interrogations. But that's mostly if the doppelgänger needs a confession, rather than actually needing information.
If the doppelgänger actually needs information, asking a question and reading surface thoughts should get it, like the old "don't think of a purple cow" thing. Saying, what did you do with the murder weapon is going to make someone instantly think "Don't think about throwing the bloody. dagger in the river" and then you have them.
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I am having a doppelganger interrogate the players after they got arrested. And it has the read thoughts ability. How do you deal with that without making it too obvious? Do you ask the players to tell you what their characters think? Or do you decided what your NPC learns based on what you as DM already know the players know?
When it says: “The doppelganger magically reads the surface thoughts of one creature within 60 feet of it” that is just the narrative reason for the rule. The actual mechanical function of the rule is: “While reading the target's mind, the doppelganger has advantage on Wisdom (Insight) and Charisma (Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion) checks against the target.”
So I let the dice decide how good a read the Doppelgänger gets on the target, and then I decide what it learns through (Insight), or how much of what I know as the DM it could have possibly sifted to use for the (Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion) checks. If I roll super high for their Intimidation, then I might have them say something personally “threatening” to the PC to get into their player's head a little.
I don't know how clear all that was so if it wasn't I'm sorry. I hope it helped.
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Mostly the latter. But then you use that to get them talking about even more stuff. If you can, separate them and then use little details about one character to convince the other characters that they're flipping on them. Then use what you get from them and go to the next character and do the same thing. Watch Bunk on The Wire doing interrogations. But that's mostly if the doppelgänger needs a confession, rather than actually needing information.
If the doppelgänger actually needs information, asking a question and reading surface thoughts should get it, like the old "don't think of a purple cow" thing. Saying, what did you do with the murder weapon is going to make someone instantly think "Don't think about throwing the bloody. dagger in the river" and then you have them.