The players fought a hag named Gertrude Green-Tooth. her main weapon was a pouch of collected teeth that she could throw and they would explode like grenades with bone shrapnel. After killing her, they wanted to learn about how the make "tooth grenades", so the cleric used Speak with Dead on the hag's decapitated head AND zone of truth so I HAD to truthfully give him an answer. After a minute or so of thinking, I said (in the hag's pov) "During my years in the Feywild I was quite the gardener. I harvested my plants to create all kinds of potions - one of which was the potion that turned my teeth a sickly green, and gave me the power to manipulate the properties of enamel I held in my fingers."
So, of course, for next session my players want to visit the fey wild to get grandma's secret recipe to green-tooth-itis....
Should I allow this? if not, how can I tell the players "no" without taking away their agency?
EDIT: I ran with it and here's how it went The players found the coven the original hag was a part of, and the hags gave them the potion BUT turns out it only works on other hags, and other creatures die within 24 hours of consumption - forcing the players to do the hags' bidding to get the antidote. After stealing a magic compass for the hags, the players found out the "dying within 24 hours" was a lie. After killing the hag in anger, the players now had no way of getting the serum and returned to the material plane empty-handed.
Opinions on how it could have been handled better?
And when they drink the potion, it makes them look like a hag. They want the powers, they just have to put up with the effects. Their fingernails may grow to be long like a hags or they could take on more and more of their image as they go. They could not use magical disguises for it as coincidently enough only hag magic can transform or hide the effects with illusions.
Either that or have the potion require something really evil to do. Sentient beings sacrificed to it things like that. That may stop at least some of the players from going that far to have the power. Just depends on the group.
The feywild is a big place. Do they have any idea where to go once they get there? You might ask them that. Where, within this alternate plane, do they propose to start looking. And if they wait and start asking the hag again, be more cryptic. She can’t lie, but she doesn’t have to give them much. If they ask where her house is, she says, next to the big tree. They ask Which plant did you harvest, she says, the one with green leaves. Truthful, but not helpful.
There's a lot of steps they'd have to do to get to the Feywild, like finding a portal, which might take research (possibly involving a favor for an archmage), then a long and dangerous journey, then a dungeon filled with the portal's guardians. Once they arrived, they'd have to locate someone who knew the hag, convince them to show them the plant, and deal with all the dangers of a Feywild journey along the way. It might even turn out that another, stronger hag has taken over the garden, and her minions won't give up the plant easily. That kind of adventure would be fun, but it could run for a number of sessions and level the characters up two or three times! Make that clear to the players, and then let them decide if they want to go on with it. So yes, I think you should allow it if they really want it, but it should be a story all its own!
Here's what happened that prompted this:
The players fought a hag named Gertrude Green-Tooth. her main weapon was a pouch of collected teeth that she could throw and they would explode like grenades with bone shrapnel.
After killing her, they wanted to learn about how the make "tooth grenades", so the cleric used Speak with Dead on the hag's decapitated head AND zone of truth so I HAD to truthfully give him an answer. After a minute or so of thinking, I said (in the hag's pov)
"During my years in the Feywild I was quite the gardener. I harvested my plants to create all kinds of potions - one of which was the potion that turned my teeth a sickly green, and gave me the power to manipulate the properties of enamel I held in my fingers."
So, of course, for next session my players want to visit the fey wild to get grandma's secret recipe to green-tooth-itis....
Should I allow this? if not, how can I tell the players "no" without taking away their agency?
EDIT: I ran with it and here's how it went
The players found the coven the original hag was a part of, and the hags gave them the potion BUT turns out it only works on other hags, and other creatures die within 24 hours of consumption - forcing the players to do the hags' bidding to get the antidote.
After stealing a magic compass for the hags, the players found out the "dying within 24 hours" was a lie. After killing the hag in anger, the players now had no way of getting the serum and returned to the material plane empty-handed.
Opinions on how it could have been handled better?
And when they drink the potion, it makes them look like a hag. They want the powers, they just have to put up with the effects. Their fingernails may grow to be long like a hags or they could take on more and more of their image as they go. They could not use magical disguises for it as coincidently enough only hag magic can transform or hide the effects with illusions.
Either that or have the potion require something really evil to do. Sentient beings sacrificed to it things like that. That may stop at least some of the players from going that far to have the power. Just depends on the group.
The feywild is a big place. Do they have any idea where to go once they get there? You might ask them that. Where, within this alternate plane, do they propose to start looking.
And if they wait and start asking the hag again, be more cryptic. She can’t lie, but she doesn’t have to give them much. If they ask where her house is, she says, next to the big tree. They ask Which plant did you harvest, she says, the one with green leaves. Truthful, but not helpful.
There's a lot of steps they'd have to do to get to the Feywild, like finding a portal, which might take research (possibly involving a favor for an archmage), then a long and dangerous journey, then a dungeon filled with the portal's guardians. Once they arrived, they'd have to locate someone who knew the hag, convince them to show them the plant, and deal with all the dangers of a Feywild journey along the way. It might even turn out that another, stronger hag has taken over the garden, and her minions won't give up the plant easily. That kind of adventure would be fun, but it could run for a number of sessions and level the characters up two or three times! Make that clear to the players, and then let them decide if they want to go on with it. So yes, I think you should allow it if they really want it, but it should be a story all its own!
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
This!
Your players have handed you an amazing story hook. Take it and run with it. Good luck.
Please consider posting here after the adventure to tell us how it went.
Let them go to the Fey Wild. Finding an unknown plant and an unknown recipe should take them the rest of their adventuring careers.