mirror match? pretty classic. the question becomes how you make it yours...
are you thinking scattered puddles of animated quicksilver ooze like the aftermath of an alchemy experiment? puddles which take on just the appearance of individual intruders in order strike the adjacent threat with no other ambition? might be interesting to meet two or three at once in a room and the players decide that in the future they'll only pull one at a time. then later they have a chance to isolate one from a hallway group... except that at half health it alerts a dozen more. before they seemed as ambivalent as slugs to anything just outside their reach, but now they rapidly converge into a single giant mirror-skinned humanoid shape which then takes the form of one member after another in giant size, chasing them around a decrepit ballroom.
alternatively, they might present as amorphous blobs which scatter like roaches when the kitchen light flicks on. soon they're revealed as magically "upgraded" mimics that can take on more than just the form of simple wood or stone. first, out of place suits of armor, statues, and sewing dummies that pick up and run if confronted by more than two people at a time. soon, it's revealed they can mimic people as some of the party split to chase a person that ran away. they can also mirror a player but, instead of fighting the same individual they mirror, perhaps their goal is to separate the party by deception. not interested in besting only their twin in fair combat, the hungry mimics will try to eat party members in ones and twos with advantage of surprise. sprinkle in some poltergeist early on to rattle chairs and shake chandeliers (maybe the party is originally there to hunt ghosts) so players can't trust environmental queues about the furniture after being revealed as mimics later.
or i guess you could place some strange mirror-arch in a magical laboratory with a tall glass vat of some unmoving silver liquid inside. someone might step in to unlock a simple box in the wall and remove golden wires. however, before they pull away the wires they're scanned by the device. suddenly faces appear in the silvery vat. secretly but more importantly, now the bottled oblex is awake. with the scan they're able to create duplicates of persons from a player's past and extrude them secretly through a crack or failed seal. while it attempts to negotiate with the party for freedom in return for knowledge, it sets a trap to sate it's hunger. how strange to walk into a side room and see a younger version of your mother setting a dinner table with your (deceased!) favorite teacher and a bully from the merchants guild! beware poison, because an oblex eats memories and won't spoil it's own meal that way. the rest of the party should watch out for many copies of an archer stepping out of balconies above the trapped oblex when threatened!! i'm not even sure it would burst out of confinement as a final boss fight, since it's fairly well shielded in there as it creates copies to cast spells for it.
or, since you mention video games, there's always that Mirror Knight boss from Dark Souls 2. is it a steel golem with a shield made from a great magical heat smelting a sphinx and the sand it sat upon into a shiny plate? or is it a djinni of some sort welding a diviner's magic mirror as a weapon that brings to this fight echos of the players engaged in previous (or future!) fights? or a flesh golem invigorated by lightning devices and gripping the frame of its former master's dimensional escape tunnel which is now being swung wildly through the air with a result not unlike some sort of multiverse bubble wand with "magnetic" bubbles which pop to strange effect?
So. How do you guys feel about an encounter like the mimic tear fight from elden ring? Where the party fights themselves.
Well, unless you give them some sort of weakness, it's a 50% chance of a TPK, which is problematic. It's also quite difficult to run, PCs are way more complicated than monsters. Running stripped down versions of the PCs makes it easier to run and less likely to be a TPK, but harder to prep for and may be short on verisimilitude.
PCs aren’t really built to fight each other. The damage to hit point ratio is off from fights against monsters. As a result, oftentimes in PvP, it comes down to who wins initiative more than anything else. You might have better luck with a more themed approach, use monsters/npcs to fill the same roles as as the PCs, give them some similar powers, but make the appropriate for their CR, even make them look the same as the PCs if you like.
these guys are right. fighting an exact (but somehow more ruthless) copy of yourself leads to either a double-knockout, a 50% chance of the player surviving, or stupid player strategies like triggering the 'mirror' while holding no weapons (and hoping it won't magically readjust after they pick up that weapon hidden nearby). better to pick something that just looks like the player or else engineer a situation where a mirrored party can shuffle to force favorable match-ups (which is just another way for it to not be an actual mirror duel).
...but it remains a fun aesthetic!
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So. How do you guys feel about an encounter like the mimic tear fight from elden ring? Where the party fights themselves.
"Anyone can smith at the cosmic anvil, yet only I can forge a weapon as good as thee."
My Homebrew Please click it, they have my family.
mirror match? pretty classic. the question becomes how you make it yours...
are you thinking scattered puddles of animated quicksilver ooze like the aftermath of an alchemy experiment? puddles which take on just the appearance of individual intruders in order strike the adjacent threat with no other ambition? might be interesting to meet two or three at once in a room and the players decide that in the future they'll only pull one at a time. then later they have a chance to isolate one from a hallway group... except that at half health it alerts a dozen more. before they seemed as ambivalent as slugs to anything just outside their reach, but now they rapidly converge into a single giant mirror-skinned humanoid shape which then takes the form of one member after another in giant size, chasing them around a decrepit ballroom.
alternatively, they might present as amorphous blobs which scatter like roaches when the kitchen light flicks on. soon they're revealed as magically "upgraded" mimics that can take on more than just the form of simple wood or stone. first, out of place suits of armor, statues, and sewing dummies that pick up and run if confronted by more than two people at a time. soon, it's revealed they can mimic people as some of the party split to chase a person that ran away. they can also mirror a player but, instead of fighting the same individual they mirror, perhaps their goal is to separate the party by deception. not interested in besting only their twin in fair combat, the hungry mimics will try to eat party members in ones and twos with advantage of surprise. sprinkle in some poltergeist early on to rattle chairs and shake chandeliers (maybe the party is originally there to hunt ghosts) so players can't trust environmental queues about the furniture after being revealed as mimics later.
or i guess you could place some strange mirror-arch in a magical laboratory with a tall glass vat of some unmoving silver liquid inside. someone might step in to unlock a simple box in the wall and remove golden wires. however, before they pull away the wires they're scanned by the device. suddenly faces appear in the silvery vat. secretly but more importantly, now the bottled oblex is awake. with the scan they're able to create duplicates of persons from a player's past and extrude them secretly through a crack or failed seal. while it attempts to negotiate with the party for freedom in return for knowledge, it sets a trap to sate it's hunger. how strange to walk into a side room and see a younger version of your mother setting a dinner table with your (deceased!) favorite teacher and a bully from the merchants guild! beware poison, because an oblex eats memories and won't spoil it's own meal that way. the rest of the party should watch out for many copies of an archer stepping out of balconies above the trapped oblex when threatened!! i'm not even sure it would burst out of confinement as a final boss fight, since it's fairly well shielded in there as it creates copies to cast spells for it.
or, since you mention video games, there's always that Mirror Knight boss from Dark Souls 2. is it a steel golem with a shield made from a great magical heat smelting a sphinx and the sand it sat upon into a shiny plate? or is it a djinni of some sort welding a diviner's magic mirror as a weapon that brings to this fight echos of the players engaged in previous (or future!) fights? or a flesh golem invigorated by lightning devices and gripping the frame of its former master's dimensional escape tunnel which is now being swung wildly through the air with a result not unlike some sort of multiverse bubble wand with "magnetic" bubbles which pop to strange effect?
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Well, unless you give them some sort of weakness, it's a 50% chance of a TPK, which is problematic. It's also quite difficult to run, PCs are way more complicated than monsters. Running stripped down versions of the PCs makes it easier to run and less likely to be a TPK, but harder to prep for and may be short on verisimilitude.
PCs aren’t really built to fight each other. The damage to hit point ratio is off from fights against monsters. As a result, oftentimes in PvP, it comes down to who wins initiative more than anything else.
You might have better luck with a more themed approach, use monsters/npcs to fill the same roles as as the PCs, give them some similar powers, but make the appropriate for their CR, even make them look the same as the PCs if you like.
these guys are right. fighting an exact (but somehow more ruthless) copy of yourself leads to either a double-knockout, a 50% chance of the player surviving, or stupid player strategies like triggering the 'mirror' while holding no weapons (and hoping it won't magically readjust after they pick up that weapon hidden nearby). better to pick something that just looks like the player or else engineer a situation where a mirrored party can shuffle to force favorable match-ups (which is just another way for it to not be an actual mirror duel).
...but it remains a fun aesthetic!
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!