One of my players is a bard changeling that uses his shapeshifting as a 'performance'. He has 3 personas he uses: A young girl, his regular form, and an old lady. He hides this from the group and puts up an elaborate act of a big brother and a little sister travelling together, but obviously they're never seen in the same room.
Twice now the group has split up during important story moments and made things more difficult or disjointed than they should be because of the young girl persona. This has also happened at other times but those were less important and changed little to nothing.
The first time was when I had set up a chase. A cult bombed a procession the players were spectating and some members of the group saw one of them flee and chased him, but instead of following, the player fled into the crowd as 'that's what a little girl would do', causing the maternal character and another to go after her and splitting the group. This resulted in an unbalanced encounter at the end of the chase because suddenly, there were 3 instead of 6. After this, he changed into his regular form and followed along as the maternal figure led a search around the city to find the girl, who they were obviously never going to find.
The second time the group was about to infiltrate a secure compound. Now the player split up and played the flute on the other side of the street while the others snuck inside. After events inside unfolded, the others set off alarms to frame another group. As soon as this happened, the first thing the player wanted to do is run away again. This time I intervened to stop the situation from evolving along the same lines with another witch hunt.
This is just going to keep happening and some of my other players have already expressed frustration with it, as the character doesn't seem to have any drive to adventure and just distracts from and derails the story.
How should I handle this? This is my first campaign as a DM so I don't always have the experience to predict problems like these before they happen.
I had typed out a much more expansive post of events but I lost it due to my browser crashing, so if anything is confusing, let me know.
Some of what I am going to say is advice for the future, since you can't go back and re-do things, but...
... as a first-time DM, I would have advised you not to allow a changeling as a character in your group. It's not that this should never be allowed, but as a first-time DM you should keep things simple. I'd even suggest to first time DMs to maybe not allow any of the optional things like Feats or Multi-classing. Again, these things are not inherently problems, but as you have seen, a new DM lacks the experience to foresee what such things can do to potentially (if you are not prepared for them) unbalance a campaign. You have now seen why I would have advised you not to allow the changeling -- because the player is using it in ways that you, as a new DM, are finding difficult to predict and thus complicated to deal with.
Now, in terms of the behavior of the player -- Given that you allowed the changeling and the 3 forms and that the party, in character, doesn't know about the forms (do the other players know it OOC? It seems like they don't), I don't think the player has done anything that is out of line. He's doing things you don't expect, yes. But players are going to do unexpected things all along and your carefully-scripted scenarios will never come off the way you plan so you need to get used to this as a DM. If player actions cause "unbalanced encounter at the end of the chase because suddenly, there were 3 instead of 6," then as a DM you have basically 2 choices. Either, (1) you down-convert the encounter ("go easy on them") so that they win as you probably planned, or (2) you let the encounter that is too hard go off as planned, and the consequences are the consequences.
There are up sides and down sides to both of these. Depending on what the encounter was, this could cause 3 characters in the party to be killed. If the players are new, they will hate this. New players don't (until they see it happen the first time) really believe their characters can actually die in a campaign (even if they say they do -- they really don't think it will happen to them). Worse, if they consider the deaths (justifiably in this case) to be the fault of another player acting irrationally or selfishly (which is how it must look to them) there will be bad blood among the group at the table, which is always trouble. You don't want that. However the up side to this is, assuming he didn't want to cause a party wipe, the changeling player will probably never do that again.
On the other hand, if you keep rescaling things to go easy on the party, although the players may be happier in the moment, the players will also learn that they can act in a crazy fashion and there are no consequences to this. Now, if this is how your table wants the game to go, and you're OK with it, then this is fine. But if you want things to be more serious and deadly, and there are consequences to behaving foolishly, then you will find yourself quickly becoming unhappy. Which it sounds like we are seeing in this post.
It sounds to me like, when you tally this all up, you need to have an honest, out of game chat with the changeling player. Explain that the changeling thing is causing a lot of trouble for you as a new DM, and it is making things much harder for you to predict and control, and that, if you were more experienced you could probably roll with it, but you are new at this and it is overwhelming you. Ask him to please stop running off like this, and try to find a way to keep his character with the party. If he says that's just not what his character would do, and won't change, then ask him to please make up another character and switch it out, and promise to provide a RP reason why this would happen. Let him come in at the same level as the party, no penalties, etc.
And make sure the new character is not a changeling or anything complicated. If this player made up one super-complex character I can see him trying to do it again, so you will need to sit on him and make sure -- no multiclassing, just pick ONE class, follow it straight from the book, no options, no variations, no "can I do this non-standard thing." No to all of that. Be clear -- it's not "no" to take his fun away. It's "no" because you are a new DM and are having enough trouble as it is, please don't make any more for me. A good player will understand this and comply. And a bad one, well... you don't want to play with a bad one anyway.
However, all that said -- as a DM, you need to expect the unexpected, and learn to roll with it, and not try to force players to go the direction you planned for them to go. As a DM you should not stop players from doing what they want with their characters as a normal course of action. But if the player is making the other players miserable you have to stop that.
Also make sure in the future to have a session 0 in which everyone comes together and you decide the kind of game you want. It sounds like maybe the changeling player wants more of a hi-jinks, "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner" kind of campaign and you want more "Game of Thrones," and if that's the case you're going to have to come to some sort of agreement because those two types of campaigns cannot be run together.
Id say it depends how strick you are being about the changleing. As their clothes and items aren't meant to resize with them so you'd have a little girl running off in the clothes armor of the default shape. You'd then have this raise suspicions of the locals.
Also what is the realms opinion of changlings? Could set up some changling traps to reveal true form etc so the group finds out IC...
Rather than scaling the encounters for the group that is left you could have the changling run into bigger problems when they seperate from the group. Teaching the "safety in numbers aspect".
Agree with Bio that none of what is happening is "bad" just not what you were hoping for in your campaign.
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All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
It's bad if the other players are getting frustrated with the one character, along with the DM. Playing a character in a way that makes everyone else at the table miserable is not acceptable.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
This is just going to keep happening and some of my other players have already expressed frustration with it, as the character doesn't seem to have any drive to adventure and just distracts from and derails the story.
some of my other players have already expressed frustration with it
It looks from the OP like the "if" in this case is in fact happening.
Feel like this is going round in circles. You said it isnt bad outright, but only if it is causing a problem.
I agreed with that statement.... but now it has gone round 4 posts to point out that it is a problem in this case. Which neither of us ever said it wasn't...
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All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Have the other characters roll for insight whenever the alternate personalities are talking to the party and eventually they will figure things out. This way when the young girl keeps running away they won't follow. Now throw in that if that character keeps running away they get no xp from encounters nor would any decent adventuring group split up loot to someone who never helps. That character will need to grow up and start being a true party member or be left in the dust and that player would need to roll a character that actually wants to be an adventurer.
Just have a conversation with the player. Let them know that their actions are disrupting the game and you need them to meet you halfway because they are ruining everyone else’s fun. Be honest. Don’t try to deal with out-of-game player issues in game as if it’s a PC issue.
Sounds like they want attention. Well, a observant rogue NPC or watchman might think the PC is a doppelgänger or something, leading to some time in prison or worse. As a DM, remember YOU can make extra ordinary things happen. Once the rest of your party catches on (if they haven’t already) they can confront him/her in-game and seek justifications for their actions.
Some of what I am going to say is advice for the future, since you can't go back and re-do things, but...
... as a first-time DM, I would have advised you not to allow a changeling as a character in your group. It's not that this should never be allowed, but as a first-time DM you should keep things simple. I'd even suggest to first time DMs to maybe not allow any of the optional things like Feats or Multi-classing. Again, these things are not inherently problems, but as you have seen, a new DM lacks the experience to foresee what such things can do to potentially (if you are not prepared for them) unbalance a campaign. You have now seen why I would have advised you not to allow the changeling -- because the player is using it in ways that you, as a new DM, are finding difficult to predict and thus complicated to deal with.
Now, in terms of the behavior of the player -- Given that you allowed the changeling and the 3 forms and that the party, in character, doesn't know about the forms (do the other players know it OOC? It seems like they don't), I don't think the player has done anything that is out of line. He's doing things you don't expect, yes. But players are going to do unexpected things all along and your carefully-scripted scenarios will never come off the way you plan so you need to get used to this as a DM. If player actions cause "unbalanced encounter at the end of the chase because suddenly, there were 3 instead of 6," then as a DM you have basically 2 choices. Either, (1) you down-convert the encounter ("go easy on them") so that they win as you probably planned, or (2) you let the encounter that is too hard go off as planned, and the consequences are the consequences.
There are up sides and down sides to both of these. Depending on what the encounter was, this could cause 3 characters in the party to be killed. If the players are new, they will hate this. New players don't (until they see it happen the first time) really believe their characters can actually die in a campaign (even if they say they do -- they really don't think it will happen to them). Worse, if they consider the deaths (justifiably in this case) to be the fault of another player acting irrationally or selfishly (which is how it must look to them) there will be bad blood among the group at the table, which is always trouble. You don't want that. However the up side to this is, assuming he didn't want to cause a party wipe, the changeling player will probably never do that again.
On the other hand, if you keep rescaling things to go easy on the party, although the players may be happier in the moment, the players will also learn that they can act in a crazy fashion and there are no consequences to this. Now, if this is how your table wants the game to go, and you're OK with it, then this is fine. But if you want things to be more serious and deadly, and there are consequences to behaving foolishly, then you will find yourself quickly becoming unhappy. Which it sounds like we are seeing in this post.
It sounds to me like, when you tally this all up, you need to have an honest, out of game chat with the changeling player. Explain that the changeling thing is causing a lot of trouble for you as a new DM, and it is making things much harder for you to predict and control, and that, if you were more experienced you could probably roll with it, but you are new at this and it is overwhelming you. Ask him to please stop running off like this, and try to find a way to keep his character with the party. If he says that's just not what his character would do, and won't change, then ask him to please make up another character and switch it out, and promise to provide a RP reason why this would happen. Let him come in at the same level as the party, no penalties, etc.
And make sure the new character is not a changeling or anything complicated. If this player made up one super-complex character I can see him trying to do it again, so you will need to sit on him and make sure -- no multiclassing, just pick ONE class, follow it straight from the book, no options, no variations, no "can I do this non-standard thing." No to all of that. Be clear -- it's not "no" to take his fun away. It's "no" because you are a new DM and are having enough trouble as it is, please don't make any more for me. A good player will understand this and comply. And a bad one, well... you don't want to play with a bad one anyway.
However, all that said -- as a DM, you need to expect the unexpected, and learn to roll with it, and not try to force players to go the direction you planned for them to go. As a DM you should not stop players from doing what they want with their characters as a normal course of action. But if the player is making the other players miserable you have to stop that.
Also make sure in the future to have a session 0 in which everyone comes together and you decide the kind of game you want. It sounds like maybe the changeling player wants more of a hi-jinks, "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner" kind of campaign and you want more "Game of Thrones," and if that's the case you're going to have to come to some sort of agreement because those two types of campaigns cannot be run together.
Thank you for the in-depth answer,
To expand on some things:
I don't want to run a hyper deadly campaign, after all, I'm not actively trying to get them killed but preserve the challenge. There should still be that possibility that they'll die, but it shouldn't be something hiding around every corner. The players aren't new- 5 out of 6 have been at this for a few years, so a character dying wouldn't be the end. If anything I'm not sure I myself am ready to kill 3 players in one session!
After the first two sessions I also realized what you said about changelings and expecting the unexpected; I don't script encounters entirely, just some prep to have a general guideline, but I must admit that I hadn't expected the group to split up during such chaos, while I probably should have.
The players are OOC aware of the changeling, I try to make it so players can have secrets from each other, but this was not something you can keep a secret (I don't think). I think I'll see what the next session brings, and if it doesn't change, I'll have to have that one to one talk.
Id say it depends how strick you are being about the changleing. As their clothes and items aren't meant to resize with them so you'd have a little girl running off in the clothes armor of the default shape. You'd then have this raise suspicions of the locals.
Also what is the realms opinion of changlings? Could set up some changling traps to reveal true form etc so the group finds out IC...
Rather than scaling the encounters for the group that is left you could have the changling run into bigger problems when they seperate from the group. Teaching the "safety in numbers aspect".
Agree with Bio that none of what is happening is "bad" just not what you were hoping for in your campaign.
We established that the clothes don't change with the body, which incidentally is also his excuse for not changing at some points when I pointed out, it might be a good time should he want to succeed in the thing he wants to do.
I played with a changeling a year ago. They were hit by a moonbeam (I think that is the spells name) which makes the changeling revert to its original form. You could attack them with an enemy with this spell and have a big reveal when the pcs find out. You would have to talk to the player about this before the session so they do not feel targeted.
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The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
Talk to the player out-of-game, let them know running off makes the game harder for you, and ask them to work with the group so everyone can have more fun. You're all adults (or at least reasonable teenagers, I guess I don't know), so they should understand. Trying to "deal with" the problem in-game will seem like fighting pettiness with pettiness, and it won't stop the problem–the player might just do more annoying things, because they probably don't realize they're hurting anyone's enjoyment. Work together with the player to make the game better for everyone! That's the only long-term fix.
The way OP describes it, it almost seems like the little girl is the primary persona for the changeling, rather than the "default" "big brother" persona. That's the only way I could justify the second encounter where the Changeling player caused a distraction, then was the lookout while the party framed the other group. Wanting to run away in that scenario is something a little girl might do, but it's not something her adultish (OP doesn't specify) brother would do.
I also think it's time that some of the other characters should begin to figure out that the 3 people are actually the same person. The procession bombing hijinks should have been suspicious to someone in the party, though the character(s) more likely to catch on were probably chasing the cultists rather than the little girl.
DM Firebird here to help you: You are DM, God of your world, don’t let this player stress you. Cause an accident (set a vicious and cruel trap for him) where both his legs are broken beyond repair. Can’t run away anymore, problem solved, your welcome.
DM Firebird here to help you: You are DM, God of your world, don’t let this player stress you. Cause an accident (set a vicious and cruel trap for him) where both his legs are broken beyond repair. Can’t run away anymore, problem solved, your welcome.
This is a player issue. It can only be dealt with at the player level.
FInd a quiet time for a conversation (face-to-face, if possible) with the player (lets call them Mallory).
"Look, Mallory, when you had your character run away, it split the party. That meant I had to split time between two groups. The result was, the other players were here for four hours but only got less than two hours of actual gaming time. THat's not fair on everyone at the table. There's a reason that 'Don't split the party!' is good advice. Please stop doing it."
If you get the "But that's what my character would do!" defence then politely (or bluntly) suggest they change characters.
Something you might consider is figuring out how to make the other /characters/ (not the players) learn that the character is a changeling. Perhaps they have to go talk to a priestess in a temple, and there's a permanent "true seeing" field on the temple because one of the tenets of the religion is that someone can't come before their god/goddess with secrets. Then everyone sees the changeling as a changeling....and that "I'm a little girl going to run away" thing is out the window because everyone will know it's BS.
The player probably won't like it, but your other players don't presently like it. There's not a great answer here.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
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Hi, I'm looking for some advice.
One of my players is a bard changeling that uses his shapeshifting as a 'performance'. He has 3 personas he uses: A young girl, his regular form, and an old lady. He hides this from the group and puts up an elaborate act of a big brother and a little sister travelling together, but obviously they're never seen in the same room.
Twice now the group has split up during important story moments and made things more difficult or disjointed than they should be because of the young girl persona. This has also happened at other times but those were less important and changed little to nothing.
The first time was when I had set up a chase. A cult bombed a procession the players were spectating and some members of the group saw one of them flee and chased him, but instead of following, the player fled into the crowd as 'that's what a little girl would do', causing the maternal character and another to go after her and splitting the group. This resulted in an unbalanced encounter at the end of the chase because suddenly, there were 3 instead of 6. After this, he changed into his regular form and followed along as the maternal figure led a search around the city to find the girl, who they were obviously never going to find.
The second time the group was about to infiltrate a secure compound. Now the player split up and played the flute on the other side of the street while the others snuck inside. After events inside unfolded, the others set off alarms to frame another group. As soon as this happened, the first thing the player wanted to do is run away again. This time I intervened to stop the situation from evolving along the same lines with another witch hunt.
This is just going to keep happening and some of my other players have already expressed frustration with it, as the character doesn't seem to have any drive to adventure and just distracts from and derails the story.
How should I handle this? This is my first campaign as a DM so I don't always have the experience to predict problems like these before they happen.
I had typed out a much more expansive post of events but I lost it due to my browser crashing, so if anything is confusing, let me know.
Some of what I am going to say is advice for the future, since you can't go back and re-do things, but...
... as a first-time DM, I would have advised you not to allow a changeling as a character in your group. It's not that this should never be allowed, but as a first-time DM you should keep things simple. I'd even suggest to first time DMs to maybe not allow any of the optional things like Feats or Multi-classing. Again, these things are not inherently problems, but as you have seen, a new DM lacks the experience to foresee what such things can do to potentially (if you are not prepared for them) unbalance a campaign. You have now seen why I would have advised you not to allow the changeling -- because the player is using it in ways that you, as a new DM, are finding difficult to predict and thus complicated to deal with.
Now, in terms of the behavior of the player -- Given that you allowed the changeling and the 3 forms and that the party, in character, doesn't know about the forms (do the other players know it OOC? It seems like they don't), I don't think the player has done anything that is out of line. He's doing things you don't expect, yes. But players are going to do unexpected things all along and your carefully-scripted scenarios will never come off the way you plan so you need to get used to this as a DM. If player actions cause "unbalanced encounter at the end of the chase because suddenly, there were 3 instead of 6," then as a DM you have basically 2 choices. Either, (1) you down-convert the encounter ("go easy on them") so that they win as you probably planned, or (2) you let the encounter that is too hard go off as planned, and the consequences are the consequences.
There are up sides and down sides to both of these. Depending on what the encounter was, this could cause 3 characters in the party to be killed. If the players are new, they will hate this. New players don't (until they see it happen the first time) really believe their characters can actually die in a campaign (even if they say they do -- they really don't think it will happen to them). Worse, if they consider the deaths (justifiably in this case) to be the fault of another player acting irrationally or selfishly (which is how it must look to them) there will be bad blood among the group at the table, which is always trouble. You don't want that. However the up side to this is, assuming he didn't want to cause a party wipe, the changeling player will probably never do that again.
On the other hand, if you keep rescaling things to go easy on the party, although the players may be happier in the moment, the players will also learn that they can act in a crazy fashion and there are no consequences to this. Now, if this is how your table wants the game to go, and you're OK with it, then this is fine. But if you want things to be more serious and deadly, and there are consequences to behaving foolishly, then you will find yourself quickly becoming unhappy. Which it sounds like we are seeing in this post.
It sounds to me like, when you tally this all up, you need to have an honest, out of game chat with the changeling player. Explain that the changeling thing is causing a lot of trouble for you as a new DM, and it is making things much harder for you to predict and control, and that, if you were more experienced you could probably roll with it, but you are new at this and it is overwhelming you. Ask him to please stop running off like this, and try to find a way to keep his character with the party. If he says that's just not what his character would do, and won't change, then ask him to please make up another character and switch it out, and promise to provide a RP reason why this would happen. Let him come in at the same level as the party, no penalties, etc.
And make sure the new character is not a changeling or anything complicated. If this player made up one super-complex character I can see him trying to do it again, so you will need to sit on him and make sure -- no multiclassing, just pick ONE class, follow it straight from the book, no options, no variations, no "can I do this non-standard thing." No to all of that. Be clear -- it's not "no" to take his fun away. It's "no" because you are a new DM and are having enough trouble as it is, please don't make any more for me. A good player will understand this and comply. And a bad one, well... you don't want to play with a bad one anyway.
However, all that said -- as a DM, you need to expect the unexpected, and learn to roll with it, and not try to force players to go the direction you planned for them to go. As a DM you should not stop players from doing what they want with their characters as a normal course of action. But if the player is making the other players miserable you have to stop that.
Also make sure in the future to have a session 0 in which everyone comes together and you decide the kind of game you want. It sounds like maybe the changeling player wants more of a hi-jinks, "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner" kind of campaign and you want more "Game of Thrones," and if that's the case you're going to have to come to some sort of agreement because those two types of campaigns cannot be run together.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Id say it depends how strick you are being about the changleing. As their clothes and items aren't meant to resize with them so you'd have a little girl running off in the clothes armor of the default shape. You'd then have this raise suspicions of the locals.
Also what is the realms opinion of changlings? Could set up some changling traps to reveal true form etc so the group finds out IC...
Rather than scaling the encounters for the group that is left you could have the changling run into bigger problems when they seperate from the group. Teaching the "safety in numbers aspect".
Agree with Bio that none of what is happening is "bad" just not what you were hoping for in your campaign.
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
It's bad if the other players are getting frustrated with the one character, along with the DM. Playing a character in a way that makes everyone else at the table miserable is not acceptable.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yea bad if, not just out right bad....
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
It looks from the OP like the "if" in this case is in fact happening.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Sounds like this might help you:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JoYR3eCFqoA
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Feel like this is going round in circles. You said it isnt bad outright, but only if it is causing a problem.
I agreed with that statement.... but now it has gone round 4 posts to point out that it is a problem in this case. Which neither of us ever said it wasn't...
All posts come with the caveat that I don't know what I'm talking about.
Have the other characters roll for insight whenever the alternate personalities are talking to the party and eventually they will figure things out. This way when the young girl keeps running away they won't follow. Now throw in that if that character keeps running away they get no xp from encounters nor would any decent adventuring group split up loot to someone who never helps. That character will need to grow up and start being a true party member or be left in the dust and that player would need to roll a character that actually wants to be an adventurer.
Just have a conversation with the player. Let them know that their actions are disrupting the game and you need them to meet you halfway because they are ruining everyone else’s fun. Be honest. Don’t try to deal with out-of-game player issues in game as if it’s a PC issue.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Sounds like they want attention. Well, a observant rogue NPC or watchman might think the PC is a doppelgänger or something, leading to some time in prison or worse. As a DM, remember YOU can make extra ordinary things happen. Once the rest of your party catches on (if they haven’t already) they can confront him/her in-game and seek justifications for their actions.
DM - And In The Darkness, Rot: The Sunless Citadel
DM - Our Little Lives Kept In Equipoise: Curse of Strahd
DM - Misprize Thou Not These Shadows That Belong: The Lost Mines of Phandelver
PC - Azzure - Tyranny of Dragons
Thank you for the in-depth answer,
To expand on some things:
I don't want to run a hyper deadly campaign, after all, I'm not actively trying to get them killed but preserve the challenge. There should still be that possibility that they'll die, but it shouldn't be something hiding around every corner. The players aren't new- 5 out of 6 have been at this for a few years, so a character dying wouldn't be the end. If anything I'm not sure I myself am ready to kill 3 players in one session!
After the first two sessions I also realized what you said about changelings and expecting the unexpected; I don't script encounters entirely, just some prep to have a general guideline, but I must admit that I hadn't expected the group to split up during such chaos, while I probably should have.
The players are OOC aware of the changeling, I try to make it so players can have secrets from each other, but this was not something you can keep a secret (I don't think). I think I'll see what the next session brings, and if it doesn't change, I'll have to have that one to one talk.
We established that the clothes don't change with the body, which incidentally is also his excuse for not changing at some points when I pointed out, it might be a good time should he want to succeed in the thing he wants to do.
Thanks, I've watched it and it did provide some nice insights!
I played with a changeling a year ago. They were hit by a moonbeam (I think that is the spells name) which makes the changeling revert to its original form. You could attack them with an enemy with this spell and have a big reveal when the pcs find out. You would have to talk to the player about this before the session so they do not feel targeted.
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
Talk to the player out-of-game, let them know running off makes the game harder for you, and ask them to work with the group so everyone can have more fun. You're all adults (or at least reasonable teenagers, I guess I don't know), so they should understand. Trying to "deal with" the problem in-game will seem like fighting pettiness with pettiness, and it won't stop the problem–the player might just do more annoying things, because they probably don't realize they're hurting anyone's enjoyment. Work together with the player to make the game better for everyone! That's the only long-term fix.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
Ideas:
XP reduction for running away from the fight. The changeling may change their ways (pun intented).
Set up situations that allow rolls to notice things about the changeling's various personas until a PC is on to him/her.
Discuss the problem with the changeling PC and group OOC and ask for solutions.
The way OP describes it, it almost seems like the little girl is the primary persona for the changeling, rather than the "default" "big brother" persona. That's the only way I could justify the second encounter where the Changeling player caused a distraction, then was the lookout while the party framed the other group. Wanting to run away in that scenario is something a little girl might do, but it's not something her adultish (OP doesn't specify) brother would do.
I also think it's time that some of the other characters should begin to figure out that the 3 people are actually the same person. The procession bombing hijinks should have been suspicious to someone in the party, though the character(s) more likely to catch on were probably chasing the cultists rather than the little girl.
DM Firebird here to help you: You are DM, God of your world, don’t let this player stress you. Cause an accident (set a vicious and cruel trap for him) where both his legs are broken beyond repair. Can’t run away anymore, problem solved, your welcome.
Whatever you do, don’t do this.
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This is a player issue. It can only be dealt with at the player level.
FInd a quiet time for a conversation (face-to-face, if possible) with the player (lets call them Mallory).
"Look, Mallory, when you had your character run away, it split the party. That meant I had to split time between two groups. The result was, the other players were here for four hours but only got less than two hours of actual gaming time. THat's not fair on everyone at the table. There's a reason that 'Don't split the party!' is good advice. Please stop doing it."
If you get the "But that's what my character would do!" defence then politely (or bluntly) suggest they change characters.
Something you might consider is figuring out how to make the other /characters/ (not the players) learn that the character is a changeling. Perhaps they have to go talk to a priestess in a temple, and there's a permanent "true seeing" field on the temple because one of the tenets of the religion is that someone can't come before their god/goddess with secrets. Then everyone sees the changeling as a changeling....and that "I'm a little girl going to run away" thing is out the window because everyone will know it's BS.
The player probably won't like it, but your other players don't presently like it. There's not a great answer here.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha