I'm creating a starting campaign for some new players, and the main plot resolution is to cure the local priest of a small mountain town of his lycanthropy.
The party will be able to find the recipe for the antidote by asking a swampland Green Hag (who will lie about the recipe, but shhh). If they actually do go about curing the priest, instead of just killing both or either of them, what ingredients should the antidote be made out of (if a canonical antidote does not exist)?
I already have three ingredients in mind:
- 3 wolfsbane plants. (The ultra-poisonous kind that affects on touch)
- 1 lb of rock salt.
- 12 darkmantle hearts (since darkmantles are basically magic cave squid, it will only take four darkmantles to reach this amount)
- 1 ounce of duergar blood to offset the wolfsbane's poison effects (preferably gained by actually talking to duergar townspeople and asking them to donate blood instead of venturing into a cave to mass slaughter gray dwarf bandits)
Also, the green hag will use this opportunity to give the players a poisonous swill instead, but since wolfsbane is already poisonous the rest of the potion will probably be just garlic and gold dust or something to annoy the party.
I don't think there is a potion to cure it, I know greater restoration spell will do it, but I would take out wolfsbane flowers are pretty poisonous so it is most likely kill the guy (in real life just handling some species of wolfsbane flowers without gloves is enough to poison you)
Lycanthropy is a curse, as stated by the Monster Manual linked here. Therefore, the Remove Curse spell will remove the curse of lycanthropy.
Oh yeah, you're right about that. I honestly don't know whether I want my players to use an easily learned spell to solve the lynch-pin of my entire campaign, so I might have to just use the old faithful rule:
A cure I used once was wolfsbane, holy water, the blood of the parent werewolf(however, the wolf must still be alive for it to work), and chocolate(toxic for the wolf, but not the human(oid)). This must be mixed together in a silver basin at a new moon, and left to sit until the full moon. The moment it strikes midnight, the wolf must be drowned until dead, and the body burned. The ashes must then be placed within a large urn, large enough for a human(oid) body, with a silver holy symbol of the human(oid)'s god. When the light of the sun kisses the earth at dawn, the human(oid) will rise from the urn, fully formed and very much cured.
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"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
A cure I used once was wolfsbane, holy water, the blood of the parent werewolf(however, the wolf must still be alive for it to work), and chocolate(toxic for the wolf, but not the human(oid)). This must be mixed together in a silver basin at a new moon, and left to sit until the full moon. The moment it strikes midnight, the wolf must be drowned until dead, and the body burned. The ashes must then be placed within a large urn, large enough for a human(oid) body, with a silver holy symbol of the human(oid)'s god. When the light of the sun kisses the earth at dawn, the human(oid) will rise from the urn, fully formed and very much cured.
Oh yeah, Holy Water should definitely be one of the ingredients. I'm not sure about the other parts of the ritual. My party will be full of newcomers so having them understand such a complex process is... beyond my expectations, to say the least.
I mean, they could just follow it step by step, like a little instruction booklet for how to poison your friend, murder them, burn them, and hide their body.
You could play it up by having somebody actually give them an illustrated book with big words and huge pictures taking up half the page. The person then explains that it's such a complicated process that many of the lesser priests need a big picture book to help them understand.
I mean, they could just follow it step by step, like a little instruction booklet for how to poison your friend, murder them, burn them, and hide their body.
You could play it up by having somebody actually give them an illustrated book with big words and huge pictures taking up half the page. The person then explains that it's such a complicated process that many of the lesser priests need a big picture book to help them understand.
Honestly I think this could work better as a fake ritual set up by Auntie Sextionio (that's 69 in swedish according to google translate) as a way to mess with the players.
First Step: Feed Father Ungart some wolfsbane so he'll "fall asleep"
Second Step: Burn his ashes under the full moon
Third Step: Throw 10 pp's worth of platinum dust into the ashes
That actually works better. It's long, and tedious, so it definitely looks official, and it's the perfect way to bump the guy off. She could just say that the players did something wrong with the ritual.
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"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Yeah, and according to mordenkainen's, this trickery and "deals with the devil" type stuff is what hags live for. Unless the party can find a way to steal the Father Ungart's homebrewed Wand of Truth, or ask the local alchemist to make a Truth Serum, they're probably going to fail this.
Real talk, though, this session is supposed to serve as a simple lesson: NPCs, and therefore the DM, are allowed to lie.
1 pouch of mustard seeds. They are easy to find, only requiring a DC 8 Nature check.
The potion must be brewed in a pot, iron full of 1 gallon of water over a magical fire, and only under the moonlight. First the pouch full of mustard seeds and wolfsbane must be put into the pot together and stirred thoroughly with both hands until the water becomes milky white. Then 2 of the darkmantle hearts must be diced and thrown in. Do not stir the water, and wait until the broiling bubbles darken. Pour in the truth serum and throw 3 full darkmantle hearts into the water, then stir viciously with both hands until the bubbles start to rise out of the pot and float. Pull out the pouch of mustard seeds using the ladle you are using to stir the potion. Pour in the duergar blood and all of the remaining darkmantle hearts (remember to slice them vertically). Stop stirring after pinpricks of darkness coalesce in the milky water, and use some sort of spell or other effect to deal force or radiant damage to the fire below the pot. When the fire below the pot starts to glow white, stir vigorously with as many hands as possible (4 at a minimum). Keep stirring until the water in the pot decreases to just a bottle's worth of thick white liquid. Immediately put out the fire, and drain the remaining contents of the potion into your container of choice (it mustn't be the same pot you used to brew the potion). A full dose of the potion must be ingested fully. DO NOT drink the potion if you do not have lycanthropy.
Fake Cure for Lycanthropy:
2 stalks of wolfsbane. It can only be found in the swamp with a successful DC 13 Nature check.
1 pouch of mustard seeds. They are easy to find, only requiring a DC 8 Nature check.
The potion must be brewed in a pot, iron full of 1 gallon of water over a magical fire, and only under the moonlight. First the pouch full of mustard seeds and wolfsbane must be put into the pot together and stirred thoroughly with both hands until the water becomes milky white. Then all of the darkmantle hearts must be diced and thrown in. Stop stirring after pinpricks of darkness coalesce in the milky water, and use some sort of spell or other effect to deal force or radiant damage to the fire below the pot. When the fire below the pot starts to glow white, stir vigorously with as many hands as possible (4 at a minimum). Pour or throw in the doppelganer blood and assassin's blood, and keep stirring until the water in the pot decreases to just a bottle's worth of thick white liquid. Immediately put out the fire, and drain the remaining contents of the potion into your container of choice (it mustn't be the same pot you used to brew the potion). A full dose of the potion must be ingested fully. DO NOT drink the potion if you do not have lycanthropy.
Not even going to utilize any silver in either fake or real antidote? I mean the classic way to kill a lycanthrope is a silver weapon or a silver bullet. I mean it would be funny to have the fake one include powdered silver in the ingredient list. Goodluck
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
I'm creating a starting campaign for some new players, and the main plot resolution is to cure the local priest of a small mountain town of his lycanthropy.
The party will be able to find the recipe for the antidote by asking a swampland Green Hag (who will lie about the recipe, but shhh). If they actually do go about curing the priest, instead of just killing both or either of them, what ingredients should the antidote be made out of (if a canonical antidote does not exist)?
I already have three ingredients in mind:
- 3 wolfsbane plants. (The ultra-poisonous kind that affects on touch)
- 1 lb of rock salt.
- 12 darkmantle hearts (since darkmantles are basically magic cave squid, it will only take four darkmantles to reach this amount)
- 1 ounce of duergar blood to offset the wolfsbane's poison effects (preferably gained by actually talking to duergar townspeople and asking them to donate blood instead of venturing into a cave to mass slaughter gray dwarf bandits)
Also, the green hag will use this opportunity to give the players a poisonous swill instead, but since wolfsbane is already poisonous the rest of the potion will probably be just garlic and gold dust or something to annoy the party.
I don't think there is a potion to cure it, I know greater restoration spell will do it, but I would take out wolfsbane flowers are pretty poisonous so it is most likely kill the guy (in real life just handling some species of wolfsbane flowers without gloves is enough to poison you)
Lycanthropy is a curse, as stated by the Monster Manual linked here. Therefore, the Remove Curse spell will remove the curse of lycanthropy.
Oh yeah, you're right about that. I honestly don't know whether I want my players to use an easily learned spell to solve the lynch-pin of my entire campaign, so I might have to just use the old faithful rule:
The DM is always right.
A cure I used once was wolfsbane, holy water, the blood of the parent werewolf(however, the wolf must still be alive for it to work), and chocolate(toxic for the wolf, but not the human(oid)). This must be mixed together in a silver basin at a new moon, and left to sit until the full moon. The moment it strikes midnight, the wolf must be drowned until dead, and the body burned. The ashes must then be placed within a large urn, large enough for a human(oid) body, with a silver holy symbol of the human(oid)'s god. When the light of the sun kisses the earth at dawn, the human(oid) will rise from the urn, fully formed and very much cured.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Oh yeah, Holy Water should definitely be one of the ingredients. I'm not sure about the other parts of the ritual. My party will be full of newcomers so having them understand such a complex process is... beyond my expectations, to say the least.
I mean, they could just follow it step by step, like a little instruction booklet for how to poison your friend, murder them, burn them, and hide their body.
You could play it up by having somebody actually give them an illustrated book with big words and huge pictures taking up half the page. The person then explains that it's such a complicated process that many of the lesser priests need a big picture book to help them understand.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Honestly I think this could work better as a fake ritual set up by Auntie Sextionio (that's 69 in swedish according to google translate) as a way to mess with the players.
First Step: Feed Father Ungart some wolfsbane so he'll "fall asleep"
Second Step: Burn his ashes under the full moon
Third Step: Throw 10 pp's worth of platinum dust into the ashes
Fourth Step: Watch him be reborn! :D
That actually works better. It's long, and tedious, so it definitely looks official, and it's the perfect way to bump the guy off. She could just say that the players did something wrong with the ritual.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Yeah, and according to mordenkainen's, this trickery and "deals with the devil" type stuff is what hags live for. Unless the party can find a way to steal the Father Ungart's homebrewed Wand of Truth, or ask the local alchemist to make a Truth Serum, they're probably going to fail this.
Real talk, though, this session is supposed to serve as a simple lesson: NPCs, and therefore the DM, are allowed to lie.
Okay, to put a cap in this once and for all, here's both the true and false lycanthropy antidote's i'll be using in campaigns.
True Cure for Lycanthropy:
The potion must be brewed in a pot, iron full of 1 gallon of water over a magical fire, and only under the moonlight. First the pouch full of mustard seeds and wolfsbane must be put into the pot together and stirred thoroughly with both hands until the water becomes milky white. Then 2 of the darkmantle hearts must be diced and thrown in. Do not stir the water, and wait until the broiling bubbles darken. Pour in the truth serum and throw 3 full darkmantle hearts into the water, then stir viciously with both hands until the bubbles start to rise out of the pot and float. Pull out the pouch of mustard seeds using the ladle you are using to stir the potion. Pour in the duergar blood and all of the remaining darkmantle hearts (remember to slice them vertically). Stop stirring after pinpricks of darkness coalesce in the milky water, and use some sort of spell or other effect to deal force or radiant damage to the fire below the pot. When the fire below the pot starts to glow white, stir vigorously with as many hands as possible (4 at a minimum). Keep stirring until the water in the pot decreases to just a bottle's worth of thick white liquid. Immediately put out the fire, and drain the remaining contents of the potion into your container of choice (it mustn't be the same pot you used to brew the potion). A full dose of the potion must be ingested fully. DO NOT drink the potion if you do not have lycanthropy.
Fake Cure for Lycanthropy:
The potion must be brewed in a pot, iron full of 1 gallon of water over a magical fire, and only under the moonlight. First the pouch full of mustard seeds and wolfsbane must be put into the pot together and stirred thoroughly with both hands until the water becomes milky white. Then all of the darkmantle hearts must be diced and thrown in. Stop stirring after pinpricks of darkness coalesce in the milky water, and use some sort of spell or other effect to deal force or radiant damage to the fire below the pot. When the fire below the pot starts to glow white, stir vigorously with as many hands as possible (4 at a minimum). Pour or throw in the doppelganer blood and assassin's blood, and keep stirring until the water in the pot decreases to just a bottle's worth of thick white liquid. Immediately put out the fire, and drain the remaining contents of the potion into your container of choice (it mustn't be the same pot you used to brew the potion). A full dose of the potion must be ingested fully. DO NOT drink the potion if you do not have lycanthropy.
Not even going to utilize any silver in either fake or real antidote? I mean the classic way to kill a lycanthrope is a silver weapon or a silver bullet. I mean it would be funny to have the fake one include powdered silver in the ingredient list. Goodluck
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
This thread is great.