Soulbound dolls...

[Lanathar]

My group has recently finished book 1 of this adventure.

So far the encounter with the soulbound doll has provoked the stongest reactions from my group
Has anyone thought of ways to include more dolls (likely in whitethrone)
Or are the dolls with souls just used as border guardians (and therefore unlikely to be in the capital)
My imagination has also been captured by the idea of if a pc dies and the group tries to resurrect them and all they can find in whitethrone is a witch who will trap their soul in a doll...
Does anyone have any idea how I can make this work rules wise? Should I treat like reincarnation and allow them to keep mental stats but adjust physical (lose con, -4 strength, +2 Dex ) ?

[zimmerwald1915]

Lanathar wrote:

Has anyone thought of ways to include more dolls (likely in whitethrone)

The Shackled Hut:

The PCs might encounter an errant sentinel hut on their journey to Whitethrone. Maybe it found the border of the pocket of summer and parked itself there, seeing as its mission is supposed to be to protect wintry Irrisen's borders against the lands that know the seasons. They might encounter a doll or two in Whitethrone. Most of the dolls that end up in sentinel huts are made in Morozny, but some are bound to be made in Whitethrone too. Maybe Korgin has one guarding his house when the PCs come to free his slaves. Maybe Granny Nan keeps a couple around in the clock tower.

Quote:

Does anyone have any idea how I can make this work rules wise? Should I treat like reincarnation and allow them to keep mental stats but adjust physical (lose con, -4 strength, +2 Dex ) ?

The baseline guardian doll, that is, the special version of the soulbound doll used in Irrisen, seems to be built on the elite array of ability scores (with the human adjustment going into Dexterity), with no adjustment except for loss of its Constitution score.

Snows of Summer:

Thora Petska has the same ending stats as the vanilla guardian doll, but I would suggest she gets there differently. She would start with a base array of Str 8, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 10, raise her Strength by 2 with her human racial bonus, and then raise her Dexterity by 2 and lower her Strength, Constitution and Wisdom by 2 each to model her age per the rules for playing young characters in Ultimate Campaign. She would thus have the array Str 8, Dex 17, Con 10, Int 13, Wis 12, Cha 10 before being turned into a doll and losing her Constitution.

[Lanathar]

So that implies that there would be no stat change necessary.
Would there not need to be physical adjustments necessary due to tiny size ? (although I do find the idea of a supernaturally strong tiny porcelain doll hilarious)

[zimmerwald1915]

Lanathar wrote:

So that implies that there would be no stat change necessary.

Would there not need to be physical adjustments necessary due to tiny size ? (although I do find the idea of a supernaturally strong tiny porcelain doll hilarious)

There is no ability score adjustment when changing from Medium to Small, but the Small to Tiny transition apparently carries with it a -4 to Strength and a +2 to Dex. So I guess you were right in the first post. The "base" stats of a vanilla Guardian Doll would seem to be Str 12, Dex 15, Con 8, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 10, and being turned into a doll seems to impose a -2 Wisdom adjustment along with the adjustments from changing size and type. In total these adjustments would add up to +4 Str, -2 Dex, -2 Wis. Becoming a Guardian Doll also seems to change 4 of one's HD into Construct HD, and to advance those who were not 4 HD already to 4 HD. This would eliminate preexisting racial bonuses and penalties to one's abiltiy scores.

...And I'm going to have to rethink my theory on Thora's stats.

Snows of Summer:

This has become a peripheral question, but I'm invested and interested at this point, so what the hey?

Stats as a Guardian Doll:
Str 8, Dex 17, Con —, Int 13, Wis 12, Cha 10

Adjusted for Medium size:
Str 12, Dex 15, Con —, Int 13, Wis 12, Cha 10

Adjusted for Humanoid type (no racial modifiers):
Str 12, Dex 15, Con 6, Int 13, Wis 14, Cha 10

Adjusted for < 4 HD:
Str 12, Dex 15, Con 6, Int 13, Wis 13, Cha 10

Adjusted for Adult age category (base stats, because again racial modifiers are removed by being a construct):
Str 14, Dex 13, Con 8, Int 13, Wis 15, Cha 10

Eh, it's not quite the elite array, but it's darn close.

[Tumael]

I had Solveig mention that the Heralds had recently discovered a way to create counterfeit soul gems that would react as if the ritual of creating the doll was successful, but then explode and release the soul fragment sometime after creation.

I made it a small encounter in which they had to get into the dominant shop in Whitethrone's Porcelain Street, and get past the alarm wards and single guardian doll there to swap their gems with the counterfeit ones, but without alerting the owner or doll to any fishy business. (They ended up disguising as the shop owner and dispelling the ward to fool the doll.)

[Matthew Morris]

The dolls show up a lot in the fiction for the AP.

Amusing bit from Saturday, the PFS scenario has an NPC lamenting about her teenaged daughters and keeping an eye on them. I could 'hear' Ksenia (my witch) in the back of my head going, "Just bind a couple ulfen into soulbound dolls and give them to the daughters when they're young. Worked for me!"

[randomtone]

Since this named thread exists, I would like to add that I would like the soulbound guardian in book one to be a bit more of a chalange and act in a more aggressive manner that would actually deture adventures/ people. And I may add some doll making happening in the clock tower by Grandma Nan. But this whole thing seems so grotesk and brutal that I want to make it clear that this is a pratice the Queen Elvanna started to make Baba Yaga more palatable. Any one do this sort of thing?