For my next game session I’d like to run a fey encounter — and since I’m pressed for time, I could use ideas on specific scenarios.
I’m looking for something with an eerie, otherworldly vibe. Fey bargains, trickery, gifts or trades that aren’t what they seem. Any suggestions along those lines? The more detailed the better.
Bogeyman + Nightmare Creature template + Implacable Stalker template = CR 13 scary fun time!
Give him 8 more HD, which is a total of 25 for him, making him a CR 15 monster.
Him having 25HD allows his tricks to work on 20HD targets, which should cover just about anything that will show up to fight him.
Something I cannot stress enough is location, location, location!
Have hostages/children crying in cages to both mitigate the party's use of offensive area spells, and to feed his appetite for FEAR.
He loves nothing more than to bask in the terror felt by others. It literally invigorates him.
If you feel wonderfully sadistic, you can give him Skill Focus Intimidate, Signature Skill Intimidate, and Dastardly Finish. He then makes people cower in fear, coup de graces one in the most brutal way possible, which makes everyone cower in fear, and he coup de graces... it's a vicious cycle.
He obviously has minions, probably a Dirge Bard with a pipe organ somewhere in his lair, and...
A pit of cats.
Yes. Cats.
And this particular Implacable Stalker Nightmare Lord Bogeyman steals children away, male and female and everything in between, but he is only really interested in the males.
See, all Bogeymen are male. And legend has it, that Bogeymen are MADE.
Back to the pit of cats.
He throws a hungry boy into a pit of hungry cats and see who comes out victorious.
Then he makes those boys fight each other until he sees who is victorious.
He uses the girls and others to bait and motivate the boys into doing his bidding. He also eats them, and feeds them to the boys and the cats, on the rare occasions that either get fed at all.
What happens when he gets to the one victorious, murderous, cannibal child...? Nobody knows, thats what the campaign is all about.
Or something.
This is sort of my specialty; I've done a fair bit of research into this area.
Can we get some more details on what sort of a game you're running and what sort of encounter you're looking for?
Voodist, I appreciate your ideas, and I'll certainly keep them in mind.
Quixote, I'd be glad of your suggestions. The campaign has been a long foray into deep wilderness, moving between small outposts and settlements and finally striking out into the wild. Most of their interactions have been with various tribes, sects and bandits, and there's been an increasing Lovecraftian element as well.
The party recently had a challenging encounter with a lamp blighter, so I'd like to try a different tone for the next fey they run across, something that involves the strange, unfathomable perspective of the fey, fundamentally inhuman yet hopelessly alluring. Beautiful, perilous, carefree and darkly whimsical.
I don't want a full encounter with a faerie court, because that might crowd out other aspects of the campaign, but something that highlights these features of the fey, serving as a single-session encounter, would be be perfect here.
What creeps out your players? I mean, this isn't much of a visual medium, so you can't rely on jump scares. You can try for some weird voices and sounds, to set the mood. Lighting also helps.
As for more detailed scenarios, what kind of stuff makes your players' skin crawl.? You mention some Lovecraftian elements being added. You also mention having an encounter with a creature that is "Beautiful, perilous, carefree and darkly whimsical."
First off, I'd pick something that can engage the PCs at range without the encounter immediately being a combat. Ventriloquism, Whispering Wind, Magic Mouth, or just plain old using Stealth or Invisibility while talking to the players could all be useful.
Look to creatures that can Teleport, Dimension Door, or move fairly quickly using Stealth or Invisibility. So now you have a creature that speaks with the PCs while concealing or confusing it's location, making it difficult for the PCs to just murder-hobo their way through the encounter.
But what's being said? This is where you set the real tone of the encounter, even more than setting in game or out, movement of the creature, etc. At this point I'm looking back through this thread and while the title says "spooky" the OP's last post seems to suggest a bit more dark humor.
My suggestion is: it doesn't matter what fey creature or creatures you involve so long as the PCs aren't just pitted against the fey immediately in a fight. Also, the more vague you make the creature the better. The moment your players KNOW what they're facing and begin to assess it tactically, that's when TTRPG and gamer instincts begin to creep back in.
So... what do you want the fey encounter to do? Do you WANT the players to fight, get XP and loot, then move on? If so, just pick a fey of the appropriate CR and keep them at range for a few rounds trying to make them inscrutable.
If instead you're looking for a more nebulous mystery, I'd suggest the fey gives the PCs a mission. Said mission should be weird and seemingly innocuous. "I need you to go to the ruins on the hilltop and rescue... a comb." Said comb, when the PCs find it, does not radiate magic and seems to have no historical significance, however it's guarded by fell monsters and traps.
You could end it there or have the fey keep sending them on missions. Each of these has some similar element and the PCs begin to piece these together. Say all of the items all have a logo stamped on them of a roadside inn that once existed in this area but was abandoned to the wilderness years ago. The fey gives no reason WHY it wants the mundane, non-magical items but just asks the party to retrieve a comb, a key, a pitcher and a pillow.
If you want to have a reveal, it turns out that the place the PCs have been meeting the fey was actually the former site of the Black Tongue Inn. After assembling all four mundane items a portal is opened revealing the inn room on the other side; the inn room where the fey's mortal beloved was trapped years ago. The poor mortal is deliriously mad from their imprisonment in the First World, which to them has lasted a thousand years. The delirious mortal goes berserk and exhibits amazingly powerful attacks until they leave the inn room at which point they age rapidly and die from the shock.
The final confrontation ends in horror and tragedy. The PCs have unwittingly played pawns in the fey creature's doomed reunion. Now having lost both the Inn that was struck by a storm from the First World which transposed it out of the Prime in the first place, as well as the one true love of it's life, the fey creature is bound to the site and cannot die. Each time it does it is reborn at the exact spot but the items needed to open the portal are lost forever in the First World.
This could in turn be the end of the story or give the PCs a permanent enemy in the area. You decide.
Of course, it doesn't have to be that way. I've already listed in another thread, I think from the OP, that I had an adventure where a korred gets free dwarven beer from a town's ritual every year, and every year the korred drunkenly uses it's Stone Shape on the nearby henge shrine that the dwarves then interpret as a blessing from their god. The conflict arises when the korred gets denied its beer and goes on a tear, kidnapping the mayor. In my version a band of mites stole the dwarven beer and replaced it with bad stuff for the korred to consume, but you could have the dwarves find out, or have a LN Inquisitor of the deity halt the rite as heresy, or whatever.
Another way to go would just be as simple as a group of mites befall the PCs at their camp. They get Prestidigitation at will, so they use a bunch of harmless "special effects" to get the PCs on edge. Then the mites use Stealth to creep through the camp and Sleight of Hand to pickpocket the PCs. If they're in trouble the mites use their Doom ability as well as some Animal Handling to get the PCs' mounts to break away from camp and flee into the night or call on some giant vermin as "muscle."
For a more whimsical approach, how about a group of fey-touched animals, gifted with the power of speech, convincing the party when they awaken in the morning that they have given the PCs the power to speak to any animal like themselves. Of course, the animals don't just do this out of the kindness of their hearts; they want to be transported to the next town and treated like kings. So hopefully the PCs comply and if so, along the way, the characters can run across other animals like the ones tricking them. Play this however you want; give one of the animals Ventriloquism at will and have it "speak" for the wild animal the PCs encounter, furthering the ruse. Alternatively have the fey-touched animals try to use Bluff to convince the PCs that either they haven't earned the "full use" of their ability yet or that the wild creature they encountered was being really belligerent and was censored by the fey-touched animals to spare the party.
As for fey oaths or bargains, just look to any folktale for these. Perhaps have a fey creature show up in disguise at the party's camp at night, begging for something the PCs consider valuable or asking to sleep among them. If the party relents, the creature reveals its true self and reward them; if they deny the creature it goes away dejected but not before issuing some cryptic curse. After that the PCs are attacked during the day by animals, plants and other fey; they have really poor luck, or whatever.
You could have a hag demand a child in return for the gift of long life; perhaps the party finds 7 yellow bands tied to several trees - following the trail leads the party to a pot of gold but stealing said gold causes them to age 1 year for every day the coins are in their possession; maybe a quickling challenges them to a footrace, the prize for winning being "eternal good humor" or a permanent +2 Morale bonus to all rolls for the remainder of the PC's life (until of course the winning PC is killed and raised from the dead, at which point they lose said bonus).
You could also look to the Witchmarket for inspiration. Just having a dark portal open, have a coven of First World hags standing there among caravans of gremlins, the wagons being pulled by weird, alien-looking stags, in the middle of the night would be enough to give the party pause. Throw in that the hags, far too powerful to fight directly anyway, want nothing more than each of the PCs' worst fears in exchange for great power in battle. Each PC that agrees loses their worst fear into a glass bottle held forever by the Witchmarket. In exchange they have a permanent +4 Morale bonus to whatever stat governs their main attack method, be that Strength, Intelligence, Cha or Dex, etc. However they also suffer a PERMANENT -2 penalty to AC as, without their fear they are permanently reckless. You can also impart circumstance bonuses or penalties based around the PCs not being afraid and making this both a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Are these the kinds of things you're looking for, or do you just want APL-appropriate encounters with fey that are somewhat engaging to the players while they're attacking their foes?
A few interesting points about faeries in general:
-the general concept is "people used to believe in faeries, but that was a long time ago" is actually a really old belief itself. The people we think of as setting out saucers of cream for the Fair Folk in fact felt the same way about them as we do; that people once believed, many years ago. So it sort of begs the question...when *did* we actually believe, and where did these beliefs come from?
-compare your classic child-stealing faerie to the more modern story of alien abduction. They come at night, steal you from your bed, and take you to a strange, far-away place...little green men...then they return you to your home, your memory blurred and vague...
So then the question becomes: did ancient people mistake alien encounters for faerie ones, viewing the experience through the only filter that made sense to them, or are "aliens" a modern adaptation of faeries, a more easily-rectified phenomenon than the truth that simply stretches our understanding of reality too far?
-fae creatures probably cover more ground than any other, mythologically speaking. In some, faeries are the distant cousins of daemons. In others, dwarves, trolls, ogres, banshees and more are considered fae beings. The land of Faerie is at times depicted as containing the collective of all legend and myth. It's where griffons, unicorns and dragons come from. It's every thing and every where that was proven not to exist.
So. It looks like a stand-alone wilderness encounter featuring fae creatures. Alien, enchanting..."beautiful, perilous" --that reminds me of Lady Galadriel...
One moment.
Use an Unknown and set it up properly to make it spooky. I ran an encounter with one in a haunted fey woods last Halloween. First, the party was beset by killer primal rabbits to get them to let down their guard. Then the Unknown appeared and attacked the youngest and most vulnerable party member. It worked pretty well. Once they got the upper hand, I had it teleport away and ended the encounter, leaving the PCs nervous about when it might reappear.
Basic ideas:
-a hag in her hovel. Evil and wise, but not immediately threatening.
-a ogre/troll/whatever with an evil eye and his captive princess in an abandoned fort/cottage/cavern.
-a maiden with long, dark hair, trapped in a ruined tower and guarded by a fearsome knight.
I'll go with the last one for a moment.
We could say the maiden is in fact some sort of unseelie enchantress and the knight is a mortal who has fallen under her spell, doomed to challenge any who approach her until he falls and his vanquisher takes his place.
The encounter's dramatic question appears to be "can the party free the damsel?" but it's really the knight that needs freeing, and once they realize that, the question is "can the party stop the enchantress?"
The conflict: (1) the knight will fight anyone who tries to approach the tower. Probably should telegraph the fact that the knight has been magically ensnared (his hollow, haunted eyes, the rotting bones and broken swords at his feet, the way he seems to invite defeat, despite his fervent words).
He's super tough and immovable.
(2) The enchantress wants a new guardian. Ideally, the party murders each other, one after the other, until one's left standing.
She doesn't need to do much, just pretend like she's a helpless damsel. But it's her that raises up the thorny hedgerows to separate the party and casts various spells to influence the fight, and her who enslaves anyone who defeats her championship (I'd make it a tough save for the CR, assuming a good saving throw).
(3) Throw in some simple beasts to occupy the party that isn't dueling the knight; crows or wolves or spiders...giant leeches? Assassin vines? They just want to eat or whatever.
They might figure out the enchantress is the real threat right off the bat, after a few rounds of combat, but for sure once the knight falls (and the feller is possibly Dominate'd or whatever).
Then there's climbing the tower while occupying her champion/fighting off little monsters, and then there's the enchantress herself. You could reveal her to be an unearthly, almost painfully beautiful thing. Pale as parchment, with huge eyes like wells of ink, her hair a writhing mantle of razor-edged shadow.
The encounter's over when they defeat her in combat or...push her through the broken mirror or break the magic circle that sealed her in the tower...or maybe they fight off her magic compulsions and leave her in her tower, screaming, out of inhuman envy but also bottomless loneliness and fear, without a champion to defend her.
Something like that?
Another thing, along the lines of the damsel-as-knight scenario is the concept of someone being Elfshot. Supposedly in some of the old folklore around fairies they'd kidnap someone to the fey realm and there the person would put on a display of great skill. If in the mortal realm a woman was known as a great baker, she'd be spirited away to bake for the Elf Queen's Banquet.
This wasn't a physical kidnapping mind you. The person's body was left in the mortal realm while their inner self (soul, mind, passion, what have you) was lost to the fey. During this time the person's body would go about its daily tasks in a sort of mindless, zombie-like state. The person was conscious at some level but their personality, their drive had just been stripped away.
On the one hand you could have a fey enchantress, or just a Biloko advanced in HD or given Bard abilities or whatever, using their Enchantment spells or abilities to make a person do their bidding. Another way to do this however would be that the person's soul really HAS been captured and spirited off to the First World. The fey the PCs encounter are either guards watching the physical body of the person like guards or maybe they're the fey that actually did the stealing - maybe Lurkers in Light or some other nefarious aliens.
If you go with option 2 and the victim's soul is in the First World, you could have the PCs go to retrieve it, have there be some kind of charm or locket or whatever that must be broken to bring them back, or make it some kind of twisted fey deal like "to free the soul of Meldry the Baker you must first procure me the laughter of her infant daughter before the setting of the sun." Of course the PCs learn the tenets of the deal 3 minutes to sunset so they better get the sleeping baby to laugh quick!
Quixote, I love the knight-and-damsel idea, and I hope I can use a version of that at some point.
For now, I'm thinking of something a little less combat-oriented and more involving some sort of bargain or temptation. A fey creature offers the party something in exchange for something, but the bargain is rigged in some way which might be obvious to the fey, and thus "fair" by its lights, but not at all obvious to the party.
Any ideas along those lines?
The CR12 Candlestone Courtier has:
Fey Bargain (Su) Once per week, a Candlestone courtier can grant a limited wish or a permanent +2 inherent bonus to one ability score. In exchange, the bargainer is cursed to be carried off in its dreams each night by the courtier to a never-ending fey ball that, while pleasant as often as not, affects the dreamer as nightmare, requiring a saving throw each night (Will DC 21 negates). The DC to remove this curse is reduced by 4 if the courtier is killed, and a successful coup de grace on the courtier with a cold iron weapon automatically ends the curse. Ending the curse also ends any noninstantaneous effects of the bargain. A creature can have only one fey bargain at a time.
Voodist, that Candlestone courtier looks very interesting, thanks. I'll be using that in some form.
Quixote, any ideas about a fey transaction or bargain? I'd be glad for more suggestions, since you really have a flair for this.
J. A. wrote: The party recently had a challenging encounter with a lamp blighter, so I'd like to try a different tone for the next fey they run across, something that involves the strange, unfathomable perspective of the fey, fundamentally inhuman yet hopelessly alluring. Beautiful, perilous, carefree and darkly whimsical.
I don't want a full encounter with a faerie court, because that might crowd out other aspects of the campaign, but something that highlights these features of the fey, serving as a single-session encounter, would be be perfect here.
First off, I must be a lot worse at fey encounter design than I thought as I didn't even rate getting a shout-out in J-Dawg's last post.
Second, I'm quoting here for the fact that you suggest they had a challenging encounter with a Lamp Blighter. This is a CR 6 Fey creature so I'm guessing the party is somewhere around APL 2 - 6. Let's look at Fey some creatures between CR 4-8:
1. Boggart/CR 4: a black-hearted fey (CE) with psychic powers and a penchant for drowning victims, Boggarts enjoy tormenting a home and may lure children close to a swamp or riverbank where they drag them in to drown. These fey creatures supposedly feed their mental abilities with the fear and anguish of their victims.
A bargain with a Boggart might be: If you can find the helpless child they've got in a grave slowly filling with water, the fey will not only quit the area and never return but he will lead the party to a hidden cache of fey treasure. Of course these fey don't play fair; it uses Hallucinatory Terrain to obscure natural hazards of the swamps and has secretly dug three false "graves" for the poor girl he's trapped, all the while using Invisibility to obscure the real one.
2. Grimstalker/CR 5: normally a selfish ambush predator with a cunning intellect, these unwholesome fey are generally found keeping interlopers out of woodland regions. The one that meets the PCs however has an offer; she will give a special coat of bark and vines enchanted with her own fey magic to anyone who can best her in a footrace through the dark hart of the wood.
This encounter can be run with the Chase mechanic, with a finish line 5 cards ahead and all manner of plant-based threats and traps. The fey automatically passes one challenge on her card every round, either using her second action per card to harass the PC racing her with a Standard action or attempting a second Move action to pull ahead in the race. Of course, the threats the PC(s) face along the way may very well be lethal and the penalty for failing to beat the Grimstalker will of course be combat.
Should a PC win the fey flees deeper into the forest but not before relinquishing the coat. This is a cloak which grants constant ability to move through natural Forest terrain without any hinderance to movement (magical obstacles still apply) and grants 3/day Control Plants; 1/day Treeshape.
3. Blodeuwedd/CR 6: these mischevious ladies are protectors of meadows just as their cousins, the dryads, ward the woods. The Blodeuwedd are sometimes tricksters, assuming the forms of prairie owls or hiding amid fields of wildflowers. They use many of their tricks and powers to deter or dissuade trespassers through their fields, but if pressed can be potent guardians.
A bargain might be that the PCs must prove their worth to the Lady of the Meadow; they must move through a large area of Plains environment without causing a single disturbance. This might involve a mass Pass Without Trace spell, an elaborate series of Ref saves or Acrobatics/Escape Artist checks, using the Fly spell, etc to move through the area without disturbing a single flower or blade of grass.
The reward would be like an NPC boon. Duskpetal, the Lady of the Meadow (the Blodeuwedd in the encounter) kisses each of the PCs, giving them a permanent immunity to her Allergen Aura. This also marks each of them as a Friend of the Meadow, entitling them to enter her warded domain without hassle from Duskpetal or her animal friends. Finally, while in Duskpetal's demesne, the PCs gain a healing effect that doubles all healing while they remain here.
Now, all of the above are very mechanical, even if they aren't actually abilities or treasures usually associated with these creatures. I tried to craft each of these encounters based in the rules of the game with the rewards of the challenges also very mechanical in nature.
For a more esoteric fey bargain you could once again look at fairy tales and folklore. If you want bargains with double-meanings, focus more on old tales of deals with devils, demons and the like. For example the PCs might have a contest to outdo a satyr in a contest of Performance skill checks, kind of like the old fiddle-with-the-devil stories. If the PC wins they are gifted with an instrument crafted by fey magic; it plays the most beautiful music but slowly transforms the PC into a Faun or something.
Really the one thing you have to decide JA is this: how specific, rules-centric and mechanical do you want to get with this?
That Candlestone guy sounds like it was inspired by "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel". Definitely worth a read.
An encounter with combat as a less viable solution...
Maybe a guide of some sort through a strange and dangerous place? An emaciated thing with huge blind eyes and a magic candle leading them through an underground labyrinth or a gnarled, sharp-toothed dryad picking a way through a haunted wood or a selkie, beautiful and sad, offering them a way across a dark, eerie lake.
If you set the price so at least some of the characters balk at it, the guide can suggest they only need to "guide" one of them, and that the others are free to do as they wish...including follow them. They seem happy to point out the loopholes in their contract of service, saying such deals are often full of them.
But anyone who did not pay the toll is still stuck in the maze/forest/lake, in some fashion. Maybe their soul is trapped there, or maybe they return to the place every night in their dreams. Or they've been replaced by some sort of changeling imposter.
Or maybe it's something more optional. A strangely dapper little man with white hair, curling horns and one cat's eye alone in an abandoned cemetery, shuffling a deck of cards and offering strange stakes. He doesn't play for souls--that's demon-work--but maybe a bit of memory or a piece of luck.
A bent and world-weary old crone (who is almost certainly not an old crone) begging for food and offering strange treasures in payment. A cursed bone flute or the frozen heart of a terrible monster or a gemstone so utterly perfect and beautiful that it is constantly the center of great betrayals, thefts, murders and worse.
What appears to be a little girl in a homespun dress, offering to tell their fortune. She wants a promise in return, to be announced later. Maybe she's really a queen of some distant realm in disguise and is looking for a husband. Or a snack. Or both.
Just use the whisperer from bestiary 6. You don't need to add anything else, they are scary enough as is.
Non-combat encounters? Take some notes from Zelda games. There are lots of encounters that aren’t straight up fights against creatures that clearly would be fey if they were in Pathfinder. You could do something like the hide and seek with the Skull Kid in the Lost Woods in Twilight Princess.
The issue with non-combat encounters is the players, not the monster chosen. ANY monster encounter could be non-combat. Having 3 goblins trying to bribe the PCs with treasure so the goblins can run away; negotiating a prisoner release with a babau slaver; trading artworks for information from a wood giant; all of these could be non-combat encounters.
Then again the PCs might kill the goblins and loot the corpses for their treasure. If the wizard is sneaky enough it may have its invisible familiar delivering Resist Energy: Acid to the prisoner while the other characters directly attack the demon. Perhaps the party attacks the wood giant, reduces it to below 0 HP, binds it with magic ropes and then heals it back up to consciousness before the enlarged barbarian uses Intimidate on the defeated creature to get the info and keep all the loot too.
Honestly, I recommend taking a look at the Forest Kingdom Campaign Compendium by Legendary Games. They have fey bargains included in there, along with a bunch more fey-themed content.
CB
Bakka, I appreciate the recommendation, and I think I've seen that supplement mentioned before.
Unfortunately the price is far out of my range for a casual purchase right now. Does the information in the book appear (legally) anywhere online?
J. A. wrote: Bakka, I appreciate the recommendation, and I think I've seen that supplement mentioned before.
Unfortunately the price is far out of my range for a casual purchase right now. Does the information in the book appear (legally) anywhere online?
Check your private messages.
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: The issue with non-combat encounters is the players, not the monster chosen. ANY monster encounter could be non-combat. That's because the presence or absence of combat doesn't define an encounter, it's just one way to resolve the conflict of an encounter. "Combat encounters" and "non-combat encounters" aren't things.
Hunt of the Bogeyman
Hunt of the Ankou
If anything, there should be some sort of rule of thumb to create new curses that can summon evil Feys.
Want to really frighten your players? Homebrew a curse called "Call of the Wild Hunt", which like the other hunts, but call a Wild Hunt Monarch... that calls for a Wild Hunt everytime someone fails a save against the curse. That can include any other Wild Hunt creature serving/helping the Monarch.
JiCi, I appreciate the suggestions. The Hunt curses look interesting, but the party isn't anywhere near the level to access miracles or wishes, so those wouldn't be appropriate.
J. A. wrote: Bakka, I appreciate the recommendation, and I think I've seen that supplement mentioned before.
Unfortunately the price is far out of my range for a casual purchase right now. Does the information in the book appear (legally) anywhere online?
You can purchase the Faerie Bargains pdf on its own. It's the same information from the Forest Campaign Compendium which is the larger collection.
Very interesting, thanks. I see that Endzeitgeist positively swoons over this supplement, which is a strong nudge in its favor.
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