| Zapp |
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I find this section to have great potential. Squandered potential.
Instead of playing up the mystery, and the fairy spookiness, the trickster nature of their hosts, and making it "socially" dangerous to the heroes, we get:
Enemies in plain sight. Every single last interesting ability of the brughadatch falls foul of the ever-present party pooper called "Incapacitation".
The players aren't likely to look twice at any food offered, since there are clearly unwelcome green toad things starving the guests. Not only are the heroes generally immune to Charm (thanks Incapacitation!) but hostilities are likely to break out immediately.
Basically I look at the stat block on page 78 and think... this creature has very cool abilities... shame the adventurers didn't meet it four levels ago, when those abilities would actually have made a difference!
Now? It will just be a straight-up fight. :-(
Plus: the text says "Brughadatches of all life stages tend to cohabitate, since their abilities naturally synergize and tip the odds of survival in their favor." No two forms of Brugadatch are ever present in the same encounter.
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So I need to change things. How about this:
Every stage of Brughadatch retains the abilities of its lesser forms. They all have the Churning Frenzy ability. Doblagubs have the spells and abilities of mid-life Brughadatches.
Brughadatches have illusion magic to appear as croupiers, party hosts, and even guests. Something is off, though, and the heroes realize they need to weed out the tricksters from the innocents. Only by interacting with the people at the Hall do heroes get a save to break the illusion, that is, by accepting the offerings they receive. This is the Deceitful Feast ability.
The Brughadatch can't use its melee attacks unless it dismisses its illusion.
Critical Success As Success plus you become immune to Will save penalties from any Deceitful Feast ability of the same level or lower for 24 hours.
Success Any Will save penalties from previous failures disappear. You are unaffected by the food and you see the Brughadatch for what it really is, a green toady trickster (dressed in a ill-fitting suit, dress or costume).
Failure You don't see through the illusion. You take a –1 circumstance penalty to Will saves against any brughadatch spell or ability. The penalty increases with each failed save, to a maximum of –5.
Critical Failure As failure, plus for 1 hour, your attitude become helpful to the brughadatch, and you can’t use hostile actions against it.
The intention is that the heroes enter each room, mingle, one of them do the "will the real Brughadatch please stand up", point it out to their friends, and defeat it. All the other guests (and any critfailing hero) remain blissfully indifferent, ignoring getting splattered with green blood or getting their poker table wrecked.
Then they go to the next room... rinse, repeat. :-)
Heroes critically succeeding can't accrue further Will save penalties (against fellow mid-life Brughadatches; they can still get penalties from a Doblagub). But even a crit success does not mean you auto-penetrate the illusory disguise - you must still make your save, you're just safe from accumulating penalties.
The Doblagubs in area A6 Theater act as director and lead actress. They immediately recruit the heroes as performers in their play (which they should actually be good at!) This time, the "interaction" required to get the shot at revealing the tricksters will be Performance checks (or circus trick checks)!
So the "feast" of Deceitful Feast should be interpreted liberally. There it meant an actual "eating feast" - here it means a "feast for the senses"...
Again there are several innocents present (other actors, theater crew and audience members), so just attacking people you think is an evil frog man in disguise is likely the unpopular choice...
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I would also love for the disguised Brughadatches to surreptitiously cast Charm at the heroes while these mingle and eat snacks, so that there's a horror element (who's turning our friends into mindlessly smiling guests?!). But for this to not be a stupid idea I need to ditch Incapacitation for that effect. If the hero can just upgrade success into critical success, the Brugadatch will have just exposed itself for no benefit, shortcircuiting their entire moody trickster vibe.
So I'll simply do that. Incapacitation shall not stand in the way of a great encounter (again!). So replace their Charm spells with another innate ability:
Deceitful Charm
To you, the Brughadatch's words are honey and its visage seems bathed in a dreamy haze. You must attempt a Will save, with a +4 circumstance bonus if the Brughadatch or its allies recently threatened you or used hostile actions against you. If the Brughadatch drops its illusion so you see it for what it really is, you get a new save with the +4 modifier. If the Brughadatch use hostile actions against you, the effect ends.
Critical Success You are unaffected and aware the Brughadatch tried to charm you.
Success You are unaffected but think the Brughadatch's ability was something harmless instead of a variant ability of the Charm spell, unless you identify the ability as the spell (usually with Identify Magic).
Failure Your attitude becomes friendly toward the Brughadatch. If you were already friendly, you become helpful. You can’t use hostile actions against the Brughadatch.
Critical Failure Your attitude becomes helpful toward the Brughadatch and you can’t use hostile actions against it.