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This is for a WOTR homebrew that is more diplomatically focused.
So, bad guys summon something powerful, and the good guys are about 5 turns away from it as the summoning completes.
The "something powerfull" is a mythic Succubus with 15-20 hero levels on top. The Succubus is very very non amused about being summoned (she was doing something rather important for her "become a nascent demon lord" plans), has parts of her mortal bodyguard plane shift to her position. Following this, she starts drastically murdering the bad guys while singing operatic symphonic metal.
The heroes are open to negotiations concerning her repatriation, which are complicated by the fact that the Succubus would not accept dismissal as her body guard are mortals and not native to the abyss, they have one plane shift user and he used his daily cast of it to get the rest of the guards and himself there.
When queried about wether her bodyguards are there willingly and if they do not know that she will corrupt them fully, she is like "They are mine, by promises given freely, body and soul and in perpetuity. Why would I reduce their effectiveness as bodyguards by corrupting them? They already fight better then most Demons, and are far more loyal then all of them.".
One bodyguard casually quips that his "number of innocents murdered per time unit" KPI went down drastically after abandoning his nations military and going into Nocticulas service.
Succubus:"If I have pressing need of an orphanage to be burned down, I have other assets who would have fun doing this and even see it as a reward rather then a task, why misuse my guards? An asset is to be used for the purpose it is most effective for. Using them for "orphanage heating" would be like eating virgin brain soup with a fork."
Nothing the Succubus says detects as a lie.
Is she too "nice" or too "rational"?
P.S. We may have a hellknight in the group who could be tempted to "redeem her to the path of efficiency and effectivity".
Actually, what happens to a Succubus who becomes Neutral Evil?
Following this, she starts drastically murdering the bad guys while singing operatic symphonic metal.
Lol, that's great.
One bodyguard casually quips that his "number of innocents murdered per time unit" KPI went down drastically after abandoning his nations military and going into Nocticulas service
That sounds a bit too ''on the nose'', maybe i'd change the formulation a bit ''KPI'' sounds like something a cartoon evil would come up with. If that's what you're going for though, it works.
Is she too "nice" or too "rational"?
I wouldn't say she's nice, but she does sound more rational than most demon. Demons, as far as i remember, lives to corrupt. They feed on corruption. She does sounds closer to Neutral Evil, maybe even going towards Lawful.
P.S. We may have a hellknight in the group who could be tempted to "redeem her to the path of efficiency and effectivity".
Sounds like wonderful roleplaying opportunity!
Actually, what happens to a Succubus who becomes Neutral Evil?
She would become a Neutral Evil succubus. There's a canon Chaotic Neutral Succubus workshipping Desna, she's called Arueshalae.
I don't know if she would lose her chaos subtype however. I would personally say that it would make for more interesting roleplaying oppornuity if even with alignement change the ''detect'' spell still detected chaos as demons are beings formed of pure chaos and evil.
Well, the bodyguards homebrew "homeplane" is heavily lawful evil dystopian, in one sentence, "mildly more rational WH40K Empire/Shadow Run Atztechnology communicating heavily/exclusively in modern human resource department language".
They got invaded by the Abyss (Koschtschie and Orcus), counterinvaded the Abyss, and when it turned out that this wasnt a good idea, their supreme leadership "cut its losses", collapsed their worldwound equivalent and this left their advance armies stranded in Koschtschies realm with orders to stand and fight to the death.
Orcus being Orcus, they figured out that fighting to the death would not even be effective in preventing the Demons from using them, so part of them jumped at Nocticulas (enemy of Kosctschie to boot) offer to take them in as fairly well renumerated mercenaries that dont share common weaknesses of demons.
Nocticula mostly used them vs Devils, whom they could anticiapte and thus oppose much more effectively then Demons can, and vs Koschtschie whom they hate anyway.
Many of them are used as bodyguards, as they are reknowned for being the type of guard that is least likely to backstab you by far, while having very respectable combat strength above that of a Shir or Babau even for their common line troops.
They are very methodical about war (and most other things), and do have "Key performance indicators" galore. When at war, they were rewarded/evaluated by how much they kill, with a multi tiered system including the likes of "combatants", "war relevant non combatants" or "non war relevant non combatant aka innocents".
While killing combatants would generally be valued highest, this was "mission dependent", with so called "Competitor morale adjustment efforts" being notorious massacres with an emphasis on killing as many as one could.
A sense motive check reveals that this particular bodyguard is very happy about very rarely killing non combatants/innocents since his change of employer.
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Ok let's see.
Premise: you are the DM of your game. it's good to ask for feedback but in the end, you do you, there is no right or wrong
So, bad guys summon something powerful, and the good guys are about 5 turns away from it as the summoning completes.
The "something powerfull" is a mythic Succubus with 15-20 hero levels on top. The Succubus is very very non amused about being summoned (she was doing something rather important for her "become a nascent demon lord" plans)
what kind of summon was this? I assume Gate.
Generally on general summons I don't treat them like actual people who have plans and a schedule but more like create a new creature of that type that start to exist upon summon and cease at the end of it.The heroes are open to negotiations concerning her repatriation, which are complicated by the fact that the Succubus would not accept dismissal as her body guard are mortals and not native to the abyss, they have one plane shift user and he used his daily cast of it to get the rest of the guards and himself there.
I would add, dismissal being generally used as an hostile spell is probably not particularly pleasant.
100% a succubus would be fussy enough to not accept a Dismissal on those grounds alone.When queried about wether her bodyguards are there willingly and if they do not know that she will corrupt them fully, she is like "They are mine, by promises given freely, body and soul and in perpetuity. Why would I reduce their effectiveness as bodyguards by corrupting them? They already fight better then most Demons, and are far more loyal then all of them.".
YMMV but to a succubus the term "corrupting" might actually be meaningless. I imagine a succubus, especially a high ranking one, has her history of backstabbing and paranoia, so winning her trust would not be easy, that being said it's not impossible.
That being said based on how you want to play the succubus there are many things that could come into play.she might be overconfident in her beauty and charm to the point where she thinks it unfathomable that her people would betray her, she likely has people crawling at her feet all the time after all, why would they be any different.
Succubus:"If I have pressing need of an orphanage to be burned down, I have other assets who would have fun doing this and even see it as a reward rather then a task, why misuse my guards? An asset is to be used for the purpose it is most effective for. Using them for "orphanage heating" would be like eating virgin brain soup with a fork."
the burning down orphanages reference is a bit cartoonish villain for my taste. In my opinion a succubus motivations are usually about self inulgence. Evil for evil sake is not much into the succubus style. blatant disregard for others in pursue of fickle desires is more their thing.
Is she too "nice" or too "rational"?
Not at all, and definitely not as a display.
As a matter of fact playing nice is definitely 100% in the succubus playbook.Don't confuse evil for not nice or chaotic for not rational.
A succubus can be extremely nice to the people she cares for or even simply the people that don't pose an obstacle to her. it's anybody else that gets trampled without remorse.
Them being chaotic may make her very fickle when it comes to maintaining her interests for long.
But beside it a high level succubus is likely highly intelligent, enough to know what's best for her and insanely charismatic, definitely enough to get her best point across.
Succubi are divas, the entire world is about them. It doesn't translate to random indiscriminate destruction and violence, those are reserved for the things that displease them, and for demons they generally have a level of sophistication that goes beyond base destruction.
They are more adept at breaking hearts than breaking bones.
they are not above asking their thralls to murder someone. but a person killed is someone who can no longer be enthralled, seduced, abandoned and left to endlessly long for her. In short, is not as fun.
Given the chance a succubus will always chose to be loved and worshiped rather than feared.
In terms of ooc background, we finished WOTR, (I was a player), and all liked it story if not mechanically wise, especially act 4 as well as homebrew things about managing the resulting alliances and intersphereal geopolitics as well a good bit of shadow run style (f.e. bust an "Anti Baphometan Glabrezu noble" out of Baphomets heavily fortified embassy, which of course has a large torture area, in Porphyri city, without anyone noticing, three guesses on who the "Anti Baphomet Glabrezu" turned out to be, was a real nice RP/WTF moment for the table) shenanigans.
On a sidenote, stealth or social adventures are a way to keep mythic stuff interesting, as they setup realistically achieveable failure conditions for mythic PCs that are not TPKs resulting from losing initiative rolls in mythic nuclear rocket tag.
The GM wants to update and then reuse his notes for another table (on which I may play some GM NPC at most, given the number of NPCs, I think most GMs would enjoy outsourcing that on occassion), for some reason thinks that I am reasonable in roleplaying chaotic evil characters (supposedly a rare skill? My character was only chaotic evil for about 3,5 sessions.) .
So, GM kindly asked me to run/change/design some encounters with a narrative focus of making allying with Nocticula more palatable/desireable to Lawfull Good Iomedeans (of which the other table has a bunch) in particular, by playing up both the relative competence and the relative agreeableness of Nocticulas cohorts, while dropping tantalizing hints of possible redemption.
Playing Nocticula as "Lara Raith" or "Queen Mab" equivalents from Harry Dresden is I think a step too far into "too nice" at this point (both of these are arguably far more lawfull, and arguably much less evil then pre redemption Noct) but more evil less precictable version of these is kind of what we intend to go for.
Related lore question: Can pre redemption Nocticula have Antipaladins canonically? If yes, are their commandments written down somewhere?
I mean its GM fiat, but we generally try to stay close to canonical lore.