Weeping Angels encounter - OG Myth-Weavers

Notices


GM Workshop

A community-created and maintained place for Game Masters of all systems to bounce ideas around. It's a place for inspiration and sharing tips.


Weeping Angels encounter

   
Weeping Angels encounter



A google searched yielded a few threads mirroring this one, but none that really had what I wanted. What I am looking for is a Encounter in which Weeping Angel-esqe monsters are encountered.

My ideas so far is the statues do not moved at all if they are faced. They hold still until the party turns their backs on them, then they move. While it seems like the statues are everywhere, observant characters will note that statues are missing from where they earlier were observed. The angels enjoy toying with their prey before striking, so the party will have a few rounds to catch on to what is going on.

Rather then send victims back in time and deal with that whole muckery, I think victims are cursed in some fashion and are paralyzed the rest of the encounter. It gets progressively harder to address this threat as more characters fall victim. Once the whole party is attacked, they fade to black and wake up the back in their beds, with the encounter restarting. They appear to have the same stats they started with, have no items they came across, and NPC's treat them as they did the first time. The only difference will be whatever effects the curse inflicted on them.

The Weeping Angels take great pains to keep their attacks undetected.

Thoughts? I was thinking this would be a good part of a evil wizards lair, part of ancient ruins the party is exploring at some point. Sometime before encountering the room the angels are in, the party gets clues to what they are coming across. Maybe the diary found in the lair before hand, perhaps a deranged NPC that believes he's reliving the same day constantly.

Thoughts? Ideas?

What is your goal with this? To set up a puzzle to be solved, or a challenge to overcome? A one off reference? Or perhaps an incident that will lead to your players destroying or otherwise disabling any statue they see?

Depending on that, you could get quite a bit of variance in how to lay out your encounter.

Tedronai - I left it intentionally vague to allow more options. If need be, I can homebrew (and by I can, I mean will most certainly have to) and adapt the suggestions into a game. I'm most familiar with D&D 3.5/Forgotten Realms though.

Boundless - It would be part of a adventure exploring ancient ruins of a fallen, previously unknown civilization. The angels are part of a defensive perimeter set up by a NPC caster that took up residence in one of the ruins for their research, probably a high level wizard. Like with the setting question, I'm leaving the encounter open ended to allow more options, but regardless the angels will be a challenge they will have to overcome or pass some how.

For starters, a 17th level caster can cast permanent spells of animate object, symbol of sleep and teleport circle on some statues.

If this is D&D, your first and foremost problem to overcome is how you'll stop the players from just smashing the hell out of the statues while they're looking at it. (I always wondered why that wasn't an option in the Doctor Who episodes...)

Until you do that, there's not much point in wasting resources trying to figure out how to go about any of the other mechanics you're looking for. Because that will be their first solution.

Also, aside from coolness factor, why would the wizard have created something like this instead of just using stone golems or even just gargoyles or mimics?

Grim I agree on your first point. Especially since Doctor Who points out that they ARE stone when you look at them, but I guess you can just assume that they are to heavy and to solid to do any meaningful damage to very quickly, especially since they can move quite fast in just the blink of an eye in doctor who.

But since this is D&D we're talking about rounds, meaning that yes, you do have to figure out how to avoid the "smash it to bits!" approach. Perhaps raising the hardness and hitpoints of the angels? give them some Damage Reduction etc. Meaning you can in theory hack them to pieces, but it's not very effective, especially if you can't look at all of them at the same time.

As for why. Personally I'd go with something like a very rare type of outsiders or something instead of animated objects since I can't see why a wizard would make something that's useless if someone looks at them, and if you want something that can pretend to be a statue, well, there's gargoyles for that. Maybe the angels were there before the wizard? He just managed to get past them and set up a defense against them, they got bored and went back outside?

And the curse itself, I'd avoid something like "reliving the same day over and over", it may be effective on npc's, but it'd be a pain to use on PC's. I'd go with some version of Flesh to Stone curse that turns the victim into a new angel (hey they have to reproduce someway...) and have it set in over several rounds/minutes/hours. At first it just seems like a stat damage or level drain, bad but not lethal and can be fixed later. Then the victim starts to feel stiffer and have issues with his fine motor skills, perhaps whispers in his mind or thoughts that doesn't seem quite like his own. Last stage he starts to change physically into an angel, develop wings, skin turns to stone and so on and eventually he changes and turns on his allies (will saves, lots of will saves to avoid it). To add a twist to it the wizard they're looking for (probably to kill?) is the only one who might now how to cure it, that's one of the things he's been researching, the angels and a cure for people affected by their curse.

I'm with NikitaDarkstar, in Dr Who the characters would essentially be smart commoners lacking the strength to smash the statues. They had a hard enough time not blinking toward the end.

Why angels? stone golems/mimics/gargoyles are all mundane enough that adventurers might be prepared and looking for them. The angels would be outsiders, unexpected and something they've never encountered before. The original builders of the ruins made a pact with them to defend the chamber from intruders or something along the lines.

To avoid just smashing the statues, the players need to concentrate on not blinking which is cumulative each round they do it. Statues can be placed in such away that the party cant possibly concentrate on all the statues. Saw on another forum a decent homebrew creature where the angels had a flight speed of 200 ft (perfect), which would allow them to strike fast and hard once they are done toying with them. Also they could hang out outside melee range fairly easy.

I'll look more at the flesh to stone curse.

The biggest thing will be the element of surprise, being attacked by something entirely new. It shouldnt be something that takes several rounds to by pass, but if afterward the party freaks whenever they see a statue I will be pleased. Also should amuse any Dr Who fans in my party.

A big part of the terror in "Blink" is the illusion of safety you have as long as you don't close your eyes for any length of time. Maybe the characters making an effort not to blink get a few rounds for free, but then after that they have to start making (easy, but increasingly difficult) willpower checks, and suffer perception difficulties if they succeed for too long.

I just thought of how evil it would be to throw a medusa somewhere in the adventure, or simply imply there is one. Their most recent appearance showed that not all Weeping Angels had wings
The Statue of Liberty!
Spoiler. So you could have a group of Angels that look like a petrified party of adventurers. Or even more evil, DO have a medusa whose gaze is in fact creating the Angels and the only way to stop them is to cast Stone to Flesh on them (if you're playing D&D), smash them, or when everyone is turned into an Angel and the process begins again.

I really should run a Doctor Who game...

Have four angels frozen in terror at a medusa statue, the medusa statue is really just that. Party keeps trying to interact with the statue and when their backs are turned to the angels...




 

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
Last Database Backup 2024-03-19 06:45:13am local time
Myth-Weavers Status