Secret Santicore Reference: "Things"

And so is finished the table of contents for the "Things" Secret Santicore 2014 PDF.

There were a tonne of great rules and systems in here. "Diseases and Cures" is definitely finding its way into my Rivercrawl game, and "Gear and Careers" is just going to be my new normal for "defining player gear at chargen".

When the Monster is the Treasure	2-3	Rules for harvesting parts from monsters/animals. Tables for what you get, what they do, what it's worth, etc..
Things Found in an Abandoned Hospital or Asylum	4-5	A d66 (or 11d6?) list of things found in a modern abandoned medical facility. Each item comes with a modifier to make it work for a horror or medieval game.
An Arsenal and Armoury Pertaining to the Shed and Stolen Nails of Giants, Giantesses, and Giant Brood	6-7	A listing of items created from the use of the finger and toe nails of Giants. Arrayed in several tables depending on if found wild or as spoils of war. All pretty nasty in a body-horror type way, but also useful if you're OK with the nasty. Includes rules for several weird diseases you can catch from using the objects.
What is That up There, My Lord?	8-9	Four d10 tables that can be used to generate a "Buck Rogers-type" spaceship, including the craft, the pilots, the weaponry, and its mission.
Deep Dungeon Transports	10-14	Discussion of the viability of various types of non-magical transport options in the deep underdark. Breaks the general problem into more specific instances, describes ways of solving each instance. Includes putting something in the belly of a Purple Worm, getting transport across the deep underground sea, and using Beholders to carve out large tunnels.
Black Magic Alphabet	15-16	d26 alphabet tables for generating tomes of black magic, including their name and what's contained inside them.
The Alchemist Store	17-18	Eight d6 tables for generating an alchemist's store, including items in the shop, other customers, the owner, etc.
Games of Irradiated Wastelands	19	Five short descriptions of games played by peoples in a post-apocalyptic setting. Gonzo/silly in the best way.
Dangerous Technology for Stupid People	20-28	100(?) dangerous technology items, such as the Fez of Protection, the Soup Bowl of Death, and a Spinning Bow Tie that knocks down missile attacks. Great fun list.
The Seven Vestments of Sutoyar the Mad	29-32	Seven magical clothing items enchanted by a mad historical figure. Each has advantages and disadvantages when worn, as well as a magical and mundane history.
Amulet of Flawed Majesty	33-35	A magic item which gives the character a permanent +1 to Charisma and the occasional +6 to charisma and random super power, but at the cost of the characters' soul.
12 Wizard Hats	36-38	Twelve wizard hats, each with an image and a description, each of which offers certain advantages and disadvantages in play.
Alien Bionics	39-43	A d20 list of alien bionics with descriptions on how to use each. These are fairly serious scifi technomagic items, and rules are provided for using each one in play including advantages and disadvantages.
Thirteen Tomes	44-45	A list of 13 magical books, each with a paragraph description detailing what they do. Any would make great loot in a D&D campaign.
Random Effects for Eating Mushrooms or Other Bizarre Foods	46-49	d100 table of effects from eating weird, dangerous, rotten, unknown, etc foodstuffs. Most are short and fun in play, offering more flavor than mechanical (dis)advantage, although mechanics are there.
Magic Cutlery	50-51	Backstory and a list of 15 magical eating implements. Can be left in a wizard's tower, a magical school, etc.. The effects tend to be small but useful in a dining setting. I'm sure players can find a way to make them useful for killing things and taking their loot.
The Five Blades of the Dead Titan	52-54	Five magical, sentient swords, each with different magical abilities that they grant their users, but also each has its own goals and will attempt to take over the character to achieve those goals.
Clerical Spells	55-57	A number of clerical spells for three different deities: The Builder (Structure and Self), the Lady (Blessing and Light), and the Shipbuilder (Sails and Storms). Excellent list to help add flavor to different types of clerics.
Organizational Events for a Fantasy City	58-61	A d100 table of events that might happen in a fantasy city that pertain to its management and government. Often will affect a party of PCs, lead to adventure hooks, etc.. Great way to make the city feel alive and bureaucratic.
Gear and Careers	62-64	A method for determining starting gear of a newly rolled character that doesn't involve buying it. The character will get different gear depending on their ability scores and their class. Low scores don't get bad gear, just different gear. Really neat, versatile, and fast system.
Accessories of Exacerbating Transformation	65	Three magical clothing items that in some way transform their wearer. Switch mental/physical attributes, mutate them, etc..
Plastic Model Spaceships	66-67	Tables for quickly rolling up Gonzo Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy style spaceships of varying size and functionality. Comes with illustrations, is both hilarious and functional.
Magical Medical Marvels	68-72	Various items, spells, NPCs, and adventure hooks, all of questionable healing power. Oh, they'll heal you all right, but they'll also grow you weird limbs you didn't know you wanted (and probably didn't).
Uncommon Skills of the Second Age of Adventuring	73-74	A list of narrow skills / non-weapon proficiencies for your Old School game. All are helpful, most are a little funny too. Great way to round out a skill or feat list.
Random Potion Effects	75	d20 effects a random potion might have. Some are gross and deadly, some are useful, and some are window dressing. Given the context of "Wizard creates these, force feeds them to prisoners to see what's up", that's a pretty good mix.
Quick and Dirty B/X Vehicle Rules for Science Fantasy or Sci-Fi	76-77	Really quick and easy to use rules for deteriming the speed, handling, cargo load, etc of random vehicles in play.
Strange and Terrible Artifacts from the Bleak	78-79	d19 magical scifi artifacts. The short descriptions leave a lot to the GM to decide, but give some great flavor text.
Diseases and Cures	80-83	Two d20 tables. The first is long descriptions and rules for various diseases that a character might catch. Some might even appear to be helpful on the surface. The second is a d20 list of "rumors of cures", which do a good job of suggesting adventures for the player to go on to get cured.
Galdr Rune Magic	84-87	A totally new magic system + class for DnD-type games. Uses runes, which can be either invoked by speaking them or inscribed on something. Different effects come about depending on how they're used.
Tapestries, Murals, and Mosaics	88-89	Various wall decorations. Mostly flavor, no real mechanical effects. Really great flavor.
Mundane Magic	90-94	30 items whose magic focuses on day to day life, rather than adventuring or combat. Magic as daily technology, if you will. Great list.
Wizard Treasure	95-97	Tables detailing wizard loot! This is what Seclusium of Orphone should have been. Great system that emergently allows for having more, and more rare, loot for higher level wizards.
Yuletide Playbook for Dungeon World	98-100	Moves, monsters, and more for your Christmas-themed Dungeon World game.
Items that Grow with the Characters	101-102	Six whimsical magic items that grow more powerful as the character who is wielding them levels up.

The whole table of contents can be found in our handy-dandy Google Spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11nXs4Tv-XkKC2RD8Y3f5g4MQnnTclm7bzXZ2s7hPiGo/edit?usp=sharing

Secret Santicore Reference: "People"

A table of contents of the "people" PDF for this year's Secret Santicore. 

Flower Devils vs. Silk Demons	2-4	Two "meta-organizations", decentralized occult alliances that are somewhat at odds with each other. Each organization has several abilities, flaws, items, etc associated with it. Gives rules on generating NPCs of each organization. Describes how they interact with each other, and gives a timeline of events that are happening in the background of the campaign world.
The Order of the Machine	5	A "meta-organization" for Fate games. Occult group that worships AI. Gives several NPC templates for high-level occultists.
The Eternally Young	6-7	Description of an early modern herbal health company/cult. Ideas on how to use this in a campaign. Includes stat block for "Grace Meeks, Undead Beauty Guru" and an alien/god thing which is using the company to its own ends.
The Death Cult	8-9	Description of a death cult. Details its founding and evolution into several states. Includes punishment for those found worshiping death: eternal life.
The Secret Cults and Guilds of the Desert Kingdoms	10-14	d30 Cults and Guilds for a desert setting. Each gets a long paragraph description. Laid out to be easy to roll on.
Horror Barbarians	15-16	Three horror/weird-themed barbarian tribes. Description, flavor text, and some campaign tie-ins.
Interplanetary Pirate Ragamuffins	17	Seven NPCs biographies. Each a sort of pirate ragamuffin. Given 4e classes but no other stats.
Garden Sports Oriented Combat and Dungeonering Moves	18-19	Moves built for Dungeon World that are all focused on some form of garden sport. Also gives a list of moves for Robot Characters ("Danger, Will Robinson") and Mi-Go Characters ("Wretched Humans").
What Does This NPC Do in His / Her / Its Spare Time?	20-23	Various tables to roll on to deterimine the hobbies, activities, and abilities of general NPCs.
30 Reaons not to Murder NPCs	24-25	d30 table of reasons a party might not want to randomly murder a given NPC.
Rival NPCs	26-28	An essay on the nature of what makes a good "nemisis" or "big baddy" in play, how to build them up and get the players invested while still leaving them agency, etc.. Includes several nemises of different form from the author's own game (statted for 3.5 from what I can tell?).
The Lonely Heir	29-33	A fully-statted class for Dungeon Crawl Classics that is modeled after the typical Lovecraftian protagonist: a lonely pampered young man who falls into something greater than himself, which slowly destroys him.
d12 Sorceror-Queen Generation Table	34-35	Seven d12 tables that, when rolled on together, generate a playable Sorceror-Queen.
Super Powers in D&D Type Fantasy	36-40	Various tables and rules for generating and playing D&D characters who have super powers. Presented as "things to do after usual chargen".
Table of Adventuring Parties	41-46	d10 table of adventuring parties, each with a short back-story and multiple fully-statted NPCs for LotFP.
Four Monastic Orders	47-50	Descriptive text + rules for 4 different monastic orders, including a 5e "path" for each one. Includes schisms and relationships amongst the orders.
NPC Faction Cartomancy	51-52	Rules for using playing cards to build various types of NPC factions—whether nations, guilds, etc.. Describes how to lay out the cards and what different types of cards mean in context. Elegant and fast. Includes examples.
People	53-57	d100 tables for generating NPCs to be found at a market quickly. Includes name, business at the bazzar, and a secret for each.
Three Robbable NPCs	58-60	Descriptive text of three rich/robbable NPCs, what they have, and how they hide/guard it. Each scenario could lead to muliple sessions of play.
The Hunted—A Gonzo Racial Class for OSR Games	61-64	Instructions for building a racial class of forrest-dwelling giants for your OSR system of choice. Includes descriptive text of their culture, rules for their special abilities, and how to generate the class regardless of your system.
Rats!	65	A picture of a party lowering one of their own on a rope into a well, while giant rats at the bottom scramble for his delicious flesh.

More information and references for other PDFs is / will be available in this spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11nXs4Tv-XkKC2RD8Y3f5g4MQnnTclm7bzXZ2s7hPiGo/edit?usp=sharing

Summon Ants

This is a first-level MU spell for my Amazon Rivercrawl game.

Caster summons a swarm of ants whose HD is equal to the MU’s level. Nearby ants gather through the forest to come to the Caster’s magical pheromones. The swarm lasts as long as the caster is concentrating, and the caster can direct them to various foes. The swarm has one attack, the largest on this table for its HD.

Once the caster’s concentration is broken (by attacking, being successfully attacked, casting another spell, or pretty much doing anything that isn’t walking slowly), the swarm will lose one HD per round until it has dissipated, and it will fully dissipate if its current foe falls. To attack the swarm, the foe must make a grapple attack vs. the swarm’s HD. If it succeeds, the ant swarm loses 1HD regardless of the caster’s concentration.

While swarmed, a foe is at -2 to hit anything that is not the swarm itself.

When casting, the player roles 1d4 on the following chart to see what kind of ants respond.

1. Fire ant. On successful attack, the foe saves vs. poison. On success, half damage is done. On failure, full damage is taken. If an attack does 6pts or more of damage, then save vs. paralyze or be paralyzed for d6 rounds in pain.
2. Leafcutter ant. On successful attack, no damage is taken. Instead, leafcutters attack the skin and clothes of the foe. -1AC for each successful attack.
3. Weaver ant. On successful attack, no damage is taken. Instead, the foe must save vs. paralyze or be stuck (-4 to attacks, AC, and can't move) for d4 rounds (cumulative) in the ants’ sticky gauze. 
4. Army ant. On successful attack, ants do full damage. 

Xena's Grasping Maw

When read or researched, this spell appears to be the following first-level spell:

A five-gallon hollow floating sphere of energy appears. This sphere can be moved by the will of the Magic User at her running speed, and exists for the MU’s level x 10 minutes. (So a level six MU can conjure the sphere for an hour.)

This sphere has “jaws” as it were: the Magic User can will a variable semi-circle opening to appear or disappear either on the top of bottom of the sphere. This opening can be used to fill the sphere with items or liquid, and can also be used to grasp large items. Their closing will not crush anything, but will hold up to 200lb objects tightly enough to pick them up and move them. When closed completely the sphere is air- and water-proof.

Xena was not the magic user who originally crafted this spell, but rather his cat whose ability to grasp items in her mouth was the inspiration for his research.

When the spell is memorized for the first time, everything seems good until the Magic User decides to cast the spell. They will find that they rather prefer having the spell memorized for later than using it now, and won’t cast it.

To the character, the desire to keep the spell memorized “for later” will be stronger than any want, need, or coercion to cast it.

Story-wise, the spell is a sentient memetic virus of sorts, one that once memorized cannot be unmemorized because its desire to live (aka, stay memorized) is too strong.

Mechanically, the player just lost a first-level spell slot. If they memorize it again, they will lose that one too. Each spell is independently willful.

—

There is a plus side to this, however. Unbeknown to anyone living (except maybe one of the players’ antagonists), the spell’s will is so strong that even a changeling, once it has changed into a magic-user who has this spell memorize, will find itself itself unable to change again. The changeling will effectively become the magic user, and the two of them won’t even be able to tell each other apart.

What any person decides to do in such a situation depends on how fully they’ve given themselves into their magical studies and desire for power. I’ve written up one option, I’m sure you and your players can think of more.

Someone asked me how to create monsters in LotFP, this is what I answered.

First off, if what you have is the “rules and magic” book then it’s not really useful for GM-focused rules. For instance, no where does it tell you how to generate creatures. It’s pretty simple: You assign Hit Dice and AC to the creature more or less based on size and agility, then to-hit bonus, attack strength, and HP are derived from the HD. Here is a handy-dandy table that is in the Referee book (which is no longer available but should be again soon):

Weight	HD	Attack 1	Attack 2	HP	To-hit
<100	1/2	d4	d2	1d4	0
100	1	d6	d3	1d8	+1
250	2	d8	d4	2d8	+2
500	4	d10	d6	4d8	+4
1000	6	d12	d8	6d8	+6
2000	8	d12+d4	d10	8d8	+8
5000	10	d20	d12	10d8	+10
10,000	12	2d10	d12+d4	12d8	+12

Don’t assign an AC over 18, and don’t assign AC based on how tough the creature is: that’s what HP is for in creatures. So a monkey might be a one-hit kill but be really hard to hit because it’s so nimble, while a rhino only has an AC of 12 so you hit it almost every time, but boy that fucker can take the hits no problem.

For 99% of NPCs, they should just be 0-level fighters with 10’s across the board in terms of ability scores. Even like common soldiers are 0-level: it’s only exceptional people who have any levels in anything at all.

For particularly memorable NPCs, you might give them a +1 ability bonus somewhere. For super-duper awesome NPCs, you can give them up to +3 bonus points (so like an 18 INT, or 12s in CON, STR, and CHA, up to you). If you want to give more bonus points, you have to give some negatives as well. And feel free to give them abilities that “break” the rules, NPCs don’t have to work exactly that PCs, particularly if they have access to magic.

But what about magical creatures? The general rule of thumb with LotFP is that magical creatures are rare and dangerous. Any magical creature should be an adventure in itself, not just some mook in a dungeon. Like, a good monster isn’t a tactical mini-wargame, it’s a puzzle: and the prize for figuring out the puzzle is not having to play the tactical mini-wargame, because that unit in the tactical mini-wargame is wicked OP and unfair. And that puzzle can take an entire session and involve all sorts of crazy shit if done well.

So while the rulebooks don’t have a lot of guidance here, what does are the LotFP adventures. I’d recommend picking up Better Than Any Man—it’s free, and probably the second-best adventure I’ve ever read (after Vornheim). It’s huge, as this guy attests he got a dozen sessions out of it. I ran a 12+ hour marathon with it, and we only started getting into the shit towards the end. Just reading it will make you a better GM.

Then there are the OSR blogs. I read a bunch of these. My favorites are:

• http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/
• http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/
• http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/
• http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/
• http://thealexandrian.net/
• https://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/
• http://www.rolang.com/
• http://recedingrules.blogspot.com/
• http://jrients.blogspot.com/
• http://grognardia.blogspot.com/

In some vague order based on awesomeness vs. how often the post.

Check out False Machine and Monsters and Manuals, both have recently published adventures that are really great and have some awesome monsters in them.

Also, most the blogs are really good at tagging their posts, so find the like “monsters” or “encounters” or “rules” tag and follow the rabbit hole.

So in conclusion: (1) Dangerous is good. (2) Weird is better. (3) Follow things to their logical conclusions. (4) Don’t pull punches. (5) The rules are easy. (5a) Don’t mistake following the rules for playing the game.

Lord Skullcleave Ravenshadow

Lord Skullcleave Ravenshadow’s skeletal nightmare jaunted saunterly over the mooring meadows. The air vibrated with cleanliness, and with each step that his morose steed misgave, he felt his lungs empty of the sulfur from his home. It was a startling feeling of freshness, a lifting weight he’d not known was there before.

His orcish entourage—Febrar; Maker of Mincemeat, Grinchwin the Basher, and Dolt—fanned out behind him. Ever alert, their ceremonial gauntlet spikes shone like the black diamonds they were, embrued with the souls of the orcs who had served faithfully the Ravenshadows since time immemorial.

Suddenly, Lord Skullcleave’s lingam clutched inside his onyx codpiece. Danger was near. There was a bustle in the hedgerow beside him. A pale white fleshman tumbled from his hiding place. These, who had been but hairless apes when the Ravenshadows had build their glorious crystal castles ‘neath the sulfur puts, had taken over the countryside with their squat stone dwellingplaces in recent millenia.

Lord Skullcleave thought back to his tutelage under master Crackwhip so many centuries ago, and brought to his lips what little monkeytongue he remembered from his lessons.

"Fart nary, wee meatcreature. Though brazen am bashful, and wish you no mincery." His words froze the very air they touched, and had the opposite effect as what he’d wanted on the little creature. It began to whimper and release liquids from various orifices. For a moment he felt pathos for the small monkeything quivering below his exsanguinous mount. Then Grinchwin’s overzealous warhammer came down, and its suffering ceased.

Amends would have to be made. He would personally see a retinue under the black flags of peace, carrying the body of the fallen victim on the ends of pikes, as befit one who died a warrior’s death. He would make Grinchwin set torch to the stonedwellings in penitence for his brash bashing, and once the village was razed would erect the finest black towers from molten minemetal for the squalid meatcreatures to occupy as an offering of peace, that they might better their lot in life.

Surely they would be thankful. He wouldn’t want to be a bad neighbor.

The Clone Big Baddy

This is re-purposed from a reddit comment.

I want to make a BBEG based around the powers of the X-Men character Multiple Man, need a little help on the execution… 

I was just thinking it would be interesting if, when finally able to confront the BBEG of the campaign, instead of just the party vs. one big powerful boss, he splits and the clones work together or have some type of synergy between them. 

I guess I was just wondering if anyone knows of a Monster that can already do this, or things I could use to make the clones seem unnaturally able to work together (hive mind style)?

One way I can think to hack this is to use changelings.

Changelings are chaotic creatures that take on the form of other nearby beings. Their goal is usually to cause mischief, insomuch as they have human-understandable goals. The way they work is that when no one is looking, a changeling can change appearances to be similar to anyone within their line of sight. They don’t just change outward appearance—they actually change into the person they’re mimicking, so their thoughts, memories, manerisms, memorized spells, etc., are all 100% the same. The only differences are that 1) detect magic/evil works on them and 2) where their heart should be, they have a solid black gemstone instead.

Changelings are the kind of creature that are as much trap as monster, and whole sessions can be taken up by the political, personal, and physical chaos that ensues when a few changelings are thrown into any regular situation. The intro adventure included with Lamentations of the Flame Princess is pretty much exactly that. The players don’t know who are who, everyone is freaked out by the fact that all of a sudden there’s two of some guy, both of whom are exactly the same and can’t be told apart. Imagine if you had a perfect double of someone just appear some day. Fucked, innit?

---

Enough introduction, here’s the idea for the big baddy:

The way it started, the big baddy was originally but a simple wizard who’d memorized a specific spell that works as a kind of memetic virus, such that anyone who has it memorized is compelled to keep it memorized. Lost the spell slot, kind of a bummer. But he alone has discovered something else about this spell. When a changeling changes into a person who has this spell memorized, they find it impossible to change again. In essence, the desire to keep that spell memorized is stronger than their desire to wreak havoc, so they essentially become that person.

The first time this happened, it was by accident, and he freaked out about having a changeling clone. However, being a (soon to be) big baddy and smarter than your average bear, he and the clone eventually realized that in being the same person, they could trust each other implicitly as long as they always took the attitude that they were indeed the same person. They always knew what the other one was thinking or would think given a situation, because that’s what they’d think.

Once they agreed, they began searching out other changelings at great cost, and forcing a change by putting the changing and the big baddy in the same room until they changed into him, and then bam, he had another him running around. They discovered that any clone could make another clone of the clone and the same would happen. A changeling truly becomes the person they are mimicking.

So through this process, the baddy slowly became an actually big baddy. He and the other changeclones work in perfect harmony towards the same goals, always perfectly trusting each other because they are the same person. If one dies, that’s too bad, but they’re all the same so as long as it’s for the greater good of the cohort, even the one dying is usually happy with it. They’ll even lay down their life for the greater good of the hive if they need to.

---

So, how do you play this? I’d recommend a few things.

1. Have an adventure that is completely focused on changelings at some point. Get your hands on the Lamentations of the Flame Princess one if you can, at least to read about them in-depth. This shouldn’t in any obvious way be about the big baddy, it should seem like a stand-alone adventure, but it will introduce the players to most the key concepts.


2. The mimetic virus spell should also come up at some point. Maybe the wizard accidentally memorizes it as part of a trap (and thus loses a spell slot). Maybe it’s just mentioned as lore. Again, it shouldn’t be directly tied to the big baddy in any way—this is giving your players enough info to later figure things out without spoon-feeding it.


3. Have the players meet up and fight a single wizard at some point. Make it a fight that’s hard for them, but that they should with some cunning win. Once they have, they’ll think they’ve won against a pretty big baddie. Then once they see him again later, or hear that his trade is still booming or plans are still percolating or whatever, only then will they know that something else is up. Maybe they’ll think it’s a resurrect spell, who knows. Make sure to let them think what they will.
   
   The easiest way to do this, I think is to someone involve the players in the changeling trade.
   
   How does the baddy find new changelings? Is there a cottage industry built up around this? Can the party use that to sniff him out potentially, or find some of his non-clone lieutenants to learn information about him. Does he even use non-clones in his plans any more?
   
   This is what I personally would use to give the players a chance to figure out what’s going on, but only through really good research on their part. In addition, make sure the baddie changes his plans based on what the players learn. If they gain info from a human lieutenant, maybe that’s when the baddie stops using non-clones. That kind of thing.
   
4. You’ll have to figure out some of the details. Are the changeclones telepathically linked? I’d play it that it seems that way, but in reality they just always know what they would do, so they know what their clone is going to do. But, that doesn’t mean that they know where they are or what they are doing.
   
5. Is the original wizard still around pulling the strings, or did he die at some point and now it’s all changeclones acting as him? Does that even matter? If the original wizard dies, what happens to the changeclones? I’d play it as it doesn’t even matter, and even they don’t know who is who. Maybe even that once they did know, the original would willingly kill himself off for the good of the hive.
   
   Finally, this is what special power he has, but what is his final goal? To rule the kingdoms? To make money? To make everyone a subject to his clone army? In other words, this power is what makes him big, so what makes him a baddy? Or is he simply someone who crossed the players at some point, so they’re going to crush him regardless of whether he’s really that bad or not.


6. The then big fight. This should be pretty epic—tonnes of wizard clones all fighting the party. One interesting thing is that they might be at a weaker level than the party without the party realizing it. So any individual baddie is only level 3 or so, but their acting together is what makes them big. They also don’t have to have resurrect spells, healing spells, etc, that the party might think that he does have from previous fight where they thought they killed him, then he came back later. Will make for a slightly more fair fight too.
   
   Then you throw a bunch of them at the party and see it go. A few notes on tactics: any individual baddy will gladly lay down its own life, but only if it (and thus all of them) thinks it’s for the greater good. This probably means they’ll come in waves, not all at once, in order to minimize damage to the hive. That is, they’d rather 4 die outright than 25 get injured. The goal is always that the hive continue and achieve it’s goals, not that any individual baddy does.
   
   If they’re telepathic, then all the clones should have the same spells memorized. If not, then they can all have different spells. Even if they’re not telepathic, they should work with more coordination than most enemies, because they know how the others will think.


7. What does winning look like? Sewing dissent? Breaking the changeclones free, turning them back into changelings by tricking them into using (thus un-memorizing) the virus spell? Does killing the original big baddy to release the other clones, or does that not do anything anyway? Is he even still alive? Does it even matter? If a few changelings change into someone who also has the spell memorized, will that get the other clones not to trust each other? Is there any other way to do that?
   
   If one of the party, or someone else, did memorize the mimetic virus spell, then can the changelings change into them? Maybe even against their (human) will? Does the big baddy know this is a possibility, or is it an unknown weakness? A potential reward for a wizard who is down one spell slot for session after session, or for players who figure out the background details of how the baddie is managing all this. Just don’t spoon-feed it to them.
   Ideally there is a better way to win than just “the party fights them all and beats them all”. I’ll bet your party will come up with a few you and I never will together once they learn all the facts, so listen to them.


8. And don’t let them forget that the gemstone at the heart of a changeling is worth beaucoup bucks. Wouldn’t want to deprive them of the scene where they’ve covered themselves and the baddy’s lair in inches of blood while hacking through the check of each captured baddy, looking for the gem.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.