Doppelgangers

OG Doppelgangers
With shapeshifting and ESP being used to mimic humanoids (this said to have 90% accuracy), it's easy to see why doppelgangers are menacing agents of subterfuge and deceit... but what with a number-appearing score of 3d4, turning into party members giving them surprise on a 4-in-6 chance odds (no further mention of potential combat advantage is mentioned, curiously enough) and being statistically equivalent to slightly harder hitting ogres  one might question the reasoning for such creatures to even bother with such trickery at all. As an added bonus, they are immune to Sleep, Charm, and save as 10th level fighters.

Doppelgangers have the stated motive to kill and replace people they morph into. It is unclear whether they then attempt to live the stolen life, or to continue the cycle of murder and transformation- no mention of eating the dead is made, however. They have an apparent social structure (of numbers that suggest family units or some other small groups) high intelligence, and neutral alignment.  I am at a loss to speculate on any potential ecology implied by these facts save for the humanoid transformation being, perhaps, a means to lure maneating dungeon predators into lethal ambushes by appearing more unassuming than they truly are. Of course, one could take the notion that they are monstrous beings of the mythic underworld who need to explanation for the threat they pose or why they are the way they are, but you'd think if they lived only to kill and deceive they'd be Chaotic Evil...

3.5 Doppelgangers

With significantly nerfed damage, number appearing, and ESP abilities (a DC13 roll allowing resistance) these doppelgangers are less terrifying ambush-bludgeoners and more of the spies and deceivers they are suggested to be. Who they might be spying for is left unmentioned (though in addition to common languages of those they mimic, air-language and Giant may be known as well which may imply...something) but as they are mentioned as a potential character race, them being a sort of an highly dispersed  and distrusted minority pigeonholed into being spies seems a sensible outcome of their existence, as compared to the AD&D version. no strong motive to be 'monstrous' is mentioned apart from a tendency to be low empathy and manipulative, which isn't exactly doppelganger exclusive.

Sunset Realm Doppelgangers
The term doppelganger is terribly overused. A time-displaced self isn't one, nor is a vat-grown clone, nor a parallel reality version of yourself. A shapeshifter(be it mimic, demon, protein polymorph, clever octopus, goblin changeling, or whatever) taking your form isn't a doppelganger. Even your reflection, your double from another trouble, isn't one. (They're a moral lesson about how even if your heart is on the wrong side of the body, it can still be in the right place, or something)


A "doppelganger" is a uncanny double with no good explanation. It is a monster that has no ecology and no place in the waking, sunlit world save for your nightmares. If there is rhyme or reason to its existence, it is what you assume and project onto it. Wracked by self-loathing and despair, perhaps you think it an embodiment of your will to disappear. Trapped by mental and social chains, perhaps you think it an opportunity to leave your life behind. Consumed by regret and guilt, perhaps you think it an ironic punishment, proof that the worst thing in your life was you. You'll never know for certain what it was, and those around you may never know which was which.

Sympathy Puppet- It walks towards you, matching your own advance step for step, blocking the way forward. Strike it, and it strikes you in perfect synchronicity. It is clad in the same gear as you are- hrönir duplicates.  If you fight it, you will both die, bleeding from the same wounds, choking out the same last words. There is a link between you and the thing- If the nemesis falls into a pit, your leg breaks too. If the wizard puts it to sleep with a spell, you slumber too until you are awakened. You can sever the link by getting some distance, breaking line of sight, some dungeon walls between you and it.

It will act independently if sufficiently separated from you, or otherwise prevented its not mimicking you. It will insist it is the 'real' one and act accordingly. It will claim you are a doppelganger that switched places with it with some trickery, if anyone asks. It's not lying. ESP backs up its claims. If it makes it out of the dungeon and you're welcome to play as it. It's not necessarily an enemy, but...

Things can get trickier when you meet an entire party of the things.


Life Taker- You start hearing people talking about things you did, that you didn't do. An imposter! And a damnably good one too- not only is it doing things you were going to do anyway, it's doing things you wanted to do. Things you never told anyone else about. Building that tavern. Kissing the duchess. Beating the duke in a sword duel. Then come the dreams, hard to distinguish from memory and reality. Maybe some of those things were you, after all. The new scars are hard to deny, after all. Maybe it's more of a Jekyll/Hyde thing, and that's why you're tired by day and getting new scars by night. Or just too much carousing ale.

Or maybe this doppelganger can only pretend to be you when it's not near you. A wraithlike thing, a copy that's convincing to people so long as it's not a side by side comparison, that stalks you from a distance, only able to have what parts of your life you aren't around to contest, and every night, it comes to you, to see if its misty hands are strong enough to peel your skin and wring your neck and hide your body. All it needs is for more people to believe in it than in you, and then it will be strong enough to succeed, convincing enough that if anyone hears the struggle in your tent, they'll come to help IT, not you.

Mechanically, it's much like a wraith that that steals a level/hd every time it fulfills one of your dreams or goes adventuring with your buds in your place while you stay nice and safe at home. This is the kind that has no real equipment until it kills you- until then, its rings are painted wood, its sword a tin toy.

Unlived- You return to your hometown and find you never left. You settled down and married the baker, and kiss your family every night. The town doesn't like this adventuring you, who staggered out of the forest reeking of elves and claiming that their neighbor and friend is the real fake and you're totally on the up and up.

You and this life you almost had can't bear the sight of each other. Existential dread aside, the jealousy is eating both of you alive. This baker's spouse has both its hands, because it came back to the village instead of going to the Tomb of the Serpent Kings. You have more gold than the mayor. The baker's spouse is well-liked. You're a local legend with your poise, your stories, your magic. The grass is looking greener on both sides, here. Maybe you can live with the reminder of the life you almost had glaring at you and gripping a bread knife. The Unlived can't. It will try to drive you away, ideally never to return. Framing you for a crime is a good idea. Killing you better still. It'll have the advantage of home turf and connections... Maybe you should deal with this thing first, before it tries something, and certainly before it reveals your... I mean, its true nature upon the unsuspecting townsfolk.

Or maybe you leave. Maybe that's enough for the unlived. Maybe it isn't. Maybe the life unlived dogs your footsteps, waiting for a chance to clean up a loose end threatening its idyllic little nest, not willing to chance that you might come back and do the same to it. Maybe it doesn't, and the thought of it existing just waits in the back of your head, forever.

Face Taker- Or, for a more overt kind of monster, this is the sort of thing that leaps at you from the darkness shrieking and flees in hit-and-run pack tactics, each Face-Taker always against the same person. It's soon revealed what's happening- if one touches your arm, it takes your arm and leaves a nasty grey limb with one less finger behind and runs off to admire its new healthy red-blooded arm for a while in the dark. And you can still feel your arm, attached to some other being, out past the torch light. You can sometimes move it, and sometimes your new arm moves with a mind of its own.

If this continues, you'll end up with each limb and finally your face stolen and swapped. You might get parts that have disease, or mutations, or mutilations (1/6 chance each swap). When your arms are the gross face-taker arms, your strength is 8. Legswap gives you 8 dex. Body swap, 8 con. Face swap, 8 cha. Maybe killing them will make everything go back to normal if your GM is merciful. If not though, there's only one thing to do- catch the monster and force or trick it into touching your head one last time, making it swap the last thing that's yours- the brain. Then you'll be in your own body again, naked, and the face-taker will be back in its foul body, admittedly wearing all your gear but hey, this is the plan B after 'don't get hit.'

Chton and d12 Horrible Places To Find One

A Chton from the outside

Indistinguishable from cracked walls and statues, veins of glaze on pottery, flaking paint, perhaps even a tattoo, their vile nature can be revealed if their host 'armor' is cracked open, revealing the pus and alkali within. They exist as a pattern of cracks unique to each Chton, which spreads like a blight, allowing them to exist simultaneously in every iteration of their patterns. They dwell in long lost ruins, as the natural earth rejects their pattern and grinds them to nothingness. But upon manmade structures, or even on the shattered bones of wounded men...

Just imagine the insides of the walls being like this and smelling like bleach

 The Chton isn't the meaty stuff. It's not even the hard substance the cracks have corrupted. It's the pattern itself, it's what's missing. You can't get rid of it with a hammer, entropy is their ally. Damaging the pattern just makes them replicate from the force of the blow, endless fractal repetition of themselves splintering and cracking off. Admittedly, you could grind and smash them into dust until the manifestations were too tiny to matter. But perhaps whatever was used to hit it will acquire some hairline fractures as well. And even if you do get rid of one instance of the crack pattern, there might be more of the same elsewhere, and it will remember you because it's the same entity, just in more than one place at once.

The pus within is bad. It could burn like acid, it could attract monsters. It could taste like milk and honey and heroin and feed a whole cult of addict worshippers just, licking and sucking on some cracks in a dungeon wall. Maybe it heals them, keeps them strong. It's probably mutagenic too.

Chton prefer being in the biggest, most solid structures they can, trying to convert entire buildings into crack-riddled ruins, where the pus drips from every corner and the eyes watch from everywhere. Such a lair is likely beyond the powers of men to undo. But without followers, they can't do this quickly. They could be limited to a single brick or cobblestone for decades, waiting for someone to drop a pot or break a hip on them so they can crack the pot to replicate their pattern. Cracked masks can poison and corrupt anyone who puts them on. Cracked porcelain dollies prey on children who pick them from the midden-heaps. Cracked cups deliver pus to anyone who drinks out of them. The worst is when someone fractures their skull on a Chton, because then the Chton is literally inside their head, dripping poison into their brain, whispering madness into their ears. Not that Chton actually talk.

Chton are more like hauntings or curses or entire cultish organizations than individual monsters. You don't fight them, you imprison them, cut off their means of influencing the world, and you hope there isn't some brick 200 miles away plotting revenge even as you bury the Chtonized mountain temple in an artificial avalanche you called down with the help of 3 goats and 500 feet of rope. They don't have any statblock or defined powers, but they should lean towards inducing paranoia, slow poisons, corruption, alerting minions, spying.

Horrible places to find a Chton, though some are more horrible if you don't know what a Chton is and some are more horrible if you do
1- In a mirror hanging in a house or shop. The mirror shows what the Chton wants it to, now. Maybe it'll trick the players by not reflecting someone. Or maybe by not reflecting them. Maybe reflecting the party with one of them as a doppelganger.
2-A ruined, cracked, tower built on the edges of great canyons and ravines. Only at the top of the infested tower can you look around and see the rifts in the earth for their true shape.
3-a dry lakebed of cracked mud. So many square meters of cracked mud, all alike. The dam that let the lake dry out is vital to irrigating nearby villages in times of drought.
4-An iceberg, drifting along the sea. It gouged your ship, not enough to sink it immediately. No, you've plenty of time to take refuge on the iceberg.
5-In the bricks of a market square of a city. How long has it been there? Is it too late?
6- In the lid of the giant clay pot your camels are hauling water in, with a week of desert in every location.
7-Upon the skulls of an ancient burial mound that was looted before you got here. What few skulls remain, anyway.
8- Fine spiderweb cracks on the lens of the spyglass that's been navigating you through the high seas these last weeks.
9- On the bottle of the potion you just drank. You had been so relieved when it didn't shatter from your fall down the pit trap.
10- Glimmering in the heart of the almost flawless gemstone you just recovered. You can still sell it.
11-The boiled eggs you brought for rations. Or rather, their shells. Too similar to the potion and water? Okay, howsabout on the hatching monster eggs?
12-Every single vial of holy water from the local church is cracked in exactly the same way. And their stained glass windows. Maybe the bell.

What happens if a Chton is so big you fall in?

If you thought this post sucked, you know what doesn't suck? The Enigma of Amigara Fault

Some Gross Undead Monsters

Hangmen- Flying Zombies

Their necks broke, they choked. They were left to rot in the breeze. They climbed up their own ropes and undid the knots on the trees. Dead men walking. They like making new friends. Hang em high, and slow, then their new friends too will be in the know.

You find them in forests, on or near roads, where there's lots of branches and plenty of outlaws to hang. They fear no god or hero, but cannot stand before an honest lawman and must flee, on foot.

HP- 3, but nothing hurts them unless you aim for their ropes, and you need to burn it or cut it. They're already dead, after all. The body's just an excuse for the rope to go round.

Weapon- Noose lasso.

1d4 grapple and choke. They drag one away, then come back later with one more on their side and one less on yours.

They can pull themselves into the sky and fly away, and often descend the same way, stopping with a jerk and some swinging and twitching a few feet above the ground. They ride the wind by hanging themselves from clouds and ravens tell them things in exchange for their eyeballs. They walk when they're hanging someone from a tree and like that best, but aren't above hanging someone from a ships mast or even a cloud.

Chigger Ghouls- Better than Rot Grubs

Some ghouls dig through the earth for old corpses, reshaping the graveyards with ghoul tunnels. Chigger Ghouls are parasites though. They don't bite you or claw you when you meet them alone, they lick you and caress you. Their touch makes you go stiff and limp, unable to move or cry, and then they shrink down to tiny little ghoul-people, smaller than your little fingernail and they dig through you, through the tunnels of your veins, and they nibble on your liver and your brain until you're basically dead yourself, and they make sure nobody is coming to save you by peering out from holes in your skin that their little ghoul heads peep out of, and then they leave just before you really are dead, and you get to thinking that all you need to do to get back what you're missing is eat somebody. Maybe not all of them, just a few little bites, from choice sections, to replace what you've lost. And you've lost so much, it's like you've shrunken and just keep getting smaller, like you're so hungry you've become hollow and you're falling into yourself.

Chigger Ghouls can grow back to full size, worming their way out of their host and growing to the size of a baby the first turn, a goblin the second turn, and finally reaching their full size- that of a petite teenage girl with spade-claw-hands and prognathous teeth-jaws. The oldest ghoul keeps growing though, and it inspires the others to stay and fight and defend their person-nest. She grows as tall as the tall man who came to save, you, then taller than him, then as tall as a tree, and that's Big Sister, who remembers the days of giants when the Chigger Ghouls grew BIG to burrow inside giants oh yes indeed.

4HP- Full Size

1 Defense- 

Paralyze 1d4. Damage does no damage, but makes you save or go stiff and limp and helpless if you fail a save.

Rip Apart- 3d4, All Out Attack- If you make them angry, they'll tear you apart with claws and teeth, letting you tear them right back. They think your flesh will give way first.

Grub-Size- Fire kills 1d6 of them if they're on the surface, or none if they're not.

Baby size- 1 HP, can't attack.

Goblin Size- 2HP, can't Rip Apart

Full Size- 4HP see above

Big Man Size- 8HP Rip Apart does 3d6

Tree Size- 16 HP. Rip Apart does 3d8

Ogre Suit- Necromantic Power Armor

Nobody needs an ogre's brain, and nobody wants an ogre's face, but an ogre's strength with a person's brain? Everyone wins. 

An Ogre Suit is a dead headless ogre with the guts all taken out and the Femur and the Humerus too, because you need room to fit your arms and legs in the upper part of their arm and leg and something had to go.

Ogre Suits only twitch on their own, but anyone can climb inside naked and feel the dead ogre veins connecting with their veins, and then they walk it around and crush people with the giant ogre hands and laugh off attacks with the giant ogre fat rolls. 

Necromancers can force people inside and then control the suit directly no matter what the person wants, but they do need to put someone inside first. The reason they do this instead of just using an undead ogre is because an ogre suit is faster and, despite being headless, less stupid than an actual headed ogre zombie. Also it lets  them use innocents/enemies as meatshields AND bodyguards.

You can't get out of an ogre suit once you're in, but you can be cut out. You'll bleed a lot, and bleed brown, and you might not be 100% alive anymore, but you CAN be rescued.

Ogre Suits that you control are like having 1d10 fists and 5 defense armor and other nasty things.

Ogre suits that you fight have 18 HP and 1d10 fists and 5 defense unless you attack the person's head (0 defense) poking out the neck as they cry and apologize. Or cackle insanely and praise their dark master because dumb necromancer groupies would totally put on an ogre suit if they thought it would make them immortal or whatever.