Fun idea. Introduce a shopkeeper or something, any recurring NPC, and have him act slightly differently every time they see him, like have a table with 4 or 5 different but similar personalities on it and roll every time they meet the NPC. Turns out that NPC is dead and the party have been speaking to 4 or 5 different doppelgangers who are using the store to get money but are so lazy they take it in shifts to impersonate the guy while the others just chill upstairs playing go fish
Better, yet. The shopkeeper is still alive and works with the Dopplegangers to run his shop 24/7. Or just because the Dopplegangers are better salesmen and love to screw people over with bad deals. They make a game of it. See who can earn the most money in a week.
Better yet: introduce "several" shopkeepers over time, who all seem to have a bit too similar of a personality. Investigation into the matter would reveal that it is just one doppelganger. ( What about them being lazy, and how do they seem to traverse a city or between cities? They have employed strong males to allow for teleportation between several sites. Who knows how many personalities this doppelganger has taken over? Might not go far, but could make the group a bit paranoid that the next shop they go to could be the same person.
New BBEG idea: a highly-motivated Doppelganger who actually took the time and effort to properly raise its Changeling children and who is such a great parental figure that the children actively help to further its goals for world domination.
vs a changeling that hates doppelgangers due to the bad reputation they give to shapeshifting creatures and has used their life's work to amass an all-changeling mercenary group that specifically works to hunt out other shapeshifters
@@godzilla660 "Of course. I wouldn't want something as trivial as a toothache to become a slight distraction that might potentially lead to a fatal outcome for my minions. Efficiency is the key."
Okay but isn't the whole abandoning thing hardcoded into the DNA of dopplegangers? They aren't human remember, they shouldn't have the same thought processes as us.
@@cursedhfy3558 It could be genetic mutation due to their farther getting smote and surviving. I went with the reason that it is smite because all the stuff I heard about radiation form stories and stuff have radiation do holy damage or something similar.
Idea: The BBEG successfully assassinates the king in front of the party, and the king turns out to be a doppelganger. Everyone, BBEG included, is completely shocked by this turn of events, and now the BBEG is mad because apparently someone had successfully taken over the kingdom before he did, and did such a good job of it that no one realized it was happening.
@@TheSpencermacdougall Even more interesting plot twist for near the end, the Doppleganger actually was the king...previous queens consort was another doppleganger.
@@AzraelThanatos Another plot twist, the original BB was a Doppleganger who wanted to impersonate the king and is so pissed because another Doppleganger (seemingly) beat him to it.
This just really makes me want to play my Changeling Rogue. His deal is he took that Shapeshifter’s loneliness and shaped it into a grand dream to become the world’s greatest thieves’ guild. By himself. He acts as all the members.
Currently playing a Changeling. Level 1, need access into a city. Walk up to some fishermen outside of said city and get hit with the xenophobic "we don't talk to outsiders" line. So I walk away, to another fisherman after transforming into the first one and changing into some cheap clothes. I come out to him, as this fisherman, and now I'm waiting to go back to that area so I can find out how my changeling ruined a man's life.
Also started a fight between two guards by messaging one insults that only other guards would say. Definitely gonna keep an eye out for those two guards in the future so my changeling can turn into one to distract the other
Hmm evil characters. Spreading the misery around so that everybody suffers. Dont ask how you can reduce your misery! Ask how you can spread it around to as many people as possible! -sauron, dark lord of mordor, proparbly
@@mrvoltem9379 Not misery, character growth. While yes, the social bigotry a xenophobic fisherman will probably face is intense, it also serves as a catalyst through which this NPC can evaluate his behavior. :) The DM picked up on this. Also the guards of this city are notoriously brutal towards civilians so I also contest the evilness of making them fight.
@@mars7304 The best time to have the high-ground is when you're the type who doesn't give two figs about it but love having an excuse to indulge in your preferred hobbies. Like social manipulation, extortion, character assassination, rumor-mongering.....
The REALLY fun twist is when a player works with their GM to play as a Changeling/Doppleganger and literally never reveal it. So if they eventually die the entire party gets to FLIP THEIR SHIT and start questioning EVERYTHING when the actual answer is just "No, it was always this way, there is no conspiracy."
I did that with a changeling bard, once. He was just extremely insecure about being a "monster", so he always avoided transforming around the rest of the party, or letting on that he was anything other than a normal human. That only ended up lasting a couple of adventures, though, because the party rogue picked up a gem of seeing. The first time she used it, the party almost killed my bard, under the assumption that he was a doppelganger who had replaced their friend. Which, unsurprisingly, didn't help his insecurity any, even after the long heart to heart conversation which came from the others realizing that an infiltrator is unlikely to respond to the party attacking him by curling up in the fetal position and crying.
Happened in my Star Wars campaign, eventually it was revealed in a stealth mission when the party member became the villain to send his bodyguards away during our ambush.
I feel like I’m the only person who really doesn’t like this twist. I’ve seen it done once, and it didn’t really change much about how I saw the character. It just didn’t feel as clever as the player thinks. I like it more when people use the fact they’re a changeling to get advantages and stuff, actually using the racial traits
@@cameronjohnson4936that's the problem. If the player that dies is a changeling, i would just think "oh, that would have come in handy about a million times". Unless there was reason to suspect they weren't a changeling the entire time, that twist doesnt work. If it was a doppelganger, different story but since they arent PCs (or shouldn't be since they are just better changelings) that might be more suspicious. I tried a changeling character that tried to hide it, using a disguise kit or magic as the cop out to looking different... really wish i didn't, it's honestly pretty lame.
for whatever reason I had a mild case of big brain a few months ago and came up with an odd but (in my opinion) interesting origin for dopplegangers: They're HIGHLY advanced mimics. Mimics get larger and more complex the longer they exist and the more they see, so after becoming chests, doors, bookshelves, walls, it made sense to me that an enterprising mimic might try and become the very thing they were feeding on: a random adventurer. Changelings in my world, by comparison, are actually specifically faceless fey creatures, and part of the reason an entire society actively hunts fey.
Your MIMIC is evolving! Your MIMIC is now a DOPPELGÄNGER! “Carrying my items like that is not going to work, Pal…” {Pal…} “…yeah, your name is Pal now!” {B-} “DO NOT SAY MINE”
@@Ramsey276one RUclips kills links, search "Everybody Loves Large Chests" by exterminatus. It's a webnovel that can be read for free on RoyalRoad. Follows the adventure of an Amoral chest mimic and their quest to obtain shinies, and accidentally/intentionally destroy nations in the process. Can be quite explicit at times due to horny side characters.
My players discovered a group of doppelgangers impersonating a family, and when they tried to expose them, the doppelgangers trying to flip the situation on them. But you see, doppelgangers revert to their true form when they die, so the best way to crack this case open is with an axe.
That final idea reminds me of Young Justice. Specifically the idea of "how long was this person actually a doppleganger?" A good potential twist would be "before you ever met them" which adds in a lot more questions.
I don't like that, though. If you have reason to believe it was "before you ever met them", then the party knows for sure that EVERY interaction they had was with the Doppleganger and was furthering its (or its master's) agenda. If they know it happened at some point after they met the character, they then need to try and decide what they've heard was real and what was fake. Even better if you can somehow get the Doppleganger to impersonate the character on the sly WITHOUT killing them for awhile, meaning the party has had both genuine AND duplicitous dealings with them back and forth before the real one was finally killed.
@@weezact7 Thing is, if the person was a doppelganger the entire time, this adds in a plot hook to track down its origin. Is the real person alive? If not, when and how did they die? Why was this person impersonated? They weren't already with the party, so it wasn't an easy way of infiltration. Why did this doppelganger interact with the party? Just how far in advance was the interaction planned? Who had the doppelganger been talking to and what had it been doing before meeting the party? The potential web of intrigue here is enormous.
5e Eberron flipped the relationship, having a creation myth for Changelings that describes them as blessed by the Traveler (an Eberron deity), while Doppelganger are now suggested to be Changelings corrupted by the Daelkyr (extraplanar invaders that, at least in the Eberron setting, are also the creators of the Illithids and various other aberrations). Also, "Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse" has Changelings as fey instead of humanoid (and gives the mutability of the fey realm as the source of their transformation), and allows them to shrink down to small size. (And it also allows them to choose Performance as proficiency from Changeling Instincts.)
I played a changeling that went by the name of "Legion" and convinced people that he was a shadow organization by the same name but it was just him. He was very fun
I think it'd be really fun to play a changeling who suffers with the fact that they don't really have a sense of self. Like, they doesn't really know who they are and struggle to separate their own personality from all the masks they wear because they've been pretending to be other people for so long to survive that they've never had the opportunity to be themselves
I'm currently playing a changeling very similar to that; they were raised to be a "perfect" changeling, and their parents even went so far as to not give them a name. They left their family and went to the fey wilds to get a name and became a warlock. They still don't know their name, but they think their patron does. It is fun, but because they haven't yet told their party that they're a changeling, we haven't gotten to explore the angst much yet.
@@plynnmiller7563 There are fairly prominent theories that the original changeling myths were basically to explain things like autism. Easier to just explain the child as acting different because they were swapped out by a fae or troll or what have you. Even now a lot of parents have a mentality of using drugs and treatment to 'get their baby back,' the mindset never really left.
@yep said as if every dnd character isn't a self insert, lol. It is a game; don't rag on folks having fun playing a game. Also, maybe don't rag on mental illnesses? Just a thought.
Since this is also changelings, my current favorite character was one. Was forced to hole up in an area for a while, got actually attached to a local girl's raw determination and dreams of being a hero, then watched her die on her first actual mission. Took up her identity and has tried to fulfill that dream for her. Just doesn't really understand how, given they've never stuck around long enough to learn cause and effect properly.
In my first ever campaign on a day when there was only two players available (one was me) we encountered a dopplerganger. We got incredibly lucky with our intimidation roll and told them to grab their pals and leave. Que like half the tavern leaving. I can only imagine how poorly a fight would have gone
Fun detail, Doppelgangers can only turn into a humanoid they've seen, while changings can look like anything they want (so long as it's shaped like a humanoid). Changelings have more freedom in their changing and can technically turn into non-humanoids (for example, an ugly old tiefling woman could quite easily resemble a night hag, a rail-thin albino gith could be a wight, a human-coloured tiefling with hooves could easily pass for a faun and a grumpy gnome with odd footwear choices could pass for a redcap) Also, for both of them, their powers aren't limited to playable humanoids. Troglodytes are humanoid, as are quaggoths, grimlocks, fire newts, grung, gnolls and lycanthropes. So much potential
I think it seems like they've been trying to make changelings a bit more 'human' than doppelgangers. Emotionally, motivationally, and in the scale of their abilities. So... yeah, pretty much the same thing, but basically less extreme and more relatable. In our game we ran with the changelings are human / doppelganger spawn concept, as it fits them pretty well.
Ive run 2 doppelgangers in my games. The first was a cunning, calm, and calculated servant of a nefarious dark master. They used their abilities to get anyone who came close to finding them or those who would interfere with their plans thrown in prison, and only ever revealed himself when he was surrounded by his various tamed monstrosities, only when victory was nigh certain. He met his demise after losing a game of wits of his own creation, mostly thanks to our fighters general bumbling. The other was some dude who worked for a blue dragon, wandering town to town robbing people in their sleep and trying to lay small town wenches. Unfortunately for him, he was afraid of women, so he wasn’t much good at it. He ended up befriending the party after getting caught in a bad lie. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that the second one was closer to the actual lore.
A month or so ago I was watching a DM round table with Dungeon Dad, Aj Pickett, Wally DM, and How to D&D, and the topic of Mimics came up in conversation. Now I forget if it was Aj or Fred (How to D&D) who brought it up initially, but one of them mentioned a HB lore change they had used in their games, which recontextualized Mimics as baby Doppelgangers! Imagine confronting the local barkeep at his tavern, accusing him of being an impostor, only to have him leap over the bar counter to attack you, backed up by his son: The whole damn counter!
In my campaign, the party began to gain notoriety, and one of the nights between the cities, the lookout noticed the figure of another party member in the forest. The party then roamed the wild lands around the city for several days, and upon their return found that 5,000 gold coins had been collected on their behalf for good deeds, and then the party disappeared from the city. Unforgettable expressions on the faces of the players who realized that they have an unbearable amount hanging on them, and the success of their global mission depends on the ability to move normally around this city. It was something in the style of "The Hangover", because before they learned this news, the party spent the day healing wounds with alcohol in a tavern.
It’s just the square-cube rule. If you’re somewhat smaller, you won’t be harmed very much. If you turn into a real big motherfucker, your bones collapse under your own dramatically increased volume.
Last weekend my son reminded me of two rulings I made in Dragon Heist. He wanted to hire the Doppelgangers from the Yawning Portal for his Trollskull Alley joint. Since they only wanted to earn a living I ruled they were really Changelings. Further to set matters straight for future meetings I ruled that Doppelgangers are descended from Changelings that had become corrupted from the Far Realms. Good video, thanks.
Doppelgangers are terrifying. I love how the analog horror series, The Mandela Catalogue, handles doppelgangers: eldritch abominations that are trying to replace people without quite understanding them. (Hence why they haven't yet taken over the world.)
I had a short campaign where a town was controlled by two doppelgangers, one was the mayor, and the other was a random shopkeeper selling traveling supplies. Before the players had any idea of what the plot was they IMMEDIATELY started a running joke that the shopkeeper (yep, the one who's actually a doppelganger) was the evil mastermind of the whole campaign despite their only interaction being the sale of a single bedroll on the player's prerogative.
I once played as a changeling flighter who basicly replaced his best friend who was one of his war buddies to honor his dying wishes. So now he acts as the father to his friends family to spare them.the grief of losing someone. Any strange change in his behavior was writen off as war trauma.
I made a homebrew version of these, called a Headhunter. Basically it rips its victim's head off, and wears it, to assume their abilities, memories, and personalities. It's chaotic evil, and treats its collection of still-living heads, like a dragon treats its hoard.
My favorite use of Doppelganger is in one if Grimmtooth books. It's a corridor halfway through covered in magical darkness, with BEWARE THE DOPPELGANGER written in blood on the wall next to darkness. When first person enters the darkness, it disappears and they are teleported behind rest of the party with a note saying "Remember: Blend in" in their hand.
Imagine a small fishing town where houses and shops were pretty far away from each other and recently someone found a doppelgänger. And so they hire a detective and when they group all the towns folk together one person exposes their true identity as a doppelgänger. And then everyone looks not in fear or anger, but in pure confusion. And then another person says they also are a doppelgänger, and another, and another. Until it is revealed that everyone in the town is a doppelgänger and they just didn’t know it
Play as a changeling. Glammered leather armor, and ring of mind shielding, are perfect. Been playing as a low level wizard but am actually a middle level druid pact of moon with a few levels of wizard and ritual caster. Got a mimic familiar that most of the time looks like a spell book. No one has noticed yet.
I considered playing a homebrew 3pp doppelganger in pathfinder, with their soul motivation being to steal everything they can, not by stealthily or forcefully taking, but by having stuff given to them. Pose as a noble lord's wife while she's out and ask for some gold to go shopping. Pose as a merchant's delivery boy so that the merchant would give me goods to deliver... right into my bag of holding! Or even deliver the goods and keep the gold that was to be paid on delivery. Asking if i may borrow something by posing as someone that person knows and trusts by reading their mind. All while not letting the other party members know i'm a doppelganger. It would be private messages(roll20) directly to the GM/DM. I also had an idea for someone else, a DM asked me for ideas, and one of them was a village where everyone and everything were doppelgangers and mimics just trying to live their lives. All the doppelgangers looked like mismatched amalgamations of different people from neighboring towns. For example a human barkeep's face but with elven ears and a dwarven nose. And every piece of furniture is a mimic just trying to live it's life as that piece of furniture. The mimic doesn't want to be a monster, it just wants to be a table, or a chair; and wants to be treated as such. Chair mimic just wants to be sat upon etc. A peaceful existence.
I like the version of Changelings that are the offspring of Hags, and the playable ones are those changelings that managed to reach adulthood while resisting the psychic call of their twisted mother.
During my last campaign I brought in a temporary doppelganger character for a session where one of the party members was having some weird trauma-filled vision (we had done the same thing last session as filler while they were absent). Said character started the session disguised as my actual character, before shifting and going "damn, your memory is getting really bad. I know you miss your friends and all but this isn't healthy"
I accidentally double-clicked when I tried to open this video in a new tab, so it opened in the original tab, and I heard the video with weird distortion because it was playing twice almost in sync. I didn't notice right away because the effect was rather appropriate for the topic; you sounded like a machine imitating your voice.
One of my most glorious sessions was based on these- dungeon was full of magical darkness traps, pitfalls to other floors, rotating walls, it was a whole scooby-doo style thing. And there was a doppelganger. every 10-15 minutes when they'd fall into a trap, I'd slip all the party members one of a few prepared notes, saying either what they heard or "you have been replaced by a doppelganger." By the end it was one rogue FREAKING OUT, finding his 4 missing companions bound up while his 5th changes in front of him. Doppelganger needed something done and didn't want bother with it, kept the paladin as security while the party handled it.
The lore tidbit I find most fascinating about these guys(though I can't remember where I read it) is that in communities with large populations of changelings, there are a handful of 'communal identities' that multiple changelings will temporarily adopt for specific purposes. For example, if there's a tavern run by a group of changelings, on any given night one of them will take the role of Gurmni, the kindly greybearded dwarf barkeep, and they'll switch out as it's convenient. What makes this really fascinating is that this isn't even for the purpose of fooling anyone, since the people Gurmni is serving are probably also changelings, some of whom may also have played him in the past, and most of the time these identities were never real people, simply characters that multiple changelings have developed together overtime.
Doppelgangers are my favorite villains from D&D! They're so fun to use as a DM and if done correctly, the players may never even find out what's going on. There's even a book from 3rd edition called "The Complete Guide to Doppelgangers" which makes them out to be much more threatening than depicted in the Monster Manual (s).
Tbf I’m considering using these guys to counter a false hydras hunger - song makes the townspeople forget that their friends dead… the doplegangers essentially just turn into the missing people to keep the memory alive while the party tries to kill the false hydra (kind of going to have the people be kept alive and the false hydra essentially feeds of their life force and gradually grows).
I did the thing suggested at the end once! The party decided to rob a local baron because he was mildly rude to them one time? You know, classic D&D disproportionate retribution. Anyways, while they were casing the joint, the baron himself stumbled upon them, and the party Barbarian, ever the loose canon and bad under pressure, decided to just throw an axe at the baron’s head, instantly mercing him then and there. But then, plot twist! Instead of just collapsing and creating a pool of blood like a normal person, the corpse instead began mutating and shifting after it fell to the floor, revealing the “baron” to have been a doppelganger. Instantly, the party’s single shared brain cell switched gears from “oh shit we gotta finish robbing the place and leave before anyone else finds us” to “holy shit what the fuck what does this mean”.
Idea: Team of doppelgangers unveils themselves, creating a huge battle causing the players to be split up. If one of the players would be hit with a killing blow, don't tell them, and let them fight as normal. When the battle is over, the doppelgangers flee, and the party finds one of the players naked and unconscious, with a clone wandering around somewhere.
My favorite thing i've done as a changeling, I stole the identity of a bugbear leading goblins. Convinced the goblins he was the imposter and I was the real one and I did such a good job convincing (plus a nat 20) I got the goblins to kill the original and even he thought he was fake. then convinced them that shapeshifters don't change back on death. I did this all at like level 2, being a changeling bard is fun
I’d love to play the member of the party who was a changeling the whole time and then ends in the unenviable position of “no, I didn’t replace George, I was him this whole time”
The fun part about these two is the "chicken and the egg" scenario that they have. The MM stats that Doppelgangers mating with humans creates Changlings. Eberron stats that Dyrnn and his Mindflayers experiment on Changlings and turn them into Doppelgangers. It's freaking awesome.
:) They could both be correct in the same setting. Wherein a proto-Doppeling / human hybrid results in Changelings, and Doppelgangers were made by outside forces from the proto-Doppeling stock separately. Both consider themselves closer to the original creature. Bonus points if some instance(s) of the original creature(s) are out there somewhere.
In Eberron RFTLW changelings come from a blessing of the Traveler to some desperate mother with many kids in danger. He said 'your children will have many faces and personality disorders thanks to me, but no one will be able to know them lol bye' and that's how they were born.
I think the real reason that Doppelgangers don't get nearly as much success as you'd think given their unique skillset is that it's really hard for them to hide the bodies of the people they replace. Any kind of real infiltration is going to require a support network, and while you could possibly do that with other doppelgangers, eventually someone is going to stop the maid and ask "what's in that leaking, oddly person-shaped bag you've got slung over your shoulder" before they can get outside. Basically, for a doppelganger to conquer the world it needs friends, and we all know how hard that can be for them. Add into that the ease by which a person can impersonate someone else in D&D (Many of the spells that change your form are available to adventurers under 5th level) and it's easy to imagine that important people would take countermeasures to being infiltrated by shapeshifters or people under mind control.
Better idea... A proactive and productive doppleganger bard whose life goal is to become the world's best method actor and bard. Eventually uses the wealth not to overthrow but to build the best performance arts museum and theater!
Idea. What if changelings happen when a doppleganger carries the child and they don't do that not only because they have commitment issues but because they don't like/are afraid of changelings
So male doppelgangers make doppelgangers and females make changelings? I could see that as a player character thing where their mom is basically Loki as a doppelganger.
The funny thing about dopplies is that they will never have a small pipi crisis because it can be as big as they want to do like my father and plant seeds then leave
I really love how you mentioned the Olo debacle with Tesseract, I knew it sounded familiar and it took me a moment to remember what you were talking about.
I once ran a doppelganger for a game with my students, it Impersinated the party member who left the group and they all had to figure our which one was which. Fhe party asked loads of questions but because it can read minds it knew the answers. Took them ages to figure it out and a year later they still bring it up, best session I ever ran.
A motivated Doppleganger kills the king and takes over, and the only sign anything has changed is now things are getting done around the kingdom and the kind mysteriously has gotten better at his job of ruling the kingdom. Essentially: "Screw you! I can do it better!"
The other main difference is doppelganger need a psychic link to maintain the disguise so generally have theyre real victims somewhere held captive, but technically if they maintain one for long enough can copy them even if the victim dies. And can transform rapidly so as long as they are in a group that can't block psychic attack they can rapidly change appearance to escape. Change kings however don't have the psychic link but still magically pull off the same transformation gimic but can also mix and match to make their own unique avatar but have to train to copy someone the more they do the easier it is for them to maintain the decoy so are more comfortable being in their base form or regular avatar twerking it when desired.
The other difference is doppelgangers don't think of avatars as themselves so have no sense of gender identity, where change kings tend to have a preference based on which they started as. Also all doppelganger can sense other dopplegangers when close by which includes change kings so can know if another of them is neer they can't know who but that they exist. Though technically if your a change long in a room with another and no one else it would be obvious.
Something I found interesting in Keith Baker's (the creator of Eberron) "Exploring Eberron" book is that there are some changelings have "shared personas;" for example, there are three priests in a village, but whomever is currently on duty is "Father Hes." This also applies to the town sheriff, and the town healer. Collecting personas is also really interesting; let's say that there's a changeling who's good at fighting, and at playing the violin. In combat, they take the persona of a tough half-orc. While playing the violin, they take the form of a graceful elf. Some changelings who pursue acting, while wearing a shiftweave outfit, can theoretically play five different characters (though House Thuranni and House Phiarlan, who control the entertainment business, mostly relegate changelings to background extras in favor of Dragonmarked stars).
In my homebrew world i changed dopplegangers to be more like doplers from the witcher where they can be beasts and learn the muscle memory and instincts of the copied creature while inheriting some of the creatures personality. It makes the distinction between doppelganger and changeling alot better. And also i get to use inworld information taken from sources that dont know anybetter couple it with their meta knowledge of dopplegangers and mess with their head until they figure out the truth on how dopplegangers in my world work. its alot of fun
One session I included a doppelganger working for the bad guy. Usually the party kill and destroy everything and the doppelganger appear in a really complicated moment. For my surprise they find a way to make the doppelganger join them. After that basically they win a broken npc working with them that could solve everything by himself but usually stay aware of the Situations (And it was not very clever). I do not remember even His name but the party like him
Hey Runesmith, I’m doing a little D&D campaign with my friends and I’ve got some newbies so I’m sending them little videos like yours to help them understand their races and classes in a fun way. You have no video about elves! I have a sea elf fighter in my party and I can’t find any elf videos that are funny and also informative.
I had a bunch of doppelgangers working together as almost mercenaries. They didn't want to plan a plot, they just follow along the highest bidder (which in this case was the Black Spider from Lost Mines of Phandelver). From time to time, the PCs would learn that an NPC they met and saved and allowed to escape from an enemy jail was actually a doppelganger who infiltrated their base of operations. Also, Gravedigger, a goblin they spared and let become chief of the tribe by virtue of "I have the crown now !" learned about it and used that as an excuse to kill all of his opponents.
Campaign idea: Bog-standard fantasy world that is in the process of being subverted by an alien empire of aberrations from outside the world's crystal sphere, with doppelgangers being used to subvert whole regions by killing and replacing people in leadership positions. The players learn about it by encountering a crashed carriage on the way back from an obligatory goblin-killing mission, and encountering the local baron just as they die and revert to their normal form, along with orders written in their alien tongue.
Fun fact: It’s “all intents _and_ purposes”, as in, regardless of your intent, no matter your purpose, blah blah… I always thought everyone knew that but I’ve recently seen a LOT of people saying “all intensive purposes”
I'm actually writing a small quest that involves doppelgangers. Basically the party gets hired to look for a guy's lost wife. They find her with no memories in a village that they quickly learn that something isn't right. With some investigating they learn that the village is being run by a group of doppelgangers using the village as a refugee village for doppelgangers and the wife was not this wife but a doppelganger. Depending on how well they investigate, they discover that the real wife died by wolfs or they suspect the doppelgangers of murder.
Reminds me of something I saw in an old comic called the "Thunderbolts", about a group of baddies masquerading as good guys. When the lead bad guy finally decided to reveal his plan to take over the world, some of the rest rebelled against him, with one saying"Take over the world? Who wants to do that much goddamn work?!?!" ^_^ I recall an AD&D Ravenloft module that was about the player's being replaced by Dopplegangers, and as I also recall, I think it was suggested that they don't play their usual characters for this adventure, that way they could go all out with doing their own version of "The Thing" (who's the doppleganger and who is real).
im running a wildemount campaign where is shadycreek run a new(new as in this is set 50 years after crits 2nd run) minotaur crimelord/mayor takes over the town and a small chunk of his crew are dopplegangers, either as a body double if he feels its needed or spys , he pays well, gives them free food, drink etc , so they are rather loyal , he also has them magically branded so he can see them even doppled
the D&D comic Darths and Droids uses doppelgangers (or shapechangers as theyre called) to great effect, introducing them in Attack of the Clones and then continuing to make use of them as "oh this is just this character that you already know but he looks different in this movie because he's a shapeshifter"
One of my players was playing as a changeling that we knew was a changeling but in the middle of like the 3rd session without any of us knowing they switched out with their changeling sibling who was pretending to be them for the next several months worth of sessions. Was a complete mindfuck
My favorite D&D character is a Changeling Mastermind Rogue/Eloquence Bard named Ruz (pronounced 'Ruse'). He's a gentleman thief who joined the party by shapeshifting into party's monk to evade the city guard , not realizing the monk spoke very seldomly. Cue Ruz getting punched in the face by the guy he was disguised as.
Here's an idea to make your entire party suspicious of every NPC (and possibly the other player characters if you wanna be evil) is have the bbeg or an organization they're up against employ an assassin team of doppelgangers that escape after the first fight with the party, threatening to come back and kill them. Watch as the party starts to get extremely suspicious of any NPCs that seem to friendly.
One of my favourite PCs I’ve ever played was a changeling Rogue who was an adrenaline junkie to a fault. He would intentionally put himself in the most dangerous situations possible and see how long he can pull it off, like swapping places with the son of a local noble who wanted to have the princess jasmine experience, and pretending to be him for an entire month. He never stole anything valuable, or hurt anyone unless in self-defence, since all he wanted was the rush.
I did play a changeling during a short campaign...they had a series of different faces they shifted into; and each had an anagram for a name. Tricky Nym Suda - "tricky pseudonym" - half elf Yuri Goodforge - "good forgery" - dwarf Declan Stine - "clandestine" - human Ana Graham - "anagram" - human ...etc.
I made a doppelganger doctor phantom rogue who's a doctor to add really shake things up. They aren't too pressed about people knowing they are a doppelganger and absolutely love to give people paranoia.
Getting to make your own Secret invasion arc is a favorite of mine. The party doesn’t trust anyone anymore so they won’t accept any help and it severely limits their options. Thus they have to really a lot more on each other then before and if you hit them with one of the party members actually being a doppelgänger during that time you will have their expressions burned into your head. However, that’s hard to pull of properly so if you want an easy incorporation of a changeling watch castlevania season 4
The thought of a group of Doppelgangers infiltrating a Kingdom and then the Kingdom becoming more and more neglected due to them being just bored/lazy. That's a good story idea right there. Why wouldn't they try to take positions of power if they want to score all the time?
I've had an idea for a homebrewed campaign for a trio of doppelgangers working essentially as Theatre actors. Would be an excellent position for them really, not only can they disguise, but can evaluate the audience's thoughts on the play via mind reading. Also they could be hedonistic pompous asses who do their jobs really well.
Star Trek: Deep Space 9 has an alien species (also called Changelings) who are effectively doppelgangers who got up off their shapeshifting asses and built an empire. Their abilities go a bit further - for instance, they can convincingly morph into inanimate objects - and everyone is justifiably crazy-paranoid about them.
I had a neat idea about the Doppelgängers/Changelings that mixes up their old folklore and the identity crisis. Like the old tales they’re both Fey and kind of born as adults. The identity crisis comes in when they begin learning and have difficulty properly forming an identity. Overwhelmed by the fully formed selves of those around them and not knowing who or what they should be, they usually try on a couple shallow identities to try socializing with those around them to become someone. They actually can form loyalty to anyone who helps them become someone really and essentially gives them their identity. Thus how I created a doppelgänger/Changeling Inquisitor who rooted out problems in a Fae Queen’s court as thanks for giving them a name, life, and purpose.
Fun idea.
Introduce a shopkeeper or something, any recurring NPC, and have him act slightly differently every time they see him, like have a table with 4 or 5 different but similar personalities on it and roll every time they meet the NPC.
Turns out that NPC is dead and the party have been speaking to 4 or 5 different doppelgangers who are using the store to get money but are so lazy they take it in shifts to impersonate the guy while the others just chill upstairs playing go fish
Better, yet. The shopkeeper is still alive and works with the Dopplegangers to run his shop 24/7. Or just because the Dopplegangers are better salesmen and love to screw people over with bad deals. They make a game of it. See who can earn the most money in a week.
thank you both for the ideas for non lethal dopplegangers to put in my main city lol
Better yet: introduce "several" shopkeepers over time, who all seem to have a bit too similar of a personality.
Investigation into the matter would reveal that it is just one doppelganger. (
What about them being lazy, and how do they seem to traverse a city or between cities? They have employed strong males to allow for teleportation between several sites.
Who knows how many personalities this doppelganger has taken over?
Might not go far, but could make the group a bit paranoid that the next shop they go to could be the same person.
@@Grayson.P so Larry from Gumball
@@kenshinasakura3788 Oh yes, Larry! The man without whom the entirety of civilization would crash.
New BBEG idea: a highly-motivated Doppelganger who actually took the time and effort to properly raise its Changeling children and who is such a great parental figure that the children actively help to further its goals for world domination.
"Wait, you offer dental, too?"
the party then decides to throw in with the doppelganger.
vs a changeling that hates doppelgangers due to the bad reputation they give to shapeshifting creatures and has used their life's work to amass an all-changeling mercenary group that specifically works to hunt out other shapeshifters
@@godzilla660 "Of course. I wouldn't want something as trivial as a toothache to become a slight distraction that might potentially lead to a fatal outcome for my minions. Efficiency is the key."
Okay but isn't the whole abandoning thing hardcoded into the DNA of dopplegangers?
They aren't human remember, they shouldn't have the same thought processes as us.
@@cursedhfy3558 It could be genetic mutation due to their farther getting smote and surviving. I went with the reason that it is smite because all the stuff I heard about radiation form stories and stuff have radiation do holy damage or something similar.
Idea: The BBEG successfully assassinates the king in front of the party, and the king turns out to be a doppelganger. Everyone, BBEG included, is completely shocked by this turn of events, and now the BBEG is mad because apparently someone had successfully taken over the kingdom before he did, and did such a good job of it that no one realized it was happening.
Extra idea: The bbeg then teams up with the party to take on the hidden invasion of doppelgangers, whose leader is the true bbeg of the campaign.
@@TheSpencermacdougall Even more interesting plot twist for near the end, the Doppleganger actually was the king...previous queens consort was another doppleganger.
@@AzraelThanatos Another plot twist, the original BB was a Doppleganger who wanted to impersonate the king and is so pissed because another Doppleganger (seemingly) beat him to it.
@@weezact7 plot twist plot twist, the party were actually doppelgängers with amnesia
@@lukedoglt another another another another another ANOTHER plot-twist: they never had amnesia. The Party are the BBEG now.
This just really makes me want to play my Changeling Rogue. His deal is he took that Shapeshifter’s loneliness and shaped it into a grand dream to become the world’s greatest thieves’ guild.
By himself. He acts as all the members.
That’s really funny.
You just gave me the idea for
A Small Inn with A Large Staff
You don’t ever see them all at once, but they sure do a great job!
XD
@@Ramsey276one I honestly just love the idea of Changelings being intense method actors. 😄
OP! He has an entire guild at his disposal at a moments notice
@@jonathanard7885 *shrugs* "Hey, it's not our fault you're terrible at making friends."
Currently playing a Changeling.
Level 1, need access into a city. Walk up to some fishermen outside of said city and get hit with the xenophobic "we don't talk to outsiders" line.
So I walk away, to another fisherman after transforming into the first one and changing into some cheap clothes. I come out to him, as this fisherman, and now I'm waiting to go back to that area so I can find out how my changeling ruined a man's life.
Also started a fight between two guards by messaging one insults that only other guards would say. Definitely gonna keep an eye out for those two guards in the future so my changeling can turn into one to distract the other
Hmm evil characters. Spreading the misery around so that everybody suffers.
Dont ask how you can reduce your misery! Ask how you can spread it around to as many people as possible!
-sauron, dark lord of mordor, proparbly
@@mrvoltem9379 Not misery, character growth. While yes, the social bigotry a xenophobic fisherman will probably face is intense, it also serves as a catalyst through which this NPC can evaluate his behavior. :)
The DM picked up on this. Also the guards of this city are notoriously brutal towards civilians so I also contest the evilness of making them fight.
Hope he really was closeted and you just helped him along
@@mars7304 The best time to have the high-ground is when you're the type who doesn't give two figs about it but love having an excuse to indulge in your preferred hobbies. Like social manipulation, extortion, character assassination, rumor-mongering.....
The REALLY fun twist is when a player works with their GM to play as a Changeling/Doppleganger and literally never reveal it. So if they eventually die the entire party gets to FLIP THEIR SHIT and start questioning EVERYTHING when the actual answer is just "No, it was always this way, there is no conspiracy."
I did that with a changeling bard, once. He was just extremely insecure about being a "monster", so he always avoided transforming around the rest of the party, or letting on that he was anything other than a normal human. That only ended up lasting a couple of adventures, though, because the party rogue picked up a gem of seeing. The first time she used it, the party almost killed my bard, under the assumption that he was a doppelganger who had replaced their friend. Which, unsurprisingly, didn't help his insecurity any, even after the long heart to heart conversation which came from the others realizing that an infiltrator is unlikely to respond to the party attacking him by curling up in the fetal position and crying.
Happened in my Star Wars campaign, eventually it was revealed in a stealth mission when the party member became the villain to send his bodyguards away during our ambush.
it's actually a player secret card in IceWind Dale
I feel like I’m the only person who really doesn’t like this twist. I’ve seen it done once, and it didn’t really change much about how I saw the character. It just didn’t feel as clever as the player thinks. I like it more when people use the fact they’re a changeling to get advantages and stuff, actually using the racial traits
@@cameronjohnson4936that's the problem. If the player that dies is a changeling, i would just think "oh, that would have come in handy about a million times". Unless there was reason to suspect they weren't a changeling the entire time, that twist doesnt work. If it was a doppelganger, different story but since they arent PCs (or shouldn't be since they are just better changelings) that might be more suspicious. I tried a changeling character that tried to hide it, using a disguise kit or magic as the cop out to looking different... really wish i didn't, it's honestly pretty lame.
for whatever reason I had a mild case of big brain a few months ago and came up with an odd but (in my opinion) interesting origin for dopplegangers: They're HIGHLY advanced mimics.
Mimics get larger and more complex the longer they exist and the more they see, so after becoming chests, doors, bookshelves, walls, it made sense to me that an enterprising mimic might try and become the very thing they were feeding on: a random adventurer. Changelings in my world, by comparison, are actually specifically faceless fey creatures, and part of the reason an entire society actively hunts fey.
Woah
That's basically the storyline of "Everybody Loves Large Chests"
Your MIMIC is evolving!
Your MIMIC is now a DOPPELGÄNGER!
“Carrying my items like that is not going to work, Pal…”
{Pal…}
“…yeah, your name is Pal now!”
{B-}
“DO NOT SAY MINE”
@@MehnixIsThatGuy link please?
@@Ramsey276one RUclips kills links, search "Everybody Loves Large Chests" by exterminatus. It's a webnovel that can be read for free on RoyalRoad. Follows the adventure of an Amoral chest mimic and their quest to obtain shinies, and accidentally/intentionally destroy nations in the process. Can be quite explicit at times due to horny side characters.
My players discovered a group of doppelgangers impersonating a family, and when they tried to expose them, the doppelgangers trying to flip the situation on them. But you see, doppelgangers revert to their true form when they die, so the best way to crack this case open is with an axe.
Turns out violence can be an answer.
But, can you imagine how fucking MENTAL that would sound? "They're monsters! I can prove it if you just kill them all!"
@@weezact7 I don’t care how high your charisma is, that’s a hard sentence to sell to a mob.
It's a lot easier to sell if you provide visuals
@@weezact7 There's an easier solution though, the spell Moonbeam. Moonbeam reveals any shaperchanger's true form in addition to the damage it does.
That final idea reminds me of Young Justice. Specifically the idea of "how long was this person actually a doppleganger?" A good potential twist would be "before you ever met them" which adds in a lot more questions.
I don't like that, though. If you have reason to believe it was "before you ever met them", then the party knows for sure that EVERY interaction they had was with the Doppleganger and was furthering its (or its master's) agenda. If they know it happened at some point after they met the character, they then need to try and decide what they've heard was real and what was fake. Even better if you can somehow get the Doppleganger to impersonate the character on the sly WITHOUT killing them for awhile, meaning the party has had both genuine AND duplicitous dealings with them back and forth before the real one was finally killed.
@@weezact7 Thing is, if the person was a doppelganger the entire time, this adds in a plot hook to track down its origin.
Is the real person alive? If not, when and how did they die?
Why was this person impersonated? They weren't already with the party, so it wasn't an easy way of infiltration.
Why did this doppelganger interact with the party? Just how far in advance was the interaction planned?
Who had the doppelganger been talking to and what had it been doing before meeting the party?
The potential web of intrigue here is enormous.
5e Eberron flipped the relationship, having a creation myth for Changelings that describes them as blessed by the Traveler (an Eberron deity), while Doppelganger are now suggested to be Changelings corrupted by the Daelkyr (extraplanar invaders that, at least in the Eberron setting, are also the creators of the Illithids and various other aberrations).
Also, "Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse" has Changelings as fey instead of humanoid (and gives the mutability of the fey realm as the source of their transformation), and allows them to shrink down to small size.
(And it also allows them to choose Performance as proficiency from Changeling Instincts.)
Interesting
Changeling bard is a concept I really would love to try...
So what you're saying is morty's MotM did it better?
@@Technodreamer A small number of changelings/dopplegangers could form a traveling acting troupe and put on plays with a HUGE cast of characters.
Correct lore is correct.
I played a changeling that went by the name of "Legion" and convinced people that he was a shadow organization by the same name but it was just him. He was very fun
ok, thats next level, I just may steal that.
I think it'd be really fun to play a changeling who suffers with the fact that they don't really have a sense of self. Like, they doesn't really know who they are and struggle to separate their own personality from all the masks they wear because they've been pretending to be other people for so long to survive that they've never had the opportunity to be themselves
Changelings are just chock full of rollplay potential.
Sounds like what autistic people go through on a higher level. Physically changing as well as mentally, for the most part.
I'm currently playing a changeling very similar to that; they were raised to be a "perfect" changeling, and their parents even went so far as to not give them a name. They left their family and went to the fey wilds to get a name and became a warlock. They still don't know their name, but they think their patron does. It is fun, but because they haven't yet told their party that they're a changeling, we haven't gotten to explore the angst much yet.
@@plynnmiller7563 There are fairly prominent theories that the original changeling myths were basically to explain things like autism. Easier to just explain the child as acting different because they were swapped out by a fae or troll or what have you. Even now a lot of parents have a mentality of using drugs and treatment to 'get their baby back,' the mindset never really left.
@yep said as if every dnd character isn't a self insert, lol. It is a game; don't rag on folks having fun playing a game. Also, maybe don't rag on mental illnesses? Just a thought.
Since this is also changelings, my current favorite character was one. Was forced to hole up in an area for a while, got actually attached to a local girl's raw determination and dreams of being a hero, then watched her die on her first actual mission. Took up her identity and has tried to fulfill that dream for her. Just doesn't really understand how, given they've never stuck around long enough to learn cause and effect properly.
I personally love the idea of a changling bard that shifts as they perform for effect. Like turning into the characters in a story or something.
In my first ever campaign on a day when there was only two players available (one was me) we encountered a dopplerganger. We got incredibly lucky with our intimidation roll and told them to grab their pals and leave. Que like half the tavern leaving. I can only imagine how poorly a fight would have gone
Fun detail, Doppelgangers can only turn into a humanoid they've seen, while changings can look like anything they want (so long as it's shaped like a humanoid). Changelings have more freedom in their changing and can technically turn into non-humanoids (for example, an ugly old tiefling woman could quite easily resemble a night hag, a rail-thin albino gith could be a wight, a human-coloured tiefling with hooves could easily pass for a faun and a grumpy gnome with odd footwear choices could pass for a redcap)
Also, for both of them, their powers aren't limited to playable humanoids. Troglodytes are humanoid, as are quaggoths, grimlocks, fire newts, grung, gnolls and lycanthropes. So much potential
I think it seems like they've been trying to make changelings a bit more 'human' than doppelgangers. Emotionally, motivationally, and in the scale of their abilities. So... yeah, pretty much the same thing, but basically less extreme and more relatable. In our game we ran with the changelings are human / doppelganger spawn concept, as it fits them pretty well.
Whatever happened to changelings being the mortal children of hags?
@@emilysmith2965 those are hexblood
Ive run 2 doppelgangers in my games.
The first was a cunning, calm, and calculated servant of a nefarious dark master. They used their abilities to get anyone who came close to finding them or those who would interfere with their plans thrown in prison, and only ever revealed himself when he was surrounded by his various tamed monstrosities, only when victory was nigh certain. He met his demise after losing a game of wits of his own creation, mostly thanks to our fighters general bumbling.
The other was some dude who worked for a blue dragon, wandering town to town robbing people in their sleep and trying to lay small town wenches. Unfortunately for him, he was afraid of women, so he wasn’t much good at it. He ended up befriending the party after getting caught in a bad lie.
You can imagine my surprise when I found out that the second one was closer to the actual lore.
The party's rouge: I just got myself a cool tattoo!
The doppelganger in the corner: Our tattoo (insert Bugs Bunny)
A month or so ago I was watching a DM round table with Dungeon Dad, Aj Pickett, Wally DM, and How to D&D, and the topic of Mimics came up in conversation. Now I forget if it was Aj or Fred (How to D&D) who brought it up initially, but one of them mentioned a HB lore change they had used in their games, which recontextualized Mimics as baby Doppelgangers! Imagine confronting the local barkeep at his tavern, accusing him of being an impostor, only to have him leap over the bar counter to attack you, backed up by his son: The whole damn counter!
I like to believe that doppelgangers are just extremely developed mimics that figured out how to copy humanoids.
Cool, I'm stealing this. Dopplegangers are an evolved varient of mimics, and Changelings are made from Dopplegangers breeding with none Dopplegangers
In my campaign, the party began to gain notoriety, and one of the nights between the cities, the lookout noticed the figure of another party member in the forest. The party then roamed the wild lands around the city for several days, and upon their return found that 5,000 gold coins had been collected on their behalf for good deeds, and then the party disappeared from the city. Unforgettable expressions on the faces of the players who realized that they have an unbearable amount hanging on them, and the success of their global mission depends on the ability to move normally around this city. It was something in the style of "The Hangover", because before they learned this news, the party spent the day healing wounds with alcohol in a tavern.
I love this idea of a second party made entirely of doppelgangers taking all the credit and as much of the rewards as possible.
In the new monsters of the multivsrse book they gave Changelings the ability to become small, but they still can't get any bigger than medium
What if they swallow a man-sized balloon?
It’s just the square-cube rule. If you’re somewhat smaller, you won’t be harmed very much. If you turn into a real big motherfucker, your bones collapse under your own dramatically increased volume.
Fun idea: a changeling creates a character that becomes so popular that a doppelganger steals it to cause mischief.
Last weekend my son reminded me of two rulings I made in Dragon Heist. He wanted to hire the Doppelgangers from the Yawning Portal for his Trollskull Alley joint. Since they only wanted to earn a living I ruled they were really Changelings. Further to set matters straight for future meetings I ruled that Doppelgangers are descended from Changelings that had become corrupted from the Far Realms. Good video, thanks.
Doppelgangers are terrifying. I love how the analog horror series, The Mandela Catalogue, handles doppelgangers: eldritch abominations that are trying to replace people without quite understanding them. (Hence why they haven't yet taken over the world.)
I had a short campaign where a town was controlled by two doppelgangers, one was the mayor, and the other was a random shopkeeper selling traveling supplies. Before the players had any idea of what the plot was they IMMEDIATELY started a running joke that the shopkeeper (yep, the one who's actually a doppelganger) was the evil mastermind of the whole campaign despite their only interaction being the sale of a single bedroll on the player's prerogative.
I once played as a changeling flighter who basicly replaced his best friend who was one of his war buddies to honor his dying wishes. So now he acts as the father to his friends family to spare them.the grief of losing someone.
Any strange change in his behavior was writen off as war trauma.
I made a homebrew version of these, called a Headhunter. Basically it rips its victim's head off, and wears it, to assume their abilities, memories, and personalities. It's chaotic evil, and treats its collection of still-living heads, like a dragon treats its hoard.
Do they take the whole head or do they rip off the face and scalp and put it on over their head?
*Flashbacks to Aria of Sorrow*
@@Msoulwing That was the inspiration! 8^}
@@beastwarsFTW It takes the whole head. Technically, the victim isn't even dead, so resurrection won't work.
Check out the cult of Thanatar in Runequest.
My favorite use of Doppelganger is in one if Grimmtooth books. It's a corridor halfway through covered in magical darkness, with BEWARE THE DOPPELGANGER written in blood on the wall next to darkness. When first person enters the darkness, it disappears and they are teleported behind rest of the party with a note saying "Remember: Blend in" in their hand.
Imagine a small fishing town where houses and shops were pretty far away from each other and recently someone found a doppelgänger. And so they hire a detective and when they group all the towns folk together one person exposes their true identity as a doppelgänger. And then everyone looks not in fear or anger, but in pure confusion. And then another person says they also are a doppelgänger, and another, and another. Until it is revealed that everyone in the town is a doppelgänger and they just didn’t know it
Play as a changeling.
Glammered leather armor, and ring of mind shielding, are perfect. Been playing as a low level wizard but am actually a middle level druid pact of moon with a few levels of wizard and ritual caster. Got a mimic familiar that most of the time looks like a spell book.
No one has noticed yet.
I considered playing a homebrew 3pp doppelganger in pathfinder, with their soul motivation being to steal everything they can, not by stealthily or forcefully taking, but by having stuff given to them. Pose as a noble lord's wife while she's out and ask for some gold to go shopping. Pose as a merchant's delivery boy so that the merchant would give me goods to deliver... right into my bag of holding! Or even deliver the goods and keep the gold that was to be paid on delivery.
Asking if i may borrow something by posing as someone that person knows and trusts by reading their mind.
All while not letting the other party members know i'm a doppelganger. It would be private messages(roll20) directly to the GM/DM.
I also had an idea for someone else, a DM asked me for ideas, and one of them was a village where everyone and everything were doppelgangers and mimics just trying to live their lives. All the doppelgangers looked like mismatched amalgamations of different people from neighboring towns. For example a human barkeep's face but with elven ears and a dwarven nose. And every piece of furniture is a mimic just trying to live it's life as that piece of furniture. The mimic doesn't want to be a monster, it just wants to be a table, or a chair; and wants to be treated as such. Chair mimic just wants to be sat upon etc. A peaceful existence.
I like the version of Changelings that are the offspring of Hags, and the playable ones are those changelings that managed to reach adulthood while resisting the psychic call of their twisted mother.
During my last campaign I brought in a temporary doppelganger character for a session where one of the party members was having some weird trauma-filled vision (we had done the same thing last session as filler while they were absent). Said character started the session disguised as my actual character, before shifting and going "damn, your memory is getting really bad. I know you miss your friends and all but this isn't healthy"
Did he become a recurring character?
@@foisopracurtir6389 Nope. One of the other characters who debuted that session did, though.
I accidentally double-clicked when I tried to open this video in a new tab, so it opened in the original tab, and I heard the video with weird distortion because it was playing twice almost in sync.
I didn't notice right away because the effect was rather appropriate for the topic; you sounded like a machine imitating your voice.
How did this come out the day my party adopted a doppelganger, uncanny.
Because we've ALL been watching you 👀
@yep I'm the dm, I thought they'd just free him and let him go.
Shape-shifters are some of my favorite creatures in fantasy. The amount of mindfuck shenanigans you can get up to with shape-shifters is endless.
One of my most glorious sessions was based on these- dungeon was full of magical darkness traps, pitfalls to other floors, rotating walls, it was a whole scooby-doo style thing. And there was a doppelganger. every 10-15 minutes when they'd fall into a trap, I'd slip all the party members one of a few prepared notes, saying either what they heard or "you have been replaced by a doppelganger." By the end it was one rogue FREAKING OUT, finding his 4 missing companions bound up while his 5th changes in front of him. Doppelganger needed something done and didn't want bother with it, kept the paladin as security while the party handled it.
Thanks for the video Runesmith, very cool.
The lore tidbit I find most fascinating about these guys(though I can't remember where I read it) is that in communities with large populations of changelings, there are a handful of 'communal identities' that multiple changelings will temporarily adopt for specific purposes. For example, if there's a tavern run by a group of changelings, on any given night one of them will take the role of Gurmni, the kindly greybearded dwarf barkeep, and they'll switch out as it's convenient. What makes this really fascinating is that this isn't even for the purpose of fooling anyone, since the people Gurmni is serving are probably also changelings, some of whom may also have played him in the past, and most of the time these identities were never real people, simply characters that multiple changelings have developed together overtime.
Doppelgangers are my favorite villains from D&D! They're so fun to use as a DM and if done correctly, the players may never even find out what's going on. There's even a book from 3rd edition called "The Complete Guide to Doppelgangers" which makes them out to be much more threatening than depicted in the Monster Manual (s).
Convinced me to make more use of doppelgangers.
Tbf I’m considering using these guys to counter a false hydras hunger - song makes the townspeople forget that their friends dead… the doplegangers essentially just turn into the missing people to keep the memory alive while the party tries to kill the false hydra (kind of going to have the people be kept alive and the false hydra essentially feeds of their life force and gradually grows).
I did the thing suggested at the end once! The party decided to rob a local baron because he was mildly rude to them one time? You know, classic D&D disproportionate retribution. Anyways, while they were casing the joint, the baron himself stumbled upon them, and the party Barbarian, ever the loose canon and bad under pressure, decided to just throw an axe at the baron’s head, instantly mercing him then and there. But then, plot twist! Instead of just collapsing and creating a pool of blood like a normal person, the corpse instead began mutating and shifting after it fell to the floor, revealing the “baron” to have been a doppelganger. Instantly, the party’s single shared brain cell switched gears from “oh shit we gotta finish robbing the place and leave before anyone else finds us” to “holy shit what the fuck what does this mean”.
After this video, I can totally see my overpower player asking to make an half-doppelganger/half-warforged
Idea: Team of doppelgangers unveils themselves, creating a huge battle causing the players to be split up. If one of the players would be hit with a killing blow, don't tell them, and let them fight as normal. When the battle is over, the doppelgangers flee, and the party finds one of the players naked and unconscious, with a clone wandering around somewhere.
When u time your work bathroom perfectly for a tinsmith basically video 😁
I always took it as the changeling is a mutation of sorts of a doppelganger. Where more of its human traits took over.
My favorite thing i've done as a changeling, I stole the identity of a bugbear leading goblins. Convinced the goblins he was the imposter and I was the real one and I did such a good job convincing (plus a nat 20) I got the goblins to kill the original and even he thought he was fake. then convinced them that shapeshifters don't change back on death.
I did this all at like level 2, being a changeling bard is fun
Changelings are easily my favorite race so much potential in such a simple concept
I’d love to play the member of the party who was a changeling the whole time and then ends in the unenviable position of “no, I didn’t replace George, I was him this whole time”
"grandpa on the computer at 3AM" is now how I will ALWAYS refer to a doppleganger's true form. Always.
The fun part about these two is the "chicken and the egg" scenario that they have. The MM stats that Doppelgangers mating with humans creates Changlings.
Eberron stats that Dyrnn and his Mindflayers experiment on Changlings and turn them into Doppelgangers.
It's freaking awesome.
:) They could both be correct in the same setting. Wherein a proto-Doppeling / human hybrid results in Changelings, and Doppelgangers were made by outside forces from the proto-Doppeling stock separately. Both consider themselves closer to the original creature. Bonus points if some instance(s) of the original creature(s) are out there somewhere.
My theory is it's like apes and humans, they share a common ancestor
In Eberron RFTLW changelings come from a blessing of the Traveler to some desperate mother with many kids in danger. He said 'your children will have many faces and personality disorders thanks to me, but no one will be able to know them lol bye' and that's how they were born.
I like the idea of someone paying a doppelgänger to take their place for whatever reason
Me, who's making a Changeling Warlock that's embroiled in a prank war with a Doppelganger: **Furiously scribbling notes down**
I think the real reason that Doppelgangers don't get nearly as much success as you'd think given their unique skillset is that it's really hard for them to hide the bodies of the people they replace. Any kind of real infiltration is going to require a support network, and while you could possibly do that with other doppelgangers, eventually someone is going to stop the maid and ask "what's in that leaking, oddly person-shaped bag you've got slung over your shoulder" before they can get outside. Basically, for a doppelganger to conquer the world it needs friends, and we all know how hard that can be for them.
Add into that the ease by which a person can impersonate someone else in D&D (Many of the spells that change your form are available to adventurers under 5th level) and it's easy to imagine that important people would take countermeasures to being infiltrated by shapeshifters or people under mind control.
Furtive pigmy Manus picture flashing while you were saying "never really mattered" got me.
Better idea...
A proactive and productive doppleganger bard whose life goal is to become the world's best method actor and bard.
Eventually uses the wealth not to overthrow but to build the best performance arts museum and theater!
Idea. What if changelings happen when a doppleganger carries the child and they don't do that not only because they have commitment issues but because they don't like/are afraid of changelings
So male doppelgangers make doppelgangers and females make changelings?
I could see that as a player character thing where their mom is basically Loki as a doppelganger.
The funny thing about dopplies is that they will never have a small pipi crisis because it can be as big as they want to do like my father and plant seeds then leave
I really love how you mentioned the Olo debacle with Tesseract, I knew it sounded familiar and it took me a moment to remember what you were talking about.
I once ran a doppelganger for a game with my students, it Impersinated the party member who left the group and they all had to figure our which one was which. Fhe party asked loads of questions but because it can read minds it knew the answers.
Took them ages to figure it out and a year later they still bring it up, best session I ever ran.
Was not expecting Vanilla the Rabbit to show up in any dnd videos let alone one about changelings and doppelgängers
A motivated Doppleganger kills the king and takes over, and the only sign anything has changed is now things are getting done around the kingdom and the kind mysteriously has gotten better at his job of ruling the kingdom.
Essentially: "Screw you! I can do it better!"
In a setting I’m working on Changelings are employed by dragons as Ninjas.
Literally just wrote the first villain for my campaign with a bunch of new players as a changeling yesterday. Great timing!
The other main difference is doppelganger need a psychic link to maintain the disguise so generally have theyre real victims somewhere held captive, but technically if they maintain one for long enough can copy them even if the victim dies.
And can transform rapidly so as long as they are in a group that can't block psychic attack they can rapidly change appearance to escape.
Change kings however don't have the psychic link but still magically pull off the same transformation gimic but can also mix and match to make their own unique avatar but have to train to copy someone the more they do the easier it is for them to maintain the decoy so are more comfortable being in their base form or regular avatar twerking it when desired.
The other difference is doppelgangers don't think of avatars as themselves so have no sense of gender identity, where change kings tend to have a preference based on which they started as. Also all doppelganger can sense other dopplegangers when close by which includes change kings so can know if another of them is neer they can't know who but that they exist.
Though technically if your a change long in a room with another and no one else it would be obvious.
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Something I found interesting in Keith Baker's (the creator of Eberron) "Exploring Eberron" book is that there are some changelings have "shared personas;" for example, there are three priests in a village, but whomever is currently on duty is "Father Hes." This also applies to the town sheriff, and the town healer.
Collecting personas is also really interesting; let's say that there's a changeling who's good at fighting, and at playing the violin. In combat, they take the persona of a tough half-orc. While playing the violin, they take the form of a graceful elf.
Some changelings who pursue acting, while wearing a shiftweave outfit, can theoretically play five different characters (though House Thuranni and House Phiarlan, who control the entertainment business, mostly relegate changelings to background extras in favor of Dragonmarked stars).
In my homebrew world i changed dopplegangers to be more like doplers from the witcher where they can be beasts and learn the muscle memory and instincts of the copied creature while inheriting some of the creatures personality. It makes the distinction between doppelganger and changeling alot better. And also i get to use inworld information taken from sources that dont know anybetter couple it with their meta knowledge of dopplegangers and mess with their head until they figure out the truth on how dopplegangers in my world work. its alot of fun
One session I included a doppelganger working for the bad guy. Usually the party kill and destroy everything and the doppelganger appear in a really complicated moment. For my surprise they find a way to make the doppelganger join them. After that basically they win a broken npc working with them that could solve everything by himself but usually stay aware of the Situations (And it was not very clever). I do not remember even His name but the party like him
3:25 This part of the video happened the second my roommate walked in. Thanks, Logan!
What if there was a doppelganger that fell in love and lived out their life as their fake identity. That would be kind of cool I think.
Hey Runesmith, I’m doing a little D&D campaign with my friends and I’ve got some newbies so I’m sending them little videos like yours to help them understand their races and classes in a fun way. You have no video about elves! I have a sea elf fighter in my party and I can’t find any elf videos that are funny and also informative.
I had a bunch of doppelgangers working together as almost mercenaries. They didn't want to plan a plot, they just follow along the highest bidder (which in this case was the Black Spider from Lost Mines of Phandelver). From time to time, the PCs would learn that an NPC they met and saved and allowed to escape from an enemy jail was actually a doppelganger who infiltrated their base of operations.
Also, Gravedigger, a goblin they spared and let become chief of the tribe by virtue of "I have the crown now !" learned about it and used that as an excuse to kill all of his opponents.
Campaign idea: Bog-standard fantasy world that is in the process of being subverted by an alien empire of aberrations from outside the world's crystal sphere, with doppelgangers being used to subvert whole regions by killing and replacing people in leadership positions. The players learn about it by encountering a crashed carriage on the way back from an obligatory goblin-killing mission, and encountering the local baron just as they die and revert to their normal form, along with orders written in their alien tongue.
What perfect timing! Not only is one of my characters a changeling, but i intend to utilize some doppelgangers/changelings in the campaign
Fun fact:
It’s “all intents _and_ purposes”, as in, regardless of your intent, no matter your purpose, blah blah…
I always thought everyone knew that but I’ve recently seen a LOT of people saying “all intensive purposes”
The birth and growth of a doppelganger is very similar to that of a Deep One, so it seems.
I'm actually writing a small quest that involves doppelgangers. Basically the party gets hired to look for a guy's lost wife. They find her with no memories in a village that they quickly learn that something isn't right. With some investigating they learn that the village is being run by a group of doppelgangers using the village as a refugee village for doppelgangers and the wife was not this wife but a doppelganger. Depending on how well they investigate, they discover that the real wife died by wolfs or they suspect the doppelgangers of murder.
Reminds me of something I saw in an old comic called the "Thunderbolts", about a group of baddies masquerading as good guys.
When the lead bad guy finally decided to reveal his plan to take over the world, some of the rest rebelled against him, with one saying"Take over the world? Who wants to do that much goddamn work?!?!" ^_^
I recall an AD&D Ravenloft module that was about the player's being replaced by Dopplegangers, and as I also recall, I think it was suggested that they don't play their usual characters for this adventure, that way they could go all out with doing their own version of "The Thing" (who's the doppleganger and who is real).
And this after I JUST ran a one shot with Dopplegangers...
im running a wildemount campaign where is shadycreek run a new(new as in this is set 50 years after crits 2nd run) minotaur crimelord/mayor takes over the town and a small chunk of his crew are dopplegangers, either as a body double if he feels its needed or spys , he pays well, gives them free food, drink etc , so they are rather loyal , he also has them magically branded so he can see them even doppled
the D&D comic Darths and Droids uses doppelgangers (or shapechangers as theyre called) to great effect, introducing them in Attack of the Clones and then continuing to make use of them as "oh this is just this character that you already know but he looks different in this movie because he's a shapeshifter"
Ok, hear me out here: Changeling Circle of the Moon Druid. Become ANYTHING you want to.
One of my players was playing as a changeling that we knew was a changeling but in the middle of like the 3rd session without any of us knowing they switched out with their changeling sibling who was pretending to be them for the next several months worth of sessions. Was a complete mindfuck
as of Monsters of the Multiverse, changelings actually CAN shrink to halfling size :)
My favorite D&D character is a Changeling Mastermind Rogue/Eloquence Bard named Ruz (pronounced 'Ruse'). He's a gentleman thief who joined the party by shapeshifting into party's monk to evade the city guard , not realizing the monk spoke very seldomly. Cue Ruz getting punched in the face by the guy he was disguised as.
Here's an idea to make your entire party suspicious of every NPC (and possibly the other player characters if you wanna be evil) is have the bbeg or an organization they're up against employ an assassin team of doppelgangers that escape after the first fight with the party, threatening to come back and kill them. Watch as the party starts to get extremely suspicious of any NPCs that seem to friendly.
One of my favourite PCs I’ve ever played was a changeling Rogue who was an adrenaline junkie to a fault. He would intentionally put himself in the most dangerous situations possible and see how long he can pull it off, like swapping places with the son of a local noble who wanted to have the princess jasmine experience, and pretending to be him for an entire month. He never stole anything valuable, or hurt anyone unless in self-defence, since all he wanted was the rush.
I did play a changeling during a short campaign...they had a series of different faces they shifted into; and each had an anagram for a name.
Tricky Nym Suda - "tricky pseudonym" - half elf
Yuri Goodforge - "good forgery" - dwarf
Declan Stine - "clandestine" - human
Ana Graham - "anagram" - human
...etc.
I made a doppelganger doctor phantom rogue who's a doctor to add really shake things up. They aren't too pressed about people knowing they are a doppelganger and absolutely love to give people paranoia.
Getting to make your own Secret invasion arc is a favorite of mine. The party doesn’t trust anyone anymore so they won’t accept any help and it severely limits their options. Thus they have to really a lot more on each other then before and if you hit them with one of the party members actually being a doppelgänger during that time you will have their expressions burned into your head. However, that’s hard to pull of properly so if you want an easy incorporation of a changeling watch castlevania season 4
The thought of a group of Doppelgangers infiltrating a Kingdom and then the Kingdom becoming more and more neglected due to them being just bored/lazy. That's a good story idea right there. Why wouldn't they try to take positions of power if they want to score all the time?
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I've had an idea for a homebrewed campaign for a trio of doppelgangers working essentially as Theatre actors. Would be an excellent position for them really, not only can they disguise, but can evaluate the audience's thoughts on the play via mind reading.
Also they could be hedonistic pompous asses who do their jobs really well.
''Your time has come primates.''
-Random Doppelganger in Baldur's Gate
Yes!!!!
had been hoping for a changeling ep with logan's unique style.
love playing as them
Star Trek: Deep Space 9 has an alien species (also called Changelings) who are effectively doppelgangers who got up off their shapeshifting asses and built an empire. Their abilities go a bit further - for instance, they can convincingly morph into inanimate objects - and everyone is justifiably crazy-paranoid about them.
Not to mention they're terrifying slave-race of reptilian barbarians that are fuelled by dogma and space cocaine.
I had a neat idea about the Doppelgängers/Changelings that mixes up their old folklore and the identity crisis. Like the old tales they’re both Fey and kind of born as adults. The identity crisis comes in when they begin learning and have difficulty properly forming an identity. Overwhelmed by the fully formed selves of those around them and not knowing who or what they should be, they usually try on a couple shallow identities to try socializing with those around them to become someone. They actually can form loyalty to anyone who helps them become someone really and essentially gives them their identity. Thus how I created a doppelgänger/Changeling Inquisitor who rooted out problems in a Fae Queen’s court as thanks for giving them a name, life, and purpose.