Talk:Night Hag, Aarnott (3.5e Monster)

Need Some Ideas
I'd like some help figuring out the "Haunt Dreams" ability. I want it to be something different from a normal D&D combat ability in that it invokes some sort of minigame between the Night Hag and the PC.

My first thought was a "dream arena" that would allow the night hag to pick some sort of pre-made arena map (I'd have no issues making a few maps) and a monster with a CR 2 lower than the Night Hag. A mini combat would play out where 2 rounds in the dream arena = 1 round in real life. When the PC kills the monster or dies they wake up and take 1/4 the damage they took in the dream arena.

The problem with this idea is that other players will get bored and a single combat could take a long time. Any suggestions to have something along the same vein, but actually interesting for all the players? --Aarnott 19:16, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Each monster appears to be an evil manifestation of a party character (appearance-wise, mechanically they're actual monsters--perhaps actual shapeshifters that prey on fears or something?) and is controlled by the character with 2-3 combat options to keep things interesting. There are a number of enemies in the dream arena equal to the number of players in the party -1 (for the player in the dream arena themselves) so everyone gets to get in on the action--just on the enemy side for once. *evil grin*
 * Perhaps have the enemies share a collective pool of HP and split their damage between all of them so that the combat isn't too one-sided, and the hag taking some damage if her nightmare-creatures are killed/hurt--but only make it usable by a coven so it's not used every single encounter with a night hag, and it gives the hags a reason to form a coven. --Ghostwheel 20:19, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Was discussing this with Ghost in chat, and I'm concerned that anything like this is going to be a rather large increase in combat resolution time. It's not terrible with just 1 hag, but any time you get a group of them together it's a potential nightmare. It might work to restrict this to a coven only sort of thing, where each hag tried to drag a single target into the dream combat to weaken them first and was maybe was vulnerable while they kept the target in the dream as well. - Tarkisflux Talk 07:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I do like the idea of players getting to play the baddies. It would come at the disadvantage of metagaming, and, of course, there is still the matter of combat getting extended too long. That being said, I still really want to have a monster that does something with dreamscapes.
 * Here's an idea I just came up with. If the hag puts you into a dream state, your character in the real world begins "sleepwalking". The hag will define what the dreamscape looks like can place some number of monsters into the dreamscape. One of the monsters will be the hag herself. Out of game, this dreamscape would use a separate combat grid, but it would carry identical positions for the Hag and the character. Also out of game, the character would be in a separate room (or at least out of the way), so they cannot look at the non-dreamscape combat grid. Whenever the character uses an ability or attacks or whatnot in the dreamscape, it would happen in real life too (they would be doing it in their sleepwalking state).
 * The whole thing here is that the hag would try to trick the character into attacking allies by positioning the dream monsters in the same positions as the allies. The monsters would be killed after 1 hit in the dreamscape and the dream would end when the hag is hit.
 * Multiple hags would be able to draw more than one character into the dreamscape and have more capabilities with the effects of the dream. --Aarnott 16:28, 29 December 2011 (UTC)