Lion's Tactical Guide to the Dread Doppelganger

Dread doppelgangers are old doppelgangers that have lived for centuries and taken on hundreds of forms, an experience which has left them utterly devoid of empathy and desperate to feel any kind of emotion, as well as giving them a rather horrific appearance compared to younger doppelgangers. They have similar ability scores to doppelgangers, with slightly higher Dexterity, much higher Intelligence, and slightly higher Wisdom, along with a bit more hit points. They retain all of their doppelganger abilities on top of one more Slam attack in their Multiattack, although they curiously lack younger doppelgangers’ immunity to being charmed. They also gain a degree of innate spellcasting abilities powered by their Intelligence which, like several other monsters I’ve covered from this book, do not require any components. This little quirk of their innate spellcasting turns what would otherwise be a somewhat unwieldy set of innate spells (three daily uses of Phantasmal Killer and one daily use of Mirror Image and Mislead) into incredibly potent tools of assassination and deception while they are in disguise. They can easily operate in a manner incredibly similar to doppelgangers, and since the flavor text alludes to them sometimes leading a group of doppelgangers in combat, one could feasibly run them as doppelgangers who use these innate spells to enhance their combat abilities and soften up their targets for the others before combat breaks out. When combining all of this information into what will be a memorable encounter with a single dread doppelganger, however, there is only one recommendation that I can make:

Go full slasher film!

This approach works best for a mid-level party, as they’re at just the right level range to where a single dread doppelganger would be easy to fight openly, but deadly in a one-on-one confrontation. The adventure hook for this example, which can really be almost anything you want it to be, is this: someone has hired the party to go out to an old cabin outside of town whose elderly residents haven’t been heard from for some time. When the party gets there, they find no one but an old woman whom they had been told lived there, who proceeds to explain that her husband was killed and dragged away by a horrible monster that has been stalking the house and preventing her own escape. This old woman is, of course, the dread doppelganger in disguise, but between their expertise in Deception and advantage on the roll due to reading the surface thoughts of whomever they’re speaking to, there’s a good chance that your players won’t find anything wrong with the woman’s story. With additional mind reading giving them advantage on their Persuasion checks, the dread doppelganger then suggests that the bulk of the party go out to try and track down the monster while their strongest and least wise warrior stays behind to keep her safe in case the monster comes back while they’re gone.

Assuming they take the bait, the dread doppelganger has now isolated their first victim. First, they cast Phantasmal Killer to soften them up, using Deception checks to act like whatever the spell conjured in the victim’s mind is in the room with them so that the victim is even less likely to suspect them as the one responsible for casting the spell in the first place. If the first Phantasmal Killer doesn’t work, the dread doppelganger can afford to burn a second one, but not a third. If two Phantasmal Killer spells still aren’t enough to kill their first victim, the dread doppelganger shifts gears, removing themselves from view before using Stealth to try and get surprise in a proper melee engagement. If they succeed in doing so, they unload with their Surprise Attack bonus damage on top of three Slam attacks, likely killing or at least incapacitating their first victim before they can even fight back.

With one player dead, the dread doppelganger polymorphs into their first victim and disposes of the body in the nearest convenient location before casting Mislead to create an illusory double of themselves that, like them, looks like their first victim. By this time, you should have the party return to the cabin without any idea where this monster could have gone, only to watch as the buddy they left behind bursts out of the cabin shouting a less hokey variation of “The monster just attacked and went that-a-way! Follow me and leave the second-least wise guy behind to protect the old lady!” Unless the characters have truesight, attempt to physically touch their buddy, or succeed on their Insight check against the dread doppelganger’s Deception (no longer at advantage since they can’t Read Thoughts while concentrating on Mislead), they likely won’t realize that their buddy is an illusory double leading them on a wild goose chase until it’s too late, and in the meantime, now the dread doppelganger has isolated their second victim. In this case, the dread doppelganger will jump straight to melee engagement, rolling Stealth against their second victim’s Perception and waiting to strike until the second victim finds the body of the first shoved into a closet or something. At that point, they’ll attack either with or without surprise and keep slamming until their target is dead; Phantasmal Killer is not worth giving up that Multiattack.

By now, around half the party is dead and the rest of the party has just come back to the cabin after their illusory buddy suddenly called off the monster hunt and booked it back there, likely raising suspicion. If the party hasn’t already realized that something wicked is afoot, they will soon as the dread doppelganger, now having taken the form of their second victim, maneuvers the illusory double out of the party’s view, drops Mislead, and uses one last Phantasmal Killer to soften up whoever is the least wise among the survivors. After that, they pull off the same trick of disappearing from view, cast Mirror Image on themselves, then roll Stealth to potentially get surprise and start slamming away once more. One could easily have the dread doppelganger run off into the night as soon as they are reduced to 31 hit points or less, but I would argue that, given their tendency to take extraordinary risks just to feel something, they might just stick it out until they die. Regardless, one thing’s for sure: those player characters are going to be seeing this thing’s wretched face in their nightmares.