Running Morgantha in a Post-BG3 World
Morgantha is a beloved event in the village of Barovia. An old woman dishing out dream pies in the otherwise dark and dour village. If followed you see her seem to abduct a terrified child, and if a player eats a dream pastry they'll fall into a deep trance of a beautiful place, waking up longing for it again.
Morgantha is, of course, a Night Hag.
Many of the subs most esteemed contributors have wonderfully flavoured these interactions by making her a bubbly old lady and incorrigible gossip, and by creating details and stacking effects for the dream pies.
But now that many players (certainly almost all of mine) has played at least Act 1 of BG3 and met Auntie Ethel, the green hag who plays a very similar role in the Druid Grove, is there any way to try and capture that surprise factor again?
My first instinct is to play around with the shapeshift ability. The Night Hag stat block says it can change into any small or medium humanoid while maintaining its same statistics. I'd worry this is too much of a mislead, but what if playing up their appearance as an older woman we instead focus on their ability to appear via the Dream spell (in 2024) or Nightmare Haunting ability (2014)?
Instead of appearing as an old human lady selling pies, she disguises herself as a simple Barovian commoner, even a younger male or child to throw off suspicions. But in the nightmares, they take warped shapes like something out of a Junji Ito manga. To let the players guess it, I'd keep something consistent between the forms: A scar across their entire face, a sickly yellow eye, a withered black tooth etc.
I'd love any thoughts on this one, it'd be great to keep the Hags as a mystery rather than a forgone conclusion!