D&D 5E Murder Investigation and Trial

I'm looking for advice on a fun and fair way to run a murder investigation and possible trial.

One of my PC's (Halfling barbarian) murdered a beloved major NPC in his sleep. He is also attempting to frame one of his NPC rivals by planting the murder weapon near his home.

Here are some details:
It is a very small low-tech (stone age) village of about 150ish people. He murdered the local Druid who is also a member of the governing organization. The druid was one of four members of the "Council of Elders" who makes the major decisions and resolves conflicts for the village. The PC slit the NPC's throat in his stone hut and then intentionally left a blood trail that led to his rival npc's stone hut and left the knife there hidden sloppily in front of the entrance.

During the whole event I made him roll 2 stealth checks that were both 19+
I also made him roll an INT check to determine how well he cleaned up and covered his tracks and he rolled a 4.

His motivation is basically that the druid did not like him and was openly suspicious of him. He saw the PC as a bad omen for the village (with good reason) and made this very clear to everyone. So the PC murdered him. The PC in general is a bit of a self proclaimed nuisance to the village and most villagers did not like him and avoid him. He only has a handful of allies at best. Not including the rest of the party.

The NPC he is trying to pin this on is a half-orc with no motivation whatsoever, but he is also not particularly liked by the villagers

This is a homebrew sandbox campaign and I have zero investment in the characters or the story so I have no issues with these actions and there is no threat of derailment. I allowed the players to play any alignment so I was expecting something like this to happen sooner or later.

We left the session with the discovery of the body, the council has been alerted and a council meeting is imminent. And finally the party ranger followed the trail of blood back to the Half-orc NPC's hut.

I need to plan a session that involves an investigation and probably a trial. The odds are definitely against him given the circumstance, but I want to deliver a fun and dramatic session. I also need to plan for the fact that the PC will likely murder the entire village if he has to in order to escape.

I've always liked 4th ed skill challenges but wanted to get some ideas from DM's who have run through similar scenarios.

The investigation seems like nothing you need plan for since that would appear to be on the NPC's side of the equation. You decide whether they finger the barbarian as the culprit or not. If there's anything to prep, it's probably the cover-up, but you probably can't prepare anything really since that's going to be up to the PC(s). Adjudicate as normal on the fly, I say, and the let the results inform your decision on whether the NPCs can gather enough evidence.

Being a Stone-Age type place, I imagine matters of jurisprudence are not real fleshed out. A trial by combat seems most fitting to me. If the PC succeeds, then he is exonerated of the crime. If he fails, then he's dead and the gods have spoken. If he succeeds, you might also want to have the remaining elders banish him from the village anyway, citing some obscure right they have to do so. It's time to go.

It honestly sounds like the PCs don't have enough to do in terms of actual adventures and are just creating their own drama. I refer to such sandboxes as "quicksand boxes" because it quickly gets mired in stuff like you describe due to the PCs having no real goals. This usually leads to the PCs killing town NPCs to stir up some kind of dramatic conflict which may otherwise be lacking. I suggest encouraging them to get out of the towns for a while to a proper adventure location. Dungeons full of evil monsters are much better targets for wanton murder than town NPCs. Killing them comes with less legal complications and usually a great deal more treasure and XP.

We have actually only started this campaign. They just arrived back from a dungeon and were likely to soon move on to another. Oh. There are plenty of dungeons. One of the players just decided to go murdering. He had a motive, and pretty flimsy one, but it was there.

This would be the moment to introduce a Sherlock Holmes-esque npc, who starts to interrogate all the suspects, and investigate the scene of the crime.

I'd recommend checking out the trial sequence in Neverwinter Nights 2 for ideas on that

Its a really good part of the game. Less said about the ending of that game though, the better...

Imaculata said:

This would be the moment to introduce a Sherlock Holmes-esque npc, who starts to interrogate all the suspects, and investigate the scene of the crime.

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too easy. Inspector Clouseau. And if the group kills him. The inspector comes back as ghost but does not know he dead.

jasper said:

too easy. Inspector Clouseau. And if the group kills him. The inspector comes back as ghost but does not know he dead.

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I can already see the scene in my head. Just before Clouseau declares the barbarian PC cleared as a suspect, he turns around, and says: "Just one more thing, sir..." -And that is when he deduces what actually happened in brilliant fashion.

My google-fu is failing, but I read a book years ago where the murderer was uncovered by the murder weapon itself. You said a druid leads the council? So what if there is a spell or ritual that can be cast by other druids or a cleric that, upon a night of the full moon, a murder weapon covered in white cloth will bleed the blood of the victim when held near the murderer.

Well, I personally wouldn't drop some sort of random Deux Ex Machina into the campaign that can magically point out the killer. Instead, I think you could actually create a lot of suspense by having a detective npc interrogate each PC and npc, and then see how well they can keep their story straight. Heck, maybe you can even throw in a plot twist at the end, where it turns out the murder victim is actually not dead, but a vampire!

Imaculata said:

This would be the moment to introduce a Sherlock Holmes-esque npc, who starts to interrogate all the suspects, and investigate the scene of the crime.

Click to expand...

Actually, just an NPC with an Int of 12 and Wis of 12 and the Investigation skill and the Insight skill (or two NPCs, each with one skill covered). Maybe one of the Council members.

If he makes the Investigation roll, he knows it is a setup. That DC should be fairly low because the PC failed his Int check and sloppily hid the weapon. It might be too obvious.

If he questions PCs and other NPCs, he gets Insight versus Deception in the case of the PC and the PC's rival (good/bad roleplaying might affect the DCs).

The dice might decide one way. They might decide another. But, play it out.