twofalls
DM Beadle
I run a Kingdom's of Kalamar game odd fridays, and tonight the session has just ended. The players own a Cog called the Hyperion (merchant's vessel) and are currently docked in the harbor of Zoa, a large merchant city. They have just been freed from a public trial where they were found innocent of an accusation of murder by a wealthy merchant whose son was a PC earlier in the game. This PC met his doom in the Reelio jungle at the hands of an enraged Moss Troll, rended into pieces and beaten with his own disembodied arm. The merchant accused the survivors of murdering his son. The trial turned into a city wide event highlighting the racial tensions between the Dwarven/Gnome population and the Human populations that has been boiling for quite some time. The reason for this is that one of the surviving PC's was a Dwarf, and he and the merchant in question had already established a hateful relationship before this event turned things even uglier.
The Merchant was utterly unconvinced by the trial, though his public face was accepting, and hired one of the most expensive assassins in the city to kill the Dwarf before he departed on the Hyperion. The Assassin stuck twice. Once he stabbed the PC Dwarf with a potently envenomed dagger that inflicted 15 pts of Con damage while in a very crowded market. The Assassin escaped, and quite by pure luck the Dwarf had a 16 con (I wasn't fudging dice rolls).
The second attack happened aboard the Hyperion two days later. The PC's hadn't increase the guard, but had everyone (35 crewmembers including officers) and the 6 PC's sleeping in the crew quarters together. A PC guard was posted in the forcastle, while regular sailors where in the sterncastle, and mid ship. This expert Assassin (lvl 4 rouge, lvl2 Assassin vs. lvl 4 pary) made an average sneak roll and was discovered by one guard (avg sailor 1st lvl) but quickly dispatched him with complete silence. He slipped by everyone else including all 6 PCs (sleeping PC -10 listen penalty).
I took the player aside (he is also a GM so I laid it on the line for him) and explained the situtation. He reminded me that one of the PC's was in the forecastle (I'd not heard it said before I was rolling dice) so I brought that player into the room and had him roll his listen against the Assassin's sneak, it failed by a large measure unfortunatly. So I rolled my Coup de Grace for the short sword the Assassin wielded right in front of him and rolled 11 pts of damage. That made the DC 21. He rolled his Fortitude save and scored a 16... making one dead PC. So I gave him a choice. There was the "He's mostly dead, which is different than all dead." option, or the "all dead" option. I told him that I'd allow him to take a permenantly crippling blow -2 to permenant Con and -1 penalty to all physcial actions (skills whatnot), or he could simply be dead and choose to roll up a new character.
I did this because even though I made all the dice rolls to see if the Assassin was caught fair and square, I just hate do or die dice rolls, they just aren't any fun. He choose to live and the player and I went back into the room with the "yeah he's dead" look on our faces. The other players all moaned in dismay and tried to figure out a way to uncover the Assassin. Then the PC Cleric did a heal check on him and discovered that he was "mostly dead"...
What would you have done?
The Merchant was utterly unconvinced by the trial, though his public face was accepting, and hired one of the most expensive assassins in the city to kill the Dwarf before he departed on the Hyperion. The Assassin stuck twice. Once he stabbed the PC Dwarf with a potently envenomed dagger that inflicted 15 pts of Con damage while in a very crowded market. The Assassin escaped, and quite by pure luck the Dwarf had a 16 con (I wasn't fudging dice rolls).
The second attack happened aboard the Hyperion two days later. The PC's hadn't increase the guard, but had everyone (35 crewmembers including officers) and the 6 PC's sleeping in the crew quarters together. A PC guard was posted in the forcastle, while regular sailors where in the sterncastle, and mid ship. This expert Assassin (lvl 4 rouge, lvl2 Assassin vs. lvl 4 pary) made an average sneak roll and was discovered by one guard (avg sailor 1st lvl) but quickly dispatched him with complete silence. He slipped by everyone else including all 6 PCs (sleeping PC -10 listen penalty).
I took the player aside (he is also a GM so I laid it on the line for him) and explained the situtation. He reminded me that one of the PC's was in the forecastle (I'd not heard it said before I was rolling dice) so I brought that player into the room and had him roll his listen against the Assassin's sneak, it failed by a large measure unfortunatly. So I rolled my Coup de Grace for the short sword the Assassin wielded right in front of him and rolled 11 pts of damage. That made the DC 21. He rolled his Fortitude save and scored a 16... making one dead PC. So I gave him a choice. There was the "He's mostly dead, which is different than all dead." option, or the "all dead" option. I told him that I'd allow him to take a permenantly crippling blow -2 to permenant Con and -1 penalty to all physcial actions (skills whatnot), or he could simply be dead and choose to roll up a new character.
I did this because even though I made all the dice rolls to see if the Assassin was caught fair and square, I just hate do or die dice rolls, they just aren't any fun. He choose to live and the player and I went back into the room with the "yeah he's dead" look on our faces. The other players all moaned in dismay and tried to figure out a way to uncover the Assassin. Then the PC Cleric did a heal check on him and discovered that he was "mostly dead"...
What would you have done?
