D&D 5E OotA: Buppido Advice... [SPOILERS!]

[DMCF]

How far ahead have you read? Once you get to Gracklestugh, Buppido gives the party the slip and runs to his lair, which is pretty wonderfully atmospheric: the entire floor is difficult terrain because of all the dismembered body parts of his victims lying around. Unless you're hellbent on having him sabotage now, it's worth keeping him alive until then.

I feel the same way. He is going to give in to his rage and kill people sure, but he won't be caught. I almost got one NPC killed but the group rolled 22 Charisma and he sheathed his weapon peacefully and grumbled a bit.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I've already had Buppido bump off Ront and the duergar you can rescue in [unspellable kuo-toa settlement] by simply taking advantage of when they were a bit separated from the rest of the group while camping. The best part is that everyone in the party thinks it's being done by Topsy and Turvy, who fled the group after their secret was revealed but has been shadowing them ever since.

 

[Cody Harper]

I had great success with this one, which is to say Buppido had great success lol. He was able to convince the party to get to Gracklstugh AND was able to kill and ritualistically dissect Derendil in the process.
The first thing I did was have Buppido make friends with the stupider members of the party. He was able to exploit Derendil's delusion that he was an elven prince, promising Derendil that he knew a cleric in Gracklstugh that could heal him. From that point, Buppido started sharing rations with Derendil which were laced with Timmask mushrooms. Once the party noticed that Derendil was poisoned it was already too late. Later that night, Buppido was able to sneak up to Derendil and ritualistically kill him without being noticed. Keep in mind, all of these moves could have been found out by the party, but their rolls were bad enough that Buppido was able to get away with all of it.
The key to Buppido is his glibness and his psychopathy; have him be SUPER friendly and helpful to the weakest members. He knows he won't be able to take on the PCs, but subtly undermining the strength of the group one step at a time is his wheelhouse
Hope that helps!

 

[jasper]

Buppido waits until his victim is on watch, then sneaks up on them and scratches them with a drow sleep poison-tipped dart. Drags them into a nearby tunnel for his fun, then returns in time to look like he's been asleep the whole time. He also plants incriminating evidence on the person he thinks is the greatest threat to his grand plan.

Jasper, "Honest and True I didn't kill Morris." Pulls hanky from pouch and wipes his sweaty brow. An used sleep dart falls from the hanky!.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That seems the easiest. They have to sleep sometime, and this further escalates the feelings of paranoia and madness.

As for the potential victim, I can’t remember if this was just someone else’s idea, or something mentioned in canon, but wasn’t there some talk of Jimjar being a deity in disguise?

Have people find the body after a long rest.

 

[TheNoremac42]

In our game, he killed off half the NPCs on the way to the Darklake town. He slit the character's throat in their sleep and drug them off to some hole to finish his "ritual". It was like three days before the others got wise, discovered the remains of one of their comrades painted across a cave wall, and killed the guy.

 

[CapnZapp]

I can’t remember if this was just someone else’s idea, or something mentioned in canon, but wasn’t there some talk of Jimjar being a deity in disguise?

Yes.

 

[Motorskills]

Yes.

It's (stupidly) very near the end of the book. Because of the particular challenges of OOTA, having some secret help that the DM can tap into is useful.