A fellow DM need advice (my players, keep out!)

[abri]

My players have a unique gift for doing the unexpected. Well all players tend to surprise the DM but these guys have developped it into an art form...
First a few important data:
.The character group has pretty shady moral (six neutral with evil tendencies/evil PC, with only two neutral with good tendencies PC[both characters with int or wis below 10 btw]).
.Even though the groups have various alignement they are now working together quite well.

Now the problem: the apprentice psychic-assasin of the group ends up in verbal conflict with a VERY high level fighter female. He then decide to murder this fighter (no not a psychopath, he guessed that she was loaded with cash/magic and that looked like the main reason to me...). He knew that it was a tough thing to do but the character didn't know how dangerous she was, just that she was a very good fighter (although other members of the group knew it but they weren't there at the time.)

The problem is that by a miracle he managed to pull it off! (roll a nat 20 to hide that he using a psychic power, beat her spell resistance exactly by rolling a 19, she rolls a nat 1 on her save... Then latter he cdg her and she fail her save even though she had a +18 fort save and DR...).
Of course he has no idea how big the barrel of worms he has opened is... The fighter having quite an important but secret role among a powerful organisation.
Now MY problem is how to assign XP: He is L4, she was CR15!
.He faced her alone so doesn't feel right to split the XP with the rest of the group.
.He benefited from some pretty unique circumstance, making it what I felt was a EL8-9 encounters.
.But that's still too many XP and would take him way past the rest of the group.
.On the other hand, he will soon need the extra levels to survive the real assasins sent after him.

So my fellow DM, what should I do?

 

[Crothian]

give him the XP, but he can only gain one level with it and looses all the left over.

 

[Terath Ninir]

First, congratulate him.

Second, give him the CR 8-9 xp. Sure, it'll bump him up but, as you said, he'll need it.

If you're worried about the others falling behind, have the enemies knock him out and capture him. If they're that tough, they can do it without you just doing a bad DM deus ex machina. Once he's captured, the rest of the party can rescue him, and they get xp for that that he doesn't. So that he doesn't feel left out, he could learn important info when during his capture.

If you think you might have trouble getting them to rescue him, since they are on the evil side, have him have some important plot point with him. An item, a clue: something they have to find.

Oh, and unless he has specifically and carefully dispossed of her body, the trouble is just beginning for him. Her buddies find her and bring her back to life. And he thought her friends were trouble!

You could weave an entire campaign out of his dumb luck.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

How to correctly reward Luck

Rewarding absurd luck is a difficult thing to do. From an experience basis, thiings can be tricky since having players fall out of step is annoying, and can skew things for a while. The XP is your call.

I would be inclined to stiff him somewhat on the experience, to keep him somewhat more in step with the other players. I would make most of the rewards material.

And I would try to give the player the idea that the material rewards he obtains are the sort that make him question keeping them. If the deceased fighter was the part of a powerful organization, perhaps the treasure is marked, and any attempt to identify them scares the hell out of the NPC's. Having every shady type look at him in alarm and request that he leaves will make the player very nervous after a while. Let him twist on the rope of his own imagination for a while.

Of course, other then being marked, the loot should be pretty damn good. Just dont make it too good, and have her allies make an effort to get it back. Think of it like taking the Jacket of a Hells Angels Biker. Every other angel will want to take it back from you for dissing the angels. I think the same ought to apply here.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Agback]

My players have a unique gift for doing the unexpected.

Don't let it develop into a habit of reckoning not on consequences, nor breed an expectation of getting away with nonsense.

I think you have to play this straight. Give the soloist all the XP he lucked into, which will leave him 1 XP short of gaining two levels. Give him all the junk the NPC was carrying. But then have the NPCs friends estimate him as at least two levels tougher than their late friend, load for bear, and come for vengeance. Don't forget that they will Raise or Resurrect the victim if they can, and thus gain valuable intel.

Unfortunately this almost certainly means that a player is about to lose a favourite character. That is sad, but:

1. If your NPCs don't behave according to their knowledge and attitudes, players will find your world inconsistent, and will lose the ability to suspend disbelief.

2. If your NPCs don't behave according to their knowledge and attitudes, players will find your world inconsistent, and will lose the ability to understand the features of the environment and manipulate them to overcome challenges.

3. If you start letting PCs off, ignoring the consequences of their actions, your players will come to feel less satisfaction in their characters' accomplishments.

4. If the players learn to be a bit more careful about casing their jobs before they rush in they will be pleased about their improved skills, and their new circumspect habits will give you more loops into which to place your adventure hooks. You will be able to run a greater variety of different adventures in future if your players' characters' behaviour becomes more complex.

I was weak about this for years. My players acquired a habit of dealing with overwhelming challenges by undue aggression and waiting for me to write them out of their troubles. All the fun got sucked out of my game. And I had to kill lots of characters, adventures, parties, and campaigns to restore the credibility of my worlds.

Take my advice: don't let them start taking their characters hostage.

 

[Sigurd]

I agree with the others who said that he deserves a whack of experience for the kill. I would try not to telegraph all the ways he has to try and cover up the murder.

If the victems body is not destroyed and can be revived she seems high enough level that it is likely to happen. Perhaps there will be complications of the revival that will make her a more fitting enemy (lower level but more reasons to hate the whole party).

Have the organization the victem belonged to do the things you things your player really should have done before the murder. Scope out their victem -- all his\her friends -- and prepare to attack them when they are most vulnerable. Make sure you are realistic about the amount of work the victems relations will put into finding her murderer. Don't just haunt your players because she was high level.

Try and be true to your image of the victem before the murder and don't rewrite her to punish the player. At the same time don't short change your NPC's either.

It might also be possible that some of the equipment on the victem belonged to the victems organization, or they will try to claim them. Perhaps they don't care so long as the party completes the victems last job for the group?


S


Let us know how it works out.


S

 

[abri]

First thanks for all the answers.
It is perfectly in my intention to have the player be hunted: the fighter in question was gythyanki (in a campaign where they are stranded on the material plane and still unsure how they are supposed to interact with the world) and the silver sword she was carrying is a symbol.
Her death also cause several hundred gythyanki to go back on the war path...
This dumb luck open so many plot hooks its amazing.
BTW, the character perfectly knows that he has 2 days at most to leave the town, probably less. Finding the sword, he guessed in what kind of trouble he was.
Oh, it is almost impossible to be raised IMC...

 

[Quickleaf]

I assume you are using the standard DMG rules for awarding experience (which are really poor, in my opinion). Why should someone who decides to kill another for money/loot and gets incredibly lucky earn experience points? I have to disagree with everyone who says the PC should get experience points as per an EL 8-9 encounter. I would give even less than that, may an EL 3 encounter at most.

Here are some points to consider:
- The Gith Queen was at odds with the slain warrioress, fearing she would lead an uprising, and has been trying to get her psionic assassins to kill the warrior essfor months to no avail. All of a sudden in walks this one PC and the job is over! The Gith Queen is surely curious who did this deed for her, maybe seeing through the lies of her assassins who claim they did it. Once she finds the PC (and his party), she'll engage in a high-stakes game of political blackmail, eventually forcing them into her servitude. After all, she believes them to be highly effective assassins posing as adventurers.

- The silver sword is psionically linked to a sister blade owned by the dead warrioress' bonded battle partner Sirae. They both trained under the same mentor, and the psionic link between the two blades allows Sirae to gain many of the benefits of a familiar, including scrying on the blade. The PC's identity is quickly learned. Rather than an obvious hunt, Sirae decides to leak the information to the Gith Queen, hoping to set an elaborate trap to kill the Gith Queen's ranking servants AND the responsible PC in one fell swoop.

- Some kind of sentience inhabits the silver sword. It is actually a captured illithid psychic that the githyanki warrioress enslaved into her blade. Threatening to reveal the PC's identity, the blade demands the PC travel to a distant location to "destroy" the cursed blade and set free it enslaved githzerai spirit. Of course, the illithid is planning a way to possess the PC's body by freeing itself from the sword. Its threats are lies meant to intimidate.

- The PC's reputation *drastically* changes. Other githyanki who learn of the incident are most likely hostile to the PC, depending on how they viewed the warrioress. Githzerai and illithid will be favorably inclined toward the PC, as will all enemies of the githyanki. Assassins and other such scum will look up to the PC as a paragon of their kind. etc.

Good luck!

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I, too, think that the XP award system is not the best it could be. In my campaign I use it as more of a guideline but for purposes of the campaign I award XP for role playing, problem solving, etc., making the 'defeating of creatures' at something of a reduced rate.

I would certainly give the player a nice little extra package of XP but I certainly would not give him the several thousand he is 'entitled' to just because of some 20s and 1s.

 

[Blue]

I'd give the XP for a CR 8-9. Yes, it will bump him up, but if you're doing the occasional solo like this guy, then anyone can get out of whack.

It sounds like he's just notched up the encounters of the whole party - remember in 3.5 XP is by character, so if he allows the party to face toughter opponents and survive, they end up getting more XP from that then he does.

Remember that WHEN the warrior's comrade's / organization kill him, he is going to drop a level, and probably pawn some of the stuff to pay for a ressurection.

Run with it, it will make a unique twist to the campaign.

Cheers,
=Blue