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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1880287" data-attributes="member: 7240">How on earth do you play NPCs? Do you write down their response to every possible thing the characters could do in advance or are you a living breathing human like the rest of us who designs NPCs with motivations and personalities and plays them like people?What is your evidence that they didn't? All you know is that they didn't successfully persuade their superiors of the wrongness of taking the artifact. For all we know, they may well have been strong advocates for the party.What nonsense! They knew of the existence of these people. They knew that the gnomes were going to report to them. It is the job of the players not the GM to ensure that they meet the people relevant to their quest. Perhaps a reasonable precondition for agreeing to be separated from the artifact would have been to speak to the people who were actually in charge. Actually if you read the approximated dialogue, you'll see that they were going to have their familiars guard the artifact and then abandoned the plan in mid-stream for no good reason. The NPCs indicated that they couldn't put a human-sized person in the same box as the artifact but took no position regarding familiars. Also, are you really suggesting that these gnomes were really the only possible option for shipping this thing? On what evidence do you make this assertion? We don't know enough about where the characters were to know what other options may have been available. Yes. But if I become convinced that a king's ambassador is on my side, it tells me nothing about whether the king is on my side.You mean like all their previous interactions, conflicts and other experiences with these gnomes? How is that not information? Remembering what happened last week and knowing who you're talking to is not metagaming.I suppose that would be true of a player who only joined the campaign in that session. But I believe all the players were veterans.Then why isn't it an evil spell in the mechanics?It was very lawful. The party made the agreement; if they did so in good faith, the geas would not affect them; if they didn't, this would be divine punishment for their bad faith. I agree that it I had been the GM, I would have made the geas an explicit part of the contract, basically saying, "I'm going to cast a spell that ensures our agreement is adhered-to." But that's a pretty minor quibble in the grand scheme of things. Geas is sometimes a punitive spell but it seems to me that the spell is more a magical mechanism of enforcing a contract that would otherwise be unenforceable.How is making people abide by an agreement inherently chaotic?What gives you the sense that they met the cleric, made the agreement and got the 60,000gp in one day? I have created ecclesiastical judge NPCs who always have geas prepared because their business is enforcing contracts and meting out punishments. If that was the main job of the cardinal, I would expect her to have the spell prepared in any case.The Silent Spell feat adds one level to a spell. So, where does you "many high level slots" come from?How on earth do you run NPCs? Seriously!? Or are your players just really really predictable?Don't do this Ambrus. Admit you're wrong only if you're wrong. Don't cave in just because people are getting upset. Otherwise, you'll give them an incentive to get upset again. And nobody wants that.</blockquote>

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