DM Advice: handling 'he can't talk to me like that' ~cuts NPC throat~ players.

[TheAuldGrump]

The situation analogous to ordering a pizza is going to Storm Raven's game and bringing your World of Darkness or GURPS or whatever and DMing yourself, ignoring him.



Agreed. If you think there's a fundamental disconnect, you should take some time OOC and talk to the players about it.

"We attack the arbiter"

"OK guys, wait a second. You do know that he's the lawful authority in this region, so the paladin will get divine smackdown if he goes along with this. And if you take out the king's right hand man, he's going to declare you renegades and call in favors to have you hunted down. If I recall correctly, that's what he had you do five sessions ago, in fact, so you should know he'll escalate with more powerful adventurers. If you want to be fugitives from justice living on the run, go ahead, but don't expect your characters to have long lifespans."

There. The ball's back in the player's court, you haven't told them anything they shouldn't already know in character, and hopefully they've thought through their actions a little.

If they decide to go along with the Bad Idea anyway, well, they were warned, and can't blame you when the king declares them outlaws and sends a CR+3 encounter at them every day they're within his sphere of influence.

Hey you! Stop being reasonable here! There are people trying to argue!

Gods, some people.... Grumble, grumble, grumble....

This is of course the best answer.

The Auld Grump

 

[haakon1]

I agree with this approach with the proviso that there should be endgame scenarios besides "The king's endless stream of resources that appeared as soon as you started opposing him wear you down." If you start with a list of what the king has, what he can reasonably allocate to stopping the PCs, and what he can unreasonaly allocate once it becomes clear that the PCs do agree that an attack on the King's man is an attack on the King and are coming to finish the job.

Nod, definitely worth sketching out, and thinking about the King's personality -- is it possible he would eventually knuckle under to the PC's and decide he's lost enough folks, or will it become a vendetta with massive resources after the PC's? Will he send killer parties, or will his wrath be felt by outlawry -- the refusal of almost everyone to help the PC's in any way -- closing the shop when the PC's come into town, etc.

It could become a memorable campaign. Assuming the DM is fairly light on the PC's and they like the outlaw game, I envision a bloody assault on the King's castle and a TPK at the end, but smiles all around a fun but unusual experiment.

 

[Fenes]

I think a few of the responses were from the "the good guys have to win" school of DMing, where consequences are not simulationist, but actually railroading for the desired result (punishment for killing the arbiter).

The people who advocate the "send in 2xparty level NPC adventurers" response need to consider the ramifications of this - if that's the usual consequence in the campaign, why have the adventurers been fighting CR-appropriate foes, and were not sent to battle foes half their level as well? If that's not the usual response, why does it happen now, and not back 2 levels when the adventurers were hard pressed to get help against overwhelming numbers of orcs attacking the kingdom?

Simulationism is all nice and well, but you have to consider that whenever you bring in those killer NPCs to squash evil PCs, the Players are allowed to ask where those NPCs were when it was just the PCs and the demon horde.

So, if you go the simulation route, and all "consequences!", be fair. Set the ressources of the kingdom beforehand, and use them logically all the time, not just when the PCs come up against the kingdom.
You may very well discover that a kingdowm that has the resosurces to squash a mid-level PC party like bugs has a limited number of adventuring opportunities for low-level and mid-level PCs.

And of course, in a simulated world, treat the PCs like NPCs. If the nobles of a realm can get away with a crime, then so should the PCs, if they are powerful enough. So, in order to use the "Now suffer the consequences" approach, make sure you allow the PCs to bring the same amount of wrath down on their foes ("Ok... back when we had proof of the Duke killing his wife, why didn't he get smacked down with those ultra-NPCs? You said the duke was too powerful to be toppled over his wife's death, but if the king has these killers on call, how could that be? And if the duke has similar people on call, why are we still alive after investigating his wife's death?")

 

[roguerouge]

I'm still in favor of giving the game and the players the benefit of the doubt, having the paladin be switched over to a CG Paladin of Freedom variant, and move the campaign towards a freedom fighter mode. The populace is against them, the patrols of mooks are out there looking for them, and if the reward gets high enough a level appropriate party just might track them down. But if they could only find the Resistance....

The players get to play the game they really want to play, the DM gets to hit them with the Consequences stick and keep his game world internally consistent, and everyone gets to keep playing. Everybody wins.

I wonder what the OP ended up doing?

 

[haakon1]

And of course, in a simulated world, treat the PCs like NPCs. If the nobles of a realm can get away with a crime, then so should the PCs, if they are powerful enough. So, in order to use the "Now suffer the consequences" approach, make sure you allow the PCs to bring the same amount of wrath down on their foes ("Ok... back when we had proof of the Duke killing his wife, why didn't he get smacked down with those ultra-NPCs? You said the duke was too powerful to be toppled over his wife's death, but if the king has these killers on call, how could that be? And if the duke has similar people on call, why are we still alive after investigating his wife's death?")

You're conflating power (level) with legitimacy (position in the feudal order -- I assume feudal since it's D&D and you said "Duke").

It's quite possible that being high level does not give a character greater "immunity" to behave obnoxiously (legitimacy is based on birth, or election, or the choice of the gods (as in Tibet), not the ability to kill stuff or how much money you have).

Or you could rule it that high level does get you legitimacy in your campaign/this particular country.

I see the question (for the DM) as: Is the campaign a world where a Sergeant who's tricky enough can take over and be dictator ruling by fear and the iron fist (1970s Uganda -- think Idi Amin) or is it a world where privilege is inherited and rank is sometimes given to powerful adventurers, but only when they respect and serve the legitimate ruler (Elizabethean England -- think Sir Francis Drake)? The D&D default is likely that both exist, but in different countries.

Also, you're conflating crimes against a person (the Duke murdered his own wife) with crimes against the state (the Duke murdered the king's arbiter). A state has a choice about whether to look the other way when a crime against a person is committed. (Ah, the Duke's kid beat up a vagrant again, but we need the Duke's troops for the war, so we'll ignore it.) But the state, if it wants to stay in business as a state, has no choice when it's authority is directly threatened. (The Duke tossed our arbiters down the well, in front of the populace? The secessionist devil! This means war!)

I'm talking about the difference between OJ Simpson killing his wife versus Timothy McVey blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Both are murderers. One walked, the other was executed. The state (and the people) are annoyed by but can tolerate the first, and even if OJ had been convicted, execution seems unlikely. The second, there was no room for mercy -- McVey needed to die for attacking the nation, and indeed he did, quite swiftly compared to most death-penalty cases.

Max Weber, one of the fathers of political science, came up with the definition of the state that still works best:
"The state is the organization which holds a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a given territory."

The PC's in this case not only commited illegitimate violence (murder of a person) but also directly challenged the state. As a poli sci/history major DM, I would make life very, very tough for a party foolish enough to think it's above the law, if they were in a place where there is a law/state. A state that kowtows to cop killers is no state -- and citizen cop killers are a much greater threat to the state (to its monopoly on power) than an external force like orc raiders killing random peasants.

You're singing:
"I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy
I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense
Arbiter John always hated me, why I do not know
But my level was higher, so I shot, I shot him down
And now he knows his place"

I'm singing:
"Bad boys, bad boys, what you gunna do?
What you gunna do when they come for you?
Policeman he give you no break
Not even the soldier man he give you no break"

 

[Fenes]

You're conflating power (level) with legitimacy (position in the feudal order -- I assume feudal since it's D&D and you said "Duke").

No, I am looking at it as a pure power question. Legitimacy and lineage and nobility is window dressing in this situation. It's first and foremost a policial question.

Consider the PCs, if they are mid to high level, as having power equivalent to at least a duke - more likely a foreign power like a viking state. Now, the question is not whether they committed a crime against a state, or a person, the question is: Will the King go to war with that power over the death of an arbiter?

We're talking about a highly mobile force that can wreck havoc on a kingdom. The King might very well win, but the kingdom will be suffering.

Will he choose war, or will he choose a pretext like "Well, that arbiter acted without my clearance, and was insuting honest people" to avoid war?

Or, as another analogy: If the arbiter had been rude to a foreign noble (like, say a viking), and had been killed, would the king go to war with the vikings?

I think you either play a non-standard D&D game, where kingdoms have much greater ressources than in the DMG, or you underestimate the destruction a high-level party can cause. Once your party has the spells and mobility to ruin an entire harvest, and burn cities, and the fighting power to hack through an entire company witout breaking a sweat, they become a power even kings have to respect. Nobility, shmobility - that's pure politics. Law doesn't enter unless the king really follows "Justice be done, even if the world may be undone".

Feudalism is all nice and good, but power tops it everytime.

Unless, of course, the King has his own high-level adventurers able to handle such threats, but then - what the heck were the PCs doing then until now, and where have those guys been during the last three crisises?

 

[Fenes]

The PC's in this case not only commited illegitimate violence (murder of a person) but also directly challenged the state. As a poli sci/history major DM, I would make life very, very tough for a party foolish enough to think it's above the law, if they were in a place where there is a law/state. A state that kowtows to cop killers is no state -- and citizen cop killers are a much greater threat to the state (to its monopoly on power) than an external force like orc raiders killing random peasants.

I see it very differently. I see a king having to decide whether or not some stupid arbiter who managed to provoke something with the power of an army into killing him is worth risking the kingdom.

It's not a case of a copkiller for me, it's a case of "What did that man do? Was he mad? Trying to bully around the group that eradicated the northern orc horde that wrecked our neightbour kingdowm two months ago? What was the fool thinking!!"

Are the PCs in the right? Probably not. But the certainly are in the might, and in a feudal society, and even in our modern world, Might makes Right.

Unless of course we leave simulationism, but then all bets are off.

 

[billd91]

I see it very differently. I see a king having to decide whether or not some stupid arbiter who managed to provoke something with the power of an army into killing him is worth risking the kingdom.

It's not a case of a copkiller for me, it's a case of "What did that man do? Was he mad? Trying to bully around the group that eradicated the northern orc horde that wrecked our neightbour kingdowm two months ago? What was the fool thinking!!"

Are the PCs in the right? Probably not. But the certainly are in the might, and in a feudal society, and even in our modern world, Might makes Right.

Unless of course we leave simulationism, but then all bets are off.

But you're forgetting other powers the king has at his disposal. He's got networks of justice enforcement and other government officials providing him with information, he's got the deep pocket power of a taxed populace, and if the PCs have been big enough jerks, better relations with the masses than the PCs have.

The PCs just got the money in their pockets and swords/spells at their sides... and they have to sleep sometime.

 

[WayneLigon]

The PC's in this case not only commited illegitimate violence (murder of a person) but also directly challenged the state. As a poli sci/history major DM, I would make life very, very tough for a party foolish enough to think it's above the law, if they were in a place where there is a law/state. A state that kowtows to cop killers is no state -- and citizen cop killers are a much greater threat to the state (to its monopoly on power) than an external force like orc raiders killing random peasants.

It still comes down to the adventurers - especially if they're above 12th level or so - having a unique degree of personal power that our real world has never had to deal with, so we have no methods in place for it. If Mr Random Mad Bomber can teleport, bounce bullets, and stuff like that then Mr Random Mad Bomber would still be at large no matter the wishes of the State; the State would probably be powerless against him and people would have to accept that fact.

It's not a matter of the state kowtowing or not; it's a matter of 'do the adventurers give them a choice about whether or not to kowtow'.

We can, of course, turn this right around.

It comes down to 'Do the adventurers have the power they think they have'? Usually, the answer to that is 'no'. When this case comes about, it's because of lax GMing or a GM that doesn't, at the heart of it, want to piss people off by being clever.

Lack of rules knowledge also helps this. The Archmage might be 22nd level and have a contingency spell on him to teleport him to a safe location when he drops below 10 HP but I bet he doesn't carry that 1500gp statue that has to be on his person (nor the majority of his magic items) with him into the bathtub.

Did you, off the top of your head, know that about contingency? I didn't.

Your 0-level maid delivers his wine, then hits him in the stomach and holds him under water. No spellcasting, no holding his breath; three rounds of missing his dump-stat CON saves and he's dead no matter how many hit points he has. I'm sure there's some weird-ass Feat that lets you conjure without speaking but most people aren't going to have all the weird-ass feats that let you do something like that.

 

[Storm Raven]

I see it very differently. I see a king having to decide whether or not some stupid arbiter who managed to provoke something with the power of an army into killing him is worth risking the kingdom.

The problem with this thinking is this: if the King (or any other ruler) demonstrates his inability to prevent such challeneges to his authority, he's not going to stay in power long. Unless you posit a very unstable situation at present, those who are in power will be prepared for such problems and have ways of dealing with them, even if they have to go and deal with them themselves.

If they don't, then thier authority will (probably rightly) be questioned by just about everyone around them, and they will probably be overtrhown in short order by someone who can hold on to power. I can't think of any historical situation in which a ruler (or ruling group) that could not defend itself stayed in power for any appreciable length of time.