DMs opinion wanted

[ced1106]

Recently one of the princes of the kingdom has come here to set up this town as a defensible position from which to expand the kingdom. Since arriving he has learned of a potential threat from a growing cult among the area's goblinoids.

Random suggestion: Throw the PCs in jail for hanging, then have a cult sympathizer appear at the jail cell, offering to get the PCs out. Have said sympathizer suggest that, while ostensibly LN, the prince is really LE, and building up military power for his own purposes. The sympathizer doesn't explain, of course, why he's letting the PCs go. When the PCs break out (and kill some more guards, of course), have the town alarm go off, and several unusually well orchestrated town criers declare that the "Infernal human sympathizers to the evil humanoids have escaped!" That's right -- **someone** has set them up for some nefarious purpose.

Hey, just because you're some town threatened by a bunch orcs doesn't mean you can't have an agenda of your own!


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[Agback]

Furthermore, if the players are in the middle of an adventure, "removing a PC from play" (prison or death) tends to complicate things

Only temporarily: because if you slap the players down at once you don't get any more trouble. Whereas setting an example that PCs can behave like invulnerable jerks, and thus get the the GM to make their problems go away, tends to complicate things for a long term.

I let my players get so out of hand that when I decided to start letting PCs face the reasonable consequences of their players taking them hostage two whole campaigns were destroyed. But I consider that a reasonable price to pay for thirteen years of gaming I have had since that have been free of trouble with the "One move and the idiot gets it" gambit. Losing just one adventure is a much better price, and a bit of trouble introducing a new character is more reasonable still.

Besides which, hanging a character in D&D does not mean that that character has to be replaced. If the authorities let his friends collect the corpse it only costs 950 gp to get a Raise Dead cast, and the character is only set back one level. (Plus which the character may lose all his property if he committed a felony.)

Regards,


Agback

"To keep a man warm for a night, light him a fire.
To keep him warm for the rest of his life, set him on fire."

 

[the Jester]

I pretty much agree with Agback...

If this kind of thing happened in a similar town imc, I'd enforce the stabilization rolls, first off; and while bystanders would help the guard, they certainly wouldn't help the guard's assailant.

Assuming the pc stabilized, he'd wake up days later in a dirty cell with no gear, and if he'd shown any spell abilities, he'd prolly be in mage cuffs (stop those fingers from waggling). If the guard died, he'd wake up minus his tongue, too, and his barrister would try to defend him in court, but it's hard to contribute to your defense without being able to talk or write.

I don't like giving pcs carte blanche to destroy the setting's versimillitude. Whoever it was that said you ought to figure out what would happen to an npc in these circumstances was dead on; the same penalties should apply.

But then, I don't think a good campaign should railroad pcs into a story either. I think it should follow them through a setting full of adventure hooks, and let them bite at what they want. If the party was tough enough to wipe out the town, I'd let 'em (for instance, a 19th-level party against a small town would prolly succeed- even if they had to retreat a few times to refresh their spells and heal and stuff).

I'd also watch their alignments closely. Neither of the two who fought the guards were lawful, were they? And neither is lawful now, even if they were, right?