I need ideas for next session!

[Rand564]

So, my players have been in a big city for a while and it is essentially run by three factions. The noble faction, which they have worked for and were rewarded with a small manor in the area. The church faction (worshipers of the God of merchants, trade and money), which is in a power struggle with the nobles and from the start have hated the players (one worships a banned deity, another is a tiefling and seen as evil and the final one is a cursed pirate seen as tainted). Finally, the third faction is essentially the mob.

Early in their stay in the city, they were looking for work and were told to deliver a package upon finding out it was drugs, they burned them. The mob clearly wasn't happy and so they told them that they had to pay for it or else. The party wasn't scared; however, the mob kept harrasing them until they fireballed the party's horses as a warning. In retaliation, the party attacked a tavern that was a front for the mob, burning it down and then find and set fire to one of the mob's warehouses. The fire goes out of control and they end up setting fire to buildings around it and eventually burn down a part of a church controlled district. The paladin tried to help save people while the rest ran away. There were witnesses.

The mob retaliates with a bit squad, which the party narrowly survived. Before they can be be attacked again or Run, then church goes to their home and brings the party on for questioning by the High Inquisitor. A failed save vs zone of truth later, the paladin confesses their involvement in the Fire that killed many. The paladin does also willingly share information about the underground tunnels the mob uses. However, when stripped of his belongings to be thrown I jail, they find his symbol that he uses as a focus and to pray to the banned God. This is the second time he is caught with it and only escaped before thanks to some really good checks.

They are currently jailed by the church's inquisition awaiting a decision. Right now, the High inquisitor is the highest authority in the church there and they really annoyed him last they met. The church has a special punishment where they take all the criminal's belongings and fuse a metal mask to their faces to mark them as sinners

Thoughts on how to approach this? What punishment should the church issue? What do you think should happen next? I would prefer not having the nobles just save them... that sounds kinda boring and gets rid of most consequences.

 

[ccs]

Note: I like cannibalizing existing 5e adventures.

Well I guess I'd start by having the church strip them of all their possessions & fuse metal masks to their faces.
Via a grand ceremony - either in public or in the cathedral/temple.

And not only would their possessions be confiscated (ALL of them, including holy symbols, spell components, spell books, stuff stored back in their manor), they'd be destroyed. As in thrown into a Sphere of Annihilation or such. Afterall, you wouldn't this sin-tainted gear corrupting anyone else, would you? The manor would become property of the church. This would happen before the masks are fitted. Because no matter what happens next the PCs will be reduced to having only the clothes on their backs & their new masks.

Nobody in town will help them remove those masks & incur whatever curse triggers (something else the PCs don't know about ).

After that?
* How about casting them into the streets & seeing how they fair/what they do?
Of course this sets them up as easy prey for the mob that they didn't previously fear....
Wich means they're on a clock (not that you should tell them this) - the longer they're in the city the more likely they are to run into the mob. They might also run into others who're out for some private justice for starting that fire that cost them family/friends/homes/shops/etc....
Of these two groups the mob's the best one to be caught by - because one way or the other they still want their $.
Unfortunately now the PCs don't have anything to pay that debt with.
Just killing the fools won't get the mob its' $.
Two ideas spring to mind here:
1) The PCs are coerced into working for the mob.
Hmm, what kinds of jobs to send them on??? Characters might be a bit unreliable though.
2) The mob sells them into slavery. Or worse.
In a PF campaign we had something similar happen. The PCs ran afoul of a criminal group & got them selves sold to pirates. We then proceeded to run the Skull & Shackles AP.
If you want to go worse you could sell them to Drow slavers & run something like Out of the Abyss .

Of course the players might leave the city & go seeking adventure elsewhere. In this event there should be bounties out on them by the mob &/or angry citizens. So every now & then encounters with bounty hunters.

* If you want the PCs to escape?
How do you feel about..... Cloud Giants? As in the opening of Storm Kings Thunder?
** As the PCs are having the masks bonded to them a cloud giant castle drifts over the city & starts bombarding it. Followed by giants descending, causing havoc, & making off with some obelisk/boulder/etc.
The point is that in the ensuing chaos & rubble the PCs manage to escape.
** Or you could have the eccentric cloud giant mage from that one descend in his floating tower, snatch up the characters (with gryphons!) & wisk them away into some giant related plot (either long term or one-off).
Again, bounty hunters should be sent out.

 

[jayoungr]

I'm assuming you don't want to have the church just take all their possessions and fuse metal masks to their faces? Because that does seem like the logical next step.

Assuming you want to find a credible way to avoid it, here's a suggestion:

The nobles intervene, but don't have the clout to free them from all consequences. Maybe a powerful noble family is secretly a follower of this banned god, and that drives them to stick their neck out on the PCs' behalf? Anyway, the nobles strike a deal with the church: send the PCs on some kind of quest considered to be a suicide mission, perhaps to retrieve some relic thought to be irretrievably lost (ideally it should be something both the church and the nobles would like to see returned to the city). Give them magical collars that will strangle them if they try to run away, go off the prescribed route, or dawdle too long on the way. If they retrieve the item, the church will let them go as a favor to the nobles. If they die trying, justice has been served. If they come back empty-handed, then the church gets to confiscate all their stuff and brand them with metal masks.

 

[Oofta]

It kind of depends on what kind of game you wan to run. Can the PCs get away with whatever they want or are there consequences, even if they are character ending consequences?

There is no right or wrong answer to that, it depends on what kind of game you want. If you want the true-to-the-world answer then sometimes the PCs will lose. They get stripped of all their gear, have iron masks. Possibly executed if they continue in their ways. I've taken that approach in the past and had a PC executed by the authorities.

If I go with this approach (PCs are not invulnerable) it's something I discuss in a session 0. It's kind of a preference because if there are high level PCs in the world, there are high level NPCs some of whom enforce the law.

The other option is to give them an out. There are a few possibilities

• The church makes them a deal. Do this mission that's probably tantamount to suicide but if they survive they'll be set free. They'll have to submit to a geas or similar of course.
• A previously unknown party intervenes and helps them with a prison break. Perhaps a faction of the church, or maybe other followers of the banned god?
• Something disastrous happens and in the chaos they can escape.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Suicide squad or the dirty dozen. They are forgiven (really allowed to escape) if they accept to help in a special favor. This is a poisonous gift because they are used as bait/lure to attack an enemy. This enemy thinks the players has got something he wants, for example a false clue to discover a hidden secret.

 

[ccs]

However it turns out, let us know.

 

[Numidius]

Hi. My ideas:

- They undergo full punishment (masks, naked, exiled...) and Players make new characters in the same city, or wherever the guilty Pcs are taken to. Old Characters will be around as Npc, a living memorandum not to mess with fire & Authority in the future.

-They undergo full punishment; then game resumes a few years later, and the iron masked Pcs are now leading a gang on their own, running business and planning a vengeance on the Town/Church. The gang doesn't need to be full fleshed, it is there only to counter the armed front of Town/Church, thus permitting the Pc to act more freely on a larger scale.

-Do they now actually have any contacts in town that can help? Like friends, family from their backgrounds or past adventures? What do your Players think of the situation they are in? Did you all, at the table, discuss possible solutions, outcomes, openly? Are you open to suggestion from them, and are they willing to offer some to you?

 

[MarkB]

How committed are you/they to continuing this city scenario? If a change of pace or scene is called for, this seems like a good opportunity. Two scenarios that would work:

1. The PCs are sentenced to hard labour at a remote mining camp the Church owns. En route there, the caravan is attacked and the PCs break free, starting again in a new location.

2. The PCs are sentenced to the whole metal-face-masks deal, to be carried out in a public square. As the whole thing is getting underway, the town is attacked by some external threat, such as an army or dragon, and the PCs get drafted in to help out. The location stays the same, but the threats and relationships are drastically changed.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6990461]Rand564[/MENTION]: from your description of events in your game, I can't tell how they came about at the table, in the course of game play.

Eg was the spread of the fire in the city your establishment of a consequence for a failed check by a player, or was it you as GM freely narrating stuff that you thought logically followed from the actions the players had their PCs take?

The same question applies to the mob hit squad that found them and left them too weakened to avoid the church inquisitors.

If this stuff is all you as GM making decisions, then I think it is at the harder end of things to bring the campaign to an end, or to brutally punish the players (via stripping their PCs of gear etc), by more GM-decision making. That would seem to be getting close to "Rocks fall, everybody dies."

On the other hand, if the players have been declaring actions for their PCs, which fail, and you've been establishing the consequences of these failures, then keep going with that: let the players declare actions for their PCs to try and escape (which might eg include CHA (performance) checks to persuade/seduce a jailer; or calling in some Background-related resource/connection; or a combination of a Nature check to lure a sparrow to a jail window plus a Speak with Animals spell or ability to send a message to a friend; etc) and see where that leads.

 

[Imaculata]

I would have a shady church member approach the imprisoned players and offer them a way out of the whole ordeal. Perhaps someone who wishes to dethrone the High inquisitor, and then blame his death on the players?

If the players accept his help, he will organize an attack on the High inquisitor during the trial of the players while making sure most of the men present during the trial are loyal to him and not the High inquisitor. The High inquisitor would have nowhere to go, and the players would be caught right in the middle of this attempted assasination, and forced to fight their way out.

But then the real question is, why does he need the players for this? Possibly because he hasn't been able to sway enough people within the church, so his plan is to secretly arm the players as well and have them fight by his side. Of course after the High Inquisitor is dead, he has no further need for the players... but surely the players will see this coming and plan accordingly.

The irony here would be that the replacing High Inquisitor is obviously going to be worse than the one that is assasinated.

Some advantages to this scenario:

-You don't railroad the outcome. It's merely a plothook. The choice is entirely up to the players.
-You get to play out part of the trial and confront the players with the consequences (and victims) of their actions.
-You could even have one of the mobsters testify as a witness for added hilarity.
-You build suspense leading up to a huge fight, which the church is an excellent location for.
-There is a possibility that the players are simply sentenced, if they decline the offer. So the outcome is not set in stone.
-The players also have an option to save the life of the High Inquisitor, depending on who they side with.