If someone of my group reads this .. go away! :)
The BBG is the justices of the city, he knows his enemies very well and uses every possibility to hurt them. He uses his influence and power in the city and denounces the PCs, call them murderer and let them hunt by the guards.
The PCs recognized this, they go to the guards and surrender (the paladin believes in the truth). They get jailed and wait for an court hearing etc.
Ok and now?
I want to create a good plot around this situation and in need some ideas.
The BBG knows that he will get problems as soon as detect magic etc comes in play. So he will try to eliminate the PCs as soon as possible to prevent a court hearing.
Any ideas how i can fill this plot with life?
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Can someone tell me what BBG (or BBEG as I've also seen) stands for?
My GM seems physically incapable of running a campaign in which a thieves' guild doesn't exist, so maybe they're planning a jailbreak that the PCs could get embroiled in?
Maybe instead of sending assassins, the villain sends in the siege weapons to destroy the entire jail, hoping to rid himself of several other prisoners in one fell swoop? This seems like it would provide a little more opportunity to go wrong in a way Our Heroes could exploit, plus it gives them an advantage to expose the villain once people start looking into what actually happened at La Bastille. When they get out, they find everybody thinks it was an invading army, and that now their Fearless Leader is talking about going to war with the neighboring country that "started it".
BBEG=Big Bad Evil Guy. It is normally the "boss" encounter.
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Play through the trial, have them under real pressure: give Justice Ironbriar some kind of alignment concealment.
Have a respected paladin of another faith (Iomedae or Sarenrae) come and detect evil, circle of truth, etc.
- The PCs have a moment of high drama but are proved innocent.
- They still don't know if anyone is corrupt (or at least who it is).
Without understanding WHY the detects are bad, it's hard to answer there...
For it being be all and end all of finding out the truth... There are a large number of classes and abilities that fool things like 'zone of truth'. Master Spy anyone? Non-detection and Mis-direction are both hours per level. Glibness also for just outright lying. I personally would probably show up as good in a detect, but it doesn't mean I've never committed a crime.
If there are casters in the party, I'd say that the first movement by the BBEG would be that any magical detections are in-admissable in court as they can be faked / overcome by those with knowledge and as casters, these guys obviously qualify. To a bunch of seasoned adventurers, overcoming magical detection is trivial. You have to rely on hard (and meticulously manufactured) evidence.
two quick ideas:
...
- someone (eg mysterious lady) frees the party and urges them to flee - she might know/tell them they wont get a fair hearing
---> this someone could also tipp them to find proof for BBG being the BBG during the night to publically reveal him during the hearing
As a variant of that, have the Jailor open and candid like the Jailor of Chateau D'if in Count of Monte Cristo.
"No, my dear Dantes. I know perfectly well that you are innocent. Why else would you be here? If you were truly guilty, there are a hundred prisons in France where they would lock you away. But Chateau d'If is where is they put the ones they're ashamed of. "
He can either be genuinely remorseful over the position he's but have no alternative, or just an arrogant <expletive deleted> who thinks he's well protected enough that he can say that to prisoners and get away with it. Assume that he's actually in with the BBEG, and you have someone who is supposed to make sure that the prisoners are 'taken care of' before they get to the trial. Ensure that there is overcrowding enough that they can contact the other innocent prisoners and they'll bring out similar stories that they are actually innocent and have just managed to peeve the wrong person somehow.
It now becomes a choice of what game the PCs want to play.
- 'Survive to the trial'
2 months of 'Whoops... was that black lotus extract in your food'
or
- 'jailbreak and risk it all'.
Where they need to gather enough evidence to clear themselves and prove the system completely corrupt.
Potentially... the second one could be sold to the pally as an even better option on the basis of if they clear themselves in the trial, the other prisoners (who by now they know are completely innocent) probably aren't going to be freed at the same time... some of them already having been found guilty on planted evidence etc.
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Without understanding WHY the detects are bad, it's hard to answer there...
For it being be all and end all of finding out the truth... There are a large number of classes and abilities that fool things like 'zone of truth'. Master Spy anyone? Non-detection and Mis-direction are both hours per level. Glibness also for just outright lying. I personally would probably show up as good in a detect, but it doesn't mean I've never committed a crime.
If there are casters in the party, I'd say that the first movement by the BBEG would be that any magical detections are in-admissable in court as they can be faked / overcome by those with knowledge and as casters, these guys obviously qualify. To a bunch of seasoned adventurers, overcoming magical detection is trivial. You have to rely on hard (and meticulously manufactured) evidence.
This depends upon your world: at what level is it trivial to overcome these abilities?
Misdirection will eat up 5 second level spells for a party of five, and that will cover them for 5/6 hours. Your wizard is going to have 3/4 castings of nondetection (and I don't really see the application of nondetection).
Master Spy will be a 13th level character before getting shift alignment.
Your characters are level 5/6: In my Magnimar that makes them some of the most powerful people in the city and they are not especially well-equipped to knock out a paladin's detect evil (remember as well, he can do it every few minutes during a trial that lasts all day).
This solution will get them back on track with the adventure while maintaining some mystery/suspense.
You've got to consider if a Justice has a right to alter the rules for evidence? Aren't they supposed to enforce the rules, not make them?
Maybe this solution doesn't suit your game, that's groovy, but it is still a valid approach.
let them go to jail till the trial.
the BBEG will try to kill them something like this:
1. day, poison in their food
2. day, poison in their water
3. strong poisonous gas
4. assassin.
So they will get weaker and weaker if they can't avoid the poison, and have to face a few thugs without their gear.
Then at the trial they have to convince the judge to launch an investigation against the BBEG (his boss), and sent for an official high ranking mage and the royal guard (or whatever is above the BBEG) to arrest him later.
convincing the judge will not be easy, and you have to break the fear of the people so that they pressure the officials.
RE: Non-Detection
From the SRD
"The warded creature or object becomes difficult to detect by divination spells such as clairaudience/clairvoyance, locate object, and detect spells"
Explicitly it blocks the whole detect line. Implicitly (us of "such as" implies that these are examples, not a complete list) it wards from any divination.
Its not my game I'm looking at. I'm just trying to understand his to help a lil. :) If that's the power level we're looking at, then it's less trivial. But a pally with anything more than detect evil (which I'll discuss in a minute) is looking at 10th level (for discern lies). It is a 1 round per level spell which he can do once per day. A whole minute where the pally knows if someone is lying isn't that hard for someone to dance around the truth for. Also if your scaling power like that where 5 / 6 is super powerful, then finding 10th level pallys is not going to be something readily done. Sure you can get a 7th cleric, but that's interrupting them every 45 seconds to re-cast.
In your pally example, I'd question what the validity of a Detect Evil is in the court room. Just because someone is evil doesn't mean that anything of substance has changed. At best you can cast aspersions on character quality, but standing up in a court room and saying "He drowns kittens" will probably earn a "And that has what to do with the case at hand? By all means schedule a cruelty to animals case tomorrow, and have your evidence prepared, but today we're looking at the murders YOU committed, not my personal habits." From memory in some RL countries prior history of convictions cannot be entered in as evidence because they have nothing to do with the case at hand and affect the jury being impartial or they have to show relevance before being admitted into evidence.
Or in short....
Being Good doesn't mean your innocent of everything.
Being Evil doesn't mean your guilty of everything.
A court of LAW doesn't (shouldn't) care if your good or not, only if you broke the LAW. Stealing bread to feed your family is still guilty stealing (though you'd want to get leniency in the sentencing part).
The Paladin has no remit to turn the Detect on the Judge as he is not on trial here. Questions might become awkward if he starts to ask why not, but again... the judge isn't the one on trial here. If he has the protection of the system, he will use it to ensure that the case stays firmly on the PCs no matter how much the PCs try to derail it... If the pally is a guest in his court room rather than a formal part of the whole process, then the judge will be within his rights to remove him or 'gag' him if he breaks some of the agreed terms (which might be "This is about these accused. If you find someone else in the balconies or the rest of the courtroom who is evil, your word that it doesn't get out. We've got rules here you know!"
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I think it's awesome that your Paladin turned himself in. In my opinion he deserves his day in court for that alone. Instead of having the BBEG try and kill them, have the BBEG gloat and be overconfident. He can't believe this idiot just played right into his hands.
Then, let the Paladin have his day in the spotlight. Let him come up with an inspiring speech to address the judge and the audience. Let him have the satisfaction of seeing his words have an effect...he starts to see a glimmer of hope in the commoners' eyes as they're inspired by his words...
...and then the Judge breaks the spell and pronounces a sentence of death. There's outrage in the courtroom. The protestors are quickly and brutally put down. The Paladin and his crew are dragged back to their prison cell and will be hung at dawn. Now they have to escape. Maybe now the old woman comes. Or maybe it's a whole "crew" of commoners, each who was so inpsired by the paladin's speech that they have decided to take the ultimate risk and help him escape. They're all pathetic commoner-1s but they each have one special skill...a blacksmith to cut the bars...a tavern wench to distract the guards...whatever.
And when the characters successfully escape, they become folk heroes.
Paladins are awesomeness wrapped in cool. Let him be heroic, man!
Yeah, have them broken out of prison by a group of citizens who say they have had enough of the Justicier and his kind of rough justice, and not to mention his obvious connections with evil-doers like the Skinsaw men.
These guys though turn out to be Sczarni (sp?)... Who want the PCs to do their dirty work for them and get rid of the competition.
In short, have the PCs work for the lesser of two evils, but they should only find this out much further down the line; Like during the beginning of book 4 or something... Have a "What have we DONE?!?" moment.
:)
Ultradan
Following on to Movin's idea that the other justices might be curious about the trial, the paladin character probably has some other paladins of his order in Magnimar. They will watch the trial, too. The bad guy wants to avoid a trial, right?
Do you have the next module, the Hook Mountain Massacre?
Then put them on a boat to Turtleback Ferry and start the next module early. After they finish up with the Hook Mountain Massacre, they will be heroes in Magnimar itself and have enough influence that Justice Ironbriar dare not interfer with them again as they resume their investigation. They will even be high enough level to easily take on Xanesha, who can barely be overcome by a sixth level party. Assume that the Skinsaw Cultists conduct only a few minor murders while the party is off at Fort Rannick.
The party will be too low a level to handle the Hook Mountain challenges alone, so send them to Fort Rannick escorted by a sixth- or seventh-level guard who can aid them. Shalelu will talk her way into becoming the second escort guard. Also let them find some good magical weapons in the secret cave armory at Fort Rannick. The party will soon rescue three Black Arrow rangers who join them as NPCs, so having an extra NPC won't change the adventure much. The Black Arrows will be shocked to learn that the party did not actually volunteer for Fort Rannick and the party will learn the truth.
If the paladin's playing sufficiently law-and-order to turn himself in, he's going to be reluctant to get Escaping Lawful Confinement on his rap sheet.
If you intend to bust him out, try to have some kind of evidence that the party's not going to be treated fairly. Assassination attempts, or even the word of a credible-seeming person may do it, but depending how flexible he is about following plot leads, you could be putting him in a helluva bind by just dynamiting his cell door and telling him it's time to go.
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Since this thread is now in the Rise of the Runelords subforum, I am going to skip the spoiler box.
First, for the posters who worry about the justice being detectably evil, the character description says that he casts Undetectable Alignment on himself every day.
Do the player characters know that Justice Ironbriar is associated with the Skinsaw Cultists, or do they merely know that the justice is unfairly persecuting them for killing alleged murderers during their vigilante investigation? If the party could link Ironbriar to the cultists, he will want to slit their throats immediately. I am assuming that the party has no solid evidence against Ironbriar, but might have guessed or overhead that he is with the cultists.
Let me elaborate on a plan to exile to party to Fort Rannick as a convenient way to end their investigation. First, if Xanesha knows Lucretia's plans for the fort, then she sees this as a permanent solution. Second, Ironbriar knows that executing the heroes of Sandpoint is likely to backfire. Sending them away for a year without a public trial gives him plenty of time for a cover-up.
And we can make this personal. That night in prison each character is in an individual cell. The GM asks each character to roll a Perception check to wake up when someone opens the door to his or her cell. If the character fails to wake up, have him or her roll a Will save--no other information given, but it is against Xanesha's DC 21 Charm Monster spell-like ability. If the character instead wakes up, he or she sees a masked lamia matriarch, who says, "A struggle would leave marks. Maybe tomorrow night." She casts Silence and closes the door.
The next morning, they are herded before a justice. If they don't suspect Ironbriar, he can be the justice; otherwise, it is another justice. The justice is accompanied by Ironbriar's assistant, Xanesha in human form under an assumed name and under Undetectable Alignment. Tell every character who failed the Will save that they automatically trust the assistant as if she were an old friend. The players will guess what that means.
The justice offers them the Fort Rannick deal: one year serving the Black Arrows at Fort Rannick and protecting the province from ogres in exchange for dropping the charges against them. The assistant urges the party to accept, which will affect the charmed members. If any had awoken to see Xanesha, the assistant can hint that no-one knows the outcome of a trial--or what might happen before the trial.
If the party accepts, send them to Fort Rannick. If the party refuses, go ahead with a trial. Ironbriar's assistant might attempt to influence the charmed individuals to undermine their testimony, but have them declared innocent in a fair trial to continue the adventure.
After that, Xanesha can be an enemy that they hate personally rather than the unseen manipulator behind a series of murders. Defeating personal enemies is more fun.
Incredibly awesome plot ideas
OP said that one of the PCs is a paladin. Another option is that the paladins from the Temple of Iomedae catch wind and launch their own investigation into how a fellow paladin could have been accused of such a terrible crime. In my game, the temple is very much aware of the level of corruption in the city, and try to act as a positive influence in matters of law and justice-- when they're allowed to.
I gave my party a clue regarding corruption in the justice system when they spoke with the chaplain of the temple-- the paladins of Iomedae often offer assistance in major crimes, and did so for the spate of murders, but their offer of assistance was strangely rebuffed.
But... honestly, I'd probably go with what Mathmuse suggested. It's better than what I would have improvised!
--Hal