Running with Murder Hobo’s (Spoilers inside)


Mummy's Mask

Liberty's Edge

Ok, Asking for some insight; On a range of 1-10 how evil is this action. 1 being lying to your grandma about eating her cookies and 10 being calling a Demon/Devil prince for tea and crumpets.

So onto the situation, we are running through Empty Graves and they are cleaning up the Undead in the main city till they come to the gates. Now the party has a wonderful idea of lowering a cleric on a rope on the other side of the wall and have them channel thereby killing off the weak undead and softening up the harder ones. Unfortunately the party does not have a cleric to perform said channels. …

Enter the NPC a lowly 2nd level cleric who is in charge of the gate. (Party is 4th level) They approach and talk to the Cleric when low and behold a shadow passes through the gate and proceeds to attack the cleric. All the other guards run away leaving the party to fight off the shadow with the cleric’s help … Two strikes later the cleric is at 3 Str which is hardly enough to move in her armour. They kill of the shadow with minimal trouble and are angry that the cleric wastes a channel to hurt the undead shadow.

Party discuss tactics and still want to try the Cleric on a rope, Cleric declines saying she is not willing to help as she can hardly move and can they go and request reinforcements from the temple. They decline and decide since she is drained of Str she can’t object so they tie her up with rope and throw her from the battlements shouting “Channel B#$&#” and dangle her from the battlements before the gate … cleric is obviously traumatized by the ordeal and frightened silly, one of the other characters is also sent down on a rope to hit the undead from above as he has a reach weapon.

Now in the crowd of undead I had some variant Zombies from the book that can combust things with a look, Both of the hanging members get to make saves or burst into flame. The player char makes it and scrambles up to safety, cleric fails and ignites …Rope has 2 hp’s per inch … fire does 4 points of damage and ignites anything flammable also ignites including the rope and takes another 4 hp damage destroying it … Cleric falls the remaining distance to be set upon by Ghouls …

Players laugh and shrug it off saying they would have pulled her up if she channeled …

Characters are CN Slayer (Holding the rope and pushed her from the wall) NG Druid, LM Arcanist and a CG Ninja/Fighter (Reach Weapon)
It was an interesting encounter and I am sure to bring in a very vengeful undead ex cleric to torment them in the future …

Thoughts?

Regards

Sic


don't entirely blame the party, this is mostly your fault.

this to me is a perfect example of when the GM needs to assert control, remember you're telling the story, the PCs are the cast. sometimes as a story teller you need to say "you know what, your alignment says you wouldn't do that, try again" or even "excuse me but who's telling the story here?" i understand it probably started as a joke or two that got away and blew up, however you need to keep them in check from time to time (remember you're also a referee:)
i would tell them they need to atone to the church or hang from the gallows so to speak, give them a chance to escape if you want but until they atone change their alignment to evil.

Scarab Sages

Its a chaotic action for sure, and is obviously not a good action. I'm firmly in the camp that a single action is nowhere near enough to change an alignment (unlike cpt yesterday above me), but you as the GM needs to OOC discuss with your players what your expectations are as a GM for alignment. If you expect the ninja and druid to play their G's you need to explain that this was anything but a good action. Your Arcanist also needs a reminder that careless and reckless tactics like that generally qualify as Chaotic. None of your classes are alignment required, so breaking alignment isn't a big deal for them, but the alignment on the sheet should be used to steer how a character RP's, and as GM its your job to remind them of that.


i'm used to playing with kids, so I gotta keep that stuff in check Archmagi:) I guess it did sound harsh, but it was the flippant attitude towards her death that got me, every situation is different, casually blaming the dead person for being killed is evil at its worst and needs to be treated as such.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

The problem is it wasn't 'one' action, it wasn't 'two' actions. It was a series of actions with a horrifically predictable result; and when the result occurred the party's responds was 'LOLWUT?'
They AREN'T playing their declared alignments & if the church of Pharasma
Scratch that, if they make it to the later scene when certain party's get Summoned, having the PC's find themselves in an immediate surprise round of combat would not be entirely inappropriate.

Liberty's Edge

That's OK I understand, I'm playing with adults so I don't tell them how to play their characters ... as long as they are willing to take the consequences of their actions.

I'm going to make her come back as a vengeful something .. Not sure what yet though ... :)

Yea it struck me as pretty evil dismissing her like that. This is the first such action by the character which was actually evil .. There has been a couple since but nothing like this.

Regards

Sic

Scarab Sages

Ignoring her pleas for help is one thing. Not nice, but not evil.

Dangling a living person as 'bait' I'd immediate drop all Good aligned players to neutral with Good tendencies, and warn the already neutral players that they're now trending Evil.

On top of that, either have the now dead cleric come back as a revenant of some type, or have the body eventually found by the Pharasman church. One Speak with Dead later to discover what killed them, and the spirit is pointing the fingers at the players.

Dark Archive

Well unless they were subtle about there actions I would say arrested and either run out of town or executed may be in order.


They dangled a shell-shocked cleric from a rope into a room full of undead against her will for what is essentially laziness?

A solid 8 at the very least.


I don't see the problem here, seems like a perfectly reasonable response. In fact i think the problem is, they didn't dangle enough priests off the wall.


Surely a more durable mode of suspension is indicated. Use a chain and no problem.

Seriously, I think all the "good" players in your party have an alignment problem, and the neutral ones a lesser one.

Perhaps the players should consult the section of the rules that tell you what is involved in the various alignments. Or perhaps a dictionary.

It is however, very funny.


Quote:
Cleric declines saying she is not willing to help

Forcing the Cleric to do something harmful to herself when there is no negative alternative for NOT doing so is Evil. Only a minor amount, but it really depends on the action. Use her turning? Eh, a little Evil. Setting fire to an orphanage? VERY Evil.

Since the walls can keep the Undead at bay, there is no real threat here that necessitates threatening the Cleric with death. I'd say a 'point' here. 1 point of evil total from this.

Quote:
and can they go and request reinforcements from the temple. They decline

A single quantum of Evil is appropriate here, as there was another alternative than lowering the Cleric like Ghoul Bait. Bit 'less Evil' than the prior problem. 1 point.

Quote:
she can’t object so they tie her up with rope and throw her from the battlements shouting “Channel B#+&%”

Evil, with an extra small bit of Evil simply for taking amusement at her suffering and showing no remorse in their actions. 1 point, maaaybe 2.

Quote:
I had some variant Zombies from the book that can combust things with a look

Did the characters know this up prior to this point? If so, a smidgeon more Evil (or a hefty amount of Stupid) for not seeing this obvious problem or dealing with it. 1 or 0 points, depending on how they did it.

Quote:
Cleric falls the remaining distance to be set upon by Ghouls …

Surprising exactly no-one. Party's direct actions resulting in the death of another sapient being that did not deserve it or wasn't in direct self defense is most certainly Evil.

I'd say 2-3 points here, especially as the death was quite gruesome and the Cleric would have been tore apart screaming.

Quote:
Players laugh and shrug it off saying they would have pulled her up if she channeled

Taking delight in the suffering of others, even if not caused by one's own hand, is a bit Evil, roughly equivalent to the single quantum above. 1 point.

Explaining away their actions by saying they would have done 'the right thing' had the target complied with their heinous request is Evil as well (If he would have given me his money like I asked, I wouldn't have needed to rob him!) Another 1 point.

That comes out as anywhere from 7 to 10 on your '10' scale. An average of '8.5' will suffice, but you may want to judge based on what you see above.

Personally, I'd go with your 1-10 scale and let everyone know that if they accrue enough points to make it to '10', then their alignments shift 'downward' one step toward Evil (and if that puts them in Neutral, they've got another 10 before they are fully Evil). That makes them all pretty close. I'd probably give the guy with the reach weapon 1 less than the others, simply because he wasn't forced to do it, and easily could have just seen what happened to the Cleric Bug-Zapper.
If one of them was a Paladin, they'd not be roughly equivalent to an equal-level Warrior, but fortunately that's not the case.

Even the CN guy can't get away with this. CN can let you be an a-hole to everyone, but it doesn't imply that you're sadistic. Doing what you want at the expense of others and enjoying the experience fo their suffering would constitute CE.

Also, I'd warn the one Lawful guy. He probably slipped about 3-4 points toward the Neutral side of the Law-Chaos axis. The others might have budged a little bit, but that goes pretty far for him.


Honestly if I were GM my response would likely be this.

Kevin Mack wrote:
Well unless they were subtle about there actions I would say arrested and either run out of town or executed may be in order.

This goes beyond alignment infraction. The PCs brazenly murdered a person in public. It's hard to see there being no consequences to this action.


A good person would not do what they did and then laugh it off. That's a terrible act followed up by a horrible one. I would have a discussion OOC about it with my players and then have in-game consequences.

Silver Crusade

Thread revived from the dead. But I'm curious about the OP's party and how it turned out. @Captain yesterday, I wouldn't exactly fault the GM since we guide parties not dictate their style, if they want to royally screw with the world, the world will react in kind. If they start raging about how the world isn't fair anymore.. well murdering innocent people tends to give you a bad rap.


Its called Game Master for a reason, in this particular case the GM should've stopped things when it started to become apparent what was happening and reign it in.

it should be about having fun, not how uncomfortable they can make each other with depravity:)

And when the "Player's Style" as you say is murdering people as ghoul bait? just roll with it, c'mon man, thats terrible behavior to encourage or allow (no matter how many life lessons you try to tack on) for anyone, adults especially (who should know better!)

Silver Crusade

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Heh, Power gamers can be the biggest ***ks on the scene, murder hobos are up there in terms of tearing up game immersion, but in the end it's what your group is comfortable with.

Here it sounds like it's a group of friends and they're just having fun being malicious cupcakes in a fantasy world. I don't see anyone else in that situation being offended other than the imaginary NPC. Now knowing this group, should you interject and stop their fun saying "no, you can't do that!" ?

In my opinion, the world simply reacts either by the priesthood rejecting their aid. Shops and services refusing to serve them, and generally ostracizing them from normally open markets. So sure, they can be immature in character, I'm not going to take that away from them if that's what they all agree to do. However the world doesn't bend to their needs, and it punishes them, I don't. "Well.. you did kill a priest in cold blood, what did you expect them to do.. lend you aid?"

I generally only have this issue in my one-shot groups as I can't GM a game for power gaming murder hobos for any extended period of time. My groups, including my MM one are pretty much neutral and good, and great roleplayers; except for S&S obviously (well the good alignment that is).


well said and point taken:)
actually looking back at the time frame of my original post i suspect i was in my seasonal transition funk and was rather harsh as a consequence, obviously not the ideal sequence but what are you gonna do:)

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