So I'm starting 3FoE last Saturday and the PC's have been so kind as to take the bait. They decide that they need to get into the Mine. Lacking other inspiration, they walk up to the pallisade and tell the guards that they want jobs as miners.
In full armor.
With all their really expensive 3rd level adventurer gear on.
So the guard looks at the Halfling spellthief who has announced this and says, "ye don' qualify, now git."
Said spellthief is irrate. He's a 3rd level spellthief! He can dig in the dirt, what qualifications do you need to be an underpaid miner in a town like Diamond Lake? So he says, "What do you mean we don't qualify? We want to be miners!"
Quick as a wink, the guard clocks him a good one on the ear, sending him sprawling in the dirt. All the PC's Draw their weapons and the guards just look at them. "Ye don' qualify!" snarls the guard.
Deciding that slaughtering their way into the mine might draw unwanted attention the PC's slink off. Our Halfling Hero has decided that this nameless guard is a main character and spent the remainder of the night figuring out how to expose and defeat him....
Poor widdle guy. . .
He's going to have a tough time of things in the Free City, with all those commoners in Midnight's Muddle to intimidate him. Maybe you can introduce a Bullied Adventurer's Anonymous support group, or something. . .
I had a similar problem with Tidwoad. He's described as being cantankerous (and he's LE, for gods sake!), so when the party found this out, they started trying to plan ways to steal from him and "pay him back" for his actions againt them (being a little surly?).
He caught on quickly and flatly informed them not to try him. They kept things up until the gnome got so aggrivated, he took them downstairs and showed them the shield guardian (I was really just trying to get them off the Tidwoad track and back to the Cairn). Actually, he first mentioned something about "down stairs", and they thought he was trying to hit on them, so that's when I snapped and had him show them Festus.
Now they were bent on finding some way to not only steal Tidwoad's gem cache, but also the shield guardian. Finally, after nearly beating them over the head with the DMG, I convinced them that there ARE some battles, especially social ones, that you have to lose, especially against a shield guardian when you're first level. They conceded the point only so far as to say they would wait until they were higher level, then come back and try to steal the thing.
It's like that with almost every NPC in my games. If he doesn't bend down and kiss their boots, or volunteer to help them overthrow whatever local authority there is, they get angry at them and try to get revenge of some sort. Allustan ended up giving them 10% or more discounts on everything, just so they wouldn't get angry at him, too. Do you do that in real life? NO! If there's someone you don't get along with, you don't get along with them, and that's that (generally). So don't think it's going to be different in the game! I really didn't want to stop the campaign before it had even started by having them thrown into jail with more fines than they could possibly pay, especially given that they just alienated one of the major merchants in town.
My group found the severed arm that the owlbear was chewing on. One of the group is a miner from Diamond Lake and recognized the tattoo. So they sought out Kullen and crew at the Feral Dog to get some more info.
How? you ask.
The barbarian dropped the arm on Kullen's table and asked him what he knew about it.
The ensuing battle was fun in that only the rogue seemed to be the only one to recall that they wanted to find the bones (and therefore needed some questions answered).
Fighter Power Attacks mage...dead.
Rogue: "we need them alive"
Barbarian scores a critical on Kullen (after a Power Attack in the first round)...dead.
Rogue: "we need one of them alive!"
Psionicist blasts ranger to hell...unconscious and bleeding.
Rogue: "ummm...guys...we need to find those bones...leave one alive."
I had a similar experience... my PCs walked into the Feral Dog and eventually talked Kullen and the others into giving the information by giving them the arm back and saying "we're sorry about your friend"...then the rogue walked in with a large piece of horse anatomy he purchased from the local butcher's store, dumped that on the table, and started making lewd comments about what they owed him for returning *that* certain piece of anatomy.
Kullen raged and attacked him, but critically missed, as did the two other fighter-types. The wizardy dude cast *sleep* on our rogue, who promptly failed his save. Kullen spent the next round critically hitting (at full power attack with a +1 greataxe) and hacking our rogue into -53 hit points, then wiped what was left off his face and delivered it back to the rest of the PCs, saying "sorry about your friend".
Then they got to 3FoE, and went straight into the Banite (Hextor) temple. They got to the first room, and even though none of the skeletons animated, even though I warned them about all the bells, they wanted to destroy all of the skeletons. The cultists heard and turned up, then the tieflings turned up, used their *darkness* and fled to get reinforcements.
After all this, the PCs wandered into the cultists' room and spent an hour searching the room to see if they could find treasure. The rest of the temple waited politely outside with the boar and started a big standoff.
Eventually, after our new fighter/cleric (replacing our rogue, see last post) used one of the dead cultists as a meat shield, the paladin surrendered to the Banites in order to let the others go. They promptly wrecked his plan by shooting the boar, which went feral and attacked the half-orc Banite cleric next to it. In the general chaos which followed, they managed to kill everything in the Banite temple.
They then proceeded to the Bhaal (Erythnul) temple, where they made it to the ledge opposing the grimlock archers. Our fighter/cleric fell to the bottom and fled for cover... right into the chokers. Our mage *feather fall*ed to the bottom to rescue him and got herself killed, while the paladin resorted to throwing rocks at the grimlocks. He was useless, but our keen-eyed elf archer killed both of the irritating thingies.
So, they all got out of the temple, made their way back through the mines and back to Diamond Lake, rested up, and continued through the temple to the next area, where they all promptly fell to the grimlock barbarians.
Next party (all Harpers) started through the Bhaal temple, and half of them died. After that, I let them just mysteriously find their way through the Myrkul temple, where they nearly died again, then they killed the Faceless One in 2 rounds. I gave up as GM after that, and one of the PCs has taken over to GM AoBK.