Background: halfway through the first Kingmaker module. One character, a paladin, is the designated king-to-be (if he survives). That's been fixed from Day One; he's an illegitimate cousin of the current king, and has the Royal Charter authorizing him to clear the land and take control of it.Another PC is an otherwise unassuming sword-and-board fighter. That PC's player has just asked if his character can be a spy, tasked with the job of watching the paladin.
I like this idea. However, how to run it?
-- Just have the S&B character spy on the Paladin PC and occasionally report back to someone. Acceptable, but kinda bland.
-- Have the S&B character dip a level of rogue or something. Maybe -- but the PC has ideas for his fighter build, and this could interfere.
-- Intermediate: have the character burn a skill point or two, or a feat slot, on something relevant. But what?
I think I like the third option best, but I'd welcome thoughts and comments.
Doug M.
How good a spy does he need/want to be? Obviously the more he invests (in terms of levels, skills, feats, etc...) the better he will be. Another option is buying stuff to help. Many boosts to spy type skills can be found on reasonable cheep gear, and there are always INT headbands with the right skills if you need max ranks in something. If he wants to be James Bond, he's going to need a lot. If he just wants to keep tabs on what's going on, a good sense motive and perception might be all he needs.
But at the end of the day, he's spying on a paladin. All his reports are going to be full of things like "fought evil" "rescued puppies" or the oh-so-very-tawdry "wooed fair maidens." Barring, of course, the paladin falling into anti-paladinhood. Then the reports get interesting...
I'm with Helaman on this, you're inviting trouble. Why would you even entertain inter-party conflict? Personally, as a DM or player, I wouldn't stand for it. I think the game is much more fun when everyone is working together, towards roughly the same goal.
Out of curiosity, could you post the sword'N'boarder's build? I mean, is he even capable, from a game-mechanics perspective, of pulling this off?
He doesn't have to be if he's going to hire someone else to do it for them. Not everything boils down to just game mechanics of the player.I'm with Helaman on this, you're inviting trouble. Why would you even entertain inter-party conflict? Personally, as a DM or player, I wouldn't stand for it. I think the game is much more fun when everyone is working together, towards roughly the same goal.
Out of curiosity, could you post the sword'N'boarder's build? I mean, is he even capable, from a game-mechanics perspective, of pulling this off?
When it comes to PvP, which this surely is, yeah, the onus needs to be on the player to pull it off. Hiding behind an NPC hireling is a bunch of crap.
Another PC is an otherwise unassuming sword-and-board fighter. That PC's player has just asked if his character can be a spy, tasked with the job of watching the paladin.I like this idea. However, how to run it?
-- Just have the S&B character spy on the Paladin PC and occasionally report back to someone. Acceptable, but kinda bland.
-- Have the S&B character dip a level of rogue or something. Maybe -- but the PC has ideas for his fighter build, and this could interfere.
-- Intermediate: have the character burn a skill point or two, or a feat slot, on something relevant. But what?
I think I like the third option best, but I'd welcome thoughts and comments.
Doug M.
Most spies are essentially going to be of the "occasionally report back" variety. That said, encourage him to invest in some linguistics to send and receive cryptic reports. And if he feels he needs to multiclass to do that effectively, great.
As far as political intrigue goes, simply watching someone doesn't necessarily mean opposition. It may mean that one faction just wants to keep a potential political force under observation and evaluation to determine if they want to oppose or ally. I would pin the spy player down on where he sees this going. Will it lead to violent PC vs PC interaction? Or is the spy likely to be co-opted by loyalty to the paladin?
First: I don't really care for inter-party conflict of this kind, but if you are gonna do it..
Spy isn't a class or skill set that anyone has to get. Being a spy is about being the right person in the right place, where no one suspects you.
How would I do it? I'd offer to be the King's personal body guard. They already know each other right? They are an adventuring group, presumably. Once Kingy is Kingy, just.. be his guard.
No special skills, no special classes, no funky archtypes.
Just. Be. There.
Listen, watch, observe.
Report what you see.
Maybe, maybe burn a linguistics to learn a cipher or language so you can communicate easier on the slide or maybe work into more perception so you can "see more" without trying to see more but mainly what he needs to do is get close to the Kingy so he can see what the King is up to, without seeming to be doing so.
-S
If the party discovers he is a spy he should be warned to be ready to accept the consequences of treason.
What Wraith said. This sounds like treason to me. Of course, there's always the double agent route...the paladin could convince the spy that he should serve him instead.
Much of the spy stuff might get handwaved away, since it could be done in "downtime" presumably with little notice by the other PC's. But as I understand Kingmaker (and I don't own the AP, so take this with a grain of salt) you move around quite a bit, right? If so, how is the spy reporting back without magical aid?
I also think a good spy should have a high bluff, and linguistics would help, too. A typical S&B fighter with dumped Int and Cha is not going to make a good spy, imho. But good luck!
Another PC is an otherwise unassuming sword-and-board fighter. That PC's player has just asked if his character can be a spy, tasked with the job of watching the paladin.
First thing you have to do is figure out who this 'someone' he is reporting to and what their motivations are. Another claimant to the throne, the church to ensure that the paladin stay on the straight and narrow, some underworld figure, or some other group.
Spy doesn't have to be a character archetype. The 'spy' character could easily employ other NPCs to do the more stealthy tasks (this works well for underworld contacts). Although the player will need to expend some ranks in the various skills (e.g. bluff, disguise, sense motive).
As a side note is the 'spy' player must be fully prepared to watch his character die to advance the story. I have pulled off something similar to this once and the look of surprise on the players faces when they found out who had betrayed them was priceless. Of course with such a betrayal the ending was a forgone conclusion.
If the player is not willing to watch his character die a most gruesome death and actually thinks he should be allowed to 'win' then I wouldn't allow this, as that type of PvP is generally horrible for group cohesion. The player needs to realize that he is essentially playing an NPC for you so that other players don't suspect the overly friendly NPC that is always hanging about. A possible way to save his spot at the table is to have his 'real' character being held somewhere while this ersatz ally joins the party.
Even with this the player should expect that he and his characters won't be trusted for a while. If your other players are mature they will eventually forgive this ruse and may evenly fondly remember the campaign.
There are always ways to spin this into actually creating party unity too. If the Sword and Board Fighter reports to Evil Person X so he can basically become Evil Person X's 'Trusted Guy' it could lead to a few things.
Yeah, it can easily go down the 'split the party' route.
But it also could be handled to give the Sword and Board Fighter an 'in' to see storms on the horizon when Evil Person X starts his BBEG plot to remove the Bastard from the throne (or do his ritual so all the leaves turn pink. Whatever the plot may be!)
A good series to watch is Burn Notice. While it's a modern spy series, most of the characters inform on each other to other people at various times. But since they're all kinda 'spies' they just kinda roll with it.
And it comes up often in a light of 'I'd rather have a friend informing on me, because a FRIEND would only share what they need to' (and again, it is an in to actually turn the situation around for the whole group's advantage. And court politics can go in similiar veins. We all may be friends, but we all might be representing slightly different agendas.
Really, who the S&B Fighter reports to it probably the biggest factor in how it'll play out down the road. If the S&B F just wants to feel mildly rebellious and involve in some courtly intrigue while in the long run being willing to turn that to the party's advantage, you could probably turn it into a fairly solid move.
I'd just make to have that talk with the S&B guy early on and lay some ground work and not try to 'wing it' as a last minute save to prevent a party explosion.
If the players are still in the mode where they accept player characters basically railroaded into their party, they tend to get really really irritated if it results in even very mild PvP conflict.
I see where you are going with this, but there should be no conflict between the spy and paladin until the climax of that part of the story. The spy has more than enough in-character reasons for being obsequious. The last thing he wants is the paladin's attention.
I would worry a lot more about damaging the trust of the actual players involved.
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I would worry a lot more about damaging the trust of the actual players involved.
Especially if one person is entirely in the mode of "we're a team in a cooperative game and we're all in this together, yeah!". PvP where not everyone involved is really looking forward to PvP has a lot of potential to go south quick.
You have to know your players. If they can handle it, they can handle it. I have has groups were this would work fine, or this would get me and the player lynched. One thing you may want to do is come clean and let the party know that one of the characters is a spy.
Personally I would say that regardless, the player must ultimately choose to be on the party's side.
I would recommend that he not so much as spys, but keeps tabs. As the player does this, the king asks for more info and possibly antagonistic things, that should very quickly get the fighter to stop. Once the fighter has stopped, and decided to be 100% on the paladin's side, that is when a missive from the king to the fighter should somehow accidentally find its way to the paladin. Then you have a paladin that thinks there is a spy, when there isn't...
or something like that.
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It kind of feels like this is a question you should be asking the player.
How much does he want to invest in being a spy? How much time is he going to spend observing while trying to look like he's not observing? Or is he just *spying* on what he sees normally?
Honestly, the more the player invests, the greater the involvement should be. If, however, he's a "just kind of there" spy, then his involvement will be equally "just kind of there".
One fun thing I've done before is to have the player bring either an extra dice with a particular color, or a mini that isn't going on the board. Whenever he wants to "spy" on the paladin, he can casually pick up the designated object, and you know that he's secretly following/listening in/whatever and can make the appropriate rolls :P
Side note -- only a good idea if the player of the paladin is a really, really cool guy. I've literally seen fistfights over this type of thing. Some people just can't handle interparty conflicts.
When that happens, it's just best to give them back their stapler.
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A spy needs not be a traitor.
Sure, he is betraying his friends' confidence about keeping some things secret.
However, that does not automatically mean that he will betray their cause, ie what they are fighting for. In fact, he may be precisely tasked to ensure that his friends do not lose sight of what their true goals are.
Obviously, those (especially PCs) with conservatives views of what trust and betrayal mean might disagree with this. If you do not want them to just kill the spy when they find out about him, you will have to state very clearly that you (the GM) okayed it for the good of the campaign.
BTW, the best way to go about being a spy is to be both inconspicuous and helpful. There is no need to invest in feats, traits, skills that allow you to hide your true motives if no one ever even thinks about questioning them. In fact, doing a few shady things or even just being able to do them (ie Bluff, or even worse cyphers) is a very quick way to make other players suspicious of your character. Best to be (or at least seem) plain unable to ever hide anything from them.