With most of my player deciding to play evil player and picking up Carrion Crown two, I've hit a bit of a road block. With Daramid's quest to find more evidence for the Beast, one of them have gone under the pretenses of the 'cleaner', who basically takes out the witnesses in the smaller towns so that there will be fewer things to pin crimes on the beast.
While probably a good idea at first, I can see this backfiring in the a few ways. Does anyone have any suggestions on making this tougher or perhaps even some achievement there could be XP given in place of investigation?
This thread should be moved to the carrion crown section of the forums. You will get a better response there with people familiar with the adventure path.
Whoops, forgot there was a forum for that.
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With most of my player deciding to play evil player and picking up Carrion Crown two, I've hit a bit of a road block. With Daramid's quest to find more evidence for the Beast, one of them have gone under the pretenses of the 'cleaner', who basically takes out the witnesses in the smaller towns so that there will be fewer things to pin crimes on the beast.
While probably a good idea at first, I can see this backfiring in the a few ways. Does anyone have any suggestions on making this tougher or perhaps even some achievement there could be XP given in place of investigation?
Well, the way the story is set up, its basically reverse burden of proof, you have to convice the justices that he's innocent. Eliminating the witnesses with very shaky testimonies hurts the PC's more than it does the State. Afterall, when the guy from Morast talks about the croc dragging the beast under the water you can point out that there are no croc bites on the beast, that he doesn't bleed, that the beast isn't a profuse curser like the 'beast' they were chasing. Without the swamp people's testimony, you've basically got record eye witness statements versus the party's "nobody's here to testify."
Same goes for blind lonely Karl, who can easily be sweet talked into having an unsure testimony.
Then finding one wraith is enough to actually help with the tough one.
The beast is basically boned on the University though, since all evidence is circumstantial.
I'm curious as to why you've gone with Carrion Crown for an "evil" PC group. Carrion Crown is pretty much set up as a heroic campaign, the PCs main motivations are helping their friends and/or saving the world. For "evil" campaigns you could get much easier mileage out of Kingmaker, Serpents Skull or Skull and Shackles.
What is their motivation for helping the beast in the first place (other than the PP offered by the Judge)?
This was unfortunately a staunch player decision rather than something of my creation, believing that there would be more fun RP opportunities because of it (I posted this somewhere else, more Chaotic Madman than Chaotic Evil).
XP and money are the reasons for now...
A small report, one unfortunately butchered the 3 sisters at the abandon town. I tried to punish them by relying only on recorded testimony... saying that they couldn't pin the wraith to it, but they discover his cache of bodies...Sigh.
I would give them a couple of subtle GM nudges that this course of action may not be in their best interest. I would then sit back and allow the PCs to reap what they sow.
Eventually they're going to go "b%*@!&!s! We've really buggered this up for ourselves" at which point you can step in and ensure the world reacts realistically to their next course of action.
They'll probably try to simply bust the Beast out of prison. Create a couple of difficult but fair combat encounters for them, but give them the chance to succeed if they use good tactics and are a bit lucky.
Ultimately it doesn't matter if they get warrants put on their heads in Lepidstadt, because once the court case is over they can head straight to the Whisperwoods to lie low until the heat passes. Later on in the campaign I would have a Sleepless Agent ambush them while they're in a major city, or have them spot a "Wanted" poster with their mugshots on it. But ultimately I would allow them to hide in the backwaters of Ustalav and then get lost in the sea of people in the major cities.
If ever you want to mess with them a bit, you can always have a lone NPC go "wait a minute... you guys look a bit familiar. Have I seen you somewhere before?" to remind them of the consequences for their actions.
After reading through the Adventure Path, Episode 2 doesn't seem to have any thing too long term attached to the adventure other than the Eye and the item (which was stolen and long gone). I was thinking that that Palentine Eye would employ mercenaries and bounty hunters on the look out for this new madman. Additionally, the recent murders after the beast was locked up only convinces everyone to double up on competent security.