So I have LE Ninja/Inquisitor from Cheliax in my group. She has kept her identity hidden the entire time - the party almost uniformly thinks she is nothing more than a thief.
We are in Schloss Caromarc and have gotten to the rope bridge and . . .
The summon monster trap sprung - summoning the Erinyes (Devil). As we ended last session, this PC tells me she intends to talk to the Erinyes to try and talk it out of attacking the party. She will speak to it in Infernal. She further assumes that none of the PCs can speak this, but actually the wizard can - so this will probably be great for role playing and might reveal herself slightly.
Her intention is to discuss with the devil - "What is your contract?" I suspect I will respond with "To defend this bridge and kill anyone who tries to pass" to which the ninja will probably respond with legal wrangling such as "well how about if we go back over here?" or "what do you mean by anyone?"
Might they not just be able to go back the way they came and wait out the 11 rounds of the trap summon? The Erinyes would probably go for that.
This sounds like fun. Anyone have any fun suggestions of ways this can go or things that I should consider doing?
We have a pretty role-play intense group so help me ham it up! :)
I assumed all 'summon' spells are creatures that are mind controlled to attack X target on the spot without consideration... But that is a neat way to squeeze in some RP.
I assumed all 'summon' spells are creatures that are mind controlled to attack X target on the spot without consideration... But that is a neat way to squeeze in some RP.
The PC has mailed me and said she has a few things she's considering doing.
1: Untying the lawful good cleric in the party from the rope (the rope is a Rope of Climbing that the ninja controls), push him over the edge as an offering to the devil :). There's a bit in the statblock:
Embittered against the divine, erinyes revel in destroying holy icons. Those who offer the devil a significant divine item or figure to despoil, either a piece of religious artwork worth more than 100 gp or even a living cleric of a good-aligned deity, gain a +2 bonus on Charisma checks made to summon an erinyes.
I suspect this would be the end of at least two characters in the party - including the ninja after the rest of the goodly PCs killed her - but that's ok, makes for the best stories.
2: Try and negotiate with the devil, offering her something in return - a better contract, in hopes of stalling it for 11 rounds until it unsummons (I think this is a bit cheesy).She further tells me that she probably envys the Erinyes.
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The player is going to have an issue...
--Vrock Solid Contract
Uh, so you are letting your Clerics player get screwed over on his character, just so that the Ninja player can have an RP encounter with a Summon Monster trap? I find that more than a bit in bad taste.
I agree with Magnuskn; the trap is hardly the sort of climactic encounter where players (sometimes) accept the necessity of character sacrifice or death.
On the other hand, if it's carefully played out, the Paladin need not die. For example:
Ninja [Infernal]: We can speak privately in this language. I offer you this Paladin's life if you will grant us passage.
Wizard [Common]: Dude, she's trying to sell you to the devil! Clear off the bridge!
Erinyes: It seems as if your "offering" does not intend to go quietly. Perhaps I'll start with you instead...
Now you've got a fight, AND a bunch of heated RP after the Erinyes gets defeated.
Summons also just do as commanded. If the intent was to attack trespassers that is what will happen since a summoned creature has less freedom than a called on.
If the players want to treat it like a called creature I would make it a called creature and allow it use of all its powers including the ability to summon backup if the diplomacy check fails. The player would have to offer something more enticing than whatever the Whispering Way did to get it to guard that bridge.
Hold up, even as a called creature it is devil, not a demon so it is pretty much bound by whatever agreement it made. Of course as the GM you could say there was a loophole that allowed it to get out of its deal.
Erinyes also like to fight so turning down a fight is not something to expect.
. Executioners, not judges, erinyes alight upon the bladed eaves of Dis, Hell's cosmopolitan second layer, ever attentive for chances to soar into battle, whether in defense of Hell, on the whims of diabolical masters, or at the impassioned summons of jilted mortal summoners.
You must really not like your fellow players, then.
Chucking a fellow party member to his death just to talk to a Summon Monster trap ( which has no choice but to obey it's orders, which explicitly is "attack whomever triggers you" ) must count among the most sociopathic behaviours I've heard about between gamers. I'm really shocked to see more people thinking that this is in any shape or form something which will lead to better roleplaying. In any group I've played with it would lead to bad feelings and the danger of the group falling apart.
I did not even see the "sacrifice cleric to bad guy" statement before. It would not work well in my group for sure.
Realistic responses if this were real life event:If the cleric somehow survives that ninja might die. The party members probably won't trust the ninja anymore, and would kill the ninja out of self preservation or boot him/her from the party. The ninja getting rid of the cleric, who I am assuming is very useful considering the nature of the campaign, would be enough of a reason even if the party did not like the cleric personally.
As you can tell, we play in a pretty RP-heavy group. Furthermore, in a gothic horror campaign (ala Ravenloft & Carrion Crown), I strongly believe that the PCs are not heroes (I'm pretty sure this is explicitly mentioned in this AP also). That's just the way we look at gothic horror in our group - it's not about god slaying king making it's about the barely-above-average guy rising to the top and trying to <insert RP motivation>.
All that said, I find character deaths to be the most memorable part of an adventure and my players are always talking about rolling up other characters ("oo, have you seen the Gunslinger rules? I'm going to make one of those when this guy dies", etc).
So yeah, letting the ninja character expose his true nature as an evil infiltrator in a cinematic location and it resulting in the death of him and possibly the cleric in this example is par for the course for my group.
The last campaign we played in we had a wizard slowly turn evil and eventually switch to the side of the big-baddie they were hunting. The player just yanked out a new super-goodly wizard next week and the troupe eventually encountered the PC-character-turned-NPC a few sessions later and slaughtered him. It was very memorable and the players still talk about it.
All that being said, I don't actually expect the ninja player to do it. He says that it's probably what his character would do and, as you guys have pointed out, I don't think the negotiations with the devil are likely to pan out. But if he were to do it, come up with some well planned out RP discussion, and maybe even roll great on a diplomacy check I wanted to have some ammunition and have spent some time thinking about the possible outcome.
Look, even if we take the whole gothic horror thing as you do ( and I disagree on the "PC's are not heroes" point pretty decisively... you can be very much heroic in the classic sense and Call of Cthulhu simply cannot be done under the standard Pathfinder rules. IMO, of course. ), what the Ninja player was planning to do is not Lawful Evil in the least... it is clearly Stupid Evil.
1.) Trying to negotiate with a Summon Monster trap. It simply cannot be done by the rules. If you are willing to pretzel up the rules, then that's okay, but even Summon Monster traps are just that... traps. It's the same as trying to negotiate with a Wail of the Banshee trap, only that the latter won't taunt you while it tries to kill you.
2.) Chuck his comrade to his probably death in the midst of the wilderness, where it is highly unlikely that, if he survives the aftermath, will meet another healer. So he is also setting up the group to fail the whole Schloss Caromarc storyline.
3.) Doing something so suicidal in the first place. How does he plan to get out of this, besides being either killed by the Erinyes or afterwards by his ( probably former ) allies?
The way I see it from my vantage point, the player wants to get rid of his character and has no scruples taking down another players character with him. But, hey, if that's par-de-course at your table, go ahead. I have registered my disbelief already.
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I play the "Hell Hound of the Law Giver" (the rules call her a ninja/inquisitor of Asmodeus) in the above campaign. My DM said you were having a discussion about our situation so I thought I'd add what I sent him to the thread.
(Warning: Long post. Maybe a spoiler or two. Also some role-playing for those who are allergic to such things.)
Some background notes on my character and her motivations here. It's taken me a while to figure out what Lawful Evil is and how to play her. I see her, and the culture of Cheliax, as racist control freak sociopaths living in a stratified society where those above decide how those lesser than themselves shall live their lives. The rulers do this for the betterment of society which must not be allowed to devolve into barbarism. The idea here is that man is an animal that can only be controlled with harsh punishment. Those people who can better control their animal natures will naturally rise due to their superiority and therefore should rule over the more base members of their species. There are no other party members from Cheliax so technically all of them are beneath my character in the social order. She has mentally ranked them according to their skills and discipline but they will always rank below her until they accept the truth that is the Teachings of the Father of Laws which would then give them a place in The Order.
I'm going to treat the Erinyes like an evil samurai warrior. Erinyes revel in combat but duty is what gives their existence meaning and structure. Withing the Cheliaxian society an Erinyes is very close to my character's social level. While the Erinyes is more powerful it is only a devil whereas my character is a human and therefore superior to an equivalent devil (the devil's may see this the other way around).
This should be an interesting encounter for my character. While in our culture young girls might see themselves as some warrior amazon princess or Valkyrie, in her culture every little warrior girl wants to grow up to be an Erinyes. This battle can also be seen like a duel between two samurai warriors each of whom respect and value the other, but each whose duty forces them to fight regardless of their own wishes.
I took out the idea of her offering the cleric to the devil. While he is her inferior and under her charge (her point of view) and therefore his life and soul are hers to offer, I think she values him more highly than simply bypassing this mere devil. If it came down to her own life or the life of any other party member she wouldn't hesitate to let them die. After all their lives are not as valuable as hers or they would be of higher ranking in The Order.
I'm using the term Hell Hound for Inquisitors of Asmodeus. Seemed appropriate. You really don't want a Hell Hound on your trail...
This is how I see this encounter playing out.
(Note: Assume everything after the first line is telepathic and the party won't know it happened. I've capitalized words that are always capitalized in Infernal.)
Character (in Infernal): "Order and Strength to you Ash Wing. Know that you intrude upon the rightful Commission of a Hound of the Father of Laws."
Erinyes (telepathic from here): "Order and Strength to you Hound. I am Bound to serve this Contract to defend this bridge from those who wish to cross it. None may pass without Trial by Combat."
Character: "Strength to the Contract that binds us Fury. I am Bound to the investigation of the activities of the Whispering Way in this region. If members of the Undeath Cult have Bound you by Contract then know that your Contract is in opposition to a Hound of the Father and thereby Void in respect to this personage and her associates." (Diplomacy roll here? It would be a really high DC to void the contract and dispel the Erinyes I think. Probably impossible at our level. Maybe a smaller DC to find out if the Whispering Way was involved in her summoning. Maybe a combo with a Know:Religion roll which is pretty much Know:Law for her religion. Letting this by would be like giving my character a Dismissal spell which she isn't really high enough level to cast, so this seems a bit cheesy and wrong. I'd only let this pass if it made for cool storytelling and role-playing. this is also where she might offer up the cleric as counter payment against the contract. That could be very dark cool storytelling but I'd want to talk it over with the cleric player first. It would pretty much take both of our characters out of the party and require us rolling up new ones.)
(Assuming at this point combat will likely start.)
Erinyes: Order guide you Hound! The holders of my Contract have chosen to exercise option 14.6b of subsection 12.5-7 of chapter 39C. Their payment has been accepted and I may not vary from my Contract due to conflict of interests with others of the Faith. Were you a Hound of higher Order you would have the authority to Void my contract. (Dismissal spell to find a loophole in the Contract.) Being that you are not, I must fulfill it to the best of my ability. May the Laws give you Guidance!
Zara: May the Laws give you Guidance sister! (Infernal out loud) Each to her Duty!
(Note: By speaking the holy phrase, "Each to her Duty!", my character is both ending the negotiation and asserting herself by claiming social superiority over the Erinyes. This is a subtlety that would be lost on others.)
I play the "Hell Hound of the Law Giver" (the rules call her a ninja/inquisitor of Asmodeus) in the above campaign. My DM said you were having a discussion about our situation so I thought I'd add what I sent him to the thread.
(Warning: Long post. Maybe a spoiler or two. Also some role-playing for those who are allergic to such things.)
** spoiler omitted **...
You have an extremely cool concept of Hell and devils and Cheliax going on in this post.
As you can tell, we play in a pretty RP-heavy group. Furthermore, in a gothic horror campaign (ala Ravenloft & Carrion Crown), I strongly believe that the PCs are not heroes (I'm pretty sure this is explicitly mentioned in this AP also). That's just the way we look at gothic horror in our group - it's not about god slaying king making it's about the barely-above-average guy rising to the top and trying to <insert RP motivation>.
My reply was not about being heroic. It is about staying alive. Assuming the ninja takes the above stance and the cleric ends up dead, I know the ninja is the guy who killed him, or helped him die, and he might kill me next.
That is all the motivation I need to off him.
I play the "Hell Hound of the Law Giver" (the rules call her a ninja/inquisitor of Asmodeus) in the above campaign. My DM said you were having a discussion about our situation so I thought I'd add what I sent him to the thread.
(Warning: Long post. Maybe a spoiler or two. Also some role-playing for those who are allergic to such things.)
** spoiler omitted **...
Cool post.
While it's a very nice roleplaying account SeanDaGeek has written up, it's still trying to negotiate with a Summon Monster trap.
Which, okay, now that the inane idea of chucking the Cleric to his death has been taken out of the equation, is an appropiate roleplaying encounter. The idea which offended me was the whole deal with the Cleric and how senseless that would have been.
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We played last night and this encounter couldn't have gone better. I'll write up a description in a bit.
My character did negotiate with the Erinyes. Magnuskn's belief that this is wrong is completely off the mark. Erinyes aren't traps, they are intelligent motivated servants of Evil. He's forgotten that Pathfinder isn't so much a set of rules as a set of guidelines...
He's also wrong in the belief that offering the Cleric was a dumb idea. As you'll see when I get a moment to write up the session, it was the best outcome that could have occurred. My character is not only completely convinced of this, she is certain that her lack of offering him resulted in the Father punishing her and casting her down. She survived the Father's wrath but she will not fail him again.
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Last nights session couldn't have been better. Kudos to the module author for setting up such a wonderfully cinematic confrontation and to our DM for executing it so well.
(Warning: Some of the below is written from the perspective of my Evil character. Her viewpoints are a bit disturbing.)
As I posted earlier my Hound character recognized the Erinyes and why it was there as soon as it was summoned. Being Lawful Evil and a follower of Asmodeus, her first instinct was to begin negotiating with the Lawful Evil Erinyes attempting to both determine its purpose and trying to find a loophole in the contract used to summon it. One option my character considered was offering up the rutting beast (he drools at her often) of a Chaotic Neutral (thought he was CG but the player corrected me) priest of Gorum to the Erinyes in exchange for letting us retreat back across the bridge. We wouldn't be "trying to cross" any longer, so the idea was that the Erinyes wouldn't be in violation of its contract by letting us go. My character decided not to do this as the cleric, while vile bestial and not fully human, is strong and useful in a fight. He is no better than a useful ox to my character but oxen are valuable.
What a huge mistake. The bumbling beast of a cleric could barely stay on the bridge as he fled the dark angel's wrath. Several of the other characters, realizing
that this oaf might drag them over the edge, untied themselves from the rope that held us together and ran for it. One didn't make it but the others all did. Still my character didn't release the cleric (we were tied by her rope of climbing which she could command to rlease him). She ran across the bridge and had just made it to safety when the clumsy priest plunged off the bridge pulling the rope taught. As my character lost her balance and slid towards the edge
she called upon the Father of Laws to give her strength (I could have used Touch of Law to make her acrobatics check roll 11 instead of the 4 but forgot to use it which turned out cool from a role-playing perspective) but she was forsaken. The fall killed the previously wounded cleric, and nearly killed my Hound character. As she struggled out of rapids and up the cliff face (she still had her magic rope which was no longer tied to the cleric corpse), she realized that her lack of discipline and self control was the origin of her Fall from Grace. She had allowed her emotions to cloud her judgement concerning the fate of the cleric and the Father of Laws had punished her for it. She realized that sacrificing a lesser being was sometimes needed to allow the success of the Mission. She had forgotten a fundamental teaching of Asmodeus, "The needs of the superiors outweigh the needs of the lessers or the self." She will not fail this way again.
So in the end this fight was really nasty. I'd say it was closer to a EL 9 which is an encounter that should be tough for our 6th level characters. It killed one party member and could easily have killed two more if not TPK. My character's solution of sacrificing the cleric was the correct one from a resource expediture point of view (not necessarily a moral point of view but she is Evil and sees the other characters as nothing more than resources). He ended up dead anyway and the party is in a bad way. However from a role-playing and storytelling point of view, this was an awesome encounter.
We played last night and this encounter couldn't have gone better. I'll write up a description in a bit.
My character did negotiate with the Erinyes. Magnuskn's belief that this is wrong is completely off the mark. Erinyes aren't traps, they are intelligent motivated servants of Evil. He's forgotten that Pathfinder isn't so much a set of rules as a set of guidelines...
Uh, dude, it's totally a rulebook. Read it right on the cover: "Core Rulebook". If you want to play magical tea party, however, be my guest.^^
He's also wrong in the belief that offering the Cleric was a dumb idea. As you'll see when I get a moment to write up the session, it was the best outcome that could have occurred. My character is not only completely convinced of this, she is certain that her lack of offering him resulted in the Father punishing her and casting her down. She survived the Father's wrath but she will not fail him again.
Okay, then. If you guys play "the rules are whatever we want them to be at the moment" ( i.e. magical tea party ), that's your thing. My condemnation of the action was based on what actually is in the rules of the game.
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"The new D&D is too rule intensive. It's relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It's done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good." -Gary Gygax GameSpy interview, Pt. 2 (16 August 2004)
Funny, every copy of every edition of D&D I've ever played has this little bit in it that says "the DM is the ultimate arbiter of the rules". If the DM thinks it's cool, imaginative and interesting to let the players negotiate with a summon monster trap then that is now The Rule and what is written on some piece of paper in a book no longer matters. Maybe the Pathfinder book is missing that rule. I didn't look and don't care. If it is then Pathfinder is not improved by its absence. It's fine to argue that "changing the rule will mess up game balance" or "that makes the character too powerful" but you don't seem to be doing that magnuskn. You seem to be stuck in a mode where you think the rules are written in stone and unchangeable. That's fine. Play your version of Make Believe as you wish. I find yours uninteresting and like mine more. However don't pretend your version is somehow better and less "magic tea party" than mine. I've been playing RPG's far too long to fall for that sort of nonsense.
My DM pointed me to this after I wrote the above. From the Gamemastery Guide (far down the page):
"Just as GMs arbitrate the rules within their games, so can they manipulate, repurpose, and wholly invent new rules to improve their games."
So it is in the Pathfinder Rules.
We played last night and this encounter couldn't have gone better. I'll write up a description in a bit.
My character did negotiate with the Erinyes. Magnuskn's belief that this is wrong is completely off the mark. Erinyes aren't traps, they are intelligent motivated servants of Evil. He's forgotten that Pathfinder isn't so much a set of rules as a set of guidelines...
He's also wrong in the belief that offering the Cleric was a dumb idea. As you'll see when I get a moment to write up the session, it was the best outcome that could have occurred. My character is not only completely convinced of this, she is certain that her lack of offering him resulted in the Father punishing her and casting her down. She survived the Father's wrath but she will not fail him again.
Actually he is not wrong. Summoned monsters do as they are told per the spell. Called monsters get to negotiate. There is even an example of a summon celestial type monster lying to the PC's to help an evil guy in an AP. If the same monster was called it would not be helping an evil person unless it was forced to. Monsters can be traps when the summoning spell is used to make a trap. The fact that your GM played loosely with the rules does not change what the rules are.
Below is the an official trap monster.Summon Monster VI Trap CR 7
Type magic; Perception DC 31; Disable Device DC 31
Effects
Trigger proximity (alarm); Reset none
Effect spell effect (summon monster VI, summons 1d3 Large elementals or 1 Huge elemental)
"The new D&D is too rule intensive. It's relegated the Dungeon Master to being an entertainer rather than master of the game. It's done away with the archetypes, focused on nothing but combat and character power, lost the group cooperative aspect, bastardized the class-based system, and resembles a comic-book superheroes game more than a fantasy RPG where a player can play any alignment desired, not just lawful good." -Gary Gygax GameSpy interview, Pt. 2 (16 August 2004)
Funny, every copy of every edition of D&D I've ever played has this little bit in it that says "the DM is the ultimate arbiter of the rules". If the DM thinks it's cool, imaginative and interesting to let the players negotiate with a summon monster trap then that is now The Rule and what is written on some piece of paper in a book no longer matters. Maybe the Pathfinder book is missing that rule. I didn't look and don't care. If it is then Pathfinder is not improved by its absence. It's fine to argue that "changing the rule will mess up game balance" or "that makes the character too powerful" but you don't seem to be doing that magnuskn. You seem to be stuck in a mode where you think the rules are written in stone and unchangeable. That's fine. Play your version of Make Believe as you wish. I find yours uninteresting and like mine more. However don't pretend your version is somehow better and less "magic tea party" than mine. I've been playing RPG's far too long to fall for that sort of nonsense.
My DM pointed me to this after I wrote the above. From the Gamemastery Guide (far down the page):
"Just as GMs arbitrate the rules within their games, so can they manipulate, repurpose, and wholly invent new rules to improve their games."
So it is in the Pathfinder Rules.
Anybody can pull the rules 0 card. For the purpose of the discussion on the boards it is assumed we are using "official rules" when the word "rules" is used.
Nobody said your GM could not do what he wanted to do, and nobody is saying you are having wrong fun, but you said the poster was wrong when in fact by the official rules he is not.
What wraithstrike said ( btw, nice new icon. Father Swarm was pretty nasty in CC :D ). If at your table playing loose with the rules is what you do, it's your table. It wouldn't fly at my table, because I want to keep some consistency in the game.
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You are correct that the "official rules" don't allow negotiating with a Summoned Monster trap. I did check them very carefully before starting the entire "should we talk" idea as I wanted to think carefully about "coolness" vs. "game balance". I've been a GM for 33+ years and know better than to lightly ignore well thought out rules such as Pathfinder. It's why I spent the week between sessions thinking about the encounter. If you look at my initial post you'll see I discussed whether it was unbalanced to give my 6th level character the equivalent of a Dismissal spell for this encounter. In the end we decided it didn't work for several reasons and simply role-played out the meeting of sisters of the same faith with opposing goals.
I still stand by my statement that magnuskn was "off the mark" (the words I used you'll note) regarding negotiating with the Erinyes. It was obvious to me that we were moving beyond the written rules to improve an encounter by fine tuning it to the characters in our campaign. Apparently I should have been more clear as this seems to have been lost on both magnuskn and wraithstrike. I apologize for the misunderstanding.
As it is, we played the encounter out as I wrote about above. It was dramatic, had character changing consequences and most importantly it was fun for all the players. It is a fine example why Rule 0 trumps all the other rules (making them as I said, "guidelines" although very good guidelines in the case of Pathfinder). Using Rule 0 to improve a game session in no way makes it "magic tea party" anymore than using the rules as written because they seem balanced and well thought out makes you a "rules lawyer" or a "roll-player". Discussing the rules as written within the forums is fine if the question is "What are the rules about X?" That wasn't the original question though. The thread started with this:
Anyone have any fun suggestions of ways this can go or things that I should consider doing?
We have a pretty role-play intense group so help me ham it up! :)
Context is important.
I'm definitely sympathetic to both points of view here. If I were GM, I probably would have allowed the negotiation (perhaps with some negative modifier on the diplomacy check to reflect that the negotiation was contrary to the summoning). It would have been a shame to have the encounter between the LE ninja and the devil play out in a purely mechanical way where there was so much RP potential and so much thought on the part of the PC in terms of character background. Even though the devil is a "trap" it is also still a devil, and allowing some room for an exercise of will on the part of the devil in that exceptional situation doesn't seem unreasonable. In my mind, I'm much more willing to bend the rules for role playing than to confer an advantage on a player.
I certainly agree that the "sacrifice the cleric" approach reflects a very different table mentality than mine, but every group has its own style. I do kind of admire the willingness to accept character death. Personally, I struggle with that and, as a GM, I may be too reluctant to kill my PCs...
I'm definitely sympathetic to both points of view here. If I were GM, I probably would have allowed the negotiation (perhaps with some negative modifier on the diplomacy check to reflect that the negotiation was contrary to the summoning). It would have been a shame to have the encounter between the LE ninja and the devil play out in a purely mechanical way where there was so much RP potential and so much thought on the part of the PC in terms of character background. Even though the devil is a "trap" it is also still a devil, and allowing some room for an exercise of will on the part of the devil in that exceptional situation doesn't seem unreasonable. In my mind, I'm much more willing to bend the rules for role playing than to confer an advantage on a player.
I certainly agree that the "sacrifice the cleric" approach reflects a very different table mentality than mine, but every group has its own style. I do kind of admire the willingness to accept character death. Personally, I struggle with that and, as a GM, I may be too reluctant to kill my PCs...
As long as the roleplaying part of talking to the Erinyes is not used to gain an in-game advantage, I am all for it. But the problem is the following: She has a duration of exactly 66 seconds. By the time the Ninja would have gotten through her opening greeting, the Erinyes would have been almost gone again.
So, unless I am willing as a GM to use comic book action speech time ( f.e. Wolverine gets thrown at an enemy and does a whole speech in that one panel ), I see such an action as trying to get one over the GM. And something like that doesn't fly at my table.
As long as the roleplaying part of talking to the Erinyes is not used to gain an in-game advantage, I am all for it. But the problem is the following: She has a duration of exactly 66 seconds. By the time the Ninja would have gotten through her opening greeting, the Erinyes would have been almost gone again.
So, unless I am willing as a GM to use comic book action speech time ( f.e. Wolverine gets thrown at an enemy and does a whole speech in that one panel ), I see such an action as trying to get one over the GM. And something like that doesn't fly at my table.
I totally agree! If I, as the GM, am bending the rules of summoning to allow the PC to attempt to negotiate with the devil, I'm also bending the rules to make that not count too much towards the summoning duration. If it's just a ploy to run the clock (which I don't think was the case here), then it isn't going to fly.
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We pretty much did the comic book speech time. It was telepathic for the most part so we could pretend the whole conversation went very fast. The other characters only caught the beginning and end sentences and are a bit confused at this point and starting to wonder about my character (which I'm hoping is interesting to them). I don't think any of us wanted to cheese through the encounter so we bent the rules to make it role-play well. The DM even made it seem like the Erinyes was going to take the cleric back to Hell with her to torture, which one player pointed out summoned monsters can't do according to the rules, but it was scary and dramatic. Lucky for him he died first. ;)
Death is always a tricky thing to include in a game session. When I DM I usually fudge my way out of killing characters unless it adds something. All three of our DM's do that now and the players have come to trust that the DM's don't do anything arbitrarily. Characters still die from time to time but their deaths are remembered and always push the story forward in some way. That may be why our group doesn't mind character death so much.
I have wanted to run a campaign based on the Black Company books for a while. Who knows when I'll get the chance, however in that sort of campaign death should be arbitrary, meaningless and final. Not sure if I can pull something that dark off easily. Maybe I'll use the old Dark Sun rule where players rolled up four characters with the expectation that their characters will die fast. Maybe I should go as high as nine like in Paranoia.
I LOVE character death. I think it adds so much to the story. Still, I can see how people could get attached to a character.
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That was an awesome role playing encounter. I would find it way cooler than just a straight fight or a retreat until the trap wears off.
My only question is how the player of the cleric feels about it. How is he going to get another PC back into the game? I hope he won't have to wait until after the whole Schloss.
That was an awesome role playing encounter. I would find it way cooler than just a straight fight or a retreat until the trap wears off.
My only question is how the player of the cleric feels about it. How is he going to get another PC back into the game? I hope he won't have to wait until after the whole Schloss.
He's already back in - the very next session a Drow Ranger replacement showed up. He wrote a cool backstory about tracking the Whispering Way for some time due to <some story he made up>. He tracked them here when they came into the Castle and hasn't been able to get in himself. Then he saw this party on the bridge, trekked around the backside using his awesome climbing and terrain whoosie-whatsies and came in during the attack on the Mummy and Mimic.
It was great, he and I had talked ahead of time and prerolled his initiative, damage, and hits. Early in the combat xbow bolts started flying into the room and hitting the Mummy. It really surprised the party! They don't know about this guy now. He's a race none have ever seen (though have heard/read about), and they are really on-guard around him.
In summary - the cleric player didn't mind at all. He's now playing / trying something else fun. If he doesn't like it, we'll just have it leave and he'll try something else. That's the way our group rolls.
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That was an awesome role playing encounter. I would find it way cooler than just a straight fight or a retreat until the trap wears off.
My only question is how the player of the cleric feels about it. How is he going to get another PC back into the game? I hope he won't have to wait until after the whole Schloss.
He's already back in - the very next session a Drow Ranger replacement showed up. He wrote a cool backstory about tracking the Whispering Way for some time due to <some story he made up>. He tracked them here when they came into the Castle and hasn't been able to get in himself. Then he saw this party on the bridge, trekked around the backside using his awesome climbing and terrain whoosie-whatsies and came in during the attack on the Mummy and Mimic.
It was great, he and I had talked ahead of time and prerolled his initiative, damage, and hits. Early in the combat xbow bolts started flying into the room and hitting the Mummy. It really surprised the party! They don't know about this guy now. He's a race none have ever seen (though have heard/read about), and they are really on-guard around him.
In summary - the cleric player didn't mind at all. He's now playing / trying something else fun. If he doesn't like it, we'll just have it leave and he'll try something else. That's the way our group rolls.
Nice. So is the drow good or evil? Or would that be too spoilery in case your players read this? Two evil characters working for different agendas might be crazy -- whether it's crazy awesome or crazy bad depends on the players!
Nice. So is the drow good or evil? Or would that be too spoilery in case your players read this? Two evil characters working for different agendas might be crazy -- whether it's crazy awesome or crazy bad depends on the players!
The drow is neutral and the evil ninja/inquisitor took himself out of the party and replaced himself with a sorc that's neutral. The party had a general feel that we lacked any magical firepower and when the cleric dude brought in a ranger instead of a magic user of some sort, it was more solidified. So we just had 2 characters swap :). It went over real well.