Some of the PCs attacked a traveling merchant in the middle of the night, knocking out the merchant. They proceeded to steal everything, which included magic items.
If the merchant guild sends enforcers out to investigate, what stats should they have? APL = 9.
Most NPC's are built with a 15 point spread, I believe. You'd probably want some Rogue (Thug) NPC's to teach them a lesson.
I say forget the merchant guild enforcers. Bringing bandits to justice is something Abadar's followers can really get behind, it's even part of the code for their paladins. Send his faithful after them.
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I dig the Abadar thing. It is possible that the church of Abadar is the go to when a merchant needs enforcers, and may even pay tithes to fund such a group. Your PCs could be facing an angry group of paladins, clerics, and inquisitors. This idea rocks.
Agreed. Throw in a Fighter (a common class to follow Abadar) and you've got an opposing party.
Assuming 4-5 PCs, throw a Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, and Inquisitor of equal level but NPC wealth and stats at them. That's CR 12. Just right for an epic encounter.
And one they could even probably avoid via Diplomacy, since the Paladin would probably offer to grant them a degree of clemency if they give themselves up (I'll bet on that not happening, but you never know).
Unless you want them to lose, be captured, and forced to make restitution of course, in which case maybe jack those NPCs up a bit or add a fifth.
What level was the attacking party?
What gold value was lost?
Also.
How did the merchant determine it was them?
You have open slather to chuck whatever you want at them, depending on the type of guild and how powerful, and what their approach is to this sort of thing.
Fighters and rangers from the town guard (reported as criminals). Pallys and clerics of Abdar (though Callistria also if it's less "Get my stuff back" and more "Get back at the PCs). Rogues, assassins and bards (On loan from the guilds smuggling operations). Wizard / Sorcs / Clerics I'd imagine are also not uncommon for a guild that probably makes most of it's money from doing magic.
All the way through to motly band of whatever you feel like at the time (some of the things that were stolen were from another adventuring party and they've been contracted out for it).
Other thing I'm going to mention though (and I know this isn't what you were after).... If you wanted to turn this into more than just an encounter and more an ongoing thing.... Depending on how powerful the merchant guild is, alternately hurt them financially.... Downgrade any 'merchant guild' member to all start out as unhelpful / hostile and will be far more reluctant to do business with the party because of that black mark over their head. Until it's cleared, the party needs to rely on less reputable vendors which cost more, have less stock on hand and have a lower ceiling of what they can craft... and possibly might slip in the occasional cursed item. They can still attempt standover tactics to get the merchant guild to deal with them, but every time they do is a beacon to the hit squads. The more often they do it, the more reason you have to drop a Zelekhut Inevitable or 4 on them.
Some people have asked for more information. Here it is:
I am not the GM of this campaign, but helping a friend who is.
APL is 9.
He wanted to reward players with a traveling merchant who could sell them magic items. The party was told to wait at the inn for the caravan and would be able to meet the merchant known for selling magical equipment.
While the good and lawful aligned characters slept, a couple characters of the other alignments sneaked out and intercepted the caravan in the middle of the night.
They did so and returned with their ill-gotten gains. While the players of the lawful neutral and good alignments know it was them, they are not allowed to use out-of-game knowledge to turn them over to the authorities.
The GM wants to send guild enforcers to find the people responsible and show those players they just can't do such things and expect to get away with it.
Okay:
Thanks for the information.
Playing this out, how powerful is the merchant? Would he have the resources to track down who smacked him and stole his stuff?
Is he just a traveller just carrying the items for someone else?
Assuming that he has the money for revenge, how would he locate the thieves?
Assuming that he has found them, how much is he willing to pay to get the items retireved? And does the recovery team have enough firepower to actually localize and retrive?
I am of the mind to give as much rope as the players want, but it has to be legitiamte. IF they tactically did a superb job, and did not let things get tracked back to them, you have to be logical in what happens next.
Look foward to the rest of the story.
Wow. I wanna stay in the loop on this one, particularly when in turns into a long-term party split or PvP situation.
Okay:
Thanks for the information.
Playing this out, how powerful is the merchant? Would he have the resources to track down who smacked him and stole his stuff?
Is he just a traveller just carrying the items for someone else?
The merchant was carrying them but is part of a guild on this world. The GM did not expect the PCs to rob him.
Merchant was a 9th level expert. The Merchant Guild though has a lot of resources. GM admits he should have used more guards but was caught by surprise.
Assuming that he has the money for revenge, how would he locate the thieves?
Good question. He may have gotten a good enough look to describe them and point them out. Or maybe he can have somebody cast Locate Object on a magic item. Or maybe one of the items is bugged or marked.
Assuming that he has found them, how much is he willing to pay to get the items retrieved? And does the recovery team have enough firepower to actually localize and retrieve?
Guild leaders would be furious and want to make an example of the thieves. They would be willing to send two high level enforcers and spend
I am of the mind to give as much rope as the players want, but it has to be legitiamte. IF they tactically did a superb job, and did not let things get tracked back to them, you have to be logical in what happens next.
That is something to think about. But then there is no such thing as a perfect crime either. There should be some kind of logical repercussions.
DB:
Thanks for answering the questions.
I look foward to the rest of the story.
While the good and lawful aligned characters slept, a couple characters of the other alignments sneaked out and intercepted the caravan in the middle of the night.
They did so and returned with their ill-gotten gains. While the players of the lawful neutral and good alignments know it was them, they are not allowed to use out-of-game knowledge to turn them over to the authorities
I don't get it. A couple of characters acquire a bunch of loot overnight and the merchant the party was waiting for shows up robbed, doesn't show up at all, etc… Sounds like cause for ingame suspicion to me. Enough to immediately turn them over to the authorities? Not yet, but enough to have them tell the authorities "hey, these guys may have been involved. Please look into it and if they are guilty we had nothing to do with it."
I assumed that the other party members don't know about the recently-acquired loot.
Ok, let's say that the other players haven't seen the loot yet. Sooner or later the robbers will want to spend and / or use their loot. Unless they're very careful those characters will expose that they have more loot that they should. Even just trying to conceal goods from people you are traveling with is a problem, especially if you travel as often as an adventurer.
So, yes, there's a good chance they could get out of local law enforcement range if the other characters haven't seen the loot yet and bounty hunters, the local guards, etc don't show up first. But the odds of the robbers keeping their ill gotten gains hidden from the rest of the party isn't as good as people seem to think.
will teach them not to play Chaotic Stupid anymore.
Good suggestion.