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Let him fight his way out or die. The Monk too. Especially since unless there's some crazy s!%+ going on there's no way a Monk can ACCIDENTALLY kill 15 people.
It doesn't matter whether it's an accident, if I decided I was going to chuck a grenade into the middle of a crowded mall because I wanted to kill some evil cultists it would still be my fault if anyone died in the crossfire.
are they surrendering to authorities? guards still need to catch em first
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This is a perfect example of the need for the DM to enforce real-world consequences. What would guards think about such irresponsible use of magic? Did the wizard not think or not care?
From the sound of it, he did not care. If that is the case then he should be punished. NPCs should react organically to this sort of situation. Best case scenario for the PCs is that even if the guards did not come after him, the local populace would fear and hate the PCs. No one would be willing to do business with the PCs. People would bar them from their homes and run in fear. Word would spread to other townships and the PCs would become Pariahs without some sort of drastic action.
Worst case scenario, they face execution or other medieval punishments (Hands cut off or tongues remove or branded for their crimes, the possibilities go on and on) and those that associate with them could face banishment on top of the rest of the stuff described above. A spellcaster would face the worst of it, brutal methods would likely be used to remove his spellcasting abilities due to the fear of an unhinged spellcaster running rampant.
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who exactly is going to pull this off? the peasant militia? Depends on where the PCs are.
If they were in Korvosa, the locals are used to high magic situations (imps freely roam and duel with psuedo dragons) and would scatter when a battle broke out. How is it exactly these peasants were smushed so tightly together in the battle area?
Did the GM inform the player there were other targets in his AoE? The caster would have known that.
You can't just let the player cast a spell and then say "oh by the way that blows up the planet"
IF a Gun battle breaks out in the mall, people don't gather around to watch and place bets, they get outta dodge.
So if the PCs are somewhere where the locals wouldnt know about the scary magic powers of casters, there is not likely to be anyone powerful enough to apprehend the PCs. it all stays kinda relative.
I informed him. He's now saying that he tried to make it look like the cultists did it...
Is it pretty obvious he is the one that did it?
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So he tried to make it look like the cultists stone called themselves...
...
Yeah, I'm voting "actions have consequences" too. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs have an appropriate song on this matter, IIRC. How did it go again...
And how the hell does a monk accidentally kill 15 people? Was he flurrying with grenades?
See my friend decided to Stone Call with Elemental and Rime Meta Magic feat in the middle of a crowded pseudo Indian market place fighting cultists. He managed to mildy harm the cultists and kill 50 peasants during the process. And the monk before hand had accidentally killed 15 more. The guards saw this and this is a campaign to save the world. The bard is innocent. But there's a problem also. The guards don't have a jail. They just take you to the chopping block. I don't want to derail the campaign but the wizard was more blood thirsty than I thought.
At the absolute most, Stone Call is going to do 12 damage. That's if you roll two 6s on 2d6. Your weakest possible basic commoner has 3 hit points and dies at -10, so even in this worst case scenario, there should have been no fatalities immediately if someone used a Channel Energy or the like. The wizard could have honestly expected around 7 damage, which gives the peasants a while before they die--is this game using a houserule where NPCs die at 0 hit points? Is it possible the wizard's player didn't know that when choosing the spell? He did pick a low damage AoE, after all.
As the player in question, I only acted after the monk slaughtered a handful of commoners with a homebrew bow. The item is a bow that once a round casts a random harmful spell at the target. The spell he got was snowball swarm.
As the player in question, I only acted after the monk slaughtered a handful of commoners with a homebrew bow. The item is a bow that once a round casts a random harmful spell at the target. The spell he got was snowball swarm.
So what kind of character are you trying to play? What is the personality supposed to be like? Alignment? Etc?
Orf wiv 'is 'ead!
By the way, what you're really talking about is mass murder, not serial murder. It's hard to be a serial murder by accident.
In the order of horrid acts, existing casualties do not excuse adding to the body count.
Actions have repercussions, if I was running the game I'd have you lot over the barrel for this.
Note: serial killers don't actually kill all their victims at once. The word "serial" denotes events that occur in a series, that is, one after the other at different times.
What you have here are a couple of mass killers.
I would want to know more about the circumstances. You say one of them "accidentally" killed 15 people. Well, though this is terrible, an accident does not make a person evil. Also, I have GMed situations where it was clear the player did not completely foresee the entire outcome of what was going to happen from his actions. That, too, was an accident. People got killed, but that did not make him evil.
Should there be ramifications? Of course. Depending on the level of enlightenment in this village, such outrageous "accidents" could merit anything from a death sentence to a life of servitude to make amends.
In the future, the GM may want to think of the ramifications ahead of time and not allow these actions to result in the deaths of masses of innocents. Remember, this is a cinematic game more akin to a movie. It is not real life. Not every action need result in the most serious of consequences. It is completely within the purview of the GM to play "collateral damage" in a more comical or cinematic style to lower the body count. This does not hamper challenge, as the NPCs the party are fighting are still affected as they always would be. It just helps to keep the tone light and to keep the game on course, rather than instantly derail it and render multiple PCs useless.
In other words, just because you CAN allow innocents to die peripherally doesn't mean you SHOULD, and anybody who insists on that level of so-called "realism" might want to re-evaluate how seriously he takes the game.
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Unless the entire populace is cowed by the PCs or the leadership is completely sociopathic towards their people or the PCs are known to be absolutely, without question, necessary for the survival of the world, I can't see any way for them to not want the characters involved punished with extreme prejudice without having the NPCs not act like actual people.
Granted, those bystanders probably should have moved away from the battle unless all of this took place right at the start(in which case, holy hell) or the place was so crowded that they couldn't quickly get away.
Personally, I'd really recommend rethinking the -5 thing and that homebrew bow on the GM side. On the player side, thinking of the NPCs as people makes a lot of these problems go away. Unless the PCs themselves are sociopaths.
In which case this is probably going to come up again.
My character was a wizard\ razmiran priest. However, since we use homebrew gods I talked to my gm if I could try to make razmiran as a completly fictional character that she would use to gain power slowly and be more like a real world cult leader.
She is hard lawful evil and was in the "don't destroy theworld it's whe here all my stuff is". While she feels her companions are family she does not like people beneath her.
I think I went over board because I earlier got away with everything before this with rediculous skill checks and being able to blame the changling witch for things and most town folk would believe it.
absolutely, without question, necessary for the survival of the world,
No we pretty much are.
So, if you're playing a LE character, it's perfectly fine for her to kill the peasants to hurt the enemy (at least from her world view).
On the other hand, the locals are perfectly fine to kill the LE Wizard/Priestess for doing so.
If the monk can prove it was an accident (maybe display the bow and how random it is) then maybe the monk can get off with just a loss of a hand or something for being reckless. But the spellcaster is basically a dead woman (or at least has a price on her head if she can get out of dodge fast enough).
whats this loss of the hand business.... ah yes im just going to let someone do that.....Kung fu chop!
By the way, why would a lawful monk, use a random, unfocused magic item that is unpredictable like that.... seems chaotic to me.
If I rode down a couple of bank robbers in my car, but first had to "accidentally" drive through a crowd of innocent civilians to do it, there'd be no mercy from the mob, the cops, or the jury afterwards.
Why should this be any different?
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Honestly that reminds me a lot of something that happened in a game I was playing a while ago. Just that was maybe a little bit more extreme even:
I was a NG druid, we were playing in a homebrew world, loosely based on ancient Greece, but with PF races etc.
There was a war between dwarves and the rest of the world basically and we've infiltrated a dwarfen city. Humans and other non-dwarves were 2nd class citizens there.
At some point there was a gathering of a couple thousand or so civilians mostly, a few military guys too. They were there watching the trial and public execution of resistance people. (We were part of the resistance) Many in that crowd were humans and non-dwarves that had probably been coerced into attending.
Now our party wizard goes invisible, flies up, uses some spell combined with a Hero Point and basically makes a giant rock that was suspended over the city fall down. (in my opinion that spell wasn't powerful enough for that even with the hero point, but GM allowed it) Right into that gathering, killing pretty much everyone, and flattening entire city blocks with the blast wave, killing even more people that weren't even at that gathering.
His justification was "Hey, I'm 13 years old (the character, not the player) and just found out that the dwarves had massacred my hometown and sacrificed everyone to an evil god. So I'm taking revenge on a dwarven city."
We took a break pretty much at this point, but I said "Seriously, I don't know how I can justify my character sticking around after this, if there's no consequences at all". I mean believing in the Circle of Life etc is one thing, but this is something different.
The bad thing was, there was none. At all. IC noone outside the party knew it was him that did this, and apparently there was no way to figure it out too.
All the other players and the GM too figured it was ok what he did because "hey, it's war. that was totally normal back then to kill civilians if it was war".
And everyone in the party was ok with it too, while supposedly still being of Good alignment. Oh yes the cleric (of a NG or LG god) gave him a scolding...
My point is this: this completely hampered my enjoyment of the game and my character as I would have to ignore a major aspect of my character.
We wanted to play a heroic game, at least that's how it started and what I made my character for and were officially on a quest to save the world. Which btw, the rest of the party had voted to sort of abandon and let the NPC church deal with it at the first opportunity, so they could go and mess with the dwarves and get involved in the war. That I was the only one against that and wanted to stick with the original plan should maybe have been a hint in hindsight.
I as one of the players in that game would have actually welcomed if we've all (me included if necessary) been hunted down and killed by the resistance or the dwarves or anyone, and we roll up new characters. But to get away with this just like that, it just felt wrong in every vein of my body.
Probably luckily the game only lasted another two or so sessions after that.
So yes, you definitely should impose consequences. The enemy/government has wizards too, diviners and whatnot. They can figure out who is responsible. Clerics can put the suspects into a Zone of Truth and interrogate them. There's enough options to figure out what happened and who did it.
Or just old fashioned investigative work: "Let's see, that spell was targeted at this group with 5 cultists and 50 civilians and none of you... Hmm, yes, you're right, it probably was the cultists casting it, right? I mean why would they want to target you when they could blow up their own? /sarcasm"
The monk might get away with "accidental" but even then, he admitted up there that he took a gamble and lost. That's in modern justice systems manslaughter I believe. You willingly accepted the possibility of someone dying. If you don't want that, don't shoot with an RPG into a group of people, even if the grenade only has a 5% chance of actually exploding.
The wizard however, there's nothing accidental about that anymore.
Waitwaitwait...what?
"So, lowlife, you killed 15 innocent people in a crowded market square? What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Yes sir, it was an accident sir."
"Oh well that makes it okay then, I'll just charge you a small fine, maybe that will help smooth over the heartbroken sobs of 15 families tonight."
Yeesh. That's a hilariously low amount of wealth. Is the rest of it in item drops or are you playing a "Poor Man's Campaign"?
Still, no amount of gold smooths over the death of 15 people.
Think about it, if my gun went off and killed your mother, would you be all right with it if I walked up to you an hour later and handed you 20 grand in cash?
*Awful.
And me, I'd not be the one to forgive someone who killed my family member or friend, especially when they have the gall to try and pay me to forget about it like my family members were some kind of object that he accidentally broke. That person would likely be on the receiving end of definitely lethal and probably painful retribution. And that's coming from someone here in the 21st Century, where we're soft on that whole thing compared to medieval justice where torture, limb removal, and death are the most common punishments for crimes like this.
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I can just see the wanted poster up on the walls the next day:
"Reward: 500gp each for the wizard and warrior who cruelly ended the lives of over five dozen of our fellow citizens. The pair stormed into the marketplace and began slaying townsfolk with magic, stoning them to death with magical ice and rock. The reward will be doubled if they can be brought in alive, for fair trial and, if found guilty, death by stoning."
Ravingdork has it right. This wouldn't fly in the best case in the real world, which is a heck of a lot more lenient than any pseudo-medieval fantasy world. Heck, most trials in such don't even run on evidence, but on character witnesses. And sixty-odd grieving family members beats out a few indignant murder-hobos every time there.
IT totally depends on the power level of the locals to take the party down.
In the village of hob nob, in a low fantasy campaign, where the PC's are say 10 point builds, what real power would civilians have? It's a 10 point campaign, the NPCs would be commoners and possibly experts with a smattering of aristocrats and the occasional adept.
In a 15 point campaign you 'might' find a NPC inquisitor to be called down on the PCs when concerned citizens let word out of what happened.
In a 20 point campaign, PC classes are likely common in the NPCs and they would stand a chance to apprehend random violent PCs.
But in the low fantasy campaign, the PCs might represent the walking law. as was common IRL during the dark and middle ages, a knight in armor with a horse and sword could basically do as he please as no one could stop him, the chivalrous knight came later, but early knights were usually nothing more than bullies with armor.
I got away so I guess I am going to live out the rest of my life in rural farm towns and a metropolis that I can never ever, ever go back to.
I think I have a record for a bounty of 300k. This to much to just handout and needs to be in property or something. I now need to make a clone so I can become a kingpin.
I need to be paraniod about bounty hunters though.
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And two it's a game... Not "the real world"
However, it is a game where you're playing characters in a setting populated by other characters that are usually expected to act like people. Otherwise it's no longer a roleplaying game, or at least one with characters that act anything like humans.
I think the party's only real option at the moment to continue with all characters involved is to get out of that town and never return. And be ready to deal with bounty hunters and vengeful family members.
Again, I think the players goofed, but there are some issues on the GM end as well that seemed to feed the situation(the -5 rule and that homebrewed bow). But that's only going off of what's been presented in the thread so far. Maybe there was a communications breakdown. We can't tell from here.
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In all honesty, if it were my campaign, I would allow the PCs to find a way to escape.
Then I would have the people form posses and hunt them down.
Essentially put the players to a test.
You can surrender, or can kill more villagers. If they choose to kill more villagers, then I would have the city hire an adventuring party to bring in the murders. Dead or alive. Then as GM I would put together a higher level, stronger party and hunt down the PCs.
The adventure was planned as a heroic game. But all games are interactive. The players chose to slaughter innocent peasants. They are no longer heroic and the game has taken a turn.
They should either turn themselves in and accept whatever punishment is dealt (possibly death) or become evil.
BTW possible alternate punishment, and one that allows them the POSSIBILITY of claiming it was an accident, is to place a Geas on them to perform some sort of HEROIC action, or series of HEROIC actions (think Greek legends here). These should be suitably dangerous and certainly exceptionally deadly (at least CR+5 or higher). Completion earns forgiveness from the government.
Though certain individuals may still harbor hatreds and hire assassins to plague the PCs for the rest of their lives.
I think one more thing I would add in... If my players themselves decides not show any responsibility or even remorse (even for fictional people) I would consider twice about playing with them again or calling them friends.
Still, no amount of gold smooths over the death of 15 people.Think about it, if my gun went off and killed your mother, would you be all right with it if I walked up to you an hour later and handed you 20 grand in cash?
Depends on the culture you're playing in and how the PC fits within it. Don't project too much modern Western culture into the situation. Blow up 15 serfs in a typical feudal location and you may be paying the local lord for the loss of his land's workers. Do it in the Land of the Linnorm Kings and you may end up paying a weregild in compensation, but that still might not head off a vendetta if the wrong person happened to die.
The reason I wouldn't be fine with your payment after your gun goes off and kills my mother is because I live in a culture in which that is most decidedly not acceptable. And that's not a pseudo-medieval fantasy culture.
Killed or reduced to zero hp? The two are not the same. I have a hard time seeing 2d8+ difficult terrain and entanglement killing 50 peasants unless we are not using "standard" pathfinder npc's.
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Waitwaitwait...what?
"So, lowlife, you killed 15 innocent people in a crowded market square? What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Yes sir, it was an accident sir."
"Oh well that makes it okay then, I'll just charge you a small fine, maybe that will help smooth over the heartbroken sobs of 15 families tonight."
To be fair, paying blood money wasn't exactly an unusual way to resolve murders during the Dark Ages.
A level 7+ character is pretty much a demigod.
Not saying the public should not be crying for their blood, just saying that it may be impossible, even for the entire city-guard rallied as a whole, to defeat the party. Particularly if they fight underhanded and use the terrain of the city. Small, crowded indian marketplace, paints a picture in my head of a city with lots of crammed, narrow streets and alleyways. If challenged, the PCs could likely take on any opposition the city is capable of throwing at it, using the city's own infrastructure against it.
Assuming of course that the city does not house really, really competent NPCs. You know, the kind with crazy stats, like a few people in Magnimar or Korvosa? Your average city however, would be completely at the mercy of a close-knit team of level 7 PCs.
This is all, of course, assuming that your world operates the same as mine, and that NPCs usually come in levels 1 to 2.
Cheers
-Nearyn
A level 7+ character is pretty much a demigod.
Not saying the public should not be crying for their blood, just saying that it may be impossible, even for the entire city-guard rallied as a whole, to defeat the party. Particularly if they fight underhanded and use the terrain of the city. Small, crowded indian marketplace, paints a picture in my head of a city with lots of crammed, narrow streets and alleyways. If challenged, the PCs could likely take on any opposition the city is capable of throwing at it, using the city's own infrastructure against it.
Assuming of course that the city does not house really, really competent NPCs. You know, the kind with crazy stats, like a few people in Magnimar or Korvosa? Your average city however, would be completely at the mercy of a close-knit team of level 7 PCs.
This is all, of course, assuming that your world operates the same as mine, and that NPCs usually come in levels 1 to 2.
Cheers
-Nearyn
This point of view isn't one presented as the norm in the pathfinder system, as the system doesn't assume a level 1~2 norm for npcs.
Not saying your way is invalid or wrong, just that it isn't the norm of the system as presented by the designers.