I am currently GM'ing Rise of the Rune Lords with a group of 4. Last week the party reached the Big Bad of the first mod, and was pretty much TPK'd due to some poor saves against a fear effect. However I decided not to kill them for two main reasons. First I don't think it's fair to kill the entire group in a situation where they didn't do anything exceptionally stupid and simply had some bad luck. And second, two of the players as well as myself are also in a group that is currently playing Carrion Crown. The reason I bring this up is because we had a similar situation in that campaign where our level 3 party was TPK'd, and so was the next party, and the next, and so on. At this point in Carrion crown we are on the forth book and have been through about six full parties, and now none of our characters are even remotely connected to the story which is killing all the roleplaying.
So instead of killing my players I decided to curse each of them with one of the seven deadly sins. Now here is where I need help, how should I implement this in game? What mechanical and roleplay consequences should this have on the characters? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Also I apologize if the formatting of this post is terrible, I had to write it on my iPad.
my suggestion is that everyday the party members have to make a will save.(DC is up to you) If they fail they have to commit an act affiliated with their deadly sin. If they save they are free to act normally however the urge to sin increases. (DC goes up by 1 each day the save is made) For example the guy that is cursed with greed, and fails his save, either cannot buy anything for the day as he wants to hoard his loot. Or should you kill the BBEG and get his hoard, he "contests" (take it how you will) everyone to get more. Or if does need to get things like food and such he tries to steal it so he doesn't have to pay for it. And maybe you can get crazy and the guy with the lust curse needs "stimulation" from the opposite gender on a daily basis (unless they make their save of course). And every day that he fails the save and is denied, he starts going through "withdrawl" so he starts taking negatives on stuff. that would be really interesting for roleplay.
Remember to avoid to do things that destroy group cohesion. You could make them targets of sinspawn and the like regardless of what they actually do. There are creatures that hunt by sensing sin and the like right?
My first thought was to go with the save or sin idea, but as MrSin pointed out that could cause conflicts within the group. I was thinking instead of making them save everyday, make them save if they were in a situation where they would be feeling greedy, or lustful anyway.
Having sinspawn target them would definitely be interest, especially because I think there are variants based on each sin.
Yeah, situation based might be better. It also lets the players avoid what they might have trouble with if they know their own sin. The growing DC to save would come back to bite you later. Its a cool idea, but its bad becuase eventually they don't have a choice and your taking a lot of control out of the players hands.
Sinspawn definitely have variants. Whats better is that they encouraging taking class levels.
After looking at the sinspawn page again they look perfect. They will be great as a recurring obstacle that the party has to overcome, and giving them class levels will help them scale with the party and stay relevant over the whole adventure. Thanks for the great advice.