Campaign Advice

[TatsumakiKara]

I'm new to pathfinder (to D&D in general really) and I'm the DM. I have no one who I can ask for advice at the moment (except for one of my players who has more experience but didn't want to DM) about a situation that happened at the end of our first day.

The PCs met a pair of traveling merchants who were headed in the same direction as they were and ended up travelling with them to their destination. But once they reached the town, they found it empty and the PCs were attacked by zombies in the tavern. Meanwhile, one of the merchants (she has levels in rogue) was scouting elsewhere in town and found a lock box in what she assumed was the mayor's office/house. She couldn't open it and gave up and looked for the PCs who had just finished killing a mob of zombies. One of the zombies had the key on him, and the merchant figured it might be the key to the box and brought the PCs to it so they could open it.

Once they did, the merchant claimed half the money (she found the chest) and left the rest for the PCs (I was trying to limit how much money to give them since they're only lv2). Then they attacked her and managed to wound her though she got away. I had mentioned that she was part of the merchant's guild,so I was thinking that it would be fair if the head merchant wanted revenge on them, but since the PCs were hired by the local military, the commander would handle the situation and instead of letting the head merchant do whatever he wanted to them, the commander would make them work it off by basically drafting them. Does this seem fair?

I would also appreciate any general advice that all of you could give me about DM-ing. Sorry for the long post!

[DM DoctorEvil]

Seems fair to me. The decision to attack the merchant to take half the money seems like a bad one, and should have consequences. This time the consequences are forced draft into a military unit, next time it might be a warrant for their arrest, or a group of thugs hired by the guild to teach them a lesson.

I'm left wondering how the decision to attack the perfectly circumspect merchant because she wouldn't give more than HALF the money to them was arrived at. Half seems pretty generous for opening a box...

[Raymond Lambert]

Did your players complain about this? If not, don't worry if it is fair or not. If they did complain, have the commander point out that if they don't want him to handle it for them, don't be surprised when assassins begin targeting them, hired from the merchant guild. Also point out, they can get gear at a fair price from the commander while buying directly from the merchants will result in high prices, if they get sold to at all.

Next to nobody likes being told what to do. esoecially when you want to escape with a game. Consider bluntly telling the players life is not always fair, suck it up. Also tell them you do not have time to come up for every contingency in a perfect ending way.

[TatsumakiKara]

@DoctorEvil, I figured half would be fair since they had saved the merchants from a few bandits prior to reaching the town, so the merchant was trying to be nice.

@Raymond, it hasn't happened yet, we stopped right after the merchant got away since it was getting really late. And that's what I thought would be a reasonable response from the commander (and maybe have a little show of force from the merchant in the form of several mercenaries walking around in more expensive gear than the PCs have at the moment to try and impress that were it not for the commander, they'd probably be dead by now). And I was gonna make it more serious by making the prices of things go up for the entire military due to their assault on the merchant.

I had to ask because I didn't want to seem like I was forcing them into it unreasonably because I didn't want to be railroad-y. Thanks, both of you!

[TatsumakiKara]

I already know that if they decide to fight either the commander and the military or the merchant's mercenaries that I'll have to kill them (at least if they fight the mercenaries, the Commander might have some mercy if they manage to not die), but what would be an acceptable/reasonable level for the NPCs? Would 4-5 be good for the merchant's mercenaries and 6-10 for the military, 10 being the commander? As stated before, the PCs are all lv2.