Dark Hero points--suggestions?


Homebrew and House Rules

Silver Crusade

I'm planning on running a game that has one of its main themes being the seductive, corrupting power of evil, where the players will see the "merits" of joining the dark side for power. Don't worry, the players have all said they would like this kind of campaign and nobody is playing a Paladin or anything that has to worry about falling from grace.

To do this, I'm going to have a dark patron that watches over the PCs and wants them to succeed for its own reasons--probably a powerful devil, but haven't decided yet. My main idea is to have this work by the patron grant Hero Points as a reward for completing tasks for her (think the faction missions from pre-season 5 PFS). The tasks are going to start out innocent enough--make sure this enemy dies or this person survives, and gradually get darker as the campaign runs on to where by the end they are actively hunting people down who have angered the patron.

So there's two things I would like suggestions of:

1: How often should they have opportunities to get these Dark Hero points? One per level/module seems like it would be too slow and so they wouldn't really see these as big opportunities to gain power (also the side effect I've seen in too many games where the players just hoard their points for Cheat Death), but too many and I could see it getting out of hand--not to mention they'd end up spending more time doing "side tasks" than the actual main story.

2: Any suggestions for what kind of things would make good tasks, and how far along? For reference, the campaign will probably go from level 1 to about 12. Keep in mind nothing should be "burn down orphanage" kind of stuff--the PCs will be staying in one region for nearly all of the campaign, and so I want to avoid anything that will draw a lynch mob (big evil things are ok as long as they can reasonably be hidden from the public eye). If all goes well I want the public to see the PCs as heroes even while they slide into evil.

If it matters, the region for this campaign is the Darkmoon vale, starting with all the modules taking place in Falcon's Hollow and going from there.

Sovereign Court

I'd say remove the "cheat death" uses - any option that's so good that you dare never use any of the other options is essentially killing the soul of your game mechanics.

What you're not talking about, but what I think is important, is go also give a balancing reason why not to always take the evil mission. Perhaps sometimes the evil mission damages your reputation, because people find out what a scumbag you are. Doors close in your face. Don't do this too often or in plot-killing ways, just enough to illustrate the point.

Broadly speaking, there are various reasons why normal people don't "go evil" -

  • Because they really feel passionately about Good and Virtue. These probably aren't your PCs.
  • Because they're afraid they'll get caught and punished.
  • Because they're afraid of being embarrassed, losing their good reputation.
  • Because they're squeamish; they might not care about those orphans, but getting covered in blood is just disgusting.
  • Because they have a skewed moral perspective; in some matters they're just like normal people, in others they're quite amoral. Like the professional hitman who kills criminals and suchlike for money without any qualms, but who doesn't take contracts on "civilians" and might actively hunt down a child-killer. (In Bruges)

    Corruption isn't quite as exciting if all of the PCs immediately take all of the evil missions. They're not being corrupted, they already were evil. It's more interesting if they're tempted but also have reservations.

    So if a PC is afraid of getting caught, what if he's offered an opportunity to do bad stuff and get away with it? And maybe then he's blackmailed into doing it again...

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