DM Help: In-Character Punishments

[Insapateh]

So here's the thing...

My group are playing longstanding members of a mercenary outfit with a strict code. The code includes the usual mercenary rules:

The outfit comes first.
The outift must endure.
Always heed the contract.
Never willingly leave a comrade behind.

After our first session, one of my players decided he wasn't too keen on the characters he was usng and asked if he could switch them out. Since we were only one session in, I, in my infinite benevolence, said we would just retcon his two new characters into the group but his previous two characters would become NPCs.

Fast-forward to the end of the next session, where one of these NPCs was captured and dragged screaming into the bushes by a random encounter (not entirely random, I'd planned it to add some colour to a detail that came up during character creation, but unrelated to their current mission).

The entire party voted unanimously to forge ahead with their mission rather than attempt any form of rescue.

We had a bit of a back and forth, where I explained to them in numerous forms that this went against the outfit's code and would likely have repurcussions.

They insisted that they were following the code by putting the outfit first and honouring the contract.

I explained that they would know from experience that the code wasn't interpreted in this way but left the decision to them. It's not my job to tell them they can't jump off a cliff, it's my job to roll the falling damage.

I've no interest in punishing the players for this decision. But their characters can definitely expect punishment.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good in-character punishements from the leader of the outfit that would be fun to roleplay.

The rest of the outfit will already treat them worse once word gets out.

[Rynjin]

The greatest punishment of all for an intrepid band of murderhobos.

They forfeit their pay for the mission.

[ShroudedInLight]

Rynjin wrote:

The greatest punishment of all for an intrepid band of murderhobos.

They forfeit their pay for the mission.

More than that, they forfeit their pay and pay out of pocket for the funeral and support of the widow/children/family of that character. Think about it, that person had to be a mercenary for some reason. They were sending the money home, and now a percentage of their earnings are going to go towards paying for that family's comfort.

For the rest of the game.

[Magda Luckbender]

The Captain of the Troop determines whether an offense was committed and, if it was, what will be the punishment. Without knowing the personality of the captain, here is a range of punishments.

Troop Captain the soft-hearted and gentle anti-authoritarian wrote:

Guys, you really should not have abandoned Joe's body. You had time to attempt to retrieve his body and still complete the mission. You are all on latrine duty for a week. Do better next time.

That's if the troop captain is a weak-willed free spirit. A more typical mercenary troop commander might be more like this:

Troop Captain the vicious martinet wrote:

You abandoned a troop member to certain death, making no attempt to either save him or recover the body. Rather than have you all impaled on the long spear, right here and now, I'll be merciful. You will each receive ten lashes, which you are forbidden to magically heal. You must endure the pain of the healing process, and hopefully learn from it. I'll personally examine the wounds in a few days. Also, the Troop seizes half your share of the mission payout and donates it to Joe's widow. If this happens again I will not be inclined to mercy. Oh, and you are also on latrine duty for a week.

[GreatKhanArtist]

While I personally favour justice over mercy, I don't think any of the above responses would be fun to play. There is an old Dungeon adventure from 3.5 that involved bringing a fellow guild adventurer's body back from a dungeon where he was felled. That could be fun.

Of course, said character's ghost could always plague the party, or a villain could turn his undead corpse into another BBEG.

[Shae'ura-Drae]

Punishment should never be "fun" to play. I vote in agreement for the second option presented by Magda.

[Matt2VK]

Kind of hard to answer since we don't know all the details -

What kind of position of authority do the PC have in the troop?

What's the alignment of the PC?

How big is the troop?

What kind of mission is the Troop on?
Is it time sensitive?

In this type of situation, people in the leadership position can have a number of things go wrong. Anything from 'mis-understood orders' to 'friendly fire'. Usually at the worst possible time for the PCs.

Some examples -
"I thought you told us to retreat, making lots of noise. So you could stealth in easier"

"Oops! I fumbled throwing that alchemist fire."

"Gee, I didn't know that stew you got served had some bad meat in it."

"I thought you was outside the radius of that Glitterdust spell."

As some examples.

[The Dragon]

Does the people doing the punishing have reason to believe they left the NPC behind on purpose?

If they weren't keeping tabs on the group (and I don't see how or why they would) there's no reason for them to think that the deaths were anything but tragic accidents. Just saying, NPCs can't punish the players if said NPCs don't know there was a crime.

[Cuuniyevo]

Depending on the level of the leaders, it is not unreasonable to assume they would use divination to find out how their troop members died. It'd actually be pretty irresponsible not to, if you had a caster in the troop.

[Magda Luckbender]

Ya, I would not try dissembling to the troop leader, not if there's any chance of being caught in the lie. He probably has access to Divination magic, if it comes to that. I doubt he'd be inclined towards mercy. The only options I can see, in the case you are caught lying directly to the Troop Leader about a matter of such import, would be either immediate execution or permanent expulsion from the troop.

But maybe this mercenary troop, unlike most of those portrayed in History and Fiction, does not have tight disciplinary standards. After all, it's got PCs in it, and PCs are not renowned for toeing the line on tight disciplinary standards. Most PCs would not last three days in, for example, the Marine Corps. Mercenary troops are renowned for having tighter discipline than comparable state-run military units.

[Bodhizen]

Insapateh wrote:

So here's the thing...

My group are playing longstanding members of a mercenary outfit with a strict code. The code includes the usual mercenary rules:

The outfit comes first.
The outift must endure.
Always heed the contract.
Never willingly leave a comrade behind.

• The outfit cannot come first if its members are all expendable. Good mercenaries are a valuable resource; often more valuable than gold, magical items, or contracts. The outfit is, essentially, its members.
  
• The outfit cannot endure if its members are all expendable. You'd constantly be pulling in new members, and they would likely only come from the ranks of the desperate, stupid or foolish, because the outfit would build a reputation for treating its members as an expendable resource.
  
• You can always heed the contract without putting any one contract before the outfit. After all, the outfit comes first. If there's a way to complete the contract and still help out a member of the outfit, by the code of the mercenary outfit you must help out the member, because the outfit comes first.
  
• Never willingly leave a comrade behind. If they purposefully made the choice to hare off toward adventure and a comrade was left behind (and died), they clearly violated this term.
  

They effectively violated three of the four tenets of the mercenary troop's code. They're longstanding members; they know better. They certainly deserve punishment.

So... I think it would be reasonable to play this punishment out. It can fall out in one of a few ways... For example...

• They broke almost every tenet of the mercenary code. Ergo, they are punished via public lashing and banished from the mercenary company forevermore. They must find another mercenary company, or found one, which could be fun to play out.
  
• Public lashing, and fine them his projected income for the next 15 years (or whatever the average term of duty is in the mercenary troop), which comes in the form of garnished wages. Should they leave the mercenary company before they've paid the (blood) debt, they balance is due at that time, or they take out the payment in (pounds of) flesh.
  
• No consequence from the troop, but the lost member's family is large and makes it their business to visit retribution upon the mercenary company, or the PCs. It becomes a Hatfield & McCoys-type feud. The mercenary company must either choose to abandon the PCs to the family, or fight them off.

The PCs should not explicitly escape consequence for acting like murderhobos in what is supposed to be a tightly-knit quasi-familial unit.

[Blackwaltzomega]

Dungeon Rings. You wanna stay in the group after losing the Troop Leader's trust, the Troop Leader gives you a membership ring that lets him keep tabs on you very easily.

See how your PCs react to having to spend a precious ring slot on something that lets the troop scry on them easily, have a constant Status spell on all of them letting the Troop Leader check in on their general location and condition, and making it piss-easy for the troop to track them or teleport people to their exact location if need be. And they can't get the rings off without clerical assistance unless they get back in the Troop Leader's good books.

If you're wearing a ring and you screw up AGAIN, you're not weaseling out of punishment, and a second strike's punishment is likely a doozy.

[Mr.Fishy]

Zone of truth, second level clerical spell...standard practice during debrief following missions involve the following: grievous injury, death, or semi-permanent magical affliction. Cost about 60gp/casting for a three minute interview, 20' radius means several interviews at once. Or the company cleric can cast it as part of his duties to the group.

All within reason to ensure the security and reputation of the company.

As for the punishment you lose him you retrieve him. No pay. Also you forfeit the cost of restoration or burial. Probation duty, half pay until debt is cleared. Reduction in rank, hazard duty for a month.

The Characters are on the stick for allowing a member to die. Players are not punished...mostly.

[Lathiira]

First, public punishment. The 10/15/infinite lashings with no magical healing. Next: they are to go retrieve the body of their fallen comrade. No pay for this, it's their responsibility, time to clean up their mess. They will then pay all funeral expenses (including cleaning up the body at need). Their pay is forfeit for that mission and goes to the widow and remaining family. If the merc didn't have any, it goes to the company.

[Insapateh]

Firstly, thanks for all the quick replies folks. Definitely given me some stuff to work with.

Secondly, I'll answer some of the questions posted and give a bit more detail.

Matt2VK wrote:

Kind of hard to answer since we don't know all the details -

What kind of position of authority do the PC have in the troop?

They have no authority whatsoever. They're grunts that have worked together before but there are no discrete squads

in the outift, so they just happened to be the ones selected for this mission. In part because they have worked

together well in the past.

Quote:

What's the alignment of the PC?

Alignments vary throughout the group but none of them are evil (Evil wasn't restricted, so I don't have anyone playing CN just to get away with stuff).

They were also told during char gen that it would be a mercenary campaing and regardless of alignment there would be rules in the outfit.

Nobody is going to change alignment for this anyway.

Quote:

How big is the troop?

The mercenary outfit has about 700 troops. The current squad is 8 PCs strong. There are no surviving NPCs :(

Quote:

What kind of mission is the Troop on?

Is it time sensitive?

The outfit as a whole is employed by the ruler of an Ottoman style country. The party were given two to three weeks to investigate reports of unrest in a town about three days travel to the North. They were told during briefing that there was no real rush.

Quote:

In this type of situation, people in the leadership position can have a number of things go wrong. Anything

from 'mis-understood orders' to 'friendly fire'. Usually at the worst possible time for the PCs.

Some examples -
"I thought you told us to retreat, making lots of noise. So you could stealth in easier"

"Oops! I fumbled throwing that alchemist fire."

"Gee, I didn't know that stew you got served had some bad meat in it."

"I thought you was outside the radius of that Glitterdust spell."

As some examples.

Oh their other comrades will definitely have some of the above reactions.

To fill in on the actual story:

The NPC was a Kobold sorceror. To make this a bit more playable, I developed a bit of background to say that Kobolds are a slave race in this part of the world, rather than a monster race to be exterminated on sight. The mercenary outfit isn't from this part of the world and has a pretty open door policy for membership - like Vimes' watch. The group encountered a bunch (what's the collective noun for Kobolds?) of escaped slaves who took exception to the race traitor accompanying the (mostly) human oppressors of her own free will.

The ensuing fight killed the other switched out PC and the Kobolds shrieking about a race traitor eventually fled with a captive.

As it turns out the Kobold NPC isn't dead but has been viewed as a prophesised liberator by the Kobolds' shaman. She was the only red scaled kobold they'd ever seen, green is the normal colour but there are others.

She has undergone a ritual which has given her the half-dragon template and four levels of Oracle. The PCs will defintely see her again and she's not pleased. Her shock and anger at being abandoned pretty much made her an easy convert to the cause.

The party are still investigating the unrest, so they haven't had to report yet.

I am expecting them to try to bluff it out but we shall see.

Sorry for the length and thanks again for all the input so far.

To be honest, this has already sparked a huge campaign re-write. The slavery deal was going to be background but these events have encouraged me to push it further to the fore, especially since the party has a nemesis now.

[Cuuniyevo]

I would call the group of Kobolds a 'clutch', as the term for multiple chickens. Works great if your country thinks of them as slaves, not much better than livestock.

NB: I'm not actually advocating bigotry here, just acknowledging that it makes sense to use as a character motivation in your RPG. Having special terminology for your groups makes it feel more immersive and makes them more sympathetic.

[Mr.Fishy]

Or a murder like 'crows', or a 'nest' like snakes. Or a 'flight' to ironically reference their supposed link to dragons.

[bookrat]

Mr.Fishy wrote:

Or a murder like 'crows', or a 'nest' like snakes. Or a 'flight' to ironically reference their supposed link to dragons.

I like "flight." It also works if a flight only refers to escaped slaves, so it works in two ways. :)

[Insapateh]

I did find a rather nice image that lists some collective nouns suitable for PF here.

I don't think divination will be used to find out what happened, unless the PCs fail a bluff check. People die in the field all the time, that's why mercenaries make the the big bucks of PC WBL. They might not get found out at all.

That said, our Kobold friend had friends of her own in the ranks. A lot of those friends might ask the party what happened. The odds are certainly against them passing every check they need to make. And I would guess that mercenaries gossip worse than washerwomen.

To begin with, I basically stole the conditions at the start of the campaign from the opening of the Black Company novels. The way my party are playing, it's more like A Series of Unfortunate Events now.

I genuinely think they thought the right thing to do was press on, based on some of the other... impulsive... decisions they've made. That's why I want a punishment that they can RP through that still makes the game fun. The players' attitudes seem fine, if misguided.

[rosie_187]

Is there a hierarchy of rules? If a situation arises where abiding by some rules results in others being broken, what are your mercenaries expected to do?

Which is the most important - the outfit, the contract or the individual mercenary? If all are equally important then can a course of action that meets the requirements of some rules, but breaches others, still be deemed to be punishable?

You seem to think that the PCs believed they were acting on a good faith interpretation of the rules. If they are longstanding members of the mercenary company, they must have had a reason for doing so - perhaps their interpretation of the rules is actually correct? If not then there is narrative dissonance of people who apparently always acted a certain way in their lives before they were the centre of a story apparently acting differently because they are now player characters.

Maybe you can find a way for both positions to be true. Perhaps a recent change of leadership in the mercenary company means that different parts of the code are being emphasised - they acted in good faith based on what had gone before, but the new command structure punishes them "pour encourager les autres". Then you can have internal conflict in the mercenary company - maybe a power struggle breaks out between camps with differing interpretations of the code.