Make them want to kill their ally

[My Self]

How could I build/play an NPC character who:

A. The players want to kill (and might get to)
B. Is the player's ally (at least nominally?)
C. Doesn't make the players want to kill me

I was thinking about making a Jar-Jar type of character, but that might not fulfill objective C. Alternatively, some guy with a really big bounty price on his head or something. The party would always be able to opt out without a significant bad impact. In any case, if the players don't ditch or murder the NPC, they would get some sort of nice compensation award. Good idea/bad idea? Any ideas how to make this happen without being a bad GM?

[avr]

Have the NPC hire them then stiff them of all/part of the reward, with a bad excuse.

[Heretek]

I fail to understand your reasoning behind this.

The bounty is an option, but then you gotta deal with the potential of exceeding WBL. The pay off would need to be worth it obviously. Further, if the character turns into an evil a!~+!&#, the players are more likely to just abandon them rather than actually kill them.

Alternatively, perhaps something like a Biggest Fan escort quest? Just a really annoying halfling who follows the party around and won't shut up, but the PCs know if they get them to their escort destination they get a good payoff from a noble.

[My Self]

avr wrote:

Have the NPC hire them then stiff them of all/part of the reward, with a bad excuse.

Hmm.

The party has a Paladin, 2 LNs, 1 TN, and 1 CG. They're strangers in the location they're in, so they have very little authority, so that might work...

[My Self]

Heretek wrote:

I fail to understand your reasoning behind this.

The bounty is an option, but then you gotta deal with the potential of exceeding WBL. The pay off would need to be worth it obviously. Further, if the character turns into an evil a@!$$@*, the players are more likely to just abandon them rather than actually kill them.

Alternatively, perhaps something like a Biggest Fan escort quest? Just a really annoying halfling who follows the party around and won't shut up, but the PCs know if they get them to their escort destination they get a good payoff from a noble.

We're running sans WBL (replaced with auto bonuses), so money is a nice thing to have, but hardly necessary.

The character doesn't need to be evil. Jar-Jar was hardly evil. George Lucas was the evil one. The only problem with the Biggest Fan deal is that while the party might not kill the character, they would probably kill me. You know.

[Heretek]

My Self wrote:

We're running sans WBL (replaced with auto bonuses), so money is a nice thing to have, but hardly necessary.

The character doesn't need to be evil. Jar-Jar was hardly evil. George Lucas was the evil one. The only problem with the Biggest Fan deal is that while the party might not kill the character, they would probably kill me. You know.

There's a likely true conspiracy that Jar-Jar was a jedi who used jedi mind tricks at multiple instances, so that's something to keep in mind.

With regards to the players killing you physically, I think that's the end result regardless of what you do here honestly.

[Avatar-1]

Have the NPC have a mysterious powerful evil alter-ego whose true identity is obscured, but have the NPC be as helpful as possible to the party at any other time.

[My Self]

Heretek wrote:

With regards to the players killing you physically, I think that's the end result regardless of what you do here honestly.

Sure, but there's no need to accelerate that process more than absolutely necessary.

[CampinCarl9127]

A) Find out what the players and the characters hate. Then have the NPC throw it in their face while laughing. A strait-faced villain will definitely attract the attention of the party, but one that laughs at pain and misery of others really develops hate.

B) Magic. Disguise. Trickery. Multiple personalities. Or is very secretive about his/her true agenda, actually just manipulating the party to help them.

C) Hahahaha, you can't have everything!

[vorpaljesus]

They fight a dragon who is being assisted by an invisible bard.
After they defeat the dragon the bard insists on serving them. He is bound by honor or some curse to follow and record and sing the legends of the most powerful creatures in the land.

He follows them around singing constantly about every menial activity they do,even going so far as to narrate in song their action when they're trying to be sneaky or deceptive. Think Elan from OotS or Robin's minstrel from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That level of annoying.

If the PCs try to kill him or tie him up or otherwise dispose of him, he'll grow mournful and mention in a song how they want to get rid of him despite the faxt that he is in possession of a portable hole which has the dragon's hoard within it.

He'll gladly reward them with the loot if they find him a more worthy master or masters to sing the legends of

[Third Mind]

Perhaps a very arrogant son of a royal type that gets preferential treatment and the like, insulting, demanding, etc... and neglects to help the party in less important things like getting past guards of a new city, or something to that nature.

This would make him relatively easy to hate, he could do the occasional political favor for the party if it was in his best interest, so he could be a nominal ally.

As far as the party not wanting to kill you (presumably in real life), you could give them an opportunity to occasionally humiliate this guy, maybe try to make his arrogance laughable.

If you meant not wanting to kill the character, he's a noble's son, and the noble is a good, kind man. Kill him, and not only have you forced the loss of a man's only child, but you lose any reward you would have gotten from his vast wealth.

[My Self]

Third Mind wrote:

Perhaps a very arrogant son of a royal type that gets preferential treatment and the like, insulting, demanding, etc... and neglects to help the party in less important things like getting past guards of a new city, or something to that nature.

This would make him relatively easy to hate, he could do the occasional political favor for the party if it was in his best interest, so he could be a nominal ally.

As far as the party not wanting to kill you (presumably in real life), you could give them an opportunity to occasionally humiliate this guy, maybe try to make his arrogance laughable.

If you meant not wanting to kill the character, he's a noble's son, and the noble is a good, kind man. Kill him, and not only have you forced the loss of a man's only child, but you lose any reward you would have gotten from his vast wealth.

Huh, I like these ideas. Humiliating a noble is completely something my CG player would do. Thanks for the contribution.

[bigrig107]

Heretek wrote:

My Self wrote:

We're running sans WBL (replaced with auto bonuses), so money is a nice thing to have, but hardly necessary.

The character doesn't need to be evil. Jar-Jar was hardly evil. George Lucas was the evil one. The only problem with the Biggest Fan deal is that while the party might not kill the character, they would probably kill me. You know.

There's a likely completely false conspiracy that Jar-Jar was a jedi who used jedi mind tricks at multiple instances, so that's something to keep in mind.

No, no, no, no, NO.

I simply won't believe it. It's not true.

Edit: fixed it for you.

[Baval]

I regularly play the character you want.

He needs to be a well disciplined but irredeemably evil character. He has to be well behaved around the group enough that the Paladin cant really justify smiting him on sight, but do vile things and act like he doesn't understand why theyre wrong. He needs to kill someone they like because they insulted him, or he suspected they were going to betray him, and he needs to be right about that sometimes. Maybe more often than theyde like to admit.

And most importantly, there has to be a reason why the party needs him there. Maybe hes the only one who knows the secret chant to stop the world from being destroyed. He doesnt want the world destroyed, but hes certainly not going to give that kind of power to anyone else. They have no choice but to work with him, but as soon as this is all over hes quest number 2.

Sort of like Reaver in Fable 2

[Paulicus]

Regarding (C), if your players want to kill you after roleplaying the NPC, you've done your job well! Congrats! He's now a memorable character. :)

Also consider that many parties might kill him anyway, even if he's critical to the quest. Perhaps give him a curse or something that keeps bringing him back and attached to the PCs. Not immediately, but reappearing after a few days.

[LordBiBo]

To be honest, I have a hard time making NPCs the players DON'T try to kill. Not sure why, but they always want to murder the most helpful NPCs and seem to like dealing with the most dickish ones.

Case in point, I recently ran an adventure through Neverland. Peter Pan screwed the PCs over. The indians screwed the PCs over. The fairies screwed the PCs over. The mermaids screwed the PCs over. Captain Hook and the pirates treated the PCs fairly and traded for goods the PCs desperately needed.

Of all those NPCs the pirates were the only ones the PCs decided to set on fire.

[Paulicus]

Is everyone having fun? In that case you're golden. Give then a nice murder-hobo romp. :P

[My Self]

Paulicus wrote:

Is everyone having fun? In that case you're golden. Give then a nice murder-hobo romp. :P

See above: 1x Paladin, 2x LN, 1x TN, 1x CG. Not sure they'll go for the murder-hobo approach.

But yeah, fun happens. I just hope frustration doesn't overcome fun with this sort of NPC in play.

[Paulicus]

Ah, I was assuming a few things since they "set fire" to the pirates. :P

Also, murder-hoboing is a time-honored RPG tradition. How dare you discriminate against alignments and their murder-hobility!
(Note: humor :P )

[Divinitus]

Okay, so an idea that I have implemented in a storyline once could be something that you might consider.

Imagine a villain, or just a very morally-ambiguous jerkwad of a character, who has family/a lover/a secret crush that they are quite attached to. Well, the PCs, heroes that they are, end up saving said individual from a sticky situation that the villain could not rescue them from. The villain then feels honor-bound to repay them in kind.

There's a lot of fun things that could result from the villain feeling obliged to help the PCs. Maybe they make an idle wish about liking some uppity noble's head on a silver platter because he stiffed them on payment and, a few days later, a colorful package comes in that is, you guessed it, the noble's head on a silver platter. The villain could vouch for the PCs, tarnishing their good name because people now associate them with an individual with so unsavory a reputation. Let's not even mention what could happen if a villain FALLS IN LOVE WITH A PC (Such as the 'damsel in distress' being a sociopathic serial killer who just happened to get ambushed and put up as the sacrifice by the cultists!). There's a lot of options for exploiting this situation to make PCs miserable... you just need to be creative.

I much prefer to portray a 'friendly villain' as being quite a likable, sympathetic character in the beginning, with no knowledge of his dark side being forthcoming. Then, when the PCs start receiving the unasked-for 'help', they start noticing small things that are wrong about the person they helped out, all culminating when they found out his/her's 'darkest secret' and then decide to bring them to justice.

[The Sword]

Lanfear : )

[My Self]

Paulicus wrote:

Ah, I was assuming a few things since they "set fire" to the pirates.

Different poster.