Combining Katrine and Shayliss into one character

[DrSnooze]

I've just started a RotL campaign, and I'm thinking about combining these two NPCs into one character. She'll attempt to seduce one of the NPCs, either failing or getting caught, and then turn up dead in chapter two. Any foreseeable problems with this setup? I feel like the murders will carry a bit more weight if the PCs know one of the victims ahead of time.

[RuyanVe]

Greetings, fellow traveller.

You know your group best.
I'd say that you can definitely handle it that way.
On the other hand the player who started dating Shayliss might be upset if his love turns up dead.

Concerning the plot it doesn't matter either way.

Ruyan.

[the Lorax]

As a general rule, I tried to always introduce bodies as live people BEFORE you put the body in place, I've added lots of scenes across the AP to do that very thing.

As Ruyan points out, there is no plot specific reason that you cant do as you are thinking. It wasn't the route I decided upon, and wouldn't be what I would suggest, but Ruyan is right - gotta judge your players.

Shayliss can be one of the pins that links the party to Sandpoint, and killing her there would only break that pin (simple answer to that of course is don't kill her, just kill Banny - but then, you would want to add a Banny scene).

The whole Shayliss encounter threatened to spiral out of control when I ran it - one of the PCs went back to Ven to try to patch things up, and rolled a 1 on the Diplomacy check. This led to multiple trips back to talk with Ven to try to patch things up, and among the trips, Katrine was encountered a couple times. Later the PCs were able to rescue Banny from some goblins.
They already had reasons to dislike the Scarnettis, so Banny dying wasn't that big of an impact, but it did bring the PC and Shayliss closer together (and allowed me to use Shayliss to draw the PCs into the murder scene rather than the Sheriff).

If I ran it again, I would try to arrange it so that there was a larger comedic element - like Banny/Katrine using the Shayliss event to sneak Katrine back into the house after one of THEIR rendezvous (Katrine sneaking back in while the PC is escaping Ven, or, a panicked Banny falling out of an upstairs window after hearing Ven roaring about "What are you doing with my daughter!" onto the PC who is escaping as Katrine looks on). I would still want to use Shayliss as the lead in to the murder:
Shayliss goes running to her lover sobbing - "My sister is dead and my father is locked up for the crime, come help!"

[Bellona]

I kept them as two separate people, but used a few months down-time between Books 1 and 2 to introduce Katrine and Banny.

Shayliss went for Donk, the half-orc barbarian. With a Charisma 10 he was a better choice than the Charisma 10 size Small female ratatosk (squirrel race) druid, and everyone else had Charisma 8 :( . Ven impressed Donk by actually knocking him out with one blow (Commoner 7 vs. Barbarian 1). The rest of the party then turned it into a group project to help Donk win Ven Vinder's respect enough to let him court Shayliss.

Donk succeeded to the point that Ven allowed Donk, Shayliss, Banny, and Katrine to go on a fine dining double date (the theory being that they would chaperone each other ... yeah, right). So it got very personal when Donk saw Banny's and Katrine's bodies at the sawmill. When the party took down Aldern Foxglove, Donk cut off Foxglove's ears in order to present them to Ven. Ven is happy that some justice was served, and approves of Donk (despite his unfortunate background).

[the Lorax]

I added Shayliss to Aldren's scene during the attack on Sandpoint - allowing the person who was going to be Shayliss' target choose himself (ie whoever was most concerned about saving HER), then did the Aldren obsession triangle of Lust for Shayliss, Envy for lover. Slowly the pieces fell into place and the PCs figgered out most of what was going on.

I'm advocating not just killing her because there are good, not directly related to the AP plot threads that can play out, and Shayliss is an added link to the party being concerned about Sandpoint which IS important to the AP.

[Kalshane]

Pre-supposing the outcome of the basement encounter with Shayliss can either lead to problems down the line (if it doesn't turn out as you expect) or accusations of railroading (if you force the outcome you want to setup the later chapter.)

Also, keep in mind, that if the PC ends up in a relationship with Shayliss (if you allow all potential outcomes, rather than your ideal one) and you then kill her off off-screen you 1) run the risk of upsetting the PC in question and 2) create a scenario where it's far more logical for the Sheriff to toss the PC in prison as the suspected murderer instead of Ven.

For my own part, I introduced Katrine during one of the PCs visits to the general store (pre-basement encounter), where Ven was reading her the riot act about her relationship with Banny. This allowed the PCs to experience Ven's over-protectiveness of his daughters and his anger prior to later events.

I do like the idea of working Katrine having a trist with Banny into the Rats in the Basement encounter that was suggested earlier. It potentially gives one of the PCs a minor sense of kinship with Banny prior to his unfortunate demise.

[Latrecis]

I didn't have the party run into Katrine and Banny during the Shayliss-Basement encounter (in part because the only pc present was the half-elven bard) but I did have the party encounter Katrine in other situations including seeing her sneaking around with Banny while they were sneaking around in some Sczarni shenanigans of their own between Book 1 and 2.

As discussed in many entries above it doesn't harm the plot of the AP if the Vinders have only one daughter but unless I had high confidence in how the player would react, I would be reluctant to kill off a pc love interest off-camera without any possibility for saving her. If the pc has moved on, Shayliss was just a ship-in-the-night and she has taken up with Banny on the rebound, etc. it might be okay. But like Kalshane suggests, that should make the pc a suspect.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I combined them. One of the PCs dated Shayliss for quite awhile (I changed her character quite a bit so she wasn't just the town whore.)
Every time the PC would come back from an adventure...Thistletop, Magnimar, whatever...Shayliss would be so overjoyed to see him because she worried about him whenever he was gone. It became a constant problem in their relationship. She had a hard time dealing with him being an adventurer because she was always afraid he'd die, leaving her alone.
So, she breaks up with him and starts dating Banny Harker. He's got a good job with good security and she doesn't have to worry about him.
And then they're murdered. And the town starts questioning this. Not to mention the PC in question is an Ulfen shapeshifting barbarian, so the town has seen what happens when he loses control. ANd the bodies have obvious claw wounds, etc...
So yeah, Hemlock questions him and the PC does a good job rolling his way out of it. But that doesn't stop Ven and some other townsfolk to always have their eyes on the PC.
The PC loved every bit of it. Even wrote a love ballad to his fallen lover and has been looking for a talented bard to commission him to turn it into a song.