Typewriter
2009-09-17, 12:30 PM
I planned this out for my players a while ago and it finally came up the other night, so I'm able to talk about it!
There are three main parts to this:
The setup:
The assassination:
What happened:
The setup:
It's an urban campaign, and I've been pumping it full of intrigue and betrayal. At one point one of the party members was framed for murder by a monk who could feign death, and his mistress(a bard with the inspire hatred alternative class feature). The party had to prove the PCs innocence, or see her killed for a murder she didn't commit.
Because of how well the party did on that case, their help was requested by someone that was being accused of killing someone.
The assassination:
The city is ruled by a council of seven people. They were scheduled to have a guest visiting them and so they had some new furniture commisioned. The new furniture was being built by a crafter who had his wife kidnapped. The kidnapper ordered the man to build a ring gate into one of the chairs, or his wife would die. The opposing ring gate had some wood placed up against it that would cause the chair to look normal (you look through the design, and you see wood - just like all the other chairs).
During the dinner the block of wood is removed, and a needle filled with poison is pushed through and used to kill the person sitting in that chair, and then the block of wood was pushed back.
What happened:
The players found a spot of blood on the chair, and searched it briefly but were unable to find any pins or anything that could have been responsible.
They examined the body and found the point of entry on the upper right shoulder.
They spoke with the fellow council members and while asking in what order people arrived found out that a certain councillor had arrived early to finish setting up the new chairs/other misc. things.
They examined the chair again and pushed around on it, eventually discovering the movable block of wood.
They were able to peer inside and identify the location as being a room at an inn they would sometimes frequent.
They found the body of the woman inside, and with her testimony(and the obviously rigged chair) got the man off(he was the guest that they had been entertaining that night). When they escorted her home, her husband revealed that he had been forced to do this by a halfling with 'X description'.
One of the party members was a member of the thieves guild and recognized the description as that of the guild leader.
NOTE: This is where what I expected to happen heavily diverges from what actually happened.
Rather than tell anyone what he realized, he ran off to chat with his boss.
When he arrived his boss was putting away all his things, along with large piles of money. PC revealed that he knew about the murder, and his boss asked him if he had told anyone about this. He said 'No', and his boss shot him with a crossbow bolt covered in poison. DC 13 fort or die. The player rolled a 2 and died.
So, what do you guys think? I was really proud of this for an intrigue/investigation thing, and the part where they were questioning people piecing everything together was a lot more drawn out, but was more important to the overall story arc than this specific investigation.
One of the problems I had was the possilibity of detect magic detecing the ring early, and negating half the investigation. I wasn't sure if there was any way to block detect magic directly, but I came up with potential ideas, like the chairs were all heavily enchanted with all manner of thing to make them more comfortable and have different uses, or the ring gate itself was blocked from view so there would be no line of sight?
Not really sure if either of the things I came up with would have worked too well, but I figured I'd just go with a 'custom detect magic doesn't work' spell if it came up.
There are three main parts to this:
The setup:
The assassination:
What happened:
The setup:
It's an urban campaign, and I've been pumping it full of intrigue and betrayal. At one point one of the party members was framed for murder by a monk who could feign death, and his mistress(a bard with the inspire hatred alternative class feature). The party had to prove the PCs innocence, or see her killed for a murder she didn't commit.
Because of how well the party did on that case, their help was requested by someone that was being accused of killing someone.
The assassination:
The city is ruled by a council of seven people. They were scheduled to have a guest visiting them and so they had some new furniture commisioned. The new furniture was being built by a crafter who had his wife kidnapped. The kidnapper ordered the man to build a ring gate into one of the chairs, or his wife would die. The opposing ring gate had some wood placed up against it that would cause the chair to look normal (you look through the design, and you see wood - just like all the other chairs).
During the dinner the block of wood is removed, and a needle filled with poison is pushed through and used to kill the person sitting in that chair, and then the block of wood was pushed back.
What happened:
The players found a spot of blood on the chair, and searched it briefly but were unable to find any pins or anything that could have been responsible.
They examined the body and found the point of entry on the upper right shoulder.
They spoke with the fellow council members and while asking in what order people arrived found out that a certain councillor had arrived early to finish setting up the new chairs/other misc. things.
They examined the chair again and pushed around on it, eventually discovering the movable block of wood.
They were able to peer inside and identify the location as being a room at an inn they would sometimes frequent.
They found the body of the woman inside, and with her testimony(and the obviously rigged chair) got the man off(he was the guest that they had been entertaining that night). When they escorted her home, her husband revealed that he had been forced to do this by a halfling with 'X description'.
One of the party members was a member of the thieves guild and recognized the description as that of the guild leader.
NOTE: This is where what I expected to happen heavily diverges from what actually happened.
Rather than tell anyone what he realized, he ran off to chat with his boss.
When he arrived his boss was putting away all his things, along with large piles of money. PC revealed that he knew about the murder, and his boss asked him if he had told anyone about this. He said 'No', and his boss shot him with a crossbow bolt covered in poison. DC 13 fort or die. The player rolled a 2 and died.
So, what do you guys think? I was really proud of this for an intrigue/investigation thing, and the part where they were questioning people piecing everything together was a lot more drawn out, but was more important to the overall story arc than this specific investigation.
One of the problems I had was the possilibity of detect magic detecing the ring early, and negating half the investigation. I wasn't sure if there was any way to block detect magic directly, but I came up with potential ideas, like the chairs were all heavily enchanted with all manner of thing to make them more comfortable and have different uses, or the ring gate itself was blocked from view so there would be no line of sight?
Not really sure if either of the things I came up with would have worked too well, but I figured I'd just go with a 'custom detect magic doesn't work' spell if it came up.