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Adamaro
2010-09-05, 01:20 PM
Not for light of heart! Really gruesome text! A very grimdark campaign! Do not read if easily disturbed!


Me and my crew are running an evil monster-PC campaign and so far the thing has derailed so far, that I as a DM am just amazed. The thing is, players really and I mean REALLY got into their monstrish characters. All of them great roleplayers, but even the ogrish-me is a bit disturbed and disgusted by things that are taking place:
- kidnapping of children
- punishment by cutting off children's' limbs and devouring them (followed by casting cure light wounds)
- feeding on children
- cooking a child and presenting a cooked corpse to its sibling
- just biting off limbs off an alive child
- all sorts of gruesome gutterings and eviscerations
- rape, even between-sibling as a result of PCs scheming

Now the fun part is, this party is of low lvl (2-5) and very far from "evil, unpunishable batman", but they have a party, that really started to work: a strategist, a "face" (succubus), good meatshield and some other participants that are still to kick in.

Since this is a generic D&D world, I was thinking how would evil gods reward such individuals and deeds and would like some ideas on the latter? So far I am issuing action points, but additional boons may be in order and I am looking for some good suggestions.
And what about good gods? As they grow in eyes of evil gods, surely, there must become sort of a small "blip" on a radar of good gods. But just warping a solar on a material plane is well ... unimaginative and an overkill.


The most amazing thing is this: PCs completely fled into wilderness and are practically off "paladin radar", so there is really small chance that they get traced and killed by adventurers.

As for asking PCs to "tone things down a bit": I have no desire to ask them that, since they really are an excellent roleplayers and good players and the whole thing is really awesome, just ... gross.

So any ideas regarding rewards for evil guys?

Kaww
2010-09-05, 01:34 PM
I played with a guy that played evil so good I had difficult time not puking/punching him. This is child's play, he did +censured stuff+. You should consider Book of Vile Darkness, there are rewards for sacrifice there. Also you may find some other mildly twisted stuff.

How can you have a succubus in a low level party?

No matter where the party is some group of adventurers will track them down. If you have time start a new group that hunts them and eventually catches them.

Best of luck keeping your sanity if your group is good at playing evil.

Jack_Simth
2010-09-05, 01:35 PM
The most amazing thing is this: PCs completely fled into wilderness and are practically off "paladin radar", so there is really small chance that they get traced and killed by adventurers.Ah... if they're in the middle of nowhere, where are they getting the kids to torture? There's going to be parents/relatives/caretakers pleading the case for someone to go find the missing kids, or people investigating the villages that are missing when merchants stop by to trade and resupply. If they're engaging in the kind of behavior you describe, people WILL find out unless they're very, very good at covering their tracks.

As for rewards....
For the most part, don't bother. You don't really expect the CE deities to reward low-risk CE behavior any more than you'd expect a LG deity to reward low-risk LG behavior - which is, to say, they advance by (monstrous) class level as normal, for the most part. If you do give out rewards for this kind of low-risk stuff (and if they've gotten off the radar by some method, as non-feasible as that really is, it's now low-risk), make sure that all the NPC Good Guys who do come knocking have similar rewards - as they'd have been getting them from the good-aligned deities just as much as the bad guy players would be getting them from the evil-aligned deities.

WarKitty
2010-09-05, 01:38 PM
Well unlike good gods, evil gods seem unlikely to give out rewards for free. An evil god, or a demon or devil, might offer a pact where the characters could gain some sort of power or custom item in exchange for doing a particular service. Of course such beings are notoriously untrustworthy...

Adamaro
2010-09-05, 03:42 PM
@Kaww
I'm glad I am not the only one with this experience. :) But these guys really put "monster" in monstrish.

@Jack_Simth
They "looted" some backwater willages and then straight marched into the wildlands. Tracking them after three weeks of march into deep wildlands is ... extremely difficult (lvl 20 rangers have better jobs to do and their fees are way too high to track 4 children). Besides they made their strikes in small, unsignificant willages, and besides all that, willagers blamed goblins for the kidnappings. (goblins were destroyed by now)

Reis Tahlen
2010-09-05, 03:58 PM
@Kaww
I'm glad I am not the only one with this experience. :) But these guys really put "monster" in monstrish.

@Jack_Simth
They "looted" some backwater willages and then straight marched into the wildlands. Tracking them after three weeks of march into deep wildlands is ... extremely difficult (lvl 20 rangers have better jobs to do and their fees are way too high to track 4 children). Besides they made their strikes in small, unsignificant willages, and besides all that, willagers blamed goblins for the kidnappings. (goblins were destroyed by now)

Aaaah, the retired village raided by evil beings... The most classic beginning for a group of heroes.

Let's be honest: especially in low level scenario, vilains are often confronted to heroes just because "of bad luck". They were not tracked down by powerful organisations, they're too weak to attract the attention of good aligned entities... Nope, sir. Just a band of adventurer passing by and hearing there're troubles in this zone. It ALWAYS happens when you play good aligner characters, so why not there?

Edit: sorry, I misread the question. For me, no reward: you are low levels brutes, doing nothing more than harming children. I don't think evil gods would give you a medal for killing toddlers. Come back when you'll corrupt some people to their cause, or kill someone representative of the good side.

Jack_Simth
2010-09-05, 04:01 PM
@Jack_Simth
They "looted" some backwater willages and then straight marched into the wildlands. Tracking them after three weeks of march into deep wildlands is ... extremely difficult (lvl 20 rangers have better jobs to do and their fees are way too high to track 4 children). Besides they made their strikes in small, unsignificant willages, and besides all that, willagers blamed goblins for the kidnappings. (goblins were destroyed by now)
Scrying (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/scrying.htm) is a 4th level spell for Wizards, Sorcerers, and Druids; 3rd for Bards, 5th for Clerics. An investigator might have a Crystal Ball (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#crystalBall) on hand to determine if it's worthwhile to attempt to track down a missing child (costs him nothing but ten minutes of his time to check, as the Crystal Ball is at-will).

Parents/relatives/other concerned party brings a bit of hair off the kid's brush, pays a small fee to the local investigator, and finds out with a fairly high degree of accuracy whether or not a given child is still alive (commoner-1 child generally has a +0 will save, and the +10 from the bit of hair negates the -10 for the investigator never having seen the kid - which means a 75% chance of seeing the kid if the kid is still alive). Once it's determined the kids are still alive, it's time to post a bounty. Queue the level-appropriate party hiring a conjurer to cast two Teleports (one to get the rescue party there, one to get the caster back), studying the area the child is in for a time, and then popping over to collect the kid(s) and try to escape on foot (to claim the bounty - I'll assume for now that there are enough kids that they can't simply teleport them all back with the same hired caster... who by the way, also cast Invisibility on himself before going).

Seriously - doesn't that sound just like a normal quest for a good-aligned D&D party?

Funkyodor
2010-09-05, 08:58 PM
And don't forget that when good fails, relatives might turn to evil to get their children back / exact vengance on those responsible. Pacts with devils and the like. Evil cults might follow them out of a sense of outrage "We were going to kill those children!"

One of the kids might have been the chosen child of a god, destined for great acts no longer. Their cult might hound the PC's foot steps at the most inconveinent times. Never stoping because they're fanatics.

Mercenaries hired with what ever the village can scrape together?

Maybe several of the slain kids can come back wraiths? Creepy and difficult for low level PC's to tackle.

Snake-Aes
2010-09-05, 09:13 PM
"<eats kids>" is fairly...bland. I mean, really? Eating little children? Sell them as slaves. Use them as spell components. Trade them for a mcguffin. Release them in the wild. Mind control them into killing their parents. Sell them to new parents who will be both oblivious to the deal and pinpointed by vengeful parents. Give them back and terrorize them nightly for so long they develop a phobia of sleep.Disguise them as yourselves and disguise yourselves as them and watch angry parents kill them all. At night, put their heads on pikes spread across the main road to their home city.


Eating them... your players need to be creative!

Kelb_Panthera
2010-09-05, 11:20 PM
two words: itinerant paladins.

Jack_Simth
2010-09-05, 11:26 PM
Eating them... your players need to be creative!At least one of them is, if you read through the post in it's entirety.

Techsmart
2010-09-05, 11:43 PM
If the party is evil enough to do such things and they are not incredibly powerful, they will either a) be targetted by good characters in ways described in previous posts or b) be targetted by other evil parties for power, gold, territory, etc. If you read on the nature of chromatic dragons, they almost never work together. When they do, the time spent is fleeting. They are more likely to cut the other's throat when they look away. The biggest thing with evil is that the more powerful you get, the less you worry about the good paladins marching towards you and the more you worry about the "ally" slitting your throat before they get there.

Telonius
2010-09-06, 12:38 AM
And don't forget that when good fails, relatives might turn to evil to get their children back / exact vengance on those responsible.

Oooh, now there's an idea. An up-and-coming devil in the Baator hierarchy sees some possibility of using these guys to cause mischief in the mortal realm. Start a frame-up of the local good-guy religions. Whisper campaign that Hieroneus's clerics have defected to Hextor, and leave some pieces of white cloak at the site of the next attack. Then offer one of the locals a chance to storm the cathedral. Give him a weapon of Hieroneus Cleric Slaying, for a price. Start a witch hunt, and let the mortals start dragging their own souls through the dirt. A bountiful harvest for Baator! :smallamused:

Mnemnosyne
2010-09-06, 12:41 AM
Since the group has taken reasonable precautions to avoid tracking and they didn't hit anyone with serious resources, then all the suggestions for having people track them down seem out of place. Indeed, attacking a small outlying village and making off with a few kids, then traveling three weeks into the wilderness is enough to throw off any tracking available in such a location without tossing some absurd deus ex machina at them.

As for rewards, I also agree that as others have said, what they've done isn't special and certainly isn't a big deal enough for evil deities to spontaneously reward them. If they want the attention of evil gods, they need to take proactive action to obtain said attention. As was mentioned earlier, the Book of Vile Darkness has some pretty good stuff for use in these sorts of situations.

Now, if the characters survive to high levels and start doing things that shift the balance of power significantly in favor of evil deities, then, maybe, they might get some positive attention from such beings without actively seeking it. But not for doing some relatively mild stuff to a few kids.

Rasman
2010-09-06, 01:04 AM
well...I'm not sure about rewards, BUT putting bounties on their heads isn't a bad idea for getting them to "tone it down a bit". Nothing says "maybe we should lay low for a while" quite like a lynch mob of paladins and other bounty hunter types. But it can also be seen as a reward as well, the higher the bounty, the higher your infamy. You might find a way to turn it into a reward system. Something like "Oh my, I didn't realize you were with Gromesh the Dread. Please, please, come this way," or something along those lines. But to keep it balanced, they wouldn't want their infamy to get too high, because it would determine how strong the bounty hunters and such are, thus you could technically use it as a means to determine the CR of encounters and such. It could also lead to some interesting treachery and role playing amongst the party members.

Kaww
2010-09-06, 01:12 AM
If bounty was accessible succubus ought to kill them while they slept, alter self, present the heads to the quest giver and take the reward.

I can't see a paladin as a bounty hunter, just for the sake of money. He should do it for free?

Funkyodor
2010-09-06, 04:01 AM
I can't see a paladin as a bounty hunter, just for the sake of money. He should do it for free?

I can see a Paladin bounty hunter catching evil do'ers for a reward that he donates to his church/clergy.

kyoryu
2010-09-06, 04:08 AM
Well, what you've described may not be indicative of a larger assault that would be worthy of massive resources - but generally 'Good' folks respond pretty strongly to such things, as they want to prevent them from happening in the future.

Imagine the grieving villagers left going and begging for help in the temples/whatever, describing the horrible sights they've seen and lived through. What would the reaction be? While these may be low-level fiends, they're clearly trespassing the boundaries even more than a large, evil empire that's at least being a military jerk but staying in its own borders.

Some scrying, and a strike team to take them down seems likely, at the least. Think of how our society responds to such things, and use that as a basis for severity of reaction.

Even evil gods may not approve. They want worshippers, and this kind of stuff doesn't really get worshippers, it tends to run people off. True evil makes itself at home, and hides itself, makes itself appear harmless until it is part of your everyday life - only then do you realize what your life has become.

Evil does not mean short-sighted and stupid.

Malbordeus
2010-09-06, 05:00 AM
doresin (or however he is spelt) got of hunger/ghouls etc could reward their gluttony and lesser evil by giving them Ghoul Fever...

FelixG
2010-09-06, 05:08 AM
Evil is a reward unto itself :P

Perhaps the more fearsome they become the more power they gain, taking over small villages and towns ect threatening to eat or do [pukes] things to their first born children!

Evil characters should have goals for the most part (evil just because is boring) so their players should have an idea with where they want to go and what they want to do, so reward them with advancement toward their ultimate goal.

Weasel of Doom
2010-09-06, 06:04 AM
I probably wouldn't reward them just for doing evil unless it is really big attention drawing evil which puts them on the radar of major good and bad forces, what they're doing now seems pretty underwhelming tbh.

If they were committing the EVILness in towns and leaving witnesses then I'd reward them with a frightening reputation or something but that reputation would also attract heroes. I've always thought a cool idea is to build up the reputation via a cover identity meaning they're perfectly unremarkable just walking around but when they slip the iron mask of "AXe-FAce von EaT-BabY" mobsters start falling over themselves to do the party's bidding, peasants flee the streets and paladins steel themselves for horrible death.

If you want them to get rewarded by evil gods etc then they'd have to go out of thier way to get noticed. This could be committing the evil somewhere religious (a stone circle, a temple (good or evil), sacred sites) or sacrificing the victim in a ritual with runes drawn in blood and praises to the devils. If they did something like that I'd have something pop up and offer to make a deal.

Finally, try and encourage them to have developed goals, friendships and motivations. Evil for the lulz always seemed silly to me and just 'cause someones evil doesn't mean they can't have strong bonds and loving relationships.

Snake-Aes
2010-09-06, 06:24 AM
I probably wouldn't reward them just for doing evil unless it is really big attention drawing evil which puts them on the radar of major good and bad forces, what they're doing now seems pretty underwhelming tbh.

If they were committing the EVILness in towns and leaving witnesses then I'd reward them with a frightening reputation or something but that reputation would also attract heroes. I've always thought a cool idea is to build up the reputation via a cover identity meaning they're perfectly unremarkable just walking around but when they slip the iron mask of "AXe-FAce von EaT-BabY" mobsters start falling over themselves to do the party's bidding, peasants flee the streets and paladins steel themselves for horrible death.

If you want them to get rewarded by evil gods etc then they'd have to go out of thier way to get noticed. This could be committing the evil somewhere religious (a stone circle, a temple (good or evil), sacred sites) or sacrificing the victim in a ritual with runes drawn in blood and praises to the devils. If they did something like that I'd have something pop up and offer to make a deal.

Finally, try and encourage them to have developed goals, friendships and motivations. Evil for the lulz always seemed silly to me and just 'cause someones evil doesn't mean they can't have strong bonds and loving relationships.

The Mask is how my changeling goes about, and she pretty much exploits that.

Akin to Good, rewarding "evil" isn't necessary. Rewarding an evil character for accomplishing his goals is no different than rewarding a good character for accomplishing his goals. The nature of the goals and the means to them might change with alignment, but you don't have to "reward the alignment".

jseah
2010-09-06, 06:24 AM
Depending on what you want, you could give them things that correspond to their actions.

Like giving them a slight aura that makes people more susceptible to pain. NPCs feel uncomfortable around them and prisoners are easier to break.

An chaotic evil god, who loves psycho people like the PCs, could send a low level demon to offer them an exchange. Every time they entertain the god, it grants them a minor increase in power.
Entertaining him requires doing creatively cruel things (you decide), repeats don't do anything.
They then slowly gain abilities that eventually turn them into personifications of their evil. They begin to corrupt NPCs just by being nearby (and themselves as well) and get combat bonuses for performing these acts, combat bonuses that aid in capturing but not killing so they have more victims.
eg. every dose liquid pain that they procure by themselves and drink gives +5 dmg to non-lethal attacks for 3 days (stacks with everything and itself)
every prisoner whose mind they break (you decide when) gives them -2 to diplomacy but +2 to intimidate for 3 days (stacks with everything and itself)


They start to lose these abilities if they don't keep it up. To keep the possibility of redemption open, or serve as an incentive to take more risks once all the easy targets have fled.

EDIT:
It could have physical effects. Like making them more twisted (use the taint system?) with bonuses to make up for the drawbacks.

Kaww
2010-09-06, 08:55 AM
I think that whatever a PC does demons did it with much more style and a greater pain for the victims.

P.S. They have a demon in their party.

@ Funkyodor P.P.S. If paladin donates the money he didn't do it for the sake of monetary reward.