Bit of Trouble

[Yogibear41]

So recently while the party was clearing out a cave that turned into a tomb that turned into a diabolical temple (lawful evil) we ran into this outsider that was basically giving deals with the devil. 3 out of the 5 party memeber signed contracts that give them super powers but they have to carry out a particular task within the next year or they die and lose their soul.

1. One party memeber removed his Level adjustment with his contract

2. One party memeber has a permanent true strike cast on him +20 on every attack roll

3. One party memeber got some sort of magical buff were he gets all these bonuses spells, immunity to like 9 spells, + 10 enh to his constitution and some other stuff I forget what its called some kinda of avatar of magic or something from a faerun book.


Anyway the tasks they were given were to 1. kill and ancient vampire that is thousands of years old 2. find and break a magical scepter that is owned by a high shaman of the gnolls( would most likely entails going through hundreds of gnolls to get to him) 3. kill a lich

I'd like to point out that this is an open campaign and our DM does not always give us CR appropriate monsters so we could and are most likely walking into a death trap seeing as how broken so of these deals would be long term if they survive.


Our current party make up:

1. Half-Troll Half-Giant Psychic Warrior will be level 3 after finally buying off his ECL

2. Human Rogue +20 true strike think he is level 5 or 6


3. Gnome Wizard Level 4 or 5


4. Me 1 level of Druid(swift and deadly hunter ACF) and 3 levels of Werebear using Savage progression ECL=7


5. Human Cleric with 1 level in sacred exorcist 3.0 version he is level 8 I believe.



Me and the cleric are contemplating not going along on these suicide quests.

In addition we have a house rule in place that when you level up you have to train for x+1 weeks before gaining a level. The pyschic warrior will have to train for 7 weeks to go from level 1 to level 3 before starting on these quests. So they only have 10 months time to do it. Not to mention magic items are incredibly rare and basically cannot be bout from shops but a few can be found.

Oh and even if they succed on these quests they are marked for life with basically a magical brand that certain religious people can see, and they will come after them to kill them for making deals with devils.


How do we survive this? Can we? Should me and the Cleric run like hell?

[CaladanMoonblad]

Run like hell.

If either you or the cleric are good aligned, what the other heroes did is an abomination and they should be left to their own stupidity.

[AntiTrust]

I believe the atonement spell will break such deals. AFB, but check out Fiendish Codex 2 and its passages concerning deals with devils. The powers in your game are way off from the book, but the fluff and the general ideas in the book are well worth your time to read if you want to get into this plot/premise

[tyckspoon]

Abuse their broken powers for your own benefit, then run the heck out of there when/if they start getting antsy about actually trying to complete those tasks. But I have to ask.. is your game such that a year will actually be a meaningful deadline? Many groups carry out entire campaign arcs that don't wind up taking that long, and it's possible the players of the characters with that deadline will want to retire them before then anyway. So.. they may just intend to enjoy their rampantly overpowered bonuses while they can and not bother to try to hold up their end of the bargain unless the GM Geases them into it or something.

[Yogibear41]

Everyone in the party is good aligned except for the rogue hes lawful neutral, the DM got this monster/deal from some 3rd party d20 book and I'm pretty sure he just said the hell with it and let them wish for what ever they wanted.

He was orignially shifting their alignments toward evil or law but then I think he re read something out of the book and said nevermind your alignments don't change.


We have a house rule in game where in order to level up you have to train for x+1 weeks were x= the new level. The half troll will be training for 7 weeks as due to removing his ECL he will be able to gain 2 levels from 1 to 3. After he finishes his training the group will have a little over 10 months to finish the task and plan on starting them immediately.

The 3 of them are going to say in the entrance to the dungeon this happened in over the next 7 weeks to train and such while me and the priest will be returning to a nearby town, with him staying in a temple of a chaotic good god of the light/sun I belive, and I will be staying in a true neutral goddess temple which is basically nature oriented. Or DM informed our cleric that due to his know: religion roll that priests of a 3rd temple in this town of a lawful neutral goddess will be able to see the mark on the 3 who made the deal and will almost immediately attempt to kill them.

Myself being a lycanthrope I also have to watch were I go in the town thats why im staying at the neutral nature orinted gods temple as they are the least likely to burn me at the stake ( everyone hates me even though im good aligned :smallfrown: )

[Rabk]

Addendum from the cleric/exorcist of the party:

One year is definitely not a long time in this game.The DM really likes to push things along, as this is his own world that he's been running for over 30 real-world years and he's very interested in progressing its history. There are former players in this world whose characters have great-grandchildren now. The reason for the magical item shortage that Yogi mentioned is a decade-long war that was actually started when some of his players decided to use the empire they had built in-game to invade the region we are currently in.

For some reason the DM is very open with me about what's happening in-game and he admits he was shocked that anybody took the deal. He was actually laughing to me about it over Skype as they were signing their contracts. Anybody who's read Faust knows the story already. He told me that the outsider had arranged things such that their souls were pretty much hers no matter what happened. They have an extremely good chance of either running out their contracts or dying trying to fulfill them.

Something the DM didn't realize, though: when he gave the wizard his powers (essentially he's now an initiate of Mystra) he left a loophole that let him use Wish and Limited Wish once per day as a spell-like ability. Yeah. I know. Not broken at all for a level four gnome, really. I'm certain the DM won't let him Wish the for the quests to be annulled or immediately fulfilled or some-such, but it does make for some very interesting possibilities.

Though he's of little consequence, there's a sixth member of the party that Yogi left out: level 7(?) gnome druid straight out of PHB, inexperienced and fairly ineffective player.

RP background: I'm putting words in his mouth, but Yogi is pretty nature-oriented and wouldn't be too keen on deals with outsiders, evil or not. My character is cloistered, only cares about knowledge, and is usually chicken**** about anything that puts him in serious danger (plus very dedicated to good- he's an exorcist for Ganesha's sake). One of the dealmakers (true-strike rogue) made the deal for good reasons (protect his hometown, which is under siege by gnolls), but the other two just wanted power. In other words, we have little reason to help with these ridiculous quests, with the (barely) possible exception of the rogue.

That being said, the only reason we're considering it at all is for out-of-game reasons. If we back out we're splitting the bloody group :smallannoyed:. Yogi and I have been playing together for a long time, while two of the three problem-children are relatively new to the game. If we leave we're basically handing them a death sentence (not that they don't already have one, lol), but they'll of course have to play it out. Yogi and I are in the minority and will thus have to either completely drop out of the game or start our own separate campaign.

It's a pretty fracking frustrating situation, and we just don't know what we should do. We don't our want our characters to die pointlessly, but we don't want to leave the game either. (Oh, and any new characters we roll up always start at lvl 1.)

[Warior4356]

Sounds like you have a problem heres my soultion
When faced with a moral condrum, tough desion, good/evil, etc
Step 1: light something on fire
Step 2: is it still a problem if no then go on with life if yes then
Step 3: repeat step 1

[Amnestic]

It's a pretty fracking frustrating situation, and we just don't know what we should do. We don't our want our characters to die pointlessly, but we don't want to leave the game either. (Oh, and any new characters we roll up always start at lvl 1.)

Could play up the 'good as Redemption' angle. Even if they're (currently) evil, their souls aren't the property of this Outsider just yet. What's more Good than redeeming someone and saving their soul from the clutches of hell itself? Okay, probably a few things, but it's still a decent reason for you at least to maintain travelling with them on their quests.

Nature-oriented is a little tougher though. You say you've been playing together for a long time - are the Cleric+Yogi's character good/long term friends? If that's the case, he could come along simply because Mr. Exorcist convinced him it's the right thing to do and he'll do it because his friend asked him to do so.

[Warior4356]

On a more serious note based on thier alignements.......
How much stock does you dm put into making you play your charectar as writen and not make it up as you go but intead follow alignment background race class etc

[nedz]

If you are GOOD then you might be justified in killing the three characters who signed the contracts. You probably don't want to do that, and it's probably a bad idea anyway, but helping a fiend progress his objectives is also more than questionable. These tasks are obviously important to the infernal NPC otherwise the rewards would not be so great. Also: if they three PCs who took the deal either fail or complete the tasks then they will almost certainly become evil, even if they are not already.

Maybe what you need is some way of breaking the contract, but I don't know how you can do that.

[Yogibear41]

Our DM told us that one possible way to break the contract was to basically go to hell and talk to the Devil in charge of the contracts (not the one we talked to but her much more powerful boss) we would have to convince said devil that the lesser outsider somehow tricked the 3 in their dealings with the contracts in which case contracts would become void, due to trickery being Unlawful. However he also said this would be next to impossible.

A wish spell can also remove the magical brand marking them, but I don't believe it can break the contracts.

[TopCheese]

Step 1: Roll up a new character and put it the back page of your binder.

Step 2: Have your current character make a living will so all your posessions go to the backup character.

Step 3: Get ready for the ride of your life (doritos and mt dew out of game) (contingency teleport item to send your dead body/gear to new character's hometown).

Step 4: Have a note on your current character's person saying that Khan killed you.

Step 5: Have new character drop to his knees and yell "KHAAAAAAN!!!" (Do this in real life for dramatic effect).

Step 6: Go on and have fun with the new character

[Deathra13]

Assuming he is using the rule set he seems to be, if he is using them in full you might also go to his superior and find out how many souls it is taking to fuel these powers and whether or not his superior agrees the goal is worth the cost, being lawful means he wont break the contracts for you but he might be more helpful in finding loopholes etc. if the devil at any point claimed the tasks were minor, easy, or any variation you might be able to claim false pretenses on these terms. But hard to call.