Quick, Non-Debilitating Roleplay Based Curses [3.5]

[Golden Ladybug]

Hello Fellow Playgrounders, how are you?

I was wondering if you could give me a few ideas for some curses? You see, I'm DMing a game at the moment where two PCs have had the choice of who would be hit with a debilitating attack. One of them was on full health, and probably could've taken it, the other was on death's door. The player with full health decided to let the other one take the hit, and he died.

Now, after the session, they've talked about it with me and asked if that decision can be repealed with the dark, forbidden magicks of Retconjuration. But I don't want this to be a free lunch. Like before, I offered them a choice.

They could bring this character back, undo what had been done... if the character with full health took a penalty. I said that he would need to make the decision without knowing what it was.

I have a few ideas, but they're all kind of lame. Do you have any suggestions for what sort of fallout this would result in for a Paladin of Tyranny?

[Glimbur]

I like that you're looking for roleplay curses, not mechanical curses.

Paladin of Tyranny, eh? Where are these powers coming from? Because my first thought was "Must honor requests for aid from those weaker than himself." It's probably too big of a curse though. It could lead to him reverse-falling, which kind of fits with regretting his decision not to sacrifice for someone else. You'd need to talk about whether he wants to reverse-fall or not first.

You could also curse him with empathy. Sure, it's a bonus to sense motive, but it's also a hindrance to being a LE person.

You could curse him with fear of whatever the source of that attack was.

You could curse him with obedience. Full on Ella Enchanted style obedience would ruin the character, so you would have to think of a more limited effect.

[Humble Master]

Ideas for evil curses

When he dies there is no way to ressurect him save Wish, Miracle or True Ressurection.

Must act as a bodygaurd of the character who gets ressurected for 1 year. By act as a bodygaurd I meen take hits for them and always fight at their side.

He can't tell if he is wounded. Anytime he would take damage make a secret talley of it but don't tell the player he takes damage. He can still die but he just doesn't know how close he is to death at any given time. The other players can still see when he is wounded and a DC 20 or so Heal check will tell you how many hit points the cursed guy has left.

Just some ideas. Hope you find them helpfull.

[Golden Ladybug]

I like that you're looking for roleplay curses, not mechanical curses.

Paladin of Tyranny, eh? Where are these powers coming from? Because my first thought was "Must honor requests for aid from those weaker than himself." It's probably too big of a curse though. It could lead to him reverse-falling, which kind of fits with regretting his decision not to sacrifice for someone else. You'd need to talk about whether he wants to reverse-fall or not first.

That was the first thing he asked me about when we started discussing this; He really doesn't want to reverse-fall, since it would neuter him mechanically and roleplay wise (apparently).


You could also curse him with empathy. Sure, it's a bonus to sense motive, but it's also a hindrance to being a LE person.

That's a good one. Hmm... I'll consider it.


You could curse him with fear of whatever the source of that attack was.

Very possibly. He was fighting a Greenspawn Razorfiend, after all. Those things are pretty terrifying.


You could curse him with obedience. Full on Ella Enchanted style obedience would ruin the character, so you would have to think of a more limited effect.

Yeah, I think giving him a compulsion to obey wouldn't go down well with him. A bit too heavy handed.


Ideas for evil curses

When he dies there is no way to ressurect him save Wish, Miracle or True Ressurection.

Hmm...Interesting, but not really what I'm going for.


Must act as a bodygaurd of the character who gets ressurected for 1 year. By act as a bodygaurd I meen take hits for them and always fight at their side.

This was one of the ones I was going to put forward, but I thought of it as character assassination, just slightly. This particular Paladin of Tyranny would, in the words of the player, never actively defend another in combat. Part of his ethos as a Paladin is that "Combat seperates the wheat from the chaff".


He can't tell if he is wounded. Anytime he would take damage make a secret talley of it but don't tell the player he takes damage. He can still die but he just doesn't know how close he is to death at any given time. The other players can still see when he is wounded and a DC 20 or so Heal check will tell you how many hit points the cursed guy has left.

That is actually really cool, but I don't think I'll use it. Its the sort of thing that leaves me with Players accusing me of cheating them out of their character, but I might use it for an Actual Bestow Curse.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I'll report back on the morrow with what I go with.

[Mongrel]

How about this: his fate becomes linked to that of the character he saves. If said character dies, so does his character. That would give the "bodyguard" type effect, but let him still be evil (since it's purely in his own self interest to keep this other guy alive)

[ArcturusV]

Pick a vice the Paladin has, something of moderate/severe annoyance happens whenever s/he partakes? The classic Dominic Deegan "A fish falls on your face every time you smoke" curse.

Though I'd rather play up something closer to the event that triggered the curse. Just seems more fun to me that whatever got them cursed, relates to what the curse does. That's kinda standard in fiction so it should be a recognizable thing.

Of course you want "non-debilitating" which is tricky. Depending on your view of "non-debilitating".

My first thought was something like: Anytime a person within 30 feet of the Paladin of Tyranny is unconscious and dying (between 0 and -10 HP), the person regains enough health to put them at 1 HP, the paladin takes nonlethal damage equal to twice the amount healed.

This plays up to what happened. It means that unless your Paladin needs to be hitting for massive damage or he's going to risk harming himself and healing his enemies in melee. It provides a safety net again for the saved PC in question.

It's beneficial... but also something that might bite him in the ass. Plays to what caused the curse as well.

[Flickerdart]

Did the PoT player regret his decision in-character or just out? Because if it's in character, that opens up all sorts of delicious RP possibilities. A Paladin of Tyranny saving another at personal cost to himself directly contravenes his code. As an embodiment of LE, the source of his power is sure to try and weasel out of letting a powerful servant of evil fall into grace, and thus curse him - both to punish him for daring to do good, and to counter any effects the action may have had on his powers. Let's look at the code.

Blah blah blah loses all class abilities if he ever willingly commits a good act. Not ideal. The forces of evil would thus try and frame this as not a good act. The alignments page says that neutral people are committed to others through personal relationships, so simply helping out a party member is not a good act. As a paragon of evil, though, the character must have a motivation beyond this, so the powers of evil will create one for him.

"Respect authority figures as long as they have the strength to rule over the weak." It would be acceptable for a paladin of tyranny to make a personal sacrifice if it was for the benefit of an authority figure more powerful than him. The curse could then depower the PoT such that he were weaker than the saved character in some aspect that the PoT values - probably strength of arms, leadership, or cunning. Now that he has ceded his authority to that character, the PoT must obey him until he can prove that he is the better fighter/leader/schemer/burger flipper.

"Act with discipline." This one is vague, but again comes back to a sense of duty. If it is the character's duty to protect his party members, then he must embrace it fully - a permanent share pain effect rerouts a small amount of damage from every party member (or if you're feeling especially cruel, any evil living being) in the area to the paladin. This curse remains until he demonstrates that the death of bystanders or followers can further his agenda just as much as letting them live can.

"Help only those who help him maintain or improve his status." The act becomes acceptable if it helped the paladin gain status. This is more of a social thing, with social implications - tales of the paladin's selflessness spread, opening doors with Good-aligned individuals but making his Evil peers resent him and possibly even work to destroy him. They will do so until the paladin can prove that by tricking the rubes into thinking he was an alright guy, he can backstab them viciously.

This part of the code, along with all the other bits relating to authority, could also be taken to imply that a PoT must demonstrate to his allies that he is superior to them at every opportunity, so that they would kneel before him in admiration of his power. The PoT must thus refuse assistance from the party (rolls saves against all spells, even buffs, for instance). This curse can be struck down only if he can convince the others that he is better than each one through an act similar to the one that he performed to save this guy's life.

Of course, all the mechanical effects are optional. The curse could require the PoT to serve the other character until he could prove he was better without docking an attribute, force him into danger to protect people even without share pain, affect his reputation without any mechanical penalties, or require him to avoid accepting buffs without actually forcing him to save against them.

[Averis Vol]

So it sounds like he wants a complete do over on a bad call he made originally, but he doesn't want to pay for it....hmmmm.....

things like this should be dealt with things that might cause him *gasp* internal character conflict!

but seriously, I think a compulsion, maybe with a will save scaled to how strong his save is, would be a good fit, if he fails, he comes to the aid of the ally that apparently matters enough to make a deal with a higher being to bring back.

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

Depending on the nature of the "debilitating attack" he let the other guy take, I'd say the simplest curse is just to make it so he can't take his decision back, this time: whatever the attack would've done to him, it does to him forever. No healing, no restoration, nothing short of miracle or wish. If it was something too intense for that to be viable, you could always just leave a part of it there.

Or maybe the wound that won't-quite-heal, even if the damage &c. goes away, still causes him agonizing pain every time he does something selfish at another's expense; he takes subdual damage and a possibility of nausea with the amount of damage and save DC based on the severity of the act. This would still let him act within his code, but doing so could come with a cost, depending on how he does it.

[icefractal]

Another one along the lines of Flickerdart's ideas -

"Achieve flawless victory". Sure, defeating the razorspawn at all was a victory, but the fact that one of his allies died means it wasn't a perfect one. If he was truly powerful enough, the foe would have been dead before it could do anything of note. That's not acceptable - in the future, he must strive to achieve nothing less than complete victory, and attrition on his own side is a failure of that.

This also means that he might need to keep on fighting in situations where he'd rather GTFO and live to try another day, or take on challenges that aren't a good bet. Not sure what the removal condition would be - maybe take on a challenge he really can't win, manage to survive, and later come back and achieve victory?

[Golden Ladybug]

How about this: his fate becomes linked to that of the character he saves. If said character dies, so does his character. That would give the "bodyguard" type effect, but let him still be evil (since it's purely in his own self interest to keep this other guy alive)

No, that seems pretty debilitating to me :smalltongue:


Pick a vice the Paladin has, something of moderate/severe annoyance happens whenever s/he partakes? The classic Dominic Deegan "A fish falls on your face every time you smoke" curse.

Well, this particular PoT has a habit of making statements that cause the classic "everyone is now silently looking at you" moments. Having a fish fall out of nowhere and hit him would be funny.


My first thought was something like: Anytime a person within 30 feet of the Paladin of Tyranny is unconscious and dying (between 0 and -10 HP), the person regains enough health to put them at 1 HP, the paladin takes nonlethal damage equal to twice the amount healed.

This plays up to what happened. It means that unless your Paladin needs to be hitting for massive damage or he's going to risk harming himself and healing his enemies in melee. It provides a safety net again for the saved PC in question.

It's beneficial... but also something that might bite him in the ass. Plays to what caused the curse as well.

That's very cool, and once again gives me some ideas for actually using Bestow Curse... but wow, that would've wrecked them if this had happened. When they killed the Razorfiend, they dropped it to exactly -1 HP and were out of Actions. If it could've gotten back up, they would probably have wiped. And I did promise that whatever consequences turning back the clock would result in, it wouldn't change the outcome of the fight against the Razorfiend.


Did the PoT player regret his decision in-character or just out? Because if it's in character, that opens up all sorts of delicious RP possibilities.

Unfortunately, this was purely an Out of Character regret. After thinking about how he could've saved the other player's character without risking his own, they talked it over and asked me if we could cast some powerful retconjuration spells.

I appreciate the analysis of the code, however. That does provide me with some fodder for how to approach the Code of Conduct. Or, to antagonise the Character from his peers :smallsmile:


Of course, all the mechanical effects are optional. The curse could require the PoT to serve the other character until he could prove he was better without docking an attribute, force him into danger to protect people even without share pain, affect his reputation without any mechanical penalties, or require him to avoid accepting buffs without actually forcing him to save against them.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm aiming to do. I want something interesting, that causes his Character to grow a little bit, which still provides a tangible downside for turning back the clock.


So it sounds like he wants a complete do over on a bad call he made originally, but he doesn't want to pay for it....hmmmm.....

things like this should be dealt with things that might cause him *gasp* internal character conflict!

but seriously, I think a compulsion, maybe with a will save scaled to how strong his save is, would be a good fit, if he fails, he comes to the aid of the ally that apparently matters enough to make a deal with a higher being to bring back.

Well, to be fair, the higher being is me :smallamused:

What happened here is more of an Out of Character issue than an In-Character issue. The player in question made it quite clear that he didn't want to fluff it as his Character actively saving the other (so no "jumping in front to take the bullet" type stuff), and we eventually agreed that his PoT had moved to take the place of his fallen Ally to combat the Razorfiend, and had taken the Critical Bite Attack for him.


Depending on the nature of the "debilitating attack" he let the other guy take, I'd say the simplest curse is just to make it so he can't take his decision back, this time: whatever the attack would've done to him, it does to him forever. No healing, no restoration, nothing short of miracle or wish. If it was something too intense for that to be viable, you could always just leave a part of it there.

Yeah, he took 22 Damage from a Critical Bite attack. That's slightly more than a third of his health. I don't think gimping him like that would be fair, and it certainly wouldn't be fun for him.


Or maybe the wound that won't-quite-heal, even if the damage &c. goes away, still causes him agonizing pain every time he does something selfish at another's expense; he takes subdual damage and a possibility of nausea with the amount of damage and save DC based on the severity of the act. This would still let him act within his code, but doing so could come with a cost, depending on how he does it.

That might be good; I thought of something similiar, but not as in-depth as that. I'll consider it.

Thanks again to everyone who gave suggestions, but I don't think I'll be able to consider any more suggestions. I'm going out for a bit, then meeting up with them to play out the penalties.

I won't tell them about the Quaruts... :smallamused:

[Flickerdart]

After thinking about how he could've saved the other player's character without risking his own...
Ahaha, now that's some Lawful Evil heroism right there.

[Humble Master]

For a curse that doesn't debilitate how about this.
Every night the Paladin has a dream about the fight with the Razorfiend accept he is in the body of the person who got killed and feels all the pain and such.
Might cause some internal character development I don't know. Just throwing ideas around.

[ko_sct]

Once drawn, he cannot seathe his weapon without first drawing blood/killing ? Might not be much of a curse for a paladin of tyranie...

He could be somehow tied to the guy who came back to life, if the other dude go down, unconscius or is dominated, the blackguard go into some sort of terrible destructive rage, unable to stop while there is still ennemies around ?

He could start disling the sight of blood, could be funny.

[Callin]

The Higher Powers that be demand him to do one SELFLESS act in character with no repercussions of falling, but all the ones of RP. It can be as simple as picking up a fallen hurt child or as grandious as yours and his dreams can make.

[karkus]

He takes half damage and only has half as much HP, but doesn't know. This curse may actually appear as a subtle boon at first.

As in, "That ogre hits you with a tree. take 7 points of damage." when the ogre actually dealt 14. Pretend that you're rolling really bad that night; poker-face it. :smallwink:

In addition, he will drop down to -1 HP suddenly after reaching half his actual HP. For instance, if he has 60 HP total, and the ogres continue to whittle him down with half damage, when reaching 30 points or below in a single attack, he will immediately fall to -1 HP and start bleeding. You should drop him to -1 no matter the damage so as to not detract from gameplay and fun by redundantly killing him; does that make sense?

Also: if you fear he may be catching on and starts totaling the damage and then multiplying by 2 to circumvent this curse, just B.S. your answers from that point. Don't make equations encounter-by-encounter; just say random numbers. Hell, say that he heals damage every once in a while. The Barbarian hits him for 50 points? Tell him 75. He hits again for another 50 points? Tell him 2. A third time for 50 points yet again? He heals up all previous damage and wins a Tony award. Confuse him when he's "now at -68.14 HP but for some reason still fighting" and then again when he's "dead at 120 HP."

DM's face: :smallamused:
PC's face: :smallfurious:

[Fitz10019]

He has to tell the truth. (Or limited to men, women, or some other subset.)

Anything that he says that's phrased as a promise becomes a geas-level compulsion, or a % chance of that.

He is unable to shout, or whisper.

Flatulence.

He can't describe anything without similes, and never the same one twice. Like that song "sly as a fox, strong as an ox, fast as a hare..." Perhaps limited to animals, weapons, deities, or monster manual entries.

[hamishspence]

I kind of liked OoTS: Start of Darkness's one- a very minor character who "must speak only in one-word-exclamations" due to a curse.

[Eurus]

Where are you RPing this curse as having actually come from? Did a higher power decide he was a **** and hit him with it, or something?