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Alex12
2013-07-30, 07:14 PM
So this past Sunday, the party my character was in exploded into internal violence that left one party member dead.
We're playing an evil campaign, though the DM is playing kinda loose with alignments- alignment-based spells don't detect normal mortal evil, only supernatural evils, paladins don't lose their powers for just hanging around evil characters, that sort of thing.
We were travelling with an NPC paladin (run by another party member in combat) and were handling it pretty well. But we had a CE party member who was a multiple-murderer Goliath Crusader. That was the party tank.
So we get the boss of the bandit group we're dealing with to surrender, get fair terms, and ultimately let him walk away with basically nothing but the clothes on his back, his weapon, and a promise to never engage in banditry again. So as he's walking away, the Crusader makes an AoO on him. Misses, but that's not the point. The attempt was made. One of the fundamental principles of my character (Dvati swordsage/crusader/monk) is that you accept surrender. The paladin, likewise, is extremely displeased, and is backed up by the party face, a Marshal/dragon shaman, who is a distant cousin of the paladin.
Long story short, for completely in-character reasons, we killed the Crusader. However, everyone in the party (including said Crusader's player) was satisfied with the outcome, and we're all well aware that this doesn't mean we don't like her or anything. After all, it's explicitly an evil campaign. Frankly, backstabbing is kinda expected.
Anyone else have good stories about killing your own party members?

Herabec
2013-07-30, 07:35 PM
2nd Edition AD&D.

I'm playing a lawful evil mage but I had long ago acquired an amulet of non-detectable alignment, so the group just pretty much views me as neutral. The rest of the group consists of a cleric, fighter and a thief.

We'd spent the greater part of the last four sessions fighting our way through the necropolis of a powerful lich who wielded this scepter of undead control. We get to him, this long battle ensues and the party gets beaten and battered and bruised. By the end, most of the group is on their last leg, but we're victorious.

The group cheers, the rest of the group is rummaging through the lich's belongings and suddenly, the idea strikes me. With the scepter, I could finish what the lich began, and we're the most powerful characters in the campaign setting. As long as I'm on the ball, I won't have any trouble with anyone else in the near future as long as I'm prompt with smiting would-be adventurers.

A couple of well-placed Horrid Wiltings and a lucky Death spell later, I'm the sole survivor of the battle, I own all the lich's magical equipment (plus that of the dead group... whom I was getting around to animating) and I was now set up as the BBEG of the setting.

Group was pissed. DM was laughing his ass off. Good times. :smallamused:

hicegetraenk
2013-07-31, 01:58 AM
Mh, had one incident of the players murdering each other very recently. The story goes like this:

We, a bunch of quite low levels are infiltrating a fort which serves as a base to a cult of Nerull worshipers. Our task is to retrieve a magical artifact, called the "Ring of Nerull", which we know holds great evil power, but nothing further.

After defeating the head of the cultists, we find a pure black, heavy ring without any other special features. Detecting magic on it reveals, that it is engulfed in an aura of strong necromancy.

In comes our Wis 6 Fighter, who takes the ring and immediately puts it on his finger. Most of the other players are unaware of that because they're busy with healing / recovering from poisoned darts. Our gnome ninja spots the fighter and tells him to hand over the ring, and not to use it because it is made of black magic. Fighter says "It might just be a ring". So the ninja decides to argue with his dagger, knowing that a normal attack wouldn't really hurt the fighter, and goes in for his 1d4-1 dmg into his leg.
Fighter is pissed but doesn't want to fight the ninja now, he also dropped down to ~20% hp during the fight before. So he passes the ring, we leave and there's cookies.

At camp, during the night, the fighter holds watch. Obviously he volunteered, and we didn't suspect much, cause we others didn't see his and the ninjas 'fight' over the ring. Figther sneaks around while on his watch, getting closer to the gnome, who hears him, wakes up and tells him to not get so close, being suspicious.
Fighter proceeds to stroll along, eventually takes off his armor, gets down to his knees, sneaking only few inches per minute forward, and manages to get to the gnome unnoticed. Now he seeks revenge by saying

Fighter: "I pull out my axe and hit him in the leg, just like he did before"
DM: "You can roll a critical hit, because the gnome is sleeping"
Fighter: "Mhhh, yes... lets see... that'd be 26 dmg"
DM: "You chop the ninjas leg off. He screams and cries and wakes the whole party"

So everyone gets awake, seeing that fighter covered in blood with his axe still drawn over the heavily wounded ninja. I pull out my bow and tell him to start running, but he just stands there and says "My honor is restored. I know that you have to kill me for what you have done". So he gets shot and killed.

Having no cleric in the group and 1,5 days to the next town, the ninja also died.


It's quite a problem in one of my D&D groups. There's many inexperienced players, and many of those, who are quite... well they play mad characters. This often leads to "trouble" within the party.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-07-31, 03:23 PM
It was an epic 3.0 campaign not long before the release of 3.5. Our group of evil characters had just slain the BBEG death knight and recovered the god slayer sword.

My half-fiend character stole away with the weapon and offered up its destruction to the pantheon in exchange for godhood. The deal was accepted so after attaining my five divine ranks I returned to our lair and told the rest of the group. "This place has outlived its usefulness as have all of you." then slayed the entire group with my new god powers and the Angel Wing Razor.

The group thought the betrayal was a wonderful end to the campaign.

thamolas
2013-08-01, 12:57 PM
2nd Ed. I played a CE Fighter-Cleric (posing as a good cleric) in a good party (no Paladins, of course). A fairly new guy was DMing, but he was a regular player and did a great job, but he wanted to play a written module so he could get used to DMing. He chose the original Temple of Elemental Evil.

Being a "good priest" with a high Str., the party elected my character to be party treasurer. Of course, I gave myself the best stuff and cheated the group in every way imaginable.

The party had a lot of problems with monsters and priests (cultists and Cuthbert-ists) in Hommlet (usually secretly instigated by my character) every time we left the dungeon and rested. The party became paranoid, so eventually I convinced them to burn down the town. My God was pleased. Heh.

Eventually, in the dungeon, the party were injured and ran into a huge number of ogres. I healed myself and joined the ogres in wiping out the party. The ogres were in bad shape after the fight, so I turned on them next and killed the remaining ogres. The other players loved it - the double betrayal! Nobody saw it coming. Not even the DM.

And when a new batch of characters were created to team up with me in the dungeon (an evil party), we beat the module. Good times.

tensai_oni
2013-08-01, 01:25 PM
OP, this is the first time I saw a party kill a player character for being a dishonorable killer jerk - basically, commit a GOOD act, and rationalize it with "we're evil".

I'm not criticising, on the contrary, I think your group handled it well ICly and OOCly. I just found it amusing.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-08-01, 01:30 PM
I'm going to assume that my Fiasco play experiences don't really count.

(Though the time we wound up inadvertantly unleashing a bioweapon across the Eastern Seaboard...that was something.)

Alex12
2013-08-01, 01:35 PM
OP, this is the first time I saw a party kill a player character for being a dishonorable killer jerk - basically, commit a GOOD act, and rationalize it with "we're evil".

I'm not criticising, on the contrary, I think your group handled it well ICly and OOCly. I just found it amusing.

Here's the thing. We're different degrees of evil. Being LN, my character is the least evil member of the party, and "don't attack people who have surrendered unless they break the surrender first" is a pretty central part of his character. The paladin we were travelling with, being a paladin, is obviously also against that sort of thing. The Marshal/Dragon Shaman character is distantly related to the paladin, and fought against the Crusader mainly because of family ties. We did have someone in the party who didn't get involved in the fight.
It wasn't really a "good vs evil" thing in this instance. More "law vs. chaos" if anything. After all, if you want to be taken seriously as a power in organized crime, people have to be able to take you at your word.

Alaris
2013-08-01, 02:37 PM
"Good" stories? No, not really. I have a few horrible ones though.

1) I was playing a Barbarian who was turned into an undead (Zombie? Sentient? Have no clue, think it was homebrewed). So the party tied my character up, and left him with the cleric (another PC). I broke free, and approached the Cleric with the cliched "Brains" attitude. And he used "Turn Undead." At the time, we didn't quite 100% understand the rules of Turn Undead, and took the damage as actual damage.

The Cleric killed my Barbarian with Turn Undead... >.<

2) I killed my entire party as a Cleric, by unleashing a horribly evil god upon the universe.

No, I didn't know it was going to do that.

Yes, I was manipulated.

3) This wasn't me... and wasn't so much the party killing eachother... but Player A was absent for a session, and had Player B control his character, a Cleric/Warlock.

The party encountered a Chaos Beast deep within the dungeon (above their CR, not meant to fight it), and Player B put Player A's Cleric in front of his Bard, as some sort of meat shield.

Well, needless to say, after a few rounds, the Cleric is struck and fails his save. He became a Chaos Beast as well, and the party had to put him down. Violently. With a Greatclub.

Bronk
2013-08-01, 08:57 PM
I have a story... It all happened in a mind blowingly awesome summer long AD&D campaign that a bunch of us staff were playing at a summer camp. There were a lot of people playing, thirteen if I remember right, all in this huge barn-like room on the far edge of the camp with a big circle of tables, all controlled by one DM. It was a really big group, and it was all the more chaotic because of a huge range of age and maturity level of the players.

The main troublemakers here were a couple of the younger kids, two guys who both decided to play super beautiful chaotic evil sorceresses that would secretly mess with the other players. For example, in one encounter with a water weird they waited in the back until the other PCs in the room were dying, then finished one off, weakened another, and let a third drown. Every session they would try to pick off someone else, but their shenanigans mostly went unanswered because in game either no one knew what was going on because the party was split or because they had excuses. The DM kept a very strict control of in character and out of character knowledge!

Finally, the quest we were on brought us to some fiendish hell filled with devils, demons, and a whole lot of traps, and we quickly discovered the effects of fire spells were doubled. Soon, the lot of us encountered a vast room where we were confronted with our evil twins! A thirteen on thirteen battle was going to be tough, but we quickly devised a plan so that we could tell the 'good guys' from the 'bad guys'. Unfortunately, the two troublemakers immediately started casting crisscrossing walls of fog haphazardly across the entire room and quickly darted away and started attacking party members. Pretty soon it was a crazy free for all!

Now, out of character it was pretty easy to tell who was who since the doubles were all controlled by the DM, but in character? Well, when my riddlemaster bard with a whole lot of super effective flame spells came across two sorceresses clearly assaulting a piously praying paladin... Well, they must be the evil doppelgangers right?

We let them join in with other characters, slightly chastened.

Jay R
2013-08-02, 12:05 AM
I was playing a first level paladin in OD&D with only the first supplement Greyhawk. The party ranged from 1st to 5th level, was entirely Lawful (which meant Good).

My paladin couldn't afford a sword, and was wielding a mace.

After several encounters, a couple levels down in the dungeon, we were all down to 3 or fewer hit points. (Remember, in this game, 0 hit points is dead.) My paladin had a single hit point left.

The treasure we had just found included a sword, which the paladin asked for. He received the right to pick it up. Unfortunately, it was a high-ego chaotic sword, and the first thing that should happen when my paladin touched it is that he should have received 2d6 points of damage, which would have killed the character. The DM made a few rolls behind the screen, and then wrote and handed me a note.

"This Chaotic sword has changed your alignment. You are now chaotic, and holding a chaotic Flaming Sword."

I thought for a moment, and asked to speak to him privately. When we got into the other room, I told him, "I don't have any questions for you. I just want them to believe you gave me more information than the note had." I told him my plan, we waited a couple more minutes, and then we walked back in.

My (ex-)paladin told the group, "This is a Holy Sword with a quest I have to take on alone. I need you to go back the way you came. It's important that you do as I ask. Go back single file, and no matter what you hear, DON'T LOOK BACK."

Of course the five characters trusted my paladin, and did as he asked. My chaotic ex-paladin came up and stabbed each one in the back. Several times the DM said, "You hear a stab behind you, and a body slumping." "We don't look back." After five times, he told them that they were all dead.

So the only time I have ever had a character attack anybody else in his party, my paladin murdered an entire lawful (good) party.

Toofey
2013-08-02, 12:28 AM
I'm currently playing as a LG fighter in a low level campaign with a CN halfling and a CE elf mage/thief/fighter, who I am going to have to kill. This thread makes me feel better about this.

End of the first session the elf threatened me over treasure I found after not sharing his treasure with the party and got warned. This last session he attacked someone I was fighting beside, because they had been bullying our boss during a party the previous session.

My character doesn't know this, but he also garroted some random person for ****s and giggles when he was supposed to be looking into the guy who ran the inn we were in.

I think one more warning, my sword already demands his blood, and it's LG (according to the DM) too. I'm just playing it cautious (and trying to be gentle) as I've never done in another PC.


Actually thinking about it I'm in similar straits in my other game where i'm playing a CG mage/theif who had to take off from the sword coast after getting himself into a lot of trouble for stealing secret magic from Amn. (ahh bribery) Who is now stuck working with a group of Abject Psychopaths.

What is up with everyone wanting to play evil?

Killer Angel
2013-08-02, 06:24 AM
To provoke and annoy a Dracolich through various weeks, despite the contrary opinion of the group, leaving (without wanting it) traces that let the D. tracking back you, which lead to a TPK, does count? :smalltongue:

Aolbain
2013-08-03, 07:57 AM
A large portion of the tension in our current campaign comes from the fact that, sooner or later, the party will come to blows. But no one knows when, who and why.