murder mystery

[tim01300]

So I am making a murder mystery for my players, the local guard will ask for their help in solving a series of murders in which the victims are found flayed alive. I don't want to post too many details because one of my players visits this site sometimes.

The lvl 11 party consists of a barbarian, wizard, druid, fighter, and cleric. We are using core books only. Aside from speak with dead and discern lies what do i need to prepare for to prevent them from magically solving this in a few moments.

Does anyone have any tips for doing a detective style adventure? Right now it feels a little flat because all of the clues are obtained by speaking with eye witnesses like the beggar who found the body or a woman who smelled the killer as he ran by her. I am trying to create something that will help some of the players who have been spending points in the not so combat orientated skills. I don't have any ideas for skill challenges aside from the conversation orientated ones though.

Any ideas or past examples of mysteries you guys have done would be very helpful.

[Kazudo]

One thing that helps is multiple venues. Don't just make it take place in one part of town, make there be a reason to go out of town. Like the woods, a cave system, etc. Somewhere that will require not just cunning, but multiple skill checks. Knowledges, survival, maybe even traps and locks! If the murders are organized enough, maybe it's a crime syndicate with assassins which are proven to be too powerful for the group, forcing the group to, instead, figure out how to avoid or evade the enemy instead of fighting them head on!

As long as this kind of thing is interspersed with actual small grade combat, you should be doing ok.

I do murder mysteries all the time in L5R, and the best way I've ever been told to do it is to have a list of NPCs, and a really, really detailed account of the discovery site(s), including all possible clues the group could ascertain. You could also make certain spells (discern lies, speak with dead, etc) be illegal to perform in the city limits due to respect for the dead, respect of privacy, whatever else. That will curtail the lawful individuals and create risk for the neutral ones. The chaotic ones won't typically care. On top of everything else, unless there's a railroad ticket with your players' name on it with you as conductor, your best bet is to leave the rest to your players. If they make a logical conclusion that the ceremonial knife the guy was killed with could link him to a cult of Nerull, make there be a cult of Nerull a possible suspect, if not outright decide personally that it's the killer. If the group feels certain that it was someone the person knew, maybe the victims have a linking person in the cult of Nerull. Maybe a preacher, healer, counselor, or maybe they're all related and he's their cousin. If the victims decide that each one was killed by a different person, maybe the cult of Nerull is forcing its people to show their loyalty to the cult by killing a cherished family member. Maybe there's one that doesn't want to do it! Maybe the group can figure out who it is and stop the murder in time! Maybe the group can convince the person not to and to turn on his whole cult! Perhaps that forces the hand of the cult of nerull, who were really using heartfelt sacrifices to summon and bind some elder evil, and now they've decided to kill the group, who have OBVIOUSLY fostered a deep, meaningful friendship with the potential murderer!

Etc.

[Phelix-Mu]

I love murder mysteries.

Sadly, D&D doesn't really do that very well, and it's almost impossible past level 5-7 in a party with ample access to magic and any idea how to use spells.

The major concern is divinations that reveal (or have a chance to reveal) "truth." And also summons that result in such divinations.

Finally, beware Diplomacy. If you have a Diplomancer in the party, you have likely already learned the hard way that Diplomacy is the Easy Button for non-combat encounters.

A major way to complicate out-of-combat encounters is to use layers of illusions, deceptions, and planted agents that have been manipulated via suggestion (or it's various big brothers, geas, dominate, and other out-of-core badness). The info is false, but the person giving it believes it to be true because they saw an illusion, had their memories manipulated, have been seduced, etc. Don't go postal with the smoke and mirrors; allow Sense Motive checks at high DCs to give players hints that not everything is not as it seems.

[Shining Wrath]

The murderer has to have some way of defeating your normal spells. Just banning "speak with dead" is likely to give players a bad feeling. But "speak with dead" that learns diddly and squat is frustrating, but in a good way.

[Duke of Urrel]

I agree with everything that Phelix-Mu wrote.

Here's something that I do to keep secrets. Allow all Sense Motive checks outside of combat that are made to detect intentional lies to take 10 by default. Allow players to roll Sense Motive checks rather than take 10 if they suspect that they are being lied to. However, if a player's Sense Motive check fails, the PC is not allowed to act on any suspicion against the lying NPC until some evidence of untrustworthiness turns up. A Sense Motive check at DC 20 can accomplish this, but this is the check to "have a hunch," which can't be re-tried.

Here's the other side of that plan: All Bluff checks made by lying NPCs also take 10 by default (except in combat). See how that works? You can enable clever liars to lie just a little too well for any PC's Sense Motive check to succeed by taking 10. So the only way a player can detect one of these clever lies is by rolling the Sense Motive check, which requires some suspicion to act upon. There's no way to stop PCs from having hunches, but remember that lots of NPCs may be untrustworthy without being guilty of the particular crime that the PCs are trying to solve. It's easy to surround PCs with suspicious, untrustworthy suspects who are actually innocent, at least in this particular case, and who may even provide the PCs with some true information if they have no reason to lie.

Don't abuse this technique to keep all secrets just out of the PCs' reach. Indeed, make sure that plenty of unskilled NPCs tell lies that are easy to detect, just so that players know you're not cheating them.

Gather Information skill can be part of a detective story. The way I handle this skill is to house-rule that certain questions can't be fully answered by this skill, for the simple reason that no creature in the area knows the full answer. But a successful Gather Information check should always provide a partial answer, a clue, or a lead. For example, a successful Gather Information check may reveal who does in fact know the answer to the PCs' question, or where the PCs need to go to discover it themselves.

Arrange your campaign like a scavenger hunt. Start at the end. Then plant a chain of clues, so that the final clue leads to the villain, the second-to-last clue leads to the final clue, the third-to-last clue leads to the second-to-last clue, and so on. It's good to make sure that there are several ways for the PCs to discover each clue. If they miss a clue, create a way for them to discover it by accident, though perhaps with a heavy cost, such as a fresh new murder that the PCs failed to prevent – but which fortunately provides them with an alternative path to the next clue.

If divinations are used, make sure that there are many false trails and false suspects for your players to ask questions about. The Big Bad Evil Guy should have a completely false identity (or several of them) and lots of accomplices – some of them deceived or enchanted into co-operating – and he should cleverly make a lot of innocent creatures look guilty. A good trick is to make murder victims seem to have been killed by something other that what actually killed them. For example, a Fireball can cover up murders that were actually done with daggers, and dagger wounds can cover up murders that were actually done with the Phantasmal Killer spell, etc. Think of ways to frame people for murders they didn't commit. A particularly nasty trick is to use the Magic Jar spell to possess somebody else's body while you commit a crime.

Keep the Speak with Dead spell in mind. In anticipation of this divination, some killers may wear disguises – or use the Magic Jar spell – when they kill, so that their victims' corpses will give misleading posthumous testimony. Less creative murderers may cut their victims' tongues out, though that trick is less fun and shouldn't be over-used. It's also not realistic for murderers to have time to cut out their victims' tongues before leaving the scene of the crime.

In short, try to arrange things so that divinations are more likely to be used to spare the innocent, not to discover the guilty too quickly.

[Afgncaap5]

Given the number of divination spells that describe their answers as being cryptic and brief, one thing I tried when I tried a murder mystery in Eberron was making there be more than just a murder mystery (a jewel thief was also running around and at the stroke of midnight the mansion was going to be attacked by a number of angry wardens of the wood, chief among them some defected House members using animal controlling collars to get Horrid Rocs to attack. The level 7 party wasn't quite prepared for it.)

Another thing you could do would be to give the players what seems like a really easy way of interrogating suspects that would fail. I put in an Eye of Aureon that would compel all the suspects to speak the truth, but the murderer's murder weapon was a magical candle that had an antimagic effect. The murderer's weapon was used to deactivate the zone of truth while he was in it (the players never suspected why the butler was lighting a candle.)

[The Grue]

As previously mentioned, a lot of the information-gathering Divination spells give answers that are "cryptic", which really just means they reveal whatever the DM wants to reveal.

So if the Wizard uses one(which he will), your only decision is "Do I want to give away the answer or not?" If you do, the "murder mystery" ends abruptly. If you don't, the wizard feels like you're railroading him. Which you kind of are.

I would suggest that level 11 is not suitable for the town guard asking the players to solve a murder unless that solution requires overwhelming force and/or quick action. Unless your setting massively skews the capabilities of the average person that guard is probably level 2 or 3. Your 11th level PCs are nigh unto gods in his eye.

The sort of side-adventure you're describing is better suited for level 3-5 PCs. Level 11 is Superman. Think how Superman solves murder mysteries.

[Kazudo]

Destroying half a city comes to mind.

Do that!