So Your Players/Characters are Rich, and have pissed off everyone

[Jacob.Tyr]

So... I was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I tend to run a little more loose with paths than is to be expected, and I encourage my players to go off the rails. To that end, my players have now slaughtered the guards protecting a wagon convoy and "secured" an obscene amount of ill-gotten wealth. While I had anticipated the amount of guards to keep them from trying this, the general fact that the guards were for the most part honest folk doing a job, and the amount of civilians present, they went ahead with their whole-sale slaughter plan and succeeded, burning their resources and winding up with everyone a troll's fart shy of dead in the process. Realistically in a manner of days they're going to have the authorities from Baldur's Gate after them. Probably in a few weeks time WaterDeep will send some forces, and they'll also have to deal with the Cult of the Dragon's reprisal Soon (A message got off during combat). Since they were in theory working with The Harpers and Order of the Gauntlet, those guys are probably also going to be pissed.

So... at this point I'm hoping for suggestions on how to proceed. Also ideas as to what I should expect. Let's say you've just robbed the **** out of a wagon train, killed a bunch of innocents, betrayed your contacts and pissed off all of the authorities and a shadowy end of the world cult. What would your next course of action be? How bout from the other side of the DM screen, what are some interesting scenarios for this?

Edit: Horde/Hoard

[Grand Warchief]

So... I was running Horde of the Dragon Queen. I tend to run a little more loose with paths than is to be expected, and I encourage my players to go off the rails. To that end, my players have now slaughtered the guards protecting a wagon convoy and "secured" an obscene amount of ill-gotten wealth. While I had anticipated the amount of guards to keep them from trying this, the general fact that the guards were for the most part honest folk doing a job, and the amount of civilians present, they went ahead with their whole-sale slaughter plan and succeeded, burning their resources and winding up with everyone a troll's fart shy of dead in the process. Realistically in a manner of days they're going to have the authorities from Baldur's Gate after them. Probably in a few weeks time WaterDeep will send some forces, and they'll also have to deal with the Cult of the Dragon's reprisal Soon (A message got off during combat). Since they were in theory working with The Harpers and Order of the Gauntlet, those guys are probably also going to be pissed.

So... at this point I'm hoping for suggestions on how to proceed. Also ideas as to what I should expect. Let's say you've just robbed the **** out of a wagon train, killed a bunch of innocents, betrayed your contacts and pissed off all of the authorities and a shadowy end of the world cult. What would your next course of action be? How bout from the other side of the DM screen, what are some interesting scenarios for this?

I have never played the dragon queen path as my dms like to make their own adventures. But I will assume from your description that your party is not a good aligned adventuring party. Or if they were they aren't any longer. That being said, so long as they were acting in character, they have sealed their fate. Ripping off that many people will result in the pcs spending the rest of the campaign running from via authorities and trying to survive, usually, to a not so pleasant end. If your players are ok with the consequences of their role play decisions, then let it end there with their arrest or execution.

If on the other hand your players are not ok with this, then perhaps there is a way for them to pit the forces that are after them against one another.

While I will assume this does not happen very often, there is one other scenario that I've seen work in this situation and like I said, it's not a common approach...

This happened to my group once, we pissed off the wrong people and were pretty sure there was no way to end the campaign without us getting caught. So one player came up with an idea...he hired a new adventuring party, informed them of what was happening and what their situation was, and told them to finish what they started. He effectively had the idea that the whole party start over at a slightly lower level with new characters and continue the campaign. The old characters acted as decoys and distractions until they were eventually caught and killed. One of the new members was a bard and made sure to glorify them in his final tale.

Idk, it worked for us That one time lol.

[JFahy]

Have you read the second half yet? There's one faction that opposes the dragon cult and might reach out to your characters, giving you a way to keep them sorta-kinda-maybe on track. :smallamused:

[TrollCapAmerica]

You went full Murderhobo

You never go full Murderhobo

[Jacob.Tyr]

You went full Murderhobo

You never go full Murderhobo

With the "Enemies reaching 0 HP are either unconscious or Dead (PC's Choice)" rule in play, the abundance of murder is particularly striking. There is definitely some need for alignment reevaluation. There was actually a debate about whether or not to leave some enemies alive, with the flow chart being A) Can we torture them for information, i.e. are they members of the cult? Yes-> Keep alive. No->Kill.

@JFahy: Do you mean the Zhentarim?

[JFahy]

With the "Enemies reaching 0 HP are either unconscious or Dead (PC's Choice)" rule in play, the abundance of murder is particularly striking. There is definitely some need for alignment reevaluation. There was actually a debate about whether or not to leave some enemies alive, with the flow chart being A) Can we torture them for information, i.e. are they members of the cult? Yes-> Keep alive. No->Kill.

@JFahy: Do you mean the Zhentarim?

Yeah, those guys. I don't know a ton about them, but the notes in the sequel say that they're on board with anything, including nasty ruthless stuff, that hurts the cult but doesn't hurt them. I'm thinking they might help your PCs disappear to avoid the heat for a bit, in exchange for some not-very-comfortable commitments of future service.

[Xetheral]

Short answer: Go watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Other Ideas
For the PCs...
The manhunt won't stop until everyone believes that they're dead and they aren't coming back, or they find a way to negotiate for amnesty, or they find a patron powerful enough to protect them. The manhunt can be slowed down by getting as far away as possible as fast as possible (plane shifting is your friend here) and by finding ways to thwart divination magic (lead-lined sleeping bags are a good start).

For the DM:
-Have all the offended organizations send people at once, but don't let them coordinate... this can provide hilarity as the pursuers mostly get in each other's way, and plausibly gives the party a chance to survive short-term.
-Eventually, the pursuers get their act together and get organized... if there is some sort of summit to handle negotiations, the PCs have a chance to interfere and influence their fate.
-Give the manhunt a face... have a high-level famous adventurer be brought out of retirement specifically to organize the combined manhunt. The PCs now have a Big Bad Good Guy to deal with.
-Don't have the BBGG engage directly... if the PC's want to take the fight to him, it's up to them to turn the tables and hunt the hunters.
-Killing the BBGG won't help much, as someone else will be appointed. The PC's either need leverage or influence to co-opt, negotiate with, or subvert him, any of which might bring the chase to an end without requiring faking their deaths or a powerful patron.

[MrStabby]

I haven't done the adventure yet but a few things jump out.

Firstly this isn't the modern world with photographs and smartphones. Sure people look for the party but if they find them they can just pretend to be other people. Learning disguise self might be useful.

Sure there are divination spells but are the party more of a hassle than any other bandits on the road. Maybe if they are getting high level and could be a threat then it would warrant the attention of a diviner. Still a spot of non-detection could help.

If I were a player and I knew people were after us I would be wanting to stir up more trouble in the rest of the setting to distract people from us. Failing that find a way to threaten/blackmail the ruler's divination experts.

To be honest a tale of descent down the alignment spectrum to survive sounds like a pretty good sub-plot to the adventure and could be fun for everyone. Don't go easy on them though; they should have to find their own way out of the mess they got into.

[Jamesps]

Keep in mind that the authorities have a ton of **** to deal with already, and more now that the characters are no longer doing their work for them. A large scale response is probably out of the question, particularly given that the characters will be moving around to various out of the way locales.

Maybe send a few adventuring groups after the characters, people looking to collect a moderate-sized bounty on their head? You could replace some of the encounters in the book with good aligned characters that are following the same path, and having defeated some of the cult's forces, turn on the characters when they recognize them.

If the characters survive this, the sequel has a bunch of evil factions that are working against the Dragon cult that the characters could join up with.

[JFahy]

Also, at around this stage the dragon cult s[SPOILER]s the Dr[SPOILER]rn, the sky starts
slowly filling with dark wings, and the good guys have much more important
things to worry about than a handful of adventurers-turned-brigands.

Edit: Jamesps beat me on initiative.

[Shining Wrath]

So... I was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I tend to run a little more loose with paths than is to be expected, and I encourage my players to go off the rails. To that end, my players have now slaughtered the guards protecting a wagon convoy and "secured" an obscene amount of ill-gotten wealth. While I had anticipated the amount of guards to keep them from trying this, the general fact that the guards were for the most part honest folk doing a job, and the amount of civilians present, they went ahead with their whole-sale slaughter plan and succeeded, burning their resources and winding up with everyone a troll's fart shy of dead in the process. Realistically in a manner of days they're going to have the authorities from Baldur's Gate after them. Probably in a few weeks time WaterDeep will send some forces, and they'll also have to deal with the Cult of the Dragon's reprisal Soon (A message got off during combat). Since they were in theory working with The Harpers and Order of the Gauntlet, those guys are probably also going to be pissed.

So... at this point I'm hoping for suggestions on how to proceed. Also ideas as to what I should expect. Let's say you've just robbed the **** out of a wagon train, killed a bunch of innocents, betrayed your contacts and pissed off all of the authorities and a shadowy end of the world cult. What would your next course of action be? How bout from the other side of the DM screen, what are some interesting scenarios for this?

Edit: Horde/Hoard

The first thing that comes to mind is that Someone is going to view them as being His sort of guys and offer to protect them.

Someone: Demogorgon, Erythnul. The sorts of 'people' who can get down with nihilistic slaughter and betrayal of friends.

Of course, their aid is never offered for free.

Darkly handsome emissaries smelling faintly of brimstone should be appearing right ... about ... now.

Your decision as DM is if you want to let them live long and prosper, in which case they will manage to escape punishment, or if you want them to experience the joys of TPK (which it sounds like they have coming), in which case their new 'friends' are just running a con job.

[Finieous]

Honestly, this sounds awesome! Much better than Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Good job!

From a player's perspective, I'd probably want to escape the heat and leave the North ASAP. Relocate somewhere, spread some money around and make some friends...then start adventuring again.

From a DM's perspective, I'd continue the campaign at the new, undisclosed location, and throw in some dragons looking for a handout, some bounty-hunters, and some outraged paladins and such from time to time. PCs with a "past" because of choices they made in game are way more interesting than PCs with a "past" because they wrote it on their sheet during character creation. Have fun with it!

[Rad Mage]

Yeah, those guys. I don't know a ton about them, but the notes in the sequel say that they're on board with anything, including nasty ruthless stuff, that hurts the cult but doesn't hurt them. I'm thinking they might help your PCs disappear to avoid the heat for a bit, in exchange for some not-very-comfortable commitments of future service.

If the wagon train was a complete slaughterfest this might not be an option. If I recall one of the characters traveling with the train is one of their spies and they probably won't like the group killing their men. If she survived on the other hand...

[mister__joshua]

As a Shadowrun player this just seems like a normal adventure :-P

[Jacob.Tyr]

If the wagon train was a complete slaughterfest this might not be an option. If I recall one of the characters traveling with the train is one of their spies and they probably won't like the group killing their men. If she survived on the other hand...
She survived, and I had forgotten about her. This is awesome.

[JFahy]

If the wagon train was a complete slaughterfest this might not be an option. If I recall one of the characters traveling with the train is one of their spies and they probably won't like the group killing their men. If she survived on the other hand...

And while they don't like you killing their men, they're probably quite pragmatic about
such things. If a cold wealth-and-power calculation says it's better to overlook their recently-killed
men, that's what the leadership will do.

[DragonSinged]

Something else to keep in mind is, well, what is a dragon's favorite thing? And what do the PC's now have piles of? And what cult is very aware of this fact?
The PC's might have some winged, scaly visitors in their future. Plenty of them around at the moment, after all.

[EvanescentHero]

Please keep this thread updated; I wanna see where this story goes. I love when **** goes completely and utterly wrong. I once completely derailed an adventure by having my character (who didn't know about avalanches) scream at the top of his lungs on an extraordinarily snowy mountain, and it subsequently became one of my favorite sessions.

[JFahy]

Agreed. I'm not at all comfortable going off-script like this (I try to do it,
but I can tell I'm not at my best with the unexpected and assuredly my
players can too) but it's fascinating to watch how other people do it.

[Jacob.Tyr]

During our last session:
The players ran the wagons ahead a little bit of the caravan, driven by four cult teamsters they now have as captives, to a camp they had earlier established before the ambush. After much debating and inventorying of the carts, the debated the situation. They were universally in agreement that they needed a hefty cut of the gold at the very least, and began pocketing the highest value:size items.

During this time, one of the players discovered a note from Rezmir about her intended destination, noting that she would wait for the rest of the shipment at Castle Naertyr, but was taking her honor guard and "The Items" (I have no idea what these will be yet). A knowledge history check let one of the players partially remember something about it, but only that it was ancient and somewhere north of Waterdeep. I tied her early departure in to the players having actually earlier ambushed the cultists before they reached Baldur's Gate (well disguised, of course), killing a handful before fleeing.

After some more discussion, and some poor perception rolls, the players decided to move out only to find a halfling sitting on the front of one of their wagons, wearing an obscene amount of jewelry a la Mr. T. Jamma introduced herself as a member of the "Black Network", and offered to set the players up with a fence, for a cut of course. Not wanting to make enemies with the Zhentarim (a knowledge check gave one player a clue as to who she actually worked for), the players gave her a fairly good chunk of treasure as a gesture of good faith to her organisation (she's keeping it for herself, of course), and started heading back to Baldur's Gate.

They passed by the caravan with their stolen gods, sending most people fleeing into their carts save for a man in an out of place wool hat who watched them pass.

A few days later, little over a day from Baldur's Gate, they ran into a massive ditch dug into the road. They have their kidnapped Teamsters begin digging ramps in and out of the ditch, and set up a guard. They uncover a small camp of winged Kobolds, and prepare to defend themselves, but an attack never comes. Once the ramps are done, they start moving and discover a pair of dragon prints on the other side of the ditch. By this point it has been raining for a few hours, and the storm is getting heavier.

Finally, around 11pm at night, they run across an inn (No Room at the Inn encounter). They barely manage to fend off the assassins, whom they started a fight with after digging their their carts and becoming paranoid. With the storm still coming down, they decide to hide in the stables with their carts and wagons. Before bunking down, the ranger uses his Primal Sense, and a dragon pings on the "Within 1 mile" sensor. They're in pretty rough shape, the assassins being a much tougher fight than they expected. Everyone leveled up to 5.


Plans:
During the night, I am going to let them rest/recover. During the watch, however, I am going to let them make perception checks to notice:
Footsteps on the roof of the inn itself
Chill in the air
Ice forming on the ground
Rain turning to snow
Icicles hanging from the stable

Depending on who watches when, and how well rolls go, they might catch the ice on the ground prior to the icicles actually forming. The footsteps will be winged kobolds, and the ice is forming due to the presence of a white dragon. An hour before dawn, the Kobolds are going to ransack the inn. Around dawn the dragon will start ripping the roof off of the building.

If they react to the kobolds, I'll give them a fight and a chance to get out of dodge before the dragon. If they make a run for it, similar fight/chase with the kobolds.

They can, alternatively, stick it out and hope they aren't noticed. If they can keep their hostages from making noise, and their horses calm, the entire event will unfold in the inn proper without them being bothered.

I am going to let them get in a long rest before things start to unfold. I'll be throwing a young white dragon at them afterwards. I think they'll be able to take it and a handful of Kobolds, but it should be interesting none the less. I'm going to try and not let them kill it outright, just to keep them breathing a bit more heavily when it comes to dragons. Just a nice hard fight to drive it off.

[goto124]

A white dragon right?

Not an albino red dragon?

Or a wight dragon?

Edit: Sorry. I just read the post again.

[Malifice]

Realistically in a manner of days they're going to have the authorities from Baldur's Gate after them. Probably in a few weeks time WaterDeep will send some forces, and they'll also have to deal with the Cult of the Dragon's reprisal

Assuming the game year is circa 1360 DR or prior, and you play it by FR Canon, you wont get past step 1. The Baldurs Gate ''authorities' are the Flaming Fist mercenary company who (according to canon) are comprised entirely of around 1000 mid to high level adventurers (9th level plus).

Stat up a party of half a dozen 9-11th level NPC's and throw them at the PC's. Don't forget to scry the party first and so forth.

[gameogre]

It seems to me you have the pc's being THE FORCE in the setting that everyone else reacts to. You have a lose adventure path that you follow but the PC's are the single most powerful force in the world.

This happens when you follow a adventure path and don't add anything to it. Adventure paths are not good at representing a living and breathing world.

Things I added to my ROTDQ game.

A 9th knight(elderly) in the starting town who was wounded but making a huge heroic effort to save the town( he was making sorties out of the castle and doing THINGS at the same time the pc's were doing missions. He ended up captured and replaced the npc monk in the adventure path.

A greedy evil group of evil adventurers (8th level) used the attack on the town to attack and loot several private places in the town that held magic items. At one point the pc's come across them leaving town and try to confront/talk them into helping. Instead they really got manhandled and tossed aside and developed not only a dislike of those npc's but adventurers that are more mercenary in nature.

The pc's encountered many lone heroes and some bad people doing good things during the attack on the town as well as the next part as well.

One of the best parts that went over well was a known thief and bully who victimized others who saved the lives of a bunch of people and defeated the bad guys because he "had to". This character ended up as a pc after a pc death.

All that was just in the opening parts of the AP!

Later there was: A (powerful)Good Dragon, (two) Evil Dragons, A bossy much more powerful adventuring band that soaked up all the heroic glory but was 100% sure their way of handling the cult was THE WAY(it wasn't and eventually most of them died and the two remaining members blamed the pc's for their defeat. A political figure who turned out to be evil and sinister BUT was working towards the same goals as the party. A lone Paladin in search of a evil murderer who was so focused on defeating THAT evil that he couldn't stop to help the party.


I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is.

Your PC's are always the BIG Fish and when that happens, things often go off the rails. Give the party tons of other Big Fish to bounce off of and interact with. Some even Bigger Fish! Some a little smaller but all with goals and all with the same force of purpose and personality as the pc's.

You have to keep them just as involved in there own tasks as the pc's are with there's so they don't play the game for the pc's but with Big Fish around the pc's soon realize that what they do has consequences.