Was my parties behavior insane and is this a reasonable consequence?

[SowZ]

E6 game. I'd wager the power level equivalent is closer to an ECL 8 average. So, my party is tromping through this massive forest which is the territory of an Orc war camp and there's this ancient Roc who lives there, (a four story tall legendary bird.)

The party, weakened from a fight with some Orc/goblin renegades, wargs, and an ogre, find a big old cave to sleep in. But when they see a nest in the center and giant egg shells and then five infants they try and run. Too late. Roc momma at the entrance.

Massive battle ensues, it ends in free falling at near terminal velocity and only well placed feather falls save the day. In the wake of this epic fight, literally everyone out of all spell slots and X/day abilities, everyone down to less than half their health, someone gets the great idea to have a bird fry.

I'm thinking, fair enough, there's enough to feed a whole city but no. I'm wrong. They meant they wanted to fry the roc children. They'll taste better, apparently. Mind even the newborns are big enough that one would feed the whole party but they feel compelled to slaughter and cook them all.

No, this whole fight made quite a bit of noise, and an orc scouting party approaches. They're incredibly pissed when they see the giant bird corpse. The Roc was a nuisance sometimes but it had also acted as a guardian and defended the forest from many outside and demonic threats over the centuries. Plus, it was almost sacred to them.

Well, the sorceress speaks Orc and gets a diplomacy of 30 so talks the Orc leader down. The Orc admits there were talks of killing it before in order to steal and train up its young to be more effective, loyal guardians. He says they can leave in exchange for the babies. (I figured it is pretty common knowledge that the young of mythical beasts are actually very valuable loot.)

You can imagine the reaction when the Orcs realize the party ate them all because they would 'taste better' and each person wanted their own to cook...

So they surrender because they are so weak and are being drug in chains back to the Orc camp to essentially be publicly executed. (It's worth noting the party are citizens of a human city nearby and they violated a treaty with the orcs coming into the forest.)

Was I being a jerk DM here? Should I have seen the baby eating coming?

[MisterKaws]

Well, they did know that they were violating a treaty and even went as far as to fry an entire family of sacred beasts...

[Sir Chuckles]

If it were my old players, I would have seen the massacre coming.
...but I still would have done something similar.

As long as you give them a way out of execution, you're all fine and dandy in my book.

[Dousedinoil]

I wouldn't normally punish my group for doing something stupid the same session. Let them rest up and forget about the whole thing... Until one day BAM a group of rocs come to exact revenge.

I've had my group burn down a persons house, kill helpless people in jail cells and get the captain of the guard removed from service. I still haven't punished them yet but they are all working on it. At one point they will travel with a brother/sister of a victim and put a dagger in someone's back.

It was funny though, last time I did this the group was like "who the hell is that? What do you mean we killed so-and-so?"

[Bullet06320]

Should I have seen the baby eating coming?

LOLOL, yes, always expect the worse from PCs, they will live up to your expectations and more

if the orcs want to execute them, think BBQ, threaten the PCs with being eaten by the orcs as the form of execution, it seems a fitting punishment to the crime

you could also have the orcs send a representative to the local human realm that has the treaty and wish to discuss payments for the treaty being broken, their sacred grounds being trampled and their god being eaten. it would buy the PCs time to figure out how to escape, and possibly lead to the being released after negotiations with the humans, if they haven't figured their own way out, but look, now there's new plot hooks, they owe the human realm for saving them, and are sent on missions befitting their talents for a period of time to further those goals.

[Bobby Baratheon]

LOLOL, yes, always expect the worse from PCs, they will live up to your expectations and more

I think you mean live down to your expectations. :smallamused: At least, that's how I view my group. They once butchered an ogre and sold it as "aged beef" in a city. While selling prisoners as slaves. And running a scam on the benevolent local lord. Somehow, they still consider themselves a "good" party.

[Gildedragon]

I think you mean live down to your expectations. :smallamused: At least, that's how I view my group. They once butchered an ogre and sold it as "aged beef" in a city. While selling prisoners as slaves. And running a scam on the benevolent local lord. Somehow, they still consider themselves a "good" party.

Jeesh...
I hope they dont have any -G clerics. Eating (or encouraging the eating of) sapient beings is BoVD messed up ****

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Onto the OP:
re. the treaty: you encouraged/expected them to break it (hence the prep for stuff), so that's on you
re. roc babies: that's messed up and on them.
BUT you did make the diplomacy check the sorceress made meaningless... so them getting caught is on you

While I do think execution is an adequate end for the characters, the way they got to it is unfair. fault is at 2:1 (then again their one is them being monsters so...)

you could have had the orc leader not checked right away, assuming everything was okay. giving time for the PCs to book it.

suitable consequences
if you have a druid: slaughtering a whole nest of rocs for funsies and flavor, not sparing one, and wasting their flesh: deffos a ceasing to revere nature. powers on the fritz for a while.
execution is planned for a few days hence. it is a diplomatically wrought thing. spellcasters are bound and their mouths gagged. Rescue may (will) come at the 11th hour from the humans, BUT it will cost them. OR they might figure out a way to escape during the 2d6 days it will take to figure out what happens to them.

though if they escape expect the orcs to be slaughtered.
...this would cause any L or G clerics to prolly fritz up too

[Inevitability]

To be honest, I expected this to be a story about how they killed the roc, climbed back up to kill the babies, and got TPK'ed by a bunch of roc chicks.

But seriously, the party violated a treaty and killed a sacred animal with its offspring. Getting captured and imprisoned is entirely reasonable here. And being PC's, you can bet on them finding a way out.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Jeesh...
I hope they dont have any -G clerics. Eating (or encouraging the eating of) sapient beings is BoVD messed up ****

Well, they do now (new player in the group). He wasn't present for that bit, but I'm hoping his character helps keep them a little more on the straight and narrow, though considering PC behavior in general they're much more likely to corrupt him to the dark side.

[Inevitability]

BUT you did make the diplomacy check the sorceress made meaningless... so them getting caught is on you.

This is really, really not a good way to approach the issue.

The diplomacy check was to calm the orc down (and going by RAW, that only made it indifferent), and succeeded. The now indifferent orc is aware of the presence of roc chicks, wants them, and asks the party to give them, which is an entirely new situation that may shift the attitude of involved NPC's once more.

If I make a random passer-by friendly, then murder someone in front of them, they aren't going to cheer me on; they're going to run to the nearest guards. If I make them friendly, then tell them I murdered someone a few minutes ago, they're still going to call the guards. How is this situation different?

[Gallowglass]

BUT you did make the diplomacy check the sorceress made meaningless... so them getting caught is on you

Incorrect. The diplomancy check kept the party from being immediately slaughtered on the spot. Hardly meaningless.

and I say "diplomancy" instead of "diplomacy" because any check that helped them out in this situation was magical nonsense.

OP>

This feels like a disconnect between your expectations of the game and the game the PCs are playing.
It seems like the PCS are playing a role-play light game enjoying murderhoboing and grand-theft autoing their way through life.
And it seems like you are expecting them to think about consequences beyond the dark-humor hilarity they found in slaughtering the baby birds for omelettes because you are expecting an immersive "part of this world" game.

So, however you respond next session you need to get yourself and your players on board the same game. Either game style is fine and fun, but its gotta be one or the other. Otherwise you'll continue to be flabbergasted and confused by decisions they are making when they are just trying to out-do each other in vulgarity for the lolz of it.

[Segev]

I wouldn't put it as "punishment" for their behavior (though, honestly, killing and eating roc babies? Really? That is kind-of stupid). They could have had a way "out," but they foolishly squandered a resource. Just let it play out.

I don't suppose any of them are clerics with access to Animate Dead, are they? Skeletal roc chicks may not be able to fly without some added engineering, but they might be suitable semi-replacements.

[AnachroNinja]

I'm curious how aware the PCs were of the rocs "almost sacred" status, because the phrasing didn't seem to indicate to me that it was an obvious direct worship kind of thing. Best case, it's a non intelligent animal so short of it being trained, all the orcs could be doing it is feeding it slaves or prisoners to placate it, otherwise it would still be actively hunting them along with everything else. That said, eating the baby rocs is a complete non issue. I refer you again to non intelligent animal. Unless you're also punishing PCs for eating cows, finding it shocking that they wanted to eat a giant bird is ridiculous. You could compare it to veal if you really wanted to argue the horror, but they're still just birds.

Yeah the wandering into areas they were not supposed to go to bit is dangerous, but as noted, it was apparently part of the adventure you planned. Also, are they official representatives of the human town/kingdom? Because if not, the treaty isn't really binding on them anyway.

The diplomacy bit is accurate. It's not unreasonable for the first check to have not affected the results of the baby rocs being eaten. They also should have been able to attempt additional diplomacy or bluff checks to try to mitigate that situation however. Despite what someone else said, it's not unreasonable for the party to be able to talk their way out of killing the almost sacred birds that eat anything and everything they can. That's not even a super difficult spin.

Another worthwhile note, what party of orc scouts is running TOWARDS the sound of someone fighting their giant bird god, and then attempting to arrest them after finding out they killed it. Even if they were visibly wounded, it should have been trivial to intimidate the orcs into leaving. If the orcs were strong enough to fight a ROC then they would not need one to defend their forest. Especially not if a scouting patrol could handle it. That's really the ridiculous part of this.