Soul Stealing at Low Levels and a bit of Paladin Troubles

[GPS]

This is my first thread here, so I'll try not to mess this up.
Basically, I'm playing in a CoS campaign and my character was recently resurrected by the dark powers. I'd been trying to repay them with souls, but couldn't find a way to trap them as a level 7 cleric. Imprisonment is an 8th level spell after all. After much thought, I finally figured out an easy method for lower levels. A Ring of Mind Shielding, which any 3rd level or higher caster could craft, traps the soul if the wearer dies with it on. Conveniently, two members of our party I'm on good terms with are currently in possession of one such ring.

Here's where the paladin troubles come in. Rings of Mind Shielding require attunement, and so I can't exactly walk up to a baddie and slip one of their finger. My little idea for a fix involved capturing a baddie and forcing them to attune to the ring, then killing them. The resident Neutral Good paladin (I think oath of devotion, I forget) did not particularly like this idea. This is because the chosen method of forcing is torture, as half of the party partook in the torture of an NPC not too long ago. I didn't partake that time because their methods sort of...disgusted me (a bit macabre for my tastes), but when the price of your life is an omelet, you're going to have to crack a few eggs. I was actually planning to get the two party members on board by offering to let them do the torture while I waited with the ring. (Hey, never have to get your hands dirty if you know how to use other peoples' hands right.) I really don't want this to erupt into PvP, so I'm sort of at a loss as to how to go about doing this.

Here are my questions:
1) Is the general idea of trapping a soul in a Ring of Mind Shielding unwillingly through coercion viable, ignoring the party problem?
2) What's a good way to hide this from or otherwise circumvent the paladin, especially with two other party members potentially involved?
3) Is there a method other than torture that can get a ring attuned to a baddie? (I'm open to solutions involving charm and deception on the baddie, but I'm having trouble visualizing what such a solution would look like.)

*Please read before posting:
To the dude who's inevitably gonna say something about me starting party conflict: Yeah you're totally right, I already know I'm in the wrong here and I'm a horrible person, but this is CoS.
To the one who's gonna say something about talking to the paladin: Not the purpose of this thread, he already knows I'm plotting.
Sorry about my grammar, I wrote this at 12:40.

[NecroDancer]

This campaign is doing horrible things to us.

Also that wasn't torture I was just trying to make sure that the Revenant couldn't attack us if he escaped (I forgot that he could regen at the moment).

EDIT: I don't think our group could ever commit to actual PvP we would just chicken out at the last moment.

EDIT (2): there is a lot of moral grey. For example

1. We are planning to unleash an extremely dangerous and evil werewolf in order to stop another slightly more evil werewolf.

2. We need to stop an evil devil cult tyrannical leader without killing her (who we accidentally let rise to power after we killed an insane/evil/corrupt mayor and than did nothing about). The only problem is that we can't keep her under constant watch and there are no "good" people to help keep her imprisoned.

3. We plan to force an angel to serve us by using subliminal messages to get his true name (the angel is fallen but was tricked to fall by the big bad).

4. We regularly deal with a group of swindlers and con artists for supplies.

5. We need to some way to permanently stop an evil Revenant who can shoot fire at us (and won't die in a year).

6. Two of us have willingly made mini-pacts with the dark powers (mysterious beings who lock up and torture the most evil people).

7. We let a small town priest keep his son (turned vampire spawn) in his basement.

8. We need to choose between freeing an evil werewolf to save some kids (see point 1) or stopping a bunch of evil Druids who are preparing a doomsday ritual (via plants).

We will do anything to survive being hunted by an evil ancient vampire who controls the land and prevents escape from his domain. He has crushed all resistance and plans to kill us.

Our party is
A no nonsense devotion paladin who tries to be a moral compass. Has never left his horse, I think he might be a centaur in disguise.

An extremely paranoid cleric who doesn't like to kill innocents/people who have yet to attack him. He won't risk his life and has immolated an Annis Hag and 10 quicklings in the battle of Hag's Tree. He owes his soul to the dark powers. He also has magical smokers lung.

A greedy thief who I accidentally turning into a demon worshipper (It was a joke I didn't think he actually would). He currently carries around a wooden sculpture of his head that we found in a chapel. Can't survive a hit. Almost fired

An undead Raven girl who has a pet mimic. Switches between a moral compass/immoral compass at will. Is currently trying to recreate mind altering pastries with children bones that we keep finding (we haven't actually killed or harmed any children, in fact we almost got TPKed to save a kid at the battle of Hag's Tree).

A teifling warlock who has given up hope of escape, revenge or living a full life. He has messed up his demonic assignment, gotten killed by wolves, had a ceiling drop on him, and soaked up almost every curse imaginable. Whenever he wants to die he survives (with a sting of natural 20s) whenever he wants to live he almost dies (getting trapped in a basement with a horde of zombies). He is currently seeking to make amends and gather allies (kinda hard becuase he pissed off a lot of people) in order to stop a feindish Revenant that hunts him. He has survived a fall of 800+ feet while unconscious (best natural 20 of the entire game). He has leaned an important lesson: chaotic stupid doesn't pay off in the long run.

[Malifice]

Torture? Soul offerings to the Dark Powers? Murder?

Party conflict is assumed in any party with a NG Devotion Paladin playing with a bunch of evil PCs (like you and the rest of the party clearly are). The DM and other players surely though about this before allowing/ playing characters of such conflicting alignments.

In other words, your DM is clearly OK with this sort of thing happening, as are the other players. If they're not OK with it, then they've screwed up badly letting good paladins and evil dark worshipping soul rending torturing murderers in the party side by side.

Anyways, the obvious solution to your problem; capture, torture and then murder the NG Paladin and offer his soul to your patron first.

Problem solved. Plus it makes future murder/ torture/ soul imprisoning and feeding to dark powers much easier going forwards.

Make sure the Paladin player is mature to handle it. Otherwise you may lose a friend in real life.

[Addaran]

This is my first thread here, so I'll try not to mess this up.
Basically, I'm playing in a CoS campaign and my character was recently resurrected by the dark powers. .

So you died and got resurrected by unknown evil? How did it went exactly? You agreed to a deal or you were simply resurrected and now they want something in exchange?

The deal is to get them X souls or they own yours and you want to get it back by giving them other souls?


Instead of weird magic item shenanigans, i'd find poor (stupid) souls that would accept to make a deal with you. Deals like:

1) We'll only save you if you give me your soul. If not, i'll let the werewolf eat you or possibly turn you, corrupting your soul.
2) I can remove the curse/disease your child have, but i'll need the soul of one parent. Surely you're willing to sacrifice yourself for your only son/daughter.
3) Offer lots of gold to someone greedy that doesn't really believe in souls.

Even if you don't have the dark powers to enforce the deal (or maybe everyone can in that world/ in Ravenloft), the fact that the person agreed willingly to forfeit his soul should be enough to have corrupted it and make the original good deity give up on it. Just make a nice legal contract and make sure you don't cheat/lie about the actual deal (especially if he can't read).

[Zingzing Jr.]

Torture? Soul offerings to the Dark Powers? Murder?

Party conflict is assumed in any party with a NG Devotion Paladin playing with a bunch of evil PCs (like you and the rest of the party clearly are). The DM and other players surely though about this before allowing/ playing characters of such conflicting alignments.


I am in this party and I am actually CG. but more Chaotic than Good. It is pretty bizarre being the person with the second highest moral constraints as a rouge. Another problem is that the paladin cannot handle his character dying.

[Contrast]

1) Is the general idea of trapping a soul in a Ring of Mind Shielding unwillingly through coercion viable, ignoring the party problem?

I would note that the ring does not trap the soul. The soul is free to continue onto the afterlife if it so desires - I doubt someone you'd just finished torturing would fancy staying around for a chat unless they had some very specific reason to fear the afterlife themselves (and even then would probably vamose when it became clear you were trying to sell their soul on anyway).

That said it does seem wildly uneccessary to torture someone to get them to attune to a ring of mind shielding. Give them the ring for a short rest, they'll know what it does. Tell them you want them to attune to the ring so you can be sure Strahd or whoever isn't influencing their mind or spying on you somehow or you'll just leave them there tied up with no food and water. Job done?

[Squiddish]

Torture? Soul offerings to the Dark Powers? Murder?

Party conflict is assumed in any party with a NG Devotion Paladin playing with a bunch of evil PCs (like you and the rest of the party clearly are). The DM and other players surely though about this before allowing/ playing characters of such conflicting alignments.

In other words, your DM is clearly OK with this sort of thing happening, as are the other players. If they're not OK with it, then they've screwed up badly letting good paladins and evil dark worshipping soul rending torturing murderers in the party side by side.

Anyways, the obvious solution to your problem; capture, torture and then murder the NG Paladin and offer his soul to your patron first.

Problem solved. Plus it makes future murder/ torture/ soul imprisoning and feeding to dark powers much easier going forwards.

Make sure the Paladin player is mature to handle it. Otherwise you may lose a friend in real life.

1. The DM is distinctly not okay with this, he's been trying to get people to stop for the whole time and he's significantly irked that I seem to be the only good one left (I am the paladin)
2. He didn't start as evil. It was a slow slide from chaotic good.
3. Not going to work. He's a shrimpy little elven cleric and I'm a dwarf paladin in full plate. A fight between us is as likely to end in his death as in mine, and he can't stealth worth beans.
4. I have a trick up my sleeve if I do die.
5. I'm not. I'm sorry, but I'm definitely not. I get notoriously salty when one of my characters dies. However, I wouldn't destroy a friendship over D&D.

[Malifice]

The DM is crap.

Seriously. Seems like he's not only sat back while the party has descended into evil and torture and murder, but he's actively contributed it by handing out a dark pact to a PC. He should just step in and talk to the players to sort them out.

Secondly, seeing as the players are posting here; grow up. The DM is obviously unhappy with how things are going (as are the players). Why are you acting like douches and engaging in murder, torture and soul stealing in a (supposedly) good party containing a paladin and run by a DM that doesn't want that kind of game?

It's toxic and you're all to blame. The DM takes the most blame for mine. I wouldn't have put up with this in my campaign as DM..

OP take your character in a different direction and chat with the other players and the DM to create something that isn't causing issues and friction with your real life friends.

Grow up guys. *Mike drop.*

[Sanjithecook]

1. The DM is distinctly not okay with this, he's been trying to get people to stop for the whole time and he's significantly irked that I seem to be the only good one left (I am the paladin)
2. He didn't start as evil. It was a slow slide from chaotic good.
3. Not going to work. He's a shrimpy little elven cleric and I'm a dwarf paladin in full plate. A fight between us is as likely to end in his death as in mine, and he can't stealth worth beans.
4. I have a trick up my sleeve if I do die.
5. I'm not. I'm sorry, but I'm definitely not. I get notoriously salty when one of my characters dies. However, I wouldn't destroy a friendship over D&D.

Seems to me that you are seemingly the only remaining member of the party that is stubbornly sticking to his RP.
Which is fine and all, but if your all friends and just there to have a good time (lets be honest, this is a game) then maybe you should adapt to how they want to play as well.
Either oppose them with all the just paladin righteousness that you posses and have a rad pvp session ending in you likely getting ganked by your pals, or let them persuade you in someway and go oathbreaker (undead legions under your command? Countmein)

[GPS]

I would note that the ring does not trap the soul. The soul is free to continue onto the afterlife if it so desires - I doubt someone you'd just finished torturing would fancy staying around for a chat unless they had some very specific reason to fear the afterlife themselves (and even then would probably vamose when it became clear you were trying to sell their soul on anyway).

Thanks, I misread that part of the item description. I guess i'm gonna have to get a bit more creative, find some new solution.

[Contrast]

Thanks, I misread that part of the item description. I guess i'm gonna have to get a bit more creative, find some new solution.

Out of interest, have you put any thought into how to avoid having to give souls to a dark entity? Or have you just fully embraced being evil? :smalltongue:

[GPS]

The DM is crap.

Seriously. Seems like he's not only sat back while the party has descended into evil and torture and murder, but he's actively contributed it by handing out a dark pact to a PC. He should just step in and talk to the players to sort them out.

Secondly, seeing as the players are posting here; grow up. The DM is obviously unhappy with how things are going (as are the players). Why are you acting like douches and engaging in murder, torture and soul stealing in a (supposedly) good party containing a paladin and run by a DM that doesn't want that kind of game?

It's toxic and you're all to blame. The DM takes the most blame for mine. I wouldn't have put up with this in my campaign as DM..

OP take your character in a different direction and chat with the other players and the DM to create something that isn't causing issues and friction with your real life friends.

Grow up guys. *Mike drop.*

Welp, it's time for some clarification fun! The DM actually prevented PvP the last time we descended into torture, because it would have killed a few PC's. I was about to drop a Guardian of Faith to defend the dude being tortured, which would have killed a low HP PC immediately and a few others eventually. Somewhere in this exchange, I would also have been killed by Zingzing, truly a formidable combat rogue. Handing out dark powers pacts in exchange for resurrection and murder are both gonna be a part of CoS, a horror campaign in which the BBEG actively tries to corrupt good party members and eventually turn them against each other. In fact, I started the campaign CG. Soul theft is an optional but low cost way to pay the dark powers, and I was planning to try the other options if that one didn't work out. This is less the DM's fault and more my fault.

Edit: The DM didn't want the torture to happen, so when Necro announced his intent to "disable" a different baddie the same way, he made a little promise to describe it as macabre as possible with intentions to gross Necro out and discourage this later. It kind of backfired, and Necro and torture bud #2 were back for the thumbs. I apologize if the way Squidd and I presented this made it seem like the DM was at fault instead of me.


Out of interest, have you put any thought into how to avoid having to give souls to a dark entity? Or have you just fully embraced being evil? :smalltongue:

There are a few ways of avoiding giving souls, I was just planning to try those out after giving souls inevitably failed. I was also able to pay in magic items and character sacrifice. I just wanted to challenge myself to see if I was capable of giving souls at a low level. NecroDancer actually used the soul method, but the souls were child souls, pretrapped by hags. I had to start from scratch with my batch, and the challenge aspect excited me.

Edit: Squiddish has reminded me about another epic plan I'd forgotten. Basically, he and I collab on making Soul Beer, the best beer possible that also contained souls. We would then offer the formula be taken out of existence by the dark powers, so only they would have it. A truly worthy sacrifice, the best booze in exchange for life.


I am in this party and I am actually CG. but more Chaotic than Good. It is pretty bizarre being the person with the second highest moral constraints as a rouge. Another problem is that the paladin cannot handle his character dying.

Doubly bizarre as you, the dude with the highest moral constraints, was on the side of team eye-gouge thumb-removal. You even offered your combat services in PvP to NecroDancer after we started arguing whether the baddie who just had his eyes gouged out with an oxidized silver spoon (by Necro) should also have his thumbs cut off.

[NecroDancer]

I personally blame how this campaign has made us all paranoid of repercussions of our actions.

[Squiddish]

The DM is crap.

Seriously. Seems like he's not only sat back while the party has descended into evil and torture and murder, but he's actively contributed it by handing out a dark pact to a PC. He should just step in and talk to the players to sort them out.

Secondly, seeing as the players are posting here; grow up. The DM is obviously unhappy with how things are going (as are the players). Why are you acting like douches and engaging in murder, torture and soul stealing in a (supposedly) good party containing a paladin and run by a DM that doesn't want that kind of game?

It's toxic and you're all to blame. The DM takes the most blame for mine. I wouldn't have put up with this in my campaign as DM..

OP take your character in a different direction and chat with the other players and the DM to create something that isn't causing issues and friction with your real life friends.

Grow up guys. *Mike drop.*

You are just straight up wrong. Our DM has been excellent so far, and he has been stepping in to stop this every time it comes up. He certainly hasn't been sitting back, every time we've done something evil we've seen the consequences all too clearly. The dark pacts are part of CoS, and they don't necessarily require souls, just something dear to you.

I'm not engaging in murder, torture, and soul stealing. Our rogue (Zingzing) isn't either, he said OOC that he was just trying to annoy us/mock us for coming to PvP over something so stupid. Our warlock (Necrodancer) is at least the low end of chaotic neutral, so this is pretty in character. Our cleric (GPS) is desperate and has a tendency to make really ridiculous plans.

I'm trying to put a stop to it, the rogue is kinda sitting out at this point, the cleric thinks he has no other choice, and the warlock is a high functioning sociopath (IC, OOC he's fine).

We tried that, he seems to have forgotten.

[GPS]

I'm not engaging in murder, torture, and soul stealing. Our rogue (Zingzing) isn't either, he said OOC that he was just trying to annoy us/mock us for coming to PvP over something so stupid. Our warlock (Necrodancer) is at least the low end of chaotic neutral, so this is pretty in character. Our cleric (GPS) is desperate and has a tendency to make really ridiculous plans.

My apologies to Zingzing, I misinterpreted his intentions at the time. I thought he was on team eye-gouge, but he was really trying to show us that the whole thing was stupid

[Contrast]

There are a few ways of avoiding giving souls, I was just planning to try those out after giving souls inevitably failed. I was also able to pay in magic items and character sacrifice. I just wanted to challenge myself to see if I was capable of giving souls at a low level. NecroDancer actually used the soul method, but the souls were child souls, pretrapped by hags. I had to start from scratch with my batch, and the challenge aspect excited me.


The dark pacts are part of CoS, and they don't necessarily require souls, just something dear to you.

Just to be clear - you realise soul stealing is more evil than murder right? You murder someone once - you steal their soul for eternity. Though admittedly it is potentially cleaner if your character is squeamish.

If you're considering murdering and soul stealing rather than exploring other options or giving up something dear to you - that is pretty textbook evil. The fact that your immediate go to was to torture someone is also somewhat telling. If you're trying to roleplay as a good character I can't say that it looks like you're doing a very convincing job of it.

Don't get me wrong, I've heard CoS is pretty grim and I don't personally see any problems with you roleplaying an evil character provided you're sensible and the rest of the party is on board (though it seems they sort of aren't based on this thread?).

You could always try and figure out how the hags were trapping souls. But again - please realise that this is super evil. I am honestly surprised this issue hasn't already come to blows, was the paladin AOK with exchanging pretrapped childrens souls or did this happen while they weren't present?

[Squiddish]

Out of interest, have you put any thought into how to avoid having to give souls to a dark entity? Or have you just fully embraced being evil? :smalltongue:

We have. My favorite plan (and the DM's favorite as well) is to figure out how to make beer/wine out of souls and then sell them the recipe.

(I might be putting too much work into coming up with uses for my brewer's tools proficiency. I've also come up with the wine equivalent of holy water)

[GPS]

Just to be clear - you realise soul stealing is more evil than murder right? You murder someone once - you steal their soul for eternity. Though admittedly it is potentially cleaner if your character is squeamish.

If you're considering murdering and soul stealing rather than exploring other options or giving up something dear to you - that is pretty textbook evil. The fact that your immediate go to was to torture someone is also somewhat telling. If you're trying to roleplay as a good character I can't say that it looks like you're doing a very convincing job of it.

Don't get me wrong, I've heard CoS is pretty grim and I don't personally see any problems with you roleplaying an evil character provided you're sensible and the rest of the party is on board (though it seems they sort of aren't based on this thread?).

You could always try and figure out how the hags were trapping souls. But again - please realise that this is super evil. I am honestly surprised this issue hasn't already come to blows, was the paladin AOK with exchanging pretrapped childrens souls or did this happen while they weren't present?

It actually took a while for the idea of how evil this idea was to hit me, but I tend to come up with Chaotic Stupid and Chaotic (Totally Not Evil) ideas a lot. The paladin wouldn't have been ok with this at the time, he just never found out. NecroDancer offered the souls in the jars without notifying the paladin, because why would he? Necro was down while he was offering the souls, and the paladin (I think) did not know the jars contained souls in the first place, so it was basically the perfect crime. (Sorry, I was absent for this session so I'm going off descriptions of the session given to me after)

Edit: I'm now CN. I haven"t been CG in a while, ever since I told aa Necro to kill a dude in the woods, then did nothing when we found out he was an innocent.