My players have de-stabilized my world

[MintyThe1st]

specifically, they managed to kill a major antagonist and rival to another slightly less antagonistic major power.

the leaders of this world are as such:

Great wyrm gold dragon: King of an enormous city called the "City of gold"

2000 year old vampire lord: Father of the 4 houses that rule their land, hate the "Beastmen"

The bear king: claims to be King of the Beastman wilds, constantly fighting with the Wolf King. Hates the Vampires.

The wolf king: Recently killed by Orcs (EDIT: the orcs are the PCs).


how do i go about this without them getting completely overwhelmed by enemies they weren't suppose to fight yet?


BTW, they're also not on good terms with the dragon.

[Crake]

Your first line seems completely unrelated to the rest of your post, you'll need to draw a connection there somehow. Honestly, if the players somehow managed to get on the bad side of powerful people without having powerful friends, you might need to just let them know they're likely screwed. Their actions have consequences after all, and any attempt to downplay their actions will cheapen the experience. That said, you'll have to give us more of an insight into what they actually did. If the people they managed to defeat were so powerful, they would likely have contingencies in place to ensure their revival, which is why soul binding or other means of actually ensuring people cannot be brought back is a strong component of high level play. If you think about it for a little while, you might come to the conclusion that the players did not actually manage to achieve anywhere near as much as they thought they did.

[barakaka]

Other option is to have them find some artifact that'll tip the scale back in their favour. Maybe a legacy weapon if you want to fit some player progression in that way.

EDIT - Or just give the PCs easy access to Aboleth Mucus. That works too.

[Holcane]

I wouldn't suggest giving them something that makes the other high power forces less trivial.

Like Crake said, keep it as it is they must have consequences for the their actions if they didn't think it through.

And if they have clerics or wizards they can hopefully be brought back and what they have done will be remembered.

A little more information will help too.

[Templarkommando]

It sounds like you have some kind of power vacuum. I know this is going to look silly, but all you have to do now is fill the power vacuum. Maybe a large council of plane-traveling Rakshasa were just waiting for the opportunity to intervene, and the party creating the power vacuum gave them that opportunity.

[Quertus]

Good for your players. Nothing is quite as boring as a stable world.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: never present your players with an NPC unless (its) death is on the line.

So, you don't think that they're ready to face bigger fish yet? That sounds like a problem a little XP grind would solve. But why should the death of one big fish necessitate that other big fish suddenly attack the PCs? You've already been presented with several solutions: introduce additional big fish, equip your PCs to deal with bigger fish. I'll add the ideas of having the bigger fish ignore the PCs, or having the bigger fish eat the PCs.

[Darrin]

I'm confused about who got killed... the wolf king? Was he killed by PCs or by orcs? (Or the PCs weaponized the orcs somehow?)

Anyway...


What's good for the goose is good for the gander. NPCs have access to raise dead, resurrection, etc.
Likewise, there's clone.
And simulacrum.
Also ice assassin.
The Wolf Tribe Seer foresaw the Wolf King's death in a prophetic vision... and therefore prepared a ritual to bring him back from Mostly Dead (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlyMostlyDead). It has to be completed on the next full moon, but there's one last ingredient the Seer needs (rare herb, sacred knife, whatever). Enter the PCs: "Go get X or the wolf tribe will turn you into dogfood."

[Berenger]

If there is a Wolf King, why isn't there a Wolf Queen or Wolf Prince or Wolf Princess to take his place in the event of his death?

[Deeds]

Mmmmm this sounds like a juicy opportunity to me. I'm not sure which of your major NPCS just died but think of the ramifications:

Power vacuum - many wannabes are all vying for power
Annex Land - perhaps one of your listed NPCs simply takes over dead NPCs territory.
Vengeance - bountys, assassins, wolves in sheep's clothing, etc
Asylum - surely somebody is glad the NPC is dead. Maybe they could put the PCs under their protection while fending off the above problems

[MintyThe1st]

for the record, the PCs are the orcs, maybe i was a bit to vague. one player got it in his head to play Gul'dan from warcraft (Except he's a cleric/Acolyte of the Skin rather then a warlock) and it snowballed from there.

I've already made them aware of the power vacuum they created. One of the powers that be (Vampires) are very glad the wolf king is dead, so that's at least an ally they may not have had otherwise.

I like the suggestions, and how about half of them were similar to what i thought would be the way things would go down.

i'm a bit of a rookie DM, and my players are in no way rookie players, i should have seen this coming to be honest.

[weckar]

If the players managed to kill a king, wouldn't it stand to reason that they COULD take whatever else you throw at them? I mean, if they chose to they could from this position easily choose to usurp the dead king's power. Numbers shouldn't be an issue.

[MintyThe1st]

One of my players is a psion, who by some crazyness that i have yet to figure out, can penetrate SR 32 with ease at lvl 8, and toss dudes 500 feet into the air. i've warned him that if he keeps up the cheese, psionic horrors will start taking notice of him. The rest of the players are fairly average for ~10 year veterans of 3.5, which is to say still fairly powerful, but not unimaginably so.

the current situation is as such:

wolf king died, bear king swoops in and claims wolf king's territory is his, party disagrees but can't afford to fight for it at the moment, plans to murder the bear king are brewing.

The dragon king sences somthing is wrong and begins scrying into it. he suspects the recent increase in orcish activity is to blame, he's right, sending soldiers to do something about it.

The vampire king catches wind that the Beastman wilds is weakened due to the death of one of it's kings, he is pleased.



and in the background, an ancient evil not seen for eons has one of it's seals broken, letting some of it's contagion seep out into the world.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I strongly recommend against what Crake suggested. The players accomplished something impressive; taking it away from them with a cheap cop-out is the last thing you want to do. The players killed one of the four great powers? Now the entire political structure is disturbed. The Wolf King's lands will promptly dissolve into civil war, most likely, between potential heirs and revolutionary groups. You could potentially have all three other sides supporting puppet regimes, with the players caught up in the middle. Or perhaps things get more overt, and things will start sliding towards general war-- Perhaps the Vampires come in to wipe out the remains of the Wolves, the Bear King steps in to crush their old rival (now that the Wolves are no longer a threat to divide their forces), and the Dragon quietly starts gobbling up outlying territories on all parts.



One of my players is a psion, who by some crazyness that i have yet to figure out, can penetrate SR 32 with ease at lvl 8, and toss dudes 500 feet into the air. i've warned him that if he keeps up the cheese, psionic horrors will start taking notice of him. The rest of the players are fairly average for ~10 year veterans of 3.5, which is to say still fairly powerful, but not unimaginably so.
You might want to check that build; it seems wrong to me. Are you using psionic-magic transparency rules, and remembering that your power point expenditure is limited by your manifester level?

[Dagroth]

It's the players' job to destabilize the world.

If word gets out exact how the players killed a major world power, the others are likely to target that to remove it as a threat. If "that" happens to be one particular character, then another party member can overhear some rumors to that effect. Then the game becomes either "protect the Psion" until he and the rest of the party is stronger... "abandon the Psion" because, let's face it, there's something wrong with that character build... "convince someone big that the Psion isn't a threat" even though he is, because there's something wrong with that character build.

[Fouredged Sword]

Sounds like the Bear King is going to do some unification before turning on the vampires while the gold dragon watches from the sidelines. They just did the Bear King a great favor and the Bear King will be distracting the only people in a position to attempt retaliation (the remaining Wolf King loyalists and the Vampires).

A stable four way equilibrium is now a three way equilibrium with the Bear King spending his time pacifying the Wolf King's land and nipping around the corners of the Vampire's land.

[dhasenan]

how do i go about this without them getting completely overwhelmed by enemies they weren't suppose to fight yet?

Why were the players able to get to the Wolf King? Why was he sufficiently undefended that they could just murder him and walk away? Probably because there was some Grand Vizier equivalent ensuring that, when there was a dagger at hand, it got firmly implanted in the king's back. And now that vizier is taking over.

Alternatively, this is the perfect time for a civil war -- offering another series of encounters as the party tries to find a more stable region -- and the neighbors can invade. This means the rulers (if they're intended as the final bosses of their regions) are out in the field and hard to track down. Now you can delay those confrontations as long as you want. (Sorry, PCs, the princess is leading another army.) Or if you don't want the PCs to murder the rulers of the world, well, they're surrounded by soldiers.

[EvulOne]

Easy fix Minty.

Have the players captured by the Wolf King's successor and be imprisoned. Someone who wanted to see the King dead, helps them escape. That gives them a fun escape adventure. But when they get out, theyr'e captured again. The Successor does not believe in execution without trial by test, they're sent to a remote island or something where they can adventure away from the powers that be that are too high level for them and they can gain some levels that way until they're ready.

[John Longarrow]

One of my players is a psion, who by some crazyness that i have yet to figure out, can penetrate SR 32 with ease at lvl 8, and toss dudes 500 feet into the air.

Ask the player to send you a copy of their character with notes on how it works. If that doesn't explain exactly how they are doing what they are doing, start a new thread to see if we can find how they are doing it or if they are not properly using the rules.

Penetrating SR 32 at 8th level shouldn't be easy.

[Quertus]

Penetrating SR 32 at 8th level shouldn't be easy.

Ok, well, technically, penetrating SR 32 is very easy: use a power with SR: no. Or a sword.

Otherwise, yeah, build plz.

[XionUnborn01]

Ok, well, technically, penetrating SR 32 is very easy: use a power with SR: no. Or a sword.

Otherwise, yeah, build plz.

Ok, well, technically, that's not penetrating it, that's avoiding it.

[Crake]

I can see a level 8 wizard beating SR32 easily enough, assay resistance, with greater spell penetration and arcane mastery. That would let them take 10 to auto-bypass SR32 (8CL, 4 GSP, 10 assay resistance, and 10 on the "dice").

If the psion is using some kind of item of assay resistance, and has either power penetration or whatever the psionic version is, or simply just using overchannel, that would be easy enough to achieve. As for 500ft into the air, that could just be a hyperbole, but a level 8 psion with overchannel could hit CL 11, and toss people 110ft into the air with telekinetic thrust.

However, that alone should not have been anywhere near enough to be able to take out a world superpower on it's own. The DC would be at most 20 or so, and a will save, so he shouldn't have had much issue on succeeding that, and even if he did, a 500ft fall (assuming that's not hyperbole) would only have done 20d6 damage, or roughly 70 damage on average, which shouldn't have gotten close to killing him.

This honestly sounds more like DM error, and not having properly prepared what a world power should look like.

[MintyThe1st]

Ok, here's approximately how the fight went down:

Wolf king starts tearing holes in the cleric,
cleric fights back by enlargening himself,
binder uses abilities to do decent damage.
psion uses Telekinetic thrust, i roll poorly on save.

everyone sets up to attack him when he hits ground,
everyone AOOs when he tries to get up.

a few more rounds of combat, and another volly of thrust-ready-AOO, and the wolf king expires.


The beast kingdom dosn't have much in the way of spellcasting or magic items, prefering a more animalistic lifestyle. the "kings" are are really just a title, perhaps "Apex Predetor" would be a better name for them.

Oh, as for why the king was alone, he's a Lost, he's not exactly right in the head, crazy bastard would kill anyone who tried to follow him on his hunts.


I'll try and get my friend's sheet, somthing's up, and i dont understand psionics well enough to call him out properly.

[Dagroth]

Huh.

I couldn't imagine a high level melee character that didn't have a high enough AC that 10th level characters would have serious trouble hitting him; even if he was denied his Dex because he was falling or Prone. Heck, there's a cool skill trick he should've had that allows him to stand without provoking AoO's. I'm sure he had 8 ranks in Tumble, right?

[MintyThe1st]

I'll admit I didn't exactly build him expecting him to be prone/falling half the fight.

AC 26 flat 19 touch 17

that's unarmoured, natural armour not withstanding

[Bonzai]

So right now it sounds like the only immediate threat is the Dragon King, who is sending troops out after them instead of coming after them himself? If that's so, I don't see too much of a problem. They contend with minions and fodder for a few level bumps, until the dragon takes matters into his own hands. Hopefully by then they will be able to make allies of the others, or perhaps the other kings make power plays of their own while the dragon is distracted.

It reminds me of the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms scenario. In a nutshell, China was divided between 3 Warlords. Whenever one invaded the other, the third would take advantage and invade the attackers homeland and they would have to rush home. It's a short read, and readily downloaded online. I'd recommend reading it for inspiration.

[Darrin]

It reminds me of the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms scenario. In a nutshell, China was divided between 3 Warlords. Whenever one invaded the other, the third would take advantage and invade the attackers homeland and they would have to rush home. It's a short read, and readily downloaded online. I'd recommend reading it for inspiration.

(emphasis added)

What... I don't even...

Um. It's not a short (https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Three-Kingdoms-Vol-1/dp/0804834679/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488292874&sr=1-1) read (https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Three-Kingdoms-Vol-2/dp/0804834687/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488292874&sr=1-2).

[Bonzai]

I finished it in a few days. Lots of chapters, but they are all pretty short.

[Crake]

Ok, here's approximately how the fight went down:

Wolf king starts tearing holes in the cleric,
cleric fights back by enlargening himself,
binder uses abilities to do decent damage.
psion uses Telekinetic thrust, i roll poorly on save.

everyone sets up to attack him when he hits ground,
everyone AOOs when he tries to get up.

a few more rounds of combat, and another volly of thrust-ready-AOO, and the wolf king expires.


The beast kingdom dosn't have much in the way of spellcasting or magic items, prefering a more animalistic lifestyle. the "kings" are are really just a title, perhaps "Apex Predetor" would be a better name for them.

Oh, as for why the king was alone, he's a Lost, he's not exactly right in the head, crazy bastard would kill anyone who tried to follow him on his hunts.


I'll try and get my friend's sheet, somthing's up, and i dont understand psionics well enough to call him out properly.

Here's your problem. The real question is this: If a bunch of level 8 characters could walk in and smash him so easily, how has the other kingdoms not done so with level 10, 12, 15, 18 or 20 characters of their own? They most likely have them, so what's the deal?

[lord_khaine]

Ok, here's approximately how the fight went down:

Wolf king starts tearing holes in the cleric,
cleric fights back by enlargening himself,
binder uses abilities to do decent damage.
psion uses Telekinetic thrust, i roll poorly on save.

everyone sets up to attack him when he hits ground,
everyone AOOs when he tries to get up.

a few more rounds of combat, and another volly of thrust-ready-AOO, and the wolf king expires.


The beast kingdom dosn't have much in the way of spellcasting or magic items, prefering a more animalistic lifestyle. the "kings" are are really just a title, perhaps "Apex Predetor" would be a better name for them.

Oh, as for why the king was alone, he's a Lost, he's not exactly right in the head, crazy bastard would kill anyone who tried to follow him on his hunts.


I'll try and get my friend's sheet, somthing's up, and i dont understand psionics well enough to call him out properly.

Nothing wrong with your friend, does not sound like he has done anything wrong. If anything i would say the fault is on your shoulders.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/telekineticThrust.htm

Nothing in Telekinetic thrust indicates it also gives the prone condition. And as fast as falling is, the wolf king should have hit the ground in the same action he is thrown up into the air on. So no chance for the entire part to surrond him. And no group AOE attack on him when he tries to get up.

Your actually kinda lucky, failing his will save twice in a row would have seriously screwed him up against an arcane caster. Here it should only have done a little damage.
As for his ability to penetrate such an absurdly high SR, then its actually a bit of a psion specialty for those who build for it. Mainly since greater power penetration gives +8 on the penetration check.
That and overchannel should leave him on a +18 bonus, leaving it at doable.

[Malroth]

Ok so the wolf king is known to be going insane and goes off alone to hunt including hunting his own subjects. Meanwhile the Bear kingdom and the vampire kingdom are openly hostile. His subjects know all this yet his kingdom stays together. Why? because there's some chancellor, prince or general who was secretly running things behind the King's back, no paticular reason why this character would need to change much dispite some random Orcs rading stuff. You accuse the orcs of being in the employ of one of the enemy kingdoms, Put rewards out on their heads and then prop up some new patsy to be "king" and continue running things pretty much the same way. If possible arrange for the Orcish warband to wind up in Bear or Vamp territory so they wreck their contry instead of yours and if your minions happen to catch the orcs by some lucky twist of fate then public executions are good for morale.

[Rerednaw]

The Woof King seemed pretty wimpy to begin with.

That aside, so the PCs took out a major player.
Without "you thought he was a major player" or "clone/simulacrum" or diminishing what the PCs did I agree with the concept of consequences.

1) Congratulations, the Woof King and his kin occupied this part of the balance of forces: political, sociological, economic, etc. With his absence, the "XYZ" that he kept at bay is now free to invade. Or perhaps it was a simple niche in the ecosystem that he was filling and now you have the equivalent of locusts with no natural predators to stop them. Or his presence kept the something from stopping major trade routes and now adventuring gear costs 10x as much.

2) Alternatively (though this does subtract from their 'victory') perhaps he was merely a figurehead, the real power was behind the throne. It's a common enough trope that you take out the Evil Overlord or BBEG and find out he wasn't really the last one. Escalation is the name of the game.

3) Or perhaps the Woof King wasn't always this loon. At his height he was a real threat and his reputation has not diminished. Now that the PCs have taken him out...
The PCs have sent the balloon up by taking out the king. "It is the signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war."

4) Or the Woof King was no longer what he once was...but out of respect his very powerful kindred let him keep his crown. And the PCs have chosen to disrespect their monarch...and so now he PCs have huge bounties on their heads...not to mention endless waves of "heroes and do-gooders" who want to arrest those guilty of regicide and bring them in for a fair trial and execution. Kill enough and you end up on everyone's crap list...which means no more cities/shopping for magic gear, no rest (no rest= no regaining casting abilities, fatigue condition, etc...), constant harassment, no one hires the for jobs, quests, etc...

[MintyThe1st]

4) Or the Woof King was no longer what he once was...but out of respect his very powerful kindred let him keep his crown. And the PCs have chosen to disrespect their monarch...and so now he PCs have huge bounties on their heads...not to mention endless waves of "heroes and do-gooders" who want to arrest those guilty of regicide and bring them in for a fair trial and execution. Kill enough and you end up on everyone's crap list...which means no more cities/shopping for magic gear, no rest (no rest= no regaining casting abilities, fatigue condition, etc...), constant harassment, no one hires the for jobs, quests, etc...


This is more or less my plan moving forward. Almost all trade is controlled by the dragon king, and one of my players is already banned from his city (Long story, it involves an old man, an astral deva, and a band of marauding minotaurs), once the rest of them are seen with that character, none of them will be allowed into the city again. They'll have to find other means of trade.

i wouldnt go so far as to give them no rest, i like when my players are having fun, if the casters cant cast, then they're not having fun. they are about to be sieged though... (which, by a brilliant coincidence from the Barbarian wanting to buy things, they know about in advance, so this'll be a fun session to run.)

[Efrate]

Bear and wolf were fighting, wolf dies, bear takes over. Wolf was an idiot and such, but they didn't want to fight bear then and he might bear them some grudging respect and leeway. They took out his rival. Now he has to consolidate power. They want to step back in in a few days and deal with bear, then his leeway disappears. Have him give a speech about it and maul the psion first.

Or vamp comes in, starts fighting bear, they get invited to help kill bear by a vampire cronie or spirited away so they cannot interfere. You've now set up a couple of megalithic forces, with a lot of territory with no solid rule of law, set for murderhoboing. Depending on how you see the vampire, this could be encouraged, discouraged, or ignored. What does vamp care if they kill bears and wolves? A few less he has to deal with. They might help, agents telling them of great adventure opportunity, royalties holdouts, champions homes, etc. They might fight back because those are OUR wolves and bears now and how dare you hurt them. They might just ignore them looking more at dragon guy and plotting.

If they are suddenly now a major player as a destabilizing force, the other 3 kingdoms needs to assess that. Throw some mid level lieutenants at them, something around their level, maybe a bit above with an escape button if stuff goes bad. If it does, now they are on the run from the bigger fish. If they get the floor mopped, intentionally or unintentionally, they can be spared and regulated to not a threat, so they can go murderhobo elsewhere. If they fake it or fail, then press on the next powers, bring the full might of whoever they are attacking to bear. Don't pull your punches.

You gave them outs, they should know better, they ignore, they die. Next group of adventures can be trying to surpass the legend of the orcs who could, you could make a bunch of rumors the new pcs hear about deeds they did, or inflated tales about what they didn't, all over the place. They could be folk heroes, terrorists, whatever.

As for the psion, unless he is teleporting or something, I do not see how he got him that high, but my psionic knowledge is very minimal. Also if he did legally do it somehow, I am pretty sure you only fall 200ft a round max but IDK for sure that seems familiar. So the scenario was dice were bad, they got lucky, and splat. Happens.

I also agree, never assume any NPC you make will not end up dead at the PCs hands for whatever reason, hopefully not too intentionally unless yer playing that kind of evil game.

[MintyThe1st]

Party is as such:

Chaotic Neutral cleric of Gruumsh
Chaotic evil psion
neutral evil barbarian
lawful evil binder

they make monthly sacrifices of elves to their god every new moon upon an unhallowed evil altar, useing BOVD to determine what "blessing" Gruumsh bestows on them.

needless to say, this is quite the evil party, who from the very beginning had ambitions of conquest, so i'm well aware all my kings will likely be dead by the end of this. The endgame i have planned involves them all being dead.

[Yahzi]

Destabilizing - and remaking - the world is what PCs do. It's the reason people play.

You could easily decide that the powers of the world think the party got lucky, and hence largely ignore the PCs while they go after each other.

But here's a pro tip: if you tell your players about a super-cool powerful figure in the world, they will kill him. Doesn't matter if they're good or evil. Killing monsters is like climbing mountains: the PCs are gonna climb the biggest mountain they see. Just because it's there.

[Vogie]

Destabilizing - and remaking - the world is what PCs do. It's the reason people play.

You could easily decide that the powers of the world think the party got lucky, and hence largely ignore the PCs while they go after each other.


I would actually take the opposite approach - have the party discover they were being manipulated by one of the other powers. For example, they run into some people and gain the information is the sole reason why they were able to get into the area was because of the Dragon's machinations (people called away, guards paid off or killed, and a lookback to other things they've encountered where things were out of place or a bit strange suddenly make sense). Now they have a huge issue - they've been manipulated and played as pawns by the dragon, but the King of the Beastman and the Vamp Lord are the pressing issues to both them and the immediate area.