ways of preventing a elvish/fey wedding

[TundraBuccaneer]

My group will be forced to make sure that a wedding will go off without a hitch, as punishment for stealing and lying.
But to provide a more of a challenge the leader of this elvish community has cursed the brother of the bride to fall in love with the groom, who were just friends before.
So what are fun problems to throw at the party.

[sithlordnergal]

There are a few ways I would handle it:

1) The cursed brother tries to force the Groom into eloping with him. The Party goes to check on the groom and finds he was kidnapped. Now the party has to hunt for the Groom. Or, have him kidnap the Bride.

2) The Brother starts trying to spread rumors about the Bride cheating on the Groom in an effort to break the two apart. Now, instead of a hunt you have an investigation where the Party has to find a way to prove that the Bride was being faithful. Or vice versa, with the Groom being slandered

3) The Leader and Brother work together to kidnap the Groom/Bride and claim they eloped with another person. Give the party an investigation to find out if the person really did elope, eventually lead them to the Elven Leader who cursed the brother, then have a hunt to find where the brother took the Groom/Bride.

[pwykersotz]

Cold Iron wedding bands. Corsages of Polymorph: Orc. Transmuting the elven wine into Dwarven ale. Fire imps with a penchant for deforestation. Discovery of secret documents that ID the bride as a half elf. Cursed instruments that always play off key. Abducting the groom.

[No brains]

Fun problems require fun solutions. What resources do our player characters have to work with?

Also, how well does the wedding need to go? Does it have to be perfect? Does it have to be memorable? How much disruption will ruin the wedding as opposed to just making it fun? Maybe if things are too perfect, the elves will get bored and still be angry with the PCs.

One fun way of making this a problem is to throw in the Ceremony spell for its Marriage effect. See it here! http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-Starter-Spells.pdf Maybe someone will try to ruin the wedding with Counterspell, so they gotta be kept over 60ft away. Maybe someone can try to break the priest's concentration, making everyone sit around for another hour until they can do it right. Maybe someone moves the bride or groom more than 10 feet away from the caster, making Web or Entangle into a silly solution. Maybe someone makes off with the material component, prompting the PCs to pay for extra.

If you wanna make this a fun challenge, think about set goals for the players. If you do measure elven satisfaction by pure fiat, they might not have fun trying to sort this out.

[TundraBuccaneer]

Fun problems require fun solutions. What resources do our player characters have to work with?

Also, how well does the wedding need to go? Does it have to be perfect? Does it have to be memorable? How much disruption will ruin the wedding as opposed to just making it fun? Maybe if things are too perfect, the elves will get bored and still be angry with the PCs.

Some more background information the characters are lvl1 and its a West Marches game, so resources are what ever they can persuade to get. And because WM style is kind of big I wanted it to stay to the book resources (and EE pdf).

The group is a balance combination of treasure hunters and pirates. So the best wedding planners in my book.

Edit: thanks for these suggestions these are really fun

[Asmotherion]

Brother gives them a quest to kidnap the groom in hopes to change his mind. Of cource, he does not, so adventure hook, to find and kidnap a specific High Level Enchanter Wizard that will "make up" his mind.

Party has to decide to either ally with the brother, and find said Wizard (Evil path), try to Convince him otherwise (I'd say DC 20 Persuation Check, because of the Curse), which reveals the Brother was cursed after a small cinematic, and a new adventure hook oppens up: to find said Wizard, and convince him to help remove the curse (Good path/happy ending), To pretend to help the brother, but rat him to the Sister (bad ending, as everyone will be arrested as accomplices, the brother will get a pardon, but the party will be hanged), To intimidate him into giving up (DC 20). Anything else, or any failed check initiates combat with the Brother, who is X levels higher than the party, X being the number of party members.

If the Brother's Curse is Removed, he will remember he is actually in a happy relationship with a prince from an other kingdom, and the curse clouded his mind; Everyone, including the groom, will then ally to confront the Real Culpit

[JellyPooga]

Just add zombies.

Preferably of deceased family members.

It's pretty much the perfect way to ruin any social occaision.

[Dr. Cliché]

If you don't mind being crude, you could use Subtle Spell with Prestidigitation to make it look like the groom has crapped himself.

[Unoriginal]

Wouldn't make it more sense for the bad guy to curse the groom to be in love with someone else?

[Sorlock Master]

Wouldn't make it more sense for the bad guy to curse the groom to be in love with someone else?

How unoriginal.

Also cursed guy asks the help of sprites/faries/brownies to stop this wedding so he can be with his true love.

[Hrugner]

Cursed guy should kidnap the groom and disguise himself as the groom in order to be the person who gets married to her. Suspicions should be raised when the cursed guy goes missing, or when the groom starts acting funny. The groom shouldn't be killed by the cursed brother, but he should be left somewhere unsafe in order to put a time limit on things that ends before the wedding starts. After the abduction the rehearsal dinner should result in the dinner guests being dosed with a potent aphrodisiac rather than just the intended target of the bride. This may potentially include the party if they attempt to enjoy themselves at the dinner.

[Easy_Lee]

Make sure your idea isn't too complex for the players to figure out. You're not writing a novel, you're writing an adventure. Adventures are about encounters and choices. How can you turn the wedding into an encounter? What interesting choices can the players make? Don't try to write a story yourself, just write choices. The players tell the story through their actions.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Kidnap the priest or bride or whoever. and leave enough clues the party can try several ways of finding them.

If you are real adventurous have some kobolds or whatever distract the party then kidnap the bride or priest. The danger is they won't all get distracted and you'll have an interesting running battle. Figure out a grease trap or something to slow down the party.

[Nifft]

My group will be forced to make sure that a wedding will go off without a hitch

Hmm.

Without a hitch means without a problem.

But also to get hitched means to get married. Therefore, a hitch is a marriage.

The PCs are tasked to make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch (i.e. without a marriage and also without a problem).

That sounds like exactly the sort of impossible-but-not-really situation that a Fey would impose on a poor clumsy mortal, just to watch the mortal flail and fail.




The obvious solution would be: arrange for the couple to elope prior to the formal wedding, so they can pass the wedding without a marriage (since they're already married), and also without any event at the "wedding" preventing their marriage (since they're already married).