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View Full Version : Player Help First Session as Lawful Evil hitman... abandoned first contract.



MonkeySage
2018-11-23, 11:05 PM
Not off to a good start, here. Certainly not an ideal situation. To preserve my reputation, I ended up silencing the client, but... The contract was unfulfillable for certain reasons.

In the future, I'll need to keep my contracts in the future. Any advice?

The Glyphstone
2018-11-23, 11:38 PM
Don't take contracts on the spot; insist on doing your own independent research about the mark before accepting a contract.

MonkeySage
2018-11-23, 11:57 PM
I am a little worried about my choice to kill the client, but... I suppose that only matters if future clients know about that.

The Glyphstone
2018-11-24, 12:09 AM
Yeah, murdering your clients is generally a bad strategy too.

It's just up to you to not get into this sort of situation. Either do research before taking any contract, or build a 'drop clause' into your standard contract - if you take a job and determine it's beyond your abilities after surveillance, you refund any advance payment and walk away. The first is better than the second as far as building a rep for reliability, but the latter at least ensures you build a rep for trustworthiness in the 'won't steal your money' sense.

Mastikator
2018-11-24, 08:50 AM
If the contract was unfulfillable and the client knew it then it's arguable that they set you up.
If not then you should have renegotiated, explained why it's unfulfillable. If they are immune to logic and reason and inconsolably vengeful then killing the client is indeed the right choice. But if the client is a rational agent not set out to destroy you then killing them was wrong even if the contract was wrong choice, loyalty is a more valuable trait than fulfilling a contract (or covering it up in this case).

Try to explore options in the future.

Strigon
2018-11-24, 10:18 AM
The first thing is, you're playing a character. Not an alignment.
Your character has an alignment, but unless they're an outsider, they won't always act 100% in accordance with your alignment. This is especially true for the L-C axis of the scale. You messed up once; that's actually a good RP opportunity to improve your character, if you want to take it.
If you just want a way to prevent it in the future, then the other suggestions here seem spot on.

Of course, you haven't given us much in the way of details, so some of it may not be very applicable to your particular situation. However, I'd like to point out that LE hitmen are very, very dangerous people. Think of your Boba Fetts, your Kincaids - these are people who, if you mess with them, will kill you, client or not. Usually, this is if you fail to meet your end of the bargain, but I wouldn't want to be in your shoes if you asked them to take someone out without giving them all the relevant details.

Other options, of course, are available to you. Suppose this was a person you just couldn't win a fight against. How else might you kill them? Could you buy a powerful poison, and slip it in their drink? Could you trick them into following you somewhere where you can kill them environmentally?
I don't know if this was your problem here, but if you want to be a hitman you'll need to think outside the box to take down some of the tougher customers.

MonkeySage
2018-11-24, 12:07 PM
The big problem, now that I think of it, was a complete lack of information. No idea who I'm actually supposed to kill, where to find them, etc. He told us that it's because of the mark that his daughter has disappeared (in that the daughter was running away from her abusive father because of the mark).

What I did know was that my client was going to be unable to pay me- the rest of the party kind of made sure of that after the client started beating his daughter across the face. Client was already unconscious and bloody, though stabilized. All I did was make sure he died from the wounds my party gave to him. But I definitely could have walked away instead.

Bastian Weaver
2018-11-24, 12:50 PM
I think it's a great way to make sure your next client is more informative. "Do you know what happened to the last person who wanted to hire me without telling me the important details? Actually, no one does. He just... disappeared. So I repeat the question. Who is the target?"

jayem
2018-11-24, 01:24 PM
the rest of the party kind of made sure of that after the client started beating his daughter across the face. Client was already unconscious and bloody, though stabilized. All I did was make sure he died from the wounds my party gave to him. But I definitely could have walked away instead.
That sounds like it was a group decision, rather than you just being that one guy, and for relatively LG reasons (or rather 'Honorable'). Which seems like the worst problems aren't here.

You could possibly ask if the rest of the party should have checked OOC with you before entering a fight, (but in any case you've now gone beyond that), or similarly if you should have checked at the end. But intra-party that looks fine, perhaps check and if necessary do things slightly differently (as agreed).

With the DM, again things could be ok. He deliberately made the guy a jerk. He could be perfectly happy with the outcome and develop a story based on that (again the coup de grace could be a problem).
Alternatively you can just skip over many 'unsuitable clients' and he (and you all) can 'meta-game' a client you are happy to work with.

Mastikator
2018-11-24, 01:44 PM
The big problem, now that I think of it, was a complete lack of information. No idea who I'm actually supposed to kill, where to find them, etc. He told us that it's because of the mark that his daughter has disappeared (in that the daughter was running away from her abusive father because of the mark).

What I did know was that my client was going to be unable to pay me- the rest of the party kind of made sure of that after the client started beating his daughter across the face. Client was already unconscious and bloody, though stabilized. All I did was make sure he died from the wounds my party gave to him. But I definitely could have walked away instead.

Doesn't sound like a serious client. Sounds like he was taking you for a ride.

You need to be better at picking up on those kinds of red flags and saying "no" to stupid contracts.
Especially if he can't pay you, always take half payment first unless it's a trusted and reliable client. This is just good business sense.

Anymage
2018-11-24, 01:51 PM
Waitasec. Is your character personally a hitman instead of your party being a bunch of "troubleshooters"? One character having side jobs complicates the table, since it's a long-term version of all the pacing and spotlight problems that splitting the party brings. Plus, if your party has any moralistic types, that puts you two off on the wrong foot when that sort of conflict should be bought into early by both sides.

In this specific case your client was an idiot, and the only thing I worry about is that your DM might also include other stupidly unsavory types because he thinks that's what makes for a good game. I'd have to know more about him in that case. But as far as party dynamics go, team players make the night go more smoothly for everybody.

MonkeySage
2018-11-24, 01:59 PM
We're mostly of the morally dubious sort- one Chaotic neutral tending good party member. I'm the only assassin in the party, but I'm an assassin in a party of thugs and thieves.

Anymage
2018-11-24, 02:04 PM
It isn't necessarily that being a shady assassin is bad. It's more that if you're headed off to assassinate your mark while another PC is off casing a target and a third is off trying to traffic illicit goods, shifting attention around between the three of you is a lot of overhead for the DM and the table. If you're hired to assassinate a mark, another PC is hired to rob them, and a third is sent to grab any useful documents to give a competitor an edge, and you all decide to pool your talents going after the same guy, it's easier for the PCs to engage each other and shift off the spotlight than if all three had to deal with their own DM run NPCs.

MonkeySage
2018-11-24, 02:26 PM
In this case, they were sent to find the daughter, I was sent to kill the one responsible for her running away.

TheYell
2018-11-26, 09:34 AM
Well in my country a contract is void when the breach occurs, so to me, once he couldn't pay you, you were released of obligations to carry out the contract because of his failure to pay.

Dunno if your guy wants to be legalistic like that, but, there's that point.

I like Bastian Weaver's suggestion of building a reputation for severe enforcement of breach of contract.