Help me craft interesting situations for my players' characters

[Phhase]

Hail! (If you're part of the campaign I'm DMing, shoo! Shoo!)

I'm currently running a 5e campaign with a player count of about four, and there's been enough character development that I'd like a little help with properly crafting situations to properly test and foster the development of these characters.

The player's current quest concerns them escorting a small caravan of religious pilgrims of Pelor to a mountaintop location known as The Eye of Insight, a highly magical, oracle-adjacent place of knowledge. For years now, pilgrimages like this one have been disappearing, and the players have been assigned to prevent this from happening again. They are about 3/4 of the way down the road to the Eye, and have already seen many trials and tribulations. These are the characters in question (With names changed).

Character 1: "Ancient"
Ancient is a female tiefling archeologist, a junior member of her guild. She was taking in by said guild after living her early years on the streets, and was effectively raised there. She is extremeley businesslike, and very much a closed-off and slow to trust sort. The few she considers friends are her clever dinosaur familiar, and some of the members of her guild. In general, she only just tolerates the other party members, and would likely not stick beside them if it were not part of her job. My goal with Ancient is to create situations that test her ability to trust other members of the party, and generally challenge her in that aspect.

Character 2: "Dragon"
Dragon is a blue dragonborn "rogue" (homebrew class, just think Rouge but lighting damage instead of sneak attack), an outlander who was trained in her martial art by a blue dragon named Sycorax. Sycorax considers Dragon to be in debt to her for the training, to the tune of 1 million gold pieces (or equivalent items), to be paid before her death. Dragon is a very straightforward character: she enjoys hitting things, treasure, and hitting things with treasure. She has a bit of a greedy streak, and can be tempted with power or shiny things, but will not knowingly forsake the party in the pursuit of such things. She is not particularly communicative, but not as disinclined to chat as Ancient is. Dragon has already suffered the loss of an arm and a leg, thanks to an encounter with a diseased beast (although she has an item that will regenerate the limbs over the course of many days). My goal is to find a way to temper Dragon's greed, such that they will put a little more thought and care into where they acquire power and wealth from. I also want to see if I can draw some character interaction out of them.

Character 3: "Cat"
Cat is a tabaxi bard. Previously part of a musical group, she left them on account of them being bungholes, and ended up with the party. Cat mostly plays a support role, inspiring, healing, and casting spells to control enemies and the battlefield. She also thinks quickly on her feet and often makes insightful observations regarding what to do next. Her attitude is mostly decent and carefree, although she's recently revealed a startlingly callous side when she effectively inflicted an I Must Scream style fate on a prisoner she was supposed to execute, melting them into a puddle that struggled to breathe through its liquefied face. The group was quick to stand by the action, to the dismay of some NPCs present. The melted prisoner in fact survived, but won't be coming back for revenge in the forseeable future. I want to give Cat more opportunities to do terrible, awful, no good, very bad things that are easy to justify in the moment, but difficult to rationalize in retrospect.

Character 4: "Broody"
Broody is a changeling paladin of vengeance, who turned to a life of vigilantism after they failed to save their little brother from drowning in a well. They are a defender of the downtrodden, but also a bit of a rogue, having stolen the magical scimitar they wield out of necessity. Broody is quiet and awkward in a hair-over-eyes angsty sort of way. They occasionally see images of thier long-dead brother hanging out, but it is unclear if it is a hallucination or actually his brother's ghost. I'm honestly not sure what to do with him, but he does occasionally have cool, off-the-wall ideas.

There are also a few NPCs of note: the priest of Pelor leading the congregation of acolytes, Let's call him "Sun". There is an utterly mad but quite kind warforged Cleric-Bard mishmash we'll call "Sounder". Sounder is a member of Ancient's guild, and is pretty much the only person outside of Ancient's familiar that Ancient has been friendly to. There is also "Howler", a Rahkshi (long story, just think warforged/lizardfolk hybrid with magic power), that is travelling with Sounder, on a search for a missing member of thier tribe. Howler has a very strong Proud Warrior stripe, and will duel anyone over anything (and likely will fight Dragon soon, given recent events, though not to the death).

The Eye of Insight is surrounded by a perpetual icy vortex, a storm that must be braved to reach the Eye on the pilgrimage. I want to set up a series of tests, not dissimilar to the Test of the Body, Mind, and Heart of OOts fame. So, any thoughts?

[Unoriginal]

Hail! (If you're part of the campaign I'm DMing, shoo! Shoo!)

I'm currently running a 5e campaign with a player count of about four, and there's been enough character development that I'd like a little help with properly crafting situations to properly test and foster the development of these characters.

The player's current quest concerns them escorting a small caravan of religious pilgrims of Pelor to a mountaintop location known as The Eye of Insight, a highly magical, oracle-adjacent place of knowledge. For years now, pilgrimages like this one have been disappearing, and the players have been assigned to prevent this from happening again. They are about 3/4 of the way down the road to the Eye, and have already seen many trials and tribulations. These are the characters in question (With names changed).

Character 1: "Ancient"
Ancient is a female tiefling archeologist, a junior member of her guild. She was taking in by said guild after living her early years on the streets, and was effectively raised there. She is extremeley businesslike, and very much a closed-off and slow to trust sort. The few she considers friends are her clever dinosaur familiar, and some of the members of her guild. In general, she only just tolerates the other party members, and would likely not stick beside them if it were not part of her job. My goal with Ancient is to create situations that test her ability to trust other members of the party, and generally challenge her in that aspect.

Character 2: "Dragon"
Dragon is a blue dragonborn "rogue" (homebrew class, just think Rouge but lighting damage instead of sneak attack), an outlander who was trained in her martial art by a blue dragon named Sycorax. Sycorax considers Dragon to be in debt to her for the training, to the tune of 1 million gold pieces (or equivalent items), to be paid before her death. Dragon is a very straightforward character: she enjoys hitting things, treasure, and hitting things with treasure. She has a bit of a greedy streak, and can be tempted with power or shiny things, but will not knowingly forsake the party in the pursuit of such things. She is not particularly communicative, but not as disinclined to chat as Ancient is. Dragon has already suffered the loss of an arm and a leg, thanks to an encounter with a diseased beast (although she has an item that will regenerate the limbs over the course of many days). My goal is to find a way to temper Dragon's greed, such that they will put a little more thought and care into where they acquire power and wealth from. I also want to see if I can draw some character interaction out of them.

Character 3: "Cat"
Cat is a tabaxi bard. Previously part of a musical group, she left them on account of them being bungholes, and ended up with the party. Cat mostly plays a support role, inspiring, healing, and casting spells to control enemies and the battlefield. She also thinks quickly on her feet and often makes insightful observations regarding what to do next. Her attitude is mostly decent and carefree, although she's recently revealed a startlingly callous side when she effectively inflicted an I Must Scream style fate on a prisoner she was supposed to execute, melting them into a puddle that struggled to breathe through its liquefied face. The group was quick to stand by the action, to the dismay of some NPCs present. The melted prisoner in fact survived, but won't be coming back for revenge in the forseeable future. I want to give Cat more opportunities to do terrible, awful, no good, very bad things that are easy to justify in the moment, but difficult to rationalize in retrospect.

Character 4: "Broody"
Broody is a changeling paladin of vengeance, who turned to a life of vigilantism after they failed to save their little brother from drowning in a well. They are a defender of the downtrodden, but also a bit of a rogue, having stolen the magical scimitar they wield out of necessity. Broody is quiet and awkward in a hair-over-eyes angsty sort of way. They occasionally see images of thier long-dead brother hanging out, but it is unclear if it is a hallucination or actually his brother's ghost. I'm honestly not sure what to do with him, but he does occasionally have cool, off-the-wall ideas.

There are also a few NPCs of note: the priest of Pelor leading the congregation of acolytes, Let's call him "Sun". There is an utterly mad but quite kind warforged Cleric-Bard mishmash we'll call "Sounder". Sounder is a member of Ancient's guild, and is pretty much the only person outside of Ancient's familiar that Ancient has been friendly to. There is also "Howler", a Rahkshi (long story, just think warforged/lizardfolk hybrid with magic power), that is travelling with Sounder, on a search for a missing member of thier tribe. Howler has a very strong Proud Warrior stripe, and will duel anyone over anything (and likely will fight Dragon soon, given recent events, though not to the death).

The Eye of Insight is surrounded by a perpetual icy vortex, a storm that must be braved to reach the Eye on the pilgrimage. I want to set up a series of tests, not dissimilar to the Test of the Body, Mind, and Heart of OOts fame. So, any thoughts?

A find-your-true-self quest with very evil PCs? That could be interesting.

Here's what I think could work:

Everyone gets separated by the icy storm, and they all go through different situations.

- Broody falls in a hole, find himself in a cave. Between him and the exit is an apparition of his brother, who chews him out for using his death as justification for being a terrible person who does nasty stuff. The harder Broody attempts to justify himself, the harder the brother apparition chews him out. Broody can leave the cave at any moment, the question is just if he can bear to do it.

- Cat is rescued by a kind old Aasimar who take her home. The Aasimar claims to *be* the Eye of Insight, the powerful seer the place is named after. They also mention that they have to wait for all of Cat's companions, and that the the magic storm and the harrowing experiences one go through inside said storm will persist as long as the Aasimar is alive, due to an ancient edict. The test is to see how long it takes for Cat to kill them or otherwise harm them in an effort to get what she wants.

Can't finish right now, will try to do the others later.

[Phhase]

A find-your-true-self quest with very evil PCs? That could be interesting.

<snip>


I appreciate the effort, but I think I may have accidentally grossly misrepresented my player's characters, lol. Here's a few things I missed.

The group of PCs is actually working for the law. So to speak, they're essentially cops. That's why they're on this mission in the first place, the clergy requested extra oversight for this pilgrimage. They're all ostensibly good-aligned, and have mostly been acting the part fairly well (if grumpily in Ancient's case). In fact, while quite major in its own right, the melting of that guy is the only debatably evil act they've committed so far. They've mostly been doing their duty and helping those in need to the best of their ability otherwise.

To clarify the melting of the guy that Cat did: the group were sneaking through a range of rocky crags that had been overtaken by cultists of evil earth. They'd captured two cultists, but were hard-pressed for time and were trying to avoid the notice of the cult at large (who WOULD stomp them, if they were made fully aware), so some superior officers asked them to kill one of the cultists and interrogate the other to lead them through a safe path outward. Since the cultists were partially stone humans, Cat decided to use a vial of transmute rock to mud-like fluid on one to melt off the stone she thought it was covering their face like a mask. Turns out, the cultists are partially fused with the stone on a night skeletal level, meaning the parts of him that were stone started melting off of the parts that weren't like a Salvador Dali painting. Needless to say, the other cultist was horrified and immediately flipped sides. Everyone was shocked, but since they accomplished their goal and it was a snap decision in a high-pressure situation, they were all quick to say something to the effect of "Had to be done. Just following orders. Let's move on.". Needless to say, the NPC took umbrage in the difference between one clean blow and a horrific disfigurement but that's for another time.

One thought I had is to have Cat find a small basin they have to pass through that is occupied by a villiage of, say, goblins. There's a huge vat of something nasty-looking above them, and a pile of bones in the corner. Most of the bones are of animals, but a few are humanoid. All of them are clearly leftovers. The test here is to see if Cat immediately dismisses the villiage as people-eating monsters and dumps the vat of acid into the basin to take care of them the easy way. The truth is that they're just starving, and have been forced to eat some of thier own. if talked to, they'll be happy to let anyone go if they pass off some food.

Broody, additionally, has few sins to his name other than the theft of his blade.

[Amdy_vill]

Hail! (If you're part of the campaign I'm DMing, shoo! Shoo!)

I'm currently running a 5e campaign with a player count of about four, and there's been enough character development that I'd like a little help with properly crafting situations to properly test and foster the development of these characters.

The player's current quest concerns them escorting a small caravan of religious pilgrims of Pelor to a mountaintop location known as The Eye of Insight, a highly magical, oracle-adjacent place of knowledge. For years now, pilgrimages like this one have been disappearing, and the players have been assigned to prevent this from happening again. They are about 3/4 of the way down the road to the Eye, and have already seen many trials and tribulations. These are the characters in question (With names changed).

Character 1: "Ancient"
Ancient is a female tiefling archeologist, a junior member of her guild. She was taking in by said guild after living her early years on the streets, and was effectively raised there. She is extremeley businesslike, and very much a closed-off and slow to trust sort. The few she considers friends are her clever dinosaur familiar, and some of the members of her guild. In general, she only just tolerates the other party members, and would likely not stick beside them if it were not part of her job. My goal with Ancient is to create situations that test her ability to trust other members of the party, and generally challenge her in that aspect.

Character 2: "Dragon"
Dragon is a blue dragonborn "rogue" (homebrew class, just think Rouge but lighting damage instead of sneak attack), an outlander who was trained in her martial art by a blue dragon named Sycorax. Sycorax considers Dragon to be in debt to her for the training, to the tune of 1 million gold pieces (or equivalent items), to be paid before her death. Dragon is a very straightforward character: she enjoys hitting things, treasure, and hitting things with treasure. She has a bit of a greedy streak, and can be tempted with power or shiny things, but will not knowingly forsake the party in the pursuit of such things. She is not particularly communicative, but not as disinclined to chat as Ancient is. Dragon has already suffered the loss of an arm and a leg, thanks to an encounter with a diseased beast (although she has an item that will regenerate the limbs over the course of many days). My goal is to find a way to temper Dragon's greed, such that they will put a little more thought and care into where they acquire power and wealth from. I also want to see if I can draw some character interaction out of them.

Character 3: "Cat"
Cat is a tabaxi bard. Previously part of a musical group, she left them on account of them being bungholes, and ended up with the party. Cat mostly plays a support role, inspiring, healing, and casting spells to control enemies and the battlefield. She also thinks quickly on her feet and often makes insightful observations regarding what to do next. Her attitude is mostly decent and carefree, although she's recently revealed a startlingly callous side when she effectively inflicted an I Must Scream style fate on a prisoner she was supposed to execute, melting them into a puddle that struggled to breathe through its liquefied face. The group was quick to stand by the action, to the dismay of some NPCs present. The melted prisoner in fact survived, but won't be coming back for revenge in the forseeable future. I want to give Cat more opportunities to do terrible, awful, no good, very bad things that are easy to justify in the moment, but difficult to rationalize in retrospect.

Character 4: "Broody"
Broody is a changeling paladin of vengeance, who turned to a life of vigilantism after they failed to save their little brother from drowning in a well. They are a defender of the downtrodden, but also a bit of a rogue, having stolen the magical scimitar they wield out of necessity. Broody is quiet and awkward in a hair-over-eyes angsty sort of way. They occasionally see images of thier long-dead brother hanging out, but it is unclear if it is a hallucination or actually his brother's ghost. I'm honestly not sure what to do with him, but he does occasionally have cool, off-the-wall ideas.

There are also a few NPCs of note: the priest of Pelor leading the congregation of acolytes, Let's call him "Sun". There is an utterly mad but quite kind warforged Cleric-Bard mishmash we'll call "Sounder". Sounder is a member of Ancient's guild, and is pretty much the only person outside of Ancient's familiar that Ancient has been friendly to. There is also "Howler", a Rahkshi (long story, just think warforged/lizardfolk hybrid with magic power), that is travelling with Sounder, on a search for a missing member of thier tribe. Howler has a very strong Proud Warrior stripe, and will duel anyone over anything (and likely will fight Dragon soon, given recent events, though not to the death).

The Eye of Insight is surrounded by a perpetual icy vortex, a storm that must be braved to reach the Eye on the pilgrimage. I want to set up a series of tests, not dissimilar to the Test of the Body, Mind, and Heart of OOts fame. So, any thoughts?

Ancient: put her is a situation where another member of the party has to do her job and she has to help them. maybe the pelor worshipers find or need some artifact and she can't get it, because tieflings are distrusted.

Dragon: have you heard of a deal with the devil or monkey paw, do that, they don't need to know what they are making a deal with, play into their greed, and then turn it on its head. make it the problem. you are being hunted by all local dragons as they smell your gold. places you spend gold get destroyed and the gold always seems to return to him afterwords. putting a target on their back.

cat: the perfect mid-play. cat could be the sub for Ancient in her option, as well as letting cat in on dragons gold and encouraging them to explote said knowldge, outside of that you can always ham out the damage their spells and attacks do. make them particularly grossume. you could play up some trauma from this.

Bloody: the brother isn't a ghost. the brother isn't dead. they are traped between the ethereal plan.

[Unoriginal]

I appreciate the effort, but I think I may have accidentally grossly misrepresented my player's characters, lol. Here's a few things I missed.

The group of PCs is actually working for the law. So to speak, they're essentially cops. That's why they're on this mission in the first place, the clergy requested extra oversight for this pilgrimage. They're all ostensibly good-aligned, and have mostly been acting the part fairly well (if grumpily in Ancient's case).

To clarify the melting of the guy that Cat did: the group were sneaking through a range of rocky crags that had been overtaken by cultists of evil earth. They'd captured two cultists, but were hard-pressed for time and were trying to avoid the notice of the cult at large (who WOULD stomp them, if they were made fully aware), so some superior officers asked them to kill one of the cultists and interrogate the other to lead them through a safe path outward. Since the cultists were partially stone humans, Cat decided to use a vial of transmute rock to mud-like fluid on one to melt off the stone she thought it was covering their face like a mask. Turns out, the cultists are partially fused with the stone on a night skeletal level, meaning the parts of him that were stone started melting off of the parts that weren't like a Salvador Dali painting. Needless to say, the other cultist was horrified and immediately flipped sides. Everyone was shocked, but since they accomplished their goal and it was a snap decision in a high-pressure situation, they were all quick to say something to the effect of "Had to be done. Just following orders. Let's move on.". Needless to say, the NPC took umbrage in the difference between one clean blow and a horrific disfigurement but that's for another time.

Horrifically torturing someone and then going "we were just following orders" is not something good people do, as far as I'm concerned.

Sure the whole body melting was not planned, but she was still trying to melt off someone's mask while they were wearing it. And then they left the torturing person into an horrific state rather than doing anything about it.



Broody, additionally, has few sins to his name other than the theft of his blade.

Aside from excusing the horrific long-term harming of someone with "just following orders", you mean?

[Phhase]

Horrifically torturing someone and then going "we were just following orders" is not something good people do, as far as I'm concerned.

Sure the whole body melting was not planned, but she was still trying to melt off someone's mask while they were wearing it. And then they left the torturing person into an horrific state rather than doing anything about it.



Aside from excusing the horrific long-term harming of someone with "just following orders", you mean?

This is true. But I'm not gonna write off of entire characters as evil because of one ignorant decision they had no hand in making, all while certain death is breathing down their necks. I do agree though, leaving them like that is inexcusable. Make no mistake, their superiors WILL hear about this and there WILL be dire consequences down the line, it's just not happening in the near future. Now, on the other hand, if doing things like this becomes a pattern, that's a different beast.