Avernus - Devil deals

[Sirithhyando]

Hi everyone,

What did you use as inspiration for deals that devil make the characters when they make death saving throws?
The goal is to slowly corrupt each charachter souls since adventurers are more difficult to corrupt.

Especially one of my player, i know he might let his character die rather than accepting the devil deal and i'd like to make him take the deal when the time come.

Any insight/help/inspiration is welcome, thanks :)

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I think this one is really player/ character dependent. If you can figure out what each player/ character wants in order to sweeten the offer you'll have a better chance of getting someone to bite.
I ended up with one of my characters signing effectively a 'non-aggression pact' with a barbed devil that if violated would cost the character his soul. 'Barbos' just kept showing up amongst enemies with a smile on his face, which was a real pain as it stopped the party from using AoE.

[Corran]

Ok, this is going to be railroady, so it's not a good suggestion, but I've enjoyed stuff like that when I was newer to the game, so who knows, maybe your player will like it.

You need a nemesis and a good toy.

First step: Give your player a really cool magical item. I am talking about holy avenger type of stuff here. Let them enjoy it. In fact, I think it's good practice if you dont hand the item at full operational strength, but instead make sure to inform the player that this item will keep getting a lot stronger the more heroic/honorable/just/whatever the pc will become. Cause now you give the player the feeling that they will be the ones who'll make the toy awesome, through their rp and character's actions. The bond between pc and toy is stronger that way.

Step 2: Then create a nemesis for the pc. You want your pc to hate this guy. The cool magical toy you gave to your pc? Well, it used to belong to the nemesis. And perhaps that's how they first meet. The nemesis finds the pc alone, beats them in a very unfair fight and steals/reclaims the magical toy. This fight has to be unfair for two reasons. First, to make defeat even more infuriating for the good guy pc, but also to not make them think that the nemesis is out of their league. It's an entirely different game if the nemesis shows up and smacks the pc to the ground by itself, and if they used additional help or some other kind of trick that made the fight unfair. Obviously the nemesis does not kill the pc. It leaves them half dead and departs with the toy.

Step 3: Reoccuring villain. The nemesis must hound even more the pc for additional measure. You dont want to take any chances. Even if the pc has taken the bait already, push a little more, cause you can never be too sure. This will not involve direct confrontation, but rather messing with the pc's plans. What did you say? The party accepted the village's quest to go and take care of the vile bandits hounding them? Awesome.They do that, and when they return to the village to tell them the good news, they found out that the nemesis was there and did some evil stuff. Perhaps they kidnapped some NPC villager that your pc had taking a liking to. Another quick quest, though without any chance of success (npc is dead before the pc's can do the rescue bit). Perhaps they killed them all and the pc's return only to find the village a ruin. Whatever. Where the pc goes, the nemesis will make sure to follow every now and then, and hurt the people the pc takes a liking to or wants to protect.

Step 4: Hope. At some point you want to give the pc a small victory. He fight the nemesis and wins. Great! The nemesis is a devil and it cannot permanently die if killed in another plane but their native one. Make it a tough fight, so that if the pc wins they will certainly feel they earned it but also know that it was a very close thing. In case the pc does not already know, make sure to let them know that the nemesis is not really killed. And unless you get to kill the nemesis on its native plane, this is far from over.

Step 5: Hopefully by now the pc wants to kill the nemesis rally badly. But how? March into hell, find it and kill it? For the sake of all that's good it must be done. But it cannot be done. At least not without some kind of help. Without some kind of deal. And that's when you introduce the devil that wants to corrupt the pc. Better if you make pc seek them out, or at least come accross them. This devil is sympathetic towards the pc. They clearly do not approve of the actions of the little nemesis guy. However, they are not willing to help the pc, because doing that will cost him in some way. Whatever the nemesis has done, he is still one more soldier against the demons, taking part in the only fight that matters. The devil wont throw away an able body just for the pc to take revenge, because revenge is just not that important, or noble (heck, have the devil throw some real wisdom to the pc there). Then you wait. If you did it right, that's when the pc is the one who will start bargaining. I imagine the devil who wants to corrupt the pc as a sophisticated, calm and intelligent battle commander. Perhaps he is great chess player too. Bhaal is a good place to start for some inspiration.

[Dr.Samurai]

We're running through Avernus now, and something like this occurred to the Ranger in our party (though not on a death save).

He's a fire genasi and it was revealed that when his powers manifested at a young age he accidentally burned his sister and killed her.

His character has been very kind and protective throughout the campaign to NPCs. The running joke is that he will offer a food ration to literally anything. But generally he is always concerned about others and looks after people. His character and my character generally take issue with the economics of Avernus and abstain from a lot of stuff, to give a sense of his character.

So what the DM did was reveal that innocents killed through fire by the hand of a loved one wind up in Cania, and are the province of Mephistopheles. We had to deal with an agent of Mephisto through the adventure and it was revealed that Mephisto has had claim on his sister's soul all these years. Naturally, the ranger asked for it. Mephisto offered to hand it over if the Ranger would offer his soul in her place. He accepted, and now when he dies his soul will go to Cania.

So I guess the question is why won't this character take the deal, in your estimation, and is there something you can work with there to at least tempt them. And really, that's all you want to do. You can't force the player to take the deal, and you shouldn't try to. But there's no harm in making it interesting, and maybe they'll surprise you :smallamused:.

[Angelalex242]

Depends on the character and the player, yeah.

I recall playing a Paladin, and some Devil Lord or other offered power and even magic items to the PCs.

By the time he got around to me, I was like, "I'm a paladin you idiot, move along."

[5eNeedsDarksun]

I wonder if you're having a tough time getting players to bite on these if you could offer player A a deal to save player B. Maybe if it was their companion then some characters might be more likely to agree.

[Sirithhyando]

Thanks for the answers everyone

Quick thought though, i meant literally the deal itself.
I'm working toward making the less easy prey end up accepting deals.

Only one of my players got a deal at the moment.
The deal was that in exchange for saving his life, he needed to make a field goal (kick) the youngest hell hound he could find.

The goal was to make him enjoy doing bad things therefore slowly corrupting his soul.

Said field goal was magnificient, they stumbled across a small "lair" of hell hound where they were giving birth. They ran through many with the vehicle they got while the player jump out to field goal the youngest, surprising all the other player at the same time (fun time).

I'm not searching for straight up dealing for someone soul, but corrupting it slowly.
It's hell, they'll die, or come close to it many time and they have a lot of lives on their shoulder already as it is. They need to stay alive :)

[5eNeedsDarksun]

There was a thread recently about hellfire weapons and what impact using them had on good (or neutral characters). Perhaps making one of them available would be attractive, particularly if characters don't have magic weapons yet. If just using one of these starts to corrupt the characters, then maybe they're already on the path without knowing it.

[Hairfish]

Have the devil tell them that there's a corrupted celestial who broke an agreement with the devil and the devil wants the celestial dead in exchange for <insert favor here>.

The celestial is, of course, not corrupt.

[Unoriginal]

Hi everyone,

What did you use as inspiration for deals that devil make the characters when they make death saving throws?
The goal is to slowly corrupt each charachter souls since adventurers are more difficult to corrupt.

Especially one of my player, i know he might let his character die rather than accepting the devil deal and i'd like to make him take the deal when the time come.

Any insight/help/inspiration is welcome, thanks :)

I think most Devil will offer the PC a deal the PC wants, but do not need.

Ex: a Paladin wants to kill Devils. So the Devil offers the Paladin to live, but they have to go kill Bitter Breath the devil wasteland warlord.

No tricks, no wording abuse, nothing but a "go kill this specific devil" quest.

Now that this bargain is established, the Paladin will likely be more open to similar deals, and that's an invaluable asset when working on the Paladin's corruption for any Devil.

Another example: a PC would like to have a magic item. If this PC is close to death, the Devil who contacts them offer them a deal to let them live, but they must go to X place to get Y magic item and make sure Y magic item does not fall into the hands of Z fiend nor get destroyed, until the Devil get an opportunity to come gather the item.

Now the PC has a devil-contracted magic item. It sounds pretty great. But that's just the Devil letting the PC have what they want, so that it becomes easier to convince said PC to do other things.