Messenger of Helm prodding a paladin

[HoboKnight]

Hey guys,

one of my players is running Paladin of Helm. He was informed of a coven of hags, who are destroying/corrupting communities, making people insane, really gruesome stuff. Problem is, he is taking so much time with leveling up/looting, main task remains unadressed and this really saddened an angel of Helm. It is not so much that player would not want to finish this quest, it is more that he gets distracted easily. I want to bombard this guy with pleas from this angel, which will mostly be visions of suffering, intervowen with pleas.

What gnarly, descriptions I can toss at him? I could use some visceral/dark ideas.

Also I do not need entire texts, just ideas...

Thanks

[KorvinStarmast]

Hey guys,

one of my players is running Paladin of Helm. He was informed of a coven of hags, who are destroying/corrupting communities, making people insane, really gruesome stuff. Problem is, he is taking so much time with leveling up/looting, main task remains unadressed and this really saddened an angel of Helm. It is not so much that player would not want to finish this quest, it is more that he gets distracted easily. I want to bombard this guy with pleas from this angel, which will mostly be visions of suffering, intervowen with pleas.

What gnarly, descriptions I can toss at him? I could use some visceral/dark ideas.

Also I do not need entire texts, just ideas...

Thanks
Start with dreams, where as he's sleeping he dreams of being one of the victims of the hags. He feels their suffering as he does weird stuff in dreams (stuff that happens in dreams can get kinda weird, based on my RL experience) until he wakes up, and has vivid recall of the dream.

[Anymage]

How often do you make it clear that things are happening based on an in-game calendar instead of just as a result of PC actions/adventures? Because this sounds like someone wanting to complete sidequests before advancing the main quest. And given how it's easy for both players and DMs to fall into the habit of thinking that time is an unlimited resource unless there's a mission specific timer, it's a very understandable take.

An NPC prodding the PC is very likely to be read primarily as just saying "yup, main quest is still here". Seeing the results of hag actions, either directly or indirectly (e.g: hag corrupted people/creatures wandering off to make problems elsewhere), should be more impactful. Let the PCs find certain subquests closed off because they took too long with other subquests and the questgivers/quest locations got messed up by the spreading corruption. Better still, let their current quests get complicated if they spend too long dawdling/resting and corruption encroaches on the questgivers/quest location. Players are more likely to change their behavior if they get a sense that the bags are advancing on real targets based on a calendar, over abstractly happening in the background when the PCs aren't currently on a hag quest.

[gbaji]

I guess I'd ask myself the question: What is the long term objective of the Hags? Do they just park themselves in villages and corrupt people and drive them insane for fun? Or is there a larger purpose?

Assuming there is a purpose, what is it? Is there a "next level" to this? Perhaps, typically, these hag infestation are just that: hags show up, people start acting strangely, then some heroes show up and defeat the hags. But what happens if no one does? Perhaps, these insane/corrupt people start acting in consistent insane/corrupt ways? Perhaps it's a means of recruiting them to worshp of <insert evil demon-god of insantiy/corruption here>? Or perhaps the concentration of insanity and corruption attracts some new greater power which parks itself in the village and starts embarking on greater evil stuff (the "good guys" aren't the only ones who may recieve visions about this sort of thing, right)? Now you have a direction things can go. So make it actually go in that direction.

I'd have a consequence for ignoring the celestial warnings here. Give the character an even more dramatic vision showing the people building a temple or something and dancing at the feet of something that just feels foul and horrible. Have this leave the character with a strong feeling of dread. And when the party arrives, they find that there's now a much larger threat than just the hags. The village itself has "turned" in some way, and is actively engaging in evil themselves. Perhaps, as others have suggested, are branching out and spreading this to surrounding villages.

The end point IMO should be that what would have been a relatively easy thing to deal with now is much much more difficult, and has absolute long term ramifications. Odds are many/most of the villagers have been completely corrupted/converted to this new evil <whatever> and will not recover (ie: now the PCs have to treat them as fanatic enemy cultists and will have to kill most of them in order to stop whatever "evil plan" they have cooked up). There will be much more powerful things to deal with. Also, because it was allowed to fester for so long, other evil "things" may have appeared there (via various means) during this time, which may have already wandered off and are doing things in other nearby areas (maybe this whole process created an evil "weak spot", where nasty extra-dimensional things can show up easily?). Or maybe, now the the village is entirely converted to evil/corruption/whatever, they've been actively summoning things to spread it even more?

Lots of different things you can do with this, but there should always be consequences when players ignore stuff like that. And IMO, those consequences should not be arbitrary, but should reflect that "bad things" get worse over time if not dealt with. So yeah, make this minor bad thing get a lot worse. And also make it painfully obvious to the players (and especially to the one playing the paladin) that this is "their fault", for sitting on their butts and not doing anything. Make it clear that most of this pain and suffering and death could have been avoided if they had acted on this warning earlier. The exact method of doing this will vary based on the theme/feel of the game you are running, but make it abundantly clear that at this point, no matter what they do, they have already "failed", and are at best cleaning up a terrible disaster that could have been averted by acting sooner.

[solidork]

It depends on the exact details of the situation, but rather than try and guilt him into shifting his focus I'd give the player a golden opportunity to do something about it - information about where he might intercept one of the hag's agents or some place they might be targeting next. In an ideal world following this lead would allow multiple party members to pursue their personal drives. When you've got a big complicated problem, sometimes it's hard to tell where to start - "the hags are out there somewhere, look into it" isn't super actionable but "the hags are threatening X thing important to your party member" will undoubtedly get them to bite.

It's quite possible that he's got ample information and opportunities to act on though, in which case seeing the consequences of the hags being able to accomplish their goals could be motivating.

[SpyOne]

This is definitely not how to start, but at some point (at non-crucial moments), he may find some of his Helm-given abilities don't trigger when they are supposed to, or spells he tries to cast don't happen. Little signs that their patron/god may not feel that they are doing the right things.

My DM would have every divine caster give him the list of spells they had chosen for the day, and most of the time he was just using that info for final balancing of encounters and stuff, but occasionally when he passed the list back it would have changes - you submitted what your character asked for, but that isn't what you got.
"Um, it looks like my god thinks we're about to fight undead."

So, is there a way to show him that Helm is changing his spell selections, and giving him stuff that would be useful against hags?

[Slipjig]

Send visions of the eventual outcome absent his intervention. Try to give him a clear time clue that, "this is what will happen BY THIS DATE absent your intervention", maybe by referencing an upcoming holiday that is only a few weeks away or the upcoming New/Full Moon.

To players who have mostly played video games, it may not even occur to them that there are consequences to delay. With very few exceptions, most games allow you to side quest as long as you want, and the situation will still be exactly the same when you eventually return to the main questline.

[Ionathus]

My read on Helm is that he's a god of duty and watchfulness, with not really a whole lot of guile or subtlety in his communications and not really prone to florid descriptions or pathos.

I'd honestly go far in the other direction: don't have the angel invoke suffering and visceral imagery, instead have the angel repeatedly bother the PC with some variation on the same message. Almost like a parent nagging their child to take out the trash or clean their room. The angel can make impassioned pleas to the PC's humanity, but I think it could be just as effective for the angel to read off a list of all the people the hags have killed/corrupted since the last time they talked. A daily death toll update can be pretty effective on its own -- or the PC could quickly become inured to it, which hey, now you can twist the knife on their newly-acquired apathy too.

[Psyren]

+1 to "does the PC know there's urgency here / have you put in-game time limits on quests before" as well as "have a plan if the PC(s) continue to do nothing." A lot of us came to D&D from games like Zelda and Skyrim and Pokemon and Dragon Age where you have all the time in the world to knock out sidequests. And even if this player didn't start there, those are still prominent examples/assumptions in the modern RPG landscape.

Have you also signaled the expected difficulty of this quest? The PC might already be more than powerful enough to make a difference, but if they don't know that, then being cautious and continuing to grind levels elsewhere might feel prudent. It's easy for someone to calculate that pausing to grind or a while might lose some innocents in the short term, but going too soon and dying will lose all of them.

Lastly, speaking of sidequests - how are these being presented to the player? Do they know it's side content? Are they being positioned as equally important as the thing you want them to prioritize? Are they saving innocents / slaying predators / vanquishing evil in the side content too? Even if you are making the demarcation very clear, it might be worthwhile to hold off on offering more of it until they make some progress on the critical path / character quests.


My read on Helm is that he's a god of duty and watchfulness, with not really a whole lot of guile or subtlety in his communications and not really prone to florid descriptions or pathos.

I'd honestly go far in the other direction: don't have the angel invoke suffering and visceral imagery, instead have the angel repeatedly bother the PC with some variation on the same message. Almost like a parent nagging their child to take out the trash or clean their room. The angel can make impassioned pleas to the PC's humanity, but I think it could be just as effective for the angel to read off a list of all the people the hags have killed/corrupted since the last time they talked. A daily death toll update can be pretty effective on its own -- or the PC could quickly become inured to it, which hey, now you can twist the knife on their newly-acquired apathy too.

I agree with this suggestion on roleplaying Helm's messenger - very blunt and to the point.

[HoboKnight]

Great ideas. Straightforward angel of Helm. Nice.

[Sapphire Guard]

"Hey, you! Paladin of Helm! Deal with that hag problem!"

[Ionathus]

To Paladin of Helm STOP

Hag Coven in village of Peasantton 54 miles SSE STOP

Coven unopposed, death toll risen 28 since last message STOP

Reminder to recipient about being Paladin of Helm God of Protection and Vigilance STOP

If recipient would prefer less demanding oath please submit proper transfer forms STOP