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kirbsys
2008-09-07, 05:00 AM
So tonight our DM ran for our first 4E campaign keep on the Shadowfell. We get the mission from the Lord and head off. As we're fighting the three dragonborn in the party hear voices saying "Why are you fighting your Kin?" We all think its Bahumat simply because the DM told us that. We kill the quest's BBEG after hearing the voice again (this time telling us to charge) and it occurs to me that its our Wizard. I'm a little mad, but I have no proof to do anything.

We get back to town and he offers us 100 gold as a reward, so the Warlock and Wizard both burn dailies to kill the Lord. Immediately afterward I dragon breath both of them, burn an action point, and then Shield Smite the warlock. My clutch mates help me out, and combined with the peasant's and town guard we take out the two traitors. We ended the session with the two in jail, and the rest of us in house arrest. I'm kinda interested in what's going to happen next.

Anyways, what are your best betrayal stories in DnD?

BobVosh
2008-09-07, 05:15 AM
Why did they kill the lord, and what was the point of whispering to you two?

Johel
2008-09-07, 05:54 AM
Why did they kill the lord, and what was the point of whispering to you two?

100 gold might not have been enough... and the Lord wouldn't agree to raise the prise ? Pretty chaotic evil reaction from the PC.

And for the whispering thing, it might just have been a bad joke. I've never played the 4th edition but Message is a 0-level spell in the 3.5th edition, so it's cheap to be used, even at low level.

For the betrayal story, our sorcerer cast Web spell on a melee. It would have been ok because the fighter and the priest had both enough strenght to eventually get out but so had the minotaur we were fighting.
So the sorcerer just cast burning hands. We were already low in hp (but again, so was the minotaur).
His excuse was that he wanted to participate in the battle but couldn't because the hall was too narrow and we would have been killed anyway so...

only1doug
2008-09-07, 08:02 AM
MY Best betrayal was Star Wars:


I was playing a Jedi-Kid type, the group Jedi had been neglecting my instruction and a Sith we had encountered was remotely tempting my Kid character.

After the jedi ignored the repeated plea's for help the kid slowly gained darkside powers. for over 3 months of real world time (playing 1 / week) the kid slowly became more powerful without anyone else in the party having anything concrete to prove their worries. (and the Jedi still didn't confront the kid).

the "Betrayal" came during a session when the party was due to steal an ancient spaceship (with unique abilities) from a museum. the party told the kid "stay in the ship and keep out of trouble" while they all went to plan their robbery.

after 20 minutes of them scouting the kid decided to show what he could do.
he went to the guard who was watching the target ship and pumped him for information, "so hows that ship work? you don't know do you?"
the guard couldn't resist showing off and demonstrated the remote device he had for the target ship.
Kid walks off into crowd then turns back, inflict pain on guard, telekinesis keys to his hands, walks onto ship and flies away.... took 5 minutes for the kid to beat the party to their prize...

and to see their faces as their target flies away before they could steal it...

but that was the turning point, i gave the Kid to the GM for a NPC and created a new character. I knew the rest of the party would never trust him again (even though he gave them the ship he stole).

The Kid later became the most hated BBEG the party ever faced, as he knew all their strengths and weaknesses and their standard operating procedures.


WFRP
I don't really class this as a betrayal, it was almost self inflicted by the person in question.


we were traveling by barge down the river, we had stopped at a town and two new players were GM fiat'd into introducing their characters.
My best friend was caught by the river and one of the new characters rescued him /end GM fiat. The new character charged him 25 gold for the rescue and made him swear loyalty. then came a spiel:
"i Hate thieves, if i ever catch a thief i will kill them immediately without further warning"

we all agreed that this was reasonable and play continued.
we rested that night on the barge and once everyone was asleep i had a private word with the GM.
"i'm going to cut the new characters throat, steal all her gold and roll the body into the river"
the GM agreed and i returned my friends gold to him.
I was playing a thief. i never stole from the party and i viewed the incident as a clear case of self defense.

Zeta Kai
2008-09-07, 09:52 AM
My new players were sent on a mission (a pretty standard tomb-raid) by their patron, a mid-level wizard named Orlith. The wizard sent his new apprentice, Hiraon, along with them as a guide. Hiraon was a small, bookish little mouse of a boy, only about 16 or so. The party was already on the run from the authorities & a popular church, the Followers of Light, led by the charismatic & ambitious Kunavi, the Sun-Father.

The goal of the raid was to recover the White Spear from the king's tomb. Hiraon led them to the tomb, & even put on a brave face to join them in the first chamber of the crypt, but he turned tail & ran away as soon as the first encounter went sour. The party didn't need him anymore, & they were already sick of his cowardice, so they continued on without him.

In the last chamber, the party managed to find the White Spear in the hands of the dead king. As soon as they picked it up, though, they heard Hiraon behind them, calling out. They turned around, & found Hiraon standing there with a dozen obviously-powerful members of the Followers of Light. Hiraon was actually Kunavi himself in disguise, & had used the church's resources to magically hide as Hiraon & dupe Orlith into send somebody to recover the White Spear, which was key to his plans for more power. Now that the party had done the dirty work, he intended to take the spear & use the party for his evil religious rituals.

Hilarity (but no TPK's) ensued.

FMArthur
2008-09-07, 01:01 PM
My players entered a city I made that was part of a magic-extermination empire. The party had two full casters, two partial casters and a barbarian loaded down with magic equipment. Luckily (well, plot-related luck), they enter the city at night.

In the first building they enter, which is a tool shop, they ask the lone craftsman for magical gear, and he helpfully warns them about the city's general hatred of magic and the unfair laws against having any form of it. He of course declares that he's not 'one of those' and offers them a place to stay for the night and to hide their stuff during the next day. So he leads them upstairs to their room and the party rests. They succeed on the listen checks to hear him quietly leaving the house during the night, and think nothing of it. :smallsigh:


I guess too many players subscribe to the notion that all non-combatant NPCs are there to serve them unquestioningly for no gain.

Ravyn
2008-09-07, 01:47 PM
My GMs seem to love betrayal plots, so I get a lot of these--and I'm the one betraying the group with statistically improbable frequency. (You'd think someone would've caught on by this point.) I've had characters blackmail them

My personal favorite, though, was in the end game of my first major story arc when running Exalted. It'd started as one of those "NPC captured because she knows something vital to a ritual" plots.... and I probably would've ended up playing it mostly straight, if the player of the group's Lunar, Shadow, hadn't wanted to toy a little with the old anime cliche of the "demon form". I don't like cliches, so I modified the premise a bit, with the end result that the elder god whom the BBEG served actually managed to talk him around.

With me so far?

So the group, after much arduous travel, arrives at the BBEG's place to rescue their friend Kiara (and a couple others who were yoinked over the course of the storyline). He's not there, just his three offspring--the only one they saw in the beginning was his eldest daughter Rukan, who was quite possibly a nicer person than most of the party put together. So she does the gracious hostess thing, offers them tea, actually reunites them with their missing friends--she can afford to do this partly because Kiara's managed to lock herself in her own mind and is functionally catatonic, and Rukan figures the group has a better chance of waking her up than she or her family does. And everything's going perfectly well... until they try to leave. At which point Shadow tells them, "I'm sorry, I can't let you do that." (Rukan, being the noncombatant that she is.... hides. Side changes at this point: 1)

THEN Shoren, the Zenith, gets possessed by his prior incarnation, Glory, and a three-sided fight begins: Shadow and his favorite NPC vs. Glory-as-Shoren, as everyone else is trying to disable both of them and figure out wtf is going on. During which time one of the other NPCs basically tries to get out of there with Kiara before the fight messes up the geomancy. And gets ambushed by the BBEG's other two progeny. And, losing, lets the rest of the group know about this. Which semi-ends the fight (Shoren quashing his prior helps) and gets the group working together for a bit... (Side changes at this point: 3 I think. The NPC doing the absconding was technically on her own side.)

Until, as they're fighting their way through the demons between them and their friends, Shadow goes ahead again. And this time, tries to put Shoren to sleep so he can talk with their "patron" himself--which, unfortunately, brings Glory out again. (By this time, pretty much the entire group has agreed, nobody likes Glory. We're up to something like five or six now.)

And then that gets resolved, including a sort of alliance between the BBEG's progeny and the group. (Number of changes of sides at this point: Honestly, I've stopped counting. The neutral PCs threw things off, and I'm really not sure who technically switched to whose side at this point.) And everything's fine until a little while after the group manages to wake Kiara, at which point Shadow has another change of heart and tells everyone to leave. Rukan's younger siblings try to warn them what a can of worms they're opening, of course, but really, would you listen to someone like that? And Rukan, seeing no other option, activates her final contingency, bringing in her father.

And the group attempted to run, in a scene that lasted about ten hours and involved two heroic rearguard actions, one of the most hilarious bluffs I've ever seen, a couple of ambushes, one desperate prayer and, in the end, just about everyone getting captured again. Fortunately for them, nobody expected the Dawn (quite possibly the quietest member of the party) to be an expert lockpicker, and... well, speaking of betrayals, one of the second generation just happened to open the place in which the group's weapons were stored, and just happened to not notice that it wasn't closed when he went back to check on his sisters (they'd gotten beaten unconscious during the escape attempt), and just happened to not react with alarm at the fact that the entire group had managed to get out of their cells....

....and finally they got to beat up on the BBEG, and there was much epicness. The lead-up was more fun, though; I don't think I'm ever going to be able to top that.

Zenos
2008-09-07, 02:11 PM
I once GM'ed a "magical spec-ops" game where there was a dwarf crusader and an awakened cat rogue. After some hilarious trouble with a gargoyle, they enter a room and find some civilian bussinessmen. After a bit of fumbling around with words they have to hold them at gunpoint, a kobold commits suicide, that kind of thing. Then the Good crusader allows the civilians who didn't kill themselves to go, on the promise that they wouldn't alert the guards. Later, they have planted their bomb, and are heading into the forest, when they pass a door in a corridor, out walks one of the civilians, conversing with an enemy officer, who is drawing his gun.
The crusader was a bit surprised.
By the way, the snitch was the first to die. They defeated the soldiers quite easily with their newly acquired Lesser Sonic Orb Revolvers (or in the case of the cat, sniper rifle).
Then, when the enemy soldiers withdrew into their room, the crusader was considerate enough to warn them to get out before the bomb blew. And he waited with detonating it until people had fled the complex.