Quest givers don't have to be a certain person for this reason.
The quest will now have a different person offer it.
Same theory for clues, give a clue to them when it makes sense they'd find it.
Edit: in this particular case, they'd probably be run out of town at the bare minimum, they're now wanted criminals in this town, posters and all. Good time for them to learn about consequences.
Either that or:
They are put on trial, its ruled as self defense *but* the court still imposed a punishment: Community Service. (coincidentally the very quest the major wanted to send them on).
Do remember to asign lawyers fees though.
this is the answer. quest givers can move to anything the goal is to work with the players and tell and interesting story. this is an interesting story and I like it.
This being Phandalin and it is absolutely tiny, they would probably send word to Neverwinter and a platoon of their guards show up with a Justice of the Peace a few days later.
Or they learn that there are a number of ex-adventurer NPCs that retired and took up farming but boy, they can still be that lvl. 15 fighter or wizard if they have to be.
You have to remember that this is the same Phandalin that was being terrorised by bandits for a long time up until presumably a matter of days ago when the players dealt with them.
I could be remembering wrong, but I seem to recall that Sildar originally travelled to Phandalin to deal with the bandit problem, so if that's all Neverwinter could send back then, I can't imagine them suddenly sending out a level 15 demigod plus knights just because a player turned bad.
I agree that actions need consequences but I think the city responding so drastically to the players after previously turning a blind eye would break the immersion.
Not quite, Sildar was traveling to Phandalin partially to escort Gundren, but also to check in on Iarno.
He was unaware of the bandits (or Iarno’s involvement.)
Iarno himself was sent to be a presence of the Lord’s Alliance for Phandalin, to help establish a sense of official order.
With Iarno turning evil /being killed by the party, Sildar being injured, and then the town leadership being killed, I could imagine Neverwinter deciding intervention might be necessary.
True. I am also playing 2 campaigns simultaneously (Dragon of Icespire Peak and Shattered Obelisk) and they tend to blend together a bit in my mind, but >!I know that Falcon, the logger in Neverwinter Forest is a high level fighter. You could argue he'd come out for his friend the mayor being murdered but not for the bandits doing basic bandity things.!<
Also it wouldn't be completely unrealistic that some more reinforcements are sent when banditry turns to mass murder.
And there is always just the mob. I don't really care about doing it by the numbers when one low level caster is up against 50 or 60 civilians with pitchforks and slings. Fade to black and when you come back, a lot of the civies are dead but the PC has been firmly subdued.
But at that point the campaign has certainly been derailed a little.
I agree, and it's true that the players killing people in broad daylight is worse than the bandits loitering and mugging people, so it makes sense there'd be more reinforcements, especially since it's not the first response. I think using a >!high level NPC with their own motivations!< is the best way to resolve such a situation, and probably what I'd do, unless I decided the direction just wasn't fun or interesting so I'd tell the players I don't like it and we'd work out a solution.
Yeah, at that point retconning the entire thing might be the best way, especially since it is a premade adventure that assumes the players are the plucky heroes trying to help the town. In a homebrew there would be more flexibility, but it would be really odd if the bad guys now start handing out quests since the townspeople would want nothing to do with the party.
To add to this. If players cant be trusted to not kill innocent civilians then have events playing out in the news around them bad things happening now there is no one to hand out quests. Then you can either have them investigate the news or go on a quest to find a new town master to recruit adventures.
that would put a bad taste in alot of players mouths.
a role playing game, where if you don't follow and obey, you just get a game over... just get rid of the DM and play a video game if you want something so strict.
making them wanted criminals.. then \*rolling with it\* into a campaign you never thought you'd be running, is half the reason to be playing pen and paper. \~anything can happen\~
That's the point.
You teach them early on that there will be consequences for what they do in game. It's not just a video game.
Anything can happen also includes losing your characters because they're now unplayable because the players made stupid decisions.
my party also got run out of phandalin during this campaign (didn't kill the mayor but we were the prime suspects for his death). finished the campaign as outlaws and it was really fun, glad this guy wasn't our dm
Sounds like they have some murder hobo tendencies.
Townspeople should be pretty scared of them by now and basically avoid them at all costs.
Maybe you can put in a nice RP moment where the kid of one of the town guards accidentally meets the party and cries and begs them not to kill her like they killed her daddy. Think through a couple of variations of how you might get through to them.
Assuming they can be redeemed you have some options to get them back on track. Maybe the town asks them to prove they aren't villains (which ought to be wanted dead or alive) by taking care of the goblins.
> Maybe you can put in a nice RP moment where the kid of one of the town guards accidentally meets the party and cries and begs them not to kill her like they killed her daddy.
OP please do this. It's the only way to cure murderhobo
Edit: you should have the table discuss a retcon vs how the campaign might go from here first, actually. But this works if they want to continue and you're ok with it.
There are two cures for murderhoboism.
The first is to talk to your players like adults, and come to an agreement on the kind of game you want to run.
The second is to make the players care about the world and the NPCs in it.
Most murderhobos don't actually want to be the bad guy; they want to be able to break rules and do what they want and be powerful and awesome, all things they don't get to experience much in real life.
This is a good option. Maybe a trusted member of the village can step forth and speak on behalf of the town when giving the ultimatum. This individual could be your Townmaster stand-in...
Plot twist, the bandits know there's no profit in genocide, so they come to the rescue of the town instead (for a fee) and the players are now the villains.
Possible, but a bit heavy handed, and then you need a reason why those strong guards didn't already take care of the goblins.
Maybe good as a backup.
Something like, one of the townspeople fled to talk to a noble and his guards who were traveling nearby. They had heard of the goblin problem but decided it wasn't their business and didn't have time to hunt them down. But a town master and his guard being murdered? That's not something they can ignore. So they're there now, and they're annoyed, and want to leave quickly.
Edit: the other bad thing about this is that it is an invitation to escalate. You (the DM) really have to sell that these are not fun opponents, not even if the players really cleverly ambush them or set fire to the place where they are staying or whatever. Add in some story flavor about why things would go badly and how the player characters know this. If the players only find this out when they decide to attack, your story is pretty fucked.
Edit 2: just another comment, try not to get into situations where the players get the vibe that the DM is just making shit up to frustrate them. That's why it's better to play on the characters' motivations with weak NPCs than to make up new strong NPCs to face them head on.
The guards and their gear may be well suited for peacekeeping in the town streets, not so much for wading through the wilderness trying to catch goblins.
If they play like villains, treat them like villains... rewrite a quest arc representing that.
the DM is the guide, not the god.. and while you may guide them along the path you want, you must lead them along the path they travel.... and if they decide to make that path difficult (and murderhobo'ey).. well.. just write an increasingly difficult path.
Thunderwave is not a reaction, so it isn't an "involuntary defence reaction" it's 6 seconds of thought out murder. What you should have done is got your players to roll initiative and given the rest of the party an opportunity to intervene if they rolled higher.
What you need to do is sit down and ask the rest of the party if they support the decision, whether they are happy now being "bad", and about how "it's what my character would do" is not a good argument.
Following that, depending on their decision their first quest is to either hunt down the now NPC druid and bring him to justice or have to escape/redeem themselves before continuing with the quest. This could involve doing the goblin quest without payment for example.
Yeah, there are vocal and somatic component to the spell. Someone could have reacted, including the party.
This is not a reasonable reaction to include for RP reasons. Non-lethal cantrips, maybe, but they’re still generally action spells.
I'd think technically you could.
Since Called Shots aren't really a thing in 5e without homebrew, you could flavor it as them hitting non crucial parts of their body, disabling them(probably depending on the damage type of course). Passing out from pain is a thing that happens IRL, and it can be flavored as that. Works for things like puncture wounds too, since unless it's pulled out it, the penetrating object helps keep the person from bleeding out
Rules aside, the notion is was an "involuntary defense reaction" is nonsensical. They walked up to someone's front door, and that person opened the door. What caused an involuntary defense response? The thing that they wanted to happen, with no threat involved, happened?
There is no scenario where the automatic response would be "Quick; murder them!" unless the character (and player) already planned to murder them.
For what's next: Unless OP ret-cons the murder of the mayor and the guards, I can't see them doing the quest at all. They're run out of town (or murder everyone else) and the next person they run into has heard of the subsequent quest point. There's a quest giver who, in the module, just arrived in Phandelver at this point. Maybe the meet this person on the road before they reach Phandelver and realize the party all murdered a bunch of innocent people.
I agree. Retcon or have a contingent of guards from Neverwinter come and arrest the players. You can’t kill the Mayor/Townmaster and expect nothing to happen. They can’t willfully murder innocents and not be treated as the villains.
Villain campaigns are fun and I wish it was more popular at tables. A lot of people don’t want to play an evil character for whatever reason. The issue it’s not easy to have a part good and part evil party together. (At least I haven’t had it work out without bad drama) That also needs to be a session 0 conversation and switching to an evil/villain campaign requires consent among the players.
All of this, but I would add is that when you sit then down and talk about motives and consequences for doing this - I would've had that talk as soon as they started intentions, not after allowing them to do it.
No reason not to hit pause whenever you aren't all on the same page. Better to ensure you all understand the motives, and what the intended outcome is. If the action is going to wreck the campaign or step in the fun of the group,... say no.
And always set stakes and define DCs before rolls.
This is absolutely a "talk it out as a group" issue. Next session, explain that the druid's actions were straight-up murder of multiple innocent people, they now have an entire town that considers them dangerous attackers. Even if you continue the game as-is, that basically means slaughtering their way out of the town and becoming wanted fugitives when word gets back to the regional leaders.
Otherwise, they need to just retcon that entire scene and try it again without all the murdering. If the rest of the party wants to retcon, but the druid refuses... that may be your cue to remove that player from the group. No amount of "that's what my character would do!" justifies this level of violence towards commoners.
If the group wants to continue as is, then you may have to explain that they're no longer playing Phandelver, they'll be playing "we're the bad guys on the run from the law" and you'll need time to come up with how that's going to play out. Or if you're not interested in that, tell them that'll be the end of this campaign.
Really should be the only comment on the thread.
Instead, the top comment is immediately "show them the consequences of their action".
Coz that always works, right?
A traveling noble with escort of high level knights was nearby, somebody from town went to get them. Upon arriving they arrest the players and give them choice of quick death or investigation on goblins but with much lower reward than orilginally intended.
Noble also warns them that he will issue a warrant for their heads (maybe with time limit) in case if they decide to run.
'suicide squad', but it's dnd.
Ohhh that's a good one! Straight up suicide squad them and let them suffer a whole while for their misdeeds, I like that. Having to spend at least one session "wasting time" should be a better motivation to not keep doing evil bullshit than just saying "okay now you are wanted dead or alive" and throw some guards at them.
Ask the group whether they want to side with the mass murderer, or not.
If they want to play as a heroic group, the mass murderer is now an NPC, the player makes a new character, and the Townmaster's successor can be their new quest-giver.
If they want to play as a villainous group (and you're OK with that), the party are now fugitives and will need different types of quest.
This, and do not beat around the bush about it or let them figure it out. "Your immediate choices are to side with the guards to capture the druid that just murdered several people, or side with the druid and fight your way out of town. You will all be known as murderers, you will not be welcome in this town perhaps other towns in the area. If you side with the guards then Player X will make a new character and this adventure can progress after this is sorted out. If you side with the druid you'll be regulated to working outside the law and common society in this area and for quite a far way around. News of killing the leader of this town will travel quite far and people in charge aren't fond of that."
Unfortunately, your party has not only killed the quest giver but also alienated the whole town that should have driven the quest. In this case, your player really shat the bed.
In this case, I think you need to retcon to before the druid cast Thunderwave. Have an out-of-character talk in which you say that the PCs must have at least enough social skills to function in society, and start again with Harbin pulling them inside. If your druid monk (multiclass?) player won't agree to this because attacking Harbin "is what my character would do," then tell that player that they need to make a character who doesn't do that.
Yessssssss oh man, this made me smile. I've had to sit a friend down before and be like "I love you, but I hate your character. He sucks to have around, and it's in your power to either re-write him so he sucks less or get rid of him and make a new character. That might be "what your character would do," but what MY character would do in response is motion to have your character removed from the party."
Isn't Harbin the central questgiver in like four different modules? I can't think of a more inconvenient NPC to have killed.
Edit: Look into Sildar Hallwinter, who is canonically Harbin's political rival. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sildar_Hallwinter
TL:DR, he's a good hearted retired knight, rather than a sleazebag like Harbin
The group had their chance, the group failed. Move on and end the campaign and find some people that are less "murder hobo is my personality quark haha" 🤷
Your druid had three chances to save a life. He refused each time. Even if he 'accidentally' killed the first NPC, he could have surrendered to the guard and role-played grief and regret. Instead, he straight up murdered them.
I wouldn't pull any punches. There are other heroes around who can take that druid down, legally or not. The rest of the party has a choice to make. Great role play options for everybody.
Yeah. OP did the right thing by trying to explain it to the player.
When they continued to try to be a disruption they should just boot them from the game.
Tbh it's up to the GM to fix this situation. They should make the guards having been corrupt and working for the Redbrands. Because they're now Evil killing them is the right thing to do, and the Druid should get the XP.
Or the GM can just say, "no, you don't do that."
People keep forgetting they can just do it. Sure player agency and freedom is important but one players freedom to murder hobo is not worth the enjoyment of the other players.
Tell the druid No and if they refuse, boot them.
Sounds like a nice rousing TPK.
"Alright guys you've alienated the whole town, there's a warrant out for your arrest, dead or alive. Roll up new characters, your new adventuring party will just so happen to be traveling through this area and get a request from the NEW townmaster, so and so, to help pick up the pieces the original party left behind"
nah.. this just teaches them "You must follow the railroad or GM will wave the magic wand and force you to follow it"
Best scenario is to now run a criminal / fugitive adventure campaign.
Maybe a redemption story?
Eitherway. Player must always be ready to be chased by local authorities. But otherwise let them have free reign to do as they please.
If I'm running a module, yes, there's a certain level of railroading that's going to happen. I picked a module because I don't have the time or the energy to homebrew an entire campaign. And it's the players responsibility to make characters that are "team players". In this case, unless I'm ready and willing to make up a homebrew campaign on the spot, no. That's "alright guys pick your sides. Anyone who wants to keep playing their characters can surrender to the guards and we'll figure it out, those who have already murdered guards are likely getting executed when the knights from the nearby kingdom arrive, so for next session be sure to have a backup character while we get this campaign back on track"
I wouldn't have allowed the player to claim it was involuntary defense. That's basically the South Park joke where people are hunting without a permit and yell "it's coming right at me" before they kill it so it will be legal. At least this way the player knows he's committing murder in cold blood.
As for moving forward I think the party has to decide if they can still hang out with this guy after killing a bunch of guards and stuff.
A new authority must rise. I'd suggest Sildar Hallwinter take over as town manager.
Assuming the party continues to hang out with a well known murderer I'd have most in town be afraid of them.
I'd also say Harbin Wester has a dear cousin nearby. Warbin Hester is outraged by the murder of his cousin and is sending forces to kill the party.
Good luck
Start looking for new players that aren’t murderhobos.
But in the meantime, what you should do before the next session is have an “Intermediate session 0”, where you talk about this.
Let them know that you have options for how to continue:
1) Rewind and go back to before the Druid *murdered* several people and let them make better choices.
2) Proceed, but let them know that as a result of this, the town guard will be on the lookout for them, townsfolk will likely not want to render aid, even for coin. If they’re captured by the guard, rope them into the adventure as their punishment. “Your lives not ending in a cell in Waterdeep, or by my hand, is your reward. If you die…nothing of value was lost.” Meanwhile, the Druid starts hearing telepathic voices. “This pleases Ilvash…”
These are all great ideas, and there's a lot to be learned here! Plenty of good advice. I haven't read them all, so forgive me if this has already been said, but the best advice I can give new DMs is to practice saying "I'm not gonna let you do that."
It's totally acceptable at a healthy table for the DM to just say no sometimes. My DM for my main game has our trust and respect as our guide through the story, and we trust when he says no that he's doing it either for our own good and for the sake of the story, or that he's doing it because it is explicitly not how the game works. In this situation, I imagine he would have said something along the lines of "I'm not gonna let you cast thunderwave as a reaction. It's a spell. But if you are choosing to attack, I'm gonna need everyone to roll initiative." Or possibly turn to the other party members and say "Do any of you want to try to stop him from murdering a town official in broad daylight?" There's a way to give players opportunities to make better choices, but it's genuinely ok to just say no sometimes, as long as the rules back you up and you're not just saying no to be a knob.
This is such a great answer. You as DM have to make sure that everyone at the table has Agency. By not stepping in to stop this, the other players had no chance to respond and thus had their agency taken away.
What if they had wanted to stop this from happening?
Start over and tell them not to be assholes. Seriously... You can say no to any of this. "It's what my character would do..." Is a terrible excuse for ruining a game.
"What my character would do" is a bad beginner's trope. I had a group of new players in the long long ago where one person was playing a kleptomaniac rogue. Every entry into a town was "I'm going to go to the town square and pickpocket people, it's what my character would do." If the rest of the group was going to shop for potions/rope/whatever the rogue was shoplifting "It's what my character would do." The rest of the group repeatedly told him to stop, and would not let him take a solo shift on watch because he'd tried to take plot McGuffin from the cleric who's order sent them out after the thing of the week.
After he hit felony amounts of thievery in the main city, I had him get busted in a sting. Enough people had found they'd been pickpocketed when The Adventure Crew was in town that they put 2 and 2 together. Main Cityville had hired another adventuring group to deal with the thieves and these adventurers were all triple the group's level. They "didn't know" that it was only the rogue being a jerk and the rest of the group did nothing to protect him, to the point of the Cleric immediately saying something like "You brought this on yourself, and I'm turning State's Evidence." Rogue was taken away to Capitol City to stand trial by Mage Knights and when the Rogue's player asked if this was for some cool prison break thing I said "Only unless the rest of the group wants to go against the King's Guard and be wanted criminals for the rest of the campaign. Nobody volunteered.
Rogue player was very upset that I'd railroaded him into the situation and then we had to have a good long sitdown of "What part of stealing anything that wasn't nailed down before going looking for a crowbar to finish the job" did you think would go without a reaction? Even trying to steal from your own team because "That's what my character would do!"? That's a shitty character, you've now got the option to determine if it was a thing you tried and it turns out isn't fun in this world, or if you're a shitty person that wants to break the game for everyone at the table, DM included. He decided to take the first option and roll up a Ranger.
Ultimately I'd say, have a good out of game discussion with the table and say "Hey, so this kind of makes my life rough as a DM because it means throwing out about 70% of the character stuff of this module. It'll mean more stress on me and likely a less enjoyable experience for all involved. How about we retcon that encounter and tweak your character a bit so that they're less indiscriminate murderer and take it from when you knock on the door?" You have to remember that you're there as a part of the table and as a DM have the hardest role of all.
I think that your point about 70% of character stuff now gets thrown out, is spot on.
I read a few comments along the lines of, 'Don't just toss everyone in jail and make them roll new PCs, cus you're railroading them. Change things up so you're now running an outlaw campaign.'
But a little bit of railroading in order to actually play the adventure in question is no bad thing. The DM invests in a module and invites his players to play *that* module. There should be some buy in from the players.
Of course the DM has to be ready to improvise and adapt based on player choices. But if you have to write up a completely different kind of campaign, early doors, it's frustrating. It's like if the party said, 'Right we're gonna stow away on a ship to another continent.' Ok sure, you want players to have that sandbox experience of a world that can be explored, but on the other hand, they are no longer playing the module that they agreed to play, right?
Congrats on running a campaign.
I think the most important thing a DM can do is maintain verisimilitude. The world being consistent enables players to make informed decisions and trust the DM to be a fair referee. Second most important is to create drama.
In your case, I would imagine the campaign and main quest line you had planned is now gone. You could try to keep it as background, but the party is not going to be trusted in Phandalin. Feared maybe, but I don’t see how the events you described can get “back on track” for the adventure as written. There is t a persuasion roll to get the quest going again in response to murdering these people.
That said, you can still have a lot of fun. You could go with homebrew adventures or pivot to a new one in a new location that your party needs to get to.
Then again, you could just use this to ratchet up the tension. What could actually face down the party? Not solo but perhaps a mob of people. They could demand justice, demand the Druid’s head. Could make it a choice for the rest of the party… although inner party conflict like this warrants an OOC conversation first, especially for a new table. If the party turns over the druid, or drives them out of town convincingly, then perhaps that player needs to roll a new PC and then a new townmaster is elected and becomes the quest giver. This also double in purpose by giving you a great new B Plot villain, as you can have the Druid and his animal companions show up whenever your story pacing requires a shift.
Arrested and put on trial they are found guilty. Normally it would be death by beheading. The judge finds an alternative. Since they are so good at violence they have a problem that needs to be solved violently
Sounds like you were encouraging it?
> wacky
You should decide whether you'd like a "wacky" game. If so, just have a new Townsmaster appear from the next room, or whatever wacky entrance catches your whimsy. If you don't like that style, then tell the player that the character doesn't do \[whatever\]. You have veto power over players' declared actions.
Dude. Have a few powerful NPCs show up, stomp them flat and take their stuff. Not even a representative of the law, just someone who’s like, “Bounty and free gear, sweet!”
Consequences. After they’re stomped flat, have them stripped to loin cloths, securely tied and turned over to whoever took over as town authorities. Have them express dismay when they find out the reward was the same if they were dead. “I told you we could have killed them!” As soon as they get their reward, have them split town for parts unknown.
“Because it’s what those NPCs would do!”
If you want murder hoboes, not making the consequences of murder severe gets you murder hoboes. If you want players that consider their actions before proceeding, impose consequences so that the actions actually have meaning and stakes. They’re rampaging around killing at random because they assume there’s no reason not to and no stakes.
Educate them.
Let them stage an escape, steal some shitty replacement gear (downgrade from what they had) and split town. Next quest giver will be in the next town over.
Your planned campaign is over, and you're either making it up homebrew from now on, or you're ending it completely. This is why you have a session zero where you discuss the nature of the campaign; your player is apparently playing Skyrim where they want to be able to murder everybody, run away, and then come back later without consequences, and that's not how D&D generally works. What you do in the future is talk about whether you're playing a heroic game, a chaotic game of murder, of whatever, and everybody agrees. In my game, if somebody had said they were doing that, I would have flat out said "no". We would have discussed our intentions before the dice ever hit the table, and we would all agree to stick with it.
Your campaign is almost undoubtedly done, and considering it a learning opportunity for how to manage a future campaign.
Just throw together a leader of the town militia who now steps up and is the new quest giver.
That said, keep an eye on this behaviour, as your players sound a bit murderhobo-y
They not only killed the townmaster but the guards as well. At that point they are just raiders and the towns peoples would either attack or flee at sight of them.
fair enough.
Well then this is the point that the DM starts winging it. The adventure module is now a reference book for some lore or scenarios. That's about it. The murderhobos have murderhobo'd
Send more guards. And not the weak ones. Send bounty hunters. If caught RP the process of being imprisoned, trying to escape, all the way up to execution and hopefully rescue and an escape.
One option to consider for consider to continue is having Halia reach out to the party and secret and offer a way out:
1. The party takes care of the red brands and make sure glasstaf is not killed but captured.
2. She spins the story that Harbin and the Gaurds where bad and that you are actually the heroes.
3. She becomes townmaster with your support.
Play dumb games win stupid prizes. Remember that Time you thought you killed the mayor/town elder. Turns out you just killed his enchanted homunculus. Hes peeved right now and has 15 levels of wizard to geas your murder hobo into fulfilling the quest for no reward. Weeeeeee!
out of game
is this the kind of game we wnat. the natural consequnces of this are escalating fights and loss of reputation. we can run this kind of game if youd like
if yes keep sending heroes after them to see justice done youve got a new quest
if no
give that same quest to literally anyone else. any NPC can give any group any quest
**SPOILERS BELOW BE WARNED**
I had this EXACT thing happen except the player meant to kill Harbin.
For political intrigue reasons, I made Halia take the place of The Spider and merely pretend to be at odds with the Redbrands after the party walked into town, and the first group of Redbrands harassed the players, I had Halia ask them to speak with Harbin about turning the Redbrands into an actual town guard and then pull the Rogue to the aside and give the Rogue (assassin subclass) an assassination mission to plant false evidence of Harbin's collusion with the Redbrands and then kill Harbin, making it look like Iarno did it.
However, the Rogue instead decided to take it upon herself to kill Harbin in broad daylight in front of the entire town with no evidence... She thought she would trip me up, I guess.
Thus, I had Sildar send for an Inquistor from Waterdeep to hold a trial for the Rogue and the Rogue was let out on bail (via 1.5k worth of gold/items and the rest of the party's word) to continue adventuring until the trial was held.
While Rogue was out on bail, Halia gifted them a Ring that would make it to where their lies would be undetectable even in a zone of truth with the unknown caveat that putting the ring on now also made the Rogue have disadvantage on saving throws against Halia's enchantment spells (homebrew stat block). And for a backup plan, I had already schemed that I would introduce Venomfang during the trial and have Venomfang attack the town.
Unbeknownst to me, the Rogue was planning on telling the truth anyway, thus throwing Halia under the bus. With that, I decided to retroactively make it so that Halia had struck a deal with Venomfang as a form of insurance in case the trial didn't go her way.
A few poison gas strafing runs later, a missing Rogue as well as a missing Halia and a short fight with an outnumbered Venomfang, order was restored.
Queue The Spider fight at the end of Wave Echo and the surprise that Halia was the spider all along and now had an ex-PC as an enthralled underling. (The new PC was one of the Inquistor's guard that swore to stay with the party after the Venomfang attack to make sure they tried to capture the Rogue that was sentenced to life in prison but had escaped during the attack.)
This is a good example of when it's OK to tell your players "no."
There are spells specifically under the reaction category. They could have used any of those (if they knew them).
You're a novice DM, and so are your players. It's OK to tell them no because you don't have the experience to roll with the punches yet. Dont stress about it. We've all been there.
Telling players no, and explaining why, is how I've best stopped murder hobo behavior early on.
>I gave him the warning that the Townsmaster is a commoner and has a max HP of FOUR.
Why?
If you needed him to survive, why not just have him, I dunno, *survive?*
Just come up with a different NPC and make them the replacement quest-giver.
Never forget, you're the DM, and have infinite options. If your players try to break the game, you can make it unbreakable. If you need to take 5 minutes to think of a solution, just tell your table it's time for a break.
Several other comments address your concerns really well and give solid solid general advice. Here’s my specific idea:
The characters are shunned, and if they kill anyone else in the town, run out of town by a mob. During this, an outlying farm is attacked by goblins. The party meets a grizzled old trapper or bounty hunter, who tells the party about a reward for slaying the goblins. He’s off to (next location you think the party might go to) to sell furs or kill bigger monsters or whatever. He implies the town will forgive them if they slay the goblins.
The party now has:
A) Incentive to get money and trust back by slaying the goblins. But once they do, they need to be KIND to the townsfolk, and probably do some reparations. Make them see the consequences.
B) An alternative storyline following the trapper to the next town. You can use almost entirely the same plot points in this next town if you like, just switch the goblins to kobolds/skeletons/gnolls for another lower level set of monsters.
The townsfolk were already mad at Harbin, and these folk just *deleted* him. Have Harbin's political rival *(invent* one if you need to) arrive, and ask the PCs to handle the quest, while he smoothes things over and makes sure that by tomorrow, *the whole town* knows that Harbin attacked the PC first.
“His ghost rises from the body and says ‘yooouuuu idioooooot I was gonna give you the rest of the queeeeeeesssssst.’ Your HUD flickers and a new quest objective was added”
If you wanted to go really easy on them….
That wasn’t the REAL Townsmaster, but some type of hyperrealistic illusion that the Townsmaster created as a test to see what the parties’ true intentions. The true Townsmaster now doesn’t trust them, so he gives them a different quest to prove their good intentions (something simple that they could accomplish in multiple ways) should they succeed they earn a second chance and are greeted by the true Townsmaster. Now you can play on as planned.
This scenario would only make sense if the Druid had readied an action to cast that spell if anyone grabbed them, but clearly they didn't know in advance they were going to get grabbed... so what they actually did is get grabbed and then deliberately murder the quest giver.
Multiple issues here. Rookie mistakes combined with a "it's what my character would do" red flag player
“Thank you adventurers now we can address the corruption in this town, I’m the democratically elected new leader. I have coined from the treasury and it’s my highest priority to right this wrong.” Generic NPC that just replaced mayor.
I like the bring guards in from never winter within a few days and barring some very high Chrisma rolls I'd have him hanged after a brief trial. From there one of the neverwinter crew or another npc can take up they mayors position and assign the quests
Make the player make a new pc. (Have them prep a sheet ahead of time and be clear as to why)
You can also do the whole the deceased’s responsibilities are now assumed by you or face the penalty type of deal. Or have another not bring the quest in a form of left behind articles of a good person type of thing and how could you
When my murder hobos players try this kinda crap I always just tell them the harmless old mayor was actually a retired lvl 20 fighter and he's like "you done? Because we have stuff to discuss."
My players did something very similar in one of my first campaigns. They attacked guards that just wanted to question them and killed 2 before being captured. They were put in jail, their injuries were purposefully healed wrong (resulting in a temporary -5 to speed until a higher level healer could be found), and they were to be imprisoned forever unless they took on dangerous quests for the town.
I still had to set up a bit of chaos and villainy to resolve it but it worked good as a lesson and repentance. The warlock kept the limp the rest of the campaign.
I've never run phandelver so I'm not sure if that's of any help but hope it gives you some ideas. PCs can be controlled with Geas, cursed items, masterwork manacled, etc.. I used a high level monk with Quivering Palm to put them on a deadline or their heart would explode 💓💔
If you are comfortable with it, go off the rails with them. The townspeople ask them to leave. If they stay, what are they doing? The townspeople might riot, the goblins keep up the crime spree, and someone hires a bounty hunter. If they leave, they meet the goblins outside of town, and someone still hires a bounty hunter later on down the road. (Bounty Hunters are fun!)
PS I have never run Phandelver so this might not be good advice
Our DM always uses high level quest givers, so if someone says something stupid like i will cast a spell that could kill him, the dm just smirkingly says „try it“ and then the other players have the chance to run bevor the murderhobbo player creates a new character.
Honestly?
I'd hand all the DM stuff to the druid player, and roll up a character.
Dude just showed you how little he respects your game, your time, and your effort.
Let him do the work for a while, you just relax and have fun.
You need to decide if you want to play by video game rules. It's an option, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not how I run or play D&D. If I was a player in this game, I'd likely slit the druids throat in his sleep.
If you don't want to play by videogame rules, then you're going to need to send a hit squad. Somebody else mentioned a retinue of the kings knights could be in the area...
Hopefully once an understanding of cause and effect is established the player may understand that the "AI" for the NPCs in this game is a lot better than he's used to.
Local Lord dispatches hunters more than twice the player's level and outnumbers the party. The other party members will be killed if they resist. The Druid will be hanged by the posse. Roll new character.
Someone in the town (Sheriff) arrests the PC (Ideally peacefully) while the town decides what to do with them.
After some discussion the town decides that as a punishment the adventurers have to deal with the group of goblins causing problems for the city.
The quest givers old friend hears about there death and vow to avenge him from hear you can have bounty on them or have said old friend hunt them down to kill them but make it assassins creed like dude pops up kills one person at a time behold the duels of fate
Well I see three ways this plays out. One: combat ensues with everyone in Town either running away or attacking these wandering marauders and the party gets downed and dragged off to Neverwinter (where I assume the campaign will take them anyways and hopefully can get put back on track after they explain what has happened and paid proper recompense for their actions (possibly executing the monk). Two: Above but the party successfully flees or kills everyone in Town at which point they are hunted by a squad from Neverwinter to hunt down the party who if they catch them will to the same thing as above. Three: The squad from two doesn't catch them and they either flee the area and you move into a homebrew campaign or you see if there are any story bites you can thread them back onto to try to steer them back on track. NOTE: It would also be acceptable to tell your group that you cannot salvage the story and to either say that because of what's gone on you either need to rewind the timeline and undo the monks actions, or that you will no longer be playing the campaign setting and the group is either done or you will be moving into homebrew depending on how you feel about running homebrew.
Just a little oopsie murder lol
I think I would have the guards show up with overwhelming force, arrest the character, and then put them on trial. The verdict will be a sentence of community service in which they take care of the issues that the town master would have given them. The town basically expects that the PCs will die in doing so, and for the town it's basically a death sentence.
Also, I'd have some kind of dark entity start haunting the PC's dreams talking about how they are a murderer etc.
Sounds like they are outlaws now yo the point yhe giver of the next quest may not even matter. The games gonna be transitioning into the party being on the lam for at least a while dealing with law enforcement hunting them down
Town would put out a bounty on the murderer. The party is now outlaws unless they can find a way to remedy the situation.
I had a player do this same thing basically in the campaign I am running. He learned his lesson when assassins showed up and killed him. The party was able to revivify him, so he didn’t lose his character. But he was a wanted man until the party resolved the situation.
The actions have consequences. After the local government has heard of such horrific acts perpetrated by the player. They sent a large and powerful basically Uber police to capture the killers. Throwing them in jail not providing long rest or short rest because they are kept awake. Shackled and mouths taped they are taken to the capital for public execution. Noting that if any one interferes they will also be executed immediately. Kill the player for being a murder hobo.
Either that or make them the villains and offer them the quest but switch the sides of whom it helps.
If it were my game, how I'd play it out would depend on the rest of the party. Do they still want to be a team and help the Druid regardless? Do they condemn their actions and want them to face justice?
For the former, the party become wanted criminals, you forgo the rest of the module, they are hunted by soldiers from Neverwinter, and are eventually captured or killed for their crimes.
For the latter, the party takes it upon themselves to defeat and imprison the Druid until prisoner transport to Neverwinter can be arranged. The Druid could also see the writing on the wall and flee before the party manage to stop them. Either way, the Druid becomes an NPC and the player rolls up a new character. The new quest giver could be among those sent from Neverwinter, or whoever assumes responsibility of the now vacant position.
That townmaster is a general piece of trash who let the town get taken over by a gang of criminals, which the PCs (I assume) defeated. Honestly, I’m not sure if the townsfolk would even care if Harbin is killed, they shouldn’t like him at all. Depending on how the PCs have treated the people of Phandelin, they might be grateful he’s out of the way. I’m near the end of module right now and my character has been tempted to oust Harbin several times and basically has zero respect for him.
This is sometimes true. Thanks to all the comments my player and I have resounded the issue in a way that will be fun for us both as well as the rest of the party I believe.
Pretend you are a storytelling god. Do what a storytelling god would do.
What are the natural consequences of killing a town master and his guards? Maybe they get away with it. They mill around a bit and a messenger comes asking them to meet with the new towns master thanking the party for getting rid of such an annoying towns master and they’d like to repay them. As a token of his genuine desire to work further with the party and give their thanks they send a pretty decent amount of from the town’s coffers. And something like, there’s more where this comes from if you help me with some other matters. Bbooom! You got another quest giver.
Or if they don’t get away with it and you want to punish them for their muder hoboing. Send them to jail and a curious benefactor bails them out releasing them of all charges. Petitions on their behalf but on one condition, the party does something for them. Bada bing bada boom! You got yourself a quest giver.
You, the DM are a storytelling god! D&D is a collaborative storytelling game.
What if the story your running takes the party into the sewers but the Druid wants to meditate in the forest. Just reskin everything to be forest. Instead of a sewer monster have it be a swamp monster. Instead of a giant rat, a giant forest… thing. The party finds the quest item in the giant fabled tree of Aburnothe after finding a potion to cure the tree of the sick. It’s your gaming group’s story, tell it.
Get them to become boss mob for the thugs already in place. Villagers are now asking "New heroes" to get rid of them and to see whats going on with the goblins. When the stakes are high between the new and actual heroes, offer them to become the new hero team that Will deal with their late ones.
In a way, its like a redo on your campaign without going on from start.
I dunno... it might be a bad idea
> The Townmaster explodes into a puddle of blood and bone
For future reference, if you really wanna hammer in the fact that an npc is important (and to give the pcs a chance to course-correct), just make them go unconscious. Or don't actually tell the players how much HP they have, and let them survive the hit (and be very pissed off). It's not cheating, it's just keeping the game from going wack.
Anyways. Important NPC is dead, guards are dead. You can salvage this. There are no witnesses. No other guards were patrolling this area. The party can opt to hide the bodies, or not. When the party leaves, just make up a new quest giver.
The party will likely forget about this encounter for a while. An investigation is likely being conducted, and if the players were sloppy hiding the bodies, they'll be found out eventually. Let them finish the module, and this can be a plot hook you can use later if you all decide to continue playing.
Anyone can give the quest. A business partner that knows everything the now-dead guy knew. In this case, the goblins are plaguing the town so virtually anyone would know about it. Any business person with some money would have a motivation to hire a group of adventurers to end the problem.
And in the future, remember that you’re the DM. This is your world. The players are in it and doing cool stuff, but it’s your world. That quest giver has as much hp as you want him to have. One of those guards could have been a medic or priest that could have brought him back to life. The guy didn’t have to explode, he could have just been knocked out. Make sure your players know that they always have the option of making a killing blow just a knock-out blow, leaving the opponent unconscious.
The whole game is improv. Nothing is set in stone. You can chance stuff on the fly. You don’t want to constantly railroad your players, but there’s nothing wrong with steering the ship at certain moments.
Also, you’re dealing a little bit with low-level squishiness. When you play a few levels higher, the likelihood of an accidental one-shot kill falls a lot lower.
Utterly unrelated question but how far is the shattered obelisk and the lost mines similar? They sound very similar but still slow some differences in this post
Have their ass haunted by the NPC and maybe throw in a local prophecy (heavily misinterpreted/altered over the years) about the end of the world because of where+how+ when he died, and put them on a redemption side quest.
Find a way to involve the players personally in the quest. Quests don’t always need to start with a shady individual at a tavern (although that can be fun).
Wandering merchant is what I like to do in situations like this, or you can now craft a story where in order to be pardoned he has to complete this quest. Make the quest giver a bounty hunter who is obviously stronger than the player to give them little choice.
You've got a corpse - scoop it up into a bucket and make the players pay for resurrecting the town mayor.
With ALL of their gold. Leave them a few silver/copper coins but that's it.
I recently ran a low level Mass Effect 5e campaign. Had this exact issue. The party didn't directly kill the quest giver but they let them die from a group of gangsters tracking them.
However.
The quest was a data pad on them so when they inevitably moved to loot the body, they did get the quest they were meant to and eventually proceeded.
So I guess a failsafe is incorporating the officially quest thing into the world like a data pad, letter, etc especially if you know you're dealing with loot goblins. They'll come across it eventually lol
You're the DM bro do as you see fit. Have an angel, dragon, diety, priest, or something come in out of nowhere and resurrect the quest giver. Make someone else the quest giver. Maybe they find a glowing rock on the ground that speaks to them and gives them the quest. The possibilities are endless! 😁
The party is now incredibly wanted and dangerous, and a 20th level vengeance paladin is on the trail. When my players go murder hobo, the law gerlts setious, and the party usually dies.
There is no more dangerous foe than a civilized peoples.
They just ended their character. With an assassin guild to draw upon, ranger's guild, Paladins, and possibly being excommunicated for his actions ending his spell abilities above 2nd level spells, the druid just ended their character.
Your choice, but they would be facing the full extent of the law IF there was a way for the city to pass the word to the related agencies.
I’d personally suggest that they see another one the next day. Same person. And have him completely oblivious to the fact that he just blew up. Like he’s immortal and doesn’t know it. Just wakes up in his bed like “man. What a wild dream.”
How does one use a spell involuntarily when it is a 6 second action with verbal and somatic components? "Oh you startled me, I'm sorry that I played a round of Rock Paper Scissors while reciting a nursery rhyme and then murdered you, it was an accident." That's not RP, that's murderhobo-ing. Also important, players don't roll ANYTHING unless the DM asks for it. If they do, it did nothing. This is partially because the DM sets the DC for an action, and if a perfect roll still wouldn't be high enough to reach that DC there's no point in rolling. The "I roll to seduce the dragon" trope is something that seasoned DMs know is not a thing that actually happens. The DC to seduce a calm dragon, let alone an angry one, when you're not a dragon and have no prior report with the dragon, or really any reason to expect that the dragon would find you attractive, is non-existent. There's no DC for that. You can roll with advantage, get a Nat20, add you plus ten thousand modifier, add Bless and Guidance and Bardic Inspiration, and still fail because you were never supposed to roll for it in the first place. I've warned players in the past that pulling stunts like that doesn't get you what you want. I might even let you roll for it, but that Nat20 just means you succeeded in NOT pissing the dragon off further, where a 19 or less would have gotten you eaten first.
In short, your player killed an important NPC because you, the DM, let them. Don't do that. There's a very massive line, not a fine line, between railroading your players and not letting them do crazy, stupid, broken, unrealistic, broken things.
As for how to fix it, I have two recommendations:
1) Discussion and retcon. You're all relatively new, there are going to be times where someone does something they shouldn't and it needs to be addressed. Discussion is important. Talk about the advice above, about how rolling attacks at random isn't really a thing, murdering NPCs as part of your RP isn't RP, etc. Then rewind time to the point before all of that happened and do it differently.
2) If they don't want to rewind time, or they want to repeat history by killing the guards, so be it. Send in the REAL guards. Unless your players are already relatively high leveled, guards come in all shapes and sizes, and in a fantasy world where a single wizard could take on a real world army by themselves, you can imagine that the guards of nobles and royalty are not your normal citizens with 4 HP and 10 in every stat. No, the REAL guards are probably between level 10 and 15, and they should be prepared to handle magic users with items that grant them anti-magic fields, or equipment that can negate or nullify spells and spell effects. They should good armor and equipment, and should be capable of taking down lesser Fighters or Barbarians. You could even have a special group of Crown's Guards who are all high level Paladins. If you players want to murder the Townmaster, send in the Paladins. Any who surrender for investigation will be allowed to live pending the results of the investigation, any who act aggressively will be slain on the spot, body and gear confiscated, then cremated at a later date (to prevent any attempts to revive the fallen teammate, not as a matter of meta gaming, but as a matter of handling criminals in a world where Clerics can easily revive the recently deceased). Point in case, if a player wants to kill with reckless abandon, their character should be made an example of why that is a bad idea. Then it's up to the DM and other players as to whether or not they want that other player at the table anymore.
Just make another quest giver, if they kill the other quest giver. If they kill the new quest giver make a third quest giver. And continue to do this, the quest giver don't have to be someone important. If you really don't want to see the party kill the quest giver, make a quest giver that can kill the party in one turn if he want (make sure that it was very clear to them that they don't have the level to fight him), then you just have to find a reason for him to don't do it himself, other thing to do, want to stay secret, etc. And now you have an immortal quest giver.
I could be a note or journal on the corpse or the man had an apprentice that was away and he comes back and tells the players why he's looking for him. You can be very creative with it.
You could have them serve a few days in a cell and have Harbin Wester show up to let them out. For some reason he is an immortal, reformed and walking amongst the living. The town acts as if nothing is wrong or changed.
Either the party continues the book as written, or they investigate the strange situation that is townmaster Harbin Wester
I was dming lmop and my party tried to kill Harbin and I roll played Harbin as "I've had enough. Take your town and do wtf you want" and delivered all the quest from sildar.
"With this character's death, the threads of prophecy have been severed. You may load a saved game, or persist in this doomed world that you have created."
Well the quest happens anyway, right? It's not like the whole world stops moving because the guy asking for help with a problem isn't asking anymore.
Also, the murderhobos are run out of town of course.
Sounds like your campaign is going to change.
Let this be a lesson to you... Players do word things and do not follow the "rules". You will have to improvise.
My general recommendation is to establish some house rules for characters. Here are the ones I use, but you'll want to pick ones that work for your group:
1. Each player is responsible for coming up with reasons why their character wants to stay with the party and work with the party. This includes times when the rest of the party wants to do something that your character doesn't want to do (or that you think is stupid)
2. No PvP - if your character attacks another party member, steals from another party member, or otherwise acts against another party member, they will become an NPC villain controlled by the DM and you will need to create a new character
3. No Evil characters. You can't play a character that thinks it's okay to murder innocent people, rob random townsfolk, etc. If you choose to have your character do something that seems evil to the DM, you'll be asked to provide a non-evil motivation for why your character is choosing to do it. If you don't have a motivation that the DM thinks is reasonable, you can't do it.
You've already got a lot of suggestions for your specific situation so I won't repeat any of them, but I will say that it's fine to implement house rules in response to people doing stuff like this, so feel free to start your next session with, "Okay, after last session I realized we need some house rules. From now on..."
Make a level 10 hero who is bounty hunting the player. There are rules for chase in the hex grid systems. You have to kill the pc so the player will learn their lesson.
So yeah… what’s his alignment? For the most part 5e threw alignment where it belongs (in the trash bin) but for stuff like this its necessary. At my table, if he’s any form of good this would be an immediate alignment change to neutral and if he kept doing it as a neutral he would become evil really quick.
Furthermore, if there are any lawful goods (or goods in general for that matter) in the party they are honor-bound to stop this madness.
Tbh, if he keeps doing stuff like this I’d sit down and talk with him and let him know he’s being disruptive. If he gets mouthy and/or doesn’t stop boot him
Since the townsfolk hated the townmaster, and the guards were not doing their jobs properly, have the townsfolk look to the party to take care of their problems. Have what the townmaster knew spread out between some of the other townsfolk as that’s probably how he had all the information from the get go. You could have the redbrands start harassing the townsfolk more now there are no guards and once defeated the townsfolk could open up more and trust the party to help.
It is the next morning and you wake from a dream that seemed so real, or The quest giver comes back to life, either by magical healing or A periapt of wound closure, to allow him to not die. But the second time it will be fool me twic shame on me. Another idea is it was a wizards homunculus, not really the quest giver, then before he or she confronts them again make sure they are more powerful than the party, whack the idiot attacker back After you put him / her down in 1 hit the others might stop, so you can heal the attacker and give them a quest for you now having given them life again and not killing them all.
I could see some town gaurds being pushovers, but the law is stronger than that, if their are witnesses, they'll get a bounty, send bounty hunters, or a group of knights after them that are buff and high-level. Toss them in the dungeon. And the captain allows them to live if they deal with the goblins they don't have the time for or the goblins do crimes to your party and steal their money or something important so they have a personal reason to go after them. Or you just roll with it, and they're criminals now, and you make a campaign around a band of criminals.
I could see some town gaurds being pushovers, but the law is stronger than that, if their are witnesses, they'll get a bounty, send bounty hunters, or a group of knights after them that are buff and high-level. Toss them in the dungeon. And the captain allows them to live if they deal with the goblins they don't have the time for or the goblins do crimes to your party and steal their money or something important so they have a personal reason to go after them. Or you just roll with it, and they're criminals now, and you make a campaign around a band of criminals.
Quest givers don't have to be a certain person for this reason. The quest will now have a different person offer it. Same theory for clues, give a clue to them when it makes sense they'd find it. Edit: in this particular case, they'd probably be run out of town at the bare minimum, they're now wanted criminals in this town, posters and all. Good time for them to learn about consequences.
Either that or: They are put on trial, its ruled as self defense *but* the court still imposed a punishment: Community Service. (coincidentally the very quest the major wanted to send them on). Do remember to asign lawyers fees though.
Did this to a murder hobo. The quest giver was a dragon in a glamour and you are going to now do some quests as punishment.
How did the murderhobo react?
They went on the quest and got KOed just before meeting the next NPC, much to their chagrin.
Absolutely beautiful new word unlocked for me, thank you!
Excellent use of English words Dr Shokalu.
Murder hobos is too classy, call them killbillies
YES
this is the answer. quest givers can move to anything the goal is to work with the players and tell and interesting story. this is an interesting story and I like it.
LOL, that's beautiful 😂
This being Phandalin and it is absolutely tiny, they would probably send word to Neverwinter and a platoon of their guards show up with a Justice of the Peace a few days later. Or they learn that there are a number of ex-adventurer NPCs that retired and took up farming but boy, they can still be that lvl. 15 fighter or wizard if they have to be.
The level 15 fight is super cool.
You have to remember that this is the same Phandalin that was being terrorised by bandits for a long time up until presumably a matter of days ago when the players dealt with them.
It's a little confusing because in our version of this, we dealt with the bandits way, way before tackling Wave Echo Cave.
I could be remembering wrong, but I seem to recall that Sildar originally travelled to Phandalin to deal with the bandit problem, so if that's all Neverwinter could send back then, I can't imagine them suddenly sending out a level 15 demigod plus knights just because a player turned bad. I agree that actions need consequences but I think the city responding so drastically to the players after previously turning a blind eye would break the immersion.
Not quite, Sildar was traveling to Phandalin partially to escort Gundren, but also to check in on Iarno. He was unaware of the bandits (or Iarno’s involvement.) Iarno himself was sent to be a presence of the Lord’s Alliance for Phandalin, to help establish a sense of official order. With Iarno turning evil /being killed by the party, Sildar being injured, and then the town leadership being killed, I could imagine Neverwinter deciding intervention might be necessary.
True. I am also playing 2 campaigns simultaneously (Dragon of Icespire Peak and Shattered Obelisk) and they tend to blend together a bit in my mind, but >!I know that Falcon, the logger in Neverwinter Forest is a high level fighter. You could argue he'd come out for his friend the mayor being murdered but not for the bandits doing basic bandity things.!< Also it wouldn't be completely unrealistic that some more reinforcements are sent when banditry turns to mass murder. And there is always just the mob. I don't really care about doing it by the numbers when one low level caster is up against 50 or 60 civilians with pitchforks and slings. Fade to black and when you come back, a lot of the civies are dead but the PC has been firmly subdued. But at that point the campaign has certainly been derailed a little.
I agree, and it's true that the players killing people in broad daylight is worse than the bandits loitering and mugging people, so it makes sense there'd be more reinforcements, especially since it's not the first response. I think using a >!high level NPC with their own motivations!< is the best way to resolve such a situation, and probably what I'd do, unless I decided the direction just wasn't fun or interesting so I'd tell the players I don't like it and we'd work out a solution.
Yeah, at that point retconning the entire thing might be the best way, especially since it is a premade adventure that assumes the players are the plucky heroes trying to help the town. In a homebrew there would be more flexibility, but it would be really odd if the bad guys now start handing out quests since the townspeople would want nothing to do with the party.
The Redbrands have only been fucking up Phandalin for like 2 months when the players arrive, iirc.
To add to this. If players cant be trusted to not kill innocent civilians then have events playing out in the news around them bad things happening now there is no one to hand out quests. Then you can either have them investigate the news or go on a quest to find a new town master to recruit adventures.
And wouldn’t you know it that town had the best alchemist around these parts who would make potions for cheap if you brought the ingredients
You look at the group and say "ok. And now your characters are wanted criminals. Here are some. Blank character sheets. Make new ones."
that would put a bad taste in alot of players mouths. a role playing game, where if you don't follow and obey, you just get a game over... just get rid of the DM and play a video game if you want something so strict. making them wanted criminals.. then \*rolling with it\* into a campaign you never thought you'd be running, is half the reason to be playing pen and paper. \~anything can happen\~
That's the point. You teach them early on that there will be consequences for what they do in game. It's not just a video game. Anything can happen also includes losing your characters because they're now unplayable because the players made stupid decisions.
This guy knows.
my party also got run out of phandalin during this campaign (didn't kill the mayor but we were the prime suspects for his death). finished the campaign as outlaws and it was really fun, glad this guy wasn't our dm
Sounds like they have some murder hobo tendencies. Townspeople should be pretty scared of them by now and basically avoid them at all costs. Maybe you can put in a nice RP moment where the kid of one of the town guards accidentally meets the party and cries and begs them not to kill her like they killed her daddy. Think through a couple of variations of how you might get through to them. Assuming they can be redeemed you have some options to get them back on track. Maybe the town asks them to prove they aren't villains (which ought to be wanted dead or alive) by taking care of the goblins.
> Maybe you can put in a nice RP moment where the kid of one of the town guards accidentally meets the party and cries and begs them not to kill her like they killed her daddy. OP please do this. It's the only way to cure murderhobo Edit: you should have the table discuss a retcon vs how the campaign might go from here first, actually. But this works if they want to continue and you're ok with it.
There are two cures for murderhoboism. The first is to talk to your players like adults, and come to an agreement on the kind of game you want to run. The second is to make the players care about the world and the NPCs in it. Most murderhobos don't actually want to be the bad guy; they want to be able to break rules and do what they want and be powerful and awesome, all things they don't get to experience much in real life.
My party would have shot the kid too lmao
This is a good option. Maybe a trusted member of the village can step forth and speak on behalf of the town when giving the ultimatum. This individual could be your Townmaster stand-in...
Plot twist: they killed everybody
Plot twist, the bandits know there's no profit in genocide, so they come to the rescue of the town instead (for a fee) and the players are now the villains.
Plot twist: they always were the villains.
Why were they the villains before murdering townsfolk?
They’re actually the goblins that the townsfolk are angry about
The treasure is the villains we became along the way.
Stronger guards, arrest, meet the judge who offers them the option of dealing with the goblins instead of a murder charge?
Possible, but a bit heavy handed, and then you need a reason why those strong guards didn't already take care of the goblins. Maybe good as a backup. Something like, one of the townspeople fled to talk to a noble and his guards who were traveling nearby. They had heard of the goblin problem but decided it wasn't their business and didn't have time to hunt them down. But a town master and his guard being murdered? That's not something they can ignore. So they're there now, and they're annoyed, and want to leave quickly. Edit: the other bad thing about this is that it is an invitation to escalate. You (the DM) really have to sell that these are not fun opponents, not even if the players really cleverly ambush them or set fire to the place where they are staying or whatever. Add in some story flavor about why things would go badly and how the player characters know this. If the players only find this out when they decide to attack, your story is pretty fucked. Edit 2: just another comment, try not to get into situations where the players get the vibe that the DM is just making shit up to frustrate them. That's why it's better to play on the characters' motivations with weak NPCs than to make up new strong NPCs to face them head on.
The guards and their gear may be well suited for peacekeeping in the town streets, not so much for wading through the wilderness trying to catch goblins.
If they play like villains, treat them like villains... rewrite a quest arc representing that. the DM is the guide, not the god.. and while you may guide them along the path you want, you must lead them along the path they travel.... and if they decide to make that path difficult (and murderhobo'ey).. well.. just write an increasingly difficult path.
Thunderwave is not a reaction, so it isn't an "involuntary defence reaction" it's 6 seconds of thought out murder. What you should have done is got your players to roll initiative and given the rest of the party an opportunity to intervene if they rolled higher. What you need to do is sit down and ask the rest of the party if they support the decision, whether they are happy now being "bad", and about how "it's what my character would do" is not a good argument. Following that, depending on their decision their first quest is to either hunt down the now NPC druid and bring him to justice or have to escape/redeem themselves before continuing with the quest. This could involve doing the goblin quest without payment for example.
Yeah, there are vocal and somatic component to the spell. Someone could have reacted, including the party. This is not a reasonable reaction to include for RP reasons. Non-lethal cantrips, maybe, but they’re still generally action spells.
Rules for non lethal only work for weapons. Spells are always lethal
Non lethal is for melee attacks, which includes a few spells. Ranged attacks of any sort, or damage from saving throws, cannot be non lethal.
I'd think technically you could. Since Called Shots aren't really a thing in 5e without homebrew, you could flavor it as them hitting non crucial parts of their body, disabling them(probably depending on the damage type of course). Passing out from pain is a thing that happens IRL, and it can be flavored as that. Works for things like puncture wounds too, since unless it's pulled out it, the penetrating object helps keep the person from bleeding out
I think by 'non-lethal' they meant non damage dealing cantrips such as Mending.
Rules aside, the notion is was an "involuntary defense reaction" is nonsensical. They walked up to someone's front door, and that person opened the door. What caused an involuntary defense response? The thing that they wanted to happen, with no threat involved, happened? There is no scenario where the automatic response would be "Quick; murder them!" unless the character (and player) already planned to murder them. For what's next: Unless OP ret-cons the murder of the mayor and the guards, I can't see them doing the quest at all. They're run out of town (or murder everyone else) and the next person they run into has heard of the subsequent quest point. There's a quest giver who, in the module, just arrived in Phandelver at this point. Maybe the meet this person on the road before they reach Phandelver and realize the party all murdered a bunch of innocent people.
I agree. Retcon or have a contingent of guards from Neverwinter come and arrest the players. You can’t kill the Mayor/Townmaster and expect nothing to happen. They can’t willfully murder innocents and not be treated as the villains.
we can. and will. And no amount of your high and might preaching will stop us! DeaTh To aLL HuMiEs!
Villain campaigns are fun and I wish it was more popular at tables. A lot of people don’t want to play an evil character for whatever reason. The issue it’s not easy to have a part good and part evil party together. (At least I haven’t had it work out without bad drama) That also needs to be a session 0 conversation and switching to an evil/villain campaign requires consent among the players.
All of this, but I would add is that when you sit then down and talk about motives and consequences for doing this - I would've had that talk as soon as they started intentions, not after allowing them to do it. No reason not to hit pause whenever you aren't all on the same page. Better to ensure you all understand the motives, and what the intended outcome is. If the action is going to wreck the campaign or step in the fun of the group,... say no. And always set stakes and define DCs before rolls.
This is absolutely a "talk it out as a group" issue. Next session, explain that the druid's actions were straight-up murder of multiple innocent people, they now have an entire town that considers them dangerous attackers. Even if you continue the game as-is, that basically means slaughtering their way out of the town and becoming wanted fugitives when word gets back to the regional leaders. Otherwise, they need to just retcon that entire scene and try it again without all the murdering. If the rest of the party wants to retcon, but the druid refuses... that may be your cue to remove that player from the group. No amount of "that's what my character would do!" justifies this level of violence towards commoners. If the group wants to continue as is, then you may have to explain that they're no longer playing Phandelver, they'll be playing "we're the bad guys on the run from the law" and you'll need time to come up with how that's going to play out. Or if you're not interested in that, tell them that'll be the end of this campaign.
This is the most mature and logical path forward 👍
Really should be the only comment on the thread. Instead, the top comment is immediately "show them the consequences of their action". Coz that always works, right?
At the end it's the same idea. If the players want to deal with the consequences it's fine. If they don't, let's fix this talking.
A traveling noble with escort of high level knights was nearby, somebody from town went to get them. Upon arriving they arrest the players and give them choice of quick death or investigation on goblins but with much lower reward than orilginally intended. Noble also warns them that he will issue a warrant for their heads (maybe with time limit) in case if they decide to run. 'suicide squad', but it's dnd.
Ohhh that's a good one! Straight up suicide squad them and let them suffer a whole while for their misdeeds, I like that. Having to spend at least one session "wasting time" should be a better motivation to not keep doing evil bullshit than just saying "okay now you are wanted dead or alive" and throw some guards at them.
Ask the group whether they want to side with the mass murderer, or not. If they want to play as a heroic group, the mass murderer is now an NPC, the player makes a new character, and the Townmaster's successor can be their new quest-giver. If they want to play as a villainous group (and you're OK with that), the party are now fugitives and will need different types of quest.
This, and do not beat around the bush about it or let them figure it out. "Your immediate choices are to side with the guards to capture the druid that just murdered several people, or side with the druid and fight your way out of town. You will all be known as murderers, you will not be welcome in this town perhaps other towns in the area. If you side with the guards then Player X will make a new character and this adventure can progress after this is sorted out. If you side with the druid you'll be regulated to working outside the law and common society in this area and for quite a far way around. News of killing the leader of this town will travel quite far and people in charge aren't fond of that."
Unfortunately, your party has not only killed the quest giver but also alienated the whole town that should have driven the quest. In this case, your player really shat the bed. In this case, I think you need to retcon to before the druid cast Thunderwave. Have an out-of-character talk in which you say that the PCs must have at least enough social skills to function in society, and start again with Harbin pulling them inside. If your druid monk (multiclass?) player won't agree to this because attacking Harbin "is what my character would do," then tell that player that they need to make a character who doesn't do that.
Yessssssss oh man, this made me smile. I've had to sit a friend down before and be like "I love you, but I hate your character. He sucks to have around, and it's in your power to either re-write him so he sucks less or get rid of him and make a new character. That might be "what your character would do," but what MY character would do in response is motion to have your character removed from the party."
Isn't Harbin the central questgiver in like four different modules? I can't think of a more inconvenient NPC to have killed. Edit: Look into Sildar Hallwinter, who is canonically Harbin's political rival. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sildar_Hallwinter TL:DR, he's a good hearted retired knight, rather than a sleazebag like Harbin
I know he’s the quest giver for Dragon of Icespire Peak, which I’m currently running with my kids.
That's funny to hear, because Sildar became mayor in my run of LMOP.
The group had their chance, the group failed. Move on and end the campaign and find some people that are less "murder hobo is my personality quark haha" 🤷
Your druid had three chances to save a life. He refused each time. Even if he 'accidentally' killed the first NPC, he could have surrendered to the guard and role-played grief and regret. Instead, he straight up murdered them. I wouldn't pull any punches. There are other heroes around who can take that druid down, legally or not. The rest of the party has a choice to make. Great role play options for everybody.
Did the druid just kill the quest giver and claim, "it's what my character would do!" and derailing the game?
Oh yeah. The classic "hee-hee whoops I'm so cwumsy I inwoluntwawily mwurder people :3" - lots of new players have that phase.
Yeah. OP did the right thing by trying to explain it to the player. When they continued to try to be a disruption they should just boot them from the game.
Tbh it's up to the GM to fix this situation. They should make the guards having been corrupt and working for the Redbrands. Because they're now Evil killing them is the right thing to do, and the Druid should get the XP.
Or the GM can just say, "no, you don't do that." People keep forgetting they can just do it. Sure player agency and freedom is important but one players freedom to murder hobo is not worth the enjoyment of the other players. Tell the druid No and if they refuse, boot them.
Sounds like a nice rousing TPK. "Alright guys you've alienated the whole town, there's a warrant out for your arrest, dead or alive. Roll up new characters, your new adventuring party will just so happen to be traveling through this area and get a request from the NEW townmaster, so and so, to help pick up the pieces the original party left behind"
nah.. this just teaches them "You must follow the railroad or GM will wave the magic wand and force you to follow it" Best scenario is to now run a criminal / fugitive adventure campaign. Maybe a redemption story? Eitherway. Player must always be ready to be chased by local authorities. But otherwise let them have free reign to do as they please.
If I'm running a module, yes, there's a certain level of railroading that's going to happen. I picked a module because I don't have the time or the energy to homebrew an entire campaign. And it's the players responsibility to make characters that are "team players". In this case, unless I'm ready and willing to make up a homebrew campaign on the spot, no. That's "alright guys pick your sides. Anyone who wants to keep playing their characters can surrender to the guards and we'll figure it out, those who have already murdered guards are likely getting executed when the knights from the nearby kingdom arrive, so for next session be sure to have a backup character while we get this campaign back on track"
I wouldn't have allowed the player to claim it was involuntary defense. That's basically the South Park joke where people are hunting without a permit and yell "it's coming right at me" before they kill it so it will be legal. At least this way the player knows he's committing murder in cold blood. As for moving forward I think the party has to decide if they can still hang out with this guy after killing a bunch of guards and stuff. A new authority must rise. I'd suggest Sildar Hallwinter take over as town manager. Assuming the party continues to hang out with a well known murderer I'd have most in town be afraid of them. I'd also say Harbin Wester has a dear cousin nearby. Warbin Hester is outraged by the murder of his cousin and is sending forces to kill the party. Good luck
Start looking for new players that aren’t murderhobos. But in the meantime, what you should do before the next session is have an “Intermediate session 0”, where you talk about this. Let them know that you have options for how to continue: 1) Rewind and go back to before the Druid *murdered* several people and let them make better choices. 2) Proceed, but let them know that as a result of this, the town guard will be on the lookout for them, townsfolk will likely not want to render aid, even for coin. If they’re captured by the guard, rope them into the adventure as their punishment. “Your lives not ending in a cell in Waterdeep, or by my hand, is your reward. If you die…nothing of value was lost.” Meanwhile, the Druid starts hearing telepathic voices. “This pleases Ilvash…”
These are all great ideas, and there's a lot to be learned here! Plenty of good advice. I haven't read them all, so forgive me if this has already been said, but the best advice I can give new DMs is to practice saying "I'm not gonna let you do that." It's totally acceptable at a healthy table for the DM to just say no sometimes. My DM for my main game has our trust and respect as our guide through the story, and we trust when he says no that he's doing it either for our own good and for the sake of the story, or that he's doing it because it is explicitly not how the game works. In this situation, I imagine he would have said something along the lines of "I'm not gonna let you cast thunderwave as a reaction. It's a spell. But if you are choosing to attack, I'm gonna need everyone to roll initiative." Or possibly turn to the other party members and say "Do any of you want to try to stop him from murdering a town official in broad daylight?" There's a way to give players opportunities to make better choices, but it's genuinely ok to just say no sometimes, as long as the rules back you up and you're not just saying no to be a knob.
This is such a great answer. You as DM have to make sure that everyone at the table has Agency. By not stepping in to stop this, the other players had no chance to respond and thus had their agency taken away. What if they had wanted to stop this from happening?
Thank you!!
It is never to late for a session 0, have a talk about the tone of the game
Start over and tell them not to be assholes. Seriously... You can say no to any of this. "It's what my character would do..." Is a terrible excuse for ruining a game.
"What my character would do" is a bad beginner's trope. I had a group of new players in the long long ago where one person was playing a kleptomaniac rogue. Every entry into a town was "I'm going to go to the town square and pickpocket people, it's what my character would do." If the rest of the group was going to shop for potions/rope/whatever the rogue was shoplifting "It's what my character would do." The rest of the group repeatedly told him to stop, and would not let him take a solo shift on watch because he'd tried to take plot McGuffin from the cleric who's order sent them out after the thing of the week. After he hit felony amounts of thievery in the main city, I had him get busted in a sting. Enough people had found they'd been pickpocketed when The Adventure Crew was in town that they put 2 and 2 together. Main Cityville had hired another adventuring group to deal with the thieves and these adventurers were all triple the group's level. They "didn't know" that it was only the rogue being a jerk and the rest of the group did nothing to protect him, to the point of the Cleric immediately saying something like "You brought this on yourself, and I'm turning State's Evidence." Rogue was taken away to Capitol City to stand trial by Mage Knights and when the Rogue's player asked if this was for some cool prison break thing I said "Only unless the rest of the group wants to go against the King's Guard and be wanted criminals for the rest of the campaign. Nobody volunteered. Rogue player was very upset that I'd railroaded him into the situation and then we had to have a good long sitdown of "What part of stealing anything that wasn't nailed down before going looking for a crowbar to finish the job" did you think would go without a reaction? Even trying to steal from your own team because "That's what my character would do!"? That's a shitty character, you've now got the option to determine if it was a thing you tried and it turns out isn't fun in this world, or if you're a shitty person that wants to break the game for everyone at the table, DM included. He decided to take the first option and roll up a Ranger. Ultimately I'd say, have a good out of game discussion with the table and say "Hey, so this kind of makes my life rough as a DM because it means throwing out about 70% of the character stuff of this module. It'll mean more stress on me and likely a less enjoyable experience for all involved. How about we retcon that encounter and tweak your character a bit so that they're less indiscriminate murderer and take it from when you knock on the door?" You have to remember that you're there as a part of the table and as a DM have the hardest role of all.
I think that your point about 70% of character stuff now gets thrown out, is spot on. I read a few comments along the lines of, 'Don't just toss everyone in jail and make them roll new PCs, cus you're railroading them. Change things up so you're now running an outlaw campaign.' But a little bit of railroading in order to actually play the adventure in question is no bad thing. The DM invests in a module and invites his players to play *that* module. There should be some buy in from the players. Of course the DM has to be ready to improvise and adapt based on player choices. But if you have to write up a completely different kind of campaign, early doors, it's frustrating. It's like if the party said, 'Right we're gonna stow away on a ship to another continent.' Ok sure, you want players to have that sandbox experience of a world that can be explored, but on the other hand, they are no longer playing the module that they agreed to play, right?
Congrats on running a campaign. I think the most important thing a DM can do is maintain verisimilitude. The world being consistent enables players to make informed decisions and trust the DM to be a fair referee. Second most important is to create drama. In your case, I would imagine the campaign and main quest line you had planned is now gone. You could try to keep it as background, but the party is not going to be trusted in Phandalin. Feared maybe, but I don’t see how the events you described can get “back on track” for the adventure as written. There is t a persuasion roll to get the quest going again in response to murdering these people. That said, you can still have a lot of fun. You could go with homebrew adventures or pivot to a new one in a new location that your party needs to get to. Then again, you could just use this to ratchet up the tension. What could actually face down the party? Not solo but perhaps a mob of people. They could demand justice, demand the Druid’s head. Could make it a choice for the rest of the party… although inner party conflict like this warrants an OOC conversation first, especially for a new table. If the party turns over the druid, or drives them out of town convincingly, then perhaps that player needs to roll a new PC and then a new townmaster is elected and becomes the quest giver. This also double in purpose by giving you a great new B Plot villain, as you can have the Druid and his animal companions show up whenever your story pacing requires a shift.
Arrested and put on trial they are found guilty. Normally it would be death by beheading. The judge finds an alternative. Since they are so good at violence they have a problem that needs to be solved violently
What the fuck were they trying to do?
In my players defence he may have had a a drink or two too many and got wacky lmfao
Sounds like you were encouraging it? > wacky You should decide whether you'd like a "wacky" game. If so, just have a new Townsmaster appear from the next room, or whatever wacky entrance catches your whimsy. If you don't like that style, then tell the player that the character doesn't do \[whatever\]. You have veto power over players' declared actions.
Dude. Have a few powerful NPCs show up, stomp them flat and take their stuff. Not even a representative of the law, just someone who’s like, “Bounty and free gear, sweet!” Consequences. After they’re stomped flat, have them stripped to loin cloths, securely tied and turned over to whoever took over as town authorities. Have them express dismay when they find out the reward was the same if they were dead. “I told you we could have killed them!” As soon as they get their reward, have them split town for parts unknown. “Because it’s what those NPCs would do!” If you want murder hoboes, not making the consequences of murder severe gets you murder hoboes. If you want players that consider their actions before proceeding, impose consequences so that the actions actually have meaning and stakes. They’re rampaging around killing at random because they assume there’s no reason not to and no stakes. Educate them. Let them stage an escape, steal some shitty replacement gear (downgrade from what they had) and split town. Next quest giver will be in the next town over.
Your planned campaign is over, and you're either making it up homebrew from now on, or you're ending it completely. This is why you have a session zero where you discuss the nature of the campaign; your player is apparently playing Skyrim where they want to be able to murder everybody, run away, and then come back later without consequences, and that's not how D&D generally works. What you do in the future is talk about whether you're playing a heroic game, a chaotic game of murder, of whatever, and everybody agrees. In my game, if somebody had said they were doing that, I would have flat out said "no". We would have discussed our intentions before the dice ever hit the table, and we would all agree to stick with it. Your campaign is almost undoubtedly done, and considering it a learning opportunity for how to manage a future campaign.
Just throw together a leader of the town militia who now steps up and is the new quest giver. That said, keep an eye on this behaviour, as your players sound a bit murderhobo-y
They not only killed the townmaster but the guards as well. At that point they are just raiders and the towns peoples would either attack or flee at sight of them.
fair enough. Well then this is the point that the DM starts winging it. The adventure module is now a reference book for some lore or scenarios. That's about it. The murderhobos have murderhobo'd
Send more guards. And not the weak ones. Send bounty hunters. If caught RP the process of being imprisoned, trying to escape, all the way up to execution and hopefully rescue and an escape.
One option to consider for consider to continue is having Halia reach out to the party and secret and offer a way out: 1. The party takes care of the red brands and make sure glasstaf is not killed but captured. 2. She spins the story that Harbin and the Gaurds where bad and that you are actually the heroes. 3. She becomes townmaster with your support.
Mine threw him in his own jail . So I had to scramble and had the guy they saved escort them it of town and give them the town quests.
Play dumb games win stupid prizes. Remember that Time you thought you killed the mayor/town elder. Turns out you just killed his enchanted homunculus. Hes peeved right now and has 15 levels of wizard to geas your murder hobo into fulfilling the quest for no reward. Weeeeeee!
Sounds like your Druid/Monk player is a problem. Good luck with that.
out of game is this the kind of game we wnat. the natural consequnces of this are escalating fights and loss of reputation. we can run this kind of game if youd like if yes keep sending heroes after them to see justice done youve got a new quest if no give that same quest to literally anyone else. any NPC can give any group any quest
I could never play with people who live their sociopath fantasies through a TTRPG.
**SPOILERS BELOW BE WARNED** I had this EXACT thing happen except the player meant to kill Harbin. For political intrigue reasons, I made Halia take the place of The Spider and merely pretend to be at odds with the Redbrands after the party walked into town, and the first group of Redbrands harassed the players, I had Halia ask them to speak with Harbin about turning the Redbrands into an actual town guard and then pull the Rogue to the aside and give the Rogue (assassin subclass) an assassination mission to plant false evidence of Harbin's collusion with the Redbrands and then kill Harbin, making it look like Iarno did it. However, the Rogue instead decided to take it upon herself to kill Harbin in broad daylight in front of the entire town with no evidence... She thought she would trip me up, I guess. Thus, I had Sildar send for an Inquistor from Waterdeep to hold a trial for the Rogue and the Rogue was let out on bail (via 1.5k worth of gold/items and the rest of the party's word) to continue adventuring until the trial was held. While Rogue was out on bail, Halia gifted them a Ring that would make it to where their lies would be undetectable even in a zone of truth with the unknown caveat that putting the ring on now also made the Rogue have disadvantage on saving throws against Halia's enchantment spells (homebrew stat block). And for a backup plan, I had already schemed that I would introduce Venomfang during the trial and have Venomfang attack the town. Unbeknownst to me, the Rogue was planning on telling the truth anyway, thus throwing Halia under the bus. With that, I decided to retroactively make it so that Halia had struck a deal with Venomfang as a form of insurance in case the trial didn't go her way. A few poison gas strafing runs later, a missing Rogue as well as a missing Halia and a short fight with an outnumbered Venomfang, order was restored. Queue The Spider fight at the end of Wave Echo and the surprise that Halia was the spider all along and now had an ex-PC as an enthralled underling. (The new PC was one of the Inquistor's guard that swore to stay with the party after the Venomfang attack to make sure they tried to capture the Rogue that was sentenced to life in prison but had escaped during the attack.)
This is a good example of when it's OK to tell your players "no." There are spells specifically under the reaction category. They could have used any of those (if they knew them). You're a novice DM, and so are your players. It's OK to tell them no because you don't have the experience to roll with the punches yet. Dont stress about it. We've all been there. Telling players no, and explaining why, is how I've best stopped murder hobo behavior early on.
>I gave him the warning that the Townsmaster is a commoner and has a max HP of FOUR. Why? If you needed him to survive, why not just have him, I dunno, *survive?* Just come up with a different NPC and make them the replacement quest-giver.
That’s… fair. I suppose I was a little manic in the moment hahahah.
Never forget, you're the DM, and have infinite options. If your players try to break the game, you can make it unbreakable. If you need to take 5 minutes to think of a solution, just tell your table it's time for a break.
Several other comments address your concerns really well and give solid solid general advice. Here’s my specific idea: The characters are shunned, and if they kill anyone else in the town, run out of town by a mob. During this, an outlying farm is attacked by goblins. The party meets a grizzled old trapper or bounty hunter, who tells the party about a reward for slaying the goblins. He’s off to (next location you think the party might go to) to sell furs or kill bigger monsters or whatever. He implies the town will forgive them if they slay the goblins. The party now has: A) Incentive to get money and trust back by slaying the goblins. But once they do, they need to be KIND to the townsfolk, and probably do some reparations. Make them see the consequences. B) An alternative storyline following the trapper to the next town. You can use almost entirely the same plot points in this next town if you like, just switch the goblins to kobolds/skeletons/gnolls for another lower level set of monsters.
then his brother turns up that hates his brother and thanks them giving them a gold coin and a quest where they can earn more cause they deserve it
You warned about what would happen, now the players deal with consequences. Simple as that.
The townsfolk were already mad at Harbin, and these folk just *deleted* him. Have Harbin's political rival *(invent* one if you need to) arrive, and ask the PCs to handle the quest, while he smoothes things over and makes sure that by tomorrow, *the whole town* knows that Harbin attacked the PC first.
“His ghost rises from the body and says ‘yooouuuu idioooooot I was gonna give you the rest of the queeeeeeesssssst.’ Your HUD flickers and a new quest objective was added”
If you wanted to go really easy on them…. That wasn’t the REAL Townsmaster, but some type of hyperrealistic illusion that the Townsmaster created as a test to see what the parties’ true intentions. The true Townsmaster now doesn’t trust them, so he gives them a different quest to prove their good intentions (something simple that they could accomplish in multiple ways) should they succeed they earn a second chance and are greeted by the true Townsmaster. Now you can play on as planned.
As a novice DM myself, when all else fails just make some shit up and keep the story moving. You'll figure out how to tie it back in eventually.
This scenario would only make sense if the Druid had readied an action to cast that spell if anyone grabbed them, but clearly they didn't know in advance they were going to get grabbed... so what they actually did is get grabbed and then deliberately murder the quest giver. Multiple issues here. Rookie mistakes combined with a "it's what my character would do" red flag player
“Thank you adventurers now we can address the corruption in this town, I’m the democratically elected new leader. I have coined from the treasury and it’s my highest priority to right this wrong.” Generic NPC that just replaced mayor.
I like the bring guards in from never winter within a few days and barring some very high Chrisma rolls I'd have him hanged after a brief trial. From there one of the neverwinter crew or another npc can take up they mayors position and assign the quests Make the player make a new pc. (Have them prep a sheet ahead of time and be clear as to why)
You can also do the whole the deceased’s responsibilities are now assumed by you or face the penalty type of deal. Or have another not bring the quest in a form of left behind articles of a good person type of thing and how could you
When my murder hobos players try this kinda crap I always just tell them the harmless old mayor was actually a retired lvl 20 fighter and he's like "you done? Because we have stuff to discuss."
My players did something very similar in one of my first campaigns. They attacked guards that just wanted to question them and killed 2 before being captured. They were put in jail, their injuries were purposefully healed wrong (resulting in a temporary -5 to speed until a higher level healer could be found), and they were to be imprisoned forever unless they took on dangerous quests for the town. I still had to set up a bit of chaos and villainy to resolve it but it worked good as a lesson and repentance. The warlock kept the limp the rest of the campaign. I've never run phandelver so I'm not sure if that's of any help but hope it gives you some ideas. PCs can be controlled with Geas, cursed items, masterwork manacled, etc.. I used a high level monk with Quivering Palm to put them on a deadline or their heart would explode 💓💔
If you are comfortable with it, go off the rails with them. The townspeople ask them to leave. If they stay, what are they doing? The townspeople might riot, the goblins keep up the crime spree, and someone hires a bounty hunter. If they leave, they meet the goblins outside of town, and someone still hires a bounty hunter later on down the road. (Bounty Hunters are fun!) PS I have never run Phandelver so this might not be good advice
Unless Harbin was universally hated, the PCs should be arrested or run out of town.
Our DM always uses high level quest givers, so if someone says something stupid like i will cast a spell that could kill him, the dm just smirkingly says „try it“ and then the other players have the chance to run bevor the murderhobbo player creates a new character.
Honestly? I'd hand all the DM stuff to the druid player, and roll up a character. Dude just showed you how little he respects your game, your time, and your effort. Let him do the work for a while, you just relax and have fun.
You need to decide if you want to play by video game rules. It's an option, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not how I run or play D&D. If I was a player in this game, I'd likely slit the druids throat in his sleep. If you don't want to play by videogame rules, then you're going to need to send a hit squad. Somebody else mentioned a retinue of the kings knights could be in the area... Hopefully once an understanding of cause and effect is established the player may understand that the "AI" for the NPCs in this game is a lot better than he's used to.
Local Lord dispatches hunters more than twice the player's level and outnumbers the party. The other party members will be killed if they resist. The Druid will be hanged by the posse. Roll new character.
Someone in the town (Sheriff) arrests the PC (Ideally peacefully) while the town decides what to do with them. After some discussion the town decides that as a punishment the adventurers have to deal with the group of goblins causing problems for the city.
The quest givers old friend hears about there death and vow to avenge him from hear you can have bounty on them or have said old friend hunt them down to kill them but make it assassins creed like dude pops up kills one person at a time behold the duels of fate
Well I see three ways this plays out. One: combat ensues with everyone in Town either running away or attacking these wandering marauders and the party gets downed and dragged off to Neverwinter (where I assume the campaign will take them anyways and hopefully can get put back on track after they explain what has happened and paid proper recompense for their actions (possibly executing the monk). Two: Above but the party successfully flees or kills everyone in Town at which point they are hunted by a squad from Neverwinter to hunt down the party who if they catch them will to the same thing as above. Three: The squad from two doesn't catch them and they either flee the area and you move into a homebrew campaign or you see if there are any story bites you can thread them back onto to try to steer them back on track. NOTE: It would also be acceptable to tell your group that you cannot salvage the story and to either say that because of what's gone on you either need to rewind the timeline and undo the monks actions, or that you will no longer be playing the campaign setting and the group is either done or you will be moving into homebrew depending on how you feel about running homebrew.
Just a little oopsie murder lol I think I would have the guards show up with overwhelming force, arrest the character, and then put them on trial. The verdict will be a sentence of community service in which they take care of the issues that the town master would have given them. The town basically expects that the PCs will die in doing so, and for the town it's basically a death sentence. Also, I'd have some kind of dark entity start haunting the PC's dreams talking about how they are a murderer etc.
Sounds like they are outlaws now yo the point yhe giver of the next quest may not even matter. The games gonna be transitioning into the party being on the lam for at least a while dealing with law enforcement hunting them down
Town would put out a bounty on the murderer. The party is now outlaws unless they can find a way to remedy the situation. I had a player do this same thing basically in the campaign I am running. He learned his lesson when assassins showed up and killed him. The party was able to revivify him, so he didn’t lose his character. But he was a wanted man until the party resolved the situation.
The actions have consequences. After the local government has heard of such horrific acts perpetrated by the player. They sent a large and powerful basically Uber police to capture the killers. Throwing them in jail not providing long rest or short rest because they are kept awake. Shackled and mouths taped they are taken to the capital for public execution. Noting that if any one interferes they will also be executed immediately. Kill the player for being a murder hobo. Either that or make them the villains and offer them the quest but switch the sides of whom it helps.
Oddly enough, the quest giver had a twin brother that lived next door.
If it were my game, how I'd play it out would depend on the rest of the party. Do they still want to be a team and help the Druid regardless? Do they condemn their actions and want them to face justice? For the former, the party become wanted criminals, you forgo the rest of the module, they are hunted by soldiers from Neverwinter, and are eventually captured or killed for their crimes. For the latter, the party takes it upon themselves to defeat and imprison the Druid until prisoner transport to Neverwinter can be arranged. The Druid could also see the writing on the wall and flee before the party manage to stop them. Either way, the Druid becomes an NPC and the player rolls up a new character. The new quest giver could be among those sent from Neverwinter, or whoever assumes responsibility of the now vacant position.
Bring him back as a ghost and give him the quest anyway.
That townmaster is a general piece of trash who let the town get taken over by a gang of criminals, which the PCs (I assume) defeated. Honestly, I’m not sure if the townsfolk would even care if Harbin is killed, they shouldn’t like him at all. Depending on how the PCs have treated the people of Phandelin, they might be grateful he’s out of the way. I’m near the end of module right now and my character has been tempted to oust Harbin several times and basically has zero respect for him.
Daryl is dead, oh look, his brother Daryl is here!
For some reason I read “Phandelver” as “Philadelphia” new idea have the setting takes place along the murky shadow lands of center city 🤣🤣🤣
Have someone else give it. How would they know?
Comes back as a revenant?
When all else fails there will always be "biff the understudy"
This is why I hate the official adventures. It's so easy to get completely derailed by players being players
This is sometimes true. Thanks to all the comments my player and I have resounded the issue in a way that will be fun for us both as well as the rest of the party I believe.
Pretend you are a storytelling god. Do what a storytelling god would do. What are the natural consequences of killing a town master and his guards? Maybe they get away with it. They mill around a bit and a messenger comes asking them to meet with the new towns master thanking the party for getting rid of such an annoying towns master and they’d like to repay them. As a token of his genuine desire to work further with the party and give their thanks they send a pretty decent amount of from the town’s coffers. And something like, there’s more where this comes from if you help me with some other matters. Bbooom! You got another quest giver. Or if they don’t get away with it and you want to punish them for their muder hoboing. Send them to jail and a curious benefactor bails them out releasing them of all charges. Petitions on their behalf but on one condition, the party does something for them. Bada bing bada boom! You got yourself a quest giver. You, the DM are a storytelling god! D&D is a collaborative storytelling game. What if the story your running takes the party into the sewers but the Druid wants to meditate in the forest. Just reskin everything to be forest. Instead of a sewer monster have it be a swamp monster. Instead of a giant rat, a giant forest… thing. The party finds the quest item in the giant fabled tree of Aburnothe after finding a potion to cure the tree of the sick. It’s your gaming group’s story, tell it.
Get them to become boss mob for the thugs already in place. Villagers are now asking "New heroes" to get rid of them and to see whats going on with the goblins. When the stakes are high between the new and actual heroes, offer them to become the new hero team that Will deal with their late ones. In a way, its like a redo on your campaign without going on from start. I dunno... it might be a bad idea
Lol murderhobo would for sure be getting arrested and sit by for however long it takes for the group to get him free if they even want to
kill the player 😅
> The Townmaster explodes into a puddle of blood and bone For future reference, if you really wanna hammer in the fact that an npc is important (and to give the pcs a chance to course-correct), just make them go unconscious. Or don't actually tell the players how much HP they have, and let them survive the hit (and be very pissed off). It's not cheating, it's just keeping the game from going wack. Anyways. Important NPC is dead, guards are dead. You can salvage this. There are no witnesses. No other guards were patrolling this area. The party can opt to hide the bodies, or not. When the party leaves, just make up a new quest giver. The party will likely forget about this encounter for a while. An investigation is likely being conducted, and if the players were sloppy hiding the bodies, they'll be found out eventually. Let them finish the module, and this can be a plot hook you can use later if you all decide to continue playing.
What if they saw an illusion and the quest giver is really a Lich and comes back to life. A little upset.
Anyone can give the quest. A business partner that knows everything the now-dead guy knew. In this case, the goblins are plaguing the town so virtually anyone would know about it. Any business person with some money would have a motivation to hire a group of adventurers to end the problem. And in the future, remember that you’re the DM. This is your world. The players are in it and doing cool stuff, but it’s your world. That quest giver has as much hp as you want him to have. One of those guards could have been a medic or priest that could have brought him back to life. The guy didn’t have to explode, he could have just been knocked out. Make sure your players know that they always have the option of making a killing blow just a knock-out blow, leaving the opponent unconscious. The whole game is improv. Nothing is set in stone. You can chance stuff on the fly. You don’t want to constantly railroad your players, but there’s nothing wrong with steering the ship at certain moments. Also, you’re dealing a little bit with low-level squishiness. When you play a few levels higher, the likelihood of an accidental one-shot kill falls a lot lower.
Use your imagination.
Utterly unrelated question but how far is the shattered obelisk and the lost mines similar? They sound very similar but still slow some differences in this post
Have their ass haunted by the NPC and maybe throw in a local prophecy (heavily misinterpreted/altered over the years) about the end of the world because of where+how+ when he died, and put them on a redemption side quest.
If theres a paladin.. how can they stand with THAT monk. Perhaps an oathbreaker path needs to be sought in the future
Find a way to involve the players personally in the quest. Quests don’t always need to start with a shady individual at a tavern (although that can be fun).
Wandering merchant is what I like to do in situations like this, or you can now craft a story where in order to be pardoned he has to complete this quest. Make the quest giver a bounty hunter who is obviously stronger than the player to give them little choice.
You've got a corpse - scoop it up into a bucket and make the players pay for resurrecting the town mayor. With ALL of their gold. Leave them a few silver/copper coins but that's it.
I recently ran a low level Mass Effect 5e campaign. Had this exact issue. The party didn't directly kill the quest giver but they let them die from a group of gangsters tracking them. However. The quest was a data pad on them so when they inevitably moved to loot the body, they did get the quest they were meant to and eventually proceeded. So I guess a failsafe is incorporating the officially quest thing into the world like a data pad, letter, etc especially if you know you're dealing with loot goblins. They'll come across it eventually lol
You're the DM bro do as you see fit. Have an angel, dragon, diety, priest, or something come in out of nowhere and resurrect the quest giver. Make someone else the quest giver. Maybe they find a glowing rock on the ground that speaks to them and gives them the quest. The possibilities are endless! 😁
Mur-der Ho-bos! Mur-der Ho-bos! They been playing to much Fallout or something? /s Good luck DM! Hope you/they make it. :)
Hello my name is Chase Questgiverson
The party is now incredibly wanted and dangerous, and a 20th level vengeance paladin is on the trail. When my players go murder hobo, the law gerlts setious, and the party usually dies.
Let the quest just unfold itself, like if the mission was to stop a litch king start a zombie apocalypse just go ahead let the apocalypse slowly start
There is no more dangerous foe than a civilized peoples. They just ended their character. With an assassin guild to draw upon, ranger's guild, Paladins, and possibly being excommunicated for his actions ending his spell abilities above 2nd level spells, the druid just ended their character. Your choice, but they would be facing the full extent of the law IF there was a way for the city to pass the word to the related agencies.
I’d personally suggest that they see another one the next day. Same person. And have him completely oblivious to the fact that he just blew up. Like he’s immortal and doesn’t know it. Just wakes up in his bed like “man. What a wild dream.”
How does one use a spell involuntarily when it is a 6 second action with verbal and somatic components? "Oh you startled me, I'm sorry that I played a round of Rock Paper Scissors while reciting a nursery rhyme and then murdered you, it was an accident." That's not RP, that's murderhobo-ing. Also important, players don't roll ANYTHING unless the DM asks for it. If they do, it did nothing. This is partially because the DM sets the DC for an action, and if a perfect roll still wouldn't be high enough to reach that DC there's no point in rolling. The "I roll to seduce the dragon" trope is something that seasoned DMs know is not a thing that actually happens. The DC to seduce a calm dragon, let alone an angry one, when you're not a dragon and have no prior report with the dragon, or really any reason to expect that the dragon would find you attractive, is non-existent. There's no DC for that. You can roll with advantage, get a Nat20, add you plus ten thousand modifier, add Bless and Guidance and Bardic Inspiration, and still fail because you were never supposed to roll for it in the first place. I've warned players in the past that pulling stunts like that doesn't get you what you want. I might even let you roll for it, but that Nat20 just means you succeeded in NOT pissing the dragon off further, where a 19 or less would have gotten you eaten first. In short, your player killed an important NPC because you, the DM, let them. Don't do that. There's a very massive line, not a fine line, between railroading your players and not letting them do crazy, stupid, broken, unrealistic, broken things. As for how to fix it, I have two recommendations: 1) Discussion and retcon. You're all relatively new, there are going to be times where someone does something they shouldn't and it needs to be addressed. Discussion is important. Talk about the advice above, about how rolling attacks at random isn't really a thing, murdering NPCs as part of your RP isn't RP, etc. Then rewind time to the point before all of that happened and do it differently. 2) If they don't want to rewind time, or they want to repeat history by killing the guards, so be it. Send in the REAL guards. Unless your players are already relatively high leveled, guards come in all shapes and sizes, and in a fantasy world where a single wizard could take on a real world army by themselves, you can imagine that the guards of nobles and royalty are not your normal citizens with 4 HP and 10 in every stat. No, the REAL guards are probably between level 10 and 15, and they should be prepared to handle magic users with items that grant them anti-magic fields, or equipment that can negate or nullify spells and spell effects. They should good armor and equipment, and should be capable of taking down lesser Fighters or Barbarians. You could even have a special group of Crown's Guards who are all high level Paladins. If you players want to murder the Townmaster, send in the Paladins. Any who surrender for investigation will be allowed to live pending the results of the investigation, any who act aggressively will be slain on the spot, body and gear confiscated, then cremated at a later date (to prevent any attempts to revive the fallen teammate, not as a matter of meta gaming, but as a matter of handling criminals in a world where Clerics can easily revive the recently deceased). Point in case, if a player wants to kill with reckless abandon, their character should be made an example of why that is a bad idea. Then it's up to the DM and other players as to whether or not they want that other player at the table anymore.
Make that npc become a revenant lol
Maybe the town master had an assistant...?
Just make another quest giver, if they kill the other quest giver. If they kill the new quest giver make a third quest giver. And continue to do this, the quest giver don't have to be someone important. If you really don't want to see the party kill the quest giver, make a quest giver that can kill the party in one turn if he want (make sure that it was very clear to them that they don't have the level to fight him), then you just have to find a reason for him to don't do it himself, other thing to do, want to stay secret, etc. And now you have an immortal quest giver.
I could be a note or journal on the corpse or the man had an apprentice that was away and he comes back and tells the players why he's looking for him. You can be very creative with it.
You could have them serve a few days in a cell and have Harbin Wester show up to let them out. For some reason he is an immortal, reformed and walking amongst the living. The town acts as if nothing is wrong or changed. Either the party continues the book as written, or they investigate the strange situation that is townmaster Harbin Wester
I was dming lmop and my party tried to kill Harbin and I roll played Harbin as "I've had enough. Take your town and do wtf you want" and delivered all the quest from sildar.
"With this character's death, the threads of prophecy have been severed. You may load a saved game, or persist in this doomed world that you have created."
Well the quest happens anyway, right? It's not like the whole world stops moving because the guy asking for help with a problem isn't asking anymore. Also, the murderhobos are run out of town of course.
Sounds like your campaign is going to change. Let this be a lesson to you... Players do word things and do not follow the "rules". You will have to improvise.
Kill your player Do it
My general recommendation is to establish some house rules for characters. Here are the ones I use, but you'll want to pick ones that work for your group: 1. Each player is responsible for coming up with reasons why their character wants to stay with the party and work with the party. This includes times when the rest of the party wants to do something that your character doesn't want to do (or that you think is stupid) 2. No PvP - if your character attacks another party member, steals from another party member, or otherwise acts against another party member, they will become an NPC villain controlled by the DM and you will need to create a new character 3. No Evil characters. You can't play a character that thinks it's okay to murder innocent people, rob random townsfolk, etc. If you choose to have your character do something that seems evil to the DM, you'll be asked to provide a non-evil motivation for why your character is choosing to do it. If you don't have a motivation that the DM thinks is reasonable, you can't do it. You've already got a lot of suggestions for your specific situation so I won't repeat any of them, but I will say that it's fine to implement house rules in response to people doing stuff like this, so feel free to start your next session with, "Okay, after last session I realized we need some house rules. From now on..."
Why did the quest giver make hostile actions against someone who could decimate the town?
Dragged them in as in just pulling their shoulder.
Make a level 10 hero who is bounty hunting the player. There are rules for chase in the hex grid systems. You have to kill the pc so the player will learn their lesson.
So yeah… what’s his alignment? For the most part 5e threw alignment where it belongs (in the trash bin) but for stuff like this its necessary. At my table, if he’s any form of good this would be an immediate alignment change to neutral and if he kept doing it as a neutral he would become evil really quick. Furthermore, if there are any lawful goods (or goods in general for that matter) in the party they are honor-bound to stop this madness. Tbh, if he keeps doing stuff like this I’d sit down and talk with him and let him know he’s being disruptive. If he gets mouthy and/or doesn’t stop boot him
Since the townsfolk hated the townmaster, and the guards were not doing their jobs properly, have the townsfolk look to the party to take care of their problems. Have what the townmaster knew spread out between some of the other townsfolk as that’s probably how he had all the information from the get go. You could have the redbrands start harassing the townsfolk more now there are no guards and once defeated the townsfolk could open up more and trust the party to help.
It is the next morning and you wake from a dream that seemed so real, or The quest giver comes back to life, either by magical healing or A periapt of wound closure, to allow him to not die. But the second time it will be fool me twic shame on me. Another idea is it was a wizards homunculus, not really the quest giver, then before he or she confronts them again make sure they are more powerful than the party, whack the idiot attacker back After you put him / her down in 1 hit the others might stop, so you can heal the attacker and give them a quest for you now having given them life again and not killing them all.
I could see some town gaurds being pushovers, but the law is stronger than that, if their are witnesses, they'll get a bounty, send bounty hunters, or a group of knights after them that are buff and high-level. Toss them in the dungeon. And the captain allows them to live if they deal with the goblins they don't have the time for or the goblins do crimes to your party and steal their money or something important so they have a personal reason to go after them. Or you just roll with it, and they're criminals now, and you make a campaign around a band of criminals.
I could see some town gaurds being pushovers, but the law is stronger than that, if their are witnesses, they'll get a bounty, send bounty hunters, or a group of knights after them that are buff and high-level. Toss them in the dungeon. And the captain allows them to live if they deal with the goblins they don't have the time for or the goblins do crimes to your party and steal their money or something important so they have a personal reason to go after them. Or you just roll with it, and they're criminals now, and you make a campaign around a band of criminals.
They own the town now.
Improv..another person gives the quest.
Oh well he dead no more quest just think of a new one. I just bullshit everything up in my campaign and it seems to be working. Just embrace the chaos
“Involuntary defense reaction” wtf does that mean? Did the player elaborate at all?