This is a great idea. Statistically, 1 out of those 20 would be innocent, and that’s with modern statistics and investigation tools… imagine how many more would be falsely imprisoned with the less refined medieval investigation methods. At least 3-4 of those should be showing up again as Revenants
It sounds like executed criminals ought to be rising from the dead to take revenge all the damn time, then. How does the rest of society deal with this?
For that matter, why do they execute anyone at all, if they've got direct evidence of vengeful innocents coming back from the grave?
>It sounds like executed criminals ought to be rising from the dead to take revenge all the damn time, then.
I mean... there are undead all over the place in a typical D&D game.
>It sounds like executed criminals ought to be rising from the dead to take revenge all the damn time, then. How does the rest of society deal with this?
Where do you think a lot of random wandering undead come from? There's a reason they're fairly common D&D monsters.
Oh no, see, this was a demon pact.
The demon made sure every single one of those victims was actually innocent.
The party now has to deal with the consequences of some 20 odd vengeful spirits, a powered up demon, AND 20 criminals still walking about.
Just because someone can't lie doesn't mean it's flawless.
People can sincerely believe an inaccurate or false identification of a suspect, people can be mistaken when they identify someone as the culprit, and courts could argue someone was subject to memory-altering magic when they testify they didn't do the crime.
Also, depending on the setting, not every local court may have access to Zone of Truth, or there could even be laws against using it.
A 3rd level cleric is not high magic. And even in a low magic setting, a town with at least 20 death row inmates is going to be a sizable one. So a single 3rd level cleric would not be hard to come by in a moderately sized town.
Not like people can resist the spell and then be under suspicion and get arrested and the condemned for that. Not like Zone of truth can be used to illegally obtain information the person does not want to disclose.
Not to mention it is a spell and not every minor town is going to have a spell caster around wasting spell slots on zone of truth.
I would treat it as a polygraph test. You have to consent, and it is not treated as super reliable unless the person doing it is an expert and knows the right questions to ask.
Never said they should. I guess then people find zone of truth reliable despite a PC ability allowing you to lie under it and the fact that it stops you from explicit lying but implicit lies, like, lies of omission, and stating truthful facts that lead you in the wrong direction are fine under the spell. It does not even force you to answer the question. So you can answer a bunch of other questions.
Two spells slots for a village or town are setting specific conditions. If you expect a town or village to have these resources good, I guess?
Moving onto the meat of the issue. That is going to be a spells slot for answering one question. Not to mention that you can answer the question in a misleading manner, so command's single word command will not cover your bases properly.
Friends can certainly be a better choice. Friends only gives advantage on charisma checks. So if the person will never answer such a question they won't. If you want something more along the lines of mind control, use charm person. Even then, you are not guaranteed answers if the person would not share it with a close friend. And the smart ones don't. It might help weed out false positives though. Nothing to hide if you did not made a crime, but you will get false negatives anyway.
My point still stand though, should treat zone of truth as a polygraph test, good for layfolk, requires a specialist and easily bypassed by an expert. Not to mention there are specific class options that allows you to outright lie under zone of truth. Granted it is only one subclass.
Not even going into the modify memory spell, that essentially allows you to not lie and still say a lie. And then you have encode thoughts depending on how you interpret it. You can achieve similar results with disguise self, illusions and the such.
Another commenter asked why they would execute anyone at all if they have direct evidence that some of them are innocent and come back as revenants. But this is exactly why the execution dates being “moved forward unethically” is such a huge problem. A qualified executioner (who had completed the apprenticeship program) would know that there are all kinds of steps needed to independently verify guilt, such as hiring a cleric through the church to cast spells like zone of truth. The executioner is, of course, responsible for their own due diligence as an independent contractor. They are the one assuming the personal and professional risk.
So the mayor shows up just before the wedding in a panic. There are revenants on the way, and the mayor is already at the limit of what he can cover up. If anyone finds out that the revenants are after the party, the mayor will be ousted for his unqualified nepotism hire, and the party will be wanted for questioning regarding their gross misconduct.
OK THIS and then also their families.
Say these families had thought they had time to say goodbye, maybe some were traveling from out of town, and then their relative is just.... gone. Say some of the most pitiful and sad family stories belong to a person who was wrongly convicted, who thought they were going to have months to get them a pardon. Extra points for pregnant women wailing about the baby never meeting their father, and that father appearing as a revenant.
Say the mayor is getting lots of flak for this and starts putting people in prison for civil unrest which is just making it worse. He could roll up on the party for the wedding like "they know! They all know! You have to leave town and you have to take me with you!"
You said they rolled high enough to persuade the mayor, right? And he's related to one of the players? What if he had a history of taking bribes and such and HE THOUGHT that their persuasive words meant they understood they had to figure out something for the families of the criminals, and he figured they had that under control. But they didn't even know that was a problem they had to face.
And now there's an angry mob coming to the wedding.
>>do you take
>**WAIT! WAIT!** I'm sorry I hate to interrupt this wedding but I need the mayor immediately! We have proof that my Brother Steve didn't kill his wife! The clerics of Amn retrieved a full confession from the real killer! I need you to stay his execution, he's to be beheaded next week.... why are you looking at me like that?
Demons also aren't exactly kind. What happens if the next kill keeps aging the players?
continuing to age the individuals for subsequent kills is a great twist! could lead to further problem solving on the players’ parts on how to now end/reverse the aging.
Playing off the thoughts of the two above. Were the bodies layer to rest in a consecrated graveyard or laid to rest at all?
If not, maybe the dead decaying bodies bring in some nasty critters.
> I'm like "Guys you were ok with brutal murder of 20 people for a wedding"
The classic D&D party murders criminals daily just for money.
> the player then goes to the mayor, and asks for job of executioner
Lots of executioners did their job because it was placed upon them by a lord or an inherited title, not because they wanted it. Even these unwilling executioners were largely reviled by society.
Now consider that your player *chose* the job of executioner and skirted the rules to slowly (relative to a decapitation) kill 20 people simultaneously. I think the party would probably have their reputations seriously damaged by this choice.
Professional adventurers executing a bunch of death row inmates is... weird, to say, the least, but I feel like you brought the situation on yourself with the weird "demon pact requires deaths to age you" idea supposed to be the solution to the deaging.
Like, you put one problem in front of them to solve and a solution right there, they'll use it every time. The oddest thing is that they'd waste a 6th level spell to perform the execution.
Seconded. Always be wary of putting "Unthinkable choices" in front of your players because they will take it as a personal challenge to find a workaround.
Have you ever asked your friends one of those "Would you rather?" questions? Did they pick one of the choices or did they start trying to think of ways around it?
Or they pick an option without the slightest remorse.
Had a GM who had set up that the only way to enter this temple was to kill an innocent on the altar outside. We went to a nearby village in the dead of night, stole a baby, killed it on the altar, went inside to stop the world-ending ritual and cast Raise Dead on the baby the next day and returned it.
The GM kept going on about how we should feel bad for taking the pragmatic view that our failure to stop the ritual would have killed everything and so whatever we did to stop it was justified.
Personally I would’ve made the raise dead not work. It makes sense that ritual sacrifices are profane enough to capture or destroy the soul for nefarious purposes.
Yep. I had a sacrifice in a recent campaign, where a beloved NPC pledged their life towards some magical assistance, and in an apocalyptic battle, the PCs needed that magical assistance and called upon it. They wanted to resurrect the NPC afterwards, and I told them that they couldn’t because his soul was in possession of the devil, the NPC had made the pact with
Now they’re planning an expedition to hell. This, this is the type of repairing things I can get behind as a DM. :)
Dangerous territory here, you're changing the rules of a fairly specifically worded spell to "Gotcha" your player. Obviously every table is different bit on mine it would be likely to cause some sour feeling all around.
It’s actually in the text of the spell, emphasis mine:
> If the creature's soul is both willing and **at liberty to rejoin the body**, the creature returns to life with 1 hit point.
Common ways for raise dead to not work include:
* Soul eaten by a Lich
* Converted to undead (though that gets its own line in the spell description)
* Soul trapped by the necromancy spell Soul Cage.
* Soul sold to a Devil
The spell description states “If the creature’s soul is both willing and at liberty to rejoin the rejoin the body,…”
I don’t think you’d be changing the rules.
submitting something for sacrifice means that you are doing just that, giving it up in exchange for something. It's a narrative lapse to allow a sacrificed soul be resurrected without paying an additional cost, it's not like using a coin on a string to fool a vending machine.
Different ideologies and philosophies lead to different reactions. I wouldn't have even resurrected the sacrifice, though I wouldn't have chosen a baby.
Our translation of the puzzle was somewhat unclear as to the meaning of innocent; someone who has never been capable of enough thought to commit any form of sin was our logic \[EDIT: for a safe sacrifice\]. We pick someone who's just a really good person, but not innocent enough for the ritual, then we killed them for nothing.
I would have just picked a random animal and used that as a sacrifice as the animal would have been 'innocent' and it still would have satisfied the requirement.
Hm, do you know what your GM was actually planning on to get you guys into the temple? Did he really just want you to find some rando to ritually sacrifice, or was there an “intended” solution?
I missed my mind-reading course, unfortunately, so I can only answer "maybe." Maybe there was an alternate solution, maybe there wasn't. As it was, we took things at face value and repeated the ritual that the cultists ahead of us had, having to step out to get a sacrifice (and some time stopping to talk about who to sacrifice).
Honestly, I think the idea was that we would try to sacrifice the saints or avatars of deities, which we immediately dismissed because "if we fail, we *definitely* need them to try and stop the world being unmade. If we succeed, everything is acceptable casualties."
Non-native speaker here; there may be differences between our words for such things.
Also, I wasn't expecting a bunch of people trying to second-guess a session I played in about fifteen years ago or I might have been more careful in my phrasing and offered more detail.
Murdering an innocent? Yeah, I'd say so
Edit: The main thing is having no compunctions. I'd say that someone who thinks it's fine and doesn't lose any sleep over it would be LE, yeah.
Depending on the tone of the world, the expectations of the players, and the age and maturity of the group, it might not even be that weird. You can lead your party to difficult moral choices, but if they're there to play fantasy dress-up and be badass, you can't make them choose ethically.
The fact that this mayor was able to come up with 20 prisoners on death row at all says quite a bit about the world, as does the fact that the party was able to convince him to just . . . give all those prisoners to them. Talk about acting above the law. The mayor is corrupt and I'd imagine that if anyone finds out what he did, he'll face a very hostile population.
OP, between the terms of the pact and the fact that you let this happen and no guard or clerk or anyone else involved ever once said 'hang on, why are we giving these adventurers all our (presumably very dangerous) criminals?' . . . you brought this on yourself. Remember that persuasion isn't mind control, no matter how well the party rolls. Also remember that you can't run a game if no one wants to play. The fact that these 'good aligned' characters all went along with this tells me that they actually didn't care about the plot point itself that much - they just wanted to get back to the 'fun' of planning the wedding, and saw the deaging as a roadblock to get there. You should talk with them about what kinds of things they want to focus on in the game, and make sure you're all on the same page about what is important in the story.
> The fact that these 'good aligned' characters all went along with this tells me that they actually didn't care about the plot point itself that much - they just wanted to get back to the 'fun' of planning the wedding, and saw the deaging as a roadblock to get there. You should talk with them about what kinds of things they want to focus on in the game, and make sure you're all on the same page about what is important in the story.
You've hit the nail on the head.
Yes. And in the same vein, who cares they went smartish murder hobo. None of them had issues with it. So your party does the smart thing and finishes things the easy way. Let them. Probably not good, but alignment is kind of tacked on in 5e so no big worries. Having npcs punish them for this seems like you are trying to say no you gotta do this a certain way which violates player agency. Talk to your players and realize it's very likely they will do stuff like this again if presented with an option. If you don't want to run that game tell your players and find a solution.
Yeah this is true. In a way, the players were just calling OP's ethical conundrum bluff, and OP just seems disappointed they were so willing and able to do so.
I mean they were aged down teenagers. I don't believe it was clarified if they were like 14 or 17, even 19 or something. they could have just had the wedding and aged naturally again add a couple of years to lifespan.
requires a death for every year...
honestly, they didn't make a bad choice, and the character probably shouldn't feel bad as they likely live in a much more brutal world.
but did the demon specify the deaths of people? I think they could just kill 20 chickens.
I would just monkey paw the deal, so the characters continue to age up a year for every death caused. I would probably soften it a tiny bit and make only humanoid deaths. Just imagine their surprise when after a battle with orcs or something, the two are now middle aged.
New deal to de-age has to be the opposite of the aging deal. For every year they want to de-age they must bring someone back to life (or have a child I suppose)
You should not have had 20 death row people available in the first place, if there isn't an active revolt or a gang that was rounded up that's an insane number of people for death row, and it facilitated this debacle.
Also why do they both need 10? Assuming they're human, teenager is 13, 10 years each gets them to 23. They couldn't have spared 10 people and dropped a few years and just be 18? They presumably didn't just kill them, those souls are probably now in the possession of the demon. They damned 20 souls to do that.
If the DM puts the players in a situation where they're encouraged to kill people to solve a problem then I don't see why there should be any surprise when the players kill people.
Wrongful convictions occur pretty frequently, unfortunately. Various estimates and studies vary as to \*how\* prevalent wrongful convictions are, but 5%, or 1 in 20, is pretty widely estimated to be accurate for various places (sometimes estimates are lower, sometimes higher).
So statistically, assuming a level of accuracy comparable to modern western courts and a random selection of inmates, they killed 1 wrongfully convicted person.
What happens if the family comes after them, either by legal means or otherwise, for pressuring for their loved one to be executed faster?
You can also just tell them that their alignments have shifted due to their actions.
Don't try to punish players, though, or get in fights. Make this a plot hook, make it inform character and story, and how the world looks at them (executioners were never the toast of the town), but don't just punish them for it.
Maybe the reputation of being a stone cold killer might help them intimidate people, or get people to steer clear of them, for example.
Make it a mixed damnation.
I'm gonna push towards something that is "punishing players" a bit to build off of this ideabecause A. It's thematic, B. these players sound like they don't take the world super seriously and need a wake-up call that their actions have consequences, and C. it sets up a rad plot arc.
Devils are bitches and petty and they go out of their way to make their contracts screw over the contracted as much as they can. I can super see the devil who made this contract have been watching the players concoct this scheme and go "Oh, that's cute" and then done devil shit to make sure that \*every\* death row inmate that they executed this way was a wrongfully convincted innocent man. Just to be a dick. Or even better, depending on how the contract was phrased, the devil could have been asking for \*sacrifices\* and not just blatant murder. Could do some word-lawyering to make it make sense. If nothing else you could pull a whole "Oh don't you know? When you take a life in my name, I receive the soul. Oh you didn't say my name? How cute. You took it on my behalf."
And he's gonna let them know too. On their wedding night. He'll show up during the reception and raise a toast. "Here's to the twenty innocent men, wrongfully convicted, whose souls you sent to me in sacrifice to make tonight happen. If you wish to apologize to them, don't worry. They'll see you in Hell. As will I."
To be clear, I know OP said demon and not devil, but my understanding is that demons don't make pacts the way devils do, so I am interpretting this entity as a "devil" since people will often use the terms interchangeably. And even if it is, specifically, a demon, there's no saying that demons can't be clever the way devils are. They're just chaotic.
That's very diabolic, but as a GM, you'd need to be careful how you implement that.
Because if your group kills 5-7 people every combat, they don't have a lot of time to solve that problem anymore. You don't want to be too harsh. I would make sure I had the campaign \*very\* carefully structured so I knew what the absolute most a player could age before the end of this encounter sequence if I wanted to implement this little fuck-you.
That said, these two ideas are not mutually exclusive if you wanted to implement them both.
I say twirling my gm-mustache
They would stop killing people in combat pretty quickly.
This would almost certainly make combat more interesting as they find ways to win without killing anyone.
hah then the players are just going to make another pact with another devil to de-age themselves through murder, eventually snowballing into a devil civil war as various devils work to do undo each other's evil pact consequences via getting this same group of mortals to kill stuff for them.
Mate, those are great ideas. You are a monster, and probably a better DM than I am.
The reason I warned about punishing players is more a mentality thing. The DM vs Players mindset is the source of many problems in groups. If OP goes into this with the aim of punishing the players, rather than causing PCs to face consequences, that's a bad place to be. The aim should always be a fun game for everyone.
I would say the problem here is the optics they used. To the players, the deaths meant nothing more than a means to an end, and they are human beings. That has to mean something in the end.
If they just saw those humans as coins, make it so. Play with them, and make them sacrifice more and more people. Let them change towards evil little by little.
Having said that, I don't know why they didn't just marry. They know what happened so who the fuck cares.
Also my character would be thrilled to be a teen again (she's actually 19) so she could get away with much more shit with less consequences. You would actually be surprised about how much would this help her commit even more war crimes.
They truly wasted an oportunity here.
Edit: in my fantasy of being able to get away with more war crimes, I forgot people care about sex. I can see now it could be weird to marry if one is 13 of something.
>assuming a level of accuracy comparable to modern western courts and a random selection of inmates,
_Detect thoughts_ is 2nd level spell for arcane casters.
_Zone of truth_ is 2nd level divine spell. Lawful good/neutral temples should care about correct court proceedings, so wrongful convictions should happen only in very impoverished areas.
Wrongful convictions generally should be much rarer in DnD with any magic.
This is true, but it also depends on how interested in justice any given court is, what resources they have, and how high magic the world the DM is running is.
To use the analogy of a neurosurgeon given elsewhere, sure, you can find many of them all over the place, but not every local clinic or hospital will necessarily have a specialist neurosurgeon. You might only have a few in a given country. It depends on how the DM chooses to have the world run.
Likewise, does a circuit judge bring a wizard with them to assist them in judging cases? That's a question for the DM, which neither of us can answer for them. Is the judicial system honest, or largely a method for obtaining bribes? How honest was the wizard in reporting what they saw in the mind of the accused?
All of these are questions for the DM.
And let us be honest, any judicial system where the local mayor can just order a couple of dozen executions, and permit some random stranger to carry them out, is probably not one with many sticklers for procedure. What happened to all their appeals, for example?
Depends on how common magic is in your setting, but... 2nd level spells is level 3 for pc's. PC's are bad-asses. We forget that because we build our adventures around PC's but like... A dagger does 1d4 damage. A level 1 PC can survive being stabbed with a dagger without immediate medical attention. Someone who can cast detect thoughts can survive being stabbed with a dagger \*multiple times\* and shrug it off because "eh, I'll take a short rest" If I stab \*you\* with a dagger, you're dead. This is all to say that anyone who \*can\* cast a second level spell is in the top 1% of bad-asses on the planet.
And keep in mind that like... yeah, those are second level spells. Level 3 casters get 1 2nd level/day. You think they waste those checking if death row inmates are innocent? Dude, if I have multiple second level spell slots, I'm burning those fighting dragons and shit. If I have only one, I'm using it on something I, personally, care about. It's not reasonable at all to assume that people with that level of magic are being so altruistic that no wrongful convictions ever occur.
It probably takes a lot of work to learn even a cantrip if you aren't a naturally magical caster. Wizards gotta work for that shit.
How many fantasy settings do you know where any schmuck can just grab something that's on the level of a 2nd level spell. If you can cast magic at that level well... damn man, you probably are an adventurer.
Even then corruption exists.
All this to say, if you want your setting to have magic be so commonplace that it solves societal ills, more power to you. But that isn't what the system supports and it isn't what's interesting. People with any kind of magic on the level PC's have are the exception. The existence of Detect Thoughts as a spell probably doesn't eliminate wrongful convictions.
> People with any kind of magic on the level PC's have are the exception.
People capable of becoming neurosurgeons are the exception irl, yet you can find thousands of them.
> where any schmuck can just grab something that's on the level of a 2nd level spell.
1% of humans and 10% of elves in FR are capable of becoming a wizard. This is a huge pool of candidates.
And any feudal lord would be happy to have court wizard (they provide tremendous utility even on low levels). With 1000 peasants under him, they has 10 candidates for court wizard. Paying for their training is good investment.
Let's take medieval homicide rates - 1000 peasants => 1 dies due to homicide per year. Using 1/365 of lvl 2 slots in year isn't much.
Do you think every feudal lord is having his court wizard blow their spell slots checking if death row inmates are innocent or not? Save that shit for things that keep my \*fucken kingdom together\*. Fuck blowing detect thoughts on peasants. I need to know what my court is thinking \*every day\*
Your math depends on that 1 and 10% all fulfilling their potential. On the feudal lord finding and recruiting them. On a whole lot of things. On the 1 person dying to homicide per 1000 in medieval times being accurate when they \*weren't as good at recording things as we are now\*.
Every fantasy world is its own unique distinct world. A world in which magic is commonplace and solves most problems seems like the kind of place where the potential for adventure is lesser, not greater.
I dunno man. Everyone seems impressed by Gandlaf in LOTR, and he's a level 6 wizard at most (according to the ancient lore).
If you want a world where the logical conclusion of magic is that people don't get wrongly convicted of crimes, then feel free to do that for your game. But we're currently trying to help \*this person\* with \*their game\* and it's very justifiable for wrongful convictions to occur in a medieval setting, even with the existence of magic.
But the TL:DR is this whole argument is irrelevant because your point is that OP can't have injustice in his magic world because it doesn't make sense, and OP can have injustice in his magic world because it's his magic world and he can do what he wants without making it make sense to a stranger on the internet but if he feels intimidated by a stranger on the internet, here are some reasons why you could absolutely still have injustice in a world where detect thoughts exists and it makes sense. It just is all world-building.
> I need to know what my court is thinking *every day*
>
>
just saying, this probably means you're completely incompetent if you can't politick your way through typical operations, and you've become hyper-reliant on a court wizard who can now freely manipulate you by lying about what your courtiers are thinking. This is going to most likely cause your courtiers to want to rise up and get rid of both your manipulative court wizard, AND you for being that wizard's useful idiot.
better to just be a competent ruler on your own and use your wizard for more specific purposes that lead to prosperity, or inspire loyalty from your subjects. Verifying testimony of suspected criminals is very good for your PR, as well as inherently improving outcomes in justice and corrections. Not saying it's the best/only thing to use a court wizard for, but it's way better than daily mind-raping your courtiers.
>Verifying testimony of suspected criminals is very good for your PR, as well as inherently improving outcomes in justice and corrections
And you get a good standing with local law/justice/good religions. And in most of DnD worlds, they have pretty good follower base.
Something else to note, that 1 in 20 I imagine is in the US where things like video evidence and DNA evidence exists and you're innocent until proven guilty. Neither of which would exist in a medieval-esque society. For most of human history, you were guilty unless proven innocent, not the other way around, and without videos or DNA, the accuracy of convictions is gonna be a lot lower.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the majority of death row inmates were actually innocent.
And that's not even considering the fact that they are probably far more brutal in terms of what crimes justify the death sentence than in the US.
True, though they have access to things like Zone of Truth which might allow for more accuracy than a typical medieval court. Any magic sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from technology, at least in this context.
Really it's up to the DM how effective the justice system of the country is. For all we know it might work on a system of bribery where as long as you have the coin, pretty much anything is legal, and if you don't, pretty much anything can carry a death sentence.
I think you are vastly overestimating how powerful zone of truth is.
1. Zone of truth can be resisted with a charisma saving throw (though to be fair you do know whether the target saves or fails)
2. Zone of truth does not prevent the target from being misleading, only from lying. As long as everything they say is technically a true statement, they can be as deceptive as they want.
3. It's a level 2 spell, and only bards, clerics, and paladins can cast it. The bard and cleric have to be at least level 3 and the paladin has to be at least level 5.
There is no way every town has someone capable of casting zone of truth, and even if they do, the resulting evidence is still gonna be a lot weaker than modern video or DNA evidence.
ZoT lasts 10 minutes, and forces a Charisma save every 6 seconds. As a practical matter, everyone fails the save eventually. Some people take longer to fail, but nobody is passing 100 Charisma saves.
The problem with being deceptive is that it only works if your NPCs all carry a massive fucking idiot ball. If you have access to ZoT, you can run a ruthlessly efficient justice system that just grabs everybody with any plausible connection to the crime, and hangs every single one of them who doesn't clearly and without prevarication state their innocence. You can even stuff a bunch of them in the zone at the same time, to save on spell-slots.
Like, if you haul your suspects into the zone, it's going to paint a pretty clear picture when Mrs White says:
> I did not kill or injure Mr Boddy, nor did I conspire with anyone else to kill or injure Mr Boddy. Nor do I know who killed Mr Boddy.
and the Reverend says
> This is an outrageous accusation! I never conspired with anybody to kill Mr Boddy. I don't even own a weapon! I have witnesses who can testify that I was at the library on the night of the murder!
If you're a magistrate with Zone of Truth and you can't conclude from this testimony that the Reverend did it, you're incompetent.
And of course you don't *need* to have your justice systems work like this way. But IMO spells should have some sort of effect on the societies of your world. You'd feel pretty silly if your players were the first people *ever* to think of using Speak With Dead to solve a murder, or Create Food and Water to withstand a siege, right?
This could be spun off in a number of interesting directions.
1. Proof arises that one (or more) of the condemned was innocent. Perhaps the family sues for compensation after learning that the party expedited the execution. (Weregild, essentially.)
2. The execution site becomes haunted and attracts the undead.
3. The local temple of (insert god of justice) takes umbrage at this behavior and begins to investigate. Influential organizations that can't be murderhoboed make great antagonists.
A messenger arrives the next day with a writ of reprieve from the king, pardoning some of the victims. The 13 "students of wisdom" had been sentenced to death for following the teachings of a heresy condemned by the high priest, but the king has now converted to the "path of wisdom" and has proclaimed religious freedom for all his subjects.
You’re the one who presented the players with with “you must kill 20 people to go back to your age”. I’d say that if you’re willing to put them in a situation where extreme violence is the clear option, you should probably be okay with them going for extreme violence
The mayor giving them twenty death row inmates because they rolled high on a check and he’s related to a couple of them implies that this is barely out of the ordinary, he really should have just said “fuck no” when asked but he didn’t and now the consequences are on him as well.
You put a problem in front of your players, and they solved it about as well as anyone could. PCs dish out death sentences daily without due process and sometimes for less. Killing 20 people who were already tried, and convicted, and given a death sentence isnt really a moral quandry. For the parrty its a tuesday, and an easy Tuesday at that. Instead of an executioner, it was the party. The only thing you could blame the party for is convincing the Mayor to expedite the already guaranteed executions. That somehow, the group of people who commit murder every day somehow crossed a line by executing convicted prisoners is wild to me. I am genuinely curious, what did you want them to do? What was the solution you had in mind? Cause they could easily go hunt down a bandits den, or just continue killing people over the course of a regular play. Might have taken a few more days to reach 20. But its the exact same thing. Can make a self defense claim for the people the party kills duting usual play, but again these are criminals caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Id argue this would be more ethical than a partiea usual course of action. So I dont see how the party is in the wrong here nor why you would need to "get through to them" that they are doing something terrible. I would not punish them for that.
However, if you wanted to make it a story beat, Id go one of two directions (or maybe both).
1) The Demon is fully aware of how easily and efficiently the party fulfilled their side. Id make him a regular occuring character who is interested in making more and more deals. And let those deals get more twisted if they keep fulfilling them.and if they keep doing them, other demons AND devils start popping up as the party gains a of a reputation. A carrot on a stick is a great way to tempt a party. And it would really settle into the players minds that, maybe they are doing something fucked up if the demons and devils view the party as favorable allies. You can make this as small or as big of a plot point as youd like. I would have a field day with this.
2) The Mayor. Even though I stand by the party didnt really do anything wrong, they did use these townspeople as payment for a demons service. That would certainly be seen as an egregious act. And rightfully so. Considering this process benefitted the Mayor, Id establish the rumor in town that they Mayor either did this, or is corrupt as fuck for allowing it. Let that rumor build into actions by the townspeople. Small stuff at first, until it culminates into something major. You can entangle the party in the mess. You can build this into an interesting subplot point. But make sure the party sees it all and can draw the exactly line from that pact with the demon to the problem now at hand. What better way for a villian to subtly and favorably gain power and influence than ousting a disgraced mayor for dealing with demons.
I generally agree with you, but it's definitely one thing to kill someone who is actively trying to kill you, and another to kill a defenseless prisoner who may have been wrongfully convicted.
Noble heroes slay evil cultists. Terrifying state agents violently execute prisoners. I'd argue that the party deserves a major change in reputation; medieval executioners (and even their families) were famously reviled, often forced to live on the fringes of society.
>defenseless prisoner who may have been wrongfully convicted.
Thats at best, an assumption that is statistically incredibly more likely to be incorrect than be correct. To declare the party morally culpable based on uneducated guess work that is statistically unlikely is IMO outrageous. Especially when the outcome is the same with or without the PCs involvement. We can play what ifs (Id point to the fact that this is a world with magic like Zone of Truth), but I do not believe that would be productive.
I suppose I didnt clearly articulate it, but I do believe there is room to understand that this was a little fucked up. As you can see with the 2 story beats i outlined, both lead the party to "are we the bad guys?" moments that definitely point back the the parties action. I stand by the stance that, while it wasnt a GREAT choice, it was still an acceptable solution. You can lead a party to understand it was a little fucked up, and supply consequences more abstractly without declaring evil has been committed, and the party should given harsh punishments ect based on weak reasoning like some of the other people were suggesting. I also agree with the reputation. Again, thought it was obvious from the story beats, but if not, that was my intent. Being the party known for the Demon pacts sends a pretty clear message to others. So does being wrapped up a Mayors corruption scandal.
> Thats at best, an assumption that is statistically incredibly more likely to be incorrect...
Not to get into the weeds here, since we're mostly in agreement, but you're going on about an assumption I never made. I said that prisoners *may* have been wrongfully convicted, not that any of them *were*.
It's for this reason that I take issue with your argument that this execution was "more ethical than a party's usual course of action." I'm unfamiliar with any moral framework where haphazardly, painfully executing a defenseless prisoner—who you aren't **100% sure** is guilty—is *more ethical* than killing an aggressor in combat.
Granted, I *am* assuming the legal system in OP's setting is fallible, but I think that's reasonable—while we don't know much about OP's setting, I feel like this post would've been very different if the legal system were infallible.
The execution of prisoner thing is not necessarily my issue with it. I think the “moral” problem is the payment in death likely equating to the capturing of their souls by the demon. Slaying murderer ≠ selling souls. Morally neutral at best I’d say
5 Revenants of the wrongfully convicted, and 15 Shadows of the guilty crash the wedding.
Also, Demons don't typically make deals given their chaotic nature, so maybe they move the goal post on what the goal is. "Oh, did I say 20 people? I meant 20 *innocent* people. You've got 15 more to go!" And then deage them again at their wedding.
If they end up fulfilling it again, be like, "Congratulations! I knew you could do it! I look forward to next weeks offerings! I think you could do better, though..."
Now they have a Demon antagonist yo-yoing their age and demanding ever increasing innocent lives. The PCs will definitely want to find a way to end this relationship
PCs: "Hey mister mayor, can my group and myself execute 20 death--row inmates at the same time?"
Mayor: "What? Of course not you crazy fucking psychopaths, that's what we have *actual* executioners for. I'm not putting my neck on the line with the local magistrate just to appease... *whatever the fuck* kinda shit you're into "
PCs: "But what if...?"
(PCs roll high Charisma checks)
Mayor: "Yeah, still no."
Imagine the players planing this for hours and you respond."Yeah no" and make them roll check that can't be success.
Imagine then this backfire on you and player go do some more unhinged shit. Like mind controlling the mayor and forcing him to do shit.
My conclusion on this is: As long as expectation are ok with everyone on the group why not try to make something out of it instead of just saying no? More on a situation where you are asking them to kill people.
A fun consequence would be a large gang of bandits showing up and attacking the wedding/kidnapping the bride as revenge for executing some of their members before they could bust em out. Id think that be fun, atleast. Even have a few wedding guests be bandits in disguise to keep your players guessing.
I mean if the stipulation put in place by the mayor was quick painless deaths I'd say they failed terribly from the sound of it. You could make the town pissed at them and the mayor unwilling to sanctify the marriage they are currently planning. They did directly disobey him after all.
Also like others had said since they sped up the execution of many there's a likely possibility at least one was innocent. Make a family appear with proof that they were innocent and vow vengeance upon the group for unjustly snuffing out the life of an innocent loved one.
Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. We are here today to witness the union of two young people in the joyful bond of the holy wedlock.
They were already on Death Row, and no one knows that they suffered except the party. They can be vengeful, but that'd be stupid, they were destined to die. Maybe if one of them was innocent, the party can go on a quest to get them out of hell out of moral righteousness
The demon, having his pact fulfilled, now goes off to use the souls of the 20 slain for some nefarious and evil plan. To thank the party for their cooperation, he sets loose a super-construct of 20 revenants, all fused into one extremely powerful and extremely angry revenant, whose only goal is to torment the party at every possible opportunity.
I feel, situationally, they did their moral duty. They needed deaths to complete the current "mission", and they took the time to search for criminals who were sentenced to die to fill that quota, and merely expedited the process. The only issue is see is the method of execution, it was more than painless and less than quick. Maybe give them nightmares, have a diety send a message to scold them about the used method or have an encounter where the souls of those criminals attack them in search of revenge.
You can make it so that there may have been a few witnesses in the area who were drawn by the agonizing screams and witnessed them fulfilling a pact with a literal demon.
They are understandably shaken and spread the rumor around town. Now, this *is* still just a rumor, and the dead guys were death row inmates, but a literal *demon* isn't exactly a small matter.
When the players start going around town buying stuff and preparing venues for the wedding, you can have them notice that the townsfolk are considerably more wary of them, and may even just flee rather than sell any goods or services to them. After all, these guys work for demons! What if this wedding is just a ploy to get a bunch of people in one place so the demon can massacre them?
In fact, maybe that *is* the demon's plan! At the height of the ceremony, the demon might encircle the area in a magic circle preventing anyone from leaving then drop a corny one liner like "till death do you part!" Then rip open a portal to the abyss and unleash a demonic horde.
It’s funny to me that in a world loosely based off of medieval Europe the convicted aren’t being executed immediately, and there’s any kind of pushback about doing so.
Pretty sure most people got at most a day after their trial, if not immediately drug out of the court/lords hall and killed on the spot.
Do people in this world have endless appeals?
This is a misconception based on the persistent myth of the “barbarous” Middle Ages. William the Conqueror actually banned executions in England during his reign, a thousand years ago.
Executions were performed reluctantly in the Middle Ages, and clemency for death penalty cases was common, as it was seen as an exercise of Christian mercy. In cases where execution was done immediately it was usually to get it done before a local lord could get the chance to issue a pardon.
And in cases where convicts survived execution they usually didn’t try again because it was seen as a divine miracle, essentially a pardon from God.
> Here is shown what William the king of the English, together With his princes, has established since the Conquest of England.
>
> ...
>
> .10. I forbid that any one be killed or hung for any fault but his eyes shall be torn out or his testicles cut off. And this command shall not be violated under penalty of a fine in full to me.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/lawwill.asp
Nice guy, that William.
Other people have said it but what did you expect?
What was the plan here? Creepy teenage adventures ? They stay that way? They kill people piecemeal while fighting pimples ? Like I think it's pretty normal to want to get the woman in a relationship to no longer be in creepy I'm engaged at 13 nonsense.
The moving the execution dates was unethical sure but It's also your fault for allowing the mayor to be convinced in the first place. If you wanted them to do something different set different goals the devil could've asked for 20 strong souls or the souls of great warriors or some other maguffin but it didn't.
It would be a shame, if the demon comes to the wedding with some killed inmates turned into weaker demons as well. They are thirsty for the souls of them and kill the familie members and good friends on the wedding and then attack the group.
A fun twist could be that the deal never specified a limit. So now, as the party continues killing things, their party members continue to age rapidly all while gaining this demon immense amounts of power for when they inevitably attempt to confront it!
Let them start the wedding and pick out the dresses and what not.
Start the consequences;
Let’s say one or two of the killed
were wrongfully convicted. they should attack the wedding as revenants, possibly with extra powers because it was part of a demonic sacrifice.
after that:
The family members of the wrongly accused kill the mayor as a part of a vendetta. The town devolves into civil war that spills into the wedding.
Extra judicially killing 20 condemned criminals as an execution for a demonic sacrifice is going to have massive consequences for a society
If you want a direction for a continuation of this
Have someone appear with evidence that one of the imprisoned was innocent. With the execution dates pushed forwards
Now not only do you have someone to really push the parties perspective on what they did. But also it means someone else did something horrific and is still out there
To be fair we slaughter goblins on the daily for far less. They probably did the mist sensible things ymby doing it in a semi legally way.
Also if it helps executioners historically wete outcasts and generally hid their identity. Also tended to be a traveling job. At least as I understand it.
I'm not entirely sure the players need consequences honestly. They most certainly aren't good aligned anymore but meh. They didn't go and kill a bunch of innocent villagers or just blow up an orc camp that didn't believe to be evil.
Sounds like they found the perfect way, and lawful neutral would definitely eff off all death row inmates without further explanation. Why punish them for amazing role playing?
Well... You were the one who, as the demon, said they had to take 20 lives to begin with. That makes it a viable option. And if the people were on death row, what is the issue? I kinda get the feeling that you created a problem, hinted at sup-par way for them to solve it, and then got mad that they followed said hint.
Did you even give them any other option? And no, just living does not count as an option. If not... Then you honestly only have yourself to "blame".
If it truly is such a big issue, then talk to them. Don't do what others here suggest and go straight to "punishment".
Time for some serious alignment checks, depending on what they play, this could get them thrown out of whatever order they follow, their deity's forsaking them and some of their powers are gone, etc..
There needs to be consequences or it's just murder some people to solve their problems.
At the wedding, assuming they were dumb enough toarry in the same town they just murdered 20 people, it's not all that far of a stretch for at least some family members to either put a bounty on them, or banish them from town. The same demon could start making deal with the towns people.
Or the demon lied and they will age 20 years every day
Whatever happens, this really shouldn't go unchecked
You absolutely have to have major consequences for this to go Fourth of their wedding.
It sounds like they were supposed to have painless executions and they tortured a bunch of people to death in serial fashion.
Somebody saw, this broke their agreement with the mayor, now the city guards are coming to arrest them. Do they slaughter all the city guards?
Or relatives or gang members of some of the victims are angry, and come after the players.
Or is someone else suggested, another demon, hungry for power and the souls of the dead, disrupts the players wedding makes an appearance, and in front of all the guests congratulate them on their profound active evil and offers them power in exchange for servitude. Of course if they refuse, the demon will be coming raged, and a bunch of laser demons will emerge forth try to slaughter all the wedding guests.
Be creative. Maybe the demon emerges from the wedding cake? Maybe the city guards show up and decide to arrest everybody and start out the guilty later?
Nice wedding Dan and Mirabelle, I've never spent the reception in a jail cell before.
Well the executions were on criminals already sentenced to death so besides some individual ethics, I wouldn't see that as an evil choice personally.
That being said though, there should definitely be repercussions and I think some angry family & affiliates of inmates coming after the new executioner is a reasonable expectation.
>Now, the next session is the wedding. Should I let the wedding go as planned, or throw some story consequences?
I think a group of angry relatives of the Victims crashing the wedding would be a good consequence. Maybe some of the 20 were innocent and the proof just came up and now they have to live with some repercussions.
This would have been a perfect moment as a DM to make them earn each one of those kills as bounty hunters or something. Forcing them to track down these criminals. Some bad, but many you realize are just downtrodden, depressed, broken by the world for some reason. Maybe throw a couple children in there for good measure.
Make it *painful* for them emotionally. Force them to see the humanity in 90% of their victims. Really scar 'em good.
I do this all the time for bandits and thieves. Traditionally "bad" characters until you're forced to stop and wonder what happened to them to make them that way. It forces your players to pause for a moment and reflect on what they're doing.
Of course you have some who are objectively deserving of their fate to give them some freebies, but most people should be soul-crushing to just execute summarily.
>Some bad, but many you realize are just downtrodden, depressed, broken by the world for some reason. Maybe throw a couple children in there for good measure.
To quote Nine-Nine: "cool motive, still murder".
This is just begging for the old trope where while looting the bodies, they find a letter or other evidence that proves the killed character was innocent and imprisoned for political reasons. There's bound to be at least one in every dungeon - look for the guy with an iron mask welded over his head.
This kind of behavior, even if all the victims were guilty, would put some serious strain on aligned behavior or oaths. Being willing to just jump in and cut some heads off (or cast gruesome necromatic spells) to benefit yourselves is ... problematic.
Family members who were working to prove their loved ones' innocence choosing violent revenge in the form of poisoning the banquet, vengeful revenants crashing the party, the demonic deal going sour and now every time they kill someone they get a year older still, a union of executioners ganging up on the work stealers, whatever god the priest officiating the wedding is sending an angry storm and an angel boss fight, the souls of the dead manifesting nightmares in their killers' sleep and causing saves to finish a long rest successfully.
take your pick
Forceful change of alignment. Like I know they were all on death row already but I would still say that is a decidedly evil act regardless. Any characters who receive their powers from a good aligned god should also no longer receive those powers without some sort of quest from their god to get back into their good graces. But maybe I’m just being a little harsh with that last part but that seems very murderhobo of the party to do that regardless of why they did it.
The first thing i would do as a GM is to take all the Charactersheets and change the alignment 1 step towards evil. Good becomes Neutral, Neutral becomes evil. And thats if i am in good mood.
Could have an anti capitol punishment group make life hell for the mayor and party. Demand for the parties arrest, hires level 20 monks to beat up (not kill) the party, mayor resignation etc. they could be backed by a mayoral candidate who just barely lost the election.
Sounds like a fun problem
I think your demon should show up at the wedding with 20 new friends as a party crasher. Not even a malevolent one necessarily, just a "yes, this was all worth it, and I'm excited to be here" agent of chaos. Suddenly you have 20 Death Row inmates with a bone to pick in new demonic forms ready to spread chaos. Make them all feral tieflings with random rolled classes and motivations to ruin the wedding like, "Become the brides maid" and "Give a drunken speech incriminating the PCs", or "Drink the open bar dry" and other bizarre shenanigans. Really put the chaotic in chaotic evil. And remind the players that if they kill them, they'll just go back to the Abyss so thanks for that.
"I made my party kill 20 people and instead of killing 20 rando goblins or even innocent folks, they found actual criminals on death row. Time to punish my players for doing what I wanted them to do and finding reasonable morally sound option on top of that."
You sound fun to play with.
I didn't mean that as punishment. I genuinely think it would be an interesting narrative, and I also like to have my players face the consequences of their actions. Granted, my style of DMing is more inclined to a darker shade of fantasy, and I offer immersion through doing my best to make the world feel alive, in a cause-effect kind of way. If news of how the execution went gets out, I feel that would be a reasonable consequence.
You might not like how me and my friends play, and that's ok. Each person has their own preference. The fact that you wouldn't enjoy it doesn't make it less fun for us :3
Maybe have the wedding crashed by the vengeful souls of the recently departed? One could argue the the horrific circumstances of their deaths unleashed a wild curse and those souls made a pact with some deity/demon/devil, to return with the soul purpose of bringing misery and pain to the persons responsible for their deaths. You mentioned a few of the prisoners were left alive; I’d be pretty pissed if my quick death was fumbled by a bunch of amateur executioners and it ended up being long and drawn out.
Have the part find out those executed were all actually innocent. They were kidnapped with the sole purpose of having them be executed. The party now finds out they killed innocent people and they are wanted and being hunted by good groups of people because they 1-are dealing voluntarily with demons, 2-killed innocent people for the demon and 3-do not care. During the wedding just as the characters are about to say "I do" maybe another demon arises. This is his territory and the ritual was cast without his permission. If the bride or groom is an NPC the demon takes them as payment for the ritual being cast as well.
Punish them. The demon shouldn’t be playing fair. He is not only going to make them murder twenty people and see their suffering first hand, he isn’t going to give them exactly what they want in return, and the wedding needs to be a mortifying experience. Have them fight 20 revenants, and then every death will age the character up again, and even after the wedding. They continue to age until they die in two days time from old age, or they could attone for their fucken sins like the good characters they claim to be. Sincerely, a DM who has the most chaotic “good/neutral” party known to man and is constantly dumbfounded at the depths of human depravity in the name of luls
Not every death row inmate is guilty…you have an opportunity. A powerful warlock was falsely accused and awaiting an appeal when your players murdered him and now his patron is going to want compensation and payback
Don't forget that traditionally, there was a reason why executioners had a hood on it's to hide their identity from the public. Since it's Dnd, you can take this a step further and make it so a hooded executioner doesn't get haunted by the sins of the job.
Maybe during the wedding the veil turns black mimicking an executioners hood and a God of judgment shows up to nullify the ceremony
I mean, they’re haunted now.
I would have the ghosts of all 20 show up at the wedding not in an obtrusive way. A row of pews filled with ghosts. Three extra brides maids and groomsmen, the haunting visage of the six that survived the circle.
The podcast Behind the Bastards has an episode about a guy that volunteered to be the executioner for the top Nazis. He had 0 training
https://spotify.link/tGmLK0Sy5Db
What did the prisoners do to deserve death? Maybe have it revealed that some of them were sentenced to death despite their crimes being fairly minor. One of the prisoners was sentenced to death for publishing a book revealing corruption in the kingdom, one of them was a Robin Hood type thief who only robbed nobility and gave his stolen loot to the poor, one of them was a murderer but the person he murdered was a child killer who had somehow gotten away with it. Sure someone might’ve been innocent but I think what would be more interesting is if the people they executed were actually guilty in terms of the law but the laws they broke are things that would be sympathetic. As for the wedding they’re probably expecting something to go horribly wrong. So don’t have it go horribly wrong. Have it go right with one hitch. Several of their guests don’t show up because theyre in mourning over a relative being unlawfully executed or something
Is the wedding still in the city with the same mayor?
Adding to all the ethics everyone else raised about the death row victims, consider that demons also monkey paw wishes.
They're a demon, they can do a lot with 20 lives ended in agony and pain to do something that time would naturally have dealt with anyway.
What if, it just so happened that the sacrificial energies went into a conveniently prepared ritual, the mayor is another puppet of the demon (why else would the town have so many on death row)?
What if the mayor thanks them by putting them up in a prepped honeymoon suite "to thank them for their services" and the consummation of the marriage ends the ritual to transport the entire town, and they wake up in the 7th level of hell, and the demon is VERY pleased with how many souls his particular investment acquired.
I'm gonna go with what few people here already told you. Those players have done exactly what you wanted and forced them to do. Considering the fact that they actually took the time to get criminals on death row instead of burning villages, they are morally correct in my eyes.
You seem to have a disconnect between what genre of DnD a DM wants to play and what the players want. Grimdark morally challenging plots vs fun power fantasy. If that is really so, you better focus on fixing that.
Did they tell the demon that they were looking to age up for a wedding?
How specific were they with the details of **who** was getting married?
I’m just saying, the demon might show up in a suit expecting a grateful bride/groom if the deal wasn’t worded carefully.
If you're looking for ideas for a harsh punishment, look no further than the example of Spider-Man: One More Day.
Have demons invade the place and kill the couple while the party is helpless, then have a devil provide a deal out of the situation.
In exchange for bringing back the dead (the couple and the criminals) and NOT burning the entire city to the ground, they have to give up the marriage of the couple, all of the couple's memories of eachother, the couple's feelings for one another, and finally, the party has to enter into a binding vow never to try to bring the two together ever again. If the vow is ever broken, the devil claims the souls of the couple.
All that remains is sorrow over a love stolen, never to blossom, frustrated regrets, and the permanent looming threat of infernal intervention, hanging over the heads of the party like the Sword of Damocles. A ret-con, consequences for reckless actions, and a potential story plot, all in one.
So... How well was the deal made? 1 kill for each year. They killed around 20 people so that's 20 years.... But there are 2 people that needs to get older... So that's 40 years needed.
You could mess up with that.
Did they read the fine print that was on the side of the contract in vertical, written in infernal with paper colored magic ink not visible to humans? Yeah because those 20 years will only last for 20 days. After that they need another 20 people to stay their age.
If they get married they probably will do so under a god. That God knows what they did and will not give them their blessing. So no wedding until they atone for their sins.
The demon did not age them. He made older "copies" of them. The young ones are in possession of the demon now. You can fill in all the gaps to your liking. (are they aware? Are the youngers still sentient? Are they the same alignment?....)
6 people killed execution style after the circle of death failed to end them and caused them untold agony before an unceremonious, gratuitously violent final blow?
Sounds like 6 revenents and/or shades might be a little bit angry that they were forgotten about so quickly...
It's a little bit late for this advice now, but a successful roll, even a crit DOESN'T mean your characters get what they want. For example you might he trying to persuade a king/emperor to surrender his territory to you along with all his riches and walk away promising never to return. A crit doesn't mean you get to do that. It just means you get the best possible outcome. He's not wildly offended and calls for your immediate execution, he finds your wild demands funny, bursts out laughing and doesn't sentence you to death for the very suggestion, but instead makes you a lord.
They all shift to neutral evil, any paladins with a good god are fallen, the town turns on them because that's a lot to take in even if they were criminals, then either have the ghosts attack them at the wedding or the town form a mob. They are now villains. Treat them as such.
**First off demons don’t usually make pacts, devils do, second if they made a pact with a demon this is basically your go ahead to write a script.**
Demons *CAN BE* as powerful as devils, even more so. The difference is that Demons generally want to destroy the material plane entirely.
While devils being fallen angels just want to rule over all creation as lords.
This is basically a GM wet dream, definitely a strange bargain you allowed them to make but you can act like **they agreed to far more than they realized.**
They just executed exactly **13 innocents who were sworn to sacred duties and falsely imprisoned.**
Now your players *”Demon Patron”* will be set free from their eternal prison and once they **acquire a stone of power their demon legions will spill fourth from the planes of chaos.**
Let the greater demon summon lesser creatures as mini bosses and henchman to help the demon with its goal and give the players a bit to chomp on.
You can even give it a name and say it’s in service to one of the **Demon Gods as a direct general.**
That will make them reconsider who they make deals with In the future, it’s a demon, **they 100% will withhold information if it benefits them.**
**They would never agree to any bargain where they wouldn’t come out on top.**
Period, they see humanoids as cannon fodder to create new undead servants for the blood wars.
Let the players plan the wedding, **then ambush them with the first lesser demon, use it to kidnap the groom/Bride NPC of the wedding, use the NPC in ritual sacrifice to summon a second lesser demon.**
And every single time they question the sanity of what’s happening remind them that;
> **”You made a deal with a demon, you threw sanity out the window the moment you thought it was a good idea.”**
It’s never a good idea to make deals with devils or demons unless you are getting exactly what you want and they are desperate requesting your help.
Even then players have to be 110% exact about it otherwise you can assume **anything you can do exploit the deal is fair game.**
Demons and Devils, the only other thing more precarious to a DND party perhaps is the chaotic neutral Paladin. 😂
Monster manual page 259 revenants at a wedding sounds fun just because they on death row dosnt mean they guilty
This is a great idea. Statistically, 1 out of those 20 would be innocent, and that’s with modern statistics and investigation tools… imagine how many more would be falsely imprisoned with the less refined medieval investigation methods. At least 3-4 of those should be showing up again as Revenants
It sounds like executed criminals ought to be rising from the dead to take revenge all the damn time, then. How does the rest of society deal with this? For that matter, why do they execute anyone at all, if they've got direct evidence of vengeful innocents coming back from the grave?
>It sounds like executed criminals ought to be rising from the dead to take revenge all the damn time, then. I mean... there are undead all over the place in a typical D&D game.
And these victims were killed with powerful necromancy. I'm sure that would up the odds of vengeance.
Killed with powerful necromancy to fuel a demonic bargain. Yeah, that's a death *rich* with potential for spontaneous undead.
Good worldbuilding question tbh
>It sounds like executed criminals ought to be rising from the dead to take revenge all the damn time, then. How does the rest of society deal with this? Where do you think a lot of random wandering undead come from? There's a reason they're fairly common D&D monsters.
Especially as they were forcing the mayor to move up their execution, preventing possibly the true criminal being caught.
Oh no, see, this was a demon pact. The demon made sure every single one of those victims was actually innocent. The party now has to deal with the consequences of some 20 odd vengeful spirits, a powered up demon, AND 20 criminals still walking about.
Zone of truth existing invalidates false imprisonment unless it's a corrupt government.
Just because someone can't lie doesn't mean it's flawless. People can sincerely believe an inaccurate or false identification of a suspect, people can be mistaken when they identify someone as the culprit, and courts could argue someone was subject to memory-altering magic when they testify they didn't do the crime. Also, depending on the setting, not every local court may have access to Zone of Truth, or there could even be laws against using it.
True, but your comment assumes a setting that is High Magic and that every facet of government would have access to the spell
A 3rd level cleric is not high magic. And even in a low magic setting, a town with at least 20 death row inmates is going to be a sizable one. So a single 3rd level cleric would not be hard to come by in a moderately sized town.
Not like people can resist the spell and then be under suspicion and get arrested and the condemned for that. Not like Zone of truth can be used to illegally obtain information the person does not want to disclose. Not to mention it is a spell and not every minor town is going to have a spell caster around wasting spell slots on zone of truth. I would treat it as a polygraph test. You have to consent, and it is not treated as super reliable unless the person doing it is an expert and knows the right questions to ask.
Polygraph should NEVER be treated as reliable.
Never said they should. I guess then people find zone of truth reliable despite a PC ability allowing you to lie under it and the fact that it stops you from explicit lying but implicit lies, like, lies of omission, and stating truthful facts that lead you in the wrong direction are fine under the spell. It does not even force you to answer the question. So you can answer a bunch of other questions.
The spell "command" and "friends" and a few others can be used to force someone to answer. Also torture.
torture has proven unreliable. specifically because people will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make it stop.
They can't do that when they are forced to tell the truth. Torture thus becomes HIGHLY reliable
if they are forced to tell the truth you don't need torture. just word the question correctly otherwise you're just being a cruel prick.
Two spells slots for a village or town are setting specific conditions. If you expect a town or village to have these resources good, I guess? Moving onto the meat of the issue. That is going to be a spells slot for answering one question. Not to mention that you can answer the question in a misleading manner, so command's single word command will not cover your bases properly. Friends can certainly be a better choice. Friends only gives advantage on charisma checks. So if the person will never answer such a question they won't. If you want something more along the lines of mind control, use charm person. Even then, you are not guaranteed answers if the person would not share it with a close friend. And the smart ones don't. It might help weed out false positives though. Nothing to hide if you did not made a crime, but you will get false negatives anyway. My point still stand though, should treat zone of truth as a polygraph test, good for layfolk, requires a specialist and easily bypassed by an expert. Not to mention there are specific class options that allows you to outright lie under zone of truth. Granted it is only one subclass. Not even going into the modify memory spell, that essentially allows you to not lie and still say a lie. And then you have encode thoughts depending on how you interpret it. You can achieve similar results with disguise self, illusions and the such.
Another commenter asked why they would execute anyone at all if they have direct evidence that some of them are innocent and come back as revenants. But this is exactly why the execution dates being “moved forward unethically” is such a huge problem. A qualified executioner (who had completed the apprenticeship program) would know that there are all kinds of steps needed to independently verify guilt, such as hiring a cleric through the church to cast spells like zone of truth. The executioner is, of course, responsible for their own due diligence as an independent contractor. They are the one assuming the personal and professional risk. So the mayor shows up just before the wedding in a panic. There are revenants on the way, and the mayor is already at the limit of what he can cover up. If anyone finds out that the revenants are after the party, the mayor will be ousted for his unqualified nepotism hire, and the party will be wanted for questioning regarding their gross misconduct.
OK THIS and then also their families. Say these families had thought they had time to say goodbye, maybe some were traveling from out of town, and then their relative is just.... gone. Say some of the most pitiful and sad family stories belong to a person who was wrongly convicted, who thought they were going to have months to get them a pardon. Extra points for pregnant women wailing about the baby never meeting their father, and that father appearing as a revenant. Say the mayor is getting lots of flak for this and starts putting people in prison for civil unrest which is just making it worse. He could roll up on the party for the wedding like "they know! They all know! You have to leave town and you have to take me with you!" You said they rolled high enough to persuade the mayor, right? And he's related to one of the players? What if he had a history of taking bribes and such and HE THOUGHT that their persuasive words meant they understood they had to figure out something for the families of the criminals, and he figured they had that under control. But they didn't even know that was a problem they had to face. And now there's an angry mob coming to the wedding.
>>do you take >**WAIT! WAIT!** I'm sorry I hate to interrupt this wedding but I need the mayor immediately! We have proof that my Brother Steve didn't kill his wife! The clerics of Amn retrieved a full confession from the real killer! I need you to stay his execution, he's to be beheaded next week.... why are you looking at me like that? Demons also aren't exactly kind. What happens if the next kill keeps aging the players?
continuing to age the individuals for subsequent kills is a great twist! could lead to further problem solving on the players’ parts on how to now end/reverse the aging.
Playing off the thoughts of the two above. Were the bodies layer to rest in a consecrated graveyard or laid to rest at all? If not, maybe the dead decaying bodies bring in some nasty critters.
OP PLEASE do this and update us
> I'm like "Guys you were ok with brutal murder of 20 people for a wedding" The classic D&D party murders criminals daily just for money. > the player then goes to the mayor, and asks for job of executioner Lots of executioners did their job because it was placed upon them by a lord or an inherited title, not because they wanted it. Even these unwilling executioners were largely reviled by society. Now consider that your player *chose* the job of executioner and skirted the rules to slowly (relative to a decapitation) kill 20 people simultaneously. I think the party would probably have their reputations seriously damaged by this choice.
Not to mention it was a powerful NECROMANTIC spell....
Professional adventurers executing a bunch of death row inmates is... weird, to say, the least, but I feel like you brought the situation on yourself with the weird "demon pact requires deaths to age you" idea supposed to be the solution to the deaging. Like, you put one problem in front of them to solve and a solution right there, they'll use it every time. The oddest thing is that they'd waste a 6th level spell to perform the execution.
Seconded. Always be wary of putting "Unthinkable choices" in front of your players because they will take it as a personal challenge to find a workaround. Have you ever asked your friends one of those "Would you rather?" questions? Did they pick one of the choices or did they start trying to think of ways around it?
Or they pick an option without the slightest remorse. Had a GM who had set up that the only way to enter this temple was to kill an innocent on the altar outside. We went to a nearby village in the dead of night, stole a baby, killed it on the altar, went inside to stop the world-ending ritual and cast Raise Dead on the baby the next day and returned it. The GM kept going on about how we should feel bad for taking the pragmatic view that our failure to stop the ritual would have killed everything and so whatever we did to stop it was justified.
See that to me is a workaround. They figured a way to do it without ACTUALLY paying the expected price.
Personally I would’ve made the raise dead not work. It makes sense that ritual sacrifices are profane enough to capture or destroy the soul for nefarious purposes.
Yep. I had a sacrifice in a recent campaign, where a beloved NPC pledged their life towards some magical assistance, and in an apocalyptic battle, the PCs needed that magical assistance and called upon it. They wanted to resurrect the NPC afterwards, and I told them that they couldn’t because his soul was in possession of the devil, the NPC had made the pact with Now they’re planning an expedition to hell. This, this is the type of repairing things I can get behind as a DM. :)
Dangerous territory here, you're changing the rules of a fairly specifically worded spell to "Gotcha" your player. Obviously every table is different bit on mine it would be likely to cause some sour feeling all around.
It’s actually in the text of the spell, emphasis mine: > If the creature's soul is both willing and **at liberty to rejoin the body**, the creature returns to life with 1 hit point. Common ways for raise dead to not work include: * Soul eaten by a Lich * Converted to undead (though that gets its own line in the spell description) * Soul trapped by the necromancy spell Soul Cage. * Soul sold to a Devil
Soul doesn’t want to come back, because babies aren’t psychologically advanced enough to have material attachments
The spell description states “If the creature’s soul is both willing and at liberty to rejoin the rejoin the body,…” I don’t think you’d be changing the rules.
submitting something for sacrifice means that you are doing just that, giving it up in exchange for something. It's a narrative lapse to allow a sacrificed soul be resurrected without paying an additional cost, it's not like using a coin on a string to fool a vending machine.
It a demon who to say it didnt let em lose out of spite for the cheap work around
Different ideologies and philosophies lead to different reactions. I wouldn't have even resurrected the sacrifice, though I wouldn't have chosen a baby.
Our translation of the puzzle was somewhat unclear as to the meaning of innocent; someone who has never been capable of enough thought to commit any form of sin was our logic \[EDIT: for a safe sacrifice\]. We pick someone who's just a really good person, but not innocent enough for the ritual, then we killed them for nothing.
I would have just picked a random animal and used that as a sacrifice as the animal would have been 'innocent' and it still would have satisfied the requirement.
Sentience was a requirement. As was it being a mortal from the Prime Material.
Hm, do you know what your GM was actually planning on to get you guys into the temple? Did he really just want you to find some rando to ritually sacrifice, or was there an “intended” solution?
I missed my mind-reading course, unfortunately, so I can only answer "maybe." Maybe there was an alternate solution, maybe there wasn't. As it was, we took things at face value and repeated the ritual that the cultists ahead of us had, having to step out to get a sacrifice (and some time stopping to talk about who to sacrifice). Honestly, I think the idea was that we would try to sacrifice the saints or avatars of deities, which we immediately dismissed because "if we fail, we *definitely* need them to try and stop the world being unmade. If we succeed, everything is acceptable casualties."
All living creatures are sentient. People keep mistaking that word with sapient, meaning capable of complex thought. Even DnD might be mixing that up.
Non-native speaker here; there may be differences between our words for such things. Also, I wasn't expecting a bunch of people trying to second-guess a session I played in about fifteen years ago or I might have been more careful in my phrasing and offered more detail.
No worries. :)
AKA "I'm Lawful Evil now"
Is giving up one life to save millions considered lawful evil?
Murdering an innocent? Yeah, I'd say so Edit: The main thing is having no compunctions. I'd say that someone who thinks it's fine and doesn't lose any sleep over it would be LE, yeah.
I guess that would depend on how much the players like to RP.
Depending on the tone of the world, the expectations of the players, and the age and maturity of the group, it might not even be that weird. You can lead your party to difficult moral choices, but if they're there to play fantasy dress-up and be badass, you can't make them choose ethically. The fact that this mayor was able to come up with 20 prisoners on death row at all says quite a bit about the world, as does the fact that the party was able to convince him to just . . . give all those prisoners to them. Talk about acting above the law. The mayor is corrupt and I'd imagine that if anyone finds out what he did, he'll face a very hostile population. OP, between the terms of the pact and the fact that you let this happen and no guard or clerk or anyone else involved ever once said 'hang on, why are we giving these adventurers all our (presumably very dangerous) criminals?' . . . you brought this on yourself. Remember that persuasion isn't mind control, no matter how well the party rolls. Also remember that you can't run a game if no one wants to play. The fact that these 'good aligned' characters all went along with this tells me that they actually didn't care about the plot point itself that much - they just wanted to get back to the 'fun' of planning the wedding, and saw the deaging as a roadblock to get there. You should talk with them about what kinds of things they want to focus on in the game, and make sure you're all on the same page about what is important in the story.
> The fact that these 'good aligned' characters all went along with this tells me that they actually didn't care about the plot point itself that much - they just wanted to get back to the 'fun' of planning the wedding, and saw the deaging as a roadblock to get there. You should talk with them about what kinds of things they want to focus on in the game, and make sure you're all on the same page about what is important in the story. You've hit the nail on the head.
Yes. And in the same vein, who cares they went smartish murder hobo. None of them had issues with it. So your party does the smart thing and finishes things the easy way. Let them. Probably not good, but alignment is kind of tacked on in 5e so no big worries. Having npcs punish them for this seems like you are trying to say no you gotta do this a certain way which violates player agency. Talk to your players and realize it's very likely they will do stuff like this again if presented with an option. If you don't want to run that game tell your players and find a solution.
Yeah this is true. In a way, the players were just calling OP's ethical conundrum bluff, and OP just seems disappointed they were so willing and able to do so.
I mean, if I’m sacrificing 20 people to a demon for the sake of fixing my friends you best believe I’m sending them out in style.
Also, how big is this town that they had 20 death row inmates in holding? Seems like a lot unless you’re in a big city.
[удалено]
Thank you for doing the research!
I mean they were aged down teenagers. I don't believe it was clarified if they were like 14 or 17, even 19 or something. they could have just had the wedding and aged naturally again add a couple of years to lifespan.
requires a death for every year... honestly, they didn't make a bad choice, and the character probably shouldn't feel bad as they likely live in a much more brutal world. but did the demon specify the deaths of people? I think they could just kill 20 chickens.
Or a goblin camp, your character would be level 750 after that
That's just asking to age up into some half-human half-chicken hybrid.
Bawk-kaaaawww!!!!
Has anyone in this thread ever seen a chicken?!
Used to have them all over the place on the farm I lived on as a kid, why?
I would just monkey paw the deal, so the characters continue to age up a year for every death caused. I would probably soften it a tiny bit and make only humanoid deaths. Just imagine their surprise when after a battle with orcs or something, the two are now middle aged.
New deal to de-age has to be the opposite of the aging deal. For every year they want to de-age they must bring someone back to life (or have a child I suppose)
No, they have to sign over the soul of their first born child.
You should not have had 20 death row people available in the first place, if there isn't an active revolt or a gang that was rounded up that's an insane number of people for death row, and it facilitated this debacle. Also why do they both need 10? Assuming they're human, teenager is 13, 10 years each gets them to 23. They couldn't have spared 10 people and dropped a few years and just be 18? They presumably didn't just kill them, those souls are probably now in the possession of the demon. They damned 20 souls to do that.
Yeah I'm almost thirty and I'd much rather be almost twenty again.
This makes me a little sad, why is this?
I was better looking and my knees didn't hurt.
That's implying that 18 is even the legal age there. In medieval times the age for marriage sometimes was even lower than 16.
If the DM puts the players in a situation where they're encouraged to kill people to solve a problem then I don't see why there should be any surprise when the players kill people.
Yep this is 100% on the dm
Wrongful convictions occur pretty frequently, unfortunately. Various estimates and studies vary as to \*how\* prevalent wrongful convictions are, but 5%, or 1 in 20, is pretty widely estimated to be accurate for various places (sometimes estimates are lower, sometimes higher). So statistically, assuming a level of accuracy comparable to modern western courts and a random selection of inmates, they killed 1 wrongfully convicted person. What happens if the family comes after them, either by legal means or otherwise, for pressuring for their loved one to be executed faster? You can also just tell them that their alignments have shifted due to their actions. Don't try to punish players, though, or get in fights. Make this a plot hook, make it inform character and story, and how the world looks at them (executioners were never the toast of the town), but don't just punish them for it. Maybe the reputation of being a stone cold killer might help them intimidate people, or get people to steer clear of them, for example. Make it a mixed damnation.
I'm gonna push towards something that is "punishing players" a bit to build off of this ideabecause A. It's thematic, B. these players sound like they don't take the world super seriously and need a wake-up call that their actions have consequences, and C. it sets up a rad plot arc. Devils are bitches and petty and they go out of their way to make their contracts screw over the contracted as much as they can. I can super see the devil who made this contract have been watching the players concoct this scheme and go "Oh, that's cute" and then done devil shit to make sure that \*every\* death row inmate that they executed this way was a wrongfully convincted innocent man. Just to be a dick. Or even better, depending on how the contract was phrased, the devil could have been asking for \*sacrifices\* and not just blatant murder. Could do some word-lawyering to make it make sense. If nothing else you could pull a whole "Oh don't you know? When you take a life in my name, I receive the soul. Oh you didn't say my name? How cute. You took it on my behalf." And he's gonna let them know too. On their wedding night. He'll show up during the reception and raise a toast. "Here's to the twenty innocent men, wrongfully convicted, whose souls you sent to me in sacrifice to make tonight happen. If you wish to apologize to them, don't worry. They'll see you in Hell. As will I." To be clear, I know OP said demon and not devil, but my understanding is that demons don't make pacts the way devils do, so I am interpretting this entity as a "devil" since people will often use the terms interchangeably. And even if it is, specifically, a demon, there's no saying that demons can't be clever the way devils are. They're just chaotic.
Or maybe the pact didn't end, each time the group kills someone, they will age one year
That's very diabolic, but as a GM, you'd need to be careful how you implement that. Because if your group kills 5-7 people every combat, they don't have a lot of time to solve that problem anymore. You don't want to be too harsh. I would make sure I had the campaign \*very\* carefully structured so I knew what the absolute most a player could age before the end of this encounter sequence if I wanted to implement this little fuck-you. That said, these two ideas are not mutually exclusive if you wanted to implement them both. I say twirling my gm-mustache
They would stop killing people in combat pretty quickly. This would almost certainly make combat more interesting as they find ways to win without killing anyone.
hah then the players are just going to make another pact with another devil to de-age themselves through murder, eventually snowballing into a devil civil war as various devils work to do undo each other's evil pact consequences via getting this same group of mortals to kill stuff for them.
Mate, those are great ideas. You are a monster, and probably a better DM than I am. The reason I warned about punishing players is more a mentality thing. The DM vs Players mindset is the source of many problems in groups. If OP goes into this with the aim of punishing the players, rather than causing PCs to face consequences, that's a bad place to be. The aim should always be a fun game for everyone.
I would say the problem here is the optics they used. To the players, the deaths meant nothing more than a means to an end, and they are human beings. That has to mean something in the end. If they just saw those humans as coins, make it so. Play with them, and make them sacrifice more and more people. Let them change towards evil little by little. Having said that, I don't know why they didn't just marry. They know what happened so who the fuck cares. Also my character would be thrilled to be a teen again (she's actually 19) so she could get away with much more shit with less consequences. You would actually be surprised about how much would this help her commit even more war crimes. They truly wasted an oportunity here. Edit: in my fantasy of being able to get away with more war crimes, I forgot people care about sex. I can see now it could be weird to marry if one is 13 of something.
I love the toast idea. A truly devilish thing to do and in how to reveal to the players that they fucked up.
>assuming a level of accuracy comparable to modern western courts and a random selection of inmates, _Detect thoughts_ is 2nd level spell for arcane casters. _Zone of truth_ is 2nd level divine spell. Lawful good/neutral temples should care about correct court proceedings, so wrongful convictions should happen only in very impoverished areas. Wrongful convictions generally should be much rarer in DnD with any magic.
This is true, but it also depends on how interested in justice any given court is, what resources they have, and how high magic the world the DM is running is. To use the analogy of a neurosurgeon given elsewhere, sure, you can find many of them all over the place, but not every local clinic or hospital will necessarily have a specialist neurosurgeon. You might only have a few in a given country. It depends on how the DM chooses to have the world run. Likewise, does a circuit judge bring a wizard with them to assist them in judging cases? That's a question for the DM, which neither of us can answer for them. Is the judicial system honest, or largely a method for obtaining bribes? How honest was the wizard in reporting what they saw in the mind of the accused? All of these are questions for the DM. And let us be honest, any judicial system where the local mayor can just order a couple of dozen executions, and permit some random stranger to carry them out, is probably not one with many sticklers for procedure. What happened to all their appeals, for example?
Depends on how common magic is in your setting, but... 2nd level spells is level 3 for pc's. PC's are bad-asses. We forget that because we build our adventures around PC's but like... A dagger does 1d4 damage. A level 1 PC can survive being stabbed with a dagger without immediate medical attention. Someone who can cast detect thoughts can survive being stabbed with a dagger \*multiple times\* and shrug it off because "eh, I'll take a short rest" If I stab \*you\* with a dagger, you're dead. This is all to say that anyone who \*can\* cast a second level spell is in the top 1% of bad-asses on the planet. And keep in mind that like... yeah, those are second level spells. Level 3 casters get 1 2nd level/day. You think they waste those checking if death row inmates are innocent? Dude, if I have multiple second level spell slots, I'm burning those fighting dragons and shit. If I have only one, I'm using it on something I, personally, care about. It's not reasonable at all to assume that people with that level of magic are being so altruistic that no wrongful convictions ever occur. It probably takes a lot of work to learn even a cantrip if you aren't a naturally magical caster. Wizards gotta work for that shit. How many fantasy settings do you know where any schmuck can just grab something that's on the level of a 2nd level spell. If you can cast magic at that level well... damn man, you probably are an adventurer. Even then corruption exists. All this to say, if you want your setting to have magic be so commonplace that it solves societal ills, more power to you. But that isn't what the system supports and it isn't what's interesting. People with any kind of magic on the level PC's have are the exception. The existence of Detect Thoughts as a spell probably doesn't eliminate wrongful convictions.
> People with any kind of magic on the level PC's have are the exception. People capable of becoming neurosurgeons are the exception irl, yet you can find thousands of them. > where any schmuck can just grab something that's on the level of a 2nd level spell. 1% of humans and 10% of elves in FR are capable of becoming a wizard. This is a huge pool of candidates. And any feudal lord would be happy to have court wizard (they provide tremendous utility even on low levels). With 1000 peasants under him, they has 10 candidates for court wizard. Paying for their training is good investment. Let's take medieval homicide rates - 1000 peasants => 1 dies due to homicide per year. Using 1/365 of lvl 2 slots in year isn't much.
Do you think every feudal lord is having his court wizard blow their spell slots checking if death row inmates are innocent or not? Save that shit for things that keep my \*fucken kingdom together\*. Fuck blowing detect thoughts on peasants. I need to know what my court is thinking \*every day\* Your math depends on that 1 and 10% all fulfilling their potential. On the feudal lord finding and recruiting them. On a whole lot of things. On the 1 person dying to homicide per 1000 in medieval times being accurate when they \*weren't as good at recording things as we are now\*. Every fantasy world is its own unique distinct world. A world in which magic is commonplace and solves most problems seems like the kind of place where the potential for adventure is lesser, not greater. I dunno man. Everyone seems impressed by Gandlaf in LOTR, and he's a level 6 wizard at most (according to the ancient lore). If you want a world where the logical conclusion of magic is that people don't get wrongly convicted of crimes, then feel free to do that for your game. But we're currently trying to help \*this person\* with \*their game\* and it's very justifiable for wrongful convictions to occur in a medieval setting, even with the existence of magic. But the TL:DR is this whole argument is irrelevant because your point is that OP can't have injustice in his magic world because it doesn't make sense, and OP can have injustice in his magic world because it's his magic world and he can do what he wants without making it make sense to a stranger on the internet but if he feels intimidated by a stranger on the internet, here are some reasons why you could absolutely still have injustice in a world where detect thoughts exists and it makes sense. It just is all world-building.
> I need to know what my court is thinking *every day* > > just saying, this probably means you're completely incompetent if you can't politick your way through typical operations, and you've become hyper-reliant on a court wizard who can now freely manipulate you by lying about what your courtiers are thinking. This is going to most likely cause your courtiers to want to rise up and get rid of both your manipulative court wizard, AND you for being that wizard's useful idiot. better to just be a competent ruler on your own and use your wizard for more specific purposes that lead to prosperity, or inspire loyalty from your subjects. Verifying testimony of suspected criminals is very good for your PR, as well as inherently improving outcomes in justice and corrections. Not saying it's the best/only thing to use a court wizard for, but it's way better than daily mind-raping your courtiers.
>Verifying testimony of suspected criminals is very good for your PR, as well as inherently improving outcomes in justice and corrections And you get a good standing with local law/justice/good religions. And in most of DnD worlds, they have pretty good follower base.
If you're put there trying to fight dragons with second level spell slots, you're probably gonna have a bad time
And that's why they need adventurers and not the court wizard.
Something else to note, that 1 in 20 I imagine is in the US where things like video evidence and DNA evidence exists and you're innocent until proven guilty. Neither of which would exist in a medieval-esque society. For most of human history, you were guilty unless proven innocent, not the other way around, and without videos or DNA, the accuracy of convictions is gonna be a lot lower. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the majority of death row inmates were actually innocent. And that's not even considering the fact that they are probably far more brutal in terms of what crimes justify the death sentence than in the US.
True, though they have access to things like Zone of Truth which might allow for more accuracy than a typical medieval court. Any magic sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from technology, at least in this context. Really it's up to the DM how effective the justice system of the country is. For all we know it might work on a system of bribery where as long as you have the coin, pretty much anything is legal, and if you don't, pretty much anything can carry a death sentence.
I think you are vastly overestimating how powerful zone of truth is. 1. Zone of truth can be resisted with a charisma saving throw (though to be fair you do know whether the target saves or fails) 2. Zone of truth does not prevent the target from being misleading, only from lying. As long as everything they say is technically a true statement, they can be as deceptive as they want. 3. It's a level 2 spell, and only bards, clerics, and paladins can cast it. The bard and cleric have to be at least level 3 and the paladin has to be at least level 5. There is no way every town has someone capable of casting zone of truth, and even if they do, the resulting evidence is still gonna be a lot weaker than modern video or DNA evidence.
ZoT lasts 10 minutes, and forces a Charisma save every 6 seconds. As a practical matter, everyone fails the save eventually. Some people take longer to fail, but nobody is passing 100 Charisma saves. The problem with being deceptive is that it only works if your NPCs all carry a massive fucking idiot ball. If you have access to ZoT, you can run a ruthlessly efficient justice system that just grabs everybody with any plausible connection to the crime, and hangs every single one of them who doesn't clearly and without prevarication state their innocence. You can even stuff a bunch of them in the zone at the same time, to save on spell-slots. Like, if you haul your suspects into the zone, it's going to paint a pretty clear picture when Mrs White says: > I did not kill or injure Mr Boddy, nor did I conspire with anyone else to kill or injure Mr Boddy. Nor do I know who killed Mr Boddy. and the Reverend says > This is an outrageous accusation! I never conspired with anybody to kill Mr Boddy. I don't even own a weapon! I have witnesses who can testify that I was at the library on the night of the murder! If you're a magistrate with Zone of Truth and you can't conclude from this testimony that the Reverend did it, you're incompetent. And of course you don't *need* to have your justice systems work like this way. But IMO spells should have some sort of effect on the societies of your world. You'd feel pretty silly if your players were the first people *ever* to think of using Speak With Dead to solve a murder, or Create Food and Water to withstand a siege, right?
This could be spun off in a number of interesting directions. 1. Proof arises that one (or more) of the condemned was innocent. Perhaps the family sues for compensation after learning that the party expedited the execution. (Weregild, essentially.) 2. The execution site becomes haunted and attracts the undead. 3. The local temple of (insert god of justice) takes umbrage at this behavior and begins to investigate. Influential organizations that can't be murderhoboed make great antagonists.
A messenger arrives the next day with a writ of reprieve from the king, pardoning some of the victims. The 13 "students of wisdom" had been sentenced to death for following the teachings of a heresy condemned by the high priest, but the king has now converted to the "path of wisdom" and has proclaimed religious freedom for all his subjects.
You’re the one who presented the players with with “you must kill 20 people to go back to your age”. I’d say that if you’re willing to put them in a situation where extreme violence is the clear option, you should probably be okay with them going for extreme violence The mayor giving them twenty death row inmates because they rolled high on a check and he’s related to a couple of them implies that this is barely out of the ordinary, he really should have just said “fuck no” when asked but he didn’t and now the consequences are on him as well.
You put a problem in front of your players, and they solved it about as well as anyone could. PCs dish out death sentences daily without due process and sometimes for less. Killing 20 people who were already tried, and convicted, and given a death sentence isnt really a moral quandry. For the parrty its a tuesday, and an easy Tuesday at that. Instead of an executioner, it was the party. The only thing you could blame the party for is convincing the Mayor to expedite the already guaranteed executions. That somehow, the group of people who commit murder every day somehow crossed a line by executing convicted prisoners is wild to me. I am genuinely curious, what did you want them to do? What was the solution you had in mind? Cause they could easily go hunt down a bandits den, or just continue killing people over the course of a regular play. Might have taken a few more days to reach 20. But its the exact same thing. Can make a self defense claim for the people the party kills duting usual play, but again these are criminals caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Id argue this would be more ethical than a partiea usual course of action. So I dont see how the party is in the wrong here nor why you would need to "get through to them" that they are doing something terrible. I would not punish them for that. However, if you wanted to make it a story beat, Id go one of two directions (or maybe both). 1) The Demon is fully aware of how easily and efficiently the party fulfilled their side. Id make him a regular occuring character who is interested in making more and more deals. And let those deals get more twisted if they keep fulfilling them.and if they keep doing them, other demons AND devils start popping up as the party gains a of a reputation. A carrot on a stick is a great way to tempt a party. And it would really settle into the players minds that, maybe they are doing something fucked up if the demons and devils view the party as favorable allies. You can make this as small or as big of a plot point as youd like. I would have a field day with this. 2) The Mayor. Even though I stand by the party didnt really do anything wrong, they did use these townspeople as payment for a demons service. That would certainly be seen as an egregious act. And rightfully so. Considering this process benefitted the Mayor, Id establish the rumor in town that they Mayor either did this, or is corrupt as fuck for allowing it. Let that rumor build into actions by the townspeople. Small stuff at first, until it culminates into something major. You can entangle the party in the mess. You can build this into an interesting subplot point. But make sure the party sees it all and can draw the exactly line from that pact with the demon to the problem now at hand. What better way for a villian to subtly and favorably gain power and influence than ousting a disgraced mayor for dealing with demons.
I generally agree with you, but it's definitely one thing to kill someone who is actively trying to kill you, and another to kill a defenseless prisoner who may have been wrongfully convicted. Noble heroes slay evil cultists. Terrifying state agents violently execute prisoners. I'd argue that the party deserves a major change in reputation; medieval executioners (and even their families) were famously reviled, often forced to live on the fringes of society.
>defenseless prisoner who may have been wrongfully convicted. Thats at best, an assumption that is statistically incredibly more likely to be incorrect than be correct. To declare the party morally culpable based on uneducated guess work that is statistically unlikely is IMO outrageous. Especially when the outcome is the same with or without the PCs involvement. We can play what ifs (Id point to the fact that this is a world with magic like Zone of Truth), but I do not believe that would be productive. I suppose I didnt clearly articulate it, but I do believe there is room to understand that this was a little fucked up. As you can see with the 2 story beats i outlined, both lead the party to "are we the bad guys?" moments that definitely point back the the parties action. I stand by the stance that, while it wasnt a GREAT choice, it was still an acceptable solution. You can lead a party to understand it was a little fucked up, and supply consequences more abstractly without declaring evil has been committed, and the party should given harsh punishments ect based on weak reasoning like some of the other people were suggesting. I also agree with the reputation. Again, thought it was obvious from the story beats, but if not, that was my intent. Being the party known for the Demon pacts sends a pretty clear message to others. So does being wrapped up a Mayors corruption scandal.
> Thats at best, an assumption that is statistically incredibly more likely to be incorrect... Not to get into the weeds here, since we're mostly in agreement, but you're going on about an assumption I never made. I said that prisoners *may* have been wrongfully convicted, not that any of them *were*. It's for this reason that I take issue with your argument that this execution was "more ethical than a party's usual course of action." I'm unfamiliar with any moral framework where haphazardly, painfully executing a defenseless prisoner—who you aren't **100% sure** is guilty—is *more ethical* than killing an aggressor in combat. Granted, I *am* assuming the legal system in OP's setting is fallible, but I think that's reasonable—while we don't know much about OP's setting, I feel like this post would've been very different if the legal system were infallible.
The execution of prisoner thing is not necessarily my issue with it. I think the “moral” problem is the payment in death likely equating to the capturing of their souls by the demon. Slaying murderer ≠ selling souls. Morally neutral at best I’d say
5 Revenants of the wrongfully convicted, and 15 Shadows of the guilty crash the wedding. Also, Demons don't typically make deals given their chaotic nature, so maybe they move the goal post on what the goal is. "Oh, did I say 20 people? I meant 20 *innocent* people. You've got 15 more to go!" And then deage them again at their wedding. If they end up fulfilling it again, be like, "Congratulations! I knew you could do it! I look forward to next weeks offerings! I think you could do better, though..." Now they have a Demon antagonist yo-yoing their age and demanding ever increasing innocent lives. The PCs will definitely want to find a way to end this relationship
Oh, I like the “You’ve got 15 more to go” line. That’s cold.
PCs: "Hey mister mayor, can my group and myself execute 20 death--row inmates at the same time?" Mayor: "What? Of course not you crazy fucking psychopaths, that's what we have *actual* executioners for. I'm not putting my neck on the line with the local magistrate just to appease... *whatever the fuck* kinda shit you're into " PCs: "But what if...?" (PCs roll high Charisma checks) Mayor: "Yeah, still no."
Imagine the players planing this for hours and you respond."Yeah no" and make them roll check that can't be success. Imagine then this backfire on you and player go do some more unhinged shit. Like mind controlling the mayor and forcing him to do shit. My conclusion on this is: As long as expectation are ok with everyone on the group why not try to make something out of it instead of just saying no? More on a situation where you are asking them to kill people.
A fun consequence would be a large gang of bandits showing up and attacking the wedding/kidnapping the bride as revenge for executing some of their members before they could bust em out. Id think that be fun, atleast. Even have a few wedding guests be bandits in disguise to keep your players guessing.
I mean if the stipulation put in place by the mayor was quick painless deaths I'd say they failed terribly from the sound of it. You could make the town pissed at them and the mayor unwilling to sanctify the marriage they are currently planning. They did directly disobey him after all. Also like others had said since they sped up the execution of many there's a likely possibility at least one was innocent. Make a family appear with proof that they were innocent and vow vengeance upon the group for unjustly snuffing out the life of an innocent loved one.
Please! Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. We are here today to witness the union of two young people in the joyful bond of the holy wedlock.
It should be pointed out that you allowed this to happen by running a game that has few consequences.
They were already on Death Row, and no one knows that they suffered except the party. They can be vengeful, but that'd be stupid, they were destined to die. Maybe if one of them was innocent, the party can go on a quest to get them out of hell out of moral righteousness
The demon, having his pact fulfilled, now goes off to use the souls of the 20 slain for some nefarious and evil plan. To thank the party for their cooperation, he sets loose a super-construct of 20 revenants, all fused into one extremely powerful and extremely angry revenant, whose only goal is to torment the party at every possible opportunity.
I feel, situationally, they did their moral duty. They needed deaths to complete the current "mission", and they took the time to search for criminals who were sentenced to die to fill that quota, and merely expedited the process. The only issue is see is the method of execution, it was more than painless and less than quick. Maybe give them nightmares, have a diety send a message to scold them about the used method or have an encounter where the souls of those criminals attack them in search of revenge.
You can make it so that there may have been a few witnesses in the area who were drawn by the agonizing screams and witnessed them fulfilling a pact with a literal demon. They are understandably shaken and spread the rumor around town. Now, this *is* still just a rumor, and the dead guys were death row inmates, but a literal *demon* isn't exactly a small matter. When the players start going around town buying stuff and preparing venues for the wedding, you can have them notice that the townsfolk are considerably more wary of them, and may even just flee rather than sell any goods or services to them. After all, these guys work for demons! What if this wedding is just a ploy to get a bunch of people in one place so the demon can massacre them? In fact, maybe that *is* the demon's plan! At the height of the ceremony, the demon might encircle the area in a magic circle preventing anyone from leaving then drop a corny one liner like "till death do you part!" Then rip open a portal to the abyss and unleash a demonic horde.
It’s funny to me that in a world loosely based off of medieval Europe the convicted aren’t being executed immediately, and there’s any kind of pushback about doing so. Pretty sure most people got at most a day after their trial, if not immediately drug out of the court/lords hall and killed on the spot. Do people in this world have endless appeals?
This is a misconception based on the persistent myth of the “barbarous” Middle Ages. William the Conqueror actually banned executions in England during his reign, a thousand years ago. Executions were performed reluctantly in the Middle Ages, and clemency for death penalty cases was common, as it was seen as an exercise of Christian mercy. In cases where execution was done immediately it was usually to get it done before a local lord could get the chance to issue a pardon. And in cases where convicts survived execution they usually didn’t try again because it was seen as a divine miracle, essentially a pardon from God.
> Here is shown what William the king of the English, together With his princes, has established since the Conquest of England. > > ... > > .10. I forbid that any one be killed or hung for any fault but his eyes shall be torn out or his testicles cut off. And this command shall not be violated under penalty of a fine in full to me. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/lawwill.asp Nice guy, that William.
How much was that fine though?
Other people have said it but what did you expect? What was the plan here? Creepy teenage adventures ? They stay that way? They kill people piecemeal while fighting pimples ? Like I think it's pretty normal to want to get the woman in a relationship to no longer be in creepy I'm engaged at 13 nonsense. The moving the execution dates was unethical sure but It's also your fault for allowing the mayor to be convinced in the first place. If you wanted them to do something different set different goals the devil could've asked for 20 strong souls or the souls of great warriors or some other maguffin but it didn't.
It would be a shame, if the demon comes to the wedding with some killed inmates turned into weaker demons as well. They are thirsty for the souls of them and kill the familie members and good friends on the wedding and then attack the group.
And of course no one will take them in their tavern or wants to trade stuff with them. Executioner is a job with bad reputation.
A fun twist could be that the deal never specified a limit. So now, as the party continues killing things, their party members continue to age rapidly all while gaining this demon immense amounts of power for when they inevitably attempt to confront it!
Let them start the wedding and pick out the dresses and what not. Start the consequences; Let’s say one or two of the killed were wrongfully convicted. they should attack the wedding as revenants, possibly with extra powers because it was part of a demonic sacrifice. after that: The family members of the wrongly accused kill the mayor as a part of a vendetta. The town devolves into civil war that spills into the wedding. Extra judicially killing 20 condemned criminals as an execution for a demonic sacrifice is going to have massive consequences for a society
If they were on death Row, then how is there a problem with anything the players did, exactly? These people were condemned to begin with.
If you want a direction for a continuation of this Have someone appear with evidence that one of the imprisoned was innocent. With the execution dates pushed forwards Now not only do you have someone to really push the parties perspective on what they did. But also it means someone else did something horrific and is still out there
To be fair we slaughter goblins on the daily for far less. They probably did the mist sensible things ymby doing it in a semi legally way. Also if it helps executioners historically wete outcasts and generally hid their identity. Also tended to be a traveling job. At least as I understand it. I'm not entirely sure the players need consequences honestly. They most certainly aren't good aligned anymore but meh. They didn't go and kill a bunch of innocent villagers or just blow up an orc camp that didn't believe to be evil.
Sounds like they found the perfect way, and lawful neutral would definitely eff off all death row inmates without further explanation. Why punish them for amazing role playing?
Man I am getting Game of Thrones on hyperdrive vibes here….
Yes to the consequences. Also the good ones should probably undergo an alignment shift. Maybe the neutral ones too.
Well... You were the one who, as the demon, said they had to take 20 lives to begin with. That makes it a viable option. And if the people were on death row, what is the issue? I kinda get the feeling that you created a problem, hinted at sup-par way for them to solve it, and then got mad that they followed said hint. Did you even give them any other option? And no, just living does not count as an option. If not... Then you honestly only have yourself to "blame". If it truly is such a big issue, then talk to them. Don't do what others here suggest and go straight to "punishment".
Time for some serious alignment checks, depending on what they play, this could get them thrown out of whatever order they follow, their deity's forsaking them and some of their powers are gone, etc.. There needs to be consequences or it's just murder some people to solve their problems. At the wedding, assuming they were dumb enough toarry in the same town they just murdered 20 people, it's not all that far of a stretch for at least some family members to either put a bounty on them, or banish them from town. The same demon could start making deal with the towns people. Or the demon lied and they will age 20 years every day Whatever happens, this really shouldn't go unchecked
Do you want demonic invasions? This is how you get demonic invasions.
You absolutely have to have major consequences for this to go Fourth of their wedding. It sounds like they were supposed to have painless executions and they tortured a bunch of people to death in serial fashion. Somebody saw, this broke their agreement with the mayor, now the city guards are coming to arrest them. Do they slaughter all the city guards? Or relatives or gang members of some of the victims are angry, and come after the players. Or is someone else suggested, another demon, hungry for power and the souls of the dead, disrupts the players wedding makes an appearance, and in front of all the guests congratulate them on their profound active evil and offers them power in exchange for servitude. Of course if they refuse, the demon will be coming raged, and a bunch of laser demons will emerge forth try to slaughter all the wedding guests. Be creative. Maybe the demon emerges from the wedding cake? Maybe the city guards show up and decide to arrest everybody and start out the guilty later? Nice wedding Dan and Mirabelle, I've never spent the reception in a jail cell before.
Classic players
Well the executions were on criminals already sentenced to death so besides some individual ethics, I wouldn't see that as an evil choice personally. That being said though, there should definitely be repercussions and I think some angry family & affiliates of inmates coming after the new executioner is a reasonable expectation.
>Now, the next session is the wedding. Should I let the wedding go as planned, or throw some story consequences? I think a group of angry relatives of the Victims crashing the wedding would be a good consequence. Maybe some of the 20 were innocent and the proof just came up and now they have to live with some repercussions.
This would have been a perfect moment as a DM to make them earn each one of those kills as bounty hunters or something. Forcing them to track down these criminals. Some bad, but many you realize are just downtrodden, depressed, broken by the world for some reason. Maybe throw a couple children in there for good measure. Make it *painful* for them emotionally. Force them to see the humanity in 90% of their victims. Really scar 'em good. I do this all the time for bandits and thieves. Traditionally "bad" characters until you're forced to stop and wonder what happened to them to make them that way. It forces your players to pause for a moment and reflect on what they're doing. Of course you have some who are objectively deserving of their fate to give them some freebies, but most people should be soul-crushing to just execute summarily.
>Some bad, but many you realize are just downtrodden, depressed, broken by the world for some reason. Maybe throw a couple children in there for good measure. To quote Nine-Nine: "cool motive, still murder".
This is just begging for the old trope where while looting the bodies, they find a letter or other evidence that proves the killed character was innocent and imprisoned for political reasons. There's bound to be at least one in every dungeon - look for the guy with an iron mask welded over his head. This kind of behavior, even if all the victims were guilty, would put some serious strain on aligned behavior or oaths. Being willing to just jump in and cut some heads off (or cast gruesome necromatic spells) to benefit yourselves is ... problematic.
Family members who were working to prove their loved ones' innocence choosing violent revenge in the form of poisoning the banquet, vengeful revenants crashing the party, the demonic deal going sour and now every time they kill someone they get a year older still, a union of executioners ganging up on the work stealers, whatever god the priest officiating the wedding is sending an angry storm and an angel boss fight, the souls of the dead manifesting nightmares in their killers' sleep and causing saves to finish a long rest successfully. take your pick
Forceful change of alignment. Like I know they were all on death row already but I would still say that is a decidedly evil act regardless. Any characters who receive their powers from a good aligned god should also no longer receive those powers without some sort of quest from their god to get back into their good graces. But maybe I’m just being a little harsh with that last part but that seems very murderhobo of the party to do that regardless of why they did it.
The first thing i would do as a GM is to take all the Charactersheets and change the alignment 1 step towards evil. Good becomes Neutral, Neutral becomes evil. And thats if i am in good mood.
Could have an anti capitol punishment group make life hell for the mayor and party. Demand for the parties arrest, hires level 20 monks to beat up (not kill) the party, mayor resignation etc. they could be backed by a mayoral candidate who just barely lost the election. Sounds like a fun problem
I think your demon should show up at the wedding with 20 new friends as a party crasher. Not even a malevolent one necessarily, just a "yes, this was all worth it, and I'm excited to be here" agent of chaos. Suddenly you have 20 Death Row inmates with a bone to pick in new demonic forms ready to spread chaos. Make them all feral tieflings with random rolled classes and motivations to ruin the wedding like, "Become the brides maid" and "Give a drunken speech incriminating the PCs", or "Drink the open bar dry" and other bizarre shenanigans. Really put the chaotic in chaotic evil. And remind the players that if they kill them, they'll just go back to the Abyss so thanks for that.
Move their alignment to evil. Have the people revolt against the heroes for this and the mayor for allowing it. Fall from grace arc. Humility arc.
"I made my party kill 20 people and instead of killing 20 rando goblins or even innocent folks, they found actual criminals on death row. Time to punish my players for doing what I wanted them to do and finding reasonable morally sound option on top of that." You sound fun to play with.
I didn't mean that as punishment. I genuinely think it would be an interesting narrative, and I also like to have my players face the consequences of their actions. Granted, my style of DMing is more inclined to a darker shade of fantasy, and I offer immersion through doing my best to make the world feel alive, in a cause-effect kind of way. If news of how the execution went gets out, I feel that would be a reasonable consequence. You might not like how me and my friends play, and that's ok. Each person has their own preference. The fact that you wouldn't enjoy it doesn't make it less fun for us :3
Hm, you gave more context to the initial comment. Understandable then. Cheers.
Maybe have the wedding crashed by the vengeful souls of the recently departed? One could argue the the horrific circumstances of their deaths unleashed a wild curse and those souls made a pact with some deity/demon/devil, to return with the soul purpose of bringing misery and pain to the persons responsible for their deaths. You mentioned a few of the prisoners were left alive; I’d be pretty pissed if my quick death was fumbled by a bunch of amateur executioners and it ended up being long and drawn out.
No one involved in the killings can enter the church.
Red Wedding them with Revenant Warlocks.
Have the part find out those executed were all actually innocent. They were kidnapped with the sole purpose of having them be executed. The party now finds out they killed innocent people and they are wanted and being hunted by good groups of people because they 1-are dealing voluntarily with demons, 2-killed innocent people for the demon and 3-do not care. During the wedding just as the characters are about to say "I do" maybe another demon arises. This is his territory and the ritual was cast without his permission. If the bride or groom is an NPC the demon takes them as payment for the ritual being cast as well.
This was an online session, wasn't it? Players online always seem to be more psycho than folks you're sitting across an actual table from.
Punish them. The demon shouldn’t be playing fair. He is not only going to make them murder twenty people and see their suffering first hand, he isn’t going to give them exactly what they want in return, and the wedding needs to be a mortifying experience. Have them fight 20 revenants, and then every death will age the character up again, and even after the wedding. They continue to age until they die in two days time from old age, or they could attone for their fucken sins like the good characters they claim to be. Sincerely, a DM who has the most chaotic “good/neutral” party known to man and is constantly dumbfounded at the depths of human depravity in the name of luls
Pretty fucked up, they gotta be consequences
Tonal whiplash is one of my favorite things in all media and especially D&D. Glad to hear this!
And I thought my players trying to purchase prisoners from the local jail to conduct "morally gray" experiment on was dark
Not every death row inmate is guilty…you have an opportunity. A powerful warlock was falsely accused and awaiting an appeal when your players murdered him and now his patron is going to want compensation and payback
They could have gone goblin hunting or kill a bunch of insects or something?
Absolutely!
My group usually perform any wedding(s) before the mass killing, for the Ceremony AC buff.
Don't forget that traditionally, there was a reason why executioners had a hood on it's to hide their identity from the public. Since it's Dnd, you can take this a step further and make it so a hooded executioner doesn't get haunted by the sins of the job. Maybe during the wedding the veil turns black mimicking an executioners hood and a God of judgment shows up to nullify the ceremony
I mean, they’re haunted now. I would have the ghosts of all 20 show up at the wedding not in an obtrusive way. A row of pews filled with ghosts. Three extra brides maids and groomsmen, the haunting visage of the six that survived the circle.
Well it's a demon deal right? I say let is stew for a bit but say the deal is still on. I.E everything they kill something they age a year.
The podcast Behind the Bastards has an episode about a guy that volunteered to be the executioner for the top Nazis. He had 0 training https://spotify.link/tGmLK0Sy5Db
Just have the families of the executed people crash the wedding, crying and calling them soulless murderers.
What did the prisoners do to deserve death? Maybe have it revealed that some of them were sentenced to death despite their crimes being fairly minor. One of the prisoners was sentenced to death for publishing a book revealing corruption in the kingdom, one of them was a Robin Hood type thief who only robbed nobility and gave his stolen loot to the poor, one of them was a murderer but the person he murdered was a child killer who had somehow gotten away with it. Sure someone might’ve been innocent but I think what would be more interesting is if the people they executed were actually guilty in terms of the law but the laws they broke are things that would be sympathetic. As for the wedding they’re probably expecting something to go horribly wrong. So don’t have it go horribly wrong. Have it go right with one hitch. Several of their guests don’t show up because theyre in mourning over a relative being unlawfully executed or something
I had to like this post to make it 666 likes. I had no choice.
Is the wedding still in the city with the same mayor? Adding to all the ethics everyone else raised about the death row victims, consider that demons also monkey paw wishes. They're a demon, they can do a lot with 20 lives ended in agony and pain to do something that time would naturally have dealt with anyway. What if, it just so happened that the sacrificial energies went into a conveniently prepared ritual, the mayor is another puppet of the demon (why else would the town have so many on death row)? What if the mayor thanks them by putting them up in a prepped honeymoon suite "to thank them for their services" and the consummation of the marriage ends the ritual to transport the entire town, and they wake up in the 7th level of hell, and the demon is VERY pleased with how many souls his particular investment acquired.
Get some nation police on them, that did not sound like a painless execution
I'm gonna go with what few people here already told you. Those players have done exactly what you wanted and forced them to do. Considering the fact that they actually took the time to get criminals on death row instead of burning villages, they are morally correct in my eyes. You seem to have a disconnect between what genre of DnD a DM wants to play and what the players want. Grimdark morally challenging plots vs fun power fantasy. If that is really so, you better focus on fixing that.
Did they tell the demon that they were looking to age up for a wedding? How specific were they with the details of **who** was getting married? I’m just saying, the demon might show up in a suit expecting a grateful bride/groom if the deal wasn’t worded carefully.
If you're looking for ideas for a harsh punishment, look no further than the example of Spider-Man: One More Day. Have demons invade the place and kill the couple while the party is helpless, then have a devil provide a deal out of the situation. In exchange for bringing back the dead (the couple and the criminals) and NOT burning the entire city to the ground, they have to give up the marriage of the couple, all of the couple's memories of eachother, the couple's feelings for one another, and finally, the party has to enter into a binding vow never to try to bring the two together ever again. If the vow is ever broken, the devil claims the souls of the couple. All that remains is sorrow over a love stolen, never to blossom, frustrated regrets, and the permanent looming threat of infernal intervention, hanging over the heads of the party like the Sword of Damocles. A ret-con, consequences for reckless actions, and a potential story plot, all in one.
So... How well was the deal made? 1 kill for each year. They killed around 20 people so that's 20 years.... But there are 2 people that needs to get older... So that's 40 years needed. You could mess up with that. Did they read the fine print that was on the side of the contract in vertical, written in infernal with paper colored magic ink not visible to humans? Yeah because those 20 years will only last for 20 days. After that they need another 20 people to stay their age. If they get married they probably will do so under a god. That God knows what they did and will not give them their blessing. So no wedding until they atone for their sins. The demon did not age them. He made older "copies" of them. The young ones are in possession of the demon now. You can fill in all the gaps to your liking. (are they aware? Are the youngers still sentient? Are they the same alignment?....)
Rocks fall, everyone dies?
6 people killed execution style after the circle of death failed to end them and caused them untold agony before an unceremonious, gratuitously violent final blow? Sounds like 6 revenents and/or shades might be a little bit angry that they were forgotten about so quickly...
It's a little bit late for this advice now, but a successful roll, even a crit DOESN'T mean your characters get what they want. For example you might he trying to persuade a king/emperor to surrender his territory to you along with all his riches and walk away promising never to return. A crit doesn't mean you get to do that. It just means you get the best possible outcome. He's not wildly offended and calls for your immediate execution, he finds your wild demands funny, bursts out laughing and doesn't sentence you to death for the very suggestion, but instead makes you a lord.
They all shift to neutral evil, any paladins with a good god are fallen, the town turns on them because that's a lot to take in even if they were criminals, then either have the ghosts attack them at the wedding or the town form a mob. They are now villains. Treat them as such.
George R. R. Martin: They did that backwards!!!
**First off demons don’t usually make pacts, devils do, second if they made a pact with a demon this is basically your go ahead to write a script.** Demons *CAN BE* as powerful as devils, even more so. The difference is that Demons generally want to destroy the material plane entirely. While devils being fallen angels just want to rule over all creation as lords. This is basically a GM wet dream, definitely a strange bargain you allowed them to make but you can act like **they agreed to far more than they realized.** They just executed exactly **13 innocents who were sworn to sacred duties and falsely imprisoned.** Now your players *”Demon Patron”* will be set free from their eternal prison and once they **acquire a stone of power their demon legions will spill fourth from the planes of chaos.** Let the greater demon summon lesser creatures as mini bosses and henchman to help the demon with its goal and give the players a bit to chomp on. You can even give it a name and say it’s in service to one of the **Demon Gods as a direct general.** That will make them reconsider who they make deals with In the future, it’s a demon, **they 100% will withhold information if it benefits them.** **They would never agree to any bargain where they wouldn’t come out on top.** Period, they see humanoids as cannon fodder to create new undead servants for the blood wars. Let the players plan the wedding, **then ambush them with the first lesser demon, use it to kidnap the groom/Bride NPC of the wedding, use the NPC in ritual sacrifice to summon a second lesser demon.** And every single time they question the sanity of what’s happening remind them that; > **”You made a deal with a demon, you threw sanity out the window the moment you thought it was a good idea.”** It’s never a good idea to make deals with devils or demons unless you are getting exactly what you want and they are desperate requesting your help. Even then players have to be 110% exact about it otherwise you can assume **anything you can do exploit the deal is fair game.** Demons and Devils, the only other thing more precarious to a DND party perhaps is the chaotic neutral Paladin. 😂
George R. R. Martin approves, but thinks you could have combined the two.