Consequences
If you’ve grown up on Monopoly and Sorry!, then there’s a bit of culture shock when you arrive at D&D.
“You mean I can do anything?”
“You can certainly try.”
“Like anything anything?”
“Within reason.”
And then, with wide and sparkling eyes: “Guys… Let’s rob the magic item shop!”
That’s the go-to story among the old timers in my group. To hear them tell it, that long-ago heist did not end well. The newbies tripped a magical alarm, summoned the town guard, and failed to surrender without a fight. Theft is punishable by the standard penalty quest: slay ##[monster] as community service. Murdering half the town guard, on the other hand, is punishable by hanging from the neck until dead. Their next characters were a bit more respectable, or at least more circumspect in their murderhoboing.
We’ve all heard the standard dungeon master advice: Make sure that there are consequences. If the players want to be thieves and murderers, they get treated like thieves and murderers. But if you’ve ever had the misfortune to meet an epic level innkeeper, you probably know that it’s possible to go overboard in the consequences department.
What I want to caution against in today’s comic is the knee-jerk need to “punish” player behavior. Especially when you’re dealing with new players, I think it’s better to encourage creativity than crack down on misconduct. I mean sure, if you’ve got a chronic murderhobo like Fighter in the group, then go nuts with the rocks. But when players are in the “testing boundaries” stage of their gamer development, try showing a little restraint. Imagine if, the first time you tried to rob a shop in an Elder Scrolls game, you had to retire your character rather than pay a fine. I doubt I’d have ever finished Oblivion.
When you encounter a new game, pushing the boundaries of what’s allowable is only natural. You try to glitch out of the map. You kick the chickens. You mess with the NPCs. The same impulse applies to the tabletop. But whether you’re in the digital realm or the analog, the novelty wears off. You eventually settle down to play. So if you’re running for such a player, give ’em time to get it out of their system. We’ve all been there, and it can even be fun if you let it. After all, “We stole all this crazy magic crap and now half the kingdom is after us!” makes for a pretty good story.
Question of the day! Have you ever had to deal with murderhoboing as a GM? What happened to the offending players? Alternatively, have you ever tried on a pair of murderhobo pants yourself? Did you get away with your shenanigans, or were you bludgeoned about the head by sudden-onset consequences? Let’s hear your tales of antisocial adventuring down in the comments!
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Hoooooo boy. I’ve seen some hobo-murdering.
That is to say a murderhobo murdering a hobo. We were trying to get information from Crazy Louie. The Gunslinger had just managed to convince the guy that snorting a tiny amount of black powder every day could make his missing toes grow back in just a few weeks. It looked like he was just about ready to make a trade and tell us what he’d seen that we needed to know in exchange for our “Magic Fairy Dust”.
The Rogue, who has not been participating in the roleplay up to this point, decides that now is the time to sneak attack and kill Crazy Louie with no warning because the rogue’s player was bored with this line of investigation and had decided that Louie was crazy, so obviously we weren’t going to get anything useful out of him anyways.
He faced no consequences, aside from that the group eventually fell apart like every other group that hadn’t outright kicked him out. That group was definitely enabling him, and the people who had a problem with the guy were outnumbered by the people who wanted to avoid conflict at all costs.
Geek social fallacies?
http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html
I heard that. Crazy how those things seem to keep coming up, no matter how widely that article is circulated.
I’d never actually seen that article before, but yeah, that seems appropriate. Numbers 1 and 3 especially applied to that group, and I suppose number 2 did too, though that one was more benign.
I’ve actually found that running a new group through an elder scrolls style game world seriously helps control expectations and curbs problematic murderhoboing. Anything outside the town gates is fair game. Inside town, everything is orderly and controlled, and you wont ever find a random encounter. With a very clear adventuring area/home base divide, it gives players some direction about what is and is not a good idea to do. People don’t poor where they eat, right? Same idea here. Then later on, once they’ve settled into the game and learned that the DM (ie me) is a hostile force bent on their total destruction, and not an enabler of bad ideas, we introduce more action and possibilities in the city besides leveling up.
It’s nice to start out like this too since, when it’s finally time for the big dramatic turn, the bad guys can come to town. Suddenly the safe space is part of the active game world, and players get that moment of, “I didn’t think things could attack here!”
More generally though, I dig this structural solution. Set up the game world to account for player behavior. It’s much easier to manage expectations when the world is set up to reinforce them, you know?
My usual players (we have had mostly the same players for over 20 years now) are generally pretty good, and any newbies we take in tend to learn by observation, so I haven’t had to handle a clueless murderhobo since my teens (when I would bring the consequences with both barrels).
That said, there was one occasion when my usual guys went completely off the reservation.
It was a WFRP campaign, and they were pursuing a group called the Medical Union. If you know the Warhammer world it is very dark, gritty, and knee-jerk on the declarations of heresy. This medical union a fun self-aware dig at the setting, being a bunch of surgeons and apothecaries that were seeking to cure disease through the application of minor doses of disease (good old inoculation to us, heretical behavoir aligned to the Chaos God Nurgle to the average witch hunter). The ‘cult’ had given the party a good run for their money, and managed to make them look very stupid on a couple of occassions, so when they tracked down the ringleaders (hiding in plain sight working in the capital cities Temple of Shallaya – the pacifistic Goddess of Healing and Mercy), the party went full retribution.
As the spire of the temple was starting to catch fire, and they were standing casually amoungst the dismembered bodies of the victims they were convinced were disguised cultists, whilst discussing the orders they would issue to the approaching watchmen to round up the few unarmed teenage preistesses who fled the slaughter, I felt a pang of sympathy, and let them make a couple of intelligence tests regarding exactly what the situation would look like to the casual observer. Fortunately at that point they had the good sense to flee, actively avoid injuring any law enforcement during the pursuit, and then mailed a pack of evidence to the city council and watch, while leaving the city as fast as possible. A couple of players seriously suggested just explaining the situation to the arriving guards, but the others took my warning as the last chance they would get before the hangmans noose loomed large in their future, and got out of there!
Heh. Sometimes the “are you sure?” moment isn’t obvious:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/areyousure
Especially not to players with more certainty than sense.
I’ve actually sort of deliberately subverted this before. Ran a mid-level game where the players decided to just become bandits and would raid small towns and villages. I never included epic level bartenders, and only the big cities had any pc class characters in their militia/town guards. The ‘big bad’ of the campaign was an NG Cavalier who was captain of the guard of the royal capital, that the players were slowly working their way towards looting. So I guess bandits isn’t quite the right term. Marauding barbarians? Basically, they were champions of random disparate groups, and for the finale of the campaign, brought their tribes/clans together to sack not-Rome.
I dig it! How’d you manage to make the NG Cavalier unlikable? I always have trouble turning noble knights and white hats in general into proper antagonists.
It wasn’t super hard. I just played them as good, but sort of prejudiced, and also constantly angry at the players for their criminal ways. I didn’t really have to make him unlikeable, as my players totally understood that they were pretty firmly on the ‘wrong’ side of the law in his eyes. So it was less a battle of ‘heroes vs. villains’, and more of ‘imperialism vs. tribalism’.
Welp, time to meet Fighter #41.
95 HP you say? 10 + (6 x (level – 1)) + (level x Con Mod)=
…A level 10 with 16 Con would have 94. It’s possible you flubbed the math. Or he rolled and got some wonky numbers.
I can therefore conclude that Fighter #40 was level 10~.
The scrollover says fighter, not Fighter.
The average of 1d10 is 5.5 not 6, which would make a 12th level fighter with 14 con average out to 94.5 hit points, which rounds to 95.
Also while doing this math, I want to do some more math.
I’ll assume 1) that the 2000 peasants are all level 1-2 commoners with 10-11 in all stats.
2) That fighter has no relevant feats for fighting minions but will depend on his normal 3 attacks from his high BAB.
3) That neither side get’s clever but the battle instead consists entirely off the peasants surrounding fighter and attacking him with their pitchforks (which well stat out as spears since commoners aren’t proficient with tridents).
4) That fighter hits on a 2 even with his worst attack, due to his superhuman strength and likely magical weapon, and that any peasant hit will go down for the same reason. The peasants will probably need a nat 20 to hit and two in a row to crit for their part (an AC of 22-23 trivial for a 12th level fighter).
For every 400 attacks the peasants will on average do (191d8+13d8 =22d8 =99) damage, which makes their average damage 0.2475 pr. attack.
Up to eight peasants can surround fighter at once so that’ll be 1.98 damage pr round on average.
As a result it’ll take them 47.98 rounds to take down fighters 95 hit points.
During those rounds fighter will have slaughtered 136.74 peasants (30.9547.98), which is much less than the 2000 arrayed against him, through that might be a somewhat cold comfort for anyone among the first 100 to rush him knowing it will mean their certain death.
Truly their brave sacrifice will be remembered and honored forever.
lol. The math has been done.
Ah, our disparity comes from your math being from lesser editions. In 5E you can take the average rounded up every time (And most people do because rolling for HP is a sucker’s game)
Also in 5E the numbers are flattened a lot and magic items are rare.
Our math assumes a level 10 fighter because of his 95~ HP. Since we’ve seen that fighter uses a 2handed weapon and wears plate he has an AC of 18. By level 10 he should have 20 Strength meaning he deals 2d6+5 for an average of 13 per hit and has +9 to hit. He has 2 attacks a turn meaning he’ll kill 2 commoners 90% of his turns. He’s also got Second Wind so he’ll heal d10+level once per short rest as a bonus action. Let’s bump his functional HP up by 15 as a result giving him a functional 110.
A Commoner has 10 AC, 4 HP, and +2 to hit with their club which does 2.5 average damage.Against AC 18 they hit on a 16. That means an average result of 1.25 per attack. (The math includes the extra d4 per crit)
9 medium creatures can surround a medium creature on a battlemat. So fighter is taking 9 attacks a turn, for an average of 11.25 damage. and killing 1.8 commoners a turn. He’ll be dead in a minute and have killed 18 people.
If the commoners use Goblin tactics and all back out, to make room for more attackers causing fighter to use his reaction to kill another 0.9 commoners a round then we could get 3 waves of a of 9 attacks for 11.25 per wave. This will do 33.75 damage. He’d be dead in 4 rounds.
Firstly I feel that the random edition warring is rather uncalled for.
Secondarily: The assumption that the math should use 5e dnd instead of pathfinder is a bit strange for a comic which has characters called Paladin and Antipaladin instead of Paladin of Devotion and Oathbreaker Paladin, and furthermore characters named, Alchemist, Gunslinger, Magus and Witch all of which are pathfinder classes.
Thirdly even if we go with 5e your calculations are wrong in several ways.
Only 8 medium creatures can surround a medium creature on a battlemap, like so:
C C C
C F C
C C C
Notice how the creature surrounded also takes up one space.
The average damage of an attack that hit’s on a 16, does 1d4 damage and 2d4 on a nat 20 is 0.75 (2.5*6/20), not 1.25.
Finally should the commoners start using tactics like described at the end, a lot more than 3 waves would be able to move in and out per round, once they had saturated the area around him, but now it starts to get into a lot of messy details since a lot of it will depend on how and where the combat starts and how fighter moves if you want the exact numbers.
Showing that it’s more than 27 is rather trivial through.
Every commoner within 20 ft of the fighter, would be able to move adjacent to the fighter by spending a maximum of 15 ft and then back again by spending the remaining 15 ft. Depending on which ruling you make on the rules of 5E the 8 that starts surrounding him might have to move out first, but that is well within their ability to do.
Due to the increase in size as rings expand 109 commoners are capable of standing within 20 ft at once.
Some of the commoners standing further away would also be able to move in and attack if the commoners standing closer moved out of the way instead getting back to their original position, but honestly I calculating exactly how many.
So I was GMing Wild Sheep chase. One of the players decided to play a Necromancy School Wizard. After the first fight he raised a corpse as a zombie. Bartender: “Ugh, Mondays.”
Whatever, I had an adventure to run. Eventually they finished the adventure. I looked at the time. Well shit, I had to think of something to do from here. They had paid for time at a game store, and I wasn’t gonna just shrug and end an hour early. The Necromancer had brought his Zombie back with him to the bar. As such, the guard barged in to arrest him for Necromancy. Barkeep: “Ugh, Tuesdays.”
The party stood by their friend who was only violating the cycle of life and death with his unclean magic and bringing evil into the world. They won the fight, and made a very deliberate point of knocking out their attackers. They were now in the middle of town, and guilty of necromancy/consorting with a necromancer, resisting arrest, and assault of a noble. (One of the arresting guards was a knight) Before they might’ve “Adventurer community service”. (Go adventure for us at significantly reduced pay) Now they needed to get out of town before reinforcements arrived.
Yakkety sax begins to play
I feel like Yakkety Sax is the official theme song of murderhobos.
I am reminded of my friend who remains convinced that an army of peasants with muskets (and possibly alchemical bombs implanted in them) can defeat any foe. He has still not properly accounted for DR, though I believe his explanation is an accurate one for where all of Earth’s dragons and krakens went.
Just yesterday, the game I GM saw a true dice gods’ will miracle: A Nat 20 with a Nat 20 to confirm the crit. Unfortunately, it was a summoned Compsognathus ( https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/dinosaur/compsognathus ), which does 1d3-1 damage. We rolled 2d4s by mistake (instead of d3s) and that still only brought it up to 5 damage. Against a foe with DR 5/adamantine. I let 1 point of damage get through out of pity, as well as in acknowledgement of the clear will of the dice gods.
Laurel’s group like to talk about their run-in with Octavian in a heroic mortals game. If you’re not familiar, then think of him as a balor. Apparently their archer managed to hit the bastard, rolled the minimum-one-die damage, and failed to actually inflict damage. If that 7-10 had come up, dude would have probably exalted on the spot.
Fate’s a dick.
Ok, this is a murderhobo experience that is doubling as a call for help, because I’m genuinely at a loss at to where to go without saying “rocks fall, everyone dies.” Apologies for length, but some context is needed.
It’s an E6 campaign modified to 5e. There is a demonic plague running through the land that creates a very visible mark of the infected. It doesn’t have any symptoms aside from that, except that if you’re infected and die your body becomes a temporary portal to the Abyss, which can summon a few demons. You may be lucky and just summon a few manes. You may be unlucky and summon a glabrezu. After three new moons, the plague straight up kills you, and no one knows how it’s spread.
The party consists of a barbarian, paladin, rogue, and ranger. They are a bunch of level 6 adventurers charged with trecking across the continent, getting a cure, and bringing it back to their starting point. Problem: all of them have the plague, so they’ve got a time crunch. They did strike a deal with a devil to give them free Raise Deads 24 hours after they die (including the stat penalty) mainly so I wouldn’t have treat them with kids gloves in the encounters and because several of them were relatively new to D&D. In hindsight this was a pretty big mistake, but I’ve already set it up.
So for most of the game the party’s been acting fairly neutral, but also been avoiding civilization areas, either due to them being heavily quarantined or fallen from demons. So far so good, they’ve helped slay an evil hag, purposely didn’t attack a wandering hill giant who was stupid but not-hostile, had the good sense to run from a crazed wandering stone giant. Then they get to the first major city that isn’t fallen or quarantined. Outside the gates they find a devil cultist proselytizing to some infected people to sell their souls to devils to fight the demons in the blood war. Paladin tries to refute this and tell the crowd there’s a better way. Then the barbarian steps up and out of nowhere says “If your gods had wanted you to live they would not have sent me” then jumped down and uses his magic hammer to kill 3/4 of the peasants on the spot. Of course, since they all have the plague, this promptly summons a small demon army right outside the city.
Somehow the party manages to get out and the demons held back by party and guards, but the seriously wounded barbarian is arrested and sent to the Cathedral for trial. I made it clear where this was and when the trial would take place if they wanted to try a jailbreak, but the party opted instead to explore the city a bit and let the trial commence (barbarian does try unsuccessfully to brute force an escape out). During this time the paladin finds out the city had banned slavery before but recently legalized it from public outcry because of some slavers offering an escape to the plague, so now he hates the political leadership. Trial commences, the barbarian is found guilty of slaughtering a bunch of people and it comes out he comes back to life if he dies, so he is sentenced to a pit full of quippers. Again the party has a chance to bust him out, but decides to do it not while he’s being held, not during transit to the pit, but during the execution itself when a bunch of guards and townspeople are gathered. Well, the ranger and rogue do with little plan. The paladin instead decides to confront the corrupt baroness who legalized slavery, fought through her guards, and killed her in front of a crowd of witnesses. Then he gets surrounded and beaten down by guards while the ranger gets captured trying to bust out the barb and the rogue flees the scene.
I’m trying to give a way out while still having consequences, so I have the aforementioned devil cult bust out the rogue and ranger (paladin wasn’t there that session) and recruit the thief, then put a geas on them to kill the cathedral leader and destroy the tomb of the solar that rests at its heart. At this point the party has the option of going through with it or trying to get a Remove Curse. They choose the former, gather info and a hostage, then make a very loose plan to break in. Next session, we have a guest player who’s an artificer that’s helping the party. They break into the cathedral, get to the room the paladin is being held in and kill the guards. Problem is a teen girl acolyte walks in while they’re spending 20 minutes fashioning disguises, but she’s not suspicious and is mostly self-conscious they got her with a smut book. Then the artificer, who was hiding, just steps out and delivers a menacing line, and the ranger out of nowhere stabs the girl. The rogue uses a magic item to stabilize her, still unconscious, but the artificer pulls out his magic boom stick and shoots her in the head. During the stealth mission. So now the rogue and paladin are angry and trying to kill the artificer while he and the ranger bolt, and the barbarian is trying to play whack-a-mole with the guards running in to investigate. Final score, the artificer is dead, the ranger, barbarian, and paladin are all being held prisoner by the Cathedral, and the rogue gets away again because rogue.
So now I’m wracking my brain with what to do now. I would really, really like to avoid RFED, but I also don’t want to deus ex machina them out. I’ve already given chances to jailbreak, which they’ve tried and failed three times now so now the guards will be extra alert. I’ve tried having a 3rd party break them out then demand a favor, which was bungled. I can’t just let them out on community service, since the party collectively has now killed a bunch of peasants, guards, an innocent teen girl acolyte, tried to break a convicted prisoner out, trespassed into the cathedral, worked with a devil cult, killed the baroness of the city, and summoned a small demon army. I’m running out of ideas.
The thing is there has definitely been murderhoboing, but it’s been spread out. The barbarian started with his murderhobo but has been fairly good since then. The paladin kills the baroness but justifies it with his character being incensed by slavery in the city and being too stupid to come up with a better plan. The artificer was a recurring guest player who probably won’t show up anymore. The ranger is playing a crazy chick, but most of the time that’s alright because 98% of the campaign was supposed to be wilderness journey where it is ok to murderhobo a bit. But now they’ve been stuck in this city for the past five sessions where murderhoboing actually is a problem. I’m at a loss as to what to do now. Advice is very welcome.
TL;DR:My players have through poor planning and murderhoboing gotten themselves into in deep trouble about three times now, and I’m struggling to provide opportunities to bail them out without it being no-consequence deus ex machina and without RFED. I’ve tried several options already, none of which they succeeded on and all close themselves off to being plausibly offered again.
If you’ve got a strong stable of NPCs, you could always kill the main party and then let the “replacement party” go on a resurrection quest for a few sessions.
Alternatively, you could let the devils contract come due. They keep getting free resurrections. Maybe that finally has a cost. They die in he prime material and have to go on a few planar missions at the behest of devils.
Perhaps have infernal ex machina happen – a full scale demonic invasion, brought by suicide-infected peasants/cultists (infected are forced into an area and offed with remote spells to trigger portals, like suicide bombs), happens near where the PCs are held. The PCs then have the option of bolting mid-chaos (a demon breaks their cell to try kill them), or the desperate guards let them loose to save their skins / flee the city together, since they’re more combat capable than anyone else available.
Alternately, have another prisoner tip them in that there is a escape tunnel hidden in their cell – but that it leads into a deadly underground area (underdark-nasty) that the original tunnel digger died in.
Yeesh. That is quite a pickle. To paraphrase something else “The fate of the world is in your hands? Well, we’re doomed.”
It sounds like you need to get them out of this city ASAP. Option 1 that I see is for someone in the city government (perhaps having learned of the PCs’ mission, perhaps not) to basically toss them out with a promise (perhaps magically enforced) to never return, on the grounds that since they can’t be permanently killed and are constantly causing more casualties with escape attempts, the city, already dealing with demon plague, doesn’t have the resources to properly contain them. Maybe have them not get all of their gear back as a “consequence”, but that runs the risk of the players becoming obsessed with recovering what’s rightfully theirs, and trying to get back in. So it may be better to just cut bait and let them get away with all this in the name of the plot. It sounds like if you just keep them away from large cities, they’ll be okay, so hopefully they won’t learn the wrong lesson from that.
Option 2 is for the city to suddenly be hit by a VERY serious demon outbreak as a result of the authorities being unable to contain the demon plague (in no small part thanks to all the trouble/death the PCs have caused). This could result in a sort of emergency conscription of the PCs to fight the demon outbreak (again, possibly enforced by some sort of spell). Or it could just be that a CR-above-your-pay-grade demon is rampaging and gives the PCs the opportunity to escape (damaging the Cathedral prison, or just drawing away all guards worth anything so they can escape). I suppose the devil cult could also make some sort of assault on the Cathedral and free the PCs as a part of their attempt to destroy the solar’s tomb (the cult didn’t come for the PCs, but saw them on their way over there and thought they’d be useful assets/distractions, especially if they are still under geas).
Regardless, get them away from this city as soon as possible. Good luck.
Hmm. I may be able to set up option 2. The PCs have been causing lots of chaos, and I have previously made that the next day is the full moon (as set on the calendar we’re using.) Nothing like a sudden werewolf attack to kill a bunch of peasants with the plague and snowball a demon-outbreak.
Thank you!
Once in one of our evil party campaigns it was the king of the local kingdom who was in need of the advise “Thou art powerful. Thou art not immune to consequences.”, after some gruesome deaths and many senseless deaths the monarch decided that it was more profitable just leaving do what we wanted than trying to stop us. Yeah, he would have needed to use as much funds to try to capture us as he should use in two or three wars to expand the kingdom. We were that much OP thanks for our DM new rewards tables 🙂
Have you considered the role of players in the setting? I mean while the normal people of the real world, aka the campaign setting, would make some choices for their life, a pc would not.
Also i finished Oblivion, and with lots of infamy 🙂
What all did you get from the rewards table?
As for your question, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Do you mean that PCs are a different sort of being than NPCs, and should be held to different standards?
Yeah, the tables were a little OP, usually 3rd level pc don’t get a +5 Vorpal sword 🙂
Yes, that is what i say. As the common variety of pc is but a shadow, an avatar of a higher more complex and disturbing being: a Table-top role player. These abominable and hypocritical creatures oath to serve the forces of goodness of evilness, but they just really are interested in abstract and eldritch values as XP and loot. These beings use these things called pcs to enter a reality and interfere with their denizens in their search of that things they call experience and items without having any concern for what destruction they bring or the deaths of any person that oppose them. Their destruction and madness spree is, theorize some, in search of entertainment, which only makes these beings more hideous in their complete disregard of the sanctity of people lives, only seeing them as mere constructs in some kind of game made for their enjoyment. What is more worrisome is that these beings appear to respond to some higher being. That mysterious entity, if it exist at al, has been called, according to some reports, de’em, a terrible name that appear to strike fear in even these monsters. Some people say that sometimes in response to some breaking in the rules of their games or in the general destabilization of reality that follows them, these roleplayers commune with these being, often by talking aloud to the very air as if that being is with them. Many have gone mad trying to understand what kind of entity may it be, it’s hardly encourage to desist of the pursuit of that kind of forbidden knowledge.
So to resume these so-called roleplayers are dangerous, eldritch and complete aliens beings, foreign to what any man of good or even the most powerful practitioners of the arcane arts can describe as reality. Their motive incomprensible and their actions only fueled by a hedonistic pursuit of their own entertainment. May the gods deliver us from these beings, because these beings aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They cant be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with and even the death of their pc would not stop them.
-Extract for a dissertation of Mage Schattensturm* on the topic of the beings called “Role players”
*Later evidence sustain that the very same wizard who pronounce these words may r may not being a Role player himself.
Disclaimer: I wouldn’t take any responsibility for the lecture of this text and any effect that it may have in the perception of reality, or of himself or the tabletop rpg games in general that may have on the reader 🙂
Fun write-up.
But for serious, you’re going to get different responses from different players on the “PCs are special” thing. Some players like for “de-em” to give them special treatment. Others rebel if an NPC has powers that are inaccessible to a PC or vice versa. I tend to fall in the former camp myself.
“Fun write-up.” Thanks i am glad you enjoy it 🙂
Good response too. In fact i am kinda against pcs are special. “Oh! You are the special one, you will defeat any evil in front of you and gets lots of gold and chicks” is, for me, a cliche, void, and unimaginative resource for DMs. You are not a hero for having a god or high authority said so, you are a hero for protecting people, doing what is right and bringing justice when needed or mercy when required. A hero is made, never born. That said it always bother me when the npc can break the rules player must obey. Why a evil npc, for example, can use Disguise Self straight for a complete week but for the heroes it only works for 1 hour.
I am a complicated person 🙂
The first time i played it was when i was around 13 with a friend as dm and my 9 year old brother as the pther player, while we didnt really murderhobo, we did do a decent amount of dumb stuff in the tavern and dungeons we went into. My first more real dnd experience was in college many years later. I was invited into a group in the middle of a campaign where everyone was elite guardsmen for the city watch, with my guy being a new recruit. Not fully understanding that things were supposed to be played a bit more realistically then i thought, on our first mission in which we were to go to a drug kingpins house and try to get evidence of his guilt, my first instinct was to cut the door down and emand surrender before promptly turning the people behind the door into pools of blood. This was apparently not the proper guard procedure. They were all guilty though, so my punishment wasnt very severe, merely a harsh talking to and probation period from the mayor. The dm punished another player, who was already part of the campaign, considerably more in the same event, when to catch the kingpin running away, he crashed the mayors airship into the street where he was, killing him, a large amount of innocent bystanders, and the airship. His punishment was basically to be mind controlled jnto a new character loyal to the mayor, being changed from captain canada to captain puerto rico.
Ah yes. The far more mature college-level D&D game, lol.
I hope that there was an outrageous accent involved with this change.
Also a large mustache.
YES!
So how is it that the villagers managed to subdue Fighter but still get fleeced by the housecat-mafia?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-commoner
The housecat-mafia is significantly stealthier than Fighter is, and thus avoid mob justice by not being easy for a mob to find.
Probably tricked him into playing hangman…
They made a pit trap next to a sign that said “Free Loot and XP Here.” Mafia Cats wouldn’t fall for such a thing.
Also, who do you think is directing the villagers from behind the scenes? No one knows how to run a mob better than mobsters!
I liked all the replies, but this one especially.
One commoner is a victim. Many commoners is a troop:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/troop/
I don’t think those villagers have as big of an advantage as the mouseover text implies. Sure, in an open field where the villagers can retreat unlimitedly and rain unlimited numbers of projectiles upon him they’re decidedly dominant, but in an actual village it’s a different situation.
Fighter can probably kill 2-3 villagers per round, and inside of a village hut only about 8 peasants can reasonably attack him at once. Based on fighter’s AC and villagers’ attack bonuses, I think it’s fair to assume that he may be able to kill 5-10% of that 2,000 person village before being taken down. This makes defeating fighter something of a Pyrhic victory for the peasants, even before the ensuing property damage. (and ignoring the fact that after being killed, fighter’s identical twin brother will come back to avenge him)
If the peasants are smart, they’ll simply redirect fighter into another one of their problems. Perhaps point out that as dirt farmers there’s not much to loot from them, and anything valuable they once might have had had would be in the bandit fortress just 10 miles down the road. Of course, once fighter gets there, the bandits will explain that they’ve been hitting a bad spell lately, but there’s a gold dragon that’s been giving them trouble that ought to have some loot worth taking…
Obviously they just waited until he was asleep, as Cleric the rules lawyer would force him to take off his armor in order to avoid fatigue. 8 villagers (24 if you count the ones with reach weapons behind them) with flanking bonuses all wailing away on an unarmored, prone guy with no weapons but his fists and who provokes an attack of opportunity from all of them just to stand up should be able to wear him down pretty quickly.
…Then, once he was captured, they put his armor back on him to add insult to injury/neck snapage.
They would need those reach weapons. Otherwise you get 8 attacks against the unconscious fighter, 8 more if you win initiative, and then 8 attacks of opportunity as he stands up. If fighter has no magical items giving him AC bonuses and +0 for dex then the peasants hit on an 8 or higher thanks to flanking, so 60% hit. That’s only 14 hits, 1 of which is a crit on average. With spears that’s effectively 16d8 damage, average 72, before Fighter starts swinging, and much worse if Fighter wins initiative which he will 50% of the time.
(of course, if Fighter somehow fails his save on a coup de grace attempt it’s game over)
In 5e it seems like you would be better off as everyone gets an auto-crit whilst Fighter is asleep (helpless), and after that they +2 to hit from having a proficiency bonus and advantage from flanking which is mechanically equivalent to another +4. So with 16d8 guaranteed whilst he’s asleep (all greatclubs this time), and an 80% chance of hitting after that, they can then kill him outright if they win initiative. They don’t get attacks of opportunity from Fighter standing up though, so they really need to win that initiative.
tl;dr – peasants with reach weapons save lives.
My scroll-over text is based on empirical evidence from extremely accurate battle simulations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo4tTWvUaV0
The mention of “omg robbing shops!” reminds my of one of my favorite video games to this day. Arcanum. You could totally rob shops that had actually worthwhile loot and get away with it if you were clever and patient enough. Even right at the start of the game.
The one time I wanted to rob/grift a store in D&D the GM was of the type that was just so against it they’d decided all shopkeeps everywhere had protection against charm spells.
And every since that I’ve never been in a scenario where robbing a store was in any way worth the kind of consequences.
In 5e especially there’s usually nothing in stores worth the consequences of theft since after a certain point in time money seems to only exist as a means for getting spell components which you’re unlikely to find enough of in one place to justify the consequences of theft and prior to that… you’re just not going to find anything worth stealing in the town general store most of the time.
That said, I certainly murderhobo in the way that means looting all the corpses, snagging anything I can find that isn’t nailed down during our adventures, and things like that. Because money still does have at least one use aside from buying spell components… and that’s buying potions of healing every opportunity you get.
Also, it’s just kind of fun to have a growing catalog of items you’ve acquired in your journeys and having a reason to celebrate when you get to a town with a store.
I remain surprised that there’s not much of an economy in 5e. I get that not everyone loves shops and the whole “the world is a Sears catalog” mentality that they inspire, but you’d think there would be a little more to do with your fantastic hordes of wealth than getting advantage on your Smaug impersonation.
Bummer about the charm-proof merchants. It makes a certain amount of sense in magic item shops, but you’d think that ye olde blacksmith would be susceptible. For my money, I’ve always liked the “family discount” mentality. I wouldn’t agree to lose thousands of GP worth of merchandise if my best buddy asked, but I’d very likely declare a one-time-only sale.
The first time that my friend and I played D&D, we assumed that Good alignments are good, and so brought LG and NG characters to the table… a table of only CN players. Fortunately, they were fairly experienced, and therefore played chaotic neutral as, “I care about me and my friends”, not, “Murderhobo”. So the campaign went quite well, but there was one time I came awful close to murder-hoboing, despite my good alignment…
We had found ourselves in a strange and unfamiliar land, but fortunately a noble or group of nobles were kind enough to keep us as guest until we could find our way home. We were very thankful and were escorted to our rooms & attended to by a small group of servants. But for some reason, my character instantly assumed that the servants were in fact an oppressed lower class, little better than slaves before the powerful nobles.
DM: “Don’t worry, the servants say that they’re very happy here and treated well”.
My thoughts: Exactly what you would say if you didn’t want the nobles to make you ‘disappear’. Don’t worry, slave… I understand your hidden message, and will free you.
Unfortunately, my bluff, hide and move silently bonuses are all much lower than my stab face bonuses, so any plan would likely result in bloodshed. Fortunately, I was away next session, so the party left before I could do something profoundly stupid.
Due to going long time between sessions, this campaign is still going, and so sometimes, my character will look in a random direction (he doesn’t actually know where the heck he WAS geographically) and think of those ‘slave’. He has never been able to return, however, for a quest to save the world really fills up your calendar.
Slaves have a way of screaming “quest hook” to good PCs. Just look at the paladin in Bill’s post further up the page for your example. For that reason, I tend to include them only when emancipation is the point of the adventure.
I have seen much murderhoboing over my years. It really is rather tied to a particular style of play. The worst example of murderhoboing by a player happened in a homebrew Intrigue themed BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) game I ran. It was a modern to early future society where psychic powers were known and the government was forcing them to register and join the military. Of course, there was a Resistance faction, and that’s where the conflict starts. The particular player in this example was the son of a Wealthy politician who was also a powerful Telepath. He was working with the Resistance.
First, the PC is asked to go to a safehouse and extract a young woman who was just rescued from a military stronghold. Note that they are trying to help her. PC walks in, sees contact and little girl of about sixteen. Immediately attempts to mind control her. Does not say Hi, does not speak to contact, tries to mind control her. She resists the mind control, and due to her Mind Shield power, realizes what just happened. She starts running. Some action happens, and she ends up getting pulled out of the situation by a second PC who is a mercenary working for another faction. Now on the run from the Military, the Psychic Police, and whoever the second PC worked for, the Mind Controller decides to flee into the slums. Alright, well and good. He finds a Hobo and Mind Controls the Hobo for his Coat. During Winter. He goes and hides in a cafe for a little while, mind controlling the server for free drinks. He gets discovered by a few mundane military guys, and, you guessed it, mind controls them into suicide. In one session he made the Military’s Case for putting Psychics under government control better than any NPC could have. Remember that this character was explicitly wealthy, as in had bought the wealth power. At any point, he could have used money to fix his problems. But mind control was his go to.
If there is anyone who should NOT be given mind control powers, it is TTRPG players.
Maslow’s Hammer, yo. It comes in more flavors than “fireball.”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/i-cast-maslows-hammer
That said, the blog on this one is probably more applicable:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/detect-insult
Sometimes players just let their abilities do their thinking for them. What can you do other than apply appropriate consequences?
Murderhobo Baron elect in Kingmaker luckily left the gaming group after I informed him that his Chavalier is IMnshO Evil with a capital „E“. I did this with writing up my definition of evil in a one page and essay and he concluded „than my char is evil“ with an unfortunate air of „I therefore reject your definition“. Consequences where hinted at: The people (NPCs) around you came here to get away from the shit you propose, they might be motivated to depose you. If he‘d gone and actually clear cut the fairy inhabited forest I‘d have jumped straight to book 6 and dumped the CR15 encounters of chaper 1 on them at around book 2.
Evil is fine. Just be sensible evil. There’s no reasonable way to jump from “I have deposed a tyrant” to “serve me or I murder your families.” Of course that kind of dude is going to get rebellion’d in the face.
„oho, let them try to rebel for I have PC class levels“ (also I‘m a player and it’s your job to cater to my demands)
„no it’s not slavery, the servants I brought with me are serving me willingly, for I have their families as „honored guests“ at home in my daddys castle.“
„well if it’s evil to rob a griffon nest I‘ll just put out a bounty for griffon eggs“(and let someone else do the dirty work for me. no, I’m totally not responsible for their actions, they are free to acquire the egg in an ethically appropriate manner)
Homeboy sounds like a barrel of laughs.
oh, yeah.
He’s had some horrible mentions before, discussing your comics. (no that’s not a spelling mistake)
I did the math.
Based on the hp provided, I’d say Fighter is probably about level 9-10. I’m going assume the latter. An average townsfolk would be a level 1 Commoner, I will be using the Village Idiot statline for that. Additionally, I will be using Automatic Bonus Progression for the expected Big 6 bonuses.
Considering Fighter’s personality, I think it would be safe to assume that he put as much points into Strength as he could afford. Still, we’re talking about a MAD class, so let’s say he starts at 18. Physical prowess +2 and ability score increases push that into 22.
Based on the Weapon Focus strip (https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/weapon-focus) I think we can safely assumed that Fighter took Weapon Focus (Longsword) at the very least.
Adding +2 weapon attunement this gets us two attack at +19/+14 for 1d8+8 damage. Since our average townsfolk only has 6hp, we can safely assume that every hit will be lethal. With an AC of 10, this means every round of combat 2 commoners die (for the ease of calculation I am ignoring nat1). Assuming that Fighter will be constantly swarmed by an enraged, suicidal mob, he will need 1000 rounds, or an hour and 40 minutes, to mow through the entire town.
Fighter appears to be wearing a Half-plate (an odd choice, as at this level Full plate, which would provide him with a superior AC, is pocket change, but I’m working with what I’ve got). Adding +2 Deflection and +2 armor attunement, this gets us an AC of 22, possibly 23 if he took Dodge. The difference is inconsequential – either way an average townsfolk needs a nat20 to hit, for 1d4+1 damage. With Fighter being constantly swarmed by 8 Commoners, this gets us 8 * 0.05 * 3.5 = 1.4 points of damage per round. This means that Fighter will be going under after 68 rounds of combat.
Final result: 136 dead Commoners and one unconcious Fighter.
The mental imagery fills me with an odd mix of horror and delight.
Nice job on the math! Looks like I was right on the money with my guess of 5-10% of the village’s population.
Question: How many more villagers can fighter kill per healing potion in his inventory?
Depends on the potion. A cure light wounds only does 1d8+1, average 5.5. Using HadACookie’s calculations of 1.4 damage per round that buys him ~4 rounds. He’s spent one of those rounds drinking the potion, but then he gets 3 more rounds of damage. Again using HadACookie’s maths, that’s an extra 6 commoners per potion.
Using the same logic, a cure moderate wounds is 2d8+3, average 12. That’s 8.5 rounds of life, 7.5 rounds of damage, or 15 commoners per potion.
Cure serious comes out at 24.4 commoners per potion. Three cure serious wounds potions over doubles the number of commoners killed.