Diplomatic Immunity
Well this has been brewing for a while. Way back when we introduced Team Bounty Hunter, our big idea was to make them recurring villains. We’d planned for these lethal ladies to play Wile E. Coyote to The Heroes‘ Roadrunner, and the thought was to have many a merry jape as our ne’er do well protagonists bumbled their way out of captivity. It didn’t quite work out that way though. The role of murderhobo wrangler seems to have defaulted to Horsepower, leaving Team Bounty Hunter with nothing to do but serve as just-another-adventuring-party. Well no more, says I! At long last they can bring their greatest quarry to justice! It’s just too bad they waited so long.
Today’s comic isn’t just about character relationships in Handbook-World. It’s also about the relationships that all PCs tend to form with their benefactor NPCs. If someone is rich and powerful enough to hire the greatest heroes in all the land, it stands to reason that they’re also big movers and shakers in the setting. And if it happens to be an absolute monarch filling those quest givin’ shoes, it’s easy for players to feel like they’ve acquired royal invulnerability. In other words, there’s a risk of your murderhobos becoming entitled murderhobos.
When that happens, you’ve got to come up with reason after reason for the Her Royal Highness to bail the party out of their self-inflicted troubles. They were acting under my orders! The crown will pay for the damages! I’m certain that orphanage can be rebuilt… for the third time. While a dedicated diplomancer can usually smooth things over with a beleaguered head of state, there inevitably comes a breaking point. And for my money, this is the best spot to introduce evil rival nobles.
“You have served me loyally and well, but Lady Duplicity’s faction is becoming too powerful. My spies carry whispers of revolt, and there are many now who blame you for the recent spate of fireball-based property damage. I am sorry, but I can no longer afford to keep you in my service.”
Suddenly you’ve threatened their sweetheart deal. A friendly NPC is in trouble, the party is losing out on valuable quest rewards, and all that destructive energy is now pointed squarely at the next campaign villain rather than innocent shop keepers.
Of course, that’s just my personal favorite solution to this problem. What about the rest of you GMs out there? When you find that a party is leaning too heavily on borrowed influence, how do you reign them in? What are your favorite consequences for all those “PC actions should have consequences” situations? Tell us about your experiences with nights in jail, fines levied, and patronage withdrawn down in the comments!
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On the upside, Inquisitor finally proved she’s no Wile E. Coyote.
It took her a while, but she got ’em!
I feel very proud of Team Bountyhunter right now. ^_^
Magus is just off-panel, playing with a bit of spare rope, isn’t she?
Most likely.
Most definitely.
But what royal beast/monstrous royal guardian and/or pet would Ranger be playing with?
Maybe she’s in the royal stables, the royal kennels or the royal mews. Or she’s playing with one of a legion of cats. A royal palace traditionally had a LOT of domesticated animals to keep things running smoothly and vermin-free.
Most people would find flying horses distracting. Ranger, on the other hand, finds then VERY distracting.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/handle-animal
It hasn’t really come up that often, but several of my GM friends have a tendency to go with the nuclear option… turn everything upside down with some new element that completely disrupts the social order. A revolution, a foreign invasion, a natural disaster… in short, something that says it’s time to move on.
I wish my group was interested in revolutions…
I usually just keep notes on everything they’ve done and use those to plan future events. This leads to one of the more personally satisfying things I can say in a campaign:
“So, you remember when you…”
Mind you, the PCs have never really had a lot of influence to throw around until now… and they have gotten official diplomatic writs to throw around in that dwarfhold. I’ll have to keep an eye on that.
To me the first question is “is this actually a problem”, that’d depend on the kind of game I’m interested in running currently and such-like.
In some cases the PC’s having a powerful patron that shields them from consequence might be entirely appropriate. After all real life nobility and their agents could get away with some outright heinous shit from time to time as long as they didn’t go after those that could defend themselves either socially/politically or with actual force.
Most of the time I’m not really interested in doing that though and prefer the pc’s to not be villains getting away with it through sheer privilegie. I usually handle that by asking the players to not go there though, instead of by in-game methods. If it’s other players it becomes unfun for instead, then that’s fundamentally the same problem and I’d like to go with the same solution, through my lack of mind-reading ability would mean that they’d need to say something themselves.
For less egregious examples where I do actually find it fun enough to deal with, my guiding principle is to look at the people and societies involved. Could the patron protect them? Would they? If they dislike the actions themselves they might not, or they might do so only reluctantly, accompanied by some verbal chewing out, to make it clear that this aid is limited.
It’s also worth considering how other people would react, those with not enough power to strike directly might go through social means, or gather other methods of causing problems.
Rival power factions are a good method to introduce extra spice like you mention. (Through at the point where orphanages are burned down repeatedly, perhaps they are less likely to be evil nobles, than they are to be good ones).
Alas, poor Inquisitor, I rooted for ye…
I’m rather fond of the “create your own nightmare” approach, where the fell deeds of the naughty PC result in another adventurer who wants to kick their ass. (Don’t think Handbook World has actually done that yet, at least not with any recurring characters, which is surprising)
On a more regular basis though, it depends largely on the ethics and morals of the person they’re trying to get “Get Out of Jail Free” cards from. Some might even be offended at the request and leave them in even worse straits.
Hm. Obviously I haven’t done much gaming in the past year, and before that the most recent games were Rise of the Runelords (an adventure path driven by players following the plot more than any patron), Skull and Shackles (a pirate campaign), and a 5e game at the local game shop (treasure and payment just don’t feel important in 5e).
Beyond that, my group is generally good at hiding their troublesome behavior and/or getting themselves out of trouble, so they haven’t needed to rely on royal patrons very often.
A bit off topic, but what is you thought on the “item levels” system of PF 2e/SF?
From personal experience, they are really useful when it comes to calculating DCs to influence/break things and durations of effects, but then you get down to the crafting system and actually HAVING to be at the level to craft something feels weird and makes for an awkward system (and this is not getting into the weird video game dichotomy of having “higher-tier” equipment at all).
Oh, like 3.5 and PF1 didn’t have that. They just concealed it better.
To me, it’s no more arbitrary to say that a wizard needs to be at least 5th level to craft a moderate rope of climbing than it is to say that they need to be 5th level to cast fireball—or, for that matter, that they need to be 5th level to Craft Magic Arms and Armor, or a monk needs to be 5th level to not catch a cold. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t arbitrary, of course; class levels are pretty much the most arbitrary thing around. But they’re an accepted form of arbitrariness, and not one we should mistake for something novel.
There is still a big difference. I can “get” the lesser/greater dichotomy translating to scaling, but the difference lies in how a wizard 3 CAN craft a 17th level PoP or a 4th level wand, especially if you optimize skills even slightly. It’s a much harder cap in PF2E. Especially when you realize it counts for mundane goods too, so now you NEED to have a bunch of higher level people running around, instead of aid another.
I knew that the Diplomacy skill didn’t affect PCs, but I didn’t know that counted as “diplomatic immunity”.
Anyway, I haven’t really had players getting their patrons to bail them out of trouble – either they don’t have powerful connections, they behave themselves or they just deal with the consequences on their own. If I do need to rein them in a bit, I can introduce someone who doesn’t answer to their boss, such as a higher-ranked authority figure or the leader of a more powerful country/faction. In practice, though, they find it more fun to get themselves out of trouble and only call their royal employers in for help when there’s a really good reason.
Damn. I wish I’d thought of that gag. Would have made a good Bard comic.
I wonder whether Elven Princess’ decision not to honour the bounty might have something to do with the fact that Inquisitor ran her through to get at Witch, once upon a time…
Poor Inquisitor…
This reminds me a bit of the Curse of Strahd campaign I’m in. My group had managed to stumble across and set off at least four time sensitive quests and had gotten beaten the shit out of us completing two of them. Unfortunately, we had less than 24 hours in-game to complete the other two quests and were in no condition to do them. A lot of NPCs that we liked died due to that…
Try this tale: a group got Tatyana near Sergei’s ghost… and pulled her away from him, saying it was no good for her to let the past hold her back, and she should embrace freedom and live for herself.
Then they took her to a creepy cult leader who’s in Strahd’s pocket so she could be “safe” while she recovered from her trauma.
Fuck… How much did they know ahead of time? Have they found out and if so how did they react?
I have no idea. I read it in passing on the Fraternity of Shadows forum. The author said his players had basically 2020’d Curse of Strahd. ^^;
Our PC parties seem to generally get on the wrong foot with almost any kind of royalty, nobles or authority figures, even when they’re supposed to be on our side.
For example, even though he does nothing but help the PCs and doesn’t commit any bad actions, our PCs heavily dislike the current ruler of Osirion in Mummy’s Mask, the Ruby Prince. Mostly because we don’t like the fact he can give us any order and we’re more or less forced to obey it. And because one of our new PCs is one of his slaves given to us to help us on our mission.
Psh, that’s just you nerds. Mine is a nationalist glad to help the cause. :p
Slavery isn’t made more OK if the master is “nice” about it.
My WFTC party actually stayed mostly within the law and kept their heads down, which is surprising considering they were the least subtle people on the fucking planet. The closest they came to major property damage was the suggestion to burn down a small town that had been entirely taken over by giant spiders.
Which, to be fair, is an entirely reasonable reaction to a small town entirely taken over by giant spiders.
There is a reason the Uriah Gambit is a thing. If the PC are too useful but becoming troublesome time to squeeze all that usefulness before they need to get murdered by the next batch of disposable royal assistants. Also who will the nobles and the people believe? Some random guys with hero complex that bring too much damage? Or their king that is telling them that the “The bearer of this letter has acted under my orders and for the good of the State” letter is forged? Mysterious benefactors ware the best so that the DM gets a plot-hook and get to decide when he intercedes 🙂
I just kind of roll with whatever consequences seem to make sense. Though I’m also the kind of GM that isn’t afraid to kill the party and have them wake up to “Congrats, your new quest is escaping from the 4th Circle of the Hells!” or whatnot.
Not that I’ll leap straight to murdering them. In fact, I’ll try my best to avoid it and will usually issue reminders or warnings that something may not be advisable. But if it ever goes far enough, I’m willing to let it happen.
In theory my extreme lack of desire to actually remove characters from the game could be an exploitable weakness, but I can’t imagine I’d have any desire to run a game for players that would actually self destruct so hard I run out of way to give them negative consequences in an effort to game my behavior.
I once DM’d a group through clearing an island resort of sahuagin–the besieged hotel advertised “all-you-can-eat waffles.” Upon seeing the pitcher of endless batter and enchanted waffle iron, the barbarian declared “I’m taking that with me.” We all had a good laugh and continued with Game Night shenanigans. Cut to five hours later, when the barbarian (played by a bodybuilder not much smaller than the character) says he nonchalantly picks up pitcher and iron on his way out. The island has be saved, the survivors rescued, and no one is willing to say anything (at the time, out loud, anyway) about the theft. Their patron wizard denies everything and tells them to pass the syrup.
I waited four or five months before beginning the next adventure with the plot hook–your patron tells you over breakfast “We’re being sued.”
The party was being sued in civil court for the resort’s lost revenues after the waffle iron went mysteriously missing following the adventure. If the adventurers returned the waffle iron now, they’d skate on the civil lawsuit, but (having stolen it, then lied about it for so long in game time) they’d open themselves up to potential legal action.
The patron wizard had a plan, however: continue to deny everything and retrieve another endless item that would be equal or greater in value.
[Cue dangerous dungeon quest and object lesson.]
Wait, what ambassador is Inquisitor talking about? Elf princess? Lady Duplicity? Lord Cragchin? Aristocrat?
I think Wizard might have been made an ambassador of elfland after she ran away to avoid becoming their queen and stuck aristocrat with the job instead.
That is the plot.
I’ve finally managed to finish the whole comic. It’s been a good time, great comic, Colin and Laurel.
I can’t really comment much on this comic, I don’t tend to DM much anymore unfortunately and even having a group is a touch fraught ATM. 🙂
Glad to hear you enjoyed the binge!
I hope the Handbook helped to scratch that between-gaming-groups itch for ya.
But did you also look at every comic’s alt-text jokes (hover over the images to see it), or the extra Patreon comics? 😀
Oddly enough, I have a scenario where a patron is bailing out the party next session.
They’ve joined the Grey Hands, which I’ve been been playing as the Teen Titans to the much more esteemed Force Grey. Naturally, some in the party seem to think that this might be a free pass against retribution if things go wrong. It is not. : P
They’re currently assisting a senior member of Force Grey raid a Xanathar Guild Mage’s lab, uncovering all sorts of ill-doings and bad magics. However, Captain Asshole of the Force Grey is currently actually Captain Asshole, Intellect Devoured edition, and proceeded to burn the place down, not because it’s evil, but because he’s attempting to hid evidence of ill intent from the city.
Naturally, burning down a building in the city of Waterdeep in the course of an operation is not particularly approved. If they decide to stick around the crime scene, they’ll end up having to contend with an angry watch captain who wasn’t made aware about any of this.
Their boss is going to be much more understanding; she already knew something was weird about Captain Asshole, and sent them along to spy on him for her by proxy, but wasn’t expecting him to go so far in the line of duty as it is very much out of his character.
To get around to the point, by using him as a proxy, it’ll stand to say that, yes, you guys are heroes, but if something weird happens under their watch it’s gonna still go up the ladder and cause issues. Issues that I am eager to see them resolve with Captain Asshole in maybe glorious combat.
Nicely done. You’ve built in natural consequences, and the PCs can contend with them through eventual combat.
Really though, I suspect the feeling of invulnerability might come after the demise of Captain Asshole. Happily, however, most players aren’t actual murder hobos.
If Captain Asshole, dies, he dies. He’ll earn his death soon enough, though I’m sure they’ll spare him anyways! And if they don’t. Well. Either way he’ll get his.
The bright spot is that their powerful wizard friend is also the one who’ll take the most flack. Which will keep her from actually being able to help in any coming fights. Which is ideal, because it’s their story, not hers. If I can tie her politically and keep her on putting out fire duties (literally and figuratively), that’s more ideal than having her as a tactical nuke at the party’s disposal.
Who knows though. They’ve surprised me plenty in the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if they defuse that ‘trap’ somehow and keep her out of trouble.
Whatever the consequences, they must leave absolutely no one for the PCs to blame but the PCs themselves. Not always an easy task, but it’s the only way they can learn.
Since you mentioned having to rebuild the orphanage… again, I thought I’d ask you if that’s been mentioned before or if it’s finally put you on the Axel Scale of Black Comedy. You see the Axel Scale of Black Comedy measures how long it takes for something to play the destruction of an orphanage for laughs. Ansem Retort is a 1, and Looking For Group is a 4.