Race to the Finish
Players do not like it when you take away their stuff. They earned that stuff. It’s theirs, dammit! And if you so much as threaten said stuff you’re going to get smote. I learned this the hard way. Story time, kids!
My players found themselves on a mysterious tropical island, having taken a magical portal from the dungeon to the far side of the world. They spent weeks fighting intelligent apes, cthuloid horrors, and the mandatory crew of rum-besotted pirates. It goes without saying that they managed to accumulate mass quantities of booty in the process. There were ingots and rolled tapestries; bejeweled flagons and feathered masks; solid gold idols and silver ewers and way, way too much stuff to schlep around on a dangerous island. So they buried it.
Flash forward to the end of the adventure. They’re sailing around the headlands towards the beach, eager to collect their stuff and head home, when they notice a golden glittering upon the sand. Their cache has been pillaged! The party’s precious treasure is lying exposed all along the shore. And clinging to a nearby cliff, bedraggled and miserable, is the sorry remainder of the pirate crew. A T-rex and her offspring had treed the pirates mid-pillage, and are now waiting down below for pirates to drop into their mouths.
You have never seen Good characters turn Neutral so fast. Half of them begin casting spells and knocking down pirates while the other half ferry the treasure to the raft. Pirates are eaten by the score, the baby dino chases the poor sorcerer around like a cat with a laser pointer, and a small armada of summoned spirits teleport gold like some kind of celestial moving company.
At last they’ve got the boat loaded up and ready to go. And so, disturbed by their bloodthirstiness but impressed with their ingenuity, I make the mistake of allowing them to narrate the exciting conclusion of the encounter.
“Alright,” say I. “You manage to load the last chest onto your raft. But just as you push off, Chester the Tyrannosaur bites down on the gunwale of your boat. So I want you to tell me how you manage to–”
“What do you mean it bites the boat?” explodes the bard.
“It’s not even its turn!” says the sorcerer.
“So what, we just get skipped while you steal our stuff?” demands the oracle.
“Well no,” I stammer. “I mean yes, it bit the boat, but….” I could feel mutiny brimming beneath the surface. The light of righteous indignation burned within my players’ eyes. And if Chester hadn’t released the boat tout de suite, I believe my bones would still lie buried upon that island.
So here’s my advice to all you GMs out there. If you’re going to throw thieves, rust monsters, or a rival adventuring party at your players, you can rest assured that they will be properly motivated. Just make sure that, in the event that they do lose their stuff, you’ve got a flash grenade or an ejector seat or some kind of handy distraction. Because players love their stuff, and no one is getting in their way.
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
When it comes down to it, I think that the one thing a player would not want to lose more than anything else would be their character. There’s always more stuff out there, but there is only one of your character. To lose that would mean to lose everything you have worked up towards.
I, for one, happen to be rather attached to the characters I choose to play. The last thing I would ever want to hear is “Roll a new character.”
In a vacuum, I think most players would say the same. But consider this: which would you rather fight? A crocodile that wants to kill and eat you, or a rust monster that wants to eat your stuff? One is a normal combat encounter. The other is a “mean” encounter.
Given my choices, I would rather the rust monster: It’s not innately hostile, it’s just hungry. Sure some of our iron may get marred, or even eaten some, but the benefits of capturing one alive outweigh the risks.
Now I can be a crafty player who can think of quite a number of ways to use a rust monster, or at least try to. Surely it’s possible to tame a rust monster, right?
I’m afraid not. A captured rust monster will invariably eat its way out of your pokeball.
One GM I played with got a lot of use out of Rust-monsters. Our group though also played a lot of oneshots, so loss ever really reached the heartbreakingly-serious level.
In older editions rust monsters were the most efficient way of disenchanting magical items to get magic dust for making better swords.
I believe they gave twice the yield of any other method.
Too many of my parties have gleefully profited off of new characters and their magic items (by selling/using the gear of the recently-deceased) for me to think yours is a common attitude.
You see, every player will say that about a theoretical scenario. When you actually put someone in the position of “your stuff or your life”, it is a VERY different story. Case in point:
My party comes across a dwarven ruin in the underdark. They proceed to start looting everything of value while the monsters are in another room. One PC -a Magus- decides that a blacksmith’s anvil is worth taking.
“What is your maximum carrying capacity?”
“eighty pounds”
“How much gear are you currently carrying?”
“Seventy pounds”
“You cannot carry it by yourself at present. What would you like to do?”
Three options lay before the player, and their wagon is at the entrance.
1: make two trips
2: ask the fighter to carry it.
3: “Oooh! I can drag it across the floor!”
“…Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Yes! It’s within my Drag capacity!”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Yes!”
“Okay.” I turn to the party. “Your looting is interrupted by the extremely loud scraping of metal against stone, and the unmistakable sound of someone trying to push or pull something heavy. You have two turns before the minotaur patrol you avoided earlier comes running in here to check out the noise. What do you do?”
The answer was “Almost get TPKed because the Magus refused to abandon the Anvil.”
Was your magus played by Will Smith?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w67dhHLUK3M&t=2m23s
You know your party might be a tad kleptomaniac when you’ve memorized the GP value of adamantine doors. And know a Dwarf who will give you a good rate, no questions asked.
All I know is that Oracle has Seen enough etc to know where this is going.
How do you think she got the blind curse?
Killing your character just means you roll a new one, with level appropriate loot not much less in value and probably with less cruft. When it comes to just the munchkin side of things, a loss of loot is much more permanent and significant than the loss of a character; even if you resurrect your character, that takes loot to pay for, but you can’t resurrect stolen/destroyed loot.
“Resurrect Magic Item” is now my next spell design.
Why does the picture remind me of the opening theme of Ducktales? Not the current one, the original one.
I’m guessing it’s this bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMU2NwaaXEA&t=0m54s
But damn… It had been a few years since I actually watched the intro. I kind of want to play a Ducktales campaign now.
Probably.
Dibs on Scrooge! He’s got the best stats.