To Catch a Killer, Part 2: Wild Accusations
Uh-oh. Looks like our resident catgirl is neck deep in self-incrimination. One can only hope that she lawyers up before Inquisitor feels obliged to show her Mercy.
Any dang way, it’s been a good long while since we talked about PVP. Dramatic irony, sneaky note passing, and Chevy Chase are all relevant to the conversation. Hurt feelings and misaligned expectations can be a real risk here, which is why my personal taste runs to jolly cooperation. Happily, with a little prep work and a smidge of player maturity, pitting players against one another can yield some truly memorable gaming moments.
Is it time for another tale from the table? Does a Reaver have radiation sickness?
So no shit there we were, a scrappy boat full of Browncoat sympathizers out on the edge of the The Verse. We’d had a few run-ins with the Alliance in recent sessions, and so we’d decided to lie low while the heat died down. That mostly meant floating in low-power mode out near the Rim, far away from the government dignitaries we’d impersonated, robbed, and roundly mocked. Since space is a big place, we figured that they wouldn’t have much chance to track us down, send avenging assassins, and shoot us about the face and head until such time and we expired.
Apparently they were extra special pissed off at us though. They decided to activate their sleeper agent.
“As you sleep,” says our GM, “You begin to dream. You are a knight clad in silver armor, and you are walking through a dark cave. You are very quiet though, and so the troll does not wake at your approach.”
“Um,” says the ship’s mechanic. “I’m pretty sure Joss Whedon didn’t write trolls into this setting.”
“What do you care?” says the GM. “You’re asleep. Besides, this is a one-on-one dream sequence with Unassuming Drifter With A Mysterious Past. May we continue?”
“Whatever,” says the mechanic.
“So there’s a troll in front of me?” says UDWAMP. “Great. I brain the ugly brute with the butt of my sword. I don’t want him waking up.”
“Go ahead and roll damage. I’ll even give you a bonus for the surprise. And… oof. That’s a hell of a hit!”
The GM was grinning a shit-eating GM grin at this point. We should have known. “Hey Mechanic!” he says. “You’re no longer asleep in the engine room. You’re unconscious and dying.”
“I’M WHAT?”
“Alright. Now that the troll is out of commission, you notice its fabulous treasure. There’s a huge magical device thrumming with power at the back of the troll cave. The only problem is that it’s far too big for you to carry alone.”
“Hmmm,” says UDWAMP. “I break off the most valuable piece, and I stuff it into my bags.”
“Pilot?” says the GM. “You wake from your doze to see a bank of urgent lights flashing on your console. Looks like there’s something very, very wrong with the ship’s engine.”
“Oh shit! I get on the coms and tell everyone to wake up!”
“UDWAMP? You hear the distant cries of a war horn. The goblins know you’re here! Your only hope is to get back to your noble steed and escape before they can swarm you.”
You probably get the point. What followed was a run-and-gun from the engine room to the ship’s lone shuttle. The mind-whammied sleeper agent kept shouting about goblins and fireballs, while the rest of us were desperately trying to capture him alive and prevent him from setting off not-rated-for-spacecraft hand grenades. It was one of the most memorable moments of the campaign, and it would not have been possible without some well-orchestrated player/GM collusion.
We eventually KO’d the sleeper agent, got his mind right, and set about finding his blue-handed handlers. It was a fun adventure, but nothing was quite so dramatic as that moment of “we’ve got to fight one of our own.”
And so, as we move into our daily discussion, what do you say we share our most successful PVP escapades? Did you plot out a betrayal with your GM? Was it one faction of PCs against another? Or is the phrase ‘successful PVP’ a contradiction in terms? Tell us all about your own players versus player adventures down in the comments!
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My most memorable PvP memory was finding a lycanthrope bane sword in a tomb and wanting to take it… and the party’s Dwarf Fighter balked because there was a curse on the tomb that said the wielder would become a beast under the full moon. My character was already an infected lycanthrope, so … phtbbbt.
The Dwarf, mighty of thew and Str., and my Half-Elf with his measly +1 Str. score wrestled over the sword… and I rolled a natural 20. The Dwarf was very surprised.
This post didn’t show up for a while; that’s why I repeated it further down the page…
Lift with the legs, Rogar….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSynJyq2RRo&t=1834s
You can see Ranger thinking: “Magus, honey… stop talkinggg…!”
That being said, Magus is doing surprisingly well on the observation front.
Her outfit gives her a +2 competence bonus to sounding like she knows what she’s talking about.
…
OK, that should actually be a feat. “If you’re wearing an outfit appropriate to a specific task — firefighter, jester, etc. — receive a bonus to your etc. etc.”
That’s called a disguise check.
Naw man. I’m thinking something more like Pageant of the Peacock, but disguise-based:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/bardic-masterpieces/masterpieces/pageant-of-the-peacock/
This is good enough digging oneself deeper that Magus may not be an accessory to murder, but have to wonder if she’s an accessory to the DM.
For someone observant, she’s missing the obvious dog tracks left behind. Hmm, does Gestalt wear shoes?
I think those are her ‘hand’prints, actually.
Eh, she’ll be fine. Magus had a witness to her location at the time of the murder, closer inspection of the wounds would show it wasn’t her blade, and if all that fails she can fall back on the fact that she clearly doesn’t have the attention span to plot a murder
But does she have the attention span to forget that she committed a murder?
I think that level of forgetfulness would fall under ‘Non Compos Mentis‘
Better question: Does Gestalt? Or Fighter? Or any of the othe murderhobos?
Hey, now. Fighter is definitely a murderhobo, but Gestalt has a place of residence and is holding down a paying job! She’s not a hobo. A murderer, on the other hand… 😉
Hmm, I note what look like twin punctures on the neck of the victim, as though they had been bitten by a fanged creature…
Some kind of snake monster, with a distinctively serpentine lack of ears? Oh no, I’m all out of antivenin! All I have is this useless holy water and garlic!
Haven’t you heard the rumors? The Two-Quick-Jabs-to-the-Neck-with-a-Rapier Killer has struck again!
Plus, the argument that the killer likely had animal-like fangs is still not a very helpful one for Magus’ case.
Looks like she cleaned up all the arterial spray again, too…
It wasn’t exactly a big battle, but I did get to do some PvP shenanigans in one campaign. It’s been a few years, so I’ve forgotten some details, but here goes:
It was an evil campaign, and I was playing a NE druid. One of the other players brought an intelligent undead. I couldn’t exactly do anything, since the rest of the characters were fine with it, and if I just walked away I couldn’t get rid of the abomination and I’d be out of the reward money. And he was our muscle, while I was the utility.
I had to be smarter about it. My first chance was when I was sent to chase a runner on my riding wolf. I stopped him but told him to I would let him go if he’d carry a message to the people trying to hunt us down, saying I would be willing to make a deal if it involves the undead destroyed and me getting out on top. I told the rest of the party he’d chugged a potion and ran at double speed.
Things progressed and on the way back from the mission I had the chance. I was the rear guard, and I left light spells shining backwards so my party couldn’t see them but we were sure to be followed. The next day I was front guard, they let me pass and ambushed the party. I got back and slung a magic stone towards the undead. That was the first time the players knew I was doing this stuff, the rest was done with the DM in the hallway or through notes.
That one attack was all the actual PvP though. It missed, and the guy then promised the soldiers to leave them alone if they’d go after me instead. And they did. Being mounted, I got away pretty easily. But my party won the fight, so in the end, I got away with only the XP gained, and without killing my target.
I’m not sure how the other player would have reacted if I’d managed to kill him, but since it was the last encounter of a one-shot campaign, I don’t think it would have been a big deal.
Context is king. Seems to me that one-shots are EXACTLY the kind of place where you can risk a bit of PVP without the feels-bad of a beloved PC.
my one and only ever play by post experience hab me „inform“ a fellow player that the proposed „evil action“ would provoke my Barbarian to intervene.
Lvl 1, min damage 11 vs. max HP 10 was convincing to stop an NPC getting murdered.
Power attack + greatsword + 18 STR + rage = “On second thought, my guy is feeling more Neutral today.”
„speak softly and carry a big stick“:
in game: „my character doesn’t like what you just proposed“
out of game: what you just said.
My finest PvP moment was when the party’s Dwarf Fighter and my Half-Sidhe Bard argued over whether or not to take a lycanthrope bane sword from a tomb.
The Dwarf didn’t like the inscription on the tomb, which threatened whoever carried the sword would become a ravening beast under the full moon.
Seeing as my Bard was already infected with lycanthropy, he figured he had nothing to lose.
So they matched strengths as to whether I would pick the sword up or the Dwarf would make me put it down… and I rolled a natural 20 on an opposed Strength check.
Hilarity was had.
And I did not become a hyper-werewolf at the next full moon.
Feed that lycanthrope enough caffeine though….
Nothing i have ever seen has equaled the “oh crap!” moment that was when the party wizard got hit with a Dominate Person effect and was told to kill all his companions. With his wisdom score of 1 he wasnt breaking out of that domination no matter how well he rolled, and he began his opening salvo by trapping the paladin and cleric inside a Forcecage spell, entirely of the player’s own volition. I genuinely thought this might result in a TPK, except the cleric got desperate enough to call for a Divine Intervention which beat the odds and actually worked, banishing the demon that was controlling the wizard, breaking the forcecage, and slamming the rest of the enemies into the ground like nails for good measure.
How did your party Wizard wind up with a Wisdom of 1?
He asked me if he could do it for roleplaying purposes. I gave him the obligatory “are you sure you want to do that?” and he went with it anyway. So you know, i bear no responsibility at all at that point, officer.
Usually it’s the barbarian at low level causing the dominated-TPK. At least at high level the rest of the party has resources to burn solving the problem.
I was running my own D20 Future conversion of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (with heavy Traveller influence). As the squad of space marines begin to investigate the first working “drop tube” they’ve encountered, the encounter key called for doppelgängers.
I explained how the first two soldiers went down the shaft, only to reappear moments later from a nearby corridor–haggard and with two days’ stubble–ranting about “we got to you in time” and “don’t go down there–the closer to the engines you get, the time distortion is worse,” and other sci-fi tropes.
I placed two color-coded markers on the table for each of the crewmembers.
The players looked at me, then the rest of the table. “Is this really us, they asked.
“Sure,” I replied.
The team didn’t trust them–a fight ensued–but as soon as their two teammates dropped, two more popped out of a different corridor, babbling about “don’t killing blow them” and “bootstrap paradox” and “time fractures* and other plausible nonsense. Two more color-coded markers were placed. Beginning to catch on, but still unsure, the players leaned into their roles and a convoluted Marine-on-Marine combat/Diplomacy/Bluff scenario unfolded. The duplicate soldiers lost; everyone was grinning.
That’s when I began pouring two-colored markers onto the table. “A team of Edwards come running and firing from corridor A and a squad of Bakers arrive from companionway C…”
Now only the players of Baker and Edwards were grinning. I sat back and let the carnage unfold.
The best part was the last round of combat: two more soldiers (one of each) popped back up the turbolift to check out the commotion and see why the rest of the team hadn’t followed them. Predictably, the freaked out and gun-happy space marines then mistakenly shot their own teammmates.
Amazing.
I mentioned my own doppelganger experience way back when…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-10
…But that one involved taking the doppel-player aside and being like, “Here’s what happened. You’re unconscious and dying in the other room, so you get to play an evil doppelganger. Now go try and kill your buddies.”
Absolutely love the time-travel schtick though. It’s a great bit of subterfuge for a classic situation: “Which set of tropes are we dealing with? I don’t know!”
Heck, our longest game started with PVP. Two of my players had decided to start the game as vigilante bandit hunters, while the third elected to play as a bandit. Inevitably, they clashed; a treasure-hunting priest was making his way through the swampy forest, and our bandit with her squad of bumbling NPC minions attempted to waylay him, with the vigilantes rushing in to defend him. But three rounds into the fight, the BBEG rose up from the swamp nearby, also intent on claiming the priest’s treasure. The two sides had to work together to face this new threat and declared a truce afterwards.
It worked in our case not because of GM collusion, but because of absolute trust between the players. We implicitly knew that no one was out to ruin anyone else’s fun, and they always planned to end up working together. It was just a matter of giving them an in-character reason to do so, which a treat to their hometown provided.
Criminal or Cleric, it don’t matter: “Nobody steps on a church in my town!”
PVP doesn’t happen too often at my table, but I can think of two instances.
In the first, the party thought it was PVP for a bit. One of the players had an artifact of raw Necromancy which had been trying to corrupt him for a year but his mental powers were keeping it at bay. The character had “gone off to talk to the nobles” and wasn’t at the inn when suddenly undead began to attack everyone else.
Since the ambush was meant to wait until he was gone, I asked the player beforehand to help me manage the fight; I’d get some of the undead, he’d get the rest. This meant the other players saw the player making rolls against them with undead and naturally assumed the worst. The session was fun because they had to prioritize a lot of different things. They ultimately holed up in a tower and kept freezing the giant undead solid on the slippery stairs so it’d fall down and crush the undead behind it.
The player came back the next session as his PC to help clean up but there was some tense RP around his undead artifact managing to slip around his controls.
The other PVP I can recall clearly was another mistaken thing. Both parties thought the other was under the control of the big bad so they were duking it out with magitech and good old fireballs from the sky. Both sides knew the other wasn’t OOCly and were trying to do a minimal damage take down, but it was still interesting to watch as 4 players went at each other. The battle didn’t last long because one combatant rolled terribly and almost died after he fell off his broomstick after an attack.
I’m sensing a theme with some of these stories. Leveraging meta-knowledge for dramatic effect is an interesting technique. Makes me wonder if it’s damaging to player trust though….
So no shit, there we were, session 1 of a new campaign, all of us conveniently arriving at the same location looking for different things when all hell breaks loose. Most of the characters don’t know each other, but my rogue knows the sorcerer from some backstory stuff. We’re fighting some kind of stone creature with gigantic pillar-hands, and we can barely scratch it, but I think to myself, “hey, we’ve got these disarmed bombs that have been planted here, right?” So I grab one and try to wedge it inside the thing. Unfortunately, I roll low, and the bomb slides out at my feet. Now, me and the bard pc (who my character doesn’t know) are standing on on opposite sides of the thing. I look at them, say “sorry, kid,” and bonus action dash around the corner, yelling for the sorcerer to firebolt the bomb (which is powerful enough to vaporize a train car). It didn’t end up happening, but it made for some juicy intra-party tension going forward.
Also, thinking about it, I’m now 2 for 2 on “abandon a party member to die in the first real combat of a campaign” with this group… although I had good reasons the first time (and talked it out with the group), and was pretty sure in the moment that the bard would survive the second.
Well hey, now you’ve got plenty of opportunity for a heel-face turn. I seem to remember a certain self-absorbed hero making the sacrifice play when the chips were down….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arQXN8qK6cE
In practice, those scenes tend to be more like the start of Saints Row 4. Especially Mythic/Demigod power PC games.
https://youtu.be/lFMo1cQrVeM
“I feel like Magus is the opposite of a psychic detective. Homegirl lacks regular-sensory perception.”
So she’s an anti-psychic detective? Okay, I think we can work with this, we just need her in the right campaign…
Magus: My super power is making everyone around me dumber!
Everyone: https://c.tenor.com/XHI8PjnQQ6cAAAAC/naked-gun-facepalm.gif
Abd then they get the Luck domain and cause everyone to roll nat1s, and grab Mind Fog to get a group of people stoned.
So she’s like Fighter in 8Bit Theatre?
Red Mage once claimed the guy had an Intelligence-draining attack…
Known to everyone else as talking in a well-meaning but inane fashion until people’s brains started giving out.
Oh man, the dream-sequence-D&D sleeper agent thing was brilliant! I might need to file a version of that away for a future campaign…
As for PVP, in my experience the best PVP is low-stakes. Low stakes means nobody loses too much when they lose, and lethal force probably isn’t being brought to bear.
Well said. I think that years of “who would win?” arguments condition us to imagine all-out fight-to-the-death duels. But there’s no reason to go that hard. Life or death struggle is only one type of conflict, and as you say, probably not the best choice for every PVP situation.
Sadly, it happened in a mid-session game that I was unable to attend. But one of our players was sort of a second GM and his current character turned out to be a transformed chromatic dragon. They party was in a dungeon and this guy stabbed our fighter several times and killed him before fleeing. Fighter had enough gold that we were able to pay for a Resurrection and he often brought up the stabbing.
On a more funny note, not long after our goblins joined us, they decided to try to steal fighter’s armor. We woke up and the goblins were inside the bottom half of the armor trying to run away. Our wizard cast some spells but had Wild Magic and ended up turning the armor pink with little red hearts. And then the goblin with spells cast Stinking Cloud. It was hilarious.
Odd dynamic being a “second GM” and simultaneously a player. How exactly did that work? Were they privy to the primary DM’s plans?
No idea. They might have been given some plot pieces at appropriate times but not before. They were also the only player that had multiple characters. Funnily enough, one of those characters was one of our quirky goblins.
Welp, either I’m very good at spying at Colin’s scripts, Colin re-wrote the script, or I’m a Wizard/Oracle. Guessed the Sherlock outfit and floofy-ears accusation so far!
But for real, what’s the behind-the-scenes script this time? 😀
And any chance of it being a permanent feature to the comic? Darths and Droids does something like it, for I think vision-impaired peeps who need transcripts.
Do you really think people would be interested in the scripts? They’re pretty short….
Anywho:
Original Part 2 Script:
TITLE: To Catch a Killer, Part 2: Outside Consultant
TEXT: There is no shame in calling in an expert.
PIC: A murder scene. The victim has been neck-bit by Miss Gestalt. And also stabbed. And also there are bloody paw prints and wolf hair everywhere. Occultist is in the foreground examining the the murder weapon (a curvy dagger from last comic). Members of Team Bounty Hunter stand in the background looking impatient.
DIALOGUE:
Occultist: How do none of you guys have proficiency in Investigation?
SCROLLOVER: Psychic detective is just a day job. Her real passion is in her pay-per-call Psychic Classes Network service.
BLOG: calling locksmiths, lore masters, etc.
Part 2 script after your comment:
TITLE: To Catch a Killer, Part 2: Wild Accusations
TEXT: When the game is afoot, no one is above suspicion.
PIC: The murder scene. The victim’s corpse is covered in a sheet. Magus’s large cat ears poke around the sides of a dearstalker cap. She has a bubble pipe clamped in her teeth, and she gestures at the body with her rapier. Meanwhile, Quiz and Ranger give one another the side-eye, obviously suspecting that Magus is the murderer..
DIALOGUE:
Magus: Witnesses describe our suspect as having distinctive, animal-like ears. Note too the stab wounds. Clearly the work of a slender-bladed piercing weapon.
SCROLLOVER: I feel like Magus is the opposite of a psychic detective. Homegirl lacks regular-sensory perception.
BLOG: Paranoia. Secret PVP. Colluding w/ GMs.
But Quiz knows where Eldritch Knight was at the time of the murder: With her.
I believe I’ve already told my Monk story in the past, but I’ll tell it again:
So my character and That Guy’s were at each other’s throat for a while. Eventually the DM said “You guys want to settle this with some sanctioned PvP? That Guy won initiative. It’s important to note that he was playing some unholy multiclass of Assassin Rogue with the v1 Mystic and as a Vuman had Magic Initiate to have an Owl familiar. He hit me for like 90% of my HP in the first go because the DM just had the owl work on his initiative and use the Help action which is not RaW but I did not know that at the time.
Then it was my turn. I was playing a Monk. I whacked him with a staff and triggered Stunning Strike, then did the rest of my attacks. He spent his turn being stunned. On my turn I re-upped SS and hit him 4 more times. He spent his turn being stunned.
I had proven my point.
An unrelated story that also involves a Monk:
So the Dwarf Fighter was trying to egg my Goblin Kensei into a fight, trying to do a Gimli/Legoland rivalry with kill-counting and the like. I refused to play ball on kill-counting since “We’re working together as a group, any kill is the result of the team not the individual”. On the subject of us fighting I simply told him “I promise if you fight me you will lose, and it won’t be fun for either of us.
Later he was mind-whammy’d into some PVP and went after me. I responded by doing my kung-fu and then using my Mobile feat to back away without retaliation. He caught up to me by dashing. 4 more hits and I backed away. He came halfway and hucked javelins at me only to encounter Deflect Missiles. At that point he realized that fighting me would not end well, and would not be fun.
Later he tried to get a rematch with the caveat that we couldn’t move. I told him “My mobility is my greatest asset, if I can’t move you can’t have weapons or armor”. The campaign fell apart after that; we never got our rematch.
Probably for the best.
Actually there’s a third story, that happened just a few sessions ago, for once I wasn’t the Monk who stomped the other player. I was playing a Fiend-lock who was in a Yugoloth pyramid-scheme and was roleplayed as a failed academic and “That creepy guy from work”. The Monk in this story was being played as a total dudebro jock and so our characters were at odds. It didn’t help that as a Halfling my character was subject to a lot of “Throw the small PC” jokes. (While there is much in-character antagonism out of character I’m cool with it.)
Since our characters were antagonistic when we came to a fighting pit it seemed sensible to have it out. Before the fight I cast Armor of Agathys. The funny thing aboot that spell is that it really wasn’t balanced for use against players. I was level 7 at the time which means it gives 20 THP and every hit against it causes the attacker to take 20 cold damage. The Monk ran in, Stunning Strike kicked me in the junk but took 20 damage. Once the character knew (The player knew but was playing a dumb dudebro so wouldn’t know how the spell worked) that hitting me hurt he backed off and chucked darts at me. I spent my turn stunned but with the spell still up. On his turn he chucked enough darts to break through the armor. On my turn I spent my second slot to re-up my armor. He retaliated with more darts, I ineffectually Eldritch Blast‘d him only to have my armor broken by the darts at which point he ran in and used his bonus action to Flurry of Blows into Stunning Strike, with yet more hits to the junk. Eventually I lost.
I threw away 20 GP to get kicked in the junk.
Dataset of 3, but why do so many Monks end up doing PVP?
Well, it wasn’t a PvP fight, as much as a PvP campaign. This was in Glorantha, and we were playing RuneQuest III. One of our players, the healer, was separated from us during a minor fight. Turns out he was turned to the Chaos gods during that separation. So we had a whole campaign (about 2 years in game and about 4 years IRL) and he was playing his normal character, but in hindsight there were definitely chaotic twists there, but he explained away all of them.
So the purpose of the whole campaign was to consecrate a new temple for the Seven Mothers, the guardian deities of the Lunar Empire. We managed to get all the stuff that was needed, and payed for the construction, and this was to be the climax of the campaign, and we would be the honoured heroes that made it all possible. Everybody that was anybody in the province was at the feast, up to and including the imperial governor. And just as the consecration ceremony was taking of, the players character opened up a hidden trapdoor, and we were attacked by Krasht kids, minions of the Chaos god Krasht, who ate everybody, including us, while we were fighting for our lives. And afterwards they despoiled the temple and it is now a place of chaos.
Epic fight, epic campaign, and epic reveal, but huge surprise at that moment.
So the campaign got “bad ending’d”? Was there anything your could have done to prevent that in retrospect? Or was that always that way it was gonna go once the GM and the betraying player hatched their plans?
The only PVP experiences I had were Domination related (it sucks how long it lasts). Both times my PC was nearly murdered by a PC.
The first time, vampires told our Melee-focused Occultist to kill my Wizard. I failed to dispel, she failed to resist a command she’d never do willingly, and then she critted me with enough damage to kill me from full hp – or would have if I didn’t have Windy Escape, negating the crit to ‘almost KO’d’ instead. The crisis ended after that with our witch doing a better casting of Dispel Magic.
The other situation, our Barbarian got hit by the domination whammy from a ghost, who ordered my Kobold gunslinger dead (he was wearing the plot mcguffin). This time, a massive dodgy AC, disarming him of his greataxe and a martial HD pool made the Kobold survive a few hits, and even a crit, but if he continued fighting for a round longer, he’d likely be dead (or the barbarian would, as my Kobold, whilst trying to be nonlethal, could destroy him if he critted on accident with his x4 crits). Once again a dispel magic saved the day before I had to resort to fleeing or aggressive KOing.
Dude, good call prepping windy escape. It’s always a good idea to have a “what if my buddy gets dominated” plan in place.
It was more of a ‘what if a melee monster ever rolls a nat20 in melee range, ever’ contingency. A dang prehistoric fish could one-shot me on a lucky roll.
Me too: http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/images/species/0/coelacanth-size-comparison.jpg
Please, tell me that next page is Magus yelling herself on a mirror like she were a Ace Attorney’s character 😀
Only she’s dumb enough to conclude that she did it, seeing as she has an alibi (as shown in the previous comic).
Does she? Major image could be her alibi while she killed tha guy that looks like fighter’s brother 🙂
Maybe the whole short-spam attention cat-girl is just an act on her part and she is the true BBEG of the setting using BBEG as a cover while she goes unsuspected with team bounty-hunter. She is a criminal mastermind who has been playing all the characters at the tune of her plans 😛
She plays Good Cop to Inquisitor’s Bad Cop for her own interrogation.
XD
The next comic features a hanging. Magus is on the scaffold.
First row to see the hanging 😀
…
No. Wait. What!!! o_O¡
I see how it is. Kill Fighter and nobody bats an eye. Threaten Magus with a little perma-death and everyone loses their mind.
You either die a PC or you keep HP long enough to see yourself become the BBEG 😛
on a lighter note:
our Paladin gave me a stern „I‘m not amused“ look when I reported that I didn’t manage to wake up the sleeping guard for a fair fight.
Now that would be a nice archetype. Give up a few of your standard paladin auras to receive a “guilt trip” aura.
I was once in a campaign where intrigue PvP ended up being the campaign’s main draw. I forget if this was the GM’s original instructions or not, but all three PCs had a significant backstory secret (one had been a part of a secret military unit that did war crimes before he deserted; one was a character from a previous campaign who traveled through time in a VERY convoluted sequence of events involving seducing a tree; and one was actually two characters sharing a body and on the run from the person who did that to them) that no other player knew. The main villains were a colony of telepathic extradimensional fungi, and they could see our character’s minds and desires, so they used these secrets (as well as stat boons they could give) to try to manipulate and recruit the PCs. The GM encouraged this by frequently giving out slips of paper with personalized messages on them that were telepathic messages that only that character’s player could read. One PC eventually became convinced of the fungi’s good intentions (aided by their ‘gift’ of the child form of her old friend from the prior timeline) until the last session or two, when the rest of the party talked her back. It was great fun!
How was the dramatic irony with the paper-passing? Did everyone assume that the others were getting similar psychic tips, or did the players successfully play it off?
Oh, we ALL knew whenever someone got a psychic message slip of paper. It would have been way less fun if we didn’t.
Even crazier was when the GM gave each of us an envelope (that the PCs had received in-universe) with important information and a threat if the reader shared the contents with anyone. We kept those letters a secret from each other for MONTHS. (I recall that mine addressed both of my characters separately – no surprise that a telepath could figure out there were two souls in one body.)
My PCs are fighting battles of Intrigue, blades and armies all the time, but the best single example of it would have to be the Telean revolutions. As various players were trying to claim the throne, another led the capital in a bloody uprising then escaped (the First Revolution.) On emerging into this chaos, one of the PC claimants decided a rival was responsible and killed him, earning the enmity of the Queen he’d been planning to wed. He fled, with a group of other PCs, making dark deals to return later with an army of demons. When they did, he successfully kidnapped the Queen, causing one of the other players loyal to her to set up a provisional government whilst yet another went after her and rescued her, returning only to find that the PC serving as interim governor had decided he was in charge now (the Second Revolution.) His PC spymaster set about turning the various nobles of the nation against the Queen with incredible success, whilst the Royalist assault on the capital was thwarted when the PC who’d rescued her was blasted off the walls by another PC ally of the governor. All of this ignoring the simultaneous conflicts in two other PC-run nations, which played into and off this one.
It was a glorious, incredibly complex clash of arms and Wits, and I can still remember the chief Royalist player’s face when the spymaster (who was working for him behind the scenes) completely accidentally caused twenty of twenty-three provinces in the nation to declare for his foes, forcing him after a month or so of guerilla warfare on an isolated island to which he’d retreated to flee the nation.
It sounds like the moral of the story, like all such stories, is that monarchy sucks and you should have a republic.
How did you manage the plans and counterplans at the table? Was it a case of secret not passing? Or did you just have a gentleman’s “no metagaming” agreement in place?
Ah, the Mysterious Wanderer Past, which can only be upstaged by the Mysterious Cyberware flaw, or perhaps the rarer Mysterious Pregnancy backstory.
Be very sure you trust your DM/GM/Storyteller before giving them hooks into your character. It can turn out very well, but it is very easily handled badly.
Truly, the path of the UDWAMP is a treacherous one.