So the Play is a Circle of the Moon Druid. They have the Outlander Background, and seem to be setup up as kind of Anti-City. The Campaign setting is Water Deep: Dragon Heist. We are just entering Chapter 4, in doing so some of the players needed to catch up to other players had missed a few sessions and needed exp to catch up. So I setup a custom encounter that was hard enough to grant the needed exp for those players to reach level 4. As some may know Water Deep doesn't house any druid groves, but does have druids and the Emerald Enclave in it. So Druids live there and help bring nature to the city and balance. In this encounter I set it up in the City of the Dead location in Water Deep. Its has several Crypts and Graves around and these Crypts are know to be both family tombs and also can house family heirlooms and artifacts of notable families of Water Deep.
The Players receive a request to look into the Crypts in a certain area as the last couple of nights there have been loud noises and undead sightings in the areas of the City of the dead. The city guard think their maybe a necromancer or someone up to no good but don't have the man power to spare as they to investigate at the time cause they are still dealing with the fall out from the Gurlhund Villa incident.
It works out pretty well the Players arrive a little before midnight and setup around in various locations to watch out for the loud noises and undead that are possibly happening. At midnight nothing happens right away and they are all wondering if the rumors wasn't true. When an explosion rocks the side of one of the Crypts and some undead start climbing out of the whole that was opened. They begin fighting the undead that filter out, the Ranger shooting into them with blunted arrows he made, the Bard inspiring people, the Cleric healing and turning the undead when she can, the Paladin going toe to toe with the on the front line next to the cleric and the Druid throwing rocks at the undead until the turn into an Animal that does blunt dmg an Ape. They beat back the first wave fine and then Zombies and Skels started rising from the ground all around them the heavy rain coming down drowning out the noise and blighting there sight. The Cleric rose into the sky on Holy wings and cast Channel Divinity: Sear Undead and wipes out most of the weak ones in range of her. A nice hit to the horde that came up as she is floating there a blast rings out and a cannon hits her square the chest knocking her from the sky. She crashes into the ground and slides in the the wall of one of the crypts not moving and seemingly devoid of life.(she was reduced to -8 hit points). The rest of the part continued fighting as the Paladin also started to falter his hp falling to the onslaught but between the remaining members they fight them off. The bad stabilizes and heals the Cleric bringing her back from the brink of death. The Druid and Paladin fight of the nearby skels, and the Ranger discovers when the blast came from in that he noticed a wall wasn't quite right on one of the crypts revealing to him a illusionary wall once its effect broken he could see into the Crypt and starting engaging a Larger Undead Pirate with a hand held Canon weapon and two heads along with two other skel Knights.
After a Hard won fight against the Two headed Pirate and the other skels. They finished off all the undead and completed the Encounter. The players that needed the Exp gained level 4.
Most of the Players are of the Good/Mostly Lawful in how to play and act. The Bard is slightly on edge of Lawful but still good, the Druid is more neutral and leans more towards greed and dark paths, which I find odd but their background I guess makes them that way.
The players loot what they want from the Undead the Cleric stays outside to watch and call out if anymore come while they check out the Crypts that broke open for more undead. She is thankful for the load off cause her artificial leg was broken in the fall and can't move around good.
In the Crypts one the Players find a Ornate Chest inlaid with Gold, the Chest is Warded and Locked from their observations. The Ranger attempts to undo the ward and fails and takes Fire dmg. Mean while other Party memebers the Druid and Bard are looking into the 2nd Crypt where the Two head pirate was and find a similar styled chest in that one along with 4 torches on the walls. They both work to untrap and unlock the chest, something in the druids background he says give him thief tools and makes them proficient. I didn't see it so it must come from something else but haven't had time to go over it all yet.
They work at it for a little bit and they finally get the box open only to find it empty, and lacking any hidden areas inside the lid or a false bottom. So we swing back over to the Ranger who has managed to untrap and unlock the other box, and finds a Letter a Very nice looking Druid staff and a Bag inside. The Ranger despite not wanting to disturb the items breaks the wax seal on the letter, and reads it.
"To my Darling Daughter this Staff handed down by the Elders of our circle, ready for you take up the mantle now that you have come of age and the Bag of containing a part of our circles money, 20 Harbor Moons. I love dad P.S. Lilly I know I couldn't be here to see you take up the mantle but I know you will do our Circle proud."
The Ranger placed the items back in the box and closed the letter best he could, then closed the Chest and walked out of the Family Crypt and Moved over to the 2nd Crypt.
When ask about what he found he told them their was nothing of value inside so he came to see if they needed help. The Druid and Bard figured out that by turning all the Torches upside down it made the chest move to the side revealing a stair case that lead down. They traveled down a few miles and came to a room with a Blood Red Door and Two human skulls embedded in it, in the room with the door they also found 2 more chests one made of human skin, and the other made of wood. They opened the human skin one and found the skulls and bones of around 10 people in it, the other box contained 10 sets of clothes. In one of the skulls the found a Ring that detected as magic but didn't identify it. nothing of note was found in the 2nd box. They began trying to figure out the door they found, and noticed it has no seems nor locks but it had two handles and 2 Human skulls and was blood red.
After a while they decided to detect magic on the door and discovered it was held shut by an Arcane lock. So the Bard made the track back to the city proper to get a scroll of Knock, he also took the Cleric with him to help her back to the guild hall so the Artificer their could look at her leg he had made her as she couldn't walk with out help atm.
Roughly a few hours later the Bard arrived back, mean while the pally who has been standing guard decided to head back to the guild hall also(they had a headache and went home early). So the bard arrives and they use the Knock spell to unlock the door, find a room full of slowly rotting organs all over the floor walls and ceiling and parts a small throne made of peoples skin ect and a Floating Mace, that had a Enlarged Human Skull for the top and some blackened bones for a handle. The bard decides to go for it as the Ranger says its probably not a good idea. They tie a rope to the Bard and he walks in grabs the Mace, and nothing happens. So he walks out with it, then for whatever reason decides to touch the mace to the organs on the floor causing them all to rot and decay. After which the Mace speaks to him in his head and tells he thank you for sacrifice to Orcus, he looks forward to you becoming a valued follower. The bard keeps the mace and the room is resealed, the Ranger wanting to find some justice collects all the bones and skulls and puts them in bag of holding to take to the guard. They make the long trip back up to the stairs to the top of Crypt 2 and find the chest has moved back into place with no obvious ways to move it. The Ranger and Druid begin to look for buttons leavers ect but don't find anything mean while the Bard has been talking with the Mace he found, which calls it self the Wand of Orcus, and says he can help him gain power, and can even show them how to get out if he agrees to attune with him. So the Bard agrees with out any hesitation, and the Wand tells him about the stone block 3 under the chest that is a button. Sure enough the chests slides and they return to the surface.
Another note the Druid and Ranger are brothers in game, the Druid kept pestering the Ranger during the trip back up the stairs asking him if there really wasn't anything in the other crypt only he looked at. The Ranger kept saying nothing of value to us. But the Druid kept pestering him about (Meta Knowledge that it contained some druid things). The Pestering won out, and the Ranger said it was just an old staff that is passed down by Elder to Elder in a Druid circle based in the city and a letter to the next heir for when they come of age. He noted the letter didn't look very old and their wasn't to much dust on or around the box. He figured maybe a 4-7 years had passed roughly by his reckoning. So it wasn't some ancient forgotten Crypt. The Ranger said I would just leave it alone and that he was heading back to the guild hall and the Bard followed. The Druid went to the other Crypt opened the chest took the Staff, the bag of Harbor moons and the letter(he read it), and replaced the staff with an old Stick he carried around with him and then closed and locked the Chest and went home to the guild hall.
So with the taking of the Staff I told him I would consider him moving from Neutral to Neutral Evil. As he stole items from another Druid Circle knowing it was something passed down, and their circle funds along with the letter from a Father to Daughter.
His reasons are that he doesn't consider druids that live in the city be real druids cause they aren't apart of nature anymore. To which I noted to him that he also lives in the city for the past year or so and lives in a house. He hasn't given back to Nature or done anything that really feels druidy along those lines. But condemns druids that keep the balance in the city and spread nature where they can.
He said based on how he doesn't believe that they are druids cause they live in Ivory towers in a city that they aren't druids he hasn't done anything wrong. They don't live in towers, but I get that they aren't in Druid groves full of trees, but they do help maintain and bring nature to the city of Water deep, like the city of the dead with all its trees they help cultivate.
I don't want to punish a player for how they want to play their char. But I don't know if Druids are just not bound by a moral compass in 5E. But also their is basically no I'll effects of him stealing from another circle of druids. Maybe if they discover its missing, and someone sees him carrying around this Very Rare Staff he took. It might lead him to be Exiled from all Local and near by Druid Circles. But other than that I can't see much going against it. I suppose I thought like the Ranger the player would choose to do the right thing based on how I see Druids normally acting.
Can someone help me understand their motivation here? and maybe something I can do to work around it with out having to like banish the char from Druid things. I thought about normal good Animals not wanting to talk or come up to him anymore, and more aggressive and dangerous ones being more likely to answer his calls but be aggressive with him and unstable. Maybe the Staff won't attune to him or it starts to decay as he holds it showing him that he is out of balance with nature etc.
Firstly, remind him that his meta knowledge does not apply to his character's knowledge in the future.
Secondly, unfortunately, 5e has no alignment based stuff to draw on. This player clearly doesn't care if he's evil or neutral, he just wants to play the game and be a nuisance. So you either let that happen and or grow a backbone and tell him no.
As far as punishing him, which you clearly WANT to do but feel bad about it, it this Druid circle an active one? If so, they can try to take the staff back. Is it a dead circle? Then who cares let him have the staff and going forward grow a backbone.
Its not a back bone thing damn people are so aggressive these days, I'm trying understand the changes from path to 5e the no alignment stuff is pretty moot, 5e changed alot like most of the table has lucky and slivery barbs so its pretty much every creature rolls with disadvantage. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense for a druid to do it cause of how pathfinder worked. In this case I was just wondering what other people would do based on the info. Even the Paladin can steal stuff pretty much if they say can justify it for what ever, at this point even like Evil and Good aren't even really a thing. But as a GM I feel that it was wrong to steal something like that from another Druid Circle, yes the Circle is still active. I plan for him to be shunned by animals and the circles until he makes amends. I haven't planned beyond that yet. It just happened last session.
Its not a back bone thing damn people are so aggressive these days, I'm trying understand the changes from path to 5e the no alignment stuff is pretty moot, 5e changed alot like most of the table has lucky and slivery barbs so its pretty much every creature rolls with disadvantage. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense for a druid to do it cause of how pathfinder worked. In this case I was just wondering what other people would do based on the info. Even the Paladin can steal stuff pretty much if they say can justify it for what ever, at this point even like Evil and Good aren't even really a thing. But as a GM I feel that it was wrong to steal something like that from another Druid Circle, yes the Circle is still active. I plan for him to be shunned by animals and the circles until he makes amends. I haven't planned beyond that yet. It just happened last session.
As far as Paladins go I start taking away their Paladin powers or forcing them to make charisma saves to use them if they start to go too far astray from their oaths. I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing with Druids if you felt they were going too far astray. There are no rules about it, though, so you have to make it up yourself.
As far as Silvery Barbs - just ban the spell. Most tables already do.
Right there is nothing for druid so it harder to use a rule book ruling for it, vs just I don't like it so I'm punishing the player. Technically the Druid can walk around stealing anything in a city and doing what ever cause it doesn't effect nature at all. So in the players mind its all justified, the Staff was locked away in a container and he freed it. Due to the druids being city ones he doesn't care about the moral implications or that its belongs to another circle. He could burn the whole city down and say he's just helping nature reclaim its space.
But yea I'll have to get creative on what happens with the druid cause there is no guidelines for them beyond they are good long as they don't burn down a forest pretty much. Going by a rule book ruling other than breaking the law by stealing which if they don't check the box anytime soon no one would know it happened.
But I think due to the nature of the staff its going to be more of a wand chooses the wizard sort of thing here. it won't let him attune so its just a fancy looking stick.
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So the Play is a Circle of the Moon Druid. They have the Outlander Background, and seem to be setup up as kind of Anti-City. The Campaign setting is Water Deep: Dragon Heist. We are just entering Chapter 4, in doing so some of the players needed to catch up to other players had missed a few sessions and needed exp to catch up. So I setup a custom encounter that was hard enough to grant the needed exp for those players to reach level 4. As some may know Water Deep doesn't house any druid groves, but does have druids and the Emerald Enclave in it. So Druids live there and help bring nature to the city and balance. In this encounter I set it up in the City of the Dead location in Water Deep. Its has several Crypts and Graves around and these Crypts are know to be both family tombs and also can house family heirlooms and artifacts of notable families of Water Deep.
The Players receive a request to look into the Crypts in a certain area as the last couple of nights there have been loud noises and undead sightings in the areas of the City of the dead. The city guard think their maybe a necromancer or someone up to no good but don't have the man power to spare as they to investigate at the time cause they are still dealing with the fall out from the Gurlhund Villa incident.
It works out pretty well the Players arrive a little before midnight and setup around in various locations to watch out for the loud noises and undead that are possibly happening. At midnight nothing happens right away and they are all wondering if the rumors wasn't true. When an explosion rocks the side of one of the Crypts and some undead start climbing out of the whole that was opened. They begin fighting the undead that filter out, the Ranger shooting into them with blunted arrows he made, the Bard inspiring people, the Cleric healing and turning the undead when she can, the Paladin going toe to toe with the on the front line next to the cleric and the Druid throwing rocks at the undead until the turn into an Animal that does blunt dmg an Ape. They beat back the first wave fine and then Zombies and Skels started rising from the ground all around them the heavy rain coming down drowning out the noise and blighting there sight. The Cleric rose into the sky on Holy wings and cast Channel Divinity: Sear Undead and wipes out most of the weak ones in range of her. A nice hit to the horde that came up as she is floating there a blast rings out and a cannon hits her square the chest knocking her from the sky. She crashes into the ground and slides in the the wall of one of the crypts not moving and seemingly devoid of life.(she was reduced to -8 hit points). The rest of the part continued fighting as the Paladin also started to falter his hp falling to the onslaught but between the remaining members they fight them off. The bad stabilizes and heals the Cleric bringing her back from the brink of death. The Druid and Paladin fight of the nearby skels, and the Ranger discovers when the blast came from in that he noticed a wall wasn't quite right on one of the crypts revealing to him a illusionary wall once its effect broken he could see into the Crypt and starting engaging a Larger Undead Pirate with a hand held Canon weapon and two heads along with two other skel Knights.
After a Hard won fight against the Two headed Pirate and the other skels. They finished off all the undead and completed the Encounter. The players that needed the Exp gained level 4.
Most of the Players are of the Good/Mostly Lawful in how to play and act. The Bard is slightly on edge of Lawful but still good, the Druid is more neutral and leans more towards greed and dark paths, which I find odd but their background I guess makes them that way.
The players loot what they want from the Undead the Cleric stays outside to watch and call out if anymore come while they check out the Crypts that broke open for more undead. She is thankful for the load off cause her artificial leg was broken in the fall and can't move around good.
In the Crypts one the Players find a Ornate Chest inlaid with Gold, the Chest is Warded and Locked from their observations. The Ranger attempts to undo the ward and fails and takes Fire dmg. Mean while other Party memebers the Druid and Bard are looking into the 2nd Crypt where the Two head pirate was and find a similar styled chest in that one along with 4 torches on the walls. They both work to untrap and unlock the chest, something in the druids background he says give him thief tools and makes them proficient. I didn't see it so it must come from something else but haven't had time to go over it all yet.
They work at it for a little bit and they finally get the box open only to find it empty, and lacking any hidden areas inside the lid or a false bottom. So we swing back over to the Ranger who has managed to untrap and unlock the other box, and finds a Letter a Very nice looking Druid staff and a Bag inside. The Ranger despite not wanting to disturb the items breaks the wax seal on the letter, and reads it.
"To my Darling Daughter this Staff handed down by the Elders of our circle, ready for you take up the mantle now that you have come of age and the Bag of containing a part of our circles money, 20 Harbor Moons. I love dad P.S. Lilly I know I couldn't be here to see you take up the mantle but I know you will do our Circle proud."
The Ranger placed the items back in the box and closed the letter best he could, then closed the Chest and walked out of the Family Crypt and Moved over to the 2nd Crypt.
When ask about what he found he told them their was nothing of value inside so he came to see if they needed help. The Druid and Bard figured out that by turning all the Torches upside down it made the chest move to the side revealing a stair case that lead down. They traveled down a few miles and came to a room with a Blood Red Door and Two human skulls embedded in it, in the room with the door they also found 2 more chests one made of human skin, and the other made of wood. They opened the human skin one and found the skulls and bones of around 10 people in it, the other box contained 10 sets of clothes. In one of the skulls the found a Ring that detected as magic but didn't identify it. nothing of note was found in the 2nd box. They began trying to figure out the door they found, and noticed it has no seems nor locks but it had two handles and 2 Human skulls and was blood red.
After a while they decided to detect magic on the door and discovered it was held shut by an Arcane lock. So the Bard made the track back to the city proper to get a scroll of Knock, he also took the Cleric with him to help her back to the guild hall so the Artificer their could look at her leg he had made her as she couldn't walk with out help atm.
Roughly a few hours later the Bard arrived back, mean while the pally who has been standing guard decided to head back to the guild hall also(they had a headache and went home early). So the bard arrives and they use the Knock spell to unlock the door, find a room full of slowly rotting organs all over the floor walls and ceiling and parts a small throne made of peoples skin ect and a Floating Mace, that had a Enlarged Human Skull for the top and some blackened bones for a handle. The bard decides to go for it as the Ranger says its probably not a good idea. They tie a rope to the Bard and he walks in grabs the Mace, and nothing happens. So he walks out with it, then for whatever reason decides to touch the mace to the organs on the floor causing them all to rot and decay. After which the Mace speaks to him in his head and tells he thank you for sacrifice to Orcus, he looks forward to you becoming a valued follower. The bard keeps the mace and the room is resealed, the Ranger wanting to find some justice collects all the bones and skulls and puts them in bag of holding to take to the guard. They make the long trip back up to the stairs to the top of Crypt 2 and find the chest has moved back into place with no obvious ways to move it. The Ranger and Druid begin to look for buttons leavers ect but don't find anything mean while the Bard has been talking with the Mace he found, which calls it self the Wand of Orcus, and says he can help him gain power, and can even show them how to get out if he agrees to attune with him. So the Bard agrees with out any hesitation, and the Wand tells him about the stone block 3 under the chest that is a button. Sure enough the chests slides and they return to the surface.
Another note the Druid and Ranger are brothers in game, the Druid kept pestering the Ranger during the trip back up the stairs asking him if there really wasn't anything in the other crypt only he looked at. The Ranger kept saying nothing of value to us. But the Druid kept pestering him about (Meta Knowledge that it contained some druid things). The Pestering won out, and the Ranger said it was just an old staff that is passed down by Elder to Elder in a Druid circle based in the city and a letter to the next heir for when they come of age. He noted the letter didn't look very old and their wasn't to much dust on or around the box. He figured maybe a 4-7 years had passed roughly by his reckoning. So it wasn't some ancient forgotten Crypt. The Ranger said I would just leave it alone and that he was heading back to the guild hall and the Bard followed. The Druid went to the other Crypt opened the chest took the Staff, the bag of Harbor moons and the letter(he read it), and replaced the staff with an old Stick he carried around with him and then closed and locked the Chest and went home to the guild hall.
So with the taking of the Staff I told him I would consider him moving from Neutral to Neutral Evil. As he stole items from another Druid Circle knowing it was something passed down, and their circle funds along with the letter from a Father to Daughter.
His reasons are that he doesn't consider druids that live in the city be real druids cause they aren't apart of nature anymore. To which I noted to him that he also lives in the city for the past year or so and lives in a house. He hasn't given back to Nature or done anything that really feels druidy along those lines. But condemns druids that keep the balance in the city and spread nature where they can.
He said based on how he doesn't believe that they are druids cause they live in Ivory towers in a city that they aren't druids he hasn't done anything wrong. They don't live in towers, but I get that they aren't in Druid groves full of trees, but they do help maintain and bring nature to the city of Water deep, like the city of the dead with all its trees they help cultivate.
I don't want to punish a player for how they want to play their char. But I don't know if Druids are just not bound by a moral compass in 5E. But also their is basically no I'll effects of him stealing from another circle of druids. Maybe if they discover its missing, and someone sees him carrying around this Very Rare Staff he took. It might lead him to be Exiled from all Local and near by Druid Circles. But other than that I can't see much going against it. I suppose I thought like the Ranger the player would choose to do the right thing based on how I see Druids normally acting.
Can someone help me understand their motivation here? and maybe something I can do to work around it with out having to like banish the char from Druid things. I thought about normal good Animals not wanting to talk or come up to him anymore, and more aggressive and dangerous ones being more likely to answer his calls but be aggressive with him and unstable. Maybe the Staff won't attune to him or it starts to decay as he holds it showing him that he is out of balance with nature etc.
Firstly, remind him that his meta knowledge does not apply to his character's knowledge in the future.
Secondly, unfortunately, 5e has no alignment based stuff to draw on. This player clearly doesn't care if he's evil or neutral, he just wants to play the game and be a nuisance. So you either let that happen and or grow a backbone and tell him no.
As far as punishing him, which you clearly WANT to do but feel bad about it, it this Druid circle an active one? If so, they can try to take the staff back. Is it a dead circle? Then who cares let him have the staff and going forward grow a backbone.
Its not a back bone thing damn people are so aggressive these days, I'm trying understand the changes from path to 5e the no alignment stuff is pretty moot, 5e changed alot like most of the table has lucky and slivery barbs so its pretty much every creature rolls with disadvantage. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense for a druid to do it cause of how pathfinder worked. In this case I was just wondering what other people would do based on the info. Even the Paladin can steal stuff pretty much if they say can justify it for what ever, at this point even like Evil and Good aren't even really a thing. But as a GM I feel that it was wrong to steal something like that from another Druid Circle, yes the Circle is still active. I plan for him to be shunned by animals and the circles until he makes amends. I haven't planned beyond that yet. It just happened last session.
As far as Paladins go I start taking away their Paladin powers or forcing them to make charisma saves to use them if they start to go too far astray from their oaths. I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing with Druids if you felt they were going too far astray. There are no rules about it, though, so you have to make it up yourself.
As far as Silvery Barbs - just ban the spell. Most tables already do.
Right there is nothing for druid so it harder to use a rule book ruling for it, vs just I don't like it so I'm punishing the player. Technically the Druid can walk around stealing anything in a city and doing what ever cause it doesn't effect nature at all. So in the players mind its all justified, the Staff was locked away in a container and he freed it. Due to the druids being city ones he doesn't care about the moral implications or that its belongs to another circle. He could burn the whole city down and say he's just helping nature reclaim its space.
But yea I'll have to get creative on what happens with the druid cause there is no guidelines for them beyond they are good long as they don't burn down a forest pretty much. Going by a rule book ruling other than breaking the law by stealing which if they don't check the box anytime soon no one would know it happened.
But I think due to the nature of the staff its going to be more of a wand chooses the wizard sort of thing here. it won't let him attune so its just a fancy looking stick.