So, my party has an Oath of Redemption paladin in it, and the player is staying true to it. That's fine. Every enemy he can reasonably spare, he does. D&D being so combat-centric, this usually means he just has to declare a K.O. instead of a killshot, but I let him talk enemies down when I can. He tries to get the rest of the party in on this as well, with varying levels of success.
However, this sometimes poses issues with what the party can do to manage all these badguys they've knocked out or made to surrender. It's hard to keep the adventure going when the party has to pause and decide they need to drag a dozen guys back to town and to the authorities, or try to figure out how many people they can tie up with one 50 ft rope.
How would you remedy this issue? I don't want to put him on a mandatory killing spree since it's against his character. And last I checked, things like a bag of holding have a limited air supply, so that's not exactly ideal either. I plan to talk with this player later, but I want to have some ideas on-hand going into the discussion.
How are they feeding all of these people is my first question? If the bandits were just outside of town I guess its one thing, but if its a couple days, that's a lot of mouths to feed.
But I guess, if you want to let them, the easiest thing is to just hand wave it. "Yes, you have them all tied up and they march back peacefully, the end."
You could use more creature type enemies so the pally doesn't feel like they need to redeem them.
The other way would be to make it part of the adventure is getting these buys back to town. It should be kind of hard for the paladin. Being good is often the harder choice. There's the logistics of feeding them, but besides that, they'll be moving slower (you can bet the prisoners will be shuffling along slowly, and tied together they're more likely to stumble and fall, and bring others down with them), they'll be an easier target for other monsters. The bandits might have friends who mount a rescue attempt. The prisoners might try and escape. Actually, probably they would -- just because the paladin wants to try and redeem them doesn't mean they want to be redeemed. Or only some of them might try and escape, and do they chase those guys into the woods while the rest of the prisoners are left tied up and unattended at camp (where they might decide to escape, of would be defenseless targets for a pack of wolves)?
Of course, the party may start getting annoyed and start going out of their way to make sure the pally doesn't land the last hit because they don't want to deal with prisoners. (which makes me think, have you checked in with the rest of the players, out of character, about this? It's important to let the Paladin player have fun with their character, but not to the point that it steps on the rest of the players.)
Just put a time limit so dragging them back to town isn't an option. That doesn't force killing ('lecture and release' is an option, or finding someone more accessible to do the job), but does force coming up with some method of keeping things moving.
I'd say any time the players are reasonably within range of the town you could just handwave it with some brief narration. Like, "You escort the bandits into town and turn them over the authorities before returning to your quest". Out in the wilds it gets a bit more complicated... I'd say a good idea is to actually make this an in-game challenge for the players themselves. Like.. they know what the Paladin is like. They know he's going to try and spare the bandits... so let them prepare for it. Maybe they'll make arrangements with local authorities. Maybe they'll buy a Paddy Wagon they can use to transport prisoners and carry extra rations to keep them fed and healthy. Maybe they'll just have a frank in-character discussion with the Paladin about making hard choices. That way even if you do go kind of lenient on them and ultimately use whatever they decide on as a form of hand-waving, the players will feel that they're being rewarded for their creativity instead of just thrown a bone to avoid keeping track of all these NPCs.
How would you remedy this issue? I don't want to put him on a mandatory killing spree since it's against his character. And last I checked, things like a bag of holding have a limited air supply, so that's not exactly ideal either. I plan to talk with this player later, but I want to have some ideas on-hand going into the discussion.
The situation doesn't need a remedy.
Let the players handle it. I know you're anxious to keep the adventure going but if this is what the players want to play out, let them. Yes, I get it, you have a grand adventure planned that you want them to go on. Let them work it out.
You can handwave them taking the villains back to town like TransmorpherDDS said. That way it doesn't take up too much real game time. Regarding food tracking, that just seems like fiddly bits that don't add to the story. Yeah, the prisoners get to town a little bit skinny, no big deal. Upholding an oath is important, tracking food is not (unless you really want it to be).
If his actions are just too much of a trial for you, then give more enemies that are beyond redemption like undead.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
This could also be something the party could plan for. They know Redemption Richard is going to have his gaggle of repentant evildoers, so they invest in a paddywagon and a few deputized NPCs to follow the party around and take care of the prisoners. Maybe there's a local lord that is happy to have an incoming stream of able workers who have been sentenced to a few years of hard labor for their crimes.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. In response to some of the questions here, the adventures so far have been fairly close to town, so the distances haven't been long enough to need to worry about food and drink. And so far, the captives thing hasn't been a huge issue, it's just that I'd like to avoid it becoming one.
I spoke with the player who was doing this, and his main concern as a player was making sure they don't have a whole dungeon full of bad guys sleep off the KO and be ready to fight them again on the way back. Not that a bunch of guys at 1 HP would be a huge threat, but it could be risky for a party that's already worn down. For the moment we've decided to houserule that ordinary "nobody" enemies either take longer to wake up or will focus on getting out of the area if they wake up before the players get back to them.
This should prevent it from being an issue mid-dungeon crawl, and the other ideas from this thread will help if the situation goes beyond that.
I would say, too... the party has already won the fight. If they had wanted, all these enemies would be dead. Whether they spare them or not, there is generally no reason to make them fight the same battle over again. They don't need to keep proving they can win the same fight. I would just hand-wave it or just not track the amount of rope they are using. They "tie up the enemies in such a way that it will take longer for them to get out of their bonds than the party takes to leave the dungeon, but not so long that they'd all starve to death." End of story.
The PC is doing something noble, and as a general rule, heroic or noble actions should lead to reward, not punishment.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Using hireling NPC's occurs to me. Way back in the early dungeon delving days of DnD, parties had teams of hirelings to hold their equipment and carry treasure to and fro. You could probably do the same with hiring NPC's to guard the prisoners so you can cart them back to the nearest town to answer for their crimes.
The hirelings themselves can be more like low-key bounty hunters who don't have the skills to go head-to-head with the various dangerous outlaws themselves, but will help keep watch and prevent escape for a cut of the bounty.
If you wanna do something in-universe with that too, you could set it up as the beginnings of a new mercenary company that focuses on capture and rehabilitation, with Redemption Richard at its head, expanding and hiring more guards as they travel and an infrastructure of communication remains between them from one town to the next.
That's a little out there, but point being, NPC hirelings aren't just a solution to the problem, but they're actually also a fun roleplay opportunity.
D&D is what you make out of it some people do more combats, others more social or exploration. If your campaign is combat-centric, the party sparing enemies is not necessarily a problem unless you don't want to deal with RP opportunities (interrogation etc) it brings up. I'd embrace it as it makes for a even more living world with impact for such actions and some of them can even eventually face the party back again and have some sort of history / rivalry building up between them, like recurrent villain often are.
Make it such a pain to deal with that even the Paladin doesn't want to dea with it. Easy example, bathroom breaks. This is a problem even in the real world as you cannot really control when you gotta go. Make it so that the prisoners use the bathroom so much that nobody wants to deal with it.
Make it such a pain to deal with that even the Paladin doesn't want to deal with it.
I'm going to respectfully disagree. This is tantamount to punishing the entire party, including the Paladin, for the Paladin being true to his character concept. To make matters worse, it is punishing what would in most cases be called more ethical behavior than just mowing the room down. The player is doing the hard/in character thing instead of the easy/optimal thing. I believe hard/in character should always be rewarded.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Make it such a pain to deal with that even the Paladin doesn't want to dea with it. Easy example, bathroom breaks. This is a problem even in the real world as you cannot really control when you gotta go. Make it so that the prisoners use the bathroom so much that nobody wants to deal with it.
I cannot agree with this at all.
You should not punish a player for RP if they are doing something that follows their class path. If they are doing the ethical thing especially when it is time consuming and inconvenient they should be rewarded.
Making it easier to kill everything and making it extremely difficult to take prisoners or let them escape is how you breed murderhobos.
I appreciate what BioWizard and Wyspara wrote, and agree that one shouldn't punish a player for playing their oath. That said, it's the Oath of Redemption, not the Oath of Incarceration or even the Oath of Corrections and Rehabilitation (C and R being the euphemism for many states incarceration systems). I have some ideas as to how you can take this "arrest" mentality and with a quick diversion/exploration of your game world's justice system you could coax the Paladin into some other way of prompting ne'er do wells on a path of redemption (maybe the Palladin becomes a sort of restorative justice messiah, and I'm not joking there). I'll try to check in later to elaborate but here's some quick ideas.
1.) What's the community thinking of this Palladin making use of their carceral infrastructure and maybe clogging up their justice system (if they have one) with all his arrests that are likely outside the community's jurisdiction. Even pseudo-medieval jailing costs money and eventually the Town Constable or what have you is going to want to literally settle accounts with the Paladin for burdening the town's systems with the Paladins notion of justice.
2.) Is indefinite detention and rendition to a "gaol" or even a prison really putting the vanquished on a redemptive path, or is the paladin willfully ignoring this "justice" will likely perpetrate more harm etc. (maybe there should be illustrations).
Basically, yes, the player thinks they're doing the right thing, it's up the DM to provide evidence put before the character's eyes that may cause the player to realize a different course of action may be in better service to their intentions. Basically it sounds like this player is playing the Paladin as a rookie cop who hasn't learned the nuances of the world and the complexities and consequences of even "the good guy's" system. My reading of the Oath of Redemption would take a much more nuanced and forgiving stance.
So, my party has an Oath of Redemption paladin in it, and the player is staying true to it. That's fine. Every enemy he can reasonably spare, he does. D&D being so combat-centric, this usually means he just has to declare a K.O. instead of a killshot, but I let him talk enemies down when I can. He tries to get the rest of the party in on this as well, with varying levels of success.
However, this sometimes poses issues with what the party can do to manage all these badguys they've knocked out or made to surrender. It's hard to keep the adventure going when the party has to pause and decide they need to drag a dozen guys back to town and to the authorities, or try to figure out how many people they can tie up with one 50 ft rope.
How would you remedy this issue? I don't want to put him on a mandatory killing spree since it's against his character. And last I checked, things like a bag of holding have a limited air supply, so that's not exactly ideal either. I plan to talk with this player later, but I want to have some ideas on-hand going into the discussion.
How are they feeding all of these people is my first question? If the bandits were just outside of town I guess its one thing, but if its a couple days, that's a lot of mouths to feed.
But I guess, if you want to let them, the easiest thing is to just hand wave it. "Yes, you have them all tied up and they march back peacefully, the end."
You could use more creature type enemies so the pally doesn't feel like they need to redeem them.
The other way would be to make it part of the adventure is getting these buys back to town. It should be kind of hard for the paladin. Being good is often the harder choice. There's the logistics of feeding them, but besides that, they'll be moving slower (you can bet the prisoners will be shuffling along slowly, and tied together they're more likely to stumble and fall, and bring others down with them), they'll be an easier target for other monsters. The bandits might have friends who mount a rescue attempt. The prisoners might try and escape. Actually, probably they would -- just because the paladin wants to try and redeem them doesn't mean they want to be redeemed. Or only some of them might try and escape, and do they chase those guys into the woods while the rest of the prisoners are left tied up and unattended at camp (where they might decide to escape, of would be defenseless targets for a pack of wolves)?
Of course, the party may start getting annoyed and start going out of their way to make sure the pally doesn't land the last hit because they don't want to deal with prisoners. (which makes me think, have you checked in with the rest of the players, out of character, about this? It's important to let the Paladin player have fun with their character, but not to the point that it steps on the rest of the players.)
Just put a time limit so dragging them back to town isn't an option. That doesn't force killing ('lecture and release' is an option, or finding someone more accessible to do the job), but does force coming up with some method of keeping things moving.
I'd say any time the players are reasonably within range of the town you could just handwave it with some brief narration. Like, "You escort the bandits into town and turn them over the authorities before returning to your quest". Out in the wilds it gets a bit more complicated... I'd say a good idea is to actually make this an in-game challenge for the players themselves. Like.. they know what the Paladin is like. They know he's going to try and spare the bandits... so let them prepare for it. Maybe they'll make arrangements with local authorities. Maybe they'll buy a Paddy Wagon they can use to transport prisoners and carry extra rations to keep them fed and healthy. Maybe they'll just have a frank in-character discussion with the Paladin about making hard choices. That way even if you do go kind of lenient on them and ultimately use whatever they decide on as a form of hand-waving, the players will feel that they're being rewarded for their creativity instead of just thrown a bone to avoid keeping track of all these NPCs.
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The situation doesn't need a remedy.
Let the players handle it. I know you're anxious to keep the adventure going but if this is what the players want to play out, let them. Yes, I get it, you have a grand adventure planned that you want them to go on. Let them work it out.
You can handwave them taking the villains back to town like TransmorpherDDS said. That way it doesn't take up too much real game time. Regarding food tracking, that just seems like fiddly bits that don't add to the story. Yeah, the prisoners get to town a little bit skinny, no big deal. Upholding an oath is important, tracking food is not (unless you really want it to be).
If his actions are just too much of a trial for you, then give more enemies that are beyond redemption like undead.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
This could also be something the party could plan for. They know Redemption Richard is going to have his gaggle of repentant evildoers, so they invest in a paddywagon and a few deputized NPCs to follow the party around and take care of the prisoners. Maybe there's a local lord that is happy to have an incoming stream of able workers who have been sentenced to a few years of hard labor for their crimes.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Thanks for the replies, everyone. In response to some of the questions here, the adventures so far have been fairly close to town, so the distances haven't been long enough to need to worry about food and drink. And so far, the captives thing hasn't been a huge issue, it's just that I'd like to avoid it becoming one.
I spoke with the player who was doing this, and his main concern as a player was making sure they don't have a whole dungeon full of bad guys sleep off the KO and be ready to fight them again on the way back. Not that a bunch of guys at 1 HP would be a huge threat, but it could be risky for a party that's already worn down. For the moment we've decided to houserule that ordinary "nobody" enemies either take longer to wake up or will focus on getting out of the area if they wake up before the players get back to them.
This should prevent it from being an issue mid-dungeon crawl, and the other ideas from this thread will help if the situation goes beyond that.
I agree with Transmorpher and Wysperra.
I would say, too... the party has already won the fight. If they had wanted, all these enemies would be dead. Whether they spare them or not, there is generally no reason to make them fight the same battle over again. They don't need to keep proving they can win the same fight. I would just hand-wave it or just not track the amount of rope they are using. They "tie up the enemies in such a way that it will take longer for them to get out of their bonds than the party takes to leave the dungeon, but not so long that they'd all starve to death." End of story.
The PC is doing something noble, and as a general rule, heroic or noble actions should lead to reward, not punishment.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Using hireling NPC's occurs to me. Way back in the early dungeon delving days of DnD, parties had teams of hirelings to hold their equipment and carry treasure to and fro. You could probably do the same with hiring NPC's to guard the prisoners so you can cart them back to the nearest town to answer for their crimes.
The hirelings themselves can be more like low-key bounty hunters who don't have the skills to go head-to-head with the various dangerous outlaws themselves, but will help keep watch and prevent escape for a cut of the bounty.
If you wanna do something in-universe with that too, you could set it up as the beginnings of a new mercenary company that focuses on capture and rehabilitation, with Redemption Richard at its head, expanding and hiring more guards as they travel and an infrastructure of communication remains between them from one town to the next.
That's a little out there, but point being, NPC hirelings aren't just a solution to the problem, but they're actually also a fun roleplay opportunity.
D&D is what you make out of it some people do more combats, others more social or exploration. If your campaign is combat-centric, the party sparing enemies is not necessarily a problem unless you don't want to deal with RP opportunities (interrogation etc) it brings up. I'd embrace it as it makes for a even more living world with impact for such actions and some of them can even eventually face the party back again and have some sort of history / rivalry building up between them, like recurrent villain often are.
Make it such a pain to deal with that even the Paladin doesn't want to dea with it. Easy example, bathroom breaks. This is a problem even in the real world as you cannot really control when you gotta go. Make it so that the prisoners use the bathroom so much that nobody wants to deal with it.
1 shot dungeon master
I'm going to respectfully disagree. This is tantamount to punishing the entire party, including the Paladin, for the Paladin being true to his character concept. To make matters worse, it is punishing what would in most cases be called more ethical behavior than just mowing the room down. The player is doing the hard/in character thing instead of the easy/optimal thing. I believe hard/in character should always be rewarded.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I cannot agree with this at all.
You should not punish a player for RP if they are doing something that follows their class path. If they are doing the ethical thing especially when it is time consuming and inconvenient they should be rewarded.
Making it easier to kill everything and making it extremely difficult to take prisoners or let them escape is how you breed murderhobos.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Also, it's not how the player wants to play the character. It's almost guaranteed to make the player miserable.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I appreciate what BioWizard and Wyspara wrote, and agree that one shouldn't punish a player for playing their oath. That said, it's the Oath of Redemption, not the Oath of Incarceration or even the Oath of Corrections and Rehabilitation (C and R being the euphemism for many states incarceration systems). I have some ideas as to how you can take this "arrest" mentality and with a quick diversion/exploration of your game world's justice system you could coax the Paladin into some other way of prompting ne'er do wells on a path of redemption (maybe the Palladin becomes a sort of restorative justice messiah, and I'm not joking there). I'll try to check in later to elaborate but here's some quick ideas.
1.) What's the community thinking of this Palladin making use of their carceral infrastructure and maybe clogging up their justice system (if they have one) with all his arrests that are likely outside the community's jurisdiction. Even pseudo-medieval jailing costs money and eventually the Town Constable or what have you is going to want to literally settle accounts with the Paladin for burdening the town's systems with the Paladins notion of justice.
2.) Is indefinite detention and rendition to a "gaol" or even a prison really putting the vanquished on a redemptive path, or is the paladin willfully ignoring this "justice" will likely perpetrate more harm etc. (maybe there should be illustrations).
Basically, yes, the player thinks they're doing the right thing, it's up the DM to provide evidence put before the character's eyes that may cause the player to realize a different course of action may be in better service to their intentions. Basically it sounds like this player is playing the Paladin as a rookie cop who hasn't learned the nuances of the world and the complexities and consequences of even "the good guy's" system. My reading of the Oath of Redemption would take a much more nuanced and forgiving stance.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I suggest answering the player's roleplaying with an interesting dilemma and opportunity for even more roleplaying.
The paladin and party have just escorted prisoners back to town and handed them over to the town guard, who prompty hang them all and thank the party.
What is the party's reaction?