Getting ready to run Descent into Avernus and I'm hoping to be able to offer each player at some point a deal that they will at least strongly consider. None will involve the player's soul, but all will involve some act that doesn't necessarily require them to do something evil, but will be used to further evil. For example, destroying a scroll in the Cathedral of Elturel. A condition will be the player cannot allow anyone to open it and read it, or else they suffer some huge penalty. The scroll, unbeknownst to them will have some Arch Devil or Pit Fiend's true name on it. The catch
Highlight for spoilers...is I won't allow anyone who accepted a deal to attune to the Sword of Zariel
Some of them I have figured out:
Divine Soul Sorcerer/Hexblade- Going to give them *several* additional spells know. This is a weakness for Sorcerers and the player has already asked to use the Sorcerer Reborn homebrew, so I know they'll be tempted.
Death Cleric- Going to allow them to use their turn undead ability to also turn/destroy fiends of the same level. Think I'm going to overwhelm the group with several low level fiends one day and then offer them the deal.
Arcane Trickster- I'm thinking since the campaign is certainly not going to level 19, I may give them a ring that gives them a certain number of Greater Invisibility per day...maybe like 1-2 charges. I don't want to trivialize Versatile Trickster, so maybe a cloak of displacement. so when combined they get a similar effect and this would be at all times, except the normal limitations. But I also don't want to just give the players a magic item that they could run across. I kinda want it to be something that the class just doesn't get, so they're the only one in the world who can do this (but not game breaking)
Bard- Not sure what their advanced class is, so it's hard for me to guess
Oath of the Ancients Paladin- This is the one that has me stuck. I have a *very good* story hook to tempt them, but have no idea what to give them from a gameplay perspective. What's something that Paladin's really want, but don't get/can't have.
There's also one more class, but I have no idea what they're rolling.
One thing that could work for the Paladin is a weapon like the Snicker-Snack, which lets the attuned creature used Charisma in place of Strength for attacks and damage rolls (It is also a sentient +3 Vorpal blade). Paladins would probably also drool over a second overlapping aura.
So, maybe give them a weapon that boosts their Charisma to 20+, lets them use Charisma in place of Strength for attacks and damage rolls, and grants them a secondary 10ft aura. It could be a sentient greatsword called "Evangelion" that craves to be wielded by an owner with a strong sense of purpose.
And if each party member takes a pact at one point or another, the sword just gets subsumed by the scab and Zariel doesn't get redeemed?
I built the possible pacts more organically. The only "standing contract" I had would be a Infernal intervention if they're making death saves. They get to live, and can take the offer even after failing the third roll, but they have to undo some good they've done.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
And if each party member takes a pact at one point or another, the sword just gets subsumed by the scab and Zariel doesn't get redeemed?
I built the possible pacts more organically. The only "standing contract" I had would be a Infernal intervention if they're making death saves. They get to live, and can take the offer even after failing the third roll, but they have to undo some good they've done.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the module, lifting the sword from the scab doesn’t trigger attunememt. Therefore the players could still lift the sword and use the it to redeem Zariel.
The lack of attunememt just makes a potential fight against her much tougher if redeeming her fails.
However players would still have all of their other options when it comes to freeing the city and returning it to the material plane
And if each party member takes a pact at one point or another, the sword just gets subsumed by the scab and Zariel doesn't get redeemed?
I built the possible pacts more organically. The only "standing contract" I had would be a Infernal intervention if they're making death saves. They get to live, and can take the offer even after failing the third roll, but they have to undo some good they've done.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the module, lifting the sword from the scab doesn’t trigger attunememt. Therefore the players could still lift the sword and use the it to redeem Zariel.
The lack of attunememt just makes a potential fight against her much tougher if redeeming her fails.
However players would still have all of their other options when it comes to freeing the city and returning it to the material plane
You're right. I was going off memory as to how we played it and there was more a intra party debate on worthiness.
That said, I don't know if I'd treat the contracts as instruments from which a PC can't be redeemed. I think it depends on how the. PC lives with the contract. It's the sword who determines whose worthy of attuning and. perhaps the sword may recognize a PC's redeemable value so to speak. I mean, the sword could redeem Zariel after all, and she made a contract that trumps the PCs in a sense so....
A couple of summers back there was a lot of talking about ways one could flesh out Avernus and the events of the adventures impacts on.the Hells. One idea thought that Zariels redemption is an incarnation of how unstable Hell is. Contracts be damned, so to speak, if an Archduke can reject and re-convert from an Infernal pledge ... things sort of fall apart. The adventure could play that as the moment that brings in "revolution" to Hell, or maybe it was the PCs and their struggles against the contracts they get chained too that are the real catalyst for that epic moment. (My party sort of "broke Hell" by introducing hope into it via some stuff that gets into some non canonical metaphysics in my game world, It disrupts the Abyss to a great extent too .. if only there was some other fiendish faction that straddled the Chaos/Law axis with a bit more agility....).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
And if each party member takes a pact at one point or another, the sword just gets subsumed by the scab and Zariel doesn't get redeemed?
I built the possible pacts more organically. The only "standing contract" I had would be a Infernal intervention if they're making death saves. They get to live, and can take the offer even after failing the third roll, but they have to undo some good they've done.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the module, lifting the sword from the scab doesn’t trigger attunememt. Therefore the players could still lift the sword and use the it to redeem Zariel.
The lack of attunememt just makes a potential fight against her much tougher if redeeming her fails.
However players would still have all of their other options when it comes to freeing the city and returning it to the material plane
You're right. I was going off memory as to how we played it and there was more a intra party debate on worthiness.
That said, I don't know if I'd treat the contracts as instruments from which a PC can't be redeemed. I think it depends on how the. PC lives with the contract. It's the sword who determines whose worthy of attuning and. perhaps the sword may recognize a PC's redeemable value so to speak. I mean, the sword could redeem Zariel after all, and she made a contract that trumps the PCs in a sense so....
A couple of summers back there was a lot of talking about ways one could flesh out Avernus and the events of the adventures impacts on.the Hells. One idea thought that Zariels redemption is an incarnation of how unstable Hell is. Contracts be damned, so to speak, if an Archduke can reject and re-convert from an Infernal pledge ... things sort of fall apart. The adventure could play that as the moment that brings in "revolution" to Hell, or maybe it was the PCs and their struggles against the contracts they get chained too that are the real catalyst for that epic moment. (My party sort of "broke Hell" by introducing hope into it via some stuff that gets into some non canonical metaphysics in my game world, It disrupts the Abyss to a great extent too .. if only there was some other fiendish faction that straddled the Chaos/Law axis with a bit more agility....).
You may be right, and depending on how the campaign goes I don't want to back anyone into a corner
But Zariel and The Sword of Zariel have a special connection, hence why it can be used to redeem her. To player's it's a powerful, albeit celestial sword.
And I know this is DM 101 for what *not* to think, but I'm almost certain the Paladin won't take a deal :)
They'll be tempted but they won't take the deal :)
all will involve some act that doesn't necessarily require them to do something evil, but will be used to further evil. For example, destroying a scroll in the Cathedral of Elturel. A condition will be the player cannot allow anyone to open it and read it, or else they suffer some huge penalty. The scroll, unbeknownst to them will have some Arch Devil or Pit Fiend's true name on it.
Ok so I think that there is a problem here.
You are going to offer the PCs extremely powerful rewards for doing some kind of deed. Except the deed itself won't require them to do something evil. They'll then later discover that what they did furthered evil. If they don't discover the truth, then what's the point?
I have BIG issues with this as a form of game design:
If the reward is good, and the act they have to do doesn't seem bad, then what moral reason does the PC have to turn it down other than "All devils are bad"?
If they do the act, and have no way of knowing that it has bad end results, then is that really fair on the PCs? I know my players would be really annoyed if they ended up having done something that, to the best of their intentions and knowledge was not a problem, but then I sprung "Actually you helped the evil side" on them it would feel cheap and unfair.
So the act doesn't seem evil: they can only find that it's evil after the fact. So doing the deed is not evil because they can't possibly know it is. And you're clearly gearing the rewards to be extremely tempting to the players, so that you can spring this on them.
I don't think that they'll like it. I think they'll just feel annoyed that they didn't have all the information up front. An awesome reward won't feel awesome if you've made their Good aligned character accidentally, and without any way to know, do something that feels unfair.
all will involve some act that doesn't necessarily require them to do something evil, but will be used to further evil. For example, destroying a scroll in the Cathedral of Elturel. A condition will be the player cannot allow anyone to open it and read it, or else they suffer some huge penalty. The scroll, unbeknownst to them will have some Arch Devil or Pit Fiend's true name on it.
Ok so I think that there is a problem here.
You are going to offer the PCs extremely powerful rewards for doing some kind of deed. Except the deed itself won't require them to do something evil. They'll then later discover that what they did furthered evil. If they don't discover the truth, then what's the point?
I have BIG issues with this as a form of game design:
If the reward is good, and the act they have to do doesn't seem bad, then what moral reason does the PC have to turn it down other than "All devils are bad"?
If they do the act, and have no way of knowing that it has bad end results, then is that really fair on the PCs? I know my players would be really annoyed if they ended up having done something that, to the best of their intentions and knowledge was not a problem, but then I sprung "Actually you helped the evil side" on them it would feel cheap and unfair.
So the act doesn't seem evil: they can only find that it's evil after the fact. So doing the deed is not evil because they can't possibly know it is. And you're clearly gearing the rewards to be extremely tempting to the players, so that you can spring this on them.
I don't think that they'll like it. I think they'll just feel annoyed that they didn't have all the information up front. An awesome reward won't feel awesome if you've made their Good aligned character accidentally, and without any way to know, do something that feels unfair.
Fair enough, I was going to make it clear that this was an evil deal and that the Devil was with holding details, but you're right...I'll add some more context to these deals. Like they'll know what's on the scroll, just the scroll will only reveal itself to the player if they accept the deal. This way they don't just use the scroll as blackmail.
Another I was thinking of was in exchange for [TBD reward] once the player returns to the material plane every time they bleed (haven't decided on the frequency or number of times), the Devil gains the ability to create a portal directly from the Nine Hells to that spot. They will be barred from telling anyone or attempting to close it in any way.
I mean, you could have the characters take a advantaged wisdom. check to recognize. they're making a deal. with the devil and what that entails. The way the adventure is. written there's even a downtime. for the characters to read up on devils. So it's not like the characters are in the position to presume the devils are just these benevolent folks looking to lavish riches with handshakes. There's plenty of guidance in DitA on the contracts and the "soft sell" of "innocuous" deals is a trope in infernal contracts. Faust, Daniel Webster's client, the mortal subjects in The Screwtape Letters. Entrapment is. part of the. spirit of the deal. Of course, there's also a lot of regular wheeling and dealing to be done in Avernus too.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I have previously done a deal like this with a super being (actually a Great Old One) offering to remove a curse from a player character in exchange for a service. The player did the (obviously dark) service, and the GOO removed the curse, only for it to move to one of his friends. For me as the DM it was a moment of "Ahahaha, behold the twists of dark gifts, and the foolishness of trusting evil..."
For my players it felt awful. They really hated it. Narratively it was fine, and it made sense in the greater scheme of the campaign but in the moment it just felt like the DM was screwing them over. I won't make that error again.
I would recommend that dark dealings are fun when you know that you're damned. When you know that what you're doing is irredeemable. You can leave it open ended, for example the devil offers "In exchange for this devilish blessing, you will answer my command three times before the year has passed..." But at least the player knows what they are getting themselves into! That way they can roleplay the fun of falling to the dark side rather than simply learning that by pure accident they've screwed up.
When we played we had a near total party wipe. The warlock that was left was given an option to swap patrons and the party would be resurrected. He didn't really investigate the contract. After we were brought back to life, the devil informed him of the details and that if he died his soul would immediately be forfeit and that he now owed several services or could offer up some souls to pay for them. He also now had a wand that would let him open a portal to one of the hells. He was in the process of ridding the local town of some ne'er do wells when we found out what he was doing and had a lot of conversation and coming to terms with what we were gonna do from there and that we had all benefited from it. I'll leave out the details of breaking the contract, but it certainly changed the moral tone of our campaign. We also went through several phases in character progression. Fear of dying led to "Screw it... I'm going to enjoy life if I'm going to lose it all" to eventually believing we could break the contract and free him from the fear fueling his other activities.
Let them bond as a group first. Then when an opportunity arises, offer the temptation expecting everyone to resist (and leave out some of the details... and preset DCs on them figuring out the details). Once you get one on the hook, and bad things happen to the party, it is easier to entice others. Balancing it after that becomes the important part. You don't want to squash all hope... there has to be some window of opportunity where they can redeem themselves or others. But it can really build some tension and create some interesting inter-party dialogue.
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Getting ready to run Descent into Avernus and I'm hoping to be able to offer each player at some point a deal that they will at least strongly consider. None will involve the player's soul, but all will involve some act that doesn't necessarily require them to do something evil, but will be used to further evil. For example, destroying a scroll in the Cathedral of Elturel. A condition will be the player cannot allow anyone to open it and read it, or else they suffer some huge penalty. The scroll, unbeknownst to them will have some Arch Devil or Pit Fiend's true name on it. The catch
Highlight for spoilers...is I won't allow anyone who accepted a deal to attune to the Sword of Zariel
Some of them I have figured out:
Divine Soul Sorcerer/Hexblade- Going to give them *several* additional spells know. This is a weakness for Sorcerers and the player has already asked to use the Sorcerer Reborn homebrew, so I know they'll be tempted.
Death Cleric- Going to allow them to use their turn undead ability to also turn/destroy fiends of the same level. Think I'm going to overwhelm the group with several low level fiends one day and then offer them the deal.
Arcane Trickster- I'm thinking since the campaign is certainly not going to level 19, I may give them a ring that gives them a certain number of Greater Invisibility per day...maybe like 1-2 charges. I don't want to trivialize Versatile Trickster, so maybe a cloak of displacement. so when combined they get a similar effect and this would be at all times, except the normal limitations. But I also don't want to just give the players a magic item that they could run across. I kinda want it to be something that the class just doesn't get, so they're the only one in the world who can do this (but not game breaking)
Bard- Not sure what their advanced class is, so it's hard for me to guess
Oath of the Ancients Paladin- This is the one that has me stuck. I have a *very good* story hook to tempt them, but have no idea what to give them from a gameplay perspective. What's something that Paladin's really want, but don't get/can't have.
There's also one more class, but I have no idea what they're rolling.
One thing that could work for the Paladin is a weapon like the Snicker-Snack, which lets the attuned creature used Charisma in place of Strength for attacks and damage rolls (It is also a sentient +3 Vorpal blade). Paladins would probably also drool over a second overlapping aura.
So, maybe give them a weapon that boosts their Charisma to 20+, lets them use Charisma in place of Strength for attacks and damage rolls, and grants them a secondary 10ft aura. It could be a sentient greatsword called "Evangelion" that craves to be wielded by an owner with a strong sense of purpose.
And if each party member takes a pact at one point or another, the sword just gets subsumed by the scab and Zariel doesn't get redeemed?
I built the possible pacts more organically. The only "standing contract" I had would be a Infernal intervention if they're making death saves. They get to live, and can take the offer even after failing the third roll, but they have to undo some good they've done.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the module, lifting the sword from the scab doesn’t trigger attunememt. Therefore the players could still lift the sword and use the it to redeem Zariel.
The lack of attunememt just makes a potential fight against her much tougher if redeeming her fails.
However players would still have all of their other options when it comes to freeing the city and returning it to the material plane
You're right. I was going off memory as to how we played it and there was more a intra party debate on worthiness.
That said, I don't know if I'd treat the contracts as instruments from which a PC can't be redeemed. I think it depends on how the. PC lives with the contract. It's the sword who determines whose worthy of attuning and. perhaps the sword may recognize a PC's redeemable value so to speak. I mean, the sword could redeem Zariel after all, and she made a contract that trumps the PCs in a sense so....
A couple of summers back there was a lot of talking about ways one could flesh out Avernus and the events of the adventures impacts on.the Hells. One idea thought that Zariels redemption is an incarnation of how unstable Hell is. Contracts be damned, so to speak, if an Archduke can reject and re-convert from an Infernal pledge ... things sort of fall apart. The adventure could play that as the moment that brings in "revolution" to Hell, or maybe it was the PCs and their struggles against the contracts they get chained too that are the real catalyst for that epic moment. (My party sort of "broke Hell" by introducing hope into it via some stuff that gets into some non canonical metaphysics in my game world, It disrupts the Abyss to a great extent too .. if only there was some other fiendish faction that straddled the Chaos/Law axis with a bit more agility....).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You may be right, and depending on how the campaign goes I don't want to back anyone into a corner
But Zariel and The Sword of Zariel have a special connection, hence why it can be used to redeem her. To player's it's a powerful, albeit celestial sword.
And I know this is DM 101 for what *not* to think, but I'm almost certain the Paladin won't take a deal :)
They'll be tempted but they won't take the deal :)
Ok so I think that there is a problem here.
You are going to offer the PCs extremely powerful rewards for doing some kind of deed. Except the deed itself won't require them to do something evil. They'll then later discover that what they did furthered evil. If they don't discover the truth, then what's the point?
I have BIG issues with this as a form of game design:
So the act doesn't seem evil: they can only find that it's evil after the fact. So doing the deed is not evil because they can't possibly know it is. And you're clearly gearing the rewards to be extremely tempting to the players, so that you can spring this on them.
I don't think that they'll like it. I think they'll just feel annoyed that they didn't have all the information up front. An awesome reward won't feel awesome if you've made their Good aligned character accidentally, and without any way to know, do something that feels unfair.
Fair enough, I was going to make it clear that this was an evil deal and that the Devil was with holding details, but you're right...I'll add some more context to these deals. Like they'll know what's on the scroll, just the scroll will only reveal itself to the player if they accept the deal. This way they don't just use the scroll as blackmail.
Another I was thinking of was in exchange for [TBD reward] once the player returns to the material plane every time they bleed (haven't decided on the frequency or number of times), the Devil gains the ability to create a portal directly from the Nine Hells to that spot. They will be barred from telling anyone or attempting to close it in any way.
I mean, you could have the characters take a advantaged wisdom. check to recognize. they're making a deal. with the devil and what that entails. The way the adventure is. written there's even a downtime. for the characters to read up on devils. So it's not like the characters are in the position to presume the devils are just these benevolent folks looking to lavish riches with handshakes. There's plenty of guidance in DitA on the contracts and the "soft sell" of "innocuous" deals is a trope in infernal contracts. Faust, Daniel Webster's client, the mortal subjects in The Screwtape Letters. Entrapment is. part of the. spirit of the deal. Of course, there's also a lot of regular wheeling and dealing to be done in Avernus too.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I have previously done a deal like this with a super being (actually a Great Old One) offering to remove a curse from a player character in exchange for a service. The player did the (obviously dark) service, and the GOO removed the curse, only for it to move to one of his friends. For me as the DM it was a moment of "Ahahaha, behold the twists of dark gifts, and the foolishness of trusting evil..."
For my players it felt awful. They really hated it. Narratively it was fine, and it made sense in the greater scheme of the campaign but in the moment it just felt like the DM was screwing them over. I won't make that error again.
I would recommend that dark dealings are fun when you know that you're damned. When you know that what you're doing is irredeemable. You can leave it open ended, for example the devil offers "In exchange for this devilish blessing, you will answer my command three times before the year has passed..." But at least the player knows what they are getting themselves into! That way they can roleplay the fun of falling to the dark side rather than simply learning that by pure accident they've screwed up.
When we played we had a near total party wipe. The warlock that was left was given an option to swap patrons and the party would be resurrected. He didn't really investigate the contract. After we were brought back to life, the devil informed him of the details and that if he died his soul would immediately be forfeit and that he now owed several services or could offer up some souls to pay for them. He also now had a wand that would let him open a portal to one of the hells. He was in the process of ridding the local town of some ne'er do wells when we found out what he was doing and had a lot of conversation and coming to terms with what we were gonna do from there and that we had all benefited from it. I'll leave out the details of breaking the contract, but it certainly changed the moral tone of our campaign. We also went through several phases in character progression. Fear of dying led to "Screw it... I'm going to enjoy life if I'm going to lose it all" to eventually believing we could break the contract and free him from the fear fueling his other activities.
Let them bond as a group first. Then when an opportunity arises, offer the temptation expecting everyone to resist (and leave out some of the details... and preset DCs on them figuring out the details). Once you get one on the hook, and bad things happen to the party, it is easier to entice others. Balancing it after that becomes the important part. You don't want to squash all hope... there has to be some window of opportunity where they can redeem themselves or others. But it can really build some tension and create some interesting inter-party dialogue.