Recently, my party arrived in a new area. In this area, my party was trying to reach a specific temple in which an evil entity was sitting. The party's objective was to eventually free this temple from its influence. But when they got to this new area, they found out that the people living there were dealing with some conflicts that were at least partially caused by the entity's influence over the area but could result in catastrophy if left unchecked. Instead of helping these people with these smaller conflicts, the party chose to head straight for the big boss in the temple in an attempt to destroy it. Hoping that dealing with the smaller conflicts would be easier if the entity is gone.
For my players: Als jij in Menno's game speelt, moet je hier stoppen met lezen hé.
For some more context:
My party, specifically the cleric, wants to reclaim this lost temple in the name of his god. The temple is located in a Moria-style abandoned kingdom. The party didn't expect to encounter any people living in the abandoned kingdom because all story's about the place said it was completely lost. To the party's surprise, they found a small civilization surviving in the depths of the kingdom. This civilization was dealing with its own conflicts, some of which are caused by the entity int he temple. I expected them to help these people before going straight to the temple, but they have chosen to go to the temple in the hopes of making dealing with the smaller conflicts after easier.
The smaller conflicts are as follows: 1. A group of Duergar has come up from the underdark and occupied a part of the kingdom. They are a threat to the civilizaiton of dwarves, who worshipped the same god as the cleric. But because the Duergar were more dangerous than the dwarves could handle, they have been losing to them. The duergar are killing and enslaving the people from the civilizaiton. The government of that civilization worshipped the cleric's god, but because they are seen to be failing, people are turning away from the cleric's god and instead beginning to worship the entity within the temple. Which appears to be a much more present and caring god-like figure.
2. Thats also where the second part of conflict comes in. The church is currently non-violent but a concern to the worshippers of the cleric's god. They are losing members to this 'cult' every day. And as people turn against the governing body, they begin losing to the duergar at an even faster rate. But, because the church is currently non-violent, the party didn't know what to do about them. As they didn't want to attack them without provocation.
3. There have also been kidnappings within the civilizaiton. Worshippers of the cleric's god have gone missing. This party the party hasn't interacted with at all. All they know is that people have gone missing and that the disappearances are supposedly committed by the duergar. But had the party shown an intrest and investigated, they would've discovered that the church was behind these kidnappings. Capturing and sacrificing worshippers of the cleric's god to bolster the strength of the entity. They could've also naturally found this out if they had dealt with the duergar threat. Not only would freeing the enslaved people bolster the numbers of the people that still worship the cleric's god, but they would've also found out that the kidnappings didn't stop. If they could no longer be written off as duergar attacks, the party could've more easily found out the cult was responsible.
Instead my party chose to, after meeting this civilizations and its conflicts, go directly to the temple inhabited by the entity. This temple is currently blocked by a magical wall that the party has means to pass, but this is a puzzle they have to yet figure out (This is where the last session ended).
Now, I wonder what I should do from here. The party ignored these side quests with the best of intentions, so I don't want to punish them for making a 'wrong' decision. Because it wasn't perse a wrong choice. But I do feel that the other conflicts should escalate because of it. I am sure that the party will proceed into the temple and attack the entity. When they defeat the first stage of the boss battle, its spirit will retreat into the dungeon beneath the temple. At this point I think the entity would tell a message to every (including the party) in the area to 'kill the non-believers'. Sparking a civil war within the civilization the party discovered. How the people would fare against the cult should depend on if the party decides to follow the entity into the dungeon, or return to the civilization. Or maybe, they could even go to free the enslaved people from the duergar and return to the civilization in force. However the longer they stay away, like going into the dungeon first or freeing the enslaved people, the worse the situation in the civilization should become I think. Additionally, the duergar have captured a mindflayer that has been slowly trying to infect the duergar over the past few months with tadpoles and intellect devourers. My initial intention was to reveal this when the party thought they defeated the duergar and freeing its 'prisoner' which would then be revealed to have been a mindflayer who then turns many of the remaining duergar into mindflayers and attacks the party. I feel now that the party isn't interfering with the mindflayer's plan, it should be further along with its goals.
I want the story to progress in the player's absence. Things need to happen to those storylines without the party's interference. If nothing happened, it would feel like the player's choices wouldn't have mattered at all. At the same time, they made this choice not with harmful intend, the opposite even. They hoped to be able to help these people better by going straight for this entity.
My question is, how can I escalate these conflicts without making the party feel like they are being punished for making a reasonable choice with the best intentions?
My question is, how can I escalate these conflicts without making the party feel like they are being punished for making a reasonable choice with the best intentions?
It's not "punishing" the party if they make a choice with an entirely predictable outcome (if problem ignored, problem gets worse), and the predictable outcome in fact happens.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects. What they have is a plan, and it isn't completely nonsensical. So I want them to feel like they accomplished things while also feeling the consequence of ignoring the side quests.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects.
There should be negative effects from what they're not doing, and positive effects from what they're doing. That's what choice is all about. Assuming they were operating on a reasonable theory, the positive would be expected to outweigh the negative.
I mean I understand the logic of wanting to solve the biggest problem first. What it sounds like is that your players have a sense of urgency about the problem in the temple and don't feel comfortable letting it lie while killing rats for the blacksmith.
If you want them to do side quests before taking on the boss, maybe make the temple inaccessible to the players when they arrive, and only through talking to the townsfolk and helping them out can they gain access. Maybe the temple is locked to contain the evil, and the one who holds the key isn't giving it to just anyone so the players need to prove they have the town's best interest at heart. Maybe the key is stolen by some of the bad guy's minions so the players need to get it back. Maybe there's just a big black impassable energy dome over the temple that the players need to weaken before it can be dispeled.
It sounds to me like your players need to have a reason they wouldn't just rock up and kill the bad guy, so instead of punishing them for what I consider a logical standpoint, you should give them that reason.
*edit*
Whoops, i skimmed over the part where you did have a magical wall. If they solved the puzzle, I would just let them in and confront the entity, but leave all the side quests for the players to do afterwards. Perhaps one of the dwarves begs the new saviors of the city to intercede on their behalf with the duregar, and run them as you would've before the boss fight still.
There are many different practices and methods of running a good D&D campaign/story/adventure. I find however, that when I create, I follow three simple rules that ensure verisimilitude which I think is the single most important thing for ensuring a quality game.
1. When you write an adventure/story/plot, you write it with the assumption that the players don't exist and you define events as they would transpire as such. Meaning, you should have a plan of what happens (how the story resolves) if the players didn't exist at all. Then you run that story exactly as written until the players intervene and you adapt the story (like an alternative timeline) based on how the players have intervened. This method solves a lot of these sort of questions.
2. As a DM you are an arbitrator of events, not a participant. Meaning that you should be completely void of any attachment to the story, to the characters, to the NPC or to the events that transpire. The only allegiance you have is to verisimilitude, does what happens make logical and physical sense, is it believable? When you execute an event that produces consequences, the player's response should be "oh shit, yeah that makes sense". It might surprise them because they didn't think of things in a logical way, but when the surprise is revealed there should be no challenges to the logic of those events, they should be blaming themselves not you for how events transpired through their action or inaction.
3. Don't ever block narrative outcomes for mechanical or balance reasons. I can't stress enough how much players despise this with a deep-seeded passion. This is the most common and most destructive mistake that DM's make that completely annihilates not only trust in the DM but the sense of ownership of the game and the feeling of player actions having impact on the story. Once you cross this line once, your players will never trust you again, nor should day. Balance and game mechanics cannot be a consideration when compared to narrative logic.
For example if a Villain is fighting with a +3 Vorpal Sword and they kill him, they get a the sword. Don't tell them it doesn't work, or make up some BS reason they can't use it. If you don't want the players to get that weapon, don't put it in the hands of the villain. I have seen lifelong groups break up permanently over a single incident like this (and the above example was the exact reason). Don't tempt fate, run an honest game.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects. What they have is a plan, and it isn't completely nonsensical. So I want them to feel like they accomplished things while also feeling the consequence of ignoring the side quests.
The problem with making those small conflict worse IMO, is that you have tied those conflicts to the entity in the temple. Thus it makes logical sense that upon defeating that entity some of those conflicts should get better. Basically, you want to make the players to understand the outcomes of their choices, if they believe that killing the entity in the temple would make the problems easier to deal with you either need to fulfill that expectation, or be able to give a clear reason to the party why that is not true (that ideally you hint at ahead of time). For instance, if the non-violent cult loses the entity it worships perhaps they kill themselves and their prisoners to try and bring it back, which weakens the duergar but allows the mindflayer to take over the duergar. So yes some of the problems are solves but another problem is made worse.
1. When you write an adventure/story/plot, you write it with the assumption that the players don't exist and you define events as they would transpire as such. Meaning, you should have a plan of what happens (how the story resolves) if the players didn't exist at all. Then you run that story exactly as written until the players intervene and you adapt the story (like an alternative timeline) based on how the players have intervened. This method solves a lot of these sort of questions.
Well yeah, thats exactly what I want to do. I'm just asking for suggestions of how things could progress in the conflicts that the party isn't participating in actively by moving on to the temple directly. I have some ideas but I was wondering what other people would do to, like you said, not make the players lose trust in the DM by making it feel like their choices have no impact.
The problem with making those small conflict worse IMO, is that you have tied those conflicts to the entity in the temple. Thus it makes logical sense that upon defeating that entity some of those conflicts should get better. Basically, you want to make the players to understand the outcomes of their choices, if they believe that killing the entity in the temple would make the problems easier to deal with you either need to fulfill that expectation, or be able to give a clear reason to the party why that is not true (that ideally you hint at ahead of time). For instance, if the non-violent cult loses the entity it worships perhaps they kill themselves and their prisoners to try and bring it back, which weakens the duergar but allows the mindflayer to take over the duergar. So yes some of the problems are solves but another problem is made worse.
I think I may not have been entirely clear. The smaller conflicts aren't all tied to the entity. Not completely at least.
The three conflicts are:
1. The rising presence of the cult and the tension between those who still workship their god and those who turned to the entity. The cult beginning to outnumber the others.
2. The duergar capturing people who venture outside their walls, many of these being soldiers and guardsman that work for the current government and were thus followers of their god.
3. the duergar supposedly kidnapping people out from within the walls. This was a way of discovering the cult's darker side (considering they were the ones responsible) and would give the party fair reason to begin to actively oppose them. They were hesitant to just straight up attack a sinnister, but non-violent group. Though their distrust of these people couldve led them to investigate the church of their own accord by accepting an invitation to one of their gatherings and maybe doing some snooping around. If the party chose to deal with the duergar directly in hopes of stopping the kidnappings, then they would eventually conclude the duergar weren't responsible for the kidnappings, which would have then led them to discovering the cult's involvement. So basically, nr 3 is a way of dealing with nr 1 and a way to deal with nr1 if their assumption about nr 2's involvement was found out to be incorrect.
The only thing tied directly to the entity was the cult. The duergar and the illithid within have no connection to it, at least not directly.
What im considering now, is to do the following:
I can't and don't want to stop the party from facing the entity. But that big boss battle would have happened in multiple stages in multiple locations. Both in the temple and beneath it. When the party defeats the entity's first stage in the temple, Im thinking of having it call out to its majority of followers within the civilizaiton and tell them to 'fight the non-believers'. This would cause a civil war to spark up within the city and give the party a few choices.
They can do:
1. Head back directly to the city to aid the god's loyalists in defeating the cult. Because the loyalists have a minority they would begin to lose this fight. But intervening quickly would give the party a good chance to win the conflict.
2. Head further into the temple to finish the entity off. They can do this, at the cost of the loyalist's near defeat. But when retaking and freeing the loyalist's from that situation would be somewhat easier because the cult would no longer be able to benefit from the entity's support (There are in-world reasons the cult would continue to fight even after the entity's defeat, this has to do with the BBEG of the overarching campaign)
3. Head to the duergar before or after delving deeper into the temple. Giving up more time to getting back to the city would worsen the state in which the loyalist's find themselves. But if they manage to free the loyalist's enslaved by the duergar before returning, they would have an even better chance of winning the conflict. Ofcourse, if the party delves into the temple further and then chooses to free the loyalists before returning, it would be more of a re-capture of the city than aiding the loyalists in their fight against the cult.
If the party decides to not delve further yet and first defeat the cult, they would get additional allies from the loyalist's ranks in their battle against the entity. If the party decides to head to the duergar fortress after fist confronting the entity, i believe the mindflayer will have either more control or entire control over the duergar. Depenidng on if the party goes back to the city first, goes to the duergar first, defeat the entity first, ect. The order in which they would do these things would escalate the power of the mindflayer.
I think this may be a good solution to the 'problem' I have (Which isn't really a problem tbf). If anyone sees a problem with this approach, or additional suggestions, Id love to hear it!
1) It is very important to try and see the situation from the player perspective. YOU know everything that is going on, the players only know what you have told them or hinted at. In these types of situations with a convoluted plot, the DM needs to be aware of exactly what they say and see if they can foreshadow outcomes for the players so that they can make reasonable decisions.
Depending on how you have presented things ... the party choice to go after the entity may make complete sense. There is a duergar enemy pressing the dwarves. There is a church encouraging a pacifist approach and there have been people going missing that you have told them are due to the duergar.
There are several issues with the scenario as presented ...
- what is the time line? Unless the duergar are about to invade tomorrow and you have made this clear that this is happening then why NOT go after the entity - it is nearby and will probably only take a few days, a week at most to deal with. Why would the characters expect something to change in the next few days? Why would you need to evolve a plot line over the period of a only a few days such that the character decision to pursue the entity has drastic consequences? Unless the story you have written has an imminent duergar invasion then you are adjusting the story to respond to the player action and create dire consequences that did not exist.
- similar to the above ... your comments about the mindflayer infiltration are again a long term plan. Why would the mindflayer choose this moment to decide to "go public" and create a conflict within the duergar as they try to take over? Does that make any sense for a mindflayer that has perhaps already infiltrated enough to pull the strings? Unless the mindflayer has infected and can control a substantial part of the population and there is a good reason from its perspective to do so ... why would a few days more while the players deal with the entity create such an issue.
- how does a pacifist church benefit the entity at all? Is it working with the duergar? The duergar are enslaving IT's possible subjects ... as more and more join the entity's church - it just makes the duergar more powerful and an even bigger threat so unless the entity is an ally of the mind flayer and is complicit in the plan to take over both the "civilization" and the duergar then the story really makes no sense from the perspective of the entity. The cult members should be fighting for the dwarves against the duergar.
In addition, the following statement makes no sense in that context: "The government of that civilization worshipped the cleric's god, but because they are seen to be failing, people are turning away from the cleric's god and instead beginning to worship the entity within the temple. Which appears to be a much more present and caring god-like figure."
The government is failing to resist the duergar so folks turn towards this other church that encourages them to do NOTHING. To not fight back. To essentially make the situation worse. Why would anyone turn towards worshipping the entity when its offering is worse that the government? At least the government is trying to fight back. Presumably, the duergar don't care what the beliefs are of the dwarves they enslave so both cultists and all the rest are equally at risk. Basically, the motivation of the entity in having a cult of pacifists in the middle of an existential conflict makes no sense.
2) In a similar vein, you mentioned that the entity would "When they defeat the first stage of the boss battle, its spirit will retreat into the dungeon beneath the temple. At this point I think the entity would tell a message to every (including the party) in the area to 'kill the non-believers'. Sparking a civil war within the civilization the party discovered." Wut?
In this case, the entity has their followers kill all the other dwarves making them a sitting duck for the duergar and the mind flayer. Even if the entity has no idea about the mind flayer - it does know about the duergar and unless they are allies then it is simply signing the death warrant for the cult since they become sitting ducks for the duergar.
On the other hand, if the entity is allied with the mind flayer then it might have its followers capture the rest of the dwarves to be mind flayer slaves but the entity would likely demand help from the mind flayer in the form of troops sent to its aid (controlled duergar, dwarves and possibly a mind flayer or two) to attack the characters at the temple/dungeon before they can destroy the entity. This would be possible with some behind the scenes changes but it would be good if the DM could foreshadow or suggest the possibility of some of these linkages in one way or another so that the players are guessing and aren't sure what is going on and possibly suspicious rather than being completely blindsided.
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Basically, almost all of your suggestions appear to be non-sensical continuations intended to create negative consequences from a player decision that should not likely cause any major negative consequences given the plot lines you have outlined.
If it takes the party a month to travel to the entity and deal with it then the plot lines might have a significant progression. If it only takes a few days then only minor updates might be expected.
As OSR4Ever mentioned, the DM is the NEUTRAL arbiter, they know what is going on and the players don't, as soon as you ask about "punishing" the players for not engaging in a side quest then you are no longer a neutral arbiter since "punishment" plays no role in that at all.
So - how could this play out?
- when pressed the entity doesn't call on his followers to go kill folks - it calls on the followers to kill themselves and feed their power into the entity so it can be empowered to defeat the characters in the final conflict. Maybe it uses the final burst of energy to open a portal and escape at the end of the final battle if it doesn't win but the battle should be epic. Keep in mind that the characters will not know where the entity gets this huge influx of power at the end of their fight until they return to the civilization and discover that all its followers are dead (Assuming the entity is reasonably intelligent, it makes more sense to escape and start over somewhere else without these pesky characters nearby).
- the loss of the cultists causes a shock to the civilization due to the loss of so many of their friends including some who had not publicly joined the cult yet.
- at the same time, the mind flayer has continued to extend its control - the reason the duergar are attacking the dwarves in the first place and so relentlessly is to obtain more slaves for the mind flayer's spawn. The duergar don't realize this due to the fact that all of their leadership has been subverted. The loss of the cultists is a loss of potential slaves and perhaps to prevent more such losses this triggers the mind flayer to accelerate their plan to obtain more dwarf slaves. (the mind flayer prefers dwarves to duergar since the dwarves can be sent among surfacers as agents without arousing undue suspicion - something duergar can't do - making dwarven slaves more valuable to it than duergar ones).
- the players could return to find either - the civilization under seige by the duergar with only a few survivors and a lot of dead cultists OR the final battle could have happened and most if not all of the NPCs are prisoners of the mind flayer ... in line to become hosts.
The campaign then pivots to the characters dealing with the duergar/mind flayer threat.
However, this plot line really requires the players to be gone for a week - if they can deal with the entity within a day then they would come back to find the cultists dead and have to deal with the duergar assault since it would happen within 2-3 days of the cultists dying and the associated confusion that results.
The above is a story that could happen given the story you have outlined. It is not punishment. On the other hand, your suggestion of killing off all the non-cultist dwarves to make the players feel bad for not saving them despite the fact that the plot line really makes no sense with that event IS punishment (both to the players and to your story) and in my opinion should be avoided. If you had set up the story differently then that might make sense but the entire idea of people defecting to a pacifist church in a time of war making the situation worse for everyone doesn't really make much sense to start with since the duergar will shortly be coming for the cultists anyway.
P.S. Just to emphasize - unless the trip to deal with the entity takes a long time - then changing the story so the Mind flayer has control makes no sense - you'd want to change it so that the mind flayer already HAD control and is the driving force behind the duergar invasion in the first place. Similarly, none of the other suggested plot line advancements really make much sense over a short time frame like 2-5 days. The pieces need to be in place already rather than something developing because the players didn't do something else right away - unless there is some reason why the character involvement needed to be urgent AND the DM also give hints or indications of some form of urgency being required. Players can only react to what the DM tells them, if he tells them that there is nothing urgent that needs to be dealt with right now then they believe the DM even if the DM has some mythical storyline which does require urgency. If the DM gives no indications of that through what the characters see or notice then the players have no way of knowing - so don't blame them when they go in an unexpected direction.
The problem with making those small conflict worse IMO, is that you have tied those conflicts to the entity in the temple. Thus it makes logical sense that upon defeating that entity some of those conflicts should get better. Basically, you want to make the players to understand the outcomes of their choices, if they believe that killing the entity in the temple would make the problems easier to deal with you either need to fulfill that expectation, or be able to give a clear reason to the party why that is not true (that ideally you hint at ahead of time). For instance, if the non-violent cult loses the entity it worships perhaps they kill themselves and their prisoners to try and bring it back, which weakens the duergar but allows the mindflayer to take over the duergar. So yes some of the problems are solves but another problem is made worse.
I can't and don't want to stop the party from facing the entity. But that big boss battle would have happened in multiple stages in multiple locations. Both in the temple and beneath it. When the party defeats the entity's first stage in the temple, Im thinking of having it call out to its majority of followers within the civilizaiton and tell them to 'fight the non-believers'. This would cause a civil war to spark up within the city and give the party a few choices.
They can do:
1. Head back directly to the city to aid the god's loyalists in defeating the cult. Because the loyalists have a minority they would begin to lose this fight. But intervening quickly would give the party a good chance to win the conflict.
2. Head further into the temple to finish the entity off. They can do this, at the cost of the loyalist's near defeat. But when retaking and freeing the loyalist's from that situation would be somewhat easier because the cult would no longer be able to benefit from the entity's support (There are in-world reasons the cult would continue to fight even after the entity's defeat, this has to do with the BBEG of the overarching campaign)
3. Head to the duergar before or after delving deeper into the temple. Giving up more time to getting back to the city would worsen the state in which the loyalist's find themselves. But if they manage to free the loyalist's enslaved by the duergar before returning, they would have an even better chance of winning the conflict. Ofcourse, if the party delves into the temple further and then chooses to free the loyalists before returning, it would be more of a re-capture of the city than aiding the loyalists in their fight against the cult.
From a player perspective, I don't know why I would leave a temple after a first defeat of the BBEG that is commanding the cult? I would assume that the BBEG would just re-establish itself undoing what we had achieved in the first battle with them if we left the temple. If the BBEG is calling for civil war this just means time is of the essence and we should hurry to defeat the BBEG ASAP to minimize the casualties of the civil war. Leaving the temple and returning to the town I presume is a several-hour journey whereas delving deeper and defeating the BBEG once and for all might take as little as 30 minutes (in-game time). So I wouldn't necessarily make the outcome depend on the choice they make but rather on the time it takes for them to resolve the BBEG conflict. So if the players take a long rest before either defeating the BBEG or going back to town the civil war should be much more advanced than if they just charge forward and beat the BBEG then return to the village within a few hours.
It's important to note: events not occurring as they expected them to occur should not result in losing trust in the DM -- if you didn't tell them that X would work and they decided to do it anyway, and then it didn't work, you didn't do anything dishonest.
On further inspection of your side quests and the PCs plans, I'm going to be brutal: their plan is bad and deserves to fail disastrously, but you probably failed to communicate why.
The plan is bad because it involves the PCs attacking an (apparently harmless and peaceful) temple with absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing. This is traditional chaotic evil murderhobo behavior, and should result in the political situation getting a whole lot worse. This is mostly a side effect of ignoring side quest #3. For your other side quests, #2 isn't really a quest, it's just politics, and #1 is something that you can easily transform into the main quest if ignored.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects. What they have is a plan, and it isn't completely nonsensical. So I want them to feel like they accomplished things while also feeling the consequence of ignoring the side quests.
Nothing should escalate, unless the part leaves it for weeks or months. It sounds like the party is going to this temple directly and it's only going to be a couple of hours detour. I'm assuming the temple is in the city. If weeks or months go by then escalate each conflict to its natural conclusion.
The problem is in the title of the post. DM's should not "punish" players for playing in whatever style they see fit. - If they want to go crush the temple let them crush the temple. If they want to ignore the side quests so what? Sometimes all the things that seem interesting in a DM's head aren't really all that interesting to the group.
Let them go do their thing at the temple make it a fun 3-4 session thing then move on with the story. If the group has choice A and B you cant get annoyed if they are the type that will pick A every time.
Hell one of my groups is currently embroiled in a fight with a demigod because they would not bend a knee in a sign of respect. Stuff happens roll with it.
It is more the players story than it is yours you just provide the framework for them to create. - Then have fun rolling with it.
The problem with making those small conflict worse IMO, is that you have tied those conflicts to the entity in the temple. Thus it makes logical sense that upon defeating that entity some of those conflicts should get better. Basically, you want to make the players to understand the outcomes of their choices, if they believe that killing the entity in the temple would make the problems easier to deal with you either need to fulfill that expectation, or be able to give a clear reason to the party why that is not true (that ideally you hint at ahead of time). For instance, if the non-violent cult loses the entity it worships perhaps they kill themselves and their prisoners to try and bring it back, which weakens the duergar but allows the mindflayer to take over the duergar. So yes some of the problems are solves but another problem is made worse.
I can't and don't want to stop the party from facing the entity. But that big boss battle would have happened in multiple stages in multiple locations. Both in the temple and beneath it. When the party defeats the entity's first stage in the temple, Im thinking of having it call out to its majority of followers within the civilizaiton and tell them to 'fight the non-believers'. This would cause a civil war to spark up within the city and give the party a few choices.
They can do:
1. Head back directly to the city to aid the god's loyalists in defeating the cult. Because the loyalists have a minority they would begin to lose this fight. But intervening quickly would give the party a good chance to win the conflict.
2. Head further into the temple to finish the entity off. They can do this, at the cost of the loyalist's near defeat. But when retaking and freeing the loyalist's from that situation would be somewhat easier because the cult would no longer be able to benefit from the entity's support (There are in-world reasons the cult would continue to fight even after the entity's defeat, this has to do with the BBEG of the overarching campaign)
3. Head to the duergar before or after delving deeper into the temple. Giving up more time to getting back to the city would worsen the state in which the loyalist's find themselves. But if they manage to free the loyalist's enslaved by the duergar before returning, they would have an even better chance of winning the conflict. Ofcourse, if the party delves into the temple further and then chooses to free the loyalists before returning, it would be more of a re-capture of the city than aiding the loyalists in their fight against the cult.
From a player perspective, I don't know why I would leave a temple after a first defeat of the BBEG that is commanding the cult? I would assume that the BBEG would just re-establish itself undoing what we had achieved in the first battle with them if we left the temple. If the BBEG is calling for civil war this just means time is of the essence and we should hurry to defeat the BBEG ASAP to minimize the casualties of the civil war. Leaving the temple and returning to the town I presume is a several-hour journey whereas delving deeper and defeating the BBEG once and for all might take as little as 30 minutes (in-game time). So I wouldn't necessarily make the outcome depend on the choice they make but rather on the time it takes for them to resolve the BBEG conflict. So if the players take a long rest before either defeating the BBEG or going back to town the civil war should be much more advanced than if they just charge forward and beat the BBEG then return to the village within a few hours.
The option to continue and defeat the entity always remains open to the players. Why they would cut off their attack halfway through? A few reasons.
First, the faster they return the more aid they could be to their allies within the city.
Secondly the journey back to the city may actually take a shorter time than delving deeper into the temple. Considering my player's will be expecting a multi-stage boss fight (I do this often for arc-ending bosses) there is a good chance that one of them will save a high level teleportation spell (The party is 14th level at this point). This is what happened at the end of the previous arc, I had the lair of the enemy collapse then, but because my players often try to save their resources as much as possible, the sorcerer hadn't used his 7th level slot yet and used it to teleport out. It is likely they won't blow their 7th level slot in the first stage of the combat and thus a very quick return would be possible. They may also save this option for when they defeat the entity but that would be holding back a pretty big Ace up their sleeve.
Thirdly, engaging the entity first before returning to the city will make them significantly less powerfull (resource-wise) when they get there. Wether they teleport or not. In this campaign we established rules for long resting in unsave areas. The party could only use their hit dice to heal up and only regains half their level worth of spell slots (7 levels woth. Be that two 3rd levels and a 1st or a 5th and a 2nd or a single 7th level slot). This would mean that choosing to go after the entity, which will be a significant drain on their resources, would result in them arriving back at the city not only later, but also with very few resources that aren't easily regained. That is assuming that they all survive the battle. It is possible that someone passes during a boss battle that significant. Even if a dead character would be brought back, we rule that that person comes back with 5 levels of exhaustion.
These may all be reasons the party decides to return before finishing the fight. If they do, they could always return later with the allies they saved to finish the battle.
It's important to note: events not occurring as they expected them to occur should not result in losing trust in the DM -- if you didn't tell them that X would work and they decided to do it anyway, and then it didn't work, you didn't do anything dishonest.
On further inspection of your side quests and the PCs plans, I'm going to be brutal: their plan is bad and deserves to fail disastrously, but you probably failed to communicate why.
The plan is bad because it involves the PCs attacking an (apparently harmless and peaceful) temple with absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing. This is traditional chaotic evil murderhobo behavior, and should result in the political situation getting a whole lot worse. This is mostly a side effect of ignoring side quest #3. For your other side quests, #2 isn't really a quest, it's just politics, and #1 is something that you can easily transform into the main quest if ignored.
I may not have communicated that as poorly as you might think. The party was discussing about what to do and were considering the consequences they might suffer from ignoring the tension within and around the city they found. They knew that ignoring the cult and the duergar may have consequences, but they believed it would be easier to deal with those consequences when the entity is dead.
I think you may have gotten mixed up in the difference between the temple and the church/cult. The temple is obviously infested by something evil that needs to be destroyed. Their previous interactions during dreams when the entity came to them and the visions the cleric had recieved from their god should and did absolve any doubt they may have had about wether or not its wrong to attack and kill the entity in the temple. The church/cult, which resides in the city some distance away from the temple, is a clearly sinnister group. Not only does the party know that the entity they worship is evil, but its members also exude big 'Evil cult' energy. The party isn't attacking the cult precisely because they are currently non-violent. Though it has been shown and told that this state of non-violence may not be a permanent state of affairs. Attacking the temple, as they are doing now, isn't some straight-up murder hobo thing to do. Attacking the church/cult without provocation would've been very murderhoboy, but is also the exact reason the party didn't do that. There would have been ways for the party to eventually attack the chuch/cult without it being just a murderhobo's choice tho.
The party could have either gone to the cult's gathering for which they were invited and snooped around for evidence of its evil nature or investigated the kidnappings and found out through that that they were actively sacrificing 'non-believers'. At which point it would give the party all right to fight/arrest the church's leadership and in doing so may have turned many of its less fanatic followers back to the light.
Doing so wouldve given them allies in the fight against the entity considering those people wouldn't have to be worried about the cult's activities in their absence.
Freeing the enslaved worshippers of the cleric's god from the duergar wouldve balanced the numbers of loyalists with the numbers the cult has gotten recently. In doing so the party may have felt more comfortable opposing the cult if they were fearful of being outnumbered before.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects. What they have is a plan, and it isn't completely nonsensical. So I want them to feel like they accomplished things while also feeling the consequence of ignoring the side quests.
Nothing should escalate, unless the part leaves it for weeks or months. It sounds like the party is going to this temple directly and it's only going to be a couple of hours detour. I'm assuming the temple is in the city. If weeks or months go by then escalate each conflict to its natural conclusion.
The temple is about a 16 hour walk away from the city, which ment it took the party about 1.5/2 days of travel to arrive at the temple. Returning may not take nearly as long because of the party's high level and access to stuff that would either allow them to travel faster or instantly return through a teleportation spell.
I did consider not doing anything to the conflicts the party ignores, but if I don't do that Im sure the part will feel as if their choice had no real stakes. I could see doing that for the duergar maybe, but it has been foreshadowed that the duergar are infected by mindflayer's so it wouldn't come completely out of left field if the duergar are suddenly more mind flayery after being left alone. As for the cult, I could not imagine that would be the same if the party fully defeats the entity. It would either have collapsed entirely or gotten violent because of the murder of the thing they worshipped and believed was keeping them safe.
Not having anything change would maybe make the players feel like their choices don't matter at all. Which is one of the worst things to do I think.
I appreciate the in-depth response! (Even tho some of it made me feel bad) I'm going to put my response in the middle of your quote to answer all questions or give more context where I think it may have lacked.
Just a couple comments ...
1) It is very important to try and see the situation from the player perspective. YOU know everything that is going on, the players only know what you have told them or hinted at. In these types of situations with a convoluted plot, the DM needs to be aware of exactly what they say and see if they can foreshadow outcomes for the players so that they can make reasonable decisions.
Depending on how you have presented things ... the party choice to go after the entity may make complete sense. There is a duergar enemy pressing the dwarves. There is a church encouraging a pacifist approach and there have been people going missing that you have told them are due to the duergar.
Yes, your assessement of how things were presented are largely correct. The party, on their way to the city, were attacked by a group of duergar, some of which turned out to be infected by mind flayers. They then went to the city where they were told that the duergar have been an issue as they have been capturing the people that venture out of the city and enslaving them. The people who leave the confines of the city are mainly the guardians, which are loyalists and warriors of the cleric's faith. The loss of these people has left what remains of the government in a weakend state. They have lost many of their warriors, and because the families of those who were captured blamed the government for it, they began to resent them and the faith they worshipped. Especially because the entity would've come to them in dreams and such as it did to the players earlier in this story arc and offered them salvation and safety from 'a darkness yet to come'. This is why these people turned away from their original faith and started worshipping the entity. In doing so, they more easily received divine blessings as the entity is much more involved in the day-to-day lives of its worshippers due to its proximity and smaller number of worshippers compared to the larger deities of this world. The church indeed appears to be non-violent. Non violent doesn't mean pacifists. The party had seen and been told that tensions between loyalists and the church/cult are rising and its likely only a matter of time before the cult would take over completely, in a likely violent manner. But without any evidence, and being occupied with the outside duergar threat, the government hasn't had the time of manpower to investigate the cult. This is where the party could have stepped in by either showing initiative and investigation the cult at one of their gatherings, to which they were invited. Or, if they investigated the kidnappings, they would have eventually been led to the cult's sinnister activities. Which would give the party good cause to actively bring down the cult. Which at that point would be proven to not be 'non-violent'. Had the party first attacked the more apparent theat, the duergar, they would have found out that the kidnappings wouldn't stop. The cult may have even escalated the conflict on their own because they could no longer hide behind the duergar taking the focus off of them.
The entity, the cult and the government all have been expecting the party. A prophecy told of a savior that would come to this abandoned place and liberate them all. The party arriving and being revealed as the first outsiders to have come to this place in a very long time could've very well been the reason for the entity and the cult to want to expedite their take over of the city. Until halfway through the latest session, the entity was trying to corrupt the cleric (and some other party members) into joining its side. This was only definitively shut down during the last session.
There are several issues with the scenario as presented ...
- what is the time line? Unless the duergar are about to invade tomorrow and you have made this clear that this is happening then why NOT go after the entity - it is nearby and will probably only take a few days, a week at most to deal with. Why would the characters expect something to change in the next few days? Why would you need to evolve a plot line over the period of a only a few days such that the character decision to pursue the entity has drastic consequences? Unless the story you have written has an imminent duergar invasion then you are adjusting the story to respond to the player action and create dire consequences that did not exist.
A duergar invasion isn't something that is currently on the table. Their numbers are great enough to be a threat to anyone who leaves the safety of the city wall, but are also small enough that it is a threat that the party could deal with without needing to recruit an army. Besieging the city isn't something they would likely be able to do. This has also been made clear to the party. Saying that anyone who leaves the city is in danger, but recently 'the duergar' have also been kidnapping people from inside the walls. Which was concerning. (This then would have been revealed not to be the case, because it was the cult's doing insetad).
Why not go for the entity directly? Well, because the arrival of the party to the city was a big deal. Like I wrote above, the party's prophesied arrival would bring an end to the dispair the city's residents have been living. But because this prophecy was given to them by a god that many citizens feel like ignored them for a long time, many were either weary or straight up unhappy with the party's arrival. These people who turned to the entity, found a new god that actually blesses them with divine miracles and promises that it would save them from the darkness in due time. The undoing of the entity's influence and the return to the worship of their old god is something that many of these converted citizens didn't want. Because as far as they could see, their new god is an involved and benevolent god. This could have been disproven by the party discovering that the cult does secret blood sacrifices and is responsible for the kidnappings. If the party did that, im sure the strongest believers of the entity would be willing to fight the party for it. The fanatics, cleric and dark paladins. But the faith is also made up of many people who were simply looking for something different. A faith that they would feel actually would help them. But being shown that the faith they worshipped was evil could have quickly turned the average follower against the cult.
So yeah, the party's arrival made the very tense situation within the city even more so. The party departed the city and went to the temple before 24 hours had passed since the announcement of their arrival. Leaving a city in this tense of state is something that some party members worried about, and is thus not completely out of left field when it would escalate.
- similar to the above ... your comments about the mindflayer infiltration are again a long term plan. Why would the mindflayer choose this moment to decide to "go public" and create a conflict within the duergar as they try to take over? Does that make any sense for a mindflayer that has perhaps already infiltrated enough to pull the strings? Unless the mindflayer has infected and can control a substantial part of the population and there is a good reason from its perspective to do so ... why would a few days more while the players deal with the entity create such an issue.
The mindflayer currently maskerades as a prisoner of the duergar while taking over more and more of them each day. There is a reason it would choose to go puplic at this moment. The mindflayer is aware of the entity's presence. But also knows that, as long as it is locked away within the temple it is little threat to its plans. The mindflayer would want to infect as many duergar, and later dwarves as possible before turning into an elder brain (Thats what an Ulitharid does after establishing a colony). The mindflayer has no need to ally itself with the entity as long as it is contained within the temple. I imagine its hubris would make it think that, if it establishes a large illithid colony in the area, it could eventually either destroy or corrupt the entity and control it as a puppet.
The mindflayer is aware of the party's arrival. Like I said, it has fought them through some of its thralls. If the party attempts to break the magical wall, they could set the entity free. The party of course wants to destroy the entity, but the mindflayer believes that they can very well die in the attempt too, which would have simply set this entity loose upon the area and would force it to deal with the entity much sooner than it would wish. I am considering having the mindflayer approach the party and speak to them through some of its thralls. Trying to convince them not to release the entity from its prison and attacking the party if they refuse.
- how does a pacifist church benefit the entity at all? Is it working with the duergar? The duergar are enslaving IT's possible subjects ... as more and more join the entity's church - it just makes the duergar more powerful and an even bigger threat so unless the entity is an ally of the mind flayer and is complicit in the plan to take over both the "civilization" and the duergar then the story really makes no sense from the perspective of the entity. The cult members should be fighting for the dwarves against the duergar.
The church/cult is made up of some fanatics that know the darker side to the entity. The entity promises them power in the wake of an approaching darkness, a larger danger yet to come that many peoples around the world have gotten visions about. The most devout of its followers get magical power from it. Its more average follower feels that the entity can have more impact on their life than their older more distant god
The entity and the duergar are completely separated. Eventually, I can imagine the entity being interested in corrupting the duergar too. But whereas the dwarves are a full civilization numbering in the few thousand, also including man non-combatants, the duergar number around one or two hundred if you add it all together. Difference being, all those dwarves are hardened warriors. They also worship a different god. The god that the cleric worships is a deity that the entity has a strong hatred toward and thus delights in corrupting its followers. The duergar, however useful, wouldn't be its first priority.
The entity doesn't care much for the people the duergar enslaves. Because the people they enslave are the ones venturing out of the city, they are loyalists to the government and their original god. Each member the duergar enslave is an enemy less for the entity. The entity would likely take an intrest in corrupting the duergar after successfully taking over the dwarven settlement. Until then, the duergar's intrest in slaves is somewhat beneficial. But because the duergar almost exclusively (and not on purpose) enslave people who don't follow the entity, it is a force that the party could liberate and have at their side in the conflict against the cult and the entity. Thats how I wanted to present that conflict and give reason for the party to maybe prioritize it. If the duergar enslaved members of the cult, it may be a reason the party would choose to ignore it.
In addition, the following statement makes no sense in that context: "The government of that civilization worshipped the cleric's god, but because they are seen to be failing, people are turning away from the cleric's god and instead beginning to worship the entity within the temple. Which appears to be a much more present and caring god-like figure."
The government is failing to resist the duergar so folks turn towards this other church that encourages them to do NOTHING. To not fight back. To essentially make the situation worse. Why would anyone turn towards worshipping the entity when its offering is worse that the government? At least the government is trying to fight back. Presumably, the duergar don't care what the beliefs are of the dwarves they enslave so both cultists and all the rest are equally at risk. Basically, the motivation of the entity in having a cult of pacifists in the middle of an existential conflict makes no sense.
You mistake the cult's non-(openly)violent stance against the other dwarves within the settlement as an overal pacifistic position. They are not. NPC's the party met were constantly worried about the cult turning to violence at any moment and about how little the government could do about it if they did. This was part of the reason the party went to fight the entity, to take away the divine gifts gifted to the cult. The cult stays entirely within the walls of the settlement. They don't have any encounters and thus aren't threatened by the duergar. Im sure that if the cult were to fully take the settlement over, they would surely use violence in an effort to defend themselves. If not seek to free the enslaved dwarves 'In name of the entity'. People turn to the cult because the government isn't protecting the people that venture out and aren't doing anything to try and get them back. They don't have the numbers to do so, but people like to blame others. The cult uses this to their advantage by making people angry at the government.
2) In a similar vein, you mentioned that the entity would "When they defeat the first stage of the boss battle, its spirit will retreat into the dungeon beneath the temple. At this point I think the entity would tell a message to every (including the party) in the area to 'kill the non-believers'. Sparking a civil war within the civilization the party discovered." Wut?
In this case, the entity has their followers kill all the other dwarves making them a sitting duck for the duergar and the mind flayer. Yes it would, but it would be an attempt form the entity to switch the party's focus away from itself and toward the dwarves in the settlement. The cult doesn't hasn't had to deal with the duergar themselves yet because they didn't leave the confines of the settlement. So, given a direct order by their 'god', it wouldn't stop them from following that command.
Even if the entity has no idea about the mind flayer - it does know about the duergar and unless they are allies then it is simply signing the death warrant for the cult since they become sitting ducks for the duergar. The cult would outnumber the duergar, and have the support of the common people. It would actually stand a better chance against the duergar than the current government and its dwindling support. Also, if its own life is threatend, it is selfish enough that it would prioritize its own survival over the long-term well being of its followers by trying to shift the party's focus.
On the other hand, if the entity is allied with the mind flayer then it might have its followers capture the rest of the dwarves to be mind flayer slaves but the entity would likely demand help from the mind flayer in the form of troops sent to its aid (controlled duergar, dwarves and possibly a mind flayer or two) to attack the characters at the temple/dungeon before they can destroy the entity. This would be possible with some behind the scenes changes but it would be good if the DM could foreshadow or suggest the possibility of some of these linkages in one way or another so that the players are guessing and aren't sure what is going on and possibly suspicious rather than being completely blindsided.
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Basically, almost all of your suggestions appear to be non-sensical continuations :( intended to create negative consequences from a player decision that should not likely cause any major negative consequences given the plot lines you have outlined.
If it takes the party a month to travel to the entity and deal with it then the plot lines might have a significant progression. If it only takes a few days then only minor updates might be expected. I strongly believe that if I don't change anything at all, it would feel utterly disappointing to the party. If their choice to face the entity as quickly as possible has no impact at all, it would just show that their choices are of no consequence. I am not a fan of all outcomes being negative because of the party, thats why my initial post asked about how I should progress each conflict WITHOUT making it feel like its punishement. There should be reward for facing down the entity, but there should be consequence for ignoring immediate conflicts.
As OSR4Ever mentioned, the DM is the NEUTRAL arbiter, they know what is going on and the players don't, as soon as you ask about "punishing" the players for not engaging in a side quest then you are no longer a neutral arbiter since "punishment" plays no role in that at all.
So - how could this play out?
- when pressed the entity doesn't call on his followers to go kill folks - it calls on the followers to kill themselves and feed their power into the entity so it can be empowered to defeat the characters in the final conflict. This is insane. Not only is mass suicide very easily a sensetive topic in any group, but it would also make the party feel awful. The party wishes to set people free from the entity's influence and turn them back to the light. This would basically be 'Oh, because of your choices, hundreds of people killed themselves' and is sure to make the party feel awful. You could say that maybe only its most devout worshippers do this, but then this feels like an easy cop out. It would reward a solely violent approach to the matter whereas the goal of this arc, for the cleric specifically, is to be challenged in his believes. Making all the bad guys just all kill themselves would erase any need for in-depth character conflict. It is much more interesting to explore what the cult may do if its god was killed by the party. How would they respond to it if the party does that? Do they all just give up? Do they rise up against the party for killing the thing they worshipped? Thats much more interesting than just giving the entity a boost during the fight and then the conflict being completely resolved when the party returns.
Maybe it uses the final burst of energy to open a portal and escape at the end of the final battle if it doesn't win but the battle should be epic. This is a really bad idea, at least for my party. I have done the 'the enemy teleports away' twice before in this campaign and both times it brought my group to a near-collapse. Players strongly dislike a big boss fight being taken away from them in that way. Maybe if the party found out beforehand that the entity is trying to create a portal to escape its bonds through bloodsacrifices or something, it could work. But just randomly now would feel deeply unsatisfying.
Keep in mind that the characters will not know where the entity gets this huge influx of power at the end of their fight until they return to the civilization and discover that all its followers are dead (Assuming the entity is reasonably intelligent, it makes more sense to escape and start over somewhere else without these pesky characters nearby).
- the loss of the cultists causes a shock to the civilization due to the loss of so many of their friends including some who had not publicly joined the cult yet.
- at the same time, the mind flayer has continued to extend its control - the reason the duergar are attacking the dwarves in the first place and so relentlessly is to obtain more slaves for the mind flayer's spawn. The duergar don't realize this due to the fact that all of their leadership has been subverted. The loss of the cultists is a loss of potential slaves and perhaps to prevent more such losses this triggers the mind flayer to accelerate their plan to obtain more dwarf slaves. (the mind flayer prefers dwarves to duergar since the dwarves can be sent among surfacers as agents without arousing undue suspicion - something duergar can't do - making dwarven slaves more valuable to it than duergar ones). This could work in the scenario you described. It could work similarly if the entity sparks a civil war between the dwarves. Wether or not the party turns their attention away from the entity, the disarray the dwarves would be thrown in would be an opportune moment to snatch up the pieces. Maybe even, if the entity is defeated, the party could unite the dwarves against a common enemy. Making it so the sides that were fighting each other a moment ago stand side by side again if the party tries to maneuver them that way.
- the players could return to find either - the civilization under seige by the duergar with only a few survivors and a lot of dead cultists OR the final battle could have happened and most if not all of the NPCs are prisoners of the mind flayer ... in line to become hosts.
Maybe this could work? The duergar don't have the numbers to lay siege to the settlement. But if the party somehow takes a long enough time to get back after dealing with the entity, things could have escalated to this point. Although I don't know if thats going to happen given the party wouldn't have many other priorities if they defeat the entity.
The campaign then pivots to the characters dealing with the duergar/mind flayer threat. Does feel like a bit of a downgrade after fighting a near god-like entity. Reward for them facing against the big boss would be that they already to care of the biggest danger. Otherwise it would feel like they wasted the risk they took.
However, this plot line really requires the players to be gone for a week - if they can deal with the entity within a day then they would come back to find the cultists dead and have to deal with the duergar assault since it would happen within 2-3 days of the cultists dying and the associated confusion that results.
The above is a story that could happen given the story you have outlined. It is not punishment. On the other hand, your suggestion of killing off all the non-cultist dwarves (I never suggested that, I suggest having them be in active violent conflict with the cult. Thats very different from just killing them all. It gives the party the chance to fight back. Ignoring this for a longer time would mean the fight against the cult would be harder but never impossible. I would never just kill them all, that would be insane) to make the players feel bad for not saving them despite the fact that the plot line really makes no sense with that event IS punishment (both to the players and to your story) and in my opinion should be avoided. If you had set up the story differently then that might make sense but the entire idea of people defecting to a pacifist church in a time of war (Not an active war. Its a conflict that the government could have handled, if its support wasn't actively being sapped away by the cult) making the situation worse for everyone (They only join because the cult members never had to deal with the duergar themselves and only blame the ones they and the cult assigns to be responsible) doesn't really make much sense to start with since the duergar will shortly be coming for the cultists anyway.
P.S. Just to emphasize - unless the trip to deal with the entity takes a long time - then changing the story so the Mind flayer has control makes no sense - you'd want to change it so that the mind flayer already HAD control and is the driving force behind the duergar invasion in the first place. Similarly, none of the other suggested plot line advancements really make much sense over a short time frame like 2-5 days. The pieces need to be in place already rather than something developing because the players didn't do something else right away - unless there is some reason why the character involvement needed to be urgent AND the DM also give hints or indications of some form of urgency being required. Players can only react to what the DM tells them, if he tells them that there is nothing urgent that needs to be dealt with right now then they believe the DM even if the DM has some mythical storyline which does require urgency. If the DM gives no indications of that through what the characters see or notice then the players have no way of knowing - so don't blame them when they go in an unexpected direction.
I appreciate the in-depth response! I'm going to put my response in the middle of your quote to answer all questions or give more context where I think it may have lacked.
I think you may have gotten mixed up in the difference between the temple and the church/cult.
Probably. I assumed "temple" meant "place of active worship", not "place off in the middle of nowhere that used to be a place of worship". So, going back to the original problem:
When the spirit sends out its message of "Kill the nonbelievers", well, it's not really a problem if it only reaches the temple, but if it reaches the church, presumably the church will proceed to attack the nonbelievers. If the PCs immediately chase down the spirit and defeat it finally, that will probably get aborted before too much damage is done. If they take a short rest, there's potential for a lot of damage to be done (and, the spirit might be empowered by the kills it got). Take a long rest and the situation could be very bad.
So... do you think your PCs can sprint through the dungeon without taking any rests? If they can, not a lot of consequences for ignoring the side quests. If they can't, they may regret their decision. Note that if you decide to follow a path like this, you should be clear on the consequences of delay.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects. What they have is a plan, and it isn't completely nonsensical. So I want them to feel like they accomplished things while also feeling the consequence of ignoring the side quests.
Nothing should escalate, unless the part leaves it for weeks or months. It sounds like the party is going to this temple directly and it's only going to be a couple of hours detour. I'm assuming the temple is in the city. If weeks or months go by then escalate each conflict to its natural conclusion.
The temple is about a 16 hour walk away from the city, which ment it took the party about 1.5/2 days of travel to arrive at the temple. Returning may not take nearly as long because of the party's high level and access to stuff that would either allow them to travel faster or instantly return through a teleportation spell.
I did consider not doing anything to the conflicts the party ignores, but if I don't do that Im sure the part will feel as if their choice had no real stakes. I could see doing that for the duergar maybe, but it has been foreshadowed that the duergar are infected by mindflayer's so it wouldn't come completely out of left field if the duergar are suddenly more mind flayery after being left alone. As for the cult, I could not imagine that would be the same if the party fully defeats the entity. It would either have collapsed entirely or gotten violent because of the murder of the thing they worshipped and believed was keeping them safe.
Not having anything change would maybe make the players feel like their choices don't matter at all. Which is one of the worst things to do I think.
2 day trip back? They aren't going back because logic would dictate they can finish the temple in less than 2 days.
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Dear dungeon masters, please help me out here.
Recently, my party arrived in a new area. In this area, my party was trying to reach a specific temple in which an evil entity was sitting. The party's objective was to eventually free this temple from its influence. But when they got to this new area, they found out that the people living there were dealing with some conflicts that were at least partially caused by the entity's influence over the area but could result in catastrophy if left unchecked. Instead of helping these people with these smaller conflicts, the party chose to head straight for the big boss in the temple in an attempt to destroy it. Hoping that dealing with the smaller conflicts would be easier if the entity is gone.
For my players: Als jij in Menno's game speelt, moet je hier stoppen met lezen hé.
For some more context:
My party, specifically the cleric, wants to reclaim this lost temple in the name of his god. The temple is located in a Moria-style abandoned kingdom. The party didn't expect to encounter any people living in the abandoned kingdom because all story's about the place said it was completely lost.
To the party's surprise, they found a small civilization surviving in the depths of the kingdom. This civilization was dealing with its own conflicts, some of which are caused by the entity int he temple. I expected them to help these people before going straight to the temple, but they have chosen to go to the temple in the hopes of making dealing with the smaller conflicts after easier.
The smaller conflicts are as follows:
1. A group of Duergar has come up from the underdark and occupied a part of the kingdom. They are a threat to the civilizaiton of dwarves, who worshipped the same god as the cleric. But because the Duergar were more dangerous than the dwarves could handle, they have been losing to them. The duergar are killing and enslaving the people from the civilizaiton. The government of that civilization worshipped the cleric's god, but because they are seen to be failing, people are turning away from the cleric's god and instead beginning to worship the entity within the temple. Which appears to be a much more present and caring god-like figure.
2. Thats also where the second part of conflict comes in. The church is currently non-violent but a concern to the worshippers of the cleric's god. They are losing members to this 'cult' every day. And as people turn against the governing body, they begin losing to the duergar at an even faster rate. But, because the church is currently non-violent, the party didn't know what to do about them. As they didn't want to attack them without provocation.
3. There have also been kidnappings within the civilizaiton. Worshippers of the cleric's god have gone missing. This party the party hasn't interacted with at all. All they know is that people have gone missing and that the disappearances are supposedly committed by the duergar. But had the party shown an intrest and investigated, they would've discovered that the church was behind these kidnappings. Capturing and sacrificing worshippers of the cleric's god to bolster the strength of the entity. They could've also naturally found this out if they had dealt with the duergar threat. Not only would freeing the enslaved people bolster the numbers of the people that still worship the cleric's god, but they would've also found out that the kidnappings didn't stop. If they could no longer be written off as duergar attacks, the party could've more easily found out the cult was responsible.
Instead my party chose to, after meeting this civilizations and its conflicts, go directly to the temple inhabited by the entity. This temple is currently blocked by a magical wall that the party has means to pass, but this is a puzzle they have to yet figure out (This is where the last session ended).
Now, I wonder what I should do from here. The party ignored these side quests with the best of intentions, so I don't want to punish them for making a 'wrong' decision. Because it wasn't perse a wrong choice. But I do feel that the other conflicts should escalate because of it.
I am sure that the party will proceed into the temple and attack the entity. When they defeat the first stage of the boss battle, its spirit will retreat into the dungeon beneath the temple. At this point I think the entity would tell a message to every (including the party) in the area to 'kill the non-believers'. Sparking a civil war within the civilization the party discovered. How the people would fare against the cult should depend on if the party decides to follow the entity into the dungeon, or return to the civilization. Or maybe, they could even go to free the enslaved people from the duergar and return to the civilization in force. However the longer they stay away, like going into the dungeon first or freeing the enslaved people, the worse the situation in the civilization should become I think.
Additionally, the duergar have captured a mindflayer that has been slowly trying to infect the duergar over the past few months with tadpoles and intellect devourers. My initial intention was to reveal this when the party thought they defeated the duergar and freeing its 'prisoner' which would then be revealed to have been a mindflayer who then turns many of the remaining duergar into mindflayers and attacks the party. I feel now that the party isn't interfering with the mindflayer's plan, it should be further along with its goals.
I want the story to progress in the player's absence. Things need to happen to those storylines without the party's interference. If nothing happened, it would feel like the player's choices wouldn't have mattered at all. At the same time, they made this choice not with harmful intend, the opposite even. They hoped to be able to help these people better by going straight for this entity.
My question is, how can I escalate these conflicts without making the party feel like they are being punished for making a reasonable choice with the best intentions?
Thank you in advance!
It's not "punishing" the party if they make a choice with an entirely predictable outcome (if problem ignored, problem gets worse), and the predictable outcome in fact happens.
I would understand that, but I still want to show the party that their efforts still have meaning. Yes I want the conflicts to escalate, but I don't want to make the party feel like them doing what they think is best is only giving them negative effects. What they have is a plan, and it isn't completely nonsensical. So I want them to feel like they accomplished things while also feeling the consequence of ignoring the side quests.
There should be negative effects from what they're not doing, and positive effects from what they're doing. That's what choice is all about. Assuming they were operating on a reasonable theory, the positive would be expected to outweigh the negative.
I mean I understand the logic of wanting to solve the biggest problem first. What it sounds like is that your players have a sense of urgency about the problem in the temple and don't feel comfortable letting it lie while killing rats for the blacksmith.
If you want them to do side quests before taking on the boss, maybe make the temple inaccessible to the players when they arrive, and only through talking to the townsfolk and helping them out can they gain access. Maybe the temple is locked to contain the evil, and the one who holds the key isn't giving it to just anyone so the players need to prove they have the town's best interest at heart. Maybe the key is stolen by some of the bad guy's minions so the players need to get it back. Maybe there's just a big black impassable energy dome over the temple that the players need to weaken before it can be dispeled.
It sounds to me like your players need to have a reason they wouldn't just rock up and kill the bad guy, so instead of punishing them for what I consider a logical standpoint, you should give them that reason.
*edit*
Whoops, i skimmed over the part where you did have a magical wall. If they solved the puzzle, I would just let them in and confront the entity, but leave all the side quests for the players to do afterwards. Perhaps one of the dwarves begs the new saviors of the city to intercede on their behalf with the duregar, and run them as you would've before the boss fight still.
There are many different practices and methods of running a good D&D campaign/story/adventure. I find however, that when I create, I follow three simple rules that ensure verisimilitude which I think is the single most important thing for ensuring a quality game.
1. When you write an adventure/story/plot, you write it with the assumption that the players don't exist and you define events as they would transpire as such. Meaning, you should have a plan of what happens (how the story resolves) if the players didn't exist at all. Then you run that story exactly as written until the players intervene and you adapt the story (like an alternative timeline) based on how the players have intervened. This method solves a lot of these sort of questions.
2. As a DM you are an arbitrator of events, not a participant. Meaning that you should be completely void of any attachment to the story, to the characters, to the NPC or to the events that transpire. The only allegiance you have is to verisimilitude, does what happens make logical and physical sense, is it believable? When you execute an event that produces consequences, the player's response should be "oh shit, yeah that makes sense". It might surprise them because they didn't think of things in a logical way, but when the surprise is revealed there should be no challenges to the logic of those events, they should be blaming themselves not you for how events transpired through their action or inaction.
3. Don't ever block narrative outcomes for mechanical or balance reasons. I can't stress enough how much players despise this with a deep-seeded passion. This is the most common and most destructive mistake that DM's make that completely annihilates not only trust in the DM but the sense of ownership of the game and the feeling of player actions having impact on the story. Once you cross this line once, your players will never trust you again, nor should day. Balance and game mechanics cannot be a consideration when compared to narrative logic.
For example if a Villain is fighting with a +3 Vorpal Sword and they kill him, they get a the sword. Don't tell them it doesn't work, or make up some BS reason they can't use it. If you don't want the players to get that weapon, don't put it in the hands of the villain. I have seen lifelong groups break up permanently over a single incident like this (and the above example was the exact reason). Don't tempt fate, run an honest game.
The problem with making those small conflict worse IMO, is that you have tied those conflicts to the entity in the temple. Thus it makes logical sense that upon defeating that entity some of those conflicts should get better. Basically, you want to make the players to understand the outcomes of their choices, if they believe that killing the entity in the temple would make the problems easier to deal with you either need to fulfill that expectation, or be able to give a clear reason to the party why that is not true (that ideally you hint at ahead of time). For instance, if the non-violent cult loses the entity it worships perhaps they kill themselves and their prisoners to try and bring it back, which weakens the duergar but allows the mindflayer to take over the duergar. So yes some of the problems are solves but another problem is made worse.
Well yeah, thats exactly what I want to do. I'm just asking for suggestions of how things could progress in the conflicts that the party isn't participating in actively by moving on to the temple directly. I have some ideas but I was wondering what other people would do to, like you said, not make the players lose trust in the DM by making it feel like their choices have no impact.
I think I may not have been entirely clear. The smaller conflicts aren't all tied to the entity. Not completely at least.
The three conflicts are:
1. The rising presence of the cult and the tension between those who still workship their god and those who turned to the entity. The cult beginning to outnumber the others.
2. The duergar capturing people who venture outside their walls, many of these being soldiers and guardsman that work for the current government and were thus followers of their god.
3. the duergar supposedly kidnapping people out from within the walls. This was a way of discovering the cult's darker side (considering they were the ones responsible) and would give the party fair reason to begin to actively oppose them. They were hesitant to just straight up attack a sinnister, but non-violent group. Though their distrust of these people couldve led them to investigate the church of their own accord by accepting an invitation to one of their gatherings and maybe doing some snooping around.
If the party chose to deal with the duergar directly in hopes of stopping the kidnappings, then they would eventually conclude the duergar weren't responsible for the kidnappings, which would have then led them to discovering the cult's involvement. So basically, nr 3 is a way of dealing with nr 1 and a way to deal with nr1 if their assumption about nr 2's involvement was found out to be incorrect.
The only thing tied directly to the entity was the cult. The duergar and the illithid within have no connection to it, at least not directly.
What im considering now, is to do the following:
I can't and don't want to stop the party from facing the entity. But that big boss battle would have happened in multiple stages in multiple locations. Both in the temple and beneath it. When the party defeats the entity's first stage in the temple, Im thinking of having it call out to its majority of followers within the civilizaiton and tell them to 'fight the non-believers'. This would cause a civil war to spark up within the city and give the party a few choices.
They can do:
1. Head back directly to the city to aid the god's loyalists in defeating the cult. Because the loyalists have a minority they would begin to lose this fight. But intervening quickly would give the party a good chance to win the conflict.
2. Head further into the temple to finish the entity off. They can do this, at the cost of the loyalist's near defeat. But when retaking and freeing the loyalist's from that situation would be somewhat easier because the cult would no longer be able to benefit from the entity's support (There are in-world reasons the cult would continue to fight even after the entity's defeat, this has to do with the BBEG of the overarching campaign)
3. Head to the duergar before or after delving deeper into the temple. Giving up more time to getting back to the city would worsen the state in which the loyalist's find themselves. But if they manage to free the loyalist's enslaved by the duergar before returning, they would have an even better chance of winning the conflict.
Ofcourse, if the party delves into the temple further and then chooses to free the loyalists before returning, it would be more of a re-capture of the city than aiding the loyalists in their fight against the cult.
If the party decides to not delve further yet and first defeat the cult, they would get additional allies from the loyalist's ranks in their battle against the entity.
If the party decides to head to the duergar fortress after fist confronting the entity, i believe the mindflayer will have either more control or entire control over the duergar. Depenidng on if the party goes back to the city first, goes to the duergar first, defeat the entity first, ect. The order in which they would do these things would escalate the power of the mindflayer.
I think this may be a good solution to the 'problem' I have (Which isn't really a problem tbf). If anyone sees a problem with this approach, or additional suggestions, Id love to hear it!
Just a couple comments ...
1) It is very important to try and see the situation from the player perspective. YOU know everything that is going on, the players only know what you have told them or hinted at. In these types of situations with a convoluted plot, the DM needs to be aware of exactly what they say and see if they can foreshadow outcomes for the players so that they can make reasonable decisions.
Depending on how you have presented things ... the party choice to go after the entity may make complete sense. There is a duergar enemy pressing the dwarves. There is a church encouraging a pacifist approach and there have been people going missing that you have told them are due to the duergar.
There are several issues with the scenario as presented ...
- what is the time line? Unless the duergar are about to invade tomorrow and you have made this clear that this is happening then why NOT go after the entity - it is nearby and will probably only take a few days, a week at most to deal with. Why would the characters expect something to change in the next few days? Why would you need to evolve a plot line over the period of a only a few days such that the character decision to pursue the entity has drastic consequences? Unless the story you have written has an imminent duergar invasion then you are adjusting the story to respond to the player action and create dire consequences that did not exist.
- similar to the above ... your comments about the mindflayer infiltration are again a long term plan. Why would the mindflayer choose this moment to decide to "go public" and create a conflict within the duergar as they try to take over? Does that make any sense for a mindflayer that has perhaps already infiltrated enough to pull the strings? Unless the mindflayer has infected and can control a substantial part of the population and there is a good reason from its perspective to do so ... why would a few days more while the players deal with the entity create such an issue.
- how does a pacifist church benefit the entity at all? Is it working with the duergar? The duergar are enslaving IT's possible subjects ... as more and more join the entity's church - it just makes the duergar more powerful and an even bigger threat so unless the entity is an ally of the mind flayer and is complicit in the plan to take over both the "civilization" and the duergar then the story really makes no sense from the perspective of the entity. The cult members should be fighting for the dwarves against the duergar.
In addition, the following statement makes no sense in that context: "The government of that civilization worshipped the cleric's god, but because they are seen to be failing, people are turning away from the cleric's god and instead beginning to worship the entity within the temple. Which appears to be a much more present and caring god-like figure."
The government is failing to resist the duergar so folks turn towards this other church that encourages them to do NOTHING. To not fight back. To essentially make the situation worse. Why would anyone turn towards worshipping the entity when its offering is worse that the government? At least the government is trying to fight back. Presumably, the duergar don't care what the beliefs are of the dwarves they enslave so both cultists and all the rest are equally at risk. Basically, the motivation of the entity in having a cult of pacifists in the middle of an existential conflict makes no sense.
2) In a similar vein, you mentioned that the entity would "When they defeat the first stage of the boss battle, its spirit will retreat into the dungeon beneath the temple. At this point I think the entity would tell a message to every (including the party) in the area to 'kill the non-believers'. Sparking a civil war within the civilization the party discovered." Wut?
In this case, the entity has their followers kill all the other dwarves making them a sitting duck for the duergar and the mind flayer. Even if the entity has no idea about the mind flayer - it does know about the duergar and unless they are allies then it is simply signing the death warrant for the cult since they become sitting ducks for the duergar.
On the other hand, if the entity is allied with the mind flayer then it might have its followers capture the rest of the dwarves to be mind flayer slaves but the entity would likely demand help from the mind flayer in the form of troops sent to its aid (controlled duergar, dwarves and possibly a mind flayer or two) to attack the characters at the temple/dungeon before they can destroy the entity. This would be possible with some behind the scenes changes but it would be good if the DM could foreshadow or suggest the possibility of some of these linkages in one way or another so that the players are guessing and aren't sure what is going on and possibly suspicious rather than being completely blindsided.
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Basically, almost all of your suggestions appear to be non-sensical continuations intended to create negative consequences from a player decision that should not likely cause any major negative consequences given the plot lines you have outlined.
If it takes the party a month to travel to the entity and deal with it then the plot lines might have a significant progression. If it only takes a few days then only minor updates might be expected.
As OSR4Ever mentioned, the DM is the NEUTRAL arbiter, they know what is going on and the players don't, as soon as you ask about "punishing" the players for not engaging in a side quest then you are no longer a neutral arbiter since "punishment" plays no role in that at all.
So - how could this play out?
- when pressed the entity doesn't call on his followers to go kill folks - it calls on the followers to kill themselves and feed their power into the entity so it can be empowered to defeat the characters in the final conflict. Maybe it uses the final burst of energy to open a portal and escape at the end of the final battle if it doesn't win but the battle should be epic. Keep in mind that the characters will not know where the entity gets this huge influx of power at the end of their fight until they return to the civilization and discover that all its followers are dead (Assuming the entity is reasonably intelligent, it makes more sense to escape and start over somewhere else without these pesky characters nearby).
- the loss of the cultists causes a shock to the civilization due to the loss of so many of their friends including some who had not publicly joined the cult yet.
- at the same time, the mind flayer has continued to extend its control - the reason the duergar are attacking the dwarves in the first place and so relentlessly is to obtain more slaves for the mind flayer's spawn. The duergar don't realize this due to the fact that all of their leadership has been subverted. The loss of the cultists is a loss of potential slaves and perhaps to prevent more such losses this triggers the mind flayer to accelerate their plan to obtain more dwarf slaves. (the mind flayer prefers dwarves to duergar since the dwarves can be sent among surfacers as agents without arousing undue suspicion - something duergar can't do - making dwarven slaves more valuable to it than duergar ones).
- the players could return to find either - the civilization under seige by the duergar with only a few survivors and a lot of dead cultists OR the final battle could have happened and most if not all of the NPCs are prisoners of the mind flayer ... in line to become hosts.
The campaign then pivots to the characters dealing with the duergar/mind flayer threat.
However, this plot line really requires the players to be gone for a week - if they can deal with the entity within a day then they would come back to find the cultists dead and have to deal with the duergar assault since it would happen within 2-3 days of the cultists dying and the associated confusion that results.
The above is a story that could happen given the story you have outlined. It is not punishment. On the other hand, your suggestion of killing off all the non-cultist dwarves to make the players feel bad for not saving them despite the fact that the plot line really makes no sense with that event IS punishment (both to the players and to your story) and in my opinion should be avoided. If you had set up the story differently then that might make sense but the entire idea of people defecting to a pacifist church in a time of war making the situation worse for everyone doesn't really make much sense to start with since the duergar will shortly be coming for the cultists anyway.
P.S. Just to emphasize - unless the trip to deal with the entity takes a long time - then changing the story so the Mind flayer has control makes no sense - you'd want to change it so that the mind flayer already HAD control and is the driving force behind the duergar invasion in the first place. Similarly, none of the other suggested plot line advancements really make much sense over a short time frame like 2-5 days. The pieces need to be in place already rather than something developing because the players didn't do something else right away - unless there is some reason why the character involvement needed to be urgent AND the DM also give hints or indications of some form of urgency being required. Players can only react to what the DM tells them, if he tells them that there is nothing urgent that needs to be dealt with right now then they believe the DM even if the DM has some mythical storyline which does require urgency. If the DM gives no indications of that through what the characters see or notice then the players have no way of knowing - so don't blame them when they go in an unexpected direction.
From a player perspective, I don't know why I would leave a temple after a first defeat of the BBEG that is commanding the cult? I would assume that the BBEG would just re-establish itself undoing what we had achieved in the first battle with them if we left the temple. If the BBEG is calling for civil war this just means time is of the essence and we should hurry to defeat the BBEG ASAP to minimize the casualties of the civil war. Leaving the temple and returning to the town I presume is a several-hour journey whereas delving deeper and defeating the BBEG once and for all might take as little as 30 minutes (in-game time). So I wouldn't necessarily make the outcome depend on the choice they make but rather on the time it takes for them to resolve the BBEG conflict. So if the players take a long rest before either defeating the BBEG or going back to town the civil war should be much more advanced than if they just charge forward and beat the BBEG then return to the village within a few hours.
It's important to note: events not occurring as they expected them to occur should not result in losing trust in the DM -- if you didn't tell them that X would work and they decided to do it anyway, and then it didn't work, you didn't do anything dishonest.
On further inspection of your side quests and the PCs plans, I'm going to be brutal: their plan is bad and deserves to fail disastrously, but you probably failed to communicate why.
The plan is bad because it involves the PCs attacking an (apparently harmless and peaceful) temple with absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing. This is traditional chaotic evil murderhobo behavior, and should result in the political situation getting a whole lot worse. This is mostly a side effect of ignoring side quest #3. For your other side quests, #2 isn't really a quest, it's just politics, and #1 is something that you can easily transform into the main quest if ignored.
Nothing should escalate, unless the part leaves it for weeks or months. It sounds like the party is going to this temple directly and it's only going to be a couple of hours detour. I'm assuming the temple is in the city. If weeks or months go by then escalate each conflict to its natural conclusion.
The problem is in the title of the post. DM's should not "punish" players for playing in whatever style they see fit. - If they want to go crush the temple let them crush the temple. If they want to ignore the side quests so what? Sometimes all the things that seem interesting in a DM's head aren't really all that interesting to the group.
Let them go do their thing at the temple make it a fun 3-4 session thing then move on with the story. If the group has choice A and B you cant get annoyed if they are the type that will pick A every time.
Hell one of my groups is currently embroiled in a fight with a demigod because they would not bend a knee in a sign of respect. Stuff happens roll with it.
It is more the players story than it is yours you just provide the framework for them to create. - Then have fun rolling with it.
The option to continue and defeat the entity always remains open to the players. Why they would cut off their attack halfway through? A few reasons.
First, the faster they return the more aid they could be to their allies within the city.
Secondly the journey back to the city may actually take a shorter time than delving deeper into the temple. Considering my player's will be expecting a multi-stage boss fight (I do this often for arc-ending bosses) there is a good chance that one of them will save a high level teleportation spell (The party is 14th level at this point). This is what happened at the end of the previous arc, I had the lair of the enemy collapse then, but because my players often try to save their resources as much as possible, the sorcerer hadn't used his 7th level slot yet and used it to teleport out. It is likely they won't blow their 7th level slot in the first stage of the combat and thus a very quick return would be possible. They may also save this option for when they defeat the entity but that would be holding back a pretty big Ace up their sleeve.
Thirdly, engaging the entity first before returning to the city will make them significantly less powerfull (resource-wise) when they get there. Wether they teleport or not. In this campaign we established rules for long resting in unsave areas. The party could only use their hit dice to heal up and only regains half their level worth of spell slots (7 levels woth. Be that two 3rd levels and a 1st or a 5th and a 2nd or a single 7th level slot). This would mean that choosing to go after the entity, which will be a significant drain on their resources, would result in them arriving back at the city not only later, but also with very few resources that aren't easily regained. That is assuming that they all survive the battle. It is possible that someone passes during a boss battle that significant. Even if a dead character would be brought back, we rule that that person comes back with 5 levels of exhaustion.
These may all be reasons the party decides to return before finishing the fight. If they do, they could always return later with the allies they saved to finish the battle.
I may not have communicated that as poorly as you might think. The party was discussing about what to do and were considering the consequences they might suffer from ignoring the tension within and around the city they found. They knew that ignoring the cult and the duergar may have consequences, but they believed it would be easier to deal with those consequences when the entity is dead.
I think you may have gotten mixed up in the difference between the temple and the church/cult. The temple is obviously infested by something evil that needs to be destroyed. Their previous interactions during dreams when the entity came to them and the visions the cleric had recieved from their god should and did absolve any doubt they may have had about wether or not its wrong to attack and kill the entity in the temple.
The church/cult, which resides in the city some distance away from the temple, is a clearly sinnister group. Not only does the party know that the entity they worship is evil, but its members also exude big 'Evil cult' energy. The party isn't attacking the cult precisely because they are currently non-violent. Though it has been shown and told that this state of non-violence may not be a permanent state of affairs.
Attacking the temple, as they are doing now, isn't some straight-up murder hobo thing to do. Attacking the church/cult without provocation would've been very murderhoboy, but is also the exact reason the party didn't do that. There would have been ways for the party to eventually attack the chuch/cult without it being just a murderhobo's choice tho.
The party could have either gone to the cult's gathering for which they were invited and snooped around for evidence of its evil nature or investigated the kidnappings and found out through that that they were actively sacrificing 'non-believers'. At which point it would give the party all right to fight/arrest the church's leadership and in doing so may have turned many of its less fanatic followers back to the light.
Doing so wouldve given them allies in the fight against the entity considering those people wouldn't have to be worried about the cult's activities in their absence.
Freeing the enslaved worshippers of the cleric's god from the duergar wouldve balanced the numbers of loyalists with the numbers the cult has gotten recently. In doing so the party may have felt more comfortable opposing the cult if they were fearful of being outnumbered before.
The temple is about a 16 hour walk away from the city, which ment it took the party about 1.5/2 days of travel to arrive at the temple. Returning may not take nearly as long because of the party's high level and access to stuff that would either allow them to travel faster or instantly return through a teleportation spell.
I did consider not doing anything to the conflicts the party ignores, but if I don't do that Im sure the part will feel as if their choice had no real stakes. I could see doing that for the duergar maybe, but it has been foreshadowed that the duergar are infected by mindflayer's so it wouldn't come completely out of left field if the duergar are suddenly more mind flayery after being left alone.
As for the cult, I could not imagine that would be the same if the party fully defeats the entity. It would either have collapsed entirely or gotten violent because of the murder of the thing they worshipped and believed was keeping them safe.
Not having anything change would maybe make the players feel like their choices don't matter at all. Which is one of the worst things to do I think.
I appreciate the in-depth response! I'm going to put my response in the middle of your quote to answer all questions or give more context where I think it may have lacked.
Probably. I assumed "temple" meant "place of active worship", not "place off in the middle of nowhere that used to be a place of worship". So, going back to the original problem:
When the spirit sends out its message of "Kill the nonbelievers", well, it's not really a problem if it only reaches the temple, but if it reaches the church, presumably the church will proceed to attack the nonbelievers. If the PCs immediately chase down the spirit and defeat it finally, that will probably get aborted before too much damage is done. If they take a short rest, there's potential for a lot of damage to be done (and, the spirit might be empowered by the kills it got). Take a long rest and the situation could be very bad.
So... do you think your PCs can sprint through the dungeon without taking any rests? If they can, not a lot of consequences for ignoring the side quests. If they can't, they may regret their decision. Note that if you decide to follow a path like this, you should be clear on the consequences of delay.
2 day trip back? They aren't going back because logic would dictate they can finish the temple in less than 2 days.