While I agree with everybody else in their opinions, I’d also like to point out that this *is* a Beholder we’re talking about. They are the quintessential DnD evil megalomaniac villain. They’re known for paranoid scheming, and your party may just simply be saying “this beholder is acting friendly to lure us in so that it can kill us”. If my DM put a beholder being nice in front of me, that’s all I would think about.
Totally, and anyone who has played DnD has this in their mind already as well. As a DM you have to work with player expectations and expect them to be a little sticky. Honestly, the best way that I see this story play out for the happiness of everyone at the table is for it to turn out that the Beholder really is evil and is brainwashing the town. Then the players get to feel clever and you still have an interesting town/story. It's a win/win. Follow the players' lead.
A DM does not need to shift their game world to accommodate player stupidity, or change the outcome to make players feel good about stupid actions. They do have to create a consistent world, that behaves in a reasonable manner, and they need to be fair about what the characters would know independent of what the Players know or think they know - and they have to tell their players when those two don't agree.
If the characters had encountered a Beholder before and it had acted in an evil manner, or there was common knowledge/legend that beholders existed and that they're evil in your game world, or someone in the party had made an Arcana check that's indicated that Beholders were evil, that's possible moral justification for the character to make an attack.
If none of that is true - the party is ignorant as to the nature of Beholders, or they recognize them and Beholders are good in your world ( doesn't sound like it, you're making this Beholder an exception it seems ), then the character has no motive for attacking the Beholder. The DM should then ask "why are you attacking this creature?" If the answer is "because it's a Beholder!", then that's meta-gaming ( and not the good kind ). If they follow through with an attack under those circumstances, then it is no different than if they had tried to murder a random human librarian
I don't agree with advice to cater to Players' ( not Characters' ) expectations, or change up your world to cushion player stupidity.
Let the world unfold in a rational, consistent manner. Don't try and restrict the players' actions, but inform them of what their characters would know, and allow them to make informed character choices based on what they know, and try to find out.
Then have the world react accordingly. What is the legal status of the Beholder? Is it a citizen? Does it enjoy full protection under the Law? Then have the town and the authorities act accordingly.
What would the Beholder do, if attacked? Have it do that.
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One option which I’m not sure has been touted yet: escalate it in the legal system.
In an abstract sense, this situation is comparable to a Muslim being called a murderer and a terrorist. What most legal systems might do with that is file this under racial discrimination or race hate codes, which might attract a higher penalty or involve a higher court. And that’s what I’m suggesting might be done if the world setup can handle it. The druid’s words could be used against them as an example of racially vilifying speech, the assault upgraded to racial violence, and call for an enhanced penalty. I have no idea where this might lead. It may bring about a sudden epiphany. Or they may well attempt to fight it, bust themselves out of jail with the aid of the “rebels”, etc.
The quest of recompense is great, and end with the Beholder overpaying them (Though not by much). Because as much as players hate beholders, they love loot even more. Some players would go “cool, this guy gives us stuff. We’ve got a beholder benefactor.” And your Druid can be as suspicious as they want, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it probably won’t.
Thanks for all your answers guys. They were really appreciated and I especially liked the "let them fight the behold, loose and then have to do something to make up for it" idea. The Druid knows of beholders from stories that her parents used to tell her. Her parents were adventures too and when they finished adventuring and settled down to raise their family, they told their children stories of their time as adventures.
Slight meta stuff here - but in game this would have been during the time of AD&D 2nd Edition, through D&D 3.0 - and beholders featured prominently in the Spelljammer setting, so her in game parents would have dealt with lots of beholders during their adventures.
I have been rather sneaky here and metagamed the time period to add something cool to her backstory.
So anyway, the Druid only knows of beholders from those tales and obviously those tales are all of evil beholders with massive egos who maim and kill in their pursuit of magical artefacts and more and more power or who otherwise tricked or controlled people for their own ends. So she acted as her character would when meeting a creature she was brought up to believe was pure evil - I expected her reaction but I didn't expect her to be so on the nose once she learned that this beholder was different and neither did I expect the party to go along with wanting to kill it (the rest of the party hadn't even heard of beholders before - so for all they know, this could have been how beholders are)
Old story LOL but once you let your players into your world - all bets are off LOL
Still though, thanks for all your replies. You guys have really helped me to work out a solution to something I was scratching my head over.
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A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
So if the players are in prison after attempting to 'murder' the good beholder, i'd do the following in my game
have them relased without their weapons other then a knife each, for self defence only
make it clear that town guards are now stationed at the library and will prevent the characters from entering.
the characters get the cold shoulder from many business in town, with many hiking up prices or just flat out refusing to serve them.
the characters can get their weapons back once they leave town, a guard escorts them to the towns bounderies.
if your characters want to stay in town regardless of the above being carried out, have some local tough menace attack the town, such as a young dragon hoping to make a lair nearby, and let the characters see the beholder help defend the town, and even save a character from a direct attack from the dragon, make it the druid's life he saves and watch as the player has to roleplay his characters humble pie.
If all that fails and the druid still wants to kill the beholder, let him try, see if the rest of the party wants to help him, or prevent him from falling victim to his blind hatred.......
OK - So if Beholders are known in your world, and are known to be evil, I think the players might have gotten screwed over here.
Remember that - I at least believe - the DM is responsible for creating a world that behaves in a consistent & reasonable manner, that the DM needs to be fair about what the characters would know independent of what the Players know or think they know, and that the DM has a responsibility to tell their players when those two don't agree.
You have a town which is large enough to have a library, which - to me, at least - indicates it's a good size, and as a result probably enjoys a decent amount of trade traffic. Are you telling me that there would be no rumors on the trade routes, no gossip at all about there being a friendly Beholder in the town? That's like no one bothering to mention that there was an educated, erudite, rational, friendly zombie in the town, on The Walking Dead.
The Beholder is a very intelligent being, who would know the reputation that its race has in the world - are you telling me that a) it would have floated up to complete strangers, new in town, with no warning and with no precautions, and b) there would be no clues or warning in the environment that there was a Beholder in the room - no humanoid assistants warning the library Patrons, etc. ?
Methinks this was the DM playing "fast and loose" with plausibility in order to enjoy springing a surprise on the party, which doesn't seem fair to me.
It looks like the Druid is behaving in a manner consistent with her upbringing and her backstory, combined with the information presented to her ( or withheld from her ) by the DM.
I'm not sure how this is a surprise to the DM that this character would behave in this manner.
I still say play it straight, but this situation doesn't appear to be the party's doing - and allowing the party to TPK, or end up in prison, or end up with a bad reputation in the region, based on a situation that is a DM setup doesn't seem fair.
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I wasn't surprised that she acted the way she did. I expected her to act that way. What surprised me was that even after she learned this particular beholder was not like the ones she had heard of, she still was insisting that it must be up to no good. Also, the rest of the party, who hadn't even heard of beholders from stories, were willing to go along with killing, what for all intents and purposes - would have seemed to them to be an innocent person (for want of a better world) going about their business as a librarian.
Also, there are not beholders just floating around the place all over. What I am saying here, is in the past; beholders were common, but now they are not anymore. There is literally only a few in the entire world - and at the this present time people no longer really consider them dangerous because the ones that are left, either keep to themselves and don't interact with anyone else - or like this one, tend to have survived by just not being a threat and being more kind and helpful to the other races.
Beholders are highly intelligent beings and with this friendly beholder, what I am saying is, beholders have changed. They have evolved if you will. Sure, they still have the capacity for evil, but the seed of evil exists inside all of us and although this situation was not really what I had intended, the party has proved that even they are capable of being evil by wanting to just kill an innocent creature simply because it is what it is.
I am also trying to say - hey look, don't judge a book by its cover. Here is a creature that is known in D&D lore to typically be evil but look, here is one working a library and just wants to help you check out that book.
Also, all that aside, this particular library does not exist in what you might call the general world. It exists in a lost kingdom that has cut itself off from the rest of the world. My players heard rumours about a lost kingdom of Tieflings - which they decided to drop all their other quests and everything they were doing to go find. After travelling to the other side of the world and piecing together clues, they found a secret sea passage and made their way to the lost kingdom.
So they are here, in large town on the outskirts of this kingdoms capital city and this beholder has lived here for so long now that nobody even thinks its strange anymore. Remember, this is a lost kingdom of fiends and half fiends in the first place, so for something like a beholder to be living here is not even that odd.
It also means that no, this particular beholder didn't feel threatened by strangers coming to the library. Also, remember that this is a lost kingdom - the players are the first ones to visit from the outside world in many, many years. People just don't go there because well - its lost and the people who live there don't think its strange or remarkable that they have a beholder librarian.
Also, the beholder was more than capable of defending itself and doing so without any lethal attacks. It literally cast sleep and put the entire party to sleep, then summoned the towns guard to arrest them.
I do understand that it may seem like I was pulling a "got you" moment but in the context, it really wasn't.
I have done similar in my own games, in my case, I made it clear the creature was very powerful, that he offered something the party needed more than his death, and then I had a trial of sorts where his alignment was detected, truths were told, in a zone of truth, etc. so the party was clear that the world is not black and white, just like Humans have an array of alignments so too can creatures of the realm.
But I suggest starting with the carrot and then move to the stick - even a lawful good character will lay the beat down on folks that are trying to kill him.
See, SocialFoxes, this information changes how other DM's would suggest handling the suitation, sometimes a bit more context at the begining of how your current setting is laid out helps.
Mind you, my sugestions still stands even in this newly provided setting details :D
Try to make it perfectly clear to the party that if they take this action, they will become the villains of the story. For some reason the movie scene this brings to my mind is in the Princess Bride where the old woman boos the princess. Maybe you could have the druid’s grandmother arrive and give her a scolding. If they still want to be the villains, then they can accept the consequences.
The misunderstood villain as the protagonist of the story. I can think of a few books, plays and movies with that premise.
Or the party convinces everyone that they are right. They launch a rebellion against the “evil” (at least in their minds) beholders and their “minions”. In the final titanic battle, the party destroys the beholders. Or do they? The final battle has left a rift in time and the beholders may have escaped into the past to become the evil beholders of legend.
There are a lot of different ways to make a great story.
The druid said back and I quote "so what, its still a beholder and the only good beholder is a dead beholder"
I really dont know what to do now. It seems that the party are going to try and kill this beholder no matter what, despite knowing that its a good beholder and despite it clearly being a much higher level than them.
Any advice on how I can deal with this unexpected situation would be much appreciated.
That certainly is an interesting situation.
If you'll forgive me for intruding real-world stuff into a game, imagine if someone said that sentence but replaced "beholder" with "Muslim" or "Jew"...
Personally, I'm OK with bigotry in games, as long as we are careful. I play games set in Conan's world, where racism and bigotry are part of the story. I draw the line at terrorism, however. I would take the problem out of the game and have a discussion with the players. "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues - I'm stating it as a fact. If your characters continue to act the way they are then I'm retiring them, because I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." But that's just me - I don't GM evil characters.
If you are OK with GMing this then go for it! Perhaps the characters all die. Perhaps they don't. In any case, that town thinks they are a bunch of terrorists. That reputation will follow the characters for a long time. Rulers will refuse to talk to them. Merchants will close their doors. Bandits, on the other hand, will extend invitations.
At some point the players will realise on their own that their PCs are the bad guys and it will be a very powerful storytelling moment.
The druid said back and I quote "so what, its still a beholder and the only good beholder is a dead beholder"
I really dont know what to do now. It seems that the party are going to try and kill this beholder no matter what, despite knowing that its a good beholder and despite it clearly being a much higher level than them.
Any advice on how I can deal with this unexpected situation would be much appreciated.
That certainly is an interesting situation.
If you'll forgive me for intruding real-world stuff into a game, imagine if someone said that sentence but replaced "beholder" with "Muslim" or "Jew"...
Personally, I'm OK with bigotry in games, as long as we are careful. I play games set in Conan's world, where racism and bigotry are part of the story. I draw the line at terrorism, however. I would take the problem out of the game and have a discussion with the players. "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues - I'm stating it as a fact. If your characters continue to act the way they are then I'm retiring them, because I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." But that's just me - I don't GM evil characters.
If you are OK with GMing this then go for it! Perhaps the characters all die. Perhaps they don't. In any case, that town thinks they are a bunch of terrorists. That reputation will follow the characters for a long time. Rulers will refuse to talk to them. Merchants will close their doors. Bandits, on the other hand, will extend invitations.
At some point the players will realise on their own that their PCs are the bad guys and it will be a very powerful storytelling moment.
You had me until you said "I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." I think that's a BIG LEAP even with your line of thinking. I wouldn't call your players terrorists, especially if this situation they're just letting their biases and can't wrap their head around the concept of a good beholder. But definitely use the first half of what he said: "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues."
I think if you tell them that you're retiring their characters if they don't go along with your story just seems like the opposite of what D&D is about. Let them tell the story and you (the DM) referee it. If they want to kill the beholder, let them kill it, but they will have to deal with the consequences. If the beholder is integral to the part of the story, introduce a new character that fits the role that the beholder did. Retiring their characters because they don't do what you want is like one of the top 3, if not the top, BIG NO NO of D&D and would make for an absolutely terrible DM style in my opinion.
The druid said back and I quote "so what, its still a beholder and the only good beholder is a dead beholder"
I really dont know what to do now. It seems that the party are going to try and kill this beholder no matter what, despite knowing that its a good beholder and despite it clearly being a much higher level than them.
Any advice on how I can deal with this unexpected situation would be much appreciated.
That certainly is an interesting situation.
If you'll forgive me for intruding real-world stuff into a game, imagine if someone said that sentence but replaced "beholder" with "Muslim" or "Jew"...
Personally, I'm OK with bigotry in games, as long as we are careful. I play games set in Conan's world, where racism and bigotry are part of the story. I draw the line at terrorism, however. I would take the problem out of the game and have a discussion with the players. "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues - I'm stating it as a fact. If your characters continue to act the way they are then I'm retiring them, because I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." But that's just me - I don't GM evil characters.
If you are OK with GMing this then go for it! Perhaps the characters all die. Perhaps they don't. In any case, that town thinks they are a bunch of terrorists. That reputation will follow the characters for a long time. Rulers will refuse to talk to them. Merchants will close their doors. Bandits, on the other hand, will extend invitations.
At some point the players will realise on their own that their PCs are the bad guys and it will be a very powerful storytelling moment.
Retiring their characters because they don't do what you want is like one of the top 3, if not the top, BIG NO NO of D&D and would make for an absolutely terrible DM style in my opinion.
This seems like railroading to me. Where its an option if something just gets so bad that its upsetting everyone in real life, its not something I would want to do just because the story is going in a direction that I had not indented. The issue was really, that I had not planned for the party to turn evil like that. I had planned an encounter based around their alignments and the way they had been playing up to that point - and when they just turned on a sixpence and became essentially evil, I was stumped and couldn't find a narrative/story telling way to get out of the hole I had been backed into.
Let them kill the beholder was the first thing that crossed my mind but I had made the beholder to be much higher CR than they could handle and if they tried attacking it with intent, even a Good NPC, is going to defend themselves which would quite easily end up in a tpk and that was what I was trying to avoid.
We have actually solved this problem now though and we are moving on with the campaign.
I solved the issue by changing the beholder slightly. I took away all of its deadly spells and gave it powerful defensive spells. I bumped up its HP and increased its CR to 20. Basically, there was no way the party were every going to succeed against this beholder but it wasn't going to kill them either. Instead it cast high level hallucinatory terrain, toyed with them a bit - its still a beholder after all - and when they didn't seem deterred, it cast sleep on the party again.
Again, the party was arrested. This time they were put on trial, the towns people wanted to execute them but the beholder came to their defence. It said that it was aware of how its race was viewed in the outside world but that it was never under any actual threat from the party. It basically gave the people who had tried to kill it a character witness. It asked for the party to be banished instead of executed and the party asked to stay. We rolled persuasion and the party won. They were allowed to stay but in return they had to do something to make up for their actions.
The beholder wanted a book for its library, the book only existed in the outside world and so the beholder set them a task of retrieving the book as their punishment. If they refused, they would be banished from the kingdom.
So now the party are on a quest for the beholder that has taken them back to the outside world and they need to recover a book of ancient secrets that has been lost since the Dawn War. its somewhere in the outside world, the beholder had found an old map in the library but part of it was missing.
I am planning on doing something cool with the book once the players bring it back to the beholder. The beholder wants the book so it can learn powerful magic that will allow it to alter time and space and thought. It wants to do good with this power - it wants to make the beholders of the past into better people, no longer evil but doers of good. However, as the old saying goes; the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The beholder will find that it cant control the power of such ancient magic and things will start to spiral out of control, reality will start to collapse and bad things will start to happen. This was never the beholders intentions, it only wanted to use the power of the book to do something good, but through its desire to do good, it ends up doing things to terrible to image and thus, becomes the BBEG for the end of the campaign.
I am also going to flesh out the bad guys and the original BBEG that they characters would have faced before they decided to go looking for this lost kingdom. The temporal, mind bending, reality altering magic of the book basically twisted the minds of these people and turned them into what they are. Bandits, assassins, kills and the original BBEG will just become the overlord of these bandits, assassins, killers and so on.
The players can help them if they choose, do some side quests that will get magical items and stuff that will help turn these afflicted people back to their true selves or they can just kill them because there is no way to help them and they need to be stopped. Depends on what path the players take, the side quests they choose and so on.
The beholder from the lost kingdom with its book of powerful ancient magic, will now become the actual BBEG for the campaign. but of course the players dont know this.
The druid said back and I quote "so what, its still a beholder and the only good beholder is a dead beholder"
I really dont know what to do now. It seems that the party are going to try and kill this beholder no matter what, despite knowing that its a good beholder and despite it clearly being a much higher level than them.
Any advice on how I can deal with this unexpected situation would be much appreciated.
That certainly is an interesting situation.
If you'll forgive me for intruding real-world stuff into a game, imagine if someone said that sentence but replaced "beholder" with "Muslim" or "Jew"...
Personally, I'm OK with bigotry in games, as long as we are careful. I play games set in Conan's world, where racism and bigotry are part of the story. I draw the line at terrorism, however. I would take the problem out of the game and have a discussion with the players. "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues - I'm stating it as a fact. If your characters continue to act the way they are then I'm retiring them, because I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." But that's just me - I don't GM evil characters.
If you are OK with GMing this then go for it! Perhaps the characters all die. Perhaps they don't. In any case, that town thinks they are a bunch of terrorists. That reputation will follow the characters for a long time. Rulers will refuse to talk to them. Merchants will close their doors. Bandits, on the other hand, will extend invitations.
At some point the players will realise on their own that their PCs are the bad guys and it will be a very powerful storytelling moment.
Retiring their characters because they don't do what you want is like one of the top 3, if not the top, BIG NO NO of D&D and would make for an absolutely terrible DM style in my opinion.
This seems like railroading to me. Where its an option if something just gets so bad that its upsetting everyone in real life, its not something I would want to do just because the story is going in a direction that I had not indented. The issue was really, that I had not planned for the party to turn evil like that. I had planned an encounter based around their alignments and the way they had been playing up to that point - and when they just turned on a sixpence and became essentially evil, I was stumped and couldn't find a narrative/story telling way to get out of the hole I had been backed into.
Let them kill the beholder was the first thing that crossed my mind but I had made the beholder to be much higher CR than they could handle and if they tried attacking it with intent, even a Good NPC, is going to defend themselves which would quite easily end up in a tpk and that was what I was trying to avoid.
We have actually solved this problem now though and we are moving on with the campaign.
I solved the issue by changing the beholder slightly. I took away all of its deadly spells and gave it powerful defensive spells. I bumped up its HP and increased its CR to 20. Basically, there was no way the party were every going to succeed against this beholder but it wasn't going to kill them either. Instead it cast high level hallucinatory terrain, toyed with them a bit - its still a beholder after all - and when they didn't seem deterred, it cast sleep on the party again.
Again, the party was arrested. This time they were put on trial, the towns people wanted to execute them but the beholder came to their defence. It said that it was aware of how its race was viewed in the outside world but that it was never under any actual threat from the party. It basically gave the people who had tried to kill it a character witness. It asked for the party to be banished instead of executed and the party asked to stay. We rolled persuasion and the party won. They were allowed to stay but in return they had to do something to make up for their actions.
The beholder wanted a book for its library, the book only existed in the outside world and so the beholder set them a task of retrieving the book as their punishment. If they refused, they would be banished from the kingdom.
So now the party are on a quest for the beholder that has taken them back to the outside world and they need to recover a book of ancient secrets that has been lost since the Dawn War. its somewhere in the outside world, the beholder had found an old map in the library but part of it was missing.
I am planning on doing something cool with the book once the players bring it back to the beholder. The beholder wants the book so it can learn powerful magic that will allow it to alter time and space and thought. It wants to do good with this power - it wants to make the beholders of the past into better people, no longer evil but doers of good. However, as the old saying goes; the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The beholder will find that it cant control the power of such ancient magic and things will start to spiral out of control, reality will start to collapse and bad things will start to happen. This was never the beholders intentions, it only wanted to use the power of the book to do something good, but through its desire to do good, it ends up doing things to terrible to image and thus, becomes the BBEG for the end of the campaign.
I am also going to flesh out the bad guys and the original BBEG that they characters would have faced before they decided to go looking for this lost kingdom. The temporal, mind bending, reality altering magic of the book basically twisted the minds of these people and turned them into what they are. Bandits, assassins, kills and the original BBEG will just become the overlord of these bandits, assassins, killers and so on.
The players can help them if they choose, do some side quests that will get magical items and stuff that will help turn these afflicted people back to their true selves or they can just kill them because there is no way to help them and they need to be stopped. Depends on what path the players take, the side quests they choose and so on.
The beholder from the lost kingdom with its book of powerful ancient magic, will now become the actual BBEG for the campaign. but of course the players dont know this.
I think you handled it the best way possible. Good job mate!
I love your solution. I must also confess I have given up reading the back and forth so perhaps this has been addressed already but I do worry about turning beholder into a BBEG after having spent so much effort proving him nice. I suspect your players are still somewhat upset that they misjudged the character and being thrown in jail repeatedly. Having him go evil in the the end will keep picking at this conflict?
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Have the beholder kill one of their characters really easily. Then they'll know not to mess with it.
If it helps, try to kill someone's character who you may suspect wants to be a different character lol
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Totally, and anyone who has played DnD has this in their mind already as well. As a DM you have to work with player expectations and expect them to be a little sticky. Honestly, the best way that I see this story play out for the happiness of everyone at the table is for it to turn out that the Beholder really is evil and is brainwashing the town. Then the players get to feel clever and you still have an interesting town/story. It's a win/win. Follow the players' lead.
A DM does not need to shift their game world to accommodate player stupidity, or change the outcome to make players feel good about stupid actions. They do have to create a consistent world, that behaves in a reasonable manner, and they need to be fair about what the characters would know independent of what the Players know or think they know - and they have to tell their players when those two don't agree.
If the characters had encountered a Beholder before and it had acted in an evil manner, or there was common knowledge/legend that beholders existed and that they're evil in your game world, or someone in the party had made an Arcana check that's indicated that Beholders were evil, that's possible moral justification for the character to make an attack.
If none of that is true - the party is ignorant as to the nature of Beholders, or they recognize them and Beholders are good in your world ( doesn't sound like it, you're making this Beholder an exception it seems ), then the character has no motive for attacking the Beholder. The DM should then ask "why are you attacking this creature?" If the answer is "because it's a Beholder!", then that's meta-gaming ( and not the good kind ). If they follow through with an attack under those circumstances, then it is no different than if they had tried to murder a random human librarian
I don't agree with advice to cater to Players' ( not Characters' ) expectations, or change up your world to cushion player stupidity.
Let the world unfold in a rational, consistent manner. Don't try and restrict the players' actions, but inform them of what their characters would know, and allow them to make informed character choices based on what they know, and try to find out.
Then have the world react accordingly. What is the legal status of the Beholder? Is it a citizen? Does it enjoy full protection under the Law? Then have the town and the authorities act accordingly.
What would the Beholder do, if attacked? Have it do that.
Play it straight.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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One option which I’m not sure has been touted yet: escalate it in the legal system.
In an abstract sense, this situation is comparable to a Muslim being called a murderer and a terrorist. What most legal systems might do with that is file this under racial discrimination or race hate codes, which might attract a higher penalty or involve a higher court. And that’s what I’m suggesting might be done if the world setup can handle it. The druid’s words could be used against them as an example of racially vilifying speech, the assault upgraded to racial violence, and call for an enhanced penalty. I have no idea where this might lead. It may bring about a sudden epiphany. Or they may well attempt to fight it, bust themselves out of jail with the aid of the “rebels”, etc.
The quest of recompense is great, and end with the Beholder overpaying them (Though not by much). Because as much as players hate beholders, they love loot even more. Some players would go “cool, this guy gives us stuff. We’ve got a beholder benefactor.” And your Druid can be as suspicious as they want, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it probably won’t.
Thanks for all your answers guys. They were really appreciated and I especially liked the "let them fight the behold, loose and then have to do something to make up for it" idea. The Druid knows of beholders from stories that her parents used to tell her. Her parents were adventures too and when they finished adventuring and settled down to raise their family, they told their children stories of their time as adventures.
Slight meta stuff here - but in game this would have been during the time of AD&D 2nd Edition, through D&D 3.0 - and beholders featured prominently in the Spelljammer setting, so her in game parents would have dealt with lots of beholders during their adventures.
I have been rather sneaky here and metagamed the time period to add something cool to her backstory.
So anyway, the Druid only knows of beholders from those tales and obviously those tales are all of evil beholders with massive egos who maim and kill in their pursuit of magical artefacts and more and more power or who otherwise tricked or controlled people for their own ends. So she acted as her character would when meeting a creature she was brought up to believe was pure evil - I expected her reaction but I didn't expect her to be so on the nose once she learned that this beholder was different and neither did I expect the party to go along with wanting to kill it (the rest of the party hadn't even heard of beholders before - so for all they know, this could have been how beholders are)
Old story LOL but once you let your players into your world - all bets are off LOL
Still though, thanks for all your replies. You guys have really helped me to work out a solution to something I was scratching my head over.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
So if the players are in prison after attempting to 'murder' the good beholder, i'd do the following in my game
if your characters want to stay in town regardless of the above being carried out, have some local tough menace attack the town, such as a young dragon hoping to make a lair nearby, and let the characters see the beholder help defend the town, and even save a character from a direct attack from the dragon, make it the druid's life he saves and watch as the player has to roleplay his characters humble pie.
If all that fails and the druid still wants to kill the beholder, let him try, see if the rest of the party wants to help him, or prevent him from falling victim to his blind hatred.......
"I am The Ancient, I am The Land"
OK - So if Beholders are known in your world, and are known to be evil, I think the players might have gotten screwed over here.
Remember that - I at least believe - the DM is responsible for creating a world that behaves in a consistent & reasonable manner, that the DM needs to be fair about what the characters would know independent of what the Players know or think they know, and that the DM has a responsibility to tell their players when those two don't agree.
You have a town which is large enough to have a library, which - to me, at least - indicates it's a good size, and as a result probably enjoys a decent amount of trade traffic. Are you telling me that there would be no rumors on the trade routes, no gossip at all about there being a friendly Beholder in the town? That's like no one bothering to mention that there was an educated, erudite, rational, friendly zombie in the town, on The Walking Dead.
The Beholder is a very intelligent being, who would know the reputation that its race has in the world - are you telling me that a) it would have floated up to complete strangers, new in town, with no warning and with no precautions, and b) there would be no clues or warning in the environment that there was a Beholder in the room - no humanoid assistants warning the library Patrons, etc. ?
Methinks this was the DM playing "fast and loose" with plausibility in order to enjoy springing a surprise on the party, which doesn't seem fair to me.
It looks like the Druid is behaving in a manner consistent with her upbringing and her backstory, combined with the information presented to her ( or withheld from her ) by the DM.
I'm not sure how this is a surprise to the DM that this character would behave in this manner.
I still say play it straight, but this situation doesn't appear to be the party's doing - and allowing the party to TPK, or end up in prison, or end up with a bad reputation in the region, based on a situation that is a DM setup doesn't seem fair.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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I wasn't surprised that she acted the way she did. I expected her to act that way. What surprised me was that even after she learned this particular beholder was not like the ones she had heard of, she still was insisting that it must be up to no good. Also, the rest of the party, who hadn't even heard of beholders from stories, were willing to go along with killing, what for all intents and purposes - would have seemed to them to be an innocent person (for want of a better world) going about their business as a librarian.
Also, there are not beholders just floating around the place all over. What I am saying here, is in the past; beholders were common, but now they are not anymore. There is literally only a few in the entire world - and at the this present time people no longer really consider them dangerous because the ones that are left, either keep to themselves and don't interact with anyone else - or like this one, tend to have survived by just not being a threat and being more kind and helpful to the other races.
Beholders are highly intelligent beings and with this friendly beholder, what I am saying is, beholders have changed. They have evolved if you will. Sure, they still have the capacity for evil, but the seed of evil exists inside all of us and although this situation was not really what I had intended, the party has proved that even they are capable of being evil by wanting to just kill an innocent creature simply because it is what it is.
I am also trying to say - hey look, don't judge a book by its cover. Here is a creature that is known in D&D lore to typically be evil but look, here is one working a library and just wants to help you check out that book.
Also, all that aside, this particular library does not exist in what you might call the general world. It exists in a lost kingdom that has cut itself off from the rest of the world. My players heard rumours about a lost kingdom of Tieflings - which they decided to drop all their other quests and everything they were doing to go find. After travelling to the other side of the world and piecing together clues, they found a secret sea passage and made their way to the lost kingdom.
So they are here, in large town on the outskirts of this kingdoms capital city and this beholder has lived here for so long now that nobody even thinks its strange anymore. Remember, this is a lost kingdom of fiends and half fiends in the first place, so for something like a beholder to be living here is not even that odd.
It also means that no, this particular beholder didn't feel threatened by strangers coming to the library. Also, remember that this is a lost kingdom - the players are the first ones to visit from the outside world in many, many years. People just don't go there because well - its lost and the people who live there don't think its strange or remarkable that they have a beholder librarian.
Also, the beholder was more than capable of defending itself and doing so without any lethal attacks. It literally cast sleep and put the entire party to sleep, then summoned the towns guard to arrest them.
I do understand that it may seem like I was pulling a "got you" moment but in the context, it really wasn't.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I have done similar in my own games, in my case, I made it clear the creature was very powerful, that he offered something the party needed more than his death, and then I had a trial of sorts where his alignment was detected, truths were told, in a zone of truth, etc. so the party was clear that the world is not black and white, just like Humans have an array of alignments so too can creatures of the realm.
But I suggest starting with the carrot and then move to the stick - even a lawful good character will lay the beat down on folks that are trying to kill him.
YMMV
Palmate
See, SocialFoxes, this information changes how other DM's would suggest handling the suitation, sometimes a bit more context at the begining of how your current setting is laid out helps.
Mind you, my sugestions still stands even in this newly provided setting details :D
"I am The Ancient, I am The Land"
Try to make it perfectly clear to the party that if they take this action, they will become the villains of the story. For some reason the movie scene this brings to my mind is in the Princess Bride where the old woman boos the princess. Maybe you could have the druid’s grandmother arrive and give her a scolding. If they still want to be the villains, then they can accept the consequences.
Sometimes its fun to be the villains.
hey kids do you like violence? wanna see me shove nine inch nails through each one of my eyelids?
The misunderstood villain as the protagonist of the story. I can think of a few books, plays and movies with that premise.
Or the party convinces everyone that they are right. They launch a rebellion against the “evil” (at least in their minds) beholders and their “minions”. In the final titanic battle, the party destroys the beholders. Or do they? The final battle has left a rift in time and the beholders may have escaped into the past to become the evil beholders of legend.
There are a lot of different ways to make a great story.
That certainly is an interesting situation.
If you'll forgive me for intruding real-world stuff into a game, imagine if someone said that sentence but replaced "beholder" with "Muslim" or "Jew"...
Personally, I'm OK with bigotry in games, as long as we are careful. I play games set in Conan's world, where racism and bigotry are part of the story. I draw the line at terrorism, however. I would take the problem out of the game and have a discussion with the players. "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues - I'm stating it as a fact. If your characters continue to act the way they are then I'm retiring them, because I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." But that's just me - I don't GM evil characters.
If you are OK with GMing this then go for it! Perhaps the characters all die. Perhaps they don't. In any case, that town thinks they are a bunch of terrorists. That reputation will follow the characters for a long time. Rulers will refuse to talk to them. Merchants will close their doors. Bandits, on the other hand, will extend invitations.
At some point the players will realise on their own that their PCs are the bad guys and it will be a very powerful storytelling moment.
You had me until you said "I don't want to GM a bunch of terrorists." I think that's a BIG LEAP even with your line of thinking. I wouldn't call your players terrorists, especially if this situation they're just letting their biases and can't wrap their head around the concept of a good beholder. But definitely use the first half of what he said: "Look, friends, I've given plenty of clues that this beholder is in fact good. I'm not giving any more clues."
I think if you tell them that you're retiring their characters if they don't go along with your story just seems like the opposite of what D&D is about. Let them tell the story and you (the DM) referee it. If they want to kill the beholder, let them kill it, but they will have to deal with the consequences. If the beholder is integral to the part of the story, introduce a new character that fits the role that the beholder did. Retiring their characters because they don't do what you want is like one of the top 3, if not the top, BIG NO NO of D&D and would make for an absolutely terrible DM style in my opinion.
Published Subclasses
This seems like railroading to me. Where its an option if something just gets so bad that its upsetting everyone in real life, its not something I would want to do just because the story is going in a direction that I had not indented. The issue was really, that I had not planned for the party to turn evil like that. I had planned an encounter based around their alignments and the way they had been playing up to that point - and when they just turned on a sixpence and became essentially evil, I was stumped and couldn't find a narrative/story telling way to get out of the hole I had been backed into.
Let them kill the beholder was the first thing that crossed my mind but I had made the beholder to be much higher CR than they could handle and if they tried attacking it with intent, even a Good NPC, is going to defend themselves which would quite easily end up in a tpk and that was what I was trying to avoid.
We have actually solved this problem now though and we are moving on with the campaign.
I solved the issue by changing the beholder slightly. I took away all of its deadly spells and gave it powerful defensive spells. I bumped up its HP and increased its CR to 20. Basically, there was no way the party were every going to succeed against this beholder but it wasn't going to kill them either. Instead it cast high level hallucinatory terrain, toyed with them a bit - its still a beholder after all - and when they didn't seem deterred, it cast sleep on the party again.
Again, the party was arrested. This time they were put on trial, the towns people wanted to execute them but the beholder came to their defence. It said that it was aware of how its race was viewed in the outside world but that it was never under any actual threat from the party. It basically gave the people who had tried to kill it a character witness. It asked for the party to be banished instead of executed and the party asked to stay. We rolled persuasion and the party won. They were allowed to stay but in return they had to do something to make up for their actions.
The beholder wanted a book for its library, the book only existed in the outside world and so the beholder set them a task of retrieving the book as their punishment. If they refused, they would be banished from the kingdom.
So now the party are on a quest for the beholder that has taken them back to the outside world and they need to recover a book of ancient secrets that has been lost since the Dawn War. its somewhere in the outside world, the beholder had found an old map in the library but part of it was missing.
I am planning on doing something cool with the book once the players bring it back to the beholder. The beholder wants the book so it can learn powerful magic that will allow it to alter time and space and thought. It wants to do good with this power - it wants to make the beholders of the past into better people, no longer evil but doers of good. However, as the old saying goes; the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The beholder will find that it cant control the power of such ancient magic and things will start to spiral out of control, reality will start to collapse and bad things will start to happen. This was never the beholders intentions, it only wanted to use the power of the book to do something good, but through its desire to do good, it ends up doing things to terrible to image and thus, becomes the BBEG for the end of the campaign.
I am also going to flesh out the bad guys and the original BBEG that they characters would have faced before they decided to go looking for this lost kingdom. The temporal, mind bending, reality altering magic of the book basically twisted the minds of these people and turned them into what they are. Bandits, assassins, kills and the original BBEG will just become the overlord of these bandits, assassins, killers and so on.
The players can help them if they choose, do some side quests that will get magical items and stuff that will help turn these afflicted people back to their true selves or they can just kill them because there is no way to help them and they need to be stopped. Depends on what path the players take, the side quests they choose and so on.
The beholder from the lost kingdom with its book of powerful ancient magic, will now become the actual BBEG for the campaign. but of course the players dont know this.
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
I think you handled it the best way possible. Good job mate!
Published Subclasses
I love your solution. I must also confess I have given up reading the back and forth so perhaps this has been addressed already but I do worry about turning beholder into a BBEG after having spent so much effort proving him nice. I suspect your players are still somewhat upset that they misjudged the character and being thrown in jail repeatedly. Having him go evil in the the end will keep picking at this conflict?