As a DM I want to engage my players on a personal level...

As a DM I want to engage my players on a personal level. I want them to think outside the box and deal with tough moral dilemmas. So I was planning on having them go to this dungeon where a particularly cruel lich has rounded up all of the town's children as well as the family members of the party's paladin. All of the prisoners are divided in two special cages, the kids in the left and the family in the right.

The cages themselves are Deus Ex Machina. They are 100% immune to any form of tampering and are impossible to break into or out of without using the lich's special key, which he has so graciously placed on a pedestal in the room with instructions. The key will open up either of the locks but it can only be used once. It cannot be copied or altered in any way or form. Once a cage is chosen and unlocked it will dissipate and those batch of prisoners will be free. However, the cage that was not chosen will be hit with a deathknell spell and its occupants dropped into a portal to the negative energy plane where they will be instantly and eternally destroyed with no chance of reincarnation or other restorative spells.

The paladin is the only one who can use the key. If he chooses to save the children he will effectively be sentencing his family to death. Alternately, he could allow innocent children to die by selfishly saving his family, severing his connection to his god and falling from grace. By choosing to do neither then all the victims will slowly expire from thirst and hunger.

Either way he will never confront the lich again and never have an opportunity to right the wrongs he will have a hand in.

>the paladin
not falling for this shit, asshole

>not falling
How wrong you are.

Okay, I waited until the third red flag before I stopped reading. It didn't take long.
Short answer: Don't.
Long answer: This is a shit idea and you're most likely a shit gm and quite possibly a shit person.

Nice copypasta, but could you try something more original next time?

You clearly do not think outside the box then. You assume that the enemy will always play fair. You assume that the villain has a rhyme and reason for his evil ways. You assume that the day will always be saved by the choices you make. You are wrong.

The clever enemy does not play fair.
The villain does not always need a justification for the evils they do.
The heroes can lose.

Sometimes you cannot win no matter what you do.

>dude the paladin must save the babies or the nuns from his church from the evil lich and they all die in a gruesome way
>unless the paladin urinates on the evil lich's face

Dear diary, today OP was a colossal faggot.

>You clearly do not think outside the box then.

>The cages themselves are Deus Ex Machina. They are 100% immune to any form of tampering

There is nothing outside that box but the void.

>Mastermind.jpg

Ah, a vintage bait.

Yes, there is

>the Paladin player punches the "that guy" DM in the face irl

that's how you think outside of the box

...

I cast Planar Adaptation, Mass on the people in the other cage. Now the negative energy plane won't kill them and we can go retrieve them.

The problem is that you're not asking for "outside the box thinking" you're asking for submission.

>The heroes can lose.
Yes, CAN. That's entirely different from saying, "the heroes lose". This scenario would be fine if it weren't for your "Deus Ex Machina" because FOR GOOD REASON there is nothing in the game that can be used for this kind of shit. You want cages, fine. You wanna enchant them to be immune to physical damage and kill everything in one when the other opens, fine. But when your paladin hands in food and water, you tell him okay. And when your paladin goes on a quest to obtain the assistance of a god to get those people out, you let him do it. And if he fails, so be it. And when that paladin tears through the plane LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING ANGEL OF DEATH, LOOKING TO REND THE VERY SOUL OF THAT LICH TO PEICES, you let him find him. It may be after putting the sword of a saint to the throat of Orcus himself, but either his LUCK fails him and he dies a warrior, or he finds the damn lich. You are not there to tell the players, "you lose" and then wank over the "moral dilemma" you've given them. Your players are not there to facilitate your masturbation. Fuck you, and fuck your god complex.

Damn, fucking, straight.

Now I feel self conscious about my rant, but not enough to not post it.

>I am a massive faggot.
>I am such a massive faggot that I can't even settle for "rocks fall, everyone dies"
>I am such a massive faggot that I think I'm clever by shitting all over my players who will soon leave to find a better game and leave me confused and blaming everyone except myself for my own massive faggotry.

Oh, it's you again. Fuck off already.

>They are 100% immune to any form of tampering and are impossible to break into or out of without using the lich's special key,
Therfore the death knell spell doesn't work and the negative energy plane won't affect them.

Lich didn't think this plan through very well, did he?

Dispel magic, or greater dispel magic on the magical item that casts the death knell spell, and open both doors, remove people.

Go get an antimagic field and open the doors without fear of a death knell spell working.

Cast death ward on the people and open the doors.

Cast dimensional lock on the cages and let them die, then resurrect.

I'm glad we've got a caster in the party!

If none of the above works, shrug, well, we tried. Paladin's family knew what he was signing up for.

My character is an orphan with no family, checkmate.

Also this.

Kill the lich, If he had the gall to apply permanence to his absurd fuckery trap I hire mages/clerics to help me dispel it. If that fails I save my family and continue being a paladin because you only fall if you willingly commit and evil act.

willingly letting innocents die for selfish reasons is the definition of willingly committing an evil act

Have we covered all the ways to explain how stupid of a faggot OP is yet?

I liked your rant.

It wasn't willingly you fuck. He was put to the task, completely out of his control.

Hijacking OP's post since his idea is dumb anyway. How do I give a sense of urgency to my players?

Basically the players will fight a wizard who, once his hp drops enough, will cast a banishment spell on the most vulnerable player. Should said player get banished, the wizard will surrender and demand to be taken to the king as a hostage. The thing stopping him from being gutted (as it was the mission) is that should he die, the player that got banished will be stuck in whatever dimension he's banished to. But they also have a day to bring the wizard to the king or else the banishment is permanent regardless.

How do I do this without having the players go "we spend the day walking back to the king, since we killed everything on our way to the wizard and there's nothing in our path."?

Any ideas?

>the wizard will surrender and demand to be taken to the king as a hostage
Or they'll just gut him at this point while not listening, because he just presumably disintegrated their friend with a save or die (which was an ass move, GM).

Also, are you really going to say "I'm going to boot a player out of the game for a day and possibly permanently if the others fuck around"? Sounds like a dick move to that guy.

What you do instead is have the players be on a timer TO GET to the enemy wizard. Have a visible symbol of the wizard grow in power as he rips open the void and summons progressively bigger demons, along with names;

"THE VOID IS TORN OPEN! THE IMP RAZATHUL IS SUMMONED! NEXT SUMMONING, IN ONE DAY'S TIME: CHORGON, THE DREAD SUCCUBUS!"

Then you have another beasty to throw at the enemy, and they know if they don't get to the demon he's getting hold of a balor and 2d6 lemurs.

And then he's getting the demogorgon's brother in 3 days time.

I'm pretty sure the paladin wouldn't fall either way here as he wouldn't be purposefully setting out to commit an evil action. You can argue that it is being selfish, but the paladin is still both saving and killing regardless of his choice, and can only do so much in an unwinnable situation.

So yeah, if you make him fall because of this, you are being That DM.

Kill the wizard and go on a quest to save our friend. I believe in my own abilities more than I trust the evil wizard with his life.

...

seconded. OP's plan to fuck with the paladin displays no understanding or right or wrong, and correspondingly no understanding of how paladins are even supposed to work.

you shouldn't even be a DM, since you're both a moron and an asshole.

Rolled 11 (1d20)

I roll to seduce the Lich.

You give him a boner.

>Ah, a vintage bait.
For an uncultured newfag, maybe.

Rolled 14 (1d20)

Fuck, can I bluff him into buying some ecs that is actually viagra?

I want this old skelly to bone me outta this situation

i push the lich onto the trolley tracks

You know that milk gets him hard.

I actually planned to have that character play parallel to his party as he tries to survive in the dimension, possibly returning with loot.

> have the players be on a timer TO GET to the enemy wizard.
Too late I'm afraid, I stopped the session as they are one room away from the wizard fight (time constraints IRL and all.)

This might work. The party might open an unstable portal and must find the lost player in a time limit. Meanwhile said player is having his own adventure surviving in some weird ass dimension.

>The party might open an unstable portal and must find the lost player in a time limit.
This is a much better one. Make sure they know they have a set time limit and the portal will permanently close within 3 days time.

...

> I want them to think outside the box and deal with tough moral dilemmas.
Followed by:
> An unavoidable situation with all possible choices bad ones that seem designed to punish the player
Friend that is quiet contradictory to your stated goal.
Forcing this really just absurd situations is the sort of thing that gives people a pathological hatred of railroading/focused story/plot.
Please abort.

...

The paladin can just quest to true-resurrect his family, you massive idiot. Or cast Communion and pray for a divine intercession, and at that point the mortal lich will be BTFO.

2/10 made me talk to the pasta

Saving innocents in a situation of tribulation is not an act for which a paladin falls. The paladin will not fall even if he saves the family for he has committed no Evil act.

>Hey guys, look at this neat little box made, isn't it rad?
>Your box is shit
>Just think outside the box!

There is nothing evil about saving innocents you dolt. Masochism and killing your family to appear impartial is fucking retarded. YOU set up a stupid fucking scenario designed to "trick" the paladin. It's stupid to let both groups die. And it makes logical sense to save the group you know.

I am so tired of pretentious assholes acting like breaking a paladin is a good thing. These people hate heroes, they hate goodness, everything has to be a trolley problem or worse so you make a contrived and illogical scenario to make up an excuse to force your paladin to "fall from grace" despite the gods not being automatons who can empathize with mortal struggles. You've set up a situation solely to make a character feel bad. To make a player unhappy. Do you think that's cool? Do you think you're clever? You made someone not have fun to instill in them something that they already knew: the world fucking sucks and evil wins over good. Why can't you design a scenario with a solution? Why can't you have the paladin be hero and live up to his oath? Why do you shit DMs insist on attempting to have Paladins fall from grace?

Someone who plays a paladin WANTS to be a hero, and you design encounters so that they can't do that. You have actually made their life worse because you wasted their time and reminded them that heroes can't exist even on fantasy. Congratulations, you're actively making your players miserable. Go straight to hell.

...

>I am so tired of trolls on Veeky Forums making up stories to anger me

Fixed your post, sport. Also trimmed off the useless parts.

kek top summary

Also hijacking because I need help.

BBEG has an army and is marching upon the region in which lays a town ruled by the barbarian. The army is in the thousands and the near by Nobles and Royality are getting nervous and gathering for a war counsil. I would like to add a little more flavor then them telling the Barbarian (rest of the party agreed to be his entourage) to prove himself a tactical leader.

Nobles are currently gathering forces, trying to scout locations, decide supply lines, and plan the battle according to their "civilized" way of fighting.

Enemy force is mixed beast men, orcs, goblin worgs riders, ogres, and hobgoblin forward troops set to capture strongholds for when the army marches through after the snow melts.

Any ideas, tips, or lessons learned would be great.

Scouting, logistics and strategy aren't just the civilized way of fighting, they're the right way. Not sure why you put that in quotes.

If the barbarian PC had experience fighting those types of enemies before, he could share his intuitions about where they're likely to attack first.

Epic

best post

Is this bait thread still going on? I wish people would fucking read the read instead of just posting shit in reply to the first post.

Keep in mind no matter what he chooses he doesn't fall. He only falls if he willingly violates his oath. If it's literally impossible for him not to break his oath, he doesn't fall because he never had the option not to.

That said, this is solved by the Paladin player declaring himself the new GM, then saying he just saves everyone because he can.

/thread

>lol
>this guy thinks that a fucked up sociopath will play fair when he breaks into his home
>he thinks that he can man up when he's drugged and chained to a chair with his hamstrings cut and leap out of it
>he thinks that the bad guy will let him save his family members instead of casually making him choose which one gets to live while killing the other
>he thinks he knows what true darkness lies in the hearts of men who only want to see the world burn
>lol
>lol

Just because your post deserves the truth of why paladin fall threads are made.

HA! There we go.

There's nothing wrong with having the bad guy kill innocents.

There's everything wrong with having the baf guy kill innocents and then have the paladin fall because of it.

"Paladin, if you don't immediately cut your throat, I will kill this little girl, who I am going to blow up anyway!!" Oh look, you didn't have your character kill himself, he falls!!!

That's wrong, because the paladin is attempting to stop the person killing the girl. Trying and failing isn't a sin, and it's not the paladin holding the blade that kills the girl.

this