What offers of power have you tempted players with? What would the catch have been...

What offers of power have you tempted players with? What would the catch have been, or how did it play out if the bargain was accepted?

a powerful alchemist offered them connections to his order in exchange for their loyalty. they were given a poison that would kill them at a predetermined date and he would only offer them the antidote if they proved their worth to him

they betrayed him instantly, severed ties with him, and now they roam the lands with a random minor miniboss he told them to kill, none of them knowing the first thing about curing the poisons that would kill them all

>pic related
Probably one of the best examples of a neutral villian done correctly.

Got tempted by the setting's version of the devil with an amazing magical greatsword that looked just like the one my character had lost a year before. The issue is that the tempter had the most nebulous "I want your soul" condition and refused to explain exactly what that meant. He wouldn't put it in writing, wouldn't tell my character when possession would be transferred, wouldn't say what happens to my corporeal body, and wouldn't explain any fine print.
My character was a detail obsessed mercenary, so he turned the offer down.

Whoops, misread the OP, thought it was about what the GM offered to me as a player. My bad.

Maybe I'm a filthy Fable Casual, but how is Jack not evil?

>an artifact that looks like a mirror's shard
>druids they meet say that it is incredibly powerful or should be get rid of ASAP
>my GMPC from our very first session shows up and tries to take it away for his own gain under the guise of global safety

the catch is: it only gives you a phantom as your eternal bodyguard. and the shard fuses with the first one to use it

Haven't played in ages, so feel free ti correct me, but from what I can remember:
>Jack is one of the three lords of the Shadow Court (along with the Queen and the Knight of Blades)
>The Shadow Court represents primordial chaos, but also exists as a balancing force
>The Court decides to wipe Albion of life when imbalance is reached (Good or Evil reigns supreme, more heroes than the general people, ect)
>Hero named Archon learns of the purges, declares war on the court
>Creates the Sword of Aeons to fight them, manages to take out the Knight and Queen with help, but not Jack
>The Main Hero's lineage can be traced back to Archon
>Archon built The Spire to garner power to slay Jack and finish the job
>Realizes he can't kill chaos itself, so he banishes him
>Years pass, Archon becomes corrupt with power. Uses spire to purge Albion again and again when revolts pop up
>Jack manages to cling on to the material plane by possessing Archon's sword
>Battle ensues, Spire explodes, Jack devours Archon's Soul, but is still bound to the Sword and the Mask
Not exactly sure what happens afterwards, but it ends up looking like this:
>Jack manuiplates Albion over the ages by possessing heroes, trying to rebalance Archon's fuckups by hand, as his power has massively dwindled.
>Main Hero is decendent of Archon
>Jack realizes that as long as the bloodline exists, the power of the spire lives on, and the world is unable to return to normal
So while Jack is indeed a snide, cruel, and smarmy asshole, he is genuinely trying to heal Albion's ancient wounds by killing off your family.
Think of him not as an evil overlord, but more of a disgrunted janitor.

The best ring of fireball ever™

Catch was that it turned the wearer into a loli. Was a damn great fireball ring, though, and I probably made it a tad too strong since the fuckers oneshot a couple midbosses with it. In retrospect I may have magical realm'd that game a bit but the players didn't seem to mind the sudden and detailed transformation.

My GM once put in front of me the power of an ancient dragon-demon. It'd give me strength. Endurance. Magic. Fire.
I had to save my family, so I didn't think it through and accepted it. The demon wrapped around me, half armor, half Venom.
I knew it could wrestle control of my actions, but I thought I could keep it under control with sheer will.
I couldn't.
I enjoyed that power high for a while, but in the end, not only was I useless against the villain I accepted the bargain to defeat in the first place, I also had to be put down by the party.

Also, Because I forgot to mention it in the post, Jack is specifically evil to your family, not the world. He has a ton of statues and monuments dedicated to his efforts at defending Albion in times of crisis, like the Sundial for instance.

He again, is an absolute asshole and a sadist, but his name is equally feared and praised throughout Albion.

Did they dieded?

A store clearly run by the Devil tried to sell me a Banjo that could make me the greatest player in the world.

There's just one problem. It's clearly run by the devil, my Performance is high af and momma didn't raise no sucker.
Unfortunately, they managed to buy my monk friend's soul and we had to rescue his dumb ass form the cultists. Should have stuck with him, used countersong via whistling or some bupkiss.

That was a really good summary, thanks user. Man, now I want to play that again. The idea of a character who is evil to you, but has overall neutral-to-good motivation is really interesting for a campaign villain.

I don't know, burning your friend's pet dog in a furnace seems pretty evil to me.

Looking back it is strange to remember JoB was hailed as a hero throughout a lot of the land

>The issue is that the tempter had the most nebulous "I want your soul" condition and refused to explain exactly what that meant. He wouldn't put it in writing, wouldn't tell my character when possession would be transferred, wouldn't say what happens to my corporeal body, and wouldn't explain any fine print.

Sounds like a really shitty devil.

Could just be "lolwiki", but that doesn't sound anything like the backstory I ready on the wiki, where they just turned up and enslaved Albion because reasons, and repeatedly genocided the population until they agreed to submit.

They got basically pic related from its previous owner, who was an expy of pic relateds previous owner.

It'll be capital F, Dwarf Fortress Fun!

I asked them a question.
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise?
Worked out okay after that.

This is not a Jojo reference.

How much of this is true? I know the metaplot involving Theresa and the Spire was finally concluded in a fucking kinect game (!?!), and she finally does something heroic.

It's heavily implied in all three 'real' games that Theresa deliberately manipulated her loved ones and allies after gaining her seeress powers to further her own ends. It should have been obvious since the first game, where she's completely indifferent to the bandit that saved her and doesn't care whether you kill or spare him.

She REALLY gets her hands bloody in the second game, where she's the one who blabs on the PC and his sister after proving them to have Hero's blood, getting her killed and leaving the PC ripe for manipulation into becoming a Hero. She's also the one who reveals your location to the BBEG at the end of the game, which directly gets your dog killed when saving you, and it's VERY strongly implied she killed Hammer's father so she'd get involved with the PC's quest.

In the third game we ostensibly get an answer for her actions in the Crawler, but she still manipulates your brother into acts of unbelievable cruelty specifically to cultivate you and certainly does not step down from power after the Crawler has been vanquished.

A little of both to be honest.

There were a few books that came out around Fable 3 that villivied the Court of Shadows, I forget whatever was in them, but I guess the wiki took it and ran with it.

Oh yeah, it's a really neat dymanic that you rarely see in fantasy nowadays. It's almost like Jack was a retired Player Character.

He's one of my favorite villians for this very reason. He has a justfied reason to hunt you down, and unlike other villians in his vein, the people genuinely like him out of respect, not fear or circumstance or what have you.

>when you realize Reaver was canonically alive still when the series was permanently shelved

The demon was burrowed into the skull of a sleeping god and offered the PCs to fill the god with dreams of their heroic feats so that they would be permanently under the effects of the "bless" spell.

The party had a Paladin though. That's the trick. Doesn't matter how good the temptation is if you're not allowed to take it. "Suffer not a demon to live," and all that.