Players meeting with powerful underworld contact

Underworld as in criminal organization, user. Not underground cave people

> a player arguing that no one could carry around money

Suspension of disbelief broken.

They are a gorup of professional conartits who are not stupid enough to not cast g invis before detecting thoughts so that is they fail they can gtfo.
Are you saying there has to be a blatant wizard in black robes casting a spell so that its easy for the players??

>You come back to the room
>All papers, ledgers and everything is missing
>There is a hole in the wall
>"What the fuck user?!"
>"The moleman burrowed through the wall when he heard you were planning to kill him"

Not the DM, and I see your point, but on the other hand I'd say this is a good case of realism. Even in RL there're situations where someone's been scammed and there is as little to go on as here. If I were playing in that game I'd see this as something that screams "I'M A PLOT HOOK!", it provides a great opportunity for the players to start their own investigation, the bank would definitely want to cooperate with them because someone going around and stealing the money they're supposed to safeguard is EXTREMELY bad for business, any authorities should be highly interested in finding the scammers as well because they're disrupting the local economy.

It's a great plot point, whether the execution of it was good or bad is, as it would seem, debatable, but I'm leaning towards good.

More saying that a bank in any high magic setting should have a lot of precautions against magical fraud because of these exact situations.

Blood biography and more should be required to make large withdrawals. Otherwise the bank would never stay in buisniness.

Good point after they complete this mission ill implement that

I agree that the plot hook is good but the implementation needs work. From what little he posted it's implied that they got a roll or two and that was it. If your plot hook relies on a few must pass rolls it needs work otherwise the players have to meta-game their way through and thats not good either. It could also be a case of shit players and shit gm but who knows.

Stuff like seek thoughts, zone of truth, blood biography, true sight, etc. should be in effect. Blood biography is one of the easiest and lowest level for confirming identity.

They just need an item that casts it and a way for the person to prick their finger.

>not giving them a saving throw vs stupidity
Sometimes you have to nudge the players in the right direction.

>It's another episode of the GM taking OOC as IC to screw with the party!

My favorite!

How else were the communicating their plans to kill him, if not verbally? Telepathically?

If players are speaking to one another and communicating in game information to make decision it is in character. All verbal communication about in game information is in character. Doing it any other way is fucking stupid.

Out of character maybe? As in, the characters weren't actually saying anything?

Hell, even a simple token system that mimics real life RFID encryption wouldn't be entirely out of the question. Having simple low-med level spells bound to a token for accounts with a certain threshold of money in them would thwart this robbery pretty easy. When you go for a transaction, you input a certain code into your device, it pings its unique signal with your signal overlaid on it to a much larger one at the bank, then the transaction/information can be relayed.
This could come in a couple different formats, with a manual/oral version for non-casters, a version that requires a variation of a cantrip or something similar (something that is somewhat unique to every caster in DnD formats usually, which is why you can't instantly copy another's spellbook) for those with a caster feature.
Of course this method still has weaknesses, but it adds a few layers to security that would make cheap gambits like this one much more difficult.

>have to leave the room
>to talk OOC plans

sounds like players using the good ol' it was OOC all along trick

Well, the hook is there, the money is gone. If the targeted character had made their save the scammers would probably have backed off and chosen a new target, making the player aware that a save was rolled would not really change all that much. Sure there would be a hint that something was up before the fact, but all in all I'd say that's a minor thing.

Maybe something like the party witnessing an NPC loudly complaining about their money being gone from the bank could have been implemented, but that depends on what the party was up to before, and might lead to the players withdrawing all their money and carrying it with them in a bag of holding that's chained to one of them at all times. And then there's no plot hook at all.

They stepped out of the room for 10 minutes and stood around slackjawed before all deciding to kill him?
Genius

So they just walk out of the room, stand around quiet for a few minutes and walk back and spontaneously kill the guy while yelling "JINX! You owe me a coke!" as they stab the guy in unison?

Then they walk into the room and innact a plan they all worked out and decided on, without any of the characters actually communicating?

-4 levels for egregious meta gaming.

Seriously though, the GM should have warned them about planning inside the oppositions base. Or asked to clarify if they were discussing it in character.

He asked them to leave.

Ok, so they stand around outside not leaving and talking about murdering him.

If players are idiots and don't take any precautions then get fucked by it maybe they'll learn to not be idiots next time.

No, they asked to step out for a sec, at least that's what I got from OP

No, it's quite clear the crime boss asked them to leave the room.

No.

>Players meeting with powerful underworld contact
>Ask to step out of room for a moment

Implies the players asked to step out of the room for a moment, not that the crime boss asked them to step out.

>Ask to step out for a moment

Nowhere does it say who asked, and the "for a moment part" makes me think it was the players who wanted to go plan this.

The problem is that the money is gone with no obvious lead if their rolls failed. Given that the bank lady believes they did it and the mage failed his arcana roll they have very little, if anything to go on. There has to be an obvious thread for pc's to pull on in investigation driven plot hooks. Not because they're idiots (they are) but because a failed roll can seal off the whole plot line you had worked out.

This reminds me of a similar situation, except the enemies decided to buttfuck them and kill the party instead of just run off.

It's been posted on Veeky Forums before and always makes people angry.

Doesn't matter. Unless they somehow in character talked about the plan to murder him then there's no way they could've communicated it to each other outside being apparently from a fucking hivemind that is connected to the actual players. OOC talk during such a tense situation about the characters planning something together does not translate into them sharing the idea on that spot unless there's an actual reason they all suddenly decided to forge their bonds of friendship with good old fashioned stab-a-roo action.

False.

I'm playing in a game right now too where the rest of the party is godawful at keeping ic/ooc discussion separate, how can my dm and I help them improve?

Ok, so you're saying that the underground contact asks them to step outside for a moment?

Ok, why are we even arguing it? Who asked to step out doesn't actually change the fact the players were retards.

>Unless they somehow in character talked about the plan to murder him then there's no way they could've communicated it to each other outside being apparently from a fucking hivemind that is connected to the actual players.

Maybe they're all telepathic through some kind of weird sex ritual

This is the thing that pisses me off the most about two of my players. They are chaotic neutral murderhobos in the extreme. They will kill anyone for the slightest reason and I'm thankful that the three other members are at least there to hold back their violent tendencies. The worst part is that this isn't just an occasional thing for them, all of their characters are murderhobos, it's like it's ingrained in their brain. They play a monk, murder, they play a wizard, murder, they play a bard, murder. Anything they play murders shit indiscriminately. For once I'd like them to make characters that act like real people, but they aren't interested in that shit.

It's a poorly formed sentence because it never specifies so as far as we know OP himself asked for the players to step outside for a while.

D&D needs mole-people

>explaining why things happen to your players
No. Never. You should just have told th that he is gone. They don't know why, because their characters don't know why.

Anyone who is sufficiently advanced to cast greater invisibility would not be wasting his time being a lowly con artist. But if they did, for some reason, and have access to 4th level spells, why would he even need to create an elaborate plot to steal the money in the first place? There's a lot of easy ways to exploit spells up to 4th level to steal money from a bank leaving pretty much no traces to follow. A plan with a polymorph disguise, face-to-face interaction with a clerk and thought detection that allows saves to the victims has a lot of moving parts. Anybody high enough level to acquire 4th level spells is careful. They didn't live that long by being half-assed. They would be smart and play smart.
What I'm saying here, is that if your con men are as smart as you claim, they wouldn't be casting detect thoughts in the first place. They would minimize contact with the victims in order to leave them the least evidence and clues to work with.

You shouldn't be playing RPG if you don't have a basic understanding of how language works.
These rule books are heavy on words you know ?

>players traveling
>find a man sleeping in an alcove near the road wrapped in his cloak
>they're on a mountain pass in the middle of no where
>they snuck up so the two are still asleep
>party paladin detects evil on them because he does often
>one of the enemies detects as overwhelmingly evil
>party paladin immediately readies a smite and goes to kill him
>plunges his blade into the man's heart
>the guy dies
>the paladin falls
>gets pissed and freaks out at me that he killed an evil creature
>tell him the guy was wearing an evil amulet, he was sent on a pilgrimage to deliver the amulet so it could be destroyed
>tell him the guy was chosen because he was pure of heart and mind and resistant to the corruption of the amulet
>what the paladin detected was the overwhelming evil of the amulet worn over the man's heart
>paladin killed first and asked questions later, causing him to murder a good man on a holy mission in cold blood
>tfw my player literally killed my frodo equivalent

The arcana roll was an error on the GM's part, true. He should've just said, "portable hole, handy haversack, bag of holding, moderate strength, etc". In any case "bag of holding" is so bloody well known that you don't even have to have read the rules to know about it. If the player didn't think of it he must've had a serious rage-induced blackout.

But even discounting bags of holding, "How does someone carry 100 pounds of weight?" is a stupid question. Give me a good backpack and two sturdy suitcases and I'll do it, and I don't even lift.

I agree weight question is stupid but the bag of holding one can be meta-gaming depending on the availability in the setting, which there wasn't given enough information. I think his players were idiots, asking the wrong questions, and he was, assuming his players would ask the precise questions/actions he had planned out.

They know that someone who looked like them stole their money from the bank. Just from that they could start looking around for incidences of people being seen in two places at once or look for other people who had their accounts mysteriously drained. Two solid leads. You, and OP's players, should watch a crime drama or two.

This is retarded though, if it's a society advanced enough to have a bank then it's a society with enough common sense to have basic security.

If wizards and magic exist, then it's not far fetched to assume forgery and identity theft would be a huge issue.

Unless the wizards "detect thoughts" spell is what got him the sensitive information (which is kinda weird, because I don't actively think about my bank account information 24/7) then it was a bullshit move.

Kek

I would have maybe given him a chance to rethink
>Are you sure you want to attack the unarmed sleeping man?

He was clearly baiting him into attacking just to make him fall...

But wouldn't the paladin detect evil from the amulet and not the sleeping guy?

That's not how Detect Evil works nor is it how Paladins falling works. This has to be bait.

Thats assuming any happened in their immediate area. Even then looking for dopple ganger incidents might not be the intended plot. I personally would've started with finding the thieves guild or some such in the area and go from there. I'm not arguing it was a bad plot, just that the players and gm are both idiots.

The
>tfw my player literally killed my frodo equivalent
Made me think otherwise.

I don't know. I'm not sure how it works in DnD.

Depends on whether it's Detect Evil, or Detect Evil with Discriminatory and possibly Analyze.

Detect evil gives you direction and strength in pathfinder, not the actual entity. The direction was towards the man's heart, which I told the paladin, and the strength was overwhelming.

He did not investigate and immediately went to kill the man.

Falling does in fact work like that. Murdering an innocent due to one's carelessness is certainly grounds to fall. Because he was simply foolish and not actively malicious getting his paladin powers back would not be as hard as it would be for others, but he has to atone for murdering an innocent.

The amulet in this case was out of his line of sight so he got the direction:
>center of the man's chest

If the players do not clarify what they are doing, you gotta assume the game is still going on.
There is a reason why in my group, you raise your left fist to your head to let everyone know you are speaking ooc, or you step away from the table.
If you don't, you are in character and treated as such, no matter how stupid you act.

Detect Evil does not work if LoS is broken.

No, Paladin's falling due to retarded DM contrivances has never been a valid interpretation.

If LoS is broken Detect Evil tells you the direction but not exact location. Read detect evil again.

>3rd Round: The power and location of each aura. If an aura is outside your line of sight, then you discern its direction but not its exact location.

Why would banks in a magical setting not have guards with True Seeing and permanent Zones of Truth?

>they wouldn't be casting detect thoughts in the first place
If they don't see it happen, they can't roll to notice it. Iirc it takes a fairly strong perception type check to notice a failed mental intrusion attempt, or a really strong resist roll, otherwise, you never actually notice.
The consequences are weighted very much in the casters favor, and saying that an accomplished caster with nefarious thoughts wouldn't use their skills for easy money is absurd; not every caster is a murderhobo or risks their ass in crypts and lairs.

This.
If the man was evil, then his entire body would radiate it, similar to an evil cleric or outsider.
It would not come from a single spot, which is how you tell it's an item or not.

> Player 'C' likes to murder every civilian
> Every game
> With every character he makes
> I ask him on the side to tone it down
> He agrees
> Keeps murdering
> Ask again
> He agrees
> Visit inn
> He tries to murder innkeeper
> Innkeeper hides behind bar, ogre bouncer beats the shit out of C, takes his gold, dumps him in the street
> 'wtf user'
> Wandering the woods
> Party meets wise woman
> C attacks wise woman
> Powerful witch, banishes C to other side of the woods, curses him to fuck with his perception permanently
> Finds a long abandoned farm with a little girl with golden locks who offers to guide him back to the party
> Tries to kill her
> If you had better perception you would have seen those 3 bears
> Eventually he gave up. Still kills innocents but at a manageable rate, since he knows I'll occasionally slip in something to fuck him up or take his shit if he goes around killing indiscriminately or just put an ever increasing and tempting bounty on his head until the rest of the party decide to collect

Technically he should have been stunned and the spell ended with only knowing there was one overwhelmingly strong aura. That said I think it was entirely fair.

"1st Round: Presence or absence of evil.

2nd Round: Number of evil auras (creatures, objects, or spells) in the area and the power of the most potent evil aura present.

If you are of good alignment, and the strongest evil aura’s power is overwhelming (see below), and the HD or level of the aura’s source is at least twice your character level, you are stunned for 1 round and the spell ends.

3rd Round: The power and location of each aura. If an aura is outside your line of sight, then you discern its direction but not its exact location."

The paladin should've fallen anyway, just because someone is evil doesn't mean you can murder them in their sleep.

Magic items don't have HD, they have CL, so evil items don't stun.

That's actually a fantastic idea... too bad that doesn't translate to online games as easily.

If we are going with PF 3.0 or 3.5 rules if it's sufficiently powerful then it would stun, but that's "Left Testicle of a Demon God" levels of evil.

>the HD or level of the aura’s source

Learn2Read

That's sad

My group in our online game uses brackets when we speak ooc, why don't you?

You're right, I'm a dummy.

...I'm not talking about play by post, context was talking. OOC in text would be insanely easy.

tell them that their next characters are not to murder a single person. mindless breasts are okay
but they are not to willingly incur the death of any sophont

>If they don't see it happen, they can't roll to notice it. Iirc it takes a fairly strong perception type check to notice a failed mental intrusion attempt, or a really strong resist roll, otherwise, you never actually notice.
>The consequences are weighted very much in the casters favor,
There's a chance they notice it in addition to the chance that they pass the save. A 2nd level spell isn't going to have an awfully high DC to save against. Also, could you provide the actual rules for detecting mental intrusions and the numbers of the perception type check (DCs, modifiers, etc) involved. I don't think that's something that everybody knows, so it would be good to have citations and I'd like to know the specifics myself, too.
>and saying that an accomplished caster with nefarious thoughts wouldn't use their skills for easy money is absurd; not every caster is a murderhobo or risks their ass in crypts and lairs.
There are much easier ways to use spells to make easy money than conning. I'm not sayng there wouldn't be some instances where a mid to high level caster would resort to getting easy money by robbing a bank. It's just that these incidents wouldn't be a sustainable source of income for obvious reasons and certainly wouldn't require more than one caster with access to 4th (if even that) level spells. There would be no possibility to do that sort of thing often and no need work in a team or share the loot with other people.

> If you had better perception you would have seen those 3 bears

I mean that.
If you don't have some way to signal to the gm you are speaking ooc, you are the fuck up.
>Also, could you provide the actual rules for detecting mental intrusions and the numbers of the perception type check (DCs, modifiers, etc) involved
d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/d/detect-thoughts/
It depends on the spell, and your gm's whim. According to the spell, there is no consequence outside not being able to do it again for 24 hours.
>There are much easier ways to use spells to make easy money than conning
Like what, that doesn't involve abusing crafting rules? Shadowrun mages can make better bank running heists than doing legit work, for example, because regular people tend to have good money, but not incredible defenses to protect it. You are relying on pc logic.

Npc comes up I heard you in the bank same thing happened to me I've met other victims it's maddening the bank does nothing etc

Make teller low level member of gang, this bypassed box bank checks and explains why she no help

I say make him pay for it for the entire campaign. Make it so that a god gets tired of his shit and curse him until his homicidal tendencies are gone.

A friend of mine played an AD&D 2e campaign in which his character sucker punched Eldath's avatar because she was being a bitch with the puzzles, so she cursed him in a manner that he could never attack anyone ever again. He was a fighter.

*beasts
mindless breasts are usually better than those with their own minds

Why do you let them without repercussion though

Or that. Excellent ideas, user.

Would play Paladin under

I'm going to do this SOLELY to encourage ic because they'll feel stupid doing it all the time

It depends on what system you're using. In D&D fifth edition, for instance, if you're digging into the target's brain for a specific piece of info instead of just reading surface thoughts, then they sense a mental intrusion even if they fail the save.

>>"We were talking out of charcter, and you should have assumed we were whispering"
"So you walked out and immediately, simultaneously, coincidentally decided to walk back in and kill him without consulting the others? 500xp deducted for such blatant metagaming."

>punches god of peace
>gets cursed to be peaceful
Man, what'd you think was gonna fucking happen here? While hilarious, you sorta should have seen this one coming.

>Player needs to load a cartoony cannon
>All he has is a stack of unmarked bills
>”Will they fit?”
>”I mean if you pack ‘em together well maybe”
>”I ball them all up”
>”Roll Smarts”
>less than decent
>”It’s kinda just all crammed in there, it won’t fly very far. Maybe if you found a way to stick them all together?”
>Wait for four minutes
>”I’m gonna spit on the ball.”
>”Oh my fuck Roll Smarts one more goddamn time”
>3D6 and it’s all 6’s, a perfect roll
>”YOU HAVE DUCT TAPE IN YOUR BAG”
>the rest of the party is dying

>> If you had better perception you would have seen those 3 bears
tippity top fucking kek
wrecked by Goldielocks

Kek

He was an assassin, so the perception curse hurt him. Plus the party were tempted to move on without him so he missed a fair bit of it wandering aimlessly through the woods with poor perception.

The rest of the party turning him in for the irresistable bounty just before rewards were given out was a nice touch too. I gave him a way to escape but he lost all his possessions and missed out on some pretty nice rewards... plus the guards broke his fingers and kicked in his knees, making him an assassin with no dexterity or perception.

That was right near the end of the campaign but he learned. I don't mind him killing a lot, just not openly murdering every npc he meets and thinking there wont be repurcussions

IIRC he did say that she never revealed herself explicitly, he thought she was just some randumb witch that was fucking aroung with the party. Turns out they were in a test to see if they were worthy of bearing a really powerful magic item which name I forgot.

Things my DM does that I hate

>rolls for everything
>I mean everything
>"I talk to the oldest farmer"
>ok, you're talking to a .... *rolls* 45 year old man
>"I go to the inn"
>there is a bartender and ... *rolls* zero other patrons
>"are there any towns nearby?"
>there are not. wait! *rolls* yes, actually.
>the kobold attacks ...*rolls* user
>the armorer has *rolls* two magical weapons on sale
if I wanted a procedurally generated game, I'd play Dwarf Fortress or No Man's Sky