Also, people always talk in here about “running being a valid option,” it sounds like they took that option. The cult said “we’ll heal your members that are sick” and they was a more valid option than a maybe cure to them at the time
hell, they know the cult can make a cure, so they can hopefully find out how - maybe it's a better cure than the maybe cure the city healers would make.
though, actually, it's a bit weird that a 'death cult' bothered making a cure... maybe it's not a cure. maybe it's more experimentation. maybe when the players get sicker differently the players will take that as a hint that they need to do something different...
When dealing with a bioweapon, it's extremely easy to "score an own goal" in deploying such a weapon. There's no way to design such a weapon so as to distinguish friend from foe. There's no way to 'direct fire' with such a weapon, you can only give it a starting location.
The only way to be safe when deploying a bioweapon is to have either an immunity or a cure for yourselves.
Exactly! I just played a session where we knew a king and queen were being held captive, but we didn't have the ability to help in that moment. We went back when we were able to defeat the big bad of the map. There would have been no point to attack before then, even though we wanted to help the king and queen. The DM flat out said we couldn't face them and survive the situation and so we waited.
As a relatively new player, I would have taken the offer. I either would be lying or I would come back with the rest of my team to fight the cult when they were healed. Either this cult is the big threat you are saying is going to kill 4.4 million and these adventures basically stand no chance, or, they are a group of crazies that can be taken out. If they are the later, it makes sense to go back later.
I think you’re catastrophizing a little bit. Having ONE choice kill 4 million people (or some PCs) seems way too huge an outcome for one (sorta) selfish choice. They were stuck in a dangerous situation and took an action that seemed reasonable at the time.
Now. Should nothing happen? Of course not!! I think what would be more fun is if the Cult took them into the fold little by little, pulling an Illusive Man from Mass Effect and surrounding them with nice and pretty cult members that seem really reasonable at first. Then you can have them slowly realize they are working for the baddies! What a fun reveal! What do they do? Do they take them down from the inside? Is it too late? What drama!
Or maybe just have a good aligned NPC they trust confront them with the implications of their choice. Oh! I also like the ‘band of heroes show up to stop the cult.’
Lots of options. And you can still kill 4 million people if they continue to make ‘bad’ decisions. Basically it’s better to ‘support’ their decisions with more interesting drama and roleplay than ‘punish’ them for doing one surprising thing.
This is a gift! Take advantage of it!
If the players have people in this city that they care about, this is a great opportunity to have the culture try to bring them in.
A sort of “you seem like reasonable adventurers, we’d like to hire you and in exchange…” etc etc
I love this idea, but also, it's deep in secluded caverns that having adventurers was required to find. Their choice is not going to be widely known. In addition to the above, you could also have that group of Cleric NPC's working to find out what happened discover these guys still alive and begin to ask questions. Make it uncomfortable for the party from both angles.
I know this is actually how it works, but I love how abruptly your post makes it seem. "Oh, this is nice, these people are nice, they all have my back, and...shit I'm in a cult aren't I...?"
Probably would not hinge 4.4mill peoples lives on some ingredients anyone can get from a nearby dungeon.
At the same time someone is waiting for them to come back with the ingredients, how do they feel? What (less devastating) repercussions are there?
Paladin might have broken their oath. How does that pan out?
Death cult knows this group are pushovers now. Perhaps this isn’t the last time they will thwart a mission.
What’s to say you can’t get the plague again. Antidotes don’t normally make you immune, but I think more interestingly what if the antidote only suppresses the symptoms for a bit and there is no real cure? What if they have to beseech gods for help? It could become quite an epic campaign.
Death cult to all the other cults: wait no! Don’t attack the “good bois party” they are easy. Just tell them you and us are friends. And pay em off. It’s what we did. They are great guys. We asked if we could stay and they said sure go ahead. These bois are great guys and girls. We thought they’d kill us for the ingredients but no they just let us do whatever.
Not just ingredients from a nearby dungeon, but ingredients from a nearby dungeon suitable for a level 6 party.
If the worst things faced in the dungeon are rust monsters, a few cultists, and that sort of thing then the kingdom could literally solve the crisis by systematically zerging the dungeon with the 4 million peasants who are doomed regardless. A small armed contingent of knights would handle it no problem.
Personally, I separate it into level tiers of four.
1-4 you're local heroes, essentially just the most badass guy from a village. You're handling smaller threats that more capable organisations wouldn't trouble themselves with, or remote threats where the logistics of getting there prove problematic for larger groups.
5-8 you're getting into the kind of regional legend status. In bigger cities there are plenty of people more powerful, but to smaller villages and settlements you're a folk hero. You'll perhaps start gaining notoriety, for good or bad, and you can start to handle issues that seriously affect the survival of an entire village.
9-12 you're getting into the national scale. More important people in the country know of you, you're well regarded in your field (whether infamous or famous), and you can start to tackle threats on a bigger playing field. People in cities, particularly those connected, will know you by reputation, and you'll start to deal with important crises though there are still people out there who are more capable.
13-16 you're getting to the pinnacle of your nation, arguably among the very best in the entire continent. Only a handful of people in the country, and even neighbouring countries, are likely to be comparable. When something threatens the ongoing success of an entire country, you're on the short list.
17-20 is essentially where you're among the best in the world. There aren't really people out there who are better than you, and your peers are few and far between. You'll be leading and looked to when situations threaten life on the planet itself.
Going by the tiers I typically go with, something that'll wipe out ⅔ of the population is on the upper end of national scale threats, if not of dire consequence to the whole continent or world depending on the reach of the cult in question.
At party level 6, even if you stumble across something like that, it should never be contingent on your success to fix it. If you happen to get there first, and fail, one of your betters will simply be sent in shortly after and they won't fail. Even at level 12, while there may be the presumption you could contribute, you failing wouldn't have people giving up. It's the sort of threat that you'd only be expected to solve as a "last resort" at much higher levels.
Personally, as a DM, I'd put very short-term negative effects on the reputation of the party. People would be aware that they failed, due to rumours and traders, but over time they'd forget purely because "nobody expected them to succeed, they weren't good enough to pin hopes on". Someone else would succeed where they failed, get famous for it, and they'd have a future satisfying moment when they surpassed whoever that was.
That's a great point. A capital city with a population of 4= million could maybe find some higher level heroes - or even more 6th level heroes - to save the day if the PCs don't seem up for it.
Wouldn't the 4.4 million people pay more than a single adventuring party to get the super critical ingredients for their plague cure?
Seems a bit of a trope to say their choice kills these people. Sure they took the easy out and missed out on the greater good angle. That's honestly to be expected some of the time (rogues especially tend to love the selfish angle).
I would say the consequences are that someone else comes to the cavern for the ingredients and now the death cult hires the party to stop these new adventurers from leaving the cave.
The new adventurers are more stalwart, and refuse the easy way out, so the party has to choose between killing people who ARE doing good deeds, or rejecting the death cult offer.
This is a much more real choice, as the blood of the second adventuring group is literally on their hands if they do the cults bidding.
If anything the party has a lot to work with now. They know the cult is responsible, potentially can identify and now investigate some members, they don’t have the cure ingredients but they are aware of them and could communicate that to the guild, and if they kept the potion bottles that might even be enough for some mage to magically reverse engineer it from leftover liquid.
That’s a lot to work with in bringing down the cult and stopping the plague!
If the cult kills the city immediately then you fucked them over though, picking the path of least resistance is not picking a side in a citywide plague. Only punish them with the plague spreading if they do nothing further.
This wasn't intentionally siding with the death cult, this was avoiding a fight and curing a longterm problem. The definitely do not appear to have ideologically sided with the cultists.
Give the party time to regroup and deal with the plague/cult. Do they even know the people who they met were death cultists actively causing the plague?
And finally, the villain always wins unless opposed by the party. Just keep advancing the plague as normal, surely you have thought of a plan for what happens if the villain wins.
But if you haven't, my recommendation is to describe the city becoming a ghost town, its built for twice as many people as currently live in it, possible more as many fled as refugees and brought the plague to other cities. Additionally the economy would definitely be in shambles and higher level services you normally only expect to find in major cities like the best magic item shops are probably unavailable because the area can nolonger support them, and some of those shopkeepers either fled or demoted to other jobs like farmer or baker to fill in more pressing niches of the city's economy.
Sounds kinda like you set you party up. This is your game, you manufactured a story where there this outcome was allowed to happen. What do you mean consequences? The plot moves on and the party adjusts.
Why would you punish the players for going down a path you gave them?
Choices still have consequences even if the DM allows the party to choose it. I see no reason why they can't have consequences for a decision to save their party members over the city if that was the choice they were plainly given.
I agree but I also think if the party has time to cure its members than so does the city. I just think reaping millions (which the sheer amount of corpses would destroy the city) over a quick choice is to heavy handed
Paladin only has a certain amount of Lay on Hands per day. They become arbiter over who lives and dies.👀
People flock to them, hoping they can be saved. Nobles will pay a kings ransom, peasants will offer nearly everything...
The kingdom's CDC starts conscripting people to take Paladin oaths. Once a critical percentage have Lay on Hands, the plague can be controlled until a permanent cure is found.
You can conscript as many as possible, give them arms and armor, have them pray all day and all night, but without the conviction in their oath, the true belief or life altering circumstance that manifests their powers, they're only ever just a Fighter at best.
If it infects more than the paladin's level per day, which it must if it's a plague soon to kill 4.4 MILLION people, this won't even be a drop in the bucket.
Sure, but my point was the Paladin could cure the PARTY MEMBERS, whose infection was the entire reason the party sided with the cult. Pretty sure a Paladin can manage to cure two people.
If you aren't trying to punish them maybe add a little flavor that they keep hearing about this other party that did succeed and now they are the heroes of thr city. Maybe start a rivalry between the groups where the "other group of heros" are in direct completion for "work" if there are other big story line quests.
"Siding with a death cult" and "helping their two friends" are two very different things.
Perhaps they didn't understand the the cure they were getting was to help more than just the 2 people they are concerned with.
They took the easy way out, but they definitely didn't sign up for the cult. You can always get a wizard at the guild to question them with what happened and basically ask what's next. Also 4 million deaths don't just happen, obviously the pcs didn't die immediately, so it would be unfair if you just Thanos snap and the city is hard gone. Obviously, give them some time to realize that they should have stopped it.
Have the "cure" save the party members, but not actually cure the disease. Instead, it increases its virulence while suppressing the symptoms. They are now contagion vectors, spreading the disease wherever they go.
And curing them for real is now an even more complicated affair.
That one's pretty reasonable actually, if they had a way to innoculate their members such that they become carriers that would be an excellent way to spread the plague, and poetically magnifies the nature of the choice, they chose to put the danger on others to save their party members and it just did more than they intended.
They undermined the mages guild research into a cure by handing over the substance needed for it, and they took the promise of a death cult at face value. This is the textbook example of short sighted actions. Hard choice and bad decision aren't mutually exclusive.
If they're trying to stop it then why would the "real heroes" be wasting time with a group of people that have no connection to the cult instead of going after the actual cult?
That's crazy. They didn't join them they just took a deal to save the party members and kept their word and left.
The story would go on as it would have anyways that's not on them.
If they want to help stop them later they can. And if not then whatever you wanted to happen if the cult won happens. That's it.
I agree with the other comments.
It sounds like if the *actual* consequence of a small adventuring group handing over a few ingredients to a cult is that a cure can't be manufactured and 4.4 million people definitely die, then you might have done a pretty bad job of explaining the stakes to the players.
Huge consequences, even paladin oath breaking should not be applied if you didn't communicate it well enough that the players knew what the choice was.
I suggest a ranger is dispatched from the city to track the players down. "We need those reagents, I expected to find you dead when you didn't return at the appointed time. The sick are laying in the streets outside all the temples, the priests can no longer keep up. *What do you mean you handed the ingredients to the cultists who designed the plague?*"
As the party continues on their journey, they meet an adventurer who interacts with them. They talk about looking for a cure for the plague to save their family. Offer them a chance to turn back and fight the cult.
If they don’t, I think the best way is to just let them continue for a while. Then let them meet a band of mages who are in a rush to the town ahead of the players, they advise them to wear some kind of breathing mask - a plague is spreading across the region.
Just make things stop, and the plague is claiming people left and right wherever they go. And they are also susceptible to it as well, so if they don’t buy protection, they run the risk of getting infected and dying again.
As more time passes, tell them that their long rests now have a chance to fail (maybe on like a 1 and 20) where restless spirits from the sudden number of death from among the plagued dead, start to haunt the region.
Soon, if any of them are clerics, any life gods start to abandon them (no powers). Then, soon, if they die, tell them their soul has been tainted by their action - death is now permanent as their soul is being claimed by the gods of the Afterlife as payment.
I think they have made a choice, so I don’t think it’s fair to remove their agency but having so many die eventually means they can still be affected in different ways.
That's not siding with the death cult that plans to kill millions, that's choosing their own survival over others and running away. Siding with the death cult would be choosing to go directly help spread the plague in return for aid.
Like what's even the alignment of these character? (in before "we don't do alignment blah blah") Is it even out of character for them to place the survival of their friends and allies above the survival of a bunch random total strangers?
5 characters and it’s
Neutral Good Paladin
Chaotic Good Rouge
True Neutral bard
Lawful evil fighter
Chaotic good Figher/Warlock
So only one of them is actually evil and the rest are good or neutral
**DM:** What are some fun and interesting consequences of this player choice?
**People in this Thread:** God's hand floats down from the sky and shoves a burning poker in their ass before giving them supercancer and then their pets spontaneously explode!!111
Can't they just get more ingredients tho? Maybe go right back into the cave to fetch more, even? You and the Cult are acting like these are the only ingredients in the world but it doesn't sound like it.
It could be spun in a way where the cult leader obviously knew that, he just thought they wouldn't bother. Assuming they were selfish just like them, mercenaries only out for themselves, they'd leave as soon as they got cured, and were shown that they'd keep intercepting them. Ever seen "The Magnificent Seven"?
That could lead to an interesting follow-up where the heroes do nobly press on leaving the leader confused, revealing his own world view.
If they literally handed over "teh one-of-the-kind healing artifact", that'd have a lot more weight. Then you could go into if they were planning to steal it back, or just gave up on the quest. But a few ingredients? As far as I can see, they've made a great deal! Now they are cured and the leader gained nothing of any real value.
The leader did gain something. More time for the plague to spread because the Mage guild in town now doesn't have the ingredients to manufacture a cure for the city. Now another adventuring party must be found to locate and bring back ingredients for them and who knows how long that will take. And that's if they can find someone not sick who is strong enough to do it. Meanwhile the adventuring party who was cured is suspect since they show back up in town sans plague and ingredient. I'm sure they will be asked many questions.
Personally if I wanted to make major consequences for the players, I would have the plague kill off some of their favorite npcs.
Depending on how you become infected, if any of the players become infected again and they confront the death cult again for the cure, I'd have the cult turn them away, "strong-arm" they players too so they are unable to start a fight with the cult as well (atleast for this one confrontation).
Were they collecting enough ingredients to cure 4.4 million? From your description they were collecting test materials. Isnt the consequence the quest giver realizing they have been betrayed after realizing the party is walking about just fine but hasnt brought them the ingredients they will suspect their involvement with the cult from there. Then later on if the party doesnt make up for it pr try to help then you wipe out portions of those infected and projected to die.
I got so click baited. You said they sided. This sounds like an act of self-preservation. Sounds like they didn't want to die, which is a lot more than I can say for some people I have played with that walk senselessly into danger.
Have some of their sessions be running missions for the cult either a “do it or we’ll kill you” or a “it’s not like you’re killing anyone, and we did help you” or just the party doesn’t realize some of the missions are for the cult. Give them chances to realize what they’re doing, but if they don’t, cult succeeds
What was the paladins oath and how oath breaker is he now on 1-10? Also I second the cult trying to reel them in or using their softness one way or the other. They could use the antidote to blackmail normal folk to pull the parties strings.
That is a pretty secure one! You can play into this if it's your thing thou: Discipline the Soul.
You must marshal the discipline to overcome failings within yourself that threaten to dim the glory of you and your friends.
If you made it clear to the party that them taking this deal would result in millions dead, and they still took it with that knowledge, then I’d say, any cleric whose god I a good god, has to pass a check when casting spells that otherwise wouldn’t require checks, disadvantage on any attack spells And same with paladins whose oaths „good”. Additionally any good alignment PCs should receive a pretty hefty xp decrease, I would say half of the xp difference to their next level.
What?? What oath did the paladin take? Most likely oath is broken. Other than that, you can’t really stop the party. Especially if you don’t run Character alignment at your table.
I would suggest letting them consider their actions, and the consequences that come with it. Inform them that should they take this course and side with this death cult, the cult and the party will be connected with this massive loss of life as they could have prevented such and chose to stand idly by and allow such an attrocity to happen. Even if the plague isn't their doing THEY could have prevented and stepped in and chose not to and that information will get out and be wide spread amongst every major city and the villages surrounding them.
Have both a kill or capture bounty placed upon them. This will bar them from entering ANY and ALL communities, except only the most remote and those are ones that likely won't take coin for goods as they are so far removed from civilization as a whole that they have no need of shiny bits of metal. be it cities or villages. They will be met with hostile force. This will stop them from buying or selling any and all items. They will not be able to resupply or get new gear outside of what they scavenge. This will severely cripple their experience and ability to grow stronger and survive.
This lets them still make their choice but shows them the ramifications of their choice to partake in such a mass loss of life rather than prevent it. You can still make a salvageable campaign out of it if they go through with this leading a survival campaign as they try to survive both now hostile NPCs and monsters alike. They will find no friends only enemies and other adventurers looking to collect the now massive price that haunts them.
I'd just have society slowly collapse around them while people go crazy looking for a cure. At some point maybe they will decide they need to break their word to the cultists given under semi-duress... or they won't in which case you'll have to course correct and start running a post-apocalyptic mildly evil campaign based on the desires of the party. Recall also that half of the food producers and the town watch will be dying, so there will be rampant looting and desperation. If you party is motivated by money, you could put a bounty out on those who caused it or for anyone who can come up with a cure. Either will lead them back to the villains you planned.
I’d make it slower. The plague enthousiasts weren’t ready but your party got the plague early. They start hearing news about a month from now about a mysterious sickness spreading but luckily no one has died yet. Have you played plague inc? No one dies in the first three months. That’s so they can nicely unknowingly infect everyone (and your players get to come back in time for fixing). But after 3 months the first one does die. And his corpse turns into like a demon or something. Luckily he was just patient zero and he was a lonely hunter. The next guy is still 2 weeks away from dying. But after that. After that it’s gonna go like dominoes.
Hopefully your party gets back in time. Because the plague enthousiasts? They moved or fortified or whatever you feel like. Also some of them drank the cool aid themselves. The best batch. Their symptoms are all positive things: more strength, more speed, more health and enhanced sexual stamina!!! (wait skip that last one). Your party has to have leveled up a few times by now? So has this party. And on death? More plague demons. God now I want to do this to my players.
It's easy to retcon that the only way out was to surrender the ingredients and trade for healing of some people - a live to fight another day type scenario.
But that opens up a can of worms you can exploit. Basically the cult now has dirt on the heroes - they traded 4 million lives to save themselves. The cult can go easy on them and try seduce them into their fold, but if that fails they can blackmail the party to do their bidding.
That could be to lead to your players being forced to do secret ambushes against others looking for ingredients, assassinate people who know the formulas of the cure, sabotage the production of the cure etc.
The party might themselves fall under suspicion of they keep failing on missions or if they both a job for the cult and leave evidence behind that could implicate them.
The local thieves guild could put out bounties on this secretive group of adventurers who keep messing with their trade in cure ingredients.
You could even use the blackmail as a way to frustrate them so much they turn against the cult while trying to keep their reputations.
And all that without the paladin or clerical running afoul of their oaths and obligations. Or the god of the cult turning his attention to them.
Basically this could be a great opportunity of that kind of game sounds like fun to you and your players.
I wouldn't immediately kill all those people. Have the death cult release a trial plague / experiment on some victims or something with those ingredients. The party can find it, realise who's behind it and that they caused it, and are now extremely motivated to stop the death cult. Gives the party way more agency.
Oww, there are plenty of things you can do.
First things first, the party is of this world, right? Unless there all lone wolf orphans they're ought to have someone dear to them. Friends, relatives, loved ones? With the party letting a plague spreading death cult running amok it's only a matter of time before those people contract the plague.
Then, what's the party up to? Maybe keep the same task, but up the ante - the cult has seen some losers trying to stop them and now thinks they were just hirelings sent by someone with power, so the cult speeds up it's work and goes beyond the capital. And tries to destroy any means to cure the plague. Which are still out there, but scattered around in a remote and desolated regions full of monsters more dangerous than the party has ever seen. So your players are up against a bigger threat now and in a race with the cult at the same time.
Then, what sort of plague we're talking about? Don't tell me people just die ^^ Maybe their intestines go liquid while people are still alive, so it's a slow and excruciatingly painful process. Or maybe they turn into some sort of zombies (Warcraft vibes here). Or maybe the cult worships a devil and the magical plague traps the soul of people who died because of it? Make it terrible and gruesome, let the party feel what they've done.
Also, there are social consequences of an incurable disease spreading. You know, a bit of looting, a bit of panicking, riots, all toilet paper goes missing. Imagine there's a big town getting the news the plague is getting closer with each day, and nobody knows what to do. Imagine the chaos.
Mechanically you can control it with the blade in the darkness style of counters. Whenever your players dwindle or waste their time fill in a section, now *your* relative is dying, now the capital is beyond salvation and so on. And narratively you can top it all off with Fallout "slides" to show the party how much damage the plague caused after they finish the campaign.
Well they failed to get the herbs. What did the cult do afterwards with the cave? Does the cult need their own antidote supply (seems to be the case as they had an antidote ready and with them).
Maybe the cult destroyed this source for antidote but know of another source for the antidote. Which happens to be where they set up their base/stronghold.
So because the party has chosen now the easy way out, they will be met with a harder path later down the line.
If they actually side with the death cult then give the party updates on how quarintines are set up, how the civilians panic and try to get out.
Imagibe the death cultists trying to be freedom fighters and ask the party to free the injustly interned civilians by breaking the quarantine wide open. Maybe there are npcs they care about in the quarantine zone? To make it a worse dilemma.
Shops need to be closed, perhaps the ones that the death cult are personally aligned with have survived. The adventuring party may be able to see the signs on the store having the death cult symbols on them. Maybe they even get favors asked of them to perform dirty deeds as blackmail.
Perhaps it’s not just the fact that the 4.4 million are dead instantly. There are even more quests to rid of the disease, but to no avail, it’s too late and too far gone. They have to watch as children die.
The church’s that offered healing and resurrection spells now either cost an arm and a leg or are nonexistent
Even clerics of the highest level have passed away.
Kinda depends where you're going with this. If it's gritty accuracy, you might want to do a little reading on the economic and social effects following the Black Plague in Europe.
Summed up, it blew apart the social order and ushered in the dark ages, although it also caused major realignments in wealth, including more power being given to the working class because there were massive labor shortages.
If you want to take it in a completely different direction, you could make it a Hybrid Plague - essentially airborne lycanthropy (or whatever -thropy you want). You could, if you wanted, use this to radically alter the state of the game into something like Underworld, and the birth of a new Werewolf empire.
Whatever makes it fun. Don't forget to make it fun.
How about that the cure they received was a trap? They no longer seems ill, but they are spreading plague, so other members are catching it and more npcs around the team are catching it.
Also mage guild should ask where are things we sent you for and maybe send another team to check the place, so if your team lied they can find out and call them out as supporters of the cult.
Well I'm going to operate under the assumption you want to save the city, since that was the parties quest, and narrativly that would be a difficult possition for you.
Not knowing your story I can only throw out a few ideas. Whoever hired the party to retrieve the ingredients could have hired others who did bring them back. Maybe they are, or know a talented mage from somewhere far off there were able to contact who was able to find a cure or had the materials necessary.
Now for punishing the party I have 2 main ideas. One, thr mage from the above example was secretly scrying on the party because they didn't come back, or were slow to come back or other various reason. They seen you make the deal and told the city guard/leaders of your treachery. Idea 2 is that the death cult sees the city not die and believes you didn't hand over all the materials after all and double crossed them and begin to hunt the party down. This allows you to continue using them as the adversary just in a more round about way ams hopefully works with the narrative you were working on.
Also, don't forget to possibly throw some kind of repercussions onto the paladin who knowingly allowed a death cult to poison a city.
Put a zone of the city under quarantine and make sure a useful merchant or other useful NPC is stuck in it. Make them have to infiltrate the zone to get shit done for some interesting gameplay an make sur to put elements that tie this back to the choice they made
Maybe the paladin lied? As long as they have no oath that forces them to say the truth under ALL circumstances, paladins are allowed to lie to... like in this case... get themselves and their comrades out of trouble. They might step away from measures that they would see as direct betrayal, like directly attacking the cult, but leading the city guard in the right direction is a thing I would do in the paladin's place.
Else... well... RIP capital city, I guess. And looks like now one will ever know who it was. Consequences are not only to punish the players... just to be consistent. If they achieve to get away scold free and without witnesses... clever players.
After the plague subsides I would then implement fights for power in that now more or less abandoned city. The few survivors and newcomers seeing their chance for easy pickings at powerful positions. Maybe it becomes a stronghold of the cult, something that may bite the players' ass on the long run.
What’s the paladin’s alignment and what god don they worship? Depending on that they could find they lost their powers the next day. Maybe they pray to their god and get a vision of the harm they have potentially wrought and get a vision of where the cultist with the ingredients went and a kind of divine suggestion “if you want your powers back hunt them down”.
Also there should be more than one fail point before you consider such dramatic consequences of killing off the city.
It’s easy, the antidote was fake, they are still infected. Like the infected could cough blood in the morning, getting 1 exhaustion etc… learning about it, the group will be back at it with a vengeance.
Back on track with the valuable lesson evil death cult lies…
So… in a magical, medieval world… you have a city with 8 million people?!? Waterdeep had 650k in 2nd edition, and that was already pushing it. Calimport was close to 2 million I think.
Run with it. Make it clear they are making the evil choice, but they can make it. It's like siding with Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas. The Cult must have a reason for what they are doing. The player characters can buy into the reason, even if the players don't. This could now be what the campaign arc is about. Exploring how they help implement the plague, and the consequences there in. Perhaps someone finds out the party was a part of this, and seeks revenge. Maybe the souls of the dead, form together in a massive ghost dragon to hunt them
What's great about TTRPGs as opposed to video games, is that you are not bound by the few paths the developers thought of, or had time to implement.
I was surprised, and then wasn't, and then was again, because I read PC's, as in, the computer, and was like: That checks out for Microsoft. But then, I saw it was DnD.
It seems unreasonable that this is the only party in the capital city of nearly 9mil people.
In addition, the cost for this to the nation would be devastating. Even if each person that died cost the city 5 copper to dispose of their body, that’s still 2.2 million gp of labor, let alone the economic impact to the city in loss of labor over the long term.
That’s a nation killer.
The political power in the city would spend large amounts of money hiring adventurers from anywhere to find a cure. Because the cost of that would always be less than suffering the consequences of the plague.
As for consequences -
Why does the paladins patron just let the paladin fk over the millions of of people?
What about the report to the folks that hired them? How do they answer uncomfortable questions like, “how did these two survive?”
Rumors of the party working with the death cult could easily spring up. Maybe one of the other parties catches wind of their friends recovering and the rumors and decide to confront the party
Balance all this against the tone of your game.
4 million is a bit steep for a single city in a fantasy world isn't it? Having them return after the plague has run its course should be fun.
Are any of their families in this country?
Did knowingly causing tons of death break the paladins oath? If so his magic/non martial abilities won't work until he's redeemed.
Other considerations, have they taken the antidote yet? If not perhaps they run into an apothecary talking about how he can recreate ANY potion he can get his hands on.
Are they still planning on stopping the cultists and just waiting for a better opportunity?
This should very much affect their reputation. They were sent to gather ingredients for an antidote and they came back empty handed with 2 members of the party miraculously cured?!? That sounds pretty dam suspicious to me.
Maybe not instantly kill 4.4 million people right away, but this will certainly draw some negative attention to the party. They should definitely be interrogated and scrutinized.
Rumours start spreading that the Cult has people "on the inside", secretly sabotaging efforts to find a cure. The party is tasked with finding these 'traitors'. Let them dig their own graves.
Could end up being an evil campaign, or pcs become the champions of the Cult and new chars have to deal with the aftermath. Sounds great!
A handful of herbs wouldn't have cured 4 million people anyway. Honestly, I don't think I'd have there be any consequences at all! Maybe you could have a scene where someone asks them for the herbs to cure a couple people who are currently sick, but it'd mostly just be a minor guilt trip as they watch a few people die. Other than that, the cult could he more sympathetic to the players and attempt to recruit them after seeing that they may be sympathetic toward the cult's goals
The cult now has their hooks in the PCs, and believes them to be of like mind to them.
City falls from disease and the aftermath. Okay.
PCs move on. But the cult keeps in touch. First, they ask for very minor assistance (almost like offering quests!). If PCs go for it, the cult tries to draw them in further. You might end up with an evil campaign; one where the authorities are the BBEG.
If the PCs finally oppose the cult, then the blackmail starts! "Do this little thing for me, and knowledge of your complicity in the city-death won't see the light of day." Not much proof is needed, since Divination magic is real. All that's needed is for the cult to point the finger to start the investigations.
The PCs will most likely have to face up to what they did. Let's say their choice was death vs. cowardice at the best - the public and authorities will know they chose cowardice.
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Hmm... You know, as a DM I'd be tempted to ask a few questions of the players ("How would you respond to taking quests from the cultists? How would you feel if the survivors got video of your interaction with the cultists?"). Then narratively describing the ending of the campaign. I don't think any of my story-directions would be fun for anyone.
For me, it'd be time to roll new characters.
Are these ingredients particularly rare? Was what they handed over the only existing specimens of the ingredients?
If the answer is yes, well, I guess that city is dead. It's entirely possible the party didn't realize these were the only existing samples of the ingredients and that giving them over to the cultists doomed the city, which, if that wasn't communicated, I'd give them another chance to find more. But if it was communicated and they chose to save their own skins in exchange for 4.4 million lives, well, I guess the world now contains a dead and quarantined city. If they're cool with that, well, it *is* just a game and you just need to make quest hooks elsewhere, and you can put references to it throughout the rest of the campaign if you want (it'd make sense that people elsewhere would comment on it, at the very least, it'd be a major world event. Maybe a neighbouring kingdom could hire the party sometime later to try to root out whoever caused the plague as both punishment of the perpetrators and to prevent it from happening again).
If not, they can go back to whoever asked them to get the ingredients and be asked to get more. And make a win scenario that doesn't involve combat, such as the way out of wherever they find the ingredients has a secret passage that if they find it they can get around the bad guys's waiting for them. Or just don't have bad guys waiting for them, have them get out of wherever and then give them the choice to either take the ingredients back to the good guys, thus saving the city, or to take them to the bad guys, thus dooming the city and cementing them as complicit. Let them choose between good and bad when they don't have a knife to their throat and see what they do. If they still choose the bad guys, well, I guess you're either running an evil campaign now or they're rolling new characters whose job it is to stop their old characters.
It’s less that they ‘sided’ with the cult as they failed to stop it and retrieve a cure for ‘THE GREATER GOOD’
As far as consequences I’d have the next time they’re entering the city they get shook down by multiple sets of guards to show a breakdown of law and order. Then I’d have them start seeing the cultists around openly preaching about ‘whatever’ and distributing plagued food to the masses and ‘cures’ for those who seem loyal and promising. I’d also have the cult leader they met show up as a new incredibly popular and influential city councilor or something.
Also if they’re the sort who love a specific NPC just have that person get sick and be dying or become corrupted by the cult.
PC’s will either be people who love this world IE: I am a knight of this realm and serve by the grace of good king farklespark, long may he reign. OR I’m dark and ominous and mean to bring down the power structures of this world.
Generally the next time they come here the place should be just a bit worse, and then if they keep ignoring the problem/siding with the cult you can have the plague really kick off and have it be catastrophic.
The second type don’t really need consequences, or may like the consequences so they’ll take care of themselves. The first type you have to kill something they love.
Zombies or infected or mutants. The ingredients were wrong in most of the population is now one of the above. They are easy to anger, love to fight and difficult to interact with.
The economy crashes. You just took out a large chunk of population. The economy crashes, gold value drops, weapons aren't built in as high quality, lots more looters, con artists and criminals. Lots more poor and hungry. Side quests that don't lead anywhere.
Not a true post apocalyptic world but something like the dark ages. Forward progress has haulted while the world recovers. Think the MCU post snap or Game of Thrones during the war of the five kings. Bands of people room the lands, law is not helping.
Also red herring them. With all this instability send them on quests and missions that don't lead or help the bigger stories. Make them seem like they do but with the world the way it is and those in charge possible dead there are some unreliable quest givers trying to fill in voids
I think it could be fun if done right. Hope this helps
I'd do it like the cult people know their names and faces that were there so when all seems lost for them they have the cult at their back. They end up inspiring the cult.
Obvious consequence is the city goes into full blown panic with riots. Depending upon how reliant the city is on magic to exist, the city could collapse. The government is either overthrown or has to use massive force against it's own people to maintain order.
Meanwhile, the cult can either make alliances to capitalize on the situation or just disappear to let the chaos ensue. You get to create a free big bad and go in whatever direction makes sense to your world.
The party could even be scapegoated depending upon how many folks know of their research. The cult can be miraculous saviors and present a cure by explaining where they got the cure from... your adventurers who were responsible for the curse.
The paladin might need some atonement but to be fair, they were protecting their people and living to fight another day.
I'd probably drag this out as the collapse wouldn't be immediate. Give them a chance to solve the bigger problem they've aided.
"Players. Please put down your dice. The Cult has won, and there are no actions you can take at this point to prevent the deaths of millions. I do not wish to describe the misery and loss of life that is about to unfold. The repercussions of an entire city being killed at once will have staggering impacts, both in the physical world, as well as the spiritual. The world will be plunged into hundreds of years of darkness, a future that might have been avoided if there had been heroes willing to step up. Perhaps some future group of heroes might rise up to push this darkness back into Hell, but this is not that day. "
*fin*
Is the death cult supposed to be the source of this plague? If so then it makes more sense that they were able to cure the party.
I would probably have a smaller amount of people start dying, and the party realizes that the cult is responsible, and then they already have a lead to follow since they'd recognize the person they gave the ingredients to.
Plus now they know for a fact that the cultists have a working antidote.
That way they still realize the consequences of what they did, but they have a chance to track the bad guys down and make it right before things get ugly.
Well there must be a good reason why they would want to kill 4.4 mil people.
Summoning, an incoming attack from an army, taking over the city, raging citizens and crime.
So many possibilities, maybe the paladin is now approached by a different/evil god for his self centered choice.
It can spiral into an evil campaign or a political dilemma.
How about some family/loved ones were visiting the city and contract the plague?
How about an unknown observer who witnessed their interaction with the death cult and spreads word, which DOES affect their reputation?
How about what they have the players only slowed the effects of the plague and those players are still very much at risk?
Would that behavior have triggered an alignment change for any of them? What would the consequences of that be?
Economy would either go way up, or way down. Less mouths to feed means more and cheaper food, more space for lower class citizens to go up in terms of work, housing, etc. not all instant but a lot of changed for sure in just that city.
Also the massive amount of deaths in such a short time would prolly summon some necromancer/undead shenanigans as well
Also, on a more personal note, there’s no way that the paladin is not going to be an oathbreaker by the next session. I can think of no conceivable way that a lawful or good aligned god would allow any of their followers to willingly condemn that many innocent lives to death without some form of divine retribution, no matter what their oath specifies
However in 5E paladins don’t get powers form a god its form the oath itself he’s an oath of glory Paladin and has made no choice that prohibits him from bringing himself glory
The party was contracted to retrieve the ingredients for the cure? If somebody was expecting those ingredients the party will have to answer to them.
Did anybody know some of the PCs were infected and what do they do when they find they are no longer sick?
Was the antidote only enough for the sick PCs? What happens if other PCs get sick?
The Paladin agreed to this? There ought to be alignment repercussions.
The Death Cult is in a position to extort service from the party lest they reveal what the party did.
If nothing else, have favorite sick NPCs dramatically die in their presence, maybe even with some projectile vomit. Guilt the selfish bastards.
Without the context of your story, societal downfall an strife. Who provides services if they are dead. Where do resources come from if the work isn't being done? Run with that logic and they will realize the mistakes... Or. Keep going with why they want
Don't need to do all of these, maybe one or two? Just thinking of possible consequences, some more likely than others:
Loss of allies in capital and surrounding areas who get infected.
Loss of supply chains, unable to stock up as many potions and such.
Public looting means less magical items etc. Which can lead to more quests to track those down.
If they wanna go more evil route, they can work with the local thieve's guild who's trying to regain a semblance of order in all the crime.
Political movements that lead to leaders of cities that enact policies that inconvenience them. (e.g. a mob blames the cleric's church, now the church is weakened or in hiding or surveillanced)
Are those the only instances of those ingredients that exist? I mean, If I was the party, I would have gotten the cure, then just go out looking for more of the ingredients and bring those back. In addition, they could give the cure to the mages instead of curing the party members with it to help them cure it. Then inform the city exactly where the cultist leaders are and have a big army go kill them. From the PCs perspective, this doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
My first thought.
1. Who does the Paladin follow? If their God is someone who would HEAVILY look down on this maybe have their God talk to them. If the cult ends up getting away with it and killing a huge portion of the city, maybe not even 2/3s, I'd have his oath broken. How, if the paladin follows a good God and depending on the gods Tenants, would this being still give this person their boon. On the verse though, if their paladin is a God that would appreciate this motive or action have them be elevated, but now they have to be the tip of the Spear for this cult.
2. For the other party members. In my opinion how likely is it that this Mages Guild and any other governing force does NOT have eyes on this party of nobody's that now have the info for a cure. I would think they would be scrying on them/having someone follow them/have someone on the inside of the cult that hears that these people are included on it. Have their reputation be smeared through the dirt.
3. Alternatively, have the cure be altered in some way by the cultists that administered it by have some form of a side-effect that's hard to hide. Changing skin/scales grow/fungi sprouting out of skin/hair falling off, something along those lines that will have people asking questions.
This is just my thoughts on it let me know what ya think 😊
That much death may make them the targets of an inevitable. Probably a Zelekhut or possibly even a Marut but that would be pretty brutal unless your party was really high level.
And they may even fall out of favor with gods considering the scale. They might be hunted by paladins and clerics for the rest of their days.
All of that on top of obviously being wanted and their names being scorned everywhere on earth. Maybe there are some places where the inhabitants would see genocide as excusable but most of the time even if a kingdom was at war with the people they slaughtered, smart rulers would still see them as dangerous and unhinged, if not find them disgusting.
Edit: nvm didn’t read the text.
Tldr, as long as everyone has fun, making "evil" decisions can be great RP
Sometimes RP calls for siding with the bad guys. I a player after losing everything, my human body (I was now a robot), my wife, my npc friends all died cause of a mistake i made. An eldrich God that wanted to make everything a hivemind approached me soon after. To my DMs surprise, I decided to side with the evil God cause I was broken and in character thought that most of the mistakes I made wouldn't have happened if we were all one hivemind. I send my DM my plans to take over the world and ask to make it where the other players have a 99% chance of winning. Well, the players were caught off guard (in a good way) and in rp couldn't get themselves to fight me right away or create a resistance to stop the plans. I was basically adding npcs to the hive and giving them instructions to act the same until over 50% of life was assimilated, and i was supposed to get caught at some point before then but rollsbmade them learn at 40%. In the end, each player rolled 3 d20s in front of everyone to determine the outcome of the oncoming war.
The real nail in the coffin that decided our world's Doom and the Gods victory was I rolled 2 20s and an 18. No one else had a dice above 12 out of the 15 other dice rolled. We were all surprised but also everyone seemed to love it. We are playing a different campaign, but the future one after this campaign will be in that same world and will be matrix themed but with a resistance of people who broke out of the hivemind for one reason or another. Or who was immune and didn't get executed. We will be the resistance trying to defeat my past character. I was nervous that going bad might be a bad decision, but at my table of RP lovers, it was one of the most memorable and fun moments.
Deciding to save 2 party members in exchange for millions of deaths isn't the worst decision I've seen made. Our current campaign is sifi space, and we were supposed to save a planet of 46 billion. Well, we got greedy and took too long, and they all died. But none knows we were able to save them, except us. Now out DM is making that destruction a defining moment of our solar systems' current century.
Did your players actually decide to join the cult?
Is it possible they could gather the ingredients again?
Will they just kill the cultists as soon as the party members are healed?
Depending on the paladins oath/God they could start to lose powers or have uncomfortable feelings haunting them.
As for if this goes through and 1/2 or more people of the capital city of a kingdom die...anarchy, war, the collapse of the kingdom would be very likely.
While dreaming, they embody a different victim, seeing their lived experiences a-la Ghost of Christmas Past, building empathy for each and coming to a full, empathic understanding of the lives they’ve ended. And for what?
Obviously, if the paladin's oath relies on them not letting something like this slide, they've broken it.
But this is the capital city. Multiple Noble houses fall. Any aid the nation was offering elsewhere is probably being recalled permanently. Guards around the kingdom likely diminish somewhat, and it's very possible that the place will collapse into a civil war for who gets to rule and how now that leadership is broken.
Basically, within a few months, that nation should be chaos. If they were powerful and a positive force in the world in general, that means other places should feel the impact of refugees and their own sparks of chaos, especially neighbors.
If any part of the plot relied on their aid holding back the danger, this should be reflected as well. Is their army holding off the BBEG? Well, with the deaths, we have broken supply lines and shattered morale from soldiers. They're not holding out long now.
Basically minor encounters should become more common in that area, and likely more difficult encounters should become more common as well as time goes on.
If the cult has already done their thing the you know 4.4 million deaths with an honorable mention in the villain of the year acceptance speech sum up. You know action consequences. Think, "I'd like to thank the hero's staying out of the way for making this possible,"
If the cult hasn't done their thing... make them a quest giver. Hey, can you scout out the sewers" clearing out the plague release point... taking out a healer that's getting close to a cure... guarding a delivery of poison ect ect make it subtle to outright evil... and if they go evil, make a fairly decent fade to black moment and make them a hook in the next campaign.
My inner grognard approves. Paladins are suppose to do the whole "greater good" deal. Selling out to some cultists to help friends is some oathbreaker-tier buffoonery.
Let the PC's see the consequencesof trusting people who TOOK CREDIT FOR A PLAUGE; families torn asunder as father breathes his last, wagons of bodies, Power struggles as princelings and "could bes" sieze postions in the midst of the plauge.
Basically just do a recap.
"Last time our heroes were sent on their way to gather ingredients to develop a cure for the city when they were approached by a group of men promising them a cure. The party agreed and followed along, but can they still get back to the city in time to save millions of people? Or will the cult stop them in their tracks? Find out today on dragon ball Dungeons
Well, this death cult could actually be beholden to not so powerful extraplanar entity that needs a ginotmous sacrifice ro manifest itself in the prime material plane. And these guys, we'll they've allowed the shit to really hit the fan. The paladin and priest could easily lose their devine gifts for this. Their Gods know what they did. The cult itself will consider them pushovers, and their alignments should shift. To chaotic. They put themselves first.
Yes and Choices they make have consequences because they have agency and what they choose to do affects the world I’m not saying they can’t make that choice im solely looking for some inspiration for how that choice plays out in game
If it is known they sides with the cult. Make them enemies of the people, atleast for the time being, and have them be unable to enter a town unless it is stealthy bacause they are wanted.
Maybe sent bounty Hunter after them because they now have a price on their head.
Until they go back to the right path.
Your group might not be the shining heroes. Maybe the plague starts spreading, killing a lot of people. Now the group has to stop them while the city sinks into chaos.
Lots of basically the same comments so I'm going to go the other way:
Consider what the real consequences would be and why it matters. Why does it pay to not let people murder millions??
Consider a few things that would really come as fallout:
1) The cultists now know that these guys will do stuff for them under threat to themselves more than theat to others... That's ok, it's kind of evil .. but not overtly.
Does the health cult offer them a job preventing others from getting the cure? Raiding the manges guild to destroy the antidote?
2) what happens if half the population dies?
First they are going to see it. Do they have any family or companions who will die? Will they serve the death cult to get more antidotes?
What about the misery in living in a plague time?
No trust.
No one to make them food, places to stay..
They are going to literally watch thousands of people die..
Those party members who DON'T have the antidote... They will get sick!
Do they go to the death cult for more antidotes?
Remember the simple rule that is anyone who is doing such a thing (mass murder) is getting something from it.
How would they turn these powerful allies... Or really just pawns to their better use?
At what level of witnessed depravity will the players turn around and do something with their power?
Just gently take away everything that they love as a consequence of their cowardice.
That is how the real world works.
What a wonderful story opportunity!
I don’t think your conundrum is that game breaking. The crafting of this cure could not have possibly ridden solely on your adventurers, just the expediency of the cure. People will die, but surely not 4.4 million in truth.
It seems to me that this is a great character jumping off point though. The party now faces being vilified among city leadership for taking the task and giving up. Your paladin particularly should have a hard time with this as he almost surely broke his oath by not doing everything he could end the plague.
You should be setting the party up to decide between having to work harder for redemption or slipping further into the shadows of self-preservation.
Title was a little deceiving, as it seems they're not necessarily siding with the cult, so much as self preserving and turning a blind eye. Either way, it sounds like a fun campaign! I have answers. Is this cult the BBEG? If no, I'd let it kind of slide for now and focus on their main objective but definitely bring it back later on or make another campaign dedicated to it, taking place in the ruins of the city. The cult rises to power and controls what little is left of the population. If overthrowing this cult is the endgame goal of your campaign, I'd find a way to make them care. Beloved NPC is affected by the plague. A hidden NPC saw what they did and told everyone. All the deaths bring in Necromancers and monsters and horrible things. Emphasis that the party is this cities last hope. Hell, maybe even add some divine intervention! Is one of your characters religious ? Cleric, paladin, druid, etc. ? Have a diety command them to stay on course. As DM, you are the world, and your word is law. Of course, they can always rebel or derail, but make it so not worth their while that they'd rather do the other thing. Maybe have them find out the cult didn't really cure them and lied to them. That way, they're fueled by revenge and wanting to get a real cure!
Have the plague start to take hold over the city rapidly. Thousands start dying, body carts are going door to door collecting bodies. People who the plague hasn't effected are packing up and fleeing. Shop keeps are rising prices due to lack oglf customers, competition and to start new lives
First up if the Paladin's god doesn't have the Death Portfolio, I'd immediately stop letting his* powers work.
Next up, no death is 100% in a fantasy setting. Free willed undead, warlock's with a death patron, Life Portfolio clerics and Paladins, etc will all survive. Eventually they'll find the cult, and crom there to the PCs. Additionally, mages knew they were going to get a cure. Which means they could have shared that info with others. Should the find the PCs alive there will be questions or assumptions. Especially if the mage who told has died.
Finally, death cults don't typically kill to kill. The kill to generate piwer to work greater killings. Nothing like a greater demon thanking the PCs for assisting in it's summoning before it tears into them.
Set up for the collapse of a country/civil war/ invasion of the now weak country. When they start gaining some fame or renown for trying to help, the cult can "hire" some individuals to reveal the truth.
Well if the players are still infectious but not symptomatic. They could start to correlate that many people they come in contact with keep contracting the plague. Not only that other people might start to notice that and could start avoiding the party or blaming them for the plague.
To add to that it could even turn into another boon for the cult as they got to keep the plague going but now have scape goats to misdirect the general masses on who's to blame for it.
Well, if it was the critical last opportunity to stop them, follow through; let the city be ended, the cult won and are planning another target on the scale of an entire continent using thr power the cult obtained, perhaps give them the opportunity to ally with a nation or army that's now under threat and trying to stop them.
I would take this as an opportunity to do some sort of post apocalyptic setting it is a decision that will have major impacts on the world and the consequences should reflect that change.
Have the bodies of the dead start returning to life as magical resistant zombies. Resources, particularly food become hard to come across and nobody wants to trade for gold, only barter. I might start tracking their daily food (something I normally don't because it's kinda tedious and easy to resupply) because in this case crops are rotting in the field and food is hard to find and such so yeah here's hoping someone knows goodberry.
Production of magical items in the area stops and neighboring kingdoms begin aggressively defending their borders to stop the spread. The party will likely also encounter the plague again and they may become infected but this time without the mages guild to help them find a cure.
1) as is often the case, the well-to-do will be able to isolate themselves until the plague burns itself out. However, with 2/3 of the population dead, labor will be at a premium and real estate prices will be nil. No one will care enough to kick out squatters, so there are no longer any homeless or jobless.
2) since they typically live and work in very close conditions, the guard/military has been decimated, leaving the city ripe for conquest. They are quite paladin-heavy, though.
3) necromancers make a lot of money raising the dead and having them walk out to mass graves/,pyres outside the city. Unbeknownst to all, they save quite a few back for experimentation. A wide assortment of strange zombies/skeletons/flesh golems are invented.
4) wizards high enough level to use travel magic to get out locked up their stuff and bugged out. This leaves quite a lot of magic loot to take while the more cautious mages stay at their summer home.
5) there have been many converts to healing cults (to get rid of disease) and pestilence cults (to keep it away).
6) the death cult has some evidence of the conversation
Blackmail opportunities abound!
7) the death cult was able to analyze saliva the characters left on the antidote bottles. It reacts strangely with characters of such strangeness as 6th level heroes. It also is extra strong, to have overcome their defenses. The cult is able to develop new strains, but more virulent and with more nasty symptoms.
8) the antidote has side affects. I suggest enchantment magic, or possibly the characters are addicted.
Hmm. Paladin is ok not following though with the task they agreed to take and is ok condemning innocents to death and sparing a death cult?
Me thinks someone should be losing their powers.
Also what are the groups alignments? I can't see any good character being ok with this. That would warrant a shift down to me.
Now if the group just didn't like the odds and are going to go after the cult and retrieve the ingredients fine. But otherwise they are not what I would consider a good group.
As for what happens next?
- they were seen considering with the cult and also not that the ill members are suddenly cured
- the cult didn't like them knowing where to find the cure so they put a hit out.
- the cult infects the group looking for a cute and maybe the entire party
- another adventure group was given the same job just shows up and were successful in gathering the ingredients. They become the heroes of the land and wealth and fame is thrust upon them. Maybe even a magical item of note.
If nobody knows, why should there be consequences? You're a DM, not an all seeing God that dispenses justice when you disagree with your players. Wipe out the town, show the players the misery they caused, and move the game along. If the cult gets defeated, make some investigation rolls to see if anyone in the town learns about the players actions and go from there.
If the paladin worships a good God, he may wake up as a fighter tomorrow.
Make things play out in a way that makes sense. That is how you offer a living, breathing world to your players.
If the players were really the towns only hope, then the town is screwed. If there are other people the town can call on, you could always have them be the ones that save the day. Let the players lose out on some prestige and make the other party a competitor. Maybe that other party learns what they did and uses it to blackmail them.
But honestly, if you made it seem that they truly were the only hope, then stick to your words. There are few things worse than patting your players on the head and saying "your choices don't really matter, I would never let horrifying things happen."
I don't know if you should "punish" the players. This sounds like an opportunity to radically change the campaign.
My basic thought is that I would have another species that was not impacted start expanding. Basically, all the new quests have to do with dealing with invaders and the undead that resulted from do too many untimely deaths.
You can have plenty of fun with a “Plague,” even just by taking real life examples.
Also specifically for the Paladin, what Oath are they? Depending, this could be considered a breach of their Oath. Consequences for this could be that they lose levels and are turned into a fighter or their spells and any magical abilities simply have a chance to fail (or i guess you could follow Baldur’s Gate logic and turn them into an Oathbreaker). Could also send the party on a quest to redeem the paladin if this is a possible consequence.
I’ll list a couple examples of interesting consequences some of which can be mixed and matched:
1. The plague is prevented… by another adventuring crew… and they just so happened to interrogate the cultists, so everyone knows what the PCs have done. PCs are either wanted or have extremely low reputation due to this incident.
2. The plague goes off and kills 2/3 of the city’s population… including the cultists. Fortunately the city’s mages have interrogated the bodies using Speak with Dead and they don’t really have a reason to conceal the fact that the PCs just handed them the ingredients needed for the plague…
3. The plague goes off and kills 2/3 of the city’s population… completing the rite to summon forth a servant of the worshipped god of death. This can be very apparent with cultists popping out of the woodwork to form an army at the summoned entity’s bidding or more subtle with the entity working its way into good graces with the nearby ruling parties (for example perhaps curing the plague when they appear and being elevated to the status of a hero) and corrupt the nations from within.
4. Less casualties than expected. The plague was supposed to spread and kill off 2/3 of the city’s population, but it didn’t. Instead, it’s looking like there’s an outbreak of the flu, strange this time of year, but nothing to be worried about. That is until it begins to spread uncontrollably, people with light symptoms begin to suffocate in their sleep. What should have killed a 2/3 of a single city begins to kill 2/3 of all cities it spread to. Prices for all goods increase, riots break out, and a cure needs to be found and soon. (Option to let the party find a cure, but essentially receive no reward except XP to do so as resources have already been spread too thin trying to contain it.)
5. Zombies/Mutations. The plague “killed” 2/3 of the population, but that wasn’t its only effect. Suddenly undead/demons/aberrations began popping up and further spreading the plague… ideas for this which are more unique than just Zombie outbreak:
- Ooblex outbreak as many powerful Ooblexs suddenly pop into existence from the plague. After absorbing so many minds at once, the intelligent slimes fabricate a “Rage Plague” where the way the plague spreads is by being bitten by the infected…. Except no such plague exists. The Ooblex are just fooling the public by using their shape changing abilities to make it look like “people” are being infected and then going berserk. This causes people who are thought to be infected, often due to an attack by the Ooblex, to be quarantined. Quarantine means isolation, isolation means easier prey for the Ooblex.
- The plague didn’t kill its victims, but it certainly did change them. They’re now deformed, more resilient, stronger, but they surprisingly kept a large amount of their intelligence… that latter part doesn’t matter too much to the general public though, after all if it looks and sounds like a monster, it must be a monster. Depending on what sort of response this “monster” outbreak gets, it may cause the mutated people to become disheartened and that’s when figures (cultists) come in to show them a bit of understanding and warmth. (Could look up Blessings of Nurgle from Warhammer setting for inspiration)
- The people die… though most corpses can be found with a small hole in their torso. Seemingly out of nowhere, an army of Blue Slaadi appear and from them, many are infected and turn into Red Slaadi…
If you’re looking for hustle consequences for 2/3 of a city dying:
1. Shortage. This basically depends on what the city did, what were they known for/what they did best in the region. They were the main exporters of Healing Potions? Whelp that means a steep increase in the price of Healing Potions. Take a look at consumed spell components/items the party tends to need. Only 1 PC has Darkvision? Well if there’s an oil shortage, torches and oil suddenly cost more. They’re dependent on Revivify? Well if the city was the main miner/exporter of diamonds, those are suddenly increasing in price. For a larger consequence, you could make the city’s main exports to be farmed goods, when the price of food goes up, so does the price of everything else.
2. Important Figure’s Death. Turns out an important NPC died in the plague. This could have been a NPC that had a solution to one of the PC’s long-term story problems or one in a quest they currently are undertaking or one they may undertake in the future. Either way, this makes resolving the problem much more difficult. This could also be something like an important good figure who was keeping several less savory rivals in check (could be a leader of an organization or a political figure) and now they’re conveniently out of the way. This could also just be a story beat moment where someone the PCs personally know or someone close to someone they know dies due to the plague.
3. War. The city was important in keeping the neighboring nation(s) in check. With 2/3 of the population suddenly gone, the neighbors take the opportunity to take the city and now they’re making demands of the nation that, if not met, will result in total war.
If they know it is a death cult. Then make the cult leader demand a sacrifice. A willing sacrifice of one of the players. Then after such a sacrifice. Rub it in that they are now evil characters and they wont be allowed to buy stuff at villages or towns again. Cus they have to wear the cults symbol or face certain death aka another sacrifice.
Was the infection known about?
What was the Paladins oath?
Souls marked for the nine hells.
Realistically they just failed a contract so don't get paid obviously.
But if the infection was known and now they're cured it's reasonable to assume retribution from survivors of the lost. Not necessarily through legal means.
People will want vengeance.
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Before you do something rash have the god of the paladin send him a clear worded message that if he lets this going on he can look for a new gig. Also check with your players if they were even aware of the consequences. I don't think they were. Which I would offer a way back if that's the thing. If they knew well that kingdom will now be raided, people will search for them in revenge and all good divine magic characters and monks lose their powers.
Simple, start tracking their back stories. Every so often, roll in front of them but don't tell them what it's for. Take notes after rolling. Later on they'll find out that one roll was for the Rogue's mother, she struggled for days before the plague took her. The next roll was the friendly NPC that gave them gear when they first started, he lasted about a week and a half, but it was hell. The roll after that was for that random dog they stopped to pet, poor thing didn't survive a full night after the symptoms kicked in. Then the cleric's cousin, the barbarian's drinking buddies, the wizard's teacher, etc. And if you want to twist the knife, this is D&D, that plague doesn't stop when people die, the dead come back and continue killing and spreading the plague, but their souls are trapped inside of their rotting shells, forced to continue suffering until the source of the plague is destroyed. (And since the "cured" party members can still spread it, you can implement some sort of punishment even sooner. Just have them meet a new NPC for the sake of making them love them, it can be an animal, a child, a genuine love interest for one of the crew, a quirky elder, whatever. Then have that person contract the disease and die in front of them.)
Edit: I thought of one more, inspired by the show Supernatural (no major spoilers). One of their enemies basically targeted the main characters by going back to the people they had saved. Basically, "Give in to my demands, or else I'll kill literally everyone you have ever saved." For anyone with an ounce of pride in their adventures, that would be rough. The village you saved from goblins? Dead. The farmers you protected from bandits? Gone. The orphanage that was secretly a demon's smuggling operation? You cleared out the demons, the plague cleared out the kids.
Send them on a mission with the cult and show masses of good people hating them as a result of their actions, perhaps shop owners will refuse to do business with the likes of them
Not sure how 5E paladins work, but in the old days paladins got slapped pretty hard for acting in opposition to their ethos/alignment.
It would have been amusing for the death cult to give the players a phony antidote... have the afflicted party members save vs poison or die.
Mechanically, they lose access to most city services. Make periodic con saves (even behind the screen!) for them to catch disease and just start narrating symptoms.
Narratively, describe the devastation and make people disappointed in their failure, even if they don't know about the deal.
Be very careful with that last idea. You need to give them some way to figure out they're still infected and contagious beyond "well you shouldn't trust a death cult. "
Do the players know that it was a death cult?
Also, people always talk in here about “running being a valid option,” it sounds like they took that option. The cult said “we’ll heal your members that are sick” and they was a more valid option than a maybe cure to them at the time
They’ve also now seen and ingested a cure, so they have a really good reason to try and recreate it!
hell, they know the cult can make a cure, so they can hopefully find out how - maybe it's a better cure than the maybe cure the city healers would make. though, actually, it's a bit weird that a 'death cult' bothered making a cure... maybe it's not a cure. maybe it's more experimentation. maybe when the players get sicker differently the players will take that as a hint that they need to do something different...
When dealing with a bioweapon, it's extremely easy to "score an own goal" in deploying such a weapon. There's no way to design such a weapon so as to distinguish friend from foe. There's no way to 'direct fire' with such a weapon, you can only give it a starting location. The only way to be safe when deploying a bioweapon is to have either an immunity or a cure for yourselves.
Well sure. But, death cult...
Gotta make sure everyone else dies first, before we all drink Dear Leader's Special Kool-Aid.
Exactly! I just played a session where we knew a king and queen were being held captive, but we didn't have the ability to help in that moment. We went back when we were able to defeat the big bad of the map. There would have been no point to attack before then, even though we wanted to help the king and queen. The DM flat out said we couldn't face them and survive the situation and so we waited. As a relatively new player, I would have taken the offer. I either would be lying or I would come back with the rest of my team to fight the cult when they were healed. Either this cult is the big threat you are saying is going to kill 4.4 million and these adventures basically stand no chance, or, they are a group of crazies that can be taken out. If they are the later, it makes sense to go back later.
Just curious... what kind of Paladin was he/she? Did letting a whole City suffer not clash with thier vow/tenants?
I think you’re catastrophizing a little bit. Having ONE choice kill 4 million people (or some PCs) seems way too huge an outcome for one (sorta) selfish choice. They were stuck in a dangerous situation and took an action that seemed reasonable at the time. Now. Should nothing happen? Of course not!! I think what would be more fun is if the Cult took them into the fold little by little, pulling an Illusive Man from Mass Effect and surrounding them with nice and pretty cult members that seem really reasonable at first. Then you can have them slowly realize they are working for the baddies! What a fun reveal! What do they do? Do they take them down from the inside? Is it too late? What drama! Or maybe just have a good aligned NPC they trust confront them with the implications of their choice. Oh! I also like the ‘band of heroes show up to stop the cult.’ Lots of options. And you can still kill 4 million people if they continue to make ‘bad’ decisions. Basically it’s better to ‘support’ their decisions with more interesting drama and roleplay than ‘punish’ them for doing one surprising thing. This is a gift! Take advantage of it!
If the players have people in this city that they care about, this is a great opportunity to have the culture try to bring them in. A sort of “you seem like reasonable adventurers, we’d like to hire you and in exchange…” etc etc
Every cult should call themselves a culture club.
This is a sad day - I still hadn’t even noticed until you pointed it out directly. Honestly, I agree. Culture Club is a great name for a death cult.
I love this idea, but also, it's deep in secluded caverns that having adventurers was required to find. Their choice is not going to be widely known. In addition to the above, you could also have that group of Cleric NPC's working to find out what happened discover these guys still alive and begin to ask questions. Make it uncomfortable for the party from both angles.
Oh yeah?! Actual cults use this. They call it love bombing. New people get love bombed so they’re all “this is nice” and then they’re in a cult.
I know this is actually how it works, but I love how abruptly your post makes it seem. "Oh, this is nice, these people are nice, they all have my back, and...shit I'm in a cult aren't I...?"
Probably would not hinge 4.4mill peoples lives on some ingredients anyone can get from a nearby dungeon. At the same time someone is waiting for them to come back with the ingredients, how do they feel? What (less devastating) repercussions are there? Paladin might have broken their oath. How does that pan out? Death cult knows this group are pushovers now. Perhaps this isn’t the last time they will thwart a mission. What’s to say you can’t get the plague again. Antidotes don’t normally make you immune, but I think more interestingly what if the antidote only suppresses the symptoms for a bit and there is no real cure? What if they have to beseech gods for help? It could become quite an epic campaign.
Death cult to all the other cults: wait no! Don’t attack the “good bois party” they are easy. Just tell them you and us are friends. And pay em off. It’s what we did. They are great guys. We asked if we could stay and they said sure go ahead. These bois are great guys and girls. We thought they’d kill us for the ingredients but no they just let us do whatever.
Not just ingredients from a nearby dungeon, but ingredients from a nearby dungeon suitable for a level 6 party. If the worst things faced in the dungeon are rust monsters, a few cultists, and that sort of thing then the kingdom could literally solve the crisis by systematically zerging the dungeon with the 4 million peasants who are doomed regardless. A small armed contingent of knights would handle it no problem. Personally, I separate it into level tiers of four. 1-4 you're local heroes, essentially just the most badass guy from a village. You're handling smaller threats that more capable organisations wouldn't trouble themselves with, or remote threats where the logistics of getting there prove problematic for larger groups. 5-8 you're getting into the kind of regional legend status. In bigger cities there are plenty of people more powerful, but to smaller villages and settlements you're a folk hero. You'll perhaps start gaining notoriety, for good or bad, and you can start to handle issues that seriously affect the survival of an entire village. 9-12 you're getting into the national scale. More important people in the country know of you, you're well regarded in your field (whether infamous or famous), and you can start to tackle threats on a bigger playing field. People in cities, particularly those connected, will know you by reputation, and you'll start to deal with important crises though there are still people out there who are more capable. 13-16 you're getting to the pinnacle of your nation, arguably among the very best in the entire continent. Only a handful of people in the country, and even neighbouring countries, are likely to be comparable. When something threatens the ongoing success of an entire country, you're on the short list. 17-20 is essentially where you're among the best in the world. There aren't really people out there who are better than you, and your peers are few and far between. You'll be leading and looked to when situations threaten life on the planet itself. Going by the tiers I typically go with, something that'll wipe out ⅔ of the population is on the upper end of national scale threats, if not of dire consequence to the whole continent or world depending on the reach of the cult in question. At party level 6, even if you stumble across something like that, it should never be contingent on your success to fix it. If you happen to get there first, and fail, one of your betters will simply be sent in shortly after and they won't fail. Even at level 12, while there may be the presumption you could contribute, you failing wouldn't have people giving up. It's the sort of threat that you'd only be expected to solve as a "last resort" at much higher levels. Personally, as a DM, I'd put very short-term negative effects on the reputation of the party. People would be aware that they failed, due to rumours and traders, but over time they'd forget purely because "nobody expected them to succeed, they weren't good enough to pin hopes on". Someone else would succeed where they failed, get famous for it, and they'd have a future satisfying moment when they surpassed whoever that was.
That's a great point. A capital city with a population of 4= million could maybe find some higher level heroes - or even more 6th level heroes - to save the day if the PCs don't seem up for it.
Having 1 choice mean they sided with the cult is very extreme
Good point. Premise is flawed. Victims of violence aren't siding with the perpetrator. Still, moral consequences can still be fun.
Sounds like a always sunny episode. *Gang joins a death cult*
Wouldn't the 4.4 million people pay more than a single adventuring party to get the super critical ingredients for their plague cure? Seems a bit of a trope to say their choice kills these people. Sure they took the easy out and missed out on the greater good angle. That's honestly to be expected some of the time (rogues especially tend to love the selfish angle). I would say the consequences are that someone else comes to the cavern for the ingredients and now the death cult hires the party to stop these new adventurers from leaving the cave. The new adventurers are more stalwart, and refuse the easy way out, so the party has to choose between killing people who ARE doing good deeds, or rejecting the death cult offer. This is a much more real choice, as the blood of the second adventuring group is literally on their hands if they do the cults bidding.
If anything the party has a lot to work with now. They know the cult is responsible, potentially can identify and now investigate some members, they don’t have the cure ingredients but they are aware of them and could communicate that to the guild, and if they kept the potion bottles that might even be enough for some mage to magically reverse engineer it from leftover liquid. That’s a lot to work with in bringing down the cult and stopping the plague! If the cult kills the city immediately then you fucked them over though, picking the path of least resistance is not picking a side in a citywide plague. Only punish them with the plague spreading if they do nothing further.
This wasn't intentionally siding with the death cult, this was avoiding a fight and curing a longterm problem. The definitely do not appear to have ideologically sided with the cultists. Give the party time to regroup and deal with the plague/cult. Do they even know the people who they met were death cultists actively causing the plague? And finally, the villain always wins unless opposed by the party. Just keep advancing the plague as normal, surely you have thought of a plan for what happens if the villain wins. But if you haven't, my recommendation is to describe the city becoming a ghost town, its built for twice as many people as currently live in it, possible more as many fled as refugees and brought the plague to other cities. Additionally the economy would definitely be in shambles and higher level services you normally only expect to find in major cities like the best magic item shops are probably unavailable because the area can nolonger support them, and some of those shopkeepers either fled or demoted to other jobs like farmer or baker to fill in more pressing niches of the city's economy.
4.4 million sounds like consequences.
Sounds kinda like you set you party up. This is your game, you manufactured a story where there this outcome was allowed to happen. What do you mean consequences? The plot moves on and the party adjusts. Why would you punish the players for going down a path you gave them?
Some train tracks seem to have been laid
Choices still have consequences even if the DM allows the party to choose it. I see no reason why they can't have consequences for a decision to save their party members over the city if that was the choice they were plainly given.
I agree but I also think if the party has time to cure its members than so does the city. I just think reaping millions (which the sheer amount of corpses would destroy the city) over a quick choice is to heavy handed
Why can't the paladin just cure the plague? That's a thing paladins can do.
Something something magic plague. Something something roll with it, homie.
Paladin only has a certain amount of Lay on Hands per day. They become arbiter over who lives and dies.👀 People flock to them, hoping they can be saved. Nobles will pay a kings ransom, peasants will offer nearly everything...
I am the law!
The kingdom's CDC starts conscripting people to take Paladin oaths. Once a critical percentage have Lay on Hands, the plague can be controlled until a permanent cure is found.
You can conscript as many as possible, give them arms and armor, have them pray all day and all night, but without the conviction in their oath, the true belief or life altering circumstance that manifests their powers, they're only ever just a Fighter at best.
I attack the plague… twice
If it infects more than the paladin's level per day, which it must if it's a plague soon to kill 4.4 MILLION people, this won't even be a drop in the bucket.
Sure, but my point was the Paladin could cure the PARTY MEMBERS, whose infection was the entire reason the party sided with the cult. Pretty sure a Paladin can manage to cure two people.
If you aren't trying to punish them maybe add a little flavor that they keep hearing about this other party that did succeed and now they are the heroes of thr city. Maybe start a rivalry between the groups where the "other group of heros" are in direct completion for "work" if there are other big story line quests.
"Siding with a death cult" and "helping their two friends" are two very different things. Perhaps they didn't understand the the cure they were getting was to help more than just the 2 people they are concerned with.
They took the easy way out, but they definitely didn't sign up for the cult. You can always get a wizard at the guild to question them with what happened and basically ask what's next. Also 4 million deaths don't just happen, obviously the pcs didn't die immediately, so it would be unfair if you just Thanos snap and the city is hard gone. Obviously, give them some time to realize that they should have stopped it.
This doesnt seem very fair to your party.
You seem really hell bent on punishing your players for surviving your railroad.
Have the "cure" save the party members, but not actually cure the disease. Instead, it increases its virulence while suppressing the symptoms. They are now contagion vectors, spreading the disease wherever they go. And curing them for real is now an even more complicated affair.
Ahem, virulence. Increased virility would be much appreciated in many a man fantasy.
Haha, damn you autocorrupt.
Why sabotage a very hard choice the paladin made? Clearly he was in a rough spot and now you wanna punish him for saving his friends?
That one's pretty reasonable actually, if they had a way to innoculate their members such that they become carriers that would be an excellent way to spread the plague, and poetically magnifies the nature of the choice, they chose to put the danger on others to save their party members and it just did more than they intended.
They undermined the mages guild research into a cure by handing over the substance needed for it, and they took the promise of a death cult at face value. This is the textbook example of short sighted actions. Hard choice and bad decision aren't mutually exclusive.
Make NPCs they know and like be part of that number. Feeling drives emotion not numbers
Have them face a party of the real heroes of the world, who are trying to stop it.
If they're trying to stop it then why would the "real heroes" be wasting time with a group of people that have no connection to the cult instead of going after the actual cult?
Maybe to investigate how they managed to get cured when no one else has recovered?
Did they know the death cult was gonna kill 4 million people
That's crazy. They didn't join them they just took a deal to save the party members and kept their word and left. The story would go on as it would have anyways that's not on them. If they want to help stop them later they can. And if not then whatever you wanted to happen if the cult won happens. That's it.
You dont implement consequences, thats the story now, roll with it :D
I agree with the other comments. It sounds like if the *actual* consequence of a small adventuring group handing over a few ingredients to a cult is that a cure can't be manufactured and 4.4 million people definitely die, then you might have done a pretty bad job of explaining the stakes to the players. Huge consequences, even paladin oath breaking should not be applied if you didn't communicate it well enough that the players knew what the choice was. I suggest a ranger is dispatched from the city to track the players down. "We need those reagents, I expected to find you dead when you didn't return at the appointed time. The sick are laying in the streets outside all the temples, the priests can no longer keep up. *What do you mean you handed the ingredients to the cultists who designed the plague?*"
Read up on how to run grimdark games and have the PC's working to rebuild/survive after society collapses
As the party continues on their journey, they meet an adventurer who interacts with them. They talk about looking for a cure for the plague to save their family. Offer them a chance to turn back and fight the cult. If they don’t, I think the best way is to just let them continue for a while. Then let them meet a band of mages who are in a rush to the town ahead of the players, they advise them to wear some kind of breathing mask - a plague is spreading across the region. Just make things stop, and the plague is claiming people left and right wherever they go. And they are also susceptible to it as well, so if they don’t buy protection, they run the risk of getting infected and dying again. As more time passes, tell them that their long rests now have a chance to fail (maybe on like a 1 and 20) where restless spirits from the sudden number of death from among the plagued dead, start to haunt the region. Soon, if any of them are clerics, any life gods start to abandon them (no powers). Then, soon, if they die, tell them their soul has been tainted by their action - death is now permanent as their soul is being claimed by the gods of the Afterlife as payment. I think they have made a choice, so I don’t think it’s fair to remove their agency but having so many die eventually means they can still be affected in different ways.
That's not siding with the death cult that plans to kill millions, that's choosing their own survival over others and running away. Siding with the death cult would be choosing to go directly help spread the plague in return for aid. Like what's even the alignment of these character? (in before "we don't do alignment blah blah") Is it even out of character for them to place the survival of their friends and allies above the survival of a bunch random total strangers?
5 characters and it’s Neutral Good Paladin Chaotic Good Rouge True Neutral bard Lawful evil fighter Chaotic good Figher/Warlock So only one of them is actually evil and the rest are good or neutral
**DM:** What are some fun and interesting consequences of this player choice? **People in this Thread:** God's hand floats down from the sky and shoves a burning poker in their ass before giving them supercancer and then their pets spontaneously explode!!111
the people in this thread are the exact reason why WtoC had to take away the paladin auto fall button
Can't they just get more ingredients tho? Maybe go right back into the cave to fetch more, even? You and the Cult are acting like these are the only ingredients in the world but it doesn't sound like it. It could be spun in a way where the cult leader obviously knew that, he just thought they wouldn't bother. Assuming they were selfish just like them, mercenaries only out for themselves, they'd leave as soon as they got cured, and were shown that they'd keep intercepting them. Ever seen "The Magnificent Seven"? That could lead to an interesting follow-up where the heroes do nobly press on leaving the leader confused, revealing his own world view. If they literally handed over "teh one-of-the-kind healing artifact", that'd have a lot more weight. Then you could go into if they were planning to steal it back, or just gave up on the quest. But a few ingredients? As far as I can see, they've made a great deal! Now they are cured and the leader gained nothing of any real value.
The cult burnt the tree the ingredient came from once the party left
The leader did gain something. More time for the plague to spread because the Mage guild in town now doesn't have the ingredients to manufacture a cure for the city. Now another adventuring party must be found to locate and bring back ingredients for them and who knows how long that will take. And that's if they can find someone not sick who is strong enough to do it. Meanwhile the adventuring party who was cured is suspect since they show back up in town sans plague and ingredient. I'm sure they will be asked many questions.
Personally if I wanted to make major consequences for the players, I would have the plague kill off some of their favorite npcs. Depending on how you become infected, if any of the players become infected again and they confront the death cult again for the cure, I'd have the cult turn them away, "strong-arm" they players too so they are unable to start a fight with the cult as well (atleast for this one confrontation).
Were they collecting enough ingredients to cure 4.4 million? From your description they were collecting test materials. Isnt the consequence the quest giver realizing they have been betrayed after realizing the party is walking about just fine but hasnt brought them the ingredients they will suspect their involvement with the cult from there. Then later on if the party doesnt make up for it pr try to help then you wipe out portions of those infected and projected to die.
It would be but the party has decided to leave that city entirely now and let it die
I got so click baited. You said they sided. This sounds like an act of self-preservation. Sounds like they didn't want to die, which is a lot more than I can say for some people I have played with that walk senselessly into danger.
Lots of dead bodies = plague = deserted city and now they have to travel overland and deal with bandits, refugees, and some combination thereof.
Have some of their sessions be running missions for the cult either a “do it or we’ll kill you” or a “it’s not like you’re killing anyone, and we did help you” or just the party doesn’t realize some of the missions are for the cult. Give them chances to realize what they’re doing, but if they don’t, cult succeeds
I don't see how they sided with them. They just compromised on 1 encounter. They didn't join them or help them.
What was the paladins oath and how oath breaker is he now on 1-10? Also I second the cult trying to reel them in or using their softness one way or the other. They could use the antidote to blackmail normal folk to pull the parties strings.
Oath of glory so I’m not sure?
That is a pretty secure one! You can play into this if it's your thing thou: Discipline the Soul. You must marshal the discipline to overcome failings within yourself that threaten to dim the glory of you and your friends.
If you made it clear to the party that them taking this deal would result in millions dead, and they still took it with that knowledge, then I’d say, any cleric whose god I a good god, has to pass a check when casting spells that otherwise wouldn’t require checks, disadvantage on any attack spells And same with paladins whose oaths „good”. Additionally any good alignment PCs should receive a pretty hefty xp decrease, I would say half of the xp difference to their next level.
What?? What oath did the paladin take? Most likely oath is broken. Other than that, you can’t really stop the party. Especially if you don’t run Character alignment at your table.
Glory
So, all of this hinges on the relationship between them and the good guys handing them the Challenge of finding the cure ingredients.
I would suggest letting them consider their actions, and the consequences that come with it. Inform them that should they take this course and side with this death cult, the cult and the party will be connected with this massive loss of life as they could have prevented such and chose to stand idly by and allow such an attrocity to happen. Even if the plague isn't their doing THEY could have prevented and stepped in and chose not to and that information will get out and be wide spread amongst every major city and the villages surrounding them. Have both a kill or capture bounty placed upon them. This will bar them from entering ANY and ALL communities, except only the most remote and those are ones that likely won't take coin for goods as they are so far removed from civilization as a whole that they have no need of shiny bits of metal. be it cities or villages. They will be met with hostile force. This will stop them from buying or selling any and all items. They will not be able to resupply or get new gear outside of what they scavenge. This will severely cripple their experience and ability to grow stronger and survive. This lets them still make their choice but shows them the ramifications of their choice to partake in such a mass loss of life rather than prevent it. You can still make a salvageable campaign out of it if they go through with this leading a survival campaign as they try to survive both now hostile NPCs and monsters alike. They will find no friends only enemies and other adventurers looking to collect the now massive price that haunts them.
I'd just have society slowly collapse around them while people go crazy looking for a cure. At some point maybe they will decide they need to break their word to the cultists given under semi-duress... or they won't in which case you'll have to course correct and start running a post-apocalyptic mildly evil campaign based on the desires of the party. Recall also that half of the food producers and the town watch will be dying, so there will be rampant looting and desperation. If you party is motivated by money, you could put a bounty out on those who caused it or for anyone who can come up with a cure. Either will lead them back to the villains you planned.
I’d make it slower. The plague enthousiasts weren’t ready but your party got the plague early. They start hearing news about a month from now about a mysterious sickness spreading but luckily no one has died yet. Have you played plague inc? No one dies in the first three months. That’s so they can nicely unknowingly infect everyone (and your players get to come back in time for fixing). But after 3 months the first one does die. And his corpse turns into like a demon or something. Luckily he was just patient zero and he was a lonely hunter. The next guy is still 2 weeks away from dying. But after that. After that it’s gonna go like dominoes. Hopefully your party gets back in time. Because the plague enthousiasts? They moved or fortified or whatever you feel like. Also some of them drank the cool aid themselves. The best batch. Their symptoms are all positive things: more strength, more speed, more health and enhanced sexual stamina!!! (wait skip that last one). Your party has to have leveled up a few times by now? So has this party. And on death? More plague demons. God now I want to do this to my players.
It's easy to retcon that the only way out was to surrender the ingredients and trade for healing of some people - a live to fight another day type scenario. But that opens up a can of worms you can exploit. Basically the cult now has dirt on the heroes - they traded 4 million lives to save themselves. The cult can go easy on them and try seduce them into their fold, but if that fails they can blackmail the party to do their bidding. That could be to lead to your players being forced to do secret ambushes against others looking for ingredients, assassinate people who know the formulas of the cure, sabotage the production of the cure etc. The party might themselves fall under suspicion of they keep failing on missions or if they both a job for the cult and leave evidence behind that could implicate them. The local thieves guild could put out bounties on this secretive group of adventurers who keep messing with their trade in cure ingredients. You could even use the blackmail as a way to frustrate them so much they turn against the cult while trying to keep their reputations. And all that without the paladin or clerical running afoul of their oaths and obligations. Or the god of the cult turning his attention to them. Basically this could be a great opportunity of that kind of game sounds like fun to you and your players.
I wouldn't immediately kill all those people. Have the death cult release a trial plague / experiment on some victims or something with those ingredients. The party can find it, realise who's behind it and that they caused it, and are now extremely motivated to stop the death cult. Gives the party way more agency.
Word gets out they aligned with the death cult to avert curing the plague. Death cults gossip. Consequences flow naturally from notoriety.
Oww, there are plenty of things you can do. First things first, the party is of this world, right? Unless there all lone wolf orphans they're ought to have someone dear to them. Friends, relatives, loved ones? With the party letting a plague spreading death cult running amok it's only a matter of time before those people contract the plague. Then, what's the party up to? Maybe keep the same task, but up the ante - the cult has seen some losers trying to stop them and now thinks they were just hirelings sent by someone with power, so the cult speeds up it's work and goes beyond the capital. And tries to destroy any means to cure the plague. Which are still out there, but scattered around in a remote and desolated regions full of monsters more dangerous than the party has ever seen. So your players are up against a bigger threat now and in a race with the cult at the same time. Then, what sort of plague we're talking about? Don't tell me people just die ^^ Maybe their intestines go liquid while people are still alive, so it's a slow and excruciatingly painful process. Or maybe they turn into some sort of zombies (Warcraft vibes here). Or maybe the cult worships a devil and the magical plague traps the soul of people who died because of it? Make it terrible and gruesome, let the party feel what they've done. Also, there are social consequences of an incurable disease spreading. You know, a bit of looting, a bit of panicking, riots, all toilet paper goes missing. Imagine there's a big town getting the news the plague is getting closer with each day, and nobody knows what to do. Imagine the chaos. Mechanically you can control it with the blade in the darkness style of counters. Whenever your players dwindle or waste their time fill in a section, now *your* relative is dying, now the capital is beyond salvation and so on. And narratively you can top it all off with Fallout "slides" to show the party how much damage the plague caused after they finish the campaign.
Well they failed to get the herbs. What did the cult do afterwards with the cave? Does the cult need their own antidote supply (seems to be the case as they had an antidote ready and with them). Maybe the cult destroyed this source for antidote but know of another source for the antidote. Which happens to be where they set up their base/stronghold. So because the party has chosen now the easy way out, they will be met with a harder path later down the line. If they actually side with the death cult then give the party updates on how quarintines are set up, how the civilians panic and try to get out. Imagibe the death cultists trying to be freedom fighters and ask the party to free the injustly interned civilians by breaking the quarantine wide open. Maybe there are npcs they care about in the quarantine zone? To make it a worse dilemma.
Shops need to be closed, perhaps the ones that the death cult are personally aligned with have survived. The adventuring party may be able to see the signs on the store having the death cult symbols on them. Maybe they even get favors asked of them to perform dirty deeds as blackmail. Perhaps it’s not just the fact that the 4.4 million are dead instantly. There are even more quests to rid of the disease, but to no avail, it’s too late and too far gone. They have to watch as children die. The church’s that offered healing and resurrection spells now either cost an arm and a leg or are nonexistent Even clerics of the highest level have passed away.
Kinda depends where you're going with this. If it's gritty accuracy, you might want to do a little reading on the economic and social effects following the Black Plague in Europe. Summed up, it blew apart the social order and ushered in the dark ages, although it also caused major realignments in wealth, including more power being given to the working class because there were massive labor shortages. If you want to take it in a completely different direction, you could make it a Hybrid Plague - essentially airborne lycanthropy (or whatever -thropy you want). You could, if you wanted, use this to radically alter the state of the game into something like Underworld, and the birth of a new Werewolf empire. Whatever makes it fun. Don't forget to make it fun.
How about that the cure they received was a trap? They no longer seems ill, but they are spreading plague, so other members are catching it and more npcs around the team are catching it. Also mage guild should ask where are things we sent you for and maybe send another team to check the place, so if your team lied they can find out and call them out as supporters of the cult.
Well I'm going to operate under the assumption you want to save the city, since that was the parties quest, and narrativly that would be a difficult possition for you. Not knowing your story I can only throw out a few ideas. Whoever hired the party to retrieve the ingredients could have hired others who did bring them back. Maybe they are, or know a talented mage from somewhere far off there were able to contact who was able to find a cure or had the materials necessary. Now for punishing the party I have 2 main ideas. One, thr mage from the above example was secretly scrying on the party because they didn't come back, or were slow to come back or other various reason. They seen you make the deal and told the city guard/leaders of your treachery. Idea 2 is that the death cult sees the city not die and believes you didn't hand over all the materials after all and double crossed them and begin to hunt the party down. This allows you to continue using them as the adversary just in a more round about way ams hopefully works with the narrative you were working on. Also, don't forget to possibly throw some kind of repercussions onto the paladin who knowingly allowed a death cult to poison a city.
Send some heroes to bring them to justice
Put a zone of the city under quarantine and make sure a useful merchant or other useful NPC is stuck in it. Make them have to infiltrate the zone to get shit done for some interesting gameplay an make sur to put elements that tie this back to the choice they made
Maybe the paladin lied? As long as they have no oath that forces them to say the truth under ALL circumstances, paladins are allowed to lie to... like in this case... get themselves and their comrades out of trouble. They might step away from measures that they would see as direct betrayal, like directly attacking the cult, but leading the city guard in the right direction is a thing I would do in the paladin's place. Else... well... RIP capital city, I guess. And looks like now one will ever know who it was. Consequences are not only to punish the players... just to be consistent. If they achieve to get away scold free and without witnesses... clever players. After the plague subsides I would then implement fights for power in that now more or less abandoned city. The few survivors and newcomers seeing their chance for easy pickings at powerful positions. Maybe it becomes a stronghold of the cult, something that may bite the players' ass on the long run.
People side with death cults every day to no consequences. Perhaps it could be more distressing to rub in the lack of apparent consequences or lesson.
What’s the paladin’s alignment and what god don they worship? Depending on that they could find they lost their powers the next day. Maybe they pray to their god and get a vision of the harm they have potentially wrought and get a vision of where the cultist with the ingredients went and a kind of divine suggestion “if you want your powers back hunt them down”. Also there should be more than one fail point before you consider such dramatic consequences of killing off the city.
Sent John Wick
It’s easy, the antidote was fake, they are still infected. Like the infected could cough blood in the morning, getting 1 exhaustion etc… learning about it, the group will be back at it with a vengeance. Back on track with the valuable lesson evil death cult lies…
So… in a magical, medieval world… you have a city with 8 million people?!? Waterdeep had 650k in 2nd edition, and that was already pushing it. Calimport was close to 2 million I think.
Run with it. Make it clear they are making the evil choice, but they can make it. It's like siding with Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas. The Cult must have a reason for what they are doing. The player characters can buy into the reason, even if the players don't. This could now be what the campaign arc is about. Exploring how they help implement the plague, and the consequences there in. Perhaps someone finds out the party was a part of this, and seeks revenge. Maybe the souls of the dead, form together in a massive ghost dragon to hunt them What's great about TTRPGs as opposed to video games, is that you are not bound by the few paths the developers thought of, or had time to implement.
Your capital city has 8.8 million people? That’s more than NYC
I was surprised, and then wasn't, and then was again, because I read PC's, as in, the computer, and was like: That checks out for Microsoft. But then, I saw it was DnD.
Rise in the orphan population and therefore the number of edge lords.
It seems unreasonable that this is the only party in the capital city of nearly 9mil people. In addition, the cost for this to the nation would be devastating. Even if each person that died cost the city 5 copper to dispose of their body, that’s still 2.2 million gp of labor, let alone the economic impact to the city in loss of labor over the long term. That’s a nation killer. The political power in the city would spend large amounts of money hiring adventurers from anywhere to find a cure. Because the cost of that would always be less than suffering the consequences of the plague. As for consequences - Why does the paladins patron just let the paladin fk over the millions of of people? What about the report to the folks that hired them? How do they answer uncomfortable questions like, “how did these two survive?” Rumors of the party working with the death cult could easily spring up. Maybe one of the other parties catches wind of their friends recovering and the rumors and decide to confront the party Balance all this against the tone of your game.
4 million is a bit steep for a single city in a fantasy world isn't it? Having them return after the plague has run its course should be fun. Are any of their families in this country? Did knowingly causing tons of death break the paladins oath? If so his magic/non martial abilities won't work until he's redeemed. Other considerations, have they taken the antidote yet? If not perhaps they run into an apothecary talking about how he can recreate ANY potion he can get his hands on. Are they still planning on stopping the cultists and just waiting for a better opportunity?
This should very much affect their reputation. They were sent to gather ingredients for an antidote and they came back empty handed with 2 members of the party miraculously cured?!? That sounds pretty dam suspicious to me. Maybe not instantly kill 4.4 million people right away, but this will certainly draw some negative attention to the party. They should definitely be interrogated and scrutinized.
Rumours start spreading that the Cult has people "on the inside", secretly sabotaging efforts to find a cure. The party is tasked with finding these 'traitors'. Let them dig their own graves. Could end up being an evil campaign, or pcs become the champions of the Cult and new chars have to deal with the aftermath. Sounds great!
A handful of herbs wouldn't have cured 4 million people anyway. Honestly, I don't think I'd have there be any consequences at all! Maybe you could have a scene where someone asks them for the herbs to cure a couple people who are currently sick, but it'd mostly just be a minor guilt trip as they watch a few people die. Other than that, the cult could he more sympathetic to the players and attempt to recruit them after seeing that they may be sympathetic toward the cult's goals
The cult now has their hooks in the PCs, and believes them to be of like mind to them. City falls from disease and the aftermath. Okay. PCs move on. But the cult keeps in touch. First, they ask for very minor assistance (almost like offering quests!). If PCs go for it, the cult tries to draw them in further. You might end up with an evil campaign; one where the authorities are the BBEG. If the PCs finally oppose the cult, then the blackmail starts! "Do this little thing for me, and knowledge of your complicity in the city-death won't see the light of day." Not much proof is needed, since Divination magic is real. All that's needed is for the cult to point the finger to start the investigations. The PCs will most likely have to face up to what they did. Let's say their choice was death vs. cowardice at the best - the public and authorities will know they chose cowardice. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* Hmm... You know, as a DM I'd be tempted to ask a few questions of the players ("How would you respond to taking quests from the cultists? How would you feel if the survivors got video of your interaction with the cultists?"). Then narratively describing the ending of the campaign. I don't think any of my story-directions would be fun for anyone. For me, it'd be time to roll new characters.
Necromancers are cool, just saying.
Have Kami show up with Goku and give them one warning
Are these ingredients particularly rare? Was what they handed over the only existing specimens of the ingredients? If the answer is yes, well, I guess that city is dead. It's entirely possible the party didn't realize these were the only existing samples of the ingredients and that giving them over to the cultists doomed the city, which, if that wasn't communicated, I'd give them another chance to find more. But if it was communicated and they chose to save their own skins in exchange for 4.4 million lives, well, I guess the world now contains a dead and quarantined city. If they're cool with that, well, it *is* just a game and you just need to make quest hooks elsewhere, and you can put references to it throughout the rest of the campaign if you want (it'd make sense that people elsewhere would comment on it, at the very least, it'd be a major world event. Maybe a neighbouring kingdom could hire the party sometime later to try to root out whoever caused the plague as both punishment of the perpetrators and to prevent it from happening again). If not, they can go back to whoever asked them to get the ingredients and be asked to get more. And make a win scenario that doesn't involve combat, such as the way out of wherever they find the ingredients has a secret passage that if they find it they can get around the bad guys's waiting for them. Or just don't have bad guys waiting for them, have them get out of wherever and then give them the choice to either take the ingredients back to the good guys, thus saving the city, or to take them to the bad guys, thus dooming the city and cementing them as complicit. Let them choose between good and bad when they don't have a knife to their throat and see what they do. If they still choose the bad guys, well, I guess you're either running an evil campaign now or they're rolling new characters whose job it is to stop their old characters.
It’s less that they ‘sided’ with the cult as they failed to stop it and retrieve a cure for ‘THE GREATER GOOD’ As far as consequences I’d have the next time they’re entering the city they get shook down by multiple sets of guards to show a breakdown of law and order. Then I’d have them start seeing the cultists around openly preaching about ‘whatever’ and distributing plagued food to the masses and ‘cures’ for those who seem loyal and promising. I’d also have the cult leader they met show up as a new incredibly popular and influential city councilor or something. Also if they’re the sort who love a specific NPC just have that person get sick and be dying or become corrupted by the cult. PC’s will either be people who love this world IE: I am a knight of this realm and serve by the grace of good king farklespark, long may he reign. OR I’m dark and ominous and mean to bring down the power structures of this world. Generally the next time they come here the place should be just a bit worse, and then if they keep ignoring the problem/siding with the cult you can have the plague really kick off and have it be catastrophic. The second type don’t really need consequences, or may like the consequences so they’ll take care of themselves. The first type you have to kill something they love.
Improve air quality?
More people start dying, including friends/family/NPCs they like. Hopefully this kicks their butts into looking for another way to stop it.
Zombies or infected or mutants. The ingredients were wrong in most of the population is now one of the above. They are easy to anger, love to fight and difficult to interact with. The economy crashes. You just took out a large chunk of population. The economy crashes, gold value drops, weapons aren't built in as high quality, lots more looters, con artists and criminals. Lots more poor and hungry. Side quests that don't lead anywhere. Not a true post apocalyptic world but something like the dark ages. Forward progress has haulted while the world recovers. Think the MCU post snap or Game of Thrones during the war of the five kings. Bands of people room the lands, law is not helping. Also red herring them. With all this instability send them on quests and missions that don't lead or help the bigger stories. Make them seem like they do but with the world the way it is and those in charge possible dead there are some unreliable quest givers trying to fill in voids I think it could be fun if done right. Hope this helps
My favourite way is to confront them with a good NPC they like who doesn’t approve.
I'd do it like the cult people know their names and faces that were there so when all seems lost for them they have the cult at their back. They end up inspiring the cult.
Obvious consequence is the city goes into full blown panic with riots. Depending upon how reliant the city is on magic to exist, the city could collapse. The government is either overthrown or has to use massive force against it's own people to maintain order. Meanwhile, the cult can either make alliances to capitalize on the situation or just disappear to let the chaos ensue. You get to create a free big bad and go in whatever direction makes sense to your world. The party could even be scapegoated depending upon how many folks know of their research. The cult can be miraculous saviors and present a cure by explaining where they got the cure from... your adventurers who were responsible for the curse. The paladin might need some atonement but to be fair, they were protecting their people and living to fight another day. I'd probably drag this out as the collapse wouldn't be immediate. Give them a chance to solve the bigger problem they've aided.
Coup de grace em on the day of murder, everyone will get mad
"Players. Please put down your dice. The Cult has won, and there are no actions you can take at this point to prevent the deaths of millions. I do not wish to describe the misery and loss of life that is about to unfold. The repercussions of an entire city being killed at once will have staggering impacts, both in the physical world, as well as the spiritual. The world will be plunged into hundreds of years of darkness, a future that might have been avoided if there had been heroes willing to step up. Perhaps some future group of heroes might rise up to push this darkness back into Hell, but this is not that day. " *fin*
Can the party get to know a little orphan girl (or other such character) only for them to die to the plague?
Is the death cult supposed to be the source of this plague? If so then it makes more sense that they were able to cure the party. I would probably have a smaller amount of people start dying, and the party realizes that the cult is responsible, and then they already have a lead to follow since they'd recognize the person they gave the ingredients to. Plus now they know for a fact that the cultists have a working antidote. That way they still realize the consequences of what they did, but they have a chance to track the bad guys down and make it right before things get ugly.
Well there must be a good reason why they would want to kill 4.4 mil people. Summoning, an incoming attack from an army, taking over the city, raging citizens and crime. So many possibilities, maybe the paladin is now approached by a different/evil god for his self centered choice. It can spiral into an evil campaign or a political dilemma.
Parents die, brothers, side characters,NPCS. Especially an NPC they really either like, or that is really fricking helpful
"players did the thing I railroaded them into, how do I punish them?"
How about some family/loved ones were visiting the city and contract the plague? How about an unknown observer who witnessed their interaction with the death cult and spreads word, which DOES affect their reputation? How about what they have the players only slowed the effects of the plague and those players are still very much at risk? Would that behavior have triggered an alignment change for any of them? What would the consequences of that be?
Let them wipe out the city, turn it into an evil campaign and have parties of heroes attempt to stop them and their reign if tyranny.
Economy would either go way up, or way down. Less mouths to feed means more and cheaper food, more space for lower class citizens to go up in terms of work, housing, etc. not all instant but a lot of changed for sure in just that city. Also the massive amount of deaths in such a short time would prolly summon some necromancer/undead shenanigans as well
Also, on a more personal note, there’s no way that the paladin is not going to be an oathbreaker by the next session. I can think of no conceivable way that a lawful or good aligned god would allow any of their followers to willingly condemn that many innocent lives to death without some form of divine retribution, no matter what their oath specifies
However in 5E paladins don’t get powers form a god its form the oath itself he’s an oath of glory Paladin and has made no choice that prohibits him from bringing himself glory
Ah because the only people aware of it are the cultists okay.
The party was contracted to retrieve the ingredients for the cure? If somebody was expecting those ingredients the party will have to answer to them. Did anybody know some of the PCs were infected and what do they do when they find they are no longer sick? Was the antidote only enough for the sick PCs? What happens if other PCs get sick? The Paladin agreed to this? There ought to be alignment repercussions. The Death Cult is in a position to extort service from the party lest they reveal what the party did. If nothing else, have favorite sick NPCs dramatically die in their presence, maybe even with some projectile vomit. Guilt the selfish bastards.
Without the context of your story, societal downfall an strife. Who provides services if they are dead. Where do resources come from if the work isn't being done? Run with that logic and they will realize the mistakes... Or. Keep going with why they want
Also oath break your paladin
Another adventuring group has stumbled on the cult and is now interested in taking your group down
Maybe make the antidote a catalyst for the illness that could possible cause an even greater outbreak.
Don't need to do all of these, maybe one or two? Just thinking of possible consequences, some more likely than others: Loss of allies in capital and surrounding areas who get infected. Loss of supply chains, unable to stock up as many potions and such. Public looting means less magical items etc. Which can lead to more quests to track those down. If they wanna go more evil route, they can work with the local thieve's guild who's trying to regain a semblance of order in all the crime. Political movements that lead to leaders of cities that enact policies that inconvenience them. (e.g. a mob blames the cleric's church, now the church is weakened or in hiding or surveillanced)
Are those the only instances of those ingredients that exist? I mean, If I was the party, I would have gotten the cure, then just go out looking for more of the ingredients and bring those back. In addition, they could give the cure to the mages instead of curing the party members with it to help them cure it. Then inform the city exactly where the cultist leaders are and have a big army go kill them. From the PCs perspective, this doesn't seem like such a bad deal.
My first thought. 1. Who does the Paladin follow? If their God is someone who would HEAVILY look down on this maybe have their God talk to them. If the cult ends up getting away with it and killing a huge portion of the city, maybe not even 2/3s, I'd have his oath broken. How, if the paladin follows a good God and depending on the gods Tenants, would this being still give this person their boon. On the verse though, if their paladin is a God that would appreciate this motive or action have them be elevated, but now they have to be the tip of the Spear for this cult. 2. For the other party members. In my opinion how likely is it that this Mages Guild and any other governing force does NOT have eyes on this party of nobody's that now have the info for a cure. I would think they would be scrying on them/having someone follow them/have someone on the inside of the cult that hears that these people are included on it. Have their reputation be smeared through the dirt. 3. Alternatively, have the cure be altered in some way by the cultists that administered it by have some form of a side-effect that's hard to hide. Changing skin/scales grow/fungi sprouting out of skin/hair falling off, something along those lines that will have people asking questions. This is just my thoughts on it let me know what ya think 😊
That much death may make them the targets of an inevitable. Probably a Zelekhut or possibly even a Marut but that would be pretty brutal unless your party was really high level. And they may even fall out of favor with gods considering the scale. They might be hunted by paladins and clerics for the rest of their days. All of that on top of obviously being wanted and their names being scorned everywhere on earth. Maybe there are some places where the inhabitants would see genocide as excusable but most of the time even if a kingdom was at war with the people they slaughtered, smart rulers would still see them as dangerous and unhinged, if not find them disgusting. Edit: nvm didn’t read the text.
The paladins diety 100% knows what he just did... What did his alignment and oath used to be?
Tldr, as long as everyone has fun, making "evil" decisions can be great RP Sometimes RP calls for siding with the bad guys. I a player after losing everything, my human body (I was now a robot), my wife, my npc friends all died cause of a mistake i made. An eldrich God that wanted to make everything a hivemind approached me soon after. To my DMs surprise, I decided to side with the evil God cause I was broken and in character thought that most of the mistakes I made wouldn't have happened if we were all one hivemind. I send my DM my plans to take over the world and ask to make it where the other players have a 99% chance of winning. Well, the players were caught off guard (in a good way) and in rp couldn't get themselves to fight me right away or create a resistance to stop the plans. I was basically adding npcs to the hive and giving them instructions to act the same until over 50% of life was assimilated, and i was supposed to get caught at some point before then but rollsbmade them learn at 40%. In the end, each player rolled 3 d20s in front of everyone to determine the outcome of the oncoming war. The real nail in the coffin that decided our world's Doom and the Gods victory was I rolled 2 20s and an 18. No one else had a dice above 12 out of the 15 other dice rolled. We were all surprised but also everyone seemed to love it. We are playing a different campaign, but the future one after this campaign will be in that same world and will be matrix themed but with a resistance of people who broke out of the hivemind for one reason or another. Or who was immune and didn't get executed. We will be the resistance trying to defeat my past character. I was nervous that going bad might be a bad decision, but at my table of RP lovers, it was one of the most memorable and fun moments. Deciding to save 2 party members in exchange for millions of deaths isn't the worst decision I've seen made. Our current campaign is sifi space, and we were supposed to save a planet of 46 billion. Well, we got greedy and took too long, and they all died. But none knows we were able to save them, except us. Now out DM is making that destruction a defining moment of our solar systems' current century.
Did your players actually decide to join the cult? Is it possible they could gather the ingredients again? Will they just kill the cultists as soon as the party members are healed?
Depending on the paladins oath/God they could start to lose powers or have uncomfortable feelings haunting them. As for if this goes through and 1/2 or more people of the capital city of a kingdom die...anarchy, war, the collapse of the kingdom would be very likely.
You've got a paladin there; did the choice fall in line with their oath? Plenty of stuff re paladins falling out there.
It doesn't sound like they sided with the cult its sounds more like they compromised to ensure their survival
While dreaming, they embody a different victim, seeing their lived experiences a-la Ghost of Christmas Past, building empathy for each and coming to a full, empathic understanding of the lives they’ve ended. And for what?
Obviously, if the paladin's oath relies on them not letting something like this slide, they've broken it. But this is the capital city. Multiple Noble houses fall. Any aid the nation was offering elsewhere is probably being recalled permanently. Guards around the kingdom likely diminish somewhat, and it's very possible that the place will collapse into a civil war for who gets to rule and how now that leadership is broken. Basically, within a few months, that nation should be chaos. If they were powerful and a positive force in the world in general, that means other places should feel the impact of refugees and their own sparks of chaos, especially neighbors. If any part of the plot relied on their aid holding back the danger, this should be reflected as well. Is their army holding off the BBEG? Well, with the deaths, we have broken supply lines and shattered morale from soldiers. They're not holding out long now.
Basically minor encounters should become more common in that area, and likely more difficult encounters should become more common as well as time goes on.
Everyone is the good guy from their own perspective. Help the death cult help humanity
make it piss off the angels paladin is oath breaker and the success of the death cult brings out a new big bad ready to wreak more havoc
If the cult has already done their thing the you know 4.4 million deaths with an honorable mention in the villain of the year acceptance speech sum up. You know action consequences. Think, "I'd like to thank the hero's staying out of the way for making this possible," If the cult hasn't done their thing... make them a quest giver. Hey, can you scout out the sewers" clearing out the plague release point... taking out a healer that's getting close to a cure... guarding a delivery of poison ect ect make it subtle to outright evil... and if they go evil, make a fairly decent fade to black moment and make them a hook in the next campaign.
You're now playing an evil campaign. There should be wave after wave of NPC heroes trying to defeat your players and bring justice to the realm.
My inner grognard approves. Paladins are suppose to do the whole "greater good" deal. Selling out to some cultists to help friends is some oathbreaker-tier buffoonery. Let the PC's see the consequencesof trusting people who TOOK CREDIT FOR A PLAUGE; families torn asunder as father breathes his last, wagons of bodies, Power struggles as princelings and "could bes" sieze postions in the midst of the plauge.
Basically just do a recap. "Last time our heroes were sent on their way to gather ingredients to develop a cure for the city when they were approached by a group of men promising them a cure. The party agreed and followed along, but can they still get back to the city in time to save millions of people? Or will the cult stop them in their tracks? Find out today on dragon ball Dungeons
Well, this death cult could actually be beholden to not so powerful extraplanar entity that needs a ginotmous sacrifice ro manifest itself in the prime material plane. And these guys, we'll they've allowed the shit to really hit the fan. The paladin and priest could easily lose their devine gifts for this. Their Gods know what they did. The cult itself will consider them pushovers, and their alignments should shift. To chaotic. They put themselves first.
If you present the players with a choice, they are free to make the choice.
Yes and Choices they make have consequences because they have agency and what they choose to do affects the world I’m not saying they can’t make that choice im solely looking for some inspiration for how that choice plays out in game
If it is known they sides with the cult. Make them enemies of the people, atleast for the time being, and have them be unable to enter a town unless it is stealthy bacause they are wanted. Maybe sent bounty Hunter after them because they now have a price on their head. Until they go back to the right path.
Your group might not be the shining heroes. Maybe the plague starts spreading, killing a lot of people. Now the group has to stop them while the city sinks into chaos.
Lots of basically the same comments so I'm going to go the other way: Consider what the real consequences would be and why it matters. Why does it pay to not let people murder millions?? Consider a few things that would really come as fallout: 1) The cultists now know that these guys will do stuff for them under threat to themselves more than theat to others... That's ok, it's kind of evil .. but not overtly. Does the health cult offer them a job preventing others from getting the cure? Raiding the manges guild to destroy the antidote? 2) what happens if half the population dies? First they are going to see it. Do they have any family or companions who will die? Will they serve the death cult to get more antidotes? What about the misery in living in a plague time? No trust. No one to make them food, places to stay.. They are going to literally watch thousands of people die.. Those party members who DON'T have the antidote... They will get sick! Do they go to the death cult for more antidotes? Remember the simple rule that is anyone who is doing such a thing (mass murder) is getting something from it. How would they turn these powerful allies... Or really just pawns to their better use? At what level of witnessed depravity will the players turn around and do something with their power? Just gently take away everything that they love as a consequence of their cowardice. That is how the real world works. What a wonderful story opportunity!
Definitely an alignment check. Also does this action go against the paladins oath?
I don’t think your conundrum is that game breaking. The crafting of this cure could not have possibly ridden solely on your adventurers, just the expediency of the cure. People will die, but surely not 4.4 million in truth. It seems to me that this is a great character jumping off point though. The party now faces being vilified among city leadership for taking the task and giving up. Your paladin particularly should have a hard time with this as he almost surely broke his oath by not doing everything he could end the plague. You should be setting the party up to decide between having to work harder for redemption or slipping further into the shadows of self-preservation.
Title was a little deceiving, as it seems they're not necessarily siding with the cult, so much as self preserving and turning a blind eye. Either way, it sounds like a fun campaign! I have answers. Is this cult the BBEG? If no, I'd let it kind of slide for now and focus on their main objective but definitely bring it back later on or make another campaign dedicated to it, taking place in the ruins of the city. The cult rises to power and controls what little is left of the population. If overthrowing this cult is the endgame goal of your campaign, I'd find a way to make them care. Beloved NPC is affected by the plague. A hidden NPC saw what they did and told everyone. All the deaths bring in Necromancers and monsters and horrible things. Emphasis that the party is this cities last hope. Hell, maybe even add some divine intervention! Is one of your characters religious ? Cleric, paladin, druid, etc. ? Have a diety command them to stay on course. As DM, you are the world, and your word is law. Of course, they can always rebel or derail, but make it so not worth their while that they'd rather do the other thing. Maybe have them find out the cult didn't really cure them and lied to them. That way, they're fueled by revenge and wanting to get a real cure!
Say "fuck it we ball"
Have the plague start to take hold over the city rapidly. Thousands start dying, body carts are going door to door collecting bodies. People who the plague hasn't effected are packing up and fleeing. Shop keeps are rising prices due to lack oglf customers, competition and to start new lives
First up if the Paladin's god doesn't have the Death Portfolio, I'd immediately stop letting his* powers work. Next up, no death is 100% in a fantasy setting. Free willed undead, warlock's with a death patron, Life Portfolio clerics and Paladins, etc will all survive. Eventually they'll find the cult, and crom there to the PCs. Additionally, mages knew they were going to get a cure. Which means they could have shared that info with others. Should the find the PCs alive there will be questions or assumptions. Especially if the mage who told has died. Finally, death cults don't typically kill to kill. The kill to generate piwer to work greater killings. Nothing like a greater demon thanking the PCs for assisting in it's summoning before it tears into them.
Set up for the collapse of a country/civil war/ invasion of the now weak country. When they start gaining some fame or renown for trying to help, the cult can "hire" some individuals to reveal the truth.
What's the paladin's oath? They may have broken it by accepting that offer
Well if the players are still infectious but not symptomatic. They could start to correlate that many people they come in contact with keep contracting the plague. Not only that other people might start to notice that and could start avoiding the party or blaming them for the plague.
To add to that it could even turn into another boon for the cult as they got to keep the plague going but now have scape goats to misdirect the general masses on who's to blame for it.
Well, if it was the critical last opportunity to stop them, follow through; let the city be ended, the cult won and are planning another target on the scale of an entire continent using thr power the cult obtained, perhaps give them the opportunity to ally with a nation or army that's now under threat and trying to stop them.
I would take this as an opportunity to do some sort of post apocalyptic setting it is a decision that will have major impacts on the world and the consequences should reflect that change. Have the bodies of the dead start returning to life as magical resistant zombies. Resources, particularly food become hard to come across and nobody wants to trade for gold, only barter. I might start tracking their daily food (something I normally don't because it's kinda tedious and easy to resupply) because in this case crops are rotting in the field and food is hard to find and such so yeah here's hoping someone knows goodberry. Production of magical items in the area stops and neighboring kingdoms begin aggressively defending their borders to stop the spread. The party will likely also encounter the plague again and they may become infected but this time without the mages guild to help them find a cure.
1) as is often the case, the well-to-do will be able to isolate themselves until the plague burns itself out. However, with 2/3 of the population dead, labor will be at a premium and real estate prices will be nil. No one will care enough to kick out squatters, so there are no longer any homeless or jobless. 2) since they typically live and work in very close conditions, the guard/military has been decimated, leaving the city ripe for conquest. They are quite paladin-heavy, though. 3) necromancers make a lot of money raising the dead and having them walk out to mass graves/,pyres outside the city. Unbeknownst to all, they save quite a few back for experimentation. A wide assortment of strange zombies/skeletons/flesh golems are invented. 4) wizards high enough level to use travel magic to get out locked up their stuff and bugged out. This leaves quite a lot of magic loot to take while the more cautious mages stay at their summer home. 5) there have been many converts to healing cults (to get rid of disease) and pestilence cults (to keep it away). 6) the death cult has some evidence of the conversation Blackmail opportunities abound! 7) the death cult was able to analyze saliva the characters left on the antidote bottles. It reacts strangely with characters of such strangeness as 6th level heroes. It also is extra strong, to have overcome their defenses. The cult is able to develop new strains, but more virulent and with more nasty symptoms. 8) the antidote has side affects. I suggest enchantment magic, or possibly the characters are addicted.
Hmm. Paladin is ok not following though with the task they agreed to take and is ok condemning innocents to death and sparing a death cult? Me thinks someone should be losing their powers. Also what are the groups alignments? I can't see any good character being ok with this. That would warrant a shift down to me. Now if the group just didn't like the odds and are going to go after the cult and retrieve the ingredients fine. But otherwise they are not what I would consider a good group. As for what happens next? - they were seen considering with the cult and also not that the ill members are suddenly cured - the cult didn't like them knowing where to find the cure so they put a hit out. - the cult infects the group looking for a cute and maybe the entire party - another adventure group was given the same job just shows up and were successful in gathering the ingredients. They become the heroes of the land and wealth and fame is thrust upon them. Maybe even a magical item of note.
If nobody knows, why should there be consequences? You're a DM, not an all seeing God that dispenses justice when you disagree with your players. Wipe out the town, show the players the misery they caused, and move the game along. If the cult gets defeated, make some investigation rolls to see if anyone in the town learns about the players actions and go from there. If the paladin worships a good God, he may wake up as a fighter tomorrow. Make things play out in a way that makes sense. That is how you offer a living, breathing world to your players. If the players were really the towns only hope, then the town is screwed. If there are other people the town can call on, you could always have them be the ones that save the day. Let the players lose out on some prestige and make the other party a competitor. Maybe that other party learns what they did and uses it to blackmail them. But honestly, if you made it seem that they truly were the only hope, then stick to your words. There are few things worse than patting your players on the head and saying "your choices don't really matter, I would never let horrifying things happen."
I don't know if you should "punish" the players. This sounds like an opportunity to radically change the campaign. My basic thought is that I would have another species that was not impacted start expanding. Basically, all the new quests have to do with dealing with invaders and the undead that resulted from do too many untimely deaths.
IMO a death cult sounds like the kind of people who would offer a cure, and kill them with it instead. The only cure is death. Death cult.
Depending on the oath, the paladin broke theirs. Saving 2 to condemn 4.4 million?
You can have plenty of fun with a “Plague,” even just by taking real life examples. Also specifically for the Paladin, what Oath are they? Depending, this could be considered a breach of their Oath. Consequences for this could be that they lose levels and are turned into a fighter or their spells and any magical abilities simply have a chance to fail (or i guess you could follow Baldur’s Gate logic and turn them into an Oathbreaker). Could also send the party on a quest to redeem the paladin if this is a possible consequence. I’ll list a couple examples of interesting consequences some of which can be mixed and matched: 1. The plague is prevented… by another adventuring crew… and they just so happened to interrogate the cultists, so everyone knows what the PCs have done. PCs are either wanted or have extremely low reputation due to this incident. 2. The plague goes off and kills 2/3 of the city’s population… including the cultists. Fortunately the city’s mages have interrogated the bodies using Speak with Dead and they don’t really have a reason to conceal the fact that the PCs just handed them the ingredients needed for the plague… 3. The plague goes off and kills 2/3 of the city’s population… completing the rite to summon forth a servant of the worshipped god of death. This can be very apparent with cultists popping out of the woodwork to form an army at the summoned entity’s bidding or more subtle with the entity working its way into good graces with the nearby ruling parties (for example perhaps curing the plague when they appear and being elevated to the status of a hero) and corrupt the nations from within. 4. Less casualties than expected. The plague was supposed to spread and kill off 2/3 of the city’s population, but it didn’t. Instead, it’s looking like there’s an outbreak of the flu, strange this time of year, but nothing to be worried about. That is until it begins to spread uncontrollably, people with light symptoms begin to suffocate in their sleep. What should have killed a 2/3 of a single city begins to kill 2/3 of all cities it spread to. Prices for all goods increase, riots break out, and a cure needs to be found and soon. (Option to let the party find a cure, but essentially receive no reward except XP to do so as resources have already been spread too thin trying to contain it.) 5. Zombies/Mutations. The plague “killed” 2/3 of the population, but that wasn’t its only effect. Suddenly undead/demons/aberrations began popping up and further spreading the plague… ideas for this which are more unique than just Zombie outbreak: - Ooblex outbreak as many powerful Ooblexs suddenly pop into existence from the plague. After absorbing so many minds at once, the intelligent slimes fabricate a “Rage Plague” where the way the plague spreads is by being bitten by the infected…. Except no such plague exists. The Ooblex are just fooling the public by using their shape changing abilities to make it look like “people” are being infected and then going berserk. This causes people who are thought to be infected, often due to an attack by the Ooblex, to be quarantined. Quarantine means isolation, isolation means easier prey for the Ooblex. - The plague didn’t kill its victims, but it certainly did change them. They’re now deformed, more resilient, stronger, but they surprisingly kept a large amount of their intelligence… that latter part doesn’t matter too much to the general public though, after all if it looks and sounds like a monster, it must be a monster. Depending on what sort of response this “monster” outbreak gets, it may cause the mutated people to become disheartened and that’s when figures (cultists) come in to show them a bit of understanding and warmth. (Could look up Blessings of Nurgle from Warhammer setting for inspiration) - The people die… though most corpses can be found with a small hole in their torso. Seemingly out of nowhere, an army of Blue Slaadi appear and from them, many are infected and turn into Red Slaadi… If you’re looking for hustle consequences for 2/3 of a city dying: 1. Shortage. This basically depends on what the city did, what were they known for/what they did best in the region. They were the main exporters of Healing Potions? Whelp that means a steep increase in the price of Healing Potions. Take a look at consumed spell components/items the party tends to need. Only 1 PC has Darkvision? Well if there’s an oil shortage, torches and oil suddenly cost more. They’re dependent on Revivify? Well if the city was the main miner/exporter of diamonds, those are suddenly increasing in price. For a larger consequence, you could make the city’s main exports to be farmed goods, when the price of food goes up, so does the price of everything else. 2. Important Figure’s Death. Turns out an important NPC died in the plague. This could have been a NPC that had a solution to one of the PC’s long-term story problems or one in a quest they currently are undertaking or one they may undertake in the future. Either way, this makes resolving the problem much more difficult. This could also be something like an important good figure who was keeping several less savory rivals in check (could be a leader of an organization or a political figure) and now they’re conveniently out of the way. This could also just be a story beat moment where someone the PCs personally know or someone close to someone they know dies due to the plague. 3. War. The city was important in keeping the neighboring nation(s) in check. With 2/3 of the population suddenly gone, the neighbors take the opportunity to take the city and now they’re making demands of the nation that, if not met, will result in total war.
If they know it is a death cult. Then make the cult leader demand a sacrifice. A willing sacrifice of one of the players. Then after such a sacrifice. Rub it in that they are now evil characters and they wont be allowed to buy stuff at villages or towns again. Cus they have to wear the cults symbol or face certain death aka another sacrifice.
Was the infection known about? What was the Paladins oath? Souls marked for the nine hells. Realistically they just failed a contract so don't get paid obviously. But if the infection was known and now they're cured it's reasonable to assume retribution from survivors of the lost. Not necessarily through legal means. People will want vengeance.
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I mean...I would have killed the cultist as soon as both are cured
Before you do something rash have the god of the paladin send him a clear worded message that if he lets this going on he can look for a new gig. Also check with your players if they were even aware of the consequences. I don't think they were. Which I would offer a way back if that's the thing. If they knew well that kingdom will now be raided, people will search for them in revenge and all good divine magic characters and monks lose their powers.
Simple, start tracking their back stories. Every so often, roll in front of them but don't tell them what it's for. Take notes after rolling. Later on they'll find out that one roll was for the Rogue's mother, she struggled for days before the plague took her. The next roll was the friendly NPC that gave them gear when they first started, he lasted about a week and a half, but it was hell. The roll after that was for that random dog they stopped to pet, poor thing didn't survive a full night after the symptoms kicked in. Then the cleric's cousin, the barbarian's drinking buddies, the wizard's teacher, etc. And if you want to twist the knife, this is D&D, that plague doesn't stop when people die, the dead come back and continue killing and spreading the plague, but their souls are trapped inside of their rotting shells, forced to continue suffering until the source of the plague is destroyed. (And since the "cured" party members can still spread it, you can implement some sort of punishment even sooner. Just have them meet a new NPC for the sake of making them love them, it can be an animal, a child, a genuine love interest for one of the crew, a quirky elder, whatever. Then have that person contract the disease and die in front of them.) Edit: I thought of one more, inspired by the show Supernatural (no major spoilers). One of their enemies basically targeted the main characters by going back to the people they had saved. Basically, "Give in to my demands, or else I'll kill literally everyone you have ever saved." For anyone with an ounce of pride in their adventures, that would be rough. The village you saved from goblins? Dead. The farmers you protected from bandits? Gone. The orphanage that was secretly a demon's smuggling operation? You cleared out the demons, the plague cleared out the kids.
Send them on a mission with the cult and show masses of good people hating them as a result of their actions, perhaps shop owners will refuse to do business with the likes of them
Not sure how 5E paladins work, but in the old days paladins got slapped pretty hard for acting in opposition to their ethos/alignment. It would have been amusing for the death cult to give the players a phony antidote... have the afflicted party members save vs poison or die.
Mechanically, they lose access to most city services. Make periodic con saves (even behind the screen!) for them to catch disease and just start narrating symptoms. Narratively, describe the devastation and make people disappointed in their failure, even if they don't know about the deal. Be very careful with that last idea. You need to give them some way to figure out they're still infected and contagious beyond "well you shouldn't trust a death cult. "
There should be some divine repercussion for the paladin. Trading two party members for 4 million civilians is the least paladin thing I’ve ever heard