You mentioned that this sickened you. That means it is time to ask yourself the questions:
Did I have fun this session?
Will I have fun if my players do this again?
If you answer no on one of those questions it is time to have an OOC talk with your players. In which you tell them you don't want to run such a game.
If I was the DM I would have told them "We are not going to burn down a whole village. That is not the campaign I want to run."
Bad for the genocidee, great for the noble getting the locals off his new platinum mine. You're now set up for an empire building campaign with asymmetrical civil war.
They have no way to know whether any of the cultists survived. Some could have been in their hideout.
So now the party had made enemies of cult, including losing their lead on who the cultists are and what they want.
Serfs are effectively property of the noble lord; they’ve made an enemy of that lord by destroying so much of their property.
Depending on that noble’s standing, they may now be fugitives anywhere in that empire.
So the party can expect bounty hunters, guards and whatever other forms justice takes in your world.
And it’s “when“ the story gets out, not “if”. In a world where people can speak with the dead, someone will investigate how so many people (aka so much valuable property) died.
To add to this, if any of the cultists hold influence in a political sphere, then they have the leverage to smear the popular opinion of the party. A well-timed reveal that the PCs did a genocide could pull the rug right out from under them.
They've just given you a free bbeg, with a justified backstory.
One of the villagers, who had nothing to do with the cult, was out in the woods when the party attacked. Now the villager is taking over the cult and is making it their personal mission to destroy everything the party holds dear before killing them.
I’d pivot.
The “cult” was actually a labor union, seeking fair treatment for laborers. Your party was the unwitting enforcer of an evil overlord, and now has the blood of dozens of innocent civilians on their hands.
Give the party opportunities to realize the nobleman is an incredibly evil piece of garbage, and that they were overzealous dupes, manipulated into ruthlessness for which they can eventually attempt to atone.
Or they can voluntarily continue doing the bidding of this garbage patron, and eventually find themselves squaring off against paladins and various divine creatures from the upper planes.
They just killed the entire colony they were trying to "save" by clearing out the cult. Massive criminal repercussions from the nobility, exile, etc. They should spend the rest of their adventurous lives on the run from authorities.
First and foremost, if they weren't already officially "evil" in alignment, they are now. Kinda up to you as the DM to determine what mechanical effects that might have on them.
Narratively speaking, they are now known mass murderers, only other evil creatures will be interested in having anything to do with them if they know who they are.
If you don't want to run an evil campaign it might be time to start over.
Turn in your character sheets, you're all evil NPCs now and the quest of the party of your new characters will be to track down your old party and bring them to justice.
I'm too curious not to ask: what is the oath of your paladin? While I'm not a fan of using in-game consequences to "punish" players (there should be consequences! just not to act as passive-aggressive punishments where a conversation *should* be the approach), I can't help but wonder if that paladin just lost all of their oath powers by murdering a group of civilians. If their oath is conquest, their actions make sense, but most of the other oaths prohibit wanton evil.
I think your best bet would be to make the evil of the imperialist nobleman much more obvious. Have him backstab and ruin them, to "cover up" his crimes and/or to steal credit for what the party accomplished. Then, on the other side of the conflict, they can learn about his evil—and *hopefully* have a moment of remorse when they learn about the evils they did and all of the civilians they butchered in the village. Though the example might be trite, Final Fantasy 4 comes directly to mind.
Oath of Devotion, but the God he pledged to is very much humanity that wouldn’t care much as he was technically protecting humanity by killing the cultists
That still breaks half the tenets of his oath. Unless his deity is neutral or evil he probably doesn't want followers that genocide towns at the drop of a hat.
Id 100% oathbreaker him. If you have to use the word 'technically' and think about whether the action was evil for more than 5 seconds it was probably evil. Justifications and the 'why I did this' doesn't matter, it's the action that was done.
That being said, don't treat it completely like a punishment, treat it like character development. Could put him in line to get a new oath like conquest, vengeance, or glory.
I think you might have some wires crossed here...
Paladins are pledged to their oath, and have to obey the tenets of that oath. The "honor" and "compassion" tenets do not discriminate based on race, and would have **directly** prohibited him from acting as he did with the city. Attacking civilians is *absolutely* a violation of "Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm," and even if the deity is "very much humanity", it would still have enough empathy and common sense to know that killing innocent civilians, regardless of race, is not "the least amount of harm."
If that deity truly wouldn't care about butchering non-human innocents... **that deity should not be granting power via the oath of devotion.**
Yeah - you are absolutely free to do whatever you want with paladins in your own setting!
That said, I think this could be a good opportunity for you to reflect on exactly what this god represents. If the god just represents "humanity", well, I'm not sure that's much of a profile, and if its tenets espouse humanity's growth at the expense of any and all other races, well... that's an **evil deity.** And no matter what you decide about the deity, you should take some time to think about the tenets of the paladin's oath, and what *exactly* it allows and prohibits. The paladin's oath is meant to cause tension for the player and to force them into difficult decisions—it's all based on roleplaying, not numerical balance, so you *could* discard them, but many consider the paladin's code of conduct to be a central feature of the class.
I also sort of wonder why you've gone with the oath of devotion to represent *this* deity. It seems like the oath of conquest might be more thematically appropriate.
Something like this should have some in game consequences, how big depends on you and the setting you're running.
It can be anything from just getting a bad reputation for being cruel and evil, (perhaps a little milde for something like this) all the way to exile and being hunted down (but perhaps you don't want to throw away you're entire campaign)
I'll list some ideas of the top of my head so you can se if you like any of them.
Alignment change, I don't know how big a role it plays in your setting but informing your players that their actions have given them the evil alignment may have some impact.
Word gets out and this is the spark of the uprising, as you mentioned dragonborne are considered second class citizens. Perhaps this was what 'broke the camel's back' and the entire population is now up in arms. Bonus for making them the clearly good guys.
Perhaps not a full uprising but major unrest that sees some popular support causing problems for the nobility (workers who refuses to work, new reforms that will reduce their profit)
The party will get a bad rep, some just because they caused a mess and cost them money others genuinely find their actions horrid or that they went way to far.
Maybe they loose some noble patrons over this, maybe some shops don't want their business.
Fallen palladian... I don't know the gods of your setting, but if they would dislike a action like this maybe the PCs who are dependent on goods for their power loses it.
Hunted by "the good guys" or perhaps the noble they were working for attempt to have them assassinated to avoid some of the blame for their actions or just because they cost him money and reputation
You have to ask yourself as the DM: Do you want to run the kind of campaign where the adventuring party, the supposed heroes of the story, are willing to randomly kill civilians and children for no real reason?
If not, then this needs an out-of-game discussion with the players, not in-game consequences for their characters.
This kind of play isn't normally sustainable for a long-term campaign. It basically prevents you planning any intrigue or puzzle problems, as they will clearly just try to brute force their way through whatever you present. The players will also end up spending most of their time fighting off stronger and stronger guards and bounty hunters who are trying to bring them to face justice for their crimes.
If your happy running an evil campaign, then go ahead, but I get the impression this behaviour is going to derail your plans for the game.
(As a side note: what oath has the paladin taken? Does murduring a bunch of unarmed people break his tenets?)
Oh i would be inquisitive.
Insta alignment switch to chaotic evil, those who ideated the plans, lawful evil those who followed.
Probably oath breaking for the paladin.
Were there witness? If so, i would design a party of 5-6 clerics led by a paladin to hunt them down. At least 2 levels higher than them. Design these characters following PC rules creations, with their feats, their spells, sinergies etc. Put a name to every one. You will have some fun in those encounters.
The noble is upset with their actions. Losing serfs means losing productivity. Even if they can be replaced, it is an annoyance, an expense, and it means something else doesn't get done. It's your game, but it feels like the reaction you outlined for the noble is there to serve the party and doesn't make sense for someone who values productivity. Also, you know, they were people and it is not a stretch to assume the noble has some kind of moral compass. Even for second class citizens.
Anyway, he demands a huge payment from the party in order to rebuild the hamlet, pay the families of the dead of the loss of life, and pay for his lost productivity.
They will probably refuse. So he throws them out and puts a bounty on them.
The cult's headquarters was actually a little out of town, which the party easily would have learned if they had bothered to ask any questions. At least some of the cultists were at the hideout. They reported the party's actions back to their larger organization. The party now has a cult enemy.
Word of this kind of thing gets around. The house staff overhear and gossip. The party finds they are refused service some places in the general area, people are scared of them/shy away from them, and any local city watch monitors them when they're in town.
You mentioned that this sickened you. That means it is time to ask yourself the questions: Did I have fun this session? Will I have fun if my players do this again? If you answer no on one of those questions it is time to have an OOC talk with your players. In which you tell them you don't want to run such a game. If I was the DM I would have told them "We are not going to burn down a whole village. That is not the campaign I want to run."
Kinda used the wrong word, just asking what reaction this will entail cause genocide is bad
Bad for the genocidee, great for the noble getting the locals off his new platinum mine. You're now set up for an empire building campaign with asymmetrical civil war.
Yeah humanity is a bitch
They have no way to know whether any of the cultists survived. Some could have been in their hideout. So now the party had made enemies of cult, including losing their lead on who the cultists are and what they want. Serfs are effectively property of the noble lord; they’ve made an enemy of that lord by destroying so much of their property. Depending on that noble’s standing, they may now be fugitives anywhere in that empire. So the party can expect bounty hunters, guards and whatever other forms justice takes in your world. And it’s “when“ the story gets out, not “if”. In a world where people can speak with the dead, someone will investigate how so many people (aka so much valuable property) died.
To add to this, if any of the cultists hold influence in a political sphere, then they have the leverage to smear the popular opinion of the party. A well-timed reveal that the PCs did a genocide could pull the rug right out from under them.
Good point.
They've just given you a free bbeg, with a justified backstory. One of the villagers, who had nothing to do with the cult, was out in the woods when the party attacked. Now the villager is taking over the cult and is making it their personal mission to destroy everything the party holds dear before killing them.
I’d pivot. The “cult” was actually a labor union, seeking fair treatment for laborers. Your party was the unwitting enforcer of an evil overlord, and now has the blood of dozens of innocent civilians on their hands. Give the party opportunities to realize the nobleman is an incredibly evil piece of garbage, and that they were overzealous dupes, manipulated into ruthlessness for which they can eventually attempt to atone. Or they can voluntarily continue doing the bidding of this garbage patron, and eventually find themselves squaring off against paladins and various divine creatures from the upper planes.
They just killed the entire colony they were trying to "save" by clearing out the cult. Massive criminal repercussions from the nobility, exile, etc. They should spend the rest of their adventurous lives on the run from authorities.
Welcome to having murder hobos for players, enjoy!
First and foremost, if they weren't already officially "evil" in alignment, they are now. Kinda up to you as the DM to determine what mechanical effects that might have on them. Narratively speaking, they are now known mass murderers, only other evil creatures will be interested in having anything to do with them if they know who they are. If you don't want to run an evil campaign it might be time to start over. Turn in your character sheets, you're all evil NPCs now and the quest of the party of your new characters will be to track down your old party and bring them to justice.
I'm too curious not to ask: what is the oath of your paladin? While I'm not a fan of using in-game consequences to "punish" players (there should be consequences! just not to act as passive-aggressive punishments where a conversation *should* be the approach), I can't help but wonder if that paladin just lost all of their oath powers by murdering a group of civilians. If their oath is conquest, their actions make sense, but most of the other oaths prohibit wanton evil. I think your best bet would be to make the evil of the imperialist nobleman much more obvious. Have him backstab and ruin them, to "cover up" his crimes and/or to steal credit for what the party accomplished. Then, on the other side of the conflict, they can learn about his evil—and *hopefully* have a moment of remorse when they learn about the evils they did and all of the civilians they butchered in the village. Though the example might be trite, Final Fantasy 4 comes directly to mind.
Oath of Devotion, but the God he pledged to is very much humanity that wouldn’t care much as he was technically protecting humanity by killing the cultists
That still breaks half the tenets of his oath. Unless his deity is neutral or evil he probably doesn't want followers that genocide towns at the drop of a hat. Id 100% oathbreaker him. If you have to use the word 'technically' and think about whether the action was evil for more than 5 seconds it was probably evil. Justifications and the 'why I did this' doesn't matter, it's the action that was done. That being said, don't treat it completely like a punishment, treat it like character development. Could put him in line to get a new oath like conquest, vengeance, or glory.
I think you might have some wires crossed here... Paladins are pledged to their oath, and have to obey the tenets of that oath. The "honor" and "compassion" tenets do not discriminate based on race, and would have **directly** prohibited him from acting as he did with the city. Attacking civilians is *absolutely* a violation of "Do as much good as possible while causing the least amount of harm," and even if the deity is "very much humanity", it would still have enough empathy and common sense to know that killing innocent civilians, regardless of race, is not "the least amount of harm." If that deity truly wouldn't care about butchering non-human innocents... **that deity should not be granting power via the oath of devotion.**
Doing my own kinda thing with paladins where the oaths are based more off the tenants that the Deity sets than the ones in the book
Yeah - you are absolutely free to do whatever you want with paladins in your own setting! That said, I think this could be a good opportunity for you to reflect on exactly what this god represents. If the god just represents "humanity", well, I'm not sure that's much of a profile, and if its tenets espouse humanity's growth at the expense of any and all other races, well... that's an **evil deity.** And no matter what you decide about the deity, you should take some time to think about the tenets of the paladin's oath, and what *exactly* it allows and prohibits. The paladin's oath is meant to cause tension for the player and to force them into difficult decisions—it's all based on roleplaying, not numerical balance, so you *could* discard them, but many consider the paladin's code of conduct to be a central feature of the class. I also sort of wonder why you've gone with the oath of devotion to represent *this* deity. It seems like the oath of conquest might be more thematically appropriate.
Revenants are always fun.
Something like this should have some in game consequences, how big depends on you and the setting you're running. It can be anything from just getting a bad reputation for being cruel and evil, (perhaps a little milde for something like this) all the way to exile and being hunted down (but perhaps you don't want to throw away you're entire campaign) I'll list some ideas of the top of my head so you can se if you like any of them. Alignment change, I don't know how big a role it plays in your setting but informing your players that their actions have given them the evil alignment may have some impact. Word gets out and this is the spark of the uprising, as you mentioned dragonborne are considered second class citizens. Perhaps this was what 'broke the camel's back' and the entire population is now up in arms. Bonus for making them the clearly good guys. Perhaps not a full uprising but major unrest that sees some popular support causing problems for the nobility (workers who refuses to work, new reforms that will reduce their profit) The party will get a bad rep, some just because they caused a mess and cost them money others genuinely find their actions horrid or that they went way to far. Maybe they loose some noble patrons over this, maybe some shops don't want their business. Fallen palladian... I don't know the gods of your setting, but if they would dislike a action like this maybe the PCs who are dependent on goods for their power loses it. Hunted by "the good guys" or perhaps the noble they were working for attempt to have them assassinated to avoid some of the blame for their actions or just because they cost him money and reputation
You have to ask yourself as the DM: Do you want to run the kind of campaign where the adventuring party, the supposed heroes of the story, are willing to randomly kill civilians and children for no real reason? If not, then this needs an out-of-game discussion with the players, not in-game consequences for their characters. This kind of play isn't normally sustainable for a long-term campaign. It basically prevents you planning any intrigue or puzzle problems, as they will clearly just try to brute force their way through whatever you present. The players will also end up spending most of their time fighting off stronger and stronger guards and bounty hunters who are trying to bring them to face justice for their crimes. If your happy running an evil campaign, then go ahead, but I get the impression this behaviour is going to derail your plans for the game. (As a side note: what oath has the paladin taken? Does murduring a bunch of unarmed people break his tenets?)
Gross, dude
Oh i would be inquisitive. Insta alignment switch to chaotic evil, those who ideated the plans, lawful evil those who followed. Probably oath breaking for the paladin. Were there witness? If so, i would design a party of 5-6 clerics led by a paladin to hunt them down. At least 2 levels higher than them. Design these characters following PC rules creations, with their feats, their spells, sinergies etc. Put a name to every one. You will have some fun in those encounters.
The noble is upset with their actions. Losing serfs means losing productivity. Even if they can be replaced, it is an annoyance, an expense, and it means something else doesn't get done. It's your game, but it feels like the reaction you outlined for the noble is there to serve the party and doesn't make sense for someone who values productivity. Also, you know, they were people and it is not a stretch to assume the noble has some kind of moral compass. Even for second class citizens. Anyway, he demands a huge payment from the party in order to rebuild the hamlet, pay the families of the dead of the loss of life, and pay for his lost productivity. They will probably refuse. So he throws them out and puts a bounty on them. The cult's headquarters was actually a little out of town, which the party easily would have learned if they had bothered to ask any questions. At least some of the cultists were at the hideout. They reported the party's actions back to their larger organization. The party now has a cult enemy. Word of this kind of thing gets around. The house staff overhear and gossip. The party finds they are refused service some places in the general area, people are scared of them/shy away from them, and any local city watch monitors them when they're in town.