Betrayal in D&D
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It's a little difficult to come up with advice without knowing some details...
Would it be possible to do something like... convince the local law enforcers that you've turned over a new leaf and to lock up the rest of the party, those evil-doers? Would be probably be quite difficult if you're a drow... an anonymous tip, maybe, and you just happen to not be there with the rest of the party when they're arrested? And, it could be fun for the other players to try and stage a jailbreak.
Would it be possible to do something like... convince the local law enforcers that you've turned over a new leaf and to lock up the rest of the party, those evil-doers? Would be probably be quite difficult if you're a drow... an anonymous tip, maybe, and you just happen to not be there with the rest of the party when they're arrested? And, it could be fun for the other players to try and stage a jailbreak.
I haven't really played a good Evil campaign in a long time, but here's a good way to kill off/ruin other players courtesy of a Southern U.S. fairy tale called 'Briar Rabbit and the Tar Baby':TheDrunkNinja said:
Once when I was playing a Paladin, I was having some trouble with evil party members who were trying to mess with me for the sole reason of being a Paladin. So after having my gear and rations stolen once, I had an idea and put a plan into motion with the help of the DM outside of the game session. First, I bought some high quality rations (the kind of food Nobility or the Middle Class eats) and made no attempt to hide the fact from my party that I was eating well. Our greedy, evil Half-Orc Barbarian and tiefling theif couldn't pass up an opportunity like this, so they tried to swipe it from me. After an (intentionally) botched save attempt, they swiped my foodsack and started stuffing their faces (more from spite than hunger) before I could notice. All of a sudden, they're deathly sick, feverish, and vomiting blood (as to be expected when you soak food in strong, venomous poison for a day!) and have to make saving throws against major internal damage each turn for several hours. The Thief died of her illness, vomiting blood until she collapsed dead; the Barbarian managed to cling to life and we ended up voting to carry him with us (he nonetheless died while bedridden in an ambush the next day, coup de grâced while lying infirm in his bedroll by a hobgoblin). So they died, the rest of the party and I looted their stuff, and they were no longer allowed to call me "Lawful Stupid". Uncle Remus would have been proud.
I used a campaign-specific poison that Assassins had been using to coat their blades and arrows to make them extremely deadly (it proved to be even more venemous when ingested!).
For standard poisons though, your best bet is Book of Vile Darkness, which has plenty of highly deadly concoctions to poison your greedy party members.
OR
If you feel like being particularly sadistic, Book of Vile Darkness also covers addictive drugs in the same chapter. While poisoning your enemies may get the job done, a truly evil genius will drug them with a highly addictive substance. Soon they'll spend all their gold to get more of it, they'll start selling their weapons and armor for more drug money, and they'll end up either catatonic or dead in a gutter, truly an end without dignity!
Think up an epic plan during a particularly tough battle that results in everybody using their most powerful item, and have them "accidentally" destroyed in the process.
Or you could just light innocent passerby on fire and hope it spreads to your companions.
Or you could just light innocent passerby on fire and hope it spreads to your companions.
Given that I do not know any of the real specifics of what are involved in either resurrecting or stopping said resurection, I cannot be of much help. Since it is the stated goal of the OP that he want's to be the inside man in this endeavor and not openly work against the party, there are a few options based on the basic principles of asymetric conflict.
Misinformation is your friend. Unless your party has ready access to other sources of information on the subject, it is probable the OP has most of the answers. You can use this for any number of reasons, from getting the party to affect the resurrection by mistake to leading them down dark and dangerous paths where death seems likely. If other sources of information are present, you must work to silence such things. One can go about this in a number of ways, from the direct (destroy the other source) to the indirect (destroy the sources credability). This could take the form of burning a library full of answers, assassinating sources or simply attempting to manipulate the stream of information such that the other players question the reliability of the source.
Proxies are the key. Unless the party is standing at the precipice of success and the only option left is directly confronting your friends, all the dirty work is best done by proxies. Assassination is a risky endeavor as your friends might be skilled enough to capture a failed assassin alive, and a diligent investigation could almost certainly unravel the whole bit. Instead, simply seek to harry and harrass the party. Hire adventurers through a proxy to steal a needed mcguffin, use the services of another practitioner of magic to construct ingenious wards, pay the local thieves and assasins guild to ensure things go missing and traps litter the direct paths. Meanwhile, since it will be unlikely that you can move forward on your plans without alerting the party, outsource this portion as well. This god almost certainly has other followers, and even if they are hard to come by, there are always people wllling to work for coin without asking the wrong sorts of questions.
Information is your worst nightmare. Never reveal your identity to any of your proxies for starters but most importantly ensure that the right news never makes it to your parties ears.
Remember - your goal is to resurrect a god and simply delaying your party does you no good if your delays do not further this goal. Your aim is simple - keep your party chasing their tails and if possible wear them down while you assemble your forces against them. You are trying to set the conditions for success while acting from a position of weakness.
Misinformation is your friend. Unless your party has ready access to other sources of information on the subject, it is probable the OP has most of the answers. You can use this for any number of reasons, from getting the party to affect the resurrection by mistake to leading them down dark and dangerous paths where death seems likely. If other sources of information are present, you must work to silence such things. One can go about this in a number of ways, from the direct (destroy the other source) to the indirect (destroy the sources credability). This could take the form of burning a library full of answers, assassinating sources or simply attempting to manipulate the stream of information such that the other players question the reliability of the source.
Proxies are the key. Unless the party is standing at the precipice of success and the only option left is directly confronting your friends, all the dirty work is best done by proxies. Assassination is a risky endeavor as your friends might be skilled enough to capture a failed assassin alive, and a diligent investigation could almost certainly unravel the whole bit. Instead, simply seek to harry and harrass the party. Hire adventurers through a proxy to steal a needed mcguffin, use the services of another practitioner of magic to construct ingenious wards, pay the local thieves and assasins guild to ensure things go missing and traps litter the direct paths. Meanwhile, since it will be unlikely that you can move forward on your plans without alerting the party, outsource this portion as well. This god almost certainly has other followers, and even if they are hard to come by, there are always people wllling to work for coin without asking the wrong sorts of questions.
Information is your worst nightmare. Never reveal your identity to any of your proxies for starters but most importantly ensure that the right news never makes it to your parties ears.
Remember - your goal is to resurrect a god and simply delaying your party does you no good if your delays do not further this goal. Your aim is simple - keep your party chasing their tails and if possible wear them down while you assemble your forces against them. You are trying to set the conditions for success while acting from a position of weakness.
Except I'm quite sure that was conduct unbecomming a paladin and more than sufficient cause to revoke his holy power. That was neither lawful nor was it good and it resulted in the death (by murder) of those under his protection. I'm not an expert by any stretch, but according to this 3.5 handbook I have lying around: "Paladins must be lawful good, and they lose their divine powers if they deviate from that alignment. Additionally, paladins swear to follow a code of conduct that is in line with lawfulness and goodness".ThaBenMan said:
Meh. House rules can change all that. I would say it's ok since they started it, and it was really their own evil actions that condemned them - if they didn't steal the rations, they wouldn't have been poisoned. I don't think it'd be very fun to be under the super-strict canon restrictions for a paladin like you listed, myself (although, it might be kind of cool to play a rogue, "fallen" paladin who is Neutral Good or Chaotic Good, and struggle with trying to find redemption in the eyes of your god!)Eclectic Dreck said:
Poison the medical supplies, keep some untouched potions and such for yourself and hope that they need to heal sometime soon?TheDrunkNinja said:
If you're worried about destroying the characters they've worked on, it could be sleep inducing poison or something that would K/O them for a day, your character, being friends with them, but also wanting to serve his "God", would lock himself and the K/O'ed characters in a cave, so as to keep them from "disturbing the master's plans" but not forcing him to kill his friends.
He acts like he's just as confused as everyone else, the party has to figure some way out of this cave and if you manage to get out, your character starts figuring "if a small group of people like this can stop a 'God' and the 'God' has trouble even inconveniencing them, he can't be very powerful".
You can probably take it from there, I imagine.
A fallen paladin is simply a fighter. Their holy skills are just knowledges. Sure, playing a fallen paladin seeking redeption (or perhaps descending further into the darkness and becomming the evil equivalent who's name I forget). My point was simply that the Paladin in question acted in such a way that this act alone would be sufficient cause to be cast out of his order.ThaBenMan said:
Let's just look at it:
Theft is punished without trial - this is not lawful.
Crime punished by murder - ths is not god.
Murder was conducted by poison - this is neither honorable, nor lawful, nor good.
As the injured party, the Paladin is in no position to act as neutral judge and jury. Even assuming that this bit could be resolved and the sentence was death, the Paladin would have to be open and honest about it. Killing them in single combat would have been honorable seeing as you would have given them a chance to defend themselves.
Besides, they don't call it "lawful stupid" because the alignment is known for pragmatism.
I have some ideas.
Now, i am assuming you are playing 4e...
Find/make/buy a poison that prevents them from getting really restful sleep. This could screw around with their powers (especially the more powerful ones). Scry where their most powerful enemies/monsters/foes are and lead the party there first, especially if they are already fatigued... and if they can't sleep, they also can't recharge their spells.
Barring that, poisons involving Reflex or Will saves being lowered are good, or poisons that slowly weaken them over time. Another good one is to poison them with something that weakens them against other poisons, and send them to fight (or surreptitiously conjure/summon) poisonous enemies for them to fight.
It depends on how much work you want to do, Keep them constantly tired/fatigued and hurt, and have your character become discouraged really easily. "This is horrible! Everytime we do something, we come close to dying!" etc. Not so much like it seems that your character has all of a sudden become Edwin Odessiron (Baldur's Gate "I am certain we are going to die!" "We're all doomed!"), but, slowly become more pessimistic. If you can get another character doing it, too, so much the better.
I second the addictive stuff as well. Or see if there is some local variation of ergot you can introduce into their food. When they are fighting imaginary monsters, it's much easier to fall prey to the real ones. For that matter, is there a herbal/fungal equivalent of LSD?
Edit: I meant Xan from Baldur's Gate.
Now, i am assuming you are playing 4e...
Find/make/buy a poison that prevents them from getting really restful sleep. This could screw around with their powers (especially the more powerful ones). Scry where their most powerful enemies/monsters/foes are and lead the party there first, especially if they are already fatigued... and if they can't sleep, they also can't recharge their spells.
Barring that, poisons involving Reflex or Will saves being lowered are good, or poisons that slowly weaken them over time. Another good one is to poison them with something that weakens them against other poisons, and send them to fight (or surreptitiously conjure/summon) poisonous enemies for them to fight.
It depends on how much work you want to do, Keep them constantly tired/fatigued and hurt, and have your character become discouraged really easily. "This is horrible! Everytime we do something, we come close to dying!" etc. Not so much like it seems that your character has all of a sudden become Edwin Odessiron (Baldur's Gate "I am certain we are going to die!" "We're all doomed!"), but, slowly become more pessimistic. If you can get another character doing it, too, so much the better.
I second the addictive stuff as well. Or see if there is some local variation of ergot you can introduce into their food. When they are fighting imaginary monsters, it's much easier to fall prey to the real ones. For that matter, is there a herbal/fungal equivalent of LSD?
Edit: I meant Xan from Baldur's Gate.
sorry for the derail, btw...Eclectic Dreck said:
All good points, sir. Not saying you're wrong or anything, just that I disagree with the restrictions as they're set down in the rules. Just not very fun, imho. Maybe I'm just not cut out to play a paladin.
So, do only Lawful Good gods have paladins serving them? What if you wanted to be a holy warrior serving a god of some alignment aside from LG? If you can't, that's pretty lame, in my opinion.
Well in my last game the betrayer's character joined the party late (his previous character died) and lured us into a trap dungeon, with the character as the final boss. Obviously you have to have the DM in on it and it usually helps for the betrayal to be part of the plot and not some random thing.
This is sort of off topic but one of my favorite campaigns I played had half of the group good aligned and the other half chaotic neutral or evil. Having to make hide motive checks all the time is fun. Hard to pull off and requires lots of role playing.
This is sort of off topic but one of my favorite campaigns I played had half of the group good aligned and the other half chaotic neutral or evil. Having to make hide motive checks all the time is fun. Hard to pull off and requires lots of role playing.
You could try to gain influence among the weaker willed members of the party and perhaps sway them to your side, eventually, with magic or persuasion if it's required.
Since you're a sorcerer, I assume you've got some charisma. So, uh, get creative with it =p
Since you've ruled out the "fucking up in combat" and "kill the healer" options, you can try to gain control in the group through various methods. Try being incredibly helpful and trustworthy towards your teammates, and hopefully if you're the only or one of the stronger arcane magic casters in the group you might be able to be somewhat of an authority when it comes to certain things.
And as you gain greater control over the group and they trust you more, you can slightly alter their decisions, provide subtle advice, and so on to corrupt them or lead them into inescapable situations.
Also, of course, you've got plenty AoE spells >_> Find excuses, ahem.
Discussing it one on one with the DM might be helpful, of course, if the DM is against that idea (one of my friends who often DMs is WAAAY too good-aligned, both in life and D&D. She pisses me off sometimes -_-) it might not work out well at all. But if they can consider it, and you make your ploys with DM, he can help out with your plan by, say, providing some cursed items from generic loot stash...
Or something.
Since you're a sorcerer, I assume you've got some charisma. So, uh, get creative with it =p
Since you've ruled out the "fucking up in combat" and "kill the healer" options, you can try to gain control in the group through various methods. Try being incredibly helpful and trustworthy towards your teammates, and hopefully if you're the only or one of the stronger arcane magic casters in the group you might be able to be somewhat of an authority when it comes to certain things.
And as you gain greater control over the group and they trust you more, you can slightly alter their decisions, provide subtle advice, and so on to corrupt them or lead them into inescapable situations.
Also, of course, you've got plenty AoE spells >_> Find excuses, ahem.
Discussing it one on one with the DM might be helpful, of course, if the DM is against that idea (one of my friends who often DMs is WAAAY too good-aligned, both in life and D&D. She pisses me off sometimes -_-) it might not work out well at all. But if they can consider it, and you make your ploys with DM, he can help out with your plan by, say, providing some cursed items from generic loot stash...
Or something.