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Monster Manual. Page 259. Revenant. They never get past level 3. Edit: for anyone not in the know, Revenants are CR 5 undead with Regeneration 10, Turn Immunity, Paralyzing Gaze, and the ability to know the exact direction and distance they are from their target(s) at all times. They're wrathful spirits, returned to the material plane to exact vengeance on those who wronged them in lie (for example, by murdering them). Also even if you do manage to "kill" it, its spirit will posses another corpse within 24 hours and continue to hunt you down unless you can Wish it away.
One thing I do a lot to help is I try to include at least one small encounter per session. It keeps hoboism at bay. If I do have a session that is mostly combat however I will also ensure to add puzzle elements to the encounter to help keep the RPers engaged. Timed combat, immunity mechanics to overcome, exploitable weaknesses etc.
Usually, the noose, I have had a player murder hobo twice in the same campaign, he has lost two characters to the gallows. But third time seems to be the charm.
I think having consequences has more weight than anything else. If you kill enough people, word is going to get out about the group of bandits (yes, that is what the party is now) that have been rampaging through the province. Not so much fun when everyone wants you dead and your resupply is cut off. Of course let them have a redemption arc if they really mean to repent, but otherwise just keep throwing stronger and more numerous enemies until they give in or die.
One time in my game the mage incinerated a boy that tried to pick his pockets. There were no legal consequences - he was defending his person and property, and in a moderately corrupt port city he had a lot more clout than a street urchin - but the party were quite taken aback to find that not only had their previous sources of "word on the street" information dried up, but their enemies were getting a steady feed on where they were going and what they were doing.
That is a good way to implement consequences. It's not so drastic that it feels like disproportionate retribution, but it is enough to make the Player regret what happened.
I had a few murderhobos at my table once. They went to the same magic shop and threatened to kill the owner if he didn't give them 90% off of everything. Eventually this resulted in the shops inventory becoming depleted. The owner didn't have the funds to replace the items he was threatened to hand over. This resulted in the the two players killing the guy because they thought he was hiding the items. This then resulted in the shop closing down to *"Bereavement in the family".* When the shop opened again, the two players went in to threaten the new owner only to find the new guy had advanced anti-magic defences and a pair of very tough minotaur guards. The new owner had heard what happened to the last guy and took steps to counter the players.
casuals. everyone knows if you play and evil campaign you never stay in the one town. for one you probably have a bounty and are on the run anyway, so keeping a low profile is key. kill and mug the random travelling merchant, not the town merchant, leave him for the rogue to rob covertly while you are negotiating with a nobleman to rescue his daughter, negotiate for half up front, have the rogue rob some of the mans visible assets, and then once you get his daughter bring her straight to him, hold a knife to her throat, demand triple pay confirm the money, silence them both and head to the next town to spend it. Have plenty of disguise kits, nondetection to bypass true seeing (mind blank is even better), keep tabs on your bounty so you know how many people are hunting you for it, get the wizard to make some real fake bodies that look exactly like the party (and are real bodies) to turn in your own bounty, and keep going. evil campaigns should be so much more than "I kill him" - and there were no consequences. evil campaigns are about working around the consequences until your inevitable fall. Steal, lie, pillage, bribe, blackmail, negotiate, back stab (but not the party. never back stab the party. seriously.) but whatever you do, do it meticulously, sure the CE characters may kill without hesitation when provoked and for little reason, but ONLY when provoked. Unless they are an AntiPal they have no problem not spreading chaos every second of every day for their own well being, killing randomly and pointlessly is not beneficial to an evil group.
@UC0VtSYPnzzoi5XEWUyYjFYg bruh, that party was mythic. that poor noble would get put through the ringer ........ for a buncha no good murderers and thieves they had principles, they do what they want and if anyone tells them not to do something they definitely do it
I would have had a much better solution. Have the magic shop owner be a retired mage. Basically a 20th level wizard with years of study under his belt. So that guy the party thought was a defenseless old man ends up just mopping the floor with their asses before using telekinesis to throw them out of his shop. Much more satisfying that way.
I play many evil characters and I've been told that my evil characters act more morally good than evil. Its terrifying. Playing evil characters is very fun
Evil characters in neutral or good aligned parties tend to, indeed, stay under the radar like that. I've always held this to heart: If I scare away my party... there is no one to see me act out my scheme and evil plan. And someone should definitely know of my evil deeds in the end.
Currently playing LANCER with a group in Discord. My character has earned the title "Too Angery To Die" because he's cheated death thrice within the last 3 months. Well, he's a 22 year old college kid who has never really seen violence outside of his training. It's changed him to cheat death so many times in a row. And now that I've started making plans to become a warlord, everyone is OOC shitting on me for walking down the path of evil. IC, only one person knows, and everyone else is just seeing a plucky college kid with an absurdly strong will to live. It's already made my rp four times more interesting and it hasnt been a day since the reveal
Makes sense, you should really only logically get exp from something that takes effort to kill. Also you could do an elder scrolls style approach where players lose exp for spending time in jail.
Hey! You stole my idea! (lol) I had the same idea. If someone is (seemingly) harmless and the party can't give a plausible in-game reason why the person or animal should die, I'd either make them worth negative XP or zero XP. So if you can put forward a reasonable case that your character would have known the person was (for example) an evil hag in disguise(edit: and they're correct), you can get XP as normal, otherwise you get a small amount of negative XP instead. Or, if your characters are starving and you steal and kill an animal for food, you'd probably get zero XP for the kill. But I don't think I'd actually subtract XP as such, in that it couldn't make the PC go down a level. Instead, it would make an XP debt which the PC would have to earn back before being allowed to add to their XP again. EG. The PC has 5600 XP and gets negative XP of 20 for killing a harmless NPC. Later, the PC earns 100 XP for killing an attacking monster. The result is that the PC's XP only goes up to 5680 because 100-20=80. The XP debt has to be overcome first, before any remaining XP is added.
If a NEW "innocent" player the first thing it comes to it mind in a world with limitless possibilities is "killing an unarmed merchant" Maybe your player is not so innocent...
So, from the perspective of a new player, when reason number 10 is the biggest issue with the game and then Mr. Unarmed Merchant just happens to pile the final straw on the RP Camel's Back to break it, the murder session wasn't his fault, but sadly he bore the brunt of the IRL Frustration. lol.
Thats exactly what happened when we first played a tabletop rpg. There was one player who cut the throat of a merchant. Well they found out that the merchant only carried stones and tried to scam them. And that began the series of throat cuts. The victims: a little girl, another merchant, a cow...
My wizard was a bit of a psycho. She liked to kill innocent NPC bystanders in the heat of battle "oops, friendly fire, collateral damage" But sometimes, if such an accident had not occured in a while, she'd go out at night, sneak into a house, and cut off a head. Sneak back to the inn or "camp"
@@phobos9071 it wasn't to long until we'd left human realms behind. But each character in our party has a really dark aspect. Which we roll play the heck out of.
My guards are professionally trained soldiers, many of them accustomed to dealing with supernatural threats using cooperation and with adept mages in their ranks. This is how I deal with murder hobos.
@@raw1175 That is highly insulting to his guards your average imperial guard is barely above your standard DND town guard and they still wear leather armor instead of Chainmaile or something useful they’re good against criminals but that’s about it remember how they wind up getting their asses whooped by Skaven clan rats
My old gm used to have bullshit npc with no stats, if we did something they could arrest or kill us, no combat, nothing, and I mean the guy used to railroad the entire party and it was a pretty boring cinematic campaign. Once I was bored of playing and he told us told that there was methane in the old catacombs, I didnt hear him say that, so I threw a torch inside, there was a massive explosion and we almost died but it was fun as hell, but the gm was not happy that I derailed the story. Then my character was sentenced to die, so I chose dead by poison because my character was resistant to poison, and they gave me a sword and I was supposed to cut myself with the poisoned sword, I said that I touch the handle, the dm says that I actually touched the blade and die because it was a magic bullshit sword that ignores resistances. He doesnt talk to me anymore but I am so happy that I play dnd with normal people now.
Hire the PCs to hunt down another adventuring group that was disrespectful to the nobles and priests, stole, killed innocent town people. Let townsfolk talk about how furious they are and how terrifying dealing with the adventurers are and how the behavior of those scoundrels makes them unwilling to trust other adventurers. When the PCs track down the party have them make the same excuses your players give for being a murder hobo "That guy was a crook, she shouldn't' have started a fight with someone like me, I'm not from that town, I don't have to follow their laws.."
@@blackbloom8552 I don't know if you've ever directly confronted players about being murderhobos but the excuses I mentioned before weren't volunteered without calling my players out. A perception problem requires a perception shift.
For memes, I have always statted out my shopkeepers to be level 6 or 7 at minimum. I never expect my players to murder hobo, but some of them do play kleptos... it becomes an amusing trial of them getting caught and having to get out of the situation.
@@ab14967 you must be careful with this type of thing, because even level 1 characters are a cut above the majority (depending of your world it can be different) but if every shop keeper or quest giver is mid level, then why are they contracting adventurers? Or you run the risk of making the players feel like the bottom of the barrel, or even backfire and incentivizing murder hobos to attack them just to get a cool battle.
@@kamencraftbrasil4367 Our current game feels like Konosuba, it would make sense for the average person to be level 1 or 2 so you start off feeling more mortal, shop keepers level 3 since they sometimes have to stop adventurers stealing or will find loot to sell. All guards at least level 4 since there's so much murder hoboing.
@@kamencraftbrasil4367 Okay, but it also makes sense because charisma wisdom and intelligence are all useful for selling and buying things, and if you work with such things like armor and weapons, you should have some knowledge on them, so really constitution is the dump stat for them, and they mix the other stats based on the shop type.
When I started my last game I told my players I wouldn't stop them from being evil or even full-on murderhoboing. I also told them the most likely outcome. It's a world where adventurers are hired to deal with violent threats. So when you become one of those violent threats, you're going to get other adventurers hunting you down for those sweet, sweet rewards. In practice, this would involve me, the DM, making up a party of bounty hunter adventurers of equal number and level to the players. The bounty hunters would attack them all-out using the dirtiest, most vicious (but rules compliant!) tactics I could come up with. My players know what it looks like when I play dirty. So far none of them have murderhoboed.
This is far more creative, fair, and less power trippy than 90% of what I've read in this comment section. Bravo. Also, I could also kind of imagine a campaign where murder hoboes are hunted the whole time and tries to become a band of ... bandit of some kind to protect themselves and stay afloat in front of the violence they brought upon themselves.
"We need to be more heartless." If I get any more heartless a black hole will spontaneously generate in my chest. Interestingly enough, the CG bard is wanted in more places than the CE rouge, she was framed for 1 of them, but it wasn't the rouge who framed her.
Yesterday I had my players meet their new npc. She's a metallic dragon that polymorphed herself into a human. She tells tales of her great accomplishments. She's supposed to be their next big npc, she's a tavern owner who knew alot of information. When the players walked into her tavern she was finishing up 1 of her stories. She then went to say hi to the players and one of them told a story to the npc. The story was about how the 10th leveled player killed 8 adult red dragons all on their own. The npc didnt beleive it(obviously) and the player attacked the npc. Another player joined the attack, the npc grabbed them and went outside and polymorphed back into a dragon and flew them up high. The npc told them to just simply apologize, neither of them did. They were dropped and started to fly to their death. They died but the npc used speak with dead and asked them one more time to apologize, the second one did, but the first one didn't. The second one the npc revived but the first one stayed dead.
That's exactly why we rotate the GM screen at my Table... Sooner or later every GM's an adventure. We (as Players) respect our GM's more, and we (as GM's) tend to give our Players a bit more slack. ;o)
Dm'ing Princes of the Apocalypse, and my players will never even think of being murder hobos. I took an NPC from the book and made him an amatuer wizard that can do little enchantments in the early game, as well as sell a random set of magic items every week. He's well connected in the town, so if the players hurt any of the more mundane civilians, he would refuse to serve them and they would lose access to their upgrade shop. Then, when the players were higher level, I created a brand new NPC in another town who can make stronger enchantments befitting their level, line transmuting a player's shield to give it a +1 and the ranged weapon attribute so my player can basically be Captain America, for example. However, she's a shady witch who has connections to a criminal organization that my players share a common goal with. The town she lives in is that organization's turf, so if my players kill random civilians in that town, they will have assassins after them and lose access to their best source for upgrades in all of the Dessarin Valley. Basically one way to prevent murder-hoboing is to not only make NPCs engaging and interesting, but also have at least one NPC per town that fulfills a niche that only they can do. A weapon shop can be robbed, but permanent magical upgrades are something that most players won't be able to access without the help of NPCs.
Happened in my game, where, for some reason that is still way beyond me, the players all agreed that killing an innocent daughter (7 years old) of the Lord just because she didn't have any information about the party the previous night was the only course of action, despite being told repeatedly that she was locked in her room for the duration of the party (she was grounded for getting into a fist fight with a 10 year old boy) despite roughly 10 other guests at the party. Me: Are you sure you want to do this, your actions will have consequences. Players: Lawl. This girls useless, so I am literally taking off her head. Me: Ok, well, congratulations, you have just literally killed the "Voice of the World", as this child had the soul of a God in her. All of you can no longer speak. Players: Oh shit, I cast revivify. Me: You can't, you cannot preform spells with Verbal Components. Unfortunately, the campaign as a whole is irrecoverable from this point.
Damn that sucks. I have a player who is kind of pissed at me for something in Curse of Strahd. We were doing death house..not sure how familiar you are with it..but basically the party gets to the dungeon that lays under the house. Now. Before that they met 2 ghost children Rose and Thorn. The ghost kids were more than willing to tell the party all the information the could. After that..the 2 ghosts did try to possess 2 of the members but the party members resisted. Now earlier in the house they had found these creepy dolls. And took them. The Druid ask the ghost kids if they could possess the dolls and they did. Our Cleric took the bones of the children in the room and eventually when the ghost kids in the dolls saw their graves in the dungeon they begged the party to put the bones in their graves so their souls could finally be set free... The Bard wanted to barter with the ghost kids before doing this. Constantly asking for something or knowledge. I had explained that they already told them everything. He pressed on..knowledge about the afterlife... I then explained that they were locked in their room where they died and their souls never even made it. They dont have knowledge to give. Luckily the other players decided to go ahead and put the bones in while he was trying to barter with ghost kids who already told them everything. Later on he said that I took away his creative freedom and put down his ideas. Nothing like your story..at least this wasnt campaign ending..but I guess it is frustrating when players try to get info out of an NPC that simply doesnt have it.
Congratulation, you just robbed yourself and your players of a story hook where because they did something so serious and evil to such an entity they are now cursed and have to face several ordeals of some sort to get rid of it and to appease whatever entity they provoked and pursue the story, but I guess ending the campaign because "npc was actually ... therefore campaign ends" is a satisfying slight to inflict to the players from the Point of view of dimwitted puritans.
In a Pathfinder game where I was a player, we just got out of a dungeon and found ourselves at a tavern where magic was outlawed. I was a sorcerer, so I was outlawed. The thought crossed my mind, these townfolk would burn me at the stake as soon as they knew what I was. I had to fight the rising urge to say "I cast Fireball!" to clear the taproom, and take an introspective look at what my Sorcerer would want to do. In the end I decided that she would fly under the radar as long as possible. The DM thanked us for not going murder hobo after the session was over.
Actually... the entire last session of my group's Dark Sun campaign was "talky talky". We accidentally encountered Rajaat inside the Pristine Tower and quickly decided that we could not fight him (he's the guy who left the world in its current barren state), so the group jumped through a window and fell through a portal into a lake where we held on to the Half-Giant like a raft because she was the only one who can swim (it's Athas, so you're lucky if you ever see more water than you can drink) before being fished out by the Gith shamans who brought us there via portal. They explained to us their plot and plight, asking for help so they may possibly leave this plane. The rest of the session was just the group playing out their characters, shopping and fishing. We had a lot of fun forcing the Half-Elven shopkeeper into a full Thri-Kreen trade negotiation. She was very perplexed by our Elf following the forms of Thri-Kreen trading as well. It was a nice way to get to boast her own accomplishments but mostly validating her friend in his cultural customs. Then we had fun fishing and playing out first encounters with fish as a food and that was really it. Hours of just dedicated role playing.
That wasn't a "talky talky" session! Look at all the stuff that happened. - Opened with an unwinnable fight you successfully fled - Survival challenge where only ONE player had the needed skill to save the rest of the party - New NPC town to explore - fishing mini-game! - regular shopping - challenge mode shopping! - character trait quiz! (how do they respond to a novel food item)
I’ve had _ONE_ NPC betray the party. And that was _after_ she’d literally said “hands off my paycheck” to a Duergar who was threatening a PC, said some favorable stuff about Auril the Frostmaiden, and tried really hard to figure out what was at the cabin they needed her to guide them to. Even the NPCs who suggested they get her help traveling- a local hunter and an old friend of a PC- passed their high rolled Insight checks. One was just a simple hunter who knew a frost Druid was in the area, surely she’d be useful. The other had basically the same concept. Now her betrayal- 12 sessions later- is still deeply felt.
I actually don’t have any murder hobos in my group. I’ve even put in options to see if they’d do it but nope. With that being said, it’s funny when some accuse others jokingly of being murder hobos and they laugh while getting defensive. I think it’s partly because I WOULD hold them responsible and not hold back. At all lol.
I'd like you to do a video on RP hogs...those players who want to spend hours of game time RPing everything, including the most mundane encounters (like buying equipment)... especially those that engage in monolog RP, where the other players aren't involved
How do I avoid doing this? This is the kind of game I want to play, but often the other players aren't that interested so I end up at best the leader and at worst hijacking the game.
@@thrawnnoconnection6931 If you have a game shop in your area, you can often find groups looking for players. If the current group isn't into the game, there really is no reason to play with them.
@@thrawnnoconnection6931 Bring a watch to the game. Lay it beside your dice tray and track how much time you spend monologuing. Simply knowing you have an issue tends to solve that problem quickly. Also, when you RP the mundane stuff... if you can't do each TYPE of mundane encounter differently every time then simply say "I do x" and limit the description of the mundane activity to few sentences. It's fun to think about how magic changes simple stuff like bathrooms and light fixtures but... only the first time it's mentioned.
Why aren't the other players involved? It is the GM's job to keep the spotlight moving so every players gets equal time. I play RPGs like a poker game: check, call, or raise, then pass the turn. If any player takes more than 1-2 minutes per turn - loses a turn.
The old man? What about the party, I'm more curious about who resurrected them. Or could it be, no...a dreaded retcon!? *dun dun duuuun* Also just putting this out there, I was interested in the old man's story. Poor old dude.
Top Ten List starts at 6:11, that being said, Luke's foreword and introduction are totally worth watching. Thanks for all the great content the DM Lair!
We actually had a final session a few months ago where the DM made us murder hobo everything... despite us giving a guard a chance of leaving the place alive after killing his buddy in 1 blow... my lawful good paladin went to chaotic neutral real quick that session...
I ran a Ravenloft game and the players had a blast. It was heavy horror them so everything was terrible to them. By lvl 10 the players were geared up like a lvl 4 party due to the never ending "we got screwed again but still alive so its a win." They all had horrible phobias and PTSD triggers. It was one of the best campaigns but that was consistent with the Ravenloft setting.
I'm a fairly new player of D&D, and am currently playing a lawful evil rogue. Honestly, I accidentally ended up as a mob boss when I was gonna play an assassin style character. It turned out I, with my base line charisma, ended up as party face and need to keep my shenanigans on the low. It's all about balancing how the table reacts together.
In my experience random murder happens most when players are bored. If they've spent three hours in a session looking forward to using their new awesome spell but they've been stuck doing loot math and getting monologued at then they may hit the first thing you send at them.
I talk with my group about once every 3 weeks to see how the feel about our game.I am a 1st time DM in a campaign that has now run a year and a half. It helps me with implementing more of what my players want to see within my world. I learn what I am doing good at/ getting better at, and what I need more work on. Its been so rewarding. Good to hear others take the same approach! currently working on getting my 1 MurderHobo to quit it, and have been talking with him a lot. I hope I can bring him around
Two weeks ago, my player Isa send me a mensage ask me to reviw her as a player, and she reviwed me as a DM. It just a good experience to see what the players like and deslike in my game. I think it would be positive if all gaming groups have a day every 3 to 4 months for just say what is good and what is bad in everyone stile.
"There are some players that just want to see the world burn" My DM: "What do y-" Me: "BURN IT DOWN" I mean, no matter if there is a great dragon or a bunch of goblins, start a wildfire and everything's done for.
Your videos are extremely helpful Luke, the skits are always over the top and hilarious as well as the fact you keep your mess ups in the video which add some humility to the video as well thank you for all your advice.
I tried doing so that their actions have consequences. One dude tried to steal an armor 6 times while the guards were just outside the shop. Then he complained to me about not having enough freedom in the game.
DMing tomb of annihilation for 3 players, I felt that they'd need an npc to help with balancing the adventure early on(since ToA is meant for 4 players) so I introduced them to Xandala. I've been planting clues as to her alignment for some time so my players are wary of her specifically. I've also added in an alignment tracker for Xandala based on the party's charisma checks so that if they manage to change her alignment, she may not give up on her ambition, but she could wish no harm on the party and withdraw for the time being. I feel like if you're going to have a treacherous npc this is the right way to go about it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
My first couple of session with my first ever group my party met with a mercenary guild leader. They did not particularly like him and a few were talking about trying to kill him. I calmly explained that killing a guild leader or trying to would cause the whole guild to hunt them down. They would have laps broken the law so would have the guards after them. There are many powerful factions that have close relationships. So even if they dealt with the first couple of encounters it would not be long before the whole world is trying to kill them. That seemed to put them off haha.
I have actually switched from using Milestone leveling to XP leveling for my homebrew games. Since I create open worlds which are almost impossible to correctly time milestone levels for. I have opted to do a fusion method where they receive XP for completing tasks and not based on #’s of enemies slaughtered. So far this method seems to be working better than milestone leveling which was kinda weird when they would just level up randomly after a certain period of time without completing a specific task
I really liked this video not only because it was good and well produced,but because you were so happy in it. Keep doing videos happily like that,you made me smile after a long time,buddy!
In reference to #5, my players are constantly paranoid in every encounter they have with NPCs due to the constant betrayals of NPCs with other DMs. It makes it difficult for me to get an NPC they actually connect with on any personal level.
This is why I love my current group. We have gone several sessions in a row before and never once rolled for initiative, and we love it. No murder hobos.
Have guards be prepared for all kinds of danger. Hey, it's a world where there is magic, and giant murderous dragons, and monsters. They should be WAAYY leveled up.
how about take your murder hobo party through dungeon of the mad mage and let them do a 23 level dungeon crawl? it looks like it would be right up there alley, a little social interaction, a lot of exploration, and tons of combat
I love that you included number six. I am a new DM and semi new player, and I have two campaigns under my belt that I’m currently running, both of which have an evil character. One group is irl and one is online. I’m lucky enough that my irl group is a group of my actual friends who wanted to give DnD a try, giving me a chance to run DnD for adults instead of as an after school program for my daughter and her friends. My online group is made up of people I’ve personally handpicked because I’ve played with them in multiple settings, and I love the way they play and how their creative minds work. Irl game, this player is brand new (as are all the players). She took an online alignment quiz answering as her character and got chaotic evil because she wanted to play her as a treasure hungry trinket goblin. (Funnily she chose gnome as her race, the least materialistic race, which ultimately led her to breaking from her family. Good stuff.) I made it clear from the outset that Faster Pussycat Kill Kill games aren’t fun, and she agreed that her character wouldn’t be a murder hobo, as a rogue she would find sneakier ways to feed her greed and would never betray her friends. So I allowed it and she is an amazing player and beloved character. Online game I’m running Dragon Heist and one of my players wants to be a necromancer who owns a funeral home/mortuary whose ultimate goal is to become a litch. Again, great stuff. To her, wanting to become a litch is inherently evil, and we talked about it. I’ve both played with and played under her as a DM, and I trust her. And in character creation she started talking about how her job could benefit the goals of another player (who also wanted to own a shop in town), and all of a sudden my players had a basically a communal group of shop keepers who were banding together to fight the wrongs being done in the city because the city guards couldn’t keep on top of things. I have vigilante shop keepers all because my evil player is smart enough to make her evil motivations work with the goals of the party from the outset. Evil alignment is not a license to be an abject slaughter monkey, nor should it be. There are SO MANY WAYS to be evil. Look at our world for crying out loud. Legal evil happens everyday. Grow up kids who think evil = murder hobos.
There is a flip side to this advice that is applicable to most GM's: if you've been running for a group for awhile, your players are your mirror. If almost all the challenges you throw at them can be solved by stabbing (or a particular skill check, or a particular kind of magic, etc) expect everyone to make characters that are really good at that. Murderhobos can easily arise as a consequence if all your challenges are a GM are merely an arms race.
Enjoying your banter and outlandish demeanor. Taking it all in stride and understand your straight forward attitude, most players won't except that, its the point that needs to be exemplified not how you get there... However, in the history of calming down, no one has ever calmed down by being asked to calm down! LOL
I saw this from someone else and have used it sense, my favorite way to deal with the are revenants. Revenants are an undead monster borne from an unjust and cruel death. If your players are murdering random NPCs then have one come back as a revenant. They will not rest until there hunger for vengeance has been fulfilled, meaning killing whoever killed them. They can come back to life after a certain period of time and are intelligent, this means they can rally forces. They are very interesting and make sense for murder hobos
My favorite moment as a dm was this. Murderhobo got fed up with bargaining with the owner of a magical items and artifacts store and decided he was going to take everything. The lvl 5 fighter draws his great sword and takes a swing only for the merchant to effortlessly avoid the attack do a backflip to gain some distance and with a motion of his hands armed himself with a pair of twin daggers. What followed was the fighter getting his shit stomped by a retired level 20 rouge who was selling artifacts acquired (both legally and illegally) from his adventures to fund his retirement
Great video. Now, can you do one on how to make your players murder more? I'm running two groups that are totally avoiding violence. It's been 8 sessions since something died. It was a stirge that had nearly killed a PC.
Intellect devours and other creatures that can alter stats. Have a couple of encounters with those or, I think it is, a banchee that if you fail the save you drop to zero hp. Mix them with one of the stat altering undead.
Maybe give them a group of enemies that refuses to back down, maybe under some sort of pact or something that makes it impossible for them to not fight you.
Never heard of that 😅 Though my group now mostly attacks only if being attacked and tries other ideas for the most part. (We have a character that hates Orcs and another one that hates Yuan-ti the characters attack their respective rivals on site)
Ive been doing the XP for overcoming conflicts thing. And its worked well. My group regularly tries to avoid fights or will kill what they have to then try to escape while the enemy group is crippled.
Only YOU can prevent forest fires! By punishing the wizard, whose favoured terrain is apparently "scorched earth" (This is a running gag amongst my core group. Our first campaign meant that the wizard would burn down forests, and my druid would angrily spend time healing the land after)
16:04 Sweet Waukeen! My last group LOVED shopping and interacting with shopkeepers and stores. They ate that up. The haggling. The descriptions. The karening. Browsing. Entire whole sessions dedicated to shopping. We once invaded a large warehouse store where the big goal ending up being navigating the bureaucracy of in store management to get a rewards card. The entire session. Our rogue once spent 45 session minutes shopping for new armor for her character. She needed to upgrade to better AC equipment that the party could now afford. After all that, she walked out keeping her lvl 1 starter equipment because she didn't like the color of brown described by the DM. 2 levels (many sessions) later she got better armor from a dungeon drop.
My players actually like the talky talky role play bits more than combat and seem to have fun exploring, one of my players actually asked me for more role play over combat, the rest don’t seem to mind either.
There once was a time where my players were Vikings and they had to be murder hobo and I’m proud because they left the Vikings and actually became vampires and that was cool
I kinda feel attacked for #10 :P . I used to run a campaign set in the Firefly universe(using the Cortex system) where my players actively avoided combat. Combat is extremely deadly in the Cortex system, and it's possible to one shot pretty much any character/npc. We once went four sessions(4 hours each) where no fighting happened at all.
EXP leveling should be treated like the relic from a time where you padded games via grinding that it is. It's just a bad workaround to a problem that doesn't exist anymore. And never existed at tabletop roleplaying. It just cripples your story in all kinds of ways and doesn't even make any logical sense. In reality you could smash things with an axe for years without improving your technique in the in any significant fashion if simple smashing solves whatever problem you might have. Yes, your con and str stat might improve slightly, but nothing else. Even felling trees with any kind of proficiency is less about hitting wood with an axe then planning on how you want that thing to fall. And trees don't even actively fight back. So even being a barbarian has obviously more to it then swinging an axe. Even if it's just learning to avoid getting your weapon stuck in an enemy*, maybe that revelation even came to you when some blacksmith was rambling on about armor design. *Yes that's a real martial arts problem. And many, especially wooden shields have this as a design feature. Also there is an entire weapon category called "parrying dagger". Which are blades or daggers designed to catch blades. Those where in many cases the more expensive alternative to a shield but still saw use. They where also presumably a kind of pay to win mechanic in some dueling rules.
I remember running a really dark fantasy campaign, and my players started getting a little too indiscriminate with their killing. So, eventually, I started tallying up their kills. These kills showed up later as the revived, tortured souls stolen by the big bad. Yeah, they had to fight buffed versions of the people they killed, and by the end, the tally was in the double digits... Now, you'd think this would get them to stop. It didn't. They just started being more careful with their kills and preparations. So, to deal with THAT little debacle, I cut loose. I tallied up the souls they re-killed, and set them up as an aspect of one of the big bad's rituals. Put simply, the more the party killed, the more HP, spells, and buffs the big bad would get. I wasn't TOO cruel, though, and made some ways to weaken the boss, but it wasn't even remotely easy and we nearly had a TPK, but I think they learned their lessons. Edit: forgotten story details...
probably your best video I’ve seen so far. I haven’t had murder hobos in my game. But I’ve had players talk about it. They tried to explain to me what it was. They also said that the way I game master tends to remove that. I’m not sure what they were talking about but the various things you mentioned above to match what I do. I am not certain how merit leveling would help…. but definitely modifying the way experience points works is a good start. I am very old-school. We made players learn levels by finding a teacher. A.k.a. a local NPC. I also makes the players lose experience points the longer it takes for them to find such a trainer. Trainers in my game are very picky about who they take on and letting work out that they can even train. I suppose if the players were murder hobos they might accidentally kill the teacher that would’ve helped them. Or the teacher would have run the other way hearing what’s going on. and yeah, local militia and police in a town or city would definitely chase after them. And I always have the local military and police higher level than the players. And if they’re murder hobos, not an accidental murder, I will let the elite squad go after them. After all a king has to maintain order and a peaceful society to rule. everyone of your bits of advice makes perfect sense. And I believe a lot of the newer game styles have contributed to the creation of the murder hobo… And you bring up everyone of those points. I look forward to seeing your game
I remember my first dungeons and dragons game, it ended pretty shortly once I decided to murder a hobo and since then every time we play D&D our first rule is DON'T TOUCH THE HOBOS
My first Warhammer 2 campaign was a great example of 5, writ small. We made it through 2 sequential modules, and exactly _every other_ employer was a chaos cultist. By the 1/4 mark of the second module, we'd discovered the tick-tock progression and started counter-playing to it. Not murder-hoboing, but we _did_ start forcing confrontations on thinner evidence in order to ensure the dramatic reveal happened on our terms.
"Some players just want to watch the world burn" One of my games has a player that the DM 100% enables for this. For some reason, the player was allowed (IN ONE TOWN) to buy 30,000gp worth of black powder, alchemist fire, flasks of oil, and other explosive things. Add on the 2 horses and cart... Oh... AND that player decided to "Disguise Self" to look like me while buying everything. Despite me going out of my way to be super nice to nearly every NPC, always paying extra (ie tipping for service, etc), and despite playing a rogue, never stealing ANYTHING. So that player effectively made the choice for me to have to retire/kill my character. And the fact that the DM allowed it in the 1st place told me I didn't have a say in it. Game Plot at the time: Stop a big bad that... let's call it "had an affinity to fire." That player's idea: Blow it up... with fire. My character had the added benefit of things taking place at an area having to do with his backstory. So of course I was trying to save as many/much as I could. The TLDR of how it all ended: My character sacrificed himself in order to direct the location of "ground zero." (fwiw, we did the actual calculations of how much damage was done. it was over 34,000 after everything was added).
Love it, have not DMd in many years, moss it. DMd for 20 years, love your channel content. Your righr, 85% of the game is totally on you and your content.
Old man: "...and before you can unlock the gate that leads to the treasure of Seven Dragons, you must..." Rouge: _"Boooriiing"_ Rouge: *stabs the Old man, killing him* ... so many times...
Just stumbled upon your channel and this is some good stuff! As a dabbler in realms of Murderhoboery **cough** Reason Number 10 **cough** I loved this video! Subbed and can't wait for more content!
Yet another great video. I never heard of "murderhoboing" before but have definitely seen it. You are correct, the key reasons in my experience stems from boredom and a lack of consequences. Wonderful video. I pretty much do what you are doing as murderhoboing brings a lot of attention onto people who may need to be taught a lesson or two :).
Yay it's old man commoner! (Couple of seconds later.) Oh no beloved NPC old man commoner! Get out of there! They'll lose interest if you just run past someone else who looks murderable enough to satisfy their bloodlust. But on the other hand... what are the consequences of killing old man commoner?
My DM was actually very good with this! One of our group members went and killed someone we were supposed to deliver supplies to. Since we were all there, we are going to be put on trial at the end. I think it will be interesting, and I'm glad she's adding that flavour! Now I just hope that there's at least one dwarf on the jury since my character was introduced mid-campaign while being friends with some dwarves
Recently I tried DMing the Lost Mines starter pack, but with only one player. He lost the Goblin Arrows ambush, so I fenagled a way for him to buy some leather armor, a few weapons, and a shield, and gave him a bunch of Commoner stat block NPCs to help. they all used a javelin instead of a club. I decided to have them make separate rolls for each of them crossing the river. one got a 4, this NPC was then-on called Bob, and would always be the NPC who failed an NPC check. Next was Alice, an NPC who got middle of the road rolls, and was made up to justify having 4 NPCs help the PC. Lastly was Steve, whose first action was getting a nat 20 on an acrobatics check to jump over the river. I think I rolled the d20 and d6 enough to sya there were 4 to 6 NPCs helping, But i only named 3. on a whim, i decided to have one of the NPCs do something with the recently killed 6 goblin bodies. Steve took out a knife and some rope, and field dressed the goblins, and hung them up on tree branches. I then had him start a camp fire and sacrifice the dead goblins to the goddess mentioned in the LMoP book, the Luck goddess. then the PC went in and soloed the cave, taking it slow and steady, and making a damn good Athletics check to stab his sword in the ground and tough out 2 mintues of flooding. at one point he let a bunch of lesser goblins run off the already collapes bridge, one of those 4 died, the other 3 made it to the cave entrance, and where then killed by the waiting NPCs. Steve sacrifice those as well. Steve the NPC never said a word, even when the PC tried to talk to him. I described Steve simply nodding his head and smiling or frowning. the player said to me after the session ended "I think I'm going to like Steve, he's been fun so far." so my first attempt at making NPC on the fly resulted in a muderhobo NPC who never says anything, and is an astounding acrobat. and the player liked the results.
@Fredrik Dunge Simple. 1. He’s not allowed to interfere. 2. He’s busy on a more important mission. 3. He needs to do something else in the background to assist your group. 4. He’s a rogue Solar hiding out from his charge. 5. He’s looking for demonic activity and disguised as a mortal to watch unseen. 6. He’s on vacation. Any of these and enumerable more can be used to justify his existence in a shop.
@@Lobsterwithinternet I would have gone with a devil instead, he's bound in a human form and not allowed to harm people with physical violence or magic except in self defence. But if someone is stupid enough to pick a fight wth him that's their problem.
I'm just starting to write a homebrew. After watching a few of your videos, I think my players will have a lot of fun. To be honest, I'm not even sure where the story is gonna go yet, but I'm making a point of finding ways to avoid fights, and consequences when there are.
I've found a good way to deal with murdohoboing is to give each a player a specific quest goal for their character; also make sure the quest has a simple and cool pay off. Your father owned a +5 sword, he was killed by bandits who worship Zugtmoy and you are looking for them and your fathers sword. As a theif you have heard of a legendary ruby worth 5,000gp (that also happens to be a Soul Gem but the thief doesnt know that). Your temple let you know that a Solar has fallen and is trapped somewhere, if you find and free it it will give you a blessing.
Book recommendation! “Something Murder Hobo” by Dakota Krout. An awesome book about a Murder Hobo where it makes sense as to why the murder hobo acts the way he does.
New to this channel, but now subscribed. Never had problems with Murderhobos, because I follow item #1. I’ve played evil characters- but he was lawful evil with a strict code of conduct. (Ruined it for the DM- he was waiting for me to betray the group. Nope. For this character, People are objects; proven friends, though, are precious. And he was always kind to those who were poor... he took pleasure in taking down the cruel elite.) Also, good point on the three pillars. Last night’s session, the party just randomly scoured the city for rumors because they’d spent two sessions without a combat. Mystery solving, diplomacy, RP, but they were desperate for something to fight... so, they tracked down a Minotaur in the sewers. It was an easy victory... but unfortunately attracted three chull to their location, servants of the Aboleth they had previously dealt with (non-violently.) They got their combat. Perhaps more than they wanted.
I really interesting way to keep experience leveling based on encounter is to include three aspects to the world; 1. EXP is gained for overcoming any encounter, even if the encounter is really easy, but is increased for encounters that "could" be more difficult. 2. Creatures that survive the party of PCs will continue to improve(maybe even to the point they would become a threat). 3. Creatures that have been beaten by the party will avoid the party, even if they are now a danger to the party. In other words, each group of bandits or monsters they have defeated, but not killed, can become a source of increasing EXP each time that group avoids them(either by running away, hiding, or negotiating) because they have 'overcome' the encounter.
I did not follow my only morderhobo instinct. The result was pure carnage at the end of the game. The Dark Lord came to this World and my Character became a follower after killing the priest he did not kill at the beginning of the adventure.
Absolutely, yes for more fey stuff. Hopefully that's out in time for my next campaign 🙏 I do want to add a fey element to it, maybe with a trip to the feywild.
My BBEG is the one hiring the Players to do their main story quests. His opposition NPC is super shady, but ultimately just kind of fun-loving and motivated by profits and the gathering of rare objects. The final conflict where the BBEG becomes clear (if they don’t figure it out early, I’m not keeping it close to the vest or anything) and the shady but helpful character has to make a choice based on her interactions with the party will be fun.
So ill share my murder hobo story. I was DM a homebrew Ebbberon campaign that was heavy in the undead aspect. The players had come across a magic shop in a large town they came across. Now my party was a arcane archer, base vanilla fighter, a pally and a eldritch knight. The archer, and the plain fighter do some shopping and come across a 9th lvl turn undead scroll, the party was already lvl 5 and I had planned on them staying in the town for the next arc. So the party try their best to haggle, i have them roll for a charm and they both roll really poorly, so the shop keep wont budge on the price. My players decided to kill the old lady, loot the store and not tell the pally. Well good thing for them they all got arrested for their crimes and where given a choice. Here was the choice, the party can pick one player as a group to sacrifice, or they can all die. Luckily one of my players (the pally) wasn't having fun with his character and wanted to make a new one. So with about 2 hours of heavy rp, discussion, and a strong idea of character development in the distance, the party elected to sacrifice the pally. Oh and the arcane archer (the one who killed the old lady shope keep) ended up looting a cursed magic bow from the shop.
We made a reputation chart as a houserule to prevent murderhobo incidents. Its amazing how mutch better players behave when a 25% discount on their magic enchants is on the line.
@@brandongore711 Well it originally began as a rework of the morale system. Each charatcer started with 4 points of their starting morality. IE: lawful good has 4 lawful and 4 good points. When the difference betwen 2 opposing moralities is less than 4 you are neutral. Say 2 evil 5 good. Thats neutral. When you reach 2-6 you will be considered good. Later we decided to use it for a reputation mechanic as well. Now i cant tell you the exant numbers but here is the idea. NPCs rolled for each aspect (evil-good-lawfull-chaotic) and they could know us by our deeds. Depending on the number of points we had and the importance of the NPC. For example a town guard once rolled and he knew we had a rather problematic party member (it was a bard with a metric fucktonn of chaotic points) and wanted us to place a sort of insurance. If the party gets in trouble with the law we lose the money. After every session we went through our actions and handed out the points. Not to ourselves of course. It was decided by the group or in some cases the DM just straight up gave the party a point for an action.
I think there is a bigger problem than just there not being consequence. I think it is also a case of making it too easy. In a world so hostile but also so full of magic. I think it would be very common for shopkeepers and or other NPCs, to have the spell known or a scroll ready of Sanctuary, just in case. Some might even have sending, to inform law enforcement of anything weird happening. A shopkeeper from a reputable or good store, might have some magic items to protect them. Imagine one has a magic item that reflects damage back to whoever dealt it. They might have people protecting them. They might even have a simple panic button, that throws some sort of fireworks outside and law enforcement knows the shop is in trouble. They have a ring of deathward. They could teleport and the whole shop gets encased on a force cage. Investigators and law enforcement should have Speak with the dead. So even if they manage to kill the NPC, they shouldn't be able to truly get away with it. The next town they visit or if they return to the same place, everyone might already know who they are. They might get chased by the law, or even shopkeepers might not even want to deal with them. You can get creative, without railroading them. But instead of having to show consequences to them, you can simply make it harder for them to be murderhobos. At the very least, if they truly want to be murderhobos, it should be challenging. It could even be exciting for everyone involved.
How do you deal with murderhobos?
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Monster Manual. Page 259. Revenant. They never get past level 3.
Edit: for anyone not in the know, Revenants are CR 5 undead with Regeneration 10, Turn Immunity, Paralyzing Gaze, and the ability to know the exact direction and distance they are from their target(s) at all times. They're wrathful spirits, returned to the material plane to exact vengeance on those who wronged them in lie (for example, by murdering them). Also even if you do manage to "kill" it, its spirit will posses another corpse within 24 hours and continue to hunt you down unless you can Wish it away.
One thing I do a lot to help is I try to include at least one small encounter per session. It keeps hoboism at bay. If I do have a session that is mostly combat however I will also ensure to add puzzle elements to the encounter to help keep the RPers engaged.
Timed combat, immunity mechanics to overcome, exploitable weaknesses etc.
Time loop, although it ended up making them more murder hobo-ey
Usually, the noose, I have had a player murder hobo twice in the same campaign, he has lost two characters to the gallows. But third time seems to be the charm.
I think having consequences has more weight than anything else. If you kill enough people, word is going to get out about the group of bandits (yes, that is what the party is now) that have been rampaging through the province. Not so much fun when everyone wants you dead and your resupply is cut off.
Of course let them have a redemption arc if they really mean to repent, but otherwise just keep throwing stronger and more numerous enemies until they give in or die.
One time in my game the mage incinerated a boy that tried to pick his pockets. There were no legal consequences - he was defending his person and property, and in a moderately corrupt port city he had a lot more clout than a street urchin - but the party were quite taken aback to find that not only had their previous sources of "word on the street" information dried up, but their enemies were getting a steady feed on where they were going and what they were doing.
Sweet sweet consequences. 😈
That is a good way to implement consequences. It's not so drastic that it feels like disproportionate retribution, but it is enough to make the Player regret what happened.
This boy gave the info
Hence why having peaceful debilitations is great. Sleep, Grease, Web or Tasha's Hideous Laughter.
Sounds like time to go out in the streets and clear out the rest of the thieve's guild/ street urchins... Thieves always have the best loot.
I had a few murderhobos at my table once.
They went to the same magic shop and threatened to kill the owner if he didn't give them 90% off of everything.
Eventually this resulted in the shops inventory becoming depleted.
The owner didn't have the funds to replace the items he was threatened to hand over.
This resulted in the the two players killing the guy because they thought he was hiding the items.
This then resulted in the shop closing down to *"Bereavement in the family".*
When the shop opened again, the two players went in to threaten the new owner only to find the new guy had advanced anti-magic defences and a pair of very tough minotaur guards.
The new owner had heard what happened to the last guy and took steps to counter the players.
casuals. everyone knows if you play and evil campaign you never stay in the one town. for one you probably have a bounty and are on the run anyway, so keeping a low profile is key. kill and mug the random travelling merchant, not the town merchant, leave him for the rogue to rob covertly while you are negotiating with a nobleman to rescue his daughter, negotiate for half up front, have the rogue rob some of the mans visible assets, and then once you get his daughter bring her straight to him, hold a knife to her throat, demand triple pay confirm the money, silence them both and head to the next town to spend it. Have plenty of disguise kits, nondetection to bypass true seeing (mind blank is even better), keep tabs on your bounty so you know how many people are hunting you for it, get the wizard to make some real fake bodies that look exactly like the party (and are real bodies) to turn in your own bounty, and keep going. evil campaigns should be so much more than "I kill him" - and there were no consequences. evil campaigns are about working around the consequences until your inevitable fall. Steal, lie, pillage, bribe, blackmail, negotiate, back stab (but not the party. never back stab the party. seriously.) but whatever you do, do it meticulously, sure the CE characters may kill without hesitation when provoked and for little reason, but ONLY when provoked. Unless they are an AntiPal they have no problem not spreading chaos every second of every day for their own well being, killing randomly and pointlessly is not beneficial to an evil group.
@@ShadowAraun wow, HOLY SH*T, I WANT TO PLAY ONE NOW!
@UC0VtSYPnzzoi5XEWUyYjFYg bruh, that party was mythic. that poor noble would get put through the ringer ........ for a buncha no good murderers and thieves they had principles, they do what they want and if anyone tells them not to do something they definitely do it
I would have had a much better solution. Have the magic shop owner be a retired mage. Basically a 20th level wizard with years of study under his belt. So that guy the party thought was a defenseless old man ends up just mopping the floor with their asses before using telekinesis to throw them out of his shop. Much more satisfying that way.
Just if it’s Applicable just have the guards not be pushovers
Must be nice to not be paranoid.
Serious note most evil characters ive played actually kill less than good ones so as to stay under the radar.
I play many evil characters and I've been told that my evil characters act more morally good than evil. Its terrifying.
Playing evil characters is very fun
Yep, evil doesn't mean kill everyone for sure.
Evil characters in neutral or good aligned parties tend to, indeed, stay under the radar like that.
I've always held this to heart: If I scare away my party... there is no one to see me act out my scheme and evil plan.
And someone should definitely know of my evil deeds in the end.
Exactly, true evil never reveals itself until its too late.
Currently playing LANCER with a group in Discord. My character has earned the title "Too Angery To Die" because he's cheated death thrice within the last 3 months. Well, he's a 22 year old college kid who has never really seen violence outside of his training.
It's changed him to cheat death so many times in a row. And now that I've started making plans to become a warlord, everyone is OOC shitting on me for walking down the path of evil. IC, only one person knows, and everyone else is just seeing a plucky college kid with an absurdly strong will to live.
It's already made my rp four times more interesting and it hasnt been a day since the reveal
So, I have 1 solution for murder hobos when using the XP lvling, civilians offer NEGATIVE experience points.
That's a great house rule!
Makes sense, you should really only logically get exp from something that takes effort to kill.
Also you could do an elder scrolls style approach where players lose exp for spending time in jail.
LMFAO THATS AN EXCELLENT IDEA
Hey! You stole my idea! (lol)
I had the same idea. If someone is (seemingly) harmless and the party can't give a plausible in-game reason why the person or animal should die, I'd either make them worth negative XP or zero XP.
So if you can put forward a reasonable case that your character would have known the person was (for example) an evil hag in disguise(edit: and they're correct), you can get XP as normal, otherwise you get a small amount of negative XP instead.
Or, if your characters are starving and you steal and kill an animal for food, you'd probably get zero XP for the kill.
But I don't think I'd actually subtract XP as such, in that it couldn't make the PC go down a level. Instead, it would make an XP debt which the PC would have to earn back before being allowed to add to their XP again.
EG. The PC has 5600 XP and gets negative XP of 20 for killing a harmless NPC. Later, the PC earns 100 XP for killing an attacking monster. The result is that the PC's XP only goes up to 5680 because 100-20=80. The XP debt has to be overcome first, before any remaining XP is added.
@@theDMLair when I suggested it on the Friday stream you said you don't like it! Hypocrite 😅
If a NEW "innocent" player the first thing it comes to it mind in a world with limitless possibilities is "killing an unarmed merchant"
Maybe your player is not so innocent...
So, from the perspective of a new player, when reason number 10 is the biggest issue with the game and then Mr. Unarmed Merchant just happens to pile the final straw on the RP Camel's Back to break it, the murder session wasn't his fault, but sadly he bore the brunt of the IRL Frustration. lol.
Thats exactly what happened when we first played a tabletop rpg. There was one player who cut the throat of a merchant. Well they found out that the merchant only carried stones and tried to scam them. And that began the series of throat cuts. The victims: a little girl, another merchant, a cow...
My wizard was a bit of a psycho. She liked to kill innocent NPC bystanders in the heat of battle "oops, friendly fire, collateral damage"
But sometimes, if such an accident had not occured in a while, she'd go out at night, sneak into a house, and cut off a head. Sneak back to the inn or "camp"
@@LordTiberius52 such a toxic PJ to play with in a middle/long campaing...
@@phobos9071 it wasn't to long until we'd left human realms behind. But each character in our party has a really dark aspect. Which we roll play the heck out of.
My guards are professionally trained soldiers, many of them accustomed to dealing with supernatural threats using cooperation and with adept mages in their ranks. This is how I deal with murder hobos.
Makes sense in a fantasy world, much to the detriment of would be muderhobos. 😁
Make karl franz proud
@@raw1175 That is highly insulting to his guards your average imperial guard is barely above your standard DND town guard and they still wear leather armor instead of Chainmaile or something useful they’re good against criminals but that’s about it remember how they wind up getting their asses whooped by Skaven clan rats
The head of one of my towns militias low key had a vorpal sword to deal with extra threats. She was a retired adventurer herself
My old gm used to have bullshit npc with no stats, if we did something they could arrest or kill us, no combat, nothing, and I mean the guy used to railroad the entire party and it was a pretty boring cinematic campaign.
Once I was bored of playing and he told us told that there was methane in the old catacombs, I didnt hear him say that, so I threw a torch inside, there was a massive explosion and we almost died but it was fun as hell, but the gm was not happy that I derailed the story.
Then my character was sentenced to die, so I chose dead by poison because my character was resistant to poison, and they gave me a sword and I was supposed to cut myself with the poisoned sword, I said that I touch the handle, the dm says that I actually touched the blade and die because it was a magic bullshit sword that ignores resistances.
He doesnt talk to me anymore but I am so happy that I play dnd with normal people now.
Hire the PCs to hunt down another adventuring group that was disrespectful to the nobles and priests, stole, killed innocent town people. Let townsfolk talk about how furious they are and how terrifying dealing with the adventurers are and how the behavior of those scoundrels makes them unwilling to trust other adventurers. When the PCs track down the party have them make the same excuses your players give for being a murder hobo "That guy was a crook, she shouldn't' have started a fight with someone like me, I'm not from that town, I don't have to follow their laws.."
@@blackbloom8552 I don't know if you've ever directly confronted players about being murderhobos but the excuses I mentioned before weren't volunteered without calling my players out. A perception problem requires a perception shift.
For bonus points, have the group they are trying to hunt down actually be themselves.
@@schwarzerritter5724 I think there is an All Things D&D video where the DM did exactly that.
That's awesome! Foreshadow what might happen to your players PCs should they go down the murderhobo route. 😂
"that kid was free EXP"
Player: "Alright. I'm gonna kill the shopkeeper."
Me: "Ok. Roll."
Player: "Damage?"
Me: "Intiative."
For memes, I have always statted out my shopkeepers to be level 6 or 7 at minimum. I never expect my players to murder hobo, but some of them do play kleptos... it becomes an amusing trial of them getting caught and having to get out of the situation.
@@ab14967 you must be careful with this type of thing, because even level 1 characters are a cut above the majority (depending of your world it can be different) but if every shop keeper or quest giver is mid level, then why are they contracting adventurers? Or you run the risk of making the players feel like the bottom of the barrel, or even backfire and incentivizing murder hobos to attack them just to get a cool battle.
@@kamencraftbrasil4367 Our current game feels like Konosuba, it would make sense for the average person to be level 1 or 2 so you start off feeling more mortal, shop keepers level 3 since they sometimes have to stop adventurers stealing or will find loot to sell. All guards at least level 4 since there's so much murder hoboing.
@@kamencraftbrasil4367 Okay, but it also makes sense because charisma wisdom and intelligence are all useful for selling and buying things, and if you work with such things like armor and weapons, you should have some knowledge on them, so really constitution is the dump stat for them, and they mix the other stats based on the shop type.
I've gotten kicked out out of a weapon shop because my brother's wimpy character asked mine to force the shopkeeper. Right in front in him.
When I started my last game I told my players I wouldn't stop them from being evil or even full-on murderhoboing. I also told them the most likely outcome. It's a world where adventurers are hired to deal with violent threats. So when you become one of those violent threats, you're going to get other adventurers hunting you down for those sweet, sweet rewards. In practice, this would involve me, the DM, making up a party of bounty hunter adventurers of equal number and level to the players. The bounty hunters would attack them all-out using the dirtiest, most vicious (but rules compliant!) tactics I could come up with.
My players know what it looks like when I play dirty. So far none of them have murderhoboed.
This is far more creative, fair, and less power trippy than 90% of what I've read in this comment section. Bravo.
Also, I could also kind of imagine a campaign where murder hoboes are hunted the whole time and tries to become a band of ... bandit of some kind to protect themselves and stay afloat in front of the violence they brought upon themselves.
Murder hobos don’t just kill NPC’s, they kill role play too.
"We need to be more heartless."
If I get any more heartless a black hole will spontaneously generate in my chest. Interestingly enough, the CG bard is wanted in more places than the CE rouge, she was framed for 1 of them, but it wasn't the rouge who framed her.
My CN rouge is the most whanted criminal in 2 nations.
Rogue*
>rouge
REEEEEEEEEE
Yesterday I had my players meet their new npc. She's a metallic dragon that polymorphed herself into a human. She tells tales of her great accomplishments. She's supposed to be their next big npc, she's a tavern owner who knew alot of information. When the players walked into her tavern she was finishing up 1 of her stories. She then went to say hi to the players and one of them told a story to the npc. The story was about how the 10th leveled player killed 8 adult red dragons all on their own. The npc didnt beleive it(obviously) and the player attacked the npc. Another player joined the attack, the npc grabbed them and went outside and polymorphed back into a dragon and flew them up high. The npc told them to just simply apologize, neither of them did. They were dropped and started to fly to their death. They died but the npc used speak with dead and asked them one more time to apologize, the second one did, but the first one didn't. The second one the npc revived but the first one stayed dead.
Damn, A+ job being the Dm. That’s a hard situation
sometimes you gotta make the tavernkeeps op so those pesky murder hobos will die and get kicked from the table
Hi my name is Onlinealias and i'm a Murderhobo. and my road to recovery started when i become a DM
Murdering player's PCs feels good though, right? 😈
That's exactly why we rotate the GM screen at my Table... Sooner or later every GM's an adventure. We (as Players) respect our GM's more, and we (as GM's) tend to give our Players a bit more slack. ;o)
@@theDMLair murdering players ends the games , NPCs though , the DM giveth and the DM taketh away
Dm'ing Princes of the Apocalypse, and my players will never even think of being murder hobos. I took an NPC from the book and made him an amatuer wizard that can do little enchantments in the early game, as well as sell a random set of magic items every week. He's well connected in the town, so if the players hurt any of the more mundane civilians, he would refuse to serve them and they would lose access to their upgrade shop. Then, when the players were higher level, I created a brand new NPC in another town who can make stronger enchantments befitting their level, line transmuting a player's shield to give it a +1 and the ranged weapon attribute so my player can basically be Captain America, for example. However, she's a shady witch who has connections to a criminal organization that my players share a common goal with. The town she lives in is that organization's turf, so if my players kill random civilians in that town, they will have assassins after them and lose access to their best source for upgrades in all of the Dessarin Valley.
Basically one way to prevent murder-hoboing is to not only make NPCs engaging and interesting, but also have at least one NPC per town that fulfills a niche that only they can do. A weapon shop can be robbed, but permanent magical upgrades are something that most players won't be able to access without the help of NPCs.
"Who am I to tell them they're having fun the wrong way?"
The GM is entitled to have fun too though
TPK! TPK! TPK!
Happened in my game, where, for some reason that is still way beyond me, the players all agreed that killing an innocent daughter (7 years old) of the Lord just because she didn't have any information about the party the previous night was the only course of action, despite being told repeatedly that she was locked in her room for the duration of the party (she was grounded for getting into a fist fight with a 10 year old boy) despite roughly 10 other guests at the party.
Me: Are you sure you want to do this, your actions will have consequences.
Players: Lawl. This girls useless, so I am literally taking off her head.
Me: Ok, well, congratulations, you have just literally killed the "Voice of the World", as this child had the soul of a God in her. All of you can no longer speak.
Players: Oh shit, I cast revivify.
Me: You can't, you cannot preform spells with Verbal Components. Unfortunately, the campaign as a whole is irrecoverable from this point.
Damn that sucks. I have a player who is kind of pissed at me for something in Curse of Strahd. We were doing death house..not sure how familiar you are with it..but basically the party gets to the dungeon that lays under the house. Now. Before that they met 2 ghost children Rose and Thorn. The ghost kids were more than willing to tell the party all the information the could. After that..the 2 ghosts did try to possess 2 of the members but the party members resisted. Now earlier in the house they had found these creepy dolls. And took them. The Druid ask the ghost kids if they could possess the dolls and they did. Our Cleric took the bones of the children in the room and eventually when the ghost kids in the dolls saw their graves in the dungeon they begged the party to put the bones in their graves so their souls could finally be set free... The Bard wanted to barter with the ghost kids before doing this. Constantly asking for something or knowledge. I had explained that they already told them everything. He pressed on..knowledge about the afterlife... I then explained that they were locked in their room where they died and their souls never even made it. They dont have knowledge to give. Luckily the other players decided to go ahead and put the bones in while he was trying to barter with ghost kids who already told them everything. Later on he said that I took away his creative freedom and put down his ideas.
Nothing like your story..at least this wasnt campaign ending..but I guess it is frustrating when players try to get info out of an NPC that simply doesnt have it.
Now I’m interested in the setting this game took place, it’s unfortunate it ended like that.
@@xer0vi
"His ideas?" More like his idea that you give him a reward for doing the right thing.
Congratulation, you just robbed yourself and your players of a story hook where because they did something so serious and evil to such an entity they are now cursed and have to face several ordeals of some sort to get rid of it and to appease whatever entity they provoked and pursue the story, but I guess ending the campaign because "npc was actually ... therefore campaign ends" is a satisfying slight to inflict to the players from the Point of view of dimwitted puritans.
I'm at work but I still liked cause I know it gonna be good when I see it
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. 😂
Admiral Ackbar it is good but beware because it may have been a trap...
Grr. It took too long to get to the list.
Off with his head
(Sarcasm)
I knew it!!! 😂😂😂
@@theDMLair If you are going to tempt the universe like that, can one really be expected to not take the easy shot?
Grr ;
In a Pathfinder game where I was a player, we just got out of a dungeon and found ourselves at a tavern where magic was outlawed. I was a sorcerer, so I was outlawed. The thought crossed my mind, these townfolk would burn me at the stake as soon as they knew what I was. I had to fight the rising urge to say "I cast Fireball!" to clear the taproom, and take an introspective look at what my Sorcerer would want to do. In the end I decided that she would fly under the radar as long as possible.
The DM thanked us for not going murder hobo after the session was over.
Actually... the entire last session of my group's Dark Sun campaign was "talky talky".
We accidentally encountered Rajaat inside the Pristine Tower and quickly decided that we could not fight him (he's the guy who left the world in its current barren state), so the group jumped through a window and fell through a portal into a lake where we held on to the Half-Giant like a raft because she was the only one who can swim (it's Athas, so you're lucky if you ever see more water than you can drink) before being fished out by the Gith shamans who brought us there via portal.
They explained to us their plot and plight, asking for help so they may possibly leave this plane. The rest of the session was just the group playing out their characters, shopping and fishing. We had a lot of fun forcing the Half-Elven shopkeeper into a full Thri-Kreen trade negotiation.
She was very perplexed by our Elf following the forms of Thri-Kreen trading as well. It was a nice way to get to boast her own accomplishments but mostly validating her friend in his cultural customs.
Then we had fun fishing and playing out first encounters with fish as a food and that was really it.
Hours of just dedicated role playing.
That wasn't a "talky talky" session! Look at all the stuff that happened.
- Opened with an unwinnable fight you successfully fled
- Survival challenge where only ONE player had the needed skill to save the rest of the party
- New NPC town to explore
- fishing mini-game!
- regular shopping
- challenge mode shopping!
- character trait quiz! (how do they respond to a novel food item)
I’ve had _ONE_ NPC betray the party.
And that was _after_ she’d literally said “hands off my paycheck” to a Duergar who was threatening a PC, said some favorable stuff about Auril the Frostmaiden, and tried really hard to figure out what was at the cabin they needed her to guide them to.
Even the NPCs who suggested they get her help traveling- a local hunter and an old friend of a PC- passed their high rolled Insight checks.
One was just a simple hunter who knew a frost Druid was in the area, surely she’d be useful.
The other had basically the same concept.
Now her betrayal- 12 sessions later- is still deeply felt.
I actually don’t have any murder hobos in my group. I’ve even put in options to see if they’d do it but nope.
With that being said, it’s funny when some accuse others jokingly of being murder hobos and they laugh while getting defensive.
I think it’s partly because I WOULD hold them responsible and not hold back. At all lol.
That's awesome. Good group of players there. 😁
I'd like you to do a video on RP hogs...those players who want to spend hours of game time RPing everything, including the most mundane encounters (like buying equipment)... especially those that engage in monolog RP, where the other players aren't involved
How do I avoid doing this? This is the kind of game I want to play, but often the other players aren't that interested so I end up at best the leader and at worst hijacking the game.
@@thrawnnoconnection6931 If you have a game shop in your area, you can often find groups looking for players. If the current group isn't into the game, there really is no reason to play with them.
@@thrawnnoconnection6931 Bring a watch to the game. Lay it beside your dice tray and track how much time you spend monologuing. Simply knowing you have an issue tends to solve that problem quickly. Also, when you RP the mundane stuff... if you can't do each TYPE of mundane encounter differently every time then simply say "I do x" and limit the description of the mundane activity to few sentences. It's fun to think about how magic changes simple stuff like bathrooms and light fixtures but... only the first time it's mentioned.
ah yes, the reverse murder hobo.
Why aren't the other players involved?
It is the GM's job to keep the spotlight moving so every players gets equal time.
I play RPGs like a poker game: check, call, or raise, then pass the turn. If any player takes more than 1-2 minutes per turn - loses a turn.
The old man? What about the party, I'm more curious about who resurrected them. Or could it be, no...a dreaded retcon!? *dun dun duuuun*
Also just putting this out there, I was interested in the old man's story. Poor old dude.
It is yet to be determined who raised him... But when we find him...
I love how seemingly you ignored the party's resurrection.
Top Ten List starts at 6:11, that being said, Luke's foreword and introduction are totally worth watching. Thanks for all the great content the DM Lair!
You are very welcome!
We actually had a final session a few months ago where the DM made us murder hobo everything... despite us giving a guard a chance of leaving the place alive after killing his buddy in 1 blow... my lawful good paladin went to chaotic neutral real quick that session...
The fall of the paladin... Love it!
@@theDMLair after that he's forsaken his goal and now runs a tavern occasionally helping out the local guards, but mostly a somewhat broken dwarf
I ran a Ravenloft game and the players had a blast. It was heavy horror them so everything was terrible to them. By lvl 10 the players were geared up like a lvl 4 party due to the never ending "we got screwed again but still alive so its a win." They all had horrible phobias and PTSD triggers. It was one of the best campaigns but that was consistent with the Ravenloft setting.
I'm a fairly new player of D&D, and am currently playing a lawful evil rogue. Honestly, I accidentally ended up as a mob boss when I was gonna play an assassin style character. It turned out I, with my base line charisma, ended up as party face and need to keep my shenanigans on the low. It's all about balancing how the table reacts together.
In my experience random murder happens most when players are bored. If they've spent three hours in a session looking forward to using their new awesome spell but they've been stuck doing loot math and getting monologued at then they may hit the first thing you send at them.
Lost Mines of Phandelver: my party now has a flame skull as a party member due to the edge lord fallen asimar warlock of death.
lol, the funniest way to punish a murder hobo
I talk with my group about once every 3 weeks to see how the feel about our game.I am a 1st time DM in a campaign that has now run a year and a half. It helps me with implementing more of what my players want to see within my world. I learn what I am doing good at/ getting better at, and what I need more work on. Its been so rewarding. Good to hear others take the same approach! currently working on getting my 1 MurderHobo to quit it, and have been talking with him a lot. I hope I can bring him around
Two weeks ago, my player Isa send me a mensage ask me to reviw her as a player, and she reviwed me as a DM. It just a good experience to see what the players like and deslike in my game. I think it would be positive if all gaming groups have a day every 3 to 4 months for just say what is good and what is bad in everyone stile.
My group and I are very new we started playing this month. And give a half hour at the end of every session for everyone to give feedback to eachother
"There are some players that just want to see the world burn"
My DM: "What do y-"
Me: "BURN IT DOWN"
I mean, no matter if there is a great dragon or a bunch of goblins, start a wildfire and everything's done for.
*laughs in red dragon*
Great dragon holds breath, scales gives enough DR to ignore wildfire.
Your videos are extremely helpful Luke, the skits are always over the top and hilarious as well as the fact you keep your mess ups in the video which add some humility to the video as well thank you for all your advice.
Hey Joshua you are very welcome. I'm happy to hear that you're finding the content useful and the skits enjoyable. :-)
I tried doing so that their actions have consequences. One dude tried to steal an armor 6 times while the guards were just outside the shop. Then he complained to me about not having enough freedom in the game.
DMing tomb of annihilation for 3 players, I felt that they'd need an npc to help with balancing the adventure early on(since ToA is meant for 4 players) so I introduced them to Xandala. I've been planting clues as to her alignment for some time so my players are wary of her specifically. I've also added in an alignment tracker for Xandala based on the party's charisma checks so that if they manage to change her alignment, she may not give up on her ambition, but she could wish no harm on the party and withdraw for the time being. I feel like if you're going to have a treacherous npc this is the right way to go about it. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
My first couple of session with my first ever group my party met with a mercenary guild leader. They did not particularly like him and a few were talking about trying to kill him. I calmly explained that killing a guild leader or trying to would cause the whole guild to hunt them down. They would have laps broken the law so would have the guards after them. There are many powerful factions that have close relationships. So even if they dealt with the first couple of encounters it would not be long before the whole world is trying to kill them. That seemed to put them off haha.
I've only ever let one of my players play an evil character and my god did she knock it out of the park. In the end I even wept for her character
I have actually switched from using Milestone leveling to XP leveling for my homebrew games. Since I create open worlds which are almost impossible to correctly time milestone levels for. I have opted to do a fusion method where they receive XP for completing tasks and not based on #’s of enemies slaughtered. So far this method seems to be working better than milestone leveling which was kinda weird when they would just level up randomly after a certain period of time without completing a specific task
I would love a indepth rule set for awarding xp based on completing tasks instead of enemies killed.
O yes please try to murder hobo the lvl 20 wizard that sells the magical items. I absolutely dare them.
I really liked this video not only because it was good and well produced,but because you were so happy in it. Keep doing videos happily like that,you made me smile after a long time,buddy!
Thanks dude! Happy I could make you smile! 😁
There’s always someone tougher than the party to take them down if they have to be.
Keeping the party engaged is a big part of this problem
Good video
In reference to #5, my players are constantly paranoid in every encounter they have with NPCs due to the constant betrayals of NPCs with other DMs. It makes it difficult for me to get an NPC they actually connect with on any personal level.
Yeah that sucks. Other DMs have ruined it for you. Time to track them down...
The barbarian slipped out at 6:33 and I love it.
This is why I love my current group. We have gone several sessions in a row before and never once rolled for initiative, and we love it. No murder hobos.
A DM who called my group murder hobos was being condescending to us and also made every NPC in Barovia be condescending to us.
Have guards be prepared for all kinds of danger. Hey, it's a world where there is magic, and giant murderous dragons, and monsters.
They should be WAAYY leveled up.
how about take your murder hobo party through dungeon of the mad mage and let them do a 23 level dungeon crawl? it looks like it would be right up there alley, a little social interaction, a lot of exploration, and tons of combat
The RPG one can be solved by simply saying, this is more Witcher, than skyrim.
I love that you included number six. I am a new DM and semi new player, and I have two campaigns under my belt that I’m currently running, both of which have an evil character. One group is irl and one is online. I’m lucky enough that my irl group is a group of my actual friends who wanted to give DnD a try, giving me a chance to run DnD for adults instead of as an after school program for my daughter and her friends. My online group is made up of people I’ve personally handpicked because I’ve played with them in multiple settings, and I love the way they play and how their creative minds work.
Irl game, this player is brand new (as are all the players). She took an online alignment quiz answering as her character and got chaotic evil because she wanted to play her as a treasure hungry trinket goblin. (Funnily she chose gnome as her race, the least materialistic race, which ultimately led her to breaking from her family. Good stuff.) I made it clear from the outset that Faster Pussycat Kill Kill games aren’t fun, and she agreed that her character wouldn’t be a murder hobo, as a rogue she would find sneakier ways to feed her greed and would never betray her friends. So I allowed it and she is an amazing player and beloved character.
Online game I’m running Dragon Heist and one of my players wants to be a necromancer who owns a funeral home/mortuary whose ultimate goal is to become a litch. Again, great stuff. To her, wanting to become a litch is inherently evil, and we talked about it. I’ve both played with and played under her as a DM, and I trust her. And in character creation she started talking about how her job could benefit the goals of another player (who also wanted to own a shop in town), and all of a sudden my players had a basically a communal group of shop keepers who were banding together to fight the wrongs being done in the city because the city guards couldn’t keep on top of things. I have vigilante shop keepers all because my evil player is smart enough to make her evil motivations work with the goals of the party from the outset.
Evil alignment is not a license to be an abject slaughter monkey, nor should it be. There are SO MANY WAYS to be evil. Look at our world for crying out loud. Legal evil happens everyday. Grow up kids who think evil = murder hobos.
There is a flip side to this advice that is applicable to most GM's: if you've been running for a group for awhile, your players are your mirror. If almost all the challenges you throw at them can be solved by stabbing (or a particular skill check, or a particular kind of magic, etc) expect everyone to make characters that are really good at that. Murderhobos can easily arise as a consequence if all your challenges are a GM are merely an arms race.
Enjoying your banter and outlandish demeanor. Taking it all in stride and understand your straight forward attitude, most players won't except that, its the point that needs to be exemplified not how you get there...
However, in the history of calming down, no one has ever calmed down by being asked to calm down! LOL
I saw this from someone else and have used it sense, my favorite way to deal with the are revenants. Revenants are an undead monster borne from an unjust and cruel death. If your players are murdering random NPCs then have one come back as a revenant. They will not rest until there hunger for vengeance has been fulfilled, meaning killing whoever killed them. They can come back to life after a certain period of time and are intelligent, this means they can rally forces. They are very interesting and make sense for murder hobos
My favorite moment as a dm was this.
Murderhobo got fed up with bargaining with the owner of a magical items and artifacts store and decided he was going to take everything.
The lvl 5 fighter draws his great sword and takes a swing only for the merchant to effortlessly avoid the attack do a backflip to gain some distance and with a motion of his hands armed himself with a pair of twin daggers.
What followed was the fighter getting his shit stomped by a retired level 20 rouge who was selling artifacts acquired (both legally and illegally) from his adventures to fund his retirement
I thought this was going to be about the homebrew murderhobo class, I'm a little disappointed there wasn't more pocketsand attacks.
Great video.
Now, can you do one on how to make your players murder more?
I'm running two groups that are totally avoiding violence. It's been 8 sessions since something died. It was a stirge that had nearly killed a PC.
Never had that problem before in D&D...
Tell them if they don’t do combat in 2 sessions you would throw a Tarrasque at them.
Intellect devours and other creatures that can alter stats. Have a couple of encounters with those or, I think it is, a banchee that if you fail the save you drop to zero hp. Mix them with one of the stat altering undead.
Maybe give them a group of enemies that refuses to back down, maybe under some sort of pact or something that makes it impossible for them to not fight you.
Never heard of that 😅 Though my group now mostly attacks only if being attacked and tries other ideas for the most part. (We have a character that hates Orcs and another one that hates Yuan-ti the characters attack their respective rivals on site)
Idea: The Reverse Betrayal - The character starts out evil but turns good! Or the inverse for evil campaigns
Ive been doing the XP for overcoming conflicts thing. And its worked well. My group regularly tries to avoid fights or will kill what they have to then try to escape while the enemy group is crippled.
Only YOU can prevent forest fires!
By punishing the wizard, whose favoured terrain is apparently "scorched earth"
(This is a running gag amongst my core group. Our first campaign meant that the wizard would burn down forests, and my druid would angrily spend time healing the land after)
That's basically what wizards do... 😂
16:04 Sweet Waukeen! My last group LOVED shopping and interacting with shopkeepers and stores. They ate that up. The haggling. The descriptions. The karening. Browsing. Entire whole sessions dedicated to shopping. We once invaded a large warehouse store where the big goal ending up being navigating the bureaucracy of in store management to get a rewards card. The entire session. Our rogue once spent 45 session minutes shopping for new armor for her character. She needed to upgrade to better AC equipment that the party could now afford. After all that, she walked out keeping her lvl 1 starter equipment because she didn't like the color of brown described by the DM. 2 levels (many sessions) later she got better armor from a dungeon drop.
"That's why robots are never Dungeon Masters"
*Laughs in Skyrim*
My players actually like the talky talky role play bits more than combat and seem to have fun exploring, one of my players actually asked me for more role play over combat, the rest don’t seem to mind either.
There once was a time where my players were Vikings and they had to be murder hobo and I’m proud because they left the Vikings and actually became vampires and that was cool
“There is a reason why robots are dungeon masters” *Baldurs Gate wants to know your location*
I kinda feel attacked for #10 :P . I used to run a campaign set in the Firefly universe(using the Cortex system) where my players actively avoided combat. Combat is extremely deadly in the Cortex system, and it's possible to one shot pretty much any character/npc. We once went four sessions(4 hours each) where no fighting happened at all.
EXP leveling should be treated like the relic from a time where you padded games via grinding that it is.
It's just a bad workaround to a problem that doesn't exist anymore. And never existed at tabletop roleplaying. It just cripples your story in all kinds of ways and doesn't even make any logical sense.
In reality you could smash things with an axe for years without improving your technique in the in any significant fashion if simple smashing solves whatever problem you might have. Yes, your con and str stat might improve slightly, but nothing else. Even felling trees with any kind of proficiency is less about hitting wood with an axe then planning on how you want that thing to fall. And trees don't even actively fight back. So even being a barbarian has obviously more to it then swinging an axe. Even if it's just learning to avoid getting your weapon stuck in an enemy*, maybe that revelation even came to you when some blacksmith was rambling on about armor design.
*Yes that's a real martial arts problem. And many, especially wooden shields have this as a design feature. Also there is an entire weapon category called "parrying dagger". Which are blades or daggers designed to catch blades. Those where in many cases the more expensive alternative to a shield but still saw use. They where also presumably a kind of pay to win mechanic in some dueling rules.
This is the best Murder hobo video out there! And such a big crisis at D&D tables far and wide! Great stuff!
I remember running a really dark fantasy campaign, and my players started getting a little too indiscriminate with their killing.
So, eventually, I started tallying up their kills. These kills showed up later as the revived, tortured souls stolen by the big bad. Yeah, they had to fight buffed versions of the people they killed, and by the end, the tally was in the double digits...
Now, you'd think this would get them to stop. It didn't. They just started being more careful with their kills and preparations. So, to deal with THAT little debacle, I cut loose. I tallied up the souls they re-killed, and set them up as an aspect of one of the big bad's rituals. Put simply, the more the party killed, the more HP, spells, and buffs the big bad would get. I wasn't TOO cruel, though, and made some ways to weaken the boss, but it wasn't even remotely easy and we nearly had a TPK, but I think they learned their lessons.
Edit: forgotten story details...
probably your best video I’ve seen so far. I haven’t had murder hobos in my game. But I’ve had players talk about it. They tried to explain to me what it was. They also said that the way I game master tends to remove that. I’m not sure what they were talking about but the various things you mentioned above to match what I do.
I am not certain how merit leveling would help…. but definitely modifying the way experience points works is a good start.
I am very old-school. We made players learn levels by finding a teacher. A.k.a. a local NPC. I also makes the players lose experience points the longer it takes for them to find such a trainer. Trainers in my game are very picky about who they take on and letting work out that they can even train.
I suppose if the players were murder hobos they might accidentally kill the teacher that would’ve helped them. Or the teacher would have run the other way hearing what’s going on.
and yeah, local militia and police in a town or city would definitely chase after them. And I always have the local military and police higher level than the players. And if they’re murder hobos, not an accidental murder, I will let the elite squad go after them. After all a king has to maintain order and a peaceful society to rule.
everyone of your bits of advice makes perfect sense. And I believe a lot of the newer game styles have contributed to the creation of the murder hobo…
And you bring up everyone of those points. I look forward to seeing your game
I remember my first dungeons and dragons game, it ended pretty shortly once I decided to murder a hobo and since then every time we play D&D our first rule is DON'T TOUCH THE HOBOS
My first Warhammer 2 campaign was a great example of 5, writ small. We made it through 2 sequential modules, and exactly _every other_ employer was a chaos cultist. By the 1/4 mark of the second module, we'd discovered the tick-tock progression and started counter-playing to it. Not murder-hoboing, but we _did_ start forcing confrontations on thinner evidence in order to ensure the dramatic reveal happened on our terms.
"Some players just want to watch the world burn"
One of my games has a player that the DM 100% enables for this. For some reason, the player was allowed (IN ONE TOWN) to buy 30,000gp worth of black powder, alchemist fire, flasks of oil, and other explosive things. Add on the 2 horses and cart...
Oh... AND that player decided to "Disguise Self" to look like me while buying everything. Despite me going out of my way to be super nice to nearly every NPC, always paying extra (ie tipping for service, etc), and despite playing a rogue, never stealing ANYTHING. So that player effectively made the choice for me to have to retire/kill my character. And the fact that the DM allowed it in the 1st place told me I didn't have a say in it.
Game Plot at the time: Stop a big bad that... let's call it "had an affinity to fire." That player's idea: Blow it up... with fire. My character had the added benefit of things taking place at an area having to do with his backstory. So of course I was trying to save as many/much as I could.
The TLDR of how it all ended: My character sacrificed himself in order to direct the location of "ground zero." (fwiw, we did the actual calculations of how much damage was done. it was over 34,000 after everything was added).
AT LAST! A fey themed adventure to go along with my fey themed recurring NPC!
I always tell players who play evil characters. "Your alignment is chaotic evil, not chaotic stupid."
Love it, have not DMd in many years, moss it. DMd for 20 years, love your channel content. Your righr, 85% of the game is totally on you and your content.
Old man: "...and before you can unlock the gate that leads to the treasure of Seven Dragons, you must..."
Rouge: _"Boooriiing"_
Rouge: *stabs the Old man, killing him*
...
so many times...
I love the bloopers. Good job, editor
Just stumbled upon your channel and this is some good stuff! As a dabbler in realms of Murderhoboery **cough** Reason Number 10 **cough** I loved this video! Subbed and can't wait for more content!
Awesome! Glad you like it. 😁
Yet another great video. I never heard of "murderhoboing" before but have definitely seen it. You are correct, the key reasons in my experience stems from boredom and a lack of consequences. Wonderful video. I pretty much do what you are doing as murderhoboing brings a lot of attention onto people who may need to be taught a lesson or two :).
Yay it's old man commoner! (Couple of seconds later.) Oh no beloved NPC old man commoner! Get out of there! They'll lose interest if you just run past someone else who looks murderable enough to satisfy their bloodlust. But on the other hand... what are the consequences of killing old man commoner?
Consequences? What consequences? 😂
My DM was actually very good with this! One of our group members went and killed someone we were supposed to deliver supplies to. Since we were all there, we are going to be put on trial at the end. I think it will be interesting, and I'm glad she's adding that flavour!
Now I just hope that there's at least one dwarf on the jury since my character was introduced mid-campaign while being friends with some dwarves
11:46
"Not everyone is out to get me! I hope..."
Me on my l33t hacking computer: crap, he's on to me!
Recently I tried DMing the Lost Mines starter pack, but with only one player. He lost the Goblin Arrows ambush, so I fenagled a way for him to buy some leather armor, a few weapons, and a shield, and gave him a bunch of Commoner stat block NPCs to help. they all used a javelin instead of a club.
I decided to have them make separate rolls for each of them crossing the river. one got a 4, this NPC was then-on called Bob, and would always be the NPC who failed an NPC check. Next was Alice, an NPC who got middle of the road rolls, and was made up to justify having 4 NPCs help the PC. Lastly was Steve, whose first action was getting a nat 20 on an acrobatics check to jump over the river.
I think I rolled the d20 and d6 enough to sya there were 4 to 6 NPCs helping, But i only named 3.
on a whim, i decided to have one of the NPCs do something with the recently killed 6 goblin bodies. Steve took out a knife and some rope, and field dressed the goblins, and hung them up on tree branches. I then had him start a camp fire and sacrifice the dead goblins to the goddess mentioned in the LMoP book, the Luck goddess.
then the PC went in and soloed the cave, taking it slow and steady, and making a damn good Athletics check to stab his sword in the ground and tough out 2 mintues of flooding.
at one point he let a bunch of lesser goblins run off the already collapes bridge, one of those 4 died, the other 3 made it to the cave entrance, and where then killed by the waiting NPCs.
Steve sacrifice those as well.
Steve the NPC never said a word, even when the PC tried to talk to him. I described Steve simply nodding his head and smiling or frowning.
the player said to me after the session ended "I think I'm going to like Steve, he's been fun so far."
so my first attempt at making NPC on the fly resulted in a muderhobo NPC who never says anything, and is an astounding acrobat.
and the player liked the results.
How I handle murderhobos?
That shopkeeper turns out to be a Solar for the main religion of the city.
Hilarity ensues.
Because that doesn't at all raise the question why they need you to save the town.
@Fredrik Dunge Simple.
1. He’s not allowed to interfere.
2. He’s busy on a more important mission.
3. He needs to do something else in the background to assist your group.
4. He’s a rogue Solar hiding out from his charge.
5. He’s looking for demonic activity and disguised as a mortal to watch unseen.
6. He’s on vacation.
Any of these and enumerable more can be used to justify his existence in a shop.
@@Lobsterwithinternet Most of those only work as long as it isn't an existential threat.
@@Lobsterwithinternet I would have gone with a devil instead, he's bound in a human form and not allowed to harm people with physical violence or magic except in self defence. But if someone is stupid enough to pick a fight wth him that's their problem.
@Fredrik Dunge Sounds good. 👌🏻
I'm just starting to write a homebrew. After watching a few of your videos, I think my players will have a lot of fun.
To be honest, I'm not even sure where the story is gonna go yet, but I'm making a point of finding ways to avoid fights, and consequences when there are.
...............fireball................(every wizard in combat ever in d&d)
All wizards are murderhobos...
@@theDMLair tru
Everyone knows good wizards use Lightning Bolt.
@@yanderenejoyer but most use fireball
I've found a good way to deal with murdohoboing is to give each a player a specific quest goal for their character; also make sure the quest has a simple and cool pay off. Your father owned a +5 sword, he was killed by bandits who worship Zugtmoy and you are looking for them and your fathers sword. As a theif you have heard of a legendary ruby worth 5,000gp (that also happens to be a Soul Gem but the thief doesnt know that). Your temple let you know that a Solar has fallen and is trapped somewhere, if you find and free it it will give you a blessing.
Realy thanks ^^ .
No problem!
Book recommendation!
“Something Murder Hobo” by Dakota Krout. An awesome book about a Murder Hobo where it makes sense as to why the murder hobo acts the way he does.
12:14 I don't want anyone to play as me!
New to this channel, but now subscribed. Never had problems with Murderhobos, because I follow item #1. I’ve played evil characters- but he was lawful evil with a strict code of conduct. (Ruined it for the DM- he was waiting for me to betray the group. Nope. For this character, People are objects; proven friends, though, are precious. And he was always kind to those who were poor... he took pleasure in taking down the cruel elite.) Also, good point on the three pillars. Last night’s session, the party just randomly scoured the city for rumors because they’d spent two sessions without a combat. Mystery solving, diplomacy, RP, but they were desperate for something to fight... so, they tracked down a Minotaur in the sewers. It was an easy victory... but unfortunately attracted three chull to their location, servants of the Aboleth they had previously dealt with (non-violently.) They got their combat. Perhaps more than they wanted.
I really interesting way to keep experience leveling based on encounter is to include three aspects to the world;
1. EXP is gained for overcoming any encounter, even if the encounter is really easy, but is increased for encounters that "could" be more difficult.
2. Creatures that survive the party of PCs will continue to improve(maybe even to the point they would become a threat).
3. Creatures that have been beaten by the party will avoid the party, even if they are now a danger to the party.
In other words, each group of bandits or monsters they have defeated, but not killed, can become a source of increasing EXP each time that group avoids them(either by running away, hiding, or negotiating) because they have 'overcome' the encounter.
Why did i only watch this 2 days before my campaign. I need to " put on my big boy" pants apparently. Thank you Luke. Helpful as always
I did not follow my only morderhobo instinct. The result was pure carnage at the end of the game. The Dark Lord came to this World and my Character became a follower after killing the priest he did not kill at the beginning of the adventure.
Absolutely, yes for more fey stuff. Hopefully that's out in time for my next campaign 🙏 I do want to add a fey element to it, maybe with a trip to the feywild.
There shall be trips to the feywild... 😂
My BBEG is the one hiring the Players to do their main story quests. His opposition NPC is super shady, but ultimately just kind of fun-loving and motivated by profits and the gathering of rare objects.
The final conflict where the BBEG becomes clear (if they don’t figure it out early, I’m not keeping it close to the vest or anything) and the shady but helpful character has to make a choice based on her interactions with the party will be fun.
So ill share my murder hobo story. I was DM a homebrew Ebbberon campaign that was heavy in the undead aspect. The players had come across a magic shop in a large town they came across. Now my party was a arcane archer, base vanilla fighter, a pally and a eldritch knight. The archer, and the plain fighter do some shopping and come across a 9th lvl turn undead scroll, the party was already lvl 5 and I had planned on them staying in the town for the next arc. So the party try their best to haggle, i have them roll for a charm and they both roll really poorly, so the shop keep wont budge on the price. My players decided to kill the old lady, loot the store and not tell the pally. Well good thing for them they all got arrested for their crimes and where given a choice. Here was the choice, the party can pick one player as a group to sacrifice, or they can all die. Luckily one of my players (the pally) wasn't having fun with his character and wanted to make a new one. So with about 2 hours of heavy rp, discussion, and a strong idea of character development in the distance, the party elected to sacrifice the pally. Oh and the arcane archer (the one who killed the old lady shope keep) ended up looting a cursed magic bow from the shop.
We made a reputation chart as a houserule to prevent murderhobo incidents. Its amazing how mutch better players behave when a 25% discount on their magic enchants is on the line.
I'm interested to see/hear what your chart looks like!
@@brandongore711 Well it originally began as a rework of the morale system. Each charatcer started with 4 points of their starting morality. IE: lawful good has 4 lawful and 4 good points. When the difference betwen 2 opposing moralities is less than 4 you are neutral. Say 2 evil 5 good. Thats neutral. When you reach 2-6 you will be considered good.
Later we decided to use it for a reputation mechanic as well. Now i cant tell you the exant numbers but here is the idea. NPCs rolled for each aspect (evil-good-lawfull-chaotic) and they could know us by our deeds. Depending on the number of points we had and the importance of the NPC. For example a town guard once rolled and he knew we had a rather problematic party member (it was a bard with a metric fucktonn of chaotic points) and wanted us to place a sort of insurance. If the party gets in trouble with the law we lose the money.
After every session we went through our actions and handed out the points. Not to ourselves of course. It was decided by the group or in some cases the DM just straight up gave the party a point for an action.
I think there is a bigger problem than just there not being consequence. I think it is also a case of making it too easy.
In a world so hostile but also so full of magic. I think it would be very common for shopkeepers and or other NPCs, to have the spell known or a scroll ready of Sanctuary, just in case. Some might even have sending, to inform law enforcement of anything weird happening. A shopkeeper from a reputable or good store, might have some magic items to protect them. Imagine one has a magic item that reflects damage back to whoever dealt it. They might have people protecting them. They might even have a simple panic button, that throws some sort of fireworks outside and law enforcement knows the shop is in trouble. They have a ring of deathward. They could teleport and the whole shop gets encased on a force cage.
Investigators and law enforcement should have Speak with the dead. So even if they manage to kill the NPC, they shouldn't be able to truly get away with it. The next town they visit or if they return to the same place, everyone might already know who they are. They might get chased by the law, or even shopkeepers might not even want to deal with them.
You can get creative, without railroading them. But instead of having to show consequences to them, you can simply make it harder for them to be murderhobos. At the very least, if they truly want to be murderhobos, it should be challenging. It could even be exciting for everyone involved.