Have you ever tempted your players into making a deal with a supernatural being? How did it go? Thanks so much to Dscryb for sponsoring this video! Visit dscryb.com/supergeek and use the code SUPERGEEK at checkout to get 10% off of your first subscription payment. dscryb.com/supergeek
One thing I did recently sorta spur of the moment that worked well for a devil offering my fire-based sorcerer the ability to ignore fire resistances and have fire-immune creatures take half damage instead (in exchange for 3 services in the future) was to offer that power to them temporarily free of charge as a show of good faith. The player was rightfully skeptical that the devil would even be able to help and that they'd keep their word so he gave them the ability until the next dawn no strings attached right as the party was going into a dungeon with a lot of fire-immune devils. The player saw firsthand how useful it would be in the future when they'd be fighting even more devils, they haven't signed the contract yet, but now every time they fight a devil (and there will be many) they'll be thinking about how much easier it would be if only they could use their best damaging spells.
I often tempt the players outside the game first lol. I will sometimes text a player and ask them if they want to be a secret villain, working with the party till they reach level 5, than turn on them. I like the conspiracy outside the game just as much as tempting the characters inside. I’m also very fond of “The Fake Santa”. Have a wondering merchant or full caravan come across the party’s path. The merchant is jolly & charismatic (a little gruff, but in a grandpa who fought in the war sort of way). Have him offer the players 1 magic item a piece, just a little stocking stuffer. But of course there’s always something going on with the item. The one everyone loved the most though was a sword that turned out to be a mimic.
I've actually had success several times with characters who have accepted my dealmakers' pacts. There are three good reasons for this in my view. A) my groups tend to have character play as a focus, so the players themselves find it interesting when their character does something for personal reasons that they find ill-advised as a player. B) I don't usually go in with extreme costs, as that's almost always a deal breaker and, if the contract is accepted anyway, would destroy the balancing at the game table. The soul of a hero should be worth a lot of support from the dealmaker. C) I'm slowly cooking up the cost, often characters will take a small favor for something mildly unpleasant, at some point they want more and then the price gets higher too ... and if you've already gone that far. Oh yeah, it also helps if the dealmaker remains anonymous or vague. I wouldn't expect my players to accept a deal if I introduce the other party as Satanicus Lord of Lies, Master of Tricks and Lord of Deceit
And to experience dealmaking as a core concept of a system, I can only recommend everyone to try Werewolf the Apocalypse. What makes werewolves so immensely powerful in the system is not the absurd combat stats but their ability to connect with the spirit world and trade with spirits for favors. This is an incredibly powerful and fun part of the game when both sides are creative. I once asked a Spirit of the Dawnlight for a favor in exchange for my character either facing east or wandering east for an hour first thing every morning for the next lunar cycle. On another occasion, I had asked a spirit of fire to burn the memory of a certain event from a young woman's mind, as I wanted to prevent us from having to kill her to keep our existence a secret. The spirit's price was that it would also leave a burn on the outside... something that, while not a direct cost to my character, had still hurt him greatly as he had actually wanted to spare her a dire fate. In short, there are a lot of opportunities in the system to try out deals and juggle the consequences in order to practise deal making.
In a campaign I play, our wildfire druid had a backstory where he accidentally burned down the forest community he was from, and he turned to adventuring to try and make up for what he did. In a recent session, an archdevil made a deal with him to give him “greater control over fire” both letting him deal fire damage to creatures with fire immunity as well as prevent fire damage to allies. This fit perfectly into the backstory and was really enticing. And the cost was a future favor. This character, who was almost always the voice of reason in the party, took that deal
Thanks for making a video about my request! Unfortunatly I unsubscribed from the Patreon due to my financial situaton, but I am grateful that you still made the video. When my finances will be in order I am planning to subscruibe again.
Rolling with Difficulty Podcast has one of my favorite deal costs. The wizard player and an NPC wizard pull up a Lore Devil (MCDM) to question it about getting a "spell noone has cast in a 1000 years" which is something they needed for a quest giver. In the end they get the spell (Another MCDM homebrew) added to thier spell lists and in exchange the devil can "Spare one life of one of the wizards victims." At the time the player figures he is mostly a support caster who doesn't get a lot of kills so he takes the deal. A few seasons later the big bad is specifically this wizards nemisis and the player is VERY aware that the devil will attempt to intervine. Great drama all around.
This feels like Hitchcocks theory about tension. Instead of surprising everyone with a sudden reveal, they know what is likely to happen and now worry about it.
A Tiefling Bard character in a 1-20 campaign I DMed for had a devil for a father. Around level 12 I decided to have the dad make offers to every player in the party (of 6) other than the Bard. I wanted to have the dad be a antagonistic ally and I thought it was important to make the offers away from the table so that they didn't know it was happening to each other. The trigger would be taking a long rest at the end of the session and all the offers happened in dreams, where those who took it would wake up with coins. So right after a session ended I started several lengthy direct message conversations that had to resolve before we met at the table the next week. I offered (1) a dragonborn Vengeance Paladin information towards the chance at vengeance against the dragon that wiped out almost all of his clan, (2) a changeling Rogue the chance to ensure one infernal guarantee of safety of another party member I thought their character had feelings for, (3) a Kobold Artificer the chance at inspiration for crafting an item of awesome power, (4) a amnesiac Ranger a chance at recovering their lost memories, and (5) a Halfling sorcerer a chance at being cured from a star spawn curse. All they had to promise in return was to honor one demand of the devil at the time of the devils choosing in the future without question. If they negotiated the devil dad would make several little riders like to not demand direct harm to anyone. Their souls would only be on the line if they refused to fulfill the demand. What devil dad really wanted was to get leverage on his son. The chance to say "talk to me, because some of your friends are now in my pocket." So the deal was all that really mattered ... not the terms. The Paladin and the Changeling took the deals. The Ranger and the Halfling refused. The Kobold never took it, but left the option open for the future. Each of the offers led towards one of the main plot threads I had lined up down the line at ultimately took us all the way to level 20. It ended up working really well, created intra-party drama (but not conflict), and even cause my changeling Rogue to end up with 12 levels of Rogue and 8 levels of Warlock. EDIT: Devil dad did live up to his ends of the bargains, but also demanded the player characters do things that were challenging to those characters' morals and personal desires. He also got his leverage over his Bard son, which gave the Bard opportunity to hash through his backstory.
@@Rolling_with_Hope Did the demon dad have anything to do with the vengeance paladin? Was that infernal guarantee towards another player? Was the artificer meant as setup for a key plot point? How did the bard react to learning 1/3 of the team took the deal and another kept it on the table?
@@kingofhearts3185 Alright: 1. No the Bard's dad had no prior direct connection to the Paladin. As I understood the Paladin player's rational at the time, he had sworn an oath to get vengeance against a specific Ancient Blue Dragon, and saw it as his duty to take the deal in order to help fulfil the oath. He did make part of the deal that he could not be demanded to directly harm anyone was part of his payment, but figured whatever the payment would be was in service of his oath. 2. Devil Dad promised one occasion of infernal protection for the Ranger (whom I thought the Rogue character had affections for - though that never came to fruition). The Ranger later got trapped in a force-cage with a Mindflayer. When the Ranger got really low on HP, Devil Dad planeshifted into the forcecage and yanked the Ranger into the Nine Hells. He then gave her a superior healing potion and brought her back on the outside of the force cage through another planeshift. Ranger didn't know about the specific terms of the Rogue's deal until Devil Dad told her in this moment while they took a brief breather in his mansion in Avernus. 3. The Artificer's offer (like all of them) pointed towards a specific questline. Even if they didn't take the offer, it still planted the idea of it in their head. She was offered something that would basically give her the benefits of a headband of intellect without having to attune to an item anymore (set her INT at 19). Her character backstory was basically she was a regular Kobold who stumbled onto a Headband of Intellect and after her mind was opened, she became an Artificer merchant until the events of our game. Her quest and the Rangers quest both, through different routes, ultimately pointed into a journey into the Underdark to battle an Elder Brain whose colony was partially responsible for the Ranger's missing memories and family. We followed the Ranger's route their who had been intrigued by the offer though she rejected it and started doing some investigating on her own. 4. The Bard's player thought it was awesome. The character was afraid for his friends and a little angry because he knew they type of creature his dad was. Dad basically wanted the Bard to complete a quest that could only be accomplished by "his blood." If the son did it, the father promised to make the friends' payment much less challenging ... "only mildly corrupting in nature" or something like that is how I phrased it.
One of my favorite scenarios I ran with a deal maker was a hag who was bound to her hut and her magic limited by seals that could only be undone by others. Her price was always that her petitioners had to do undo one of the seals, and when the last one was gone, her full power was unleashed, freeing her to enact whatever schemes she had been cooking up.
@@levibradshaw8655 that was what I lifted her from. None of my players had read that series, and I really liked Muriel as a villain, so I borrowed her and turned her into a strong side villain that caused no end of head aches for the party. Her plan ended with her kidnapping a prince of the ruling empire and used him as a vassal to house the spirit of an old knight who ravaged the land eons ago
I know its farther than youve covered, but Percy's contract coming up is something i love Partially because of the third clause that he can invoke at any time forever once their original business is done
I think it would be really cool to approach a player out of game and invite them into one of those backstory screw over deals to make a pivot in their characters arc Like if someone wasn't having fun with their character mechanically and wanted to switch from a fighter to a sorcerer or something, instead of that character just leaving and loosing the party dynamic, the DM went "Hey, what if you stat up your new character, but I will set up a hag character who will turn you into that character so you get to keep your backstory and goals" and then the other players with no idea see their human fighter get turned into a kua toa or something
Hazbin Hotel may have only come out this year, but it has existed in the general zeitgeist for years now. That can throw off the feel of how long it has been I think.
I never liked that deal in Gravity Falls cause Bill didn't even TRY to be clever when backstabbing him. He could have easily given Dipper exactly the information he said he would, the password to the computer, and then let the timer run out since Dipper couldn't touch the computer in his Astral Form. It was so easy.
Notice how the password only starts when Dipper falls asleep. There never was a timer. I mean, isn't it too convenient for Bill that then of all times the arbitrary protection comes on after thousands of attempts?
In the campaign I play in, some hags had us make some offers in exchange for some things we needed. We started out with proficiencies, languages, some items, but it wasn't enough. I was playing a bugbear who had recently been turned human by a potion, so I offered all my memories of being a bugbear. It's had a really interesting impact on the campaign - meeting people from my backstory, seeing visions of the past. My character now realises he used to be a bugbear but isn't sure how or when he changed. Sometimes when he fails a check I like to say that he misjudged the length of his arms or his height or something, as he has the lingering habits of being a bugbear.
In my game my players recent hit this situation. Most players said no or a bare minimum of 'let us get back to you' except for one. There was a familiar that gained a never ending cookie that day.
In my campaign Strahd offered our sorcerer a deal. “Spy for me and let me do some experiments on you and I’ll help you find your girlfriend” and he took it! Turns out that girlfriend was one of Strahd’s brides this whole time
I love deals in TTRPGs. In my most recent campaign there was an NPC, an evil necromancer, that the party wizard resurrected. Another PC, the bard, was doing nothing but bad mouthing said NPC. The party wanted access to a spell outside of level up, and the NPC could give the spell to the wizard, the one who resurrected the NPC. The NPC who has been hearing all of the bad mouthing said that she would give the party the spell, but the bard had to stop talking trash. The 'cost' was the bards life. So his words could literally kill himself if he failed to check himself.
Another example is in a game of Scion, White Wolf Storyteller system, my PC makes deals constantly to levy as assistance in the future. A god leveraged a PCs assistance in the same campaign that led to the death of another goddess and subsequently the goddesses whole pantheon. Said PC is unwillingly infamous over that happening.
In my current campaign I introduced an NPC based on the Mr. Gold character from Once Upon a Time. So far the players have made one deal with him that required them to use their influence to get the city guard to allow a merchant's wagons through. A couple sessions later they were working to foil a plot to blow up the king and queen and the session after that they learned that the shipment they got into town was the gunpowder. I wanted them to know that "all magic comes with a price" so that when Mr. Gold/Mr. Deloro proposes a new deal they are equal parts tempted and skeptical. Like they know there is probably some consequence but they think it's one they can fight their way out of.
In a game I played a Battle Smith Artificer who was a helpful little guy, genuinely pleasant and loved to use his knowledge to improve the little community that we lived in. I was a secret agent who got sent to this backwater swamp to keep an eye on things and just sort of fell in love with the area and the laid back vibe it had. So a time comes when the BBEG makes us each an offer, I was offered the ability to go to some war-torn area where I could be super helpful, healing people up and having my robots save them. I nearly immediately turned him down (it helped that the BBEG was an insufferable businessman who was destroying the vibe in the little town). When the party regrouped we talked about what the offer was, most of them spoke about how it was really tempting and they were almost unable to turn away from a free shot at a deep desire. My character? "He offered you nice things? HE ONLY OFFERED ME STRESS!"
12:54 These kinds of stories go way back. The earliest example I know of was the 19th Century violinist Niccolo Paganini, who played into the rumours when he found out about them, by making faces and rolling his eyes back to show the whites while he played.
My character (a paladin) made a deal/pact with a warlock patron who has been a part of the campaign for a while. Originally it was “come back to life, I’ll boost your smites at the cost of one death save failure.” His Devine Smite became 2d10 cold damage and it was supposed to end when we defeated the dragon we were off to kill. That dragon did not die. Now a couple months later, my character has some boons, a changed class (D&D Paladin for a third party Paladin type class, Guardian from SW5e) and I/my character wants to find and kill said dragon, then actually become a warlock of the patron. He’s an Oath of Vengeance paladin btw
…and so the party leaves with what they came for. No one knows why the devil wanted their Paladin, but no one was really sorry to have to go on without him.
Currently in the middle of an old west arc and there's a devil in the group they have fallen in with (he acts as an undertaker and is generally known as a dealmaker) the players are all leary of him and don't trust anything he has to say, but every time it's confirmed that he WILL NOT tell a lie I can see that resolve crack a little more. Just because people don't like the terms of the deals they've made when the cost comes due, doesn't mean he is ever dishonest.
I think a trick to this is to add a conditional, like the one in The Little Mermaid.The negative consequences can be clearly laid out but dependent on something else happening or the character failing at something like Ariel. Faust only had to give his soul if he ever felt contentment with his life. The three witches tell Macbeth that no man born from a woman can ever defeat him and that he won't be vanquished unless the forest marches on Dunsinane. Then when the player takes this deal and and sees the conditional in the process of happening they'll freak out, maybe try to deal with it! So you get a character moment or a new quest!
If you intend for the deal maker to be a recurring theme, you can break the rule of the reward being greater than the price during their first few interactions. Current party I’m dming slayed a hag who was trying to convert a changling girl into a full hag. Amongst her stuff they found a lot of sus thing but none of it outright evil. One thing was a blank piece of paper that was impervious to anything they did to it. Party takes it around and shows it to a couple of npcs some see it as blank while others see smudges and a rare 2 or 3 see a few distinct words amongst the smudges. Paper was from a night hag and it was enchanted only to be legible by someone with a strong concrete desire for something. Eventually, party finds clues related to one pc’s backstory about an orc warlord who should be dead and pc is role playing well their frustration about no answers. They then can read the paper explaining how they can put it under their head as they sleep for a free consultation with the Night Madame. PC does so and the Night Madame freely answers their question, confirming the orc is dead despite followers now using his name and banner again and when the pc still has trouble believing it, she gives him a mental homing beacon to the orcs corpse. The Night Madame then goes to conclude the meeting but character asks if they can meet again if they have questions. She produces a black potion and tells the pc to drink it. PC asks, what is that and she nonchalantly says, ‘it’s a portion of my power, if you consume it you’ll be able to call me at a later time’. PC drinks but doesn’t ask if their are any stipulations attached. So there were consequences to consuming the potion the pc isn’t aware of mainly involving the details of what it means to be walking around with a portion of a hag’s power inside of you. But the hag was willing to throw out things for free to hook the pc and raise the stakes down the line when they were a better target for deal making and had more to offer.
I do like, even though you will probably don't know it, deal with devil from collection of devil deals from Czech fairytale collection Fimfárum. They are mostly backstory devil deals, but I especially like one, where main character asks to learn, "How to stop drinking alcohol." I like this for a three reasons, first is the price. "You give me something, you don't know, you have at home." I would say that this one is fairytale classic. If you read some slavic fairytales, you can guess what the price was. The second is execution of the deal. The Devil actually pulls main character into the hell and by switching between hard manual work, very short rests and temptation of the vice the Devil puts main character through regular rehab, while almost no time outside of hell passes. The manual labor is also an interesting choice. He's used there to power an elevator. The third reason is the result, because a result is the Devil saying "Now you will not drink alcohol... Unless you want to". I like this, because main character gains disguised for it, while not really getting, what he bargained for. For the context this is second deal, that main character makes and the first one was almost with no consequences, so the Devil actually builds trust, before going for a big one. Also consequences of the first deal, positives and negatives quickly fail. I actually like an idea of dealmaker be like here is a small sample and if you are happy with our services, call again and we can make a real deal. Obviously this works probably only for lawful dealmakers. I think the Devil in this story, for purposes of the story for the outside world is a parody for door to door salesman I won't spoil rest of the story, it should be available as a puppet movie, which adds an additional creep factor.
This just gave me an amazing idea to improve the arc one of my player's warlock character is on which is leading to a showdown with his patron. Thanks Mike. Great video as always!
This is something that frustrated me in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. The three hags offer the PCs deals but there is little reason for the PCs to take them since the hags are themselves the PCs main problem. By contast, in season one of Dungeons of Drakkenheim, Sebastian is genuinely tempted to take the demon's offer because he desperately wants to undo a terrible misdeed from his past and thinks the demon can do that.
This was a lot of food for thought, I'm going to use several of these. I'm starting a campaign where devils and demons are the most prominent foes, and are going to try to make deals with the players regularly. Now, some of those are going to be obviously bad deals my players won't take, but I need to make some of them tempting, or the whole tone of 'the devils are going to tempt you' won't feel right. Also, I have a major npc devil planned whose whole goal is to get the players to start making deals with him because the first few deals won't have much of a down side. Because he's playing the long game. The first few deals are more like "I'll help you find this abyssal portal and kill all the demons, if you also pull your weight in the combat," making it seem more like we're just teaming up for a bit. Or "I'll give you important info if you promise to destroy a cursed object when you get there." What he gets out of the deal are things the players probably want to do anyway, so it would seem foolish not to agree. His whole plan is to get the players used to trusting him, so later he can convince them of deals that they're more skeptical of. I'm definitely going to use the 'make me an offer' idea though, that's great. Let the party write the terms of their own downfall.
Can confirm, I've seen the stage version of Little Shop of Horrors and the ending is griiiiiim.Seymour and Audrey die and Audrey 2's plan to spread her seeds across the world succeeds and they take over. This video had me looking back at deals we've made in my games...they're not often, but they've been interesting. In my Friday game our warlock has a standing deal with a hag - she was looking for a ring of mind shielding for our ranger (and warlock's crush) who was being Sending-harassed by our BBEG, and gave up one day TBD of her magic. It's yet to be cashed in and I wonder how it's gonna work out after she very recently broke her pact. At least, her current pact...the hag might be interfering in the Raven Queen's business instead of a Great Old One's. In my Tuesday game, we made a group deal with a hag more or less to convince her to leave us alone; she antagonized us when we stumbled on her woods and when she bamfed out after trying to fight her, she cursed our paladin with nightmares. We were originally planning to just plain fight her, but realized as we tried to strategize that she would mop the floor with us. And then we ran into a warlock pirate queen whose patron was that very same hag, who had a macguffin we needed for a major fight, and she wanted our paladin in exchange for it "unless we could offer something better." My bardlock gave up her pact - or more specifically, gave up the instrument her *patron* was trapped in, which broke her pact. Totally not gonna come back to bite us later :) In an old fairy tale themed game we made a relatively tame deal...we were negotiating for an imprisoned prince, and our warforged who was a sentient cookie said "would you say the prince's life would cost an arm and a leg?" and literally broke off his arm and his leg to give them. He got better. Even in some personal RP with a friend, we did a genderswapped retelling of The Little Mermaid with some original characters, that I was particularly proud of; the sea witch was anglerfish-themed and an implied predator, and the arrangement was that in exchange for going to the surface to woo the princess, the merman had to give her the one thing his love interest treasured the most. The 'intended' item was her mother's necklace, but when he didn't have the heart to do it, the witch declared a loophole that *he* was the thing she treasured.
In one of my campaigns, I’m the deal maker. Basically this is a campaign where the entire party are fey. My character is the only fey raised among the high profile fey courts though (adopted child by a queen, is hexblood). So my character knows the rules that fey live by and how that functions. It’s a lot of dealmaking. However, the hilarity is that it’s mostly contractually obligating an npc to be the friend of the party. And we are good and kind and generous to these individuals. It’s not a big deal. But the dm had a session with my character recently and let me know, in-character, via this npc, that my fey’s deals with others were stronger than the usual fey’s and I was nearing a demigod (archfey) status the stronger I grew. It was fascinating. But I did also have a different character, a cleric, who has had ties to Naviask (minor idol of Wildemount, Exandria campaign) and recently, despite not knowing who or what this entity is, made a deal with it to save herself and her friends. I basically wrote a “blank check” sort of contract for the dm and left it like a Chekhov’s (redacted) on the table. I really wanted to bring this part of the character’s backstory into the narrative of the campaign so that’s why I made such an open ended deal for my dm. That was fun! Not smart, lol, but fun!
21:44 Speaking of Little Shop of Horrors, there is actually an alternate ending - basically a filmed version of the stage ending - where the Audrey II's take over. That was supposed to be the original ending. It's probably here on UA-cam somewhere, and some deluxe copies of the movie. And yes you're right... When they did test screenings with that ending, audiences reacted negatively. Audiences were much more sympathetic of Seymour and Audrey's plight because of Moranis and Greene's portrayals, and the audience wanted them to be happy at the end. 🤷🏻♀️
Some additional tempting offers could be Epic Boons, Blessings, Charms (DMG pg.227-232) or magic items that may have certain quirks related to the dealer or the deal (DMG pg.142-143)
A great inspiration for "boons with a cost" for me is the Nightwatcher from the Stormlight Archives. "Oh, you want to run like the wind? Sure, but the same air will escape your lips as you now can only speak 10 words per day."
I have a story that feels adjacent to this topic, but not quite. In the first campaign I've ever DM'd my players were ok with, but not happy with how characters were generated, they didn't want to use the book methods and asked to use a homebrew method from internet. So in first or second session, when they characters went to sleep, they entered a dream-like realm where supernatural beings where playing games for ante. A devil invited them over to play a game called Prophecy at his table of spirits. I told the players that this dream is not just a dream, for some reason they decided they wanted to roll if the characters knew that or not, one failed. The devil then explained the ante does not need to be currency or other physical objects. Explained the rules of the game. With a somewhat low DC, an insight check revealed that the entities were more curious in the prophecies the players would make rather than winning. The devil then asked what the characters would like to improve on or have and what they were willing to give away. Thus letting me alter their stats a bit or give early magic items or favors. They got the stats/stuff they wanted, made some prophecies that were often negative or positive with a cost but with the words given to them were vague enough to manipulate, let them "outsmart" the devil at least once. Then at what was supposed to be the mid point or maybe even 2/3rds through, revealed to them that the prophecies they had made were coming true (a few lines intentional on my part, a lot of them massaged to refer to in campaign events due to the vagueness of the prophecies made). Because one of the prophecies made that had not yet come true involved one of them dying to defeat an NPC. But the campaign died out cause the party members were not unified on any goals.
I think a lot of this comes down to a misconception to how a lot of people run their NPCs in general, particularly The ones who are evil. I feel like a character should be able to be blatantly evil, blatantly self-serving, but not necessarily overtly antagonistic. I have a long running big bad who crosses over multiples of my campaigns, my players both love and hate him. He's very evil, and there's never any hint that he is anything other than that. Most of the time when a new player is first introduced to him, it will be in the context of him indulging his brutally cruel sadistic nature. The issue is, he is powerful and helpful, and while he might not like the PCs, he views them as expensive tools. You don't break your expensive tools. I think he's a great example for me of how to make a deal rewarded with a "plot short cut." Working with Baron Basil it's never the only way forward, but it's many times the most obvious, and certainly the most direct. And he generally wants similar things to the party, or at least things that don't contradict with the party's trying to do. Often their goals in his goals will overtly align, like in my water deep campaign where the PCs were trying to take out corrupt city watch captains, and basil was all for it; He didn't want to have to deal with the city guard that was already in somebody else's pocket. He was all for helping the PCs get whomever they wanted in there, but is he could always buy those people later. He just needed the ones who are already bought gone. The thing is, the players always know that he has his own agenda, they always know that agenda is evil, but they always know that he comes through on his side of what he's offering. I think that's part of how this aspect of storytelling, the deal with the devil, generally has to shift a little bit to fit the role-playing experience, just like how murder mysteries have to shift a little bit as they change into the genre of role-playing. Murder mysteries in fiction will often hinge on finding that one all important connection or clue, but obviously if you're making a mystery for an RPG, that's just a recipe for setting your game on fire. So you adjust. Sometimes the monkey paw of a deal is called for, but I feel like a lot of times in an RPG, it has to shift a little bit to deal with the fact that it's a game not a story. I think it's less about trying to fool the players into thinking they can outsmart the person giving the deal, and more about trying to foster a scenario where they expect that person to keep their into the deal, and just have to hope that they can mitigate or achieve their goal before the deal giver has a chance to achieve his. I think it's a lot easier to pull off from a narrative standpoint than some people think. But just look at the real world, people vote for politicians they view as abhorrent people all the time, because they've convinced themselves that that politician (correctly or incorrectly) agrees with them on some thing that's very important, or at least would be willing to help facilitate that thing. I think a lot of times understanding how to frame "a deal with the devil" is as simple as being self-aware about how often you do it in your own real life.
This is basically the point I’ll be making in my own comment in the main comments. Players are always looking for ways to “win D&D.” You offer them the means to their objective, and they will seriously consider taking it.
This is a great episode. Speaking of deals in d&d, I have a story of my own experience. I bargained with the Raven Queen for my life after I died and the party's resurrection spell failed. I play a harengon rogue with the Lucky feat (lucky rabbit feet and all, lol); it was a huge part of my character's backstory as her entire family is supernaturally lucky. I knew nothing I offered would be enough but felt my character would try anyway (she believed she had to warn the party about the BBEG who killed her for discovering him on our ship stealing plans for a bomb). Without magic or anything of value to offer, I offered my loyalty, service, etc, anything I could think of. The Raven Queen didn't respond but didn't seem interested to me. Then, it hit me: what was most important and intrinsic to my character? My luck, my family gift passed down, the one thing that made me special in my character's eyes (low self worth issues lol) I barely got the words out, and everyone at the table went silent with shock, DM included. It was a huge sacrifice to make, and they all knew it. The Raven Queen took my offering, and I returned to the campaign, luck drained away. It's been months since then, and there have been hints and signs it'll come back. My connection to the Raven Queen has deepened since as well. It was tough not having a feat for that level slot compared to everyone else, but I hold my own fine in terms of party balance generally speaking. We're at very high level now (just hit 18), and I'm plenty happy with how it all went down. It legitimately felt like a moment out of Critical Role, and we've had lots of others as well with the rest of the party's personal quests. We also got very close to making a deal with Endelyn the hag to give her a Deck of Fortunes we got in exchange for a few different options but chose to hold onto it for a bit. That was highly tempting.
Spectacular Spiderman! Killing it with the references in this one! One thing that I've found success with in this kind of "deal with the devil" negotiation (which I stole from a J. Michael Straczynski Thor comic) is to have the "devil" figure make a binding vow that they won't tell any lies. It makes the negotiation much more interesting if the devil can't lie, and it communicates the devil NPC is slippery if they are able to lie and manipulate while being totally honest.
An option is the dealmaker leading with 'The first hit is free': They start by giving the PC temporary power or a favour to demonstrate they're capable/legit, then the transaction comes after a 'trial period'. This way the dm can butter up the boon by engineering encounters where the favour/power is extra useful. And if the PC decides to reject it, they had some fun at least, may be more likely to make a similar deal later, and other pcs might be more tempted to approach the devil themselves. Probably don't do the thing where the devil takes the fly spell away while the pc is mid flight though (Or do? 😈)
I rule that the resurrection spells were given to mortals by the goddess of death as an agreement that when the rite is performed, the soul is allowed back from beyond her protection. By signing a contract for your soul with another entity, you never pass beyond her veil, so her resurrection cannot bring you back. Which means any warlock who dies creates a side quest to get their soul returned to their bodies.
My players made a few deals with a devil in my game, the first one was super low stakes: For plot reasons the devil wanted to follow the heroes along on their investigation, so it "borrowed" their eyes, just watching through them, nothing harmful, in exchange, they gained a boon that if they would die, it would like make an autocrit 100% hit attack, but it would cost them a death save. The second one, the barbarian didn't ask for specifics, just agreed, was given info, and then lost all happy memories of their father.
I had a moment like this a few months ago. While I was out of the in-person campaign for a newborn, the DM and I were doing a back and forth while I wasn't there. My character was captured in a Dream state by a powerful hag who offered her the ability to unlock her dormant memories (locked away by the cult who took her in) all for the cost of her Dream or soul.
I'm reminded of my house rules for demonic possession. (Which could be applied as the result of a deal with a powerful fiend.) There's a special "prestige class" whose effects I apply to the character. (the fiend can also apply those bonuses as penalties to get what he wants.) Instead of going up via normal experience, the DM keeps track of evil actions taken by the character and prestige abilities used (taint score). This taint score is used to calculate the level in the "prestige class." As such this can cause a player to rocket up in ability compared to others and feel really bad ass. Sometimes they have to roll a save to prevent the fiend from taking over.
Now that sounds like a way to give extra temptation to bad decisions. Was there ever a point where the player was told they could do something to screw over or betray NPCs for a massive amount of taint score? Sort of like detonating the nuke in fallout 3?
@@kingofhearts3185 my game group split up before I could implement this. But I'd have no problem giving them enough taint for a "taint level up" if they did something particularly bad. Things like instigating a major war, or destroying a dam that kills many innocent civilians.
So my character was a tortle monk. He was very much the wise old master. He had what I like to call a Martyr Complex. Which means he would gladly sacrifice himself if it meant saving someone he cared about. Now we had to go to hell to fight two pit fiends due to some of my allies drawing the devil card from the deck of many things. On our way my character met his tiefling's adopted daughter's father. This devil was the devil of lawyers. My character and this guy almost immediately got along. In the backstory these two had met because my character was curious about who his daughter's infernal ancestor was. Our DM really helped set up a thing my character did later. In the first layer of hell. Our fighter had fallen behind the party. Then he was conveniently rescued by our new party member. A female Goblin artificer and her dog. Along the way to the lower level of hell we soon found the devil our new friend had sworn her soul to in exchange to save her village. My character felt bad for that because he couldn't help but try and adopt every party member and treat them like a concerned parent would (except he actually cared.) So my character named the one condition in his deal was to free the artificer. So he called up his friend the patron of lawyers to work out the contract in favorable terms. So my character only sold a hundred years of his afterlife (half he had to spend in both devils realms with the artificer but the rest of the years of his afterlife he got to spend in his good afterlife) to free one of his friends. Honestly I wasn't expecting the lawyer devil himself to show up to help. I was expecting one of his minions.
In a recent episode of NADDPOD, there was a deal with a witch in which a PC now gets 2 fails when they roll a two or a natural one on a death saving throw, instead of just on a nat one (and if they had gotten less on their wisdom-saving throw, it would've been even more). I liked it because it seems like one of those things that doesn't sit right at the front of your mind in regular play, but could really come back to bite you in a pivotal moment.
I've been seeding a deal into my campaign. Thanks for this! It's time to pull the trigger. Let's start by giving the player a taste of the power on offer. :D
I had a player take a deal with an ancient witch type to free another of Lycanthropy at the cost of him being her eyes and ears. He negotiated that he has to be safe when she is looking. As GM I was clear this was a clean deal and not a trick OOC. It did give him more power as a lycanthrope. He is also linked to her forever. As is his wife who he infected to save from another curse. Have not decided if we pick back up what it means for their puppies, I mean kids.
My forge cleric and her party was almost in a TPK against the corpse of a dead god that was being reanimated. We couldn't fight it directly coz it would harm and kill an NPC we were supposed to rescue. The archfey of that domain whispered to my character's mind an offer: take a boon in exchange for something valuable. My character traded her memories of time spent with someone she cared deeply about. The party survived the battle, and now my character is spending downtime retracing her steps and trying to repair her relationship with that loved one. Fun times. ❤
I once played a royalist spy embedded in a thieves guild who was tasked with stopping them from acquiring a powerful maguffin. Long story short, I sold my soul to a shade in a handshake deal "for the king" that saw my character turned into a Fetchling. Good times!
I'm going to be very vague because I know that mike hasn;t gotten very far into bg3, but that game has a lot of very interesting ways of handling faustian bargains where as the game progresses the terms and conexts of these recurring devils and how they relate to the party with what they want is constantly changing, so you'll regularly have them approach you or you approach them for new deals that always have interesting weights and choices for them, as well as having other terms and ways to work around how you dealk or do not deal with them. Anyone who has played the game will know exactly what I'm referring to.
A character I'm currently playing in a Curse of Strahd game accepted a deal that change him. This character is a big introvert that has always worked at creating magical devices for his parents guild. He has never been ok with that since living in a outlaw guild stressed him out a lot. One day, he left the house to go find his missing sister (and only friend) and got himself trapped in Barovia. He started hallucinating bad things, like his beloved sister jumping off a bridge and killed herself. Throughout the game, his anxious nature showed itself more and more and Strahd bite him, causing him a major nervous breakdown. So a dark entity in an amber coffin take advantage of his weakness by sending him intense nightmares and lure him into the Amber Temple to accept a deal. This deal was to kill a friend to become a vampire and finally get control over his life even in Barovia. My character accepted because he really wanted to get control on his life, to be respected by other and that nobody would ever tell him again what to do and because all the nightmares make him loose some marbles. At the end, he became a dhampir because while he was falling into madness, he tried to save himself by sealing the evil thing that was part of him. The others players made the ritual on him at the last minute.
Bedazzled is an underrated movie, it deserves to be talked about more. Edit: Oh hell yeah, a Brother Where Art Thou reference? Great movie, my family still quotes it all the time.
A have DMed for over three decades and tend to run years long campaigns. Still, Past Players began warning other groups not to EVER accept Supernatural deals or Vague deals. I had become infamous because my "vague" deals on "hold a door" or "at a later date" had resulted in massive repercussions. The "hold a door" had been "tell a certain girl Lucius still loves her", ruining a state marriage between two valuable allies, weakening the needed forces that WOULD have stopped the invading evil forces, causing massive death and a huge area to fall to darkness. The "later" date ended up causing similar chaos, but they hated me more because a RL year went by before I called it in and another RL year went by before they saw the effects. "Oh my goodness ... we caused that, didn't we?" But the moment of "I know this is a bad idea but..." that I savor most is: Nearly two RL years into a campaign, the Players are visiting a castle. One character is a Halfling with light fingers. I describe a beautiful ball that is locked away so she can only see part of it. She easily defeats the locks, missing the whole reason it has so many layers of protection. She enjoys looking at it and pockets it. The group leaves not realizing what the Halfling has done. Their journeys take them all over, so no one from the castle can predict where they will be next. This travel goes on for RL months, before the group gets stuck on a puzzle. The Halfling squeals and says, "I know what to do! I will ask Bubbles. He is very smart." The group is confused and watches her take out the softball orb and talk to it. It gives the correct answer, but the group has more answers. The Halfling sees no issues, so she innocently shares. She and the Orb have been talking for months (now they understand all the notes). The Orb holds a trapped Angel named Bubbles, and he is very lonely. He wants to be free, but neither she nor Bubbles know how. Bubbles promises to be her friend and help her gain superpowers if she helps her get free. But she has no idea how and thinks Bubbles is holding something back, but she does not know what. Her truth spells say that Bubble has not lied about who he is. The group decide to keep Bubbles in his Bubble. As one Player said, "Doesn't anyone find it odd that the 'Angel' has only talked to the Chaotic, almost Evil, one of us?" But one of the Players is upset. He voted to release the Angel, seeing it as a big boost in their power and what it could teach him. He spends the next several RL months trying to develop a method to open the Orb, then steals the Orb. A week later, they find themselves in an important Neutral City with one of the biggest Kings in the game. Negotiations are breaking down. The Player decides to use his plan and let Bubbles free. The Halfling feels deep shame at being pickpocketed by the Player. The Player goes through the complex series of tasks, and the Orb opens. He is hooting about being right and everyone else can suck it. Except ... Bubbles is a Demon Lord. A Legendary Demon Lord from a group of Fallen Angels. He frames them, kills the important king, nearly wipes the party except the Halfling and a Player who had just left to do some training (we had 10 Players that day). Every piece had been months in the creation. Every Player had expressed some sort of misgivings. Half the Party still thought it was a bad idea. Still, I got them to choose it without even a teenie bit of railroading.
I can't believe Mike went out of his way to avoid spoiling Angel and drew attention to the silliness of trying not to spoil a show that's been off the air for 20 years, and then, less than one minute later, casually spoiled Hazbin Hotel before drawing attention to how recent that show was lmao Lucky for me I finally got around to finishing Hazbin Hotel literally an hour before clicking this video lol
My peace cleric made a deal with a devil. Best decision. It was hidden from the other people in the party. She had to kill 3 people with a specific dagger. As a peace cleric she was pretty much all support and never killed. So I had her stay behind after battles and heal npcs then stab them with the blade to technically kill them again. It was fun except for the people who meta gamed. There was zero in game reason for them to be suspicious but of course people couldn’t stand it.
17:55 "don't make the wizard give up spellcasting" ... that was my whole deal in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, but, as you said, it was a backstory deal. One of the premises of that campaign could be that everyone has something stolen from them "that means a lot for the character". It was a fun roleplay thing, but I would have quit if that was forced on me in the middle of the campaign.
I've done it on both sides of the deal various times. The tick in my experience is... know the type of game you're in and the people involved. The simplest, most reliable way is to find the player who enjoys making bad decisions because they enjoy dramatic tropes like hubris, classical tragedy, or the general trope of digging your way out of the grave you dug for yourself. And then run the deal accordingly. If the player feels like you've screwed them as opposed to their character, they'll just never take any deals again, at least not without making the whole process a bloody pain. Like the main reason we stopped handing out wishes wasn't because they were powerful, but because so many wishes had bad, lazy and punishing monkey's paws that turning the whole thing into writing a three page contract became a whole thing that was typically a lot more fun to talk about than actually play through. (See also mimics, door traps and everything else that infamously gets turned into a checklist or similar) But if you and the player are on the same page about how the character is getting screwed by the deal in a way they'll enjoy playing... that's going to be fun.
I am a huge fan of heroic fantasy, powering up my players and so on. That includes (sometimes sketchy) deals or temptations. What I found out is the key to making such a trade appealing is to both make it a deal they *can't* refuse, a deal they can't *refuse* AND a deal *they* can't refuse. To present the situation in such a way that everybody knoww it's an opportunity which will have immediate consequences. I think a very mid example would be Raphael from Bauldur's Gate 3, who does the tempting well in principle but falls flat in actually providing consequences without a massive (and literal) back door.
I feel like some of the best booms to offer might just be raw power. Like “three times per rest, you can spend an action to supercharge the next melee attack you land within the next minute. The next successful hit deals an additional 8d12 fire damage” or something. Bonus points if the entity offering the deal is IMMUNE to fire damage, meaning it can’t be turned against them!
oh this is perfect, got a player's character info for a campaign starting in a few weeks and i was thinking of using a supernatural deal offer as a way to make interesting story from that character
The BBEG in my campaign, a powerful scheming erinyes devil (fallen angel), wanted the party wizard's construct technology. She offered three things in return. 1. I will not use this technology against you or your allies. 2. One of your group will be given the gift of tongues (angelic speech that transcends language. Effectively letting them speak and understand any language) 3. You will be able to supernaturally pinpoint my location at any time. The catch with that third one. This erinyes has always had the power to make shadow clones that look like her that she can use for fighting and spying. No stipulation on a range or tether. She can effectively be many places at once. When my players used that ability for the first time a few sessions later, they found out it doesn't differentiate between copy and genuine BBEG. Meaning they found out she's basically everywhere important and getting very little in terms of insight into her plans. The devil in question also massively increased her powerbase on a field the players haven't visited, in the hells. She used the technology to subjugate and recruit many infernal alles that she in turn could use against the players. TLDR: My BBEG devil used the players power to further her own ambitions elsewhere while planting a catch in the boon she granted so that it was a lot less useful than it first appeared.
I haven’t watched the video, but I offered my table a very simple bargain at the start of the game. On ASI levels, gain 2 ASI points, lose 30 HP. These points have a stat cap of 30. Once per ASI. No take-backs. Had a Fighter with ~80 HP and 24 Strength by Lv. 10, which included the Tough feat, in that party. They were the highest damage threat of the party due to their reliability to hit the target. Eventually led to a moment where the party win condition was "protect the Fighter long enough to do their massive damage" against an enemy Lv. 20 Fighter that had the party of 3 dead in under 10 punches. Fun times. Anyways, time to watch the video now. EDIT AFTER WATCHING: Yea, makes sense. Kinda at the heart of the deal I offered is that my party does their best to optimize their characters, and this was a clear way to take their characters further. But I also made the cost obvious, and made it detrimental enough where it will always be felt. And I also had stories associated with deals. One character they would meet basically has terrible physicals, but made a deal that makes them an outstanding hunter; cost being that they had to relay info to them on a safe location for them (to begin razing settlements). The enemy Fighter I mentioned made a deal for their comrade to stay alive; they pay as a puppet to those trying to end the world (to the point where they're an Arcane Archer that is being puppeted as mindless muscle). However, the one I most hoped to get to was that the party mentor was indebted to the eventual big bad, who was the one the current big bads were trying to free. They never made the deal, however; their father did, asking for a son who was extraordinary, far beyond others in their profession, inspite of their frailty. So they have a 38 Wisdom. In a system with a hard cap of 30. The mentor never had a choice in the matter, but they knew that their life is forfeit, and have been trying to train the party in such a way where they will be able to subdue him. He will either die with a legacy upheld by those better than he himself was, or live to have nothing to return to.
@Vax making a deal with a Hag that never amounted to anything: In an old Talks Machina episode (I think it was the VM wrap up one?) Liam asked Matt just that. He said that the hag didn't want to try and get involved with something so far above her level and considered it a lost investment, more or less.
For an upcoming three-party crossover boss battle, my wife and I have worked out that she's going to use Gate to summon Tiamat (who has been ever-so-slightly redeemed by presenting her with a piece of her son Sardior and reminding her that before she was a goddess of evil, she was a mother goddess). A representative of Asmodeus she is familiar with (my wife likes making deals with devils, guys) will stop time to explain to her that Asmodeus will allow the Gate to open, on the condition that she will owe Asmodeus her soul (and so control of herself) for the exact length of time Tiamat is on the Material Plane. It's only temporary, so the deal is a lot more palatable than "your soul is gone forever", but her mind is already racing. How long will combat go, maybe 10, 20 rounds? That's just 1 or 2 minutes. But how much damage can a 20th level cleric, princess of her country, do in 1 or 2 minutes? (Yes, this is mostly cribbed from a deal in Order of the Stick, but stealing from the greats is how you get good)
The campaign I'm running is all about favours and debts owed. Currently, a Night Hag has a vendetta against one of the PCs, and is willing to take it out on anyone related to the party. Another PC made a deal with a more amiable hag coven to put some protection over a house to help stave off the Night Hag's attacks; the coven wants the party to get them an item that the Night Hag wants, and is holding onto that PC's shadow as collateral. The deal is worth it for the chance to keep their loved ones safe now, whatever happens later on.
The deal maker also does not need to be evil. We have celestial warlocks, as well as hexblades. One player on our Discord group made a deal with a Hound Archon, a celestial being, as they were after the same demon, but the Archon could not leave Celestia. And my character 's hexblades patron draws from a blend of One for All from MHA, and the Vampire Killer from Castlevania. The sword possessed vestiges of the previous users, all of whom collectively grant power and guidance to my character, so long as my character fights against the forces of Shar.
I played a genie warlock. I point blank asked my GM to not monkey paw me because *I* am not clever enough to work with it, even though the character definitely would be.
One of my players made a deal with a very powerful mind flayer, the thing is she wasn't supposed to. She's the one that offered him the deal, she could have gotten out of where she was on her own (in a very easy way). But I guess making a deal with the imprisoned mind flayer was a more appropriate action to take at the time. She didn't end up with a tadpole inside her head, but she got some fun spells out of it.
6:42 To me, the exception most certainly applies to Warlocks. Their whole concept is they willngly made a deal with an Otherwordly Patron because they want something they couldn't already access through traditional or "legal" means
One way to tempt your players is to offer small gift early in the campaign/game. And if they turn down the deal, have the deal maker show up after the struggle to tell them how if they would have just accepted the deal, that would have been so easy. Or if they take the deal, and the next challenge is easy, have the deal maker show up and ask if they are happy with what they got. TLDR: Remember, the first one is free.
I had almost forgotten about Garmelie and the hat. I wonder if it was meant as a bit of misdirection, almost a red herring if you will, to make the players more comfortable with his request for a threshold crest. They already know from his sketchbook that he's a bit naughty (though not evil) and somewhat cowardly perhaps? He clearly isn't welcome in the city but not, to their knowledge, because he broke a law or attacked anyone but because he was uncouth and improper in a city full of snooty elves. So he's a mischievous little scamp. A harmlessly horny Satyr. He only wants the hat because stealing the hat of a very important person is funny! Haha! What a cheeky little fae you are to embarass such an influential person. And the threshold crest? Ah there's plenty of them, and if I remember they glowed a little too, so what harm could it be to just take one? Just disrupt the system a little bit, I'm sure he means no harm. It's all in good fun...right? Knowing what Garmelie is up to much later in the stories Critical Role tells it does make me wonder...just what did that Trickster want to do with the crest?
A fun way to offer deals might be fairly contrived, but man it’d be fun if it can work. Say your party gets captured and imprisoned. You end the session, but tell the players you’ll reach out to each of them between sessions because their characters will be interrogated privately. When you meet next session, it’ll be for a prison break adventure. However, as you reach out, you say “You expected to be be interrogated by a guard, but instead a fey prince enters your the room. He’s offering to free the party if you will accept his terms. When he leaves, the real interrogator will enter. If they take the deal, say the words ______ and he will allow you all to leave with all your belongings.” Maybe not every character is approached by the fey prince. Or maybe they each are, and several people pay the cost of the bargain unknowingly unnecessarily. Or maybe two opposing entities each choose a sucker from the party and make their offers during their private interrogations, looking to bargain for their patronage, and the conflict is now a member of the party is beholden to each of them. When you meet next for the “prison break,” the session starts with “The jailer comes and escorts you all to your stuff, and then the front gate. ‘Just don’t come back,’ they say.” Three players are like “What just happened?” One is like “So…Here’s the thing.”
I'm going to be the dissenting voice here, I like seeing my characters succeed, and if I'm pitching such a deal, I think it's more fun to do it in reverse. Lay out the terms, make it look like a decent attempt at temptation, but not so good they take it, and then later, show them why the dealmaker tried for them. Could be anything from being able to do heroics that would have crushed them to fail, to outright making the dealmaker default on another contract. You maintain the same Chekhov's Gun, but instead of a success or reward that leaves a bad taste in their mouth followed by the betrayal or cost, it's a show of determination, hope, or strength of character on their end and a triumph later on. Plots work off opposition and conflict, and I've never liked if refusing just means you're not going along with the plot.
Stormbringer and Runestaff have some interesting ideas for what you can do with these, as well as Berserk. Maybe a being of Law just asks for your characters Fate, making that character effectively rail roaded into a given ending. Maybe one of these beings makes a change to the characters morality or way of thinking, twisting them to their wills. Maybe that magic item starts attacking your friends and family whenever your around them, or eats the souls of whoever you kill.
14:18 Hazbin Hotel did technically come out this year, however the Pilot episode aired in 2019 and the spinoff Helluva Boss has had like 2 seasons already, so that also destroys any sense of time regarding that show's release date.
For your next episode that is for adventure hooks: Right now my self DM I gave my party which is technically still myself a mission where they were hired by the daughter of a well known writer who's gone slightly mad possibly because of the black mold growing inside her castle. Now the daughter is hiring the party to essentially either a save her mother from the black mold that's in the castle or if the black mold has consumed her and turned her into an undead creature of unknown origin eliminate the corpse she's also doubling as an escort mission but that's because she's also the cleric for the party that has no cleric. [You can see what I'm referencing some real world stuff in it but not really] But I believe this is a good example of a small venture hook that can Wheel them in on a big line! [Note naturally escorting a level one character into a dungeon that is probably going to be at least around level 5 to 6 with party members that are at least around level three okay actually the rogue who is supposed to be a veteran type is more likely around 6. Is the example here also another way of introducing a new time player to year old group. ]
While this trope is very prominent in folklore, there's something from the real world I've looked into recently (due to the network I've been YT-partnered with for years becoming... scummy, let's just say) that could serve as good inspiration too: payday loans. These offer horrible interest rates and often trap people in cycles of taking out more loans. But they're designed to look like as tempting as possible. "Easy cash RIGHT NOW! We don't check Credit Score!" And these lenders prey on the vulnerable, disparate, or those without the education to know they're a bad idea. They're a temporary solution that creates a bigger problem down the line, just like, say, excessively drinking alcohol to numb depression or... deals with devils. So I guess if I was making one of these, I'd focus on making the instant gratification as appealing as possible, while obfuscating the permanent problem. Lawful Evil Devils often won't outright lie, but they LOVE to bend the truth. Off the top of my head "I'll give you 1000 Platinum now, and all I ask in return is one copper piece one day." ("Psst, what I'm not telling them is this copper piece will be used as the soul jar for their entire family") Though in game design terms you can't make the mechanical benefit TOO powerful. From watching, the Hades deal is an excellent example of minimizing the bad end, because "you lose your strength for 24 hours" sounds completely mundane until you realize the titans are attacking Olympus today. Actually, speaking of Hades... that made me think of another take on Greek myth and realize Chaos' offers in the Hades game are essentially reverse devil deals: you get the bad stuff immediately but if you can live through it you get a permanent benefit. Here it's more about "what bad stuff can I afford to suffer and is the payoff worth it?"
Another way a player might take the deal is if their character feels they have to in order to protect their party from the dealmaker. Worked on me. Twice.
Dipper doesn’t take Mabel for granted bill get’s him too by pointing to time he sacrifices his happiness and Mabel not returning the favor and it’s Mabel who learn’s not take him for granted
i literally had the EXACT SAME REACTION about Hazben Hotel.... ive been rewatching it and talkming about it with a friend and i could have SWORN i saw the first bit of the show like 2-3 years ago... like, start of Covid... but nope... it was like February/March ish
Players are always looking for ways to beat D&D. If your entity offers them the means to complete their main story objective, even if the characters wouldn’t take it, the players probably would. Now it’s a hard decision, which is what you want the moment at the table to be. Even if you give the players the means to Easy Button the story, the fact that they took this deal can set up the next adventure. Now they are tasked with finding and enacting the escape clause of their contract. Or a patron gets wind of the deal struck, and cuts them off because they can’t be associated with that type of devilry. Of course, this presupposes an ongoing homebrew game, and not a prewritten adventure. But for me, D&D is all about the story created at the table, not running a script with a fixed endpoint. So such left turns in the story don’t intimidate me.
An entity could offer the party more XP at the cost of key adventuring tools or magic items (temporarily lent away or permanently given). The DM may even tempt the party into pushing their luck by doffing key equipment! Deal’s off if they leave to restock. If you want to betray the party, make one of the innocuous items the cure to a villain’s mischief, but it may be fun for the party to simply foil itself.
the gravity falls shoutout caught me off guard, hope you know there’s supplemental material that dropped recently largely focused around said demon! (if you thought the show got surprisingly dark, you’ve seen nothing compared to book of bill!)
To the original question: if you want the players to take the deal, the GM should *lower* the stakes. The list of boons in the vid was good, but one unspoken quality of each is "they are a reasonable thing a 5e GM could be expected to grant". Offer your PC something that would break the game, or requires endless planning around for the rest of the campaign - they will KNOW it's too good to be true. Likewise, if the cost is going to entirely shift the entire campaign (your soul) or invalidate your existing backstory, they're going to pass without thinking twice. But offer them something akin to a quest reward for the price of "something unpleasant but bearable"... And they'll do the math. Plus, PCs will worry less about how the devil is going to screw them if the devil is upfront with how the costs will hurt. If the cost seems innocuous, there's a twist. If the shiny thing you want will cost you permanent disadvantage on CHA checks that is less likely to feel like a scam.
Second thought - the Little mermaid example shows both of these. The offer is reasonable (added mobility for three days), the cost is clearly painful and proportional (loss of communication), and the terms are clear so it doesn't sound scammy (we bet your soul that you can make him fall in love with you, with unambiguous definition of success and failure). To a PC, this feels like a quest reward (ie. You can now fly/swim/climb for free) with a reasonable cost (your character is mute), and a plot hook for the next session complete with stakes. And a quest that could end with "and if you fail you die" is not at all unusual.
Mmmmm. This gives me thoughts and ideas. In my current campaign, I have a Kitsune Cleric, but she's a person out of time. She was born 10 to 20 thousand years before the present day, but her society was significantly more advanced (More comparable to ours in the modern day, but with easy access to space travel) but after a series of unfortunate events, she was kidnapped, experimented on, and left in a cryopod and forgotten. When she was awakened from her cryopod, she found out that it hasn't just been nearly 20 thousand years, but there is no record of her people existing at all. Turns out, there was a massive war and at the end of it, her people were banished and all memory of their existence erased from time itself. The player has addressed a desire to either bring back the Kitsune, or return the knowledge to the world (But preferably both). Now..... in my setting, I have a Great Old One who is the Demon of Forbidden Knowledge (Think of him as a fusion between Harbinger from Mass Effect and Hermaeus Mora from the Elder Scrolls, with a bit of Pherexian thrown in there). The party has recently done something to attract the attention of this entity. And knowledge of the Kitsune does count as Forbidden. Cue the deal. Knowledge, for knowledge. There is a glaring hole in this Great Old One's archive, and he knows where to get it. In exchange for getting this information for him, he is willing to give the knowledge and history of the Kitsune to the player, and is willing to arrange an "accident" to bring a viable population of them back to the world.
In my current campaign, a demon came to a player that caught the attention of an ancient black dragon. The demon stopped time and gave the option to get out of the situation, but they had to kill someone the demon wanted dead. If he doesn't, he forfeits his soul immediately.
In systems with less... Conflation... of player and player character within the rules (e.g. more of an emphasis on meta currencies and giving more authorial powers to players) I suspect this is probably easier. I think for some people, in D&D - and systems like it - because they know it's a terrible idea they refuse even if they think it's going to be more interesting if they did take it, and I think both the lack of anything on the sheet that goes beyond what your character can do outside of inspiration, and D&D's history as a 'beat up monsters and steal their stuff' game with very one to one relationship of character and player. Your character is your avatar, etc. Other systems really do seem to attract players more likely to have their character do things that are obviously terrible ideas to everyone outside of the fiction but make the resulting fiction more interesting, and in places force an authorial role onto the player - In The Warren, for example (You play as rabbits. It's a game that wears its Watership Down influence on its sleeve, but it goes beyond just replicating Watership Down), one of the character moves you can take if no one else has taken it allows you to make prophetic visions, for which it's the player, not the GM, who dictates what the vision is. Which isn't to say D&D style player/GM split is bad, just that mechanically and historically I think D&D kind of discourages players to take this sort of deal in a way I'm not sure other games do to the same extent.
Have you ever tempted your players into making a deal with a supernatural being? How did it go?
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One thing I did recently sorta spur of the moment that worked well for a devil offering my fire-based sorcerer the ability to ignore fire resistances and have fire-immune creatures take half damage instead (in exchange for 3 services in the future) was to offer that power to them temporarily free of charge as a show of good faith. The player was rightfully skeptical that the devil would even be able to help and that they'd keep their word so he gave them the ability until the next dawn no strings attached right as the party was going into a dungeon with a lot of fire-immune devils. The player saw firsthand how useful it would be in the future when they'd be fighting even more devils, they haven't signed the contract yet, but now every time they fight a devil (and there will be many) they'll be thinking about how much easier it would be if only they could use their best damaging spells.
I often tempt the players outside the game first lol. I will sometimes text a player and ask them if they want to be a secret villain, working with the party till they reach level 5, than turn on them. I like the conspiracy outside the game just as much as tempting the characters inside.
I’m also very fond of “The Fake Santa”. Have a wondering merchant or full caravan come across the party’s path. The merchant is jolly & charismatic (a little gruff, but in a grandpa who fought in the war sort of way). Have him offer the players 1 magic item a piece, just a little stocking stuffer. But of course there’s always something going on with the item. The one everyone loved the most though was a sword that turned out to be a mimic.
I've actually had success several times with characters who have accepted my dealmakers' pacts. There are three good reasons for this in my view. A) my groups tend to have character play as a focus, so the players themselves find it interesting when their character does something for personal reasons that they find ill-advised as a player. B) I don't usually go in with extreme costs, as that's almost always a deal breaker and, if the contract is accepted anyway, would destroy the balancing at the game table. The soul of a hero should be worth a lot of support from the dealmaker. C) I'm slowly cooking up the cost, often characters will take a small favor for something mildly unpleasant, at some point they want more and then the price gets higher too ... and if you've already gone that far.
Oh yeah, it also helps if the dealmaker remains anonymous or vague. I wouldn't expect my players to accept a deal if I introduce the other party as Satanicus Lord of Lies, Master of Tricks and Lord of Deceit
And to experience dealmaking as a core concept of a system, I can only recommend everyone to try Werewolf the Apocalypse. What makes werewolves so immensely powerful in the system is not the absurd combat stats but their ability to connect with the spirit world and trade with spirits for favors. This is an incredibly powerful and fun part of the game when both sides are creative. I once asked a Spirit of the Dawnlight for a favor in exchange for my character either facing east or wandering east for an hour first thing every morning for the next lunar cycle. On another occasion, I had asked a spirit of fire to burn the memory of a certain event from a young woman's mind, as I wanted to prevent us from having to kill her to keep our existence a secret. The spirit's price was that it would also leave a burn on the outside... something that, while not a direct cost to my character, had still hurt him greatly as he had actually wanted to spare her a dire fate.
In short, there are a lot of opportunities in the system to try out deals and juggle the consequences in order to practise deal making.
In a campaign I play, our wildfire druid had a backstory where he accidentally burned down the forest community he was from, and he turned to adventuring to try and make up for what he did. In a recent session, an archdevil made a deal with him to give him “greater control over fire” both letting him deal fire damage to creatures with fire immunity as well as prevent fire damage to allies. This fit perfectly into the backstory and was really enticing. And the cost was a future favor. This character, who was almost always the voice of reason in the party, took that deal
Trauma is a heck of a motivator.
This good. Well did.
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Rolling with Difficulty Podcast has one of my favorite deal costs. The wizard player and an NPC wizard pull up a Lore Devil (MCDM) to question it about getting a "spell noone has cast in a 1000 years" which is something they needed for a quest giver. In the end they get the spell (Another MCDM homebrew) added to thier spell lists and in exchange the devil can "Spare one life of one of the wizards victims." At the time the player figures he is mostly a support caster who doesn't get a lot of kills so he takes the deal. A few seasons later the big bad is specifically this wizards nemisis and the player is VERY aware that the devil will attempt to intervine. Great drama all around.
This feels like Hitchcocks theory about tension. Instead of surprising everyone with a sudden reveal, they know what is likely to happen and now worry about it.
Even at one point seeing if they can bait out the Devil’s deal early
More people need to listen to RWD. One of the best DnD podcasts out there imo
A Tiefling Bard character in a 1-20 campaign I DMed for had a devil for a father. Around level 12 I decided to have the dad make offers to every player in the party (of 6) other than the Bard. I wanted to have the dad be a antagonistic ally and I thought it was important to make the offers away from the table so that they didn't know it was happening to each other. The trigger would be taking a long rest at the end of the session and all the offers happened in dreams, where those who took it would wake up with coins. So right after a session ended I started several lengthy direct message conversations that had to resolve before we met at the table the next week.
I offered (1) a dragonborn Vengeance Paladin information towards the chance at vengeance against the dragon that wiped out almost all of his clan, (2) a changeling Rogue the chance to ensure one infernal guarantee of safety of another party member I thought their character had feelings for, (3) a Kobold Artificer the chance at inspiration for crafting an item of awesome power, (4) a amnesiac Ranger a chance at recovering their lost memories, and (5) a Halfling sorcerer a chance at being cured from a star spawn curse.
All they had to promise in return was to honor one demand of the devil at the time of the devils choosing in the future without question. If they negotiated the devil dad would make several little riders like to not demand direct harm to anyone. Their souls would only be on the line if they refused to fulfill the demand. What devil dad really wanted was to get leverage on his son. The chance to say "talk to me, because some of your friends are now in my pocket." So the deal was all that really mattered ... not the terms.
The Paladin and the Changeling took the deals. The Ranger and the Halfling refused. The Kobold never took it, but left the option open for the future. Each of the offers led towards one of the main plot threads I had lined up down the line at ultimately took us all the way to level 20. It ended up working really well, created intra-party drama (but not conflict), and even cause my changeling Rogue to end up with 12 levels of Rogue and 8 levels of Warlock.
EDIT: Devil dad did live up to his ends of the bargains, but also demanded the player characters do things that were challenging to those characters' morals and personal desires. He also got his leverage over his Bard son, which gave the Bard opportunity to hash through his backstory.
I like the sound of everything you said. Mind sharing more details?
@@kingofhearts3185 Sure! What details are you interested in?
@@Rolling_with_Hope Did the demon dad have anything to do with the vengeance paladin? Was that infernal guarantee towards another player? Was the artificer meant as setup for a key plot point? How did the bard react to learning 1/3 of the team took the deal and another kept it on the table?
@@kingofhearts3185 Alright:
1. No the Bard's dad had no prior direct connection to the Paladin. As I understood the Paladin player's rational at the time, he had sworn an oath to get vengeance against a specific Ancient Blue Dragon, and saw it as his duty to take the deal in order to help fulfil the oath. He did make part of the deal that he could not be demanded to directly harm anyone was part of his payment, but figured whatever the payment would be was in service of his oath.
2. Devil Dad promised one occasion of infernal protection for the Ranger (whom I thought the Rogue character had affections for - though that never came to fruition). The Ranger later got trapped in a force-cage with a Mindflayer. When the Ranger got really low on HP, Devil Dad planeshifted into the forcecage and yanked the Ranger into the Nine Hells. He then gave her a superior healing potion and brought her back on the outside of the force cage through another planeshift. Ranger didn't know about the specific terms of the Rogue's deal until Devil Dad told her in this moment while they took a brief breather in his mansion in Avernus.
3. The Artificer's offer (like all of them) pointed towards a specific questline. Even if they didn't take the offer, it still planted the idea of it in their head. She was offered something that would basically give her the benefits of a headband of intellect without having to attune to an item anymore (set her INT at 19). Her character backstory was basically she was a regular Kobold who stumbled onto a Headband of Intellect and after her mind was opened, she became an Artificer merchant until the events of our game. Her quest and the Rangers quest both, through different routes, ultimately pointed into a journey into the Underdark to battle an Elder Brain whose colony was partially responsible for the Ranger's missing memories and family. We followed the Ranger's route their who had been intrigued by the offer though she rejected it and started doing some investigating on her own.
4. The Bard's player thought it was awesome. The character was afraid for his friends and a little angry because he knew they type of creature his dad was. Dad basically wanted the Bard to complete a quest that could only be accomplished by "his blood." If the son did it, the father promised to make the friends' payment much less challenging ... "only mildly corrupting in nature" or something like that is how I phrased it.
@@Rolling_with_Hope Sounds awesome, thanks for answering.
One of my favorite scenarios I ran with a deal maker was a hag who was bound to her hut and her magic limited by seals that could only be undone by others. Her price was always that her petitioners had to do undo one of the seals, and when the last one was gone, her full power was unleashed, freeing her to enact whatever schemes she had been cooking up.
That sounds exactly like Muriel in the first book of the Fablehaven Series.
@@levibradshaw8655 that was what I lifted her from. None of my players had read that series, and I really liked Muriel as a villain, so I borrowed her and turned her into a strong side villain that caused no end of head aches for the party. Her plan ended with her kidnapping a prince of the ruling empire and used him as a vassal to house the spirit of an old knight who ravaged the land eons ago
Sounds like a lot of fun. Pity they hadn't read Fablehaven before though.
I know its farther than youve covered, but Percy's contract coming up is something i love
Partially because of the third clause that he can invoke at any time forever once their original business is done
The Third Clause was such a good narrative concept.
I think it would be really cool to approach a player out of game and invite them into one of those backstory screw over deals to make a pivot in their characters arc
Like if someone wasn't having fun with their character mechanically and wanted to switch from a fighter to a sorcerer or something, instead of that character just leaving and loosing the party dynamic, the DM went "Hey, what if you stat up your new character, but I will set up a hag character who will turn you into that character so you get to keep your backstory and goals" and then the other players with no idea see their human fighter get turned into a kua toa or something
Hazbin Hotel may have only come out this year, but it has existed in the general zeitgeist for years now. That can throw off the feel of how long it has been I think.
"One favour, at a time of my choosing, where you harm no one. In return, I tell you what I know. Do we have a deal?"
Such a great scene.
I never liked that deal in Gravity Falls cause Bill didn't even TRY to be clever when backstabbing him. He could have easily given Dipper exactly the information he said he would, the password to the computer, and then let the timer run out since Dipper couldn't touch the computer in his Astral Form. It was so easy.
Notice how the password only starts when Dipper falls asleep. There never was a timer. I mean, isn't it too convenient for Bill that then of all times the arbitrary protection comes on after thousands of attempts?
In the campaign I play in, some hags had us make some offers in exchange for some things we needed. We started out with proficiencies, languages, some items, but it wasn't enough. I was playing a bugbear who had recently been turned human by a potion, so I offered all my memories of being a bugbear. It's had a really interesting impact on the campaign - meeting people from my backstory, seeing visions of the past. My character now realises he used to be a bugbear but isn't sure how or when he changed. Sometimes when he fails a check I like to say that he misjudged the length of his arms or his height or something, as he has the lingering habits of being a bugbear.
In my game my players recent hit this situation. Most players said no or a bare minimum of 'let us get back to you' except for one. There was a familiar that gained a never ending cookie that day.
In my campaign Strahd offered our sorcerer a deal. “Spy for me and let me do some experiments on you and I’ll help you find your girlfriend” and he took it! Turns out that girlfriend was one of Strahd’s brides this whole time
" That's not a choice, that's an ultimatum" Gohan, dbz abridged
You and I /both/ know I don't know what that word means.
I love deals in TTRPGs. In my most recent campaign there was an NPC, an evil necromancer, that the party wizard resurrected. Another PC, the bard, was doing nothing but bad mouthing said NPC. The party wanted access to a spell outside of level up, and the NPC could give the spell to the wizard, the one who resurrected the NPC.
The NPC who has been hearing all of the bad mouthing said that she would give the party the spell, but the bard had to stop talking trash. The 'cost' was the bards life. So his words could literally kill himself if he failed to check himself.
Another example is in a game of Scion, White Wolf Storyteller system, my PC makes deals constantly to levy as assistance in the future.
A god leveraged a PCs assistance in the same campaign that led to the death of another goddess and subsequently the goddesses whole pantheon. Said PC is unwillingly infamous over that happening.
In my current campaign I introduced an NPC based on the Mr. Gold character from Once Upon a Time. So far the players have made one deal with him that required them to use their influence to get the city guard to allow a merchant's wagons through. A couple sessions later they were working to foil a plot to blow up the king and queen and the session after that they learned that the shipment they got into town was the gunpowder. I wanted them to know that "all magic comes with a price" so that when Mr. Gold/Mr. Deloro proposes a new deal they are equal parts tempted and skeptical. Like they know there is probably some consequence but they think it's one they can fight their way out of.
In a game I played a Battle Smith Artificer who was a helpful little guy, genuinely pleasant and loved to use his knowledge to improve the little community that we lived in. I was a secret agent who got sent to this backwater swamp to keep an eye on things and just sort of fell in love with the area and the laid back vibe it had. So a time comes when the BBEG makes us each an offer, I was offered the ability to go to some war-torn area where I could be super helpful, healing people up and having my robots save them. I nearly immediately turned him down (it helped that the BBEG was an insufferable businessman who was destroying the vibe in the little town). When the party regrouped we talked about what the offer was, most of them spoke about how it was really tempting and they were almost unable to turn away from a free shot at a deep desire. My character? "He offered you nice things? HE ONLY OFFERED ME STRESS!"
12:54 These kinds of stories go way back. The earliest example I know of was the 19th Century violinist Niccolo Paganini, who played into the rumours when he found out about them, by making faces and rolling his eyes back to show the whites while he played.
Bro was playing a dangerous game, he could be killed for that.
the mention of Oh Brother Where Art Thou and now the blues music in the background makes sense
My character (a paladin) made a deal/pact with a warlock patron who has been a part of the campaign for a while.
Originally it was “come back to life, I’ll boost your smites at the cost of one death save failure.” His Devine Smite became 2d10 cold damage and it was supposed to end when we defeated the dragon we were off to kill. That dragon did not die.
Now a couple months later, my character has some boons, a changed class (D&D Paladin for a third party Paladin type class, Guardian from SW5e) and I/my character wants to find and kill said dragon, then actually become a warlock of the patron.
He’s an Oath of Vengeance paladin btw
All I require, is your greatest joke
At least she didn't ask me to become a Mind Goblin
You can tune a piano...
…and so the party leaves with what they came for. No one knows why the devil wanted their Paladin, but no one was really sorry to have to go on without him.
I then immediately die, as my life is the greatest joke.
Currently in the middle of an old west arc and there's a devil in the group they have fallen in with (he acts as an undertaker and is generally known as a dealmaker) the players are all leary of him and don't trust anything he has to say, but every time it's confirmed that he WILL NOT tell a lie I can see that resolve crack a little more. Just because people don't like the terms of the deals they've made when the cost comes due, doesn't mean he is ever dishonest.
I think a trick to this is to add a conditional, like the one in The Little Mermaid.The negative consequences can be clearly laid out but dependent on something else happening or the character failing at something like Ariel. Faust only had to give his soul if he ever felt contentment with his life. The three witches tell Macbeth that no man born from a woman can ever defeat him and that he won't be vanquished unless the forest marches on Dunsinane. Then when the player takes this deal and and sees the conditional in the process of happening they'll freak out, maybe try to deal with it! So you get a character moment or a new quest!
If you intend for the deal maker to be a recurring theme, you can break the rule of the reward being greater than the price during their first few interactions.
Current party I’m dming slayed a hag who was trying to convert a changling girl into a full hag. Amongst her stuff they found a lot of sus thing but none of it outright evil. One thing was a blank piece of paper that was impervious to anything they did to it. Party takes it around and shows it to a couple of npcs some see it as blank while others see smudges and a rare 2 or 3 see a few distinct words amongst the smudges.
Paper was from a night hag and it was enchanted only to be legible by someone with a strong concrete desire for something. Eventually, party finds clues related to one pc’s backstory about an orc warlord who should be dead and pc is role playing well their frustration about no answers. They then can read the paper explaining how they can put it under their head as they sleep for a free consultation with the Night Madame. PC does so and the Night Madame freely answers their question, confirming the orc is dead despite followers now using his name and banner again and when the pc still has trouble believing it, she gives him a mental homing beacon to the orcs corpse. The Night Madame then goes to conclude the meeting but character asks if they can meet again if they have questions. She produces a black potion and tells the pc to drink it. PC asks, what is that and she nonchalantly says, ‘it’s a portion of my power, if you consume it you’ll be able to call me at a later time’. PC drinks but doesn’t ask if their are any stipulations attached. So there were consequences to consuming the potion the pc isn’t aware of mainly involving the details of what it means to be walking around with a portion of a hag’s power inside of you.
But the hag was willing to throw out things for free to hook the pc and raise the stakes down the line when they were a better target for deal making and had more to offer.
I do like, even though you will probably don't know it, deal with devil from collection of devil deals from Czech fairytale collection Fimfárum. They are mostly backstory devil deals, but I especially like one, where main character asks to learn, "How to stop drinking alcohol."
I like this for a three reasons, first is the price. "You give me something, you don't know, you have at home." I would say that this one is fairytale classic. If you read some slavic fairytales, you can guess what the price was.
The second is execution of the deal. The Devil actually pulls main character into the hell and by switching between hard manual work, very short rests and temptation of the vice the Devil puts main character through regular rehab, while almost no time outside of hell passes. The manual labor is also an interesting choice. He's used there to power an elevator.
The third reason is the result, because a result is the Devil saying "Now you will not drink alcohol... Unless you want to". I like this, because main character gains disguised for it, while not really getting, what he bargained for.
For the context this is second deal, that main character makes and the first one was almost with no consequences, so the Devil actually builds trust, before going for a big one. Also consequences of the first deal, positives and negatives quickly fail.
I actually like an idea of dealmaker be like here is a small sample and if you are happy with our services, call again and we can make a real deal. Obviously this works probably only for lawful dealmakers. I think the Devil in this story, for purposes of the story for the outside world is a parody for door to door salesman
I won't spoil rest of the story, it should be available as a puppet movie, which adds an additional creep factor.
This just gave me an amazing idea to improve the arc one of my player's warlock character is on which is leading to a showdown with his patron. Thanks Mike. Great video as always!
I just finished a Gravity Falls rewatch recently. I, for one, would be totally okay if this channel pivoted to all Gravity Falls content all the time.
This is something that frustrated me in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. The three hags offer the PCs deals but there is little reason for the PCs to take them since the hags are themselves the PCs main problem.
By contast, in season one of Dungeons of Drakkenheim, Sebastian is genuinely tempted to take the demon's offer because he desperately wants to undo a terrible misdeed from his past and thinks the demon can do that.
This was a lot of food for thought, I'm going to use several of these. I'm starting a campaign where devils and demons are the most prominent foes, and are going to try to make deals with the players regularly. Now, some of those are going to be obviously bad deals my players won't take, but I need to make some of them tempting, or the whole tone of 'the devils are going to tempt you' won't feel right. Also, I have a major npc devil planned whose whole goal is to get the players to start making deals with him because the first few deals won't have much of a down side. Because he's playing the long game. The first few deals are more like "I'll help you find this abyssal portal and kill all the demons, if you also pull your weight in the combat," making it seem more like we're just teaming up for a bit. Or "I'll give you important info if you promise to destroy a cursed object when you get there." What he gets out of the deal are things the players probably want to do anyway, so it would seem foolish not to agree. His whole plan is to get the players used to trusting him, so later he can convince them of deals that they're more skeptical of.
I'm definitely going to use the 'make me an offer' idea though, that's great. Let the party write the terms of their own downfall.
Can confirm, I've seen the stage version of Little Shop of Horrors and the ending is griiiiiim.Seymour and Audrey die and Audrey 2's plan to spread her seeds across the world succeeds and they take over.
This video had me looking back at deals we've made in my games...they're not often, but they've been interesting. In my Friday game our warlock has a standing deal with a hag - she was looking for a ring of mind shielding for our ranger (and warlock's crush) who was being Sending-harassed by our BBEG, and gave up one day TBD of her magic. It's yet to be cashed in and I wonder how it's gonna work out after she very recently broke her pact. At least, her current pact...the hag might be interfering in the Raven Queen's business instead of a Great Old One's.
In my Tuesday game, we made a group deal with a hag more or less to convince her to leave us alone; she antagonized us when we stumbled on her woods and when she bamfed out after trying to fight her, she cursed our paladin with nightmares. We were originally planning to just plain fight her, but realized as we tried to strategize that she would mop the floor with us. And then we ran into a warlock pirate queen whose patron was that very same hag, who had a macguffin we needed for a major fight, and she wanted our paladin in exchange for it "unless we could offer something better." My bardlock gave up her pact - or more specifically, gave up the instrument her *patron* was trapped in, which broke her pact. Totally not gonna come back to bite us later :)
In an old fairy tale themed game we made a relatively tame deal...we were negotiating for an imprisoned prince, and our warforged who was a sentient cookie said "would you say the prince's life would cost an arm and a leg?" and literally broke off his arm and his leg to give them. He got better.
Even in some personal RP with a friend, we did a genderswapped retelling of The Little Mermaid with some original characters, that I was particularly proud of; the sea witch was anglerfish-themed and an implied predator, and the arrangement was that in exchange for going to the surface to woo the princess, the merman had to give her the one thing his love interest treasured the most. The 'intended' item was her mother's necklace, but when he didn't have the heart to do it, the witch declared a loophole that *he* was the thing she treasured.
" made a group deal with a hag more or less to convince her to leave us alone" she completely abides by that and everything is fine, right? *cackles*
@@jobear41 Yup! Totally not playing long distance I'm Not Touching You.
In one of my campaigns, I’m the deal maker. Basically this is a campaign where the entire party are fey. My character is the only fey raised among the high profile fey courts though (adopted child by a queen, is hexblood). So my character knows the rules that fey live by and how that functions. It’s a lot of dealmaking. However, the hilarity is that it’s mostly contractually obligating an npc to be the friend of the party. And we are good and kind and generous to these individuals. It’s not a big deal. But the dm had a session with my character recently and let me know, in-character, via this npc, that my fey’s deals with others were stronger than the usual fey’s and I was nearing a demigod (archfey) status the stronger I grew. It was fascinating.
But I did also have a different character, a cleric, who has had ties to Naviask (minor idol of Wildemount, Exandria campaign) and recently, despite not knowing who or what this entity is, made a deal with it to save herself and her friends. I basically wrote a “blank check” sort of contract for the dm and left it like a Chekhov’s (redacted) on the table. I really wanted to bring this part of the character’s backstory into the narrative of the campaign so that’s why I made such an open ended deal for my dm. That was fun! Not smart, lol, but fun!
I once had a character SO DESPERATE to get to the end of the story he took EVERY narrative shortcut he could. It did not go well for him.
21:44 Speaking of Little Shop of Horrors, there is actually an alternate ending - basically a filmed version of the stage ending - where the Audrey II's take over. That was supposed to be the original ending. It's probably here on UA-cam somewhere, and some deluxe copies of the movie.
And yes you're right... When they did test screenings with that ending, audiences reacted negatively. Audiences were much more sympathetic of Seymour and Audrey's plight because of Moranis and Greene's portrayals, and the audience wanted them to be happy at the end. 🤷🏻♀️
Some additional tempting offers could be Epic Boons, Blessings, Charms (DMG pg.227-232) or magic items that may have certain quirks related to the dealer or the deal (DMG pg.142-143)
A great inspiration for "boons with a cost" for me is the Nightwatcher from the Stormlight Archives. "Oh, you want to run like the wind? Sure, but the same air will escape your lips as you now can only speak 10 words per day."
I have a story that feels adjacent to this topic, but not quite. In the first campaign I've ever DM'd my players were ok with, but not happy with how characters were generated, they didn't want to use the book methods and asked to use a homebrew method from internet.
So in first or second session, when they characters went to sleep, they entered a dream-like realm where supernatural beings where playing games for ante. A devil invited them over to play a game called Prophecy at his table of spirits. I told the players that this dream is not just a dream, for some reason they decided they wanted to roll if the characters knew that or not, one failed. The devil then explained the ante does not need to be currency or other physical objects. Explained the rules of the game. With a somewhat low DC, an insight check revealed that the entities were more curious in the prophecies the players would make rather than winning. The devil then asked what the characters would like to improve on or have and what they were willing to give away. Thus letting me alter their stats a bit or give early magic items or favors.
They got the stats/stuff they wanted, made some prophecies that were often negative or positive with a cost but with the words given to them were vague enough to manipulate, let them "outsmart" the devil at least once. Then at what was supposed to be the mid point or maybe even 2/3rds through, revealed to them that the prophecies they had made were coming true (a few lines intentional on my part, a lot of them massaged to refer to in campaign events due to the vagueness of the prophecies made). Because one of the prophecies made that had not yet come true involved one of them dying to defeat an NPC. But the campaign died out cause the party members were not unified on any goals.
I want to live in a world where “Nice try Beelzebub!” becomes the next big meme.
I think a lot of this comes down to a misconception to how a lot of people run their NPCs in general, particularly The ones who are evil. I feel like a character should be able to be blatantly evil, blatantly self-serving, but not necessarily overtly antagonistic.
I have a long running big bad who crosses over multiples of my campaigns, my players both love and hate him. He's very evil, and there's never any hint that he is anything other than that. Most of the time when a new player is first introduced to him, it will be in the context of him indulging his brutally cruel sadistic nature. The issue is, he is powerful and helpful, and while he might not like the PCs, he views them as expensive tools. You don't break your expensive tools. I think he's a great example for me of how to make a deal rewarded with a "plot short cut." Working with Baron Basil it's never the only way forward, but it's many times the most obvious, and certainly the most direct. And he generally wants similar things to the party, or at least things that don't contradict with the party's trying to do. Often their goals in his goals will overtly align, like in my water deep campaign where the PCs were trying to take out corrupt city watch captains, and basil was all for it; He didn't want to have to deal with the city guard that was already in somebody else's pocket. He was all for helping the PCs get whomever they wanted in there, but is he could always buy those people later. He just needed the ones who are already bought gone.
The thing is, the players always know that he has his own agenda, they always know that agenda is evil, but they always know that he comes through on his side of what he's offering. I think that's part of how this aspect of storytelling, the deal with the devil, generally has to shift a little bit to fit the role-playing experience, just like how murder mysteries have to shift a little bit as they change into the genre of role-playing. Murder mysteries in fiction will often hinge on finding that one all important connection or clue, but obviously if you're making a mystery for an RPG, that's just a recipe for setting your game on fire. So you adjust. Sometimes the monkey paw of a deal is called for, but I feel like a lot of times in an RPG, it has to shift a little bit to deal with the fact that it's a game not a story. I think it's less about trying to fool the players into thinking they can outsmart the person giving the deal, and more about trying to foster a scenario where they expect that person to keep their into the deal, and just have to hope that they can mitigate or achieve their goal before the deal giver has a chance to achieve his.
I think it's a lot easier to pull off from a narrative standpoint than some people think. But just look at the real world, people vote for politicians they view as abhorrent people all the time, because they've convinced themselves that that politician (correctly or incorrectly) agrees with them on some thing that's very important, or at least would be willing to help facilitate that thing. I think a lot of times understanding how to frame "a deal with the devil" is as simple as being self-aware about how often you do it in your own real life.
This is basically the point I’ll be making in my own comment in the main comments. Players are always looking for ways to “win D&D.” You offer them the means to their objective, and they will seriously consider taking it.
This is a great episode. Speaking of deals in d&d, I have a story of my own experience.
I bargained with the Raven Queen for my life after I died and the party's resurrection spell failed. I play a harengon rogue with the Lucky feat (lucky rabbit feet and all, lol); it was a huge part of my character's backstory as her entire family is supernaturally lucky.
I knew nothing I offered would be enough but felt my character would try anyway (she believed she had to warn the party about the BBEG who killed her for discovering him on our ship stealing plans for a bomb). Without magic or anything of value to offer, I offered my loyalty, service, etc, anything I could think of. The Raven Queen didn't respond but didn't seem interested to me. Then, it hit me: what was most important and intrinsic to my character? My luck, my family gift passed down, the one thing that made me special in my character's eyes (low self worth issues lol)
I barely got the words out, and everyone at the table went silent with shock, DM included. It was a huge sacrifice to make, and they all knew it. The Raven Queen took my offering, and I returned to the campaign, luck drained away.
It's been months since then, and there have been hints and signs it'll come back. My connection to the Raven Queen has deepened since as well. It was tough not having a feat for that level slot compared to everyone else, but I hold my own fine in terms of party balance generally speaking. We're at very high level now (just hit 18), and I'm plenty happy with how it all went down. It legitimately felt like a moment out of Critical Role, and we've had lots of others as well with the rest of the party's personal quests.
We also got very close to making a deal with Endelyn the hag to give her a Deck of Fortunes we got in exchange for a few different options but chose to hold onto it for a bit. That was highly tempting.
I could not help but think of Rumplestiltskin from Once Upon a Time
Spectacular Spiderman! Killing it with the references in this one! One thing that I've found success with in this kind of "deal with the devil" negotiation (which I stole from a J. Michael Straczynski Thor comic) is to have the "devil" figure make a binding vow that they won't tell any lies. It makes the negotiation much more interesting if the devil can't lie, and it communicates the devil NPC is slippery if they are able to lie and manipulate while being totally honest.
An option is the dealmaker leading with 'The first hit is free': They start by giving the PC temporary power or a favour to demonstrate they're capable/legit, then the transaction comes after a 'trial period'.
This way the dm can butter up the boon by engineering encounters where the favour/power is extra useful. And if the PC decides to reject it, they had some fun at least, may be more likely to make a similar deal later, and other pcs might be more tempted to approach the devil themselves.
Probably don't do the thing where the devil takes the fly spell away while the pc is mid flight though (Or do? 😈)
I rule that the resurrection spells were given to mortals by the goddess of death as an agreement that when the rite is performed, the soul is allowed back from beyond her protection. By signing a contract for your soul with another entity, you never pass beyond her veil, so her resurrection cannot bring you back. Which means any warlock who dies creates a side quest to get their soul returned to their bodies.
I'd love to make a (or several) very comepelling dealbreaker because it is really fun to make scenes, stories and adventures around that.
My players made a few deals with a devil in my game, the first one was super low stakes: For plot reasons the devil wanted to follow the heroes along on their investigation, so it "borrowed" their eyes, just watching through them, nothing harmful, in exchange, they gained a boon that if they would die, it would like make an autocrit 100% hit attack, but it would cost them a death save. The second one, the barbarian didn't ask for specifics, just agreed, was given info, and then lost all happy memories of their father.
I had a moment like this a few months ago. While I was out of the in-person campaign for a newborn, the DM and I were doing a back and forth while I wasn't there. My character was captured in a Dream state by a powerful hag who offered her the ability to unlock her dormant memories (locked away by the cult who took her in) all for the cost of her Dream or soul.
I'm reminded of my house rules for demonic possession. (Which could be applied as the result of a deal with a powerful fiend.) There's a special "prestige class" whose effects I apply to the character. (the fiend can also apply those bonuses as penalties to get what he wants.) Instead of going up via normal experience, the DM keeps track of evil actions taken by the character and prestige abilities used (taint score). This taint score is used to calculate the level in the "prestige class." As such this can cause a player to rocket up in ability compared to others and feel really bad ass. Sometimes they have to roll a save to prevent the fiend from taking over.
Now that sounds like a way to give extra temptation to bad decisions. Was there ever a point where the player was told they could do something to screw over or betray NPCs for a massive amount of taint score? Sort of like detonating the nuke in fallout 3?
@@kingofhearts3185 my game group split up before I could implement this. But I'd have no problem giving them enough taint for a "taint level up" if they did something particularly bad. Things like instigating a major war, or destroying a dam that kills many innocent civilians.
So my character was a tortle monk. He was very much the wise old master. He had what I like to call a Martyr Complex. Which means he would gladly sacrifice himself if it meant saving someone he cared about. Now we had to go to hell to fight two pit fiends due to some of my allies drawing the devil card from the deck of many things. On our way my character met his tiefling's adopted daughter's father. This devil was the devil of lawyers. My character and this guy almost immediately got along. In the backstory these two had met because my character was curious about who his daughter's infernal ancestor was. Our DM really helped set up a thing my character did later. In the first layer of hell. Our fighter had fallen behind the party. Then he was conveniently rescued by our new party member. A female Goblin artificer and her dog. Along the way to the lower level of hell we soon found the devil our new friend had sworn her soul to in exchange to save her village.
My character felt bad for that because he couldn't help but try and adopt every party member and treat them like a concerned parent would (except he actually cared.) So my character named the one condition in his deal was to free the artificer. So he called up his friend the patron of lawyers to work out the contract in favorable terms. So my character only sold a hundred years of his afterlife (half he had to spend in both devils realms with the artificer but the rest of the years of his afterlife he got to spend in his good afterlife) to free one of his friends. Honestly I wasn't expecting the lawyer devil himself to show up to help. I was expecting one of his minions.
In a recent episode of NADDPOD, there was a deal with a witch in which a PC now gets 2 fails when they roll a two or a natural one on a death saving throw, instead of just on a nat one (and if they had gotten less on their wisdom-saving throw, it would've been even more). I liked it because it seems like one of those things that doesn't sit right at the front of your mind in regular play, but could really come back to bite you in a pivotal moment.
I've been seeding a deal into my campaign. Thanks for this! It's time to pull the trigger. Let's start by giving the player a taste of the power on offer. :D
I had a player take a deal with an ancient witch type to free another of Lycanthropy at the cost of him being her eyes and ears. He negotiated that he has to be safe when she is looking. As GM I was clear this was a clean deal and not a trick OOC. It did give him more power as a lycanthrope. He is also linked to her forever. As is his wife who he infected to save from another curse. Have not decided if we pick back up what it means for their puppies, I mean kids.
Very good video stirred this is one of the sticking points that I've always had in campaigns of mine both on the deal side and the reward.
My forge cleric and her party was almost in a TPK against the corpse of a dead god that was being reanimated. We couldn't fight it directly coz it would harm and kill an NPC we were supposed to rescue. The archfey of that domain whispered to my character's mind an offer: take a boon in exchange for something valuable. My character traded her memories of time spent with someone she cared deeply about. The party survived the battle, and now my character is spending downtime retracing her steps and trying to repair her relationship with that loved one. Fun times. ❤
I once played a royalist spy embedded in a thieves guild who was tasked with stopping them from acquiring a powerful maguffin. Long story short, I sold my soul to a shade in a handshake deal "for the king" that saw my character turned into a Fetchling. Good times!
I'm going to be very vague because I know that mike hasn;t gotten very far into bg3, but that game has a lot of very interesting ways of handling faustian bargains where as the game progresses the terms and conexts of these recurring devils and how they relate to the party with what they want is constantly changing, so you'll regularly have them approach you or you approach them for new deals that always have interesting weights and choices for them, as well as having other terms and ways to work around how you dealk or do not deal with them. Anyone who has played the game will know exactly what I'm referring to.
Oh look! The next plot-point of the Campaign I'm running! Thanks Supergeek Mike! 🤩🔥
A character I'm currently playing in a Curse of Strahd game accepted a deal that change him. This character is a big introvert that has always worked at creating magical devices for his parents guild. He has never been ok with that since living in a outlaw guild stressed him out a lot. One day, he left the house to go find his missing sister (and only friend) and got himself trapped in Barovia. He started hallucinating bad things, like his beloved sister jumping off a bridge and killed herself. Throughout the game, his anxious nature showed itself more and more and Strahd bite him, causing him a major nervous breakdown. So a dark entity in an amber coffin take advantage of his weakness by sending him intense nightmares and lure him into the Amber Temple to accept a deal. This deal was to kill a friend to become a vampire and finally get control over his life even in Barovia. My character accepted because he really wanted to get control on his life, to be respected by other and that nobody would ever tell him again what to do and because all the nightmares make him loose some marbles.
At the end, he became a dhampir because while he was falling into madness, he tried to save himself by sealing the evil thing that was part of him. The others players made the ritual on him at the last minute.
Bedazzled is an underrated movie, it deserves to be talked about more.
Edit: Oh hell yeah, a Brother Where Art Thou reference? Great movie, my family still quotes it all the time.
Nice crossroads music in the background while you talk the art of the deal 🤝
A have DMed for over three decades and tend to run years long campaigns. Still, Past Players began warning other groups not to EVER accept Supernatural deals or Vague deals. I had become infamous because my "vague" deals on "hold a door" or "at a later date" had resulted in massive repercussions. The "hold a door" had been "tell a certain girl Lucius still loves her", ruining a state marriage between two valuable allies, weakening the needed forces that WOULD have stopped the invading evil forces, causing massive death and a huge area to fall to darkness. The "later" date ended up causing similar chaos, but they hated me more because a RL year went by before I called it in and another RL year went by before they saw the effects. "Oh my goodness ... we caused that, didn't we?"
But the moment of "I know this is a bad idea but..." that I savor most is:
Nearly two RL years into a campaign, the Players are visiting a castle. One character is a Halfling with light fingers. I describe a beautiful ball that is locked away so she can only see part of it. She easily defeats the locks, missing the whole reason it has so many layers of protection. She enjoys looking at it and pockets it. The group leaves not realizing what the Halfling has done. Their journeys take them all over, so no one from the castle can predict where they will be next. This travel goes on for RL months, before the group gets stuck on a puzzle. The Halfling squeals and says, "I know what to do! I will ask Bubbles. He is very smart." The group is confused and watches her take out the softball orb and talk to it. It gives the correct answer, but the group has more answers. The Halfling sees no issues, so she innocently shares. She and the Orb have been talking for months (now they understand all the notes). The Orb holds a trapped Angel named Bubbles, and he is very lonely. He wants to be free, but neither she nor Bubbles know how. Bubbles promises to be her friend and help her gain superpowers if she helps her get free. But she has no idea how and thinks Bubbles is holding something back, but she does not know what. Her truth spells say that Bubble has not lied about who he is.
The group decide to keep Bubbles in his Bubble. As one Player said, "Doesn't anyone find it odd that the 'Angel' has only talked to the Chaotic, almost Evil, one of us?" But one of the Players is upset. He voted to release the Angel, seeing it as a big boost in their power and what it could teach him. He spends the next several RL months trying to develop a method to open the Orb, then steals the Orb. A week later, they find themselves in an important Neutral City with one of the biggest Kings in the game. Negotiations are breaking down. The Player decides to use his plan and let Bubbles free. The Halfling feels deep shame at being pickpocketed by the Player. The Player goes through the complex series of tasks, and the Orb opens. He is hooting about being right and everyone else can suck it. Except ... Bubbles is a Demon Lord. A Legendary Demon Lord from a group of Fallen Angels. He frames them, kills the important king, nearly wipes the party except the Halfling and a Player who had just left to do some training (we had 10 Players that day). Every piece had been months in the creation. Every Player had expressed some sort of misgivings. Half the Party still thought it was a bad idea. Still, I got them to choose it without even a teenie bit of railroading.
I can't believe Mike went out of his way to avoid spoiling Angel and drew attention to the silliness of trying not to spoil a show that's been off the air for 20 years, and then, less than one minute later, casually spoiled Hazbin Hotel before drawing attention to how recent that show was lmao
Lucky for me I finally got around to finishing Hazbin Hotel literally an hour before clicking this video lol
My peace cleric made a deal with a devil. Best decision. It was hidden from the other people in the party. She had to kill 3 people with a specific dagger. As a peace cleric she was pretty much all support and never killed. So I had her stay behind after battles and heal npcs then stab them with the blade to technically kill them again. It was fun except for the people who meta gamed. There was zero in game reason for them to be suspicious but of course people couldn’t stand it.
17:55 "don't make the wizard give up spellcasting" ... that was my whole deal in The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, but, as you said, it was a backstory deal. One of the premises of that campaign could be that everyone has something stolen from them "that means a lot for the character". It was a fun roleplay thing, but I would have quit if that was forced on me in the middle of the campaign.
Lol, “Nice try, Beezelbub.” Love that line.
I've done it on both sides of the deal various times. The tick in my experience is... know the type of game you're in and the people involved.
The simplest, most reliable way is to find the player who enjoys making bad decisions because they enjoy dramatic tropes like hubris, classical tragedy, or the general trope of digging your way out of the grave you dug for yourself. And then run the deal accordingly.
If the player feels like you've screwed them as opposed to their character, they'll just never take any deals again, at least not without making the whole process a bloody pain. Like the main reason we stopped handing out wishes wasn't because they were powerful, but because so many wishes had bad, lazy and punishing monkey's paws that turning the whole thing into writing a three page contract became a whole thing that was typically a lot more fun to talk about than actually play through. (See also mimics, door traps and everything else that infamously gets turned into a checklist or similar)
But if you and the player are on the same page about how the character is getting screwed by the deal in a way they'll enjoy playing... that's going to be fun.
I am a huge fan of heroic fantasy, powering up my players and so on. That includes (sometimes sketchy) deals or temptations. What I found out is the key to making such a trade appealing is to both make it a deal they *can't* refuse, a deal they can't *refuse* AND a deal *they* can't refuse. To present the situation in such a way that everybody knoww it's an opportunity which will have immediate consequences.
I think a very mid example would be Raphael from Bauldur's Gate 3, who does the tempting well in principle but falls flat in actually providing consequences without a massive (and literal) back door.
I feel like some of the best booms to offer might just be raw power. Like “three times per rest, you can spend an action to supercharge the next melee attack you land within the next minute. The next successful hit deals an additional 8d12 fire damage” or something. Bonus points if the entity offering the deal is IMMUNE to fire damage, meaning it can’t be turned against them!
oh this is perfect, got a player's character info for a campaign starting in a few weeks and i was thinking of using a supernatural deal offer as a way to make interesting story from that character
The BBEG in my campaign, a powerful scheming erinyes devil (fallen angel), wanted the party wizard's construct technology.
She offered three things in return.
1. I will not use this technology against you or your allies.
2. One of your group will be given the gift of tongues (angelic speech that transcends language. Effectively letting them speak and understand any language)
3. You will be able to supernaturally pinpoint my location at any time.
The catch with that third one. This erinyes has always had the power to make shadow clones that look like her that she can use for fighting and spying. No stipulation on a range or tether. She can effectively be many places at once.
When my players used that ability for the first time a few sessions later, they found out it doesn't differentiate between copy and genuine BBEG. Meaning they found out she's basically everywhere important and getting very little in terms of insight into her plans.
The devil in question also massively increased her powerbase on a field the players haven't visited, in the hells. She used the technology to subjugate and recruit many infernal alles that she in turn could use against the players.
TLDR: My BBEG devil used the players power to further her own ambitions elsewhere while planting a catch in the boon she granted so that it was a lot less useful than it first appeared.
I haven’t watched the video, but I offered my table a very simple bargain at the start of the game.
On ASI levels, gain 2 ASI points, lose 30 HP. These points have a stat cap of 30. Once per ASI. No take-backs.
Had a Fighter with ~80 HP and 24 Strength by Lv. 10, which included the Tough feat, in that party. They were the highest damage threat of the party due to their reliability to hit the target.
Eventually led to a moment where the party win condition was "protect the Fighter long enough to do their massive damage" against an enemy Lv. 20 Fighter that had the party of 3 dead in under 10 punches. Fun times.
Anyways, time to watch the video now.
EDIT AFTER WATCHING: Yea, makes sense. Kinda at the heart of the deal I offered is that my party does their best to optimize their characters, and this was a clear way to take their characters further. But I also made the cost obvious, and made it detrimental enough where it will always be felt.
And I also had stories associated with deals. One character they would meet basically has terrible physicals, but made a deal that makes them an outstanding hunter; cost being that they had to relay info to them on a safe location for them (to begin razing settlements). The enemy Fighter I mentioned made a deal for their comrade to stay alive; they pay as a puppet to those trying to end the world (to the point where they're an Arcane Archer that is being puppeted as mindless muscle).
However, the one I most hoped to get to was that the party mentor was indebted to the eventual big bad, who was the one the current big bads were trying to free. They never made the deal, however; their father did, asking for a son who was extraordinary, far beyond others in their profession, inspite of their frailty. So they have a 38 Wisdom. In a system with a hard cap of 30.
The mentor never had a choice in the matter, but they knew that their life is forfeit, and have been trying to train the party in such a way where they will be able to subdue him. He will either die with a legacy upheld by those better than he himself was, or live to have nothing to return to.
@Vax making a deal with a Hag that never amounted to anything: In an old Talks Machina episode (I think it was the VM wrap up one?) Liam asked Matt just that. He said that the hag didn't want to try and get involved with something so far above her level and considered it a lost investment, more or less.
For an upcoming three-party crossover boss battle, my wife and I have worked out that she's going to use Gate to summon Tiamat (who has been ever-so-slightly redeemed by presenting her with a piece of her son Sardior and reminding her that before she was a goddess of evil, she was a mother goddess). A representative of Asmodeus she is familiar with (my wife likes making deals with devils, guys) will stop time to explain to her that Asmodeus will allow the Gate to open, on the condition that she will owe Asmodeus her soul (and so control of herself) for the exact length of time Tiamat is on the Material Plane. It's only temporary, so the deal is a lot more palatable than "your soul is gone forever", but her mind is already racing. How long will combat go, maybe 10, 20 rounds? That's just 1 or 2 minutes.
But how much damage can a 20th level cleric, princess of her country, do in 1 or 2 minutes?
(Yes, this is mostly cribbed from a deal in Order of the Stick, but stealing from the greats is how you get good)
The campaign I'm running is all about favours and debts owed. Currently, a Night Hag has a vendetta against one of the PCs, and is willing to take it out on anyone related to the party.
Another PC made a deal with a more amiable hag coven to put some protection over a house to help stave off the Night Hag's attacks; the coven wants the party to get them an item that the Night Hag wants, and is holding onto that PC's shadow as collateral. The deal is worth it for the chance to keep their loved ones safe now, whatever happens later on.
The deal maker also does not need to be evil. We have celestial warlocks, as well as hexblades. One player on our Discord group made a deal with a Hound Archon, a celestial being, as they were after the same demon, but the Archon could not leave Celestia. And my character 's hexblades patron draws from a blend of One for All from MHA, and the Vampire Killer from Castlevania. The sword possessed vestiges of the previous users, all of whom collectively grant power and guidance to my character, so long as my character fights against the forces of Shar.
I played a genie warlock. I point blank asked my GM to not monkey paw me because *I* am not clever enough to work with it, even though the character definitely would be.
One of my players made a deal with a very powerful mind flayer, the thing is she wasn't supposed to. She's the one that offered him the deal, she could have gotten out of where she was on her own (in a very easy way). But I guess making a deal with the imprisoned mind flayer was a more appropriate action to take at the time. She didn't end up with a tadpole inside her head, but she got some fun spells out of it.
6:42 To me, the exception most certainly applies to Warlocks. Their whole concept is they willngly made a deal with an Otherwordly Patron because they want something they couldn't already access through traditional or "legal" means
One way to tempt your players is to offer small gift early in the campaign/game. And if they turn down the deal, have the deal maker show up after the struggle to tell them how if they would have just accepted the deal, that would have been so easy. Or if they take the deal, and the next challenge is easy, have the deal maker show up and ask if they are happy with what they got.
TLDR: Remember, the first one is free.
I had almost forgotten about Garmelie and the hat. I wonder if it was meant as a bit of misdirection, almost a red herring if you will, to make the players more comfortable with his request for a threshold crest. They already know from his sketchbook that he's a bit naughty (though not evil) and somewhat cowardly perhaps? He clearly isn't welcome in the city but not, to their knowledge, because he broke a law or attacked anyone but because he was uncouth and improper in a city full of snooty elves.
So he's a mischievous little scamp. A harmlessly horny Satyr. He only wants the hat because stealing the hat of a very important person is funny! Haha! What a cheeky little fae you are to embarass such an influential person. And the threshold crest? Ah there's plenty of them, and if I remember they glowed a little too, so what harm could it be to just take one? Just disrupt the system a little bit, I'm sure he means no harm. It's all in good fun...right?
Knowing what Garmelie is up to much later in the stories Critical Role tells it does make me wonder...just what did that Trickster want to do with the crest?
A fun way to offer deals might be fairly contrived, but man it’d be fun if it can work. Say your party gets captured and imprisoned. You end the session, but tell the players you’ll reach out to each of them between sessions because their characters will be interrogated privately. When you meet next session, it’ll be for a prison break adventure.
However, as you reach out, you say “You expected to be be interrogated by a guard, but instead a fey prince enters your the room. He’s offering to free the party if you will accept his terms. When he leaves, the real interrogator will enter. If they take the deal, say the words ______ and he will allow you all to leave with all your belongings.”
Maybe not every character is approached by the fey prince. Or maybe they each are, and several people pay the cost of the bargain unknowingly unnecessarily.
Or maybe two opposing entities each choose a sucker from the party and make their offers during their private interrogations, looking to bargain for their patronage, and the conflict is now a member of the party is beholden to each of them.
When you meet next for the “prison break,” the session starts with “The jailer comes and escorts you all to your stuff, and then the front gate. ‘Just don’t come back,’ they say.” Three players are like “What just happened?” One is like “So…Here’s the thing.”
I'm going to be the dissenting voice here, I like seeing my characters succeed, and if I'm pitching such a deal, I think it's more fun to do it in reverse. Lay out the terms, make it look like a decent attempt at temptation, but not so good they take it, and then later, show them why the dealmaker tried for them. Could be anything from being able to do heroics that would have crushed them to fail, to outright making the dealmaker default on another contract. You maintain the same Chekhov's Gun, but instead of a success or reward that leaves a bad taste in their mouth followed by the betrayal or cost, it's a show of determination, hope, or strength of character on their end and a triumph later on. Plots work off opposition and conflict, and I've never liked if refusing just means you're not going along with the plot.
Stormbringer and Runestaff have some interesting ideas for what you can do with these, as well as Berserk. Maybe a being of Law just asks for your characters Fate, making that character effectively rail roaded into a given ending. Maybe one of these beings makes a change to the characters morality or way of thinking, twisting them to their wills. Maybe that magic item starts attacking your friends and family whenever your around them, or eats the souls of whoever you kill.
14:18 Hazbin Hotel did technically come out this year, however the Pilot episode aired in 2019 and the spinoff Helluva Boss has had like 2 seasons already, so that also destroys any sense of time regarding that show's release date.
For your next episode that is for adventure hooks: Right now my self DM I gave my party which is technically still myself a mission where they were hired by the daughter of a well known writer who's gone slightly mad possibly because of the black mold growing inside her castle. Now the daughter is hiring the party to essentially either a save her mother from the black mold that's in the castle or if the black mold has consumed her and turned her into an undead creature of unknown origin eliminate the corpse she's also doubling as an escort mission but that's because she's also the cleric for the party that has no cleric. [You can see what I'm referencing some real world stuff in it but not really] But I believe this is a good example of a small venture hook that can Wheel them in on a big line! [Note naturally escorting a level one character into a dungeon that is probably going to be at least around level 5 to 6 with party members that are at least around level three okay actually the rogue who is supposed to be a veteran type is more likely around 6. Is the example here also another way of introducing a new time player to year old group. ]
🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 I recently ran a one-shot for coworkers, debating writing a sequel, which may potentially involve deals...
While this trope is very prominent in folklore, there's something from the real world I've looked into recently (due to the network I've been YT-partnered with for years becoming... scummy, let's just say) that could serve as good inspiration too: payday loans. These offer horrible interest rates and often trap people in cycles of taking out more loans. But they're designed to look like as tempting as possible. "Easy cash RIGHT NOW! We don't check Credit Score!" And these lenders prey on the vulnerable, disparate, or those without the education to know they're a bad idea. They're a temporary solution that creates a bigger problem down the line, just like, say, excessively drinking alcohol to numb depression or... deals with devils.
So I guess if I was making one of these, I'd focus on making the instant gratification as appealing as possible, while obfuscating the permanent problem. Lawful Evil Devils often won't outright lie, but they LOVE to bend the truth. Off the top of my head "I'll give you 1000 Platinum now, and all I ask in return is one copper piece one day." ("Psst, what I'm not telling them is this copper piece will be used as the soul jar for their entire family") Though in game design terms you can't make the mechanical benefit TOO powerful.
From watching, the Hades deal is an excellent example of minimizing the bad end, because "you lose your strength for 24 hours" sounds completely mundane until you realize the titans are attacking Olympus today. Actually, speaking of Hades... that made me think of another take on Greek myth and realize Chaos' offers in the Hades game are essentially reverse devil deals: you get the bad stuff immediately but if you can live through it you get a permanent benefit. Here it's more about "what bad stuff can I afford to suffer and is the payoff worth it?"
In supernatural there are probably around 1000 deals made over the course of the show. The real number probably lies around 200-250.
Another way a player might take the deal is if their character feels they have to in order to protect their party from the dealmaker. Worked on me. Twice.
Barovian Dark Powers go brrrr
Dipper doesn’t take Mabel for granted bill get’s him too by pointing to time he sacrifices his happiness and Mabel not returning the favor and it’s Mabel who learn’s not take him for granted
3:18 that's not what I thought the lesson of Sock Opera was tbh
i literally had the EXACT SAME REACTION about Hazben Hotel.... ive been rewatching it and talkming about it with a friend and i could have SWORN i saw the first bit of the show like 2-3 years ago... like, start of Covid... but nope... it was like February/March ish
Players are always looking for ways to beat D&D. If your entity offers them the means to complete their main story objective, even if the characters wouldn’t take it, the players probably would. Now it’s a hard decision, which is what you want the moment at the table to be. Even if you give the players the means to Easy Button the story, the fact that they took this deal can set up the next adventure. Now they are tasked with finding and enacting the escape clause of their contract. Or a patron gets wind of the deal struck, and cuts them off because they can’t be associated with that type of devilry.
Of course, this presupposes an ongoing homebrew game, and not a prewritten adventure. But for me, D&D is all about the story created at the table, not running a script with a fixed endpoint. So such left turns in the story don’t intimidate me.
An entity could offer the party more XP at the cost of key adventuring tools or magic items (temporarily lent away or permanently given). The DM may even tempt the party into pushing their luck by doffing key equipment! Deal’s off if they leave to restock.
If you want to betray the party, make one of the innocuous items the cure to a villain’s mischief, but it may be fun for the party to simply foil itself.
the gravity falls shoutout caught me off guard, hope you know there’s supplemental material that dropped recently largely focused around said demon! (if you thought the show got surprisingly dark, you’ve seen nothing compared to book of bill!)
To the original question: if you want the players to take the deal, the GM should *lower* the stakes.
The list of boons in the vid was good, but one unspoken quality of each is "they are a reasonable thing a 5e GM could be expected to grant". Offer your PC something that would break the game, or requires endless planning around for the rest of the campaign - they will KNOW it's too good to be true.
Likewise, if the cost is going to entirely shift the entire campaign (your soul) or invalidate your existing backstory, they're going to pass without thinking twice. But offer them something akin to a quest reward for the price of "something unpleasant but bearable"... And they'll do the math.
Plus, PCs will worry less about how the devil is going to screw them if the devil is upfront with how the costs will hurt. If the cost seems innocuous, there's a twist. If the shiny thing you want will cost you permanent disadvantage on CHA checks that is less likely to feel like a scam.
Second thought - the Little mermaid example shows both of these. The offer is reasonable (added mobility for three days), the cost is clearly painful and proportional (loss of communication), and the terms are clear so it doesn't sound scammy (we bet your soul that you can make him fall in love with you, with unambiguous definition of success and failure).
To a PC, this feels like a quest reward (ie. You can now fly/swim/climb for free) with a reasonable cost (your character is mute), and a plot hook for the next session complete with stakes. And a quest that could end with "and if you fail you die" is not at all unusual.
Mmmmm. This gives me thoughts and ideas.
In my current campaign, I have a Kitsune Cleric, but she's a person out of time. She was born 10 to 20 thousand years before the present day, but her society was significantly more advanced (More comparable to ours in the modern day, but with easy access to space travel) but after a series of unfortunate events, she was kidnapped, experimented on, and left in a cryopod and forgotten.
When she was awakened from her cryopod, she found out that it hasn't just been nearly 20 thousand years, but there is no record of her people existing at all. Turns out, there was a massive war and at the end of it, her people were banished and all memory of their existence erased from time itself. The player has addressed a desire to either bring back the Kitsune, or return the knowledge to the world (But preferably both).
Now..... in my setting, I have a Great Old One who is the Demon of Forbidden Knowledge (Think of him as a fusion between Harbinger from Mass Effect and Hermaeus Mora from the Elder Scrolls, with a bit of Pherexian thrown in there).
The party has recently done something to attract the attention of this entity. And knowledge of the Kitsune does count as Forbidden.
Cue the deal. Knowledge, for knowledge. There is a glaring hole in this Great Old One's archive, and he knows where to get it.
In exchange for getting this information for him, he is willing to give the knowledge and history of the Kitsune to the player, and is willing to arrange an "accident" to bring a viable population of them back to the world.
Ya know I would call Ghost Rider an Oath of Vengence Paladin Fiend Warlock multiclass
In my current campaign, a demon came to a player that caught the attention of an ancient black dragon. The demon stopped time and gave the option to get out of the situation, but they had to kill someone the demon wanted dead. If he doesn't, he forfeits his soul immediately.
In systems with less... Conflation... of player and player character within the rules (e.g. more of an emphasis on meta currencies and giving more authorial powers to players) I suspect this is probably easier. I think for some people, in D&D - and systems like it - because they know it's a terrible idea they refuse even if they think it's going to be more interesting if they did take it, and I think both the lack of anything on the sheet that goes beyond what your character can do outside of inspiration, and D&D's history as a 'beat up monsters and steal their stuff' game with very one to one relationship of character and player. Your character is your avatar, etc. Other systems really do seem to attract players more likely to have their character do things that are obviously terrible ideas to everyone outside of the fiction but make the resulting fiction more interesting, and in places force an authorial role onto the player - In The Warren, for example (You play as rabbits. It's a game that wears its Watership Down influence on its sleeve, but it goes beyond just replicating Watership Down), one of the character moves you can take if no one else has taken it allows you to make prophetic visions, for which it's the player, not the GM, who dictates what the vision is.
Which isn't to say D&D style player/GM split is bad, just that mechanically and historically I think D&D kind of discourages players to take this sort of deal in a way I'm not sure other games do to the same extent.