Help me adjudicating a power check...

[Sorti]

In my campaign the PCs had to scar a vampire with a special holy water that leaves permanent scars. It was more or less an "infiltration" mission: they had to enter the club this vampire was often in (Martira Bay, btw), and find a way to scar him and escape before his vampire bodyguards catched on them.

They did find a way: scar the vampire and then have barrels of gunpowder explode, killing (gaseous form) the vampire and his bodyguards, but also some innocent human guards and some of the servant of the club.

Now, I have 3 PCs and an NPC.
The NPC had no problems, since he is a mercenary and assassin.
One of the PC (Alexander) had no problems too, and was also the one who physically blew up the barrels.
One other (Philippe) did not want to kill innocents and tried to persuade the others in not doing it, when they insisted he told them ok but he was against it, and tried to move as many people as possible away from the blast point, in fact saving some.
The final PC (Christoph) also was against it, and now is filled of regret and feels like and assassin and so on.

Now, on to power checks: who should do PC? How many? Is it an act of ultimate darkness? For everyone?

Help me

[Ail]

I'd probably have them all do PC while giving some bonuses for the PCs who tried to save people. Alternatively, you could not give them Power Checks but make roll madness checks, which could possibly be much worse, this time with penalties instead of bonuses because their good nature is horrified at the act committed. The NPC is your call.

It is possible that it could be an AoUD, but I would not do that. It is an automatic failure, and if the characters really don't have evil traits, if this was just an occasional occurrence, then giving them a failed PC without means to avoid it seems unfair. If on the other hand they have slipped many times, then it would be appropriate (I would do it for one of my PCs, for example).

Alex

[Spiteful Crow]

I think Alexander and everyone else in the party who supported the decision should get AoUDs slapped on them. Phillipe specifically went out of his way to prevent innocents from getting hurt, so I think it'd be unfair to punish him for his group's wrongdoings. Might wanna just give Cristoph a madness save.

[VAN]

I think all of them should have a PC, it doesn't matter Philippe didn't want to do it. The dark power are evil and want to corrupt so he will have to run a PC too, with only a bonus.

[Jester of the FoS]

Alexander is the only one who really needs to worry, he was the only one who seemed to really carry out the plan unconcerned with collateral damage.
No AoUD, it's bad but not that bad. Simply a couple manslaughter rolls.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

You may want to consider the 'metagame factor', in deciding who deserves a PC, an AoUD, or a Horror or Madness save. Is this behavior something that you, as DM, have a serious need to smack down, given the overall campaign style? Will being too easy -- or too strict -- hamper the fun of the players, in the long term? Will it spoil the DMing experience for you, to condone PCs' choosing such recourses?

If a blow-it-up-and-let-Ezra-sort-them-out approach is compatible with the way you and the players prefer your Ravenloft games to run, then don't be too hard on them. If further incidents of this sort would ruin the tone of the game, or make the less ruthless PCs' players unhappy, I'd suggest you spank them hard this time (Alexander especially), then let them make amends by providing them opportunities to defend or rescue other innocent NPCs in the future.

OTOH, if your own comments as DM or in-character as the mercenary NPC helped goad them into doing this (i.e. you made it sound like it'd be okay to bomb the club), you might want to come down hardest on the NPC, and let them witness the consequences of his failed Powers check. This would teach them that A) crimes carry a price in the Land of Mists, and B) trusting an NPC who says something will be morally acceptable, while ignoring your own conscience, is a bad, bad move.

[Ail]

Rotipher adequately explained a lot of things I meant to say. Yes, it depends a lot on the attitude of the players, not their characters. I don't have much to add to Roti's good post .

Except that I contest a little bit the range of the groups' (DM included) leeway in defining their version of the game.

You should have a definite sense of morality in your RL game. Even though your players may like to bomb clubs here and there, I think it won't be Ravenloft if you let go of the implied Power Checks. For me, this morality is what truly sets the setting apart from others. Granted, you have a broad range in the definition of this morality, as exemplified by my post and Jester's in opposition to all others (which were more severe). But I think such a punishment and absolute morality does have to exist to make the game gothic.

On the other hand, I'm reminded that Alhoon (and myself too, for that matter) doesn't run horror campaigns, instead he runs dark fantasy stories in Ravenloft, so perhaps you can do without the 'gothic' too and I'm being too narrow in my view of the game. Pretty much, it all comes down to this: you decide if you want to have a gothic game, and if so, the Powers Checks have to count.

Alex

[Sorti]

My campaign is gothic horror, and I feel that this should reflect in many ways, such as "actions have consequences". My players know and agree on this.

The NPC (Lucienne) was very strong in argumenting the fact that this plan would have spared their lives, and who cares about the innocents; previously he proposed having a waiter use the holy water and killing him to prevent him from speaking. The other three did not want to do something like this, but when the time began to run out they agreed on the barrel thing because Lucienne and Alexander voiced (sp?) strongly on the fact it was the only way to be sure no vampire would have followed them.
I as the DM made always very clear that PChecks exist and I roll them secretly, but obviously the PCs don't know it, and the players RP accordingly.

My ideas were these:

- Alexander did an AoUD, killing more than 10 people for personal advantage; it's not the first time he blows up things, too (the other time only villains were killed), so his power and curse should make him easier to blow up things and harder to stop; he's an alchemist and produces gunpowder, so something like "you produce gunpowder from your hands some times a day, but if you don't use it it catches fire spontaneously within the day"

- Lucienne will have some effect too, but he's an NPC and has left the group, I'll think about him if/when he rejoins

- Philippe tried to save as many people as possible, so not exactly the kind of subject the DPs like to tempt. Anyway he now feels he has no blame because "he tried to do everything he could". Suggestions?

- Christoph is very anguished; someone proposed a Madness save, and I was thinking about a Delusion: he begins to believe that those innocents were not innocent, but vampire/spawns/servants to not feel ashamed; obviously he could begin to think that everyone that does not fight the evil is evil...

Thanks to everyone for your support, it has been very useful this far! Other suggestions?

[Ail]

Christoph could also become paranoid, that the souls of those he killed are now after him and having dreams of dying in an explosion, or even being sent to a fiery hell.

As for Philippe, he still should do a Powers Check, albeit possibly with the largest bonuses. If the PC feels he has no worries, let him, but recall that in real life, many survivors of disasters develop a sense of guilt for having survived. You can play on this in a medium-long term scale.

Perhaps he starts having dreams and cold sweats, without understanding exactly why. Still, I wouldn't be too harsh on him, so do this only if his actions later turn to the evil side.

Alex

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Instead of a Powers or Madness check, Christoph could get a visit from the Ghost Dancer. That's assuming you have the Nightmare Lands boxed set, and/or enough spare creativity to do without, to stage a nightmare-as-adventure subplot.

[Sorti]

Instead of a Powers or Madness check, Christoph could get a visit from the Ghost Dancer. That's assuming you have the Nightmare Lands boxed set, and/or enough spare creativity to do without, to stage a nightmare-as-adventure subplot.

I used the Rainbow Serpent in a previous adventure . Last time they used a way to have it go away by fighting while dreaming, I wouldn't like to just have him get out with a fight...

[HuManBing]

Also bearing in mind the political consequences of detonating a large amount of gunpowder in Darkon's largest city...

Having them "get away" with a minor psychological trick like a small Powers Check or a light Madness issue would still be okay if you slap them with heavy law enforcement problems.

Azalin Rex would probably have absolutely no sense of humor at all about this sort of behavior and it wouldn't take much for Kazandra herself to worry what these PCs might be capable of doing to her if they could so badly maul another vampire. Having the Kargat pursue them mercilessly could be a non-mystical equivalent of a Madness Check or Powers Check.

[Sylaire]

This might be a dumb question...but just why was it a goal for the PCs to scar a vampire? I mean, I'm not in your campaign, but "Yes, I'll sign up to inflict permanent but non-lethal damage on a powerful undead creature!" doesn't really jump onto the "good idea" list, so I'm curious about the campaign events that led up to this event. This in turn ties in with what Rotipher was saying, about how the style of your campaign should tie in with the severity of the powers checks. The way you tell the story, you've either got a fistful of evil- and neutral-aligned PCs (seriously, did they just use "Hey, let's murder a bunch of innocent people!" as a premeditated battle strategy?), or they're undercover infiltrating some kind of secret society... ("infiltration" in the sense of espionage rather than in the way you used it in the initial post).

Presuming that your campaign runs on anything similar to the Victorian-era morality that most RL products seem to imply, you've got a possible two powers checks to look at. Don't forget that scarring the vampire probably counts as torture, permanent effects, of a evil NPC, which by itself probably qualifies for a 1-2% check under 2nd Ed.

(I'll be honest here, I have no fragging idea how 3rd Ed. powers checks work.)

As for the bombing of the club ("Terrorists Strike Martira Bay! News at eleven!"), the NPC and Alexander would have committed Acts of Ultimate Darkness. Honestly, I don't know how murdering a bunch of innocent people for "the greater good" could avoid this classification unless the act of killing them directly led to the saving of an equal number of other innocents. This isn't 24: The Roleplaying Game, after all...

Whether Phillippe gets a powers check would depend, to me, on whether he decided to go along with the plan or whether he was basically coerced into it under threat of death from the other party members. In the latter case I'd skip the powers checks. Victims shouldn't have to suffer checks.

Christoph...yeah, I have nothing to add here.

[Sorti]

Some background story:

The PCs were previously cursed by Yako Vormoff (long story). The curse sealed one of their head orifices every midnight, thus killing them in seven days (two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and a mouth, death by suffocation).

They were contacted by Tavelia, with whom they had some previous business, but they lost memory of it (another long story). Tavelia told them how to stop (but not remove) the curse, and they stopped it after their left ear and right eye were sealed. In my campaign Tavelia is a psicomancer, or a wizard specialized in souls and positive/negative energy, and also something similar to a ghost (you guessed it, another long story), so she can cure them, since Yako's curse is negative energy-based.

Now, Tavelia has some problems with the Kargat, since the current General and her previous underling, Kazandra, holds a grudge against her for sending her against Alanik Ray and trying to become Regina. Tavelia is rebuilding her spy network, but she needs a way to stop Kazandra from interfering; she decides to intimidate her, obviously using the PCs.

Lately, the famous Martira Bay cloth merchant (and secretly necromancer) Stefan Dyreth has been embraced by an ancient Kargat half-elven vampire, Damien Crestan. Tavelia plans to have the PCs use sacred water (an empowered variant of holy water that leaves a permanent scar, the same one Alanik used on Kazandra) on Dyreth, to tell Kazandra she isn't safe even in her club in Martira Bay.

Dyreth almost every evening attends the Diomedes Club to play poker with friends and drink some blood in the basement. The PCs infiltrated the Club, scarred Stefan with the sacred water, and blew up two barrels of gunpowder to kill him and his vampire bodyguards and escape safely. Obviously there was some innocent people around (more than 30 before Philippe gathered them away, more then 10 after it) who were blew up too.

By the way, to Philippe's fans I should say he was always against the plan, and even said "I remain back and fight all the vampire myself while you run away" to dissuade the others from blowing the barrels.

Do you like my curse idea for Alexander? Some other comment/criticism/suggestion/idea?

[Spiteful Crow]

By the way, to Philippe's fans I should say he was always against the plan, and even said "I remain back and fight all the vampire myself while you run away" to dissuade the others from blowing the barrels.

I definitely think Phillippe's just a victim here. Don't give him a powers check. Please? * puppy eyes *

Your idea for Alexander's curse sounds pretty neat. Could call it "Path of the Mad Bomber."