Betrayal in D&D

[alittlepepper]

Magic is iffy if you're playing with a bunch of other drow, so avoid any spells that would directly damage or interfere with them. Focus on magic that depends on the player, like illusion magics. Considering that drow typically have a lower constitution, poison might could work, as so could disease. Finding out any enemies of your allies and working out sub-deals and offers with them would be helpful so long as you can either fulfill or find your way out of. When you're betraying someone, simple lies can sometimes be the best and it depends hugely on what you've told them about yourself. The trick is making things believable. You can't just poison a party mate and then blame it on someone that works against your god; you have to make it seem reasonable rather than just blindly assigning blame. Paying someone to attack or ambush a party member would be useful. And if you're really set on this, remember. Mind-affecting on Fighters, Poison on Mages and Rogues, and have a lot of allies waiting in the wings. Summoned creatures would be helpful when you finally make the leap.

For even more subtle stuff, I would suggest tampering with clues and evidence to mislead your party mates. That would help keep your real-life group mates from getting pissed off at you when you go off on fool's errands, since you could easily "blame" it on the false god that you worship. You could entice other cultists to work against your group (at some personal risk of course) or even get local authorities involved somehow.

The best evil is not the black knight walking through slaughtering people. It's the subtle shit that you miss or don't recognize as evil that makes the most interesting stories, at least in my opinion. Make your allies question themselves and their motivation, destroy their will, ponder their faith. Tear them down from the inside and then spring your trap.

Having the DM on your side is incredibly important; a good DM will let you do what you want and play your character. I would advise in investing in a small notepad or text messages to him or her to let them know what you're up to. That way the other members of the group won't have any idea what you're up to (and thus can't "subconsciously" act against you).

Possible, but time consuming. From one evil-hearted ***** to another, best of luck. And remember, you can always count on me to watch your back. >

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Everyone keeps suggesting poison your friend's food, but as you want to make things difficult and interesting from an RP POV, surely you're best option is poisoning an important NPC instead...then planting the poison used in a party members bags.

Gives them some work to stop him being dragged off by the town guards and hung for attempted murder, but it's not death, it's just a tricky RP scenario to think their way out of.

 

[Archemetis]

I'm not sure how D&D works, I've only played Dark Heresy (A 40K style D&D thing in the future with guns) I was playing a senile, old guy and we found about 16 vials of this forbidden substance called 'spook' which if you pass a willpower test you get granted psychic powers for a while.

The draw back is if you have terrible willpower you'll fail and the penalty is rolling a D10 to find out how much you add to your insanity score.

I left the campaign not only dosed off my nut on the stuff but completely insane...

Oh and I had a heart attack on the rescue ship while loading my gun and I died...
And the fact my chest was infested by a demon and I was physically scarred by it and slightly mutated...

I'm coming back in the next campaign, reborn, Robocop style.

But before all that my friends characters were dead set on leaving me behind or shooting me for the stupid things I kept doing...

As for betrayal, yeah, just overall try to sabotage the team's progress through the campaign.
Like me with the spook, I took it all during a fight with the campaign boss and my friends were having their legs torn off...

 

[AdamRBi]

Step 1: Tell no one, not even the DM. Unless the DM is cruel themselves and would love to see you help him eventually disrupt the rest of the players then it best not to let him know the surprise twist less they turn on you.

Step 2: Divide the group. Wether it be on the field or better yet in battle. If you're strong enough you can survive on your own and fool some players in to helping you. If all goes well the players would be spaced out on the battle field and take more damage.

Step 3: Ease back on attacking enemies unless they attack you. The less attention you draw to yourself the longer you'll survive and the more damage others will take.

Step 4: Resources and Knowledge. Up your skills in this and you may have a chance of fooling the others in to thinking that what ever you need to do to revive your god is what they need to do to make sure he's never released.

Step 5: Hired Assassins to keep the players on their toes and weaken them during times of rest, delaying them until you can accomplish your goal. Killing is fine too, but I'd like to think this is still a game so we want everyone to at least still play. Though this would require enough trust in your DM not to rat you out. Also leave no traces, burn the evidence.

Step 6: "Is Karathanos really such a bad guy? Think about it, would a god devoted to conquering the world really want to destroy it? There might be more to this then we thought, do you mind if I continue to research this?" Cause is there anything quite like telling the truth to their face without revealing your true intentions? Just don't be too sinister about it, less you give yourself away.

Step 7: Counter-Active Strategy. Plan your moves to complicate or disrupt your teammates plans and make it seem like their fault. This way nothing gets accomplished, your goals are still met, and nobody blames you. You just got to be sneaky enough about it.

Remember, these steps are not in order. Use them to your own liking.

As a sorcerer, you're best way to harm the party from the inside is to try and use the bigger, flashier spells in ways your party gets hurt. Splash damage is your new friend.

This would make a nice Step 8.

Also, make sure the DM is aware of what you are doing. He can help you out with covering your tracks. Plus, if you want to do something like hiring thugs to ambush you, or "borrow" equipment from your party members, he'll need a heads up so that he doesn't give it away to the rest of your party.

And you ninja'd my Step 5!

Alright, this I like. Step 5 and 6 are definitely something I can accomplish. I should probably start writing this stuff down. Thanks to the both of ya!

You're Welcome. Happy Betrayals.

 

[mento 2425]

this might seem a little odd because it kind of goes against something you just said but
give the god guy your party's plans for your next battle with their minions and wait for the next battle but if that goes badly then get your strongest spell that casts over a large area and kill your entire party or at least help in killing them, then, now that you're on the god's good side find a way to kill, or at least capture him, and then rule the world with an evil adamantium fist and possibly become a god by killing him.

 

[Acier]

I've been a part of an evil campaign for a little while now, and just recently, my character has decided to betray the party, unbeknown to the rest of the group. Since I'm working against the group I'm in, I wanted to know what type of cool ways you guys think I should sabotage the group. I'm really interested in any interesting ways or methods you guys can come up with.

Here's the story so far:

My character is a Drow sorcerer named Solarum. Basically, we've been serving this god-like being called Karathanos, trying to do help him rise up and reclaim his rule over the world. Recently, however, we found out that Karathanos doesn't want to rule the world, he wants to destroy it out of vengence, thus the group decided to betray him in an effort to save the world we want to conquer. Solarum has been serving Karathanos his whole life, and has decided that he will continue to serve him by acting as a spy and sabotage the group within.

That's the summary of it, if I went into real detail, we'd probably be here all day. So what do you guys think I should do? Think of something really creative!

EDIT: Stop telling me to kill the healer or act like an idiot in battle. That's neither creative nor helpful.

Go for the [a href=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit]Xanatos Gambit[/a].
If you can pull it off, the whole table will drop their jaws.

Also, take inspiration from Raistlin Majere.
I don't have any concrete tips other than that.

This is what I was thinking. If your character knows more about the god than any of the other party members they probably rely on him for answer, it might be tricky convincing them of your super dark god knowledge while not serving him, but if you can steer the party towards summoning him instead of their true goal(possibly saying your part of a cult of a rival god and know a ritual hampers/invalidates the previous god when in actuality it is the summoning spell).

As several others have said DM cooperation and secrecy is incredibly important. You can summon a demon/imp/whatever and tell your party you're sending it to do retrieve some item they think they need, you can let your DM know that in addition to retrieve the item it retrieves something that aids you and slips it to you secretly and maybe kills an npc thats vital. Who knows, what you need to focus on is controlling information and keeping your party members in as much of the dark about the nature of the god and the occult/whatever so you can pull the strings. This is completely dependent on how much your party knows already, and sorry my advice isn't more specific , I play CoC so the evil god always wins anyways

 

[alittlepepper]

SenseOfTumor's idea is good as well, assuming you have important NPC's in your campaign that you could do that with, but again it'd rely on you being pretty sneaky to slip it into their bag. Basically the point in that sort of scenario is to only do one or two things and let things that are already in place handle everything else. You just have to know how to do those one or two things. It'd be good to know your level and skill build to give more specific advise, but basically since you're a sorcerer you're going to be pretty squishy. The last thing you want to do is piss off that greatsword, power attack wielding fighter, since he'll swat you flat in less than a round if you give him a reason to.

And of course, if you can Palpatine it enough to get another party mate actually on your side, well. Yeah. Definitely do that. Just remember that as a magic user you want to avoid any front line conflict; if it's possible, if things go tits up, have a fall guy that *isn't* you.

 

[Ungenericteen]

You could offer to 'enchant' your party's gear and then destroy the gear

 

[alittlepepper]

You could offer to 'enchant' your party's gear and then destroy the gear

He'd have to have the requisite feats to do so or have some really impressive way of simulating it. Maybe Nystul's Magical Aura and a continual flame spell for a Flaming enchantment, but otherwise, just from a pure statistic way of looking at it, it'd be kind of hard to fake it.

Of course if he does, intentionally making a Cursed item (DM allowance requisite) could also be VERY useful.

 

[Mray3460]

Am I the only one thinking "What if his party members are on the Escapist reading this?"

OT: To be honest, I'd need to know more about the other characters and what their main plan is for stopping Karathanos before I could figure out something creative/fitting. I can't work to counter a plan I don't know/understand, made up by people/characters that I don't know/understand.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

But that isn't constructing an wellformed plan.
That is being a pure ass to the party which usually WILL get you kicked from games.

There is a diffrence in just wanting their blood and wanting an wellformulated plan which is what the Topic Maker wants.

I'll use this as my response...

Thanks

 

[danp164]

So let me get this straight the evil god "Insert Evil Gods Name Here" wants to destroy the world out of vengance for.... ok not going to in depth there. I understand your stance on remaining true and faithful to your God and all but seriously, this seems like a self defeating goal for and assumingly intelligent evil demi-god type creature. I mean hell on Earth I could understand but wiping it out leaves little scope for a future, whats a God without anything to beleive in it.

I mean its going to be hard convincing people to help you/bribe them, even the dimmest barbarian has to understand that whatever you pay him, s/he is going to be dead when they get the reward rendering it fairly redundant.

This could be me overanylising a situation, but the whole "Destroy the world thing" has always seemed to me like a rather dim scope for an alledgedly intelligent evil being...

 

[Aaron Wickman]

Honestly, I think asking the internet about ways for your fantasy character to be a jerk kills the game. If you want to betray them, by all means do it. My friend threw a knife at my hand while climbing up a building and tried to cut my pinkies off. Anyway, you should use your own wit in my opinion, because your character isn't going to inexplicably think of crazy ideas in the game. I consider this cheating, although I just think way too deeply into things. Bash me if you want, I may be wrong here.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

'Why?'

Ive never played dungeons and dragons unfortunately cos I cant find a group But the most important question in anyhting ever is 'why?'.

Why is your character betraying them? You say hes loyal to this lord, but pure bloody minded loyalty is boring.

What makes the end of the world a desireable outcome for your character? Does he sympathise with the vengence his master wants to wrek on the world because of something in his own past?

Work out his motivations and deduce his behaviour from them. So to follow my idea of sympathising with lord scarybaddie your character has been hurt and betrayed in the past. He understand how his master feels (or at least thinks he does) and low and behold your party have gone and made ANOTHER betrayal. Don't you want to make them know what its like?

Within the game mechanics is there some way to mislead the party into thinking that someone else is betraying them? Make that your goal, make them feel the pain you do.

That way when their demise is assured and the hero looks up at you and screams

"WHHHY?!"

you wont feel like a twat n go

"cos im evil, init."

Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of the word "summary". I made this thread to get creative ideas on sabotage in D&D, not to get critiqued on my backstory despite the fact that you know nothing about the character.

 

[Chipperz]

So you want to betray your group but not kill anyone, can you tell us that next time please. I assumed you where as big a asshole as me (I've killed our entire group before, luckily my friends got over it) If you want to hinder them on there quest but not kill them, why not convice one of your group to join you (that way your not alone) and run away in the night. Then for the rest of the game you can be the antagonist. Its what I've done and it worked well.

I figured that it would be obvious to anyone that plays D&D that I'm not the only person playing the damn game. Also, you're friends must have the patience of a saint.

Frankly, when I play D&D, if I ever thought that my character's existance was soley in my hands, I'd get so utterly bored I'd stop playing. Sure, other people are playing, but I'd hope you were playing with people mature enough to realise that you're in an "evil" game - evil characters kill each other, they dominate each other, they subjugate each other and they torture each other. The second you made the decision to betray the group, you were no longer part of the party, and any vestiges of loyalty to these characters your guy might have had is gone.

I honestly, without a shadow of trepidation, suggest your big "I'm a traitor!" reveal should be with a knife through your party's healer's heart. It was his fault for exposing his back to you in an Evil campaign. In fact, if you can pull it off, get a big, hulking frontline fighter good and mind-controlled and get him to do it Try to keep one alive (this does not mean they need all their limbs) for a nice ritual sacrifice to Karathanos.

Ooooh, what kind of level are you guys at? How about killing them and raising them as sentient undead with their own minds, but ultimately under your control? They get a decent power boost for their troubles, and the campaign starts down the route of you trying to summon Karathanos. I'd talk to your GM beforehand, but you guys could slowly become the (undying, naturally) leaders of an army of evil, bent on bringing Karathanos to destroy the world, and your enemies could become the armies of the world that have assembled to stop you.

These are all things that have happened in our group (our group has a strict "if you're going to be evil, be properly evil" policy), and once your mates get over the initial shock that their characters have died, the game WILL get more fun.

Lastly, some ideas for nice "betrayal" one-liners, because you need to be prepared for the big reveal;

(To the leader dude, as you kill him) - "I've always hated you..."
"We were together, joined by a common cause, but then you had to go and ruin it! You turned your backs on my master, left him, trapped, but I would not give up hope for my lord. Now, in his name, I bid you... DIE!"
"Oh, you know I've been sabotaging our 'valiant' efforts?? And I was having so much fun..."

Actually, just watch Gargoyles and He-Man. Gargoyles for the plans and He-Man for Skeletor's fantastic "evil" lines.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Honestly, I think asking the internet about ways for your fantasy character to be a jerk kills the game. If you want to betray them, by all means do it. My friend threw a knife at my hand while climbing up a building and tried to cut my pinkies off. Anyway, you should use your own wit in my opinion, because your character isn't going to inexplicably think of crazy ideas in the game. I consider this cheating, although I just think way too deeply into things. Bash me if you want, I may be wrong here.

Good lord, I was just asking for some ideas. Cheating would be if I was asking a third party that is well-informed of the campaign to totally govern my actions in step by step instructions on how I go about sabotaging my group mates with the best results. Hell, cheating would be just flat-out killing my friends characters like everybody has been screaming at me to do.

I'll be acting on my wit because these suggestions I've been getting will be different in the specific situations that I'll be put it. This is a brainstorming session, not a fucking cheat-sheet reading.