Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 193 - The Devil Is In The Details

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

Immortal creatures will sometimes make deals with mortals for power and you can sometimes include these situations in your game.  Warlocks have this mechanic built into the class but should you even include the good and bad of these contracts in your game?  In this episode I talk about the different types of beings who will deal with mortals, examples of why they would and tips for your campaign. #dmtips #pathfinder2e #dnd #dnd5e #devils #fey Resources: 3 Line NPCs https://www.roleplayingtips.com/rptn/the-3-line-npc-method-how-to-create-story-full-npcs-fast/   Phistophilus:  https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=112   https://halflinghobbies.com/making-deals-with-devils-in-dd-5e/   https://www.reddit.com/r/DescentintoAvernus/comments/hjfrkf/devil_contract_ideas/

This week on the Taking 20 Podcast. The warlock made a deal for power that required one of his closest friends some point in the future to give up what they desire most. And they made that deal in a heartbeat because that's future warlock's problem. The devil or diva or great old one from beyond the veil has come to collect. And what does it want? Whatever the cleric holds most dear. What does it want? Whatever the cleric holds most dear. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 193,

The Devil is in the Details, all about bargains with immortals. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Space. Did you know people who start on Earth but wind up in space usually aren't hungry? After all, they just had a big launch. Do you have a topic idea for me? Do you think you might have a topic idea? Do you think it might be just an absolute disaster if we covered it as a topic? I'd love to hear all three.

Please send it to me at feedback at taking20podcast.com, and maybe we can slot it into a future episode. A huge thank you to Teddy Hayward for donating to keep the podcast alive. You are very generous and I greatly appreciate your donation to help offset costs of keeping the podcast going. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please head over to ko-fi.com slash taking 20 podcasts to make a one-time donation. It's also time to announce the details of the contest that we're going to have for episode 200. This time, I'd like you to provide me with three-bullet NPCs. What's a three-bullet NPC, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked.

I mentioned them in episode 104, but that was almost 100 episodes ago. So let's refresh your memory. A three-bullet NPC contains the following information. A goal or purpose, a memorable feature, and something they could do for or to the PCs. That's all you need for a quick multi-dimensional NPC on the fly. So send me NPCs with that information in three bullets. Here's an example. Hermina is a wayfish thin rat exterminator with thin auburn hair and a large nose who wants to get the lucrative exterminator contract for the local government. She's magnanimous with everyone except the Dunmore family of gnomes who swindled her out of her heirloom locket just this past spring. She would pay handsomely to anyone who could return it undamaged. Just like that. Three sentences or bullets, you have a name, appearance,

what they do, what they're like, and a way that you can inject them into your campaign. It's that simple. For this contest, I'll say you can enter up to, let's say, 10 times if you send me 10 NPCs. say you can enter up to, let's say, 10 times if you send me 10 NPCs. Send those to contest at taking20podcast.com. You could even send all 10 in a single email if you'd like. Once the contest is over, I plan on sharing all of the three-line NPCs that you send in with the world, publishing them on the website, taking20podcast.com. Because when we share information with each other, that's how we all get better behind the screen a winner will be drawn at random from all entries now you may be asking yourself self why would i want to do this because my friend brenton galbraith 3d crafts and curios

is making a 3d printed mug available to the winner he showed me the 3d print and these mugs look amazing you're going to want one. I'm going to put pictures and information up on social media. And you know what? While we're at it, if you follow 3D Crafts and Curios on Instagram, that'll get you five more chances to win the contest. That means you could get up to 15 chances to win if you send 10 NPCs in and follow 3D Crafts and Curios on Instagram. If my math is right, episode 200 will air on November 12th, so please get all entries in and follow 3DCrafts and Curios on Instagram by, say, Sunday, November 5th. I cannot wait to read your entries. Now, on to the episode.

Making deals with powerful beings is as old as literature. Off the top of my head, you have Hades making a deal with Heracles, Cassandra with Apollo, Spawn with Malbolgia, the Devil and Daniel Webster, mortals with Rumpelstiltskin, Stannis Baratheon, and whatever the hell the Red Lady was. Didn't her name begin with an M? Something? Melisandre? Something like that? Anyway, sailors with Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean, because... didn't her name begin with an M? Something? Melisandre? Something like that? Anyway, sailors with Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean, mortals selling their souls to the devil or that deity or for whatever reason, and in some cases, a literal Faustian bargain.

These powerful beings making deals with mortals is common. Movies, books, plays, and what have you, but what about tabletop RPGs? You bet these kind of deals are in your RPG and something that you can include if you so choose. In this episode, I'm going to talk about deals with devils, deals warlocks make for their powers, deals with good entities like angels, diva, and other less malevolent creatures. For ease of reference, I'm going to refer to the character or NPC side of the deal as the mortal, and the being granting the powers or requests as the immortal. I know these may not fit exactly, but I'm using them for a common set of terms regardless of the kind of deal that's made. These deals, by the way, could be a great part of a character's backstory, or

they could even be part of the game itself, and handling these two situations is a little different. If the deal between the mortal and the immortal was part of a mortal's backstory, then I have good news and I have bad news for you, my friends. The good news for my beloved DMs out there is that you have tremendous flexibility with how much this deal will affect your game. The bad news is, and honestly, it's not really that bad, is that the player should have significant say into how much this will affect the game.

You'll need to work with the player to determine the impact and frequency of this deal's influence on your game. For example, you may decide the deal does not affect the game at all. The deal was made before the actual adventuring part of their life started, and the negative consequences of the deal, if any, won't be visited on the character until after the campaign ends. There's nothing wrong with this at all. This is very common, by the way, for warlocks in 5e.

The immortal patron does not inflict the terms of the deal on the mortal recipient of the power during adventuring. It may be when the adventure ends, the being whisks the now level 12 warlock off to some demiplane to fight in the blood war between demons and devils. See episode 79 for much more about that. The character was a warlock with all kinds of warlocky powers, and it doesn't matter two craps where they got the power from and what they gave up to get them. In this case, the bargain for power is part of the character's interesting backstory, and it stays there. It doesn't matter that they gave up their firstborn, their soul, the ability to cast evocation spells, or whatever it was to gain this power. They did it. They made the deal, and the character can reveal it in roleplay if they so choose.

End of campaign influence, and that makes a DM's job pretty easy. However, if you want the bargain between the mortal and the immortal to affect the campaign at least a little, then maybe the immortal is going to show up later to collect an item of power that the creature possesses, or, and this would be interesting, it shows up not to collect the warlock's prized possession, but the cleric's. The warlock made a deal for power that required one of his closest friends some point in the future to give up what they desire most. And they made that deal in a heartbeat because that's future warlock's problem. Well, the devil or diva or great old one from beyond the veil has come to collect.

And what does it want? Whatever the cleric holds most dear. A relative, a powerful magic item, all of their top-level spell slots, or even the ability to channel divine power at all. Now, both the warlock and the cleric have to determine what's going to happen next. Does the warlock sacrifice the powerful abilities of the Cleric to maintain what they gained? Or do they accept the terms of breaking the contract, which are generally very dire? And does the Cleric give up such power willingly?

Or do they even have a chance to refuse? Needless to say, I wouldn't spring this on the other characters. I would require the player, if they wanted this to influence the game, to reveal that bargain as part of their backstory and let the party prepare for how they're going to deal with it if they come to collect. If the party isn't interested in that kind of adventure

or being distracted solving a character backstory quest, then you'll either need to rethink how you did the bargain or talk to the character about changing it so it doesn't affect the game at all. It's always interesting to me when mortals sign deals where the terms aren't clearly defined. I mean, think about what you're dealing with. Creatures of immortal power. This can always set up for an inevitable twist that comes down the line. Now then, you, my intelligent listener, may be asking why anyone would ever sign a contract where the payment terms were unknown. And if you're asking that, then you've never been that desperate.

And maybe the character was at some point in the past. They were wronged. They panicked. They decided they would do anything to save their loved one, regardless of the cost. Maybe they were willing to set themselves on fire, figuratively or literally, to make sure someone suffers for a real or perceived slight against them. They didn't care. That was tomorrow's problem. They want what they wanted today. Another way a bargain can minimally affect the campaign

is for the immortal to show up and demand the mortal fulfill a quest. They gave the mortal some power, and at some point they said they'd come to collect, and that time is now. The mortal got what they wanted, so now, hey you mortal and your friends, go get this thing. Go kill that thing. Go to this place and wait for something to happen like a rift in time and make it right or make it very wrong. This is a great way to bring character backstory to the forefront of the campaign for a short time. If you do want to go this route, I would make every attempt and pluck every creative nerve that I have in my body to try to tie the quest to the overall campaign somehow,

even if it's just tangentially. Come to find out the rift of time, for example, is what caused the fighter, and other characters, spouse to leave them for whatever reason, and by solving this problem, maybe it goes a long way towards fulfilling the fighter's reason for adventuring as well. Or by making sure that the cult of the drunken snake doesn't have the, I don't know, virility cube, runes of Divinity, the Golden Grimoire, the Immortal lets the party use that item until the campaign ends and then comes to collect it again.

Or maybe killing the Dark Dwarf Malefactor weakens the big bad and helps the party as well. Finally, suppose you want the Immortal making the bargain to have a substantial effect on the campaign as a whole. In that case, I'd have the immortal regularly make appearances to the mortal, directing them to do certain things

as part of the bargain. I generally only have this much interference if the characters will eventually get the mortal out of the contract as part of the adventure, but you don't have to. This can always be a thorn in the party's side because they always have to go chasing off this MacGuffin or taking care of this problem. Alrighty, let's talk about how the identity of the immortal dramatically affects the type and quality of bargain that gets made. The most common immortal that's going to enter into these types of bonds is a devil. Devils are the ultimate example of detail-oriented creatures. They are lawful evil to the extreme.

These contracts can be made extremely wordy, extremely lengthy. And not only will they do that, they will interpret it in such a way that gives the devil the most out of the deal and the greatest amount of advantage over the mortal. Remember, devils are organized to the extreme and have millennia of experience writing these contracts. As a matter of fact, both 5e and Pathfinder 2e have creatures dedicated to writing these contracts called, and I'm going to mispronounce this, Philostephus. I'm going to call him Steve. Steves are contract devils who are masters of legal lore and careful writing. If a target is desirable enough, a Steve can offer contracts that carefully manipulate the price to

drive the signatory toward forces of law and evil, and therefore, ultimately, they'll wind up in hell anyway. It's not uncommon when discussing terms of contracts written by devils to hear something from the devil like, Well, technically, according to Section 3, Paragraph G, Subparagraph 1 and Sentence 2, you are required to inflict pain on any worshipper, follower, believer, adjudicant, acolyte, retainer, servant, or disciple of Sarenrae, not just clerics.

If you didn't want to have to kill a building full of her worshippers, you shouldn't have come to a major city where she's worshipped. Here's a necklace of fireballs. Go have fun. I'll watch and laugh from across the street. Devils will make these deals, and they will work hard in the contract to make their obligations simple or low cost to the devil, and if possible, give the devil the ability to weasel out of them while making the clauses the opposite for the mortal, almost impossible to get out of. They will sometimes include escalation clauses that gives the mortal even more power at a higher and higher cost.

Devils take great delight in corrupting mortals, especially powerful ones like PCs. They don't go from no requirements to punting babies off a cliff. That's not the way they work. They're patient. And they will slowly try to turn the morals of the mortal to something more lawful, more evil, thereby attempting to corrupt the person's soul

so they can collect it when they expire. Ultimately, devils desire power, and they can get that by increasing their own power, better serving their archdevil lord, diminishing the power of a rival, or collecting souls. They are eternal, and they are patient, willing to wait years to collect on a debt owed to them, in a time and place that best serves them. Very occasionally, they will create contracts for their own amusement or fun, but those generally should be pretty rare. Usually, they're created for a purpose. Remember, they're good at this, with a tremendous library of past contracts to draw on.

Speaking of which, when a contract is signed with the devil, usually a copy is left with the mortal. Congratulations, feel free to read this at your later convenience. And a separate, perfect copy of the contract is kept in a vault in hell. Where in hell? Depends on your game system. The good news is, destroying both copies of a contract renders it null and void. Destroying the copy in the mortal's hands may be really easy, but you can't just stroll into Hell's Vault to burn every copy they have there. First off, it's in Hell. There's not a magical shuttle that shows up every ten minutes. Thank you for riding the Infernal Express.

Next stop, the Brimstone Pits, the Bleeding Citadel, Impalement Alley, and the Contract Vault of Hell. Please mind the gap and do your best to ignore the incessant heat and screaming. You could also get out of this contract by having all parties agree to release the opposite party from the terms of the contract. Needless to say, very rare for devils to do this willingly.

Like drug dealers, devils may start out with a small amount of power for a very small cost to the mortal. Slowly and gradually, they'll get the mortal hooked on what the devil can provide, and then hit them with the high price of doing business when the mortal is hopelessly dependent on the devil's help and way over their head. For example, somebody makes a deal with a devil to become a manager where they work. They're hopelessly out of their depth as a manager and realize they need more help, so they make a little bit worse of a deal. The devil ensures they're promoted again, and they become out of their depth again. Lather, rinse, repeat until they're bargaining their soul

just to keep their head afloat at their job. The devil won't seem malicious doing this. They'll frame it as protecting their investment. If you need me, you can always reach out to me again. Let's leave devils for a bit and let's talk about the Fae. They are another group that loves to do deals. I talked a lot about the Fae in episode 148, the Seelie and Unseelie Fae. I'll include a link in the resources, and if you're watching on YouTube,

there's going to be a little card in the corner that'll take you to that episode if you want to. The Fae, in a lot of ways, are the opposite of devils. Fae bargains tend to be verbal, which gives them leeway for creative interpretation. Devils write contracts down to exploit terms of the contract. The Fae refrain from writing them down to do the same thing. That being said, they will remember the wording of the promise and will do what they can to make sure they aren't brought before a more powerful Fae for reneging on the deal. Like devils, they want to give you what you ask for, even though it might not be exactly what you wanted. While devils can be patient and seem to give up a lot, they know they'll win the deal in the end. In contrast, Fae need to feel like they win the

trade in their eyes right from the jump, sometimes by creative interpretation of the terms immediately or at a later date. In a trade, immortal Fae tend to assign value to things that they ask for depending on what you think the value of the thing is. They have no use for your voice, your shadow, but you value those things, so they'll ask for them in exchange for whatever you're asking for. Fae are whimsical and capricious, and what they want seem weird and capricious as well. Fae live in the Fae Wild, or the Prime Material Plane, where they experience nature and regular seasons in a timeless fashion. One of the reasons they like memories is that they enjoy experiences involving strong emotions. Memories of the first time you held your firstborn, first kiss, the moment a barbarian loses control for the first

time. They love making deals for those moments. It means that the mortal loses these moments forever, and if that means they eventually become a dull, emotionless husk. That's not the phase problem. The mortal entered the deal willingly. A third group that likes to make contracts are Great Old Ones. These could be the ones from the Cthulhu mythos, but both 5e and Pathfinder 2e have other Great Old One gods that are seemingly beyond comprehension. They're alien intelligences that have no concern about petty things like morality, right and wrong, or the greater good.

These things just simply aren't relevant to them. From the mortals' perspectives, they tend to appear to be straightforwardly evil sometimes. Not all alien intelligences have to be evil, but most of them are focused on deception, domination, and fear if you look at the warlock patron rules. Great old ones are, for lack of a better term, maddening. Some of them will drive mortals insane just knowing they exist. There are entire adventure paths and modules built around cults to these unknowable entities. In many pantheons, the Great Old Ones are sealed behind some door or veil that keeps them from invading the mortal realms and conquering them. They were sealed off by fate, the gods, the master adjudicator, or whatever power you'd like

in your world. The reason I mention this is because one of the things you have to ask in regard to these deals is, why would the Great Old Ones want to make a bargain with a lowly mortal? Sometimes even more so than fae or devils, the power of these great old ones is so far beyond what mortals could even influence, it'd be like us negotiating with a fruit fly for some reason. What can that fruit fly do for us that we can't already do? The most common thing, the most common answer to this, the great old one wants to spread the knowledge of and maybe worship of them throughout the mortal realms. If you play them like this, they become little more than gods under a different name, and there's no problem running them this way. But maybe people driven insane by the knowledge

of their existence or their worship powers the Great Old One, strengthens them, and if they get enough, then maybe they could pierce the veil and appear impossibly large, taking up the entire horizon, screeching their song to the hapless mortals of your world, who have no choice but to screech the song in response, chattering endlessly that Cthulhu Fthagan. What follows is a spoiler alert for a fairly mediocre Netflix movie called Bird Box. It was five years ago at this point, but if you don't want that show spoiled, please skip ahead about 45 seconds. In Bird Box, the world is filled with these entities that drive people to commit suicide when people see them. People who are already mentally ill

see these creatures as beautiful and want others to see them as well. No explanation is given as to why, but you can use people who want to see the creatures as a possible template for those who would embrace the worship of these great old ones and their maddening effects. Welcome back to those who didn't want Bird Box spoiled. Just so you don't feel like you missed out anything, in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, I think the spoiler is that the whale represents nature and will kill the shit out of you. If you think you need to be desperate by making a deal with the devil, then that is doubly, quadruply, a hundred times as true for great old ones. At least with infernal contracts, the mortal generally keeps their wits about them. With great old ones, no guarantees. You might go

from being a respected member of society to bathing in a combination of yak milk and lamb blood because Uvash whispered to you that that's a good idea. The final group I'm going to mention are the good immortals that will occasionally make such bargains. The major difference between deals with good immortals compared to others is that good immortals tend to be very upfront about the cost and benefits of any deal made with them. They're not looking for a gotcha, ha ha, moment down the road. They aren't hoping the mortal regrets their decision at some point in the future. They're cognizant of the repercussions the mortal will feel when making such a deal

and are generally open and honest about those. A typical example of deals made that may influence your campaign would be between the warlock and their patron. The patron can be demons, devils, fae, great old ones, worse things, way worse things, and way, way, way worse things. One of the things you have to ask if you're actually going to roleplay that interaction is what does the patron want from the mortal? What is the clear goal that the patron is trying to accomplish? What is the clear goal that the patron is trying to accomplish? Maybe, and the thing I always lean on as my default answer,

is that the characters are a power investment. They give the character this power, very little at the beginning, and the PC grows in power over time to be harvested by the great immortal at the character's death. Talk to the players about the deal their character made, and what what they gave up and what they got as part of that deal. So let's ask, why would you even want to include these types of contracts in your game? Well, number one, it indicates there are powerful entities present in your game world and there are conflicts taking place in the other realms that bleed over to the prime material plane. These types of deals and these types of contracts gives more weight to those who would choose to play a warlock or make such deals. It generally requires them to make this contract with an

immortal being and possibly see and experience the potential repercussions from them. Contracts with immortals add drama and a sort of Damocles feeling to your campaign, so the party can always feel like there is something weighing over their head until they can possibly get out of it. The other thing I would say is don't have every devil demand the mortal soul from the jump unless it makes sense for the deal they're wanting to make. Let's go to the opposite side. Why would you not want to include these contracts? It makes things more complicated. Number one, it can also be inconvenient to the character for having to pay the cost that they agreed to when they got the power. And then finally, these types of things could be annoying to your players, so make sure

your players want to play in that type of game. Finally, consider the properties of the immortal when it comes to these deals and the contracts that they would make with a mortal being. Generally, the deal needs to further the ends of the immortal in some way. Other thing I would recommend is don't double cross every deal immediately. If everyone gets double crossed immediately, then people are going to stop making deals with devils or great old ones or fey. More than likely, they'll give the mortal exactly what they asked for and then possibly come to collect at a later date. Most importantly, decide how much you want this to influence your game, work with your players ahead of time, and make sure everybody's on board for that type of game, and I'd bet you and your players would have fun doing it.

a game, and I'd bet you and your players would have fun doing it. Do you like this podcast? If so, please consider liking it and rating it wherever you happen to find it. Tune in next week when I'm going to have a player-focused episode and give you an almost foolproof step-by-step guide to creating a new character. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Space. Some parts of Space, very hard to explain. I mean, they're just so nebulous. This has been episode 193, all about the devil being in the details. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023.

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