How Do I Have Consequences for Murderhoboism?

[Gizmogidget]

I am actually perfectly fine with murderhobos since most of my games are improv anyways, but I have issue with how to demonstrate that acting this way in just about every society is likely to not condone this behavior. See at level one if they murder random people, I can have the town guard come after them to demonstrate this.

But if Dave the Murderhobo 14th level Barbarian and his buddies come to town, ordinary guards ain't gonna cut it. However it feels cheap to have 20th level paladins appear out of the woodwork. So how should I demonstrate that doing crazy things can lead to consequences without creating ridiculous worlds in which a tiny village has 10th level fighter cops?

[Grim Portent]

Assuming the setting lacks level 20 town guards waiting in the wings, the simple thing to do is have the common folk be terrified of the PCs much like they would be a Dark Lord or Necromancer King that wandered into town.

People hide in cellars and attics, tell their children and spouses to go into other rooms and stay out of sight when the players walk into a room, exercise superstitious practices normally reserved for ghosts and demons but targeted at the players.

To the normal man someone who can kill a dragon, butcher an army and walk through a blazing fire unhindered like a 14th level Barbarian can is basically some kind of inhuman monster in a man's skin. If it has a reputation for butchery and savagery they're going to treat it as something to avoid, placate or ward off.

[Lord Raziere]

well if they're murderhobos, people being angry at them won't work- they will just see it as more free exp.

Instead, show how they won't get any fights from it, and nothing of value from their murderhobo endeavors.

People will only run in fear, cower in the corner or die too easily for combat to be anything noteworthy. they don't get any loot they can use, no magic items or amounts of money that is useful for PC level stuff (cp and sp). and that basically their legend of terror will be established, so that when they go looking for another village to do the same thing? they will find it empty of everything- life, valuables, food, because everyone has evacuated to get away from them while the kings mobilize their thousands of soldiers to eventually come for you all at once instead of in manageable tactical chunks of a few dozen, who employ scorched earth tactics by destroying anything the PC could possibly loot, knowing how adventurers work and what motivates them.

and basically the entire thing becomes a slow realization where nothing they do gets them things that they value, that everyone considers them monsters to keep well away from and that they can't dwell in civilization anymore, until a shining knight comes along and calls them bandits, or raiders. for that is what they have become in character.

[Winter_Wolf]

Are the player characters looking to be villains? Make the npcs treat them like they're monsters: they're openly afraid of the pcs, take pains to avoid them if possible like say crossing to the far side of the road or quickly detouring awand from the pcs' paths. The braver npcs might just flat refuse to deal with them at all. I know a few people in real life who'd take a beating rather than deal with people they dislike, and have actually taken the beating. Subtle discrimination like higher prices, lower quality goods and services, even "begging m'lord's pardon but were just fresh out of what you seek."

Maybe a bigger fish comes after the murder hobos because the frightened npcs pool their resources/beg salvation from someone powerful to save them.

Not really sure what else I could offer, I'm pretty comfortable with confrontation even when I suspect I'm going to get my arse kicked; I'm probably lucky I haven't been shot yet to be honest.

Edit: wow I guess I need to type a lot faster to get in before the ninjas.

[Regwon]

When they're level 14 throwing their weight around in Backwater #4, its unlikely that any of the inhabitants will be able to do anything. Even if you make something up, it will come across as really contrived. However, assuming that there are other adventurers in your world, the characters acting like bullies will eventually draw their notice. Your characters presumably have stuff that some other people would like, and defeating the local tyrants is an easy excuse to try and take it. If the characters are really behaving badly, they will get the attention of the Temple of the Good God, or the Wizard Organisation, or the Monarch, who may have the resources to deal with them. Otherwise, theyre probably powerful enough to do as they wish.

Remember, its not your job to punish your players due to the actions of their characters. You shouldnt think "They did this bad thing, and they need to pay.", but if there are laws that they are breaking, or if they are doing something that somebody In Your World finds reprehensible, then there should be mechanisms from your world to deal with threats like that. Usually it's 'Pay a bunch of adventurers to do it for you'.

[veti]

When the party comes to town, most people - won't "cross by on the far side of the road" or "look at them fearfully". They'll be gone. The party will walk into a ghost town, total population three flatulent goats who couldn't be moved quickly enough.

This will apply to all small towns and villages. Word of the maniacs' whereabouts will spread quickly, watchers will be set, and everyone is ready to light out to the hills/forest at a couple of minutes' notice.

When the party comes to a large town or city - then they run into the full military might of the local civilisation, whatever that might be. Not just the 20th level general, but also several 15th level officers, and literally hundreds of grunts to back them up. Depending on the local culture they may try to arrest or capture, but if that fails (or the party resists) they'll be fighting to kill. And they'll have had time to prepare, so break out your very best traps and tactics.

What with one thing and another, a shopping (or loot-selling) trip becomes quite tricky...

[Gizmogidget]

Thank you for all the replies

I like the idea of townsfolk avoiding them and what not and the whole the players get nothing for slaughtering a bunch of random villagers. Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

In response to the villagers pooling resources I am not sure that will work, because even the good guys are largely selfish too (i run a grim and gritty swords and sorcery world). But thanks for the suggestion.

Lord's suggestion was excellent, but I fear as stated above that their main thing is becoming famous. However since they only terrorize small backwater villages it doesn't make much sense that the king is going to send his army to save a village of less than 50 people.

[Lord Raziere]

Alternatively, you can use reverse psychology on them:

a noble comes by and says:
"Great job! you killed a bunch of lower class rabble, good riddance, as we nobles say. I can tell your a fine bunch of individuals that understand that such common, unwashed masses are completely expendable and extraneous. I'm a man who likes to hire bandits you see, and I was wondering if I could persuade you to pillage some of my rivals villages for me under the guise of plausible deniability so as to hurt his position, there is a lot of gold init for you. I do it all the time, heheheheh."

its possible that they think they're being special by doing this and going off the rails, when if they find out that what they're doing is just part of the status quo of A Song of Ice and Fire-esque medieval world then they might have second thoughts.

[oudeis]

There absolutely should be consequences for this sort of thing, but you have to have thought the matter through and prepared for it. This includes informing your players that the kingdom (or whatever your default national unit is) has laws, or at least an accepted way of doing things, and that a challenge to the established order of sufficient magnitude will result in a response of corresponding level and force from the people in charge.

In the Kingdom Size thread, it is suggested that centers of power be roughly a day's journey apart. So, allowing for travel time there and back and adding a day for logistics and organization, about 2-3 days after your players have had their fun they are going to be visited by the representatives of whatever power structure is in place. It could be an army of high enough level, abilities, and numbers to genuinely threaten the players, the Big Damn Heroes come to save the day, or just a squad of cold-eyed mercenaries recruited specifically to take down the PCs. Your party might think they are the specialest of special snowflakes but they should remember that snow always melts.

[Morty]

Even if the people in charge are selfish and don't care for the plight of the people under them, they'll mobilize a response for two reasons:

1) If the murderhobos destroy enough small villages and towns, it's going to become a significant dent in their income and influence.

2) There's no guarantee they don't come for them next. Or something more important than a backwater town. Even if you, the GM, know the PCs won't do it, the people in power don't.

[tyckspoon]

Thank you for all the replies

I like the idea of townsfolk avoiding them and what not and the whole the players get nothing for slaughtering a bunch of random villagers. Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

In response to the villagers pooling resources I am not sure that will work, because even the good guys are largely selfish too (i run a grim and gritty swords and sorcery world). But thanks for the suggestion.

So let them become famous. Eventually, they become the Bad Guys. Every wanna be do-gooder starts gunning for them. Every retired hero starts thinking about picking up the sword again, just for one last time.. because this isn't a random warlord or necromancer doing some nebulous Bad Things off on the other side of the planet. This is jerks making a mess in their homes. And then all the people who think they might be tough enough to take them also start showing up, not for altruistic reasons - but because your players are a huge source of xp and treasure for other people, and they've made themselves big enough outcasts that nobody really cares if somebody ends up killing them. So all the people who themselves want to be rich, powerful, and famous start trying to find them too.

It's possible this won't be perceived as 'punishments' for your players. It may in fact be the game they want to play. In that case.. cool. Your players are having fun. Roll with it.

[icefractal]

If the PCs were unknown before this, it will probably be several steps of escalation before people are taking them seriously. They kill some villagers, the rest flee and some of them go running to a larger town to report the threat.

Now the baron, or whatever, of the larger town probably think they're exaggeration. So he sends a small force of soldiers (a dozen or less, levels 2-5 or so) to put down the threat. The soldiers get slaughtered, probably. So now he calls on the king for help against the menace.

Again, the king might underestimate, and first send out a larger group of soldiers (a few dozen, with a few 5th-9th level knights leading them), which is also going to be insufficient. There might also be a delay, depending on what else is going on in the kingdom.

After the more serious group gets slaughtered, there are a few ways the kingdom could react:
1) Decide the PCs are too much trouble and ignore them unless they start wrecking villages on a major scale.
2) Send a larger amount of troops with elite support out to deal with them. Not necessarily anyone 20th level though, it depends on how powerful the kingdom is.
3) Make contact, attempt to gain the allegiance of the PCs, perhaps offering them noble titles in exchange for turning their destructive tendencies toward the kingdom's enemies.
4) Send assassins to kill the PCs.
5) Send spies to try and trick the PCs into attacking somewhere else.

If all these tactics fail, the kingdom's going to start getting desperate. Resorting to scorched earth tactics in an attempt to exhaust the PCs' resources, calling on allied kingdoms to help, hiring expensive mercenaries, conjuring demons or whatnot to go after them, etc. At this point, other power-groups would start taking notice too - someone who's smashing up a kingdom for the lolz is potentially a threat to everyone.

[Max_Killjoy]

If the PCs are level 14, then someone else is level 16.

Congrats to your PCs, they just became the villains that another adventuring group sets out to bring down.

[Grim Portent]

It's also possible brigands, bandits and other outlaws as well as monsters like ogres and goblins will start rallying to their banner and pledging service as part of a rampaging army that exists to overthrow the existing kingdom and burn everything down when they start fighting actual authorities like Barons and Counts.

Lot of people who respect and follow strength and would see this as a chance to ingratiate themselves with what they see as attempted usurpers who'll need loyal servants when they become rulers themselves.

Rough sequence of events I could see happening if the PCs get to the point of realizing they could go full usurper:

The common folk near the area they operate will become terrified and superstitious around them.

Then the local Baron will raise his forces of a hundred men or so and 2 or 3 knights to go and try and deal with the problem. This will likely fall as we're talking peasants with a leather cap and a simple spear plus a few low level actual soldiers.

When this fails the Baron, assuming they're not dead, sends a request for aid to their liege, likely a Count, who raises their forces and those of their other vassal Barons. Maybe they call in favours with other Nobles to get more forces. This is an army of a thousand or several thousand peasants with leather caps and spears, a few dozen knights and some actual full time soldiers. Still nothing really threatening. About this time those with no love for law or liege might decide to try and join the PCs, because they show signs of being strong enough to overthrow the realm if they want to, each successive victory will just attract more such people unless the PCs murder anyone who tries to join them.

When/if the Count's army fails and they ask their liege for help, the process repeats until you hit the King being asked for aid by one of his vassals who is at the top of the chain that started with the original Baron. Thing is that his army is still mostly peasants with little training or morale, and useless against the actual PCs, indeed they'd just make it harder for any actual threats to fight the PCs. Watching a dozen men get bisected with one attack or shamble back to life as undead is disconcerting even for a hardened warrior. If the King is a warrior king of some sort they might pose a threat on a personal level, but I generally think of kings as low level Aristocrats or Fighters. Skilled enough to fight a normal warrior, but mostly relying on good gear to beat normal men. A high level adventurer is basically an unstoppable monster by comparison.

If the King decides his forces have no way to win, they'll seek out something that has a chance. Try to bribe a dragon, bargain with demons, strike a pact with fey, offer the PCs land and wealth if they'll leave the realm alone, seek out powerful wizards or divine champions, so on and so forth. Or possibly just surrender to the PCs and try to come to terms that allow the realm to survive with some of King's power intact, like just giving them the land of the defeated nobility to rule as their own sovereign realm, at least until the King feels he can take it back by force.

[Mechalich]

But if Dave the Murderhobo 14th level Barbarian and his buddies come to town, ordinary guards ain't gonna cut it. However it feels cheap to have 20th level paladins appear out of the woodwork. So how should I demonstrate that doing crazy things can lead to consequences without creating ridiculous worlds in which a tiny village has 10th level fighter cops?

This is a more generalized D&D design flaw that has little to do with murderhoboism and everything to do with the overall power curve. At a certain point, leveled characters reach the point where they have overpowered reasonable civilization because level 1 characters are about as much threat as ants to them (meaning they only matter if you're will to construct a swarm-type 'mob' monster, and maybe not even then). Good adventurers can have this same problem when they can take on the entire undead army by themselves. This is why actually D&D worlds don't look anything like the Forgotten Realms and resolve into bizarre Tippyverse-analogues when you actually follow the power.

So if you're not willing to embrace that, you have to accept that there's going to be some level of ridiculousness. 10th level town guards is one solution. Equally arbitrary, but perhaps a bit more lore-friendly, is having the gods (or just some cabal of really powerful wizards) have a program in place that punishes anyone who destabilizes society too blatantly - meaning flattening whole towns, not just being evil. Dropping high-powered outsiders on such disruptive individuals (Inevitables and Rilmani are good for this sort of thing, lore wise) to get them to exercise some restraint is hopefully suitably enlightening.

[tensai_oni]

This isn't your party being murder hobos, this is playing with an evil party. The players are deliberately playing evil characters and are totally fine with that. And from the OP, it seems you are as well - good, you're all on the same page then.

If the players are powerful, have societies turn against them. Whole armies mobilize to take them down, and of course send high level adventurers against them, because fighting high level villains is what high level heroes do.

But here's the thing. Don't think of it in terms of consequences, as in players acting in some way "wrong" and having to be punished for it. Think of it in terms of game opportunities, adventure hooks and tricky situations the players need to get out of.

[Max_Killjoy]

This isn't your party being murder hobos, this is playing with an evil party. The players are deliberately playing evil characters and are totally fine with that. And from the OP, it seems you are as well - good, you're all on the same page then.

If the players are powerful, have societies turn against them. Whole armies mobilize to take them down, and of course send high level adventurers against them, because fighting high level villains is what high level heroes do.

But here's the thing. Don't think of it in terms of consequences, as in players acting in some way "wrong" and having to be punished for it. Think of it in terms of game opportunities, adventure hooks and tricky situations the players need to get out of.

Depends on if one is using "consequences" as colloquial slang for punishment, or if one is using "consequences" to mean "the natural result of the PCs' actions".

[Kelb_Panthera]

First, the bad news: in a standard D&D world, murderhoboism is a perfectly viable lifestyle, particularly when you get to mid-levels and higher. The vast majority of folks can't do anything about such characters and the reach of laws are only as long as their grasp, that is; not very. Unless they're being particularly egregious to the point their alignment is starting to sink, there's not much for society to do but put up with it as long as it does at least as much good as harm.

There is good news, however. There -are- both equally powerful and even more powerful characters out there in the wind and at least -some- of them are attached to powerful organizations while otheres are plenty mercenary enough that they won't care who they're taking down as long as they get paid. You can use this.

Say, for example, that your murderhobo party hits a town and torches the whole thing after an altercation with the guards (entirely by accident, of course ). It's not at all implausible that a caravan passing through should happen to have belonged to a powerful merchant-lord from a neighboring city. If his merchandise was damaged, he's not gonna be happy. In fact, he might be so irked as to send mercs to redress this act of social disregard.

Alternately, suppose the bar they turned inside-out belonged to a deacon of the local church of Cuthbert. Certainly he'll mention this incident to his parish priest, who, in turn, would express his concern over such lawless behavior to the home office. When they recieve word, it would, of course, be their duty to send out a justicar and his entourage to bring such brigands to heel and teach them the importance of The Law.

And, of course, there's always the old trope of someone they've wronged just happening to -be- a powerful adversary in his own right. You don't want to overuse it, of course, but there's no reason to just throw it away.

If they -are- dipping into evil then you can open the throttle up and actually send the odd questing paladin or cleric of heironeous or the like to ram Justice down their throats until they get the message. The trick here (since they're likely to see this as free XP if you handle it poorly) is to hound them with an -obviously- superior foe, nipping at their heals. They won't necessarily stop being evil but they might at least start being -smart- evil.

Most importantly though; the common consequence for murderhoboing in such a relatively savage world as these are is to be straight-up ganked. You -have- to be willing to PK or even TPK them to have any chance at all of getting the idea across.




Final note: I'm presuming you're aiming for something more realistic than what you're currently dealing with but otherwise having a good time in spite of it. If their murderhoboing is actually causing you any distress then you need to skip -all- of this and just talk to them. Clashing expectations between players and DMs' can only drain the life out of a campaign. Get on the same page, ASAP.

[sleepy hedgehog]

One other consequence, albeit minor is that quests they get won't be for around here.
"There's a dragon down south, a few weeks away, in the middle of an enemy country, why don't you go over there, and kill it, don't bother coming back"
The PC's could literally play ping pong between a few rival nations, as neither side wants them there.

[Mai]

Assuming this isn't killing your fun and ruining the mood for you, and your aim is to merely give them realistic IC repercussions to IC deeds, here is my suggestion. I am new to DMing, still working up to my first campaign. So feel free to ignore a newbie's input.

Inform them out of character that this may effect their characters alignment. Have a small talk and just say "hey... Your performing a lot of evil deeds keep this up and your character's alignments will shift." If we are talking about justifiable murder... Which I doubt based on what you said, then... No real need. Either way, I'd follow all the above's advice. Slowly ramp up the tension and fear in the common man. Even if they were justifiable, Joe the butcher and Jane the farmer don't know that. (Probably)

If they ignore your warning, tweak their alignments. Rando-murdering people sounds pretty chaotic evil if you ask me. And if any of them have classes that are alignment restricted.. Well they are going to loose some real power. Random good diety-sn't going to be likely to keep giving divine powers and whatnot to murderers. So maintaining thier powers may mean that as they slowly descend into evil thief views became more similar to -random evil diety- and they now worship him/her/them/etc (It sounds like this has beengoingon for a while, so clearly you could say if they keep it up after the warning that they've been slipping this whole time.)

At which point you now have a campaign against the questing paladins and such. Doing this is fair. You aren't punishing them, you are merely enforcing the laws of your world. They knew that going in, and if not, certainly did after your warning.

[ShaneMRoth]

Remember that, as the DM, you are entitled to enjoy the game, too.

One of the simplest approaches is to tell the players, Out Of Character, that they are making it hard for you to enjoy the game and could they please take a pause for the cause? If their goal is to terrify or intimidate the village, tell them that the village is duly terrified and they have achieved their stated goal, and now can we please get on with something more adventure-y?

I’m assuming that you are providing enough interesting things for the players to do. I am also assuming that you are respecting the players’ agency by allowing them to set their own timetable for when they take on more traditional encounters.

When I was running my campaign, I didn’t award XP for murderhobo behavior. If the players were in an ostensibly safe setting (like the Village of Hommlet or the Free City of Greyhawk) my rule was that the players would be awarded no XP for killing people in those settings, until I said explicitly otherwise.

When you say your players don’t care about XP or gold, I believe you, but... I don’t believe your players. They care about XP. Some players don’t care much about gold, but all players care about XP.

If your players know that killing in a safe setting is costing them XP, that fact will tend to inform their actions in-game. If you award even a single experience point for killing people in a town, then every villager and town guard becomes an Experience Point Pinata and the players can’t be faulted for treating them as such.

Sometimes, a lack of reward can serve as a consequence.

[Pugwampy]

There is good news, however. There -are- both equally powerful and even more powerful characters out there in the wind and at least -some- of them are attached to powerful organizations while otheres are plenty mercenary enough that they won't care who they're taking down as long as they get paid. You can use this.

You can put on a plastic smile and let them have their fun of raping and pillaging . Next session bring out adventurers of their level or even higher to chase em down because they are evil and not because of sweet XP and magic loot .

They want to be bandits and monsters thats fine . I will bring out a party to kill em and laugh when they want someone to raise them .

Hub towns give lots of support to heroes . Temples taverns and job opportunities.

Honesty I would just stop the game and give em the finger because the path of evil is way less fun for DM or players . You just wasting time and beating a dying horse .

I dont spend hours thinking up NPC,s characters and unique hub towns so players can kill em as they like . I get hurt and cry on the inside .

Dm is the evil guy and monster . Players are the Heroes . That should be clear from the start . If someone has to be evil then make him DM .

[Efrate]

No offense Pugwampy, but evil characters and the evil campaign is perfectly viable and great fun for all. You just treat it as such. Not your cup of tea but a lot of people just wanna be the badguy. That is fine, just play the evil game them. You have you armys of paladins, clerics and celestials, you can just change windowdressing.

So they want to be the most respected scariest thing in the world? Well they need the mcguffin of smiting the evil good guys and gods, held in the profane sacred temple of the demon angel army of evilness goodness. They must overcome the legion of eryines astral devas and defeat kill the high ranking marilith planatar so they can accomplish their goal. Along the way they get help from the elvan goblin army on the layout of the place and get a favor from the local favored soul dread necromancer aasimar tiefling.

A lot of monsters are neutral or easily usable in either adventure, and just go to angels instead of demons to get a variety of encounters.

In terms of consequence, well D&D is not a system to generally make those relevant past maybe level 10. You are just stronger than most the world. The tippyverse is the logical result of a the setting, anything less PCs break without trying past a certain out.

They murder and pillage, a continent, a world,a plane, then heaven. Good for them. They attract the notice of dieties on both sides and can make for an epic struggle in the end for good or evil to rule all, and honestly, that is doable if they were mr. goody twoshoes as well.

Eventually they will get their army of horrible creatures following them to the slaughter of all that is nice and good, and then they face the High Cleric of Pelor or whathaveyou in a pitched battle for the fate of existence.

OR, they kill everything, good and bad, no allies anywhere, and they try to rule over everything both good and evil and kill everything thats not them. An empire of (un)dead is still an empire, and heck corpses don't bug you with all this chatter about stop murdering my children in front of me and force-feeding me their bodies and souls, stop razing my orphanage, and so on. Heck there is a lot of loot in the world, so what if you cannot buy it, go kill who has it. That is a whole line of quests right there. If its the lichlord of the dark forest of the high paladin of the gateway to Celestia, someone has what you need. Find it, kill them, take there stuff, and keep going.

Just remember undead do not know fear, so you need to leave a few people alive. Likely in some sort of cages where you can drop them into the slavering hordes if you feel the whim.

[Darth Ultron]

Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

The thing about fear is you need to be careful not to go to far, because if you do that leads to despair. And that is people just shutting down and doing nothing (''so what? kill me..kill the whole town...kill eveyone in every town...it does not matter..")

Even more so in small towns, if some one goes there is often no replacement. Kill Bok the taverkeeper, then the tavern closes.

However since they only terrorize small backwater villages it doesn't make much sense that the king is going to send his army to save a village of less than 50 people.

Well...it might make sense for the king to have a couple rangers that do just that sort of thing. you know like 16th level rangers.

You do also have the gods, and they can send a celestial or a cleric to help the people.

[Professor Chimp]

Maybe this idea is too complex to implement, but how long would a region be able to economically sustain a group of murderhobos even if they can stave off repercussions from the authorities? How long can shops stay in business when they get picked clean and their employees murdered every week? Who they do go belly up, would anyone want to replace them? How long before people start moving away because the village, town or even entire region is undergoing total economic collapse?

So yeah, congrats, the players have effectively destroyed the place through their actions. Now what? Where are they going to get their stuff from now? Move to another place and start over? That's not sustainable either, provided they don't run afoul of a bigger fish sooner or later.

[Bogwoppit]

If they want people to be afraid, then let them. Let them run riot over the setting - for a while.

The population starts abandoning the region. Refugees flee. Economies collapse. There's no food or drink to be had. Nasty consequences that it sounds like they'll enjoy.
The setting becomes a depopulated crap-sack world, with suicidal fanatical resistance fighters, prepared to lay down their lives to inconvenience the party - burning down buildings rather than letting the party use them, killing the mounts of the party, desperately trying to steal the party's magic items.

Meanwhile, the powers of the rest of the world will be bending their wills against the party, appealing to higher powers, summoning outsiders - whatever is appropriate for your setting.
Without wanting to fall foul of the forum rules on modern politics - think about the global reaction to international terrorism. Look at how opponents of such terrorism apply massive resources to hunting and destroying terrorists. Imagine how that level of commitment would apply in your game setting. Can we summon angels? Can we divine where the party are? What spies can we use on the ground? etc, etc.

Lots of players will enjoy being hunted, escaping, outwitting the powers of authority.

[Eldan]

In many worlds, at level 14, your PCs are up there among the world players, if not in politics, then in raw personal power.

The standard murder hobo avoidance is for low-level adventurers, in my book. At this level, your players, if they really try, can devastate landscapes, not villages. If your players want to be feared, heck, run with it. Give them a reputation, a proper one. Have cities offer them tribute to just leave. Have a fiery novice priest rant at them and sprinkle holy water over their tracks. Have lowly evil creatures come to them, offering to be henchmen. Goblins, kobolds, the typical minion races. If they are lawful, have an agent of Bel approach them, offering them a generalship in one of the proxy wars fought on the mortal plane between infernal and abyssal powers.

If they go around challenging backwaters, challenge them. They are trying to be big fish in a small pond, when they could be bigger fish in the ocean. Have them meet a ravaging horde of nomads who laugh at them for thinking so small. Or a succubus tempter, whispering to them about how much better they could be at this.

[Mai]

In many worlds, at level 14, your PCs are up there among the world players, if not in politics, then in raw personal power.

The standard murder hobo avoidance is for low-level adventurers, in my book. At this level, your players, if they really try, can devastate landscapes, not villages. If your players want to be feared, heck, run with it. Give them a reputation, a proper one. Have cities offer them tribute to just leave. Have a fiery novice priest rant at them and sprinkle holy water over their tracks. Have lowly evil creatures come to them, offering to be henchmen. Goblins, kobolds, the typical minion races. If they are lawful, have an agent of Bel approach them, offering them a generalship in one of the proxy wars fought on the mortal plane between infernal and abyssal powers.

If they go around challenging backwaters, challenge them. They are trying to be big fish in a small pond, when they could be bigger fish in the ocean. Have them meet a ravaging horde of nomads who laugh at them for thinking so small. Or a succubus tempter, whispering to them about how much better they could be at this.

Yes! All of this!

[Logosloki]

Another alternative, is that the region powers just hire them. Murderhobos need logistics and they want loot/power. Bring them in, offer them some guidance to their trail of tears and destruction by having them clear out high level threats inside your go getting princeling/kingthing's territory whilst using them to creatively expand into new frontiers. Whether those new frontiers are being run by pesky [not us] or other regional powers is minutia that they don't need to know (keep a score on it). Use them as both a propaganda piece of pride and fear! Have a few corrupt barons and such who your adventurers can either align with (usurping those who pay you less is good if you can get away with it) or disrupt (a couple of barons down and you have your party some nice digs and a small territory (probably at the back end of the kingdom but beggars can't be choosers)).

The other thing you may need to do is to find out why the party has gone a murderhoboing. Is it because they want to play team evil? Do they find the pacing of the campaign lacking? Is the setting a bit on the low side for them? Are they bored of their characters and want a reroll or a retrain? Like I typed in the first paragraph your players might just need some guidance. Sit down as a group and find out what people want from a game session. Do they want more regional goings ons? They just want some interesting crawls? Maybe they want a place to call their own, or they want to have a campaign that goes towards something more concrete than lofty goals. Plenty of reasons to go a hoboing.

[Pugwampy]

No offense Pugwampy, but evil characters and the evil campaign is perfectly viable and great fun for all. You just treat it as such. Not your cup of tea but a lot of people just wanna be the badguy.

I dont like heroes switching sides and then forcing other players to do so because of all for one and one for all . They try to steal something but get caught , then they try to kill the witnesses ? Uncool dude .

Pick a side at the start of the campaign not because you are bored or want some fun in the middle of it or think i am going too easy .