Advisor of the Faithful

The priest provides guidance to the flock. Followers of the temple come to him for advice, and he's supposed to give it.

That advice can't be correct all the time, especially when the faithful come to him with no-win situations. When it goes wrong, the priest will probably feel guilty. When it goes disastrously wrong, and the injured party comes to the priest for help, the priest will probably be willing (if not anxious) to clean the situation up.

As an example of this hook, let's say a doting father comes to the priest with this story: His son has come to him and asked for money so that he can buy weapons and armor. His son has heard of a bandit encampment where there is much treasure to be found. The son is sure that with the right weapons and armor and a little luck he can sneak into the camp when most of the bandits are gone, defeat the guards, and make off with the treasure. The father doesn't know where the encampment is; his son won't tell him. The son is a good fighter and knows what he's talking about; on the other hand, he is youthful and a bit overconfident. The father asks "Should I give my son the money for this equipment?"

If the priest says Yes, the father does so. The son tries the raid but is captured after killing several bandits. The bandits send back his bloody, broken sword from their mystery encampment, with a ransom demand which the father (and even the PCs) cannot match.

If the priest says No, the father follows his advice. The son tries it anyway, and is captured because he was under-equipped; no bandits died. Again, the son is ransomed beyond the father's means.

If the priest says "Maybe, but my friends and I would like to get in on it," the father will take him to talk to the son. The son will sound agreeable to the proposition, but will sneak off at first opportunity. He doesn't want anyone else horning in on his adventure. And because he had to charge off prematurely, he doesn't know enough about the bandit encampment and is caught up in snares set around its perimeter. Here, again, he's captured and ransomed.

In either of these three cases, the father comes back to the priest to say, in effect, "Your lousy advice got my son captured, and I can't ransom him! Please save him!" Which the priest will be inclined to do . . . and he'll probably want to have his friends, the other PCs, along with him.

Incidentally, we don't recommend that you face your PCs with no-win situations such as the one above very often. It wouldn't be fair to do this time and time again; the players would (correctly) assume that they could never do anything right unless the DM arbitrarily wanted them to.

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