Reddit reviews The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

Every time I see a discussion about professional executioners, I have to throw in a link to this fascinating book I read a few years back on the famous executioner of Nuremberg....

https://www.amazon.com/Faithful-Executioner-Turbulent-Sixteenth-Century/dp/1250043611

My advice below is based on the idea of punishing the PCs which is not the best way to handle this.

I suggest you talk to them about his (and their) behavior and that it makes it hard to run a realistic world when their heroes are basically acting like the bad guys. They are supposed to be the good guys (this assumes you don't allow evil alignments or Chaotic Neutral). Speak to the half orc player on his own and the group in general afterwards.

You, as DM, work hard to present a game and they are just crapping all over it by killing innocent people. If they say they like doing those things and would rather play a game like that then I think you either need to chose if you want to run that type of game (see below) or if another player needs to step in as DM.

>Rather, the issue is that he’s a hulking half orc that picks a fight with everything that moves and has (realistically) gotten his party in more trouble than he’s worth.

As they get up in levels running into a random high level opponent who can put him down is not impossible (see your stable)

>An example: a sleepy roadside tavern turns into a bloodbath when the local patrons don’t bow to his will immediately and provide him with every luxury available. Too far away, no witnesses, no repercussions for this for him.

There are always witnesses. Someone could have seen the fight from outside. "I went to take a piss on the side of the road and I heard an terrible fight in the bar. There were screams and killing. I hid in some bushes. Then this 'alf-orc comes sauntering out chattering about how this will teach them not to mouth off. His friend's followed after telling 'im he should not be so aggressive."

Unless they did a complete search and destroy in every room under every sack of flour in the place for a hidden halfling and then searched 100 yards in every direction then there is certainly a witness.

But let's say they did those things.

People expect the tavern to be open and full of people. Why is everyone dead? Did they bury the bodies? Speak with Dead means that unless they chopped off all the heads and burned them to ash there is definitely a witness.

The local Mayor/Count/Duke/King will not be happy about such an atrocity on his lands. He hires adventurers to handle these rabble to dare murder a tavern full of people.

>Once that gets out, the captain of the guard escorts him and the party to prison. That’s where we left off.

Good time for a group of bounty hunters following up on a roadside massacre to show up.

>What he’s done is definitively worthy of the death penalty... his party not so much. More accomplices than anything.

I read a book called The Faithful Executioner which I heartily recommend for a good idea on how cities in the Renaissance were run and how those who committed crimes were treated. I would also like to suggest Killers of the King which discusses how Charles II hunted down and punished those involved in the execution of his father Charles I.

I think both books can give any DM a great window into the rather advance governance of those times (compared to the modern stereotype of it).

I need to read them again but I feel like the half-orc would be tortured for a confession. If he confesses then he is summarily hung and quickly buried. If he fails to confess then a trial is held, he is found guilty, he is chained to a sled and dragged through town where folk will throw rotten food and excrement at him. Then he will be hung till dead and his body left to decompose as a warning.

Other PCs who can be shown to have committed killings will receive the same treatment. Otherwise they will be stripped of all possession and whipped out of town. i.e. they will be tied to a yoke and have their legs tied (so they can't run) then the executioner will follow them whipping them as they leave town.

They may be able to negotiate a better deal but I would think town authorities would be glad to send them out into the wild wearing only their underpants and holding a tiny stick. Maybe spell casters would also lose a hand.