How to stop a murder hobos, some advice.

Any other DMs who want to add some advice go ahead and comment it in.

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There are many ways to stop a murderhobo player, you just need to be creative. The most important thing I would say is to actually talk to the player and tell them you don't want them just murdering random people or everyone who stands in their way because it ruins the game you want to build and it ruins your fun. If a player does something you don't like just talk to them, don't just result to cheap shots that ruins their fun. The following advice should really only be used if there is a specific town you want to be crime free or you want to try to scare the party a little bit. The most important thing is that you just talk with your players so everyone understands each other and so that everyone has fun.

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There are several ways this can be accomplished, not all of this is from experience I just have a very active imagination yay! My personal favorite, some dragons have this ability called shape change that is like a druid's wild shape ability. Dragons are supposed to be known to use this ability to turn into humans so that they can carry out their will in secret, however it is important to note the ability says it can polymorph into a humanoid or beast with a CR no higher than its own. This means if you're creative you can have a dragon do some interesting things. Anyway, you can have a gold dragon, Lawful good dragon, be polymorphed into a hobo or some other vulnerable looking NPC. Because as the shape change ability states, "it reverts to its normal form if it dies," like a druid. So, any murder hobo who kills a polymorphed gold dragon, suddenly has a gold dragon in front of them. Or maybe you just want to stop the murderhobo so the NPC "just happens" to be a polymorphed gold dragon.

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A less deadly to the PC approach. You can make it so your city has good crime prevention, or make it seem like it does. If no one in your party can cast see invisibility just say that the city is protected by a police force that uses invisibility to keep an eye on everyone at all times. The city doesn't even need to have them, maybe the leaders of your city have just been able to convince all the citizens there are invisible police officers. Something I did in regard to this is in my homebrew campaign I have a mafia that breeds mimics and sells them to wizards. The mafia has mimics in strategic locations around town to just watch what happens. Remember mimics are rather intelligent and some can even speak common, all they want is food. It is not that far of a stretch to say that instead of hunting they can be trained, or rather convinced that it is more easy, to just guard a place as a door and be brought a racoon every now and then. The idea that anything your party does is being watched and monitored will make them a lot more cautious about breaking laws.

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Not to mention there are plenty of spells that could be used to solve a random murder. If your party knows that the town uses these it could deter them from random murder. For example, speak with dead. Circle of truth, if the town has lots of animals maybe speak with animals is used near the crime scene. This can actually circle back to the second idea, trained dogs or other animals could be the "watchers" of the city. Once they see a crime they report to someone who casts speak with animals. detect thoughts could be used on suspects. Remember detect thoughts says in its own spell description that it is perfect for interrogation because someone will automatically think about a question they are asked. maybe the NPCs of the town use divination magic to ask for help from a god, such as the spell, divination. The spell, divination, literally just says you ask the DM a question and the DM offers a truthful, but possibly cryptic answer.