So the characters in our campaign have gotten themselves into a situation which could potentially make a relatively prominent Hutt very angry with them, and I was trying to decide where to go with it. I've been waffling back and forth so thought I'd throw the situation out to the masses and see if anybody had any thought.

A prominent Hutt on a frontier world has arranged a Hunger Games style death match. He's captured humanoids from all around the region and is putting them against one other in a last one standing situation. He then invites a wide variety of influencial, wealthty, or powerful individuals to come enjoy the games in a big week long viewing party. Influencial criminals, politicians, and assorted wealthy people come to enjoy the party and bet on the games.

Our heroes sneak into the arena, and rescue many of the participants, smuggling them out through some previously unknown tunnels. They ruin the game, spoil the party, and probably most importantly, make said Hutt look really bad in front of his peers.

My question is, what do you think his reaction would be. How big a bounty, is reasonable, and what other measures might he take? He will have pictures of the characters, but not necessarily know their identity, so he won't be able to bring immediate retribution, but when/if he finds them, I'm guessing it won't be good. From a mechanics standpoint, would this best be represented by giving them some bounty obligation, or just play it out as the drama unfolds.

Any ideas are welcome, thanks all.

Does the Hutt have any reason to suspect the PC's? Is it reasonable that they escaped unnoticed? Did they kill all witnesses working for the hut? Remember that surveillance video is not a given in the Star Wars universe.

I'm guessing he'll have cameras. After all, this is a big show, he's broadcasting it to his guests so they can choose favorites, and make bets.

The cameras are not 100% coverage, but there are probably a fair number of them.

If it's important to the plot that the Hutt figures out that the heroes were involved, he should find out.

Otherwise, leave it up to the dice. Threat/Despair rolled during checks, or the appropriate failed check, could tip the Hutt off.

The bounty is as big as you want it to be. Hutts are capricious and arbitrary, and more to the point, it's all about the story you want to tell. So make up a number and make it as realistic or out-of-this-world unrealistic as you deem appropriate

If I were in your shoes, and it went down like you described it, I might start the bounty at 25,000 per PC, primarily because that's what Jabba originally offered to pay for Chewbacca.

If the characters do well, I'll probably allow them to avoid overt detection. One nice thing, even if they are seen, all the Hutt would have is a face, and the PC's aren't even from the planet, and have never been their before. I can hold that dangling bounty/plot out there until some random point in the future when I come up with a good story to dredge it up with. It'll also allow the PC's to gain some more experience, as they're pretty noob right now.

Pondering on it though, I could certainly put in a little quick subplot whree they have to raid a transmission relay or somesuch thing and either plant some false data or just interrupt the signal.

If you can, get a copy of this at your local book store:

It has some good info on how much a bounty should be and how a Hunter gets his contracts. It also has some interesting pieces of gear that can be integrated easily into the game.

If you can, get a copy of this at your local book store:

It has some good info on how much a bounty should be and how a Hunter gets his contracts. It also has some interesting pieces of gear that can be integrated easily into the game.

The bounties given as examples may seem high for a game where the GM wants to keep the players tight on cash, but remember that these are the posted bounty. Hunters have to spend credits in the course of pursuing that bounty, so the amount is certainly not all profit. If you have a team of four that nets 20,000 credits on a bounty they may not see much profit after repairing their ship, paying off contacts, getting the needed permits, paying the Guild percentage (if applicable), etc.

Well it doesn't really matter since the bounty will be on the PCs. They're hardly going to collect their own bounty.

Anyway, I think the bounty would need to be rather large. Remember that the 25k Jabba put on Chewie was only because he was associated with Solo, who just owed Jabba money.

Embarrassment would probably command a much higher price. Which can cause some problems as you eventually get into the range where guys like Bossk, IG-88, and Boba would start being interested. Which is basically game over for any PC group.

Embarrassment would probably command a much higher price. Which can cause some problems as you eventually get into the range where guys like Bossk, IG-88, and Boba would start being interested. Which is basically game over for any PC group.

Why would it be game over? It obviously worked out well enough for Solo, Skywalker, and the rest. They're not special - PCs can easily accomplish the same as the canon heroes.

Well thats the thing. I don't see any but the most BAMF of PCs being anywhere near what the heroes in the movies are.

I prefer to see PCs as being slightly above average joes making their way in a tough galaxy while trying to avoid getting squashed by the giants.

Sure, maybe as a group, and once you've got many hundreds of XP under your belt, you might be able to, as a group, take on IG-88 or Bossk. And maybe even Boba Fett if you are lucky. But definitely not at any time except late campaign as a grand finale.

The huge difference between the heroes of the movies and our PCs is that only the heroes of the movies get plot armour. My PCs don't. And when you embarass a Hutt crime lord in front of his friends and associates he is even higher motivated to get you than by simply owing money.

It's very personal, getting a bounty as high up as 100k per character would be appropriate, maybe alive only so that the Hutt can make a public display of their demise.

And simply killing the Hutt would lead to revenge from his clan. It would be like offing a capo of the Cosa Nostra, but unlike the RL mafia the other capos would see it as an affront too since you killed a Hutt. And killing a Hutt is a no-go unless another Hutt authorized it.

And simply killing the Hutt would lead to revenge from his clan. It would be like offing a capo of the Cosa Nostra, but unlike the RL mafia the other capos would see it as an affront too since you killed a Hutt. And killing a Hutt is a no-go unless another Hutt authorized it.

Denzel's Equalizer shows us that, sometimes, it is possible to just kill the bad guys.

I'd go 50k for the entire party to be brought in alive, then make the PCs hunger games each other, no other contestants, except maybe a rancor or the PCs biggest rivals.

Denzel's Equalizer shows us that, sometimes, it is possible to just kill the bad guys.

EI: In our campaign the Hutts keeping upping the stakes after we killed Teemo. Eventually they decided we were "to expensive to keep going after", since every time they struck at us, we struck back 2-3 times harder.

Well the characters were definitely seen doing the crime. They helped about 20 slaves get out, and ended up being chased by some of the Hutts security droids, and then later taking out a few of his fighters as they blasted out of atmosphere.

That said, all he has is some faces, with no names attached, and it's a mighty big galaxy. The characters base off a relatively remote non-aligned world (this is an Old Republic era game.) so it's unlikely that somebody will just stumble across them. I'm going to guess he'll track the heroes down at some nebulous point in the future when I come up with a good story for it, and they've got a bit more exp under there belt to help them handle any baddies.

There's 4 PC's, so he'll put out a 10,000 credit reward for each of them, with a bonus 10K to bring it up to 50 for anybody who can bag the whole set.

The characters also happened to discover a secret tunnel leading into the basement of the Hutt's palace that he's not aware of, which could come in handy at some future point.

I think that's a good solution.

A nebulous possibility of a future threat.

Well thats the thing. I don't see any but the most BAMF of PCs being anywhere near what the heroes in the movies are.

Luke is a farm boy with no training in the Force in Ep IV. Han is a somewhat lucky bounty hunter in a ramshackle ship and we never see any especially amazing skills from him. Although he's pretty good at running away from Storm Troopers in a panic. I mean piloting wise, he does manage to shoot a Tie-Fighter near the end, from behind, whilst it's engaged with another ship.

Chewbacca is a mechanic. Amazing skills? Mainly he seems to thump things in frustration after pulling out all the cables for five minutes. He MIGHT be an amazing mechanic - it's really hard to tell without knowing how difficult repairing a hyperdrive is. But there's nothing in there that is obviously WOW and none of the other characters seem to notice anything special about his skillset. Leia, Politico with a few pistol skills, no? She shoots three Storm Troopers between Eps IV and V, I think.

Some people have really weird ideas about how the heroes of the OT are amazingly skilled or brilliant. Luke has a claim to it, but even there it's a claim in terms of how much potential he has.

Sure, maybe as a group, and once you've got many hundreds of XP under your belt, you might be able to, as a group, take on IG-88 or Bossk. And maybe even Boba Fett if you are lucky. But definitely not at any time except late campaign as a grand finale.

I don't know who IG-88 is but I don't see anything about Bossk or Boba Fett that makes them immune to violence from typical PCs.

The huge difference between the heroes of the movies and our PCs is that only the heroes of the movies get plot armour.

Destiny Points?

The amount is doesn't matter, they can't pay it off. This is a hutt's honor!

The characters, unless they are bounty hunters themselves, my not find out how much they are worth. I wouldn't even hint that they are being hunted. Then a few sessions down the line they are attacked by a bounty hunter. And again. and again. At this point let them figure it out.

In the Han Solo books, I believe the Solo bounty that got him captured was 50,000 (So I would use this level as enough to interest Boba Fett class bounty hunters.)

Earlier in his career, as I recall, he had a 25000 bounty from a Hutt that Boba Fett was interested in solely because he had some damage to his ship (or something like that) that he needed to fix. And Jabba the Hutt actually paid him that or most of it to lay off chasing Solo, because he was his best smuggler at the time. (And people think Jabba has no heart! )

I agree it's best not to know how much you are worth. We are laying seriously low right now, but when we find out how much is on our group's heads, I think the two bounty hunters in the group are going to cry!

Yeah if you had skills that could make Jabba money Jabba was nice to you. Han was one of his favorites until the incident where Han lost the spice and never paid him back which probably made Jabba even more angry at Solo.

Sometimes Han probably wished Jabba didn't like him so much in fact. In one scene in a novel Han mentions to Jabba that his feet are tired and suggusts Jabba should have some chairs added to his throne room. Instead Jabba offers to let Han sit on his tail, an offer Han can't refuse without majorly insulting Jabba.

Jabba wasn't even particularly upset about the cash. It was all on principle. His most important smuggler dumped the cash, said he'd pay him back, and never did.

If it was just some junior guy Jabba just hired he would probably not have put as big a bounty on his head.