In this D&D Murder Mystery Guide, you’ll find advice, ideas and examples on how to write your own murder mystery (for 5th edition). I will also mention potential hurdles you might face running a mystery using D&D rules.
To give this guide a bit more flavor, I’m going to take inspiration from Murders at Karlov Manor, the upcoming Magic the Gathering set. Even if you’re not running a D&D campaign set in Ravnica, this can still be a great opportunity to run a murder mystery in your game.
D&D normally focuses on combat and puzzles, and murder mysteries allow a unique combination of both. While most focus can be on psychological puzzles, you can easily include combat. For example, with suspects and monsters local to areas you need to search for clues.
One final note before we start. While I’ll reference Ravnica, (the setting for Murders at Karlov Manor), this article will still have tons of information useful for any setting.
What is Ravnica?
In short, Ravnica is a city where 10 guilds battle for supremacy. Each guild has its own values, and vision what the world should look like. That reflects in their line of command and actions. There are alliances between certain guilds, and hatred between the others. This makes it a very interesting setting for any story, but perhaps especially for murder mystery.
The guild member rank system might slightly hinder your mystery, though. The use of minions means players could delegate the clue hunting to their guild members. This will likely take a lot of the fun out of the mystery. One thing you could to combat that is to make players mistrust the members of their own guild also. What if one of them did it? It’s better to solve the whole thing themselves.
For the mystery, you should think if the party are all members of the same guild or different ones. If they’re members of rival guilds, they can work together to prevent a war between their guilds. With the guilds all accusing each other, that can easily turn into violence.
If you do your murder mystery happening in Ravnica, you can look at the Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica for additional help.
How to Slay an Immortal
One of the main story points of Murder at Karlov Manor is the attempted murder of Aurelia, the Law Above. That’s the angel leader of the Boros Legion. Players in D&D can generally kill most gods and demons as long as there is a stat block for them, but what if you want an immortal murder victim?
It would be far more interesting to have an immortal slain in a strange way, one that most don’t know is possible. Other immortals can then push the party to find the killer in fear that other mortals learn how to kill them.
Here are some options you can use for your game:
- You can kill an angel with the coffin nails of a saint.
- The party finds an elder god stabbed with a unicorn horn.
- One could slay a god with a weapon gifted to a mortal by the same god.
- A devil can be killed by a quill used in writing a marriage certificate in the past 7 days.
- The party finds a fae lord wrapped in iron chains, with no wounds besides bruises.
The Murder Method
There are tons of ways to kill any mortal, and even some methods for immortals, but which method do you want to use?
Poison
If you want the party present during the murder then poison is a solid option. Everyone is sitting at the dinner table and someone is talking with the party about giving them a quest or rewarding them for one they returned from.
These moments would be when the party won’t suspect violence. Here are some fantasy poisons to use. Of course, you could also skip rolling for damage for instant death.
- Skullshrooms – A fungus that grows on reanimated skeletons. It smells and tastes like molasses when boiled and it deals 4d6 necrotic damage when it is consumed.
- Copperleaves – A plant that has flowers used in healing potions but the leaves are poisonous. It is scentless and tastes like peanuts when grinded into an oil. It deals 6d6 poison damage to the consumer five hours after being consumed.
- Basilisk Saliva – It petrifies the consumer but they can afterwards be cured by the greater restoration spell. The body can be shattered to prevent them from being cured.
- Phoenix Tail – A red mineral found in deep mines, usually around mithril. When consumed the person catches fire and takes 10d6 fire damage. Afterwards they resurrect as a baby of the same species with no memories of their past life one hour after death.
Traps
Similar to poison, you could have someone open a package that explodes or they walk into a trap. In case the party saves the victim, you should also plan a route where the mystery includes a living victim.
The same is true in the previous scenario. If you decide to use poison with dice rolling, you should plan for the case of victim surviving.
Violent Death
If you’re planning a classic murder of someone that was stabbed or shot you should plan for what the weapons tells the party.
Was the weapon brought by the killer or found at the location? Does the weapon require training to use properly? This helps the players know if the murder was planned or spontaneous.
Include Monsters
These are some fun ways to allow combat loving parties to enjoy a good fight when collecting clues:
- The party finds a mangled body, killed by a manticore in the center of a city.
- The killer knocked out the victim and lured giant rats to devour the corpse.
- The party finds a demon summoning circle under the carpet.
Murder Mystery Guide – Key Parts
There are three key elements, that you should pay special attention to when designing a murder mystery campaign: victim, suspects and setting. Let’s explore each of these in more detail.
The Victim
You can have the victim’s identity be what draws the party into solving the mystery. Was the victim a patron that hasn’t paid them for a job yet? Or maybe someone important to an NPC that has information the party needs? The party might get it in exchange for the murderer’s identity.
Here are some potential victims:
- Hory Amberswan – A goblin merchant known for funding benefit balls and parties. Unfortunately his most recent charity work, smuggling people out of cults and other evil organizations, has been drawing enemies in local communities as well as the communities he smuggles from.
- Tamia Vigileye – A centaur barbarian that gained wealth thanks to her mercenary company. She has retired and began investing her wealth into local businesses. Unfortunately this charity work has angered an elven cabal of nobles.
- Maxwell Baldric – A human scientist that has made a breakthrough in producing cheap healing potions that can save countless lives too poor to afford normal potions. This has angered countless alchemists that can’t compete.
- Ingra Dragonhammer – A famous loxodon blacksmith. The biggest mystery around her death is the fact that her body became a pile of ashes. Did her killer know she was a vampire, or was this a surprise to them as well?
The Suspects
A murder mystery usually needs multiple suspects to guess between. Otherwise it will usually be too easy to find the killer.
Here are some suspicious yet innocent suspects to use:
- Kazire Rustlung – A vedalken thief, he was visiting the victim to help them steal back a family heirloom. He specializes in illusion magic and genuinely wants to help the party solve the mystery.
- Nambra Adarion – An elven event planner that hosts an event with one guild per year. Normally the face of her company, she has been disappearing more frequently during the planning of this year’s event.
- Zarwun Bronzetongue – A human that leads a local cult. He was visiting the victim to collect donations. People say he is taking advantage of the naive victim but Zarwun never wanted to lead a cult. The victim actually started the cult and convinced Zarwun to be the figurehead.
- Korlag Axebite – A goblin assassin hired to kill the victim. Her normal killing method differs from the murder method.
The Setting
Within the city of Ravnica there are tons of places to host a murder mystery. The ten guilds have a variety of settings from laboratories to gardens. You can have the party travel around the city getting clues at different locations. Here are some options for that:
- The players visit the local alchemist and their garden to get info on a poison.
- The victim was a spy gathering information on a barbarian tribe, so visiting them can provide some insight into the victim’s work.
- The victim had a construct in their home. So a visit to the laboratory of an artificer could allow you to gather evidence from it.
- The victim gathered relics of an elder god. So you visit the ruins of an ancient temple to study the victim’s actions before their death.
Non-Murder Mysteries
What if you wanted a mystery that didn’t involve a dead body? Here are some examples you could use:
- A noblewoman hires the party to recover a missing family heirloom.
- The party is hunting a spy that has infiltrated a fortress.
- Children have gone missing, all taken from their beds with no evidence of breaking in.
- Local pets are walking around with gold coins and nobody know where they’re getting them.
Possible Hindrances to the Mystery
D&D has spells and abilities that can get in the way of your mystery. In the following sections, you’ll find some common obstacles, as well as ways to avoid them.
Speak with Dead
One of the most obvious ways to derail a mystery, the ability to speak to the victim and ask them who killed them. Here are some ways I would avoid revealing the killer too soon:
- You can run the mystery when the party is too low level to cast it.
- The victim was poisoned or killed in a way they won’t immediately know their killer.
- The victim needs a mouth for this spell, so remove the head or heavily damage the face to prevent the spell.
- The spell is not a known spell in your world. Perfect for one shot games.
- The spell is illegal due to laws against desecrating the dead.
Avoid framing someone by having the killer shapeshift into someone else. The party could trust the victim if you have them tell the players who the murderer looked like. This will make the party want to go kill the innocent person, and there is no logical reason for them to continue investigating if they think they know who the killer is.
If you want to do this, you can have the party know of an alibi of the framed person ahead of time. That way they immediately know the person is being framed. This could add an interesting story element where the players wonder if the killer’s goal was to kill the victim, or frame the target.
Divine Intervention
If you have characters with ties to gods or supernatural patrons, they will likely want to use their connections. A good way to allow this method to help the player in a balanced way is to have the entity provide vague clues instead of a direct message. Here are some options:
- The caster smells roses. This reveals the murderer buried the weapon in the garden.
- The caster hears a conversation the victim had prior to their death, which will provide clues to the killer’s motivation.
- The caster hears crashing waves, which hints that the killer has bought a boat ticket for their escape.
Why Not Leave?
Many D&D parties have worlds to save and villains to slay, and stopping important hero business to solve a mystery might not always make sense.
The best way to involve them is to have an NPC they care about ask the party to help. Perhaps the NPC is a suspect and wants their name cleared. Or maybe the NPC cares about the victim and wants justice served.
Most quests should have rewards. Have a price offered to solve the mystery. You can have the reward be experience points and the loot from the murderer and their allies, but if you do this they’ll need another motivation to help them start the mystery.
If someone important suspects the party of the murder, they will work to prove their innocence. And if they try to ignore it this can lead to warrants for their arrest or death.
It was the Simic Mutant with a Lead Pipe in the Garden
That’s just one of the possible outcomes, you’re discovering who did it on Ravnica. You can really get creative in this setting. Hopefully, this Murder Mystery Guide will be of help to you when you’re designing your next campaign.
Did you perhaps already use a murder mystery in your D&D game? How did it go? How long did it take you to find the killer? Would you recommend murder mysteries to other players? Please comment below to let us know!
If you want to make your campaign a bit darker, check my article on writing Horror D&D campaigns. It can help you if you decide to go with a horror murder mystery.
As more information on the upcoming Magic the Gathering set is revealed you can find more information about it, and find Murders at Karlov Manor spoilers here.
Last but not least, enjoy creating your murder mystery campaign!