u/CheesecakeIsGodlike

Hello, i am a very inexperienced DM, im about to make my first short ish campaign for all new players, and i am in a dilemma between having a great setup for the campaign, and not wanting to railroad or take away my players agency. So i am curious, will i be the asshole if i do the following?

To make it short, players will be thieving in a manor. They don't know it yet, but the reason they have heard about the thieving job is because a main figure, who is a devil, in the campaign has made it so all of them got exposed to the oppertunity.
I essentially want them to end up getting caught by guards roaming the plot, and the players ending up in jail waiting to be executed in the morning.
Then this devil gets a very dramatic introduction and entrance, makes a deal with the players helping them out and promising riches and power if they do a handful of thieving tasks for him.
He helps them escape and thats the end that sets up the campaign. My thought process is that this devil is also the one who sabotages their thieving job and makes the job fail, putting the players in a desperate situation, as part of his big scheme.

However this also feels like im neglecting the players actions and strategies throughout the job to be stealthy and not get caught.

But at the same time, the introduction and setup to the campaign doesn't have the same impact at all if they make it out of the job significantly more wealthy and safe and aren't in the same desperate situation.

So will i be a bad and awful DM if i railroad the party in the first session to set up the actual introduction to the campaign? Or is it A-OK and actually kind of normal DM BTS stuff.

Yo! I'm curious if you guys have any cool ideas for cool battle maneuvers. The core idea is that CHA mod times per long rest you can use one of the maneruvers.

I don't wan't to step on the toes of battlemaster, so i don't want to just copy paste their options and be able to do all the same things.

I also don't just want to copy the different smite and weapon mastery options like frightening a creature or knocking it back a bit as part of an attack. I need stuff a little more unique/interesting.

The flavour of the subclass is that a powerful melee weapon was gifted from your patron and it's kind of through that weapon you tap into the magic granted to you.

So far i have:
blinking strike where as part of an attack action you blink to a creature and attempt the attack and deal a little bit extra damage.
Siphoning strike with a little bit of life steal and extra damage on an attack against none undead.
Blinking Intercept where as reaction to an incoming attack on a ally you can blink to them and grant both tempoary hp and enemy disadvante or something like that.

All the specific numbers, names and balance stuff i will figure out later, mostly im just curious about your ideas 😃