Outsmart my GM...


Homebrew and House Rules

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Dark Archive

So I had a predicament, and I could not - for the life of me - resolve it. The situation is already past jacta alea est, and now that it's behind me I'm rather curious how others may have resolved it.

Situation is as follows:

1st level Goblin Druid. Naked and without any gear of any kind. In a cage that is suspended at least fifty feet off the ground on a tree limb. The cage is lashed to the branch of a tree by a single loop. (The cage was secured by some other druids of a higher level who could FLY... *mutterfume*) Her animal companion is captive... somewhere. QED, unable to assist.

With six days to ponder her fate, knowing that at the new moon she would be sacrificed in a ritual manner with no chance of reasoning with her captors, she has the following resources at her disposal.

Her spells (appropriate for a druid with a WIS of 17, with the bonus spells that entails) but only ones that do not require material components, her brains, teeth and nails (mundane and not even really all that pointy) and the ignorance of her captors as she is out of their line of sight.

I declared a moratorium on Deus Ex Machina rescues, even though I really like the character. So, she's got to do this on her own.

So, how would YOU get out?

For the record, what actually happened was that as the clock wound down, and they were coming for her, she lit her cage ablaze and fell to her rather messy demise rather than let herself be sacrificed.

The Exchange

Intimidate.

Liberty's Edge

Produce flame, using it in my hand to spot weld my way out of the cage. I'm assuming that since you lit it on fire, there's some wood component.
Then, I'd climb the lash up to the branch, and either fall to my doom, climb down, or maybe, with a good acrobatics roll, survive the fall...not counting on it though.


1: Charm an animal.
2: Speak with the animal. Get it to get you some mistletoe.
3: use endure elements, produce flame and create water to break bars on the bottom, so gravity assists you in breaking them. I am assuming a metal cage. Heat stress is your friend. (rapidly heating and cooling metal breaks the temper, and can severely weaken it.)
4: Summon an eagle to help break your fall. That is what you needed the mistletoe for.

You have a few days to do this. Use the animal you befriended to get you some help or backup, and scout out your gear and companion for you.


Is this a troll post? This really happened? A DM really did this to a lone 1st level character with no friends or allies to rescue you?

I truly don't think you could safely get out of the tree.

You didn't mention what your cage was made of, yet you set it on fire, so it was a wooden cage?

I will assume there were no handy holly bushes within reach. Could you even see any?

Likewise, I'll assume there was no way for you to break the cage, because I am sure you thought of breaking part of it, espeically on top away from the rope, to climb out and into the tree then climb down and run away - so surely this isn't an option.

Were you playing with bonus HP (a concept from Beta that our group has kept as a house rule)? I will assume you're not, since it's not in the Core book. So you had just 8 HP + CON mod (I will assume about 10 HP would be the most you'd likely have).

5d6 falling damage is rough when you only have about 10 HP.

You cold certainly have set just the rope on fire and taken your chances on the fall. Trying to burn parts of your cage or break parts of the cage won't work - the fire would burn you too (Endure Elements won't help with that) and structurally weakening the cage just means falling anyway.

Maybe there were some bushes down there, or other tree branches to break the fall and lessen your damage, or maybe a river nearby. Maybe you could swing your cage back and forth on the rope to try to aim for a softer landing if such existed.

None of that seems likely to work. I would expect you to take around 17-HP of damage, meaning you would likely only have maybe 3-5 chances to stabilize. Let's say you get lucky and only take 17 damage, and you have a 14 CON. You're at -7 and you'll die at -12. Next round, you need to roll a 15+, the round after a 16+, then a 17+, 18+, 19+, then 20 to stabilize. That means you would have about a 30% chance to die, 70% chance to stabilize. On the other hand, if you roll slightly unlucky and take 19 damage, you would only have about a 40% chance to live and a 60% chance to die.

However, if you do stabilize, you'll still have to make those untended CON checks or keep dying anyway. Depdning on how many HP you had left when you stabilized, this may require a natural 20 just to have one chance, or maybe you'll have a 10-20% chance to survive if you were lucky.

I will assume that even if the fall doesn't kill you, the necessary two consecutive CON checks at increasigly difficult odds almost certainly will.

Well, maybe, just maybe, instead of suiciding, you could have tried burning part of your cage and using water to put it out before it got out of hand and burned you or burned so much cage that it destroyed the structure and fell anyway. Then with the fire out, you could escape through the burned hole you made. Me, I think that would weaken the wooden cage too much and you would fall, but I would try this before suicide.

But maybe there is one better alternative:

Maybe your only other chance is to let your captors bring you down and hope for a chance to escape then. It's not really clear who captured you or what their capabilities are. If you're talking about a large group of high-level druids, you pretty much have zero chance to escape. If we're talking only a couple low-level druids, then you might have a chance.

This is hard to evaluate because we don't know who your captors are. If it's truly impossible, then maybe try burning your way out.

Heck, no matter how many there are, you might be able to negotiate. You did say they're druids, maybe they'd be open to an offer to work with them, earn their trust, join their conclave, become a member.

As John Carter always said, "I'm not dead yet." Meaning, while you are still alive, there is a chance for some good fortune or a well conceived plan, or even spontaneous action if an opening prsents itself. When you're dead, there's no chance.

My reasoning:

If this isn't just a troll post to see what weird responses you might get, there are really only 5 likely possibilites that I see:
1. The DM is a total idiot and you need a new DM.
2. The DM had a plan to rescue you (maybe a kindly ranger would set you free and become your mentor or something like that). But you vetoed this kind of solution - maybe it's you who screwed up your DM's big plans by not thinking your veto through.
3. Maybe the DM had plans that something was going to happen right before the sacrifice, veto or not. A lunar eclipse or something. Just the diversion you would need. But you suicided before it could happen.
4. Maybe this was a recruiting tactic. Scare you, then pretend to sacrifice you to see how you handle under pressure. Then they could decide to recruit you or kick you out of their forest or maybe even sacrifice you after all based on how you respond. But you suicided during the scare phase and never got to the actual test.
5. You left something out, something that you should have known, and we need to know to find a way out. Maybe you completely forgot it. This seems unlikely, but I list it here as the only option I can see that doesn't make either your DM or you look like you have egg on your face.

So, 1 of those is bad DM. 3 of those are bad player. One is a genuine mistake. Hard to say which it is.

(I'm not calling you a bad player per se, but in those scenarios I listed, killing the DM's plan by veto would have been a bad idea, suiciding before the big saving event would have been a bad idea, and suiciding before the recruiting test would have been a bad idea).

Liberty's Edge

The doctor was his MOTHER!


Presuming that the bars on the cage are small enough that a tiny creature can squeeze out, I'll cast Winged Watcher (Complete Scoundrel, pg 106) and fly far, far away. Okay w/ a duration of 1 round /level not so far away, but at least to the ground.


If the cage is wood (and I really dont see druids having a metal cage around if they can help it) that means more rope usually. You're a goblin. Act like one. Eat the cage. Or at least the rope/vines holding it together.

-Weylin

Sovereign Court

Jarik wrote:
The doctor was his MOTHER!

LOL. I totally get this. haha

Sovereign Court

btw. one can outsmart the person, but by definition one cannot outsmart the GM (semantics, I know).


Something with Charm Animal/Speak with Animals sounds good. E.g. charm a bear to climb up the tree and carry you down, or charm a bird into carrying a note to a friend.

Shadow Lodge

Or suddenly gain 4(3 in PFRPG) more levels in druid and escape that way.

Sorry if that is uncreative, but everyone else already figured out all the better ways...


Dragonborn3 wrote:

Or suddenly gain 4(3 in PFRPG) more levels in druid and escape that way.

Sorry if that is uncreative, but everyone else already figured out all the better ways...

The other idea I had was to break the cage, and then really quickly cast Entangle before you hit the ground. Hopefully that will break your fall. ;-)


hogarth wrote:
Dragonborn3 wrote:

Or suddenly gain 4(3 in PFRPG) more levels in druid and escape that way.

Sorry if that is uncreative, but everyone else already figured out all the better ways...

The other idea I had was to break the cage, and then really quickly cast Entangle before you hit the ground. Hopefully that will break your fall. ;-)

Breaking out of the cage would not necessarily destroy the cage. Just make sure you have a grip fairly high up (well, as high up as a goblin can get), before trying to kick out the floor of it.

Dark Archive

You could always stand at the opposite end of the cage as the door( assuming there is one ), wait for them to lower the cage and open the door and then cast obscuring mist. Try to get by them while they can't see. You could always cast charm animal earlier and have the animal help with the distraction.


You have several days to work this out, so...

1st Day
Charm Animal : Charm a bird, get it to bring you a grasshopper.

2nd Day
Chew through the ropes/vines/etc on the cage in the section facing the tree. I'm assuming you can't climb on top of the cage (probably a rounded top, or you would have done that). Use the grasshopper leg to cast JUMP on yourself. This gives a +10 enhancement bonus to your acrobatics check. Jump from the cage to the tree. I'm assuming you are only about 10 feet out from the trunk. This would be a DC(20) so taking 10 on it with he +10 would get you to the trunk. Make a reflex save to grab on and climb down.

Use the tree to climb down, grab a pinch of dirt, cast longstrider, and run like the devil.

if you can't chew through the cage, then casting another charm animal spell to charm something that could reach you and still do some damage to the cage would work (say a wolverine or a bear (as suggested above) or a panther).


If doesn't sound like you have a DM that would give you much leeway. Jump requires the hind leg of a grasshopper, which is conceivable you could obtain in this situation. Jump doesn't allow you to make an Acrobatics check to jump down RAW, but a lenient DM might allow it.

I assume you can break the cage over several days, somehow, if you were able to set the cage on fire. I'll assume the PC has a Con 12 and 10 hp. The fall itself is not inherently lethal; if the PC can get a block of time of a couple of hours in which the area below is not patrolled, it's possible to survive the fall and escape.

First, cast virtue and attempt to jump down. A DC 15 Acrobatics check may be tough, but if you succeed, you take 1d6 nonlethal damage (avg. 3 hp) and 3d6 lethal damage (avg. 10 hp). With average damage, the character has 1 hp but is unconscious due to the nonlethal damage. The goblin heals enough of the nonlethal damage in two to three hours to regain consciousness. Since he's at positive hp, he can heal up or make his escape.

If he fails the check, he takes 5d6 falling damage (avg. 17 hp). This knocks him to -6 hp. He still has eight rounds to stabilize before he dies, and he has a 60% chance of stabilizing each round. Once he stabilizes, he has a check every hour to regain consciousness, cast cure light wounds, and attempt an escape. The base chance of regaining consciousness is 30% if he stabilized at -6, and lower if he took more damage.

Stabilizing is much easier in Pathfinder than 3.5e.

So it's certainly possible that he could survive the 50-foot fall, and if he was undetected in the fall, possibly escape. If the villains want him for a sacrifice, they'd likely just put him back in the cage if they discovered him unconscious, perhaps even with some healing.

That's with average damage; sometimes the dice gods do not smile on even the DM.


Charm animal has only verbal and somatic components, but at 1st level the range is only 30 feet, so you couldn't reach creatures on the ground; probably only passing birds. Speak with animals works, and would allow you to make a specific request of the creature (such as "bring me a sprig of mistletoe").

With a divine focus, the druid can cast summon nature's ally I. The monstrous centipede is Medium (large enough to carry a Small goblin), and has a climb speed. If you can communicate with it, you could direct it to carry you down.

Shadow Lodge

If the cage is made by druids, then it is possible that it is made from wood and vines/ropes. If you can manage to pull apart some of the vines/ropes, you can tie them together and make a rope, which you then climb down. If not long enough to reach all the way to the ground, it will at least lessen the damage you'll take from falling.

I had an idea no one else did! Go me!

Liberty's Edge

For a metal cage, charm a small climbing or flying animal to bring you a stout stick and some vines. Wrap the vines around 2 bars of the cage facing the tree and wedge the stick between them. Twist the stick around until the vines pull the bars together and climb to freedom.

For a wooden cage, I'd summon a new animal companion (a woodpecker or climbing rodent) to peck/gnaw through the bars.

To add insult to injury, I'd coax a particularly unpleasant animal into taking your place and boobytrapping the cage to open when it's close to the ground so that the angry creature will fall on them and attack. Badger from the sky! :)


Here is what I would try to do:

You have three 0 lvl spells. So I would memorize Guidance and Flare x2.

You have two 1 lvl spells. I would memorize Produce Flame and Obscuring Mist.

So here's the scenario. I would wait until the night they come to sacrifice me. They have to get me down so the easiest way to get down is to let them lower me safely. And the easiest way out of the cage is to let them get you out. So, when you see them coming to get you, cast Guidance on yourself and hold on to that floating +1 for one minute. They lower you and get you out. After they pull you out, but before they tie you up (that is important due to the somatic component of the spell) cast Obscuring Mist. That would basically be a surprise round for you. Now initiative takes place and combat begins. Anyone more than 5' away from you can't see you at all in Obscuring Mist and even if they are adjacent to you they have a miss chance since you have concealment.

Hopefully your initiative is high enough to go first in this round.

When it is your turn, if someone is adjacent to you or successfully grapples you cast Produce Flame and start touch attacking him to death. (Use the +1 from Guidance if necessary.) If no one has a hold of you just pick a direction move at half your speed while using Stealth so that no one can hear which direction you are going. Once you get outside the area of Obscuring Mist you can continue to move away each round at half speed under cover of darkness and Stealth. Hopefully you can get away clean but if they happen to spot you at least you are on the ground now and can use your two Flares and Produce Flame spell to fight them off.

::EDIT:: I didn't see if you said what race your captors were but unless they have low-light vision or darkvision you more than likely won't get captured. If they do, it will be trickier but you could still escape. Might even be able to come back for your animal companion.

Sovereign Court

Xuttah wrote:

For a metal cage, charm a small climbing or flying animal to bring you a stout stick and some vines. Wrap the vines around 2 bars of the cage facing the tree and wedge the stick between them. Twist the stick around until the vines pull the bars together and climb to freedom.

Assuming the bars are weak enough for this trick to work without the stick breaking or the vines.

Liberty's Edge

lastknightleft wrote:
Xuttah wrote:

For a metal cage, charm a small climbing or flying animal to bring you a stout stick and some vines. Wrap the vines around 2 bars of the cage facing the tree and wedge the stick between them. Twist the stick around until the vines pull the bars together and climb to freedom.

Assuming the bars are weak enough for this trick to work without the stick breaking or the vines.

It's gotta be light enough to be suspended from a rope, so I'd hope it wasn't made of 1/2' rebar. :)


Shadowlord wrote:

Here is what I would try to do:

You have three 0 lvl spells. So I would memorize Guidance and Flare x2.

You have two 1 lvl spells. I would memorize Produce Flame and Obscuring Mist.

So here's the scenario. I would wait until the night they come to sacrifice me. They have to get me down so the easiest way to get down is to let them lower me safely. And the easiest way out of the cage is to let them get you out. So, when you see them coming to get you, cast Guidance on yourself and hold on to that floating +1 for one minute. They lower you and get you out. After they pull you out, but before they tie you up (that is important due to the somatic component of the spell) cast Obscuring Mist. That would basically be a surprise round for you. Now initiative takes place and combat begins. Anyone more than 5' away from you can't see you at all in Obscuring Mist and even if they are adjacent to you they have a miss chance since you have concealment.

Hopefully your initiative is high enough to go first in this round.

When it is your turn, if someone is adjacent to you or successfully grapples you cast Produce Flame and start touch attacking him to death. (Use the +1 from Guidance if necessary.) If no one has a hold of you just pick a direction move at half your speed while using Stealth so that no one can hear which direction you are going. Once you get outside the area of Obscuring Mist you can continue to move away each round at half speed under cover of darkness and Stealth. Hopefully you can get away clean but if they happen to spot you at least you are on the ground now and can use your two Flares and Produce Flame spell to fight them off.

::EDIT:: I didn't see if you said what race your captors were but unless they have low-light vision or darkvision you more than likely won't get captured. If they do, it will be trickier but you could still escape. Might even be able to come back for your animal companion.

This seems like the safest and most logical option. Obscuring Mist for the win. Or at least for the run.

Dark Archive

This is not a troll post. My GM really wasn't expecting me to bite it like this. This was the character's prologue, basically, to joining the larger ensemble cast of our game. I and my Beloved Spouse (Kobold Chorus: "We love you!") were both actually very fond of this little ballsy goblin chick. Perhaps a bit more backstory to explicate:

The 'main cast' is over 80 miles away, no chance of them intervening as they don't even know that this character EXISTS, let alone that she may have been fated to join their ranks.

Wicker/Wooden cage.

Goblin in question has a CON of 10, 8 hit points, if I'm not mistaken, no bonuses. And a STR of 3 (that -4 penalty's a bear, lemme tell ya, though I used STR as the dumpstat for RP reasons). She is, therefore, a bit of a professional coward. (That's what animal companions are for!)

She has no ranks in Acrobatics, no ranks in Climb and no ranks in Intimidate (with a CHA of 10 to boot)

The backstory to the captivity is that this group of Druids have gone a bit ... rogue. She didn't know this before wandering into their sanctum santorium. These Druids have started worshipping the Goddess of the Moon, on a planet that didn't HAVE a moon until VERY recently.

Therefore, they're ... um.... lunatics. They're sacrificing her as an "Unwilling Believer" after trying to convince her to join their little cult.

The character is one of those "I believe in what I have control over" kinda people, and thus isn't very big on Deities and Powers. The Druids of this world just finished fighting a Druid vs Druid war which factionalized a lot of Druids. One faction - that this goblin sort of sided with - was the "All Outsiders Are Bad And Who Needs Them Anyway" faction. This includes Deities, Devils, Demons, Native Outsiders, Etc...

Therefore, they tried their recruiting pitch, she gave them a piece of her mind and they drugged her and hung her out to dry.

Before her untimely end, she tried to summon a Mite using Summon Nature's Ally I. This was accomplished by some hand-waving of the focus item, my GM allowed me to substitute a single HP of damage in blood for the normal component. The Mite failed and fell to its death, though it had no chance to make it down the tree during the spell duration.

The fall is very uneventful and there is nothing to break the impact at the bottom (as evidenced by the Mite's untimely end.... she summoned the poor critter during the day and it was blind for its entire very short spell duration/remaining lifespan)

The -4 penalty to Climb dissuaded her from even TRYING to climb down. (She had a traumatic experience when younger, falling and nearly dying)

Charming an animal was out of range, and all animals that were allowed in range were already charmed. (Mostly squirrels to drop nuts in so she wouldn't starve)

There are 5 druids, lowest level is 2, the highest is of unknown level but has levels in Cleric too and definitely can Wildshape. There are also 5 Worgs guarding the grove. This, combined with the 'naked and STR of 3' would seem to lead to the status of YRFN.

The three Druids she's actually had face time with were an Elf, a Half-Orc and a Halfling. In this world, Halflings do have Darkvision, so they'd be able to see me at night.

There's no nearby stream or river, just flat ground covered with grass and maybe a tiny bit of underbrush.

We're only using base spells from PFRPG core.

All people she knows are well out of range for a charmed animal, and no animals around to charm.

The distance from cage to tree trunk is not a variable I thought to ask, so I can't provide that.

There were no real bushes of berries, holly, mistletoe or the like within reach of myself or anything I could summon.

The GM did (kinda) offer some Deus Ex Machina, but I actually declined. I'm rather opposed to the idea of "Timely Rescue By The Knight-in-Shining Armor") While I liked the character and was just starting to get the feel for her, a contrived little rescue just struck me as that... contrived. She gave me several days both in and out of character to stew on it and think it over, which I think was more than fair.

I was the one that decided the goblin would rather die than allow herself to be sacrificed. This was an IC thing, as that whole "Outsiders are bad" thing kicked in and I felt that the goblin's sacrifice would provide some sort of spiritual traction from the power gained from her death. (Which is long winded for "Yer never gonna take me alive, copper!")

At this point, I think the winner so far is Shadowlord. You get a gold star!!!

Please keep the ideas coming, this has been a fascinating hypothetical experience and is helping me learn to think further outside the box. er... cage.

Liberty's Edge

While the druids slept, you should have reprogrammed the simulation, dropping the shields on the Klingon Warbirds and rescuing all the stranded crew. And you should have dickishly eaten an apple at the same time.

Dark Archive

Jarik wrote:
While the druids slept, you should have reprogrammed the simulation, dropping the shields on the Klingon Warbirds and rescuing all the stranded crew. And you should have dickishly eaten an apple at the same time.

Totally! Dang, why didn't I think of that!


Mikhaila Burnett wrote:

Therefore, they're ... um.... lunatics. They're sacrificing her as an "Unwilling Believer" after trying to convince her to join their little cult.

....cough cough.......

BY THE MOON WHO IS MY GOD I HAVE HAD AN EPIPHANY!!

I AM A BELEIVER!!!!

[i] ...then run like buggery... [i/]


raoul wrote:
Mikhaila Burnett wrote:

Therefore, they're ... um.... lunatics. They're sacrificing her as an "Unwilling Believer" after trying to convince her to join their little cult.

....cough cough.......

BY THE MOON WHO IS MY GOD I HAVE HAD AN EPIPHANY!!

I AM A BELEIVER!!!!

[i] ...then run like buggery... [i/]

"In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!!"

Dark Archive

kyrt-ryder wrote:


"In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!!"

You get a gold star for that!!


Mikhaila Burnett wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:


"In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!!"
You get a gold star for that!!

No sweat, glad I could make you smile :)

RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16

Mikhaila Burnett wrote:
kyrt-ryder wrote:


"In the name of the Moon, I will punish you!!"
You get a gold star for that!!

Sadly, that's either a Bluff or Intimidate check with no ranks, and no attribute bonus, against a bunch of angry folk whose class attribute is Wisdom. (And at least one of them has Sense Motive as a class skill, though there's no way of knowing if any ranks are invested.)

So personally, I'd give a white moon for it. XD

Dark Archive

tejón wrote:


So personally, I'd give a white moon for it. XD

You win teh internetz.

And a purple horseshoe, just to boot.


Mikhaila Burnett wrote:
tejón wrote:


So personally, I'd give a white moon for it. XD

You win teh internetz.

And a purple horseshoe, just to boot.....

... to the head?

Liberty's Edge

Personally, I'd Roshambo the DM for putting a character in that situation in the first place. Killing a character before the game even begins is unproductive, especially when you have a neat character!


Xuttah wrote:
Personally, I'd Roshambo the DM for putting a character in that situation in the first place. Killing a character before the game even begins is unproductive, especially when you have a neat character!

How would playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with the DM accomplish anything?

Or did you plan to gag him with the paper, bash him with the rock, and stab him with the scissors - for surely that's what he deserves.

I have no idea why a DM would stick you in this situation. It's assinine. Either he thought you would cave and join these druids (extreme DM railroading here) or he planned a fiat. Nothing else would possibly work, other than destroying your cage and hoping you could roll 8 or less on 5d6.

Maybe, to try to give him a little credit, he planned to have these druids extremely gullible to bluffs regarding your recanting your views and accepting their own, so they would automatically fail sense motive checks if you seemed willing to join them. We never got the chance to find out.

Frankly though, I think your own actions backed you and the DM into a corner there was no way out of.

Sure, it was his fault to railroad you into the cage and force you to join them or wait for rescue. Bad DM. CHOMP!

But it was your fault to veto his plans to get you out - after you were in the predicament. It's not like he could say "Oh, well, since I'm not allowed to rescue you with this kindly ranger who was about to wander by, well, uh, did I say 50' high? I really meant 10' high. Really."

The stage was set, his plans to save you from the druids were in place, and you grabbed those plans and rammed them down his throat, leaving you in that predicament with no way out.

It was further your fault to choose suicide over trying something useful. Suicide is absolutely guaranteed to fail. Something useful might have a 99% chance to fail, but hey, that 1% chance of success is better than the 0% chance you chose instead.

So, bad player. CHOMP.

You and your DM backed each other into a corner that neither of you could get out of. Hopefully you each learned something here.

RPGs are about collaborative story-telling.

A good DM wants to challenge you without killing you. Sometimes those challenges do involve some railroading, even if it's just minor like a seeming "DM fiat" that is, in fact, a planned part of the story.

A good player recognizes that sometimes the DM's story might involve events or characters that are out of the player's hands, and vetoing such things is not conducive to the collaboration between DM and players. Further, a good player recognizes that the DM is not trying to murder the PCs, so when the player finds him/herself in an inescapable predicament, the player is expected to metagame a little, to realize that the DM has a plan to continue this collaborative story (the collaboration itself is part of the overlying metagame here).

I hope that your DM is reading this thread too. It seems there are lessons here for him too (no, not just mine, even if I am waxing pedagogical here).


DM_Blake wrote:
Xuttah wrote:
Personally, I'd Roshambo the DM for putting a character in that situation in the first place. Killing a character before the game even begins is unproductive, especially when you have a neat character!

How would playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with the DM accomplish anything?

Or did you plan to gag him with the paper, bash him with the rock, and stab him with the scissors - for surely that's what he deserves.

JAN KEN! GU, CHYOKI, PA!!!

Liberty's Edge

DM_Blake wrote:


How would playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with the DM accomplish anything?

I was referring to the Eric Cartman version of the game. :)


Plan A:Make the 24 hours of prayer to bound to a new animal companion an ape will be fine, command it to climb in the middle of day, I am asuming nocturnal druids, and save.

Plan B: This is cheesey but try to bound to a fast animal companion, like a wolf, make it with a few ranks in stealth. Burn the rope and before it finishes consuming cast Cure Light Wounds and hold the charge. Try to fall in a position in wich you would touch yourself if collapse. You would probably die, unless your DM rules that CLW saves you just in time, if he does then you would be probably uncounsious but stable and your wolf would drag you to freedom.

If you bound a charmed animal you would still get priority over the druids by default.

Humbly Yours,
Yawar

Dark Archive

Xuttah wrote:

Personally, I'd Roshambo the DM for putting a character in that situation in the first place. Killing a character before the game even begins is unproductive, especially when you have a neat character!

Meh, she was totally willing to throw me a bone and give me an opening. I was stubborn and decided that if I couldn't figure my own way out I really didn't 'deserve' it or some silliness. I just couldn't think outside the box to my own satisfaction.

Besides, when I'm already playing 6 characters in the game, one more or less doesn't have the impact that it would if it were my only character. Or even a new character to a 'standard sized party'

It's all good, even if it does make me a little nosewrinkly.

Dark Archive

DM_Blake wrote:

I have no idea why a DM would stick you in this situation.

In all honesty, I think it was just a combination of factors that my beloved wife and I conspired against one another in. On her part (and these are my perceptions and therefore may or may not be her actual motivations), there are several factors.

1) New character to an ensemble cast of over 10 characters that she now has to work a complete backstory for into one game session.

2) No real connection between this character and the main group yet.

3) Some minor miscommunications between myself and her that have been ongoing for some time.

And on my part, several other factors.

a) I am recovering from being a Monty Haul, Munchkin-esque, Crunchy style, kick-in-the-door-kill-em-all-take-their-stuff player and trying to become a more RP intensive, Fluffy, Grognard friendly player.

b) I have NEVER liked the Deus Ex Machina approach to resolution. There are times it is appropriate, but I can't ever see it as anything other than heavy handed if I notice it happening. This is entirely my hangup, mostly from years upon years of my GM using it at every opportunity that I did anything even remotely off the expected path.

c) FNORD.

So, I can definitely agree that there is room for improvement. I fault myself much more than I fault her. True, she put me in the situation, but I really did dig my own grave.

The scene was rolling right along with some good RP, the signs starting to indicate "Hey, these people might be crazy" and I went along with it. There were some assumptions on my part that really clinched it though, mostly a hold-over from 3.0 (which we were playing until the game that this takes place in). That assumption being that Druids would always know if what they were eating was toxic, soporific, etc. In PFRPG, that translates to a +2 on Survival and Knowledge (Nature) rather than an (admittedly overpowered and slightly broken) ability of the same name.

I then made a further chain of assumptions and miscommunications which dug the trench further.

Now, this is not to say that I am dismissing the critique entirely. Things could have played better. Maybe even should have. We are, all of us, mortal and therefore subject to error.

This response has gone long and rambly, thanks for listening.

Dark Archive

And yes, my GM is reading this thread.

Dark Archive

YawarFiesta wrote:

Plan A:Make the 24 hours of prayer to bound to a new animal companion an ape will be fine, command it to climb in the middle of day, I am asuming nocturnal druids, and save.

Plan B: This is cheesey but try to bound to a fast animal companion, like a wolf, make it with a few ranks in stealth. Burn the rope and before it finishes consuming cast Cure Light Wounds and hold the charge. Try to fall in a position in wich you would touch yourself if collapse. You would probably die, unless your DM rules that CLW saves you just in time, if he does then you would be probably uncounsious but stable and your wolf would drag you to freedom.

If you bound a charmed animal you would still get priority over the druids by default.

Humbly Yours,
Yawar

a) If a druid releases her companion from service, she may gain a new one by performing a ceremony requiring 24 uninterrupted hours of prayer in the environment where the new companion typically lives.

This grove isn't really big on animals of that sort. But this is a very good idea!

b) Hmm, yeah that is a bit... odd. In all honesty, she probably would have let me get away with it though. She was mostly looking for "Can she think outside the box?" ideas. If I had come up with one, I would have survived. *shrugs* Happens.

Shadow Lodge

Of course, you should ask the druids if they would like to see the moon during the day, proceed to moon them, and come back from the dead as a ghost to ruin anything they do forever more.


DM_Blake wrote:
Is this a troll post?

Why so disruptive and distrustful? Even if it were, it's quite interesting how other people would react to a given situation. Why should that be trolling?

Sovereign Court

Xuttah wrote:
lastknightleft wrote:
Xuttah wrote:

For a metal cage, charm a small climbing or flying animal to bring you a stout stick and some vines. Wrap the vines around 2 bars of the cage facing the tree and wedge the stick between them. Twist the stick around until the vines pull the bars together and climb to freedom.

Assuming the bars are weak enough for this trick to work without the stick breaking or the vines.
It's gotta be light enough to be suspended from a rope, so I'd hope it wasn't made of 1/2' rebar. :)

The druids are all master's of the ancient art of folding steel, when you try to break free they appear from their hiding places in plain sight and strike you down with their katanas :D


DM_Blake wrote:

You and your DM backed each other into a corner that neither of you could get out of. Hopefully you each learned something here.

RPGs are about collaborative story-telling.

A good DM wants to challenge you without killing you. Sometimes those challenges do involve some railroading, even if it's just minor like a seeming "DM fiat" that is, in fact, a planned part of the story.

A good player recognizes that sometimes the DM's story might involve events or characters that are out of the player's hands, and vetoing such things is not conducive to the collaboration between DM and players. Further, a good player recognizes that the DM is not trying to murder the PCs, so when the player finds him/herself in an inescapable predicament, the player is expected to metagame a little, to realize that the DM has a plan to continue this collaborative story (the collaboration itself is part of the overlying metagame here).

You are missing the collaborative part. Deus Ex is not collaborative. If i wanted Deus Ex machina in a story I would read a book, or watch a movie. This is supposed to be interactive. Puting a player in a crummy situation and then dragging them out by their toes is not good story telling. The PC's are supposed to be the heroes of the story, not extras. I think a player has every right to refuse deus ex when the dm has done something foolish.

Not to mention expecting a deus ex totally destroys the suspension of disbelief. The character certainly isnt expecting to be rescued at the last minute without any hints. And you may very well kill yourself if you think you cannot escape and will be horribly sacrificed in the morning. We are supposed to think in character thats how this game works. If a dm ever uses a deus ex, it should be less transparent to the player. But it should still be rare, and never a major story element.

Liberty's Edge

lastknightleft wrote:


It's gotta be light enough to be suspended from a rope, so I'd hope it wasn't made of 1/2' rebar. :)
The druids are all master's of the ancient art of folding steel, when you try to break free they appear from their hiding places in plain sight and strike you down with their katanas :D

And then rocks fall. Everybody dies. :p


Pathfinder Adventure Subscriber

Why get all complicated?

Use speak with animals ask the local squires to chew a hole in the top of your cage in exchange for your weight in acorns. You have animal empathy that means it is a simple diplomacy roll. While the squires are hard at work ask some passing birds to find you some holly.

Now shimmy up the rope attaching the cage to the tree DC 10 to climb a rope. Then go free your companion and light the bad guys village on fire. Sneak out in the smoke and confusion to find some oak trees for your new best buddies.


dulsin wrote:

Why get all complicated?

Use speak with animals ask the local squires to chew a hole in the top of your cage in exchange for your weight in acorns. You have animal empathy that means it is a simple diplomacy roll. While the squires are hard at work ask some passing birds to find you some holly.

Now shimmy up the rope attaching the cage to the tree DC 10 to climb a rope. Then go free your companion and light the bad guys village on fire. Sneak out in the smoke and confusion to find some oak trees for your new best buddies.

All animals nearby are charmed, its ussually necesary something stronger than Diplomacy to make them do what he wants.

Seriously? The poor guy has a stenght of 3, that means not only that he can't successfuly take 10, it means a 45% chance of a 5d6 falling death.

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