I'm unsure about how to get around a scenario my current games holds. All the players are gladiators in a drow gladiator pit. We've done a few bouts and did pretty good overall. We have a human fighter who's really good at performing for the crowd, a halfling magus, a half drow cleric, a barbarian minotaur (though might be losing him soon due to player leaving for 4 to 5 months), a gargoyle ranger, and a serpentfolk loremaster/rogue.
We keeping on coming to dead ends for how to get out and it's starting to get frustrating. Sure, we might survive long enough to win our freedom, but the chances are not good for that. We all have collars that are triggered by distance from a place, such as leaving the premises, or triggered in general by the slave master that simply put the character unconscious. Trying to disarm it, remove it, has seemed all but impossible.
The guards are all minotaurs who are veterans of the arena.
The slave master seems to have some special plans for the characters, whatever that might be.
We've had prostitutes come in and gotten absolutely no where with them information wise about the city, the house, the collars, or what the slave master might be wanting.
Even the arena is protected by a magical forcefield for the fans.
Right now my character, the serpentfolk, has asked for a favor and been awarded a chance to go on a tour of the city. He hopes for the master to come along and try to get information or make an ally of them. If that doesn't happen, then we're at another dead end.
Does anyone have any other ideas?
The slave master seems to have some special plans for the characters, whatever that might be.
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Right now my character, the serpentfolk, has asked for a favor and been awarded a chance to go on a tour of the city. He hopes for the master to come along and try to get information or make an ally of them. If that doesn't happen, then we're at another dead end.
Does anyone have any other ideas?
First of all, this says to me, "Hi! Please allow me to introduce myself, I am an OBVIOUS FREAKING PLOT HOOK!" Go with it. This is probably what your GM wants you to do. Yes, it's a bit railroady, but generally speaking if your GM is good at storytelling, following the rails ze sets up for you is a good way to be part of a cool story -- to a point, anyway, you want to maintain your character's independence.
If it seems sketchy or if your GM likes to throw red herrings about like a commie fishmonger, the magus, cleric and loremaster might collaborate on trying to break the enchantment on the collars, or you could all just go all in on winning the arena and achieving freedom through that.
If the collars are limited in some fashion, e.g. if there is only one doohickey to set them off and it is carried by the slavemaster, then that could be your target. If there are lots of the doohickeys, then there might be the opportunity to find a way to switch the codes for collars around so that when they try to trigger your collar it triggers someone else's instead so they can't knock you out right away. If there is only one doohickey but rather than the slavemaster holding it, someone else does and he has them trigger it when he needs to, you could try to subvert that person instead.
A few ideas from a really new player (my first post here after a few weeks of lurking), and basically how my party or I would try to get out:
1. Social skills, social skills, social skills, maybe you can try to earn one of the guard's trust and have him help your escape/feed you information to plan.
2. Have the DM flesh out these collars, what's their source of power/activation, this may mean knowledge checks left and right, but you have to know what you're fighting. If the DM gives unsatisfactory information on nicely rolled knowledge checks, maybe raise the point with him about your frustrations. Once you know more about the collars, give us an update and we can brainstorm some more ways to beat them.
3. Is it possible that the DM just wants this to be arena combat without any other overarching plot? I know some DMs like to focus on social/combat/story campaigns (My DM likes to have about 70% social/rp, 30% combat). The trip through the town seems to disprove this theory though.
4. Incite a riot amongst your fellow gladiators, maybe, if the collars are triggered only by the slave master, you're fellow party members could launch their escape while you're out on your city tour with the slave master. He comes back to find himself locked out, it buys your party members time to escape (maybe ambush the slave master?) and in the chaos, he probably won't notice the escape has taken place right away, and triggering your collars specifically is the last thing on his mind.
My DM rewards creativity and unorthodoxy, if all that fails, TALK TO YOUR DM, it seems to be the ultimate problem solver, and if he's railroading you guys or you're not making any progress, it probably won't hurt.
Well, everything came together last session. It wasn't a complete railroad, but our characters put themselves back on the tracks of their own volition.
The drow city was attacked by another city and they released all the gladiators, exploded the collars. Of course that knocked out the characters and we were making our way through the city in the aftermath.
We had 4 or 5 medium to major encounters/combats, grabbing weapons off the defeated. It was a mixture of an invading drow/servant army and rebelling slaves and Militia. We used up all our healing resources and while we had acquired some new items, we had to rest and heal. But, we didn't feel like we had 8 hours to lay around anywhere.
We kept moving till we got ambushed by a pair of dryders who became visible and fried everyone in the alleyway we were in with lightning bolts. My character flew up and fired his bow while the minotaur charged forward and scored really well with a huge greataxe we had acquired and along with the help of the magus from behind, dropped one. The gargoyle of the party came up and down and injured the other. Then she surrendered....
We spoke with her about being a mercenary hired by the other drow city, what their plans were, a few secret passageways out of the vault. Unfortunately all those were guarded heavily and we were contemplating waiting and leaving, but that was very risky in some ways. So, the party settled on going back to noble area of the city and trying to hook up with the slavemaster's house and hopefully working as guards of something more promising than what we were in.
Around that time, the slave master, as well as a few of her upper level servants came into view. She explained she had arranged for her apparent death and wanted to take us up to the surface to get away from here and continue her pursuit to acquire lore and knowledge. We'd just have to serve her as endentured servants for one year. We all accepted and up to the lush jungle and sun overhead.
So we're on Raktor Island... Haven't been able to find anything about that place in the material yet, but I'll keep looking. With the roll i got for knowledge:Geography, my character should know the basics of the place.