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Once had a squad of bandits beat the tar out of the party due to bad rolls and a few bad tactics on the PCs parts. The bandits tied the PCs up, stripped them of all their gear, and left them naked on the side of the road.
Another time the PCs failed to infiltrate a castle and were captured. While awaiting their morning executions, shortly before their interrogations began, they overheard the following conversation around the corner of their cell:
Dimwitted Guard: What shall I do with their stuffs? Put it in the locker?
Clever Guard: No you idiot! The locker is right next to thar' cell. What if they were to get out and grab one o' them their weapons? Where would we be then?
Dimwitted Guard: Well...what shall I do with them then?
Clever Guard: Best to throw them in the moat I suppose. We got no use for 'em. They'd have a hard time gettin' them then! Be a whole lot easier retakin' them too if they got no weapons.
As I imagined they would, the PCs escaped, and went straight for the moat for their gear.
The chuuls greeted the unarmed and unarmored snacks quite happily. :D
Please share your stories of how the sanctity of your heroes' gear was defied and defiled.
A friend joined a campaign, his entrance was different. He was tied up and naked on a mule, his stuff on a second mule, with several "bandits" leading said mule.
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15th Level Black blade Magus and party fighting a 17th level wizard + Minions, after an extremely grueling adventure to even get there. This wizard was a personal adversary for the Magus.
The look on the Magus player's face when after he used the last point in his black blades arcane pool, I announced for my action that the Wizard was going to use his quicken rod on a greater dispel magic and then after the black blade failed its save, cast Wish--->Shatter...
Play stopped and the table went silent to watch for the fate of the beloved blade.
He rolled a one...
I described the blade screaming as it shivered to a thousand pieces and died.
The party sorcerer dimensional anchored the wizard and the Magus ended up beating the wizard to death with his bare fists, crying the whole time.
My players where travelling towards an ancient temple, when they got jumped by some thugs/assassins, who where employed to stop them. Easily dispensing of the threat, the PCs find one alive and take him captive rather than killing him.
They come to said temple, noticing protective magic allowing them to carry only one item each. So apart from their spell components or weapon, they leave their gear on the outside, together with their rogue prisoner...
24 hours later, still inside the temple, one of the players actually note "Hey, maybe we should have tied the prisoner better". Needless to say, he was right, and they got to travel home without a shred of clothes.
I guess maybe since it was a high level game and at the end of an adventure...but I still dunno if I would effectively deprive a character of around 1/3 of his class for 8 days (at minimum). That's like a whole adventure, and then some depending on the pacing you had set up before, especially if you're running an AP (for most of them I've played anyway).
Though it sounds like it led to some good RP moments and a Wizard being beaten to death with the Magus' "Damn bare hands!"
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15th Level Black blade Magus and party fighting a 17th level wizard + Minions, after an extremely grueling adventure to even get there. This wizard was a personal adversary for the Magus.
The look on the Magus player's face when after he used the last point in his black blades arcane pool, I announced for my action that the Wizard was going to use his quicken rod on a greater dispel magic and then after the black blade failed its save, cast Wish--->Shatter...
Play stopped and the table went silent to watch for the fate of the beloved blade.
He rolled a one...
I described the blade screaming as it shivered to a thousand pieces and died.
The party sorcerer dimensional anchored the wizard and the Magus ended up beating the wizard to death with his bare fists, crying the whole time.
Eeesh thats one harsh way to strip a Magus of all his hard work, BUT that would be some amazing RP experience as well...would have loved to be at that table.
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I guess maybe since it was a high level game and at the end of an adventure...but I still dunno if I would effectively deprive a character of around 1/3 of his class for 8 days (at minimum). That's like a whole adventure, and then some depending on the pacing you had set up before, especially if you're running an AP (for most of them I've played anyway).
Though it sounds like it led to some good RP moments and a Wizard being beaten to death with the Magus' "Damn bare hands!"
Honestly I agree with this sentiment.
Just for clarity's sake, it has been a long time since I was a player rather than a GM. So, to try and keep my table as player friendly as I can I do the following.
1.) I play as RAW as possible so that the players have a solid rules grounding with which to understand the fairness and impartialness of the dice and the risk and therefore agency associated with each of their actions.
2.) All house rules are discussed before hand and then written down, no variation from the agreed upon rules allowed without complete table consensus.
3.) If a rule is unclear at the table I make a call and unless you can show me I am wrong in under one minute we will roll with it until after the game. Rulings are mutable after the game with table consensus or a book quote.
4.) I used to try and allow PC's to survive, however after a discussion with my players where they requested it, I now roll all non-secret, i.e. perception/trapfinding rolls, in the open and let the dice fall as they may.
5.) My players being very experienced have requested "Serious Enemies". So as requested I slowly ramped up the level of complexity and power until it was something we all were comfortable with.
6.) I only homebrew. I admit I am a blatant thief of good ideas in my homebrew, however after a disastrous first book of rise of the runelords my group has decided they prefer my worlds. (This is not a bash on Paizo or their AP's, they are excellent. My group just feels invested in my world in my opinion.)
All of this led to the confrontation mentioned in my original post.
The wizard was a personal nemesis of the Black-blade, and the magus'es family in which the blade had been passed down.
He had been hounding them for about seven levels through intermediates.
My party finally found out what was behind all the trouble they had been having and found his lair locked it down and attacked.
The rest in brevity is in my original post.
What is funny is that the wizard was only a agent of the true threat and the game went on to level 24.
The magus did get his black-blade back, however the soul of the blade had been trapped by another enemy that the wizard had called out to in his time of need.
He did get to reforge the blade one week later, however the intelligence inside that was an old family friend was gone.
They spent about five levels getting that back and figuring out that they were chasing agents of a greater power.
Honestly we still talk about those characters and that game.
I did get a hug from the magus player after the session where I destroyed his blade.
He knew that the complexity and difficulty of the game was at group request and wanted to make sure that I understood that they were enjoying the game, as he knew I hated and dreaded the idea of being capricious or cruel and in such making the game un-fun.
TL;DR: My players and I talk things out and fun is had by all. I root for them but try and provide challenge at their request.
Their is no GM v Player at my table, we all work together period.
That is not to say a PC has never *cough PK'ed cough*...
Warning: Council of Thieves spoilers in this one, but it is too good of a story regarding gear loss. To those unfamiliar with the AP, I have tried to make it understandable to all. Also, in case one of my players (aka Skuld, Halung, Dunn, and Davi) is perusing the board, do not read as this stuff is ongoing.
My PCs emerged from book 3 of the AP with a ton of loot. The had just come out of Delvehaven, a shut down Pathfinder lodge, victorious and with an artifact radiating strong sunlight called the Morrowfall (the book's magical McGuffin). Unbeknownst to them, one of they party was a traitor, working for the Council of Thieves (the main villains of the AP) the entire time. Now, throughout the journey through Delvehaven, the strategy for storing loot had been "Throw it in the Chelish Crux", the lockable extradimensional space that was the McGuffin of the previous book. Unfortunately, the Chelish Crux was already in possession of the traitorous PC, a LE tiefling summoner by the name of Aubrey. Now, up to this point almost all tieflings the party had encountered up to this point have been in league with the Council of Thieves in some way.
Upon leaving Delvehaven, the party decided that they needed to keep the Morrowfall contained and hidden. And an extradimensional space makes the most sense for it, right? Into the Chelish Crux it went. Now, I required the player playing Aubrey make some obvious indications of her intentions, and attempt to not steal everything. Especially since her character's only goal was to make off with the Morrowfall. But no one questioned or heeded her suggestion that they divvy up the loot more evenly between the party members. Surely it is best to keep all the stuff in one place, suggestion ignored! No one questioned why Aubrey took a specific artifact that she intended to give to an NPC to whom the party owed money and placed it in her regular backpack instead of the Chelish Crux. No one questioned why Aubrey "dismissed" her eidolon in a different manner than usual (she was actually casting "Invisibility"), or why her glowing summoner mark did not disappear. Thus, shortly after setting off to return to their hideout, a "mysterious" pickpocket made off with the Chelish Crux, the Morrowfall, and pretty much all the loot obtained from Delvehaven (1/2-3/4 of the loot in the book).
What astonishes me is the follow-up and the obliviousness of the rest of the party. Before this event, one of the other PCs already knew that Aubrey was a tiefling (she was masquerading as a half-elf). In addition, the entire group had good reason to suspect she was evil. After the event, the party learned there was a spy in their rebel group (the Children of Westcrown), and that all the NPCs had been vetted already. It was revealed to the whole group that Aubrey was an evil tiefling, and how she came to join the group was called into question as she had been lying the entire time about her heritage and motives. Did the group suspect she was the thief? No. Did they suspect that she was the spy? No. The only reaction, ironically, was that the racist to the point of "tieflings are kill-on-sight" barbarian had a revelation out-of-the-blue that not all tieflings are evil and decided that Aubrey was OK in his book. Not only that, but the only attempt to find the stolen gear was a failed attempt to see if Detect Magic would let them track the aura of the Chelish Crux (the aura had dissipated by the time they tried). They didn't even try mundane tracking, which would have revealed the eidolon's tracks on a very easy DC. The party just kind of shrugged and went on its merry way, seemingly assuming that this was all intended to happen in the AP.
And that is the tale of how a PC engineered the theft of gear worth over 3 times her wealth by level, thus crippling the entire party. Aubrey has graduated to "recurring foil PC", still strongly influenced by the player but not allowed to be part of the party again (for their own protection). The rest of the players (save one who is keeping the secret), have no clue Aubrey was the culprit. The plan is to set Aubrey up as a potential post-Adventure Path BBEG. And I, as the DM, am left scrambling trying to add enough gear to the adventure so that the party does not die a horrible death. I honestly didn't expect the theft to work out. I had so many contingencies in place to let the group recover the gear, deal with Aubrey, etc. They just ignored every hint and hook thrown at them.
TL;DR: One of the PCs in the campaign I DM made off with all the loot, despite the player and me doing our best to allow the rest of the party to thwart the traitor.
EDIT: Correcting some poor grammar.
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Have you seen what adventurers carry? Their crap is expensive. Like hell some lowly guard would toss that crap in a moat. He would take it and retire comfortably.
Well, if he isn't beaten to death by the owner of said weapon.
Have you seen what adventurers carry? Their crap is expensive. Like hell some lowly guard would toss that crap in a moat. He would take it and retire comfortably.
Well, if he isn't beaten to death by the owner of said weapon.
Even if the guards all carry standardized gear of their own and would be mercilessly slaughtered by their evil masters if they so much as hinted at leaving the service? :P
Have you seen what adventurers carry? Their crap is expensive. Like hell some lowly guard would toss that crap in a moat. He would take it and retire comfortably.
Well, if he isn't beaten to death by the owner of said weapon.
Yeah, that does seem unlikely. If anything they'd put in another part of the castle. Their decision was borderline meta, since instead of selling/using valuable equipment, they decided to bug some random prisoners. With that said, it still sounded like some hillarious GMing, and hats off to the OP.
We've never had our gear taken in any of our games, but it does seem like a solid plot hook. So long as you're semi fair with it, and you have the opportunity to get it back or find something else to use (even if it is a downgrade).
And that is the tale of how a PC engineered the theft of gear worth over 3 times her wealth by level, thus crippling the entire party. Aubrey has graduated to "recurring foil PC", still strongly influenced by the player but not allowed to be part of the party again (for their own protection). The rest of the players (save one who is keeping the secret), have no clue Aubrey was the culprit. The plan is to set Aubrey up as a potential post-Adventure Path BBEG. And I, as the DM, am left scrambling trying to add enough gear to the adventure so that the party does not die a horrible death. I honestly didn't expect the theft to work out. I had so many contingencies in place to let the group recover the gear, deal with Aubrey, etc. They just ignored every hint and hook thrown at them.TL;DR: One of the PCs in the campaign I DM made off with all the loot, despite the player and me doing our best to allow the rest of the party to thwart the traitor.
While this almost sounds like a laugh-riot of gullible players, I have a sneaking suspicion that the other players don't even realize that it's possible that one of the players and the DM are possibly abusing their trust. Sounds to me like they think they're signed on to one game when they are playing another. And when they find out, they may be pissed.
There's also a distinct possibility that the guards didn't know the value to the gear they found in their possession. Not everyone has ranks in Spellcraft you know.
15th Level Black blade Magus and party fighting a 17th level wizard + Minions, after an extremely grueling adventure to even get there. This wizard was a personal adversary for the Magus.
The look on the Magus player's face when after he used the last point in his black blades arcane pool, I announced for my action that the Wizard was going to use his quicken rod on a greater dispel magic and then after the black blade failed its save, cast Wish--->Shatter...
Play stopped and the table went silent to watch for the fate of the beloved blade.
He rolled a one...
I described the blade screaming as it shivered to a thousand pieces and died.
The party sorcerer dimensional anchored the wizard and the Magus ended up beating the wizard to death with his bare fists, crying the whole time.
wait so NOW what happens, a bladebound magus with no blade..isnt like half the character disabled.... how would he regain this without another wish? Is it possible to reforge it? Craft another? It's a pretty unique thing.
Could it be reforged like narsil?
Yeah, it can be reforged with a 24 hour ceremony after a week passes.
It's still f$@#ing brutal to lose it but at least it's not permanent.
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So the guards are worried that the prisoners escape and their only answer is to throw the loot in the chuul-infested moat ?
1) Most definitely these guards are not PCs : loot is holy. Getting rid of it is blasphemy.
2) The guards are rebellious. They are disregarding their orders to take any adventurer's loot to their boss. Weapons and armors are not cheap, you know.
3) Why is there a locker near the cells if the moat is a better option ?
4) If I was a guard and worried that my prisoners will escape, I would be thinking on things that will make their escape impossible (more guards, tranq them, better manacles). Not on what will happen after they escape and kill me and my buddies
Smells of Metagaming to me
My god you guys are nitpicky!
It's a joke. A joke that makes fun of the "the captured heroes' gear is always nearby" trope often seen in fantasy.
Your supposed to laugh. Not analyze the crap out of it.
Yeah, but now you're waving around a double standard.
Why does nobody ever subvert the "Villain equipment is always nearby in the prison" trope, huh?
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You should make that nearby locker into a trap.
Because my gear was removed and returned in fallout, I felt bad about taking all the gear the PCs had when some were incapacitated and others surrender. I declared that after a rescue, they were returned their old gear by the other Society agents sent in to discover what happened.
15th Level Black blade Magus and party fighting a 17th level wizard + Minions, after an extremely grueling adventure to even get there. This wizard was a personal adversary for the Magus.
The look on the Magus player's face when after he used the last point in his black blades arcane pool, I announced for my action that the Wizard was going to use his quicken rod on a greater dispel magic and then after the black blade failed its save, cast Wish--->Shatter...
Play stopped and the table went silent to watch for the fate of the beloved blade.
He rolled a one...
I described the blade screaming as it shivered to a thousand pieces and died.
The party sorcerer dimensional anchored the wizard and the Magus ended up beating the wizard to death with his bare fists, crying the whole time.
If had been my PC he'd have had an instant alignment shift and ...
But I tend to react rather vengeful if someone uses stuff like a wish not to win but to mess me up instead. He could have used it to emulate some deadly spell on me after all. He'll learn to regret that mistake.
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15th Level Black blade Magus and party fighting a 17th level wizard + Minions, after an extremely grueling adventure to even get there. This wizard was a personal adversary for the Magus.
The look on the Magus player's face when after he used the last point in his black blades arcane pool, I announced for my action that the Wizard was going to use his quicken rod on a greater dispel magic and then after the black blade failed its save, cast Wish--->Shatter...
Play stopped and the table went silent to watch for the fate of the beloved blade.
He rolled a one...
I described the blade screaming as it shivered to a thousand pieces and died.
The party sorcerer dimensional anchored the wizard and the Magus ended up beating the wizard to death with his bare fists, crying the whole time.
If had been my PC he'd have had an instant alignment shift and ...
** spoiler omitted **
But I tend to react rather vengeful if someone uses stuff like a wish not to win but to mess me up instead. He could have used it to emulate some deadly spell on me after all. He'll learn to regret that mistake.
"To the pain."
You should make that nearby locker into a trap.
Awesome idea! Will totally have to use that!
I propose a title change
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How I tricked and killed my players for lulz
There were no tricks in my scenarios. Just encounters. Also nobody died.
And I was being generous. I gave them a chance to overhear the guards at all. The PCs could have spent much of the adventure searching the fortress for their gear, but no, I was kind enough to show them the way.
I could have just as easily said "it's gone forever, deal with it."
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My brother had a character that was part of a group that was framed for a crime they didn't commit. Unfortunately, my brother's character was killed earlier in the adventure and was revived as a mummy (because they didn't have enough cash on hand to find a proper healer and create undead was cheaper) so his being undead probably didn't help their case when they were beset by a group of templar knights sent to find them.
Now, the encounter went much smoother than one would expect. The party was truly quite respectful of the knights. The insisted that they were not involved with the charges set forth and had other things they needed to be doing. The knights weren't willing to simply leave them be, especially since one of them was actually quite evil (my brother was playing an evil character but not in the insane-evil sense) who was also undead (a major red flag for the templar who consisted of a pair of paladin/warriors and some sorceresses). So, my brother asked to have an honorable duel with one of their members, and if they could best him he would go along peacefully, while the alternative was he was going to fight for his freedom against these "wrongful charges".
The Paladins weren't particularly amused but one of the sorceresses agreed. As she walked up to assume a dueling position she cast halt undead on him and locked him in place. "Oh...no..." he said as he suddenly was unable to move, sword in hand. One of the other players said "Oh man I can't watch! We just got him raised and now he's going to be scorching ray fodder, I just know it"!
But instead, she proceeded to cast shatter several times on his equipment while tying him and and slapping manacles on him. Poof, away went an adamantine longsword. Crack, gone went the masterwork full-plate. "Oh no...she hit me in my pocket book!" my brother exclaimed laughing. "That's below the belt lady!" one of the other players said laughing at the big, bad, muscle-bound mummy getting himself tied in knots by this little sorceress inquisitor.
My brother carried the shards of his equipment around in a sack for like 4-7 sessions (I forget exactly how long) before he got it repaired. :P
I would also like to point out that my brother didn't piss and moan about it either. He laughed, pretended to cry, said "Oh, my poor sword! She really knows how to hurt a guy!", but he didn't go all "OMG GM YOU'Z SO NAUGHTY BAD STINKYPANTS!" at me. It became a bit of a joke. When someone asked him "what's in the bag", he would reply "the pieces of my broken heart" (which was even funnier since he was a hollowed out undead mummy warrior guy :P).
All equipment can be gained again. No item is worth more than you. It doesn't take a long time to get back to where you were. If you're 20th level and all your gear gets stripped, mop the floor with some mooks, take said loot, go on a 10th level adventure, get some better gear, go on a few 15th+ level adventures, and voila, you're restocked in no time.
It doesn't take a long time to get back to where you were. If you're 20th level and all your gear gets stripped, mop the floor with some mooks, take said loot, go on a 10th level adventure, get some better gear, go on a few 15th+ level adventures, and voila, you're restocked in no time.
Wait so what happens if you aren't 20th level and you can't just f&$+ off whatever you were doing to farm low level mobs like a boss?
Wait so what happens if you aren't 20th level and you can't just f#!& off whatever you were doing to farm low level mobs like a boss?
Depends. Are you the big damn hero? Because if you're the big damn hero, you keep on striving because that's what the big damn hero does.
I didn't ask whether to keep going or not, the statement in question is that it doesn't take long to get your gear back. Which I'll admit it is if you're assuming you're level 20 and have time to kill running low level dungeons because you don't have any bigger adventure waiting for you.
For everyone else, it's not that easy.
Losing gear happens sometimes for story reasons, but I tend to get annoyed when I'm given something and then it's irrevocably lost and I'm not given some sort of replacement after everything is said and done.
Ashiel's story amuses me greatly.
It doesn't take a long time to get back to where you were. If you're 20th level and all your gear gets stripped, mop the floor with some mooks, take said loot, go on a 10th level adventure, get some better gear, go on a few 15th+ level adventures, and voila, you're restocked in no time.Wait so what happens if you aren't 20th level and you can't just f*#$ off whatever you were doing to farm low level mobs like a boss?
I used 20th level characters as an example because they have the most to lose as it were. Your average 20th level PC is assumed to have close to a million GP worth of gear at the start of their 20th level (880,000 gp IIRC). If anyone should get upset for suddenly being stripped of all their shinies it would probably be these guys. Yet, even them, it's really only a minor setback in the grand scheme of things.
For lower level characters it's even less of an issue. I mean, my brother in the story was only around 6th level (mummies are 5th level equivalent and he had 1 level of antipaladin, but not the chaotic stupid kind) and he basically lost all of his gear (pretty much his armor + his sword was really all he had to his name, but they were awesome for a 5th-6th level character).
Even spellbooks can be replaced without too much issue if you follow the normal rules for spell availability. If you pay attention to the equipment and magic chapters, you can pay spellcasters a standard fee to scribe spells from their books (it costs 1/2 the cost to actually scribe the spell), which means that you can travel to some towns that have NPC spellcasting available and recoup your loss at a reasonable rate.
Yes, but it's the mid-high levels where it really hurts (10-14-ish).
That's when you've:
A.) Got a lot of cool stuff.
but
B.) Are going to have a HELL of a hard time replacing it.
and
C.) Probably just hit the final stretch of an adventure where the BBEG is a short time away from completing his grand master plan.
so
D.) you don't have time to wait for new stuff to be made even if you DID have the dosh to buy it.
Better to steal their stuff and have a way for them to get it back than smash it or throw it in a lake.
Yes, but it's the mid-high levels where it really hurts (10-14-ish).
That's when you've:
A.) Got a lot of cool stuff.
B.) Are going to have a HELL of a hard time replacing it.
C.) Probably just hit the final stretch of an adventure where the BBEG is a short time away from completing his grand master plan.
D.) you don't have time to wait for new stuff to be made even if you DID have the dosh to buy it.Better to steal their stuff and have a way for them to get it back than smash it or throw it in a lake.
I think it really depends on the situation. Given the ease in repairing equipment (mending, make-whole, etc) smashing stuff isn't really anything more than a combat tactic. Throwing stuff in a lake? Probably less likely but gone is gone. And I think it's a little odd to assume just because you're 11th level and thus Meteor is about to hit the planet and you don't have time to watch some Chocobos screw so you can go get the infinity+1 sword. :P
For example, when you have to escape Jon Irenicus' dungeon in the beginning of BG II, he has taken all your goodies (from your imported BG I character) and sold them. You escape your cell, unlock your fellow captives, and then you look around. There's some entirely mundane gear (not even a full selection of it), so you end up fighting your way through his mooks with stuff like mundane longswords and armor, picking up a few magic trinkets as you escape the place. All of this around 8th-9th level.
Then you even have to collect about 15,000 gp worth of coin just bribe some shmuck into helping you go after the guy and rescue the girl. But it doesn't take long to both gear up and get ready. I mean, you make a ton of money adventuring and you can buy +2 weapons for 8,000 gp and +3 armors for 9,000 gp. Mid level is the easiest level to re-gear on the fly because it's the level where you can still buy level-appropriate stuff in stores.
For example, if you're level 12, and you're stripped of gear. You break out and clobber a few enemies and go through a dungeon that was probably difficult back at 6th-8th level with full gear. You have to think about what you're doing ("Okay, let's try to avoid the beholder since we're ill equipped") but you make it out. You pawn your loot when you get to your freedom, then you go and buy some +1 bane weapons, some armor and shields, a couple of trinkets, and you're back in business. Heck, you may replace most of your gear just getting out of the place or back to a place to buy more gear.
Don't get me wrong. I don't make a habit of locking players up and pointing and laughing when their weapons or goodies get smashed. It happens though (the smashing, not the pointing and stuff). It's not a huge deal when it happens though because everything except people is replaceable.
A) Shipwrecked! Two new players, three old players. New game. All of them were on ships that sank at sea due to heavy doomwhale attacks (think of a sperm whale with an appropriately sized narwhal horn). They all were stranded on the same island with whatever gear they could grab before their ships went down.
B) Half-Orc Fighter in half-plate with a battle axe. On a job to escort a trader on a long river journey. Boat is attacked by spiders and swarms, and he falls overboard, losing his battle axe to avoid drowning. Nobody can find it afterwards at the bottom of the river.
C) Same Half-Orc, the group cleric spent 1750gp of her own money to buy him a +1 battle axe to replace the other. Same session, they are attacked by lizardfolk. One of the lizardfolk charges him and bull-rushes him off the side of the boat. He doesn't lose the axe this time (he had it on a weapon cord) so it didn't fall on the boat. Instead, it was dragged along with him as 3 lizardfolk pounded him underwater until he drowned. They dragged him up on shore later, stripped him, and left him for dead. He stabilized, was rescued naked, and then retired from adventuring.
D) Same cleric, with rest of party and new lizardfolk natural weapon ranger. Entire group is in a barbarian elf city, relaxing while the trader they escorted does trading things. Suddenly, one morning, the local city guard charges them en masse, attacking and beating them unconscious. They wake up in a jail cell, chained to the wall. The merchant is chained there as well. Turns out he was hired by his putative body guard to pretend to be a merchant. The body guard stole religious relics from the main temple, then killed the high priestess. Several days of beatings and questionings later, the actor merchant's partner (a pixie with levels of rogue) kills a bunch of the guards, casts 'open' on his manacles, and frees him. He gives them the keys and then escapes. They find about 80% of their equipment across the street (along with 15 or 20 guard bodies) and then they steal a boat and leave town, to escape through the wildlands to the south, which are overrun with giants and deurger and drow.
E) Duerger Duskblade in full plate adamantine with a mithral warhammer. He's attacking an inquisitor Tengu, who's first action is to Sunder the Duskblade's +3 Flaming Mithral Warhammer, doing 3/4 of it's HP. Duerger's player does a double take, cries out loud, and uses his next action to throw the warhammer 60 feet away on the ground, and proceeds to go MW Gauntlet to +3 Morningstar the rest of the fight. :)
F) Climactic battle of a 8 month long story arc, and the group's tank, a half-orc barbarian, goes toe to toe with a goblin anti-paladin and two goblin inquisitors. The goblin sorcerer in the back throws a fireball centered to avoid his compatriots. Barbarian rolls a 1 on his save, and takes full damage, and has to roll for his equipment. He rolls a 1 for his breast plate, a 1 for his +str belt, and a 1 for his bag of holding, resulting in his armor falling off, his str belt falling off, and his bag of holding (with all his money and other goodies) imploding into a small point of light. This resulted in the party losing the fight and the main quest character ending up being picked up by a medium elemental and tossed into a volcano (sizzle poof on lava).
In one of my home games:
Our party was completely outnumbered and surrounded. Our spell casters were basically out of spells for the day. We were sitting ducks just waiting for the slaughter. Next thing you know, the GM throws out an ultimatum. "Drop ALL of your gear. ALL of it, and we will let you go." The party erupted into mayhem. How could they possibly give up their precious items? What would they be without them? The general consensus was "Over my dead character sheet." While this was happening, my character nonchalantly stripped down to his birthday suit and walked away. The guards let me by and then slaughtered the rest of my party. On my way back to the nearest town I picked up a decent size rock to use as an improvised weapon. Just in case the GM wanted to totally screw me over.
The sad part was that my character lived and had nothing to his name. The rest of the party rolled new characters and got their average wealth worth of items.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Well it's not Pathfinder, but has anyone ever played Dragon Age: Origins and just made a point to stroll out of the prison naked?
I did it with a wizard just for the laugh. "Oh now, I'm naked, and don't have my gear. Whatever will I do?" *Cue using Storm of the Century repeatedly to clean out the prison.*
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while just about every situation can have an amusing anecdote associated with it, it is far more likely that just straight borking the gear of a PC is going to result in a situation that is distinctly lacking in smiles and good feelings
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@Lamontius
I think *multiple* encounters w/o gear is going to wear thin, but 'escape without your gear/someone else's gear' is a popular trope in fiction (and RPGs).*
It does provide a different style of play, and can lead to more nail biting moments ("What can I cast without my holy/symbol/components/spell books?" "I can't summon my eidilon? What am I supposed to do?") but it should be the exception, not the rule, unless the campaign starts at the outset like this.
*
Oh yeah agreed, we're on the same page
I mean like metaphorically, not because we are posting in on the same page in this thread
I mean that happened, too, but-
I need to go lay down.
It depends on how the scenario is set up, how possible it is to get your gear back, and how challenging the gearless encounters are. Remember that at high levels, a fighter who normally uses a greataxe but loses all her gear and is forced to fight with a scavenged mundane longsword is looking at something like a -16 to hit and a -24 to damage (and can no longer bypass DR), and her AC is back to whatever it was at first level. Better hope you have max ranks in whatever the appropriate Skill is, or you're not contributing a thing to this adventure. Pathfinder makes characters much more gear-dependent than most fiction usually does.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the tone of the topic comes across as less "What are some cool ways you made the gearless prison escape setup interesting?" and more "What are some fab ways you showed those entitled players that they don't get to have loot if you don't want them to?" - and some of the replies particularly illustrate that GMing mindset.
This is kinda like that whole "GM keeps stealing mah spellbook" thing awhile back
If the GM has something rad in mind and is using it as a plot device or set up something fun then I am super cool with it
If it is like every session while the GM dances around in a luchador mask while yelling "BABY I GOT YOUR MONEY" and shaking their rear at you then yeah, I'm not so down with it
...that was purely hypothetical.
It depends on how the scenario is set up, how possible it is to get your gear back, and how challenging the gearless encounters are. Remember that at high levels, a fighter who normally uses a greataxe but loses all her gear and is forced to fight with a scavenged mundane longsword is looking at something like a -16 to hit and a -24 to damage (and can no longer bypass DR). Pathfinder makes characters much more gear-dependent than most fiction usually does.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the tone of the topic comes across as less "What are some cool ways you made the gearless prison escape setup interesting?" and more "What are some fab ways you showed those entitled players that they don't get to have loot if you don't want them to?" - and some of the replies particularly illustrate that GMing mindset.
What am I missing?
ATTACKS
05 weapon enhancement
06 weapon training with gloves of dueling
02 weapon focus and greater weapon focus
13 TOTAL points of loss without the primary weapon
DAMAGE
05 weapon enhancement
06 weapon training with gloves of dueling
04 weapon specialization and greater weapon specialization
15 TOTAL points of loss without the primary weapon
And of course this assumes you don't find anything in a secondary weapon group. High level fighters often have secondary, and even tertiary weapon groups at smaller bonuses, so in reality the gap between your primary weapon and the weapon you pick up might not be quite so large.
Well, this happened back in the days of 2nd Edition AD&D, but it translates pretty well.
Me: Experienced GM. Party: Combination of typical players, with two obnoxious new players who have decided that this is all a video game and they're the unassailable heroes.
Situation: The party, after discovering an alliance between BBEGs in the caverns outside of town, rush to the city to warn the local baron and get him to drop his petty squabbles and form an alliance of his own with neighboring baronies for defense and eventually facing down the monsters.
Now, a little backstory. This town the players are currently based out of is a small fortified city, that has been beset by raids from monsters coming from the cavern complex for the last century. The raids, and the petty squabbles of the neighboring fiefdoms, have kept the city from mounting any serious offensive to eliminate this threat. They're doing good if they just keep the humanoids from riding off with their womenfolk.
So when a group of mercenaries comes out with all this loot that's been stolen from the town over the last century, needless to say there are some bad feelings. Prices in town suddenly jump 300% for the adventurers, for everything from supplies to mugs of ale. The players assumed it was just the serious influx of cash that made prices jump, and failed Wisdom checks (remember, 2nd edition AD&D, no such thing as Perception or Sense Motive) to figure out that the common people are not very happy with the PCs.
The party goes to the baron to inform him of the evil alliance and to urge him to actually mount an offensive. Through a lack of any form of tact, coupled with complete obnoxiousness by the new players (and the more experienced players didn't try to cover this up -- I think they wanted the idiots to offend the guy, too bad it worked too well), they manage to mortally insult the baron. The baron claps them in irons (the two idiots are beaten to 0 H.P. by the guards) and sends them to the dungeon to await his decision.
The two idiots are executed at daybreak -- I didn't even give them a chance to avoid it, they made their bed when they opened their big fat mouths. Just dead, time to roll up new LEVEL 1 characters. (This was a standard rule of my games. If your character dies and is not raised/rezzed, you start new character back at the beginning.) Did I mention the rest of the party is 8th-10th level?
The rest of the party is summarily fined all their worldly possessions (save for the basic tools needed for their class -- one NORMAL weapon, leather armor, magic-users got to keep three level 1 spells out of their spellbooks, cleric got her holy symbol and normal clothing. The rest of their possessions, what they didn't loot from the cave, is redistributed among the baronial guard and the militia to assist the defense of the city, or held to be sold to the highest bidder.
(Now, at this point the party could have gone to the baron and asked for jobs in the militia to assist the defense of the city -- after all, there was this alliance of evil creatures in the caverns who were pretty pissed that a group of mercenaries based out of that town had come along, killed a lot of their friends, and made off with all that loot they'd been stealing from the town. So it's not like the party didn't know there wasn't a threat to be defeated...)
The entire party, bereft of their items, decided to all retire their characters and reroll as new 1st level characters. Not because they wanted to start over new with the two idiots, but because they felt it would be too hard to start over again without magic items or spells. (And I ran my world pretty straight -- if they wanted to do some things more appropriate for lower-level adventurers while they re-geared.)
You're forgetting the +6 Str belt.
Beyond that, the damage gets inflated a bit because greataxe to longsword is d12 to d8 and two-handed to one-handed, but even moving to something effectively identical to your usual greataxe (except in name) would put you at something like -16 to hit, -20 to damage.
If you're in a gearless adventure you're probably not finding too wide a variety of weapons too quickly, especially since you're certainly not killing anything with your bare hands (which, incidentally, suffer a -20 to hit, -27 to damage, and make you provoke when you attack) so you're going to be snatching up whatever the first thing you stumble upon happens to be. Even if you find something in a tertiary group, without Gloves of Dueling that won't mean much; improving -16 to hit, -20 to damage to -14 to hit, -18 to damage still places you squarely in "better hope the GM isn't confronting you with anything scarier than a 1HD goblin" territory.
You should make that nearby locker into a trap.
What I'd have done is set the party up: the two guards were only pretending to discuss what was to be done with the captives' gear. It would have been secured in a safe room upstairs; the guards were just B.S.'ing the party to see if they were gullible enough to go diving into the chuul-infested moat.
"Hey! Barney! They fell for it! They actually jumped into the moat!"