Dealing with Surrender (Help the GM)

[tcharleschapman]

This has to happen a lot. You have a bunch of mooks in the room and the party just slaughters 1/4 of them without taking damage. A PC takes their free action and yells "Drop your weapons and you will be spared!" How you do this? Many enemies in PFS and Adventure Paths say fight until xxx or until dead, or run, or something. But what about everyone else? Is it a skill check? Is it an automatic point. It feel stupid when the AP provides a room of 35 NPC's that are "hostile" but no way to talk them down. Even with an outrageous bard you can only get a group down to Indifferent.

[Snow_Tiger]

I would say it depends. If it specifically says surrenders/runs when ___, then follow that. Other time when a of says to surrender, from common sense, or for story reasons (the leader surrendered/died) or for cinematic reasons (just seems right), the perhaps automatic. Sometimes an intimidate check. Other times forcing a surrender may be impossible (for similar bu opposite reasons of why it could be automatic)

[Kayerloth]

"Drop your weapons and you will be spared!"

"And then what, you take us back and we gets axed by Lord So And So anyway?"

In other words it's an opportunity to role play it out a bit. So no I'm not going to typically use the dice as a sole means of deciding the outcome though I'm not going to ignore whatever the diplomacy (or bluff) the character making the offer has either. What's the motivation for the foes? Are they intelligent humanoids? Starving bandits under a tyrannical ruler? Soldiers of a opposing and warring state? Or are they merely a vicious gang of murderers and cutthroats? Do they think the character(s) meant it (sense motive) when they offered surrender or merely buying time to get around behind them etc.? What are the other party members doing? Are they pausing to see a response or continuing to slaughter? What would you do if you were one of the foes? What happened to the last 3 guys to report failure back to the BBEG (That's a chance to let the party see some of the BBEG personality)?

And I'd start thinking ahead about what the local authorities are going to do if the party does show up with a dozen orcs in chains.

[Mojorat]

Outside of pfs just use your judgement. Will having them surender speed the game up or provide more to play than having them die a round later?

But be aware pcs are actually poorly equiped to deal with prisoners. One of the dm I used to play with had bad guys surrender constantly. It made things un fun having every encounter become a moral dilema.