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In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his men are taken prisoner by a cyclops, so they wait until he's asleep before blinding him with a sharpened stake, as there's no way they could best him in a straight fight.
I'd love to make an encounter like this for my players, but is there any way to ensure they won't go into full-attack mode at a monster I know they can't beat?
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My groups is sometimes very poor at picking up hints and subtle clues. So I just come right out and say it.
"Roll a wisdom check and add your BaB."
Who ever go the highest total I tell, "As an experienced warrior, you know there is little chance of doing serious injury to this guy in a straight up fight."
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Once, I staged a battle between two monsters, rolling all the dice in full view of the player, so that he could see how deadly the winner was. When the surviving monster went on to attack the party, the party knew to retreat.
Another time, I had the bad guy go "Bond villain". He attacked the party and allowed its members to retreat, making it clear that attacking the guy wasn't a wise move.
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The PCs have just fought a tough battle against, say, an elephant, barely surviving.
The PCs see the great cyclops wandering along in the distance. An enraged elephant charges him, but the cyclops doesn't even flinch. He picks up the elephant, bites off its head, and chews it up, tusks and all.
Intelligent PCs will get the message.
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My groups is sometimes very poor at picking up hints and subtle clues. So I just come right out and say it.
"Roll a wisdom check and add your BaB."
Who ever go the highest total I tell, "As an experienced warrior, you know there is little chance of doing serious injury to this guy in a straight up fight."
This is a good system. You can substitute Int for Wis and Caster Level for BAB as appropriate, for more book smart characters and for foes that might not innately look like much, but have massive amounts of magical power.
Also, this is one thing that Knowledge Checks are made for. Say you want them to run from or otherwise use guile to bypass some magical beast. Have them roll Knowledge: Nature. If they roll high, flat out tell them that this is a creature well above their pay grade, and they should find some other way. If they roll low, emphasize that this is a beast that they have only heard of in legends, but few specifics. In these legends, adventurers and warriors far more experienced than them fail, but the smart and stealthy rogue manages to overcome the beast by his brains.
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I depends on my players' skills. Sometimes a good perception check can sense "the power emanating off of the opponent". At other times a good sense motive check indicates that the creature is "not bluffing but is extremely sure of its own ability to own you".
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This is partially what knowledge checks are for. However, be aware that your players will think that they can defeat whatever you throw them up against.
In essence you want to pick certain ranges, CR -1 - 4, 5 - 9, 10 - 14, 15 - 19, 20+, .etc, and have a word pertaining to each of these that the scholarly communities of Golarion use to describe creatures from these categories.
CR -1 - 4, meaning anything below CR 1 through CR 4 could be described as "dangerous in numbers or if encountered on one's own."
CR 5 - 9 could be described as "extremely deadly, even to small groups."
CR 10 - 14 could be described as "dangerous even to caravans."
CR 15 - 19 could be described as "dangerous to nations."
CR 20+ could be described as "World Changing."
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Don't forget to utilize the enviroment to convey destructive capabilities of creatures.
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I know a lot of players will fight to the death before they will even consider surrender. For some being captured is failure and the only failure they want to accept is death. You could give them a heads up and explain the scenario but I think a lot of players would still prefer not to be put into these situations. It would take the right attitude and play style to go along with this. I'm not sure how to go about finding out if a player is down for this or not. Hopefully folks have some good suggestions.
I know a lot of players will fight to the death before they will even consider surrender. For some being captured is failure and the only failure they want to accept is death. You could give them a heads up and explain the scenario but I think a lot of players would still prefer not to be put into these situations. It would take the right attitude and play style to go along with this. I'm not sure how to go about finding out if a player is down for this or not. Hopefully folks have some good suggestions.
It often seems to be the same players that won't accept a surrender from an opponent.
it just isn't an option to be considered in either direction.
Personally i just tell the players straight up: this guy is out of your league. If you plan to take him out you'll need to be careful and smart. Then they cant complain if they bum rush him and get maimed.
My groups is sometimes very poor at picking up hints and subtle clues. So I just come right out and say it.
"Roll a wisdom check and add your BaB."
Who ever go the highest total I tell, "As an experienced warrior, you know there is little chance of doing serious injury to this guy in a straight up fight."
interesting....that means that wizards and sorcerers are more likely to fail the check. Essentially, it means they are drunk on their power and do not realize their own limits. It also gives value to military experience for martials.
Because what gives you a greater understanding of your limits than standing against a 32 foot tall giant and trying to hack at its ankles.
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We generally figure it out when we're calling the tactical retreat, our spells are bouncing off them and our fighters are too busy cutting themselves free of entanglement/trying to escape grapples/bleeding out/looking for their missing limbs. We're slow learners but it makes things exciting!
I know a lot of players will fight to the death before they will even consider surrender. For some being captured is failure and the only failure they want to accept is death. You could give them a heads up and explain the scenario but I think a lot of players would still prefer not to be put into these situations. It would take the right attitude and play style to go along with this. I'm not sure how to go about finding out if a player is down for this or not. Hopefully folks have some good suggestions.
Right. DON'T DO THIS! Players want to have some control over their destiny, and they like their stuff. You're gonna take those away?
Mind you, this is a GREAT way to start a campaign. "Having been captured by the Cyclops, you wake up in a cave, naked except a loincloth. You see other people waking up around you."
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I've had a group of APL 3 PCs show up and unexpectedly run into a ghost of CR 7. They were not prepared and the ghost got a surprise round, so I made it cause fear. When on the first combat round the PCs didn't leave, I had it deal some damage and then order the party to flee. For story purposes then on the 2nd round the ghost glitched and remembered it's former life and how it was a distant relative to one of the PCs (long story) so it did literally nothing all round except beg the party to leave - they still didn't.
So round 3 it nearly kills it's distant realative. Said PC's animal companion has disappeared deeper into the dungeon and suddenly the PC can't feel the bond any longer. So round 4 it glitches again and the party STILL tried to attack as they finally fled, albeit slowly. Round 5 the ghost gets one final hit in nearly killing another PC.
After it was all said and done the players were mad at me for an "unbeatable" foe. The moral of the story? Be blunt.
First tell them through the skills of the PCs. Anyone got Profession: Soldier, or a BAB of +1? Any and all of them should have the chance to just size up a foe and determine it's "combat presence" as I like to call it. Also if the foe is that B/A then maybe just TELL the guy with the appropriate knowledge check to roll it. He might not even identify the monster but he'll dang well know its out of his league.
If that's not doing it tell them flat out: your initial volley was like the buzzing of flies to him. This monster is warming up to completely destroy any trace of you from this earth. If this doesn't motivate the players to change up tactics then it's on like Donkey Kong and they don't get to complain later when they're rolling up new PCs.
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sometimes you just have to warn them.
I was running a pbp and I straight up told the PC's. If you fight you will die. It didn't work and led to a huge argument about how the encounter was unfair etc, but sometimes that is all you can do.
My groups is sometimes very poor at picking up hints and subtle clues. So I just come right out and say it.
"Roll a wisdom check and add your BaB."
Who ever go the highest total I tell, "As an experienced warrior, you know there is little chance of doing serious injury to this guy in a straight up fight."interesting....that means that wizards and sorcerers are more likely to fail the check. Essentially, it means they are drunk on their power and do not realize their own limits. It also gives value to military experience for martials.
Because what gives you a greater understanding of your limits than standing against a 32 foot tall giant and trying to hack at its ankles.
Well the last few times I used it was for characters trying to analyze the fighting capability of an opponent. How strong does it appear? How coordinated are its movements. Does it behave like a serious veteran or a high school bully? To me that was more of an observing it in relation to the characters own martial experience.
A knowledge check will tell you that it is a gnoll. But it isn't going to tell you that it has 14 levels of ranger ready to slash your face off.
{shrug}
I probably would have used caster level instead of BaB if they were watching some guy work in his lab and wanted to know how magically dangerous he seemed.
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I know a lot of players will fight to the death before they will even consider surrender. For some being captured is failure and the only failure they want to accept is death. You could give them a heads up and explain the scenario but I think a lot of players would still prefer not to be put into these situations. It would take the right attitude and play style to go along with this. I'm not sure how to go about finding out if a player is down for this or not. Hopefully folks have some good suggestions.Right. DON'T DO THIS! Players want to have some control over their destiny, and they like their stuff. You're gonna take those away?
Mind you, this is a GREAT way to start a campaign. "Having been captured by the Cyclops, you wake up in a cave, naked except a loincloth. You see other people waking up around you."
And then have the Cyclops pop a random NPC into his mouth like a Reese's peanut-butter cup just to make sure they get the hint.
I've actually used that as an in-game guide before; having an NPC who the players know is roughly their level (or higher!) get his face pushed in by a baddy to emphasize the amount of danger they're all facing. If Gerald the Paladin just saved your cookies from a dragon that was thoroughly roasting them, and then Gerald gets impaled/decapitated/defenestrated/disemboweled/delimbed/disintegrated by the new BBEG, the party's probably going to realize that retreat, deception, or negotiation are their only real options.
On a slightly tangential but still relevant note, I had a party that always forgot to look for traps, even when it was really apparent that they should be. Rather than jumping right into letting them suffer the consequences, I had the fearless knight NPC assisting their group go first and lose the top half of his head to a scything blade trap. Everyone was wanting to make Perception checks after that.
Sometimes players win fights they are not supposed to win. I would have them run into an NPC who tells them what the unbeatable monster did before the players run into it so they know not to try.
To prevent this make the monster actually unbeatable--> As an example saying the monster is only harmed by plot item X would be a good way to do it. It can also be immune to magic because _____.
]Given the pace of fights, I often find by that time, say round 2 of an unwinnable fight, we've got a couple of people down or trapped but not dead. That gives those standing motivation to either try once more to win or at least to not leave their friends behind - generally leading to a TPK or near TPK.
If you actually get into a fight with overpowering opponents, things go south fast. How long does that APL-3 encounter last against your party. How many would get away if they ran on round 2?
My group has an aversion to knowledge checks, so usually first round is the positioning or our go-to things like buffing, blasting, summoning etc. Round 1 for the enemy is positioning and prep. Round 2 is the "Crap, that didn't work, try plan B". Round 3 is the "Crap, plan C? What's plan C? Who's closest to dying, how close?" By fourth round the party generally knows which way the combat is going and reacts appropriately. What sort of heroes retreat after they swing and miss the guy once?
Now playerwise, we may know "I've seen that thing deal 30 dmg, on a low roll..." but in character it's more like "That jerk had the gall to hit me!" My characters are usually also very mission oriented. One or two casualties is insignificant so long as we can accomplish X, so I generally don't call the retreat till things are baaaaad.
Maybe the first encounter of this sort, the DM could give a "Glowing Red Button". For example, the pary may be unable to kill the enemy, but a button at the far end of the room will help even the odds. Kind of like dropping a big chandelier on the mass of bodyguards around the cruel noble. Or they could try engaging 30 highly trained combattants in hand to hand...
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Sometimes players win fights they are not supposed to win. I would have them run into an NPC who tells them what the unbeatable monster did before the players run into it so they know not to try.
To prevent this make the monster actually unbeatable--> As an example saying the monster is only harmed by plot item X would be a good way to do it. It can also be immune to magic because _____.
I have a very different idea about how to make the monster actually unbeatable: Don't. When I, as a GM, THINK that an encounter is unbeatable, and the players prove me wrong, that surprise provides the kind of fun that made me start on tabletop RPGs in the first place. If I wanted a story to happen JUST SO, I would write a novel.
I have a very different idea about how to make the monster actually unbeatable: Don't. When I, as a GM, THINK that an encounter is unbeatable, and the players prove me wrong, that surprise provides the kind of fun that made me start on tabletop RPGs in the first place. If I wanted a story to happen JUST SO, I would write a novel.Sometimes players win fights they are not supposed to win. I would have them run into an NPC who tells them what the unbeatable monster did before the players run into it so they know not to try.
To prevent this make the monster actually unbeatable--> As an example saying the monster is only harmed by plot item X would be a good way to do it. It can also be immune to magic because _____.
QFT.
I would recommend the "competent NPC gets devoured" idea that others have suggested. If the party goes ahead and dies anyway, that's too bad. If they win, than that's just a different kind of clever, or at the very least luck.
Don't say "don't kill this guy, he'll murderface you." If, before the session begins, you mention that not every fight will be winnable under normal conditions, that's fine. However, I implore you to not introduce a monster and then say "don't try to kill it." Best way in the world to kill off your game immersion.
Ive run a few campaigns now and every campaign I tell my players straight up, the fights are going to be HARD and you better play smarter then "gotta get my full round attack to win" kind of tactics. Very rarely do I ever have a encounter that can be won by simply running at them. This is nice to appease those that dumped everything into Raging Power Attack but it seems like a very poor way to play the game. Especially since Pathfinder isnt a Video Game, it's a Roleplaying game that lets you play like reality. So i prefer to make roleplaying and creativity hold a higher value then creating a scaling rocket tag.
TL;DR: If you let them know right off the bat there is a serious chance of TPK if they bum rush anything they may play different or at least slowly learn.
And continuing on the "Sometimes players win fights they are not supposed to win" aspect, does anyone remember "The Forge of Fury"?
Monsters that can only be killed through their One Weakness(tm) shouldn't just be dropped on the players. They need to be foreshadowed; dreams, prophecies, veiled (or not so veiled) warnings from seers or other NPCs, etc...
...and warnings don't have to be by magic. One of those "other NPCs" could simply be someone with inside information.
Take, for instance, the "Coin" module trilogy ("Root of All Evil", "Forging Darkness", and "Coin's End").
My groups is sometimes very poor at picking up hints and subtle clues. So I just come right out and say it.
"Roll a wisdom check and add your BaB."
Who ever go the highest total I tell, "As an experienced warrior, you know there is little chance of doing serious injury to this guy in a straight up fight."interesting....that means that wizards and sorcerers are more likely to fail the check. Essentially, it means they are drunk on their power and do not realize their own limits. It also gives value to military experience for martials.
Because what gives you a greater understanding of your limits than standing against a 32 foot tall giant and trying to hack at its ankles.
Well the last few times I used it was for characters trying to analyze the fighting capability of an opponent. How strong does it appear? How coordinated are its movements. Does it behave like a serious veteran or a high school bully? To me that was more of an observing it in relation to the characters own martial experience.
A knowledge check will tell you that it is a gnoll. But it isn't going to tell you that it has 14 levels of ranger ready to slash your face off.
{shrug}
I probably would have used caster level instead of BaB if they were watching some guy work in his lab and wanted to know how magically dangerous he seemed.
Eh, even if your analysis told you that it was a high level caster, that would only have so much meaning if the only spells he knows are on the level of 'detect secret doors' and 'magic mouth'. And even if he has a good set of spells, he might not have the proper experience to use them. There is a difference between knowing how to make a bomb and how to use one to it to take down an enemy base. That takes tactical experience, which I could more easily chalk up to being BAB based.
Of course, the martials could only tell so much from a glance too. Still, there are plenty of technical aspects that you could possibly judge just by the person's body. While wizards tend not to have much physical conditioning, there is still the need for poise, alertness, and reflexes (the actual ones, not the save). A wizard with -10 initiative, 5 WIS, and all his ranks in Craft: Basket weaving and the like can still be rather easily ambushed before he can get his spells off. And that is the kind of character you can expect from an armchair crafter who just stole a battle mage's spell book. And to some extent, you could well tell the difference in appearance and behavoir between that fool and the level 20 warmage that took down 3 different orc hordes on his own. It is all about the mentality and focus of a warrior
I would think that a martial could get a better inkling of this kind of difference because they make their living watching out for subtle cues like that so they can avoid getting impaled and then impale their enemies when they lose their focus.
Of course, another way to do this is just to use Sense Motive. That skill does have some kind of 'hunch' check. It would also be generally neutral on this whole caster/martial divide we are making here. There would usually not be too much of a difference between players that rank this (well, maybe a WIS penalty wizard versus a WIS focused cleric, what with the WIS difference and class skill thing; you kind of have to work hard to get anything too major if they are both putting the skill points in)
Thing is, I'm looking for excuses for the PCs to know what kind of trouble they're in so they can decide to back off, rather than excuses to keep it hidden from them so they get slaughtered on what they assumed was a relatively normal encounter.
[snark]Actually in PF, the proper skill to know the strength of an classed enemy is Appraise. You can back calculate level from WBL.[/snark]
[snark] But a lot of NPCs have their wealth tied up in items that they don't have on them. A farmer, for example, may have his wealth tied up in his land, farming equipment, house, and farm animals. He might only have the gear of a level 1 adventurer on him, but he could secretly be a retired ranger with favored enemy [all the PC's races] [/snark].
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At some point in some source somewhere (this may have been pre-PF), Sense Motive was given as a way to determine your opponent's puissance relative to your own. Bluff could be used to make it seem higher.
It wasn't perfect, but it worked.
**edit - It was "Oriental Adventures" from 3rd Ed. I would suggest changing the DCs.**
"Sense Motive: Characters use this skill in an iaijutsu duel
(see Chapter 6) and at other times when they want to appraise
the skill of another character (usually an opponent). Because of
these uses, it is a class skill for samurai. In an iaijutsu duel,
samurai use the following DCs:
Opponent's Character level = DC 15
Opponent's ranks in Iaijutsu Focus = DC 20
Opponent's total attack and damage bonus with primary weapon = DC 25
This brings me to a case of my own, where sadly some characters think themselves capable of taking on someone, while i ooc try to reason with them it's a very bad idea.
Case in my brother's homebrew.
The group wakes up to a fogbank and they come across a lone man on horse. Save for a very detailed description (hint #1), on which says that my 20 str paladin would feel weak (hint #2). Smalltalk reveals he's the general of the invading army (hint #3) and armswrestles cyclopses (hint #4), which we barely killed one of before, that included help from NPCs not with us at that point.
So...the guy encourages us to move along and turns around to his horse, wishing us a good day. Cue mistakes: inquisitor casts ear piercing scream on the horse and the magus charges and deals 50 or so dmg, taking a firm punch to the face for 13. Normal round the general cleaves him down, next round followed by the inquisitor and me almost. The magus would have been dead, were it not for the mercy of the GM. My brother already said this guy's a barbarian with 7 levels above us....the magus is looking forward to round 2.
Somehow the near death hasn't taught him enough.
I go with a combination of
1. Warn the players at the beginning of the campaign that I use random encounters as well as pre-defined area encounters. This means that there is nothing that says that everything you encounter will within X levels of your party's CR. If you die trying to fight something that is way stronger than you, you will not be mourned.
2. Encourage knowledge checks, and use foreshadowing. Give the players tools to know when they are facing a really tough foe.
Between those 2 things, I have never had problems when players die due to hard fights, and the times they have survived have become the stuff of legends.
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It ultimately depends on the party's makeup. Some players aren't exactly the pointiest arrows in the quiver. You can have them roll checks, and describe it to them vividly as something powerful, but the decision is ultimately up to them.
Fun storytime: I had a party stopping at a small village on the edge of the woods. A beaten and mortally wounded man drags himself into the village telling of something terrifying that's after him. There's a symbol carved on the man's chest, and the man describes its features. The party consults a local wizard who lets them use his library, and they're able to learn that the description and the symbol match the avatar of an Outer God. Their research explicitly revealed that what lurked in the forest was on par with a demigod in power. A moment of stunned silence followed before the party unanimously declared their intention to go kill it. When I heard their decision, I reiterated their findings to them in case they didn't hear, but their minds were made up.
And that's how a party with APL 7 marched off into the forest to "fight" a CR 22 monster.
They survived. Barely. Only because I pulled the creature's punches with the justification that such a powerful creature wouldn't be interested in weaker creatures that couldn't even bypass its DR and SR. It eventually left after it finished setting up some macabre altar, but not before kindly distributing some curses and insanity effects that put the campaign in an interesting direction.