The Predator hunts the party!

[Tyrant Lizard King]

Backstory:

The party is secluded in a savage wilderness where they have found each other and banded together for survival. The lives they had before seem like a distant memory as they have all woken up in this strange land with absolutely nothing. Having to craft primitive weapons and armor and struggling with beasts, weather hazards and disease. After struggling for survival for weeks they manage to build decent shelter and weapons capable of fighting off the beasts that constantly hunt them and are soon ambushed by another group of humans which they barely manage to survive. After recovering they go on the offensive and track down their village only to find what is left of them hanging from the trees without their skins.

Current Party:
Barbarian 5
Fighter 4
Ranger 3
Rogue 2

Obviously, a Predator would want to make trophies of worthy prey (the party) and the greatest trophy would be the strongest character, currently being the Barbarian. The Predator has already attacked the party with the intention of fighting the Barbarian in honorable combat. After disabling two of the party with Bear Traps and put the 3rd in a dying state with a surprise critical he uncloaked and challenged the Barbarian. Unfortunately for the Predator, the Fighter had escaped the trap and hobbled his way into the fray, landed a critical hit and added 1d4 bleed to it. It's honorable combat interrupted, severely wounded and moderately bleeding, the Predator disengages and disappears into the jungle...

So here is the dilemma,
Traditionally a Predator would hunt, kill and claim the trophies of the group from the bottom up... saving the most honorable trophy for last in order to enrage their primary target and make them more dangerous... which in turn makes the hunt more challenging and fun for the Predator.
The Rogue and Ranger are not in a position to confront this creature as they are behind in levels because their other characters did not survive the wilderness (failure to stabilize from dying, coup de grace from a Deinonychus, Infection: Filth Fever DC 18) and rolled new characters. As a GM, I don't want to punish the weaker party members and kill them off first and as the Predator I want to specifically target the Fighter for interfering while considering the Barbarian an excellent trophy.

How do I move forward with this encounter while remaining true to the Predator and not target kill a specific player?

[DungeonmasterCal]

I'm not sure you can.

[Lemartes]

I avoid level disparity when I'm DMing. Everyone levels at the same time which is why I don't use XP. That is another matter though.

While the setup is thematically great I think for an actual game it is fraught with problems.

I would have the pc's all in charge of protecting their own groups of NPCs as they run for their lives.

[Tyrant Lizard King]

It's not entirely unbalanced, the Yautja is a Youngblood/Unblooded and does not have a plasmacaster. I built it without class levels, only racial HD and tried to make it close to a Minotaur CR4 but after increased ability scores and gear it is easily a CR5 monster. Additionally, it is using primitive materials for it's weapons and armor. So -2 damage, -1 armor bonus and fragile property. It does still have the Bio-mask and wrist gauntlet though.

[MageHunter]

The appeal of Predator is him slowly killing people off one by one.

Just add in some NPC's for them to get close to, and have him kill them first. Ostensibly with the outside knowledge of people who watch horror movies, the PC's figure out not to split the party at all, and stick together.

I really like Predator, so I would just have him kill all of them. But... The PC's might complain. ;)

Alternatively you could just make him weaker. He only targets people one by one, so make him a suitable challenge for a weaker one. So have a bunch of named/unnamed NPC's die.

Also, honorable may not even mean strongest. He can just inaccurately gauge the most honorable of the prey, and choose wrong. I.E., targeting a blaster wizard for looking the weakest.

Sounds really cool, and if pulled off right I"m sure your party will love it!

Edit:

Long Predator Spiel, Spoilers Galore!:

I mean if you analyze the movie, the tactics are quite obvious. The Jungle Hunter recognizes he can't take on the whole team at once. That's why he ran when they all ganged up on him and destroyed the forest with the minigun. They shot him in the leg, and they thought he was invincible since they didn't know he just escaped from there.

Doesn't matter how skilled you are, a Yautja can't take on that many trained soldiers at once. Well, except for Alien vs Predator but we don't talk about that. And the City Hunter in Predator 2 had the advantage of darkness in the train, and the Jamiacan Voodoo Gang (which incidentally voodo is Haitian, not Jamaican) weren't expert soldiers with miniguns.

The Jungle Hunter killed Hawkins because he ran after Anna, who escaped. Anna was unarmed, presenting an opportunity.

Blain was also isolated making it easy to kill him.

Mac was going crazy, and determined to go up against him by himself. Dillon tagged along, but with a good quick shot to Mac's head, and going after Dillon's arm, he made short work of them.

The team's traps worked against them, and Ramirez was brutally injured. This made him easy prey.

Billy was determined to go mano o mano with him, discarding his weapons for a machete. Predator was too strong for him.

Anna escaped because she was unarmed, and Dutch was a much better trophy anyways.

Dutch won because he customized his own traps and utilized quick thinking.

If they didn't let the Yautja's scare tactics work on them, and just stuck together, they probably would have won.

I uh... Really like Predator.

Good video if you like music and don't want to see the whole movie for analyzing spoilery scenes.

[Pizza Lord]

I like Predator as well, I also like Aliens. But don't even get me started on Alien vs. Predator. It would be a good movie if you knew nothing about Predators and knew nothing about Aliens. That was a storyline blatantly ripped from the Alien vs. Predator story Prey, where a human woman impressed a Yuatja elder and it accepted her by giving her a hunter's mark and she later joined a group of hunters, living amongst them for a time.

It's like the creators of the movie read that story and thought, 'Hey that's cool! A woman will impress a Predator, the end!' Then they realized they needed a movie in there somewhere and filled it with a bunch of people whose sole purpose is to die or give some piece of background story and then die. I swear, watch the movie, every single person gets one cool thing and then they die because the whole story is driven towards the "We need to get the woman and the Predator alone together so she can impress him, so kill all these other people off," plot.

Girl with lots of guns, talks about guns, gets to sound cool, dies.
Guy trapped by alien pod next to girl with guns, makes heroic effort to survive by grabbing one, kills alien, looks up and is just surrounded by more pods (comic relief), dies.
Two guys separated from group, make great speech about getting home to daughter with cool story, dies.
Rich guy with terminal illness, gets ignored by predator, whines about it and does a makeshift flamethrower at Predator, not a damn bit of difference except to look cool, dies.
South American translator, gets to read a room full of backstory hieroglyphics purely so they can show a cutscene explaining things within 2 minutes, dies in the very next scene jumping over a hole.

Even the Predators act idiotic to kill the other two off, one traps an alien in a constricting net which is designed to constrict and can cut through steel. Why are they bringing traps designed to cut the flesh of creatures with acid blood, thereby just releasing them? No idea. Watch, he shoots the alien and then 'saunters' along as the net cuts into the alien and the strands begin snapping like piano wire. *Ping* *Ting* *Sproing* and he's just walking along just in time for the alien to jump out and kill him. Even claiming these are new hunters and inexperienced (typically only the most honored and skilled Yautja are allowed to 'safari' and hunt humans or intelligent prey (Like in Predator and Predator 2); this temple was designed to hatch aliens for novice hunters to earn their marks, they would be eager to make the kill... Not this one apparently... because he's gotta die off.

Okay... I said I didn't want to get started but I got started.

Regardless. The trick is trying to fit the style with the game. It's the same reason horror situations don't work like in the movies. Players think in metagame, they don't split up, they don't suspect each other, they don't rationalize things away like real people do (when they hear a noise, it's never 'just the wind', they go full Rambo).

Plus, in the end, killing off the PCs usually isn't ultimately fun (I do it) unless the action and story is exciting. Either your Predator is going to wipe out the weaklings or it's going to focus on the strong guy, which is basically just making the adventure about him. Otherwise, you end up fighting all the PCs at once, and it's your basic boss fight of 1 turn per round versus 4 turns per round, which never works out well.

The hunter has to use the weaker PCs for bait, to see how the stronger prey reacts. Does barbarian/fighter try to protect them? Is it like the bull in a herd of cows, trying to keep them together? or do the stronger ones basically allow the weaker ones to die? Since this is an adventuring group, it's probably the first one, so the Predator will most definitely attack the weaker PCs first, but it may not necessarily try to kill them. It will use snares and nets to trap them and haul them up into inaccessible areas luring the others to where it can attack, launching spears and such from ledges and concealment, shooting out light sources (since it has heat-visions, and other visual modes), recording conversations and voices while they are camped or talking and then playing them back to lure some away or down a certain route.

So keep the weaker ones involved (unless they do hurt it, then they die). Do this with traps and snares that do a little damage, like a wire snare that cuts a leg and slows them down like caltrops, the constricting net (though having it dice them into cubes and sever steel probably isn't necessary), even have one of those razor-sharp chakra but instead of just a simple throwing weapon, have it more animated and attacking autonomously (basically like an animated flying sword or dagger) to distract the weaker characters by flying around them (and giving them something to kill or defeat) while it deals with its real target.

[MageHunter]

I did enjoy watching the movie, but the incubation period of aliens and bulkiness of the Yautja did irk me a bit...

Anyways this honor code could be handy.

[Tyrant Lizard King]

He is weak enough that if he fought the party openly he would get his ass kicked. Honestly, I think a 1v1 with the Barbarian would be a good show... and I think the Barbarian would win. Maybe the Predator could just try the same thing again, disabling the rest of the party with traps and ranged attacks, then challenge the Barbarian to a 1v1. He would still want the Fighter dead though I think.

[King Gojira]

Thanks for that Tyrant, my Barbarian had a hard enough time sleeping at night...

[Redblade8]

Is the original on Netflix? If so, this thread just gave me my plans for the evening...