Should players feel comfortable surrendering? I mean... I know it won't work every time. The "successful surrender" generally winds through some kind of prison, the subsequent prison break, and a rematch against your captors. It’s either that or gladiatorial combat. But in both cases, it seems better than futilely swiping another few HP from the thing that’s about to kill you.
So what do you think? Should that kind of mid-combat diplomacy be freely available, or would your rather rely on mechanical solutions like "call truce?"
The unwillingness to surrender is, IMHO, driven by game mechanics.
Historically, the willingness to surrender--and to accept someone's surrender--was cultural. In feudal western Europe and the various Caliphates, for example, it wasn't uncommon for knights taken prisoner to be ransomed. Likewise, cities sometimes paid a ransom to avoid being sacked. On the other hand, feudal Japan's warrior caste had decidedly different opinions about surrendering.
Would Orcs accept surrender? Probably not. Would Ogres? Probably... to inflict a fate worse than death on their captives. So on, so forth.
Wait, what is this "surrender" you speak of? You mean not fighting to the death is an option? I don't know what those words mean...
I've never had a party belly-up before, so I wouldn't even know what to do as a GM. I never, and I mean NEVER, plan on the party surrendering. I didn't even know that was a realistic option.
There are no accords or conventions setting the terms of warfare here... if you willingly stop fighting in the middle of a fight, the vast majority of enemies will just continue to slaughter you. Most won't even recognize the difference between your actions of surrender, and you missing an attack in combat. A great number of enemies do not discriminate between armed combatants and civilians, so you going from one to the other does nothing to change the outcome.
Captives that are taken, if captives are ever taken, are going to be torured for information, cooked, and eaten. It takes far too much time and resources to keep captives alive for any amount of time. Cooked. Eaten. TPK.
My immediate answer is: No. My answer after a bit more thought is: Hell no. There is nothing 'comfortable' in handing over your ability to defend yourself (no matter how outmatched you are) into the hands of someone you perceive as your enemy, and how (for all intents and purposes) might be on the opposite end of the alignment spectrum and prone to considering (and performing) all manner of unmentionable atrocities to you. Better death and a suitable afterlife than that.
Perhaps that doesn't sound like a great way to tell a story through capture and whatever else the GM had in mind but, meh. Though, that all is assuming a general adherence to the GOOD end of the alignment spectrum and dealing with the EVIL end. There is more middle ground and shades of grey. If the party is more neutral or evil, they might find it better to surrender to forces that aren't known to deal in such methods, if they were wanted for crimes or the like.
Perhaps it is just me and the unwavering blaze of freedom that burns in my soul.
I would agree with Voodist Monk that generally speaking enemies aren't going to be interested in taking prisoners.
You're either going to be so much weaker that you're probably not useful to keep around, or not enough weaker that you're a threat to keep around.
The only time it's reasonable is if the enemy believes that you're usefulness outweighs your threat.
In feudal Europe one person simply wasn't that dangerous, they certainly weren't worth more (in combat power) than 2 to 3 people at most. So the risk was low, and certain people could be useful for ransom or political pawns. But your average peasant spearman? They were going to be killed. Even if your threat wasn't high, your value was very low.
In a world of magic and potentially huge gaps in combat capabilities in the world of Pathfinder, keeping an enemy locked up is a risky proposition.
There are just so many factors that go into this question.
Who is fighting whom? What are the reasons behind the fight? What are each side's respective alignments? What does the risk versus reward dynamic for taking prisoners look like?
Does every faction in every fight unquestioningly hate their opponents for reasons they are not willing to compromise on? If not, then the motive (and thus possibility) for offering mercy and accepting surrender exists. It's just a question of how willing GMs and players alike are willing to go in that direction if the story and the world's cultural context allow for it.
I've seen my players demand surrender, and give quarter to those that did [surrender]. I don't really associate with people that get enjoyment out of slaughtering the helpless, so I have never had to deal with surrendering enemies immediately being killed. They are always carted off to a prison for rehibilitation, or simply exciled from the party's area of influence... if we ever meet again, you will die where you stand. And I have seen them keep that promise.
But the heroes are the heroes because they do the right thing even if it's not the easy thing. The enemy of the heroes can be expected to do the opposite... like murder prisoners and noncombatants.
If a party gives up, then it's time to start over... TPK the cowards... and reroll characters, possibly start an entirely different campaign... they clearly did not have what it takes to participate in the encounters of the current campaign. And they obviously weren't willing to run away and try again later.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Like everything else... it depends.
Most of my lawful evil villians would accept surrender, if there's profit in it. Depending on the villian's plan, a simple ransom and promise of parole would be enough to get them released with any non-unique gear. "No you can't take the hammer of thunderbolts, but sure take your +2 armor, not like it helped you."
Surrendering to the orc hoards might not be the best idea. Or in my world, the halfling tribes...
If I can tell a story from their surrender, I'll do it.
I was one of the oddballs in PFS that preferred prisoners for my characters. Samiel, Mayim, Shankar, Ksenia... all preferred prisoners. Samiel would quote ancient wisdom* "Murder is bad for business."
Which led to everyone at one table stopping and looking at me when he said he wanted the bad guys dead. "Setting a bad example is also bad for business. They are slandering the family name. So. They. All. Must. Die."**
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I suspect it would happen more at low levels than high, plot requirements aside. At high levels, the PCs are likely to have unpredictable and powerful spontaneous abilities, so taking them prisoner is very risky. Conversely, a 2nd level character without gear isn't much more dangerous than a bury peasant, so slavery is a plausible option. Sure, there are some tricksy ones like sorcerers and oracles, but a wizard is nothing without his book and a fighter without a sword is just another strong back to carry rocks.
Ultimately, it depends on the opponent. Bandits will take your stuff and expect a ransom. Hobgoblins will enslave you. Bugbears will imprison and psychologically torture you. Ogres will capture you to keep your meat fresh for later. Daemons will capture you to sell your soul. The town watch will throw you in jail for sentencing. Fey might do anything.
Then there's the Bond Villain scenario where the BBEG wants to crow over the PCs who have been thwarting his plans for 15 levels before throwing them into the inevitable deathtrap.
On the flip side, I have YET to see ANY PC in over a decade of PF1 games take prisoners among the foes they're fighting. I'm not exaggerating. PCs might ACCEPT surrender, but they never seek it ever unless their class DEMANDS that they do, and if they're forced to accept a foe's surrender their prisoners are either executed after their usefulness is at an end or those prisoners are banished. Also it is likely that, by the time prisoners are released there's no mechanical way they could overpower the PCs anyway.
That's a shame. Maybe I should introduce you to my Tyrant's Grasp character, Kaius Ironstaff. He's often demanded the surrender of his enemies, or offered them the chance to quit while they are ahead. Why? He's just so damn old that its a little boring to engage in fisticuffs with the help and takes so much effort to settle disagreements with your fists. But if you are really eager to learn the hard way, well, he'll roll up his long sleeves and show you the meaning of "I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."
I think it can be a good thing for a GM to say in Session Zero, "This is the sort of game where surrender is an option. Not all the enemies are murderous psychopaths." Maybe the party has information the enemies want, and vice versa, so nonlethal damage becomes important.
One advantage is that you don't have be so careful about making balanced encounters. Normally, if there's a 10% chance of the party losing, then after around ten such encounters the campaign will end in TPK. And if there's less than a 10% chance of the party losing, the encounter is usually going to pretty one-sided. By lowering the life-or-death stakes, we can afford to make things more challenging and still continue the campaign no matter what happens.
It does take some effort to make this work. For example, if we're doing the standard 'magic item economy', getting captured and losing your stuff will turn the level 10 Fighter into a weakling.
So there are a few Adventures that all incorporate the party being captured and then start out as prisoners. it's usually pretty heavy handed to force the issue, but they do exist. I know Skulls and Shackles start with the whole party being press ganged.
Voodist is right though, the vast majority of the bad guys that the party could surrender too will simply kill them, so it's something that just doesn't happen.
At the end of the day, a lot of what we're discussing comes down to hypotheticals. We can debate likelihood on the basis of generalizations all day long, but it ultimately comes down to whether or not the GM asks that question about the encounters being designed. Like practically everything else, it will come down to whether (A) it serves the story and (B) whether it makes sense for the creatures involved.
IMO a big reason Pcs don't surrender is they don't want to lose their stuff. Also, it depends on who you are surrendering to.
VA makes a great point, the PCs don't want to lose their stuff so that's an incentive for them NOT to surrender, but there aren't any mechanical incentives FOR them to surrender.
To be fair, in reality the only potential incentive to surrender is that the enemy may not kill you. It's not even guaranteed. It's possible that they may kill you more brutally than would have happened in the heat of combat. And generally speaking, a prisoner has any valuables stripped away.
It simply doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective to provide any sort of incentive to surrender. Now from a Gamist perspective it does, because the campaign doesn't end/start over and it's more fun for everyone. But it chafes against realism.
At best you're a prisoner typically for months or years and whatever you had planned on doing probably isn't very relevant anymore.
That's lovely and all. But he's still just bragging about how boring it is to engage unless he's also Kaius - Lord of the Metagame.
Unless you're only referring to the multitude of nameless mooks. In which case, where did he keep them all between combats and how did he prevent what is basically a mook-swarm?
Oh, they rarely surrender and when they do get the idea that its probably better to not fight, they usually just bugger off and don't mess with the group again. I have yet to actually have to capture and restrain any of the enemies, unless we are literally heading directly to turn them in to the authorities. He's managed to talk down an almost literal swarm of tooth fairies from absconding with the party's teeth because 1) he doesn't have any and 2) he might know where they can get a whole lot of other teeth without the hassle of fighting for it.
I think you misunderstand his motivations. He is OLD (venerable, specifically), and the fatigue alone from combat encounters (ie, rage fatigue) usually ends up with him having 8 STR and 8 DEX for a full minute after the hostilities end. He can fight, and fight exceedingly well, but he believes things are much better handled (in the end) through conversation and discourse since everyone is still around to make better decisions and grow as individuals. That might not be best suited for how people typically play this game, but it is still a very interesting method to approach the roleplaying aspect of his existence within the world.
It simply doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective to provide any sort of incentive to surrender. Now from a Gamist perspective it does, because the campaign doesn't end/start over and it's more fun for everyone. But it chafes against realism.
At best you're a prisoner typically for months or years and whatever you had planned on doing probably isn't very relevant anymore.
That's probably true by default, but it's not hard to come up with a narrative where surrender is a reasonable option:
(1) The PCs have rich parents who would pay a ransom.
(2) The PCs have valuable intel that the bad guy wants to personally torture them for, but he's ninety miles away and during the time it will take to transport them there, they might have a chance to escape.
(3) The enemies are town guards and the PCs are wrongfully accused.
(4) The villain believes he's doing the right thing for the world, and that the PCs will join him once he's explained properly why killing all the gods is best for everyone.
(5) The PCs have a preset teleport spell that will bring them home in an hour, and all they have to do is survive that long.
(6) The enemies have been tricked into thinking that if the PCs die, they will return as undead to murder them in their sleep.
(7) The enemies are there to teach the PCs a lesson about honoring certain commitments made.
(8) The PCs have made prearrangements to pay Ransoms via third parties.
(9) The PCs have captured enemy characters, the foe seek leverage for a prisoner exchange.
(10) The PCs have reasons to believed that the enemies will prefer to corrupt rather then kill them
(11) It is an evil campaign, the good NPCs believe in redemption.
The vast majority of enemies we commonly face are not the type to take prisoners, though. Surrender is just not an option MOST of the time. And without there being some pretty obvious infiltration tactic going on with this "surrender", a GM should look at the party's surrender as a sign of giving up... either adjust the difficulty of the campaign so the players struggle less, or start a new campaign entirely... they are throwing in the towel... giving up. There are ALWAYS options that don't involve surrender. Surrender does not even make sense 99.9% of the time, since you will very likely be eaten.
Aberrations are probably going to eat you... or worse, make you into one of them.
Animals are probably going to eat you.
Constructs don't take prisoners.
Dragons are probably going to eat you.
Fey are probably going to eat you... or worse, torture you for their own amusement in some sort of twisted game.
Magical Beasts are probably going to eat you.
Monstrous Humanoids are probably going to eat you.
Oozes don't take prisoners... and will probably eat you.
Outsiders will probably eat you... or worse, make you into one of them.
Plants don't take prisoners... and will probably eat you.
Undead will probably eat you... or worse, make you into one of them.
Vermin don't take prisoners... and will probably eat you.
That leaves us with Humanoids... of which, things like giants, ogres, orcs, and trolls are all part of... the list is divided pretty equally on its probability of eating you. Give this catagory a 50/50 chance on eating prisoners. Out of 13 different types of enemies, only two aren't guaranteed to eat you... and of those two, one of them has a 50% chance of still eating you... that's, like, 10% that WON'T eat you. And everyone knows this about the enemies when playing pretty much any fantasy game.
Surrender is volunteering to be eaten, which is the same as giving up, and should be viewed as signs of larger problems with the game, overall. The players are not interested in their own characters enough to care what happens to them. They are literally willing to surrender control entirely to the GM. They are clocking out. They are bored. Disconnected and unintetested. You need to reel them back in, or start fresh.
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Surrender is volunteering to be eaten, which is the same as giving up, and should be viewed as signs of larger problems with the game, overall. The players are not interested in their own characters enough to care what happens to them.
If the players surrender, it's probably because the alternative is fighting to the death, and surrender looks like their only chance to survive. That's a sign that they do care what happens to the PCs.
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As a GM my preference is for the players to flee or surrender when combat doesn’t go their way rather than end in a TPK. There is plenty of role play potential with a captured PC.
From my experience the main reason players don’t surrender boils down to a meta-game calculation that they would rather play a new character with all their gear than a weakened and imprisoned version of their current character. Those players who do surrender (admittedly a rare occurrence) are generally the most engaged in their characters and do whatever it takes to give them even a slim hope for survival.
I had a really cool thing were a captured character massively suceeded in a diplomacy check, and planted the seed of betrayal into the head of the very competent mercenary that captured him.
That is very cool.
As a GM nothing is better than the PCs pulling out an unconventional and unexpected victory against hopeless odds.
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I've played and continue to play heavy politicised campaigns. In these campaigns the factions of good are often as dangerous as the factions of evil. During one campaign the party's actions split the ideologies of the good factions (ToEE and the State of Verbobonc came against the church of St Cuthbert over Gnomish rights) and one of them (the church of St Cuthbert, which legally had the delegated authority) called for the arrest and detention of the party.
The party (levels 3-4) were surrounded by 35 crossbowmen and surrendered. The party tried but haplessly failed to escape the cells and were saved by being found by the state to be not guilty. But only by beating the DC on a Zone of Truth spell during the trial.
Fights don't happen in my game simply to have fights.
A few years ago, an author whose work I enjoy made a comment about the fiction he writes, along the lines of every battle he depicts being a vehicle to say something about a character, or to demonstrate their growth. I think a similar approach separates most games (which, don’t get me wrong, can be really fun and very good) from an elevated form of interactive storytelling.
I'm not saying that enemies do not have their own motivations beyond eating. I'm definitely not trying to say that every encounter has a story to tell, either. I am simply not that caliber of storyteller, yet.
Aberrations have many motivations... most of them quite insidious, and not anything I would ever volunteer control of my character to be part of without the capacity to defend myself... against those very same insidious plans. When I think Aberration, I think Mind Flayers... who surrenders to the Illithid? You want a tadpole in your brain? Because that's how we get tadpoles in our brains. Another good one that immediately pops into mind is the Hive... Pathfinder's version of the Xenomorph. You want aliens bursting out of your chest? Because that's how we get aliens bursting out of our chests.
Demons are engineers of chaos and destruction... they are also wise enough to use pawns rather than endangering themselves. Plus, people are generally more accepting of other people than they are of literal demons... so demons always have a use for people they can bend to their will. They are also heavily into the trading of souls, and can eat souls as snacks. You have some wiggle room with these cats... but you still very well may end up as a soul gem in a candy dish.
Devils want your soul. It's that simple. They are always willing to strike deal, or hire you through a contract. But you're playing with the devil, literally. They have an eternity of experience dealing with making backhanded deals, and dealing with people trying to get out of deals made. You want to try your hand at being more clever than the devil himself? You want to wager your literal soul in a card game with a devil? Sure, they have kings on puppet-strings, and you could very well be one, too, if you are willing surrender your very soul.
Fey and Outsiders, both, have motivations beyond most peoples' wildest imaginations. Their timelines and plans take lifetimes to accomplish. Your pathetic existence is a trivial drop in the ocean of their scheming. Surrendering yourself to their will is forfeiture of mattering, at all. The motivations of Fey and Outsiders should truly terrify any mortal enough to essentially never willingly surrender to them... even their most "harmless" mischieveousness is similar to picking the wings off a fly, except we are the fly... they are picking our "wings" off, for fun, and curious amusement.
Yeah, most intelligent enemies have some sort of reason for risking their lives doing what they do... just like the members of the party have their own motivations for risking their lives doing what they do. In the scope of this game's world, the probably of intelligent enemies taking prisons they are willing to keep alive is very small. Even where bandits are common, they aren't always willing to risk a ransom demand/exchange. In a world without untracable phones to arrange these things, you are more at risk of exposure every step of the way. Prisoners are a drain on manpower and resources... even on well-supplied, organized militaries... and prisoners are slow. Hampering their unit's mobility is something a lot of intelligent enemies are simply not willing to do.
Regardless of what motivations I may bake into my enemy NPC's, seldom do those aforementioned motivations involve the need for prisoners. How many freaking ransom plots can you possibly have? When a gang of a dozen bandits only managed to steal a dozen apples today... you think any of them are going to give up their one apple so a prisoner may eat it? GTFOH. Any intelligent enemy with time-sensitive goals will either leave you so bloodied and/or broken you will not be a threat in the immediate future... leave you bound, naked, and to be eaten by random animals passing by... or simply take the 6 seconds out of their day to CdG you, and keep their rope.
Even with the politics of nations, ongoing wars in the background, and underground organizations of incredible power... the time and resources it takes to keep prisoners alive simply does not fit into the budget/schedule. And most of the things out there that ARE interested in taking prisoners certainly are not things you want to be a prisoner of. Just looking at probability, alone, surrender is seldom an option.
Do you frequently offer and accept surrender at your table?
If the PCs are murdering everything that opposes them - the default assumption - why would the players ever think of surrendering instead of TPK?
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I'm not here to tell you that the points you made aren't valid, or that they wouldn't be justifiable in designing a story and encounters. I would offer, however, that none of them disqualify the very same factions and creatures from plausibly having reasons to accept surrender (as offered by others, above), or from certain adventurers (depending on their personal context) from thinking such a course of action is preferable to immediate death. It's easy to say "death is better" from a detached perspective. History shows us that, when actually forced to face life-or-death situations, people quite often pick the former even if it involves suffering and degradation. The will to survive is often an incredibly powerful thing.
Do you frequently offer and accept surrender at your table?
If the PCs are murdering everything that opposes them - the default assumption - why would the players ever think of surrendering instead of TPK?
That's certainly the sort of context that should be factored into the game, but in terms of narrative--not meta. Meaning, if the PCs are stone-cold killers who will spare no bandit, rebel, goblinoid, etc., and their reputations precede them... then it's understandable why others wouldn't show them quarter, either.
The party has taken plenty of prisoners. They often use nonlethal damage on animals and other things too pathetic to be taken seriously. I don't associate myself with horrible people, so the players at my table(s) are generally pretty decent. They are all very aware of exactly how thin of a line separates their actions from the actions of their enemies. The classic example of what does a Paladin do when presented with a nest of evil goblin babies... except they were mites, not goblins... and the party took the baby mites to the friendly neighborhood Kobold tribe for safekeeping. That same Kobold tribe owes its very existence to the mercy of the party, as yet another example of the party demanding surrender rather than killing them all.
Offering surrender is something I am very used to seeing from the party. I am more than accustomed to having epic encounters ruined by Diplimacy. I am actually tired of having enemies they exile return, just to see what the party will do. I have to be careful giving certain enemies alignments that can reasonably be converted towards good, because the party is almost guaranteed to at least try [convert their enemies]. They have an annoying habit of turning bad@$$ enemies into friendly NPC's... all my hard work building something to actually challenge the party is now helping the party take on future challenges. I've even had enemies I built gestalt end up freaking married to members of the party.
Sick and tired of all their kindness and redemption and $#!+... I should run an evil campaign... see what they do then...
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The party has taken plenty of prisoners. They often use nonlethal damage on animals and other things too pathetic to be taken seriously. I don't associate myself with horrible people, so the players at my table(s) are generally pretty decent. They are all very aware of exactly how thin of a line separates their actions from the actions of their enemies. The classic example of what does a Paladin do when presented with a nest of evil goblin babies... except they were mites, not goblins... and the party took the baby mites to the friendly neighborhood Kobold tribe for safekeeping. That same Kobold tribe owes its very existence to the mercy of the party, as yet another example of the party demanding surrender rather than killing them all.
Offering surrender is something I am very used to seeing from the party. I am more than accustomed to having epic encounters ruined by Diplimacy. I am actually tired of having enemies they exile return, just to see what the party will do. I have to be careful giving certain enemies alignments that can reasonably be converted towards good, because the party is almost guaranteed to at least try [convert their enemies]. They have an annoying habit of turning bad@$$ enemies into friendly NPC's... all my hard work building something to actually challenge the party is now helping the party take on future challenges. I've even had enemies I built gestalt end up freaking married to members of the party.
Sick and tired of all their kindness and redemption and $#!+... I should run an evil campaign... see what they do then...
That's interesting in a number of ways.
My current player campaign is War for the Crown and we just hit 13th level. The number of living opponents we have killed is precisely zero. We've destroyed some undead and a couple constructs, but nothing alive has been made dead by us. We offer surrender regularly and have a reputation as such.
That said... while we do try to rehabilitate NPCs, the vast majority are remanded to a unspecified "NPC jail". In the early days we asked the people employing us to arrange for incarceration. As we gained resources and reputation, we're understood to be funding a proper prison.
But here's the thing: the NPCs we've rehabilitated are now story elements, not power elements. For instance, we recently needed someone trustworthy to watch over an important dog. That dog is in fact an NPC that is suffering from incurable dementia due to age who we've baleful polymorphed so they can live out their few remaining days as a happy and harmless dog. Well, we turned to a previous NPC to do this for us. We've told him who the dog is, and why this is important, and why we're asking him. Pure story. No using these against the GM.
The game is cooperative, and while we are all experienced powergamers and our characters are very, very good at not getting dead, we're not looking to destroy the story by trotting out a bunch of former opponents turned allies.
In your case, if you run an evil campaign I suspect your players may just start to enslave NPCs.
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"THERE WILL BE NO SURRENDER OR SURVIVORS, FOR THOU HAST LOOT AND NONE OF US TOOK THE IMPROVED STEAL FEAT"
"THERE WILL BE NO SURRENDER OR SURVIVORS, FOR THOU HAST LOOT AND NONE OF US TOOK THE IMPROVED STEAL FEAT"
I think you're trying to be funny but... doesn't funny need to be based in reality somehow? Like... isn't that a big thing stand-up comedians do: talk about things that are relatable and their audience experiences?
'Cuz that's not how it goes.
Bad guys lose fight, then surrender. Winners take bad guys' stuff and remand the bad guys to custody.
Same as "normal", only with less murdering pick-pockets, bandits, liars, and the religiously ill-advised.
"THERE WILL BE NO SURRENDER OR SURVIVORS, FOR THOU HAST LOOT AND NONE OF US TOOK THE IMPROVED STEAL FEAT"I think you're trying to be funny but... doesn't funny need to be based in reality somehow? Like... isn't that a big thing stand-up comedians do: talk about things that are relatable and their audience experiences?
'Cuz that's not how it goes.
Bad guys lose fight, then surrender. Winners take bad guys' stuff and remand the bad guys to custody.
Same as "normal", only with less murdering pick-pockets, bandits, liars, and the religiously ill-advised.
Dang bro, tell me how you really feel about that joke
Hey, so, I'm on lunch and re-reading the above response I sent earlier. I come off sounding all gruff and surly right there and while I didn't intend any offense to anyone, I just want to apologize if I cheesed anyone off here. It's too late to edit that previous post so I just wanted to add this. Thanks all!
I'm offended