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This forum is specifically for Pathfinder and Starfinder society scenarios, so you're probably not gstting as many eyes on the thread as you might in the advice forum. Hopefully the moderators respond to the flag and move this soon.
The encounter you're describing could easily go beyond an extreme difficulty, something the system doesn't really reward XP for.
My advice would be to have some of the mooks start moving downed PCs away to take them captive, or have them ready attacks on downed PCs to encourage negotiation. On the other hand, this might lead to friction between you and some of the players.
That being said, the sort of encounter you've planned is infamous for blowing up in the GM's face, and I'd reccomend not trying to use it again. Overriding Player Agency in this way seldom works well. If you want overwhelming force, you either need something so far beyond the PCs it can just ignore attacks and wait for the PCs to get it out of the system, or to flood them with so many enemies it becomes a chase scene.
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Is it a possibility for you to have a one on one session before the next group session?
If not, I'd just tell the one player to show up an hour early or the others to show up an hour late and then run it. And then run it quickly (neither you nor the player are allowed to dither and overthink things).
One way or the other, an hour should be more than enough to resolve things.
Alternatively, maybe get the player to agree to "Ok, lets say you have a 40% chance of winning. I'm just going to have you roll a d20. 1-13 I win, 14_ you win"
But it kinda sounds like you're already having some friction with the player. Them not responding well to "Look, I don't want to play this out alone for an hour. You're pretty much going to lose" isn't a great sign.
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I would suggest in the future, when you intend for the party to lose, that you don't run it as a combat encounter.
When you put people in encounter mode, they're going to try and win , whatever winning looks like to them in the scenario.
Instead, you need to just narratively say, "The enemy attacking you is clearly an overwhelming force. They will accept you surrender should you offer it. If you do not, they will knock you out and take you by force."
At this point...the best path forward in my opinion is to say you made a mistake in how you ran this.
Straight up tell everyone, "This wasn't a battle you're intended to win. Yes it's railroading, please understand that I have a plan and story in mind and please work with me on this. Your characters are captured and we will resume play from that standpoint."
Hopefully you're players are willing to cooperate with you, your plan, and your story.
Remember, as the GM you could always say "More enemies appear" and you could keep adding more and more until the player loses. Nothing in the rules says you can't do that.
But please, in the future when you intend for something to happen don't make it combat or even a skill check that gives players the illusion that success is a possible intended outcome.
Sometimes plot just happens, and players should hopefully trust you enough to play along with that.
Remember, in Skyrim the Dragonborn is caught in the beginning of the story and being carted away to be beheaded. Only a dragon's intervention saves the player character from death.
Sometimes stuff is just happening to set the stage and tone of a campaign.
As a player, when I'm told that what's happening is narrative I can accept it. But if I'm put in combat I think the "normal" expectations apply and that I should have a chance of winning. If you don't want players to win, don't even start combat or allow them to believe that it's an option.
TL;DR: Ultimately your mistake is running a combat when you should have just had narrative exposition.
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Is it a possibility for you to have a one on one session before the next group session?
If not, I'd just tell the one player to show up an hour early or the others to show up an hour late and then run it. And then run it quickly (neither you nor the player are allowed to dither and overthink things).
I like this a lot. If the player thinks they can win out, let 'em try at a time the doesn't inconvenience the rest of the players.
There's an almost implicit belief that if initiative gets called for by the gm, there's a chance for the party to succeed. So overwhelm odds tend to work best when stated, not played out.
Since we've already got the ball going, play it where it lies. (Or some other, better sports metaphor)
There's an almost implicit belief that if initiative gets called for by the gm, there's a chance for the party to succeed. So overwhelm odds tend to work best when stated, not played out.
Since we've already got the ball going, play it where it lies. (Or some other, better sports metaphor)
Eh...I disagree. I would consider starting the combat an error on the part of the OP to begin with.
The best path forward is admitting the error and talking to everyone about the issue and how the OP wanted things to proceed.
What they said. Lesson learned.
I have never seen such a ploy work, as players expect they have agency in any scene where they can act. And expecting them to submit relies on them knowing more than they do, namely that surrendering is an option, won't get them killed, and the enemies are just that strong rather than appearing strong for the sake of tension & drama (which should be a regular occurrence).
Reminds me of a GM who rewrote a module's "poison the players asleep" narrative scene so that the table could enjoy the roleplaying. Good intentions until one of them rolls a nat 20 on their save and now what? Heck a high roll by a PC w/ a high Fort would also lead to awkwardness.
Being on the receiving end, I once had to ask a newbie GM (who was following a poorly written module!), "Are we just expected to lose? Because these guys are ridiculously overpowered?" Thankfully he admitted so and we could end the pretense of what would have been a long, drawn out battle with zero stakes (except depletion of lots of reserve resources!).
And alongside lack of agency when agency's assumed, that's a major problem: all the stakes are false. There's nothing to gain, and the enemies are avoiding killing you (when at those levels those who fight casters should probably know to kill downed opponents).
Again, lesson learned, and hopefully the principles will help you balance agency vs. narration in the future.
ETA: I've been thinking of introducing new players using Call of Duty as a model for understanding that sometimes there will be cut scenes, and you'll likely fight alongside allies w/ greater firepower, but it's y'all taking all the important shots and determining ultimate success.
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Yeah, I have definitely told my players "hey, this is a cutscene" so they understand the situation.
Don't do it all the time, and let the players get back into "as good" of a position as they were prior to the event pretty quickly, and it can be a good tool to tell a story.
Like, players get taken prisoner. Okay, you've got a prison escape arc, or the enemy makes you a deal and you change sides, something like that. It happens over like 3 sessions and the players are basically back to the same level of power and agency they had before.
If you try and run it where they're permanently depowered and without gear for a very long time, it's basically a screw you to your players.
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I've run these types of scenarios before, and I will do it again, but if you are going to do it, the opponents have to *clearly* outclass the PCs, and there has to be something that the PCs can actually gain from the fight. (like delaying the enemies long enough that someone else can escape, or doing some damage that might weaken the enemies in the future). They must never be able to believe they have a chance of winning the fight.
In PF2 terms that means I want there to be someone on the field who is at least 6 levels higher than the PCs, with lots of backup, and a way to demonstrate their clear superiority at the beginning. If they have scouted the PCs, they will have specific countermeasures (like a way to cast Revealing Light). You do this to set up a long-term nemesis, not anyone they can go against any time soon. You also get, at most, one enforced loss per campaign.
(The most recent time I did this, the party of 4 level 7s was confronted by 4 level 15 psychics who opened by casting Rank 7 spells that were buffs or summons -- now the party knows what they were dealing with. In this case it was a modified chase, where they then had to pass skill challenges to get away from them or slow them down -- it was clear they couldn't fight. They escaped and when they come back to this city as level 11s, they will take them down one at a time.)
As for rescuing this situation, if you can't get the player to agree to have his character surrender just to keep the story moving (complimenting him on great his character is in the process), I agree with the other suggestions of trying to do this in a 1 on 1 session so as not to bore the others.
If you have to fight it out, here are some suggestions:
Remember Rank 4 invisibility only lasts 1 minute, not 10.
Send one of the mooks off for reinforcements. If they are lower level than the party you want 12-20.
Mooks should be Seeking and Aiding the more competent enemies, and positioning themselves to prevent him sneaking off. Make a wall or a circle around him.
Trade actions for actions. If Trip or Grapple are feasible, do that (with Aid and Flanking if possible)
Someone else suggested securing the other characters and taking them away. It's worthwhile to do that anyway (now he can't hide, he has to prevent their capture), but do you even need to defeat him? Can you make the plot work with them captured and him free and trying to mount a rescue? (Or if this is one of those "offers you can't refuse" scenarios, invited in without restraints to join the briefing?)
Hope some of that helps.
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I can also tell from looking at your setup, that you thought that you could defeat the characters with overwhelming numbers. In PF2, levels are much more important than numbers. (Unless you use Proficiency w/out Level.)
Troops are a type of monster that was invented precisely to overcome this problem -- in the future look at bringing a couple of 4x4 guard troops instead of 30 individual soldiers.
Step one of a plot arc like this is to get buy in from all of the players that the party is going to be defeated and captured or whatever other 'bad thing' is going to happen to them. Doing that without their approval is going to feel bad.
Step two is to not run it with combat rules. It is better to run it as a skill challenge (Victory Point subsystem) with Attack Bonus being one of the skills able to be used. At that point it can be seamlessly switched over into other types of skill challenges such as negotiating terms of surrender.
Not running it as a combat adds a level of abstraction to it. The player's characters aren't losing HP. They don't ever get to any level of Dying. So the players don't panic thinking that they are going to lose control of their character. So it is much less likely that they are going to do something that goes off script and ends up being counterproductive to the plot arc... That plot arc that you got their buy in to go with in the first place.
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Yeah, I have definitely told my players "hey, this is a cutscene" so they understand the situation.
Don't do it all the time, and let the players get back into "as good" of a position as they were prior to the event pretty quickly, and it can be a good tool to tell a story.
Like, players get taken prisoner. Okay, you've got a prison escape arc, or the enemy makes you a deal and you change sides, something like that. It happens over like 3 sessions and the players are basically back to the same level of power and agency they had before.
If you try and run it where they're permanently depowered and without gear for a very long time, it's basically a screw you to your players.
Just be aware that some players absolutely HATE losing agency like this and will quit the game/destroy the game/turn over the table (:-)) if you try.
I found that out to my horror and dismay once when I took away agency in a way that I thought the players had agreed to in advance. Turned out one of the players disagreed with me and was REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY pissed at losing agency.
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Some players do hate losing agency, but I think those players would hate a combat scenario that was concocted with the only intended outcome being their loss, while appearing to be "fair" and something that they could win at.
And in any event, if my players aren't willing to trust me with "cut scenes" I don't really want them as players. Literally everything is at the whim of the GM. When I GM, I am not trying to screw you over. I'm trying to tell a fun and interesting story that has stakes and consequences, but it also means sometimes stuff will just happen, including to your characters, and there won't be anything you could have done about it.
And if my player isn't okay with that, then I'm not the right GM for them, they're not the right player for me, and the game I'm running isn't a good fit for them.
And all of that is okay. Not every game is for every one.
If you have to fight it out, here are some suggestions:
Remember Rank 4 invisibility only lasts 1 minute, not 10.
Send one of the mooks off for reinforcements. If they are lower level than the party you want 12-20.
Mooks should be Seeking and Aiding the more competent enemies, and positioning themselves to prevent him sneaking off. Make a wall or a circle around him....
With that many enemies, I think that shouter orders from captains could also help send the message:
-"The Lord said to capture them alive at any cost! Take them down!"-"Keep the reinforcements coming!"
-"Don't let them break through. We have to stop them here"
-"Lord Kneecap-Breaker will be here any moment. Hold the line until he arrives. He will be the one to finish this. Hold steady, men."
-"Make way and clear a path for Lord Kneecap-breaker. You all know what will happen to you if you get in his way".
Then, if they ignore you... well... I am sure that healing spells work well on broken kneecaps. Kneecap privileges belong to those that can take a hint.
It seems you've already come to a decision before I could respond to this, but I'll throw this out here anyway just because I feel called to do so.
I'm not sure if you are running something prebuilt or if this is all homebrew, but if this is homebrew than allow me to give you some advice.
I don't consider myself an expert on GMing or TTRPG even though it's literally been my job, but every since I started doing it in 2016/2017 and since it's been my job since 2023/2024, I've learned a lot about player agency specifically...and not via railroading, but rather by changing things on the fly to go in a different direction than I had planned, or by going in with less concrete plans to begin with and letting players fill in the gaps.
What has happened is that you wanted a guaranteed outcome within you control, but then you gave too much control to you players by underestimating the all-powerful will of players. The problem with continuing on the path of 'the players lose regardless' is the amount of investment put into this battle.
See, if your party is anything like most others, even though it's been a slog they may be rooting for them to win, and regardless the player still fighting DEFINITELY is trying to win that battle...else they would have given up a while ago.
So here is what happens if you continue with the route of 'you weren't supposed to win' or as I like to call it the 'win in gameplay, lose anyway in cutscene' trope video games often do: best case scenario is you admit you could have handled it better by not giving them agency in the fight at all and making it a complete loss from the start, and that they are all chill with it, but then they now recognize you may take agency away from them again in the future.
It can be a lot worse than that, especially for the one player who is still fighting to win, and nothing hurts worse than when you players start to feel like nothing matters because their actions have no impact.
My advice is actually the opposite of some of the advice here: I agree with those who say you should slug it out with the final standing player, and I also agree with trying to play with them alone to resolve the combat ahead of normal session time.
My actual advice is for you to try and be a bit more narratively flexible if you can: with this scenario for example, what if that player manages to actually win the fight? Or...what if their mighty display of vigor makes the last of the enemies run away in fear, reporting to those above them a vague description of the PC but in a more monstrous and fearsome way, which will cause their next encounter to maybe be more dangerous but with more opportunities for them to prepare beforehand. Or...maybe the PC earns the respect of his enemies, which leads to fun encounters later where those enemies also recognize him and are afraid to fight him, which starts to build a minor legacy for the character?
Just because your initial plan was 'party gets ganked and loses to further the plot' doesn't mean the *current* plan needs to be 'party gets ganked and loses to further the plot', and you can potentially reward your players even though they weren't supposed to win initially as a way to both make up for the hiccup as well as to reward the dedication of the particular player.
Every GM has a different style, but one I've learned that works for me is making a world that has multiple events currently happening that I think are cool and I'm personally interested in...and then after doing a 'the party gets together and fights some stuff as a team for the first time' introduction, I let them explore wherever they want to go, knowing they will bump into something cool to do or that I can come up with something on the fly if needed the incorporates what they are currently doing or talking about.
Remember, in Skyrim the Dragonborn is caught in the beginning of the story and being carted away to be beheaded. Only a dragon's intervention saves the player character from death.
Sometimes stuff is just happening to set the stage and tone of a campaign.
Note that this cutscene sets up the entire adventure and is very clearly a session 0/first few sessions equivalent where it's all story setup for the campaign.
There is a big difference between 'hey, this is early story-establishing stuff, so you can't really engage with it that much' and 'we are multiple sessions in and I don't want you to win what is clearly a combat encounter because I have a story in mind and that requires you to lose here'.
Again, I encourage you to be more flexible and adjust your story a bit more to give more agency to your players in this specific outcome and build something from here rather than to just toss the encounter in the trash and force the outcome as originally planned, even if it comes with an apology.
One of the amazing advantages TTRPGs have as a story-telling medium is being able to work with your players to weave a narrative together. This isn't a movie where the characters aren't real people and the narrative is set, and this isn't a video game where player actions can be limited in impact on the story without issue based on genre.
As a GM, you magic powers are being able to change the ebb and flow of encounters and story on the fly based on what it seems would be dope to do at the time. Sometimes that is making an encounter winnable that wasn't planned to be that way and making adjustments based on if they win, and sometimes it's making every encounter in an area incredibly difficult to show how dangerous an area is or how underprepared the party currently is.
I believe this is easily salvageable to turn it into something the players could end up thinking is great instead of just just enforcing the same fate on them and hoping they all take it gracefully the entire way through.
Some players do hate losing agency, but I think those players would hate a combat scenario that was concocted with the only intended outcome being their loss, while appearing to be "fair" and something that they could win at.
IDK how true this is. Losing a combat, even one you mathematically shouldn't win, is kind of markedly different than the GM simply declaring your PC defeated and captured through overwhelming force. It's completely realistic to be more okay with the former than the latter, which is why I think the constant references to 'agency' is kind of misleading here. None of the proposed solutions really have anything to do with player agency, and agency doesn't mean that they're owed success anyways.
It's not even the main issue here, it's that OP doesn't want to spend a whole session running a one character combat. The solution that is to talk to the player in question between sessions and try to work out something satisfactory.
Since one is invisible, you could let them keep their agency and flee before the spell wears off. Have the enemies start dragging the other characters into carts and hauled away while the invisible player fights walls of soldiers. Then they could follow and free their friends later.
You have to allow player agency to ruin your plans and find a way to go with the flow. So long as you can keep them interested and involved, then you should be able to pivot to a similar or new idea.
I don't like the whole cloth advice of don't do it, but rather keep in mind your plans need to be able to change for the players. Some of the best scenarios can be when a GM says "I didn't expect us to be here, but here we are." It can be rough sometimes, but try to always have a plan for when the players turn your plan upside down. Usually not a detailed plan either, more of a set of ideas or a methodology for incorporating crazy ideas and bizarre outcomes.
As a GM, I absolutely never write an ending to an encounter that nullifies player agency. Being able to change the world and affect the story is the one thing tabletop beats computer games at. Some degree of nudging can be expected so that the party is able to engage with content, but the less of it, the more of what's special about tabletop can be enjoyed. When it goes beyond that, it's railroading.
I don't really understand why folks never look at the dates on posts. The person you're all responding to hasn't posted since February 20th.