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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalendraf" data-source="post: 3227684" data-attributes="member: 3433">As the gnome player is said escapade, I thought I'd chip in.  (BTW, Teneb only now showed me this link, so I was totally unprepared for the night when it happened...)The party did assume some form of mind control was being used, and as was noted, we took what seemed at the time to be fairly wise and precautionary steps leading up to the orphanage visit.  My own theory was that it was bound to be a trap, likely one that used the children as hostages, but I initially hadn't considered that the several kids themselves might be possessed or be turned into enemies.  Instead, I figured we'd just have to discover the main baddie, confront it, and try to figure out how to defeat it/trick it/buy it off/scare it off/etc.The moment the boy threatened the baby, everything suddenly turned sour.  I think the Divine Mind had a good plan in scaring the kids, but if anything we probably should have made sure someone was in a position to catch that baby.  The distance from the door to the drop point was well over 30 feet, which probably meant someone could have made a run to that spot the moment the threat was made.  We didn't, but in our defense, I think all of us were assuming some kind of traps in the courtyard, or invisible foes.  Thus, we proceeded from a more typical "dungeon" mentality - deal with the problem at range.When the baby got dropped, fireballing the kid that dropped him was an emotional response on the part of the sorcerer.  That character had a history of such behavior, having (accidentally?) fireballed the ranger's companion to death in a similar emotional reaction during a previous session.  Everyone knew he had a hair trigger...including the DM.  I doubt that Fireball was even a consideration at how to resolve this situation initially when the DM set it up, but once it happened, it definitely sent the party down an entirely unexplored path.From that point on, my gnome attempted everything in his power to avoid hurting kids.  He did knock one out with a non-lethal punch, and another one suffered poisoning from having a spiked chain of grappling wrap itself around both the kid and the poisoned pillow he was trying to use against us.  The gnome even rang the bell, hoping to draw the neighbors or guards attention to the problem at the orphenage.  He finally did manage to reach the office, at which point the school lady screamed bloody murder, accused the party of extortion and the town guards had no choice but to haul us away.I think many other parties I've DM'ed or played in before would also struggle badly with this scenario.  Some of the best solutions are probably the ones least likely to be taken by typical D&D-players:Option #1 - Contact the guards immediately and have them investigate it with you.If things go sour, you've got them as witnesses to hopefully help prove your side of things.  However, this is not typical RPG-player mentality.  Should the party always run to the guards everytime they hear about a threat?  Beyond the Cry Wolf problem, it could also backfire.  I think most of us took the tone of note to be one of, "Come alone, or all these orphans die!", even though that wasn't spelled out specifically the message.Even though this is probably the best option the party could take, it just doesn't seem likely that most players would do it.Option #2 - Blindly enter the orphanage to confront the enemyThis seems to be the path the DM was expecting us to take.  IMHO, there were too many reasons to not trust the message sender, and it was too obvious of a trap to enter the orphanage without being cautious.  I fully expected that we'd get led into a building full of traps, possibly ones which were designed to kill children, yet make it look like the party was guilty.  Or the kids inside would be in (or immediately put into) a hostage situation, used as shields to thwart the party.  The best way to avoid both of those likely scenarios was to stay outside of the building.  I was also worried about invisible foes in the courtyard or other traps placed there.  Another angle I considered was that the some of the kids inside might not be kids at all - instead being shapechanged creatures of some kind.  That could make it really hard to know which kids posed threats.Thus, when we saw a kid threaten a baby, I think the mentality was probably, "He's one of them.  Kill him".  From that line of thinking, the ensuing fireball almost seems justified.  I personally would have preferred a less spectacular and non-lethal method of dealing with that "enemy", but given our range and the possible traps between him and the party, it may have been one of the few options available.As for the ranger depitating the kid on an AoO...  There's really no justification for the character to do that.  The player was obvioisly frustrated by the situation, and probably felt the whole party was doomed for the earlier fireball and dropped baby.  I think this was an "Oh screw it" kind of response on his part.Option #3 - Scout and infiltrateThis was definitely an option.  The party had access to invisibility spells, and the rogue has a super high hide & move silent.  In addition, a simple fly-over might have revealed much about the initial dangers posed by the kids & babies.I'm not sure why we didn't do that (the fly-over), but I think we were all assuming all the threats would be much deeper inside the orphanage, possibly well hidden, instead of being on top of it.  Sending in an advanced scout also risks the chance that scout is detected, captured and/or killed.  Most parties I've been involved with seem to prefer to keep that extra live character vs the risk w/ possibly helpful recon info.</blockquote>

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