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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6640506" data-attributes="member: 6787650">In this case there are reasons why letting the barbarian go will cost him his secret: the reason he's trying to arrest the barbarian is that the barbarian is proposing to go rescue King Andruin who vanished while the PCs were away in wildspace this week. Andruin was last seen leading a party of soldiers to reclaim part of the capital city from the infestation of hobgoblin vampires which the PCs inadvertently (ahem) created, previously. In reality Waldemar tipped the vampires off in hopes they would wipe out Andruin--he's tired of being the power behind the throne given how poorly his last scheme went (hobgoblin army was supposed to capture the capital, not get turned into vampires) and just wants to become the power of the throne.But, dominating the barbarian doesn't necessarily give away his core secret anyway. All that will be known even by his own men is that he is secretly a wizard. Politically that could be bad (could raise suspicions that he has been manipulating the king with magic) but it's nothing like having it out that he's a Rakshasa, and it's also better than having Mr. Stupid Barbarian possibly rescue King Andruin, possibly before the vampires have been able to finish him off. Andruin would presumably not be pleased to hear how swiftly Waldemar assumed control while he was away--this is the worst possible time for the PCs to start interfering with Waldemar's plans. (And from a metafictional angle, that is by design. I deliberately created a situation where Waldemar would have to act in more obvious ways than subtle ways, because a rule of thumb for RPG mystery-type things is that you should always give the PCs three times as many clues to what's going on as you think they'll need. In this case, they didn't catch on to the "hostile takeover" angle when he refused to pay them full price for their captured ballistas, nor when he confiscated their ship for intra-kingdom trade and refused to be reasonable about how much good they could do for the kingdom with it themselves, but when the barbarian told him he was going to look for King Andruin and Waldemar's response was, "Arrest that man!", a light finally went on in one of my players' heads. "I know what's going on! This is a hostile takeover!" So the rule of three seems to be holding.)Edit: And this isn't "a combat he cannot win." I estimate a 70-80% chance that the barbarian is going to bite the dust here. 30% chance of failure is high, and it would be nice to bring that down to zero. But from a metafictional perspective, 70% chance of PC death is already about as severe as I have any right to make it. I don't actually want to attack the PCs in the middle of the night with ten assassins, all with drow poison on their weapons, who shoot the PCs unconscious and then tie them up and dump them, restrained, in the ocean. I run a sandbox but it's a sandbox which was constructed as best I could with initial conditions that would set the PCs up for eventual victories, not ignominious and unceremonious defeats. Even if the barbarian wins this fight he will almost certainly be at low HP and cursed by the Rakshasa's claws, and that itself is a pretty severe penalty.</blockquote>

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