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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 2836394" data-attributes="member: 704">The Tactical use of HostagesTaking hostages, as a strategic consideration, usually works out poorly.  Your opponents will only have an impetus to co-operate as long as you keep them alive and under your control.  Once you surrender that control, your opponent no longer has any reason not to kill you.  And as a reversed situation, giving into a hostage taker never really works either.  If you give the opponent what he wants, he will still have the hostage under his power, allowing him to try to make more demands, or to go ahead and kill the hostage anyway.  So as a rule, never negotiate when hostages are involved.But this is  a tactical thread, not a strategic one.  And there are cirumstances where having a hostage on the battlefield is advantageous.But the one thing you have to be certain of is that your opponent will care about the fate of the hostages.  If your opponents are chaotic evil, or just supremely cold hearted and calculating, hostages wont be much of a deterrant.  But aside from that, one of the strongest benefits of hostages is that the threat scales with level.  It does not matter if the opponent is level 1 or level 20, if they care about the hostage, they will at least give you a chance to speak rather than risk having you kill the hostage.First, there is the ever popular human shield technique.  You hold the hostage in front of you and use them to intercept attacks.  According to the rules-as-written, this gives you a 4 point AC bonus, and if an attack misses by 4, it hits the hostage.  (I am too lazy to look this up right now so if I am wrong, go ahead and correct me).  Pulling this off is usually not easy, since your probably going to be unable to attack while controling the hostage.A variant of this would be the Breastplate of Babies, where you strap an infant onto your shield or chest.  Infants are light weight, and it takes alot of balls to be wiling to risk killing an infant just to inflict damage on a villian.If you can force close proximity to your hostages, you can prevent your opponents from using spells with areas of effects, (except for spells such as sleep and other non-lethals).  This works with human shields but you can also acheive this effect by having prisoners chained to the ground out in the open.The threat of killing a hostage is best carried out by preparing a readied action for a coup-de-grace on someone who is currently helpless.  Ready the action, make your demand, and carry it out if the opponents do not comply.  If you can get away with it, have a mook do the dirty work some distance away from yourself.  It prevents the players from trying to do something clever like a quickened spell to stop you before you carry out the threat.  You can even make it clear to the players that if you do not return, someone dear to them will be killed.Also of use is the notion of Hostages as a Diversion.  Basically, you put your hostages in imminent harm and run away.  If the plaeyrs try to catch you, the hostage will die.  This usually means doing something like tying weighted chains to someone and tossing them in the water, or tying them down to a stake in the ground and setting them on fire.  The players should have enough time to intervene and save the hostages, but it should also give you the chance to escape.  This option is less useful for escape purposes if you have Teleport or a similar ability.  But for retreats that rely on movement, the head start will pay off.  You do not need to use this to escape, you can also just buy time for some step in your convoluted plan.Most of the above is only really usable with encounters prepared in advance.  However, you can pull this off on the spot.  All you need to do is drop one of the players to 0 HP, or otherwise render them helpless.  Once attained, prepare to go with the coup-de-grace and make your demand.  At high levels, they may settle for a ressurection of the soon to be deceased, but at lower levels, this can give most players pause.  You can even threaten to maim a character, "One move and I cut his eye's out!" will probably get better results then a threat to kill.WARNING:  Only go for a coup-de-grace on players very rarely.  For some reason, they really dont like it, and may end up chasing you from the room.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

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