Good party needs to "extract" information

[Olive]

If you want to keep your players and their respect, I'd strongly advise against this tactic. The DM who used this sort of childish runaround taught me only that divination spells were non functioning in his campaign - and that he was a "play against the players" DM. I'd rather he'd told me that in advance, and I would have learned earlier to follow along like a good little sheep until he let us get to the fight.

I think it's not only approriate but important to make the players think about what they're actually asking with divinations.

My players asked "what names do the enemy agents go under when in town" and I answered "their real ones". If they had asked "what are the names that the agents go under" I'd have given them names.

I don't see that as being play against players, I see that as encouraging thinking. As long as there's a way to overcome it.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I do not consider plea bargins particularly lawful, especially when it is to gain information. It turns the justice system into a kind of game where you keep score with convictions and buy a bigger "score" with a sacrifice play. This is a philisophical issue, and I see where you are coming from to some extent, but my disagreement is basic and not based on a lack of understanding.

So we might as well just drop the subject, but the warning is out there that this tactic will not fly with all DMs.

No tactic will fly with all DMs.

Sometimes being perfectly Lawful can be in contradiction to being Good. As a wise man once said, in Hell there is only the Law and it is followed to the letter.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I think it's not only approriate but important to make the players think about what they're actually asking with divinations.

My players asked "what names do the enemy agents go under when in town" and I answered "their real ones". If they had asked "what are the names that the agents go under" I'd have given them names.

I don't see that as being play against players, I see that as encouraging thinking. As long as there's a way to overcome it.

You can check out PirateCat's story hour for some 17+ level PCs who do divinations, get good info, but never seem to get that far ahead with it... Maybe PCs plot is to convoluted, but the divination answers just seem to complicate matters instead of making them simpler.

The cleric in my last campaign discovered the versatility of Commune. He was trying to locate the bodies of some people who had been murdered. Basically he took a map of the area, drew a line across it and asked "are the bodies I seek on this section of the map?" He'd pick the section that the bodies were in, draw a line dividing it in half, and point to one of the new sections and ask the same question. Do you have any idea how quickly you can narrow a search using this method? It would have been possible to screw it up, but I had already decided where the bodies were and didn't want to alter history to make them unfindable. They were, incedentally, manacled to stone blocks at the bottom of the city harbor. He found them in less than a day.

Of course, all the really good divinations cost xp, so the cleric made a sacrifice to accomplish his detective work.

I feel divinations are part and parcel of the game. Though I don't agree that a dead body will necessarily be forthcoming, I do expect my players to use all their capabilities to accomplish their goals. I hate resorting to "some dark power is blocking divinations on this subject." That's lame and annoying.

 

[Nifft]

I don't buy the choosing justice or mercy argument either, its just a dressed up threat. "Do what I want or I'll kill you". Its no better when a cleric says it. Mercy is given, not paid for, and justice does not look for bribes to stay its hand.

This interpretation goes against every episode of Law & Order I've ever seen. For an extreme example: "If you co-operate with us and testify against [CRIME-BOSS], we'll set you free with a new identity. Otherwise, you'll go to jail for the rest of your life, where his minions will kill you."

Mercy shown because of co-operation (especially against a greater threat) is just fine, as it's saying, "I'll forgive your previous bad acts in light of your new good acts."

-- N

 

[jmucchiello]

I think it's not only approriate but important to make the players think about what they're actually asking with divinations.

My players asked "what names do the enemy agents go under when in town" and I answered "their real ones". If they had asked "what are the names that the agents go under" I'd have given them names.

And I see it as quibbling. IMO, when a cleric uses a Divination, the deity or his agent knows exactly what the cleric means by what he says. Thus, the deity or agent will ensure answers framed in the context the cleric desires. Wizards are on their own.

My other problem with word games is the suspension of disbelief problem. What are the odds that the question framed in English has the identical misinterpretation in Chodathan? What if your world has a complex Dwarvish language with no two words having the same meaning and no homonyms whatsoever; thus it is completely ambiguity free?

As for the Lawful contradicting Good issue (someone reads Sepulchrave's story hour): One act of choosing Law over Good does not cause an alignment shift. All this means is the cleric who use this tactic should balance their Lawful acts with Good acts to remain LG. The argument here makes as much sense as punishing a CE character for choosing not to kill a random passerby since that would be both Chaotic and Evil.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

As for the Lawful contradicting Good issue (someone reads Sepulchrave's story hour): One act of choosing Law over Good does not cause an alignment shift. All this means is the cleric who use this tactic should balance their Lawful acts with Good acts to remain LG. The argument here makes as much sense as punishing a CE character for choosing not to kill a random passerby since that would be both Chaotic and Evil.

I concur. Many tactics/gambits would, in context, be called Neutral -- neither Lawful nor Good nor Chaotic nor Evil. Even LG Paladins are not forbidden from doing such things as long as their tactics of first & second resort are more alignment appropriate.

I just cannot see that, say, a Paladin or LG Cleric would win points with their God for insisting on killing all the bandits without negotiation if doing so means certain death for innocents (for lack of information).

 

[tf360]

I'm going to apply a little of my real world experience into this discussion. I've been in law enforcement for the last 13 years, and you'll find more often than not that people (prisoners) will talk a lot more than the average person thinks. Why? Because they've gotten away with b.s.'ing people for so long that they think they'll do the same thing to you as well. There's a reason why the American justice system gives you the right to remain silent, because the more you talk, the more likely it is that someone will catch you in a lie and bring your whole story crashing down on you. I realize that this does not assist you in the game situation dilemma that you're discussing, but it's just a pet peeve of mine that in many campaigns (and I'm not singling this one out by any means), prisoners/enemies automatically clam up and say nothing even under the threat of torture. It's just not a realistic version of the way that the system and most people work.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

This interpretation goes against every episode of Law & Order I've ever seen. For an extreme example: "If you co-operate with us and testify against [CRIME-BOSS], we'll set you free with a new identity. Otherwise, you'll go to jail for the rest of your life, where his minions will kill you."

Mercy shown because of co-operation (especially against a greater threat) is just fine, as it's saying, "I'll forgive your previous bad acts in light of your new good acts."

-- N

Whoa. Bearing in mind that I say this as a rabid, fanatical watcher of Law and Order, Jack McCoy aint lawful good. No way, no how. The fact that the show's title has the word "law" in it doesn't automaticly make it relevant to judging lawful or good behavior in D&D...

And I just don't see "mercy shown because of cooperation" as anything but spin. The situation decribed is no different morally than the chaotic neutral barbarian saying "tell me what I want to know or I'll kill you." Its a death threat to obtain information, and were I the DM I would judge it accordingly. If you think its ok for good characters to make death threats to get info, especially for people they would be ok killing anyway, there's no problem. I have a problem with it. I don't consider my problem irrational, though I'm willing to conceed the entire conversation as philosophical.

As to people who have accused me of being anal, the orriginal example was a person whose cleric had taken the domains of Law and Good. To repeat myself, I take domain choice VERY seriously. If you think you can't maintain both, you better not choose both, because its more than an overall description at that point - I'd hold them to paladinesque standards.

As for claiming its a "impossible situation" by my judgement, this entire thread was started on how to get information as a good party, with the assumption being that death threats and tourture would be out. Several good ideas have been put forth, and similar to what someone opined with speak with dead difficulties, obtaining information from an uncooperative prisoner while maintaining a good allignment and behaviour is supposed to be hard. Deal with it. (if people were saying my stance makes it impossible for a lawful good character to deal with survivors/prisoners at all, thats also false, but it is certainly true that you have to plan ahead a little and think about the issue. Field justice is also not easy, though magic has the capacity to make it a lot easier.)

And with that, I think we've gone in circles enough.

Kahuna burger

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

And I just don't see "mercy shown because of cooperation" as anything but spin. The situation decribed is no different morally than the chaotic neutral barbarian saying "tell me what I want to know or I'll kill you." Its a death threat to obtain information, and were I the DM I would judge it accordingly. If you think its ok for good characters to make death threats to get info, especially for people they would be ok killing anyway, there's no problem. I have a problem with it. I don't consider my problem irrational, though I'm willing to conceed the entire conversation as philosophical.

Yeah, right. By your bizarre perspective, a burglar and a bill collector are exactly the same thing. You end up poorer either way. The difference is only spin.

Context, context, context.

My main problem with your stance is that you appear to be forgetting that the prisoners we are talking about generally deserve to die by the laws & customs of the society and culture (when we are talking about "medieval" styled campaigns). The prisoners positively expect to be tortured first, killed, and then their body left on display as a gruesome lesson to future generations.

Somehow you insist on seeing an offer of mercy as tainted if the heroes gain the slightest advantage. I guess I cannot wrap my mind around the idea of mechanically slaughtering every prisoner and cold-bloodedly ignoring each every plea for mercy as being the paragon of all that is Lawful & Good. If I play a paladin in your campaign I will remember to bring my torture implements in case I catch someone poaching a deer.

 

[Hypersmurf]

My other problem with word games is the suspension of disbelief problem. What are the odds that the question framed in English has the identical misinterpretation in Chodathan? What if your world has a complex Dwarvish language with no two words having the same meaning and no homonyms whatsoever; thus it is completely ambiguity free?

When the movie Enemy at the Gate came out, a common complaint was that all the Russian characters were speaking English with English accents.

Apparently, they claimed it would have been more 'realistic' if all the Russian characters were speaking English with Russian accents.

I say hell, if you're not going to have all the Russian characters speak Russian, you're not exactly going for realism in the dialogue anyway, so what difference do the accents make?

If you read Asterix in French, or if you read it in English, it's full of puns. They're not the same puns in both languages... but on average, you get a book with a whole bunch of puns in it.

So no, perhaps the Chondathan words for "two" and "too" are not homophones. But there will be a stack of Chondathan homophone pairs that don't exist in English.

Since none of us speak Chondathan (with or without a Russian accent), we don't know what any of those are. But if we never confuse the real Chondathan pairs, and sometimes confuse the English pairs, then on average, we're getting the same amount of confusion.

Unless you all start playing in Chondathan... what else would you recommend?

-Hyp.