Help me avoid slaughtering my party

[ironfang]

Make the Ogre Mage capture them and sell them to slavery!

Could this be the beginning of a drow adventure?!?!

 

[Gilladian]

I like the non-lethal cold idea.... hmmm....

 

[TheNovaLord]

let the party find some allies nearby who despise the ogres....

OR

have the cave attacked by another monster so the ogre uses up his cone of cold fighting that off, or the party use this distraction to rescue their chums, get away, etc.

if the party are Good, they may not wanna do a deal with the devil...

 

[TheNovaLord]

OR

seeing as the ogre mage has got a whole bunch of the ogres slaughtered, maybe they rebel against him with the parties help.

 

[Herobizkit]

OR

seeing as the ogre mage has got a whole bunch of the ogres slaughtered, maybe they rebel against him with the parties help.

This. This is something I might consider doing in a similar situation... but I don't play the traditional "Monster is Evil so must KILL" D&D that is so popular with the kids these days.

 

[haakon1]

I'd just run the fight and see what happens. Dice sometimes do unexpected things. And I give a second save roll if somebody misses it on a roll where failure means death (I call it save versus DM, from the old AD&D screen's abbreviation for "save versus death magic").

If they die, OK, they learn a hard lesson, but death need not always be permanent. Perhaps years from now, another character will find their remains and have them raised.

If they don't die, hopefully they can find a way to survive -- such as surrendering and being sold off as slaves, or swimming for it and being rescued by helpful sea-creatures such as selkies.

 

[travathian]

I think Der Kluge's idea is the winner! He'll bargain with them and make a deal.

I feel this is a terrible idea. It reeks of lame RPG stereotypes. The uber powerful creatures sending the PCs on a quest that will take weeks, yet the powerful creature could likely do it in a matter of hours. (see 8-bit theater for a very funny example)

I didn't mention that this is a side-adventure on an adventure path and I'd prefer not to totally reroute the campaign.

Why not? Hate to break it to you but your players are going to continuously go off the beaten path and do things you aren't expecting. If your campaign runs on rails you're only going to find it more and more difficult to keep the players on those rails as they go up in level. The higher level they get the more 'outside the box' type abilities they get, thus the more likely they are to muck up your well laid plans. Instead of thinking that this screws up your plans, think of it as a chance to come up with something new. Or heck, go find an existing module that deals with slavers, there are a pretty decent number of them. If they come back to deal with the Ogre Mage some day, maybe they'll remember why they were originally there and continue down that path.

Anyhow, I think the Ogre Mage will use his cone to make a nice display of power (freeze some of the cave water) and threaten them into listening to him. He'll offer to return their stuff (a wand and a medallion) that he swiped earlier, if they deliver a box to a specific location (in town) and leave it.

And it's going to bribe the PCs into doing this? How will it know they've completed the task? Are your PCs actually dumb enough to trust an Ogre Mage not to kill them when they come back? Ogre Mages are incredibly intelligent, why would it give back the magic items when it can simply move caves or kill the PCs when they come back?