How can a Warlock be a prisoner?

[Argyle King]

Except for the fact any minion or ally of the shackled creature can get him out easily? So the player wastes a standard action so that another creature loses a standard action? That's incredibly inefficient.

It's pretty good against solos, I admit. But just keep some minion reserves to assist your solo until after he uses the shackles.

They had enough shackles and had worked out the tactic well enough that they could typically shackle the majority of the creatures in the encounter and then go back and kill them at their leisure. This wasn't only a problem with Solos.

Minions didn't really help this because they wouldn't last long enough to make a difference. If for some reason the PCs didn't have enough shackles or the combat was too hectic to perform their normal tactic, they'd just do it one creature at a time and then focus fire on the helpless creature.

In one particular encounter that I remember, they were facing a flying creature. Through the use of a few powers, the party gained flying for a few rounds. In mid-air they shackled the creature, and the creature went splat as it fell to the ground.

As has been mentioned, with the way the rules for D. Shackles work, it's effectively a Save or Die.

I'm glad in some way that the item exists because the OP's 'problem' does exist in 4E. Without DM fiat, there aren't many ways to take something prisoner in D&D. Dimensional Shackles fill a need in the game and fill a niche. Unfortunately, the way they interact with the rest of the rules can be problematic sometimes. Since our first few campaigns, the group I regularly game with has heavily houseruled shackles; one of the guys completely bans them without DM permission when he's running a game.

 

[luide]

Yeah, I can see how shackles could become problematic. Best case scenario for players (assuming 5 players and 4 encounters per day at epic) would give them ability to use shackles 25 times per day, meaning 6 attempts per encounter.

At level 21 (best case for players) dex/str build with demigod will have relevant stat at 28, giving +19 to hit. Add combat advantage it will go up to +21. Against average ref of 32 of level 21 monster, that will mean 11+ to hit. All characters won't be this good at hitting, but using elven accuracy and other reroll/power bonuses will increase hit rate a lot. So 50% hit rate would be pretty good starting point.

So on average encounter fully optimized party can shackle around half of the enemies, rendering them quite useless.

I guess my houserule of "you cannot use same daily power from multiple items (some rare exceptions)" was good call even though the campaign is still on paragon tier.


Note; Of course shackles are also trivial to "game around" by encounter design. Just have some teleporting minions arrive at regular intervals to unshackle people, keep the shackles and teleport out next round.

 

[The_Fan]

Simple answer, requiring no magic whatsoever, relies on this question: Does the warlock project his magic from his hands?

If yes, it's easy. A special jacket that binds his arms so they can't move, with his hands bounds into fists, crossed, directly against his chest. He can still use his magic...and die, as he performs a coup de grace against himself.