How can I stall combat for a couple rounds?

[Noumenon]

3.5e: Running lets you move some 90 feet in a round.

4e: Running lets you move 80 feet in a round.

I'm not sure if we thought you were limited to a straight line, or what.

The DM always has this power.
Roll your dice in secret. That way, your players don't know you are keeping them alive(ish).

I am way too wussy to let myself roll the dice in secret. The dice are my saviors, they add all the actual danger to combat because they don't care if the characters die. That's why I'm complaining here about situations that force me to roll the dice every round (heated combat).

It would be nice if i could avoid taking out the other players' sins on the poor paladin. Here's an idea -- I could render the paladin helpless, set up for a coup de grace and say "come out, come out, wherever you are!" That might shame the other players into coming back into the combat by making it obvious that they are responsible if he dies. While giving them time to get back into the fray.

 

[Cor_Malek]

Or maybe subdue the paladin (ie rope + taking all his weapons), and prepare an ambush for the others? It's their damn dungeon, they know what possible ways in there are.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Yes, absolutely defeat the paladin. No mercy.

Now, you don't have to kill the paladin, just defeat him. If the BBEG manages to capture him, they can subject him to torment while the other PCs try to rescue him--without their brick.

Now, maybe they'll just abandon him to his fate, and run off to fight another day. Simple--that's when you put the focus of the game back to the paladin, and give him a chance to escape. If he makes it out, extra XP from the harrowing tale in tow, then he goes back to wherever and forms a new party.

Of course, the other players were all expecting just to be able to continue their characters and just have the paladin lose his. But now, you can continue the action from the paladin and force everyone else to make a new character. Of the paladin's choosing. All without killing anyone.

By the way, how does the paladin's player feel about all this? Is he okay with everyone running away?

 

[ExploderWizard]

To expand on the reason I don't want to just play RAW and let the party get its just deserts: for dramatic reasons, I want to be in control of whether the characters have a chance to die.

What do the players want? Do your players enjoy having the life or death of their characters decided by dramatic fiat or do they want such decisions to be more in their control?

By deciding dramatically when the possibility for death exists, you are removing the consequences from any tactical choices the party cares to make. This is something the players really should be on board with if you plan to do it.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I'm not sure if we thought you were limited to a straight line, or what.

I'm going from recollection here, but first off the moving PC can do a full move for 60 ft. if they use both their move and standard actions for movement. On top of that I seem to recall that you could move an additional 30 ft. (3x) by hustling. The straigt line movement was limited to when you wanted to move 4x.

In the end regardless of the RAW, this is the simplest place to exercise your DM powers for cinematic drama and declare that the PCs can move faster than normal so they lose only a round or two getting to the back way.

Call it the "24" movement power: the ability for PCs to behave like Jack Bauer who can get to any location in L.A. in 10-20 "real-time" minutes.

 

[maddman75]

Ultimatley, it sounds like you want to have a more cinematic game, and so do your players. I'm going to suggest Savage Worlds. It uses minis, or not. Instead of set feats or powers there's a variety of tricks the PCs can do. Creating antagonists is very easy, and converting something would be simple, even on the fly.

You can download the test drive for free, as well as a small fantasy suppliment. If you like it, the core rules are $10 and they have all kinds of setting books.

I don't recommend killing the PCs when the try to do something fun. I'd rather find some rules that work for your kind of fun.

 

[malcolypse]

they don't call me party killer because of my winning smile.

In that example, the group pursued two orcs into a room, the hallway became congested (paladin, fighter, and halfling ranger) and the rogue decided to go around to the back. This was about a 170-foot trip (down a conveyor belt, behind an orc sentry, and down a staircase).

Another example: One member of the party fighting a giant scorpion (can't remember if he was already grappled or not) and one of the other two goes around about 90-120 feet to come out in the other entrance of the room.

Third example: Party member gets himself smuggled into the funeral home inside a coffin, other party member gets caught sneaking in and starts a fight, first party member decides his character doesn't have enough proof to want to be a part of murdering funeral home employees. Third party member never enters the funeral home at all. Honestly a lot of my problem is that the players aren't committed to supporting each other in combat, and sometimes I suspect they sneak around just as an excuse to stay out of danger.

first and third examples, take the party members involved in combat to a back room. tell them they're outnumbered and abandonned by their friends. have an opponent offer to let them surrender, or they have to duke it out and wait for reinforcements that may not come in time. that way, if they get themselves killed, it's their choice and you don't have to feel guilty. also, a captured party member forces the others to enter the fray or roleplay out a cool interaction to somehow save their friend.

second example, it's an animal with a very limited repetoire of reactions to stimuli. if it has a victim dead to rights, it will try to sting and claw it until it stops moving, or run away if the situation changes dramatically. period. you shouldn't feel guilty about a reasonable action in the situation being lethal. if they abandon a friend to a horrible monster, they're not very good friends and they should fall apart as a party when they realize it. assuming any of them survive.

as a player, i once murdered a party member who continually betrayed our party over several months of real and game time. she stole from the party on multiple occasions, sold the party into slavery to avoid offending an amazon hunting party (for about six million gold worth of jewels, which she split equally with the party, minus the 40 percent that she decided she was owed for getting us all this money, which the dm took away after it was carefully explained to him why he shouldn't have given our fifth level party six million gold), and let a party member die to prove to us how valuable an asset she was after we complained to her. that night she fell down the stairs of her keep and onto a rapier. the other players were horrified (except the betrayer, who saw it coming a mile away ooc)that i had done this terrible thing, and it cost me my alignment, but the other pc's agreed that a hero's funeral was a better idea than a resurrection.

eventually, a pc in game will take care of it, or a player will express their lack of fun at being the party decoy and leave the game, and in either case it should be dealt with as soon as you see the problem brewing instead.

 

[Lanefan]

Also: how about you just stop showing the players the entire map? At that point any character who goes running off into the wild unknown in hope of a flank is just an idiot.

Completely agree on this one, unless the entire area has already been explored and mapped by the PCs.

Also, as has been pointed out a PC in any edition can run quite a long way in a round, so at worst in the example you gave the Paladin would be hung out to dry for a round or two (unless the sneaky types get lost, which should be a risk, hence don't show 'em the map). And does the party not have any other warrior types, or is the Paladin the only one?

There seems to be a lot of blame being put to the sneaky ones for "poor tactics"; I'd look twice at the Paladin (or any heavy fighter type) right from the start and ask what a metal-clad tank is doing trying to run with what is otherwise clearly a stealth party, if I were to analyze it to that kind of depth.

Lan-"this all sounds like perfectly good gonzo play to me, what's the problem"-efan

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Bah, I know exactly what that's like.

I was once the tank in an otherwise-stealthy party. Standard operating procedure went like this: Party travels along trail, encounter something, everyone scatters and hides except the tank (because he can't). Encounter sees just a tank, no one else, and attacks.

Note that if encounter saw a party instead of one individual, there might not be any combat. In one particularly egregious example, we happened upon a cockatrice. Everyone else scatters and hides, so the cockatrice rushes me. I fight it off, but take off running, leading it away from everyone else. Any potshots from cover? Not a one. Thankfully, as a mounted fighter, I was faster than the cockatrice, but an encounter that would have been reasonable for a group was no good for just one PC.

So, of course, the question had to rise--since everyone else wanted to hide so much, perhaps my fighter was holding everyone else back. Nope, they loved me! If I didn't be the brick, who would?

In short, all the craven hiders needed some big meatsack to distract the enemy while they ran off. Joy of joys.

Of course, the particulars may vary between my experiences and the OP's, but I can easily believe that it's poor tactics on the part of the sneaky-and-ineffective. There is maneuvering and waiting for the right opportunity to strike, and there is putting the party at risk to save your skin.

The real question is how the players feel about what is happening. If everyone is happy with the tactics, then there is no problem. If the sneaky players can say aloud and clearly that they'll run around to flank, confident that the other players will be happy with it, then there is no problem. If, however, they have to hide that they're running, and not be totally honest about their intentions, then there is a problem. If the flank is achieved in 1-2 rounds, then it might be okay--inefficient, but okay. If the flank should take 1-2 rounds but somehow ends up being 3-5 rounds, or when the combat is almost won, then there's a problem.

 

[Noumenon]

Simple--that's when you put the focus of the game back to the paladin, and give him a chance to escape. If he makes it out, extra XP from the harrowing tale in tow, then he goes back to wherever and forms a new party.

By the way, how does the paladin's player feel about all this? Is he okay with everyone running away?

I like that from the fairness angle, and it's pretty close to what I actually did. I invented at the table, a klah-tasting potion for the orcs to stabilize the paladin, which felt like distasteful fudging, and then ran a split adventure where the paladin and warmage made a deal with the slaves' bookkeeper and then fought their way out with the aid of the slave ogre who powered the elevator, madly leveling down encounters as I went.

However, even if the paladin were the focus of the new party instead of the flee-ers, it retains one of the things that makes me avoid PC death in the first place: the whole "no more adventure for two hours, we need to go get new characters built/raised/healed/integrated into the party."

What do the players want? Do your players enjoy having the life or death of their characters decided by dramatic fiat or do they want such decisions to be more in their control?

By deciding dramatically when the possibility for death exists, you are removing the consequences from any tactical choices the party cares to make. This is something the players really should be on board with if you plan to do it.

Nope, the players all seem not to mind death and sometimes beg for consequences. (I do a lot of consequences as far as "this happens as a result of your doing this," I just don't do a lot of "you did this and so I'm going to nail you to the wall.") I just can't rid myself of the feeling that "D&D" is when you have a group of four characters opening the door to a room and killing a monster, and when you are ripping up your character sheet after dying in a random encounter or splitting up the party because your character isn't motivated to go along, you are not playing the game any more. I'm not sure I can find common ground with my players on this.

Completely agree on this one, unless the entire area has already been explored and mapped by the PCs.

I don't reveal the entire map, but the entire map is on the easel pad so you can basically use your intuitions to figure out if things connect and how far a trip it is. I believe in both of these encounters the path was 90% known. The Secret of Smuggler's Cove is a very nonlinear adventure and the PCs had seen all kinds of connecting rooms without maybe going into every door. In the paladin encounter, the PCs had worked in the room as slaves but didn't know there were sentries to sneak around.

If the flank is achieved in 1-2 rounds, then it might be okay--inefficient, but okay. If the flank should take 1-2 rounds but somehow ends up being 3-5 rounds, or when the combat is almost won, then there's a problem.

I think my problem is encounters that will kill a character in two rounds; if they were lower level, this wouldn't be as bad. The scorpion was actually two levels higher than the party; I was experimenting with sandboxing by scattering modules all over the map, but I wasn't happy at all when I wasn't able to "let the players go with a warning" because they couldn't win and the scorpion couldn't let them go. If they had been using efficient tactics, they maybe, I hope, could have gotten through that one encounter and realized they didn't belong there. With the paladin encounter, they had one extra party member but two extra orcs compared to how the module was written. In contrast, in the combat where the one character didn't fight because he didn't have enough evidence and another never came inside, the combat wasn't rigidly planned out so I just made all the minions 1d4+1 hp commoners with no armor and it went OK -- I just wanted to stall combat a little longer to try to get more people on board.