Illusionist with a hostage, what would you do?

[Kahuna Burger]

My group, chasing an accomplished illusionist, caught up with her in the room of an NPC. She appeared to be holding his unconsious body with a knife to his throat. I say appeared, because this is a villian who has already been screwing with our perceptions three ways to sunday. (in fact at that very moment, she looked like my character.) There was good in character reason to be skeptical of the NPC being in his room at that moment (we had said earlier that we were looking for folks to help with the search that led to this chase/fight, and the NPC was not mentioned) but it wasn't impossible.

Assuming for the moment that you cared at least a little if the NPC lived or died, what would you do in this situation?

 

[TheYeti1775]

Depends what levels we are talking and what you have available.

Or when in doubt - empty the magazine into her.

 

[kensanata]

Err on the side of caution and protect the innocent. Treat it like a hostage situation.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

If they're using someone as a hostage, I'm guessing that the villain is going to use at least a round or two to try and negotiate some form of escape. This should give the party a chance to try and detect or disbelieve any illusions, assuming that the illusion allows a save without direct interaction (it depends in the spell, I think).

At any rate, play for time until you can get more information, but otherwise assume that the hostage is real.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Is it a bad sign that when I read the title of this thread my first thoughts were:

"Pop Quiz! ... What do you do?"
"Shoot the hostage."

 

[TheYeti1775]

Is it a bad sign that when I read the title of this thread my first thoughts were:

"Pop Quiz! ... What do you do?"
"Shoot the hostage."

It popped into my head too.

 

[Felix]

Throw a harmless item at the hostage; it'll go straight through the illusion and remove the need for saving throws.

Then empty the magazine.

EDIT:

Alternatively, if you have an [Empowered] Ray of Enfeeblement handy, shoot it at the hostage: if the hostage is real, they'll go slack and it's very, very hard to hold up dead weight. If the hostage is an illusion, then the illusionist is now very weak.

Otiluke's Resilient Sphere around both of them: then go about setting up the room so that the illusionist cannot escape. If the illusionist kills the hostage, it's murder, and you're the torturing lynch mob.

Dispel Magic, because the illusionist may be invisible in the corner of the room concentrating on the illusion of himself and the hostage.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

"Hostage? Hah- that's no hostage!"

Twang! Thuk!

"Whoops! Guess he wasn't bluffing after all... Unless the corpse is an illusion, too?"

[EDIT- actually, now that I think of it, humor aside that might be an option. Sense Motive to see if he'll really go through with the threat to maim/injure/kill the hostage. That might be another option in addition to trying to disbelieve the illusion. If you've got a high Wis and/or ranks in Sense Motive, anyway.]

 

[The_Gneech]

Why don't you have a wand of true seeing by this point?

-TG

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Why don't you have a wand of true seeing by this point?

-TG

Well, the most obvious reason would be that it's not 4th level or lower and cannot be made into a wand....