Sacrificial Bunnies (Warlock curse question)

[jayphonic]

Anyway, everything has been said, this discussion is finished. Bottom line: DM does what he wants and the advice given by the books is "don't allow it when it doesn't involve (dangerous) combat.

Please don't feed the troll

 

[Twilightwaits]

OK. For my first post here at ENWorld, I'm going to pick this thread.


robertliguori: I would say that they aren't in fact different at all. I would assume that a competent, able DM would take inspiration from the acts of his players and the scenarios they create, as much as they take inspiration from the DM and his story.

Now, I would make a few caveats to this, for the particular scenario in discussion.

Credible Threat exists as a rule because ultimately, you must have some way to reign in players. Yes, this is an arbitrary metagame issue. In the real world, people abuse power all the time, using any means neccesary. We see that in American politics, but I'll not sully this forum with any further discussion of THAT truly evil topic. Admittedly, we don't have people bouncing around via mystical transportation via sacrifice IRL, but if we did, I am sure there are people who would abuse the daylights out of it.

However, D&D is a game of cooperation, and in order for the game to function, as its base, there must be guidelines for BOTH sides to follow. Just as your players shouldn't exploit the RAW to gain an advantage when it doesn't make logical sense in a DM's game world, the DM should not go out of his way to abuse the RAW to deny players what is rightfully theirs.

You don't expect your players to abuse the Warlock Pact or similar abilities by killing a sack of rats which pose no actual threat. Conversely, if your players force a monster to surrender, successfully find a way to contain it, beat and abuse it to the point of near death, and then let the warlock kill it as a sacrifice, after expending such an effort to contain what is obviously going to be a dangerous, potentially life threatening risk should it escape prematurely, then they SHOULD arguably receive something for it. However, they should be prepared to suffer the repercussions of such an act (IE: a shift in alignment, possibly legal ramifications).

It should be stated here that minions are in fact a credible threat. However, I think most people are taking the idea of minions in this thread to an extreme.

Minions can and -will- kill you if you ignore them. I know this first hand; the first party my players ran chose to ignore minions, figuring they couldn't be that dangerous. Three rounds later, they were hip deep in kobolds with no escape, and wound up TPK'ed.

They exist only as a literary or cinematic device; take for example, the Uruk's in the Battle of Helm's Deep and elsewhere. For all we see of the Uruk's in the movie, for all we read of their ferocity, the Fellowship defeats them rather easily, through skill at arms. They can and do kill people; I believe it was Glorfindel who perished at said battle (its been a while since I've read the books though; I know there is an elf who dies). This is a man who stood up to a Balrog in solo combat and WON.

I digress; minions exist to let you recreate such scenes. They are dangerous; they can and will murder you if you let them. However, rather than saying to your players "The battle rages around you, and five Orcs step out from the throng to challenge you while the combat swirls around", you can literally have them face down a HORDE of orcs. Orcs which are a credible threat, but aren't going to TPK your party if you're careful. Yes, they die in one hit, but they are literally the epitome of swarm tactics, using weight of numbers to outmaneuver and crush the party.

Now, as pertains to the sacrifice of commoners, chickens, or other such miscellany.

While a single commoner is not much threat to a PC, a village would be. Eventually,numbers will overwhelm individual power. Ultimately, the PC's lack the actions to make a serious dent in 1,000 level 1 commoner minions. This constitutes a credible threat via swarm tactics, albeit the farther extreme of it. Thus, killing any part of the relevant threat would suffice for the activation of a Warlock Pact, assuming the intent is in fact to sacrifice the whole village.

In the case of the chicken sacrificing warlock...my pagan roots aside (I won't let this thread devolve into a discussion of Vodou, Vodun, Hoodoo, and who's right, wrong, or in between, as well as the misconceptions carried with each), I would say that it would be feasible...assuming the chicken in question had some intrinsic value as a sacrifice. The Gods of ancient Greece didn't accept pig slop; they wanted whole goats, and rare pure white cows, and all sorts of incredibly valuable, extremely rare things.

I would place the Pact Master of such a warlock as being much the same way, demanding a QUALITY sacrifice for the expenditure or use of some of IT's power.

More the kind of answer your guys were looking for?

 

[hong]

My common sense tells me there will not be an explanation forthcoming of the uncomfortable example that does not violate common sense.

And that's actually fine. "Yes, that would work, and it's a logical thing for a character to try, but the game isn't designed for characters to optimize effort on that level, so please don't or it won't be as fun." is a fine explanation.

See, this is what not thinking too hard about fantasy is ALL ABOUT.

 

[Pistonrager]

I guess that explains Harry Potter. It wasn't his Mother's love that saved him, it was the fact that as a baby he wasn't a credible threat.

Nice line.

I honestly don't see what the problem with people is at this point. People are having a hard time understanding what a credible threat means? If if can't easily and readily harm you, it's not a threat. An animal in a cage(or bag) is not a real threat, a goblin you tied up to drag thru a dungeon is not a threat.

And as far as the examples of being evil and sacrificing people to your great evil noodle monster overlord. Your clique are the ones that people got wind of at DnD's start, causing stupid like "Dark Dungeons" and that retarded movie "Mazes and Monsters"... ok, I can't keep that up but seriously, if you're an evil 3rd level minion of the unknowable noodley horror sacrificing a single minion may gain you some small favor(though it really should be part of a ritual) but if you're a level 15 Ur priest of the blood sauce, you're sacrifices should be a lot more impressive (though it still makes a lot more sense as a ritual).

The real issue is that some people want to use "bag of rats"(or bunnies or a tied up goblin or any other thing that has no real defense) to heal without real effort, or other similar potentially abusive repeat uses of a special ability. Attempted abuse like that used to actually require the DM giving a hardline "NO, you're being an unreasonable douche." Now there is a rule(that people are trying to get around) that says it for them, but is more of a guidline, not giving hard limits.

If you want a hard limit of what counts as a credible threat, we'll use the point at which the xp compared to level starts to get wonky. 5

Creatures more than 5 levels below you aren't a "Credible threat".
There done.


I'm really surprised this hasn't been closed yet.