Victories and No Defeats in D&D

[Hassassin]

It's probably much more convenient to take the PCs magic items and kill them, then to ransom them for less of what their magic items are even worth, risking death by escape, and winning a powerful group of enemies that levels up every few weeks.

But BBEGs are greedy. They take your stuff and then attempt to ransom you if at all possible. Unless they tell you their plans - then you should be worried.

 

[the Jester]

But BBEGs are greedy. They take your stuff and then attempt to ransom you if at all possible. Unless they tell you their plans - then you should be worried.

This.

The binary here isn't "release captured pcs with all their gear for a ransom or kill them", it's "kill them and take their stuff or take their stuff and release them for a massive amount of additional gold".

 

[GM Dave]

I don't know your GM nor your story, but, i wouldn't assume surrendering is a sure way to get a CR-appropriate chance of escape.

Maybe you are lucky and you get one. Maybe you are captured by mindflayers and you get your mind wrecked and you'll never remember who you were, ending your story right there.

Unless your character is especially valuable for the level he is (a king maybe) i don't think npcs would be that willing taking the risk the party might escape, recover their magic items and kill the captors. They ARE PCs, they are able to do that.

It's probably much more convenient to take the PCs magic items and kill them, then to ransom them for less of what their magic items are even worth, risking death by escape, and winning a powerful group of enemies that levels up every few weeks.

Well, this speaks to the spirit of this thread.

You can't expect a player to accept capture if they are going to be worse off then dying.

If the GM captures a player who surrenders and offers a fair amount of treasure for their life and takes the situation to rob them then the player won't surrender in future.

The player will instead look for a deep crevasse to leap into.

I can understand if you were dealing with known 'evil' types but if you are dealing with known 'lawful' types (like elves) then the GM should go by some code of civility.

The behaviour of the GM has a great influence on whether the players treat the battle as a need to push a loss into a TPK or accept the situation and surrender/retreat.

Especially since this is players, if you want to have a classic story of capture and escape then you have to play within the 'fiction' of the surrender.

This reminds me of the story of how dogs play. A dog will play fight by nipping at each other. The nip demonstrates not only the dog could have made the bite but also that this is play which is why no one is getting hurt.

Surrender has to be on this order for people to play with you this form of game.

 

[Zustiur]

Fleeing is only a win if the battle has no stakes others than the continued survival of the PCs. That is fine for the random attack by a hungry owlbear, but it doesn't work for a desperate battle to save a peaceful village from a band of wicked brigands. You can say my perspective comes more from thinking of D&D battles as being similar to military battles, a thought process brought on by pretty much never playing the stereotypical "kill things and take their stuff" D&D campaign.

And this is where random encounters played a big part. If every encounter is tied to the story, then there are no encounters where the only goal is survival. If survival is the only goal, retreat is a sensible choice. If you have to fight the encounter for any reason, players will stay and fight instead of running.

Fixing this isn't about fixing the rules. As we've discussed here, it's as much about play groups as anything else. The best way of influencing play groups is to put examples and comments into the DMG. If the DM finds the game in that kind of situation, he suddenly has someone else's experience/example to fall back on, instead of just continuing the fight to the death.
This is where you'd then expand on alignment and intelligent behaviour. Surrendering to an owlbear will just get you killed. Fleeing from it's lair might be all that it wanted in the first place (get away from my babies!). Surrendering to a chaotic evil phsychopath is likely to get you killed. Surrendering to a lawful evil BBEG will probably get you stripped of your equipment.

And so on.

I think some more mechanical support for inducing and resolving defeats would be a good idea.

Yes, and failing that, roleplay guidelines for the DM. Provide some ideas and suggestions on how to handle these situations. I can't think of any DMG that actually mentions what to do if the party is caught in one of these situations.

 

[Mattachine]

I'll note that being captured is related to magic item dependency and Expected Wealth: if PCs aren't really dependent on magic items, and they don't have a lot in the first place, being captured is not nearly as bad.

 

[amerigoV]

Is that DM fudging? Sure, maybe. But who would complain?

"You know nothing, John Snow"

D&D is too much about the gear. Many of us players would rather have the PC die rather than lose their stuff. Plus, prisons and such really expose an unspoken flaw in fantasy - that the PCs have super-advanced military grade weaponry while the enemy have rusted short swords. So even when the PC breaks out, instead of finding their +2 Sword of Awesomeness they have Goober's -1 Rusted Sword of Lameness for a couple of sessions. The DM has to either fudge finding their gear ("you open the closet next to your cell and find your stuff"), make sure the stuff is distributed amongst the enemy, or over-treasure the next adventure to get them back up to gear level.

In other words, just end the charade and TPK us!

If you change to another genre - say a Western, then that situation drops away. If you get captured, when you break out the Deputy probably had a gun that was as good as you had (plus there is just less gear that influences the numbers)

 

[Sunseeker]

"You know nothing, John Snow"

D&D is too much about the gear. Many of us players would rather have the PC die rather than lose their stuff. Plus, prisons and such really expose an unspoken flaw in fantasy - that the PCs have super-advanced military grade weaponry while the enemy have rusted short swords. So even when the PC breaks out, instead of finding their +2 Sword of Awesomeness they have Goober's -1 Rusted Sword of Lameness for a couple of sessions. The DM has to either fudge finding their gear ("you open the closet next to your cell and find your stuff"), make sure the stuff is distributed amongst the enemy, or over-treasure the next adventure to get them back up to gear level.

Says you! I beat my PC's up with +5 Vorpal Fire Greatswords of Speed dual-wielded by every guard in the prison(who also take no to-hit penalty)!

But I don't think it's fudging to say the armory where they hid all your stuff is nearby. I know a lot of fantasy games have rather fantastical-sized prisons but that's as much "fudging it" as saying the armory happens to be down the hall.

The biggest issue really comes from the fact that your meat-shields become the most helpless when disarmed, well, assuming they undress you from your +5 sparkling armor of majesty.

If you change to another genre - say a Western, then that situation drops away. If you get captured, when you break out the Deputy probably had a gun that was as good as you had (plus there is just less gear that influences the numbers)

To an extent. Even in Deadlands the players still tended to have access to things NPCs could never dream of, but it was more balanced. 1 to 2 as opposed to 1 to 10.

 

[Endur]

Unless your character is especially valuable for the level he is (a king maybe) i don't think npcs would be that willing taking the risk the party might escape, recover their magic items and kill the captors. They ARE PCs, they are able to do that.

It's probably much more convenient to take the PCs magic items and kill them, then to ransom them for less of what their magic items are even worth, risking death by escape, and winning a powerful group of enemies that levels up every few weeks.

Medieval knights would be ransomed. And usually it was just the knight that was ransomed; all of his gear, weapons, armor, and horse would be kept by the captor in addition to the gold.

And the next time around, it might be the ransomed prisoner who would be doing the ransoming.

I think it comes down to expectations. If they expect that running and ransoming is possible, then those are the rules they'll play by.

 

[Endur]

I'll note that being captured is related to magic item dependency and Expected Wealth: if PCs aren't really dependent on magic items, and they don't have a lot in the first place, being captured is not nearly as bad.

You could just as easily say that the high level pick pocket who steals all of the PCs magic items is far more dangerous than a God of Evil that merely slays mortals.

 

[Starfox]

One of the things that makes level drain, resurrection level loss, and xp cost for creating magic items less scary in 3E is the metric of balancing encounters by level, and having a standard gold curve. A character that loses levels does not lose nearly as much gold (in the form of magical gear) and thus ends up above the power curve for his level. A caster that makes so many magic items that he is one level lower actually gains magic items this way, rising significantly above the power curve - especially if his pals commission him to make magic items.

And by the rules of 3.5, you actually gain more xp from being lower level too.