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Gnaritas
2010-10-04, 07:09 AM
So, i want to catch my party without killing them. Their opponents are drow.
Party is level 8-ish
Rogue, Warblade, Sacred Fist, Saint Cleric, Barbarian.

How do i go about this?

My plan so far:

Trap
How high can i make the Search DC?
If i create a large area where a net is used to catch the opponents, would they still all get a reflex save? How hard can i make it for them to get out, i think most of them have teleporting shoes? I want to neutralize the caught players asap, perhaps that might also fix the teleporting shoes. Is there something for this that already exists? Some kind of poison, and how would they be poisoned. By the way, the Saint is also deathless, hard to poison.
Hopefully i will be able to catch most of the party, and try to let the others surrender.

Camelot
2010-10-04, 07:21 AM
Short Version: If you want something to happen, just make it happen.

Long Stream of Consciousness Version: You can make the search DC as high as you want, deny reflex saves, make the enemies super powerful. You aren't being a bad DM, you're advancing the story. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to make every challenge defeatable. Just narrate the whole experience: "So you walk through the forest, but in the deepest, darkest spot, you suddenly find yourselves strung up in a net surrounded by drow. Before you can react, they've taken you away to their lair. Now try to escape." You can do this because you've planned for a fun prison escape adventure, not a capture scene. If you want to force some of them to surrender, roleplay the capture encounter. If the PCs resist a lot, have the drow just use poison that knocks them out. Maybe they can take out a few before being captured. But if you make it too easy to escape, then your whole adventure will be ruined, and you'd have to say "Guys, come on, just let yourselves be captured," and that's metagamey and not fun.

DwarfFighter
2010-10-04, 07:34 AM
Agreed.

Think about it: If you really want to defeat the PCs then you can set the DCs so high they WILL fail. How is that different from simply telling the players that their characters have been defeated? The latter is at least honest in that you don't pretend that the PCs have a chance of winning.

On the other hand you can make the traps moderately challenging. If the PCs are defeated they are captured, if they win they aren't. I don't thing the players will be overly concerned about missing out on a jail-break adventure.

-DF

Halaster
2010-10-04, 08:13 AM
As a rule, I prefer not to hang plots on such scenes. Rather, I wait for my players to lose any encounter, then run a prison escape plot I had prepared previously, with some of the trappings changed to match the specific opponents.

But if you're going for it, do it right. Tell your players they get captured, period. Anything else will signal to them that they can win and they will try their utmost to get out of the situation. To give an extreme situation, in a Star Trek game I played in, the Romulans were supposed to capture our ship, but the GM allowed us to elude their first assault, so we kept fighting until we defeated them, losing half our crew, but winning nonetheless. The GM was very frustrated, and I told him, if he wanted us captured, he should just have said so.

Yuki Akuma
2010-10-04, 08:49 AM
Start the session with them already captured.

Ruinix
2010-10-04, 09:05 AM
Start the session with them already captured.

LOL that's a good one XDDDD

also.

trap. net on them heavier than they tan pull out and poison a lot of poison, hold spell, heighen sleep spell.

if the sacred fist save all this, then intimidate him (in char, not skill rol) to kill their mates if he don't surrender.

Lord_Gareth
2010-10-04, 09:06 AM
If you MUST have an explanation, you can always look up ways to rape the hell out of the save DC for drow sleep poison, which doesn't have that nasty clause about people waking up when attacked. This means, among other things, that the still-conscious party members might be encouraged to surrender by simple expedient of being stuck by themselves with a bunch of hand crossbows pointing at them.

Throw 'em in prison, have the napping party members wake up, call it a day.

Gnaritas
2010-10-04, 09:09 AM
I do not think my players are the kind to have a capture forced upon them without giving them any option.
And that is also not what i intend with this encounter, i want them captured, but not at all cost.

If they somehow make it through, i will have to think of something else, they will notice that, and love it. And hey, that IS what it is all about not? them loving the game.

But that said, i do want to make it very hard on them.

Also, me giving them the "Surrender now!" call, should give them enough hints that i want them captured. It is up to them to resist and take extra risks, with the reward of them feeling that they have "defeated me...if they make it.

Lord_Gareth
2010-10-04, 09:12 AM
If you MUST have an explanation, you can always look up ways to rape the hell out of the save DC for drow sleep poison, which doesn't have that nasty clause about people waking up when attacked. This means, among other things, that the still-conscious party members might be encouraged to surrender by simple expedient of being stuck by themselves with a bunch of hand crossbows pointing at them.

Throw 'em in prison, have the napping party members wake up, call it a day.

^<- See this suggestion for what you're looking for - the chance to resist with the (still overwhelming) chance of capture.

GodGoblin
2010-10-04, 09:21 AM
Seeing as they are against drow have them followed by a group with sleep or paralisis poisoned repeating crossbows, if the party run have some poisoned traps on the path, or even a big ol pit trap that the drow then shoot into. And if one survives it all they can always break them out of prison. I tried it once, having a 2 sided adventure can be pretty fun.

Shenanigans
2010-10-04, 12:40 PM
You could "cut scene" capture them, but from my experience, that's a very unsatisfying (for the players) way to do things. Give them the appearance of a chance, however remote, of escape. Maybe you can use a much higher level caster who catches them by surprise and helps capture them. After they've been taken, then the caster could be called away on other duties, thus giving you the opportunity to set up a more level appropriate circumstance.

Personally, some of the best adventures I've been involved in, both as a player and a DM, have involved a jailbreak of some type. Good luck!

Mercenary Pen
2010-10-04, 01:33 PM
You could "cut scene" capture them, but from my experience, that's a very unsatisfying (for the players) way to do things. Give them the appearance of a chance, however remote, of escape. Maybe you can use a much higher level caster who catches them by surprise and helps capture them. After they've been taken, then the caster could be called away on other duties, thus giving you the opportunity to set up a more level appropriate circumstance.

I was thinking of something along the same lines as this... Though possibly make it a group of professional slavers/bounty hunters with a variety of classes and using a variety of techniques to cover most of the possible weak spots of the party... Sure, as said previously, optimise the heck out of Drow sleeping poison, but make sure you have ways around the immunities and high saves of everyone... Of course, by having these professional hunters then leave the area, there's also the chance that you can have them re-appear later as recurring villains and/or people your party want to hunt down... Moreover, if you're doing this with much higher level characters, feel free to make it somewhat unusual (if you think you need a Marilith and a fallen Inevitable as part of the group, that just makes it more interesting IMO)...

Telonius
2010-10-04, 01:41 PM
I'd throw in a "partial victory" possibility. Important NPC really needs to escape, but he needs a diversion in order to do so. PC's agree to provide the diversion, and he promises that he'll send some help to get them out of their predicament.

Ormur
2010-10-04, 02:09 PM
Just make up a plan that you can't imagine the PC's escaping. That probably means they still have about a 25% chance of it by some way you just didn't think up.

Having the Drow ambush them, the DM fiat can be limited to them knowing where they are, pretend to roll some die to placate them or blame it on divinations if you think they'll complain about that, unless of course they have specifically taken precautions against that.

Dimension lock can neutralize teleportation and there are expensive poisons with high save DC's, or just let them get hit by volleys of lower save DC poison.

Malbordeus
2010-10-04, 07:11 PM
theres a few good ways of doing it without flanging it.

just wait for the party to sleep. then do it in the night. fighter-types are usually the ones on watch, so at 8th level, its easy enough to dominate him from further away than his vision can cope with, and have him beat the ever loving stephen out of his comrades, or just hit him with a deep slumber spell and the drow all walk up and do non-lethal coup-de-grace's to the other guys.

aquaticrna
2010-10-04, 09:15 PM
if you really want to scare them while its happening, have a group of fighter types with appropriately awesome offenses/defenses start doing non lethal damage, your players will be more scared by that than anything else i've ever seen thrown at them... it may be a little more likely for them to escape, but their reactions will be worth it.

Halaster
2010-10-05, 04:08 AM
I do not think my players are the kind to have a capture forced upon them without giving them any option.
And that is also not what i intend with this encounter, i want them captured, but not at all cost.

If they somehow make it through, i will have to think of something else, they will notice that, and love it. And hey, that IS what it is all about not? them loving the game.

But that said, i do want to make it very hard on them.

Also, me giving them the "Surrender now!" call, should give them enough hints that i want them captured. It is up to them to resist and take extra risks, with the reward of them feeling that they have "defeated me...if they make it.
I sure hope that works for your group. In my experience, there are several problems with you plan:
- you want them captured, but they want to avoid capture. This might lead into a severe tug-of-war between you and them, which might be both drawn out and frustrating.
- there is no such thing as "enough hints". Players have an amazing talent for not getting the DM's intentions.
- encouraging a mentality of celebrating "defeating" the DM is problematic for a number of reasons

I don't want to discourage you, but you should be aware of this.

AslanCross
2010-10-05, 04:10 AM
Remember that by default, drow poison is knockout poison. Once all of them are poisoned, the deathless guy might want to surrender.

I'm not very keen on having the plot depend on the scene, either, but drow knockout poison is probably your best bet.

DwarfFighter
2010-10-05, 04:55 AM
Start the session with them already captured.

I've done this and it works.

One example is my Star Trek campaign. My players initially complained a bit but eventually got around to dealing with the situation at hand. However, there are a couple of elements that worked in the favour of the story line.

The campaign was of an episodic nature, which is appropriate for the setting. In media res tends to work very well with episodic adventures. Particularly in Star Trek since everybody is fairly comfortable with the structure of the shows.

Also: The setting is almost completely free of item dependence. Sure, a Klingon warrior character may have a special emotional attachment to his family sword, but that's it. If you lose your phaser you can get a new one from the armoury. As such, being captured means the player characters were still intact.

In any setting where the players invest time and effort to properly equip their character, the loss of an item can be a severe setback, often even worse than the death of the character. Getting caught typically means getting disarmed. Though the cliché tends to be that the character's stuff is stored in a chest just outside the jail cell, there really is no guarantee that the GM won't take the opportunity to remove from the game some of the PCs most prized possessions.

-DF

E-mail
2010-10-05, 04:56 AM
Take hostages!

In the last campaign I played, the party were on a mission to rescue village of kender (think CG retarded kleptomaniac halflings), but as we were leading the little buggers to safety, we were ambushed by 20-30 human warriors. At this point, we were an all tier 1 level 6 party, but as the warriors threatened to attack the kenders, we had to let ourselves be captured without a fight. The warriors would have died like bugs against a windshield in a straight fight, but the circumstances forced us to play nice.

Shademan
2010-10-05, 05:28 AM
LOTS of enemies ganging up on them from every direction using nets, saps, whips, mancatchers, truncheons and what have you!
also: spells!

Kaww
2010-10-05, 05:40 AM
Moon bolt (I think that is the name). From Spell Compendium does 5D4 Strength damage. 5 casters should do the the trick, that is 5*5d4 (/2 if they made their saves) strength damage (min 12 on all ones, avg 31 max 50, if they saved) and any undead is helpless.

You could always try hold person/dominate with high DCs, or blind and deafen them...

Chrono22
2010-10-05, 05:48 AM
Try to divide the party and interfere with their ability to communicate as much as possible. If they can't coordinate their actions, they might put eachother into compromised positions. Use multi-pronged threats- a combination of different threats will prevent them from being able to discern the "best" or most mechanically optimal solution to win the combat. In other words, overload the combat with trivial information that can distract the PCs from the real threats.

That said, I don't recommend trying this. I've only done this once before, in a level 12 campaign- and halfway through it became clear to me, that rather than being an instrument for progressing the plot, capturing the PCs is a great way to end a campaign. The higher level the PCs are, the more difficult it becomes to capture them without killing them, because of how swingy combats become. And once the PCs are captured, you stand a good chance of killing player interest in the events that follow. Yeah, well done, it can be memorable. But it requires a certain level of player-DM trust, and lots of things can make it go horribly wrong.

I suggest settling for the capture of one or two PCs at most.

Maryring
2010-10-05, 06:53 AM
Power Word Sleep, Power Word Stun, Power Word DM fiat. All those could work.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-05, 08:01 AM
As a rule, I prefer not to hang plots on such scenes. Rather, I wait for my players to lose any encounter, then run a prison escape plot I had prepared previously, with some of the trappings changed to match the specific opponents.


This one. It provides a great way to avoid TPK, and you get to bust out the prison encounter you've been saving. Pretty much a win/win, and as a side benefit, it makes you look like a DM who's great at improvising, or crazy prepared.

Person_Man
2010-10-05, 08:17 AM
There's a feat called Heroic Destiny in Races of Destiny. Once per day when reduced to -10 hit points or fewer, you're instead reduced to -9 hit points and stable. Just give it to every PC as a bonus feat, and remind the PCs that some enemies take prisoners, and others don't.

Kislath
2010-10-05, 09:04 AM
Drow?
Drow have buddies, like Mind Flayers

Yuki Akuma
2010-10-05, 09:06 AM
Drow?
Drow have buddies, like Mind Flayers

Nnnno they don't. They're xenophobic bastards who hate everybody - especially Illithids.

The Illithids agree. They hate everybody too. Especially Drow.

Lord_Gareth
2010-10-05, 09:10 AM
I take it no one likes that "rape the save DC on the sleep poison" idea?

grarrrg
2010-10-05, 09:32 AM
So, i want to catch my party without killing them. Party is level 8-ish
How do i go about this?

Well, first you have to do some damage to them, you can't just barge in and expect a quick capture. First thing, you want to prevent them from running away, but this shouldn't be a problem, as most will stick around for a fight.
You've mentioned poison, status effects are always helpful for capture. Poison, sleep, stun, etc... are all good.
Also, you should definately wound them first, being very carful not to kill them. So don't use the big attacks, stick to the small stuff.
Once they are almost dead, then it should be a simple matter to throw your Poke-ball and get a clean capture, if it doesn't work, just try again with another Poke-ball.
It's scary how much this advice applies to DnD and Pokemon...
Tada!

Maryring
2010-10-05, 10:08 AM
Symbol spells could also work. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/symbolOfSleep.htm)

Dr Gunsforhands
2010-10-05, 02:41 PM
Basically, you're looking for a way to capture your PC's but in a way that won't cheat them.

You've already decided that one way or another they need to be captured, the way you do it (poison, hit points, failed save) isn't as important as making sure your players don't feel railroaded or so they don't feel they're playing a game they're rigged to lose. You can still rig it to end up that way and have it be fun for your players. The only way you cheat our players is if they don't have fun.

My advice is twofold. I will use the Drow poison example to illustrate:

1. Give them an adventure advantage on a good save even though they are knocked unconscious no matter what they do.

"Even though you have 'rigged' the drow poison so that no matter what they do the PC's will be knocked unconscious, a high save will allow them an extra benefit in their captivity. Maybe the PC will have managed to hide his dagger and will have a real weapon when all their equipment is taken. Maybe the PC's will be allowed to wake up earlier than they were supposed to and overhear secret information or enemy weaknesses. Maybe one of their captors will take a shine to that PC and then the PC's will have a sympathetic contact."

2. Give them a permanent benefit regardless once they have escaped from and overcome their captors.

"Because the drow used some sort of rare super concentrated version of their drow sleep poison, every member of the party has developed a permanent +1 resistance to poison. The PCs might even find one single dose of the rare super concentrated drow poison."

A permanent +1 resistance to poison is cool, not game breaking, and is a way to make up for that fact that the Dwarven Barbarian with an 18 Con who fails his will save all the time was forced to fail a poison save. Try to come up with permanent benefits that are cool, won't break the game, and ones you'll only give the party when you have to DM rig something bad and unavoidable.

These two ideas in combination will help justify the PC's inevitable capture.

Tyndmyr
2010-10-05, 03:49 PM
Er, I dislike "well, I'll give you a bonus in return for ignoring your bonuses". It is, to be blunt, entirely pointless. There is no value in having a higher save if the DM is willing to ignore my save. Especially when it's something as rare as poison.

Plus, there's the natural 20 problem. That's an autopass on the save. Anyone could pull that off.

No, don't rig it in metagame ways. Rig it in IC ways. Leave ways for them to escape it, or subtle clues as to what is going on. But have the would-be captors use the perfectly normal items in intelligent ways. Preferably with redundant plans.

For instance, death attack can be used to force a (admittedly low) save vs knockout. You can demand surrender when only one person is up. Non lethal damage is possible. Nets, tanglefoot bags, or creative use of glue all work. Plus, you've got good ol' fashioned traps.