Asking for advice from DM : the oddity of "gunpoint"

[Corto]

As I am about to begin a campaign of DnD 3.5 as the DM, I frequently come across some problems that I need to solve before moving on to the next one, mostly because I am quite the perfectionist...

The problem I am concerned with right now revolves around what I call the "gunpoint instant" ( hence the title ) :

In almost every book, film, there is this moment when the hero is held at gunpoint by some mook, or even the big bad himself. Usually it involves the hero being unarmed, or wielding less firepower than his opponent. ( Which leads to the "out-gunned at gunpoint situation" :) ). The big idea is that the hero surrenders in this scenario, he HAS TO, because of the much dreaded alternative : he will get shot, and, we can suppose, be killed.
This whole situation is built on the concept of fear, which must overcome all ideas of bravery. It also often leads to cunning plans where the hero prepares himself to surprise the gunman, but even in this case, there is a distinct phase where he surrenders, even if he is just pretending to do so.

However in DnD I find the whole concept hard to believe. The Hit Points system is really protective of the players' life, and I am afraid that at some point in my campaign I will be presented with the following situation:
One of my player is in some X location, and for some reason, he is confronted by one or two dudes with let's say crossbows for the sake of naming a weapon. If he chooses to fight, he get shot. Even at lower levels, our "hero" can have 20 to 30 HP. Two crossbow shots by low-level scums/bandits/guards are going to hit him for 20 damage in the worst case, and will more often deal around 6 dmg give or take ( assuming that one of them misses ). Then our "hero" will have a great chance of cleaving through those 2 mooks, who are for now still holding their useless crossbow...

Where is the fear in that ?

Even worse the player can choose to simply run : first round deals him an average 6 damage and then he has 2 rounds at full speed to outrun his opponents, even laughing at them while running away in a straight line toward the sunset...

So I get it : crossbows are lousy... Well when I am considering other situations I come across similar oddity : "the hostage situation"

Two party members are having a great time near their camp-fire, eating their lot of cornered beef when suddenly one man leaps from the shadows, drawing his blade and putting it beneath one of the player's throat.
IRL : oh noes, we have to give away our goods ( remember it may be faked : at some point, if the bandit is negligent, they might attempt to overcome him ).

in game : Why bother ? The non-hostage player just draws his axe, or begins casting, knowing that his companion will take the blow and live.

How can I instill that aforementioned fear into the players' heart ? Which rules am I overlooking in this case ?

Thanks in advance for your response,

Clement

[Cartigan]

Movies heroes may be badass normals but they aren't "Fight demons for fun" heroes. D&D is Epic Fantasy, even at the low end up the scale.

You cannot hold player characters at "gun point" by RAW in D&D. They won't care.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Wands are always pretty good, it's not obvious what spell they carry or how powerful it will be.

One alternative is to make the weapons appear more dangerous, show a mook killing an ogre or similarly nasty creature in one shot, the PCs don't need to know the ogre was on 1HP or that the mook had a giantbane bolt or a Slaying(giant) arrow.

Another good way is hold someone other than the PCs hostage (assuming they have any empathy) "we know how strong you are so throw down your weapons or we kill this adorable little girl!"

[Z3ro]

My group injects a little realism in these type of scenarios. Basically, if you can approach someone unaware and get a weapon to their throat, they're helpless and can be coup-de-graced. Until higher levels (say, 15+), this is usually lethal. Now, it runs both ways, so the players can do this to enemies, but it makes more sense and feels more real.

[Doughnut Master]

More crossbows.

[VirOath]

Again, more crossbows, a castle full of them. But the real question is, should you?

The Gunpoint Instance occurs in stories, be they books or movies, and they work because these are a fixed media. The watcher has no interaction with the outcome.

Getting into interactive media, a single player game can get away with this at points if it is done well. It still follows a set story for the most part, limited by the writers, so the player is on rails. But that is part of the point of playing them, to enjoy the game itself.

Sitting in on an interactive multiplayer experience, now we get into the situation of possibly removing control of the characters from their players, which is akin to telling them to go sit in the other room and enjoy themselves. The trick behind the Gunpoint Instance is that it is set as a Will Happen cliche, needing to be played out. When you write it up, you are saying that nothing the players do will stop it from happening, and possibly that the only solution to this is X.

Done right, or in certain instances it can be very enjoyable to play through (IE, a contact setting you up and burning you in SR, it was your choice to accept and go, the choice of how it turns out is still in the players), but on the flip side, having 10,000 crossbows on rooftops ambush the party when they are in the middle of town and demanding a surrender, with the only option being surrender, is giving false choice. It's no different from saying they were all killed or captured in their sleep by exposition.

Plot Armor and Convenience work from an observer medium, but once you are sitting in an environment that the player has power over the world by the choices they make, using those tends to annoy players because it's saying "you don't have a choice, play nice."

[bloodtide]

This is not so hard.

First don't use any of the crazy house rules where characters get more hit points.

Second don't allow the characters to heal up after every single fight.

Third don't let the characters rest and do 15 min days.


Then when you want to lead up to a 'gun point' scene, make sure the characters are wounded. And that they have no time to heal.

So the character fights off some mooks, then the thug mook and then gets to the big bad, all wounded..all with in five minutes.

Also don't just have the mooks do hp damage, they can do all sorts of ability damage and other types of damage.


Plus, it's not so hard to have a 'deadly dagger'. That is what poison is for, after all. And you can do it with magic as well. Lots of things can increase the damage of an attack. And you only need a once a day ability/item. And once you get past 10th level or so, it's easy to kill someone with a touch...plenty of save or die spells, not to mention save or take lots of damage and or suffer a bad effect.

[Kyberwulf]

Well, if you are running Low Level Campaignes, you can have your Mooks equipped with Composite bows. That adds points to damage from Strength.

Also you can have the tips coated with poison. My players found out early, that most vile, evil henchmen used every dirty trick.

The Poison trick works out well with PCs rushing into every Large groups of monsters as well, Cause even Conan failed his Fort check occsanally. If you get people trying to argue that poison use is to sophistaicated for "dumb" monsters to use,... there are tribes of people out in the real that use poison! lol

Make the mooks Higher level .. like 5 to 6 levels so that they have a ...*ahem* Better Shot at doing more damage to the PCs,..and let the players know they will prolly die if they attack.

oh,..and bluff checks!... make the Mooks Bluff the characters. >.> its "metagaming" to know the characters can survive attacks because of thir high HP lol

[mootoall]

Hmm, I remember seeing something in some book, possibly the DMG, saying "An arrow to the eye is still an arrow to the eye," regardless of HP amount. Maintain this realism.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, but there aren't any rules for called shots.

[jebob]

I would merely say if a character just stands there and takes it to the chest, he automatically counts as being helpless, bound or otherwise unable to move. Coup de grace, anyone?

[Epsilon Rose]

For hostage taking: That's pretty much what the coup-de-grace rules are for. Don't even bother rolling damage in that case; a slit throat should send you to -1 and dieing and if a character has a way of working through that it's part of there character and you should let them have it.
Be forewarned, this is a two way street. The PCs can do this to the npcs too.

Cornered: this is a bit trickier, partially because both running and charging are valid options even in the movies. If you really want to do this you probably need truly overwhelming odds (more 5:1 then 2:1); in a high (or lopsided) magic or tech campaign you could decrease the numbers by giving the mooks wands or really good guns (the dmg has rules for anti-matter rifles) but even if you do this getting out of doge is still a valid option especially if they have a flash bang and/or teleport equivalent. Also be forwarned that if you trick out the npcs and the PCs opt to fight they're going to be looting all those shiny items.

[erikun]

This generally only happens when half the party is knocked down and the other half knows it's a hopeless fight. The bag guys make an offer: either drop your weapons and come silently, or we finish things here. Most players are willing to go along with their captors then, but generally don't while everyone is still up standing.

Of course, the players that don't will either try to run or fight to the end. That's kind of the problem - the players are still in control of their characters, and may not like the capture option even at gunpoint. Also, only try it when there are several characters knocked out of the fight. If everyone is still up and standing, then nearly every party will attempt some stupid trick rather than surrendering.

[Treblain]

The trick behind the Gunpoint Instance is that it is set as a Will Happen cliche, needing to be played out. When you write it up, you are saying that nothing the players do will stop it from happening, and possibly that the only solution to this is X.

Done right, or in certain instances it can be very enjoyable to play through (IE, a contact setting you up and burning you in SR, it was your choice to accept and go, the choice of how it turns out is still in the players), but on the flip side, having 10,000 crossbows on rooftops ambush the party when they are in the middle of town and demanding a surrender, with the only option being surrender, is giving false choice. It's no different from saying they were all killed or captured in their sleep by exposition.

Come on. You can't accuse a DM of railroading the campaign the moment anything happens out of the players' control. The Gunpoint Instance isn't an auto-"you're in jail", no options given. It's a tool, not a limiter. You could negotiate, or bribe, or bluff, or run, or fight, or try something else. But for storytelling purposes, the DM needs to be able to make choosing nonviolent options seem necessary without having 10,000 crossbows pointed at the party. There needs to be a way for a logical campaign setting to have consequences.

Ideally, there's a level of immersion and DM-party understanding and cooperation. The fact that your character can survive a dozen crossbow bolts to the face is metagame knowledge, and is therefore not information that an RPG character has in mind when faced with attackers. I know it's hard, but there are times when both DM and party have to forget about the rules and act like the crossbowmen are real threats.

It's not always possible to have that level of trust. If you're going to use the Gunpoint Instance now and then, discuss it with everyone first. Play it, but play it fair. Come up with a houserule that everyone knows, make it clear this is a threat that could happen. Don't pull it without giving them a Listen check before the ambushers pop out. Don't pull it without warning on a party used to nothing but fighting.

And if your party decides to defy warnings and take the damage, don't forget the Chunky Salsa Rule: "Any situation that would reduce a character's head to the consistency of chunky salsa dip is fatal, regardless of other rules." Once the DM has established that common sense is in effect over rules, it's the DM's right to rule as they desire.

[ffone]

Second the last post. RAther than presenting the Gunpoint Moment as something you shoehorned your players into....you can make it seem like you're doing them a favor. Mid-battle which would otherwise be a TPK, the villains demand surrender instead.

When I DM I often plan similar stopgaps into encounters - if the bad guys start doing too well, they may have saps or other nonlethal damage options they can pull out (or debuffs like sleep) to capture rather than kill the PCs. A TPK becomes a TPC (capture).

[Corto]

Thanks for all your answers.

I see there are many different views on this problem, so I will try to sum up what we have here :

How to handle the "gunpoint situation" :
- Just don't. Well it's a fair answer and it comes from different and reasonable arguments, such as
" now one likes a railroading DM ", or " DnD is meant to be epic, and player will want to do epic stuff like
stand up to any foe, against any odds" .

The thing is : the whole concept is meant to teach the player to fear the possible outcome. If I have a player
who is badass enough to, let's say, pull one or two moves from nowhere and end up on top of the situation : fine by me !
But all I want, all I ask, is that in his head he knows that there can be consequences. In fine the goal is to provide
better immersion, for the players and the DM.

On the other hand I assure you that while asking for advice on this matter, I am not prone to rely on this tool to guide the PC
from left to right on every occasion, as I understand that it is a plot/immersion hook which can get really old really quicly.

- "More crossbow", " Upgraded Mooks" : I see that you answer my question on the first level and it works well,
but I don't want to begin an " arms race " on this side. Two low-life scums will not get to have more than two levels of warrior,
but they should, in the right situation, be able to threaten the life of one PC in a way that can make him pause and rethink his options.

- "Coup de grace the hostage "... Well I kinda like that one, even more so as I'm French and I just like how that expression was put to good use. On the other hand it gives Sneak attacker and more yet, assassins, a serious drawback because now anyone who can sneak on someone ( and most spellcasters will be able to do just that with various spells ) can just do a coup de grace on their target. I could use some help on that one from all the DMs out there.


- " Give the option to surrender when the party is in bad shape, it can thus also be a good way to avoid TPK " . Well alright, I see your point and I approve, mainly because I do enjoy seeing my Players use their social skills or any shenanigans at their disposal to get themselves out of horrid scenario. But I am still looking for an answer to the "gunpoint situation", because to me, an unarmed man being held at point blank range of 2-3 crossbows IS in fact in a "bad shape".

- "What Treblain said..." . I'm glad I posted my question here because your view on the subject is interesting. I hope I will be able to talk this out with my Players, but I doubt all of them will get onboard. And even then it's possible that they agree at first, and just react with their heart later mostly because they see the situation from a whole different angle.


One of the options that was also given to me is to increase the damage output of the range weaponry. By reading some templates around these or other forums, it does strike me that Archery isn't the go-to template even for those that might benefit the most from their class ( fighter with their billion feats, rangers , etc... ). So will a few houserules about bows and the like be "game-breaking" or is that a valid option?

Once again, thanks for your answer,

Clement.

[Safety Sword]

A late entry:
Make the person being held at gunpoint a Level 1 commoner who is critical to the *whatever characters care about*

And just an aside, Treblain is very sensible. Making something happen that has a predicable PC reaction is not railroading. The tracks are laid when that's the only option allowed to the players.

My bad guys will kill the hostages if the PCs don't back off, steal the gem or "whatever". They're evil, they're allowed to (it's their job!) :smallamused:

[Shpadoinkle]

Hmm, I remember seeing something in some book, possibly the DMG, saying "An arrow to the eye is still an arrow to the eye," regardless of HP amount. Maintain this realism.

I was going to say something like this. There's another paragraph in the DMG that says something to the effect of "A great hero shouldn't meet his end by being run over by a cart-" it acknowledges that hit points are an abstraction.

Yeah, if somebody has a knife to your throat and they cut your jugular open, I don't care what the rules say; unless you have regeneration, fast healing, or somebody uses healing magic on you in the next round or so, you bleed to death, regardless of how many HP you had right before you gained a hole in your throat.

[Reluctance]

#1: Coup de Grace is an actual rule. I'd be careful with how easy you make it, though; both because you have to explain why the PC counts as helpless just because a mook is pointing a crossbow at him, and because the players will happily turn that rationale around when they want to take potshots at their own enemies.

#2: Guns in the real world seriously mess you up. In D&D, you can get the same effect from spells. Being threatened with a Disintegrate at staffpoint will give players second thoughts. As with the above, be careful about how often you do this; there's always a chance the PCs will think of some way out of this, and then they'll be the ones with the powerful magical swag.

#3: Remember the last time some mook held Superman at bay by pointing a gun at him? That's more of what you're looking at with mid-high level D&D heroes. You have to break out the cosmic-level threats, because mundane tools stop mattering after the first few levels.

[VirOath]

Come on. You can't accuse a DM of railroading the campaign the moment anything happens out of the players' control. The Gunpoint Instance isn't an auto-"you're in jail", no options given. It's a tool, not a limiter. You could negotiate, or bribe, or bluff, or run, or fight, or try something else. But for storytelling purposes, the DM needs to be able to make choosing nonviolent options seem necessary without having 10,000 crossbows pointed at the party. There needs to be a way for a logical campaign setting to have consequences.

Did I say that? No, you've gone and completely ignored anything else in the post. The moment you remove control of their own characters from the players by leaving only one 'right' choice is railroading.

If the 10,000 crossbows come from literally no where to push the party into a jail cell or captured scene, then that is railroading! But, having a reason for it, such as a consequence of their actions, or a trap that was sprung by their choices, is something very different.

I asked, should you use the Gunpoint Instance? The very idea of it is using a lethal amount of force as a story point coercion, which if written as a plot point is written as a Will Happen. Writing it as a reaction to "If this happens" the entire sequence becomes a Will Happen once it springs. The difference is one is written with one way out, the other is up to the players to solve.

A lethal force is needed. My 200 hp fighter that has wrestled bears, fallen off of a cliff, beaten the undead back with their own arms and danced on a dead troll's head isn't going to suddenly be scared of a few blokes with crossbow bolts. Any character has some idea of what they can take, or are beyond able to know and are just overconfident, to say otherwise is to say that the party should be running from 90% of the encounters because they are more threatening than a guy with a surprise round and a crossbow.

And if playing the Gunpoint Instance straight up as per non-interactive media isn't railroading, then why the heck are you saying you should talk it over with the players first?

It's not when something happens out of the player's control, because that's the world. Most can't stop it from raining on a whim (Weather Control aside). But saying that the actions of the player have no effect on the world, or that the players only have one choice to a given situation is railroading.

[Epsilon Rose]

Coup-de-grace: If you're worried about pc's abusing it and simply sneaking up on people and couping them I see two ways two deal with it:
A) except that to some extent that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; if I get the drop on someone I'm not going to set things up so they can fight. But keep in mind that there only going to be able to reliable do this to 1 npc per pc per encounter and if they do it to often people are going to start taking precautions against it.
B) You could also allow people who are reasonably aware a and mobile a grapple check to prevent being captured (if you reeeaaallyy wanted to you could probably work it into the grapple rules as a series of opposed check mid combat but I wouldn't bother). That means if a pc snuck up to an on duty guard even if they had no idea the pc might be there they'd still get a check (because they're ready for something) but if they're druck, bound, just finished saying that the pc's the greatest person ever, kissing their wife and kids goodbye in the morning they don't because they either aren't expecting trouble at that point or they aren't going to be able to respond adequately fast enough.

As for a couple of redshirts taking in a pc at bow point... That doesn't seem likely without in character cooperation. It would be like two muggers getting batman to surrender or the a couple of cops getting the joker to come quietly.

[Thurbane]

If the BBEG has some means to render the heroes helpless (Paralysis etc.), he can threaten a Coup De Grace with a high crit weapon (like a scythe). Even a medium to high level character can find it daunting to make the require save from a high damage CDG.

[ninja'd]http://i51.tinypic.com/2zh1q81.jpg