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Calinero
2013-05-20, 08:10 PM
So, my level 10 Pathfinder party ended their last session in the camp of the warlord of an Ogre army that is gathering in the bottom of a canyon in the desert. They were captured and have lost most of their weapons and mounts, though all of these are not too far away. These guys have made short work of Ogres before, and if escaping from the middle of an active war camp isn't difficult, any credibility they had as a threat is gone. I've already established that there is a gladiator pit in the canyon, as well as unusual mounts for the ogres including giant lizards. What else should I put in there?

Mr Beer
2013-05-20, 09:02 PM
Obviously level up some of the ogres to start with. Work with the lizards to create "ogre knights", gigantic platemail-clad lance wielding ogres should be good. Or you can go the desert theme and have them lightly armoured under flowing robes, using spears and scimitars.

Ogre mages are more threatening than vanilla ogres, you could have some of those around. If not, cleric ogres worshipping their brutish diety.

I would have some gruesome, semi-controlled beasts that fight in the arena, maybe some sentient captives, maybe some gladiator ogres as well (back to levelled ogres).

Slipperychicken
2013-05-21, 03:03 AM
Imagine you just captured the most dangerous men alive. These are guys with 100 ways to kill you with their bare hands. They get loose? They kill you, your lord and master, all the people depending on you, your whole damn country if they're angry enough. To top it all off, the whole war hinges on keeping these guys from helping the enemy.


Assuming you're a crazy enough Ogre to want to keep them alive:

Take their stuff. They cannot be allowed to have access to anything, especially their weapons, tools, and equipment. Treat it like you have five Hannibal Lecters in there, only they can use magic and bend bars with their bare hands. KO them, strip them of all their clothing and equipment, search everything, check all their nasty orifices, and garb them in the bare minimum of tattered underwear you can get away with.

Masterwork manacles for everyone, on both hands and feet. Manacle Barbs to interrupt spellcasting and escape attempts.

Bind and fully gag all of them. With chain, so it's harder to burst. Possibly keep them in a nonlethal coma, or just kill them outright (it's too risky; he might have Still and Silent Spell). "Nonlethal coma" them, only wake them up for force-feeding. Consider tying them with rope too, so they can't Escape Artist out of it. Additionally, the more of their senses you can disable (blind, deafen, etc), the better.

Keep them separate, you have a big camp so this is plausible. Make sure they're out of earshot and don't have line-of-effect to each other. You do not want these guys in contact.

Keep an eye on them. You need people to watch them 24/7. If you wake the casters up for force-feeding if you have to, and when you wake them up, have someone with a readied action to smack them if they start casting a spell.

Don't listen to them. Instruct your guards to disregard everything the prisoners say, no matter how convincing, even if they somehow manage to communicate through their extensive gagging. Those prisoners are magical masters of manipulation, and will pull any dirty trick to escape.

DoomyDoom
2013-05-21, 07:54 AM
Depends entirely on what you expect to get out of this scenario. Some ideas and questions you might want to ask yourself:

- No matter what, it's a game for players. Presenting them with opportunities to make interesting decisions is what matters. "Difficult" is one thing, but you aren't trying to kill the PCs off, right?

- A camp is not just tents for soldiers. It has weapon storage, supply storage, defences etc. If it is an army on march to war, there is a lot to be found inside. Seeing how they are in a desert, the supply part seems to be crucial. This creates a nice dilemma for your party - do they want to just get away, or do they want to take a huge risk and try to hinder ogres in the process? Also, they have to get some water/food/mounts to run away (just to survive in the middle of literally nowhere + the chase), not even mentioning their confiscated stuff.

- Who does the party consist of? How can they escape? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Can they sneak around? Steal an invisibility scroll from a sleepy ogre mage? Set fire in the camp? Charm guards? Each and every thing they do will, of course, have consequences, both in success and failure.

- If they are going to follow the sneaky route, PCs may very well find/learn something unexpected. It might be a great place to introduce a war-related plot twist, such as accidentially learning about a betrayal in their ranks and such. If they want to learn even more - they'll have to stay longer and take even more risks.

- To make it more difficult limiting their available time is, i believe, a viable option. Works in a sense of "You will be executed next morning after questioning (read: torture to get all the secrets out)", as well as "Sure, you broke out of jail itself, but the guards will probably come to feed you anytime soon. Or to take you to the chief". Also, it may be reasonable to not let them think about their course of action for too long (assuming live session, not a PbP).

- Not so sure about splitting the party. It is reasonable from the in-character perspective for ogres to not let them be together, but whether or not it would make a good experience for players is up to you to decide. Maybe talk about it with them OOC and learn whether they are ready to try it that way. If you do split them, try to make sure they have some viable things to do, and not just sit and wait for someone with better capability to bust them out.

Angel Bob
2013-05-21, 08:52 AM
Imagine you just captured the most dangerous men alive. These are guys with 100 ways to kill you with their bare hands. They get loose? They kill you, your lord and master, all the people depending on you, your whole damn country if they're angry enough. To top it all off, the whole war hinges on keeping these guys from helping the enemy.


Assuming you're a crazy enough Ogre to want to keep them alive:

Take their stuff. They cannot be allowed to have access to anything, especially their weapons, tools, and equipment. Treat it like you have five Hannibal Lecters in there, only they can use magic and bend bars with their bare hands. KO them, strip them of all their clothing and equipment, search everything, check all their nasty orifices, and garb them in the bare minimum of tattered underwear you can get away with.

Masterwork manacles for everyone, on both hands and feet. Manacle Barbs to interrupt spellcasting and escape attempts.

Bind and fully gag all of them. With chain, so it's harder to burst. Possibly keep them in a nonlethal coma, or just kill them outright (it's too risky; he might have Still and Silent Spell). "Nonlethal coma" them, only wake them up for force-feeding. Consider tying them with rope too, so they can't Escape Artist out of it. Additionally, the more of their senses you can disable (blind, deafen, etc), the better.

Keep them separate, you have a big camp so this is plausible. Make sure they're out of earshot and don't have line-of-effect to each other. You do not want these guys in contact.

Keep an eye on them. You need people to watch them 24/7. If you wake the casters up for force-feeding if you have to, and when you wake them up, have someone with a readied action to smack them if they start casting a spell.

Don't listen to them. Instruct your guards to disregard everything the prisoners say, no matter how convincing, even if they somehow manage to communicate through their extensive gagging. Those prisoners are magical masters of manipulation, and will pull any dirty trick to escape.

...Aaaaaand now your PCs are left to rot in the prison camp of extremely genre savvy ogres, with all their conceivable methods of escape entirely blocked. Yeah, thanks for the tip -- it's a great recipe for the end of a campaign.

Really, the DM's goal shouldn't be to make the villains as dangerous and as competent as possible. It would be all too easy to succeed at that goal -- and then your campaign has reached a dead end. In order for things to work out, the villains need to be competent enough to challenge the PCs, but not impossible to defeat.

In this case, I understand that ogres are perhaps not the cleverest of creatures. Unless they're being led by a more intelligent master, the above tactics aren't something these brutes would come up with. The ogres probably think it's sufficient to toss the PCs in a cell that perhaps an ogre would think inescapable: extremely fortified, with thick iron bars and walls, but perhaps especially vulnerable to magical means of escape. The cell shouldn't be the main obstacle in escaping; the bulky ogre guards should be. I like the "ogre knights on lizards" idea proposed above, and don't forget to throw in a desert theme. Really, this should be simple enough: just draw up a few moderate-to-hard ogre encounters for the PCs to defeat, whether through combat or conversation; ogres aren't especially insightful, either.

Calinero
2013-05-21, 08:56 AM
While those are some excellent suggestions for how the Ogres should have treated their prisoners, we are sadly past that point. The party has already begun their escape attempt, and are much better equipped than they really should have been allowed. Oh well.

The party consists of a Half Orc Fighter who can do some terrifying damage with a double axe, a Halfing Ranger who has boots of Spider Climb, a human Paladin who has only a knife at the moment and a non-optimal spell loadout, and a Gnome Sorcerer who still has plenty of evocation spells. The paladin's mount and the ranger's animal companion are both captured by ogres.

They are currently in or very near the warlord's tent, so they might be able to steal some information on troop movements or macguffin locations and so on. I'm mostly trying to figure out what resistance they should run into on their way out. It would be boring to just throw a few dozen Ogre soldiers at them, I'd like to vary it up a bit.

I'm thinking that, at first, they're going to fight a couple of relatively tough Ogre guards to get out of the tent and to their supplies. Then, depending on where they choose to go, they'll meet a more organized response, tougher Ogre soldiers and casters. Then, they'll run into something weird either in the arena or that has escaped from the arena in the confusion. Finally, the Ogre warlord and his personal guard will come after them, and hopefully chase them away--this will lead to a desert chase.

As for what they could find in the camp, there will indeed be supplies--arms, armor, a few magic items. There will also be lots of water and food, obviously, as well as mounts, siege equipment, and potentially slaves.

DoomyDoom
2013-05-21, 09:25 AM
The ogre army shouldn't necessarily consist exclusively of ogres. Why not throw in some other appropriate creatures (orcs, goblins, maybe something more exotic and less cliche)? At the very least, they should have some sort of guard dogs (or analog). Or, maybe, they have a squad of halfling mercenaries as elite scouts. Or they have some non-ogre spellcasters because they needed experience from people, who are more familiar with ogres' enemies military magical "habits". Like, ex-casters from the army of the country they are attacking.

00dlez
2013-05-21, 10:04 AM
Leveling up some of the ogres, and specifically Ogre clerics were mentioned - I've used a similar blueprint in 3.5 to great effect with a PC, I can't imagine that an Ogre would be less effective.

Something Ogre - Barbarian 1/Cleric 3/Fighter 2 can be particularly deadly (I went barb 1/cleric X, but the 3rd level spells weren't all that useful in my quick browse of PF).

1) Use Fighter feats to improve grapple abilities
2) Buff with Bull's STR and maybe Bear's Endurance as well
3) Enter rage when in combat

Now you are looking at a STR of ~30, Large size at a minimum, BAB of +8, and bonuses to grapple from feats as well.

You don't have to use these beasts to kill the PCs, grappling them to submission if they try to escape could be a good way to send them a message that "this won't be easy" and present a serious challenge while at the same time not threatening a TPK while the PCs are unarmed.

Slipperychicken
2013-05-21, 11:00 AM
...Aaaaaand now your PCs are left to rot in the prison camp of extremely genre savvy ogres, with all their conceivable methods of escape entirely blocked. Yeah, thanks for the tip -- it's a great recipe for the end of a campaign.


Ehh, if you get captured and your enemy is both serious about keeping you that way and cognizant of the threat you pose, you've already lost. When your enemy is already splitting your loot, there's not much short of GM mercy that can get you out.

The nonlethal coma thing might be a bit excessive, but the rest stands as reasonable precautions. Maybe you could roll 2d6 for each individual precaution, and the Ogres forget it if they roll 8 or higher.