Roleplaying How to go about waging war on the most secretive organization possible? [Archive]

View Full Version : Roleplaying How to go about waging war on the most secretive organization possible?

Jowgen

2014-12-20, 12:25 AM

Lets say you have a large international sect of spies, assassins and such. Think pre-Captain America 2 Hydra on steroids... Mega-Hydra, for the lack of a better name. Keeping themselves hidden as they work behind the scenes is their whole schtick. They don't throw about their name, employ plenty of anti-detection/divination magic, and all members with any ammount of information on the organization are trained to Bluff and made immune to mind-affecting effects in one way or the other. They're mainly contained on the prime material, but do have some cells on a few other planes.

EDIT: Members are reasonably optimized for secrecy and intrigue based actitivies, but average NPCs organization in terms of everything else.

Your mission is to take down this entire organization to the last man, but you're a mid-level adventurer, working with at most 1 other person (your side-kick, so to speak); and neither of you has any casting ability of any sort (expect maybe whatever SLA and Su you can get your hands on via race/template/class). All you have is their name, their symbol, and some general information on how they operate.

EDIT: You and your side-kick have above average WBL and are free to optimize in any way within the non-casting constraints specifically for the purposes of this task.

How do you take down Mega-Hydra?

Extra Anchovies

2014-12-20, 12:46 AM

Sphere of Annihilation -> Well of Many Worlds

jedipotter

2014-12-20, 01:17 AM

How do you take down Mega-Hydra?

Well, if your saying it's just a ''mid level character with no real abilities, magic or resources'' then the answer is that you can't do anything.

Now, the Mega-Hydra sounds just too good to be true. If your going to say ''every day they use Kitty Prides phase ability to jump back in time one day as part of Operation:Groundhog Day, so they never get found out" then that is just way too much. It's like saying the group has infinite wishes from a loop effect where they get three wishes and make two and then wish for three wishes and make two and wish for three more....

But if you back it up to a more reasonable way, then your Mega-Hydra is not perfect. They ''try'', but they are only human...and there will be leaks and holes.

But if they are all powerful....well the only way to fight that is to become all powerful too. So it's an arms race. You just need time travel, infinite wishes or the power of a god.

But if you want to have ''all powerful group'' and ''character has sticks and stones'', then you need to toss the character a bone. Like they find a Hydra Crystal Ball or something....

And come on......I knew Crossbones, Ward, Sitwell and Bill Paxton were all Hydra like the first time I saw any of them.....they just had that Dark Side vibe. Ward especially, he never fooled me for a second. I knew he'd be the traitor in episode one.

AvatarVecna

2014-12-20, 01:31 AM

So, you and one person have to uncover and take down a massive organization without using magic? I hate to say it, but I think you're screwed. The solutions I'm coming up with that bypass the organizations defenses (optimizing for bardic knowledge, diplomacy, and gather info) don't really take members out, and they don't really prevent the organization from taking you out. Depending on how thorough the group covers their tracks, high level magic shenanigans are likely to be the only way to solo such an organization.

(Un)Inspired

2014-12-20, 02:28 AM

UMD Scroll of Shapechange, Zodar, Blah Blah Blah...

Inevitability

2014-12-20, 04:54 AM

Diplomancy. Randomly diplomance people into becoming your slaves, and ask them if they are part of any secret organizations every time you do it. Eventually, you will find someone involved with Mega-Hydra. From there, concentrate your search on people your slave tells you about.

You should probably be a warforged though, because this will take a while.

Jowgen

2014-12-20, 05:54 AM

Well, if your saying it's just a ''mid level character with no real abilities, magic or resources'' then the answer is that you can't do anything.

-snipped-

But if you want to have ''all powerful group'' and ''character has sticks and stones'', then you need to toss the character a bone. Like they find a Hydra Crystal Ball or something....

And come on......I knew Crossbones, Ward, Sitwell and Bill Paxton were all Hydra like the first time I saw any of them.....they just had that Dark Side vibe. Ward especially, he never fooled me for a second. I knew he'd be the traitor in episode one.

Maybe I was a bit harsh on the scenario protagonist to rev-up the suspense of the story. :smalltongue:

The protagonist and side-kick do not have casting, but they do have above-average wealth by level and are free to optimize themselves to any degree possible. Think of them as Season 2 Green Arrow and season 3 Arsenal if you will :smallwink:

Mega-Hyrda is not infinite-wish-shenanigans level powerful. They have lots of numbers, efficient cells working most existing hubs of power in the world, and their casters are apt at using magic for the purposes of secrecy; but they are no more optimized than the average NPC organization in any book. When it comes to actual combat, the protagonist and side-kick generally have the upper hand, provided the playing field is level.

So it's basically, 2 high-op mundanes VS a secret army of NPCs that are only good at secrecy stuff.

As for regular Hyrda... but Sitwell was so adorable :smallfrown:

So, you and one person have to uncover and take down a massive organization without using magic? I hate to say it, but I think you're screwed. The solutions I'm coming up with that bypass the organizations defenses (optimizing for bardic knowledge, diplomacy, and gather info) don't really take members out, and they don't really prevent the organization from taking you out.

You and your side-kick are rather capable of taking organization NPCs down due to them only really being optimized for secrecy, but yeah, that's about it :smallsmile:

Diplomancy. Randomly diplomance people into becoming your slaves, and ask them if they are part of any secret organizations every time you do it. Eventually, you will find someone involved with Mega-Hydra. From there, concentrate your search on people your slave tells you about.

You should probably be a warforged though, because this will take a while.

Provided this is fluffed in the vein of "covert everyone you meet to your cause to build your own counter-network" I actually kinda like that :smallsmile:

Marlowe

2014-12-20, 05:57 AM

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/901/JlpOVh.jpg

Malroth

2014-12-20, 06:02 AM

Have a kid and train him to be a full caster then die to one of their operatives.

Red Fel

2014-12-20, 08:34 AM

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/901/JlpOVh.jpg
The ubiquitous duo is right! (Also awesome.)

Seriously, though. A secret organization is secret for a reason. Forcing them out of hiding prevents them from operating behind the scenes. When everyone is paranoid about this Mega-Hydra group, it will make things harder for them.

So, you develop a reputation for intelligence, honesty, and reliability. Then you tell people to be on guard for this group. If you're incontrovertible, people will accept your words, particularly if you have something resembling evidence, because most people buy into an argument from authority (despite it being a fallacy).

At this point, Mega-Hydra will start to act against you. Subtly at first, because they won't want to overplay their hand. They'll try to discredit you. Find out who's behind it, expose them, and you'll have more evidence. Next, Mega-Hydra will probably try to eliminate you. Dispatch your would-be dispatchers, and use the attempt(s) on your life as more evidence.

Eventually, Mega-Hydra will come... out of the shadows. :smallcool:

Kelb_Panthera

2014-12-20, 09:07 AM

Bucky and the Captain need to take leadership, extra followers, and landlord. You beat mega-hydra by building mega-s.h.i.e.l.d.

More specifically, you dig up intelligence on their operations and foil their most important ones while trying to stay off of their radar. You take out key personnel, stop them from advancing their goals, find and eliminate recruiters, etc and so on. Unless you can build your own organization to work against them, you're just not going to be able to do it in a single humanoid lifetime.

Priority 1 is to break up their chain of command. Handlers for the cells in a region are first on that list followed by the people that make decisions for those handlers to execute. Whenever the opportunity arises take out high level commanders.

Naturally, the most important weapon against secret organizations is information. It's very typical of secret organizations to rely on that secrecy as their primary defense. Attempts to expose them directly probably won't work but getting them caught in the act might. If you can get them known to the authorities and legitimate powers then you can severely weaken them. Once you've got them on the radar, handing over specific intel on their operations and personnel can do massive harm to them.

After that, the more typical attrition tactics come into play. Guerrilla strikes against their hardware storage, their barracks and training facilities, their communications networks, etc will get you where you're aiming to go.

RoboEmperor

2014-12-20, 09:12 AM

Inevitability

2014-12-20, 11:30 AM

atemu1234

2014-12-20, 11:53 AM

No magic allowed. And if you use diplomacy, I already posted that.

Post a poorly made conspiracy theory video on YouThoutube?

ace rooster

2014-12-20, 01:52 PM

1. Dominate or charm a lackey
2. Get him to point fingers
3. Dominate or charm them
4. Get them to point fingers
5. Repeat indefinatly.
6. You find the top guys

Killing them is another matter entirely. How do you find the 1st guy to start this tree of dominates and charm? You don't. You randomly charm or dominate people. Charm and dominate are just truth serums and cooperation drugs.

This unfortunately fails because any secret organisation worth it's salt employs a firewall* through which all communications are routed. Even a perfect truth serum is useless if your target doesn't know anything.

Your best bet for getting to the root of a conspiricy is probably infiltration, combined with honey traps for finding information about other cells. Many cells probably don't even know the objectives of the organisation, or believe they are working for somebody entirely different. These cells can be hijacked rather that eliminated. For reasons of security it is possible that few people other than the handler are aware of the identities of a cell, and if they can all be identified and eliminated then you have minions :smallamused:.

*This can range from a dominated creature that does not know who has dominated it to an old red dragon being a literal firewall. Even a link where the only communication is with a character in disguise breaks the chain if all meetings are on their terms and they monitor their charges. The main consideration is for enquiries such as you outline to hit a dead end.

RoboEmperor

2014-12-20, 10:14 PM

No magic allowed. And if you use diplomacy, I already posted that.

The OP only said anti-divination stuff. And everything, and I mean everything, can be dispelled. Unless the organization consists solely of abominations or similarly mind-immune creatures, highly unlikely since they're supposed to infiltrate, you can strap a guy down, dispel him, and either charm/dominate or torture him. Since tortured people confess to things they haven't done, and there's a good chance you're interrogating innocent people, I'd stick to charm and dominate :P

This unfortunately fails because any secret organisation worth it's salt employs a firewall* through which all communications are routed. Even a perfect truth serum is useless if your target doesn't know anything.

Unless the guy is a mind-controlled puppet, he will know enough stuff to allow you to trace stuff. He doesn't have to know names, or face, just the next meeting point or method of communication and you can start tracing from there. If the guy is mind-controlled, there's a sense motive check to know if he is dominated or not.

Of course, the perfect solution is highly dependent on the situation.

I think I remember watching some anime movie about this hacker who hacked into people's brains and changed their memories into fanatical servants, so interrogation proved useless, and communication was one-way. If you're talking about this kind of scenario then... I guess use divination on everyone and the ones you can't divine are your targets or something. Again, solution is highly dependent on the exact situation.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-12-21, 12:08 AM

jedipotter

2014-12-21, 12:33 AM

*Find their active agents. If they have a plan and they have agents doing things, they can be discovered when active. The trick is to get there quick and take action yourself. You won't know who is a mega hydra member is, but you can assume everyone is....

*Lots of detective work. Mega Hydra will try and hide everything, but there will always be a trail or clue or bit of information to find. It's impossible to cover everything.

*Bait. If you know what they want, all you need do is display it in public and let them come to you.

Your best bet is to find an evil agent and get some information out of them. The more you know, the more you can act on.

Curmudgeon

2014-12-21, 12:53 AM

Diplomancy. Randomly diplomance people into becoming your slaves, and ...
There's no reason to expect that to work. Yes, there's a table for Influencing NPC Attitudes via unopposed Diplomacy checks, but

You have no magic.
There's nothing in the rules preventing every NPC from negotiating (opposed Diplomacy checks) instead.

ace rooster

2014-12-21, 07:59 AM

The OP only said anti-divination stuff. And everything, and I mean everything, can be dispelled. Unless the organization consists solely of abominations or similarly mind-immune creatures, highly unlikely since they're supposed to infiltrate, you can strap a guy down, dispel him, and either charm/dominate or torture him. Since tortured people confess to things they haven't done, and there's a good chance you're interrogating innocent people, I'd stick to charm and dominate :P

Unless the guy is a mind-controlled puppet, he will know enough stuff to allow you to trace stuff. He doesn't have to know names, or face, just the next meeting point or method of communication and you can start tracing from there. If the guy is mind-controlled, there's a sense motive check to know if he is dominated or not.

You only need one immune* creature in the chain of command to avoid mind control finding the top guys, and mundane stuff can't be dispelled. Even knowing the next meeting point is no guarentee, for precisely the reasons you outline. In DnD land it is far easier to get information out of someone, so more stringent precautions would be taken (at least at mid to high levels in the organisation). Expect a decent chunk of the organisation to be watching other parts of the organisation (unaware of who or why they are watching), with undirected signals as to what is happening (think ads in papers, or strange codes written invisibly on the walls of the marketplace. This will tell you that some members of the organisation read a particular paper, or occasionally have operatives with see invisibility visit the market, but there is little more to trace than that). At the slightest hint of trouble you can expect a cell to be cut off for a while, with no communications or meetings to trace from at all. Additionally you can expect the organisation to start acting against you directly. Mind control is a very powerful tool for interogation, but not much more so than simply torturing your way to the top. It is no more or less crude a tactic, and equally as easily deflected.

Also, charm and dominate work better for them than you. A dominated random can be a mook who knows literally nothing, but can deliver a letter just fine. With precautions to make the letter untracable this can easily be a dead end.

Of course, the perfect solution is highly dependent on the situation.

I think I remember watching some anime movie about this hacker who hacked into people's brains and changed their memories into fanatical servants, so interrogation proved useless, and communication was one-way. If you're talking about this kind of scenario then... I guess use divination on everyone and the ones you can't divine are your targets or something. Again, solution is highly dependent on the exact situation.

That would be an extreme case, but illustrates the kind of basic defenses such an organisation would have in place.

*Immune does not have to mean literally immune. An old red dragon is effectively immune to being strapped down and charmed at reasonable levels, on account of being an old red dragon. For this red dragon taking messages which are then picked up could be a very profitable sideline that he participates in from the comfort of his lair. He is not strictly part of the conspiricy (being an outside contractor with no idealistic interest), so not within the PCs remit, and as such might be horrendously over CRed. Worse, it could be a captain of industry, who is effectively immune on account of his role in the local economy and political influence. While the PCs could act directly against them, they would have to expect unacceptable fallout.

In both these cases expect the PCs to charge in regardless. :smalltongue:

Jowgen

2014-12-21, 09:06 AM

Loving the thread so far, some really good input there :smallsmile:

To surmize suggested strategies and their aleged flaws so far:

- Build rival organization via Leadership/Diplomacy/Mindrape (if one can get is Su/SLA somehow). This is a very direct arms-race kind of approach, with success largely dependent on how well you can build and run your organization. It is a very long-term strategy with chance of success being very hard to guess at.

- Expose Mega-Hydra workings. Rather than going after the members directly, this approach aims to harm them by making whatever you can discover about them public knowledge. Depends largely on your reputation, how much info you can uncover, and of course how much control mega-hyrda has over those whom you'd reveal this information to. The bright side here is that that this approach will invariably draw aggro from mega-hydra, forcing some portion of their members out of the shadows (into the light :smalltongue: ); opening up other possibilities.

- Disrupt chain of command. This is an offensive approach where you aim to cripple the organization by trackin down and taking out key members. It's straight forward and efficient if you can get it done, but the downside is that you can never be sure how much damage you've done overall, as the "leader" you took out might be a patsy or have a replacement on hand to take over. Also, once mega-hyrda realizes what you're doing, they're likely going to take steps to have truly important members evade you more efficiently.

- Capture members for intel to work your way up. This approach has the great merrit that you could potentially learn much about how the organization works and thusly take them down very well; but it also appears to be the hardest road to take. Capturing a member who actually knows something useful is the first hurdle, but the main problem is how to actually extract information from a captive. I'm not aware of any truth serum/mindrape type effects that can reliably overcome mind-affecting immunity. Truth Wine (alchemical item from some Dragon mag) might work in some cases, but not always. Torture might work, but the captive is likely skilled at lying under torture (read: Sense Motive skill arms-race) and might have countermeasures, which can range from flat-out pain immunity to an alchemical tooth with liquid pain/black lotus extract.

So far, none of the suggested approaches are entirely exclusive of each other, so they might be combine-able to good effect.

I think how to get intel on mega-hydra operations in the first place is something that needs more addressing. How far can a sky-high gather information check really get you in this? :smallconfused:

I also think that the capture members for intel route holds the most potential; provided one can figure out a way to reliably get information out of the captured targets. Brilliant ideas, anyone? :smallconfused:

Tarvus

2014-12-21, 09:15 AM

How much do the PC's know about their goals? You said they knew how they operate, but does that include what they want?
For example, is personal power a means to a political end? Or the opposite?

In any case; First thing is "Boots on the ground". This doesn't have to be cohort level, just build an informant network to start. Innkeepers, bards, local guildmasters, beggars, people that owe you favours etc. they all hear things and even in a low-ish magic world organising communication is easy. Its vital to get this set up first. Even if you can't do anything about the threats at the time, more information on their goals, tactics, operational structure etc. is invaluable. Get that information rolling in ASAP. Additionally, keep it low key. If they don't know you exist they can't act against you. The longer they are in ignorance the more damage you can do.

Only after that, do you ensure you can hurt them. This can be defeating their operations directly, attacking other parts of their structure when they are busy, messing up their logistics, or even just false information to waste resources. A good first step if you don't have any specifics but can at least work out some basic immediate goals is to honey trap them. Spoilered for length below.

This is where the informant network shines - information doesn't just have to come in after all. While "Mega-Tesseract on display at Local Museum" in the paper sounds suspicious, forcing them to "figure it out" makes it more believable. An innkeeper might mention that a local mage with a high-powered-magic-item collection got a well protected shipment, an auctioneer might mention that he can't believe the Mega-Tesseract only sold for $1mil GP, and a ship captain in town would discuss his recent voyage from Auction City to Localton as he waited to ship out. Not only does it make it more believable, it also lets you test the extent of their own informant network. If the people of Localton are mentioning the shipment being guarded by Red Dragon Wyrmlings, and the mooks show up wielding Cold weapons, its a good bet they have agents there. This ofc depends on the intricacy the DM is willing to support

The operation itself can go several ways, so its best to prepare like Xanatos. First key is to prevent or at least monitor communication during their raid. Lead lining prevents overwatch scrying their progress, Aspect Mirrors let you watch them to listen in on any sendings they cast, etc. If they can't communicate back that it was a trap, or who you are, they won't even know TO strike back let alone where to aim.

It can go several ways, in order of worst to best:

You lose; for them it was all for nothing anyway, so their gain is negligible and it cost them resources. However, you might be dead, or they might now know how you are. Mitigation strategies here depend on the situation

You win, but they get information back to command. If this option is likely, put this operation off until you know your MegaS.H.I.E.L.D is ready for a full blown shadow war. Agents as well as an informant network.

You win, but every one of them dies: Thats one cell down, with no way for the command structure to know what happened. With no way to trace it back to you, they just think it was bad luck, or more formidable defenses. Either they try again and you get another opportunity with the same trap, or they move on and its still a net profit for you.

You win, but some of them escape. This is both a good thing and a bad. Ideally, you position agents to shadow them back to their base, where you can bet their first task is to inform command. This gives you an opportunity to find out how they communicate and to whom.

Its up to the PCs and the intricacies of the situation whether it is more valuable to find out more or to preserve their anonymity. If a messenger is sent, for example, it might be possible to switch out the messages and achieve both, failing that, kill/capture the messenger. If it's a sending or the like, you'll likely not be in a position to intercept or scry the receiver, but you now know how and can develop tactics to deal with that. In the latter case, trying to eliminate them in the time between finding out and them actually conveying the threat is the goal.

You win, capture some wounded. This is the best option, simply because all the other options are still available - you can engineer an "escape" or execute the prisoner at your leisure. Obviously interrogation is a good idea here, and there are mundane and magical ways to go about that. Focus on how they get their commands, logistics and chain of command. Despite what Hydra says, severing heads is a great way to kill monsters, even hydras (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0326.html).

ace rooster

2014-12-21, 09:33 AM

I also think that the capture members for intel route holds the most potential; provided one can figure out a way to reliably get information out of the captured targets. Brilliant ideas, anyone? :smallconfused:

Charm/dominate should work, though if magic is out then things are trickier. You have to resort to the standard diplomacy/intimidate/bluff methods. Even mind blank is not a reliable defence once you have them captured, as you can just wait it out. Reliable catch all tactics are hard to come by though, and in most cases you will need a variety of tools.

You also missed one tactic that historically has been hugely effective: Infiltration.

Tinker tailor soldier spy was at least in part based on the Cambridge_Five (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five), which was a Soviet spy network deep inside British intelligence.

Scipio_77

2014-12-21, 10:59 AM

I'd just roll a bard and just cause tremendous amounts of havoc and calamity and blame it all on this organization (steal wands from liches, gold from red dragons, "kidnap" princesses, instigate civil wars in powerful evil empires and so forth).

When they topple and collapse I'd write songs about how evil they were and spread blatant lies about my own heroic efforts.

SinsI

2014-12-21, 11:05 AM

Destroy global communications and transportation. That mega-hydra will quickly deteriorate into a multitude of small independent local organisations that don't pose any threat on their own.

NichG

2014-12-21, 11:54 AM

Co-opt it.

The downside to having an organization which is made up entirely of bottlenecks, dead-drops, and other information-sparse channels is that it's far easier to fake the signal coming through those channels than one which is tightly connected. For the thing to be an organization rather than just a set of disparate small-time thugs, there must be particular accepted ways in which orders percolate around. More importantly, even if the orders flow in one direction there has to be a mechanism by which people are promoted or the organization will die out on its own given time.

In practice how do you do that? Well, you need an in. Fortunately there are two of you. Have one of you go and recruit a bunch of lackeys posing as a secret Hydra cell. Start doing villainous operations in the area, but be sloppy about it. Leave evidence. Drop the 'Hydra' name by mistake. Make the organization think that one of its splinter cells has gone rogue or just incompetent, and bait them into taking corrective action. One possibility is that they try the usual methods of communication first, in which case you can perhaps get some information about what those methods are and then make use of that on your second pass. One possibility is that they just try to kill everyone to clean things up, in which case you've got genuine hydra members you can use to initiate infiltration - have your backup guy take the place of one and return to base with his comrades, or whatever. The third possibility is that they know outright that your fake cell is fake, and do nothing (or try their own espionage to figure out how you know what you know), in which case you have at least a little extra information about how the organization is built (in that at the top levels they have sufficiently complete knowledge that they can list off all of their cells, which means that if you can access the top you can get information about all of their bases/etc).

Your backup guy is there to basically watch from out of the line of fire, and to take on secondary roles which won't be identified with the guy who is acting as bait, as needed.

Alternately, you can try to make a spectacle so absurd that the real organization is tempted to try to take advantage of it. Instead of making a sloppy fake criminal organization, make some kind of super-charity and very visibly call it Hydra (or whatever the actual name of the secret organization is). Have the charity do real charitable things in regions where Hydra is likely to want to actually operate covertly - e.g. make it look like the charity could be used as a reputable public cover for their actual operations. Essentially make something so random and strange that the leadership of the secret organization is driven to investigate even if it seems like it would be a bad idea - essentially, play on their ambition and curiosity. You're more likely to get big fish rather than small-fry with this tactic, but you're also more likely to get nothing at all if your stunt is too transparent. It has to be mysterious enough that the Hydra people can't just conclude 'this is obvious bait to get us to expose ourselves, so we should just ignore it'. It has to be harder than that to explain away.

Threadnaught

2014-12-21, 01:44 PM

There's no reason to expect that to work. Yes, there's a table for Influencing NPC Attitudes via unopposed Diplomacy checks, but

You have no magic.
There's nothing in the rules preventing every NPC from negotiating (opposed Diplomacy checks) instead.

There's nothing in the rules preventing NPCs from attempting to kill you in order to prevent you from dying to monsters, as a way of being helpful.

A merchant doesn't have to buy from and sell to the PCs to help them, they could simply murder them and bury them where no Necromancer of Spawn Creating Undead can turn them into Undead.
Nobody in a Tavern is required to offer quests of any kind, they could simply rob the PCs of all gear and money, preventing them from advenuring, which risks their lives and instead forcing them into earning an honest living.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-12-21, 07:37 PM

- Build rival organization via Leadership/Diplomacy/Mindrape (if one can get is Su/SLA somehow). This is a very direct arms-race kind of approach, with success largely dependent on how well you can build and run your organization. It is a very long-term strategy with chance of success being very hard to guess at.

It is a long-term strategy. You -need- a long-term strategy for this sort of thing. You have to have information networks and tactical teams and all the other myriad things that a squad of two men just can't cover by themselves. Relying on outside sources for this sort of thing is dicey at best and would -require- that you be willing and able to expose the existence of Mega Hydra to people with those resources and you run the very real risk of Mega Hydra having gotten to them first. Even building your own organization is going to run the risk of infiltration but you have -much- tighter control and ability to uncover and mitigate that risk. There's a reason S.HI.E.L.D. was created to counter Hydra in the comics beyond the story opportunities.

- Expose Mega-Hydra workings. Rather than going after the members directly, this approach aims to harm them by making whatever you can discover about them public knowledge. Depends largely on your reputation, how much info you can uncover, and of course how much control mega-hyrda has over those whom you'd reveal this information to. The bright side here is that that this approach will invariably draw aggro from mega-hydra, forcing some portion of their members out of the shadows (into the light :smalltongue: ); opening up other possibilities.

Doing so without some kind of serious backing is also -extremely- dangerous. Making yourself the focus of such an organization's wrath without being representative of an organization yourself will lead to a shallow, unmarked grave post-haste.

- Disrupt chain of command. This is an offensive approach where you aim to cripple the organization by trackin down and taking out key members. It's straight forward and efficient if you can get it done, but the downside is that you can never be sure how much damage you've done overall, as the "leader" you took out might be a patsy or have a replacement on hand to take over. Also, once mega-hyrda realizes what you're doing, they're likely going to take steps to have truly important members evade you more efficiently.

Thus the need for information networks and counter-intelligence. This is a strictly necessary step in taking down any such organization but if you're doing it blindly then you're absolutely right.

- Capture members for intel to work your way up. This approach has the great merrit that you could potentially learn much about how the organization works and thusly take them down very well; but it also appears to be the hardest road to take. Capturing a member who actually knows something useful is the first hurdle, but the main problem is how to actually extract information from a captive. I'm not aware of any truth serum/mindrape type effects that can reliably overcome mind-affecting immunity. Truth Wine (alchemical item from some Dragon mag) might work in some cases, but not always. Torture might work, but the captive is likely skilled at lying under torture (read: Sense Motive skill arms-race) and might have countermeasures, which can range from flat-out pain immunity to an alchemical tooth with liquid pain/black lotus extract.

This is another necessary step. The gathering of information is absolutely necessary to do -anything- against such an organization. The two ways to do so are to capture and extract information from agents and to infiltrate with double-agents. The other alternative is to hope that they have agents with loose tongues and deal with information brokers but that's very unreliable for this sort of thing.

As for methods, a gentle touch is required for the most part. You don't -capture- the enemy in the traditional sense, you put him and one of your double-agents in a situation where they're trapped, or at least have the impression they are, and the double-agent tries to get them to give the desired intel, "just in case he's captured." Alternately, you get one of your agents to befriend a low-level hydra agent and get him to convince said agent to introduce him to a handler. If it comes right down to it, though, there's no denying a thought-extruder. It's in lords of madness and requires a creature with telepathy to operate but it -cannot- be resisted in any way. It also leaves the affected creature a drooling idiot.

So far, none of the suggested approaches are entirely exclusive of each other, so they might be combine-able to good effect.

No no no no. None of the methods are, or should be, mutually exclusive. It will require -all- of the above to have any real chance of success unless the DM throws you a bone pretty regularly.

I think how to get intel on mega-hydra operations in the first place is something that needs more addressing. How far can a sky-high gather information check really get you in this? :smallconfused:

DM dependent. Assuming it's been given that the organization exists, a sky high GI check might get you the ability to correlate seemingly unrelated events as Mega-Hydra operations and -maybe- a prediction of a likely upcoming target or someone related to the events, not part of Mega Hydra, to whom you can talk.

I also think that the capture members for intel route holds the most potential; provided one can figure out a way to reliably get information out of the captured targets. Brilliant ideas, anyone? :smallconfused:

See above: basic subterfuge at best, thought extruder at worst.

RoboEmperor

2014-12-22, 02:19 AM

Organization:
1. Knock out a guy without ever being seen (sleep spell or similar). Preferably a guy with a family, and has access to a lot of stuff, like the king's adviser, a noble, a noble's servant, etc.
2. Cast modify memory. He now remembers that the imperial army slaughtered his family in front of him. He watched them die, and this dark figure saves his life. Now he serves hydra to exact vengeance for the death of his family and has fanatic loyalty to this dark figure, who gives him orders remotely.
4. Slaughter the guy's family for reals.
5. Release the guy
6. Cast greater scrying on the guy
7. Send messages to the guy via greater scrying.

This is combated by using detect magic on members in your own organization, and dispelling anyone who has a magical aura upon them since modify memory has a permanent duration instead of an instantaneous one.

This will only prevent your organization from being infiltrated.

You could have a persistent scry-shielded area, and once the modified guy enters it, dispel him, and make him act like he wasn't dispelled to make him act as a double agent.

But, how would you people catch the guy knocking guys out for a few minutes on the street or in their own homes and doing this? Only thing I can think of is secretly scrying every individual who has access to important information in your own organization, and once hydra acts, you do some super long police chase and hope to god he doesn't just teleport away.

Tarvus

2014-12-22, 04:01 AM

2. Cast modify memory. He now remembers that the imperial army slaughtered his family in front of him. He watched them die, and this dark figure saves his life.

Modify Memory (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/modifyMemory.htm) only alters 5 minutes. So that entire sequence, the slaughter, the saving, the explanation, the joining etc. would all have to fit in that time. Also you'd have to provide a reason, backstory, explain why he hasn't visited their graves, or remember their funeral because "an illogical modified memory is dismissed by the creature as a bad dream or a memory muddied by too much wine".

Multiple castings might work, but they'd likely be dismissed between castings if you didn't ramp it up slowly (a slight, then an argument, build mistrust then get to the other stuff). Also if any one of them between is resisted, and you accidentally skip a step is also fails. This is why mind rape was invented, and also why its banned by so many DMs :smallbiggrin:

Now he serves hydra to exact vengeance for the death of his family and has fanatic loyalty to this dark figure, who gives him orders remotely.

If he's meant to act as your mole in Mega-Hydra, how does he know how to contact them if you don't? Also how come they don't know who is working for them? How is he going to prove his credentials? Or is this for your own recruitment (as Hydra)?

RoboEmperor

2014-12-22, 07:54 AM

If he's meant to act as your mole in Mega-Hydra, how does he know how to contact them if you don't? Also how come they don't know who is working for them? How is he going to prove his credentials? Or is this for your own recruitment (as Hydra)?

Guy scries target, guy sends a message, target writes something on paper and holds it in mid air for a while.

He can't contact you if you don't contact him. That's the point of this whole security setup, so the dominated minion won't blab.

If you change enough memories, you can make him work for a guy he never seen. Put in a fake memory of him doing something for him, or make him think that the mysterious contact is his best chance at revenge, his savior, be touched by him, etc.

Mega hydra can knock him out maybe 10minutes a day and modify his memories slowly.