3.5 Crusader roleplaying advice

[karinrin55]

Hey :smallsmile:,

I've posted a few times in here before and you may know me as


Sir Knight's player

quoted from one of the bigger posts that I was a part of, but never mind that.

Right now I'm interested in your opinion on how I should roleplay this next bit:
I was imprisoned by a member of my team (long story) and now facing either a trial by combat or a life sentence in jail.

Now, my character (I'll just refer to her as Selene, it would be more convenient than always saying my character) is from a big tribe outside of the kingdom and came looking for it's true leader after it's former had been murdered viciously. So Selene is now imprisoned and I have no idea what to do.

I should mention Selene is highly religious (her patron being Ptah the Egyptian god of creation and Law) and is LN, she prays each day when she wakes and before she sleeps.
Because my option to win a trail by combat includes me killing off a party member who holds resent for me for some reason I would like to avoid that.

Ant advice on how I should handle my situation?

Again Selene is a crusader (currently 15th level) who's just interested in going back to her people and lead them without anyone dying unnecessarily :smallredface:.

[InvisibleBison]

Two ideas occur to me. Firstly, you might be able to win the trial by combat by merely defeating your opponent - knocking him out or reducing him to negative HP, but not actually killing him. I don't know if the rules for the trial will allow that, though. Alternatively, resurrection is a thing. You could kill your opponent and then resurrect him, or agree to be sentenced to life in prison, kill yourself, and have your allies resurrect you.

Another idea that occurred to me as I was writing this: You don't want to fight your party member in the trial, so perhaps you could find a way to prevent him from being able to participate in the trial. It's kind of underhanded, so a lawful character might not approve, but you could slip something in his food that will incapacitate him for a day or so right before the fight, or hire someone to break his leg or something.

[Gildedragon]

Normal damage to disable them and subdual at the end to knock them out (bluff to pretend to kill him)
Or if you can deal subdual damage sans penalty to attack, just deal the subdual damage throughout.

Or for the duel: ask it to be a pottery making duel.

[NomGarret]

Trials by combat typically include the possibility of yielding when the result is foregone. If you are winning, offer the other PC the chance to stand down, ideally disarming or tripping them rather than beating on them when they are low on hp. If they refuse three times, then knock them out. Hopefully healers are on standby and you don't roll high on that final damage roll.

[Erdinger]

My advice is that you should go for trial by combat and if you can ask for someone else to fight you, but be sure you can win that member/Stranger. Because if he imprisoned you and he'd the chance to win you, he'd kill you...

[Troacctid]

You could use Mountain Hammer to bust out of your cell and fight your way out of prison.

[karinrin55]

You could use Mountain Hammer to bust out of your cell and fight your way out of prison.

That would have been great, but sadly I chose only White Raven and Devoted Spirit maneuvers and stances because I never thought I'd have to break out of a prison without my team. Let alone from one they put me in.
That choice seemed logical as I am built for team fights and tanking DMG while still maintaining decent DMG output.
should have seen that coming though...:smallsigh:

[Troacctid]

Hum, I suppose without a weapon it wouldn't be much good anyway, since unarmed strikes deal nonlethal damage, assuming you don't have Improved Unarmed Strike.

Well, bending iron bars requires a DC 24 Strength check. If your Strength is high enough, you might be able to bust out of a barred cell without Mountain Hammer. Breaking down a solid iron door is DC 28, though, which is a bit tougher.

[dgnslyr]

Maybe you could convince your party member to drop their grudge, fake the fight, and break out together? Talking's a free action, after all, and the people in the stands are probably too far to hear anything over the din of battle, so you can conspire all you want without fear of getting caught. The only tricky part is persuading your (former?) party member, but that's where the role-playing comes in.

[Kish]

From your other posts, this isn't an IC issue--it's an OOC one. So it needs to be resolved OOC. Neither your character killing theboss's, nor his character killing yours, will do anything but create resentment, because it doesn't actually matter which one of you is better at optimizing and the personality clash is between the players, not the characters.