Tear Gas and Riot Cops, Damn stupid PCs and their big mouths

[mostlyharmful]

My group has a bit of a problem upcoming, using diplomacy and intimadate ("It's the Workers who control the means of Production, Throw off your imperialist shakles and create a better world...." ) between them they've managed to cobble together something along the lines of a peasents rising. They've got a few thousand commoners and experts marching fairly shambolically towards a large city with a heavy preponderance of Wizards, quite a few of which are high level. And since the peasents are rising no-one's producing the standerd amounts of food, timber, iron ore, etc...

So next session it's riot cops, or the DnD equivilent. so I ask the forum, how would an unruly mob of economically useful citizens be handled by an angry, magically powerful nobility that doesn't value them much as people but understands their use to keep the brandy and cigars flowing.

Couple of ideas so far-
1. riot police/mercenaries on horses with shields and batons (homebrewed clubs dealing nonleathel damage except on a critical)
2. tear gas spells, modelled on Cloudkill with con penalties rather than damage, effective until an alchemal treatment or several days.

anything more to challenge my players?, the idea being that they're running around in the middle of all this low level stuff trying to lead the peasents and counter the tactics of the establishment not that they themselves take on an army or anything.

Party =
level 14 Wiz
Level 12 Bard
Level 15 Barb
Level 13 S'Sage

[Sleet]

Bards or clerics casting enlarged calm emotions?

[rollfrenzy]

Walls to channel the peasants into an area then..

Web, sleep, fog cloud, en masse.

basically scare the peasants into routing or break up the will to fight.

Also mass illusions to make it seem like the peasants are heading into a fight with thousands of giants or whatever.

These are what the low level wizards can be doing while the powerful casters deal with the PC's.

Also assassinating leaders of a rebellion generally proves pretty useful.

[Arang]

If I were a wizard I'd use undead or or some other kind of fear AoE magic. Makes them rethink the whole revolution thing, useful if there is fighting, and you can make sure nobody gets hurt unless you want to.

[Baxbart]

There's always one way to solve this problem - let the Terrasque out.

Well, not literally - but get some wizards together and start creating illusions of big scary monsters to make the peasants rethink the march (And hope your PCs aren't too smart to see through it/Too stupid to attack...)

[Telok]

Freaking hilarious.

The commoners will break when hit with real firepower, or the threat of it. Acid Fog, Chain Lightning, and some well chosen illusions should do it. After that it's just a matter of rounding up the leaders of this little revolt and doing horrible nasty magic things to them.

Edit: Hire a dragon, the younger ones will work for decent money and "munchies"

[Magnor Criol]

Yeah, like the others have said, start throwing some illusions or fear effect that would cause the weaker-minded folk to panic and run. Your PCs, I'll warrant, won't be fooled - especially if the peasants are just running because they're getting hit by a couple damage spells, the players won't want to back down from that. So a few of the spells or effects listed above will quickly separate things out into the fleeing mob of combat-insignificant peasants, and the heroic PCs.

This'll make the government happy because they'll get to take out the leaders of the revolution (or try to); it'll make your players happy because they'll get a good big fight; and it'll give you a chance to set events going in a way that's convenient. If you like the big peasant mob, then if the PCs win, the mob could all come back to their triumphant champions and be more determined, and maybe bigger, than ever. If you don't like them, then the mob could just be dispersed and gone, regardless of whether the PCs win or lose.

[Tempest Fennac]

Stinking Cloud (especially if Extended and Enlarged) would be useful as a form of tear gas.

[Funkyodor]

Try low 'tech'.

Police force equal to 1/8th to 1/4 the size the pesant mob representing main line cops, rent-a-cops, and volunteer deputies. Give them normal chain or plate mail and tower shields. Use the sap mechanics but call them batons. Gear them out with alchemical items, easily made from a city of wizards and magic types. Stink-sticks using the smoke-stick mechanics (but with a stinking cloud effect and no obscurement), thunderstones, and ebberon-esque flash pellets. Maybe you might want to issue out 2 Decanters of Endless Waters for the water cannon effect and have several folks to secure it, or maybe an apparatus to do it for them.

I mean, come on. A battered, wet, blind, deaf, and/or puking pesant would just throw down his pitchfork and say, "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" It lets the wizards handle the matter using cheap resources easily replaced once the pesants go back to dirt farming.

Then to challenge the players, include some wizards, clerics, and police veterans scattered throughout, kinda like how they are. So when they make an action to shore up a weak spot, or start screwing with the cops ranks; the enemy elites can show up.

[The_Werebear]

Intimidation effects work as well.

The wizards send out a scouting party to grab some revolutionaries, kill them, and reanimate them. Have them scrubbing streets when the mob shows up.

Another good idea is a line of summoned monsters. Extradimensional things are scary, not to mention they can represent police hounds.

[Prometheus]

I think the real question is how the PCs have any hope of coming back from this with anything but complete failure, Scenarios:
1) The Wizards control, scare, and nonlethal damage the crowd until it breaks up. Any the PCs do is pretty much irrelevant and they should not have done this
2) The Wizards play hard ball and start kill the peasants, the PCs are forced to chose between letting them die or retreating, no matter how you look at it, they would have been better not to put the peasants in this position
3) The PCs engage in some real combat with the Wizards, only to have the peasants be spectators who are being punished for being there all along the way. The PCs should have just fought the wizards alone
4) Peasants and PCs work together to destroy the wizards...???

Unless of course you are showing them how stupid their idea was, than by all means, make it hurt.

[Hexus]

Fabricate some dirt on the pc's. Have the peasonts question there motives. There stop in production is endangering there own livelyhood.

[iop]

Aside from using "tear gas", the establishment could also be using the tried and true tactic of capturing the leaders for an exemplary trial and execution.
If they get caught, you can have the PCs stage a prison break next session.

[bosssmiley]

*sigh* Why peasant uprisings don't work in D&D.

TL;DR version: your rising of plucky yokels have no chance against a regime that has a bunch of full class casters binding Vrocks against just such a contingency. Decimate (in the "kill 1-in-10" sense) the rising, the survivors suddenly remember they have some crops to tend...elsewhere.

The tallest poppies get their head lopped first.

[Mewtarthio]

Use Subdual Substitution to deal ridiculous amounts of nonlethal damage. It'll be some time before those peasants get up. Afterwards, you can slap the unconscious peasants with geases to get them back to work (eg "Reach this designated quota of goods produced during the next five years").

[tainsouvra]

Intimidation effects work as well.

The wizards send out a scouting party to grab some revolutionaries, kill them, and reanimate them. Have them scrubbing streets when the mob shows up.

I was going to suggest something like this as a good opener--remind the peasants that, in the grand scheme of things, they are actually quite replaceable.

A small handful of mid-level spellcasters should be able to utterly rout the peasants, and that's not even getting into the category of what should be CR-appropriate for the party. What the PC's are doing is downright stupid. Peasants with sticks and torches don't belong in real battlefields, in D&D ones with Wizards and Dragons they'd have to be utterly moronic to try it. Remind them why this is the case!
For example...
Stick a handful of foes with a little bit of DR, 10 would probably do it. Let them walk right through the peasant army, killing without reprisal. See what that does to morale.
Have the big guns target the leaders (players) but the splash damage alone should be enough to kill off swarms of peasants, who, if they have half a wit left among their entire number, will run like hell.

[Brawls]

Fabricate items that cast Major Image and Hold/Charm Person. Distribute liberally throughout town. Congratulations you've just hijacked the revolution by introducing TV. Next step, start charging for the items, then content, then better looking content, etc.

Brawls

[sikyon]

Thought: Peasant Railgun.

[tainsouvra]

Thought: Peasant Railgun.

Response: D&D doesn't really have a conservation of momentum like classical physics would.

[sikyon]

Response: D&D doesn't really have a conservation of momentum like classical physics would.

What does conservation of momentum have to do with anything?

[Fuzzy_Juan]

Guards with 'Symbols' on their shields, or even just wizards carrying the symbol on a standard.

Sleep, persuasion, pain, and fear...that is really all you need.

Persuasion to make them be nice and go away...anyone who resists will be turned over by the crowd =)...after all, they are your friends.

Sleep is good as a passive symbol to guard a gate you are goign to leave open (people holding a document with the royal seal may pass unaffected...like all people who have 'security papers' ). people who try and enter a secure area will then be picked up by a guard and placed in jail.

Pain and fear if you wish to be cruel to those who do not respond to reason without using lethal means.

cloud of nausia is bad cause then you have a mess and who wants to clean that up. Insanity is bad cause then you have a riot.

other spells are web, grease, bane...

Or, if the powers in charge are goodly, perhaps a high level priest would summon a daeva and ask it to calm the crowd. If they don't listen to an angel on a mission of mercy trying to keep people from being hurt unnecesarily...then well...plan B...on the other hand, the PC's will be much less likely to attack a good 'monster' than something like ogers or guards.

[puppyavenger]

PAO that is all

[tainsouvra]

What does conservation of momentum have to do with anything?

The peasant railgun doesn't accomplish anything except moving an object from person to person quickly. It doesn't gain any momentum regardless of the speed it travels due to this handing-off, and if thrown by the final person it does exactly the same damage as any other thrown object of its size.

[Fhaolan]

Okay, so these Wizards sound like the shiftless nobility that is typical in these kinds of stories. Which means that they are going to expend the minimal amount of resources available to them. However, they are the nobility, so they won't be able to resist showing off and using what is essentially overkill.

The goal is to create fear and obediance with a minimal amount of bloodshed, because the more you kill, the less peasants there will be to cravenly tug their forlocks as you go by in your levetating sedan chair.

The easiest way to do this is illusions and a liberal sprinkling of area-of-effect mind control spells like confusion, fear, etc.

Halucinatory Terrain is a good one. Have the terrain appear to twist slightly, so they naturally end up going back the way they came. Or put imaginary chasms and rivers in the way. Less subtle, use Walls of Force. To be even more sneaky, deliberately put ways to bypass the obstacles into the illusions, but make them restrictive. One-at-a-time rope bridges and that kind of thing. Nothing puts a peasant's rebellion into perspective than trying to get 300+ commoners over a rope bridge hanging over a waterfall...

Unless the PCs are actively dispelling and counterspelling, the level 1 shmucks aren't going to have a chance with their will saves. If the PCs *are* actively dispelling, these multiple high-level wizards are going to have a lot more spell resources than the PCs do and will simply outlast them, or gather enough info about them to target them directly.

[StickMan]

Man you all are thinking about this the wrong way. Sure short term casting spells and scaring people great idea, long term how ever these things do not force people to go back to work. The whole rebellion thing works fine you just have to stop having all the commoner stop working in any way to effect the upper class.

I suggest you look at how real world protests work. Back during the U.S. civil rights movement many people were threated with being kill, and they marched. People who were treated unfairly did boycotts and put people of out business or forced them to change to stay in business.

Unless the wizards are willing to kill off the whole population then odd are by using civil protest long enough the people may very well be able to overthrow or at least gain rights.

Just to be clear as long as this does not go into combat your fine.

[tainsouvra]

Man you all are thinking about this the wrong way. Sure short term casting spells and scaring people great idea, long term how ever these things do not force people to go back to work.

In reality, peasants in the real world rarely rebelled even in horrific conditions, often due to simple inertia. When they did, it was usually put down with a minimum of effort by those in power.

The whole rebellion thing works fine you just have to stop having all the commoner stop working in any way to effect the upper class.

This doesn't work in D&D. A peasant can be easily replaced by a fairly simple spell or automaton, as far as the upper class is concerned. The masses don't control the only means of production in the D&D universe. They might be more convenient, but it's possible that they aren't even needed at all by the upper class, at least not needed in a living/conscious/free-willed state.

I suggest you look at how real world protests work. Back during the U.S. civil rights movement many people were threated with being kill, and they marched. People who were treated unfairly did boycotts and put people of out business or forced them to change to stay in business.

Unless the wizards are willing to kill off the whole population then odd are by using civil protest long enough the people may very well be able to overthrow or at least gain rights.

Just to be clear as long as this does not go into combat your fine.

The problem with that is that D&D isn't real life. In real life, people really do have power, at least to an extent, and the masses really can change things. In D&D, the masses are a moderately-valuable, but ultimately replaceable, commodity traded by those who have real power.

[J.Gellert]

The problem with that is that D&D isn't real life. In real life, people really do have power, at least to an extent, and the masses really can change things. In D&D, the masses are a moderately-valuable, but ultimately replaceable, commodity traded by those who have real power.

Depending on the Dungeon Master and game setting, of course.

[tainsouvra]

Depending on the Dungeon Master and game setting, of course.

Yes, the DM can heavily reduce the ability of magic to sustain a small population if he wishes. In the standard campaign, though, it's quite viable even if most don't think to try it out.

[StickMan]

Fine in that case just take some bloody assassin levels, make a list and start killing you some wizards.

[Mewtarthio]

Man you all are thinking about this the wrong way. Sure short term casting spells and scaring people great idea, long term how ever these things do not force people to go back to work. The whole rebellion thing works fine you just have to stop having all the commoner stop working in any way to effect the upper class.

As I posted above: Lesser geas can force the peasants to get back to work. Just come up with a quota of goods you expect them to produce in the next five-to-ten years and place them under a geas that states, "You must provide [government name] with [quota] sometime within the next [time period], broken up however you wish." By the time they fulfill the geas, they'll have forgotten all about revolution.

Depending on the Dungeon Master and game setting, of course.

The PCs are level 12-15. At that level, you've got enough magical power floating around out there to either control the populace or replace a good portion of them.

----------

You know, I've got an interesting question: How would we have responded if the players had posted this scenario? In other words: What should the players be doing to ensure success?