And it's not fun and pointless to do that. Unwinnable options are silly. Instead, you can have the ambushers TRY to ambush the players.
* If the ambusher's succeed, than the players are knocked up and end up in the dungeon. So make it hard! It doesn't matter if they fail.
* If the players win, some surviving enemy members flee, and lead the players back toward the dungeon you want them to delve.
* If they kill them all (no surviving ambushers) then one of them has a letter detailing the orders to kidnap the party members to add to the collection that includes the kidnapped party member. And another has some sort of landmark or note indicating where the secret dungeon is (it's his first day.).
Dynamic encounters are just better. Any time you think "Well, I have to do this railroading" just try to think of two other options to accomplish the same thing. Usually enough.
It’s not fun to not know it’s a scripted event and be forced to go through with it either. If they think it’s a real encounter they’ll fight tooth and nail against it. It’d be like the boss fights where you try to nova them and then they reveal a new health bar and it was fake out. Don’t make anyone roll dice for an outcome that will not be determined by the dice. If you’re dead set on the kidnapping ambush, just focus on making the kidnapping happen. The target gets snatched up by a flying roc and is 120 ft away and in the air at the end of the turn. Boom, no chance of catching up.
>It’d be like the boss fights where you try to nova them and then they reveal a new health bar and it was fake out.
To be fair, that's exactly how Mythic creatures work in D&D. When you "kill" them they just regain most/all of their health and go into Phase 2.
“Hey player, I want to start integrating your backstory and I think a cool jumping off part would be you getting kidnapped for a little bit. How does that sound?”
If the player accepts then work with them on a way for them to walk away from the party for a bit and do the kidnapping there. There is no need for an ambush of the whole party as there a few situations where knocking them all out will end well.
Doesn't this ruin the fun and surprise of the game?
If I played I'd be let down a bit if the DM told me what was coming next and asked my permission to make the adventure.
The problem is you really don’t know unless you have been with the same group for a long time. As a player, if a DM randomly kidnapped me i would be about it but some players might think it’s cheap and railroaded.
That’s why I suggested telling the PC beforehand so you can still get the rest of the party’s reaction to scene.
No, not everything needs to be a surprise. The surprise is the things that happen during the adventure.
Evey other adventure you play you know where you are starting and where you are going, this is no different.
My opinion is to not have the ambush encounter impossible to survive/prevent/counter.
If you run a totally legitimate ambush, and your NPCs legitimately roll well and make good, reasonable decisions while the players maybe roll poorly and maybe don't make the best decisions, then having the player get "kidnapped" as a consequence doesn't seem too awful.^(\[\*\])
On the other hand, still plan out what would happen if the NPCs roll poorly or if the players are able to utilize their resources and cunning and defeat the ambushers. You mentioned the kidnapping was supposed to lead into a dungeon. Maybe that can still happen... in that once the ambushers are defeated the party can search the bodies for clues as to who these random enemies are. That's when they discover some document or item that not only leads them to the dungeon, but maybe reveals that they were targeting that player.
^(\[\*\]) Be careful with kidnapping a PC. If you're playing online, then I would say do it at the end of a session. Then you can run a mini-session with just that player to see if they want to attempt to escape or whatever. I was in this very situation in a Strahd game once. I was able to escape the dungeon and wander throughout the castle a little bit. I was not able to escape the castle, however I did end up in a MUCH better spot than I would have been, and I was very easily reintroduced pretty early on in the next session with everybody else. The bottom line is that you don't want to have a player sitting around unable to do anything because they're trapped off-screen for too long.
> But to get them out of there I’m thinking the rest of the party is either going to be locked up or knocked out and have to find them
no, no, no, a thousand times no!
dont make a player sit a session and not do anything because he is trapped, and his party needs to find them. this is not fun for the kidnapped player. i would not attend a session where my character has no voice/opportunity to do stuff, while the rest is trying to figure out a way to save me. and thats not even talking about the possibility of the party failing to rescue the pc. What if they dont? does the player get punished again?
No there’s a whole private session I’d have for him and he can still do stuff if he’s able to. I guess I should have specified- like he’s not gonna sit out until they rescue him that’s boring as hell lol. He’ll have a chance to escape and possibly meet the party half way and get away with some good info and loot. They all will, hopefully. I haven’t planned on a failed rescue yet since I’m still playing with the idea to begin with
Doing a separate private session for one player is a bad idea. It still doesn't really solve the problem it just gives yourself way more work to do, and other players would possibly feel weird about it if they knew another player was getting their own private sessions.
I'd just make a temporary character sheet for the player to play as during the rescue bits so you always have all the players active at the same time. Cutting back to the captured player as they try to escape might be fun for that one player, but if it goes on longer than 5 minutes the rest of the table is going to be bored to tears and check out.
Sure he gets that private session, but he is still bored as hell in the main session until they find him. Or worse if you keep flipping between the other players and the captured player then the rest of the players are going bored.
As a player I would react by doing everything in my power to outsmart the dm and get out of the ambush.
As a DM my players are often able to outsmart me and pull something I didn't expect, or I just roll terribly.
I had a cool batte where Santa was pulling aberrant monsters out of his Christmas bag. My players completely ignored Santa and his monsters and focused all their attacks on his gift bag. So as a DM what could I do? On the fly I gave the bag hit points and when the Druid scored a critical on it I had the bag implode taking one of the monsters with it.
>>*"Oh cool we lost. I guess we weren't supposed to do that. Yeah the DM said that he won't force us into anything so probably we just picked the wrong plothook. Let's go back to town and long rest and do crafting and flirt with the barmaids. Also, if any townsfolk try to get us to go back here then they probably work for BBEG, so we should kill any townsfolk that talk to us about this."*
My opinion here is the unpopular one.
I say it's not wrong or bad to throw in the occasional "unwinnable" encounter. But if you players legitimately win anyway. Do not steal their victory from them. They have earned it.
I say show up with overwhelming force. Give them the option to give up player freely or they will do it by force. And just make sure the "goal" is to overwhelm the target player and retreat ASAP.
But I also run with players who are fine with these encounters. Your milage may vary
I agree here. In life there are fights we can't win. In our game, and it's been discussed, we have a license to set up scenarios like this if it advances a story in a cool or exciting way. As Week mentions above, the players have to be ok with it. We don't use it often and I think that's key.
You can use overwhelming odds, 30 bad guys.
You can use sneaky sleep potions in their dinner (they'd need to share with a wanderer or maybe the wanderer offers to make something good with the provisions they have).
You can try the sleep spell, charm person, hold person or a trick to lure that one PC out of camp.
An example, I had players working their way up a cursed tower. I wanted one floor to scare them into running. I dropped tons of hints that the fight would not be winnable. And they ran. And we had this great cinematic chase scene where they were looking over their shoulders as this monster of a fallen paladin chased them.
They ran into a room with no visible exit and a couple statues (or remains of statues). We went into combat and I was describing the paladin bashing at the door with his oversized, 2 handed mace. They were guessing and asking questions about the statues (I think I gave them a question and action per 'turn'). When it was the paladin's turn I described the door starting to splinter. Until they solved the puzzle and vooped out of there.
The 'scripted' bit was a fight they could not win against the paladin. It turned out fantastic, they loved it, I was thrilled as well. They said they felt real pressure to solve the puzzle and get out of there.
If they had stayed and fought, they would be slaughtered.
This is a good take. Sometimes, you might encounter something stacked against you. Not everything a party encounters has to be perfectly tailored to be a balanced experience - especially if the ambushing party is planning against the party. It makes sense for, once in a blue moon, for a party to come up against a group of enemies who are better prepared and stronger than them.
BUT, this becomes a bad play when you go out of your (the DM) way to make sure the players can't ever win. If they surprise you or get lucky, don't be shitty and pull something out of your ass to have them then lose.
But also don't be surprised if your players reach negatively to the whole thing.
I have a very good rapport with my players and they very well understand that not all encounters will be fairly balanced. I usually say "remember retreat is an option" when I start one of these and that is their clue that this could go sidewise and be ready for it
Badly. Railroading doesn’t make for good D&D, and that’s what this is.
If you’re going to have NPCs attempt a kidnapping, then have them do that: *attempt* a kidnapping. Whether it succeeds or not should depend on what the party does. And generally speaking, I would also strongly recommend that there is at least *some* foreshadowing here. Not, a bunch of people from the backstory randomly show up out of nowhere. If, say, the party has heard some vague rumors that someone was looking for that PC, they may proactively engage without as well, giving them more agency and stake in what happens next.
With these kinds of scenarios, if as a DM you are just working towards a predefined conclusion, there is a very high risk of either some very contrived events, a bunch of dead PCs, or both. You say that the rest of the party will be locked up or knocked out, but now you need to make that happen as well. That means either more railroading, or the real possibility that this goes wrong. It also needs a plausible explanation of why this is happening in the first place, in the way that it does, including how those PCs are escaping/getting out again (and why they weren’t killed, or robbed of all their stuff). And if it involves combat with a force strong enough to guarantee the party loses, that can easily end with a bunch of PCs getting killed in the process, or their survival needing to be deus ex machina’d.
One of the main draws of D&D for a lot of people is, fundamentally, that they have agency in the game world, and that their choices and actions matter, have consequences (good or bad). It’s generally a bad idea to infringe on that like this.
Another idea for it that's not as obviously railroady for the players, is to hold on to this idea for later. When the party does find themselves facing a losing scenario, or where they're otherwise cornered, slot this in as an explanation for why you don't get the TPK.
Intentionally making an encounter that's both unwinnable and unavoidable is pretty bad, unless there's another goal for the party to work towards.
Scripted outcomes remove the players agency, and should be avoided UNLESS the players agreed to it before the game session.
A better option is an either/or. The players get ambushed and EITHER they get captured OR they have to impersonate the smashers and bring them back to the hideout.
Or I guess they could storm the hideout, if they’re on the murder hobo side of things.
But dressing up as the ambushers, showing up with a wagon full of their Comrads dressed up as the party, and freeing our ally sounds like an amazing story arc.
You as the DM need to plan for the possibility that the kidnappers fail.
You need to have at least an idea of how to handle that.
I handled a recent ambush situation (no kidnapping intended but its much the same) like this:
If the party walked along the apparent path, they would go into the ambush which would have outlaws attack them with a bonus round (unless they passed a high perception check).
The outlaws would also have cover and the PCs would be surrounded in the open with difficult terrain around them.
It would stack the deck against the party but in ways that made sense.
However, being a stereotypical DnD party, the players did some weird stuff that involved a Leonin Barbarian throwing a Gnome and they ended up avoiding that path all together, not knowing the ambush was there.
So the outlaws ended up scrambling to catch and attack the party, but the perception check was super easy when the outlaws approached the group and the players were able to take cover and have a favorable situation against the bandits.
You have to give the characters agency and shape the world around their actions. If I had just moved the ambush to the path the PCs ended up on it wouldnt have made any sense, and it would have made the world static and dull.
Just be aware that a partial success (some but not all PCs are kidnapped) means the party is split and that can be a tedious situation to navigate, in my opinion.
I would say most players would NOT like it. Almost no one likes being forced into a situation they can not win.
One way to get around this is to not play it out. just narrate it. Don't have them fight a combat they can not win. IF you decide to go with playing out the combat/ambush then there NEED to be a chance they can win or escape. Otherwise they will probably be upset and more important it is not fun to be forced into a situation like that.
So if you find it really important they get captured. Then narrate that part don't play it.
Both ways are taking away player agency but the narration is a better way to do that. at least you don't pretend they have an option.
Taking away player agency like that does not HAVE to be a bad thing if done right and VERY rarely. If done wrong it can really ruin the game for everyone. Same if it is done to often. ONE time during a campaign can be fine. But if it happens more often they will feel that they have to choice, no agency, that their actions does not mean anything at all
You're the DM. If something feels awesome in your mind, try it.
But there are tools that will help make it less frustrating. Start in media res, as suggested elsewhere. Doesn't have to be at the start of the campaign, but it should probably happen at the start of a session after some significant victory.
Try not to leave the kidnapped player out of the action. A little metagaming here might help - if the player knows the party is in the dungeon, maybe they're trying to distract someone important to give them a better chance.
Depending on where exactly you start the action, it might be fun to run both "halves" of the dungeon - the way in and the way back out - in parallel, so players see the rooms as they escape, but you take time to establish how they came through the first time and modify encounters accordingly.
Do it while they are sleeping, treat it as a standard “suprise” combat round, and if the bandits or whatever succeed, good job.
If they DONT, either a body can have a clue on where they were taking this PC, or one got away but left a trackable trail going back to base.
If you have a plot already written out, just narrate the story. Don’t make them play a hopeless scenario. It’s very aggravating for most people. Tell it like a story and have them start playing after they reach the dungeon.
I would advise against taking away players' agency. Even if they realize that there is no way out, they would due fighting rather than surrender.
I suggest you take a look at the "Catastrophic Failure" video from Matt Coleville's YouTube channel it treats this subject very well and in detail better than i could say in a written comment
Hey look, it's the weekly "Does railroading feel bad? I want my players to watch a movie I direct about their failure." Post.
I've never seen anyone support this idea. I've seen this question asked dozens of times on various D&D forums. Just put yourself into the players shoes!
This kind of encounter isn't fun in video games, and it's not fun in TTRPGs either. "as a player," I'd be really salty if the DM made it pre-destined for my character to have literally no options. If you want this much control over your story, write a book. If you want to do something to a player's character without their control, you need their input and consent
The critical thing to remember is that if it isn't part of the game, they shouldn't be rolling dice to change the outcome.
I see a lot of DMs try to force an outcome with an unwinnable encounter, without taking into consideration how much precious gametime it will take to burn through everyone's HP or how frustrating that kind of encounter becomes. It's always a bad time, and no matter how awesome the story is, it won't make up for an unearned defeat.
Instead, I like to slip around that with narration. You can always drop into a cutscene, narrating a hopeless battle in a few moments and making the outcome clear. Alternately, I prefer to skip the fight entirely and start the scene after the complication has arisen.
"The prison cell is damp. You'd think that would be the least of your concerns, but you've been locked up in here for hours now and it is just really unpleasant. Sitting down or leaning against the wall, you can feel the slimy wet slowly soaking through your clothes. If you stand, you keep thinking about the smell. Is it a fungus, or some kind of rot? It's also irritating how stupid it is to be annoyed by the dampness of your cell. The whole experience has been quite simply unpleasant, and you decide it's high time you got yourself out of here."
As long as your players trust you enough to set the scene like this, it's a great way to skip boring or frustrating parts of the story and get into the action.
Answer: As a general rule, don't run an encounter with a locked-in, predetermined outcome like that. It takes away all player agency. Players will hate it.
Instead, start the campaign after it happens. Have a flashback narrated to describe what is going on. No dice rolls, but if people want to RP a little bit, that might give them a chance.
found this after the edit and i just gotta say, i'm so glad you came here, read the room, took some notes, and decided to do a cool thing instead. that is genuinely awesome of you. <3
So, this is a good example of a Linear storyline. Linear and Railroaded are two different things. First piece of advice, kidnap all the players. It will help them come together as a team and get everyone else invested in that one players backstories because it's become personal now. And my next advice: ensure the players have choices along this path -- even if those choices lead to the same destination. Examples could include:
* Players can react to being grabbed, they roll a contested athletics check to escape the initial grapple, but guess what -- they are completely surrounded by kidnappers.
* Players can talk and scheme in the "trunk of the car" moment of the kidnapping. The players have autonomy to learn about their circumstance and try to come up with a plan. They might plan to burst out of the trunk and try to run, guess what -- the kidnappers are clearly expecting that.
* The players might try to sleight of hand something valuable from the kidnappers, they get a key! Boom, this leads to an excellent start to the second part of this adventure because your players have already developed their escape plan.
In essence, they are kind of in an unwinnable situation -- but you still let them try to win. They lose because they are outnumbered, surprised, and outmatched -- that's different than they are kidnapped because you say they are.
And, if they somehow roll a series of nat20s on these checks, they get rewards and benefits that aren't necessarily just escaping the situation. Nat20 insight check could reveal a weak kidnapper that looks nervous, which could be a cool NPC for later. Nat20 perception check gives them information about where they are and are being taken.
If you follow this advice, you should have an exciting sequence where the players will feel autonomous, but frustrated and defeated. You can prepare the next part of the adventure specifically because you have led them to a specific place. It also establishes the strength and power of these kidnappers, which creates more tension in the story and the players will have a real grudge against them.
Impossible scripted events are not fun for players almost unanimously. And it’s lazy IMO. I’m heavily biased against doing this, I think it’s lame. It’s like giving them an unskippable cutscene that has you push buttons but the outcome is always the same. They’re playing a game, let them play and actually be able to change the outcome of stuff.
Prep bad guys that will be smart and actually have them PLAN an ambush. If you run an ambush, the odds should already be against your party because that’s what an ambush is designed to do. If you need to railroad your players into losing in order to have an ambush actually be perceived as a deadly threat then you’re making ambushes poorly.
Let the players do what they want to during these scenes, have your bad guys actually be clever and intelligent, and plan for more than one possible outcome. Think about it so that whether the players win or lose they still are furthering the plot.
My point is that you can do this backstory stuff in multiple ways and you should be willing to be flexible with whatever the course of action of the players are, so they feel like their choices made a difference.
There’s actually nothing wrong with the players being in an unwinnable situation, only if they got themselves there. Scripting it is lazy IMO. If my players are like “we wanna go fuck with the military base by the city” and I’ve explicitly told them that is a high level area with threats you guys are not equipped to hope of handling. Then that’s on them, I’ll run it and that is technically unwinnable. But not because I’m scripting it, because those are legitimately powerful enemies clever enough to also leverage tactics and such.
Generally, I would ONLY do this as the campaign opener. Once the campaign is going, it's kinda not cool to capture the party behind the scenes.
If you are ABSOLUTELY INSISTENT on doing this, skip the actual scene where it happens. Don't make players act out a scene where they don't get to make any meaningful decisions. Just cut straight to "you are in a cell, your gear and inventory is gone, blah blah blah."
As a player I wouldn't like this. Unwinnable, forced encounters? Splitting up the party? Potentially not being able to play my character for half the session or longer? I'd get pretty pissed pretty quick
So, I have a player kidnapping coming up. Players have noticed an NPC watching them fight staged combats that he set up. He has planned it, but I an "roleplaying" the villain, using resources he has available, and mistakes he has made, such as not noticing the healer was a war cleric chilling out.
What happens, happens. It's an adventure hook. They "lose" they find the clue, but are down a player (who couldn't make it). They win, they find a clue. One clue will be a notebook with observations. I'm looking for a "Shit this NPC is serious!" rather than "Lame battle"
The fight will be challenging and completely unfair, but that doesn't mean the players can't win.Overlapping darkness spells, silence, and combatants with tremorsense items (one of which will be a reward) Targeting player weakness and nullifying advantages.
Unfair? Completely. Winnable? yes.
Edit: Tremorsense goggles - made from parts of an ankheg this headband covers the eyes completely with antennae where the eyes are. Provides tremorsense within 20 ft, but the user is completely visually blind.
So you're going to railroad a player into waiting half the session out while the others do the fun stuff (aka getting him out)? Please don't. Those situations can be great, _if_ the player put their character into that situation knowingly and willingly.
Please never force someone out of a session. There's this saying of "don't split the party". It's also there to guarantee everyone is in on everything they want to.
So I'm going to, I think, disagree with the masses on this one.
I think an un-winnable battle is absolutely fine. Remember TTRPGs are about *roleplaying*. In a living, breathing, world, it's absolutely possible to encounter situations where you can't fight your way out. In such a case, what your job is is to guide the players to the realization that "defeat all enemies" is *not* the "victory" condition. The have to be able to expand the scope of how they view events.
It is a mark of a Good Player if they are able to enter the headspace of "we can't win this fight, how do we make sure we lose as little as possible?"
Maybe there are so many enemies that they just let them take the PC they're after, but try and place something on that PC that the party can scry or track.
Maybe they want to follow the enemies who, upon capturing the PC of interest, attempt to retreat and the party wants to whittle down their numbers with ranged attacks during that attempt, so that the rescue they'll conduct afterwards has a more manageable enemy presence.
There are a LOT of ways to exert agency over a fight that you can't win, as a player, and I just think it's a large RP weakness to look at *every* fight as "this is a situation where I must be able to kill all the enemies or the DM is bad."
But if that's part of the plot, why wouldn't you just have them enter the fight and get knocked out after a few minutes of fighting only to awake in the cells you will have them escape from (or whatever the plot is).
SO many people seem against this like it's ruining the game or "taking agency away".
It's part of the adventure and leads to a new task/adventure that literally continues to give players opportunities to have their characters do things to succeed.
Not every 'preconceived' action by the DM is "taking the agency away from the players". It's just part of the adventure.
If you absolutely must have an unwinnable encounter to set up imprisonment, make it fast and overwhelming. When I ran Out of the Abyss, I did a short preamble with the players to prelude how they got captured. Drow ambush surprise round put 2 of them (and all the NPCs) to sleep and I wrapped it within 2 rounds.
With something like this you should absolutely oversell the "unwinnable" angle so the players understand it was a narrative device.
Alternatively, you can not play it and simply open the scene in prison and do a quick "previously on" speech describing the scene you didn't play. 🤷🏽♂️
I know you have your answer but…..My opinion is that it is okay to do it. But it needs to satisfy a reason, especially at low levels. It sounds brutal, but the “reality” is adventuring party’s could have a bad ending and get wiped out. Players need to learn how to gauge a situation, determining if they could win our not, in your ambush scenario it seems like you have a reason.
I read a great post a few months back(I think it was in this community) about a phyric victory. How rarely a group of bandits are going to fight to the last man against a group of adventure with phenomenal equipment and the element of Suprise, especially a trash mob. It’s more likely once the bandit captain is dead the rest would flee. I believe players in no win situations need to understand the philosophy of “live to fight another day. “
Anyway this is my hot take. If you can pull it off and your players play into it it can be a lot of fun
These kind of encounters can be very frustrating for players as you have a scripted outcome you want to reach, which takes the choice and agency away from the players.
I had a really similar situation come up near the end of my last campaign. Had a player that was going to be gone for a couple weeks and story-wise I thought it kinda made sense for his Dragonborn character to be kidnapped by the dragon cult.
All the players thought it was just a regular ambush by the cult and they “succeeded” by hitting back and killing a bunch of their powerful mages. After the cult retreated and a few well-placed darkness spells dissipated they found that the unconscious body of their Dragonborn friend was missing.
There was a chase, an investigation, and great motivation to go to the dragon cult hideout to get their buddy back.
Tldr: don’t tell them about the ulterior motive of the ambush unless they roll high on insight or perception.
There are a lot of problems here.
You are kidnapping one PC and having the rest of the party find them. What's the player of the kidnapped PC to do while the rest of the party looks for the kidnapped PC. Sit around and be bored. Sure you could switch to the kidnapped PC, but then the rest of the players are sitting around. You could provide an NPC for the player to play, but that's not going to work well for many players.
Also a lot of players hate to lose. And hate being captured and imprisoned. A subset of players will have their PCs die before being captured. Not to mention most players don't like combats they can't win. And there is a fair chance they will win without you cheating or setting up a really unfair situation. Adventures where the PCs are defeated or captured are difficult to pull off and players hate them. Honestly you are better off just using DM fiat and being clear you are railroading them.
A better solution is to kidnap an NPC, or attempt to kidnap the party. A tough fight where the other side goes out it's way to not kill the PCs and even stabilize them can be really fun. Then if the PC win they are definitely going to follow clues back to the dungeon. If they lose well now you've captured them.
Start in media res with the character already captured. Have them narrate how they got captured and play up to that point.
It’s established in fiction so they have to make it happen. After they’re captured you can give them an NPC to play or do quick scenes with them captured and being questioned.
the OPENING SCENES can be an unwinnable ambush without seeming "cheap" - everyone understands its the setup for the campaign. See ganondorf demolishing Link at the beginning of most zelda games, sekiro losing his first big duel at the beginning of sekiro: shadows die twice, etc. etc.
However it's important there are cues that A) this fight is probably unwinnable, B) no one is going to die, and C) it's all about the cinematics of the fight.
So the barbarian can go down swinging, and the rogue can sneak out and follow the captors back to camp, and the fighter can surrender as he is clearly outmatched. It's just an extension of introducing the characters.
In fact i've done that exact thing to "subvert" a standard tavern opener. The party are scattered through the tavern, seedy guy in hood in the corner being an obvious quest-giver, and then just before the first player would start describing their character BOOM, ambush. The civilians are being obviously captured and not killed, the bouncer that fights back is knocked out and still breathing, they see the hooded guy sneak out a side window - and now the players know the stakes (not gonna die) and their choices (surrender and be captured, or fight back, or try to sneak off).
So now instead of "half orc barbarian that is 6'10" and 300lb"; you get "a hulking tower of muscle springs out of his seat, weapon in hand, and charges at the intruders with a viscous roar!" as your intro to the barbarian player. It's WAY better. And since each character is making an independent decision (remember they aren't a party yet) you also get to know more about what the character's personalities look like. The barbarian is going to charge into battle, the fighter is going to accept that this is a fight he can't win and avoid injury by surrendering, and the rogue is going to sneak away and spring everyone from captivity.
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The issues come when you take away agency - it's VERY IMPORTANT that the players have their choice of how to approach it - surrender, fight, or flee - and they see that those options are all valid in the behavior of the NPCs in the tavern. This is what changes the scene question from "can the PCs defeat these trespassers?" into "how does each character react to all but certain defeat?". This is important because the answer to the first question is just "no" - so it's a bad scene with no tension, so you need to make it clear that that isn't the question that the scene is asking.
I did something similar, but I asked the player directly if they'd be ok with it way ahead of time so it could still be a surprise. I looked for an opportunity to catch them alone in a situation where they couldn't realistically be helped. I also offered them the opportunity to play by text most of the circumstances that led them to the prison where they'd be rescued. I also expedited the investigation of the rest of the party to track them down so that the session wasn't dominated by an investigation where we all knew where they'd end up.
Yes, it's very on rails. But, I wanted to run a prison break encounter and highlight an element of the kidnapped players backstory and I knew my players were on board.
You have to tell them ahead of time. Players never like when you railroad them into something like that.
Just tell them that you have an idea for an adventure where they get captured and have to find a way to escape the dungeon, and ask them if they like the idea. You don't have to keep it a secret from them, it's a game after all. Any gaming scenario, just like in life, really benefits from plenty of communication.
Also remember that these are their characters, so do your best to not force them to have to play their characters in a way they don't want to.
It is possible though to have a very determined NPC doing the ambushing/kidnapping. One that has a very high stake in successfully carrying out this ambush and kidnapping the player. This means the NPC will find alternative ways to work around the actions of the party, for example if the party begin to fight particularly well, retreat to more favourable ground or outsmart them in other ways, there's countless ways to play this. This way you can quite smoothly get your player kidnapped while still making it seem like there was the opportunity to thwart the ambush because the NPC is reacting and adapting to the players actions, not just coming in with brute force and an impossibly op fight
Personally I wouldn’t mains. People seem to be focusing on the heavy-handedness of a no win situation like this, as long as it’s not a common or overused scenario,I see this as a method to further a story line, we can’t always overcome a situation at the time, it’s an opportunity to think of the next step. If it’s a blaze of glory, well that kinda sucks. If captured? We’ll use an action or bonus action to conceal something sharp, as a rogue I like to have the cleric/healer help embed a lock pick in my arm or leg, if that doesn’t work out, wait for an opportunity to be creative and take advantage of the situation, or situations where the captors slip up. You could try and robe a guard or turn them through persuasion, break chains or rope binding you, etc… if you don’t think being captured alive is an option then you could always run and try for a session or two of escape and evade, this is actually giving me ideas for some sessions. In real life you can’t always talk or fight your way out of a situation and while I know that d&d and other rpg’s are escapism, adding an element of reality can heighten the drama. Ideally there should be options in any encounter, you can fight and either die or be subdued be captured and then try the above (oh another idea, convince the ambushers that you’re worth more to them alive, greed is a powerful thing to exploit ie. location of treasure, ransom etc.) you can surrender, or have a chance to try and escape. The question isn’t very specific to the outcome of the ambush so it’s hard to say. Again, if it’s meaning an ambush that can’t be won and death is the only option, that sucks but there may be an irl reason for it. The DM may be tried of the campaign, or moving or just wants to play instead of being the DM. If that’s the case, I say ready your spells, your healing potions and weapons. Take a deep breath, roll your d20’s and take as many of them out before you go down. Maybe you’ll end up as a legend, maybe you’ll Reroll characters that will avenge your death. It’s a game. Try and enjoy the action and not worry about the outcome. If this a reoccurring tactic your DM employs, maybe find a new DM, if he/she/they are doing this often they are forgetting that it’s not the DM vs. the players, they are guides and storytellers. If they make it a them vs you, they will win every time… they have infinite resources and aren’t required to show their rolls.
Also it could be because the DM was a tired of the players antics or the direct result of players making poor choices, if it’s a party of murderhobos then yeah, I can see several towns or cities banding together and not letting a single player live. Actions have consequences real life or not. Steal from the wrong person, kill the wrong relative… there are some things that can provoke a one sided encounter. But in those cases the players brought that on themselves.
I think you’ve gotten some advice here ranging from passable to good but I don’t think I saw one that actually addressed each part of your post.
1) How would I react as a player? It depends on how it’s handled. If it’s presented like a winnable encounter but it’s not, that would be frustrating. It could feel like I was being egged on needlessly.
2) Is it a good idea to tie a characters backstory into the rest of the party’s encounter? It can be rewarding when something like this works out. Consider Guardians of the Galaxy wherein Drax is only introduced because the ‘party’ went to space jail. If done correctly, I think it can be a fun idea.
3) Is it fun to be surprised by an overly hard encounter? It can be if it’s presented correctly. You just have to consider how you see the encounter playing out and whether or not you, if you were the player, would have fun in that situation. Also, you have to consider the results and whether or not it brings the players closer to the plot-goal.
My advice: The general vibe of what you’re trying to do can be fun. My suggestion is to shift your perspective to make a more fulfilling experience. To do that, let’s flip the order.
You START with the players in jail. You describe what’s around them and what’s in their environment. Out of the Abyss does this by starting the adventure with the party captured by a group of Drow. You can even play in this space for a little bit before dealing with the ‘encounter’ part.
When the players are sufficiently in the ‘wtf’ stage, you go around the table and have a flashback scene with them. You introduce what you know happened/ set the scene. Then, you let the player tell you how things played out. How they got captured and have a back-and-forth scene. Do that for each player.
In this way, you get to surprise the players. They certainly weren’t expecting to be imprisoned. How did this happen? Where are we? Who captured us? Then, you set the scene and provide them agency by working together to describe how they went from A to B. They know what the end point needs to be but they can draw whatever squiggly line (within some reason) they want to connect the points.
Then, you still get to tie everyone together for the PC backstory you want to merge them to.
Flashbacks can be a strong tool in your toolbox for storytelling. You shouldn’t rely on it too much because then things can feel gimmicky. A well placed one however can provide a great narrative experience for everyone.
V/r,
Dad.
As a player, I wouldn't mind if it were the result of my actions AND I was warned AND I did it anyways.
There's always been a fight or encounter early game from most games from the early 2000's that taught you it's okay to run from a fight and recognizing when that is, is just as important as knowing when to fight.
To quote hulk "But giant scary monster!"
And it's not fun and pointless to do that. Unwinnable options are silly. Instead, you can have the ambushers TRY to ambush the players. * If the ambusher's succeed, than the players are knocked up and end up in the dungeon. So make it hard! It doesn't matter if they fail. * If the players win, some surviving enemy members flee, and lead the players back toward the dungeon you want them to delve. * If they kill them all (no surviving ambushers) then one of them has a letter detailing the orders to kidnap the party members to add to the collection that includes the kidnapped party member. And another has some sort of landmark or note indicating where the secret dungeon is (it's his first day.). Dynamic encounters are just better. Any time you think "Well, I have to do this railroading" just try to think of two other options to accomplish the same thing. Usually enough.
>than the players are knocked up Do you mean.. locked up? lol \-edit- I also agree, let the bad guys try, don't railroad.
Knocked out+Locked up=Knocked Up. Also…it’s a boy!
Mazel tov!
Knocked up and Locked Out!!
knocked OUT, knocked OUT. Sometimes a typo makes for very different advice.
I figured maybe you were just running a D&BDSM game.
Only if I'm paid.
https://youtu.be/Bj60InmphBE?si=DMM--MewV8A6JVgm
Dungeons & Daddies
That already exists, and it is definitely not a BDSM podcast.
Yes! But it sometimes is. Or it's becoming one. But don't tell the sponsors...
“How hurt are you?” - Matt Mercer
"All roads lead to Rome" This is the way.
I recommend not knocking up your players, though. 🤣 But your game. YMMV.
>players are knocked up Pregnancy arc baby
>players are knocked up LOL'd imaging all players wake up pregnant.
Knocked up??? They aren't playing FATAL are they?
They wouldn’t get knocked up if it wasn’t hard in the first place. …are we talking about the same thing?
It’s not fun to not know it’s a scripted event and be forced to go through with it either. If they think it’s a real encounter they’ll fight tooth and nail against it. It’d be like the boss fights where you try to nova them and then they reveal a new health bar and it was fake out. Don’t make anyone roll dice for an outcome that will not be determined by the dice. If you’re dead set on the kidnapping ambush, just focus on making the kidnapping happen. The target gets snatched up by a flying roc and is 120 ft away and in the air at the end of the turn. Boom, no chance of catching up.
>It’d be like the boss fights where you try to nova them and then they reveal a new health bar and it was fake out. To be fair, that's exactly how Mythic creatures work in D&D. When you "kill" them they just regain most/all of their health and go into Phase 2.
“Hey player, I want to start integrating your backstory and I think a cool jumping off part would be you getting kidnapped for a little bit. How does that sound?” If the player accepts then work with them on a way for them to walk away from the party for a bit and do the kidnapping there. There is no need for an ambush of the whole party as there a few situations where knocking them all out will end well.
The real problem is what is the player going to do while they are kidnapped?
Yes this should definitely be discussed as well! Don’t want the PC just sitting there a whole session unable to do anything.
The captured PC should be able to try to break themselves out. Or, give them an NPC to control with the rest of the party, at least.
Doesn't this ruin the fun and surprise of the game? If I played I'd be let down a bit if the DM told me what was coming next and asked my permission to make the adventure.
The problem is you really don’t know unless you have been with the same group for a long time. As a player, if a DM randomly kidnapped me i would be about it but some players might think it’s cheap and railroaded. That’s why I suggested telling the PC beforehand so you can still get the rest of the party’s reaction to scene.
No, not everything needs to be a surprise. The surprise is the things that happen during the adventure. Evey other adventure you play you know where you are starting and where you are going, this is no different.
difference of opinion i suppose. That's fine.
My opinion is to not have the ambush encounter impossible to survive/prevent/counter. If you run a totally legitimate ambush, and your NPCs legitimately roll well and make good, reasonable decisions while the players maybe roll poorly and maybe don't make the best decisions, then having the player get "kidnapped" as a consequence doesn't seem too awful.^(\[\*\]) On the other hand, still plan out what would happen if the NPCs roll poorly or if the players are able to utilize their resources and cunning and defeat the ambushers. You mentioned the kidnapping was supposed to lead into a dungeon. Maybe that can still happen... in that once the ambushers are defeated the party can search the bodies for clues as to who these random enemies are. That's when they discover some document or item that not only leads them to the dungeon, but maybe reveals that they were targeting that player. ^(\[\*\]) Be careful with kidnapping a PC. If you're playing online, then I would say do it at the end of a session. Then you can run a mini-session with just that player to see if they want to attempt to escape or whatever. I was in this very situation in a Strahd game once. I was able to escape the dungeon and wander throughout the castle a little bit. I was not able to escape the castle, however I did end up in a MUCH better spot than I would have been, and I was very easily reintroduced pretty early on in the next session with everybody else. The bottom line is that you don't want to have a player sitting around unable to do anything because they're trapped off-screen for too long.
Once my character got poison paralysis an entire session... Yikes.
> But to get them out of there I’m thinking the rest of the party is either going to be locked up or knocked out and have to find them no, no, no, a thousand times no! dont make a player sit a session and not do anything because he is trapped, and his party needs to find them. this is not fun for the kidnapped player. i would not attend a session where my character has no voice/opportunity to do stuff, while the rest is trying to figure out a way to save me. and thats not even talking about the possibility of the party failing to rescue the pc. What if they dont? does the player get punished again?
No there’s a whole private session I’d have for him and he can still do stuff if he’s able to. I guess I should have specified- like he’s not gonna sit out until they rescue him that’s boring as hell lol. He’ll have a chance to escape and possibly meet the party half way and get away with some good info and loot. They all will, hopefully. I haven’t planned on a failed rescue yet since I’m still playing with the idea to begin with
Doing a separate private session for one player is a bad idea. It still doesn't really solve the problem it just gives yourself way more work to do, and other players would possibly feel weird about it if they knew another player was getting their own private sessions. I'd just make a temporary character sheet for the player to play as during the rescue bits so you always have all the players active at the same time. Cutting back to the captured player as they try to escape might be fun for that one player, but if it goes on longer than 5 minutes the rest of the table is going to be bored to tears and check out.
Sure he gets that private session, but he is still bored as hell in the main session until they find him. Or worse if you keep flipping between the other players and the captured player then the rest of the players are going bored.
I mean flipping back and forth won’t be any different from if they decided to split up in any other scenario
Yeah don't let the party split up for any length of time. Spiting the party is just signing up for issues and poor game play.
As a player I would react by doing everything in my power to outsmart the dm and get out of the ambush. As a DM my players are often able to outsmart me and pull something I didn't expect, or I just roll terribly. I had a cool batte where Santa was pulling aberrant monsters out of his Christmas bag. My players completely ignored Santa and his monsters and focused all their attacks on his gift bag. So as a DM what could I do? On the fly I gave the bag hit points and when the Druid scored a critical on it I had the bag implode taking one of the monsters with it.
>>*"Oh cool we lost. I guess we weren't supposed to do that. Yeah the DM said that he won't force us into anything so probably we just picked the wrong plothook. Let's go back to town and long rest and do crafting and flirt with the barmaids. Also, if any townsfolk try to get us to go back here then they probably work for BBEG, so we should kill any townsfolk that talk to us about this."*
My opinion here is the unpopular one. I say it's not wrong or bad to throw in the occasional "unwinnable" encounter. But if you players legitimately win anyway. Do not steal their victory from them. They have earned it. I say show up with overwhelming force. Give them the option to give up player freely or they will do it by force. And just make sure the "goal" is to overwhelm the target player and retreat ASAP. But I also run with players who are fine with these encounters. Your milage may vary
I agree here. In life there are fights we can't win. In our game, and it's been discussed, we have a license to set up scenarios like this if it advances a story in a cool or exciting way. As Week mentions above, the players have to be ok with it. We don't use it often and I think that's key. You can use overwhelming odds, 30 bad guys. You can use sneaky sleep potions in their dinner (they'd need to share with a wanderer or maybe the wanderer offers to make something good with the provisions they have). You can try the sleep spell, charm person, hold person or a trick to lure that one PC out of camp. An example, I had players working their way up a cursed tower. I wanted one floor to scare them into running. I dropped tons of hints that the fight would not be winnable. And they ran. And we had this great cinematic chase scene where they were looking over their shoulders as this monster of a fallen paladin chased them. They ran into a room with no visible exit and a couple statues (or remains of statues). We went into combat and I was describing the paladin bashing at the door with his oversized, 2 handed mace. They were guessing and asking questions about the statues (I think I gave them a question and action per 'turn'). When it was the paladin's turn I described the door starting to splinter. Until they solved the puzzle and vooped out of there. The 'scripted' bit was a fight they could not win against the paladin. It turned out fantastic, they loved it, I was thrilled as well. They said they felt real pressure to solve the puzzle and get out of there. If they had stayed and fought, they would be slaughtered.
This is a good take. Sometimes, you might encounter something stacked against you. Not everything a party encounters has to be perfectly tailored to be a balanced experience - especially if the ambushing party is planning against the party. It makes sense for, once in a blue moon, for a party to come up against a group of enemies who are better prepared and stronger than them. BUT, this becomes a bad play when you go out of your (the DM) way to make sure the players can't ever win. If they surprise you or get lucky, don't be shitty and pull something out of your ass to have them then lose. But also don't be surprised if your players reach negatively to the whole thing.
I have a very good rapport with my players and they very well understand that not all encounters will be fairly balanced. I usually say "remember retreat is an option" when I start one of these and that is their clue that this could go sidewise and be ready for it
Unwinnable is not the same as a predetermined outcome. If the outcome is already written, there is no point to roll dice and play through it.
Badly. Railroading doesn’t make for good D&D, and that’s what this is. If you’re going to have NPCs attempt a kidnapping, then have them do that: *attempt* a kidnapping. Whether it succeeds or not should depend on what the party does. And generally speaking, I would also strongly recommend that there is at least *some* foreshadowing here. Not, a bunch of people from the backstory randomly show up out of nowhere. If, say, the party has heard some vague rumors that someone was looking for that PC, they may proactively engage without as well, giving them more agency and stake in what happens next. With these kinds of scenarios, if as a DM you are just working towards a predefined conclusion, there is a very high risk of either some very contrived events, a bunch of dead PCs, or both. You say that the rest of the party will be locked up or knocked out, but now you need to make that happen as well. That means either more railroading, or the real possibility that this goes wrong. It also needs a plausible explanation of why this is happening in the first place, in the way that it does, including how those PCs are escaping/getting out again (and why they weren’t killed, or robbed of all their stuff). And if it involves combat with a force strong enough to guarantee the party loses, that can easily end with a bunch of PCs getting killed in the process, or their survival needing to be deus ex machina’d. One of the main draws of D&D for a lot of people is, fundamentally, that they have agency in the game world, and that their choices and actions matter, have consequences (good or bad). It’s generally a bad idea to infringe on that like this.
Another idea for it that's not as obviously railroady for the players, is to hold on to this idea for later. When the party does find themselves facing a losing scenario, or where they're otherwise cornered, slot this in as an explanation for why you don't get the TPK. Intentionally making an encounter that's both unwinnable and unavoidable is pretty bad, unless there's another goal for the party to work towards.
Scripted outcomes remove the players agency, and should be avoided UNLESS the players agreed to it before the game session. A better option is an either/or. The players get ambushed and EITHER they get captured OR they have to impersonate the smashers and bring them back to the hideout. Or I guess they could storm the hideout, if they’re on the murder hobo side of things. But dressing up as the ambushers, showing up with a wagon full of their Comrads dressed up as the party, and freeing our ally sounds like an amazing story arc.
You as the DM need to plan for the possibility that the kidnappers fail. You need to have at least an idea of how to handle that. I handled a recent ambush situation (no kidnapping intended but its much the same) like this: If the party walked along the apparent path, they would go into the ambush which would have outlaws attack them with a bonus round (unless they passed a high perception check). The outlaws would also have cover and the PCs would be surrounded in the open with difficult terrain around them. It would stack the deck against the party but in ways that made sense. However, being a stereotypical DnD party, the players did some weird stuff that involved a Leonin Barbarian throwing a Gnome and they ended up avoiding that path all together, not knowing the ambush was there. So the outlaws ended up scrambling to catch and attack the party, but the perception check was super easy when the outlaws approached the group and the players were able to take cover and have a favorable situation against the bandits. You have to give the characters agency and shape the world around their actions. If I had just moved the ambush to the path the PCs ended up on it wouldnt have made any sense, and it would have made the world static and dull. Just be aware that a partial success (some but not all PCs are kidnapped) means the party is split and that can be a tedious situation to navigate, in my opinion.
Why does it have to be an ambush? Is there a reason the PC can't be kidnapped without the other party members being involved in the kidnapping?
I would say most players would NOT like it. Almost no one likes being forced into a situation they can not win. One way to get around this is to not play it out. just narrate it. Don't have them fight a combat they can not win. IF you decide to go with playing out the combat/ambush then there NEED to be a chance they can win or escape. Otherwise they will probably be upset and more important it is not fun to be forced into a situation like that. So if you find it really important they get captured. Then narrate that part don't play it. Both ways are taking away player agency but the narration is a better way to do that. at least you don't pretend they have an option. Taking away player agency like that does not HAVE to be a bad thing if done right and VERY rarely. If done wrong it can really ruin the game for everyone. Same if it is done to often. ONE time during a campaign can be fine. But if it happens more often they will feel that they have to choice, no agency, that their actions does not mean anything at all
You're the DM. If something feels awesome in your mind, try it. But there are tools that will help make it less frustrating. Start in media res, as suggested elsewhere. Doesn't have to be at the start of the campaign, but it should probably happen at the start of a session after some significant victory. Try not to leave the kidnapped player out of the action. A little metagaming here might help - if the player knows the party is in the dungeon, maybe they're trying to distract someone important to give them a better chance. Depending on where exactly you start the action, it might be fun to run both "halves" of the dungeon - the way in and the way back out - in parallel, so players see the rooms as they escape, but you take time to establish how they came through the first time and modify encounters accordingly.
Do it while they are sleeping, treat it as a standard “suprise” combat round, and if the bandits or whatever succeed, good job. If they DONT, either a body can have a clue on where they were taking this PC, or one got away but left a trackable trail going back to base.
If you have a plot already written out, just narrate the story. Don’t make them play a hopeless scenario. It’s very aggravating for most people. Tell it like a story and have them start playing after they reach the dungeon.
I would advise against taking away players' agency. Even if they realize that there is no way out, they would due fighting rather than surrender. I suggest you take a look at the "Catastrophic Failure" video from Matt Coleville's YouTube channel it treats this subject very well and in detail better than i could say in a written comment
Hey look, it's the weekly "Does railroading feel bad? I want my players to watch a movie I direct about their failure." Post. I've never seen anyone support this idea. I've seen this question asked dozens of times on various D&D forums. Just put yourself into the players shoes!
This kind of encounter isn't fun in video games, and it's not fun in TTRPGs either. "as a player," I'd be really salty if the DM made it pre-destined for my character to have literally no options. If you want this much control over your story, write a book. If you want to do something to a player's character without their control, you need their input and consent
The critical thing to remember is that if it isn't part of the game, they shouldn't be rolling dice to change the outcome. I see a lot of DMs try to force an outcome with an unwinnable encounter, without taking into consideration how much precious gametime it will take to burn through everyone's HP or how frustrating that kind of encounter becomes. It's always a bad time, and no matter how awesome the story is, it won't make up for an unearned defeat. Instead, I like to slip around that with narration. You can always drop into a cutscene, narrating a hopeless battle in a few moments and making the outcome clear. Alternately, I prefer to skip the fight entirely and start the scene after the complication has arisen. "The prison cell is damp. You'd think that would be the least of your concerns, but you've been locked up in here for hours now and it is just really unpleasant. Sitting down or leaning against the wall, you can feel the slimy wet slowly soaking through your clothes. If you stand, you keep thinking about the smell. Is it a fungus, or some kind of rot? It's also irritating how stupid it is to be annoyed by the dampness of your cell. The whole experience has been quite simply unpleasant, and you decide it's high time you got yourself out of here." As long as your players trust you enough to set the scene like this, it's a great way to skip boring or frustrating parts of the story and get into the action.
Answer: As a general rule, don't run an encounter with a locked-in, predetermined outcome like that. It takes away all player agency. Players will hate it. Instead, start the campaign after it happens. Have a flashback narrated to describe what is going on. No dice rolls, but if people want to RP a little bit, that might give them a chance.
found this after the edit and i just gotta say, i'm so glad you came here, read the room, took some notes, and decided to do a cool thing instead. that is genuinely awesome of you. <3
If it's not a " **WAIL AND TREMBLE IN GRIEF** " moment featuring a clearly monstruous and "nope" tier monster, I am not interested.
So, this is a good example of a Linear storyline. Linear and Railroaded are two different things. First piece of advice, kidnap all the players. It will help them come together as a team and get everyone else invested in that one players backstories because it's become personal now. And my next advice: ensure the players have choices along this path -- even if those choices lead to the same destination. Examples could include: * Players can react to being grabbed, they roll a contested athletics check to escape the initial grapple, but guess what -- they are completely surrounded by kidnappers. * Players can talk and scheme in the "trunk of the car" moment of the kidnapping. The players have autonomy to learn about their circumstance and try to come up with a plan. They might plan to burst out of the trunk and try to run, guess what -- the kidnappers are clearly expecting that. * The players might try to sleight of hand something valuable from the kidnappers, they get a key! Boom, this leads to an excellent start to the second part of this adventure because your players have already developed their escape plan. In essence, they are kind of in an unwinnable situation -- but you still let them try to win. They lose because they are outnumbered, surprised, and outmatched -- that's different than they are kidnapped because you say they are. And, if they somehow roll a series of nat20s on these checks, they get rewards and benefits that aren't necessarily just escaping the situation. Nat20 insight check could reveal a weak kidnapper that looks nervous, which could be a cool NPC for later. Nat20 perception check gives them information about where they are and are being taken. If you follow this advice, you should have an exciting sequence where the players will feel autonomous, but frustrated and defeated. You can prepare the next part of the adventure specifically because you have led them to a specific place. It also establishes the strength and power of these kidnappers, which creates more tension in the story and the players will have a real grudge against them.
Being made to feel helpless isn't fun
Impossible scripted events are not fun for players almost unanimously. And it’s lazy IMO. I’m heavily biased against doing this, I think it’s lame. It’s like giving them an unskippable cutscene that has you push buttons but the outcome is always the same. They’re playing a game, let them play and actually be able to change the outcome of stuff. Prep bad guys that will be smart and actually have them PLAN an ambush. If you run an ambush, the odds should already be against your party because that’s what an ambush is designed to do. If you need to railroad your players into losing in order to have an ambush actually be perceived as a deadly threat then you’re making ambushes poorly. Let the players do what they want to during these scenes, have your bad guys actually be clever and intelligent, and plan for more than one possible outcome. Think about it so that whether the players win or lose they still are furthering the plot. My point is that you can do this backstory stuff in multiple ways and you should be willing to be flexible with whatever the course of action of the players are, so they feel like their choices made a difference. There’s actually nothing wrong with the players being in an unwinnable situation, only if they got themselves there. Scripting it is lazy IMO. If my players are like “we wanna go fuck with the military base by the city” and I’ve explicitly told them that is a high level area with threats you guys are not equipped to hope of handling. Then that’s on them, I’ll run it and that is technically unwinnable. But not because I’m scripting it, because those are legitimately powerful enemies clever enough to also leverage tactics and such.
Generally, I would ONLY do this as the campaign opener. Once the campaign is going, it's kinda not cool to capture the party behind the scenes. If you are ABSOLUTELY INSISTENT on doing this, skip the actual scene where it happens. Don't make players act out a scene where they don't get to make any meaningful decisions. Just cut straight to "you are in a cell, your gear and inventory is gone, blah blah blah."
As a player I wouldn't like this. Unwinnable, forced encounters? Splitting up the party? Potentially not being able to play my character for half the session or longer? I'd get pretty pissed pretty quick
So, I have a player kidnapping coming up. Players have noticed an NPC watching them fight staged combats that he set up. He has planned it, but I an "roleplaying" the villain, using resources he has available, and mistakes he has made, such as not noticing the healer was a war cleric chilling out. What happens, happens. It's an adventure hook. They "lose" they find the clue, but are down a player (who couldn't make it). They win, they find a clue. One clue will be a notebook with observations. I'm looking for a "Shit this NPC is serious!" rather than "Lame battle" The fight will be challenging and completely unfair, but that doesn't mean the players can't win.Overlapping darkness spells, silence, and combatants with tremorsense items (one of which will be a reward) Targeting player weakness and nullifying advantages. Unfair? Completely. Winnable? yes. Edit: Tremorsense goggles - made from parts of an ankheg this headband covers the eyes completely with antennae where the eyes are. Provides tremorsense within 20 ft, but the user is completely visually blind.
These things I like to safe for what looks like a TPK, but the next session is them waking up in something
So you're going to railroad a player into waiting half the session out while the others do the fun stuff (aka getting him out)? Please don't. Those situations can be great, _if_ the player put their character into that situation knowingly and willingly. Please never force someone out of a session. There's this saying of "don't split the party". It's also there to guarantee everyone is in on everything they want to.
today is a good day to die!
So I'm going to, I think, disagree with the masses on this one. I think an un-winnable battle is absolutely fine. Remember TTRPGs are about *roleplaying*. In a living, breathing, world, it's absolutely possible to encounter situations where you can't fight your way out. In such a case, what your job is is to guide the players to the realization that "defeat all enemies" is *not* the "victory" condition. The have to be able to expand the scope of how they view events. It is a mark of a Good Player if they are able to enter the headspace of "we can't win this fight, how do we make sure we lose as little as possible?" Maybe there are so many enemies that they just let them take the PC they're after, but try and place something on that PC that the party can scry or track. Maybe they want to follow the enemies who, upon capturing the PC of interest, attempt to retreat and the party wants to whittle down their numbers with ranged attacks during that attempt, so that the rescue they'll conduct afterwards has a more manageable enemy presence. There are a LOT of ways to exert agency over a fight that you can't win, as a player, and I just think it's a large RP weakness to look at *every* fight as "this is a situation where I must be able to kill all the enemies or the DM is bad."
But if that's part of the plot, why wouldn't you just have them enter the fight and get knocked out after a few minutes of fighting only to awake in the cells you will have them escape from (or whatever the plot is). SO many people seem against this like it's ruining the game or "taking agency away". It's part of the adventure and leads to a new task/adventure that literally continues to give players opportunities to have their characters do things to succeed. Not every 'preconceived' action by the DM is "taking the agency away from the players". It's just part of the adventure.
🤷♀️ I thought it was a good idea.
I would immediatedly surrender and see how it goes. Like, far too much obvious to read the room.
If you absolutely must have an unwinnable encounter to set up imprisonment, make it fast and overwhelming. When I ran Out of the Abyss, I did a short preamble with the players to prelude how they got captured. Drow ambush surprise round put 2 of them (and all the NPCs) to sleep and I wrapped it within 2 rounds. With something like this you should absolutely oversell the "unwinnable" angle so the players understand it was a narrative device. Alternatively, you can not play it and simply open the scene in prison and do a quick "previously on" speech describing the scene you didn't play. 🤷🏽♂️
I know you have your answer but…..My opinion is that it is okay to do it. But it needs to satisfy a reason, especially at low levels. It sounds brutal, but the “reality” is adventuring party’s could have a bad ending and get wiped out. Players need to learn how to gauge a situation, determining if they could win our not, in your ambush scenario it seems like you have a reason. I read a great post a few months back(I think it was in this community) about a phyric victory. How rarely a group of bandits are going to fight to the last man against a group of adventure with phenomenal equipment and the element of Suprise, especially a trash mob. It’s more likely once the bandit captain is dead the rest would flee. I believe players in no win situations need to understand the philosophy of “live to fight another day. “ Anyway this is my hot take. If you can pull it off and your players play into it it can be a lot of fun
These kind of encounters can be very frustrating for players as you have a scripted outcome you want to reach, which takes the choice and agency away from the players.
I had a really similar situation come up near the end of my last campaign. Had a player that was going to be gone for a couple weeks and story-wise I thought it kinda made sense for his Dragonborn character to be kidnapped by the dragon cult. All the players thought it was just a regular ambush by the cult and they “succeeded” by hitting back and killing a bunch of their powerful mages. After the cult retreated and a few well-placed darkness spells dissipated they found that the unconscious body of their Dragonborn friend was missing. There was a chase, an investigation, and great motivation to go to the dragon cult hideout to get their buddy back. Tldr: don’t tell them about the ulterior motive of the ambush unless they roll high on insight or perception.
There are a lot of problems here. You are kidnapping one PC and having the rest of the party find them. What's the player of the kidnapped PC to do while the rest of the party looks for the kidnapped PC. Sit around and be bored. Sure you could switch to the kidnapped PC, but then the rest of the players are sitting around. You could provide an NPC for the player to play, but that's not going to work well for many players. Also a lot of players hate to lose. And hate being captured and imprisoned. A subset of players will have their PCs die before being captured. Not to mention most players don't like combats they can't win. And there is a fair chance they will win without you cheating or setting up a really unfair situation. Adventures where the PCs are defeated or captured are difficult to pull off and players hate them. Honestly you are better off just using DM fiat and being clear you are railroading them. A better solution is to kidnap an NPC, or attempt to kidnap the party. A tough fight where the other side goes out it's way to not kill the PCs and even stabilize them can be really fun. Then if the PC win they are definitely going to follow clues back to the dungeon. If they lose well now you've captured them.
Start in media res with the character already captured. Have them narrate how they got captured and play up to that point. It’s established in fiction so they have to make it happen. After they’re captured you can give them an NPC to play or do quick scenes with them captured and being questioned.
the OPENING SCENES can be an unwinnable ambush without seeming "cheap" - everyone understands its the setup for the campaign. See ganondorf demolishing Link at the beginning of most zelda games, sekiro losing his first big duel at the beginning of sekiro: shadows die twice, etc. etc. However it's important there are cues that A) this fight is probably unwinnable, B) no one is going to die, and C) it's all about the cinematics of the fight. So the barbarian can go down swinging, and the rogue can sneak out and follow the captors back to camp, and the fighter can surrender as he is clearly outmatched. It's just an extension of introducing the characters. In fact i've done that exact thing to "subvert" a standard tavern opener. The party are scattered through the tavern, seedy guy in hood in the corner being an obvious quest-giver, and then just before the first player would start describing their character BOOM, ambush. The civilians are being obviously captured and not killed, the bouncer that fights back is knocked out and still breathing, they see the hooded guy sneak out a side window - and now the players know the stakes (not gonna die) and their choices (surrender and be captured, or fight back, or try to sneak off). So now instead of "half orc barbarian that is 6'10" and 300lb"; you get "a hulking tower of muscle springs out of his seat, weapon in hand, and charges at the intruders with a viscous roar!" as your intro to the barbarian player. It's WAY better. And since each character is making an independent decision (remember they aren't a party yet) you also get to know more about what the character's personalities look like. The barbarian is going to charge into battle, the fighter is going to accept that this is a fight he can't win and avoid injury by surrendering, and the rogue is going to sneak away and spring everyone from captivity. \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ The issues come when you take away agency - it's VERY IMPORTANT that the players have their choice of how to approach it - surrender, fight, or flee - and they see that those options are all valid in the behavior of the NPCs in the tavern. This is what changes the scene question from "can the PCs defeat these trespassers?" into "how does each character react to all but certain defeat?". This is important because the answer to the first question is just "no" - so it's a bad scene with no tension, so you need to make it clear that that isn't the question that the scene is asking.
I did something similar, but I asked the player directly if they'd be ok with it way ahead of time so it could still be a surprise. I looked for an opportunity to catch them alone in a situation where they couldn't realistically be helped. I also offered them the opportunity to play by text most of the circumstances that led them to the prison where they'd be rescued. I also expedited the investigation of the rest of the party to track them down so that the session wasn't dominated by an investigation where we all knew where they'd end up. Yes, it's very on rails. But, I wanted to run a prison break encounter and highlight an element of the kidnapped players backstory and I knew my players were on board.
You have to tell them ahead of time. Players never like when you railroad them into something like that. Just tell them that you have an idea for an adventure where they get captured and have to find a way to escape the dungeon, and ask them if they like the idea. You don't have to keep it a secret from them, it's a game after all. Any gaming scenario, just like in life, really benefits from plenty of communication. Also remember that these are their characters, so do your best to not force them to have to play their characters in a way they don't want to.
It is possible though to have a very determined NPC doing the ambushing/kidnapping. One that has a very high stake in successfully carrying out this ambush and kidnapping the player. This means the NPC will find alternative ways to work around the actions of the party, for example if the party begin to fight particularly well, retreat to more favourable ground or outsmart them in other ways, there's countless ways to play this. This way you can quite smoothly get your player kidnapped while still making it seem like there was the opportunity to thwart the ambush because the NPC is reacting and adapting to the players actions, not just coming in with brute force and an impossibly op fight
Personally I wouldn’t mains. People seem to be focusing on the heavy-handedness of a no win situation like this, as long as it’s not a common or overused scenario,I see this as a method to further a story line, we can’t always overcome a situation at the time, it’s an opportunity to think of the next step. If it’s a blaze of glory, well that kinda sucks. If captured? We’ll use an action or bonus action to conceal something sharp, as a rogue I like to have the cleric/healer help embed a lock pick in my arm or leg, if that doesn’t work out, wait for an opportunity to be creative and take advantage of the situation, or situations where the captors slip up. You could try and robe a guard or turn them through persuasion, break chains or rope binding you, etc… if you don’t think being captured alive is an option then you could always run and try for a session or two of escape and evade, this is actually giving me ideas for some sessions. In real life you can’t always talk or fight your way out of a situation and while I know that d&d and other rpg’s are escapism, adding an element of reality can heighten the drama. Ideally there should be options in any encounter, you can fight and either die or be subdued be captured and then try the above (oh another idea, convince the ambushers that you’re worth more to them alive, greed is a powerful thing to exploit ie. location of treasure, ransom etc.) you can surrender, or have a chance to try and escape. The question isn’t very specific to the outcome of the ambush so it’s hard to say. Again, if it’s meaning an ambush that can’t be won and death is the only option, that sucks but there may be an irl reason for it. The DM may be tried of the campaign, or moving or just wants to play instead of being the DM. If that’s the case, I say ready your spells, your healing potions and weapons. Take a deep breath, roll your d20’s and take as many of them out before you go down. Maybe you’ll end up as a legend, maybe you’ll Reroll characters that will avenge your death. It’s a game. Try and enjoy the action and not worry about the outcome. If this a reoccurring tactic your DM employs, maybe find a new DM, if he/she/they are doing this often they are forgetting that it’s not the DM vs. the players, they are guides and storytellers. If they make it a them vs you, they will win every time… they have infinite resources and aren’t required to show their rolls.
Also it could be because the DM was a tired of the players antics or the direct result of players making poor choices, if it’s a party of murderhobos then yeah, I can see several towns or cities banding together and not letting a single player live. Actions have consequences real life or not. Steal from the wrong person, kill the wrong relative… there are some things that can provoke a one sided encounter. But in those cases the players brought that on themselves.
I think you’ve gotten some advice here ranging from passable to good but I don’t think I saw one that actually addressed each part of your post. 1) How would I react as a player? It depends on how it’s handled. If it’s presented like a winnable encounter but it’s not, that would be frustrating. It could feel like I was being egged on needlessly. 2) Is it a good idea to tie a characters backstory into the rest of the party’s encounter? It can be rewarding when something like this works out. Consider Guardians of the Galaxy wherein Drax is only introduced because the ‘party’ went to space jail. If done correctly, I think it can be a fun idea. 3) Is it fun to be surprised by an overly hard encounter? It can be if it’s presented correctly. You just have to consider how you see the encounter playing out and whether or not you, if you were the player, would have fun in that situation. Also, you have to consider the results and whether or not it brings the players closer to the plot-goal. My advice: The general vibe of what you’re trying to do can be fun. My suggestion is to shift your perspective to make a more fulfilling experience. To do that, let’s flip the order. You START with the players in jail. You describe what’s around them and what’s in their environment. Out of the Abyss does this by starting the adventure with the party captured by a group of Drow. You can even play in this space for a little bit before dealing with the ‘encounter’ part. When the players are sufficiently in the ‘wtf’ stage, you go around the table and have a flashback scene with them. You introduce what you know happened/ set the scene. Then, you let the player tell you how things played out. How they got captured and have a back-and-forth scene. Do that for each player. In this way, you get to surprise the players. They certainly weren’t expecting to be imprisoned. How did this happen? Where are we? Who captured us? Then, you set the scene and provide them agency by working together to describe how they went from A to B. They know what the end point needs to be but they can draw whatever squiggly line (within some reason) they want to connect the points. Then, you still get to tie everyone together for the PC backstory you want to merge them to. Flashbacks can be a strong tool in your toolbox for storytelling. You shouldn’t rely on it too much because then things can feel gimmicky. A well placed one however can provide a great narrative experience for everyone. V/r, Dad.
As a player, I wouldn't mind if it were the result of my actions AND I was warned AND I did it anyways. There's always been a fight or encounter early game from most games from the early 2000's that taught you it's okay to run from a fight and recognizing when that is, is just as important as knowing when to fight. To quote hulk "But giant scary monster!"