Dominate Hair
In my experience, there are two things that kill PCs: falling rocks and dominate effects. And while you can ward off the former by buying your GM pizza, surviving an unexpected control magic is a bit trickier.
Like the Handbook says, this mess can come in multiple forms. It might be a literal dominate person spell. It might be a confusion effect. It might even be something as exotic as demon possession, like the one that caused a soft reset in my own campaign. But whatever form it takes, a dominate means one thing: your trusted ally has turned to the dark side, and is now trying to kick your ass. They’ve got all the powers of a fully equipped PC, they’re already in the party’s backfield, and you’ve got to snap ’em out of it.
Now the most straightforward approach to surviving these situations lies in a swift TKO. All you’ve got to do is deliver a bit of nonlethal damage to your afflicted ally and then heal ’em back to full once the dominate has worn off. Unfortunately, it’s the big guys with low resist-mind-control saves and fat HP pools that typically get mind-whammied. This is where dispel magic type effects really earn their keep. Break enchantment, mind blank, and Protection From Evil And Good all put in work here, and keeping a scroll or two of these spells handy is important. But if you go the silver bullet route and keep specific answers in your back pocket, make sure that more than one PC can use them. There’s nothing that sucks harder than watching your cleric get dominated and realizing she was the only one who could have broken the spell. Look at it this way: Batman keeps kyrptonite in his utility belt, but what happens when Superman and Batman get dominated? If you want to be a good Robin, you’ll have an answer for that situation.
So what do you say, gang? Do any of the rest of you guys have solid anti-dominate strategies? Have you ever been caught without an adequate answer, and subsequently got beat by your buddies? Or worst of all, have you actually been guilty of unwitting murder while under the influence of such malign magics? Let’s hear all about your most memorable dominate-related dust-ups down in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
I have long said that the greatest danger to the PCs is themselves. I’ve told most of my mind whammy stories in other topics. And thanks to the publication of the “Unnatural Lust” spell (Pathfinder) and my own reputation for pranks, I’ve been forbidden from playing anything with access to the Enchantment school. ( I only joked about making the Druid’s animal companion hump his leg once. But then the Paladin decided he didn’t want horse kisses…) Though there is a day of sadness in my history.
It was 3.5 D&D, and I was playing a rogue as is my want. We tracked the supposed necromancer back to his crumpling tower, only to be confronted by a large number of zombies. We have entered the tower, but the back row has been backed against the wall by the horde of zombies we are facing. The GM calls for a Sense Motive check. “38!” I announce, to everyone else’s sub-10 numbers. The GM looks horrified at us, then states that I notice one of the zombies is acting a little too coordinated. Then he pauses and states “The zombie makes eye contact with you, roll a Will save.” A sad announcement of 10 is met with another horrified look. Then he passes me a note. I have been dominated by my new Vampire lord, who has commanded me to kill my friends. Felisha already had her daggers ready.
So when the Wizard starts his fireball spell, I take the Attack of Opportunity. The Wizard’s player stares wide eyed as I proceed to sneak attack him and drop him in one swift stab. The Cleric starts to cast Dispel Magic only to be reminded that I have Combat Reflexes and he also takes an Attack of Opportunity. His player shouts “Oh come on!” as I proceed to roll a natural 20. Then confirm the Critical. Felisha was known for particularly devestating Criticals due to the Telling Blow Feat, which allowed her to add her Sneak Attack to any Confirmed Critical. So the Spell is flubbed, the Cleric is very injured…and it’s my initiative. The cleric goes down to the next stab. At which point the Vampire proceeds to reveal his true nature and slam the fighters.
So we built new characters and i got to play the Vampire bride of the Big Bad for a little while. That was super broken. But yea, that’s the story of how Felisha murdered all her friends due to not having a good Will save. Learned my lesson. And My friends learned not to underestimate a rogue.
My next Cleric is going to have a deep southern accent and speak very, VERY slowly.
CLERIC: “Alrighty then. I reckon I’m gonna go ahead and… cast me a… good ol’ dispel magic…”
ROGUE: “Sorry, guys. I’ve got combat ref–”
CLERIC: “…defensively.”
Ooof, what a pain of a story!
I usually haven’t planned ahead for this eventuality as much as I should. But I did once manage to pull off an emergency rescue when the party barbarian was dominated by an aboleth. The aboleth ordered him to grab another party member and drag them into the water, so I used my own mind control spell on him: charm person. It was a first level spell versus a ninth level spell-like ability, but according to the Conflicting Mental Control rules, it came down to opposed Charisma checks between me and the aboleth, and being a drow bard, my Charisma was actually better. I was able to keep him under control for long enough that the rest of the party could dispatch the aboleth.
There was also the time when my own barbarian PC was dominated from afar by some kind of psychic brain slug, which ordered him to come into its lair, which took several hours of travel. Here’s how the scene panned out when I arrived in its lair:
DM: You see one of those brain slugs you’ve encountered before.
Me: Cool. So I’ve finished carrying out its order to come into its lair?
DM: Yep.
Me: And it hasn’t given me an explicit order not to kill it?
DM: … roll initiative.
Me: wins initiative, squishes slug
That’s why you have to be so careful when using dominate effects, and why charm effects are often a better idea, even if you have less fine control.
I suspect there was a good deal of page flipping in that slug example, lol.
I hope Witch and Necromancer learned their lesson; even with Barbarian’s brand-name-upcharge, those +2 scissors are worth it!
I once gave my PCs a +1 apple corer. I kept threatening to send the trees from Wizard of Oz after them….
As a DM I usually try to avoid dominating PCs for two reasons: first it can feel like anti-fun, similar to magic that prevents PCs from taking turns. Suddenly I’m taking one of the PCs and forcing them to act against the player’s will. As a DM I hate taking away player agency. Sure it’s a nice shock to the other PCs when their barbarian turns against them, but it sucks for barbarian’s player. However, that leads to my second reason: I think it’s best used when used sparingly. Perhaps only a couple of times over the campaign. It makes the encounter so much more memorable, heightens the “oh crap” moment, and since it’s relatively rare the PCs usually haven’t come up with plans to counter it.
In one campaign I am running I did use a monster that charmed a PC and was quite pleased with how it turned out. The party was chasing after a neogi which was driving a slave cart being pulled along by two umber hulks. The rogue goes far ahead of the rest of the party (though still in eyesight) and the neogi hits him with a charm. The neogi commands him to pretend he got hit by a powerful psychic attack, collapse to the ground, and then when the other PCs tried to aid the rogue he was to attack them. The neogi severely underestimated the other PCs’ murderhoboness, as they decided to smash the slavers first and help the rogue later. As the other PCs approached the neogi commanded the umber hulks to unhitch from the cart, burrow underground, and ambush the ranger taking potshots from a distance. Since the other PCs were prioritizing killing the neogi and it still wanted the element of surprise with the rogue but the other PCs were quite far from him now, it commanded the rogue to “act normally” and not take hostile action it or its umber hulks to tell the other PCs the rogue was charmed. Fortunately, a failed knowledge check meant the rogue had no idea what an umber hulk was, so he ran up and stabbed the umber hulks. The neogi, realizing the error, clarified that the hulking insects were umber hulks, at which point the rogue “acted normally” as he would if he knew he were being charmed against the party; he knocked himself out.
Yes the neogi was obtuse and the commands rather poorly worded, but the player felt like an absolute baller, wiggling his way out of the neogi’s commands and subverting them, and the neogi’s increasing frustration with the rogue made it all the more satisfying for him. Sure it made the neogi seem less competent, but for what was a basically plot hook disguised as a wondering monster it didn’t need to feel as scary competent as a mini-boss or BBEG. Perhaps if the rest of the party had plans or ways to deal with one of them being charmed it would be different, as there is the same feeling of satisfaction when the mindflayer tries to dominate the fighter only to find the party put a mindblank on her. But in the absence of those sort of resources I don’t want to make domination a recurring thorn of unfun, so I’ll most likely file it away until I need an aforementioned “oh crap” moment in a dramatically appropriate part of the campaign.
Did you ever look at the blog on this one?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/i-wish-for-a-dragon
Trusting your players to ham up the RP is my favorite way to play this sort of interaction. Good show!
I’ve seen a fire-focused Kineticist get dominated, and it was not pretty. Now, people will say Pyrokineticist is the weakest of the Kineticist, and admittedly it can be annoying when so many things are immune to your element of choice, but other PCs don’t tend to have such immunities.
Now, this Kineticist was built to be a grapple specialist. Light self on fire, grab someone, punch and burn them to death. And yet despite this, the other PCs had to resort to getting into a mass grapple with her to keep her from firing off any maximized blasts at range and killing them on the spot. And all this was while a decently high-level vampire monk (the guy who’d done the domination) was running around being dangerous as well.
As I said, not pretty. They did get a vampire Kineticist (who had to spend a while retraining into that one Kineticist archetype that works for the undead) out of it, though.
Any PC deaths to report?
They ended up having to flee, leaving the Kineticist in the hands of the vampire who’d dominated her, and she was killed and turned into another vampire while they recovered and prepared their revenge.
Once they were prepared, though, what had last time been an enemy that had wiped the floor with them ended up being a two-round encounter in which the vampire’s sole turn was countered by a battlefield-control-type-spell from the party’s wizard.
Pathfinder Soulknife vs a team of squishies where the only person that realized that breaking a crystal would free me neglected to mention that fact. Nearly killed a PC and an NPC in the process, after smashing through an eidolon. Afterwards i went straight for any will save boost i could get in game.
The worst part was its a wisdom based class, with a good will save. I just rolled terribly, and forgot about hero points. Or mythic power.
Your instincts are right on the money. A buffed Will save is always a wise course of action. And yet… Do you ever get that slight sense of disappointment as a player when you don’t get to find out what the failed save did?
I understand that “make sure it doesn’t happen” is a solid countermeasure for mind-whammy effects, but mind-whammies are a lot of fun to play out. That might be why I’m such a fan of confusion, in that it allows a bit of silly PVP without the full-on “murder your buddies as efficiently as possible” of a true dominate. I kind of makes me wonder if you could modify dominate effects to be less deadly? Perhaps you only grapple, begin shoving the treasure into the bottomless pit, or attempt to steal some mcguffin from the party.
Mathematically Dominate Person/Monster/a well-worded Suggestion are some of the most powerful spells in the game. They can turn an X on Y fight into an X-1 on Y+1 fight. (A 4 v 1 to a 3 v 2)
This is why I always consider the Ancients Aura overrated, and the Devotion Aura underrated.
My favorite use of Suggestion is “X is planning to betray you; kill them before they can.” Whether that’s reasonable is based on how much trust there is between the target and X.
The funny thing aboot the Dominate line in 5E is that you get a new save every time you take damage. “This isn’t the Flinstones, you can’t just wang him over the head with a frying pan!”
Some good developer support for that reading:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/116996/can-the-suggestion-spell-be-used-to-turn-someone-against-an-ally
And some excellent incentive to get along with your party!
On the comic itself: Why does Necromancy Wizard’s knee say “I beg your pardon in a text color that is hard to see on the background of her dress?
What’re those marks on Fiend Warlock’s back?
A secret message! Quick, carefully look through the last 395 strips for hidden messages revealed only by image editing programs, logging Laurey/Colin’s slow yet inevitable descent into madness and/or new product reveal!
The walls between realities are bleeding!
For a better view of Witch’s tattoos, you can always peer behind the tawdry veil of the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy.
Ah, a tale that happened quite recently! I dare suspect you are spying on our sessions!
The domination came from a vampire, as it oft does. A bunch of Derro weenies started to give our party the glow eyes and casted dominate person on whoever they could! Luckily, most of us were protected by a circle vs evil. Less luckily, our witch who had the spell moved away from the party, leaving everyone else unprotected.
And despite an effort to buff her worst save and prevent such a scenario, our Gloomblade fails her save, and becomes dominated. Her first order? ‘Kill the rat!’ Said rat being my wizard ratfolk, easily within charge distance.
Luckily, said rat had dispel magic! One quick cast of the spell, after moving out of AOO and full attack range, and…. Natural 2. Crap.
Soon follows Gloomblade’s turn. Due to being against her nature, she gets another roll, with a bonus! It fails, again, meaning our optimized fighter gets to charge against the wizard. Now, she could easily hit him once and drop him low with that one sttack alone, but she got a natural 20, and easily confirmed it. The resulting crit would not only trigger massive damage but would kill my Ratfolk from full HP into the negative amount of his full HP.
Or it would have, if my ratfolk wasn’t crazy prepared, and a spell for such a worst case scenario – Windy escape! With a puff of wind as an immediate action, the wizard gets DR/Magic (which the gloomblade ignored) and negated any sneak or crit damage. Without the deadly crit, the attack is much weaker, leaving the wizard alive, but barely standing – one more hit would certainly kill him.
At that point, our witch realized the trouble I was in, and hexed the Gloomblade with slumber. Her save failed once more, and she was no longer a threat.
The rest of us then mopped up the other vampires (they couldn’t dominate anyone else), and then we had the problem of our dominated Gloomblade – unless dispelled, she’d spend the next 12 days mindlessly trying to kill the ratfolk, even with her ‘master’ dusted. We fired another dispel, and it finally worked, freeing her.
So the moral learned from this story – always put protection from evil on the beefcake. Always have a plan against crits. Bring dispel magic and break enchantments everywhere. Windy escape is god tier.
I now suspect that you are spying on my upcoming Paladin scripts.
Whilst this strip’s art is lovely as always, I’m having difficulties figuring out what’s going on. Is that a scroll/spellbook with the power word ‘undo’ or ‘up(side)do(wn)’? Are Necro and Witch half-dangling from a well/pit trap, or is that a fancy camera shot at a ceiling opening?
An updo is a hair style where the hair is lifted up and secured behind the head. They can be very fancy.
Necromancer is trying to use a spell called Power Word: updo, to prevent the mind-controlled/possessed witch from using her hair to fight.
I was kind of confused too, at first, but I think I get it. Witch has magic hair that can act on its own. Witch is dominated and her hair is attacking Necromancer, either by pulling her up to attack her easier or pulling her up to drop her off the top of whatever that is. Written in Necromancer’s spellbook, to specifically protect herself from situations like these, is the spell ‘updo’. A portmanteau of up and hairdo, putting your hair into an updo means tying your hair up, whether in a ponytail, a bun, a high braid, or that weird Victorian style silhouette shown in the spellbook. With her hair tied up, Witch is slightly less dangerous.
No worries. Perspective is a fickle mistress.
Necromancer is at the bottom of a pit, desperately reaching for the grimoire that will allow her to cast “power word updo.” Witch is dangling from the broken floor boards up above, apparently mind-whammied and fixin’ to strangle the shit out of her teammate.
I’m not entirely sure what is going on either, regarding the pit and whatnot, but the spell is “Power Word Updo”, which refers to a type of hairstyle, as seen in the book’s illustration. Presumably, Power Word Updo, rather than stunning like Power Word Stun or killing like Power Word Kill, instantly converts the target’s hair into an updo. Given that Witch’s hair is a prehensile weapon that his currently being used against Necromancer, the updo would presumably neutralize it by tying it in knots on the back of Witch’s head. Necromancer’s concern is either that she is currently hanging from a pit with only Witch’s now-Dominated hair to keep her up (and Power Word Updo might cause her to fall) or the hair is grappling her, which means a difficult check must be passed in order for her to actually cast the spell. I have no idea what the “I beg your pardon” at the bottom is.
Wait what is that Tattoo in the back of Witch?
Did she go to the same tattooist than Contessa?
As is tradition for goth chicks on the web, Witch’s tattoos are fully visible behind a paywall.
*shakes fist at Handbook of Erotic Fantasy*
Yeah, if only for reputation, i know of the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy. Sadly there is election time on my country, so any money anyone here manages to get it’s hoarded for the imminence of the dark electoral times. The last 200 years have been rough for my country which doesn’t help our economy either. So, sadly, no money for me to expende 🙁
At least the Handbook of Heroes is free and i enjoy it 🙂
No worries. (And no pressure!)
I believe we saw the full bones-and-flowers tattoo in one of the “Temple of Elemental Libido” series. I’m sure we’ll get a proper look at it here on the main Handbook eventually.
Don’t worry, it is that it call my attention. Almost always we have seen Witch from the front, maybe this is the first time we seen her from the, almost, side.
I can’t remember the details, but I once ran a small game (only 2 PCs). One was a min-max fighter, the other was a slippery warlock. They were is a Barony, and the baroness was actually a succubus. Of course, being PCs, they figured this out through various antics. The succubus then enchanted the Fighter to kill the warlock, but she didn’t word her instructions well and left right away.
The warlock pretended to be enchanted also, at least until the charm effect wore off the fighter. They caught up to her and slew her. She really should have read the Evil Overlord list.
This list? http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
Yep, or one of its many derivatives.
Rookie mistake on the baroness’s part. You gotta study up on the fundamentals!
Yet another reason why inquisitor is one of my favorite classes. Wis based casting, strong will and fort saves, the ability to buff those saves via judgement, and at later levels there’s Stalwart which is basically evasion but for fort and will.
The barbarian rage power Eater of Magic is also a fave for similar reasons.
The barbarian rage power “rage” is also OK for Will saves. 😛
Oh sure, but you can magnify it with superstition for scaling bonuses to all saves and eater of magic letting you reroll a failed save once per rage. Which can be once per round with a little smart investment.
I think the most offensive of that sort of thing in D&D, at least 5e, is Ghosts. They can easily show up before you have any means of dealing with their possession ability other than Turn Undead and absolutely nothing guarantees you’re going to have that ability in your party (in fact Cleric is one of the classes I’ve seen people play least often personally) or a the Protection from Good and Evil spell which I’ve never seen anyone take because pretty much the only thing you really care about is that it blocks this very niche monster ability.
Which leaves you forced to KO you allies….which also does nothing to harm the ghost or stop it from just possessing the next person available.
The low amount defenses against ghosts would be acceptable (but still irksome) if they only showed up in campaigns where you had fair warning they might show up. But…. they’re low CR monsters…. and one of the most classic monster concepts of all time so there’s a good chance absolutely any game could have one spring up out of nowhere with no warning your GM could be planning to throw one your way.
There’s this weird conflict between idea that 1) PCs need to prepare for these contingencies and; 2) it’s metagaming to prepare for these contingencies.
I think a nice middle ground is to treat the “first encounter” with something like ghosts or swarms or shadows as a “get familiar with the monster” encounter. As a GM, you aren’t full-on trying to murder the PCs here. Instead you’ll want to heavily RP the monster’s idiosyncrasies. The ghost, for example, bemoans its lost whatever, then stops possession and sinks down into the floor before it’s fully killed anyone. The players now have a good idea what to expect and full justification for breaking out the ghostbusting equipment for the rematch.
shrug I guess at the end of the day I just really dislike the concept of “if you don’t have these very specific tools prepared that it’s entirely possible nobody in your party ever can, this monster forces you to fight your friends for it with no possible risk to itself”.
If the ghost took partial damage when you hurt who it was riding in so you could eventually kill it before you’re down to the no-win scenario of you’re the last man standing and the ghost posses you now or a possessed target could save against the effect every round or some other more reasonable control effect I’d be fine with it. Because it seems like every method for controlling other people’s actions in the game has some way around it and/or limitations. But possession just… doesn’t. They take over your friend for as long as they want (seriously, they could just decide they’re unofficially alive again and ride them for the rest of their life) and then….. just do it again to any other person they meet if for some reason that doesn’t work out.
In fact…. with that mechanical reality…. why do we even encounter ghosts not already in bodies?
But anyway, to really respond to your suggestion…. that really only works if your party is capable of preparing against ghosts later on. A party of Fighter, Rogue, Warlock, Ranger, and Monk for example can’t do a dang thing about it even if they found “Beware of Ghost” signs posted for a full mile ahead. They completely lack the capability of possessing the appropriate tools. Unless they can find somewhere to buy scrolls of Protection from Evil and Good. At which point the fight flips the complete opposite direction where you won not through good use of features your characters possess, but through throwing money at the problem. (I guess there’s still some level of personal achievement involved if you ha a hint but not a blatant one that ghosts might be a thing to be concerned about. But in the case of your scenario, all you really did was inflict on them a ghost tax because they couldn’t do anything about it in the intro fight and by spending money they 100% trivialize any future encounters.)
I don’t want to play Monkey Island. I don’t want to rub object A on ghost B because that’s the only mechanical way to solve the encounter. If “protection from good and evil” is indeed the only way to solve this encounter, then it is indeed a bunch of poopy caca. That isn’t how I’d run ghosts though.
Let’s take a look at the built-in solutions as specified by the possession ability.
Any party can beat up their ally and so expel the ghost. This is the standard-issue anti-dominate strategy, but at least we know it specifically works here.
This is the most important one to me. The ghost can choose to end the effect. That means we can persuade the ghost. We can appease it. Maybe even help it finish its unfinished business. This is suggestive of an encounter that (for my money) is far more interesting than “a ghost attacks and fights you to the death.” Even if we are going for that straight-up combat, we can also ham it up as a malicious poltergeist and try to jump into multiple bodies. In other words, the best solution from the GM’s side is to play the character rather than the stats.
You can hire a priest. I believe this was the plot of The Exorcist, and is a useful way to introduce allied clerics and such.
I’d focus on the word “like” here. I’m not going to root through the 5e spell list, but I suspect that there are other options out there. I’d hope my GM allowed a bit of creativity as well, perhaps allowing something as simple as the bless spell to provide a fresh saving throw.
Here’s my point. If you go for the jugular and play the ghost as a wandering monster that wants to kill the party as efficiently as possible, then we do indeed gots problems. I don’t think that’s the best way to play a ghost encounter though. These monsters are absolutely dripping with flavor and story possibilities, and I think it behoove a GM to play up that angle. By the same token, it also behooves players to think around the mechanics and attempt to implement novel solutions. If Billy Batson can antagonize demons out of his enemies so that they can be punched effectively, I think that we can do the same.
None of what you have said is wrong. But also none of what I have said is wrong.
In the end, what you suggest could just as easily be accomplished by a better mechanical design.
Also seriously, it doesn’t even make sense you can’t shrug off possession. In what piece of media ever has a possessed named character not been at least capable of trying to fight off possession?
Yeah… I logged in this morning thinking to make an edit or two to my last comment. That’s because you said “this is mechanically overpowered” and I said “here are ways to fix that on the player’s / GM’s side.” You’re right that I’m not addressing the underlying design problem.
I get why it’s tough though. If you’re a designer and you make it too easy to get rid of possession, it loses its cool factor and becomes as trivial as escaping a grapple. There’s got to be some middle ground there.
There are a few ways I’d design it if I wanted it to stay hard to beat (and didn’t want to just increase the CR and claim that solved the problem), but fair/not an accidental TPK for a GM who didn’t really understand/or even bother reading the monster before throwing it at a party because they made the reasonable assumption the designers would make a single low CR monster capable of that.
These would be in addition to the already working options of Turn Undead and Protection from Good and Evil, because people should still be rewarded with a “this works better” option for having those.
Method 1: Rather than the possessed character getting to make a save each round, they need to make a straight stat check. Probably Charisma.
Method 2: The character only gets a save at the end of a round in which it was damaged or an ally spent an action and beat a DC something (13? I dunno, whatever is a CR appropriate DC for a CR 2 monster ability) Persuasion, Intimidation, or Religion check to try to get through to their friend/scare out the ghost/ritually interfere with its possession exorcism style.
I like both of these options because in addition to being “hard”, they’re also mechanically unique which makes the ghost retain that “not just a monster with dominate person” flavor.
The later one is the better of the two I think as it feels much more like dealing with ghosts.
I could probably think up a few more, but I think those are good enough example to prove that it’s really not an insurmountable task to bridge the gap between a “meh” version of a ghost and a “why is this a TPK?” version.
That second one is more or less the way I would run the ghost as-is. It makes sense to enshrine it in the actual stats. GJ!
In my experience, two things kill player characters: GMs, and Players. When And kill pcs, it’s typically considered to be out of some kind of spiteful hate-well of undealt with emotion, and no one likes “that GM”. Often, however, I find it is because the GM didn’t explain something well enough, and that’s an accident and a learning moment.
However, when players kill PCs, there are many causes. The most common one is that the player did something dumb. And believe me, just because you are smart, doesn’t mean you can’t do something dumb. Or a lot of somethings.
Other times, it’s because players weren’t prepared. This can go into the territory of “disputable” since it can be argued that they weren’t prepared because the GM didn’t explain, but it can also be that they just haven’t learned from previous encounters.
I find it’s hard to convince people they need to prep if they always come out on top. This harkens back to why PC deaths are important, since stakes need to be a thing or no one will take your awesome dracolich seriously. But kill them too often and sometimes they don’t realize they need to prep… They just think you’re unfair. It’s a hard balance for GMs.
I once had the players face an enemy that was way too high level for them, knowing it would TPK. I had a plan. However the point was to show them what the fight would be like. Well… What happened when they fought it again only a few levels later, after being reminded twice of the abilities it used? They went in thinking that it would be easier since they had more HP. They died.
They all had fun, but I asked them later why they didn’t prep for any of the stuff the bad guy could do. Their answer? They had no idea. They honestly didn’t think to prep contengincey plans at all. Go figure.
I’m teaching my first college class this fall. I may need to hang onto that line. 🙂
Showing and telling, my man! I’ve heard of this fun technique where some friendly god or other allows the PCs to fight the demon lord or whatever ahead of schedule. You foreshadow it of course, but the whole idea is to give the TPK’s PCs a nice, “The vision fades, and you all wake up at camp the night before.” That’s the sort of thing your can only ever do once per group, so I’ve never pulled it off myself. Still, it might be a nice way to instill a bit of caution.
My character is a construct crafter, this has already once proven to be dangerous to the party as I was possessed for 1 round and nearly killed the party samurai. I believe the party is scared of me now, and it doesn’t help that I detect as Lawful Evil because I made a deal with a devil (to save everyone’s life mind you.) The construct that nearly killed the samurai was a colossal animated workshop. Colossal strength with grapple and constrict is terrifying.
I recently made an Iron Golem with the new Commando template who was the only combatant doing consistently well in our last encounter, and my Scythe Glass Swarm ( https://www.aonprd.com/MonsterDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Scythe%20Glass%20Swarm ) with advanced HD is pretty much immune to all but one other party member.
I made this character because construct crafting looked fun but I didn’t realize it was so effective, but my alchemist’s horrible will saves will probably be the doom of us all.
Get that samurai a scaled sash, STAT!
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/r-z/sash-scaled/
Are we just ignoring the “I beg your pardon” on the bottom of this strip from last weeks strip?
There will be consequences and repercussions.
Oh I see. Well I just wanted to know else I’d be metagaming.
Once when I was GM’ing the published adventure “The Harrowed Realm,” the entire party got dominated by a trio of nameless succubi who were minions of the Big Bad.
Since all three of the minis were identical, I had color-coded them by attaching little wooden discs in three different colors to the base of the figures: red, blue and green. And that’s how they got their names: Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.
The party did manage to get loose and win the day. I only killed two party members (and one of those was a cohort). But the succubi got away and got loose in our Kingmaker campaign (from which The Harrowed Realm had been a brief side jaunt).
In the end it took us four YEARS of game play to finally kill them.
Yeah… I wound up going back and letting my buddy re-fight that incubus I talked about over here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/i-wish-for-a-dragon
It was many levels later, and his Will save was much stronger. I figured he’d appreciate a chance to even the score. Unfortunately, dude is the unlucky guy in my group. He got freakin’ possessed again.
We nearly had a fight like this last session, and might well do tonight. We’re currently on a side-quest to investigate why the water supply for a village of svirfneblin has turned poisonous, and last session we discovered a weird tentacly fish thing living up-river. One use of Charm Person and mental offers of great boons for a minor service later, and the party was split into an argument that nearly ended in blows – and only really didn’t because the DM remembered that his DMPC could and would remove the charm effect on the wizard.
Our session tonight will start in the hasn’t-yet-been-named-outright-as-an-aboleth’s lair, with us having just worked our way through a bunch of monstrous mutated mooks. It’s all going to be fine, right?
It’s aboleths, man. That’s some straight Innsmouth shit. Nothing is going to be fine. 🙁
It actually turned out mostly OK. No mind control, except for a Compulsed brief trip to the Far Realm and back.
Oh dear, the Fighter in my group had some of the worst luck during the last part of the PF2 Playtest scenario. Turn 1 against a group of rune giants, he critically failed against a Dominate spell and proceeded to join the enemies for the entire fight to TPK the group. [Luckily, this was in a mental realm where death just shook you up and required a day rest to try again.] Then of course he failed vs dominate again on turn 1 during the 2nd try, but the party was able to manage this time since it was only a normal failure & he was able to recover.
Later on, he got confused when fighting an eldritch monster & later still got PERMANENTLY confused as a result of critically failing against a mental trap. Luckily, the party had a single innate casting of Wish that could be used to cure him, otherwise we joked that he’d keep rolling “act normally” until the party went to sleep before finally being forced to murder them all (again).
Like all TPKs, if you think about it. 😛
I don’t see how turning weapon damage into energy damage helps the situation, DR applies as normal, the swarm would still be immune because it’s not an aoe, and it doesn’t help him escape grapple. What he actually needs is the Unfettered Shirt and a Swarmbane Clasp
this was supposed to be a reply but it messed up. oops
DR doesn’t apply to energy damage. You kill low-level swarms with torches as weapons of last resort.
That is true that energy damage bypasses DR but the scaled sash does specify “If the original attack would be affected by damage reduction, the converted damage is reduced as if it did not bypass the damage reduction, even if the target has no special defenses against the converted energy type”
However I did forget that energy damage from weapons does damage swarms.
It’s too bad Barbarian isn’t there. She could help tame those wild locks.
Raging barber is a hell of a rage power.
I was playing a Gunslinger that specialized in shooting everything in the face at point blank range when a Vampire dominated him. Fortunately for the party, the vampire was bad at giving directions.
First, he ordered me to abandon my friends… so I proceeded, under his orders, to walk out and leave the encounter entirely. The next round, he demands I come and PROTECT HIM, which my character interprets as ‘attack anyone attacking my new vampire friend.’
Remember how I said I just spent the last round walking out of the dungeon, and how I specialize in shooting people at point blank? Because I’d been gone a round, I did not know who my master needed defense against… and everyone was out of my most effective combat range anyways. So after my double move, my action was over.
The party focus fired the vampire and took him out before my next round came up.
Like I said in this one…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/prince-charming
I’ve always found that getting mind whammied allows for some of the best roleplaying.
As a guy who plays martials almost exclusively and with low will saves, along with a character strong enough to end an ally should domination occur, this comes up at many tables. However, bonus on saves against the characer’s nathre and repeated saves helps. You just gotta role play being bros with the party hard enough that the GM accepts that hurting them warrants the bonus.
Beg big strong? Be big friend. Or else not responsible for consequences.