Skeleton Ambush
If you’ve ever walked through a dungeon door, trespassed in a moldering cemetery, or explored the depths of your local crypts, you’ve likely run into this scenario.
The chamber is dimly lit by guttering torches. Amidst the flickering shadows you spy humanoid forms in alcoves lining the walls. Their eyes are dark and staring, but they make no move towards you. As your eyes adjust to the gloom [“I have dark vision!” “Shut up, Steve.”] you soon realize that they are only the desiccated remains of long-dead warriors. The figures are little more bone and tattered leather, and their eyes are the empty pits of skulls. The pommels of the skeletons’ weapons, however, glint gold in the firelight.
At this point, you and I and Steve all know that there’s a 99.9% chance these skelemans are preparing to animate and attack. As The Evil Party so ably demonstrate, you’ve got several options for dealing with this situation. And debating them out loud can be surprisingly useful.
My all-time favorite take on this trope came when the roles were reversed. It was an Exalted 2e game, and the party of sneaky shapeshifting lunars were trying to infiltrate the Perfect of Paragon‘s palace. The dice were not with them. Wards were triggered, inquisitive guards approached, and the heroic pack of hulking beastmen had to hurriedly stuff themselves into a nearby scrivener’s office. You can guess how well their Dex + Stealth checks went.
After the botches were tallied, it was plain to all and sundry that their attempt to hide looked a little something like this. They could only hope that the guards would pass them by without opening the door. It played out a little something like so:
The door creaks open. A sliver of light falls across the room. The expected screams do not follow. You might just have got away with this one! Then you hear the voices of the guards in conversation. They seem oddly strained.
“Um, Guard #1?”
“Yes, Guard #2?”
“It does not look like there’s anything of note to be found in here.”
“No. It certainly does not, Guard #1.”
“Seeing as that is the case—the decided absence of terrifying monstrosities partially concealed beneath yonder bureau I mean—I propose that we return to the Captain and inform her that this was a false alarm.”
“Capital idea! Let us do as you suggest with all speed.”
The door shuts again. You can hear the sound of iron-shod feet ringing on the marble floor outside. Oddly, what starts as a steady patrolman’s amble soon becomes a hurried walk. It shifts by degrees into a hasty trot, grows into a full-on run, and finally culminates in a panicked sprint. When the guards’ clanking footfalls finally leave your earshot, some moments of silence pass. And then you can hear the sounds of a great many more iron-shod feet hurrying in your direction.
At this point, my players finally decided that waiting and hoping was no longer an option. They burst from their hiding place, ran the phalanx of palace guards a merry chase, and soon found themselves crashing through a rooftop cocktail party. The city’s dignitaries were not pleased.
Any dang way, my point is that when you’re not sure exactly what you’re dealing with, putting the onus on the other guy to act first has real tactical advantages. By doing a bit of the ol’ talky-talk in earshot of your foes, you may just save yourself from ambushes, traps, and suddenly-animate skeletons of all kinds.
What about the rest of you guys? Have you ever applied this kind of child psychology to an NPC? Did they take the bait, or did you have to walk up and trigger the “very surprising and totally unexpected ambush” the hard way? Tell us your tale down in the comments!
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I haven’t tried talking/threatening contextually obvious enemies into revealing themselves. sounds fun though, might give that a try the next time the situation comes up.
Most of our groups have some kind of ranged attacker, so our usual solution is just to shoot one of the potential ambushers. That normally works, either because they’ll jump into action when the bow/crossbow/wand is raised (triggering imitative) or if they aren’t in a position to do that then get you a free attack.
And in those 0.1% of cases where it really is just a random corpse/statue having an arrow sticking out of their head usually doesn’t matter.
The question isn’t whether or not the gargoyle can endure your taunts. It’s whether the GM will get impatient.
As for the old “shoot an arrow at it” method, the downside there is that you might prompt combat when negotiation was an option.
Negotiwhatnow? I’ve played mostly warhammer rpgs in the past few years and let me tell you, you don’t use social skills unless talking to a Civiliced being and even then try to figure out if it’s a worshipper of the chaos gods. And forget anything that isn’t human(in 40k) or halfling, elf or dwarf (in fantasy) to be even remotely trust worthy or that they are even intrested to talking with you, it does happen but you’ll do better with projectile to face and guestions later, especially since those games run HIGH mortality rate especially Fantasy and Only War
But just think about all those great “betrayed by the Skaven deserter” storylines you’re missing out on!
To be great I think it needs to not be expected to happen every five minutes, dealing with Skaven be they players or NPCs is much like playing Paranoia with more rules.
But hey you do you, can I have your stuff when you are ork chow?
In my experience negotiation isn’t really an option for ambush style monsters. I must admit though that there might be a connection with our tendency to shoot first there, at least for my player side experience.
Poor Skellyman Bob, left hanging after a prank/date gone horribly wrong, now serving as a adventurer early-warning system.
I wonder if we’ll see more of him. Necromancer might like the dude, given her track record with her ‘kids’. Unless she’s a strictly ‘zombie’ kind of gal.
She’s more of a “horrible abomination” kind of gal.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unnaturally-comfortable
‘Bone Bomb’ sounds like a spell for the other handbook. Or at least one that will invite childish snickering if (anti)heroically yelled mid combat.
I usually like to use actual spells from actual game systems in this comic. Couldn’t be arsed to find one that specifically explodes bones this time.
Well, I’d expect Bone Bomb to be a //hard// spell to find…
Pathfinder has the ‘Boneshatter’ spell. It’s pretty decent!
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/boneshatter/
Oh, and the ‘Boneshaker’ spell too.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/boneshaker/
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I WAS WRITING THIS COMIC!?
Just have Laurel edit the comic text a little. Your secret will be safe with me.
There was a Batman cartoon that went something like the scene you describe. Minion hears a sound in an office, opens the door, and sees Batman completely failing to hide. There’s a moment of eye contact, before the minion closes the door, and reports that there was nothing in there.
Generally regarded as the smartest henchman to ever encounter Batman.
You see? You too could be that henchman!
Here you go!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMd4S-LkywI
That’s the one.
“Something wrong?” “Nope!”
There is a wonderful little space-trader-themed computer game called Endless Sky — a spiritual successor to the Escape Velocity series, for those who remember it. On one mission, you have the option of trying to eavesdrop on a pair of officers. To quote the game:
You follow the officers into a supply yard and hide behind a large stack of crates. “Lieutenant,” says one of them, “we just received word that the Free Worlds have contracted with someone to spy on this facility.”
“A professional, sir?”`
“Hardly. My grandmother would make a better spy. It’s a merchant captain, clearly an amateur.” They are both speaking quite loudly; you are having no trouble listening in.
“What are we going to do, sir?” asks the lieutenant.`
“Nothing. If gawking at our ships were a crime, we’d have half the local population in prison by now. But if this captain should accept any further assignments, we may have to take action.”
“Should we at least inform this individual that those crates make terrible cover?” asks the lieutenant, grinning.
“Now, now,” says the other officer, “no need to be spiteful.”
That’s great dialogue. And obscure enough that I feel no compunctions about stealing it for tabletop.
There was one time where i was playing a bard, and we were in a… negotiation of sorts with some cultists. They were in a fortified room with a bunch of readied weapons pointed at the door, so while we could just break in, we didnt really want to. Meanwhile, they were trying to convince us that they had no back door and we could just sit in this hallway for a week while they packed up and snuck out.
Now, being a bard, i was good at wording at people. I convinced several of them to come gather at the door for… basically a game of some kind to pass the time. You know, “were at an impasse, lets at least keep ourselves entertained” type stuff. At which point, once i had several of them gathered, i cast Stinking Cloud on the other side of the door.
Needless to say, that dramatically hampered their ability to resist us as we came charging in.
One sec. Gotta find my “can’t ready outside of initiative” drum. Need to bang on it some more.
Charging into your own stinking cloud!?
They probably had their own Fighter and had developed a natural immunity…
A sort of twisted version of this was attempted when my group played Storm King’s Thunder, and failed in a way that makes it one of my favorite gaming stories.
So there we were, at the gate of a frost giant fortress. We were trying to figure out how to get in safely, a process that could potentially take real-world hours. Now, that campaign, two of our players were playing an ettin—a two-headed lesser giant. One of them wanted to shortcut the planning phase, so he talked his other head into walking into the front door and pretending to be there to give tribute to the local giant lord.
The giants didn’t exactly believe the ettins—our party hadn’t been subtle before that—but they at least humored them.
So, um, the rest of the party spent hours trying to figure out how to get in safely. Soon, we wound up losing another party member who single-handedly decided to wear a dead giant’s loincloth and pretend to be a slave, despite there not being slaves in the fortress (and certainly none wearing giants’ loincloths). Sadly, I don’t remember what the remaining two members of the party wound up doing, even though I was one of them; it must have been boringly conventional.
I hope that you discovered the ettin had been made King Giant by the time you got inside.
My “Shirtless Savage” Ogress Barbarian Wrestler* quite often triggers ambushes by being loud, usually by yelling “HELLO! JEDNESA IS HERE TO FIGHT! COME OUT AND FIGHT!”
At least once the ambushers have taken one look at one tonne of fun and decided that discretion was the better of abandoning the ambush (and sneaking away), and in another the ambushers decided to switch allegiances…
But this all depends on the Character’s type, the Sneaky ones will try to counter-ambush, the Talky Ones will try to Diplomance the ambush, the Chargers will rush the ambush lest it get away, Tanks will place themselves where best to Hold The Line, and 4th Wall Breakers will crack wise or talk about “how itchy their Fireball trigger finger is and how Firebally that outcropping looks”…
She did recently have the opportunity to jello wrestle, err, wrestle a jelly. She decided not to. She’s finally learned somethings should not be touched. But that only lasted until she got angry because the space was too small to properly swing her axe/mace in, then she proceeded to stomp it till thoroughly “squished”. And spent the next hour rubbing her foot on different things to make sure she got it all off… she didn’t want toe jelly.
I think there’s a subtle but important distinction between what I’m describing and “the Talky Ones will try to Diplomance the ambush.”
The “plan aloud” method is more about influencing players than characters. It’s this technique that sits on the border of the social frame and the game world frame, as every line that you say “sort of out of character” can be seized on by the NPC as an in-character utterance. You’re basically dangling worms in front of the ol’ GM fish, hoping that one will be too tempting to pass by.
Yeah, the 4th Wall Breakers. Depends on the game, the group, etc, as to whether that sort of shenanigans fly. Some GMs will drop rocks on it, some love it and encourage, but most of us sit in the middle…
Upon reflection, again I think this depends on the group and the GM. Some Gms take any utterances as being in character, in which case it’s clearly an attempt at Intimidation, so Diplomancy.
Others won’t cross teh streams at all, so the 4th Wall Breaks will fall flat ont he attempt but may prompt laughs OOC.
And those that cross the streams and let it bleed through here and there? Still should be an Intimidation check… why else do the PCs have those skills on their sheets?
Is the DM a player too? Of course, and so they should have fun and the initiative too 🙂
No! The GM is a slave to the whims of the players! They wouldn’t have volunteered for the job if they didn’t want to prioritize other people’s fun over their own! What do you mean my character is permanently dead!? You’re a terrible GM!
But aren’t you a DM from time to time? Are you okay? Laurel keeps you chained on the basement? Do you want me to call police? 😛
It’s OK. She feeds me sometimes.
How nice of her 😛
Running a party through War For The Crown the second time I ran it, I was feeling like mixing things up with how the story played out- and my players decided to run with it.
At one point, hunting a vigilante named The Nightswan who was known to appear and disappear without a trace, they decided to lay a trap. They knew she was planning to interrupt an execution of a known traitor, so they laid a trap- announcing publicly they were holding him at their manor while they waited for the day of execution. Naturally, a lightly guarded manor presented too tempting of a target for the Nightswan to pass up. They waited for her to appear, hiding behind doorways, in closets, for her to quietly pick the lock and slip in to her inevitable doom…
Which is when the Nightswan’s homemade bomb blew their front door off its hinges.
Is it wrong that I’m rooting for the Nightswan? I hope she won the encounter and became a recurring villain.
She would be a more sympathetic villain if her plans for the future weren’t
[ ] Kill all nobility
[ ] everyone’s problems magically go away immediately
She has a noble goal (freeing common people from oppressive nobility) she just has. Absolutely no idea how to get from point A to point B with anything other than ‘just kill people until the problem is solved’
Her disguise also loses her some points, because her mask barely covers 1/3 of her face, and she doesn’t hide her hair despite being the only blonde woman in the entire county.
I feel sorry for that skeleton. 🙁
Honestly, I have difficulty treating skeletons as serious enemies anymore: years of Skeletor memes, Undertales, Jack Skellingtons and songs like Dead Man’s Party or Skeletons on Parade make them just seem more like charming, fun-loving types you wanna hang out with…
This is where Anti-Paladin should be saying, “Hey, hey buddy, it’s okay. We’ve all been there right? Hey, about joining Team Evil? We’ve got comprehensive dental and a sweet retirement package…”
I mean, he’s still got the ‘Paladin’ part in the Anti-Paladin, he’s gotta find a use for that CHA score some how…
But Antipaladin already has an adorable pseudo-familiar!
I initially misread the start of that second sentence as “Amidst the fucking shadows…”, which made it sound like it was being written by the foul mouthed preacher from the horror comedy Lesbian Vampire Killers
And straight onto the watch list it goes!