I don't often post here but I have been running a campaign for over a year now. My player group has just managed to start looking into one of the major villains of the campaign. Problem is that the kobold rogue was captured as he tried to explore the base solo. Now the cleric has also gone into the same base solo without any back up or telling the rest of the group where he has gone, and has been spotted by the henchmen; we stopped for this night at this point. This leaves the fighter on his own, and without a clue as to where the others have gone. There is also a druid but she wasn't playing the last time we met up and so as usual her standing order is her character would become a spider and hide in the rogue backpack, which is now locked away in the prison where the rogue is being held. The druid player has no idea of what has happened last session, and is currently inside a backpack which is locked in a chest 3'x2' in size. She is playing as a human. The confines of this chest should cause some kind of bashing damage if she were to return to human form, as it is too small for her.
As a group the base would of been a deadly challenge, so solo it would be suicidal. The only way out for the players would be to face a battle in the villains fighting pit/arena with one fight against a homebrewed Trex. They wouldn't be allowed their own equipment and just be allowed standard weapons and armour.
The arena was meant for the team to infiltrate their way into the organisation in a series of fights with their equipment. Now though it could well kill them all.
Should I throw the players a life line?
Or stand by my usual mantra as a GM, "Let the dice rolls decide your fates"?
I mean it sounds like they made some poor choices, but that doesn't mean it should be the end of the line. Maybe work in some sort of jail break scenario. Let the spider find a way out of a small crack in the chest. Let the rouge make some lock picks out of bones. Capture the fighter and put him in a cell next to the rouge so their all together and then let it play out. If not that, maybe have a series of smaller battles before you throw the Trex at them. There's a bunch of different things that could happen.
Part of me says they broke one of the cardinal rules, “don’t split the party.” So if they all die, well, lesson learned. But a tpk is a bit harsh. So can we have some details.
When you say “base” what are you talking about? Is it some kind of fortress? One building or more like a few buildings? Is there a wall?
It kind of seems like you need to run a few solo sessions, since they are all separate, to stop the metagaming. You could try to email each one individually and ask them what they want to do. Like, how long will the fighter stand out there before he does something, and what will that something be? If he says he’ll wait an hour, but hears things hit the damn after 10 or 20 or 55 minutes, then he’d probably change his mind. The cleric could end up in jail with the rogue, but only if the rogue just sits there waiting and doesn’t manage to get out on his own. Does the cleric have sending prepped so there could be a little coordination? The druid could just shift right back into a spider and crawl away back outside, or try to find the rogue, since the character would know what’s happened even if the player doesn’t.
Theres really too many variables until you know what each characters will do.
Druids are nearly impossible to stop when it comes to escaping. She can turn into a rat and gnaw her way out of the chest. I don't see anywhere in the description of Wildshape where it says they cannot go directly from one shape to another. She can stay in the form of a rat, so she wouldn't have much of a problem getting to the Rogue, and all the rest who are likely to be right there with him. She'd have all her gear with her and once she stopped being a rat they should have some way to improvise Thieves' Tools so the Rogue gets to do something, or the Cleric could do something, if only to cast some heals. Try not to have the Druid do much more than help them get out. The others need a chance to shine.
Let the dice fall where they may. If worse comes to worst, and you get a Total Party Kill, that's easy enough to deal with. Have their captor gather them up, and stick them in the Arena with all their gear. He'd probably do that, since there's nothing fun about watching people die without much of a fight, and he wants to be entertained while he watches their inevitable doom. It's the very stuff adventure is made of if they manage to pull it all off. If not, they probably had a blast trying, and they can create some new characters to take up the torch and get revenge.
This video gives a more thoughtful nuanced take on party splitting:
As for your circumstances, I think you already outlined their solution, "kill" them so that they're all rendered unconscious and awake in captivity to face the arena (more on that in a second). The druid, Geann I think is right. I don't see any reason why you can't use your second wild shape to change into a different wild shape (spider to human). There's a clock ticking so the Druid needs to do something or revert anyway. It's all a set up to get the Druid in the same cell anyway. The video talks about using cinematic "cuts" to make sure players get their equal time.
As far as the T Rex solution? Why a homebrew T Rex? But more importantly how is gladiatorial combat "the way out?" After they kill the T Rex does the BBEG applaud and say "Good show! I know you all were caught infiltrating my facilities here, and given how you were equipped I'm guessing your plan was to at minimum disrupt my operations. But you know what? Since you all did an excellent job working as a team to kill my prized dinosaur, I'm just going to let you all go." I just don't see that working,
I'm on the fence about this, but since the party turned this into a cluster, maybe have the arena be the last stand where at least they get to go down swinging as a party. Lesson learned from the "base" is that D&D as most TTRPG is a game that requires better party coordination and encounters are generally not designed for solo work.
The idea was for them to infiltrate the villain base and plant a bomb, one of the ways to do that was to get into the fighting arena undercover in a more clandestine way. They fight through the pit and get asked to join the organisation. From there they would be allowed to move around the base with more freedom and find the right time when and where to plant the device which would blow the base sky high.
The group had two ways into the base one was via a underground network of tunnels and old crypts, one was to infiltrate the base via trying out for membership with the criminal group. They decided to circumnavigate the build trust part and go straight for infiltration of the main base. Now it has worked against them and split the party up due to the actions of the rogue who went in solo and got captured. Now the cleric is about to stand off against 4 cultists two of which are also spell casters.
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I don't often post here but I have been running a campaign for over a year now. My player group has just managed to start looking into one of the major villains of the campaign. Problem is that the kobold rogue was captured as he tried to explore the base solo. Now the cleric has also gone into the same base solo without any back up or telling the rest of the group where he has gone, and has been spotted by the henchmen; we stopped for this night at this point. This leaves the fighter on his own, and without a clue as to where the others have gone. There is also a druid but she wasn't playing the last time we met up and so as usual her standing order is her character would become a spider and hide in the rogue backpack, which is now locked away in the prison where the rogue is being held. The druid player has no idea of what has happened last session, and is currently inside a backpack which is locked in a chest 3'x2' in size. She is playing as a human. The confines of this chest should cause some kind of bashing damage if she were to return to human form, as it is too small for her.
As a group the base would of been a deadly challenge, so solo it would be suicidal. The only way out for the players would be to face a battle in the villains fighting pit/arena with one fight against a homebrewed Trex. They wouldn't be allowed their own equipment and just be allowed standard weapons and armour.
The arena was meant for the team to infiltrate their way into the organisation in a series of fights with their equipment. Now though it could well kill them all.
Should I throw the players a life line?
Or stand by my usual mantra as a GM, "Let the dice rolls decide your fates"?
I mean it sounds like they made some poor choices, but that doesn't mean it should be the end of the line. Maybe work in some sort of jail break scenario. Let the spider find a way out of a small crack in the chest. Let the rouge make some lock picks out of bones. Capture the fighter and put him in a cell next to the rouge so their all together and then let it play out. If not that, maybe have a series of smaller battles before you throw the Trex at them. There's a bunch of different things that could happen.
Part of me says they broke one of the cardinal rules, “don’t split the party.” So if they all die, well, lesson learned. But a tpk is a bit harsh. So can we have some details.
When you say “base” what are you talking about? Is it some kind of fortress? One building or more like a few buildings? Is there a wall?
It kind of seems like you need to run a few solo sessions, since they are all separate, to stop the metagaming. You could try to email each one individually and ask them what they want to do. Like, how long will the fighter stand out there before he does something, and what will that something be? If he says he’ll wait an hour, but hears things hit the damn after 10 or 20 or 55 minutes, then he’d probably change his mind.
The cleric could end up in jail with the rogue, but only if the rogue just sits there waiting and doesn’t manage to get out on his own. Does the cleric have sending prepped so there could be a little coordination?
The druid could just shift right back into a spider and crawl away back outside, or try to find the rogue, since the character would know what’s happened even if the player doesn’t.
Theres really too many variables until you know what each characters will do.
Druids are nearly impossible to stop when it comes to escaping. She can turn into a rat and gnaw her way out of the chest. I don't see anywhere in the description of Wildshape where it says they cannot go directly from one shape to another. She can stay in the form of a rat, so she wouldn't have much of a problem getting to the Rogue, and all the rest who are likely to be right there with him. She'd have all her gear with her and once she stopped being a rat they should have some way to improvise Thieves' Tools so the Rogue gets to do something, or the Cleric could do something, if only to cast some heals. Try not to have the Druid do much more than help them get out. The others need a chance to shine.
Let the dice fall where they may. If worse comes to worst, and you get a Total Party Kill, that's easy enough to deal with. Have their captor gather them up, and stick them in the Arena with all their gear. He'd probably do that, since there's nothing fun about watching people die without much of a fight, and he wants to be entertained while he watches their inevitable doom. It's the very stuff adventure is made of if they manage to pull it all off. If not, they probably had a blast trying, and they can create some new characters to take up the torch and get revenge.
<Insert clever signature here>
This video gives a more thoughtful nuanced take on party splitting:
As for your circumstances, I think you already outlined their solution, "kill" them so that they're all rendered unconscious and awake in captivity to face the arena (more on that in a second). The druid, Geann I think is right. I don't see any reason why you can't use your second wild shape to change into a different wild shape (spider to human). There's a clock ticking so the Druid needs to do something or revert anyway. It's all a set up to get the Druid in the same cell anyway. The video talks about using cinematic "cuts" to make sure players get their equal time.
As far as the T Rex solution? Why a homebrew T Rex? But more importantly how is gladiatorial combat "the way out?" After they kill the T Rex does the BBEG applaud and say "Good show! I know you all were caught infiltrating my facilities here, and given how you were equipped I'm guessing your plan was to at minimum disrupt my operations. But you know what? Since you all did an excellent job working as a team to kill my prized dinosaur, I'm just going to let you all go." I just don't see that working,
I'm on the fence about this, but since the party turned this into a cluster, maybe have the arena be the last stand where at least they get to go down swinging as a party. Lesson learned from the "base" is that D&D as most TTRPG is a game that requires better party coordination and encounters are generally not designed for solo work.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The idea was for them to infiltrate the villain base and plant a bomb, one of the ways to do that was to get into the fighting arena undercover in a more clandestine way. They fight through the pit and get asked to join the organisation. From there they would be allowed to move around the base with more freedom and find the right time when and where to plant the device which would blow the base sky high.
The group had two ways into the base one was via a underground network of tunnels and old crypts, one was to infiltrate the base via trying out for membership with the criminal group. They decided to circumnavigate the build trust part and go straight for infiltration of the main base. Now it has worked against them and split the party up due to the actions of the rogue who went in solo and got captured. Now the cleric is about to stand off against 4 cultists two of which are also spell casters.