I want to clarify some things to help those with some replies at the ready save some time:
These are for players I have nearly 7 years experience with, we are very comfortable broaching this topic together.
We have cleared lines and veils for this next session, and everyone has expressed enthusiastic consent.
The energy is going to be less The Cell and more The Princess Bride, if that helps.
If this sort of session/topic isn't for you I respect that, but that doesn't need to be shared here as it is unhelpful.
Context: In the last session one of my players willingly surrendered themselves to the palace guards and the Duke in order to give the other players time to escape. While the official questioning was above board (the guard captain just trying to get to the bottom of what happened), the Duke clearly is pushing for a confession. After midnight the Duke came to their cell and took them to a hidden dungeon, thought decommissioned, that he uses to get "results". A confession is icing on the cake, but ultimately this character hurt his ego and he wants them to pay. The other players have caught wind of this and are racing to infiltrate this dungeon and rescue their friend before it's too late.
Question: I need some mechanics for the interactions between the Duke and this player. I don't expect them to talk, or to necessarily force them to, but I don't want it to be purely RP either. Whether that's rolls to reduce "torture" damage, or deception checks to hold off the process and buy the players more time, I'm looking for the player to have something to engage in that has stakes while the others are racing against time. It also doesn't need to be graphic, the energy is not a Saw film, but more Princess Bride as stated above. Any thoughts, questions, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
If you're going straight for princess bride, I mean... what Wesley was experiencing was pretty clearly levels of exhaustion, no? To the point where he was actually killed... until Miracle Max used a revivify on him. He then recovered from that exhaustion slowly, going from having his speed reduced to zero, all the way up to being pretty much at full capacity. (by this logic, then, we're assuming that the PCs in the princess bride were using the optional rest variants in the DMG, since he recovered pretty quickly.)
So... yeah. Repeated Constitution checks, perhaps interspersed with roleplay that determines how much the Duke cranks things up (affecting the DC), failures give levels of exhaustion (and perhaps also deal damage, reducing max hp by an equal amount until the exhaustion is recovered from).
Also, on the note of interrogations in a D&D world... both the spells suggestion and detect thoughts exist. If your duke has a spellcaster in his employ, interrogations might go a lot easier.
I think while this is the ENERGY of the Princess Bride, it may be a different actual tactic/mechanic. That said Exhaustion as a consequence for failing by a certain margin might be a way to use that, with just damage/HP Max reduction as the normal effect. Actually that works really well, the HP Max reduction could be fixed with a long rest, but if they rack up more than one level of exhaustion then it isn't TOO long to recover while still being impactful.
As for suggestion/detect thoughts, this is why I mentioned that he was less interested in a confession and more interested in making her suffer. She already powered through a Zone of Truth spell, so now he just wants to see what an old fashioned approach may accomplish.
Actually this is really great. There can be two saves. The first to reduce/prevent the Duke from raising the DC on the actual torture save, and then the save against the device. If they save against the torture they only take DMG, if they fail they take MAX HP damage, if they fail by 5 or more they gain a level of exhaustion. Does this feel fair/balanced? They're a Paladin so both Charisma, Constitution, and HP are decent enough to hold off for a bit.
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I want to clarify some things to help those with some replies at the ready save some time:
Context: In the last session one of my players willingly surrendered themselves to the palace guards and the Duke in order to give the other players time to escape. While the official questioning was above board (the guard captain just trying to get to the bottom of what happened), the Duke clearly is pushing for a confession. After midnight the Duke came to their cell and took them to a hidden dungeon, thought decommissioned, that he uses to get "results". A confession is icing on the cake, but ultimately this character hurt his ego and he wants them to pay. The other players have caught wind of this and are racing to infiltrate this dungeon and rescue their friend before it's too late.
Question: I need some mechanics for the interactions between the Duke and this player. I don't expect them to talk, or to necessarily force them to, but I don't want it to be purely RP either. Whether that's rolls to reduce "torture" damage, or deception checks to hold off the process and buy the players more time, I'm looking for the player to have something to engage in that has stakes while the others are racing against time. It also doesn't need to be graphic, the energy is not a Saw film, but more Princess Bride as stated above. Any thoughts, questions, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
If you're going straight for princess bride, I mean... what Wesley was experiencing was pretty clearly levels of exhaustion, no? To the point where he was actually killed... until Miracle Max used a revivify on him. He then recovered from that exhaustion slowly, going from having his speed reduced to zero, all the way up to being pretty much at full capacity. (by this logic, then, we're assuming that the PCs in the princess bride were using the optional rest variants in the DMG, since he recovered pretty quickly.)
So... yeah. Repeated Constitution checks, perhaps interspersed with roleplay that determines how much the Duke cranks things up (affecting the DC), failures give levels of exhaustion (and perhaps also deal damage, reducing max hp by an equal amount until the exhaustion is recovered from).
Also, on the note of interrogations in a D&D world... both the spells suggestion and detect thoughts exist. If your duke has a spellcaster in his employ, interrogations might go a lot easier.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
I think while this is the ENERGY of the Princess Bride, it may be a different actual tactic/mechanic. That said Exhaustion as a consequence for failing by a certain margin might be a way to use that, with just damage/HP Max reduction as the normal effect. Actually that works really well, the HP Max reduction could be fixed with a long rest, but if they rack up more than one level of exhaustion then it isn't TOO long to recover while still being impactful.
As for suggestion/detect thoughts, this is why I mentioned that he was less interested in a confession and more interested in making her suffer. She already powered through a Zone of Truth spell, so now he just wants to see what an old fashioned approach may accomplish.
Actually this is really great. There can be two saves. The first to reduce/prevent the Duke from raising the DC on the actual torture save, and then the save against the device. If they save against the torture they only take DMG, if they fail they take MAX HP damage, if they fail by 5 or more they gain a level of exhaustion. Does this feel fair/balanced? They're a Paladin so both Charisma, Constitution, and HP are decent enough to hold off for a bit.