In addition to the good points made by previous peeps about the tortured person giving false information or just dying to the degree of blood loss, etc. it's also entirely fair that the tortured person would crap and relieve themselves on the floor, making the torture chamber unbearable for some of the PCs. Or the tortured person faints or has a mental breakdown, preventing any further useful questioning for X number of hours.
Re: EightPack's point about cyanide capsules. If members of a criminal organization learn that this PC likes engaging in torture and discipline is strong within the criminal organzation, it makes sense that they would start carrying poison with them to off themselves. Better that than have their entire families killed by the big boss or have their soul sucked away by that thing in the scary box the boss keeps locked up most of the time.
In addition to the good points made by previous peeps about the tortured person giving false information or just dying to the degree of blood loss, etc. it's also entirely fair that the tortured person would crap and relieve themselves on the floor, making the torture chamber unbearable for some of the PCs. Or the tortured person faints or has a mental breakdown, preventing any further useful questioning for X number of hours.
Re: EightPack's point about cyanide capsules. If members of a criminal organization learn that this PC likes engaging in torture and discipline is strong within the criminal organzation, it makes sense that they would start carrying poison with them to off themselves. Better that than have their entire families killed by the big boss or have their soul sucked away by that thing in the scary box the boss keeps locked up most of the time.
I feel like people have watch a few too many spy movies. Or at least i've never gotten the feeling that cyanide (or similar) pills were a common thing. Can find a lot of evidence of it being used as a poison toward others, but not finding a lot of references to it being a common thing for "unalive yourself" in situations where you have already fought and lost a fight, or gotten jumped by a group (especially with a medieval times level of technology).
I'm also amused that every seems to jump straight to "Flay them alive", instead of less overkill, and thus easier to repeat, methods (like breaking bones or pulling nails)
In addition to the good points made by previous peeps about the tortured person giving false information or just dying to the degree of blood loss, etc. it's also entirely fair that the tortured person would crap and relieve themselves on the floor, making the torture chamber unbearable for some of the PCs. Or the tortured person faints or has a mental breakdown, preventing any further useful questioning for X number of hours.
Re: EightPack's point about cyanide capsules. If members of a criminal organization learn that this PC likes engaging in torture and discipline is strong within the criminal organzation, it makes sense that they would start carrying poison with them to off themselves. Better that than have their entire families killed by the big boss or have their soul sucked away by that thing in the scary box the boss keeps locked up most of the time.
I feel like people have watch a few too many spy movies. Or at least i've never gotten the feeling that cyanide (or similar) pills were a common thing. Can find a lot of evidence of it being used as a poison toward others, but not finding a lot of references to it being a common thing for "unalive yourself" in situations where you have already fought and lost a fight, or gotten jumped by a group (especially with a medieval times level of technology).
I'm also amused that every seems to jump straight to "Flay them alive", instead of less overkill, and thus easier to repeat, methods (like breaking bones or pulling nails)
Cyanide is a naturally occurring poison, not some kind of modern "gee whiz" high tech therapy. It's why you're not supposed to eat apple seeds. Also, if you want lists of poisonous plants known to kill upon ingestion, that's a pretty easy thing to find on Wikipedia. Many of those can, and have been, processed into pharmacological medicines used to this day. A slightly different processing method or dosage recommendation, however, makes them into potentially deadly poisons.
In addition to the good points made by previous peeps about the tortured person giving false information or just dying to the degree of blood loss, etc. it's also entirely fair that the tortured person would crap and relieve themselves on the floor, making the torture chamber unbearable for some of the PCs. Or the tortured person faints or has a mental breakdown, preventing any further useful questioning for X number of hours.
Re: EightPack's point about cyanide capsules. If members of a criminal organization learn that this PC likes engaging in torture and discipline is strong within the criminal organzation, it makes sense that they would start carrying poison with them to off themselves. Better that than have their entire families killed by the big boss or have their soul sucked away by that thing in the scary box the boss keeps locked up most of the time.
I feel like people have watch a few too many spy movies. Or at least i've never gotten the feeling that cyanide (or similar) pills were a common thing. Can find a lot of evidence of it being used as a poison toward others, but not finding a lot of references to it being a common thing for "unalive yourself" in situations where you have already fought and lost a fight, or gotten jumped by a group (especially with a medieval times level of technology).
I'm also amused that every seems to jump straight to "Flay them alive", instead of less overkill, and thus easier to repeat, methods (like breaking bones or pulling nails)
Cyanide is a naturally occurring poison, not some kind of modern "gee whiz" high tech therapy. It's why you're not supposed to eat apple seeds. Also, if you want lists of poisonous plants known to kill upon ingestion, that's a pretty easy thing to find on Wikipedia. Many of those can, and have been, processed into pharmacological medicines used to this day. A slightly different processing method or dosage recommendation, however, makes them into potentially deadly poisons.
Poison has been a fairly common practice since Ancient Egypt even, let alone dark ages, middle ages, or any kind of time period one can conceivably place D&D into. Its just weird to build a homebrew world/or run a module/ or whatever to me: where a torture takes place somewhere, and no one ever finds out, ever. So, no one hears it? smells it? comes across the location a day, two, three, etc later and "investiagtes"? Nobody would ever find out? no rumors spread? nobody would ever "prepare for this possible scenario?" etc etc.
If its an evil campaign and this is the point of the campaign. OP needs to state/establish that in his posts and its like okay, so torture is just accepted by all/not a deal breaker thing.NBD.
Since it wasn't established, even the question regarding intimidation aside which, honestly, skill checks are made for "on the spot" things, if its something you're going to spend a while with and take your time on you don't even need a skill check. "threaten torture" sure roll intimidate. Say "You're going to tell us, or there's consequences" and then proceed to: unroll a cloth filled with medical devices... Ready a spell caster with prestidigitation, Cast a silence spell for where the sound escapes, put down a tarp, heat up a hot iron, Cast blindness on them so they can't see what's coming, etc. and take your time doing all this in front of the person.... you don't need an intimidation roll for them to be intimidated.
Edit: responded to you since i blocked OP. But its good to see someone else wonders about the world building leading up to the torture moment which is the focal point seemingly.
Poison has been a fairly common practice since Ancient Egypt even, let alone dark ages, middle ages, or any kind of time period one can conceivably place D&D into. Its just weird to build a homebrew world/or run a module/ or whatever to me: where a torture takes place somewhere, and no one ever finds out, ever. So, no one hears it? smells it? comes across the location a day, two, three, etc later and "investiagtes"? Nobody would ever find out? no rumors spread? nobody would ever "prepare for this possible scenario?" etc etc.
If its an evil campaign and this is the point of the campaign. OP needs to state/establish that in his posts and its like okay, so torture is just accepted by all/not a deal breaker thing.NBD.
Since it wasn't established, even the question regarding intimidation aside which, honestly, skill checks are made for "on the spot" things, if its something you're going to spend a while with and take your time on you don't even need a skill check. "threaten torture" sure roll intimidate. Say "You're going to tell us, or there's consequences" and then proceed to: unroll a cloth filled with medical devices... Ready a spell caster with prestidigitation, Cast a silence spell for where the sound escapes, put down a tarp, heat up a hot iron, Cast blindness on them so they can't see what's coming, etc. and take your time doing all this in front of the person.... you don't need an intimidation roll for them to be intimidated.
Edit: responded to you since i blocked OP. But its good to see someone else wonders about the world building leading up to the torture moment which is the focal point seemingly.
Ok, since people keep bring this up. Let me paint a picture. You and your group break into an enemy stronghold. These are not "good people" (we are talking murderers, drug cartels, cultists, etc...), so it stands to reason that their base of operations would probably be away from normal folks, or in an area where normal people are less likely to comment about "strange noises".
Sure there could be consequences for the character's / party's actions, but those need to be consequences that could/should come up even without the torture coming into play. (quick aside: Torture is not the "go too, first choice" option. But it remains on the table as a "well we need a lead, and the enemy group is probably smart enough to not have left a detailed letter on how to find the higher ups / iron clad incriminating evidence of illegal deeds.")
I'm all for a logical progression of events, but it needs to be logical. Not just "I don't like that you did "Thing", so NOW there is going to be fallout / the fallout is going to be 20x worse, then if you had only brutally murdered your way through the base." I would love someone to give a reason why without the torture, no one hears the party fighting the enemy; no one sees them enter the base; no one smells the aftermath of the battle; no one happens to investigate the scene; no one finds out what happened; no rumors spread. Because the general vibe i'm getting from the replies, is that you can and should handwave all of that "so long as the party didn't resort to torture"
As for the poison. My issue is not "Well that's something that didn't exist till recently". You want poison powder? SURE, you want poison liquid? SURE (not sure how well a glass bottle holds up under physical assault). You want false molars with poison inside of them? mmmmmmmmm that seems like a newer invention that i'm not really convinced would be in the bad guy play book.
@Zhule There is a magical item that exist on Beyond right now that doees exactly the pill treatment. it really depends on how far you are willing to take it. you could also take the rune road like they do in naruto for the byakugan familly.
when it comes to poison, its not just spy movies... this is something that is widely used by organisations... but the problem that arises from it is that the person may not want to end her life, it takes pretty big devotion to do something as permanent. so often the spy would remove the cyanide pill and get rid of it. as an exemple of james bond in die another die, when he says he got rid of the pill years ago. he just didn't want to die, he wanted to live even if he got taken. the problem of that leads to big oversights and weak points in an organisations. in a world where magic is prevalent though, you got alot more options to enforce such devotions. as an exemple, i have a guild that uses the blood of their devotee to spy on them, know where they are and even know if they took something important. they can even wipe ones mind if need be. though that option is not at a distance. with magic everything opens up.
as for the reason people say its probably evil and all... the world we live in right now, has changed over the years. back in the days of yore (80ies 90ies) we could talk about anything in D&D and people would understand its a game... now it seems people have feelings and about everything might throw these feelings off the road and thus many of us have taken the habit of dropping down to the simple heroic deeds instead of fanatical deeds. even our bbegs are now honnorable and less torture and masochitic natures. in fact, in mygames my bad guys were true badguys, now they are more of just bandit wanting more power for themselves. its really hard now a days to be a DM knowing that players just dont wanna see or hear about things that could potentially just push them back into their mental palace... 2 of my friends at the table have started developping mental issues with anything changing their appearances. one of them dropped two characters already just because one of them became a lycanthrope and he doesn't want to, and the other he dropped cause it wasn't what he wanted when he was cursed by a demon... i'm now at a point where i discussion will happen with him. but i fear he will only clam up even more.
so yeah, we're at a time in our time period in real life where people mental health is of utmost importance and that led to many DMs dropping about everything that made evil, well actually evil ! so its normal for everyone to ask about the importance of everyone being willing to accept such behaviors.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
@Zhule There is a magical item that exist on Beyond right now that doees exactly the pill treatment. it really depends on how far you are willing to take it. you could also take the rune road like they do in naruto for the byakugan familly.
when it comes to poison, its not just spy movies... this is something that is widely used by organisations... but the problem that arises from it is that the person may not want to end her life, it takes pretty big devotion to do something as permanent. so often the spy would remove the cyanide pill and get rid of it. as an exemple of james bond in die another die, when he says he got rid of the pill years ago. he just didn't want to die, he wanted to live even if he got taken. the problem of that leads to big oversights and weak points in an organisations. in a world where magic is prevalent though, you got alot more options to enforce such devotions. as an exemple, i have a guild that uses the blood of their devotee to spy on them, know where they are and even know if they took something important. they can even wipe ones mind if need be. though that option is not at a distance. with magic everything opens up.
as for the reason people say its probably evil and all... the world we live in right now, has changed over the years. back in the days of yore (80ies 90ies) we could talk about anything in D&D and people would understand its a game... now it seems people have feelings and about everything might throw these feelings off the road and thus many of us have taken the habit of dropping down to the simple heroic deeds instead of fanatical deeds. even our bbegs are now honnorable and less torture and masochitic natures. in fact, in mygames my bad guys were true badguys, now they are more of just bandit wanting more power for themselves. its really hard now a days to be a DM knowing that players just dont wanna see or hear about things that could potentially just push them back into their mental palace... 2 of my friends at the table have started developping mental issues with anything changing their appearances. one of them dropped two characters already just because one of them became a lycanthrope and he doesn't want to, and the other he dropped cause it wasn't what he wanted when he was cursed by a demon... i'm now at a point where i discussion will happen with him. but i fear he will only clam up even more.
so yeah, we're at a time in our time period in real life where people mental health is of utmost importance and that led to many DMs dropping about everything that made evil, well actually evil ! so its normal for everyone to ask about the importance of everyone being willing to accept such behaviors.
I was unaware of that magic item. hmmm good to know.
The whole "what is evil, and what is not" is a whole other conversation. But we have gotten off topic. The question remains, are the after effects being based in reality or based off DM bias? IE: Would all this have happened regardless? Because the general answer i'm seeing is "no."
If the party are "The Heroes" then no one is going to see them enter the enemy base. No one is going to hear the several minutes of intense fighting, or take note of the flashes of spells going off. Despite all the chaos and trouble they have caused the bad guy, the bad guy will not seek revenge.
If the party are NOT "The Heroes" then suddenly every eye is watching them; people who have spent years living under gang/cult rule, will go out of their way to investigate strange sounds; Despite this being one of many cells, the bad guy will take drastic measures to hunt down the party.
@Zhule There is a magical item that exist on Beyond right now that doees exactly the pill treatment.
I was unaware of that magic item. hmmm good to know.
its not as i thought, but its called the band of loyalty, requires attunement. it makes the person die without any death saves if it is dropped to 0 hit points. its a common item and it says in its description that spies love this item. for it makes sure they can't be captured. as in knocked out and then tortured or anything.
but it doesn't do squat against charms and the likes. still its a good item to throw your party against.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
The whole "what is evil, and what is not" is a whole other conversation. But we have gotten off topic. The question remains, are the after effects being based in reality or based off DM bias? IE: Would all this have happened regardless? Because the general answer i'm seeing is "no."
If the party are "The Heroes" then no one is going to see them enter the enemy base. No one is going to hear the several minutes of intense fighting, or take note of the flashes of spells going off. Despite all the chaos and trouble they have caused the bad guy, the bad guy will not seek revenge.
If the party are NOT "The Heroes" then suddenly every eye is watching them; people who have spent years living under gang/cult rule, will go out of their way to investigate strange sounds; Despite this being one of many cells, the bad guy will take drastic measures to hunt down the party.
I'm curious why you are making such assumptions. Your question was about how to handle failed skill checks in the context of torturing an NPC. That's what people responding to you are largely offering. Since you did not ask about noise or sight of PCs entering whatever Center of Evil you have built for your campaign at the beginning, why would we be responding to those issues?
Personally, I'm all for logical worldbuilding: If the PCs absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the tortured NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence of torture, sure that makes perfect sense why nobody would find out about it (assuming none of the PCs blab about it later).
The whole "what is evil, and what is not" is a whole other conversation. But we have gotten off topic. The question remains, are the after effects being based in reality or based off DM bias? IE: Would all this have happened regardless? Because the general answer i'm seeing is "no."
If the party are "The Heroes" then no one is going to see them enter the enemy base. No one is going to hear the several minutes of intense fighting, or take note of the flashes of spells going off. Despite all the chaos and trouble they have caused the bad guy, the bad guy will not seek revenge.
If the party are NOT "The Heroes" then suddenly every eye is watching them; people who have spent years living under gang/cult rule, will go out of their way to investigate strange sounds; Despite this being one of many cells, the bad guy will take drastic measures to hunt down the party.
I'm curious why you are making such assumptions. Your question was about how to handle failed skill checks in the context of torturing an NPC. That's what people responding to you are largely offering. Since you did not ask about noise or sight of PCs entering whatever Center of Evil you have built for your campaign at the beginning, why would we be responding to those issues?
Personally, I'm all for logical worldbuilding: If the PCs absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the tortured NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence of torture, sure that makes perfect sense why nobody would find out about it (assuming none of the PCs blab about it later).
I have gotten some good answers on how to deal with the issue of "you failed a skill check... but you still want to try to do *thing*.
The issue i'm trying to address now, is that many of the replies have a very "I don't like X, so if you do X, i will have a bunch of punishments for that". Which is coupled with a lot of handwaving away similar issues if the players do NOT do X. To use your own example. Would you, personally, have forced the PC's to "absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence", if the party had simply gone a more *traditional* route of attacking the enemy base (IE: try and break in, have that go sideways, then resort to murdering their way to the boss.)? OR... would you have handwaved the fact that the party made A LOT of noise and left A LOT of bodies in their wake, because "Well at least they didn't resort to torture"?
The question has shifted to one of calling out people for using bad story telling, to punish or reward players for playing the "Wrong"/ "Right" way (as according to a specific DM)
The whole "what is evil, and what is not" is a whole other conversation. But we have gotten off topic. The question remains, are the after effects being based in reality or based off DM bias? IE: Would all this have happened regardless? Because the general answer i'm seeing is "no."
If the party are "The Heroes" then no one is going to see them enter the enemy base. No one is going to hear the several minutes of intense fighting, or take note of the flashes of spells going off. Despite all the chaos and trouble they have caused the bad guy, the bad guy will not seek revenge.
If the party are NOT "The Heroes" then suddenly every eye is watching them; people who have spent years living under gang/cult rule, will go out of their way to investigate strange sounds; Despite this being one of many cells, the bad guy will take drastic measures to hunt down the party.
I'm curious why you are making such assumptions. Your question was about how to handle failed skill checks in the context of torturing an NPC. That's what people responding to you are largely offering. Since you did not ask about noise or sight of PCs entering whatever Center of Evil you have built for your campaign at the beginning, why would we be responding to those issues?
Personally, I'm all for logical worldbuilding: If the PCs absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the tortured NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence of torture, sure that makes perfect sense why nobody would find out about it (assuming none of the PCs blab about it later).
I have gotten some good answers on how to deal with the issue of "you failed a skill check... but you still want to try to do *thing*.
The issue i'm trying to address now, is that many of the replies have a very "I don't like X, so if you do X, i will have a bunch of punishments for that". Which is coupled with a lot of handwaving away similar issues if the players do NOT do X. To use your own example. Would you, personally, have forced the PC's to "absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence", if the party had simply gone a more *traditional* route of attacking the enemy base (IE: try and break in, have that go sideways, then resort to murdering their way to the boss.)? OR... would you have handwaved the fact that the party made A LOT of noise and left A LOT of bodies in their wake, because "Well at least they didn't resort to torture"?
Again, you are making assumptions. Any action the PCs make has consequences. Breaking into Evil Inc. HQ has consequences down the line whether or not they tortured people. Killing people should naturally have consequences as well. The fact that many BBEGs in D&D almost never have vengeful families is just as much a fault of D&D being an escapist fantasy as much as it is that module writers don't include that kind of thing for the sake of saving space. This "Disney villain" approach to storytelling suits certain kinds of high fantasy and escapist fiction, but I agree that it's not realistic.
However, simply killing humanoids is somewhat different kind of beast from torture. Why? Because killing is an almost inevitable consequence of escalatation of conflict or where ending a life is necessary to get a particular resource (like leather). Torture is always optional. If the aim of torture is to inflict max emotional or physical pain on someone, that's going over and above the obligate level of "let's do what we gotta do to get s*** done". (There might be exceptions to this, but exceptions are exceptions.) Any torture designed for max humiliation or pain is necessarily calculated and contains malicious intent. There is a moral difference between killing a dog and torturing a dog, for instance. The former is often unfortunate but understandable. The latter is almost always unnecessary and seen by most people as a sign of pathological tendency in the torturer. If the aim of torture is to merely gather information, well, there are often more subtle ways of doing so with less likelihood of incurring a reputation for the torturer as someone who likes to cause pain just for the hell of it.
Again, you are making assumptions. Any action the PCs make has consequences. Breaking into Evil Inc. HQ has consequences down the line whether or not they tortured people. Killing people should naturally have consequences as well. The fact that many BBEGs in D&D almost never have vengeful families is just as much a fault of D&D being an escapist fantasy as much as it is that module writers don't include that kind of thing for the sake of saving space. This "Disney villain" approach to storytelling suits certain kinds of high fantasy and escapist fiction, but I agree that it's not realistic.
However, simply killing humanoids is somewhat different kind of beast from torture. Why? Because killing is an almost inevitable consequence of escalatation of conflict or where ending a life is necessary to get a particular resource (like leather). Torture is always optional. If the aim of torture is to inflict max emotional or physical pain on someone, that's going over and above the obligate level of "let's do what we gotta do to get s*** done". (There might be exceptions to this, but exceptions are exceptions.) Any torture designed for max humiliation or pain is necessarily calculated and contains malicious intent. There is a moral difference between killing a dog and torturing a dog, for instance. The former is often unfortunate but understandable. The latter is almost always unnecessary and seen by most people as a sign of pathological tendency in the torturer. If the aim of torture is to merely gather information, well, there are often more subtle ways of doing so with less likelihood of incurring a reputation for the torturer as someone who likes to cause pain just for the hell of it.
Ok.... so that took why longer then it really had any right to. But i THINK we are on the same page; at least with regards to the idea that actions (such as an attack the enemy HQ) should have long term consequences, regardless if the player is doing the thing you don't like or not.
I think we have very different opinions in regards to the moral greyscale, that is justifying one's actions. I think it speaks to a bigger issue that people can "justify" away a double or triple digit body count; but are repulsed by the idea of hurting/humiliating (instead of killing) even a tiny fraction of that number.
Also lets NOT compare animals to people. At least to my knowledge, you can't intimidate/harm/coerce a cow into giving you the secret location of other cows. but you sure as shit can do that to a person. Same goes for the dog. Plus lets be honest many people would 100% rather let a person (or even multiple people) die, then be forced to hurt an animal (much less a "pet")
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In addition to the good points made by previous peeps about the tortured person giving false information or just dying to the degree of blood loss, etc. it's also entirely fair that the tortured person would crap and relieve themselves on the floor, making the torture chamber unbearable for some of the PCs. Or the tortured person faints or has a mental breakdown, preventing any further useful questioning for X number of hours.
Re: EightPack's point about cyanide capsules. If members of a criminal organization learn that this PC likes engaging in torture and discipline is strong within the criminal organzation, it makes sense that they would start carrying poison with them to off themselves. Better that than have their entire families killed by the big boss or have their soul sucked away by that thing in the scary box the boss keeps locked up most of the time.
I feel like people have watch a few too many spy movies. Or at least i've never gotten the feeling that cyanide (or similar) pills were a common thing. Can find a lot of evidence of it being used as a poison toward others, but not finding a lot of references to it being a common thing for "unalive yourself" in situations where you have already fought and lost a fight, or gotten jumped by a group (especially with a medieval times level of technology).
I'm also amused that every seems to jump straight to "Flay them alive", instead of less overkill, and thus easier to repeat, methods (like breaking bones or pulling nails)
Cyanide is a naturally occurring poison, not some kind of modern "gee whiz" high tech therapy. It's why you're not supposed to eat apple seeds. Also, if you want lists of poisonous plants known to kill upon ingestion, that's a pretty easy thing to find on Wikipedia. Many of those can, and have been, processed into pharmacological medicines used to this day. A slightly different processing method or dosage recommendation, however, makes them into potentially deadly poisons.
Poison has been a fairly common practice since Ancient Egypt even, let alone dark ages, middle ages, or any kind of time period one can conceivably place D&D into. Its just weird to build a homebrew world/or run a module/ or whatever to me: where a torture takes place somewhere, and no one ever finds out, ever. So, no one hears it? smells it? comes across the location a day, two, three, etc later and "investiagtes"? Nobody would ever find out? no rumors spread? nobody would ever "prepare for this possible scenario?" etc etc.
If its an evil campaign and this is the point of the campaign. OP needs to state/establish that in his posts and its like okay, so torture is just accepted by all/not a deal breaker thing.NBD.
Since it wasn't established, even the question regarding intimidation aside which, honestly, skill checks are made for "on the spot" things, if its something you're going to spend a while with and take your time on you don't even need a skill check. "threaten torture" sure roll intimidate. Say "You're going to tell us, or there's consequences" and then proceed to: unroll a cloth filled with medical devices... Ready a spell caster with prestidigitation, Cast a silence spell for where the sound escapes, put down a tarp, heat up a hot iron, Cast blindness on them so they can't see what's coming, etc. and take your time doing all this in front of the person.... you don't need an intimidation roll for them to be intimidated.
Edit: responded to you since i blocked OP. But its good to see someone else wonders about the world building leading up to the torture moment which is the focal point seemingly.
Blank
Ok, since people keep bring this up. Let me paint a picture. You and your group break into an enemy stronghold. These are not "good people" (we are talking murderers, drug cartels, cultists, etc...), so it stands to reason that their base of operations would probably be away from normal folks, or in an area where normal people are less likely to comment about "strange noises".
Sure there could be consequences for the character's / party's actions, but those need to be consequences that could/should come up even without the torture coming into play. (quick aside: Torture is not the "go too, first choice" option. But it remains on the table as a "well we need a lead, and the enemy group is probably smart enough to not have left a detailed letter on how to find the higher ups / iron clad incriminating evidence of illegal deeds.")
I'm all for a logical progression of events, but it needs to be logical. Not just "I don't like that you did "Thing", so NOW there is going to be fallout / the fallout is going to be 20x worse, then if you had only brutally murdered your way through the base." I would love someone to give a reason why without the torture, no one hears the party fighting the enemy; no one sees them enter the base; no one smells the aftermath of the battle; no one happens to investigate the scene; no one finds out what happened; no rumors spread. Because the general vibe i'm getting from the replies, is that you can and should handwave all of that "so long as the party didn't resort to torture"
As for the poison. My issue is not "Well that's something that didn't exist till recently". You want poison powder? SURE, you want poison liquid? SURE (not sure how well a glass bottle holds up under physical assault). You want false molars with poison inside of them? mmmmmmmmm that seems like a newer invention that i'm not really convinced would be in the bad guy play book.
@Zhule
There is a magical item that exist on Beyond right now that doees exactly the pill treatment.
it really depends on how far you are willing to take it. you could also take the rune road like they do in naruto for the byakugan familly.
when it comes to poison, its not just spy movies... this is something that is widely used by organisations... but the problem that arises from it is that the person may not want to end her life, it takes pretty big devotion to do something as permanent. so often the spy would remove the cyanide pill and get rid of it. as an exemple of james bond in die another die, when he says he got rid of the pill years ago. he just didn't want to die, he wanted to live even if he got taken. the problem of that leads to big oversights and weak points in an organisations. in a world where magic is prevalent though, you got alot more options to enforce such devotions. as an exemple, i have a guild that uses the blood of their devotee to spy on them, know where they are and even know if they took something important. they can even wipe ones mind if need be. though that option is not at a distance. with magic everything opens up.
as for the reason people say its probably evil and all...
the world we live in right now, has changed over the years. back in the days of yore (80ies 90ies) we could talk about anything in D&D and people would understand its a game... now it seems people have feelings and about everything might throw these feelings off the road and thus many of us have taken the habit of dropping down to the simple heroic deeds instead of fanatical deeds. even our bbegs are now honnorable and less torture and masochitic natures. in fact, in mygames my bad guys were true badguys, now they are more of just bandit wanting more power for themselves. its really hard now a days to be a DM knowing that players just dont wanna see or hear about things that could potentially just push them back into their mental palace... 2 of my friends at the table have started developping mental issues with anything changing their appearances. one of them dropped two characters already just because one of them became a lycanthrope and he doesn't want to, and the other he dropped cause it wasn't what he wanted when he was cursed by a demon... i'm now at a point where i discussion will happen with him. but i fear he will only clam up even more.
so yeah, we're at a time in our time period in real life where people mental health is of utmost importance and that led to many DMs dropping about everything that made evil, well actually evil ! so its normal for everyone to ask about the importance of everyone being willing to accept such behaviors.
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I was unaware of that magic item. hmmm good to know.
The whole "what is evil, and what is not" is a whole other conversation. But we have gotten off topic. The question remains, are the after effects being based in reality or based off DM bias? IE: Would all this have happened regardless? Because the general answer i'm seeing is "no."
If the party are "The Heroes" then no one is going to see them enter the enemy base. No one is going to hear the several minutes of intense fighting, or take note of the flashes of spells going off. Despite all the chaos and trouble they have caused the bad guy, the bad guy will not seek revenge.
If the party are NOT "The Heroes" then suddenly every eye is watching them; people who have spent years living under gang/cult rule, will go out of their way to investigate strange sounds; Despite this being one of many cells, the bad guy will take drastic measures to hunt down the party.
its not as i thought, but its called the band of loyalty, requires attunement. it makes the person die without any death saves if it is dropped to 0 hit points.
its a common item and it says in its description that spies love this item. for it makes sure they can't be captured. as in knocked out and then tortured or anything.
but it doesn't do squat against charms and the likes.
still its a good item to throw your party against.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
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I'm curious why you are making such assumptions. Your question was about how to handle failed skill checks in the context of torturing an NPC. That's what people responding to you are largely offering. Since you did not ask about noise or sight of PCs entering whatever Center of Evil you have built for your campaign at the beginning, why would we be responding to those issues?
Personally, I'm all for logical worldbuilding: If the PCs absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the tortured NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence of torture, sure that makes perfect sense why nobody would find out about it (assuming none of the PCs blab about it later).
I have gotten some good answers on how to deal with the issue of "you failed a skill check... but you still want to try to do *thing*.
The issue i'm trying to address now, is that many of the replies have a very "I don't like X, so if you do X, i will have a bunch of punishments for that". Which is coupled with a lot of handwaving away similar issues if the players do NOT do X. To use your own example. Would you, personally, have forced the PC's to "absolutely eradicated any intelligent creatures in the vicinity that would be able to hear any potential screams of agony from the NPC AND later killed that NPC and immolated the NPC's body to erase any evidence", if the party had simply gone a more *traditional* route of attacking the enemy base (IE: try and break in, have that go sideways, then resort to murdering their way to the boss.)? OR... would you have handwaved the fact that the party made A LOT of noise and left A LOT of bodies in their wake, because "Well at least they didn't resort to torture"?
The question has shifted to one of calling out people for using bad story telling, to punish or reward players for playing the "Wrong"/ "Right" way (as according to a specific DM)
Again, you are making assumptions. Any action the PCs make has consequences. Breaking into Evil Inc. HQ has consequences down the line whether or not they tortured people. Killing people should naturally have consequences as well. The fact that many BBEGs in D&D almost never have vengeful families is just as much a fault of D&D being an escapist fantasy as much as it is that module writers don't include that kind of thing for the sake of saving space. This "Disney villain" approach to storytelling suits certain kinds of high fantasy and escapist fiction, but I agree that it's not realistic.
However, simply killing humanoids is somewhat different kind of beast from torture. Why? Because killing is an almost inevitable consequence of escalatation of conflict or where ending a life is necessary to get a particular resource (like leather). Torture is always optional. If the aim of torture is to inflict max emotional or physical pain on someone, that's going over and above the obligate level of "let's do what we gotta do to get s*** done". (There might be exceptions to this, but exceptions are exceptions.) Any torture designed for max humiliation or pain is necessarily calculated and contains malicious intent. There is a moral difference between killing a dog and torturing a dog, for instance. The former is often unfortunate but understandable. The latter is almost always unnecessary and seen by most people as a sign of pathological tendency in the torturer. If the aim of torture is to merely gather information, well, there are often more subtle ways of doing so with less likelihood of incurring a reputation for the torturer as someone who likes to cause pain just for the hell of it.
Ok.... so that took why longer then it really had any right to. But i THINK we are on the same page; at least with regards to the idea that actions (such as an attack the enemy HQ) should have long term consequences, regardless if the player is doing the thing you don't like or not.
I think we have very different opinions in regards to the moral greyscale, that is justifying one's actions. I think it speaks to a bigger issue that people can "justify" away a double or triple digit body count; but are repulsed by the idea of hurting/humiliating (instead of killing) even a tiny fraction of that number.
Also lets NOT compare animals to people. At least to my knowledge, you can't intimidate/harm/coerce a cow into giving you the secret location of other cows. but you sure as shit can do that to a person. Same goes for the dog. Plus lets be honest many people would 100% rather let a person (or even multiple people) die, then be forced to hurt an animal (much less a "pet")