What part of "there are 100 of them" didn't you un

[ricardo440]

What part of "there are 100 of them" didn't you understand

My group got toasted thursday night when the four players were following a spice caravan in Stygia disguised as slaves of an unimportant noble.

They then saw a huge shemite raiding party charging towards the caravan. Three of the four players decided they would go and help the 20 defenders of the caravan. people they had never met, never spoken with, and indeed allies of the people who had thrown them in prison earlier wanting to sell them into slavery.

The remaining player went and hid in the river.

The 100 strong shemite raiding party swept down and made short work of the defenders. The PCs lasted a bit longer but even they couldn't stand up to the onslaught of so many level 2 nomads.
Each round they would generally be in contact with 3-5 nomads. each on a +3 to hit.
These would all attack so +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 (not including flanking)
they would then move away provoking AoO
The next 5 would charge in
+10 +11 +12 +13 +15 to hit. Not including flanking.

sufice to say only the player in the river survived.

 

[René]

Well, that's the difference to standard fantasy settings! I hope your players took it well?

 

[urdinaran]

Interesting tactic there, gotta remember that next time.

 

[Sutek]

I'll bet you someone is taking the Cleave feat next time.

lol

 

[count_zero]

Never underestimate the power of stupidity... One of the first things that my players learned early on is that running away is a viable option which can be readily applied when lots of armoured people with big swords are attacking.

They'll know better next time.

P.S. I do use Uncle Bear's horde rules sometimes, but that's only when I want to drive up the body count and make the glorious slaughter a part of the story ("Aye, the skalds still sing about the day when Heimdal Skullsplitter and I dyed the earth red with the blood of our enemies" and such). Works great then, but not to avoid player stupidity.

 

[Valaryc]

The remaining player went and hid in the river.

sufice to say only the player in the river survived.

i think i can imagine his lucky face

 

[Etepete]

Interesting. Sweet piece of player education

Big hordes have always been my weak spot. I'll keep that tactic in mind.

 

[geordiekimbo]

I remember running a AD&D adventure ages ago. One plyer who had a reasonably high level barbarian always fancied himself as the charge in swords blazing type. I described the scene where 20 odd armed bandits with crossbows come out from behind trees, not so much an ambush but as an intimidating tactic...Worked on the other player...the barbarian player says I charge the most dangerous one (near the back)..other player is screaming nooooo

One round later a pin cushioned barbarian is dying. Cue lots of ass saving points to get him out of the crap by him and the other player (they had that option, once or twice a campaign).

Lets just say, the replay went something like...20 odd armed bandits with crossbows come out from behind trees, not so much an ambush but as an intimidating tactic...first player, ok i put up my hands and say "don't shoot". barbarian player says "i surrender"

one of the classic moments, filed alongside the time a 6 foot praying mantis got inside a player character reporters car, while he's in there stinking drunk and phobic of insects...

 

[teamescape]

A wise GM once said:

'You'll always survive as long as you take things one step at a time and think things through...'
and
'Stupidity results in a 90% mortality rate'

I think both of these apply to the aforementioned situations

 

[Etepete]

To survive in an RPG, get to know your GM. Learn to read his warning signs and interpret the conventions and forms inherent in his gamemastering. You need to realize how he conceptualizes the world, his sense of logics. To one GM it might be suicide to attack a dozen picts, to another its a walkover: and if you don't attack you're just being cowardly.

On the flipside of this, as a GM you need to be very careful about what kind of signals you send. You need to make sure the players get the basics of you're line of thinking so they're not completely in the dark, but you also need to make sure you have some cards up your sleeve, and that they won't be able to read you like a book.

 

[René]

To survive in an RPG, get to know your GM. Learn to read his warning signs and interpret the conventions and forms inherent in his gamemastering. You need to realize how he conceptualizes the world, his sense of logics. To one GM it might be suicide to attack a dozen picts, to another its a walkover: and if you don't attack you're just being cowardly.

On the flipside of this, as a GM you need to be very careful about what kind of signals you send. You need to make sure the players get the basics of you're line of thinking so they're not completely in the dark, but you also need to make sure you have some cards up your sleeve, and that they won't be able to read you like a book.

Wise words!

 

[Etepete]

To survive in an RPG, get to know your GM. Learn to read his warning signs and interpret the conventions and forms inherent in his gamemastering. You need to realize how he conceptualizes the world, his sense of logics. To one GM it might be suicide to attack a dozen picts, to another its a walkover: and if you don't attack you're just being cowardly.

On the flipside of this, as a GM you need to be very careful about what kind of signals you send. You need to make sure the players get the basics of you're line of thinking so they're not completely in the dark, but you also need to make sure you have some cards up your sleeve, and that they won't be able to read you like a book.

Wise words!

I'm a wise guy 8)

 

[Aelric]

Well I didn't have a hundred of them but I did have 15 bandits jump my party.I had 2 barabains,1 Ranger,1 Thief,1 Wizard,and 1 shaman.And they pretty much wiped out the whole raiding party.I had 1 or 2 bandits surive it and they where runing away as fast as they could.And the party captured one of them and sold them to the slaver caravan that they where guarding.(it's a cruel world).And this goes on a bit to wealth.What I did is I give them silver and figure how much everything costs.LIke if it is 10 gold then it comes out to be 100 silver then. here is an example of that,an early iron sword costs 13 gp,but in my game it would be 130 denari(silver)and they only start out with 240 silver.So they would have to watch what they buy and not get everything thier little hearts want.And as one player out it dam your world is exspensive.

 

[ricardo440]

indeed it was stupidity gone mad if that is even possible.

I can understand conan characters risking their lives for honour, the love of a beautiful (member of the opposite sex or indeed same sex, I'm not judging) or a big pile of cash. But throwing their lives away for no reason was very odd.

After the battle the bedouin (shemite) guys looted the caravan and then chopped all the defenders up into pieces hacking their heads off and threw them into the river.
One of my players said "That is the way I always wanted to be cremated"

 

[Amonakra]

As for the game with the charging horde of nomans, I can't really make any judgement calls on the thoughts of the players or their characters, as I don't have all of the things that had occurred up to that point. As Etepete pointed out, players have to take their queues from the GM, read the signs to figure out what is or is not expected of them. There are some players, I have a couple in my group, that play RPGs like video games. If an option is presented to them by the GM, then obviously it is what the GM wants them to do, so there for they do it. Personally, I like giving them the chance to make right and wrong decisions, you would think that this particular player of mine would have learned this by now, but hey. Anyway, the point is that the players might have assumed that because you were presenting them with the raiders, that perhaps it was your intention for them to "save the day", and therefore, become involved with someone in the caravan, who because they saved is now a plot device. Since it was Shemites, perhaps they were expecting to be taking prisoner and put on the slavery block. After all, why would the Shemites not steal their stuff AND make a profit off of the caravan defenders as well? Or perhaps they figured that they didn't have a chance to escape, that they would just be hunted down or something, and therefore, to make a solid stance with numbers. Yeah, there were only four characters and twenty people on the caravan. That's 4 to 1 odds. Not good, but not necessarily impossible either. My point is, yeah, to run might have seemed the obvious choice to you, since you knew what the outcome would be, but it may not have been so very obvious to the players.

Amonakra

 

[Etepete]

I agree completely with Amonaraka. As a GM you have a tremendous responsibility (at least theoretically). It's not only a matter of having a reasonable interpretation of causality, (basically how things work and how they... don't) but you're also automaticaly normative. Is trying to free some slaves heroic and the decent thing to do, or moronic and not your business?

Players will catch on to your train of thought rather quickly, so try to make sure it's at least slightly coherent.

 

[ricardo440]

er.

The players were the slaves. They had just escaped from a stygian dungeon. They were fugitives in stygia. It was stygians under attack.

 

[Amonakra]

Were those in the caravan the ones that had enslaved them or that they had escaped from? Also, does any of the characters possess a code of honour? While both the barbaric and civilized codes of honour stipulate that they must help the weak if requested, it isn't an unreasonable jump for the characters to feel that their character could be moved by their code of honour to help the caravan, even if they hadn't been formely asked. Also, they might have thought about the logistics of such a raid as not being so clear cut that they would have so many hitting them each and every round. Yeah, just because there are enough raiders to attack five at a time, doesn't mean that there is necessarily enough space for them to do so, especially if the raides were mounted at the time. Also, unless they have actual military training, there is little reason that such a mass of rabble would stay in a tight formation. I'm not saying that the characters were not grossly outnumbered, but I just don't think that the scenario that you described was quite so cut and dry as you might think it was.

Amonakra