Sometimes there’s a fight you just can’t win. Your second-level party has wandered into hill giant territory, and the landlord isn’t happy. You overslept, and the enemy horde has finally caught up with and surrounded you. A crime lord has your street thug over a literal or figurative barrel (either way, it’s probably full of acid or piranhas or celery). Regardless, you’re outmatched and then some. What do you do?
To start with, change your mindset. Sometimes winning just means surviving. You can’t always fight or talk your way out. Feel free to run, grovel, or offer favors you hope you won’t regret. Maybe the hill giant is just territorial, and you can find another route that doesn’t disturb it. On the other hand, you’re not likely to deceive, charm, or intimidate the mob boss, but your offer to personally tongue-polish his limo’s hubcaps might amuse him enough to buy you time. Remember, time spent polishing allows you to plot your escape and revenge. Death by acidic celeranhas does not.
For that matter, get creative. A giant is terrorizing the village, but you can’t take it on without becoming peasant pudding? Nonsense! Maybe you can’t trade blows, but you can organize the villagers, then lure the giant into the rockslide they’ve rigged up. When rocks fall, anyone can die. A god starts giving you trouble later in the game? Gather the local (and party) wizards, pool your magic, and bind that bad boy to a physical form you’re more comfortable with. A couple hours trapped in a concussion-prone hill giant oughta chill it out. Just be sure you forestall any vengeance with some kind of divinely-enforced contract before the inevitable escape during the wizards’ lunch break.
Remember to use attrition to your advantage. People have beaten Dark Souls completely unarmed. They’ve beaten modern armies with little more than sharpened sticks and a few outdated guns. Be the death of a thousand cuts. An encounter doesn’t have to be a discrete one- or two-minute affair. Ask your GM to zoom the abstraction out a level or two, make some survival, stealth, and/or crafting rolls, and see just what kind of damage you were able to do over hours or days as you John McClaned your way through the baddies or stalked a progressively more wounded monster until it collapsed.
That’s it! Remember that you have options beyond kill or be killed, embrace creative improvisation to punch above your weight class, and don’t be afraid to go guerrilla when you’re outclassed or outnumbered. Now, run along and throw your GMs for one heck of a loop next time they think they can boss you around with a cyborg dragon or something. Have fun!
…
Okay, are the players gone? A quick word, GMs. I know that sometimes you want to hit the players with a threat they can’t beat. If they find a way to beat it anyway, don’t you dare stop them. If you send an expeditionary force of Star Destroyers after them to make surrender the only option and they decide to charge, close to less than minimum effective sensor and gunnery range, and hide their ship on the hull of one of yours? By the Force, that’s a cool scene; you shouldn’t fight it (and maybe you should add a bonus or two for ballsiness). You can always send a bounty hunter after them and have that dramatic torture scene you’d planned for occur a session later. They slay the hill giant you’d meant to be a recurring menace thanks to careful planning and preparation? That’s a heck of a reputation for a second-level party to live up to. I’m sure you can arrange some interesting consequences, both positive and negative.
But don’t think PCs must always be evenly matched or underdogs. All the tactics I’ve outlined here are at your disposal as well. Have a captured baddie offer to be their jester or packmule or other humble servant to avoid his execution (and give you a man on the inside—I highly recommend this; PCs love having humble servants). Have a clever bounty hunter plink away at their equipment as he lures them into his booby-trapped killing field. Harass a road-weary party with goblins who attack when they sleep and escape into warrens too cramped for pursuit. After the fourth or fifth night of not being able to get a decent rest (and recover hit points), they might do just about anything for, say, a cyborg dragon offering to rid them of the nuisance. All it asks in return is their humble service.
Thad Kanupp
Latest posts by Thad Kanupp (see all)
- Being the Underdog - July 22, 2016
