"Hold it, men! He's not bluffing!"

I dunno about you guys, but for me, one of the most common game-crashing tricks my players tend to pull is grabbing an important bad guy and holding a knife to his throat or a gun to his head, calling out to his minions to drop their weapons. Now, I like the trope. It's just really hard to adjudicate in a roleplaying game, because it plays hell with the whole idea of initiative, and it basically means a lot of things happen at once. My last session ended on such a note, as the fight had started to drag, and we figured it was better to leave it on a cliffhanger than fight it out.

Now, I'm pretty sure this particular case I'll be able to handle through narrative roleplaying. Of three characters, one has been dropped, the other has fled, and the last succeeded on his Brawl check despite significant penalties, to grab the villain, brandishing his vibroknife just as more guards arrived. My plan is to have the villain offer a truce, and get the character to switch sides. Considering the character is a violent street thug Aggressor, there's a good chance he'll take the bait for the time being.

But let's consider how such a situation plays out mechanically. I called for a Brawl check, and stacked on extra setback dice, while ruling that the attack would cause no damage. He succeeded with some Threat, so "Yes! You definitely grabbed the guy and are threatening him with your blade as his guards burst in. I'm... not sure what that means exactly." The Brawl successes could add difficulty dice to any attack rolls against him, as he uses the villain as cover? I figure a Coercion roll is in order, or perhaps a Discipline check against the character's Coercion, one for the guards and one for the villain. Perhaps give it similar mechanics as a Fear check? What if combat continues? Should I reroll Initiative (in this case, yeah, since we'll be doing a whole new session)?

Does this ever come up for anyone else?

Usually my players just attack the big boss rather than negotiate a truce... They attempt to maintain a level of non-combat but when combat starts, all but one group just decides to heck with it and defeats all the advesaries instead of attempting to negotiate some sort of truce or ceasefire.

Coercion seems an appopriate skill to call for if the player is trying to force a ceasefire by way of threatening their leader.

Definitely re-roll initiative unless you feel like there's way too much going on to bother with it. For instance, I have a session that ended the other day 3 rounds into a 3 way battle, between the group (6 PCs) their enemy (9 NPCs) and another interested party (7 NPCs).

These situations have come up for me, and I've asked for Coercion checks. The only problems have come when the PC failed, and the player got upset, arguing that the blaster to the head or knife to the throat should be enough. The argument I've used is the NPC doesn't buy it...either doesn't think the PC will go through with it, or thinks the PC will go through with it regardless of what he does, or sees a different opportunity.

I would first check Coercion against the boss' Discipline, probably granting boost(s) for the situation. If the boss fails, he can try to convince his minions to stand down (much would depend on their loyalty to him).

Also agree that initiative should be re-rolled after the narrative pause.

13 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

Usually my players just attack the big boss rather than negotiate a truce...

Yeah, that happened for a little bit, but the PC's were becoming overwhelmed. It took a long time, since the Minion mooks did jack squat for damage, but the players were having just as hard of a time taking down the villain and the Rivals.

One of the other troubles in a game is that mechanically, there's no way our "hero" is going to be able to seriously hurt the villain with a single attack from a vibroknife. The big bad guy has a single minor crit and a few points of Wound damage, but that's it. Still, a knife held at you should be scary, right?

Sure, if one gets scared from a random guy holding a knife to his throat. I'd say you should think about how this badguy would respond to a situation like this. Is he some sort of vicious mercenary leader, born in battle & used to having his life threatened or is this some sort of hacker group that is blackmailing the PCs, with the intent that they have to listen or their secrets will be revealed? Is it an Inquisitor that's sole purpose in living is hunting down the PCs and either turning them to the dark side or killing them?

Thinking about their personality, life experiences & strength of will would determine if they have a possibility of feeling fear. Depending on how possible it would be, you could make them roll a fear check. Inquisitor? maybe a 1 difficulty, in some circumstances. Mercenary group? Maybe 2? Hacker group not used to violent acts? Possibly 3.

4 hours ago, The Grand Falloon said:

One of the other troubles in a game is that mechanically, there's no way our "hero" is going to be able to seriously hurt the villain with a single attack from a vibroknife. The big bad guy has a single minor crit and a few points of Wound damage, but that's it. Still, a knife held at you should be scary, right?

This is the main problem with "hit points" in the game mechanics, and I usually give a lot of latitude towards the one holding the knife, because otherwise the PCs and NPCs are thinking in terms of numbers instead of drama. You could completely bypass Soak, for instance, or perhaps a success is also an auto-crit, or perhaps advantages or Triumph from the Coercion can be applied to the combat roll, triggering qualities...in short, there are lots of ways to mitigate the mechanical straightjacket.

12 hours ago, The Grand Falloon said:

Yeah, that happened for a little bit, but the PC's were becoming overwhelmed. It took a long time, since the Minion mooks did jack squat for damage, but the players were having just as hard of a time taking down the villain and the Rivals.

One of the other troubles in a game is that mechanically, there's no way our "hero" is going to be able to seriously hurt the villain with a single attack from a vibroknife. The big bad guy has a single minor crit and a few points of Wound damage, but that's it. Still, a knife held at you should be scary, right?

In this setting it should be not as scary as it really is. Still you could hand out a few bonus ranks of viscous, but keep in mind that next time it might be one of the PCs getting grabbed by an Nemsis who would like to make its daring escape with a hostage. *g*
Anyway, coercion check, advantages on a fail can be used as boost dice on the following initiative check, threats would hinder the check. A failed coercion check with threats might end like that: "I have a hostage. No one moves." *bam headshot* ;-)

I would screw HP at this point and narrative state that being caught in a vulnerable position, with a knife to a characters throat adds +50 to a critical roll check, in addition to other modifiers; why? Because at this point the PC or NPC target is caught completely flatfooted and unable to muster an response as even the slightest movement without a meaningful importunity will result in his neck being slit, or worse. That was, there are real machanical stakes associated to catching someone completely flatfooted. A successful check/unsuccessful check can create a window where the target lets his guard down that the hostage can act.

If it is a NPC being held hostage; I might be even bet tempted to make despairs kill the hostage outright. One nemesis held a young woman hostage on a subway train after his ISB group was wiped out;, the PC continued to engage and rolled a despair, the shot hit the villain right between the eyes but he had pulled the trigger before his life extinguished, leaving a broken father weaping over his own daughter and this party of criminal scum was left uncertain; even though they were recovering deathstar footage for a noble cause their actions can have unnoble effects.

With starwars medicine I am not sure if I ever would go directly to the "you are dead" option, not when the "bleeding out" critical is a thing. *g*

5 hours ago, LordBritish said:

I would screw HP at this point and narrative state that being caught in a vulnerable position, with a knife to a characters throat adds +50 to a critical roll check, in addition to other modifiers

For something like that, I would require it to start out of combat, with a sweet Stealth, Deception, or Skulduggery check, to represent that element of surprise. Since we started in combat, I would give bonuses based on how well one did on his Brawl check. I've done a fair bit of tackling and rasslin', and a simple success does not put someone helpless and at your mercy.I'm thinking extra successes could be used to make you harder to hit, as you use your target as cover. Advantages would put you in a better position to carry out your threat, giving you boost dice to your attack roll. Since a vibroknife has a pretty low crit rating, this could make you very dangerous.

In this particular case, the guy rolled a few successes, and a few threat, which I figure means he got a decent grip on the villain, but the villain has a tentative grip his wrist. So everyone is in a pretty tense position here.

23 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

I'd say you should think about how this badguy would respond to a situation like this. Is he some sort of vicious mercenary leader, born in battle & used to having his life threatened or is this some sort of hacker group that is blackmailing the PCs, with the intent that they have to listen or their secrets will be revealed? Is it an Inquisitor that's sole purpose in living is hunting down the PCs and either turning them to the dark side or killing them?

The villain in this case is from the end of Act 1 of Chronicles of the Gatekeeper. The PCs basically threw subtlety to the wind and spilled the beans about their quest, even showing him the MacGuffin they carry. Negotiations broke down pretty quick from there, resulting in the current situation. I figure my best "out" is to have the bad guy make his assailant an offer of truce. The PC is a pretty obvious thug. His weaponry includes a length of pipe, brass knuckles, and a vibroknife, and his "heavy clothing" is jeans and a jean jacket, both heavily studded, the sleeves ripped off, and a big patch of a howling werewolf on the back. The character's name is D'an of Den'im, or Denim Dan to his friends (yes, these are the kinds of people I play with. Denim Dan's player has a "Dr." in front of his name). I figure our villain sees something of a kindred spirit in Denim Dan, and makes him an offer to work together. We'll see whether the offer is taken, but it should be interesting either way.

On 2/19/2017 at 11:10 AM, The Grand Falloon said:

Does this ever come up for anyone else?

It only has come up once for me, just a couple of sessions ago. One of the players, vastly outnumbered by stormtroopers, grabbed the alien turncoat that had just sold the group out to the Empire and told the Imperials to back off. The officer on the scene merely shrugged and blew the worthless alien scum away, ordering the stormtroopers to open fire anyway.

On 2/19/2017 at 11:47 AM, whafrog said:

These situations have come up for me, and I've asked for Coercion checks. The only problems have come when the PC failed, and the player got upset, arguing that the blaster to the head or knife to the throat should be enough. The argument I've used is the NPC doesn't buy it...either doesn't think the PC will go through with it, or thinks the PC will go through with it regardless of what he does, or sees a different opportunity.

I would think that throwing a blue or two at their Coercion roll would probably be enough to offset any complaints that "my gun should have been enough". I mean it is a blaster pointing at your head after all, even though their hand is shaking and their voice is cracking from stress.

Anytime I have a player grab an NPC of importance they have to pass a brawl check to grab them and then they have to pass an immediate athletics versus resilience or coordination check(whichever is higher) to keep them held, and yes if the NPC has adversary it upgrades both checks. If you feel like your players are pulling this tactic too much, you might want to try this method, and don't forget you can always flip destiny points to change the situation, like say, the player succeeded but "opppps" you drop your knife/blaster.

If the take-the-important-baddy-hostage is becoming a regular thing have said baddy pull out a Thermal Detonator and prime the dead man switch. Mexican Stand Off!

I did that once. A PC's obligation saw his old smuggler buddy pay a visit to their ship in space under the pretense of friendship and owed favors. He turned on the PC due to extortion from another party & the group sans the obligation PC intended to board his ship, defeat all the guys and steal his ship (this was like session 2 for the group). When they almost got to the enemy ship through the airlock access, one of the adversaries pulled a thermal detonator and said "time for us to part ways, or we all die". I looked at the group and said if this goes badly with a fighting check, the airlock hull will be blown apart and you'll first be hit by the blast knocking you unconsious, then sucked into space to die a horrible death. Everyone booked it to their ship save for one PC who decided to attempt kicking the thermal detonator carrying adversary back into his ship... Probably the most suspenseful roll that ever happened since death was a very real possibility. Thankfully the roll was a complete miss and no Despair was rolled. The PC then booked it back to the ship and they detached.

HA. We had this last session, on a hostage extraction operation, we send in our commandos, but they got caught in a little bit of a stalemate with the baddies, so plan B was used to sneak a second group in from behind. Sneaking in was successful, the big bad didn't realise we were there until he had a rail gun pressing against his head. The check was enough to divert attention of the whole room, but the second my character was throwing a grenade with his free hand the big bad just turned around on his regular initiative slot and miraculously missed my little verpine with his giant vibro axe (setback dice applied from the previous stealth check).

Lesson learned, the system works just fine narratively, even in such hostage situations. From a cinematic standpoint there really is no reason to assume that you just splatter the brain of your hostage the second it moves, it might be a little unrealistic, but the whole point in playing a cinematic system is to have rules for a unrealistic base premise.