D&D: Muahaha

[ralphmelton]

About a week ago, I wrote:

- drakemonger suggested a fight with the vampire Garrett among a crowd of innocent dominated victims. I was attracted to the ghoulish question of "what do the PCs do when they're attacked by a bunch of dominated commoners?" But there's a fairly easy solution with D&D mechanics--with magic circle against evil, the commoners they come near will have the domination suppressed, and then they will presumably not attack so hard.

I could, of course, have them not dominated but brainwashed--but that seems inelegant to me in a way I can't wholly articulate.
I'd welcome your suggestions on ways to refine this.

I've come up with a refinement that, I think, really works well: the innocent victims will be young children.
This will make it more plausible that when the domination is lifted, the victims will freak out. Some will panic, some will run away (and become dominated again), some may attack the adult PCs anyway, and so forth. (The reduced combat effectiveness isn't much of an issue; it wasn't as if 1st-level warriors could damage the PCs anyway. It's all about getting in the way and denying fireballs.
And it will underline Garrett's nature as a puppy-kicking figure of eeeevil.

My players are going to hate this.

Comments

[drakemonger.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that's even more wicked and horrifying...

[pjack.livejournal.com]

The danger, of course, is that a particularly ruthless party might fry 'em anyway. Even "good" PCs might be tempted to fry the kids, and raise them later.

If they do kill any of the children (by accident, or otherwise), might I suggest a good haunting? A ghost or ghosts could pester the PCs on and off for months.

Pjack

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Not an issue for my players. They have been consistently good for three and a half years; I'm not worried about them turning bad now.

[echoweaver.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's really delightful. I thought the dominated crowd of civilians was a wonderful idea, so I'm glad you made it work.

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

Ralph, you are my hero! :o)

[skington.livejournal.com]

If it doesn't matter whether they can do any harm to the PCs or not, then why would the vampire bother to dominate them in the first place? (Other than to kidnap them in the first place, but I doubt that grabbing a whole bunch of random innocent people and karting them away is too much of a hassle.) If the main purpose is to have all sorts of random cannon fodder wandering around and preventing the PCs from using heavy-duty ranged or area-effect spells (and presumably these random people aren't any danger to the vampire, who will have assumed that any of his minions can be turned against him), then why not just set them loose?

First bonus: the absence of any magical compulsion will mean that anti-magic measures won't work. These people are befuddled and running around totally unhelpfully and getting in the way because they're genuinely confused, ill-informed, and not trained for anything like this sort of thing. You can't dispel the effect, because it's not caused by a spell; it's caused by location, expectations and loud noises.

Second bonus: as a consequence of number one, this will really piss the PCs off. And the vampire can gloat.