DnD torture

how would I run a encounter/scene where the players are interrogated and tortured? how would i make them care?

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I doubt you can.

>"He cuts you for 1 hit point of damage."
>"Can I escape?"
>"No. You're chained to the wall and there are a dozen guards. He cuts you again, another 1 hit point of damage."

What you CAN do is have a villain leverage something the PCs care about, then use it against them.

For all its faults, the Batman v Superman film did this well. Superman could have easily tortured or killed Lex Luthor without resistance, but then he'd never rescue his mother. Pretty solid plan on the bad guy's part.

Players can shrug the character's damage because it's not their body, so I propose an alternative.

For each point of damage dealt, you show a kinky picture of your fap folder with a kink proportional to the damage received.

Please don't allow /d/ in your games

>can shrug the character's damage because it's not their body,
Permanent. Stat. Damage.

I prefer permanent wis damage.

On the player

Lel, no no no, you subtract a point of their most important stat everytime they don't give a good answer.

Stuff that's more fucking humiliating than physically destructive.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwedentrunk

Get a picturebook of horrible tortures, tell them they can pick one. Do it to another character in the party.

Charisma damage. A lot of people are squeamish when it comes to being physical disfigured. It's also a lot more mature than going for the sexual violation stuff.

You'd lose just as charisma if they severed the victims penis and sewed it onto their forehead.

Then make the PC spend the rest of the campaign like that, with no magic or medicine able to repair the damage or unsew the penis from the head.

Hit them where it hurts the most, in the magic items.

"This ritual strips a +1 from your gear for every minute it is maintained. Better answer my questions hero before your legendary blade becomes just another worthless lump of steel."

if you've got a good group you don't really have to go beyond the pale to get them invested

"Nooo! Not my money!! My hard-earned, pillaged, sword-like cash!!!"

This could work way too well

>interrogated
You know what the most effective interrogation technique is? Talking. No, seriously, the best interrogator in Nazi Germany would just have tea with the people he was getting information from and have a friendly chat about completely unrelated things. It's a long game, but even today it remains the best method.

>torture
no...just no. It's one of the worst interrogation methods and almost never yields anything useful. Works wonders for deterring criminals if done publicly though.

>the best interrogator in Nazi Germany would just have tea with the people he was getting information from and have a friendly chat about completely unrelated things
I don't think any of the Tarantino movies should be taken as a reliable historical source.

Does waterboarding count as "having tea"? Because I recall it being reported as effective.

Alot of the worst tortures involve permanent disfigurement, which Id say is over the top and not what most people want to play out, Id say it'd be much better to have other NPCs being tortured and then give the opportunity for hopefully not the whole group being captured and tortured themselves, I think it would be cool if they were trying to force a bunch of different information out of a character, and he had a bunch of tempting options to give out at least small bits of information, make them make will saves or auto rat, and maybe cut off a couple toes while the rest of the party comes to save them

only if you waterboard them with tea

It's effective at getting an answer, not at getting the truth

People lie and give false confessions to torture way more than they give anything useful

This is why we don't let the british into our grown up games

You evil son of a bitch

By going after something the player cares about. I recall a choose your own adventure story where refusing to give in to torture causes the protagonist permanent nerve damage that impaired their fine motor skills and made them near useless at combat for the rest of the story.

That's an extreme example, but the point is that pain is meaningless to your party. I once saw a player immediately hack off one of his fingers in order to use a cursed magic sword. It wasn't even all that much stronger than a regular sword. You'll never get at them physically, so take away their toys or their progress or any NPCs they happen to like, or anything else you think would actually hurt them.

This is also pretty bad, but it gets the point across fast. Other penalties would work as well. You can imagine the player sneering at the torturer right up until he gets a knife in a nerve cluster and suffers a permanent -2 on attack roles or something.

I strongly advise against torturing your players. Remember you play for fun, they will probably not enjoy that scene.

This is excellent. Thanks.

Random banter with people you already know everything about beforehand isn't interrogation.

By having them severely crippled. Wizards lose metamagic feats and INT from trauma, barbarians experience CON and STR drain, the bard gets percent my mutilated and has his physical charisma percent my set to 3. Basically if they take torture lightly make them want to kill their characters off.

this
if they fail the wis saving throw for it they loose one point

Yeah, but he'd gas them afterwards and you can't really do that to the PCs

Break their bones and then heal them in an incorrect position. No more somatic components, can't grip a swoard, slow land speed. But full health when they leave.

Take the things the players care about, and slowly and surely break them apart in front of them. That sweet NPC they always liked having around? Tortured and put to death. The mage's book of spells? Slowly tear the spells out. The fighter's favorite weapon? Bring in a rust monster and have it do its thing.

Jesus, people are sick fucks

I remember the game user says. It was pretty brutal