How to make bandit fights and encounters interesting, dramatic? If players lose the battle...

Which is hard railroading.

Ransom to who? Not everyone has rich friends/relatives.

If it's rape they're after they can just slit their throats afterwards

Or maybe before

>raep
>His bandits don't try to recruit attractive PCs into their gang to use as honey traps

Is it that bad if the alternative is to just call the campaign off and finished?

Thanks for replies. Might actually handle it, with traits \ classlevels \ beast pets and so on added (5e).

>players beat back the front line
>the survivors fall back, milling about in the back for a bit, before a smaller party advances
>they have hostages

>even tense and gripping
That's the rape part

Make the leader an actual charismatic asshole.

nihilistic, wicked sense of humor, etc

You know the fucking drill

>Maybe the bandits are hard to track down in the first place, which requires further resourcefulness on the part of the players.
How does one roleplay tracking?

I feel like it boils down to "ask lots of NPC for info, then go where the X is marked on your map"

How does Veeky Forums do it?

>Ransom to who? Not everyone has rich friends/relatives.
Everyone has a mom. A hole is a hole.

>they are likely to be killed
TPK. Kind of boring but there needs to at least be the threat of it I guess to keep everyone interested. I hope you have a plan B because otherwise your 2 hour D&D session just ended 30 minutes in.

>taken as slaves
Potentially interesting as long as they have at least some chance of escaping. Just make sure it's not just an excuse for you as the DM to torture them and feel all smug about them losing a fight to you.

>raeptime
Fuck off.

If you are a male and you play pretend as a female. Then you deserve to be raped, its the only way to make you feel uncomfortable.

I like the idea of selling them to monsters as food/fun/slaves/whatever that a few people have brought up here. especially if it's a dumb, clumsy (but incredibly large/strong) monster that couldn't execute an ambush
not a TPK, gives the players a chance to escape, but raises the stakes in a way too
obviously that only works if monsters exist in your setting though

If you're playing D&D like a roguelike videogame, then sure just kill all the characters and roll up Bob the Fighter 2 or whatever. If that's the kind of game everyone came to the table for, then they know the stakes and they probably don't care too much about their characters anyway.

If you're playing it for the story, then you can handwave them all surviving the attack with grave injuries, and it shouldn't be too hard to come up with story consequences for their failure. They all wake up as the bandits' captives, or they failed the time-sensitive quest they were on, or whatever.

I like your idea.

The bandits are using the captives as bait for a larger monster. So they ambush the monster and then get an even bigger loot.

Not a bad idea user.

First and foremost
If you genuinely feel the need to insert rape into your game, and think "realism" is any kind of excuse... You should find the nearest therapist and have a long, and thorough conversation.
Second
If your bandits are planning to murder and rape travelers they aren't bandits... they are murderers and rapist. Bandits generally want the maximum amount of coin for the minimum amount of effort. They attempt to intimidate even when they outnumber victims. Not because they want to kill, but they want potential victims to worry about it.
Third.
I've yet to play with a group that wouldn't attack hostile bandits, especially if those bandits admit to wanting to murder and rape people.
Lastly
If you are designing punishments for non-essential encounters that serve no greater narrative purpose... you should warn your group that you simply wish to watch them suffer before referring back my first point for a solution.
Tl;Dr: You're being a chauvinist and a prick

> they've never had the surly and rugged female bandit leader rape the party's scholarly virgin male spellcaster.

>That only works if there are slave traders to sell to which isn't always the case.
There were always slave traders to sell to

Again... therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

Also... who hurt you?
What was his name?

Why would that be important? Just because you are uncomfortably disconnected with your own sexually does not give you the right to rape peoples characters, regardless of the reasons you think they are playing them.

> If you genuinely feel the need to insert rape into your game
I genuinely feel the need to construct a medieval atmosphere with dark notes where players can make informed decisions and bear responsibility. I'm not a history expert but you can't argue Dark Ages didn't have vile details. I understand this all can be hard to utilize for someone and should have a purpose in the narrative. But I never said I'm running MLP: the Tabletop.

In 5e unless the bandits are attacking at range it's RAW.

You think anything that isn't the rest of the table watching you masturbate is hard railroading.

>How to make bandit fights and encounters interesting, dramatic?
The PCs aren't allowed to lose, because when they lose it's game over. This means any encounter that just involves them or bandits means there are only three options:
1. They win
2. TPK
3. They lose but escape as if nothing had happened

You can raise the stakes by involving people who *are* allowed to lose. Have the PCs regularly visit some kind of village that's a bit out of the way, far from major cities. Emphasize the NPCs that live there, and how nice they are. Between the inn maid that occassionally flirts with the bard, the young lad who idolizes the paladin and the old grany that always gives the adventurers freshly picked apples, there may also be some family members living there. Use them as the stakes. At some points bandits will raid the city and if they lose, *these guys* get killed or enslaved or whatever. Even if they win, have someone (perhaps the granny?) incure a horrible yet not entirely fatal wound. This makes things personal enough to have the adventurers demanding blood and wrecking every bandit outpost in the region. Hopefully.

Whatever happens the PCs are unharmed, because the bandits know the PCs aren't worth it. The risk-reward ratio just isn't in their favor.

>Detailed mass slaughter is fine but rape is not

>Killed
Depends on the campaign, I'd lean towards no though, but that's just my style.
>taken as slaves
Could be interesting, having them break out of their slavery Great Escape style. Fun side story at least.
>raeptime
No.
>other unfun things
Losing most of your shit is a pretty high stakes loss condition.

Rape does serve a narrative purpose. It's super difficult to use it effectively, but it does have its uses. If nothing else, the emotional reaction from the players who think that rape is the worst thing in the world (seemingly such as yourself) can motivate the party into almost anything. As long as it's presented properly and isn't the GM's attempt at a magical realm, its totally fine.

And bandits absolutely would rape and murder. Sure you might have the chaotic neutral types who are just looking to make a quick buck with minimum collateral damage, but a majority of the hardened criminal outcasts aren't really going to care about the humanity of their victims. If they're horny, they'll rape. If they think that letting their victims live will inconvenience them, they'll murder. That's just basic tribalism at play and you can see it all over the world today. And that's not even getting into the bandits that might be a little bit antisocial and do these things just for the sake of doing them, not out of any material gain.

And the dude needs something to happen when they lose to the bandits. It's not like they're just going to wait until the last party member goes down, break out the healing potions, revive everyone and give them nice firm handshake so over a well done fight. TPK is the default outcome, but maybe something else would be more fin and interesting than just having the party wipe.

Actually, it's entirely conceivable the bandits just take their stuff and let them go. It may be hard for you to believe, but some people, even bandits who have no problem taking your stuff, have actual compulsions about killing and won't do it if they don't have to.

Also, killing people tends to be more upsetting to the authorities than just taking peoples stuff. It's more likely that the law will come down hard and fast on you if you murder, enslave, and rape instead of "just" stealing.

It can be quite fun and challenging to have the PCs figure out a way to get their shit back. Worked often enough in the lone wolf books, even if your shit was taken by things other than bandits there.

I once pestered my group with a recurring band of thieves. The leader was a charming rogue type who kept courting the "fair maidens" he robbed. In order to have the rest of the party not feel left out I gave him a female orc sidekick who would stare lasciviously at the male party members and ask them how many warriors they'd killed. That's pretty much how I keep encounters like bandits interesting, I fling a personality at their leaders and give them Team Rocket invincibility.

Your mom.
Her ass was so tight it almost caused gangrene on my dick.

>First and foremost
>...
My character got raped twice and i kind prefer that to having her killed, but that may be just me. I was startled at first, but now i think it was appropriate from DM. He didnt go into unnecessary details and was probably slightly uncomfortable with decaring that. (At least the second time.)

>If your bandits are planning to murder and rape travelers they aren't bandits... they are murderers and rapist.
This is something i would agree to. Most bandits would probably avoid typical armed-to-teeth adventuring party. They may have a lot of treasure, but they quite literally fight and kill for living.

>Lastly
I agree that you should:
Make meaningful encounters
Tell your players what kind of game you want to run.

My issue with this is that the average group tends to be so obsecenly powerful by RAW that it makes little sense for a group of bandits who ostensibly got incredibly lucky knocking out a bunch of superheroes to not just murder them on the spot unless they're particularly stupid.

The only other alternative I could see is to cripple them into near uselessness when they're unconscious. Cutting out the wizards to tongue, burning the spell book, destroying all their weapons (rather than keeping them in a just out of reach easy to pick safe) , cutting off their hands etc.

Neither are particularly fun from a gameplay point of view but simply capturing them when they're very obviously going to escape with their superhuman abilities doesn't make much sense either.

Perhaps they could capture them and bring them to their bandit lord who happens to be a full caster but really a regular group of bandits has no business going anywhere near player characters. It's like a group of teenagers armed with flick knives deciding it would be a good idea to mug a fully armed SAS team.

This is why I tend to be forced to make all my enemies supernaturally powerful beings from the get go to even challenge a D&D party, beyond maybe a token fight at the start against some poor mooks to show everyone the ropes.

Bandits aren't analogous to muggers. These aren't people who live in civilization, they usually have enough infamy or maybe even the bounty on their head to keep them from going into anywhere too populated. Think smalltime African Warlords. Moral compunctions are going to be counter to their survival, and the bandits that have them generally won't last as long as bandits who don't.

That also explains why they're nomadic. Unless they're making a route between two places completely impassable, there's not going to be an army coming for them, and just being difficult to find will keep smaller authorities from dealing with them.

Also, if you murder all of your victims, then the only thing anyone will know is that you're somewhere in a vague area where people keep disappearing from. With any luck they'll even just attribute it to wild animals. If you let someone live and talk, then adventurers and bounty hunters are going to know exactly which passes you like to use for ambushes, how many men you have and how well-armed they are, etc. It's generally a better tactic to just murder everyone you catch, then move on after a few months or immediately after someone escapes.

>implying that wouldn't turn them on
You clearly don't understand the kind of people that pretend to be pretty girls

How about instead of devising punishments for your players, put some effort into their enemies. Six guys with weapons aren't a challenge for adventurers with skills, feats, and potentially magic of some kind...
Create a handful of characters to match or counter balance your parties skill sets, then write up a convincing backstory for them. Perhaps instead of bandits... they are adventurers tasked with bringing (your party) to "justice"

Bravo, I'm wounded. What whatever will I tell my whorish mother?

that "paladin" looks like a pretty anti-hygienic executioner

Ever heard of Dick Turpin or Robin Hood?

This is fantasy, bandits who AREN'T villainous scum are perfectly acceptable.

Hell, just have them be undead bandits so they aren't bothered about the bandit pals that got chopped up, and have them only take a bunch of gold, and tell the PCs they'll dump their weapons five hours ride west, hey-diddley-ho! Kill you? Why'd we want to put others under our curse? Slavery? Nah, not after that necromancer tried to enslave us. Rape? Trust me, if we still had working dicks we'd want to use them on prostitutes rather than your sorry asses. We're going to spend this on crypt-beer and lich dust!

Your players will remember these bandits for a long memorable time, even if the players beat them.

>taken as slaves \ raeptime \ other unfun things.
PCs will generally fight to death just to avoid the potential of any of that, particularly loss of magic items.

Not everyone the party meets needs to be experienced, competent, or otherwise fit for their role.
A band that has only recently turned outlaw, or perhaps one that has recent recruits they're trying to blood, can be just as interesting an encounter as the McBad Dudes gang.

this

>>Detailed mass slaughter is fine but rape is not
Slaughter (maybe it would be more precise to say 'rigorous fighting') is way more represented in vidya and fiction from which people translate into TRPG.

Sure, you can take bandits and make them something else, and it'll probably work great. Only problem is that at the end of the day they're not primarily bandits anymore.

Why not just have good natured marauding Undead/nobility resistance group or whatever you want to make them without worrying about the bandit part?

As for just making a shitty bandit, why? If you want a decent guy that robs people, there are plenty of other archetypes besides bandit that work for that.

Nobility resistance group is what I've also had in mind but they're not grimd0rk enough. Though, some soldiers under these nobles might serve for a scene where their morals deteriorate enough to rob travelers.

>If you want a decent guy that robs people, there are plenty of other archetypes besides bandit that work for that.
Like cat burglar with a heart of gold? They don't ambush forest roads. I'm not trolling, guess my knowledge of banditry is scarce.

Rebels that rob citizens of the faction they're rebelling against would work. They're not doing this just for the profit and they're powerful enough to deal with the consequences of it being known who and where they are. The positive PR of them helping those in need who are willing to turn to their side explains why they would take the risk in the first place, too.

You could fluff them as bandits, but they're not in it for the profit, so they're not just going to follow the goal of "get money fuck wenches" like actual bandits.

Corrupt guards wouldn't really go out into the wilderness to rob people because they're not powerful out there, at least not any more so than the average mook with a sword. Why isolate yourself to shake someone down when you can have a few hundred of your buddies to call in as backup if things go south?

>The positive PR of them helping those in need who are willing to turn to their side explains why they would take the risk in the first place, too.
Seems logical, thanks.

Think of him as a gish follower of Waaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

And yet you can't get an ought from an is. Just because non-sexual violence is way more often and way more gratuitously depicted in various kinds of media and we're more comfortable showing our children extreme non-sexual violence than showing them moderate sexual violence, doesn't mean this is correct. If anything it should drive us to ponder our moral standers, and if they may or may not be fucked up in one direction or another.

Think about it: it's kind of weird that a movie can have a castration scene, and still have a lower age rating than an equivalent movie that has a rape scene instead.

>Bandits manage to capture the party
>Realize that the party is the main characters and know that the party is likely to fuck up anyone who's holding them captive.
>The bandit lord caster teleports them into the hideout/headquarters/front business of whoever they don't like
>Sit back with cheap booze and watch the fireworks

>I tend to be forced to make all my enemies supernaturally powerful beings from the get go

Just make a new character.

Capture, torture, used in humiliating pass-times raped, sold off as slaves to harems, workforce or as human organ donors to necromancers, loss of ability scores, freed but in debt to others, or sacrificed to Yennoghu if Gnoll, or worse, adopted by a Gnoll tribe according to their law and have to betray party per Gnollish Flind customs.

There's also being turned into yuan-ti or being fed to mersshulk, horrible experimentation survival, being taken to other settings, planes and locations on the map, being brainwashed and placed under control, being forced to do evil acts for the amusement of others and the like for survival.

heres how I did it, the party captured a goblin during a raid they made on the PCs home town
and since the goblin did not speak common they had to give the goblin a piece of paper so it could write down where the goblin stronghold was but all it was is an arrow pointing north some ruins a lake and a fort so the part hade to go looking for it on the world map, i run my games on roll20 so the world map thing helps a lot when tracking and exploring plus the pcs stumble into other dungeons sometimes which leads to "fun"

>Family were drafted into the militia and died on the front lines
Yeah, he sure has a mom

its not them I worry about its the rest of the players, stuff like that can derail the game for 5-10 minutes while every one laughs their asses off

>female on the battlefield
lmao

The 1st encounter in the first game I DMed had the party fighting a group of bandits that had taken over a small archaeological dig site. They were leaded by a very David Bowie -esque man that called himself the Price of Highway Men. He had a hook hand with a hidden one shot flint lock in it. He presented himself to the party by walking out of a small cabin in nothing but a leather thong and a whip in his hand having clearly just finished taking a cumly orc lass to heaven. One of his subordinates was a guy that called himself the Stool, who fought excursively with an old beat up bar stool.

TLDR: Make them all eccentric assholes with funny, but grounded gimmicks to make them memorable

People in this thread seem to be getting hung up on sex, but you've forgotten something crucial

LOOT

If the bandits win, they will take all the players on hand money, their weapons, horses, pets; anything valuable the players have will be taken, including their shoes.

Then if the bandits dont want to kill or sell the characters, they'll be tied to a tree or rock in their underclothes with no shoes, in the middle of the wilderness.

Bandits might be murderers and rapists, but they are ALL ROBBERS. YOU GON GET ROBBED SON

which is why any fight with bandits will always be to the death for the players

>What's the point of bandits taking slaves?

What if gear was made less important?

that is the way i am going in the game i am developing. the way gear works in most games, it simply closes some "narrative space" as the players refuse to walk down that road.

i feel the next generation of RPG systems will be about mechanics that open up plotlines, make it easier for players to go less appealing routes, etc.

Stolen. So fucking stolen.

DM's will continue to think the new version of the game works like the old one and shovel in giant quantities of it, houserule everything, and then bitch that it doesn't work right?

>chauvinist
First and foremost,
I don't think you know what that word means

Second,
This might be the wrong website for you

Well in my opinion just having intelligent enemies instead of your normal "Gonna go here and hit this dude with my sharp stick" battles are the best way to make any encounter interesting, spice things up with terrain effects or traps. In terms of consequences...
>Death
Last resort option, do it if the party deserves it but it's likely to kill the game
>Slaves
the better option, give the players a chance and let them know they have a timelimit and things can get tense
>Rape
too hard to use effectively, you'd have to be a good story teller to work it in and play it correctly and even then the player might not want to deal with it. Ontop of that, in my opinion, since we're talking about PCs these guys are probably of such strong will that being raped is more or less a minor nuisance to them.

Interviewing NPCs and looking for clues at the site before traveling to the destination, making rolls to successfully track them without arrousing suspicion. Usually ends up making good plot.

Well, this is somewhat sensible, though where I live the best way to teach 18+ year olds morals might be basically showing them how responsibility works. And for kids, I get your point.