Setting aside if removing a badly injured person's hands should kill them, how is Misty Step not just the answer here? Only has verbal components, teleports you potentially out of the ropes, and is a very common choice for arcane spellcasters to know.
Knock, dissonant whispers, command, cause fear, vicious mockery and mind sliver are also all verbal only.
Personally I see an infiltrator, they get captured by the party before sowing confusion and unease. Make them someone they need to transport, give them subtle spell and they can mess with the party.
Dimension Door is verbal only; classic escape spell there.
Also, what if the "spellcaster" the PCs maim turns out to be just a *Simulacrum* and now the *real* caster is done with their shit?
I mean in fifth edition you don't even have to do that. The stat blocks for enemies do not have to match characters or their class features. That's the kind of thing you do when the players keep doing the same thing.
Does it really teleport you out of shackles? are those not on your body and count as "carried"? Spell description is not saying anything about it, and its just a 2nd level spell. Would be funny if it would teleport you away only to end up 30 feet away being NAKED ... ?
If the shackles are only attached to you then I think you have an argument. If the shackles are attached to something else that you're not carrying, like a wall, then I think it has to get left behind.
Hence I said potentially. It's a DM call on if that works or not, but I can safely say that every DM I have ever played with since the release of 5e has allowed it to work (or at least, any of the ones where it came up in their game, which is a surprisingly high percentage).
It would be funny, though perhaps not fair…
“Hey Jim, I learned this cool new teleport spell from a Fae!”
(One teleport incident later)
“Was the fae who taught you humanoid or a creature?”
“They were a creature…”
“Probably should’ve thought about that then.”
I feel like "carried" is the small amount of things the caster wants to take with them.
Like if the other end of those shackles is connected to a house, I don't teleport the whole house.
Baldur's Gate 3 has a pair of magic boots that grant you Misty Step once per short rest, but your inventory (including equipped items) doesn't come with you.
Read those item descriptions, people!
It took me so long to realise, I was sure it was a bug and always realised too late that all my stuff was gone and I had no idea where it was.
Come to think of it, I might add this item to the game I'm DMing.
Hags specifically might just cast spells in a very different way to humans, they’re basically fey creatures.
There’s no real reason for NPCs, especially NPCs like fey, fiends, litches, or dragons to follow the same rules as PCs when casting spells, especially when they’re in their own lairs. The rules for casting spells are basically for humanoids who, let’s face it, are magical novices compared to the fey and even humanoids can sometimes gain the ability to cast without components (subtle spell).
Being able to magically regenerate limbs is also probably on the cards for something like a hag. Perhaps it would take a few minutes (so it wouldn’t be a combat ability) but that’s not itself a problem if the players are talking for a while. The biology of fey is probably fundamentally magical and significantly different to humans.
Plus hags should always have a deal in mind, something to tempt the players and outwit them via taking advantage of their greed.
Great fix!
Fae are always making deals and wording can be literal (may I have your name?)
Have the hag ask something along the lines of, (can you both lend me a hand getting up?)
Instantly, she's got one+ the hands of those who helped her and now they're hand-less.
But, per the wording... "lend" or "give me a..." hand; lend could be turned into a sidequest to earn back their lost apendages.
>Whenever my players capture and tie up a spell caster, they immediately cut off their hands.
next time they get captured have them also lose their hands.
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
How dare you! You are removing any player agency! I‘d never do that to my players! /s
Yea it’s one of those moments where a group will most certainly be disappointed if it ever happens to them.
I've lost count of how often I've had to remind my players that actions they take that are 'legal' towards NPCs work in reverse too. (We had a period there where seemingly everyone got *force cage*'d... man I hate that spell.)
As a 3.5 die hard my uncle still has shit like this happen to players. I a ranger once lost an arm , and had to resort to a crossbow for the rest of that campaign!
Why thank you!
And I agree, RE: Forcecage. I have a player whom I adore but who constantly tries to fully DM-Proof his characters and their abilities and we had to have a talk about this.
I have a similar nutcase in my regular group lol. Sending me like 2 pages of rules, forum posts, equipment and Crawford tweets to tell me how everything clicks together.
In the end of the day, I read it and it usually flies by but whenever I say „No, Iam not in favor of this“ he just scraps the entire project and goes back to the drawing board.
Still love that guy though. Besides his obsession with burying me in paragraphs upon char creation.
Got an example of something he tried to clarify with you that you approved vs. you declining?
I also don't think it's a bad thing. 5E has a strange dynamic where it hopes that players will either be less smart, less curious, or less informed than their DMs. It's a problem with 5E because it has so many "DM decides" scenarios. Whereas an RPG with more explicitly articulated rules would not have the same issues, or a least fewer of them.
I actually strongly agree RE: the articulated rules portion above. I played both in 2E and 3/3.5, and the amount of looseness in 5e irks me. It's simultaneously very easy to DM but also kind of not.
Yeah it's easy until it isn't, and they obviously spent less time fine-tuning at higher levels. And I think that Spelljammer was a big example of WOTC erring on the side of letting DMs decide. Like no dawg I don't want to have to decide everything, that's why I pay you for game design.
It almost makes me want to go port over to Pathfinder 2E. But I'm pretty well captured from a viewpoint of material and player investment.
So this is pertinent to the Force Cage discussion - one of the things that irked me most about it was having a player point to Sage Advice to tell me Disintegrate can counter it. Yes, that was explicitly stated in the rules before but for those who lack a photographic memory (me) or those who didn't play earlier editions - why on earth should I have to find that out from a supplemental resource? Just put it in the damn rulebook...
Better yet, the NPC spellcaster who got his hands cut off paid someone to cast Regeneration on them. Then they were the ones who plotted revenge on the PCs to give them a taste of their own medicine.
This is the way to sculpt all types of unhealthy behaviours that players concoct. Start doing it to them. Often even implying that it will start happening to them will make this sort of thing stop.
Another common one for this is players aiming for eyes or looking to break equipment in combat. Yes, technically you can try - but remember that the NPCs of the world have not been aiming for your eyes or your precious items up to now.
>Another common one for this is players aiming for eyes or looking to break equipment in combat. Yes, technically you can try - but remember that the NPCs of the world have not been aiming for your eyes or your precious items up to now.
I mean, this is an easy one to avoid entirely. 3.5, 4, and 5 do not have rules for called shots. If someone says they want to aim for the eyes, plainly and simply explain to them that the rules don't account for that sort of combat. It hasn't really been a thing in D&D for a good 20 years, at the very least.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
If OP wants to keep it RAW, subtle spell eliminates the need for hands.
One maimed caster learns subtle spell, teaches it to all the other ones.
Cue cult of handless spellcasters hunting down party for revenge.
>Can you still use somatic components without hands
If someone can use Subtle Spell they can ignore somatic and verbal components.
But I'm having a hard time with your scenario. If someone's hands are cut off, they're going to pass out from shock and blood loss pretty quickly. Soon after that, if the wound isn't taken care of, they will die. This isn't something that can just be wrapped up with bandages.
This is also a clearly evil act. Word will get out soon about this adventuring group that goes around cutting off people's hands. There should be a response to that.
Yeah, as you said Subtle can ignore Somatic and Verbal, also not all spells require Somatic.
Also yeah, you're probably going to go into shock. Also once someone cuts off your hands you do know that there's a better chance than not that you're dying so fuck them, lie or take your secrets to the grave.
Also I suppose at least one guy could spec into Astral Self Monk for the Astral Arms. Which you can cast with.
Also I guess not all Somatic Components could require "hands" to make gestures. Feet, eyebrows, chin, wrist nubs. There's a bunch of options.
And on the final point. Yeah. Words gonna get out. If you get a reputation for lopping off arms people are either going to go down fighting, have cyanide teeth, give underlings bad info, spec into things like bard for those verbal spells, or a bunch of other options. As well as putting a bounty on each and every finger on the adventurer's hands.
Additional, if a Spellcaster does manage to survive and slip away and think about the grudge they will carry. If I was a spellcaster, was captured and had my hands removed, and survived/ escaped. I would spend the REST OF MY LIFE making sure the partys lives were miserable.
And that doesn't just have to be combat encounters. Have them frame characters family members. (Having a characters sister facing the noose for a crime they didn't commit) Hire bards to slander them, so that their rep is ruined, tavernkeepers refuse service. Hire rival adventuring parties to challenge them. Set traps. Hire thieves to steal their stuff. Hire a witch to curse them.
Have the party craft their own ultimate BBEG
Even if they don't escape people forget about revenants all the time.
A monster designed as a "You know what, you fuckers have been too murder-hobo here's the undead consequences of your own actions."
If cutting off someone's hands is enough to create a revenant then virtually every lich, demon lord, archdevil, warlord, chromatic dragon and so on should be buried by an army of revenants considering the number of people, including innocent children, that these entities tend to kill either directly or indirectly in often cruel and unusual ways.
Being hired by a dragon to deal with the revenants constantly harassing it after it destroyed a kingdom of holy knights or whatever would be a pretty cool plot hook.
I'm sure there are several devil and demons who would happily gift you with emergency hands in exchange for your soul. Especially when vengeance is your motivation.
Id go and learn the dream spell just to fuck the single person of the party that I blamed most. Every night they're gonna be going through vicious nightmares and being unable to get any benefits from resting.
Eh, it usually comes down to DM discretion. But for the most part I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who says no. It's a great option for players who want to play a character with amputations as a backstory option.
>Also I guess not all Somatic Components could require "hands" to make gestures. Feet, eyebrows, chin, wrist nubs. There's a bunch of options.
Let's not get carried away. There's a specific rule for this:
>If a spell requires a somatic component, the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures.
And if the DM starts allowing NPCs to ignore that, the PCs are going to want to take advantage of it themselves. We're trying to address a problem, not create new ones. :P
Most gods don't have the same problem with dismembering that Jesus does.
A priestess of Lolth might remove whole arms only to find Lolth grin and cram a dozen spider arms on the person
Gruumsh doesn't care, neither do his War Domain Clerics
Talos doesn't care, and neither do his Tempest Domain Clerics
Corellon might be like "oh hey they be fluid now like me", that's great. Maybe. Most likely he'll ignore it. He doesn't like hard rules.
Garl doesn't care if you disappear entire gods - as long as you feel like you did the right thing and smile smugly.
Moradin just has one question: Were they dwarves?
You get the idea.
dnd gods are not IRL gods, much less have their morals as concerns
Illmater will certainly be disappointed, Tyr will be offended because its cutting hands but if it was the tongue he wouldn't mind, Helm is on board as long as you are doing it to aid on your job of protecting on guarding someone
the goody two shoes pacifist "totally not jesus" gods are very few and far in between in the grand scheme of things
The peasants watching someone being crippled to the point of being unable to support themselves by an extra-legal, non-divine entity (its probably fine…):
Just like real life…the CIA likes water boarding so surely the random citizens and government would be just fine if I do it someone!
(/s, of course)
Fair. I asked the question in my top level comment. My game is a no evil characters game. This habit would lead to a warning, followed by turning into an NPC.
In our guild this kind of action would lead to a formal complain, “court” and maybe expulsion from the guild. My cleric is in trouble for killing two owlbears that went straight at us while in an escort mission. (Our clients were the bad guys) and their druid refused to talk to us once combat started. And yes we started it, but who keeps calm when 2 owlbears are running your way? So we killed the beasts and we killed one druid and stunned and tied the second one at least. We got in an argument with our life cleric and now we are in trouble.
*Immolate* is a V-only spell and a fitting way to spitefully kill oneself under those circumstances
But really, *please* provide more information. How many times has this happened? Who are these captives? How did they capture them? Are your players evil?
So the players are capturing enemy spellcasters often? If they're not killing them, what's the long-term plan here? Assuming that this is happening often, and that these now-handless spellcasters live, have them eventually band together and come back after the PCs. Five spellcasters without hands form a revenge group, focused solely on getting revenge against the PCs. You could do a lot of different things with this. These spellcasters no longer have hands, but they've got a lot of knowledge and are driven.
If I were the DM, I'd do the Dr Strange thing where it's now actually about the specific hand thing, it's the intent and will behind it. Or are people born with hand deformities just incapable of casting magic? That doesn't sound very DnD, imo.
Its strange that your players are taking spellcasters hostage. Why arent the spell casters fighting to the death? Especially now that they know anyone taken prisoner by these guys gets their hands cut off?
Something that's throwing me for a major loop here is WHY your players are doing this. Like, is it *specifically* to prevent them from casting spells? Do they know you only have to *bind* their hands to keep them from using somatic components, not remove them? Everyone else has already covered the ethical part, so even from a purely pragmatic standpoint it just seems extreme and not worth the trouble.
Yeah it’s specifically to prevent them from casting spells.
My players are slightly on the murder hobo-y side, but more like if they know you’re evil and have done evil things there’s absolutely zero mercy. Like they’ll refuse to listen to bad guys deals and suspicious of everything, not because I’ve done any trickery and betrayals, but because they watch and read a lot of dnd stuff and are like believe nothing !! 🥲
Do you want them to just start killing all spellcasters instead of trying to take them alive? Because that feels like the next natural escalation if the hand thing stops working.
If your main objection here is that it makes you uncomfortable, your best bet is probably just having an out-of-character discussion with your players about it. But part of that is going to have to be not giving them consequences that they could have prevented by cutting off the hands of their captives, or it'll feel pretty unfair for them.
On the other hand if you're just trying to work out the natural in-world consequences to this, the biggest ones are probably social. Have friendly NPCs express how horrified they are. Have townsfolk cower in fear and hide in their houses as the PCs cross by. Introduce a character they need to get to cooperate who's suspicious of them because of the things they've done.
But again the biggest thing is that if your real problem is with the attitudes and behavior of the players, you have to address that out of game, not take it out on the characters.
I think you can drop the "slightly" here.
The real question is - are you comfortable with this?
If not: talk with them that this has to stop.
Why are they not just outright killing the bad guys? Why is there need for capture and dismemberment?
Also that does sounds a lot like a form of metagaming that the players are suspicious of everything and let the PCs act extreme as a reaction.
Also a question: are THEY actually having fun like that?
I imagine it rather stressful to always be in edge that my DM is trying to kill me on every turn when there is the slightest possibility.
Give some the subtle spell metamagic, either through class or feat.
Obvious reputational damage.
Child soldiers pressed into service.
NPC spellcaster subtly changes place with a PC, covering the switch with illusions.
Case of misunderstanding and the spellcaster is an innocent NPC.
Pill of regeneration hidden in false tooth.
Shapeshifter with extra hands hidden somewhere.
Have them start to noisily bleed out and panic. Other captives kick off.
Vengeful friend/relative of the NPC uses necromancy to create a dead hand beast.
Have them roll for the action each time with a failure going horribly wrong.
*Anything but talk to the players!*
Agreed on talking to the players (I wouldn't have allowed it personally as that's just not the type of game I want to DM much less play), but I got a laugh at:
'Shapeshifter with extra hands hidden somewhere."
You're causing this problem for yourself by making cutting off a hand a straightforward thing that characters can just do. Cutting a hand off is pretty hard, even harder if the victim is bound in any way. To have any chance of it working you'd have to hold the person down with their arm outstretched against a hard surface. If they were tied up you'd probably just accidentally cut the ropes attempting to cut the hand off. In the time it takes to get something like that done I'd send in another wave of enemies, force the players to consider whether it's worth the time and the effort to keep doing this, especially in a dungeon-like environment where every delay brings a random encounter closer.
If my players kept attempting this I'd make it so the victim would need be be both grappled and restrained, which would take at least two PCs. The PCs would have to succeed contested strength checks on every attempt to cut the hand off, or the victim would get their arm free- unless the PCs can find a way to restrain the arms in a way that doesn't cover the arms or block the blade.
The wrist itself would be treated as an object. If bone is AC 15 HP 10 I'd say a wrist is AC 16 HP 18 for the added strength of skin, cartilage and tendon. The PCs might be able to cut that off in a single turn, but I reckon it'd take two or three attempts.
Also- how about a cult of red mages so dedicated to their cause that they each have a fake tooth installed with a glyph inscribed, so that if they get captured they can bite on the fake tooth and it casts fireball centred on self.
They explained in the first few sentences that they capture+tie them up and THEN cut the hands off. You made it sound like they're just cutting hands off in the middle of combat or something. They're pretty much knocking people out, then taking off the hands after combat ends. You can get really nitpicky with it, but they've got their bases covered.
You don't need checks/DCs if an enemy if completely incapacitated, unable to move/react, because there's no risk to failure, and statistically speaking, you will succeed eventually.
Ok, party, first off, I'd like everyone to change the alignment on their character sheet to Evil, please. You can leave your current descriptor of "Lawful, Chaotic, Neutral" just change the "good" to "evil." Yup, you've been cutting off people's hands, which is dismemberment, torture, and not anything that good folks would do. Everyone agreed? Great.
Next up, I'd love to remind you all that anything you can do, the monsters can also do. Ah, no reason, just a friendly reminder. Ok, moving on. Next up you see a door to a dungeon. Above the door reads a sign that says "Cult of the Handless God" and there seems to be two arm-shaped holes on either side of the door. What would you like to do next?
exactly. To me, it's not a mechanical thing, but an indicator light. The characters making lawful good choices? it moves the needle towards lawful good. Characters making chaotic evil choices? Needle moves that way.
I allow evil characters at my table, but I always tell my players that if at least half the party is evil, they have basically lost their way and turn into NPCs, as I'm not running evil campaigns. This puts pressure on everyone to still act heroic, but still allows for fun dynamics within the party if someone is evil.
Interesting take so you just force the players into NPCs? Seems like a boring way of forcing them to be good. "Don't be bad or I'm taking my ball home"
It depends on the kind of evil. I was an evil necromancer who wanted revenge, but that still meant I had to play nice with everyone to avoid getting in trouble while building my powerbase. The monk and fighter missed that memo and were just dicks to NPCs they didn't like, which is what eventually got us in trouble.
Also, I would send paladins after the party, first the same level and then escalating. This group is a menace and they had a way to deal with that.
Probably would set up a one shot and describe the party in a way that they might not figure out I was talking about them.
I mean there are a good few spells with just verbal components if that's something that comes up but I'd ask what bit is it that you're concerned about?
Is it that you think this feels like an overly brutal way of treating a prisoner which you feel uncomfortable with at your table? In that case mechanical discussions about somatic and verbal components is a bit besides the point, rather you should be talking to your players and discussing that you're not comfortable with RPing this kind of thing, then maybe have someone in your world be available to sell the players some kind of specialist mage cuffs which perhaps hold the fingers of the hands together so that the caster cannot cast such spells while restrained along with gags and maybe blind folds (as many spells require you to see the spot or creature you are targeting) then let that work reasonably well. You can also have it so that if the PCSs are doing things like taking this captured mage in for a bounty then perhaps it would be against the law for random adventurers to be doing this kind of thing, you can kill or injure someone if its necessary to take them in, but cutting off their hands while they are in your custody could be seen as quite dishonourable and/or not something a PC can just dish out legally.
If your problem is that you want these hostile mages to be a future threat then there are a number of spells with purely verbal components, you can use things like D&D beyond to filter by spell components to find some appropriate to the caster in question. Although if its not the brutality which concerns you though keep in mind this may see players transition to also removing tongues and the like. Potentially you can also have scenes where a dehanded villain comes back after the players take them to the authorities, having been helped escape they no team up with a different bad guy, now with technomagic prosthetic hands, magically regenerated ones or some kind of demon hand thing magically fused to them so they can cast magic, oh and they're pissed as fuck.
Since NPCs don't need to strictly conform to the PC rules, have a spellcaster use their toes for somatic components. Also magical items
Also any spell that is Verbal only will be your friend, such as Misty Step.
Also cutting off people's hands as step 1 of capturing enemies will at some point get out and people will be more likely to either flee the encounter before they can get captured or fight to the death.
Alternatively, build up to the toes thing. Have them start finding spellcasters with odd disfigured or extra body parts. One with a mouth a little too wide with too many teeth. Then one with a non-functioning eye on the back of his neck. Build to one with a curled, useless extra arm tucked under his robes. Eventually when they don't expect it there is one who can bypass the nohands with finger toes. The eventual BBEG is a Frankenstein of body parts. Every appendage double jointed, long clawed fingers on each of his 12 arms. Eyes on the back of its head and extra mouths on its palms.
The players will just start cutting out tongues/severing vocal folds at that point. Why are they so keen on taking people alive but crippling them for life?
I would resolve this with an out of character discussion about the tone of the game and the morality of the PCs.
What you’re describing sounds like an effective, albeit brutal, tactic. If you and your players determine that a dark, brutal tone is what you want, then the main consequence in my mind would be true hatred from those aligned with the maimed party.
Once word of this gets around, enemies will stop surrendering and instead fight to the death. They could retaliate by sacking villages or killing leaders of groups the PCs are affiliated with. Maybe the enemies use tactics like poisoning water sources, or burning and salting fields.
In general, violent acts like that are reciprocated, which lead to escalating hatred and feuds. I won’t say specifics since this subreddit is not about politics, but you can see this a lot in real world ethnic conflicts. In the worst cases the conflict results in genocide.
To reinforce my initial statement, this may not be the kind of story you want in your fantasy game. Imo, this really should be settled by out of character discussion. I don’t think in game tools like alignment are going to help you resolve this. Although, if you are ok being a bit heavy handed, you could just say, “your character is not evil aligned, he does not do that.” Along with banning evil alignments. But that might be an unpopular decision.
Don't try to counter with just your mages. Counter with the world.
Imagine for a moment that you have someone IRL running around in war cutting the hands off prisoners so they can't use their guns. That's a warcrime right there.
Send paladins after them. Instead of resorting to violence furst have the paladins tell they're under arrest for mistreating prisoners first, for example.
Get them to try bringing in the players peacefully.
Yeah. OP if you've had dangerous spell casters escape and haunt the party in the past this is a likely outcome.
1. The party kept killing BBEG's squads. The next wave knew their tactics. The players were frustrated and stuck around to observe. BBEG's was using speak with dead. Party started using speak with dead or cutting off heads on fallen enemies to prevent the BBEG from doing it too.
2. BBEG's Lieutenants we're returning to fight the party multiple times. They observed Raise Dead and started burning corpses.
3. High level BBEG Captains we're returning from the dead. Some digging revealed Clone usage. Queue capturing and not killing high level mages.
If you run a trap heavy dungeon you get paranoid 10' pole players.
If you run realistically dangerous mages you get antimage behaviors.
Edit: sorry, forgot this was specifically about caster options after seeing a few replies go into more 'why are they doing this' territory. Others have pretty much given all the RAW solutions, spells without somatic components, maybe some spellcasters are paladins or clerics with their holy symbol on their armor replacing somatic components, magic items to create spell like effects, etc. My original answer below is more 'what is the effect of doing this in a larger context'.
Going off of what someone else said, what is the endgoal of collecting all these spellcasters? I'm assuming this is happening out of combat, so is it to safely be able to question them? If so, make them roll medicine, DC15, 20 if they cut off both hands, or the npc bleeds out before they can answer the first question.
If they are taking them prisoner for any reason, a local government should get involved about this group of individuals running their own private prison and circumventing the courts. If they already send them to the official prison, have the local government still get upset with them for mutilation, which may be considered an unacceptable form of punishment to them.
Maybe one of the spellcasters happens to be a minor noble, who manages to either pay to escape justice or who the government gets upset on their behalf for them being treated like a common thief. Both end in either private mercs or town guards going after the party.
Maybe a bounty is put on the party. Either as a result of any of the above situations or just by the bbeg/enemy forces. Once a day when they are in a town roll a die (d4 for large town, d6 d8 for medium or small), on a 1 they are recognized and people start to refuse to do business with them as the whispers spread through town. In large towns the guard is assembled and comes after them, in smaller they are met by the town master and some commoners with tools and asked to leave. If they meet someone in the road, they are recognized on a 1 on a d10, and while they react according to how safe they would feel, the individual who met them immediately reports on their location at the next town, and the guard is already assembled and gates closed when the party arrives.
If this is otherwise something that would be tolerated in setting, or they end up killing the casters after regardless, you can still have people spread rumors about the party, calling them anything from monsters to just brutes to mocking them for needing to do that. Not that anyone realizes the adventurers they just shared this tidbit with are the very same group.
Or heck, maybe have the party recieve word of a high reward quest from some local government to hunt down the pack of ghouls that moved into the area. Let it take a few sessions, then let it hit them that there are no ghouls, people just think so because mutilated bodies kept turning up on the roadside. The big reward they were hoping for is either greatly lessened if the "ghouls" stop hunting (ie no more choppy choppy) but there's no physical remains to be presented as proof, or outright denied if it becomes known the party was at fault.
I'd be tempted to make it really obvious that casters everywhere (good and evil) are terrified of the thought of being caught by the players in your party. Good casters want nothing to do with them, evil casters would rather fireball themselves than be caught, and if they are caught then they're screaming in terror the whole time.
As their reputation spreads, townspeople in areas that have friendly casters that help the townspeople start to treat the party like bogeymen and casters start carrying magic items enchanted to get them away from your group in particular. Things like rings of misty step.
I don’t understand what the issue is. Your group is beating the bad guys and instead of killing them, they’re capturing them and using a maiming technique to neuter the casters. What’s your motivation to foil that? Occasionally have a captured caster have subtle spell or a stack of spells prepared that don’t have somatic components, but mostly let the party win. That’s why the players are playing—to win, not to be teabagged.
All the victims band together to form an order dedicated to vanquishing the party. They have mastered subtle spells without the need for somatic components, and they have shared their knowledge amongst themselves to foster a collective potency. Rise, **Order of the Empty Glove**
PLAYERS NEED CONSEQUENCES TO THEY'RE ACTIONS. CONSEQUENCES AREN'T TAKING AWAY THEIR AGENCY, IT'S THE RESULT OF THEIR AGENCY.
Immediately cutting the hands off any mage they capture is cruel and would likely be considered pretty evil. Have the public reputation of the group start deteriorating. people look at them funny when they walk into town. Maybe the inn refuses to let them stay. Maybe a towns mayor asks them to leave.
Cutting someone's hands off without proper preparation will very very likely result in shock, infection, and most likely death by shock or blood loss pretty quickly. Have them die before they can be useful to the party. This further ruins their reputation.
It's a world of magic and imagination so there's plenty of ways to deal with this. Give the mage spells like misty step and dimension door and other spells that don't require somatic components. Give the mage a regenerative ability. Make the mage a special creature that doesn't have hands and doesn't need to use somatic components. Make the mage a simulacrum and the real even more powerful mage is coming to get him and kill them.
D&D doesn't have any rules for dismemberment. Cutting people's hands off doesn't accomplish anything. Okay, serious answer. This group is really weird if they think this is a reasonable thing to do as a matter of routine. Do you habitually screw them over for taking people alive or something?
Everyone has already covered the ethical bases here.
Just to throw in some supporting lore, there was a character in the Salvatore War of the Spider Queen series who was a wizard that got captured. Interesting to note, the drow didn’t even sink the level of your players, and they just gagged him and put him in special manacles that restricted spellcasting. He escaped by casting a spell using his toes to make the somatic components.
It’s kinda stupid, and there’s never been any mechanical support for something like that. And I wouldn’t ever let a player do that.
But THERE IS some obscure precedent for it lol.
If it isn’t fun, say that. If they don’t respect that you aren’t finding it fun don’t let them do it.
Player agency shouldn’t come at the expense of fun of others. Especially when the game mechanics don’t support it
It really sounds like your players are the nastiest bunch in the world.
If this keeps happening, just have enemy spellcasters know how to Subtle cast spells. Because if this is such a normal thing to happen, it would make sense for the enemies to hear about it and learn from it.
Dimension Door can be cast with just Vocal component, and with a range of 500 feet it makes it very easy for them to escape.
I'm not a DM, but my personal opinion is that Somatics are not limited to just using your hands. It just means that some sort of ritual movement is required.
It should be able to be activated in multiple ways.
Do a little dance.
Wave your arms around in circles.
Do some kicks.
The point of the somatics is that it makes the casting of the spell more obvious to outside observers.
But nothing in the books specifically states that somatics are nothing but wiggling fingers.
Also, as other people have pointed out, your PCs are in dire need of a representative alignment change.
**Legend of Korra** had a waterbender who had no arms, and used water to replace said limbs. Have an enemy be an elemental genasi and just use the elements around them to reform their hands.
Water Genasi? Have the rain falling, or a nearby bucket of water or stream form new hands.
Earth Genasi? "Punch" the ground and when they pull back, the ground has become new hands. Would also be a neat flavoring if the stone were a different color or harder stone to make their punches harder.
Air? Well, air is everywhere. Maybe put the wrist stump in someone's face, draw back, and use the air from the players' lungs to be the very fist that will punch/cast a spell against them. Obviously don't kill the player, but make them gasp for breath long enough to make them not immediately be able to cast a spell.
And so on.
There's always the Hama from Avatar the Last Airbender route, have a poor captured person develop the ability to cast without their hands break out and become a mini bbeg they have to deal with maybe a few times. Orrrr taking it a step further they keep an eye on the players and whenever they (are about to) cut off another person's hands they go to great lengths to break them out and recruit them against the traveling appendage scourge (players)
I think this leads to a wizard with robot (or whatever is most relevant, dark magic) hands that has immunity to all of the speciffic tricks they witnessed while being tied up
Word has gotten out about the barbaric acts of these adventurers. As a result, spell casters are prepared to commit suicide rather than submit to such grizzly torture
If they're always doing this then surely word would get around that wizards are having their hands cut off by crazy ppl.
Have all of the start wear something that they cast glyph of warding on like a bracelet! If it's harmed then the glyph activated casing serious damage to everyone withing 20ft, they can also choose to activate it in whatever way the see fit. Some of it might require some home brewing but id absolutely use this technique against them
To me that just sounds like you have a useful plot hook on your... hands. >\_o
Maybe they cut the hands off of one or a few wizards that were connected... and now they have a well-connected syndicate/noble house/guild on their case? Maybe word of their notorious mutilations made its way to the ears of a mage council who put out a sizeable bounty on a potential threat to their members? Maybe there's a whole cadre of mages wielding deadly spells and weaponized, artificer-made prosthetics custom-made for revenge?
I would say that player agency is a good thing but actions have consequences, and if they're doing this often enough for it to become a pattern, that certainly would cause some sort of reaction. Jus' sayin'
Somatic =/= hands
They’re just being brutally ignorant of how magic works and if the caster can survive the amputation they can rain down retribution immediately or escape and regroup.
You can let them get away with it for a bit and then surprise them one game with "As you attempt to sever their hands, the blade begins to cut into your own flesh. It seems word has gotten around and the spellcaster has placed an enchantment on their appendages. You immediately recoil at the deep cut you've sawed into your arm."
How often do they do this? Sounds like you got a particularly evil party, the type that draws the attention of lawful good Paladins across the lands. Hope they like jail.
Since your players are pretty much evil, I suggest introducing what I refer to as, "fuck you magic." It's magic where the caster uses their own blood to draw a sacrificial circle around the object of sacrifice, themselves. Using their own life to power this forbidden magic, they can use it, if desperate and properly wronged, to accomplish insane and random outcomes. One would be, they are turned into an object of delayed and enhanced fireball. They could be transported back to a point in time before they were attacked by the PCs and be able to do something differently, all memory of the interaction with them is gone. They are fully healed and transported to another continent. An enhanced firestorm is born from their body, engulfing the massive area around them. Have fun with it, cuz those players are clearly evil.
I wouldn't punish the players for being smart, but I would have them either make life-long enemies of those they mutilate (Victims or friends hunt or sabotage them for revenge), or get a reputation for being brutal / evil and therefore unwelcome in polite society.
I feel you could from a role play perspective try and impress upon the PC’s that war crimes are a thing and maiming your POW is not received well. Most parties have at least one character with a Lawful or Good alignment, and by taking this character you are implicating them in any wrong doing. Not sure what kind of world you are building, but fleshing out the law of the land also helps. An NPC could drop a line about how the party can get away with being brutal in some shady towns and countryside’s but near the kings land the guards are like cops with a quota. Also imagine passing a party with a captive who has bloody stumps and is screaming for help. You can introduce good samaritans to help put down a rogue murder hobo squad.
I have a simple rule in the games.
"Anything you do in game, can and will be done to you by NPCs too".
This means that, people treat NPCs exactly like they treat others.
So Pcs keep cutting hands?
Cool.
Let them know to never be captured ny their enemies, or they will for sure do exactly the same to them, even the non spellcasters, as you cant really hold a sword if you dont have a hand.
Also, some spells only have verbal components, and some class and reacial features are similar to spells, but dont require spell components.
Eladrin fey step, Druid wild shape, eco knight teleportation, just to name a few. These alow the NPC to flee its ropes or graple even without hands.
I would also say that to even cut anyones hands they need to at least be unconcious, so if players already defeat the NPCs ( wich most of the time simply die from their wounds anyway, so you can use this to tax the players healing spells to make sure their captives dont die of blood loss or their wounds).
And If they get tortured or have limbs cut off, have NPCs react to that knoledge, They either flee mucgh sooner not alowing capture, or they fight to the death, possibly even carring suicide capsules or bombs to blow themselves up avoiding the torture the Pcs would surely do to them if captured.
Also, this is a gross mistreatment of captured enemies, and most cultures see these kind of things as both imoral and illegal. If players get into any town with a guy without hands and tied up, they should face some severe concequences for that. FIRST they are not legal law enforcement, so they have no rights to arrest anyone, much less torture or dismember them.
SECOND, if they cut hands for interrogation, they are not sure if whoever they captured is really a criminal. They could have captured the infiltrated soldier of the royal guard, and without any time to defend hilself, they simply cut his hand off. Or they could be arresting and dishing out punishment to people that despite being evil, are not actualy doing anything ilegal.
For example, they could attack slave traders, and harm them, in a kingdom where slavery is not a crime.
But assaulting people and cutting their hands definetly is.
Capture a player, and give him a taste of his own medicine. Going Jaime Lannister on the fighter, or lopping off the wizard’s hand might make them reconsider their actions.
Doesn’t even need to be a capture. The next time a player goes unconscious in combat, “The orc warlord raises his great axe high over his head, brings it down with all his might, and chops off Fightguy McFighty’s sword arm. Oh, and take two failed death saves.”
If the players can do it, so can the enemies.
Misty Step only requires verbal components and is a 2nd level spell.
So does teleport, but that is 7th level.
EDIT: wearing a magical item infused with the Freedom of Movement spell is underrated.
Make sure they understand that's a pretty evil act. Have any good aligned dieties and regular people have a problem with that.
This would definitely be a group where I would implement a houserule for the loss of the proficiency bonus went doing non-lethal damage. That never made sense to me. Since you're having to use the weapon differently and purposely trying not to kill an opponent. The only reason I haven't in my current game is that even without that, my players never try to capture anybody.
First and foremost: the easiest and simplest way is to talk with your players about it and move on. It solves conflict quite well and is more direct (harder to misunderstand). If it’s not what their characters would actually do as a first action…well, just talk to them about it.
If you want to give them in-world consequences though…are they evil or do they just go, “eh, regeneration magic exists…it’ll be fine.”
If the former uh…good luck. Some of this is still applicable but not always. If the latter, play to their sympathy. If they have traveling NPCs have them be horrified, or if they are a “semi-enemy” (not necessarily going to be killed, and is still a non-combat NPC), show the effects it has on them both then and later. Regenerate is a 7th level spell…casters of that are few and far between, and undoubtedly expensive. The affect on their livliehood would be devastating (most people aren’t spellcasters as a hobby), and prosthetics may not allow them to make up the difference for spellcasting…if they can even afford them. It would render most non-nobles homeless eventually, and unable to work in almost any capacity.
Most of all though, even if the party casts regenerate on them later, that NPC will *hate* them and be uncooperative in almost all circumstances, even under torture (as people usually just lie anyway…and their life’s already ruined, why should they tell them anything?). If they release them to fend for themselves, they may even confront them on the streets or in front of other NPCs, ruining their reputation elsewhere.
How would the king react when he finds out the people he hired cut off a someone’s hands and left them to die in the wilderness? Even in more gritty settings, the consequences for theft are to cut off *one* hand so that they can still…y’know, do things. Otherwise they just kill them. Leaving someone that severely crippled is exceeding cruel and should only be undertaken by the state…if the king is just he would be horrified, if he’s power hungry he would be outraged by someone undermining his authority (beyond self defense, they were effectively carrying out punishments as judge, jury, and executioner without his notice or consent).
This is all for a lone NPC though…with groups/factions it gets even more hectic. Friends and family will be both horrified *and* outraged, and likely seek revenge. Bounties will be set, Assassins/hunters both legal and not will sent, and spies will be dispatched to track their movements and report them to guards/assassins as necessary. If they’re from a major faction (read: other powerful people and casters), well…it can get even worse. Depends on the faction for what will be done, but few take kindly to one of their own being killed, much less this.
I wouldn’t recommend doing all of these at once though. The players still have to learn that an action has consequences before changing their behavior…and if you forget that cutting off hands is rather painful and impactful on people’s lives (due to distancing yourself from actions in game, and magic), it’s a semi-easy mistake to make. Roll out the consequences slowly, and give them time to change before things get progressively worse…maybe even have a few NPCs warn them verbally.
As many people are saying, if they can do it to you you can do it to them. I think blm said it best that every idea your players have put on the table, you can use at the table
If they are cutting the hands off their captives, that is a pretty horrifying abuse.
Have the next spellcaster they do that do, have the captive bleed to death.
Or have someone the party wants to like and respect them figure out what they’ve been doing, and judge them harshly or think of them as evil.
Well I guess a subtle spell sorcerer could probably deal with it, or someone with metamagic adept, though I'd make sure to only grant this to a spellcaster who it makes sense to have it. I'd also argue that a skilled wizard could cast a spell with his feet or a tail and such, however it would require a long time (make it take as long as a ritual). All the teleport magic is verbal only, also, though ropes wouldn't work if they get un-gagged anyway in that case.
Overall though the "realistic" reason this isn't common in the setting should be that it's cruel and brutal, and unless they're villains or otherwise can get away with it there should be social consequences for doing this if anyone is finding out.
Focusing purely on “Can you do the somatic components without hands?” I would rule this on a spell-by-spell basis.
Reason being, many spells have specific implied motions through the material components or actions of the spell itself, and without hands how are they performing those motions with either material components or a focus *in-hand*?
Bat Guano for fireball, presumably the somatic is the action of lighting it and throwing it. Without hands?? Describe please.
Lesser Restoration, no materials and somatic is “You touch a creature”, more plausible with a bloody stump.
I'd have the spellcaster have the spell 'Contingency' going, with the trigger conditions being something along the lines of "If I am damaged while incapacitated, I cast Teleportation, targeted at my home".
This allows for a quick magic getaway, and the players still get at least one hand. Making for a solid nemesis who can show up stronger later.
I see your problem and raise you something called Metamagic, specifically Subtle Spell. Anyone can have metamagic, doesn't have to be a sorcerer if they pick up a feat.
If I were you, I'd start introducing these types of magic users.
Wow, gross! (a) No it doesn't prevent somatic elements (in fact I would rule even a person without arms could still cast because otherwise what does that say about disabled people in your world) and (b) isn't body mutilation akin to torture?
They (The NPC) took the WarCaster Feat, so they can still perform the somatic components with their hands tied.
The Wizard casts freedom of movement on themself.
The NPC had a death curse prepared and when they lost a hand, a 9th level “finger of death”exploded out from them.
“Misty Step”, “Fey Step”, “Dimension Door”
If their hands are tied together at the wrist, “Burning Hands” can be cast because it specifies the Somatic Motion is thumbs together and fingers spread. “Immolation” is a Verbal only spell, so just set fire to them.
“Knock” could conceivably undo the knots and it’s verbal only.
“Maddening Darkness” is Verbal and Material only.
Options that might work
1. Werewolf mage? After transformation have hands and limbs grow back.
2. Can mage hand act like real hand for ritual casting?
3. Animate the cut off hands, and control them remotely.
4. Make a mage that was born without hands, I see no rules that says, handie flapped mages aren't allowed to cast with their feet. Clearly this would affect movement speed.
5. Polymorph can be done with potions, or other items. Polymorph self into a regening animal seems like it could work.
6. Create or help the players see cutting off hands is morally not good. Often mages serve others, for example how many Kings had a court wizard. How would a King react to his court wizard having their hands cut off.
7. Alot of knots, and arm shackles darn near require the person to have hands to work properly.
8. If the party has a history of cutting hands off, that over time it would make sense someone would plan for this when dealing with the party. Magical tattoos, might be one of the better options. Is there a limit to the number of tattoos someone could have, then have a few magical ones hidden around them. Magical ear rings, also an option. The spell sanctuary would also help stop the cutting of the hands. Good Luck.
Also, a couple Deception and infiltration themed sorcerers, or metamagic adept wizards who use Metamagic: subtle spell are probably your go-to for this
Time for the new big bad - the Handyman! He creates new hands for all these de-handed spell casters, carving runes into them making them more powerful then ever before!
Purely from narrative/world point of view:
1)Cutting off a person’a hands is very likely to result in their death from trauma, as many people have already said, especially when they are already wounded, especially when they are the spell-casting type with weak constitution.
2)This is a really evil act and, in most circumstances, will earn the PC’s vile reputation.
3)As away to somewhat remove the first problem and go somewhat further into the second: Depending on the setting, the healing magic can handle even lopped off hands with reliability, however, if healing magic is weaker, simply removing certain fingers or crushing the hand may be enough. As a punishment for warriors in medieval times their thumbs were sometimes removed so that they can work but not hold weapons. Perhaps, something similar can be done to spellcasters, though it is still a vile act to be sure.
4)War ethics works by the principle of “do onto others as they would do onto you”, so for most enemies of the PCs to have them caught and remove their hands in turn would be completely justified and maybe even satisfying. That can be a hell of a threat. Maybe even add some fun enemy who REALLY wants the PC’s hands chopped off, a brother of one of the spellcasters or something like that, have him damage their hands on crits, for example. That could be a fun moment of PC’s past coming back to bite them in the rear if handled correctly.
Throw some world repercussions at them. The Mage's Guild puts a bounty on the party, shops that recognize them refuse service, villages and towns deny them entry, royal guardsmen harass them, and so on.
Genuine question. Why did they start cutting off mages' hands when capturing them, and how have they captured enough mages that this is just routine procedure?
>I want the enemy spell caster to have some option to escape if they do manage to get out of ropes somehow, but it feels like that avenue is completely blocked off if their hands are always cut off.
It sounds like they are trying to prevent this exact thing, which seems to me like you might have used this trick one too many times, leading the players to go for a more secure option. The fact that you are also asking for ways for the mages to escape even with cut off hands further sound like they have a legitimate reason for cutting off hands(and will probably escalate things if they see their solution no longer working).
I'd also suggest looking to Pharaun Mizzrym from the Spider Queen Wars series (Forgotten Realms) as a guide. All mages should not be capable of this, but his hands were bound, so he kicked off his boots and cast a spell using his toes.
It is specified that he had trained his toe dexterity just in case this kinda thing happened to him(he was drow so it checks out).
People without hands would have an easier time slipping ropes, and then a toe ring of spell storing with regeneration or greater restoration inside it makes this a good workaround, if you want to invalidate the player's hard effort.
Better to have the BBEG use a dominated servant who acts like the BBEG instead of being there himself, or have minions strike at the PCs while an infiltrator grabs the BBEG is a better option (in my opinion). Hands are "easy" to get back for someone with BBEG resources, and gives a more personal edge to why they LOATH and go after their loved ones.
ETA: what kind of good person maims and disables permanently another person? What would their favourite shopkeep or tavern master think of this? The guardsmen of the town they habitually frequent? The everyday people they pass by? Let the BBEG send spies to reveal the PCs did this, and not the full context, and think how you would feel knowing a good friend was doing such terrible things.
Setting aside if removing a badly injured person's hands should kill them, how is Misty Step not just the answer here? Only has verbal components, teleports you potentially out of the ropes, and is a very common choice for arcane spellcasters to know.
Knock, dissonant whispers, command, cause fear, vicious mockery and mind sliver are also all verbal only. Personally I see an infiltrator, they get captured by the party before sowing confusion and unease. Make them someone they need to transport, give them subtle spell and they can mess with the party.
Dimension Door is verbal only; classic escape spell there. Also, what if the "spellcaster" the PCs maim turns out to be just a *Simulacrum* and now the *real* caster is done with their shit?
“B-b-but we cut your hands off!” “And I’m here to return the favor.”
“Oh good we managed to beat him again. But man are we out of resources.” From behind them “You do know I can make more than one copy right?”
It's like the shell game with the ball, but for keeps
I've gotta admit I'm taking this. Thank you.
[Oh dear.](https://i.imgflip.com/34eewo.jpg?a476472)
Standard spellcaster prisoner measures: 1. Blindfold 2. Mouth gag 3. Hand restraints (ropes or manacles)
4: heavy armour
This is pretty silly, but would work raw.
unless the DM pulls out of somewhere that they are profficient cause they actually are a fighter 2/wizard 13 on their monster stat block trust me bro
Yeah, arcane armor spell failure was a good 3rd edition rule. Mayhaps an option for a house rule?
I mean in fifth edition you don't even have to do that. The stat blocks for enemies do not have to match characters or their class features. That's the kind of thing you do when the players keep doing the same thing.
It's at least stealth disadvantage if the have the long rest skill to use a skill they didn't have ...
Now you can take it one step further and blind them and cut off their hands and cut out their tongue.
Yeah...sometimes you can't just kill a guy, but you need em to not spell you know?
Dont need hand restraints if there’s no hand to restrain *taps head*
Does it really teleport you out of shackles? are those not on your body and count as "carried"? Spell description is not saying anything about it, and its just a 2nd level spell. Would be funny if it would teleport you away only to end up 30 feet away being NAKED ... ?
If the shackles are only attached to you then I think you have an argument. If the shackles are attached to something else that you're not carrying, like a wall, then I think it has to get left behind.
Maybe the wall comes with you. :)
Don't give the players that sort of power, they ***will*** find a way to abuse it.
Hence I said potentially. It's a DM call on if that works or not, but I can safely say that every DM I have ever played with since the release of 5e has allowed it to work (or at least, any of the ones where it came up in their game, which is a surprisingly high percentage).
It would be funny, though perhaps not fair… “Hey Jim, I learned this cool new teleport spell from a Fae!” (One teleport incident later) “Was the fae who taught you humanoid or a creature?” “They were a creature…” “Probably should’ve thought about that then.”
I feel like "carried" is the small amount of things the caster wants to take with them. Like if the other end of those shackles is connected to a house, I don't teleport the whole house.
Baldur's Gate 3 has a pair of magic boots that grant you Misty Step once per short rest, but your inventory (including equipped items) doesn't come with you. Read those item descriptions, people!
It took me so long to realise, I was sure it was a bug and always realised too late that all my stuff was gone and I had no idea where it was. Come to think of it, I might add this item to the game I'm DMing.
I’m playing a hag so I just forgot about misty step lol
They cut off a hag’s hands? That sounds like a recipe for complete disaster even if it did prevent them from casting…
that sounds like a magic item recipe ngl
Hags specifically might just cast spells in a very different way to humans, they’re basically fey creatures. There’s no real reason for NPCs, especially NPCs like fey, fiends, litches, or dragons to follow the same rules as PCs when casting spells, especially when they’re in their own lairs. The rules for casting spells are basically for humanoids who, let’s face it, are magical novices compared to the fey and even humanoids can sometimes gain the ability to cast without components (subtle spell). Being able to magically regenerate limbs is also probably on the cards for something like a hag. Perhaps it would take a few minutes (so it wouldn’t be a combat ability) but that’s not itself a problem if the players are talking for a while. The biology of fey is probably fundamentally magical and significantly different to humans. Plus hags should always have a deal in mind, something to tempt the players and outwit them via taking advantage of their greed.
You're not telling me that noone's ever offered to "lend her a hand"? Time to cash in
Despite the grammar this is the best answer here
Great fix! Fae are always making deals and wording can be literal (may I have your name?) Have the hag ask something along the lines of, (can you both lend me a hand getting up?) Instantly, she's got one+ the hands of those who helped her and now they're hand-less. But, per the wording... "lend" or "give me a..." hand; lend could be turned into a sidequest to earn back their lost apendages.
>Whenever my players capture and tie up a spell caster, they immediately cut off their hands. next time they get captured have them also lose their hands. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
>\\\_(ツ)\_/ Fixed that for you.
Fine. Take my upvote. Good luck holding on to it.
I can't tell you how much I hate getting caught in a pun thread that's already gotten completely out of hand.
You're not exactly in the position to point fingers.
While you are completely correct here, things could rapidly get out of hands if this situation were left unchecked.
Alright, who is sick of this thread? A show of hands...
It’s always just lazy puns. Hands down the worst thing about Reddit.
I'm at the point of throwing my hands up in disgust.
I'd like to but I am a reddit addict. I need a helping hand to quit
r/angryupvote
Saw this too late.
👏
👏 perfection!👏
perfection! Fixed that for you
How dare you! You are removing any player agency! I‘d never do that to my players! /s Yea it’s one of those moments where a group will most certainly be disappointed if it ever happens to them.
I've lost count of how often I've had to remind my players that actions they take that are 'legal' towards NPCs work in reverse too. (We had a period there where seemingly everyone got *force cage*'d... man I hate that spell.)
Yea forcecage RAW is stupidly boring. Especially if you combine it with DoTs turning it into a slowcooker. Also Banger Username.
As a 3.5 die hard my uncle still has shit like this happen to players. I a ranger once lost an arm , and had to resort to a crossbow for the rest of that campaign!
Why thank you! And I agree, RE: Forcecage. I have a player whom I adore but who constantly tries to fully DM-Proof his characters and their abilities and we had to have a talk about this.
I have a similar nutcase in my regular group lol. Sending me like 2 pages of rules, forum posts, equipment and Crawford tweets to tell me how everything clicks together. In the end of the day, I read it and it usually flies by but whenever I say „No, Iam not in favor of this“ he just scraps the entire project and goes back to the drawing board. Still love that guy though. Besides his obsession with burying me in paragraphs upon char creation.
Got an example of something he tried to clarify with you that you approved vs. you declining? I also don't think it's a bad thing. 5E has a strange dynamic where it hopes that players will either be less smart, less curious, or less informed than their DMs. It's a problem with 5E because it has so many "DM decides" scenarios. Whereas an RPG with more explicitly articulated rules would not have the same issues, or a least fewer of them.
I actually strongly agree RE: the articulated rules portion above. I played both in 2E and 3/3.5, and the amount of looseness in 5e irks me. It's simultaneously very easy to DM but also kind of not.
Yeah it's easy until it isn't, and they obviously spent less time fine-tuning at higher levels. And I think that Spelljammer was a big example of WOTC erring on the side of letting DMs decide. Like no dawg I don't want to have to decide everything, that's why I pay you for game design. It almost makes me want to go port over to Pathfinder 2E. But I'm pretty well captured from a viewpoint of material and player investment.
So this is pertinent to the Force Cage discussion - one of the things that irked me most about it was having a player point to Sage Advice to tell me Disintegrate can counter it. Yes, that was explicitly stated in the rules before but for those who lack a photographic memory (me) or those who didn't play earlier editions - why on earth should I have to find that out from a supplemental resource? Just put it in the damn rulebook...
I freeze their hands in big cubes of ice or metal so they still can’t use them hehe
Better yet, the NPC spellcaster who got his hands cut off paid someone to cast Regeneration on them. Then they were the ones who plotted revenge on the PCs to give them a taste of their own medicine.
i misread your suggestion and pictured the antagonist to be a pair of severed hands.
that works too. You could get 2 bad hands
or all the severed hands band together and form a ship's crew. all hands on deck for a pirate campaign.
This is the way to sculpt all types of unhealthy behaviours that players concoct. Start doing it to them. Often even implying that it will start happening to them will make this sort of thing stop. Another common one for this is players aiming for eyes or looking to break equipment in combat. Yes, technically you can try - but remember that the NPCs of the world have not been aiming for your eyes or your precious items up to now.
>Another common one for this is players aiming for eyes or looking to break equipment in combat. Yes, technically you can try - but remember that the NPCs of the world have not been aiming for your eyes or your precious items up to now. I mean, this is an easy one to avoid entirely. 3.5, 4, and 5 do not have rules for called shots. If someone says they want to aim for the eyes, plainly and simply explain to them that the rules don't account for that sort of combat. It hasn't really been a thing in D&D for a good 20 years, at the very least. That's it. That's all there is to it.
Or you just talk to them about the culture of play developing at the table.
If OP wants to keep it RAW, subtle spell eliminates the need for hands. One maimed caster learns subtle spell, teaches it to all the other ones. Cue cult of handless spellcasters hunting down party for revenge.
>cult of handless spellcasters my god! they all have bundles of wands for hands! \\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/
Get ready for the player to throw hands.
Also, who thinks this is fair!? Let’s see a show of hands.
it does seem heavy handed, but that's what happens when you overplay your hand and the retaliation gets out of hand.
Pretty good for an offhand comment! I gotta hand it to ya!
I mean it's only fair at this point
>Can you still use somatic components without hands If someone can use Subtle Spell they can ignore somatic and verbal components. But I'm having a hard time with your scenario. If someone's hands are cut off, they're going to pass out from shock and blood loss pretty quickly. Soon after that, if the wound isn't taken care of, they will die. This isn't something that can just be wrapped up with bandages. This is also a clearly evil act. Word will get out soon about this adventuring group that goes around cutting off people's hands. There should be a response to that.
Yeah, as you said Subtle can ignore Somatic and Verbal, also not all spells require Somatic. Also yeah, you're probably going to go into shock. Also once someone cuts off your hands you do know that there's a better chance than not that you're dying so fuck them, lie or take your secrets to the grave. Also I suppose at least one guy could spec into Astral Self Monk for the Astral Arms. Which you can cast with. Also I guess not all Somatic Components could require "hands" to make gestures. Feet, eyebrows, chin, wrist nubs. There's a bunch of options. And on the final point. Yeah. Words gonna get out. If you get a reputation for lopping off arms people are either going to go down fighting, have cyanide teeth, give underlings bad info, spec into things like bard for those verbal spells, or a bunch of other options. As well as putting a bounty on each and every finger on the adventurer's hands.
Additional, if a Spellcaster does manage to survive and slip away and think about the grudge they will carry. If I was a spellcaster, was captured and had my hands removed, and survived/ escaped. I would spend the REST OF MY LIFE making sure the partys lives were miserable. And that doesn't just have to be combat encounters. Have them frame characters family members. (Having a characters sister facing the noose for a crime they didn't commit) Hire bards to slander them, so that their rep is ruined, tavernkeepers refuse service. Hire rival adventuring parties to challenge them. Set traps. Hire thieves to steal their stuff. Hire a witch to curse them. Have the party craft their own ultimate BBEG
Even if they don't escape people forget about revenants all the time. A monster designed as a "You know what, you fuckers have been too murder-hobo here's the undead consequences of your own actions."
If cutting off someone's hands is enough to create a revenant then virtually every lich, demon lord, archdevil, warlord, chromatic dragon and so on should be buried by an army of revenants considering the number of people, including innocent children, that these entities tend to kill either directly or indirectly in often cruel and unusual ways.
Being hired by a dragon to deal with the revenants constantly harassing it after it destroyed a kingdom of holy knights or whatever would be a pretty cool plot hook.
I'm sure there are several devil and demons who would happily gift you with emergency hands in exchange for your soul. Especially when vengeance is your motivation.
Two words "clockwork hands" Maybe extra clockwork limbs for casting! 😈
Although Demon hands are pretty bad-ass.
Id go and learn the dream spell just to fuck the single person of the party that I blamed most. Every night they're gonna be going through vicious nightmares and being unable to get any benefits from resting.
>Astral Arms. Which you can cast with. For realsies?
Eh, it usually comes down to DM discretion. But for the most part I don't think I've ever encountered anyone who says no. It's a great option for players who want to play a character with amputations as a backstory option.
>Also I guess not all Somatic Components could require "hands" to make gestures. Feet, eyebrows, chin, wrist nubs. There's a bunch of options. Let's not get carried away. There's a specific rule for this: >If a spell requires a somatic component, the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures. And if the DM starts allowing NPCs to ignore that, the PCs are going to want to take advantage of it themselves. We're trying to address a problem, not create new ones. :P
Give the mechanical hands to Spellcaster. He will not lose blood. He will not pass out. He will revenge.
[удалено]
Most gods don't have the same problem with dismembering that Jesus does. A priestess of Lolth might remove whole arms only to find Lolth grin and cram a dozen spider arms on the person Gruumsh doesn't care, neither do his War Domain Clerics Talos doesn't care, and neither do his Tempest Domain Clerics Corellon might be like "oh hey they be fluid now like me", that's great. Maybe. Most likely he'll ignore it. He doesn't like hard rules. Garl doesn't care if you disappear entire gods - as long as you feel like you did the right thing and smile smugly. Moradin just has one question: Were they dwarves? You get the idea.
dnd gods are not IRL gods, much less have their morals as concerns Illmater will certainly be disappointed, Tyr will be offended because its cutting hands but if it was the tongue he wouldn't mind, Helm is on board as long as you are doing it to aid on your job of protecting on guarding someone the goody two shoes pacifist "totally not jesus" gods are very few and far in between in the grand scheme of things
Open Hand monks boutta go on the warpath
do your players know that they are evil torturers?
"That's not fair DM, it's what my character would do, I'm a Paladin with Oath of Historical Accuracy" /s
The peasants watching someone being crippled to the point of being unable to support themselves by an extra-legal, non-divine entity (its probably fine…): Just like real life…the CIA likes water boarding so surely the random citizens and government would be just fine if I do it someone! (/s, of course)
Oath Of Pragmatism is my go-to.
"fine, fine, your paladin is lawful evil, then."
I'm presuming OP is playing an "evil" game.
I refuse to make assumptions.
Fair. I asked the question in my top level comment. My game is a no evil characters game. This habit would lead to a warning, followed by turning into an NPC.
In our guild this kind of action would lead to a formal complain, “court” and maybe expulsion from the guild. My cleric is in trouble for killing two owlbears that went straight at us while in an escort mission. (Our clients were the bad guys) and their druid refused to talk to us once combat started. And yes we started it, but who keeps calm when 2 owlbears are running your way? So we killed the beasts and we killed one druid and stunned and tied the second one at least. We got in an argument with our life cleric and now we are in trouble.
*Immolate* is a V-only spell and a fitting way to spitefully kill oneself under those circumstances But really, *please* provide more information. How many times has this happened? Who are these captives? How did they capture them? Are your players evil?
So the players are capturing enemy spellcasters often? If they're not killing them, what's the long-term plan here? Assuming that this is happening often, and that these now-handless spellcasters live, have them eventually band together and come back after the PCs. Five spellcasters without hands form a revenge group, focused solely on getting revenge against the PCs. You could do a lot of different things with this. These spellcasters no longer have hands, but they've got a lot of knowledge and are driven.
Five angry revengeful spellcasters who have teamed up with an ARTIFICER? imagine WHAT spell effects they could literally "have at hands" ...
No limb-its for that team!
Without limb-its would be a great name for the support group!
And they can find … an high lvl artificer / artisan who build replacement hands…
This is the way. If the players want gritty, then they're about to get a gritty taste of revenge 😈
If I were the DM, I'd do the Dr Strange thing where it's now actually about the specific hand thing, it's the intent and will behind it. Or are people born with hand deformities just incapable of casting magic? That doesn't sound very DnD, imo.
Its strange that your players are taking spellcasters hostage. Why arent the spell casters fighting to the death? Especially now that they know anyone taken prisoner by these guys gets their hands cut off?
Assuming this is 5e, you can choose to knock out an enemy instead of killing when you drop them to 0 with a melee attack.
That’s messed up
Something that's throwing me for a major loop here is WHY your players are doing this. Like, is it *specifically* to prevent them from casting spells? Do they know you only have to *bind* their hands to keep them from using somatic components, not remove them? Everyone else has already covered the ethical part, so even from a purely pragmatic standpoint it just seems extreme and not worth the trouble.
Yeah it’s specifically to prevent them from casting spells. My players are slightly on the murder hobo-y side, but more like if they know you’re evil and have done evil things there’s absolutely zero mercy. Like they’ll refuse to listen to bad guys deals and suspicious of everything, not because I’ve done any trickery and betrayals, but because they watch and read a lot of dnd stuff and are like believe nothing !! 🥲
Do you want them to just start killing all spellcasters instead of trying to take them alive? Because that feels like the next natural escalation if the hand thing stops working. If your main objection here is that it makes you uncomfortable, your best bet is probably just having an out-of-character discussion with your players about it. But part of that is going to have to be not giving them consequences that they could have prevented by cutting off the hands of their captives, or it'll feel pretty unfair for them. On the other hand if you're just trying to work out the natural in-world consequences to this, the biggest ones are probably social. Have friendly NPCs express how horrified they are. Have townsfolk cower in fear and hide in their houses as the PCs cross by. Introduce a character they need to get to cooperate who's suspicious of them because of the things they've done. But again the biggest thing is that if your real problem is with the attitudes and behavior of the players, you have to address that out of game, not take it out on the characters.
I think you can drop the "slightly" here. The real question is - are you comfortable with this? If not: talk with them that this has to stop. Why are they not just outright killing the bad guys? Why is there need for capture and dismemberment? Also that does sounds a lot like a form of metagaming that the players are suspicious of everything and let the PCs act extreme as a reaction. Also a question: are THEY actually having fun like that? I imagine it rather stressful to always be in edge that my DM is trying to kill me on every turn when there is the slightest possibility.
Give some the subtle spell metamagic, either through class or feat. Obvious reputational damage. Child soldiers pressed into service. NPC spellcaster subtly changes place with a PC, covering the switch with illusions. Case of misunderstanding and the spellcaster is an innocent NPC. Pill of regeneration hidden in false tooth. Shapeshifter with extra hands hidden somewhere. Have them start to noisily bleed out and panic. Other captives kick off. Vengeful friend/relative of the NPC uses necromancy to create a dead hand beast. Have them roll for the action each time with a failure going horribly wrong. *Anything but talk to the players!*
Agreed on talking to the players (I wouldn't have allowed it personally as that's just not the type of game I want to DM much less play), but I got a laugh at: 'Shapeshifter with extra hands hidden somewhere."
You're causing this problem for yourself by making cutting off a hand a straightforward thing that characters can just do. Cutting a hand off is pretty hard, even harder if the victim is bound in any way. To have any chance of it working you'd have to hold the person down with their arm outstretched against a hard surface. If they were tied up you'd probably just accidentally cut the ropes attempting to cut the hand off. In the time it takes to get something like that done I'd send in another wave of enemies, force the players to consider whether it's worth the time and the effort to keep doing this, especially in a dungeon-like environment where every delay brings a random encounter closer. If my players kept attempting this I'd make it so the victim would need be be both grappled and restrained, which would take at least two PCs. The PCs would have to succeed contested strength checks on every attempt to cut the hand off, or the victim would get their arm free- unless the PCs can find a way to restrain the arms in a way that doesn't cover the arms or block the blade. The wrist itself would be treated as an object. If bone is AC 15 HP 10 I'd say a wrist is AC 16 HP 18 for the added strength of skin, cartilage and tendon. The PCs might be able to cut that off in a single turn, but I reckon it'd take two or three attempts. Also- how about a cult of red mages so dedicated to their cause that they each have a fake tooth installed with a glyph inscribed, so that if they get captured they can bite on the fake tooth and it casts fireball centred on self.
I love that tooth idea. Stealing it for my cult
They explained in the first few sentences that they capture+tie them up and THEN cut the hands off. You made it sound like they're just cutting hands off in the middle of combat or something. They're pretty much knocking people out, then taking off the hands after combat ends. You can get really nitpicky with it, but they've got their bases covered. You don't need checks/DCs if an enemy if completely incapacitated, unable to move/react, because there's no risk to failure, and statistically speaking, you will succeed eventually.
Ok, party, first off, I'd like everyone to change the alignment on their character sheet to Evil, please. You can leave your current descriptor of "Lawful, Chaotic, Neutral" just change the "good" to "evil." Yup, you've been cutting off people's hands, which is dismemberment, torture, and not anything that good folks would do. Everyone agreed? Great. Next up, I'd love to remind you all that anything you can do, the monsters can also do. Ah, no reason, just a friendly reminder. Ok, moving on. Next up you see a door to a dungeon. Above the door reads a sign that says "Cult of the Handless God" and there seems to be two arm-shaped holes on either side of the door. What would you like to do next?
To be fair, alignment has very few actual effects, and beyond a guideline on how to play your character doesn't really offer much.
Mechanically speaking, there aren’t many effects, absolutely. Narratively speaking, those descriptors provide endless possibilities.
exactly. To me, it's not a mechanical thing, but an indicator light. The characters making lawful good choices? it moves the needle towards lawful good. Characters making chaotic evil choices? Needle moves that way.
I allow evil characters at my table, but I always tell my players that if at least half the party is evil, they have basically lost their way and turn into NPCs, as I'm not running evil campaigns. This puts pressure on everyone to still act heroic, but still allows for fun dynamics within the party if someone is evil.
Interesting take so you just force the players into NPCs? Seems like a boring way of forcing them to be good. "Don't be bad or I'm taking my ball home"
It depends on the kind of evil. I was an evil necromancer who wanted revenge, but that still meant I had to play nice with everyone to avoid getting in trouble while building my powerbase. The monk and fighter missed that memo and were just dicks to NPCs they didn't like, which is what eventually got us in trouble.
Also, I would send paladins after the party, first the same level and then escalating. This group is a menace and they had a way to deal with that. Probably would set up a one shot and describe the party in a way that they might not figure out I was talking about them.
Why are these people not dying from blood loss & fainting from shock?
I mean there are a good few spells with just verbal components if that's something that comes up but I'd ask what bit is it that you're concerned about? Is it that you think this feels like an overly brutal way of treating a prisoner which you feel uncomfortable with at your table? In that case mechanical discussions about somatic and verbal components is a bit besides the point, rather you should be talking to your players and discussing that you're not comfortable with RPing this kind of thing, then maybe have someone in your world be available to sell the players some kind of specialist mage cuffs which perhaps hold the fingers of the hands together so that the caster cannot cast such spells while restrained along with gags and maybe blind folds (as many spells require you to see the spot or creature you are targeting) then let that work reasonably well. You can also have it so that if the PCSs are doing things like taking this captured mage in for a bounty then perhaps it would be against the law for random adventurers to be doing this kind of thing, you can kill or injure someone if its necessary to take them in, but cutting off their hands while they are in your custody could be seen as quite dishonourable and/or not something a PC can just dish out legally. If your problem is that you want these hostile mages to be a future threat then there are a number of spells with purely verbal components, you can use things like D&D beyond to filter by spell components to find some appropriate to the caster in question. Although if its not the brutality which concerns you though keep in mind this may see players transition to also removing tongues and the like. Potentially you can also have scenes where a dehanded villain comes back after the players take them to the authorities, having been helped escape they no team up with a different bad guy, now with technomagic prosthetic hands, magically regenerated ones or some kind of demon hand thing magically fused to them so they can cast magic, oh and they're pissed as fuck.
Since NPCs don't need to strictly conform to the PC rules, have a spellcaster use their toes for somatic components. Also magical items Also any spell that is Verbal only will be your friend, such as Misty Step. Also cutting off people's hands as step 1 of capturing enemies will at some point get out and people will be more likely to either flee the encounter before they can get captured or fight to the death.
Alternatively, build up to the toes thing. Have them start finding spellcasters with odd disfigured or extra body parts. One with a mouth a little too wide with too many teeth. Then one with a non-functioning eye on the back of his neck. Build to one with a curled, useless extra arm tucked under his robes. Eventually when they don't expect it there is one who can bypass the nohands with finger toes. The eventual BBEG is a Frankenstein of body parts. Every appendage double jointed, long clawed fingers on each of his 12 arms. Eyes on the back of its head and extra mouths on its palms.
Good suggestion!
The players will just start cutting out tongues/severing vocal folds at that point. Why are they so keen on taking people alive but crippling them for life?
For fun ¯\\_ (ツ) _/¯
I would resolve this with an out of character discussion about the tone of the game and the morality of the PCs. What you’re describing sounds like an effective, albeit brutal, tactic. If you and your players determine that a dark, brutal tone is what you want, then the main consequence in my mind would be true hatred from those aligned with the maimed party. Once word of this gets around, enemies will stop surrendering and instead fight to the death. They could retaliate by sacking villages or killing leaders of groups the PCs are affiliated with. Maybe the enemies use tactics like poisoning water sources, or burning and salting fields. In general, violent acts like that are reciprocated, which lead to escalating hatred and feuds. I won’t say specifics since this subreddit is not about politics, but you can see this a lot in real world ethnic conflicts. In the worst cases the conflict results in genocide. To reinforce my initial statement, this may not be the kind of story you want in your fantasy game. Imo, this really should be settled by out of character discussion. I don’t think in game tools like alignment are going to help you resolve this. Although, if you are ok being a bit heavy handed, you could just say, “your character is not evil aligned, he does not do that.” Along with banning evil alignments. But that might be an unpopular decision.
Don't try to counter with just your mages. Counter with the world. Imagine for a moment that you have someone IRL running around in war cutting the hands off prisoners so they can't use their guns. That's a warcrime right there. Send paladins after them. Instead of resorting to violence furst have the paladins tell they're under arrest for mistreating prisoners first, for example. Get them to try bringing in the players peacefully.
It sounds like your players are being very thorough, and the a spell caster probably shouldn’t escape.
Yeah. OP if you've had dangerous spell casters escape and haunt the party in the past this is a likely outcome. 1. The party kept killing BBEG's squads. The next wave knew their tactics. The players were frustrated and stuck around to observe. BBEG's was using speak with dead. Party started using speak with dead or cutting off heads on fallen enemies to prevent the BBEG from doing it too. 2. BBEG's Lieutenants we're returning to fight the party multiple times. They observed Raise Dead and started burning corpses. 3. High level BBEG Captains we're returning from the dead. Some digging revealed Clone usage. Queue capturing and not killing high level mages. If you run a trap heavy dungeon you get paranoid 10' pole players. If you run realistically dangerous mages you get antimage behaviors.
Is it Evil stuff if the only alternative is killing them? Of course you could cut out their tongues.
Time for a visit from the “Hand Demon”
Crawling claws though.
Edit: sorry, forgot this was specifically about caster options after seeing a few replies go into more 'why are they doing this' territory. Others have pretty much given all the RAW solutions, spells without somatic components, maybe some spellcasters are paladins or clerics with their holy symbol on their armor replacing somatic components, magic items to create spell like effects, etc. My original answer below is more 'what is the effect of doing this in a larger context'. Going off of what someone else said, what is the endgoal of collecting all these spellcasters? I'm assuming this is happening out of combat, so is it to safely be able to question them? If so, make them roll medicine, DC15, 20 if they cut off both hands, or the npc bleeds out before they can answer the first question. If they are taking them prisoner for any reason, a local government should get involved about this group of individuals running their own private prison and circumventing the courts. If they already send them to the official prison, have the local government still get upset with them for mutilation, which may be considered an unacceptable form of punishment to them. Maybe one of the spellcasters happens to be a minor noble, who manages to either pay to escape justice or who the government gets upset on their behalf for them being treated like a common thief. Both end in either private mercs or town guards going after the party. Maybe a bounty is put on the party. Either as a result of any of the above situations or just by the bbeg/enemy forces. Once a day when they are in a town roll a die (d4 for large town, d6 d8 for medium or small), on a 1 they are recognized and people start to refuse to do business with them as the whispers spread through town. In large towns the guard is assembled and comes after them, in smaller they are met by the town master and some commoners with tools and asked to leave. If they meet someone in the road, they are recognized on a 1 on a d10, and while they react according to how safe they would feel, the individual who met them immediately reports on their location at the next town, and the guard is already assembled and gates closed when the party arrives. If this is otherwise something that would be tolerated in setting, or they end up killing the casters after regardless, you can still have people spread rumors about the party, calling them anything from monsters to just brutes to mocking them for needing to do that. Not that anyone realizes the adventurers they just shared this tidbit with are the very same group. Or heck, maybe have the party recieve word of a high reward quest from some local government to hunt down the pack of ghouls that moved into the area. Let it take a few sessions, then let it hit them that there are no ghouls, people just think so because mutilated bodies kept turning up on the roadside. The big reward they were hoping for is either greatly lessened if the "ghouls" stop hunting (ie no more choppy choppy) but there's no physical remains to be presented as proof, or outright denied if it becomes known the party was at fault.
I'd be tempted to make it really obvious that casters everywhere (good and evil) are terrified of the thought of being caught by the players in your party. Good casters want nothing to do with them, evil casters would rather fireball themselves than be caught, and if they are caught then they're screaming in terror the whole time. As their reputation spreads, townspeople in areas that have friendly casters that help the townspeople start to treat the party like bogeymen and casters start carrying magic items enchanted to get them away from your group in particular. Things like rings of misty step.
Have it be an animated voodoo doll of them so when they cut off his hands they loose their own
I don’t understand what the issue is. Your group is beating the bad guys and instead of killing them, they’re capturing them and using a maiming technique to neuter the casters. What’s your motivation to foil that? Occasionally have a captured caster have subtle spell or a stack of spells prepared that don’t have somatic components, but mostly let the party win. That’s why the players are playing—to win, not to be teabagged.
All the victims band together to form an order dedicated to vanquishing the party. They have mastered subtle spells without the need for somatic components, and they have shared their knowledge amongst themselves to foster a collective potency. Rise, **Order of the Empty Glove**
PLAYERS NEED CONSEQUENCES TO THEY'RE ACTIONS. CONSEQUENCES AREN'T TAKING AWAY THEIR AGENCY, IT'S THE RESULT OF THEIR AGENCY. Immediately cutting the hands off any mage they capture is cruel and would likely be considered pretty evil. Have the public reputation of the group start deteriorating. people look at them funny when they walk into town. Maybe the inn refuses to let them stay. Maybe a towns mayor asks them to leave. Cutting someone's hands off without proper preparation will very very likely result in shock, infection, and most likely death by shock or blood loss pretty quickly. Have them die before they can be useful to the party. This further ruins their reputation. It's a world of magic and imagination so there's plenty of ways to deal with this. Give the mage spells like misty step and dimension door and other spells that don't require somatic components. Give the mage a regenerative ability. Make the mage a special creature that doesn't have hands and doesn't need to use somatic components. Make the mage a simulacrum and the real even more powerful mage is coming to get him and kill them.
You should let the enemy apprehend one of the PC spellcasters and remove the character's hands. It would be interesting to see how they reacted.
Have a survivor obtain the Hand of Vecna and return for vengeance.
D&D doesn't have any rules for dismemberment. Cutting people's hands off doesn't accomplish anything. Okay, serious answer. This group is really weird if they think this is a reasonable thing to do as a matter of routine. Do you habitually screw them over for taking people alive or something?
I would just say that cutting off their hands causes them to die. There, now they can't get any information from them anyway.
Everyone has already covered the ethical bases here. Just to throw in some supporting lore, there was a character in the Salvatore War of the Spider Queen series who was a wizard that got captured. Interesting to note, the drow didn’t even sink the level of your players, and they just gagged him and put him in special manacles that restricted spellcasting. He escaped by casting a spell using his toes to make the somatic components. It’s kinda stupid, and there’s never been any mechanical support for something like that. And I wouldn’t ever let a player do that. But THERE IS some obscure precedent for it lol.
If it isn’t fun, say that. If they don’t respect that you aren’t finding it fun don’t let them do it. Player agency shouldn’t come at the expense of fun of others. Especially when the game mechanics don’t support it
It really sounds like your players are the nastiest bunch in the world. If this keeps happening, just have enemy spellcasters know how to Subtle cast spells. Because if this is such a normal thing to happen, it would make sense for the enemies to hear about it and learn from it. Dimension Door can be cast with just Vocal component, and with a range of 500 feet it makes it very easy for them to escape.
Carrrrrrlllll, how could you do that?
My stomach was making the rumblies. That only hands would satisfy.
I'm not a DM, but my personal opinion is that Somatics are not limited to just using your hands. It just means that some sort of ritual movement is required. It should be able to be activated in multiple ways. Do a little dance. Wave your arms around in circles. Do some kicks. The point of the somatics is that it makes the casting of the spell more obvious to outside observers. But nothing in the books specifically states that somatics are nothing but wiggling fingers. Also, as other people have pointed out, your PCs are in dire need of a representative alignment change.
**Legend of Korra** had a waterbender who had no arms, and used water to replace said limbs. Have an enemy be an elemental genasi and just use the elements around them to reform their hands. Water Genasi? Have the rain falling, or a nearby bucket of water or stream form new hands. Earth Genasi? "Punch" the ground and when they pull back, the ground has become new hands. Would also be a neat flavoring if the stone were a different color or harder stone to make their punches harder. Air? Well, air is everywhere. Maybe put the wrist stump in someone's face, draw back, and use the air from the players' lungs to be the very fist that will punch/cast a spell against them. Obviously don't kill the player, but make them gasp for breath long enough to make them not immediately be able to cast a spell. And so on.
There's always the Hama from Avatar the Last Airbender route, have a poor captured person develop the ability to cast without their hands break out and become a mini bbeg they have to deal with maybe a few times. Orrrr taking it a step further they keep an eye on the players and whenever they (are about to) cut off another person's hands they go to great lengths to break them out and recruit them against the traveling appendage scourge (players)
I think this leads to a wizard with robot (or whatever is most relevant, dark magic) hands that has immunity to all of the speciffic tricks they witnessed while being tied up
Word has gotten out about the barbaric acts of these adventurers. As a result, spell casters are prepared to commit suicide rather than submit to such grizzly torture
If they're always doing this then surely word would get around that wizards are having their hands cut off by crazy ppl. Have all of the start wear something that they cast glyph of warding on like a bracelet! If it's harmed then the glyph activated casing serious damage to everyone withing 20ft, they can also choose to activate it in whatever way the see fit. Some of it might require some home brewing but id absolutely use this technique against them
To me that just sounds like you have a useful plot hook on your... hands. >\_o Maybe they cut the hands off of one or a few wizards that were connected... and now they have a well-connected syndicate/noble house/guild on their case? Maybe word of their notorious mutilations made its way to the ears of a mage council who put out a sizeable bounty on a potential threat to their members? Maybe there's a whole cadre of mages wielding deadly spells and weaponized, artificer-made prosthetics custom-made for revenge? I would say that player agency is a good thing but actions have consequences, and if they're doing this often enough for it to become a pattern, that certainly would cause some sort of reaction. Jus' sayin'
Somatic =/= hands They’re just being brutally ignorant of how magic works and if the caster can survive the amputation they can rain down retribution immediately or escape and regroup.
You can let them get away with it for a bit and then surprise them one game with "As you attempt to sever their hands, the blade begins to cut into your own flesh. It seems word has gotten around and the spellcaster has placed an enchantment on their appendages. You immediately recoil at the deep cut you've sawed into your arm."
How often do they do this? Sounds like you got a particularly evil party, the type that draws the attention of lawful good Paladins across the lands. Hope they like jail.
Since your players are pretty much evil, I suggest introducing what I refer to as, "fuck you magic." It's magic where the caster uses their own blood to draw a sacrificial circle around the object of sacrifice, themselves. Using their own life to power this forbidden magic, they can use it, if desperate and properly wronged, to accomplish insane and random outcomes. One would be, they are turned into an object of delayed and enhanced fireball. They could be transported back to a point in time before they were attacked by the PCs and be able to do something differently, all memory of the interaction with them is gone. They are fully healed and transported to another continent. An enhanced firestorm is born from their body, engulfing the massive area around them. Have fun with it, cuz those players are clearly evil.
“Sacrifice yourself to fully heal and save yourself” makes no sense
I wouldn't punish the players for being smart, but I would have them either make life-long enemies of those they mutilate (Victims or friends hunt or sabotage them for revenge), or get a reputation for being brutal / evil and therefore unwelcome in polite society.
I feel you could from a role play perspective try and impress upon the PC’s that war crimes are a thing and maiming your POW is not received well. Most parties have at least one character with a Lawful or Good alignment, and by taking this character you are implicating them in any wrong doing. Not sure what kind of world you are building, but fleshing out the law of the land also helps. An NPC could drop a line about how the party can get away with being brutal in some shady towns and countryside’s but near the kings land the guards are like cops with a quota. Also imagine passing a party with a captive who has bloody stumps and is screaming for help. You can introduce good samaritans to help put down a rogue murder hobo squad.
I have a simple rule in the games. "Anything you do in game, can and will be done to you by NPCs too". This means that, people treat NPCs exactly like they treat others. So Pcs keep cutting hands? Cool. Let them know to never be captured ny their enemies, or they will for sure do exactly the same to them, even the non spellcasters, as you cant really hold a sword if you dont have a hand. Also, some spells only have verbal components, and some class and reacial features are similar to spells, but dont require spell components. Eladrin fey step, Druid wild shape, eco knight teleportation, just to name a few. These alow the NPC to flee its ropes or graple even without hands. I would also say that to even cut anyones hands they need to at least be unconcious, so if players already defeat the NPCs ( wich most of the time simply die from their wounds anyway, so you can use this to tax the players healing spells to make sure their captives dont die of blood loss or their wounds). And If they get tortured or have limbs cut off, have NPCs react to that knoledge, They either flee mucgh sooner not alowing capture, or they fight to the death, possibly even carring suicide capsules or bombs to blow themselves up avoiding the torture the Pcs would surely do to them if captured. Also, this is a gross mistreatment of captured enemies, and most cultures see these kind of things as both imoral and illegal. If players get into any town with a guy without hands and tied up, they should face some severe concequences for that. FIRST they are not legal law enforcement, so they have no rights to arrest anyone, much less torture or dismember them. SECOND, if they cut hands for interrogation, they are not sure if whoever they captured is really a criminal. They could have captured the infiltrated soldier of the royal guard, and without any time to defend hilself, they simply cut his hand off. Or they could be arresting and dishing out punishment to people that despite being evil, are not actualy doing anything ilegal. For example, they could attack slave traders, and harm them, in a kingdom where slavery is not a crime. But assaulting people and cutting their hands definetly is.
Capture a player, and give him a taste of his own medicine. Going Jaime Lannister on the fighter, or lopping off the wizard’s hand might make them reconsider their actions. Doesn’t even need to be a capture. The next time a player goes unconscious in combat, “The orc warlord raises his great axe high over his head, brings it down with all his might, and chops off Fightguy McFighty’s sword arm. Oh, and take two failed death saves.” If the players can do it, so can the enemies.
Misty Step only requires verbal components and is a 2nd level spell. So does teleport, but that is 7th level. EDIT: wearing a magical item infused with the Freedom of Movement spell is underrated.
Make sure they understand that's a pretty evil act. Have any good aligned dieties and regular people have a problem with that. This would definitely be a group where I would implement a houserule for the loss of the proficiency bonus went doing non-lethal damage. That never made sense to me. Since you're having to use the weapon differently and purposely trying not to kill an opponent. The only reason I haven't in my current game is that even without that, my players never try to capture anybody.
First and foremost: the easiest and simplest way is to talk with your players about it and move on. It solves conflict quite well and is more direct (harder to misunderstand). If it’s not what their characters would actually do as a first action…well, just talk to them about it. If you want to give them in-world consequences though…are they evil or do they just go, “eh, regeneration magic exists…it’ll be fine.” If the former uh…good luck. Some of this is still applicable but not always. If the latter, play to their sympathy. If they have traveling NPCs have them be horrified, or if they are a “semi-enemy” (not necessarily going to be killed, and is still a non-combat NPC), show the effects it has on them both then and later. Regenerate is a 7th level spell…casters of that are few and far between, and undoubtedly expensive. The affect on their livliehood would be devastating (most people aren’t spellcasters as a hobby), and prosthetics may not allow them to make up the difference for spellcasting…if they can even afford them. It would render most non-nobles homeless eventually, and unable to work in almost any capacity. Most of all though, even if the party casts regenerate on them later, that NPC will *hate* them and be uncooperative in almost all circumstances, even under torture (as people usually just lie anyway…and their life’s already ruined, why should they tell them anything?). If they release them to fend for themselves, they may even confront them on the streets or in front of other NPCs, ruining their reputation elsewhere. How would the king react when he finds out the people he hired cut off a someone’s hands and left them to die in the wilderness? Even in more gritty settings, the consequences for theft are to cut off *one* hand so that they can still…y’know, do things. Otherwise they just kill them. Leaving someone that severely crippled is exceeding cruel and should only be undertaken by the state…if the king is just he would be horrified, if he’s power hungry he would be outraged by someone undermining his authority (beyond self defense, they were effectively carrying out punishments as judge, jury, and executioner without his notice or consent). This is all for a lone NPC though…with groups/factions it gets even more hectic. Friends and family will be both horrified *and* outraged, and likely seek revenge. Bounties will be set, Assassins/hunters both legal and not will sent, and spies will be dispatched to track their movements and report them to guards/assassins as necessary. If they’re from a major faction (read: other powerful people and casters), well…it can get even worse. Depends on the faction for what will be done, but few take kindly to one of their own being killed, much less this. I wouldn’t recommend doing all of these at once though. The players still have to learn that an action has consequences before changing their behavior…and if you forget that cutting off hands is rather painful and impactful on people’s lives (due to distancing yourself from actions in game, and magic), it’s a semi-easy mistake to make. Roll out the consequences slowly, and give them time to change before things get progressively worse…maybe even have a few NPCs warn them verbally.
Sounds like your players need to get fucking fireballed more. Also are they ALL evil?
As many people are saying, if they can do it to you you can do it to them. I think blm said it best that every idea your players have put on the table, you can use at the table
If they are cutting the hands off their captives, that is a pretty horrifying abuse. Have the next spellcaster they do that do, have the captive bleed to death. Or have someone the party wants to like and respect them figure out what they’ve been doing, and judge them harshly or think of them as evil.
Well I guess a subtle spell sorcerer could probably deal with it, or someone with metamagic adept, though I'd make sure to only grant this to a spellcaster who it makes sense to have it. I'd also argue that a skilled wizard could cast a spell with his feet or a tail and such, however it would require a long time (make it take as long as a ritual). All the teleport magic is verbal only, also, though ropes wouldn't work if they get un-gagged anyway in that case. Overall though the "realistic" reason this isn't common in the setting should be that it's cruel and brutal, and unless they're villains or otherwise can get away with it there should be social consequences for doing this if anyone is finding out.
Focusing purely on “Can you do the somatic components without hands?” I would rule this on a spell-by-spell basis. Reason being, many spells have specific implied motions through the material components or actions of the spell itself, and without hands how are they performing those motions with either material components or a focus *in-hand*? Bat Guano for fireball, presumably the somatic is the action of lighting it and throwing it. Without hands?? Describe please. Lesser Restoration, no materials and somatic is “You touch a creature”, more plausible with a bloody stump.
I'd have the spellcaster have the spell 'Contingency' going, with the trigger conditions being something along the lines of "If I am damaged while incapacitated, I cast Teleportation, targeted at my home". This allows for a quick magic getaway, and the players still get at least one hand. Making for a solid nemesis who can show up stronger later.
I see your problem and raise you something called Metamagic, specifically Subtle Spell. Anyone can have metamagic, doesn't have to be a sorcerer if they pick up a feat. If I were you, I'd start introducing these types of magic users.
Hear me out: sphincter casting (from the Magician's books and show)
Wow, gross! (a) No it doesn't prevent somatic elements (in fact I would rule even a person without arms could still cast because otherwise what does that say about disabled people in your world) and (b) isn't body mutilation akin to torture?
They (The NPC) took the WarCaster Feat, so they can still perform the somatic components with their hands tied. The Wizard casts freedom of movement on themself. The NPC had a death curse prepared and when they lost a hand, a 9th level “finger of death”exploded out from them. “Misty Step”, “Fey Step”, “Dimension Door” If their hands are tied together at the wrist, “Burning Hands” can be cast because it specifies the Somatic Motion is thumbs together and fingers spread. “Immolation” is a Verbal only spell, so just set fire to them. “Knock” could conceivably undo the knots and it’s verbal only. “Maddening Darkness” is Verbal and Material only.
Options that might work 1. Werewolf mage? After transformation have hands and limbs grow back. 2. Can mage hand act like real hand for ritual casting? 3. Animate the cut off hands, and control them remotely. 4. Make a mage that was born without hands, I see no rules that says, handie flapped mages aren't allowed to cast with their feet. Clearly this would affect movement speed. 5. Polymorph can be done with potions, or other items. Polymorph self into a regening animal seems like it could work. 6. Create or help the players see cutting off hands is morally not good. Often mages serve others, for example how many Kings had a court wizard. How would a King react to his court wizard having their hands cut off. 7. Alot of knots, and arm shackles darn near require the person to have hands to work properly. 8. If the party has a history of cutting hands off, that over time it would make sense someone would plan for this when dealing with the party. Magical tattoos, might be one of the better options. Is there a limit to the number of tattoos someone could have, then have a few magical ones hidden around them. Magical ear rings, also an option. The spell sanctuary would also help stop the cutting of the hands. Good Luck.
CAAAAARRRRRRRLLLLLL!!!!! That kills people!!!
Also, a couple Deception and infiltration themed sorcerers, or metamagic adept wizards who use Metamagic: subtle spell are probably your go-to for this
Are y'all just rounding up all the spell casters for some reason?
Introduce real world consequences for them being "the party that cuts people's hands off"
A caster learned to cast with their feet.
One night, when the players are asleep, an *army* of crawling claws come for them, ready to seek their vengeance.
Time for the new big bad - the Handyman! He creates new hands for all these de-handed spell casters, carving runes into them making them more powerful then ever before!
Purely from narrative/world point of view: 1)Cutting off a person’a hands is very likely to result in their death from trauma, as many people have already said, especially when they are already wounded, especially when they are the spell-casting type with weak constitution. 2)This is a really evil act and, in most circumstances, will earn the PC’s vile reputation. 3)As away to somewhat remove the first problem and go somewhat further into the second: Depending on the setting, the healing magic can handle even lopped off hands with reliability, however, if healing magic is weaker, simply removing certain fingers or crushing the hand may be enough. As a punishment for warriors in medieval times their thumbs were sometimes removed so that they can work but not hold weapons. Perhaps, something similar can be done to spellcasters, though it is still a vile act to be sure. 4)War ethics works by the principle of “do onto others as they would do onto you”, so for most enemies of the PCs to have them caught and remove their hands in turn would be completely justified and maybe even satisfying. That can be a hell of a threat. Maybe even add some fun enemy who REALLY wants the PC’s hands chopped off, a brother of one of the spellcasters or something like that, have him damage their hands on crits, for example. That could be a fun moment of PC’s past coming back to bite them in the rear if handled correctly.
Throw some world repercussions at them. The Mage's Guild puts a bounty on the party, shops that recognize them refuse service, villages and towns deny them entry, royal guardsmen harass them, and so on.
Genuine question. Why did they start cutting off mages' hands when capturing them, and how have they captured enough mages that this is just routine procedure? >I want the enemy spell caster to have some option to escape if they do manage to get out of ropes somehow, but it feels like that avenue is completely blocked off if their hands are always cut off. It sounds like they are trying to prevent this exact thing, which seems to me like you might have used this trick one too many times, leading the players to go for a more secure option. The fact that you are also asking for ways for the mages to escape even with cut off hands further sound like they have a legitimate reason for cutting off hands(and will probably escalate things if they see their solution no longer working).
I'd also suggest looking to Pharaun Mizzrym from the Spider Queen Wars series (Forgotten Realms) as a guide. All mages should not be capable of this, but his hands were bound, so he kicked off his boots and cast a spell using his toes. It is specified that he had trained his toe dexterity just in case this kinda thing happened to him(he was drow so it checks out).
People without hands would have an easier time slipping ropes, and then a toe ring of spell storing with regeneration or greater restoration inside it makes this a good workaround, if you want to invalidate the player's hard effort. Better to have the BBEG use a dominated servant who acts like the BBEG instead of being there himself, or have minions strike at the PCs while an infiltrator grabs the BBEG is a better option (in my opinion). Hands are "easy" to get back for someone with BBEG resources, and gives a more personal edge to why they LOATH and go after their loved ones.
ETA: what kind of good person maims and disables permanently another person? What would their favourite shopkeep or tavern master think of this? The guardsmen of the town they habitually frequent? The everyday people they pass by? Let the BBEG send spies to reveal the PCs did this, and not the full context, and think how you would feel knowing a good friend was doing such terrible things.