Help plan a jailbreak! (D&D related)

The Game Room
1

This is a story of a party in a D&D game. The players in said game are quite intelligent people, but the bulk of their characters, while intending well, are stupid, greedy, amoral, and extremely terrible people in general. This has led to quite possibly the single most villainous game I’ve ever played in: there are no formal alignments a la D&D in the system we’re using (Arcana Evolved, for the curious), which has allowed the party to pursue a nominally good path while blundering through a series of increasingly destructive and disturbing episodes.

So good fun, in other words. :smiley:

Last night, before the game started, I made the mistake of offhandedly praising my character’s versatility within earshot of the DM. Presumably as a response to this comment, he ended last night’s session with a surprise and arranged for my character get arrested along with another PC. We were both searched, all of our gear was confiscated, we were separated, and both thrown into empty cells in separate parts of the building.

Both of the PCs were interrogated separately, and since “I’m not saying anything until my lawyer arrives” is extremely boring, we both naturally tried to finger the other, and gave the cops more than enough evidence to hold both of us. Embarrassingly enough, our party has actually been responsible for a truly astounding number of atrocities that the authorities are going to be able to connect to us in very short order.

At present, they believe that my companion is a member of a cult of Outsider-worshipers, because they found in his possession a letter, written in the Infernal language, detailing a horrible ritual and ordering its bearer to assist the cult in gathering children to use as sacrifices in some unspeakably horrible ritual. (He stripped the letter from the corpse of a real cult member, and had been carrying it because he wanted me to translate it for him.)

I managed to convince the cops that I was just some unwitting scholar who was sent by his school to gain wordly experience by following a band of do-gooders and documenting their adventures. However, just before our session ended my companion, whose player play him like a complete idiot, accidentally told the cops “I was carrying the letter to show to my friend! He’s so great, he knows everything… whenever we need to know what ceremony to perform, or what kind of ritual dagger to use, or what an ancient demonic grimoire says, he tells us!”

So now they’re coming to talk to me again. I’m currently sitting happily in my padded cell (part of the reason they haven’t been bothering me is because I convinced them that I was crazy), and I couldn’t be happier.

Except that they’re coming to talk to me again. There is enough suspicious stuff in my backpack alone to ensure that they’ll never release me once they search through my belongings, and the rest of our party doesn’t know where we are, so it looks as if I’ll have to break out of jail on my own. To that end, I’m wondering if anyone has any amusing or particularly creative stories or suggestions about how I should go about breaking myself out.

I’m currently in a 4x11 padded cell with no windows and no bathroom, and the only exit is the single door I was tossed in from. The door appears to be made from two thick wooden panels with a metal sheet inside, it has two (currently shut) slots at human and halfing eye-level, and the entire cell glows brightly when I use detect magic.

Combat is out, as my character is weak enough to make a single hit in melee potentially lethal, so it seems as if a combination of trickery and really, really fast running would be in order here.

My character is a Loresong Faen, which is essentially a small, particularly fast version of a halfing, and he has three spell-like abilities, each of which are usable once a day: detect magic, ghost sound, and lesser glowglobe.

He’s an Akashic, which means that he’s basically useless in combat, but he effectively has an average level of every skill and Knowledge available in the game.

And I suppose that’s about it. My best idea thus far has been to use Ghost Sound or “Oh geez, my stomach hurts” to lure a guard into opening the door, at which point I would try to dash between his legs, but I’m almost certain it wouldn’t work.

2

Does “detect magic” give you any clue to what the magic is? There’s a huge difference in magicked prison cells between “nullify all teleportation and portals” and “incinerate any who pass the threshold if the jailer’s key isn’t in the lock”.

You don’t have anything useful hidden on you? If you survive this, hide some ace in the hole in … wherever next time.

Does getting out of the cell help you at all, or does that just get you into a corridor that only leads to more cells and a guardroom full of cops?

Your cell is windowless. Where’s the light coming from? Could you put out the light at a convenient moment?

Does one person interrogate you or are they careful to have backup whenever they open your door?

Dayum, but it doesn’t look good at this point. I’m not sure what “average level of every skill and Knowledge available in the game” entails but unless you have something pretty darn useful, you need help.

3

The only detail I was able to discern from detect magic was that there were multiple spells in place: I saw at least one around the walls, one on the floor, and one on the door itself, but it was too bright for me to rule out the existence of additional spells. I’m guessing, though, that at least one of the spells is a persistent anti-magic field, since the DM has a long and notorious track record of using anti-magic zones to harass the players.

The cell itself is run by giants, who are probably obsessed enough with justice to not put anything outright lethal around the cell, but I don’t want to depend on it. (That’s part of the reason why I want to get a guard to operate the door, so I can be sure that at least some of the safeguards are down.)

As for hiding anything useful, the guards were very thorough. :smiley: This is a big enough city for the police to be extremely experienced, and enough weird stuff has happened over the last few days for them to be rather cautious when it came to processing an eccentric fae who stank rather heavily of alchemical ingredients.

I believe the light itself is magical, since the DM specified that there was no discernible light source in the cell.
Thus far, only one person, who seems like a senior detective, has ever interrogated me. However, I’ve always been escorted by 2-4 guards whenever they move me. I should also note that these are giant guards. They have about 10 feet and 12 STR on me, so even though I’ve never been restrained while moving, to bolt from my guards would probably force me to resist five initial grapple checks and beat three to four tanks on their CON saves to outrun them once I was out of melee range.

As for “average level of every skill…”, that’s one of the big abilities that the low-level Akashic comes with. My character is essentially a scholar with an eidetic memory and the ability to peruse through the memories of every other Akashic who ever lived. This plays out through game mechanics in several ways: for one, every skill is a class skill for me, and I get 12 skill points every level. On top of that, a limited number of a times each day I can delve into the Akashic Memory to gain a +4 bonus a skill check of my choice. (Our party is still levels 2-4, so this is a lot more powerful now than it might sound.)

On top of the +4, I have two feats and an ability that each add +4 to my skill checks, which means that I always get at least +12 to my skill check, +16 if I use Akashic Memory, +24 if it’s an intelligence-based skill, and +28 if it’s a Knowledge skill.

I only have one or two points in most of the skills, but especially at the low levels this basically lets me pretend to have all of the skills in the game. (I’m using “skill” in the D&D sense: Search, Spot, Pick Lock, Perform, and so forth.)

As far as getting out, I’m actually not sure what leaving my cell gets me. I believe it’ll get me into a hall with other cells, but the hall itself doesn’t have many guards.

There are some other options, if the cell dash doesn’t look good. I could always try to pick a jailer’s pocket while in transit and steal a key or the like…

I might also try to pull a act sick enough to pull a Scofield: if they send a healer to my cell, I can try to take them hostage and hope that there aren’t any magic users to paralze, sleep, daze, nauseate, or otherwise disable us both.

If I can actually manage to get into the infirmary, I might actually be all set: my character is an astoundingly good alchemist, and I can almost guarantee that five minutes locked in a room with medical supplies would be all he needs to improvise an explosive charge, a feign death potion, or the like.

4

Act suicidal, and then attempt to bargain that you know the location of some infernal device (so that they have reason to keep you alive).
Then get yourself to an infirmary- though if you try to commit suicide they might just lock you up and keep you on watch the whole time. So commit it in some bloody fashionable way, but not one that can actually disable you. Perhaps a good blow to the jaw or something to get all bloody and needing medical treatment- but one that wouldn’t hinder your physical skills? Or you could become a cutter, and get all emo- but that’s more likely to put you on suicide watch.

OR for fun- why not try to request a priest- your last rites or something. Priests could make GREAT hostages. Or you could try to request for someone of your race to come see you (your own race/religions priest), and hope that whoever shows up looks like you- and hope you’re unsupervised. Knock him out, switch the clothes, and then leave the priest in jail while you escape- and as a bonus if you’re “crazy” they wouldn’t believe the priest when he tells the truth.

Another way to get a priest- request to be excorcized- say you’ve been possessed by X demon or spirit and you need Y specific entity to fix the problem. That’s another way to get the priest/religious figure of reputable ilk to show up. You can then try to charm or convince him to switch places with you with the promise of $$$ to his family or promise that you will return with your party to break him out in the future, and he can place some sort of a tracking curse or such as collateral on you so you won’t renege on the deal (that’ll give the DM lots of options to work with too, so he’d be more likely to agree to that sorta thing). Then walk away clean, and try to figure out how to free that guy from jail OR how to remove whatever curse was put on you.

5

Another vote for “get sick”. They think you’re crazy, show 'em crazy. Start raving like a maniac and once you know they’re watching, brain yourself against the door. Seriously. Knock yourself out.

You’re likely to wake up manacled to an infirmary table, but you’ll be out of the cell.

6

My idea? Don’t act “sick”…act crazy. They already think you’re mad—act insane enough that someone has to go in and stop you.

Do unspeakable things with your own waste. Or—depending on how good the healing/prosthetic skills are in the game, gouge out one of your eyes. Slip out when they try and bring you to the infirmary, or escape from it after they drag you there.

Or…if they think you’re crazy, and in league with some kind of eldrich cultists, cut yourself to get a good (if non-fatal) amount of blood (scalp wounds, I’m told, bleed heavily, and look gnarly), write some kind of scary looking but bogus glyph/rune/transmutation circle on the floor of the cell with your own fluids (add torn-off but replacable body parts to taste), and start screaming out some nonsense “spell” in a scary sounding language at the top of your lungs (maybe the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven” in High Infernal, or something. I dunno). Maybe use one of your magical abilities to make the room glow again—either from the “detect magic” spell, or try and deliberately set off some of the presumed magical defences.

If the giant cops (cop giants?) don’t have any magic experts on hand, you may be able to fool them into thinking you’re about to try calling some heavy demonic crap upon the whole joint, and hastily run in to cease you (if they’re scared, unprepared, or going in in the equivilant of heavy SWAT armor to try and deal with a warlock, maybe you’ll have better chances of taking them by surprise and fleeing), be panicked into trying to talk you out of destroying everyone (in which case you might be able to negotiate your release, or bringing your imprisoned buddy close enough that you can help each other escape), or even fleeing the prison in terror (which might make it a bit easier and give you more time to figure a way out, or even attract the attention of the rest of your party—though, hopefully, they wouldn’t try and just burn the evacuated prison down to destroy the “evil” inside).

Eh?

7

Do your skills have any possum capabilities? Playing dead to get them off guard while they go for a doctor is always a classic. A bit of ghost voice to distract,(“My god what is that! All hands to the courtyard!”) and maybe gates were left unlocked? :wink: