What do you think about torture and when should it be used?

I feel like newer players are always ready to torture shit at the drop of a hat for some reason, but usually mellow out

>>44287117
>Did anyone of you utilized torture in a game of yours?
Players do regularly. I play 2e, so it's mostly them describing their interrogation, me giving a plus or minus and then having the interrogator roll Cha with those adjustments. Doesn't work? They'll keep describing until I let them roll again.

It doesn't happen very often, because I make bribes work better, most of the time. Also this is true >>44287145

One player I meant was kind of autistic and made a intentionally evil torturer in a noble bright LG CG and NG group.

>>44287117
> when should it be used?

When there is seriously no time and people are in danger/dying and time is of the essence and there is literally no time for formalities.

Threaten the BBEG that you will smash his hand with your hammer if he doesn't say how to save the people. If he doesn't buy it, do it. Then repeat the same question and threaten to smash his other hand.

And if he lies to how to save the people, then tell him that you'll be back to him.

That's how you anti-hero.

>>44287145
>>44287158
They really are this quick to resort to this? Talk about lack of imagination.

>>44287165
Talk about stupid.

>>44287117
It's a subtype of interrogation.
As such, it's part of the social skills, but since it has some serious drawbacks, it should be used when the other skills failed or are unavailable. Basically last resort.

On the plus side, since we're adventurers, disposing of the body isn't really a bother.

Now that you mention it, conntrary to the other social skills, I never used torture to "befriend" (break/reeducate) an antagonist ; only to obtain information
On the other hand I don't think the group would be too thrilled by that, and none of my characters has the profle to do it anyways.

>>44287117
I'm of the opinion that torture is impractical and shouldn't ever be used for the sake of gathering information. Setting aside the science which is more or less unanimously against it, I just figure that if I were being tortured I'd just tell them whatever I thought they wanted to hear even if it was all bullshit they were looking for.

I try not to bring my opinion into games though so I usually just make torture a challenge they can roll with whatever the system's intimidation skill is, giving them bonuses as appropriate.

Is the torture being forced to watch 24?

I read a book where some guy tortured a suspected terrorist to reveal their plan, he got the information and was hailed as a hero.
Problem was he wanted to be punished, he had do something wrong and was being praised for it and it pissed him off.
So yeh.

>>44287117
My group's sorcerer has utilized psychological torture on more than one occasion with mixed results. It came to that mostly due to the fact that the enemy is a horde of orc slaves beholden to a draconic cult of dragonborn ubermench who have bred the orcs to be loyal to the death in service of a pantheon of elder dragons they worship as gods. We all knew physical torture would be ineffective for numerous reasons. As such, the sorcerer decided to use a mixture of illusion, enchantment spells, and sleep deprivation to slowly erode the prisoner's grasp of reality and faith, then use his own draconic sorcery and appearance to gain whatever intelligence can be gained.

In the past it has worked rather well against orcs, even orc commanders, but typically has much less fortune against dragonborn officers, although it has gotten a few pieces of non-critical intel in the past.

This was all after my paladin's efforts to play good cop were met with your standard array of blasphemous insults, which tend to make zone of truth somewhat pointless. The orc in question knew information that could lead to the survival, or deaths, of thousands, and the sorcerer offered to help get it the hard way.

And that's how our military campaign to liberate the lands raided by the northern hordes turned into a bloody but still good-on-a-technicality crusade against the dragon cults. We even have the head of one of their lesser gods mounted on one of our war banners.

Beyond that, I've had an orc branded with the mark of my order on his face and told him to run back to his army after we took a position to provoke their force to attack and loosen their grip on an ongoing siege, sentenced an orc commander to be burned to death for his crimes, and to boos morale of the army, and the monk, after swearing to a dragonborn that he would kill him with his own dagger, took his sweet time doing it after we had captured him after storming a city. Not sure if those count.

Don't know enough about it to make a solid judgement.

We've used it before but mostly just to get people to cooperate rather than getting information, and nothing really drastic, just kind of beating them up. Like in a recent game, we ended up sort of capturing a bunch of orc women and it was cooperate or die, so for some of them we resorted to being rough with in order to sort of knock them into line. The real troublesome ones we had to confine for awhile and beat up till the understood the picture.

>>44287117
>What do you think about torture
It is an ancient tradition which is regularly misappropriated to satisfy misguided revenge on innocents and elevate the torturer above them in a psychopathic spiral endemic to totalitarian regimes.
>when should it be used?
To dehumanize a person and make them tell you whatever they think you want to hear. It is useful to terror governments that use social connection as evidence of conspiracy, so torture can be used to imply more innocents.
>Did anyone of you utilized torture in a game of yours?
Coercion is far more effective.