Fear of Pain
Torture is tricky in most versions of D&D because the damage in unlikely to scale with level. It’s one of those times the abstraction of hit points gets weird. No matter how badass and tough a hero is, they can’t “dodge” or “parry” torture. Red hot poker damage just somehow has to scale with level or things become comedic rather than stressful as the torture spends ten or twenty minutes covering the entire body with burns just to reduce the victim’s hp by 75%. Even the most depraved and violent tortures becomes a death of a thousand cuts.
But if the aforementioned red hot poker does scale with level, why can’t it do so in battle? Suddenly, torture implements become the best weapons every. Just cast hold person or sleep and get to pokering.
…
If I never use the term “pokering” again in this blog I’ll be happy.
Why does the damage dealt by torture devices need to scale? The hit points that heroes get as they go up levels, represent everything else; why can’t they represent a character’s resistance to being tortured?
I mean, armor or not, a 20th level fighter is going to be able to withstand being flayed alive by a balor a lot better than a 1st level fighter could.
*Note to self, use some glamour spells and/or paint, a whip and sword, and an Enlarge Person spell to mimic a balor the next time my character needs to do some torturing.
**Second note to self; create a spellsword-ish character who uses illusions to appear as a mighty fiend to terrify enemies.
Anyway, there’s something you could do to bypass the hit-point problem, though it works better in 3.5 than 5e; adapt the 3.5 drowning rules, a Constitution based check each turn against an increasing DC to avoid dropping to 0 HP.
Imagine being on the rack, the chains slowly tightening, making a save each turn to prevent your spine from going snap. Or being placed in a garrote, or being crushed under stones, or being ducked in water, or cooking in a bronze bull, or rat torture, or…okay, I’ll stop.
A thought on ruling torture in 5e, in the unlikely event that rules are necessary
Torture: an individual using pain to get information out of a subject makes an intimidation check. This check has advantage, but the target might lie just to make it stop (which could be discerned via a normal insight check) even if the check is successful. Whether or not the check was a success, the target must make a death save regardless of current hit points. Failed death saves from torture linger until the victim completes a long rest (which is easy enough to disrupt for a prisoner) and successes are not recorded since the victim is not trying to stabilize from combat damage. Proper use of torture implements allows the torturer to take advantage of tool proficiency in Torture Implements. Torture takes time to do properly — each Intimidation check to torture should represent a few minutes to a few hours, depending on what methods are being used.
I do like the idea of “torture implements” as a tool proficiency.
I think you got a very good idea here. Using death saves sounds a little heavy, but it is just what it needs to bring up the fear of losing a character… especially after you failed a couple of those. Also, the ability to endure the pain (making the save) scales up with levels, but very slowly, so it should represent the right way to let a seasoned adventurer resist some more, but avoid ridiculous effects like a torturer that gets broken before his victim due to exhaustion.
A note on HP: I really prefer games in which you get health levels, like Third Era or Werewolf, or a fixed amount of HP with increasing maluses when hurt, like in Cyberpunk 2020. This way you still have some variation due to different stamina (or body type), but the increase due to experience is slow and not-so-dramatic along a campaign. I mean, an expert pugilist is inured to blows which would easily put a regular guy down, but what really keeps him up and fighting is the ability to dodge, parry or anticipate the hits.