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View Full Version : Oracle Death story question (My players: Don't read this!)



Cleverdan22
2009-07-18, 12:31 PM
In the campaign I'm running, my players are going to an oracle to find more about a prophecy regarding them and more about the bad guy lackey who told them about it in the first place. When they get there, the oracle will give them details of the prophecy, and will give the Big Bad's name and is about to tell them everything about him when she gets run through by an assassin. But how can I do that without my fairly genre savvy players calling foul at the fact that she could have seen it coming? Basically, I don't want to lose the mood of the scene due to one of them saying something like "Wait, she should have seen that coming!" Also, I'd like to not rip off OotS due to the fact that two of my players read it. Suggestions?

Frog Dragon
2009-07-18, 12:33 PM
Simple. The assasin was prepared and managed to elude the Oracle's powers.
E: Probably by using a spell of hir own. If there's none that fit the bill, homebrew.

Gralamin
2009-07-18, 12:35 PM
Its Called Mind Blank.

Jaltum
2009-07-18, 12:38 PM
Make it a plot point. There are artifacts, or a spell, or a MacGuffin of whatever type, that makes people divination-blind. So the Oracle can see a future that is absolutely going to happen... except for taking those people into account. Or s/he can see the future that is going to happen, but without being able to view the parts involving those people (IE, s/he knows s/he won't be around, but not why.)

S/he sees an inevitable victory for the BBEG; she can't see any way he can be stopped.

Therefore, the PCs need those artifacts (that spell, etc) if they ever want to defeat the BBEG. You might even go so far as to make the BBEG another Oracle, one using his power for his own advancement. S/he can spank the players good and hard using omniscience until they get their hands on the stuff from the Untraceable Assassins. Even if not, though, he could be Destined in some specific way.

How the players want to do it is up to them. Slaughter 'em? Diplomacy? Money? Maybe the BBEG, having used them to nuke the Oracle, no longer needs them and has them mostly wiped out, and the survivors are too low level to beat him, but will assist the party.

That way the assassin becomes a plot hook; maybe even the source of their first artifact. (Ideally, they need one for every PCs. Or enough for an army, if they want to go that way! I'd keep it open-ended, as it sounds like you already do.)

AstralFire
2009-07-18, 12:47 PM
Seeing into the future is like looking into a very far distance with a telescope. You don't see everything at once, and sometimes you're mistaken due to errors in the lens. While you're focused on the meteor shower above, you won't notice the guy coming up from behind you with a baseball bat. Oracles only run into OP issues when you use them in their convenient and fast Wizard spell D&D incarnations.

Ent
2009-07-18, 12:48 PM
She's sick and she wants to die, but still wants to deliver her message so she allows events to unfold as she knows they will.

herrhauptmann
2009-07-18, 12:53 PM
Oracle knows he's going to die, and that it can't be changed. So he does what many others do when confronted by a hard fact, he ignores it.

Or the oracle knows all, sees all, except where his own future is concerned. He's blind to his own fate, and must muddle through the world in a manner similar to less gifted mortals, as decreed by the gods.

PLUN
2009-07-18, 12:56 PM
As the meerkat would say, 'simples'!

The assassin is hardcore and savvy of his targets. He spends a lot of time in the persona of one of the players, to the point a vision gives a vision of one of the players killing the oracle, with the characters own weapon no less. Naturally they do all they can to stop the party dead in their tracks, expending all their resources, but the assassin has either travelled in using the conflict as a distraction. The players encounter the oracle, dead by their comrades blade... only their comrade still has his.

kevincheese
2009-07-18, 01:04 PM
As the meerkat would say, 'simples'!

The assassin is hardcore and savvy of his targets. He spends a lot of time in the persona of one of the players, to the point a vision gives a vision of one of the players killing the oracle, with the characters own weapon no less. Naturally they do all they can to stop the party dead in their tracks, expending all their resources, but the assassin has either travelled in using the conflict as a distraction. The players encounter the oracle, dead by their comrades blade... only their comrade still has his.

So the Minority Report cheat?

OracleofWuffing
2009-07-18, 01:09 PM
The assassin is somehow important to the prophecy itself: super jeweled sword that's the only thing other than a bug-catching net which will reflect the big bad enemy guy's magic, his entire body acts as a key to the BBEG's lair, or maybe he has a sappy change of heart years down the road and joins the good guys. Just try to avoid time travel and alternate dimensions.

Alternatively, the oracle saw him coming, and is only trained in the use of Fireball Necklaces as a means of self-defense.

PLUN
2009-07-18, 01:16 PM
So the Minority Report cheat?

Haven't read it.
Beat me to the punch again, modern science fiction canon!