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North_Ranger
2012-12-22, 05:48 PM
I've been GMing a Pathfinder game for a group of friends for the past six months now, and our first campaign is nearing its climax. However, I have some misgivings whether or not the campaign will end in victory or total carnage.

To give some background, the characters are now level 3 for the most part (it took us this long to get this far because of some long pauses between games, but I digress), and the next time we play I intend to have them come across their current enemy, a chaotic evil sorcerer worshipping and serving the Demon Lord Cyth-V'Sug. He has been blighting the forest lands around his stronghold, and the final battle will pit the characters against the sorcerer and his minions deep in the bowels of the fungus-infested temple. A place, where a pit descends into the Darklands (Underdark) below, from where he is summoning a powerful servant of his demonic patron.

Now, my problem is that some of the players tend to goof around a bit, and I fear that they will not get me when I try to tell them they cannot hope to win the servant in a straight fight. I will pile upon them feelings of otherwordly evil, the sheer magnitude of demonic might brewing from the pit. Heck, I even intend to have the sorcerer hold some friendly NPCs there as sacrifice, and describe how one fleshy tendril lashes out from the pit and drags one poor soul to a screaming death.

Yet I fear the characters will insist on trying to punch Cthulhu. :smallannoyed:

Any tips on how to get the characters to realize they are out of their league and need to think outside the box to beat this enemy? Or should I just scrap that altogether and just have them kill the sorcerer and be done with it?

Winter_Wolf
2012-12-22, 06:00 PM
I've always found that "elder evil" and "the party is victorious" are mutually exclusive. Then again I subscribe to the Lovecraft view of them: You can't beat them, the best you can do is hold them at bay for a while.

But as this is Pathfinder, if your world's gods could win against elder evils, then the PCs possibly could. If the deities can't win, then the PCs better buff up a bit.

All that aside, if your PCs can come up with some amazing plan, why not roll with it and see how it pans out? I would place money on a brutal TPK, but it could still be quite an epic win or lose. The key being amazing plan. If it's a stupid plan, you should allow things to take their course, and I'll collect my winnings from betting on TPK.

TheThan
2012-12-22, 06:01 PM
Well here’s what I’d do.
If they win all goes well.
If they lose two things happen.
1: new heroes emerge to take up the previous group’s fight.
2: the natural consequences happen, new campaign set in post apocalyptic campaign.

Hazzardevil
2012-12-22, 06:08 PM
Elder Evil's are supposed to be very evil and want to end the whole multiverse, for me that isn't enough to make the players understand that you can't fight it.

I like to think that each Elder Evil is several planes of existence unto themselves.
On the first layer there would be some of their most favoured disciples, these disciples would be the ones who are the least human and understand the evil the best. They occasionly will go crazy and just throw power around, this will result in the Elder Evil stirring slightly, perhaps spawn some of his monsters associate with them.

The second layer is a layer of the punishers, they will torture the next layer down to gather the power for the first layer. This layer is going to be the one most disciples reach upon spending a thousand years in the Elder Evils service.

The third layer is where the newest of the dead followers go, they run about and essentially act as adventurers like on the planes of the rest of the multiverse, their adventuring gives the second layer the chance the torture the third layer, weather that is through being the victims of traditional physical mutilation, or through the more depraved ideas such as breaking down their personalities or just yanking hope away from them over time.

And for all your players know they could be part of this, let slip bits of information on how this works and that this follower they've found could some day reach the next level to torture them.

The Elder Evil itself though will be the target of all the power and wants to use it to kill them, the ones they care for, then the gods that would allow them to come back, then take out the nine hells and then last of all the abyss. So you would now not only be dead, not only not exist, not only never have existed, but the whole of everything ever is gone and never coming back.

North_Ranger
2012-12-22, 06:19 PM
Okay, I guess I gave the wrong impression here. English isn't my first language, so I forgot that "elder evil" = "eats world for breakfast" :smalltongue:

The final monster I had in mind is essentially a low-teen CR demon, not a Cthulhuesque monstrosity. Certainly not threatening to a high-level party, but powerful enough to wipe the floor with a party of level 3 adventurers. I try to get the party to understand that there are monsters and evils out there they cannot yet beat, but one day they can.

North_Ranger
2012-12-22, 06:24 PM
All that aside, if your PCs can come up with some amazing plan, why not roll with it and see how it pans out?

This is actually what I am hoping for. So far the party's been pretty bash-happy, so I want to throw them a "final boss" that they can't beat in a fight. I'm just wracking my brain for ways to further get them to think outside the box without actually going out there and saying "There's no possible way you can defeat this monster in a fight".

Kinda like in Dorkness Rising, where the party defeats Drazuul the death demon not by killing him, but disabling him.

Draken
2012-12-22, 06:31 PM
I can't help but think that none of the above suggestions are useful in the least.

Anyway.

The following recommendation assumes that the "servant" in question outclasses the player characters enought that it passively heals more hit points on any given round that their combined hit point total.

Edit: ninja'd. Whatever. Last paragraph is just a lot more applicable now.

Such a creature should most likely be big. Really, really big. At lower levels size matters, a huge/gargantuan creature cannot be faced at low levels on simple grounds that it can grapple any pc with zero chance of escape. So start by scaring your party with this simple fact. Size. Make the critter visible to them, maybe it is summoned from a massive pool and visible just under the line of the water.

Put the summoning on an arbitrary timer. This can be done by having the critter "come closer"every round, by something happening to the arena. Perhaps every turn it wriggles the man-sized tip of a tentacle through the floor at some random point of the room, and this is a great opportunity to shows just how utterly boned they are if it actually breaks through, a suggestion on this front would be to have the ground around this tentacle tip melt down into a pool of lava or acid, or some other suitably obvious demonstration of destructive power. Also doubles as a great opportunity to give your players the chance to hoist the villain by his own petard (tentacle breaks behind sorcerer, melts floor to lava, fighter bull-rushes sorcerer into lava).

This, of course, feels kind of excessive for a simple level 3 villain, but whatever. Everything can be toned down. The basic of the thing is a really obvious demonstration of power. And nothing shows power quite like lava, when it is all said and done.

NichG
2012-12-23, 05:43 PM
Give players a solid thing to punch and they will assume that punching it hard enough leads to victory. And the system will usually back them up on that theory, DM plans aside. Concrete, targettable things are very vulnerable to enemies with more mobility than them (e.g. not stuck in a pit waiting for food).

The best way to make it clear that this thing is beyond them is to make it so that it isn't attacking from the material plane. Its not actually a thing sitting in a pit waiting for food - its main body is on the Ethereal and untargettable, while it can fire transdimensional Evard's Black Tentacles spells or the like into the material plane. Make this fact obvious before the opportunity to throw the first punch even comes up - the party sees tentacles just manifest out of nothingness and disappear as easily, perhaps even being discarded and dissolving.

Think of other things in the game world that the party wouldn't actually try to take on in a fight. I don't mean 'big, high CR dragons'. I mean things like 'a tsunami is about to crash into the place you're camping' or 'there's a big storm on the horizon and you see several funnel clouds' or 'there's a wave of lava coming down from the volcano'. PCs might try to endure it with elemental resists/immunities and high saves, but I don't know many players who would say 'I try to punch the tornado!'.

North_Ranger
2012-12-23, 06:03 PM
but I don't know many players who would say 'I try to punch the tornado!'.

But I'm guessing you know a few, right? ;)

All joking aside, thanks to you and others, especially Draken. I think I have some ideas how to make these fellas think twice about attacking the demonic entity.

Slipperychicken
2012-12-27, 10:59 AM
If you play up a villain, there are several valid messages the PCs/players can interpret.

1. This is the villain. He's big and bad, but you're bigger and badder and you're going to take him down and be the hero. This is the most likely response if the PCs have in-character reasons to fight the villain.

2. You're not high enough level yet. You will fight and kill him him, but you need to level-grind wolves for a few weeks before you have a chance. Or you'll need to progress the story arc farther, receive a quest, or acquire a macguffin before you attack him. Much like a video game in that respect.

3. Run away. You can't fight him ever. This is the least likely, unless you say OOC "you cannot fight him". More likely if the PCs feel impotent against him, and have no real reason to fight.

And it is incredibly difficult to tell which one you're supposed to do.

NichG
2012-12-27, 06:05 PM
But I'm guessing you know a few, right? ;)


I had a player who punched the wall of the universe once, because hey why not, and I've got a player who likes the idea of 'slapping people with a hurricane' whether his character actually has the power to do it or not. But really that player archetype is going to get into trouble no matter what you as a DM do, so you might as well just enjoy the ride at that point.

Aron Times
2012-12-28, 12:01 AM
Have them get killed and sent to the appropriate afterlife, where their deities do them a special favor by resurrecting them far away from the battle, with the command to gather an army against the evil.

Bonus points if you make them do an adventure in the afterlife where their deities test their abilities to see if they are worthy of being sent back to fight the coming darkness.