The Hot Start (The Villain's End)

[DirtySonofALich]

I am currently writing up an evil campaign and I thought a fun and interesting way to start the session. It would be with the final battle between the Heroes known as the Judges and The Villain who calls himself The Primarch. There would be five 17th level characters against The Primarch and his eight bodyguards. The players will either be random assigned the character or get to choose which ever they want, but they will play out the final battle as the heroes and defeat the villain thus starting the new era that the players find themselves in some twenty five years later.

My current plan is to start with a cinematic of old man sitting at a fire telling them the story of the fall of The Primarch to set the stage for the players to enter the last room and fight The Primarch. The purpose is for them to learn firsthand how powerful the heroes and villains were as well as set the stage for a few side quests.
The side quests are still in progress. The one I have is the if one of the bodyguards in the back is attacked The Primarch will use his reaction to protect them from harm. Later in the battle as the battle shifts towards defeat for him he will teleport said bodyguard away. Basically, this bodyguard is pregnant with The Primarch heir. I am assuming my players even care in the first place, but meh.

I have written all of this to ask for your thoughts. I am a fairly new (three campaigns under my belt) DM, but I trying to up game a bit. I am still building the encounter and will probably do another post about how balanced it is once finished.

Thanks for your time!

[Koo Rehtorb]

I don't see any point in spending possibly hours playing through what's essentially a cutscene. And it also suffers from the issue of essentially doing a lore dump right at the start of the game, which has its own problems.

[DirtySonofALich]

I don't see any point in spending possibly hours playing through what's essentially a cutscene. And it also suffers from the issue of essentially doing a lore dump right at the start of the game, which has its own problems.

So, my current line up has this 'cutscene' happening during the 0 session after we have talked about expectations and that jazz. This is so that I can give them content in the world that they will be living in to interact with while I prep some stuff for the real first session. my apologies for not adding that bit into the post proper.

[GrayDeath]

If the players are up to it, this can help a lot with setting the mood for their adventure later on.

Its also a good way to determine if the palyers will be out of their depth with certain high Level abilities/SPells/etc, keep an eye on that.

I did something almost like that once to bridge one campaign to another, and while 2 players loved it, one found it "completely boring, as nothing was at stake", just as a warning, some players only have fun when failure is an option. ^^

[Murphy80]

If the players are up to it, this can help a lot with setting the mood for their adventure later on.

I agree with GrayDeath, ask the players if they want to do this.


There would be five 17th level characters against The Primarch and his eight bodyguards. The players will either be random assigned the character or get to choose which ever they want,
You might let the players make these high level characters, that might get them more invested.

[CombatBunny]

I am currently writing up an evil campaign and I thought a fun and interesting way to start the session. It would be with the final battle between the Heroes known as the Judges and The Villain who calls himself The Primarch. There would be five 17th level characters against The Primarch and his eight bodyguards. The players will either be random assigned the character or get to choose which ever they want, but they will play out the final battle as the heroes and defeat the villain thus starting the new era that the players find themselves in some twenty five years later.

My current plan is to start with a cinematic of old man sitting at a fire telling them the story of the fall of The Primarch to set the stage for the players to enter the last room and fight The Primarch. The purpose is for them to learn firsthand how powerful the heroes and villains were as well as set the stage for a few side quests.
The side quests are still in progress. The one I have is the if one of the bodyguards in the back is attacked The Primarch will use his reaction to protect them from harm. Later in the battle as the battle shifts towards defeat for him he will teleport said bodyguard away. Basically, this bodyguard is pregnant with The Primarch heir. I am assuming my players even care in the first place, but meh.

I have written all of this to ask for your thoughts. I am a fairly new (three campaigns under my belt) DM, but I trying to up game a bit. I am still building the encounter and will probably do another post about how balanced it is once finished.

Thanks for your time!

Sounds cool, go for it. Maybe, as I see it, I wouldn’t run the entire battle because it can be tiring for players who aren’t yet invested in those characters. I would assume that they have already depleted all their strength and resources and only run two rounds no matter what. Either that or run a cinematic battle with no stats, everyone gets to describe whatever they want without rolling, knowing beforehand that because this is history, they won't have too much agency on how things will unfold and because of that, some of their actions will fail no matter what and some of their actions will succeed no matter what.

I would even intertwine their actions with the sage’s narration. For example, if one of the players tries to hit the villain with his sword and you don’t want this to happen, the sage could interrupt:

“But just when X was about to give the final blow to The Primarch, his sword unexpectedly broke and chattered”, and then you can switch to slow-motion description, so that the player can describe his reaction as he witness the pieces of his sword floating in the air.