King of Nowhere
2021-10-12, 07:43 PM
I wanted to share this story because it has many elements that some people in this forum would call red flags, and yet it worked out greatly.
At this point in the campaign, an evil empire is moving to conquer a small neighboor. The pcs are level 10, and they were told by their patrons (good-ish empire) that they didn't want to start an all-out war against the evil empire over a small nation of no strategic importance, but that they would support any group of adventurer that would work against them.
In my world, "support" means they would share intelligence and spy reports, they would give you safe locations to rest without fear of retaliation, they would provide any ability you may need that's not too high level ("need an expert scout to spot enemies? we have some in our army, they're at your disposal"; "need a certain specific spell being cast? we know somebody who can do it, here's their contact information, and we'll pay the bill"), and most important, they will pay for resurrection if you get killed.
I had prepared the evil empire as a major opponent throughout the campaign, and I had prepared a bunch of mid-to-high level npcs to use as major opponents.
The party started some quick strikes against assets of the empire, and they twice faced some of the least powerful such groups, made mostly of 9th level people. they were emboldened, and they decided to go straigth for the highest target that I had established: a 20th level assassin.
I had established this assassin early on as a high level boss for the late campaign. She's a sniper - in my homebrew gunpowder system, a sniper rifle enables you, under the right circumstances, to apply sneak attacks and death attacks at any distance.
The players are wary of her, they know if they stay too much into a scene, she may arrive and she'd be bad news. On the other hand, they know they can bait her, and they know she carries a wealth in magic items. And they decided to go straight for her.
I didn't think the party had any realistic chance to pull it off; but they surprised me in the past, who knows? I told them "I don't think you're ready for this, but you have surprised me in the past. You guys know this will be very dangerous, right?". No pc died yet in this campaign, but I expect a certain degree of letality, and my players know it. I wouldn't include a "will pay for resurrection" clause if it didn't need to be used, and I established nations and powerful organizations hoarding diamonds specifically for this. The players agreed to take the risk, they felt confident they could take the assassin with preparations.
After a lot of brainstorming - which included me inventing lots of additional details about the invaded nation - they devised their plan. The invaded nation has a major port that they use to export. It's strategic to the nation's economy, and it has a strong occupation force. Sabotaging it would deal a hard blow to the empire's ability to gain wealth from their conquest. At the same time, it wouldn't hurt the civilian population too much. The party gathered allies - paladins, good-aligned adventuring parties, people who owed them favors. A lot of good-aligned powers would gladly fight the empire, and so the party gathered a large force of mid-high level npcs.
The party decided to send their forces against the docks, where they expected the greatest resistance - and where they knew there were some war golems and a bunch of regular soldiers. They would fly around, invisible, and wait for the sniper to come. The party, at this point level 11, would ambush her.
I was very nervous about this. On one hand, if the party won, they'd immediately defang their greatest opponent for what was supposed to be a long term campaign, and they would get their hands on some VERY inappropriate loot, including no less than three +10 weapons, a +10 armor and shield, an item of SR 23; all this at level 11. On the other hand, I was fairly confident the party would lose. Which would be also bad. I knew I could not pull any punches; not when the party threatens to get totally inappropriate loot, not when involving someone I'm trying to characterize as a most dangerous boss. They were in for high risk-high reward, if i take away the risk it's meaningless.
The party came in advance, and they saw the sniper-assassin killing two robbers and protect the would-be victim. I wanted to show this scene to establish the assassin as a woman of strict beliefs. She worship the god of tiranny, she thinks that the people should work for her profit, but she also think it's her duty, in return, to protect. And she genuinely cares about making the evil empire the kind where the trains run on time and the people can leave their doors unlocked (it actually is that kind of place, but mostly because everyone is heavily armed and they have some very liberal interpretations of what constitutes "self-defence", so thieves rarely last long. But I digress).
Anyway, the party could track the source of the shooting to a hill overlooking the docks. They did not see her, because she hit something like a 60 on her hide check. But they saw her brother, a paladin of tyranny (which in my world is the same class as a regular paladin, just with some good-evil tag swapped) built as a bodyguard, which they had already faced. They heard him talk with his sister, so they knew she also was close, but again, even granting a bonus to the spot check because they had a good idea of where to look, none could beat her maxxed hide check. The party went closer, and tried to assess the situation.
I decided the party had spent enough time there to call in for a move silently. I awarded a +20, because they were just floating in midair, and an additional +5 because the assassin was distracted - by then, the allies called by the party were attacking the docks. Still, she had a maxxed out listen check for +30. She rolled a 3, but it was still enough to hear the cleric in heavy armor. She looked up - of course she also had goggles of see invisibility, she's the most important member of the richest noble family in the empire and she owns more land than you could see from the top of a tall mountain on a clear day - and saw the party.
She generally avoids close confrontation; she's one of the strongest military assets of her country, and she's been treated as such, too dangerous to risk. She would have grabbed her brother and teleported away if she could. I used that as an additional excuse to avoid a premature confrontation between her and the party. But her brother was too far for her to grab, so she decided to fight. She stood up and shot the party. The party was caught unaware, but at the same time they were looking for her and expecting to fight, so I decided nobody would get a surprise round
She won initiative and unleashed a full attack with two pistols, each attack hitting for sneak attack damage. First she killed the cleric; she was fairly sure she could survive anything the party could throw at her, and she didn't want any opponent she dropped being healed back to life. She also used binding bullets, casting dimensional anchor on those she shot. She didn't want the survivors to teleport away with their fallen comrades and their valuable loot.
Next she killed the wizard, and with her last bullet she wounded the druid.
Two dead and one wounded out of five party members, all those hit stuck with dimentional anchor, before the party even got to act.
Suddenly the party realized they had severely underestimated the assassin. Mostly because they focused so much on her being a sniper, while forgetting she also was a 20th level rogue-assassin. The party went abuzz with activity. The druid (planar shepard) had access to plane shift to get the party away, but there was the problem of dimensional anchor. The fighter grabbed the rod of quicken metamagic from the cleric corpse and gave it to the druid. The rogue had bought a few bullets with greater dispel magic, and in a bout of creativity he shot the druid in the foot to dispel the dimensional anchor. When do you ever get a chance to save the day by shooting your fellow in the foot :smallcool::smallbiggrin:? The druid tried to dispel the dimensional anchor from the cleric, but failed the roll. I was suggesting to the party that they grab what they could of their fallen comrade's loot and flee, when the cleric came up with a plan: he had a sort of brain symbiote/parasite, and it was established as being capable of accessing the cleric spells occasionally. I decided to allow it, and so the dead cleric could still cast a dispel magic. Roll, 3! But wait, luck domain, he's got one reroll per day! Success!
By the time the party managed to planeshift to safety, everyone was cheering. Really cheering; I haven't seen them so involved and so happy after any successful adventure. And everyone had contributed. I picked the assassin's target based on strategical consideration, but it was fortunate that they were the best strategical player and the best roleplayer, so that none was actually left out of the planning.
None of the party blamed anyone, they felt everything was handled fairly. They took a calculated risk for a big reward, and they just underestimated how big the risk was.
Of course, the dead characters were resurrected, the diamonds provided by their patron nation, as agreed.
I was extremely relieved, because the outcome couldn't have been any better; no plot derailment, no having one pc lose his magic gear and having to drop new cleric stuff for him, no npc boss defeated way before its appropriate time.
We all had a blast, it was one of the most successful sessions ever.
By the way, the attack on the dock was successful (the party rogue and fighter, still in good shape, even took a teleport to get back into action there). And the evil empire was successfully repelled; as it turned out, their top reason for invading a small, unimportant nation was to see if they could get away with it, or if the world would react (this was certainly inspired by some events of our real world history); if it worked, they would gradually invade more important places. Seeing that they got a massive reaction, they decided it wasn't worth the effort. The party was successful through their diplomacy and planning, even when they failed miserably in combat.
And I awarded a big xp prize to them; "getting the hell away from here when facing someone much more powerful than you" can be a pretty hard challenge, and they passed it in the best way.
I bring this story to the forum because I think it shakes some general assumptions. Introducing early on an npc that's much more powerful than the party, forcing the party to be quick in their missions before she arrives, many would consider it a red flag. Same goes for letting the party face her, and not making it any easier on the party - I did pick the best strategy I could think for her, and when I explained the binding projectiles the party had a major "oh crap" moment. Still, it produced one of the most memorable sessions ever. And when the party will eventually manage to win, they will remember this day and wonder how much they grew.
I think it worked for several reasons, mostly boiling down to "everything was established and made sense"
- the campaign world is established, the parts that are involved in the campaign are pretty well detailed. the assassin didn't come out of nowhere as a super-powerful npc, she's got her own story and reason to be there.
- the party had a decent knowledge of the assassin's capability that they could use to make informed decisions
- the party took the decision to attack her freely, and I was open with them
- the fight was fair, the party wasn't expecting some of the tricks, but they weren't out of the ordinary. The party rogue even has binding bullets himself.
- even though beating the boss turned out impossible (turned out, the party just expected that as a specialist sniper she'd be mostly useless in close range), escaping the fight without losing any loot was the new objective, and it was an objective within the party capacities that could engage them
- everyone could contribute to that objective, even the guys who were dead
- finally, but perhaps most importantly, I have a long story with my party, and there is a lot of reciprocal trust. I'm sure this would have never worked, for example, in talekeal's group, no matter how well telegraphed some of the things were.
I'll conclude by stating that a dm shouldn't be too afraid of something drastic happening at its table. If you have a good group of friends and your campaign is solid, shacking things up can be good
At this point in the campaign, an evil empire is moving to conquer a small neighboor. The pcs are level 10, and they were told by their patrons (good-ish empire) that they didn't want to start an all-out war against the evil empire over a small nation of no strategic importance, but that they would support any group of adventurer that would work against them.
In my world, "support" means they would share intelligence and spy reports, they would give you safe locations to rest without fear of retaliation, they would provide any ability you may need that's not too high level ("need an expert scout to spot enemies? we have some in our army, they're at your disposal"; "need a certain specific spell being cast? we know somebody who can do it, here's their contact information, and we'll pay the bill"), and most important, they will pay for resurrection if you get killed.
I had prepared the evil empire as a major opponent throughout the campaign, and I had prepared a bunch of mid-to-high level npcs to use as major opponents.
The party started some quick strikes against assets of the empire, and they twice faced some of the least powerful such groups, made mostly of 9th level people. they were emboldened, and they decided to go straigth for the highest target that I had established: a 20th level assassin.
I had established this assassin early on as a high level boss for the late campaign. She's a sniper - in my homebrew gunpowder system, a sniper rifle enables you, under the right circumstances, to apply sneak attacks and death attacks at any distance.
The players are wary of her, they know if they stay too much into a scene, she may arrive and she'd be bad news. On the other hand, they know they can bait her, and they know she carries a wealth in magic items. And they decided to go straight for her.
I didn't think the party had any realistic chance to pull it off; but they surprised me in the past, who knows? I told them "I don't think you're ready for this, but you have surprised me in the past. You guys know this will be very dangerous, right?". No pc died yet in this campaign, but I expect a certain degree of letality, and my players know it. I wouldn't include a "will pay for resurrection" clause if it didn't need to be used, and I established nations and powerful organizations hoarding diamonds specifically for this. The players agreed to take the risk, they felt confident they could take the assassin with preparations.
After a lot of brainstorming - which included me inventing lots of additional details about the invaded nation - they devised their plan. The invaded nation has a major port that they use to export. It's strategic to the nation's economy, and it has a strong occupation force. Sabotaging it would deal a hard blow to the empire's ability to gain wealth from their conquest. At the same time, it wouldn't hurt the civilian population too much. The party gathered allies - paladins, good-aligned adventuring parties, people who owed them favors. A lot of good-aligned powers would gladly fight the empire, and so the party gathered a large force of mid-high level npcs.
The party decided to send their forces against the docks, where they expected the greatest resistance - and where they knew there were some war golems and a bunch of regular soldiers. They would fly around, invisible, and wait for the sniper to come. The party, at this point level 11, would ambush her.
I was very nervous about this. On one hand, if the party won, they'd immediately defang their greatest opponent for what was supposed to be a long term campaign, and they would get their hands on some VERY inappropriate loot, including no less than three +10 weapons, a +10 armor and shield, an item of SR 23; all this at level 11. On the other hand, I was fairly confident the party would lose. Which would be also bad. I knew I could not pull any punches; not when the party threatens to get totally inappropriate loot, not when involving someone I'm trying to characterize as a most dangerous boss. They were in for high risk-high reward, if i take away the risk it's meaningless.
The party came in advance, and they saw the sniper-assassin killing two robbers and protect the would-be victim. I wanted to show this scene to establish the assassin as a woman of strict beliefs. She worship the god of tiranny, she thinks that the people should work for her profit, but she also think it's her duty, in return, to protect. And she genuinely cares about making the evil empire the kind where the trains run on time and the people can leave their doors unlocked (it actually is that kind of place, but mostly because everyone is heavily armed and they have some very liberal interpretations of what constitutes "self-defence", so thieves rarely last long. But I digress).
Anyway, the party could track the source of the shooting to a hill overlooking the docks. They did not see her, because she hit something like a 60 on her hide check. But they saw her brother, a paladin of tyranny (which in my world is the same class as a regular paladin, just with some good-evil tag swapped) built as a bodyguard, which they had already faced. They heard him talk with his sister, so they knew she also was close, but again, even granting a bonus to the spot check because they had a good idea of where to look, none could beat her maxxed hide check. The party went closer, and tried to assess the situation.
I decided the party had spent enough time there to call in for a move silently. I awarded a +20, because they were just floating in midair, and an additional +5 because the assassin was distracted - by then, the allies called by the party were attacking the docks. Still, she had a maxxed out listen check for +30. She rolled a 3, but it was still enough to hear the cleric in heavy armor. She looked up - of course she also had goggles of see invisibility, she's the most important member of the richest noble family in the empire and she owns more land than you could see from the top of a tall mountain on a clear day - and saw the party.
She generally avoids close confrontation; she's one of the strongest military assets of her country, and she's been treated as such, too dangerous to risk. She would have grabbed her brother and teleported away if she could. I used that as an additional excuse to avoid a premature confrontation between her and the party. But her brother was too far for her to grab, so she decided to fight. She stood up and shot the party. The party was caught unaware, but at the same time they were looking for her and expecting to fight, so I decided nobody would get a surprise round
She won initiative and unleashed a full attack with two pistols, each attack hitting for sneak attack damage. First she killed the cleric; she was fairly sure she could survive anything the party could throw at her, and she didn't want any opponent she dropped being healed back to life. She also used binding bullets, casting dimensional anchor on those she shot. She didn't want the survivors to teleport away with their fallen comrades and their valuable loot.
Next she killed the wizard, and with her last bullet she wounded the druid.
Two dead and one wounded out of five party members, all those hit stuck with dimentional anchor, before the party even got to act.
Suddenly the party realized they had severely underestimated the assassin. Mostly because they focused so much on her being a sniper, while forgetting she also was a 20th level rogue-assassin. The party went abuzz with activity. The druid (planar shepard) had access to plane shift to get the party away, but there was the problem of dimensional anchor. The fighter grabbed the rod of quicken metamagic from the cleric corpse and gave it to the druid. The rogue had bought a few bullets with greater dispel magic, and in a bout of creativity he shot the druid in the foot to dispel the dimensional anchor. When do you ever get a chance to save the day by shooting your fellow in the foot :smallcool::smallbiggrin:? The druid tried to dispel the dimensional anchor from the cleric, but failed the roll. I was suggesting to the party that they grab what they could of their fallen comrade's loot and flee, when the cleric came up with a plan: he had a sort of brain symbiote/parasite, and it was established as being capable of accessing the cleric spells occasionally. I decided to allow it, and so the dead cleric could still cast a dispel magic. Roll, 3! But wait, luck domain, he's got one reroll per day! Success!
By the time the party managed to planeshift to safety, everyone was cheering. Really cheering; I haven't seen them so involved and so happy after any successful adventure. And everyone had contributed. I picked the assassin's target based on strategical consideration, but it was fortunate that they were the best strategical player and the best roleplayer, so that none was actually left out of the planning.
None of the party blamed anyone, they felt everything was handled fairly. They took a calculated risk for a big reward, and they just underestimated how big the risk was.
Of course, the dead characters were resurrected, the diamonds provided by their patron nation, as agreed.
I was extremely relieved, because the outcome couldn't have been any better; no plot derailment, no having one pc lose his magic gear and having to drop new cleric stuff for him, no npc boss defeated way before its appropriate time.
We all had a blast, it was one of the most successful sessions ever.
By the way, the attack on the dock was successful (the party rogue and fighter, still in good shape, even took a teleport to get back into action there). And the evil empire was successfully repelled; as it turned out, their top reason for invading a small, unimportant nation was to see if they could get away with it, or if the world would react (this was certainly inspired by some events of our real world history); if it worked, they would gradually invade more important places. Seeing that they got a massive reaction, they decided it wasn't worth the effort. The party was successful through their diplomacy and planning, even when they failed miserably in combat.
And I awarded a big xp prize to them; "getting the hell away from here when facing someone much more powerful than you" can be a pretty hard challenge, and they passed it in the best way.
I bring this story to the forum because I think it shakes some general assumptions. Introducing early on an npc that's much more powerful than the party, forcing the party to be quick in their missions before she arrives, many would consider it a red flag. Same goes for letting the party face her, and not making it any easier on the party - I did pick the best strategy I could think for her, and when I explained the binding projectiles the party had a major "oh crap" moment. Still, it produced one of the most memorable sessions ever. And when the party will eventually manage to win, they will remember this day and wonder how much they grew.
I think it worked for several reasons, mostly boiling down to "everything was established and made sense"
- the campaign world is established, the parts that are involved in the campaign are pretty well detailed. the assassin didn't come out of nowhere as a super-powerful npc, she's got her own story and reason to be there.
- the party had a decent knowledge of the assassin's capability that they could use to make informed decisions
- the party took the decision to attack her freely, and I was open with them
- the fight was fair, the party wasn't expecting some of the tricks, but they weren't out of the ordinary. The party rogue even has binding bullets himself.
- even though beating the boss turned out impossible (turned out, the party just expected that as a specialist sniper she'd be mostly useless in close range), escaping the fight without losing any loot was the new objective, and it was an objective within the party capacities that could engage them
- everyone could contribute to that objective, even the guys who were dead
- finally, but perhaps most importantly, I have a long story with my party, and there is a lot of reciprocal trust. I'm sure this would have never worked, for example, in talekeal's group, no matter how well telegraphed some of the things were.
I'll conclude by stating that a dm shouldn't be too afraid of something drastic happening at its table. If you have a good group of friends and your campaign is solid, shacking things up can be good