3.5 Tempest? (preparing an assassin's guild to defend itself)

[BOZ]

got the iron door, poison gas, and wall arrowslits covered already. i think i will include a very brief foyer before they hit the entrance hall (where the action will be set up.

the iron door will open and close (and lock) very quickly once PCs have entered. several 6th-level (former PC) fighters and rangers will serve as guards and muscle. of course, these guys won't stand a chance against the PCs, but then they don't have to.

 

[BOZ]

The wall of dispel magic found in Complete Arcane lasts 1 minute/level, but there's no reason you couldn't make a more permanent trap out of it.

actually, i meant how long the spell lasts. the problem with walking through such a door is that they will be paying attention to that sort of thing (especially since it has happened to them before) and will notice if their buffs immediately go away. thus, i think i like the on/off switch AMF - the PCs won't be expecting it if they make it into the entrance hall unmolested and begin parlaying with the leader.

 

[Twinswords]

Why the leader? You have a disposal luitentant for this sort of "delicate" meetings.

 

[BOZ]

why not the leader? he's defending his home turf.

anyway, got to go. tonight or tomorrow, you will learn whether the assassins died, the party died, one or the other fled, came to an understanding with each other, or the PCs decide it would be too much trouble to mess with the whole guild and save me a whole lot of grief.

 

[BOZ]

OK, here's what happened:

nothing at all. they interrogated the cheif and *spoke with dead* on one his companions; finding out that there was no easy answer to be found from them regarding the assassins, Thog decided it was better to deal with them later and go back to take care of the remaining giants at the Steading now.

whew! took a lot off my mind. i really did not want to have to run that encounter. so, i turned the DM-chair to Thog's player as we had planned before (thank god) and when he asked for the assassins' stats (to run them in another encounter, supposedly) i politely declined. those assassins were not interested in messing with the PCs any further, and i was not about to let him change their motivations.

now, who's to say a month or three from now that i might not take the DM-seat again and bring them back...

 

[Baramay]

How does handing off the DM responsibilities work for you? We have 4 current players and 3 who have been DMs. Each of us have strengths and flaws. The current DM is not well verse in the DnD books but he is working on it. He is very good at creating colorful, memorable characters. The other player has not been a DM too many times. He has the greatest availability to source information, Forgotten Realms. He works hard setting up the adventures but often gets stuck needing to follow his outline. He is not very good at thinking on the fly, which hurts our ongoing campaign. He also loves to have a high level, high magic campaign so that makes it easier for players to throw him curves. He likes a high degree of control, dice fudges, etc. In an attempt to create a great story, he takes too much control from the players. One problem that came out of this was his favoring one character over another. IMC I play in Greyhawk, less magic, less great ability scores and that has become a negative to some players, since their players in other worlds could have two 18 ability scores. The illusion is a player is powerful, yet so is everyone else. I work hard to have the world evolve around the players to give them a sense of realness. They do not live in a vaccum and there are actions and rumors around them, some people they like and some they do not. One problem I have run into is giving the players too much freedom. They have difficulty deciding what to do, and often one player will monopolize the limited time we have. I am working on fixing that.

 

[BOZ]

it's not my preferred way to do things. i was the third DM in this campaign (the first guy left after playing with us for a year, the second guy took it over for a few months, then i had it for a few months as a placeholder, now DM #4 is on it). we've had just about everyone else in the group run different campaigns of their own though, and i like it that way.