D&D 5E As a DM, do I kill the entire party at the end? Im torn?

[jaffab]

The thing is, it's sometimes REALLY hard to hurt or kill PCs for some DMs.

Not for me. Each time I play this campaign PCs have died (just out of luck) including with this group. I do have 'back in points' I add when this happens and let them roll a new PC (at a lower level than the rest of the party) and introduce them back in the story. For this group, one of them separated themselves from the rest of the group in the battle, went down to 0HP and then their first death save roll was a "1" - it was fun watching the others trying to get to him to save him (only to fail when he next rolled a 4).

So, a question. Mechanically, in what way is he invincible. Has he literally got "Immunity, all damage"? If so, even if the players go up to fight him, you will describe their hits as appearing to just pass through him, leaving him unharmed. As for the heart, well, I wouldn't make it as simple as you intend...

As I say, its pretty much like HP and the horcrux. The mechanics is that with the heart still beating, she (its a she by the way) regenerates hit points pretty fast as a bonus action and has immunity to non magical attacks. there is one magical user who could possibly do enough damage, but the way he uses his spells, he will be pretty out of decent spell slots for the big battle. Now I could lower the regen dice down, but again, its a cheat so I don't want to do it.

 

[Magil]

I'm of the opinion that if a player dies, there needs to be a die roll involved. Getting them involved in an unwinnable fight with no hope of escape--even if it's due to "missing clues" and what not, is probably as much on the DM's plotting as it is on the players' inability to "get it". It's very easy from the position of behind the DM screen to say that "the players ed up, they deserve to die", but on the other side it may not appear that way at all. Maybe they're not the players for that kind of game, maybe you actually forgot a key phrase back then that would've tipped them off. Whatever, it's done now.

Here's the thing: whenever I put forth a "pass/fail" kind of situation where the players are faced with an obstacle that will kill them outright if they don't circumvent it in some way, I typically try to remain open to the "creative third choice". You, on the other hand, seem to be of the opinion that there's only one way this challenge can be overcome (destroy the heart). While I don't always provide the players more than one way to overcome an obstacle, the important thing is I feel to remain open to player ideas. You want player choice to matter? Make it matter. You're the DM. At this point it even may even just be clinging to some seemingly irrelevant thing a player did or does over the course of the next few sessions, latching onto that and creating a plot hook that didn't exist in your head before. Or allow them to banish the BBEG to another plane for him to come back swearing revenge later.

This is option six from your list. The difference is that you may need to make a concession or two as the DM for this to work, since clearly in your head there's only one way this can go down, and my thinking is that that is a mistake.

 

[Dasem]

I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned already.

Can you have the Inn Keeper drop one final hint about how to properly kill the BBEG? If they ignore it, then kill them all in the final fight. Better yet, have the players "defeat" him, only for them to go back to the Inn where the Inn Keeper asks if they killed it properly. At that moment, skies turn black and hell on earth comes to fruition.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

I take back my earlier soft comment about letting them flee easily enough and regroup and then go after the macguffin. Let them die. In the end it makes for a far more memorable game and end of a campaign. Most stories end with the heroes saving the day, you will remember the game where you fell over at the last hurdle long after you have forgotten the victories.

You can run another game where a new group of heroes find out about the macguffin and try to save the now devestated kingdom. You could even have them raise one of the PCs from the dead, or at least, speak with the dead, in order to find out what the hell went wrong. In this way, you could have the players play through piecing the parts they missed together, then giving the quest to succeed where they failed to the new generation of heroes.

Having done this before, myself, I can say it worked out great for us. But YMMV.

 

[Ancalagon]

All, so people have talked about the clues and were they obvious enough..... so.....

1) The BBEG is the first NPC they meet, pretending to be all nice and stuff (even gifting them equipment) - they meet them in the BBEGs house
2) After some adventuring off on side quests, they discover the BBEG house on fire, and a burnt corpse in the BBEGs house - all players say how sad that the BBEG is dead - not knowing at this stage its the BBEG. There is another house nearbye with the 'town master' also dead.
3) After some more side questing , the BBEG makes an appearance, and 'reveals' themselves to be the nice person they met before, all players are shocked. They battle, the BBEG escapes

Wait a minute. The party fought with the BBEG and drove him off??? No wonder they think that they can defeat him! Why would they believe otherwise?

 

[jaffab]

Wait a minute. The party fought with the BBEG and drove him off??? No wonder they think that they can defeat him! Why would they believe otherwise?

After the reveal (in a v.large caven), the BB generates a large number of the undead laughs', says something along the lines of "play with my pets for a while, I have other things to be getting on with" then escapes down a secret tunnel. There is a battle, but 95% of it was the PCs verses the undead - they did not even come close to the BB and no magic was launched in the BBs direction.

There is a large difference between being driven off, and escaping.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[robus]

6) So I introduce a 'funeral' (slap them in the face clue) - the town inn keeper drags the dead townmaster to the town cemetery, the PCs watch, and the inn keep asks them to lend a hand with the 'other body'. They drag it around town, saying (again) how its the body of the big boss. One of them suggests looking at the BBEG house, but the others say no, not worth it. I try to push them into searching the house, but they go shopping instead (sigh)

7) When I start to panic about missing the big clue, when they next return to town, I make the inn keeper try and get them to reason who the 2nd body was - they agree (again) it was the body of the big bad, but were actually more interested in why the town master died. After 10 minutes of conversation options, they head off the keep (and the goblin/orc war) which leads us now to the conflict with the BBEG

So I see you've given lots of clues as to things aren't quite what they seem. But there doesn't seem to be any clue that the BBEG has used some arcane magic to make himself invincible. I agree that your players seem remarkably incurious about the switched bodies but still I didn't see anything about his heart in particular.

I also think that probably because you've run this adventure a few times before you have very firm expectations as to how it's supposed to play out. I'm a bit surprised that you're not enjoying the "off-the-rails" nature of this current iteration. Isn't it helping to make it fresh for you?

 

[Ancalagon]

[MENTION=6792518]jaffab[/MENTION] These clues probably lead the party to believe that the BBEG has faked his own death, not that he is invulnerable.

Also, why does unlimited hp mean invincible? He can still be stuffed into a barrel and buried...

 

[Iry]

Three Clue Rule

For any chokepoint problem, I make sure there’s at least three solutions. By a chokepoint, I mean any problem that must be solved in order for the adventure to continue.

For example, let’s say that there’s a secret door behind which is hidden some random but ultimately unimportant treasure. Finding the secret door is a problem, but it’s not a chokepoint, so I only need to come up with one solution. In D&D this solution is easy because it’s built right into the rules: The secret door can be found with a successful Search check.

But let’s say that, instead of some random treasure, there is something of absolutely vital importance behind that door. For the adventure to work, the PCs must find that secret door.

The secret door is now a chokepoint problem and so I’ll try to make sure that there are at least three solutions. The first solution remains the same: A successful Search check. To this we could add a note in a different location where a cultist is instructed to “hide the artifact behind the statue of Ra” (where the secret door is); a badly damaged journal written by the designer of the complex which refers to the door; a second secret door leading to the same location (this counts as a separate solution because it immediately introduces the possibility of a second Search check); a probable scenario in which the main villain will attempt to flee through the secret door; the ability to interrogate captured cultists; and so forth.

Once you identify a chokepoint like this, it actually becomes quite trivial to start adding solutions like this.

I’ve seen some GMs argue that this makes things “too easy”. But the reality is that alternative solutions like this tend to make the scenario more interesting, not less interesting. Look at our secret door, for example: Before we started adding alternative solutions, it was just a dice roll. Now it’s designed by a specific person; used by cultists; and potentially exploited as a get-away.

As you begin layering these Three Clue Rule techniques, you’ll find that your scenarios become even more robust. For example, let’s take a murder mystery in which the killer is a werewolf who seeks out his ex-lovers. We come up with three possible ways to identify the killer:

(1) Patrol the streets of the small town on the night of the full moon.

(2) Identify the victims as all being former lovers of the same man.

(3) Go to the local butcher shop where the killer works and find his confessions of nightmare and sin written in blood on the walls of the back room.

For each of these conclusions (he’s a werewolf; he’s a former lover; we should check out the butcher shop) we’ll need three clues.

HE’S A WEREWOLF: Tracks that turn from wolf paw prints to human footprints. Over-sized claw marks on the victims. One of the victims owned a handgun loaded with silver bullets.

HE’S A FORMER LOVER: Love letters written by the same guy. A diary written by one victim describing how he cheated on her with another victim. Pictures of the same guy either on the victims or kept in their houses somewhere.

CHECK OUT THE BUTCHER SHOP: A broken crate reading DANNER’S MEATS at one of the crime scenes. A note saying “meet me at the butcher shop” crumpled up and thrown in a wastepaper basket. A jotted entry saying “meet P at butcher shop” in the day planner of one of the victims.

And just like that you’ve created a scenario with nine different paths to success. And if you keep your mind open to the idea of “more clues are always better” as you’re designing the adventure, you’ll find even more opportunities. For example, how trivial would it be to drop a reference to the butcher shop into one of those love letters? Or to fill that diary with half-mad charcoal sketches of wolves?

The fun part of all this is, once you’ve given yourself permission to include lots of clues, you’ve given yourself the opportunity to include some really esoteric and subtle clues. If the players figure them out, then they’ll feel pretty awesome for having done so. If they don’t notice them or don’t understand them, that’s OK, too: You’ve got plenty of other clues for them to pursue (and once they do solve the mystery, they’ll really enjoy looking back at those esoteric clues and understanding what they meant). -- Justin Alexander