Hey I feel your pain.
Last session my players had the final encounter of a side adventure. They were severely outnumbered, but they had complete suprise. The came up with a half-baked plan which pretty much revolved around peppering them with missle fire. They cast no defensive spells what so ever before hand. No bless, aid.. nothing.
The thing is I warned them before the encounter about the high mortality of it as well as at the onset of the battle when they could have run away. The result was , out of 8 players, 4 PCs dead and the other 4 had to run away sheding armour and weapons as they went.
My point I guess my point is that if your BBEG encounter is going to be the first one they really could lose, then it probably will be. PC death is the only way to keep players on their toes, otherwise they lose their sense of danger.
My two cps
Last session my players had the final encounter of a side adventure. They were severely outnumbered, but they had complete suprise. The came up with a half-baked plan which pretty much revolved around peppering them with missle fire. They cast no defensive spells what so ever before hand. No bless, aid.. nothing.
The thing is I warned them before the encounter about the high mortality of it as well as at the onset of the battle when they could have run away. The result was , out of 8 players, 4 PCs dead and the other 4 had to run away sheding armour and weapons as they went.
My point I guess my point is that if your BBEG encounter is going to be the first one they really could lose, then it probably will be. PC death is the only way to keep players on their toes, otherwise they lose their sense of danger.
My two cps