Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aboyd" data-source="post: 5463422" data-attributes="member: 44797">OK, let me rephrase then.  I don't get the sense that this DM will doggedly insist on a suboptimal scenario that gives away the ruse when the DM in question is asking for improvements.  And that is what I'm advocating.  Especially considering that the described failing scenario is a mere 1 degree of separation away from my described winning scenario.  All that needs to change?  The guards need to talk to the innkeeper instead of the PCs.  Guards alter the drinks, innkeeper serves meal.  Voila.  Business as usual.I didn't suggest it was: I suggested having to beat a 15 fort followed by a 16 will might, in my made-up scenario, beat most (but not all) of a bunch of low-level PCs.  And to test it out, I just ran 8 PCs I recently made through the rolls.  In my first party of 4, 1 passed both.  In my second party of 4, 1 passed both.  So, that played out pretty much exactly as I portrayed it.As for Oil of Taggit causing them to fall asleep within a minute and thus alert the party, that's a good point, but merely a speed bump in front of an off-the-cuff suggestion.  As a DM, there are creative ways to handle that."It's a slow-acting Oil of Taggit.""It's a special Oil of Taggit with a DC of 20.  Costs more.""It wasn't Oil of Taggit.  There was a bard providing entertainment.  It was Fascinate and Suggestion.""It wasn't a bard.  It was an invisible, silenced wizard who cast a silent Bestow Curse that merely cursed you to sleep soundly through whatever might happen that night.""It wasn't a wizard..."Let's not lose sight of the forest for all the trees.  Let's focus on the spirit of my point: there are a million low-level ways to capture PCs that do not involve them feeling unjustly broadsided, do not involve obscene expenses, and do not involve cheating the rules so badly that the DM will rue the day the players try the same thing.  The ways to capture them can involve simple means that any DM will be all right to share with the players, so that they can adopt the same strategy without breaking the game world.As for the 90 gp cost being too much for the guards: seriously?  Guards were killed and their employer is pissed, but the employer is going to shrug and tell the guards to acquire extra resources from their own pockets?  Isn't access to resources one of the reasons to affiliate with a lord or other noble that can raise funds through taxation?  The guards aren't paying out of their own pockets.  Why?  Because you're the DM, and in your game world, the noble in charge paid, using his modest but certainly decent resources.If the noble can afford a 500 gp bounty per head, the noble can afford Oil of Taggit.tl;dr: let's not pre-ruin the plots with the anticipation that the players would have ruined them anyway.  They'll ruin plenty without our help.  I present the scenario with a poker face, and when they buy in, plot twists happen.</blockquote>

Verification