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Message: <blockquote data-quote="azhrei_fje" data-source="post: 4069406" data-attributes="member: 12966">Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear.  The BBEG was going to flee and did so using ethereal jaunt.  The party mage Spellcraft'd it and in the same round cast see invisible, noting (out loud to the rest of the party) that the BBEG was nowhere within sight.  END OF ROUND.The BBEG saw one of the party members bound and tied, laying unconscious on the floor, along with an NPC who had been working for the BBEG originally but had turned traitor and spent time in the BBEG's "prison".  The BBEG decided on-the-spot that neither would be allowed to go free.  She dismissed the ethereal jaunt spell and became solid standing next to the trussed up party member.  In this round, the party mage moved in order to be able to see around physical objects that blocked line of sight, but stayed essentially in the same area.  The party paladin coup de grace the other BBEG who had already gone down (and was at -25 anyway).  However, the actions of the paladin are not being questioned here.  (That'll be a separate topic later. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />)  END OF ROUND.The BBEG coup de grace's the unconscious party member.  The party cleric does some healing.  The paladin wants to drag the dead body over to the stairs and the exit, but existing spell effects block the way (blade barrier and forcecage, primarily). I don't remember what the party mage did; I'd have to check my DM Genie combat log.  END OF ROUND.The BBEG coup de grace's the traitor (laying on the ground within a 5-foot step).  I joke with the party paladin about just pushing the body through the barrier and "slice and dice" the bad guy's body, but they want to loot the gear, so that's a no-go. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Dropping out of combat would remove the blade barrier (since it's duration is in rounds and it had less than 10 rounds left).  I did not say that out loud, but I asked the paladin if they wanted to drop out of combat.  They said, "yes."Once out of combat, the BBEG would have returned to her room, found her stuff gone, and finished fleeing.  The party mage was upset because when the party did get down to the next level, they found the unconscious party member dead.  (They didn't care much about the traitor! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)  Then I got the 3rd degree about taking them out of combat.Part of the problem is that the party doesn't know that the BBEG only needed the ethereal jaunt to get from Level 9 to Level 8 of the building.  Once on Level 8, she could step into a part of the tower and drop to lower levels pretty much without being detected.  That's what she did.  The player argued that there's no way a BBEG would dismiss the jaunt and then have to run down the stairs.  I suppose I could've spilled the beans, but I felt that I played it fairly and I shouldn't have to divulge the methods that the bad guys were using just because a player doesn't understand.(That player in particular is a bit of a rules-lawyer, though.  During the evening, I ruled in his/their favor multiple times in order to avoid an argument -- like the Listen check question -- and perhaps he thought that I had gotten fed up with his objections and decided to punish him.  That was not the case, but should I have to prove it?  I think I'll need to offer some kind of explanation...)I'm not sure if you read the rest of my post, but there are numerous extenuating circumstances.  First, there were 8 characters under party control and often only 4 of the 5 players showed up.  As the party has reached higher levels, I felt that they were not playing their characters as well as they should have on the one hand, and on the other the combat were taking longer as they struggled to play each character to the max.I had warned them multiple sessions prior to last night's that the chaotic evil bad guys were going to be played to the hilt.  No holds barred.  And that at the levels they were at now, there would be difficult repercussions from save-or-die spells.Do players expect to win?  Of course they do.  Should they expect to win?  Of course not.  There is always a bigger fish in the pond and PCs should know that running away is sometimes the best choice.  A couple of other posters to this thread are aware of this module and how deadly it is; I doubt they would find the death of two PCs in one of the two climatic battles to be so unusual.  (A mage was hit with destruction and a fighter was plane shift'd away.  The mage likely won't be coming back, but they have the tuning fork to potentially find the fighter and the coup de grace'd rogue can easily be raised.  And hopefully you read my note on the raise dead spell and how lenient I am with death in this campaign.)I have one player complaining loudly.  And I have his girlfriend -- with no personal stake in the deaths of the PCs -- sort of going along with him.  I actually value her input more than his, because one of the two mages he was playing was destroyed while both of hers survived.  That leads me to think that she may have reacted in a more level-headed manner.  I should point out that none of the other 3 players sided with the mage player.  In fact, when the angry player left, the player who's rogue had died told me that she didn't think it was any big deal!  And the player of the paladin did not object when I stated that the party had decided to drop out of combat.I think one of the other posters who said that emotions can run high during an epic combat encounter hit the nail on the head.  I think the player of the mage was hit pretty hard by losing a character and instead of sucking it up and moving on, may have let it get to him.  So when the party found out that the BBEG had killed the rogue, he lost it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />It is tough as a GM to know when to stay in combat and when to drop out.  As I2K pointed out, the players start to metagame if you keep them in combat longer than they think necessary.  In the past, I have kept them in combat beyond the end of the encounter when it wasn't necessary (only once or twice), so keeping them in combat mode last night wouldn't have seemed tooooo unusual.  And that's why I gave them the choice.  I asked multiple times if they were going to chase the BBEG.  If they were, we'd stay in combat rounds so that movement could be precisely marked (remember:  this is after the two coup de grace rounds).  They opted to drop out of rounds.I'm really upset about this.  Perhaps not as much as that player, but still... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I run my games as fairly as I can.  The players know that actions they take might be taken by the bad guys.  For example, I've never used Sunder on PC equipment and while they've discussed using it, they know that once they open Pandora's box, it can be tough to close it.  And I always listen to player arguments about rules, but once they express their opinion if I stick to my original ruling, I expect them to go with the flow.  Most of them do.  Most. A recent case in point:  in order to get around an area that required a Will save, the entire party jumped into a Type 4 bag of holding and the one player who had succeeded on the save, carried the bag.  Unfortunately, that character drew The Void from a deck of many things and dropped the bag when he slipped into a coma.  No way for the players to get out.  (Think about it.)  I had fudged things a little to let them get into the bag in the first place, and I had to retroactively fudge things to let them survive this latest event.  But it seems that players have a short memory when it comes to fudging on their behalf and the GM sticking to the rules when it might go against the players. (sigh)</blockquote>

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