Big Climatic Battle -- Fizzles due to save or die...

[LordMonty]

Throw a spanner in the works maybe, something left field, maybe a ghost as kinem said above or it was his body double, a twin(um well maybe?) or most clever an doppleganger(working for whome ever you like, maybe not even Zhentil Keep maybe 3rd faction of your own creation and the party will only realise if they open the bag and discover the body has changed).
And does any of this mean your worthy foe may still be alive to wreak some havok on the party when/if he finds out who did this?

Just a few ideas hope your next few boss encounters prove more of a challenge, but then again don't feel bad a good plan is a good plan gotta give your group that, just keep throwing those spanners in

 

[Vegepygmy]

It should have been a big battle...

No, it shouldn't have. The party decided to assassinate the guy. They carefully planned their attack, and timed it when the guy was asleep. They sneaked up on him, silently, invisibly, and intangibly. They deliberately chose a "save or die" spell. Nothing in this scenario points toward a "big battle," or suggests that the players wanted one.

They came up with a good plan, but in the end, I know at least one player was disappointed the plan went so well.

"Be careful what you wish for" and all that. If he doesn't take enjoyment from carefully planning and successfully executing an operation like they did, he should avoid doing it.

But don't blame the "save or die" spell. The spell didn't make your players choose it.

Do you think I should have just handwaved a reason for their plan to fail?

I can't speak for your players, but if you were my DM and you did that, you wouldn't be my DM for long.

I'm trying to make this a player-driven campaign, and so far, they are doing a great job. It's been a lot of fun, and I've even had one of the players tell me it's been the best D&D game he's played yet.

Then don't worry about one sub-par incident. Just keep doing what you're doing and things will take care of themselves. You can't have a campaign that's all peaks and no valleys.

 

[Drowbane]

Simply put: "if the BBEG dies in his sleep, even by such a cunning(?) plan. Then clearly he wasn't actually the BBEG."

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Simply put: "if the BBEG dies in his sleep, even by such a cunning(?) plan. Then clearly he wasn't actually the BBEG."

This. Well, sort of. Here's my perspective:

How were thry sure they had the right guy? Maybe they scried a lot beforehand, though that can be misled and foiled. Not as a hand wave, but as an actual plan for the upcoming adventure, if I wanted a cool battle, I'd probably have the crafty BBEG leave a double to sleep in the lavish bed and the BBEG actually sleeps somewhere cramped and hidden. PCs go and kill the decoy, maybe he has some spell cast so that he explodes when he dies, or some other slightly less awesome alarm set up. Bam! PCs thought it would be a simple job, and realize the BBEG didn't get to where he was by being an easy target.

But I wouldn't retcon to that if I hadn't legitimately thought of doing it beforehand to get a cheap "redo."

EDIT: Missed this, somehow. *embarassed*

Throw a spanner in the works maybe, something left field, maybe a ghost as kinem said above or it was his body double, a twin(um well maybe?) or most clever an doppleganger(working for whome ever you like, maybe not even Zhentil Keep maybe 3rd faction of your own creation and the party will only realise if they open the bag and discover the body has changed).
And does any of this mean your worthy foe may still be alive to wreak some havok on the party when/if he finds out who did this?

 

[Persiflage]

The PCs are around 10th level right now. There are four in the party. I'd kind of like to have the Zhentarim track and follow them if they leave the city, but I want it to be believable. The Zhentarim has access to a lot of magic and resources, but it is also a bureaucracy and a trade organization. It doesn't waste money. Any thoughts on how I could realistically harass them on the roads leading away from the Keep? I mean, I could throw in some random encounters with caravans and so forth, but I think a scout patrol or something where they are specifically looking for these guys would be best. The only problem: the party left no witnesses, not even a corpse to Speak with Dead.

Not a problem. First though, let me congratulate you: player-driven campaigns are the most fun of all when you've got the right group and it sounds like you're doing a great job for them I'd also like to give you props for not giving into temptation and fudging the die roll for the bad guy's save!

How do the Zhentarim know to look for them? Easy.

Three words: Contact Other Plane
Two words: Stone Tell
One word: Commune
Another word: Divination
Another word (if they want to bust out the big resources): Hindsight (CAdv)

Several clerics playing Twenty Questions could quickly arrive at the fact that Marcus is dead, where he died, how many people killed him and quite possibly other details. Depending on how you rule the perceptions of a stone, an allied 11th-level Druid casting stone tell in the room where the party got him will reveal whatever someone standing in the room would have seen.

Hindsight - if you're willing to allow them access to a caster of sufficient level (16th-level Bard, 17th-level Wizard), or simply a scroll of the spell in case of emergencies - will reveal exactly what happened and who did it.

Alternatively, maybe someone in the Zhentarim has managed to resurrect the old 2nd-Edition spell "Time Pool" (Tome of Magic, Cleric 5) that allows you to look back in time for a specific event. Naturally they'd try to keep this a closely-guarded secret.

Basically, there are tons of ways the party can get rumbled: perfectly legitimate, well within the resources of the Zhentarim and without any DM-railroading. They might not have exact descriptions, depending on the method you decided on, but Twenty Questions could easily get number of people in the party, their races, their classes, whether or not they're still in the city, whether or not any of them are already known to living members of the Zhentarim and so on, and so forth.

If you don't *want* Marcus to be dead, perhaps he had a contingent spell (or magical item) in effect that slices off a toe and teleports it to a safe location in the event of the bearer's demise? The party did check the body thoroughly before stuffing it into the Bag of Holding, didn't they? No?

That wouldn't be an unreasonable precaution for a powerful organisation to take with its ranking staff, and means it's only a basic resurrection to get him back. 10,000 is better than 25,000!

Still, if it were me, I'd probably let the party have succeeded in their plan without any ret-cons... as I say, there are plenty of ways in which the Zhentarim can find out how the guy was killed without recourse to any shenanigans whatsoever.

As a side note, speak with dead wouldn't help anyway: he died in his sleep so his corpse wouldn't know what had happened

 

[krupintupple]

part of me almost wants to say he had a ward or a spell up that would stop it, just so they could experience a thematic fight. however, i feel that would be punishing them, especially if they were really clever in how they got into his room while he still slept.

however, a trump i've had occasionally is that, a summon is keyed to an NPCs life and when they die, it goes off and pulls in reinforcements, or at least a final scorched earth encounter. mind you, nothing seriously hideous, just something that they can splatter and char and feel good about; ironically, i've had players complain when a combat or battle didn't happen, because of something you've mentioned.

i suppose it's nice to get 800xp, but it's so much nicer - if not satisfying - knowing that you got it because you burned through dozens of power points psionically roasting the smug little fark who kept taunting and prancing you when he made his DCs. and then he didn't and expierinced horrible pyrokinetic death, and you got the experience AND a cool story to impress the tavern folk with.

 

[green slime]

I'm not seeing a problem here...

Next step, is to decide exactly how you want the Zhentarim to react. Being such a large, evil organisation, it is perfectly reasonable several factions of the organisation to deduce that some other faction wanted Marcus dead, and did the deed. Every large organisation has various factions, of varying power. To them, it doesn't really matter who really killed Marcus, it matters more who you can actually pin the blame on, and how you can utilize the death of Marcus to gain a foot-up, organisationally.

Instead, large parts of the organisation will be expending resources to keep themselves blameless. If someone even suspects a fellow faction-member of participating, they'll in all likelihood try to obfuscate any investigation. Therefore, no one is really willing to investigate thoroughly, unless there is a very strong political desire to do so, and then the "investigation" focuses on finding an appropriate scapegoat faster, one that preferably doesn't reflect badly on your own faction. Instead, various factions will find some mutual enemy to blame, to the extent of planting evidence.

So for instance, the master-at-arms, will not want reveled that Marcus' bodyguard was asleep, because then that reflects badly on him. Instead, the master-at-arms tries to blame the Cavalry Master, because of a personal insult 10 years ago. The Master Alchemist will not want an investigation to reveal that he replaced all the lead-lining in the walls with putty, and sold the lead to a passing Thay caravan for thousands of gp, sponsoring his latest experiments. The Master Alchemist, aware of the master-at-arms dislike for the Cavalry master, makes some sly hints, and suddenly, the Cavalry master is arrested, and then mysteriously commits "suicide" by smashing his head on a wooden spoon while awaiting "interrogation".

Case closed.

 

[ghostcat]

First off the BBEG is not really a BBEG, he is only a mid-level minion. Secondly, the Zhant's are a LE organisation. So the BBEG's disappearance should trigger a frenzy amongst his minions as they all struggle to take his position. This could even result in a few more deaths or disappearances..

 

[carmachu]

Last night the party formulated a plan (a couple, actually) to assassinate a ranking member of the evil enemy organization. They made good use of Etherealness and Silence to ensure that they would not be spotted, nor heard while they made their attack.

They ambushed him while he slept in his bed and used Slay Living to kill him. He rolled a 4 on his save.

It should have been a big battle, but it fizzled due to the save or die spell they laid on him. They came up with a good plan, but in the end, I know at least one player was disappointed the plan went so well. I agreed with him. I was hoping for a big battle, but the way they did it, I just couldn't see how the enemy could mount a defense.... I don't want to punish them for coming up with a good plan, but at the same time, I want the game to be interesting and fun.

Making a plan is fun, but it's also fun to deal with the mess when you're plan starts to fall apart. Do you think I should have just handwaved a reason for their plan to fail?

I think that was pretty awesome. Teh fact that you want to handwave the plan to fail, speaks volumes more about you then the save or die issues. Bad idea to squash good planning like that.

But here's the thing- what did they do with the body? Just because he died doesnt mean he will stay dead, whether brought back to life or comes back in undeath...

 

[pawsplay]

Last night the party formulated a plan (a couple, actually) to assassinate a ranking member of the evil enemy organization. They made good use of Etherealness and Silence to ensure that they would not be spotted, nor heard while they made their attack.

They ambushed him while he slept in his bed and used Slay Living to kill him. He rolled a 4 on his save.

It should have been a big battle, but it fizzled due to the save or die spell they laid on him. They came up with a good plan, but in the end, I know at least one player was disappointed the plan went so well. I agreed with him. I was hoping for a big battle, but the way they did it, I just couldn't see how the enemy could mount a defense.... I don't want to punish them for coming up with a good plan, but at the same time, I want the game to be interesting and fun.

Making a plan is fun, but it's also fun to deal with the mess when you're plan starts to fall apart. Do you think I should have just handwaved a reason for their plan to fail?

Definitely not. These things have to happen, otherwise there's nothing to compare it with everything does wrong.