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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Havrik Stoneskimmer" data-source="post: 5595298" data-attributes="member: 6670929">How do you deal with players trying to obtain resources from NPCs that they shouldn't really have at their level?I've seen this come up many times before, but a good example came up in last night's game.The PCs were working with a group of scholars and researchers at a university library in a major city (this is in D&D 4e). One of the researchers and an important document were abducted by villains. This is kind of a big deal to the university people, who are hiring the PCs to help them out.So the question from the players is: This is a major university full of sages - someone must be able to cast some kind of scrying ritual. It's logical enough - the sages want their researcher back more than the PCs do. But you can't very well let a level 3 party get level 10 rituals done for them for free. The game is supposed to be about the exploits of the PCs, not the NPCs they ally with, but I don't like the NPCs coming off as chumps either, so it's hard to come up with a compelling reason that the sages can't or won't offer this kind of help. I kind of waffled something about the ritual taking time to prepare in hopes it wouldn't be needed (and it turns out it wasn't). I probably shouldn't have even made a big deal out of it (there really aren't any heroic tier rituals in 4e that would have really broken the game here), but the basic issue always kind of bothers me.It's absolutely logical for the players (and by proxy the PCs) to want to exploit every possible resource, but obviously there's a need to maintain some balance when the market price of the desired ritual is higher than the PCs' combined wealth.How do you deal with this kind of thing? "The sages are busy with more pressing matters"? (Even though one of their own was just kidnapped?)How flexible are you with player requests like this? If the PCs are defending a town from goblin raiders, do you let them ask the town guard for a dozen soldiers to accompany them?</blockquote>

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