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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Roman" data-source="post: 2191827" data-attributes="member: 1845">I appreciate the large number of responses - thanks for the sympathies guys & gals. <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=":)" /> Nonetheless, I do feel that I need to defend the DM somewhat. The style of the campaign he runs is "challenge oriented" (for lack of a better term), so it is heavy on puzzles, hack & slash and tactical situations. The plot is extensive, convoluted and with many lose ends. Roleplaying does take place but the above-mentioned are the focus of this particular game. The puzzle is therefore in keeping with the spirit of the campaign - it is just that it sucks that the campaign might end in this non-glorious manner. As to the negative effects on clerics in the dark temple - we knew of those effects before we ventured into the evil temple - we did do relatively extensive research including divinations on the temple before going in. There are also some mitigating effects - I already mentioned the artifacts and there are others, but that is not really relevant to the topic at hand. The puzzles in the campaign do tend to be unsurpassable by other means apart from solving the puzzle (and if you simply guess incorrectly, something nasty always happens), but usually there are other ways to go or other things to do and if we by any chance solve it later we can return to where we left off last time. Things are different this time, because the evil temple (which is in fact found on the bottom of a lake where it sank when the lake was created long ago and has remained hidden for centuries as a result) consists of 13 rooms (or so we think from our prior research) arranged in a linear fashion connected by long corridors and there is some extradimensionality at work too. We know that at the end of the temple there is a powerful lich that we have to confront if we get there. Each room is filled with evil creatures which often have some interesting tactical advantages and sometimes also traps. Each room also has at least one (usually two and sometimes more) portals that can summon in more and more creatures indefinitely always after a certain period of time (different for each room, but never more than a minute so far). We knew of these portals before going in and managed to obtain 'potions' that can destroy the portals once thrown in. Of course, we only managed to obtain 5 such potions and the last 3 were used up destroying the portals in this room, since we are spending so much time there working on the puzzle. The corridors are faced with mists that do ability damage. In any case, we are currently in room 10 and cannot proceed any further due to the puzzle. Somebody mentioned that this may simply be the DMs way to end the campaign - it is possible, but it would be more satisfactory to end the campaign after the evil temple adventure, since the temple is definitely one of the climaxes of the campaign and we are not far away from the end (as far as we know anyway). It is just a pity that the campaign might end in such an anti-climatic way - I guess there is still hope we solve the puzzle next session, but it seems unlikely, since we have not made any progress on it at all in the last session.</blockquote>

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