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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maraxle" data-source="post: 272007" data-attributes="member: 5538">I was guilty of this when I was just starting out, but now I'm very much against it.In the original campaign I ran, there was one particular quest where an old healer had been driven mad by his obsession with an artifact that had come into his possession.  He started using his knowledge of the human nervous system to create a poison of sorts that turned people into mindless servants who he could use to protect his wonderful item.  He mostly preyed on travellers, vagabonds, and others who would not be missed by the local townsfolk.  The setup for the adventure was that he had made a mistake this time, and took the adult son of a local farmer who was coming to visit his parents.  The local guard managed to trace the whereabouts of the son to the healer's mansion, but found it to be burned to the ground.  The PCs were hired on as laborers to help clear the burned out lot and (surprise, surprise) found the entrance to the sublevels under the mansion.  When they told the local guard, they were instructed to search the sublevels (I guess the guard were busy that day) and bring swift justice to the old healer.  Well, to make a long story short, they found the old healer, and instead of killing him like I expected, they decided that the swiftest justice would be to bring him back for trial.  I was surprised as they had been fairly chaotic in the past.  What they didn't know was that I had already begun writing the 2nd quest in the series where I assumed the old man to be dead.  This opened up a whole new avenue which I hadn't expected, and allowed me to use the old healer (now a prisoner of the state) as a plot device later in the campaign.  This is when I learned my lesson.</blockquote>

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