DMs only: Stop me from killing off all my players

[Ghostknight]

Mind you, I was never saying that the DM should give the PC's a [continuing] break. My points were that 1) if the DM chooses too, there are any number of ways of plotting/rationalizing an evil group being rescued from their own stupidity and 2) the decision to introduce improbably beneficial events/NPC's into the game should have nothing to do with the groups' alignment. Villians should be as lucky as heroes, if villians are your protagonists.

An in game one which is quite easy to envision is when working for a LE organisation or government. Yeah, they may not like you or particualarly care about you - but organisational loyalty dictates that... or rule no 12657 says that...

It is possible, just much more unlikely - particularly if the rescuers are going to be at significant risk or have to use significant resources. Also, in this case it seems VERY unlikely. They are targeting the seniour member in the organisation - if LE a BAD thing to do, if CE well lets see who wins and we'll take it from there.

As a side note- in evil campaigns I generally only allow LE and NE, that way there can be some form of party cohesion as characters are part of the same organisation and have some form of loyalty to each other - even while being arrogant, evil, greedy (any further description you like) b*stards. CE as a ruledoes not work for me - players in my experience use this (and CN to a lesser extent) as a "I do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want" alignment. Generally it is too disruptive and non-conducive to a campaign (for an one shot game don't care waht the characters do, there does not need to be long term cohesion anyway!)

 

[Darklone]

Besides, they might surprise you. PCs can sometimes pull off incredible things. Watching them defeat your "undefeatable" villain is one of the funnest parts of DMing. Give them the chance to surprise you!

Had that. They lost only one PC (1 from 9) due to a lot of luck (like a CDG attempt on a PC with fumble houserule rolled a 1 on his attack roll and killed the second guy whose CDG would have been next), wasted nearly all magical emergency resources (scrolls, potions, wands and necklace of fireballs stuff), the battle lasted three gaming nights of about 10 hours each...

And they even learned not to do that again.