Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7843189" data-attributes="member: 18">If you set the players up to fail, especially if there's really no possible chance of them succeeding, you need to look at ways to mitigate that, if you don't want them being bitter pretty long-term. The players aren't characters in a book, who don't exist when it's inconvenient. You put them on a mission to defend the king, then send a guy they cannot possibly stop to kill the king, they're going to be complaining about that (not about you necessarily, but about that event), until long after you retire from DMing.I would suggest having them be witnesses rather than active, formal, defenders the first time this guy appears if you're going for that. That way they can decide to intervene (and they probably will), but then when it goes wrong anyway, they aren't psychologically "on the hook" for the failure. Then, when they face him more formally, there should be some kind of warning that he's after the person they're protecting, and they can use what they learned to try and be successful.And trust me, if they're defending someone, they're likely to blow every single thing they've got to try to succeed. Spells, magic items, potions, etc. So they will find out if he's basically unstoppable, and will expend a lot of resources finding that out.</blockquote>