Help me with this encounter!

[Chaldfont]

Remember, you have a HUGE advantage as the DM. You know the PC stats, their capabilities, their habits and tactics. You create the NPC and the setting of the attack. Its very easy to assassinate a single PC like this.

What you need to think about first is what this encounter means to the players. Will the player being singled out have fun? Will it seem arbitrary and unfair to the others? What chance of success are you aiming at (what is the chance that the PC will die)?

If you want to send a message to the players (such as "You have powerful enemies who will stop at nothing to see you dead!"), you can do it without killing a PC. Having a high-level assassin ALMOST succeed is usually more fun. It lets the PCs show off their talents and puts the fear into the victim. You want the player of the victim saying stuff like, "Oh man, you had me down to 2 hp! And I almost failed my save against the death attack!" That's what makes for cool gaming stories.

Go ahead and let the players roll their skill checks to catch the assassin. Let them use their cool abilities. If you want it to be a coin-flip situation, set the DCs and modifiers appropriately. That's what I do--look at the player's stats and reverse engineer DCs and saves to approximate the success chance I want.

 

[gizmo33]

Huh?

Oh, I guess I shouldn't have quoted you. I wasn't saying anything contrary to what you were saying. I was just saying "on the subject of character levels, please consider that an enemy of X level is considered a CR X monster, and follow to the obvious conclusion" I didn't mean that I had any objection to your post, my comments were address to the original poster - I should have made that clearer. Sorry.

 

[gizmo33]

Though "trying to kill a player though assassination" can be very fun and put the fear of god into the PC's.

True dat. My comments were more along the lines of Chaldfont's.

Plus - How does "you feel the whoosh of a dagger go by you that almost kills you. Roll for initiative." put the fear of god into a player? I agree with your basic premise that the encounter has the potential to be interesting and frighting, but IMO that takes more work than just having a fool-proof plan for an assassin or a high move silently check.

 

[Shazman]

Thanks for everyone's input. I just want to clarify that I am not trying to kill this character. I just want to put some fear of being killed into the player. This player ususally gets awesome rolls when it counts, and the character is built very well (good feat, spell, and prestige class choices). The whole group is hard to challenge, but this character is particularly tough. Having the character almost get killed by the assassain is what I want, especially since I'm pretty sure she'll make her Fort save vs. the death attack. The character is 12th level (druid/warshaper/nature's champion). The assassain is a bugbear fighter 6/assassain 4. How would you guys handle this encounter designed to scare the PC's a bit? It's really just the beginning of a larger encounter with more combatants joining the fray in a rond or two.

 

[diaglo]

The assassain is a bugbear fighter 6/assassain 4.

how did the bugbear qualify? from SRD: Skills: Disguise 4 ranks, Hide 8 ranks, Move Silently 8 ranks.

aren't hide and move siliently crossclass for fighter?

edti: nevermind i see under bugbear..still that is one smart bugbear to have so many ranks to dump in crossclass.

 

[gizmo33]

How would you guys handle this encounter designed to scare the PC's a bit? It's really just the beginning of a larger encounter with more combatants joining the fray in a rond or two.

It's hard to scare a player with just an assassination attempt because they're usually over so fast. IME players tend to only be frightened by things by either good build-up, or the sudden appearance of something really horrible looking (ex. the Tarrasque). An assassin usually doesn't fit either description (unless you hand the PCs his character sheet to take a look at before he attacks - "wow, this guy has a +20 BAB, now I'm scared"). What you're dealing with is a guy with a knife. Maybe work on his appearance to suggest more power, and imply somehow (through knowledge checks?) that there are more such assassins where he came from.

The other thing is that you usually want to make player choice the deciding factor. IME players are scared when they're standing in front of a door and they have to decide if they're going to open it. And the last door they opened had some horrible monster behind it.

But again, the situation doesn't really support this because the players are just standing around being ambushed. They don't really have a chance to stew in anxiety about their decisions.

It's harsh - but if you raise the challenge level of your campaign, sooner or later someone will die - and you may want to consider doing this. I've found that a player death* IMC raises the nervousness factor considerably for the next 50 game sessions (PC death, somewhat less ). The problem is that if the players see their deaths as inevitable, rather than be scared they'll just be frustrated. If they got killed for just standing somewhere, they'll probably be frustrated.

(* I mistyped this - I mean PC death. Hopefully no players will be harmed in the playing of your game.)

 

[Shazman]

I tried hinting at something really powerful and building up the tension. It didn't work the way I wanted because they were prepared, and got very lucky. They killed my precious monster far too easily. Something coming out of the blue and doing lots of damage coupled with, "Make a Fortitude save please." will hopefully scare the player, if only for a second or two.

 

[yennico]

I'm in the camp that puts "killing players through assassination" to be at the bottom of my "fun things to do list"

Two of my wizards died because of the death attack of an assassin.

 

[the Jester]

Well, first off I've been known to assassinate pcs, especially in my epic game. In face, for a while there the pcs were being frequently assailed by gloom assassins! Good times.


Anyhow, good luck with your villainous plot, and enjoy attmepting to kill your pcs!