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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SpiralBound" data-source="post: 2412913" data-attributes="member: 8396">These are moderately high level characters (12th or so) right?  And thay're no longer involved in minor events, but are more concerned with intrigues of national proportions, right?  Ok, then they must have a lot of npcs who uphold in one way or another their power/influence.  The head of the church, the local king, members of council, a powerful fellow wizard, general of the army, etc.  So, have a bad guy start targetting those people.  If the PCs are always either running away, avoiding conflict, and only fighting when the odds are in their favour, then have a "evil mastermind" type notice this and use it against them.  Have him deliberately use diversionary tactics, manipulating the pcs due to their easily predicted behaviours.Imagine a villian who deliberately scares the PCs away with false "overwhelming odds" and tempts them away from detecting his true activities by feeding them a series of easy kills.  Have the villian's goals be directly counter to the pcs goals and also put prominent npcs that the pcs rely upon directly into harms way.An example: The pcs want to further the prosperity of the kingdom of Almaria, maintain peaceful relations with the recently ex-enemy the Kingdom of Falorea, find the ailing King Gregor's long-lost son Prince Bregin before the king dies, thus leaving the kingdom in the hands of a divided and bickering Council of Nobles.Meanwhile, the evil Count Malegar has been observing both the PCs rise in power and their pattern of conflict-avoidance.  Furthermore, he seeks to assume control over the Kingdom of Almaria, which is why he has been secretly poisoning King Gregor, subverting the Council of Nobles and promoting their bickering, and why years ago he had Prince Bregin kidnapped and magically enslaved to his will.  Once the king dies, he plans to send in the mind-controlled Prince and rule from behind the throne.  Then, enacting his long range plan of world domination, starting with Falorea...Knowing the PCs by their previous actions, it should be a cakewalk for Count Malegar to jerk around the PCs like puppets on a string.  After a few important NPS die due to the PCs always falling for the Count's manipulations they're going to get a real hate on for him.  You'll quickly see them become willing to fight once 90% of the structures of what makes their world familar to them are put at risk!! <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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