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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 5622625" data-attributes="member: 20323">As the OP, I think I should clarify what my specific scenario was. Obviously this is colored by my perspective...In a past session the players were faced with a choice between two options (there could have been more but they aren't an especially probing/wildly creative group).1. Go through a new moon portal into a fey realm to consult an oracle. The portal is only active one day per month at the height of new moon. If the PCs choose this way they gain insight into the BBEG's hidden agent, but without their help the keep falls. The extent of destruction depends on how long they are trapped in the fey realm ("one day here is a month in your world").2. Travel north to a mountain keep besieged by goblins to help a gruff and tumble lord secure the mountain pass. If the PCs choose this path they would secure a critical stronghold against the BBEG's forces in the north, but they would not gain access to the oracle until it was too late. Additionally, the BBEG holds the oracle hostage to get info about future from her; depending on how many magical braziers the PCs find and light inside the keep, the BBEG gains more/less info (the braziers alert eladrin soldiers).The PCs choose #1 and went into the fey realm, and were trapped there for several days (real world time) before realizing the trick. This meant the keep was completely overrun and most of the people fled, the lord's family was kidnapped, the lord was dead/dying  and all his knights were dead, the magical braziers were wrecked, the keep looted, the main horde moved on and left behind a small occupying force. The main horde hadn't yet reached the next settlement where refugees had been pushed however.They arrive and take in the aftermath, defeat the small force of hobgoblins and search for survivors. They come upon the dying lord. As they start talking with him, the bard player (the group's only healer - this is 4e btw) wants to heal this guy with his majestic word, but of course the NPC has just lost to a horde of goblins and has no surges left. He doesn't have any surgeless healing powers outside of combat so he calls upon the Heal skill to stabilize an adjacent dying character (DC 15). It was here where I said: "He's beyond normal healing; that he's alive at all speaks volumes to his sheer grit." Bard player smirked and made some really good pun about not wanting to interrupt a dramatic monologue with good healing; before the lord died the bard player asked me again if he could administer a healing potion or *anything*. I said "A potion wouldn't work cause of the surges. Basically this guy failed his 3rd death save while talking with you. Yeah I know I didn't roll."Everyone else was fine with it, and it wasn't an issue for the bard player out of that session. For some reason they trust me <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" /> But it was the first time in a long while that an issue came up about how I handled something as a DM.My "mistake" (if you want to call it such) was having them be present at the lord's hour of death. It was about gravitas, not information. Others have commented that this setup would have been better served by having the NPC lord already dead. This would avoid the whole issue I raised in this thread. Maybe that's what I should have done. However, I was and remain certain that the setup I chose had more emotional impact.That's why the "pet scene" in my case. It was illustrating consequences of a choice the players had in a previous adventure, and in so doing revealing the heroism of a NPC the group had mixed reactions toward. Say what you will about it being cliche, but swearing a quest at the side of a dying sympathetic/tragic NPC is poignant. That's one quest they'll definitely remember!</blockquote>

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