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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 2796157" data-attributes="member: 18253">I do this fairly often. Couple points to keep in mind:1) If you have established a pattern of easy, no brainer encounters, it is a little unfair to the players to suddenly whack them with something hard. Players adapt to their referee and if you suddenly change your style, sure, you can come up with a good rationalization, but you are really simply changing the rules on them. Killing a PC in such a circumstance is a bit mean. Expect the players to resent it. Perhaps even to the point of sabotaging the campaign.2) So... don't be sudden about this. Establish in a few non-lethal situation that things are going to be ratcheted up. Depending on your style and the players, you could even simply warn them out of game. "Look, guys, I'm going to change the game style a bit here and throw some encounters at you that you really might be better off handling with care." If you prefer in-game cues (or both), you can lead with a few lethal encounters where allies save them from death at the last minute, or the bad-guys pull their punch for some reason (although be careful with pulled punches, it can make you look bad).3) Developing the last sentence above: if you are going to use tough encounters, once you have established the base work for a truly tough encounter, don't cop out. if the PCs get themselves killed, let them get themselves killed. If you cop out, you will diminish your stature as a ref and lose everything you were no doubt trying to achieve with a more leathal encounter.4) But don't kill them all unless you just want to stop your campaign (and perhaps not be asked to ref again  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /> ).  One or two dead PCs is a great way to establish mortality as long as it doesn't seem arbitrary (see point #1). Killing the whole party usually just pisses off everyone and wrecks all your hard work in creating and running the campaign. In a very lethal encounter it is wise for you to consider contigencies ahead of time that can keep the entire party from dying. These contingencies can include allies coming to the rescue, some event that separates the foes (staff retributive strike sends foes or PCs elsewhere), foe takes prisoners, etc. One of my favorites is to have an undefined magic item in the PCs possession. An example is crystal dragon figurine: PCs know if they break it, it summons a dragon. How big a dragon? Why there is no way to know until you use it. As a ref, if the players use it when the party is about to wiped out, you can make the dragon big enough to save the survivors. If they use it at a poor time, you can give them an ill-tempered wyrmling. Of course, this must be very sparingly used but the beauty of it is that in many cases the players will *never* use it and you never have to tip your hand.5) Alternately, you can slowly increase the encounter difficulty. This will avoid the sudden change of style but takes lots of patience on your part.</blockquote>

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