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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glamdring" data-source="post: 233809" data-attributes="member: 4835">Power-gaming.  I feel your pain.I know exactly what you're going through.  Many of the posted replies should help you, especially the one explaining how hack-n-slash your module is (as most are).  I had a similar problem during my second eddition campaign a few years back.  Bear with me:We were running Night Below, set in the FR world, and the group had made it through the first two books.  As the third book was introduced, I had already worked in plenty of FR goodies, like visits to Shadowdale, Cormyr, the Hullack, and the entire Underdark area beneath both regions.  The PCs were powerful, I'll give them that, and they deserved everything they recieved...to a point.  I always work in tricks and tests that my gamers sometimes miss as they play.  When treasure and experience points take precedence over the game itself, I get angry, and when I get angry, PCs die.  I'm a fair DM, and my players know that, but my favorite quote at the gaming table is "Greed kills."  Back to the Night Below tale:The group was accosted by a clan of stone giants.  The PCs fought back, followed them into their cave complex, and wiped them out in two evenings of bloody battle.  Inside that cave I worked in a hidden dwarven tomb.  You see, the giants' cave was once a dwarven kingdom, and the giants quarried out the area, making it livalble.  The tomb was well hidden, and had nothing to do with the campaign whatsoever.  Of course, they were curious, and the very idea of a dwarven tomb leads one to imagine heaps of treasure.  They went down into the tomb, and they all died there.  The dwarven undead banged them up badly enough, but the drow lich entombed there finished them off rather quickly.  The only one to escape was the priest of Mystra, who returned the next day to destroy the lich single-handedly.  It was the finest moment of the campaign as the shining, armored priest battled the dark drow lich for the lives of his comrades.  That's not even the half of it.  Bear with me.Once that was over, the PC's bodies (and their many many magical items, which were more important than anything, of course) were nowhere to be found, having either been spirited away by the drow or ashed by the titanic spell exchange.  The priest returned empty handed, and quickly formed a crack squad of adventurers (ran by those who recently lost their beloved original characters) to seek out the drow lich's phylactery and the bodies and items of the slain PCs.  They completely abandoned Night Below to delve deeper in search of their treasures.  I wasn't happy.  The found their way to the classic drow comples, The Vault, and infiltrated a massive stalagmite drow stronghold.  The priest summoned a 24 HD fire elemental, and the group set about slaying the many, many derro, bugbear, hobgoblin and drow guards with relative ease.  Once they stumbled upon a central chamber containing not only the infamous drow lich that was "thought" to have been destroyed, but also another human lich, a drow priestess, an ultra-illithid, and a galbrezu demon, the entire campaign ended right then and there in one final battle.  End of story.  Their worthless quest for the return of their magical items ended abruptly.My point is this:  Power gamers can only go in one direction.  Down.  Forgive the pun in this case, but it's true.  All you can do is yank back on the choke collar and let them know that you're in charge, and that you want the game to go a certain direction.  If they chose another path, that's fine.  The game should be open-ended.  My suggestion is to slay them all and have them start over.  Don't make it seem like you're doing it on purpose.  It's a fine line to walk, but it can be done.  I've done it, and they learned their lesson.  Unfortunately, I can still sense the greed in their actions in our 3E game.  I'll be jerking their collars real soon, I imagine.  It's so much fun!!  Maybe I'll throw a balor/marilith combo at 'em!!</blockquote>

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