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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 2922589" data-attributes="member: 1328">Here's something that happened recently in one of the campaign I DM.[sblock]The characters had been granted the services of a shield guardian by a (formerly) powerful (compared to them) wizard, who had lost his magic when he tried to become a lich through a deal with a demon lord (Orcus). Upon losing his life, he lost his shadow too, and with his shadow, his magical abilities. So he struck a deal with the PCs to lend them this powerful construct (they needed it for another quest) in exchange for them hunting down his shadow. To ensure the deal is followed, the shield guardian is actually controlled by a minion of the failed lich, a sort of tiny beholderkin without eye ray powers.Many many events and adventures pass, and the construct proves a very, very big asset to them -- at least when they're ambushed by random encounters on the road.Anyway, one of the seemingly unrelated adventures have them investigating a city for mysterious murders. Eventually, they find out demon cultists in old catacombs beneath the city, and attack the cultists. The shield guardian had been left behind, as they didn't wanted to encumber themselves with the huge metal guy while spelunking and sneaking.It turned out the demon cult was led by a Shadow Demon with the Fiend of Blasphemy and Fiend of Possession prestige classes, and with the spellcasting ability of our ninth-level wizard... Orcus melded one of his elite shadow demons with the wizard's shadow, creating a powerful tool of evil and chaos.Big showdown. The player quickly dispose of every cultists, but the shadow fiend just hop from item to item (including cultist corpses), possessing them as animated objects, and keep on attacking. As the players do not find ways to damage the demon's immaterial shape, only its vehicles, the situation becomes desperate...... Until the shield guardian and its beholderkin arrives, and with a prepared scroll, suck out the essence of the demon/shadow and emprison it within the shield guardian. Beholderkin and construct then left promptly, thanking the PCs for fulfilling their half of the bargain, and returning to the wizard.Now, it was Deus Ex Machina. A deliberate choice. I wanted to remove an overpowered toy from the PCs, conclude the "shadowhunt" story arc, and get the player wondering how will the wizard fare once reunited with his shadow, now that it is demon-bound. And they really don't have the time to check that out now.During all the campaign, these two DMPC, the beholderkin and the shield guardian, were just background presence. As I said, outside of random ambushes during travel, they never got to intervene, since the PCs prefered to not be spent with aberrations. Plus, they suspected the beholderkin to spy on them (and they were perfectly right, since the beholderkin wanted to know if they'd found the shadow yet).[/sblock]So, I don't think this was too bad. PCs felt angered and ripped off because they still needed the construct: nice drive for future plots. They've had the spotlight about all the time: the NPC' spotlight was just a little foreshadowing during the combat, as PC could make Listen check to hear metallic footsteps approaching. Then the shield guardian appearing, the beholderkin chanting, the animated pillar slumping to the ground, and it's over.</blockquote>

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