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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7826823" data-attributes="member: 20323">Thanks Sphoedus. Oh man, I am so tempted to do that "after spying for X hours/days you learn..." There's a couple reasons I'm on the fence...First, the night hag may use Nightmare Haunting on a caster PC, preventing that PC from getting a long rest. I'm on the fence whether or not to do this. The night hag would know that the PCs were in the general area (the Valley of Dread), but she would not yet know their current location in a cave of friendly lizardfolk (one of her sisters knows, but hasn't yet communicated that), and she certainly doesn't know the PCs are planning a bold assassination on the Lizard Emperor's forwarding base camp. It's a risky move and until now the party has been fairly cautious. For instance, they faced one of the hag's sisters many sessions ago, attempting to ambush her, and nearly the whole party was put to sleep (thanks to dust mephits cooperatively upcasting sleep & that hag using enhanced component to upcast sleep), leaving it up to the druid PC to soothe that hag's ruffled feathers and convince her to spare the party in exchange for tribute.Second, my players are very detail oriented. In other words, I can rarely describe a scene without being bombarded by questions. It's not a bad thing – what else am I doing as DM if not answering the player's questions? But it can get excessive. For example, even with your approach, I could say something like "ok, there's a slow-moving swamp river running through the camp" and then I'd be getting hit by: (1) Ok, I'll send my arcane eye underwater. What do I see? (2) I want to scout ahead of the party before we decide to go this way, popping up intermittently like a crocodile. (3) How deep is the river? How wide? Are there any reeds? (4) If I have a light on the bottom, will we be able to see, and will a creature on the surface see the light? ...and so on, you catch my drift. It's very hard for me to present options without my players turning over each option with a barrage of questions asking for clarification and detail.Third, one of my players wants to plant a friendship tree between his race (grung) and the friendly lizardfolks they're staying with. This is a side thing to wrap up some story threads, explain a plant growth spell cast in exchange for an elixir of regeneration, and provide one last "gathering of the fellowship" before this very dangerous mission. Rather than interrupting the flow of the assassination with dramatic role-play (not my players' forte), I told the player we could open the session with that scene he proposed.Ideally, I'd love for the players to tell me their recon strategy in advance, but the realities of work, school, and family life mean that I rarely get much information from them in advance beyond the bare minimum. For example, even after I posted my question here, my players questioned their original plan to go forward with the assassination and had a whole vote off thing where they ultimately confirmed that, yes, they were sticking with the assassination plan. If past is anything to go by, I'm doubtful if I'll get much more than that from them. That's OK. It just means I need to get creative with how I fairly but expeditiously handle recon.</blockquote>

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