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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 2271135" data-attributes="member: 5171">I've done a few things that worked well.1) Had a long-time nemesis show up unarmed at the PCs' camp. When they had him at swordpoint, he begged for the chance to tell his story. The story involved a powerful mutual enemy who the nemesis wanted to help the PCs destroy, as the nemesis wanted to rule the world while the enemy wanted to destroy it. The nemesis also held the PCs off by saying that he had an amulet that magically send his lifesigns to a small gemstone in a safe in the lair of the local assassin's guild (a high-powered guild with magical communication all over the country). The head assassin was going to check the gemstone at midnight tonight, and if the gemstone said that the PCs' nemesis was dead, the head assassin was going to carry out murder-by-torture hits on friends and family members of each of the PCs.The PCs were mightily enraged but swallowed their pride and agreed to hear out the nemesis as he told them about their mutual enemy. The nemesis got out three sentences, then began to choke. A moment later, he fell to the ground, stone-dead, and then exploded in a 10d6 fireball that completely destroyed his body. The mutual enemy had apparently put wards in place to prevent anyone from talking about them.I then held up a clock and said, "The current time is 7:35 PM, real-world-time. When this clock hits 11:00 PM, the head assassin is going to open that safe."2) On the "Crap, who is this guy" front, I've never had cause to do it, but the notion of having an encounter go like this was always fun to imagine:Round 1:Players see evil spellcaster of unknown power. They cast buffs and fire ranged weapons.Enemy spellcaster casts Dimensional Anchor on one party member and a quickened Dimensional Anchor on another.Round 2:Players charge, alternating damage spells and buffs.Enemy spellcaster casts Dimensional Anchor on one party member and a quickened Dimensional Anchor on another.Round 3: Players launch full-round attacks on the evil spellcaster and unload the heavy spell artillery.Enemy spellcaster casts Dimensional Anchor on one party member and a quickened Dimensional Anchor on another.3) I did a good enough job at creating a culture for my big bad monsters, complete with a language, that all I had to do was unload something in the language -- the creatures had been hiding in secret for eons, and many famous names were actually derivations of the monster language. The party would hear about a magical fountain that was supposed to grant immortality and then realize that the name translated to "Soul Death" in the enemy language, which was always good for a laugh.</blockquote>

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