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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5990029" data-attributes="member: 386">That sounds like an elegant solution, but I'm not sure what it means for player choice.Let's say that something triggers when the PCs hit level 13.  The PCs hear about some event coming up when they're 12th level.Their choice: Face the higher-level challenge to prevent the consequence (the event).Level up before facing the higher-level challenge, but suck up the consequence (that event will happen).Take off a year or two making magic items, then make the choice as above.Take off five years running a business in a Metropolis, get some GP, spend those GP on magic items, then make the choice as above.5-minute adventuring day (scry-buff-teleport-fight-teleport-rest-repeat) to minimize cost of each encounter in both PC death and magic item depletion.Let's add some context:[sblock=More Spoilers]The PCs, at 11th level, learn that the Doomdreamers are excavating the Temple.  Lareth is there with the Orbs and will soon summon the Elemental Champions.  This event triggers when the PCs hit 13th level.The smart choice would be to take off a few years to make some GP, while making sure you don't get any XP.  (The number of years you have depends on how close you are to the next age category, and if you want to suck up those penalties to your physical stats.)  Then you spend those GP on magic items.  Divination spells - Contact Other Plane - can tell you which magic items you should get.  (I chose Contact Other Plane because the drawback - losing Int or Cha for a few weeks - isn't a drawback when time is unlimited.)  (If you're all elves I guess you could wait around until Lareth dies of old age.)This is obviously nonsensical, so we'd want to introduce an in-game time condition.  Then we're back where we started.You could say something like "1 month or until they gain a level."  The best choice is to dawdle around making GP, then go in hard when your time is running short.I guess you could hide all this information from the players, but something about that doesn't sit right with me.  The players think they are making decisions that matter but they really aren't.  If we want players to feel like their decisions matter, why not just make them matter instead of trying to deceive them?[/sblock]Maybe I misunderstood what you meant?</blockquote>

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