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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6922995" data-attributes="member: 97077">Honestly, that was probably a good call because swapping the sword like that could be seen as a "gotcha" by the players. They had an expectation of one thing and it would have been something else entirely which can be viewed as unfair. I'm an advocate for always telegraphing things like this so that the players can potentially make decisions to change their fate.I know what you mean, but you can have plenty of tension in a game without death on the line. It's just a matter of threatening the PCs' goals rather than their pools of hit points. (See, for example, my short-form scenario <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470046-Seahorse-Run" target="_blank">Seahorse Run</a>. Death is very unlikely unless the PCs provoke the shark, but they can still lose.) That requires the players actually caring about those goals though!</blockquote>