Is it fun??

[spuppett]

I hope this is the right spot to post this.

I'm thinking of running a little scenario in our campaign (4E), where if all the PCs miss a saving throw, an encounter starts. It turns out after 2d4 rounds, they realize it was a hallucination. Any dailies, arrows, potions, etc. they used are now expended, but I would probably put HP back to where they were (unless hit by another PC) and give them XP. I'd also like to hopefully work in some sort of clue about a weakness of the BBEG.

I'm pretty new to the hobby, a bit of a late bloomer, as it were. I haven't played a lot, and DM'd only slightly less. Is this a fun idea. On the one hand, it doesn't actually advance the party towards anything, but it makes the location a bit more interesting (I hope).

Thanks for any insight/input.

 

[EricNoah]

Depending on how it is done I could see it being an intriguing mystery. If you give them XP as you say, that certainly takes the sting out of losing resourcs during a "phantom fight". Works best when the group has been playing with the DM for a while and there is a certain level of trust there -- if any of my DMs did this I would be intrigued and play along, sure in the knowledge that it was going to pay off in some cool way.

 

[Roger]

For an average party of 5 PCs, all of them failing a saving throw would happen less than 2% of the time.

I'm not sure I'd want to hang a lot of the adventure or a lot of prep time work on something that's so unlikely to see play.


Cheers,
Roger

 

[spuppett]

I'm actually using a pre-made adventure and this comes up as a 'what if'. I know the likely hood of it happening is small, but it sounded kinda cool, but also could be a bit of a let down/ WTF was that moment. Nothing in the adventure hinges on this happening. I have a few 'exrta encounters' hanging around, so this would be a good spot to dump one.

Thanks for the replies.