Is this fair?

[ARandomGod]

You're right though, you want to walk the fine line between finding a challenge for the players without ticking them off.

This reminds me of a quote I saw once, probably on this forum.

Being a GM is a lot like playing with a child. You're in control. You make the rules. You want to let the child win, but you don't want to let him know you're letting him win.

 

[MerakSpielman]

My players have fun when I tell them "there are invisible opponents sneaking up on the camp. Put out the minis around the campfire, and we'll play out their approach - and whether or not you spot or hear them - round by round."

Adds a great deal of suspense.

 

[Henry]

I don't see any problem with it. Chances are the party will be alerted at some point during the process (every death I think would allow a new round of listen checks) and frankly, a party that is uncautious would be more vulnerable to such business. Just be sure that the party has ticked off a load of important people first, and are worthy of an enemy spending a boatload of money on a bunch of assassins!

Othewise, if you aren't willing to go that far, blackmail on the PCs to leave the enemy alone works well, too.

 

[Plane Sailing]

My plan is for the hired group to have tracked them down and ambush them during an evening in which they are resting.

I see this as the potentially problematic bit.

Understanding that you may handle this perfectly, I'd like to mention what often seems to be a problem.

a) NPCs have an unerring ability to track down and ambush PC's
b) PCs have great difficulty in tracking down and ambushing NPCs.

Far too often IMX NPCs are hand-waved into position. They don't need to have a tracker make the difficult tracking checks, they don't stumble onto the parties position by accident or give themselves away, they don't have to make half a dozen move silently and hide checks during the approach...

I'm using hyperbole to accentuate the point, I hope you understand!

On to other matters, in the interests of realism:

Firstly, the group has to hire the assassins. They may have access to an assassin group, but where is that assassin group based? How long will it take to get together the resources to hire assassins, and how long will they have to wait until the right assassins are available for the mission? Will they be Goblin "silent knives"?

Secondly, how will the assassins find out where the group is now, how will they track them down (hire a ranger? who works with assassins? an assassin with tracking? bounty hunter?) considering relative movement speeds of trackers and normal movement how will they be able to catch up with them? How will the group gather intel on the parties future plans and positions and pass that on to the assassins?

(nb in the campaign I'm currently playing in the small party (rgr/wiz, rgr/ftr, monk) set an alarm spell and had a guard. Didn't help when the bad guys pulled up 60ft away in the woods and lobbed two fireballs into the campsite. Pretty much 2 out of 3 PCs out of action in the surprise round...)

 

[robberbaron]

Fair? Sounds like it to me.
Popular? Depends on how the players take it.

IMC, when NPCs ambush the PCs I make the hide and move silently rolls and the PCs react to what I tell them. I don't fudge the rolls - if I roll higher than the PCs' listen checks the bad guy creeps in unheard, if not, they hear him. If the PCs are sloppy/unlucky, they get hurt. If they are on the ball/lucky, they come out pretty much unscathed.
All I can do to ensure fairness is to make the NPCs use the same rules as the PCs and the encounters appropriately nasty.

Oh, and when the PCs ambushed an NPC group while they were camped, they caught the MUs asleep and slaughtered all but the rogue on watch, who ran away, for the loss of one PC unlucky enough to take a mighty critical hit.

 

[Shellman]

Sounds like a good and fair plan.

Just take a look at the CR for the encounter and see if two assasins would be overdoing it. Typically if there is one person on watch, then the chances of the worst happening depends on who that is (i.e. do they have a decent listen score and Fort save).

Could the pc on watch fail to hear the Assasin. Yes, then it sucks for the party because then they are probably all dead.

Plus you have to figure that they are probably not going to sleep in armor, hence armor class will be down for just about everyone in the party.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I 2nd Planesailing.

What you could do is, in part of your notes write down how the NPC's go about their business. You can consider time taken, coin needed, track/gather info checks, forced march etc... The assassins could be rogues and are an assassin by profession rather than class.

Also, there could be a double cross, betrayal or ambush that happens to the NPC's that the PC's discover as they are leaving. With that foreshadowing, you could then hit the party pretty hard with whatever assassins remain the following night and the players will buy into the encounter I am sure. They will also no doubt be on their guard, which would be appropriate.

 

[gnomebarbarian]

watch the CR

Someone said it... watch the CR and the total EL for this ambush. As long as it isn't too high above the party it should be fair... they will have a chance to survie. but if it's more then 2 or 3 levels higher then the party you should tone it down... less baddies or take away a few levels from them etc. Any encounter more then 2 or 3 EL higher then the party is going to probaly be a mighty test for the party. Make sure you fully understand the rules for it.

Also part of the encounter you should consider is how much resources do the baddies have to use to hire these assasians... can they really afford hiring so many assasians to kill the PC's? wouldnt there be a cheaper way to try first... who is going to spend everything they have to kill someone, unless it is a last resort? If they can afford it without going broke then make sure if the PC's survive and can find out who sent the attack,(they should have a chance to discover it) that when they go knocking on the bad guys door that they can get some of those resources as loot.

 

[reveal]

Thanks for all the good advice.

Here is a breakdown of the group sent to kill PCs:

Human Ftr7
Human Rog5/Asn1
Half-Elf Rog5/Asn1
Elf Sor6
Doppleganger Rog3
Phase Spider CR5

The PCs are:

Warforged Wiz1/Ftr5/Urban Ranger1/Devoted Defender1
Warforged Rog4/Psion3/Extreme Explorer1
Human Clr8
Human Wiz7/Human Paragon1
Shifter Urban Ranger6/Master Inquisitve2

Considering the warforged hardly ever rest, unless they need to regain spells or psionic abilities, they will be awake when this happens. And I'm not throwing anything at them before this encounter, so they won't use their spells/abilities beforehand.

The bad guy who hired the group works for the Emerald Claw. He has the resources and has tried to kill the PCs a few times. He convinced his superiors it would be best to "outsource" killers.

The bad guy was last defeated 2 weeks prior to the current timeframe of the campaign. In that time, the group was hired and has gathered information to find the whereabouts of the PCs. With the connections the group has within Sharn, 2 weeks is ample time. Heck, a successful Gather Information check only takes 1d4+1 hours.

I definitely plan on the group making Hide and Move Silently checks opposed by the PCs. That's only fair.

All in all, the parties involved are evenly matched.

 

[robberbaron]

Yep, unless you are giving the assassins some overpowered items, it looks OK to me.