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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6951700" data-attributes="member: 12731">But the first step would have to be becoming aware there is a powerful party The party certainly were overconfident and took few precautions. On the other hand, they acted almost immediately. I'm not denying the bad guys COULD have used spells to figure out their true identities, but at this point we need to take a step back and look at this from the outside.Can we as DMs create enemies that wipe the party from the face of the earth in a single swoop. Yes. But does this lead to a fun satisfying game?I will not apologize for thinking that the party needs to make an active mistake to justify ambushing them with overpowering force. It is a game, after all.There's nothing wrong with ambushes out of the blue, but those will generally be &quot;level appropriate&quot;. In other words, the bad guys think they have the upper hand, but the heroes turn out to be much more heroic than anyone could imagine, and despite being ambushed they prevail.Or in even blunter terms: any out of the blue ambush is a weak ambush, or the game isn't fun.This is an unstated agreement or unwritten contract. Normally we don't like to talk about it since it kind of kills the illusion. But when people tell me I could have used my NPCs in a much more deadly fashion, my only response is:[ATTACH]78514[/ATTACH]<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 6951700, member: 12731"] But the first step would have to be [B]becoming aware there is a powerful party[/B] The party certainly were overconfident and took few precautions. On the other hand, they acted almost immediately. I'm not denying the bad guys COULD have used spells to figure out their true identities, but at this point we need to take a step back and look at this from the outside. [I]Can we as DMs create enemies that wipe the party from the face of the earth in a single swoop. Yes. But does this lead to a fun satisfying game?[/I] I will not apologize for thinking that the party needs to make [B]an active mistake[/B] to justify ambushing them with overpowering force. It is a game, after all. There's nothing wrong with ambushes out of the blue, but those will generally be "level appropriate". In other words, the bad guys think they have the upper hand, but the heroes turn out to be much more heroic than anyone could imagine, and despite being ambushed they prevail. Or in even blunter terms: any out of the blue ambush is a weak ambush, or the game isn't fun. This is an unstated agreement or unwritten contract. Normally we don't like to talk about it since it kind of kills the illusion. But when people tell me I could have used my NPCs in a much more deadly fashion, my only response is: [ATTACH=CONFIG]78514._xfImport[/ATTACH] :) [/QUOTE]

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