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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Dungeon Nazi" data-source="post: 194613" data-attributes="member: 4520">The DN that trained me was -- and still is -- the absolute master when it comes to this sort of thing.  Power *always* comes with a price.Since we game strictly in FR, these ideas might not be totally relevent, but I'm sure you can do some tweaking if you find something you like.The final AD&D game we played before switching to 3E (an adaptation of Night Below set in the Underdark beneath Shadowdale) ended when the group followed our cocksure party leader to do some tomb-raiding and stumbled upon a drow lich who had been sealed in there for centuries.  The entire party was slaughtered, save for one silvery fire-wielding priest of Mystra who refused to enter.  He decided to put together another party and go after the bodies of the first for raising purposes, and was rewarded when he was captured by illithids and doomed to decades of torture as they mined his brain for the secrets of silvery fire.  Mike, our DN, consistently draws up side-quests filled with such drow liches, eye tyrants, Cult wizards, powerful vampire spellcasters and the like, and leaves it up to the party to know when they're outmatched and outgunned.  Sometimes, if it's particularly dangerous, he'll go out of his way to hide such passages and chambers, and we may never even stumble upon them.  But when we do, and if we manage to survive, the rewards are always great.  The problem is that sometimes (as the Warriors of Shadow Light found out the hard way) we wind up wondering if the price was really worth paying.Earlier in this same campaign, I was playing a thief -- the Swashbuckler kit from the Complete Thief's Handbook -- whose *only* assets were a 17 Dex and a rapier of speed (otherwise, he was completely beat).  After failing one too many Resurrection Survival rolls -- and this is where DM-Player trust comes in *really* handy -- the character was reborn as a Chosen of Mask, with a shapeshifting Malaugrym body and 18s for all three physical ability scores (I think I also got minor boosts to Cha and Wis to satisfy Specialty Priest of Mask requirements).  The big caveat was that all my fun-loving, carefree swashbuckling days were over -- Lexavian was now a neutral evil tool of Mask, and while the party generally assumed he was just another thief, he had on occasion served as a foil for the party, and the shapeshifting allowed him to disrupt their efforts (when the party's wishes ran contrary to the will of Mask) virtually unnoticed.So secretly pitting your players against each other makes for a *really* interesting game, and if you haven't done so already, start instituting a communicate-with-the-DM-via-written-notes-only policy to start getting away from the idea that each party member automatically knows what's going on with every other party member simply because the players announce aloud what they're doing.  The notes aren't necessary all the time, but essential for when characters wish to act without the rest of the party's knowledge -- some of the greatest sequences in-game would be triggered by one of our players passing down a folded piece of paper to the DN, and we'd all be wondering what he or she was up to.That seems to be enough for one post.  If you're interested in hearing more of what went on with the Warriors or their 3E counterparts, I've got plenty more stories to tell.</blockquote>

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