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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6043110" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'm a bit confused - is the artefact the same thing as the battery?That is, is the problem that (i) the arefact may not work to open the temple's planar hub, or (ii) that once they open the hub the weapons may be depleted and not work? I am assuming (i), but others who have replied seem to be assuming (ii).I haven't quite worked out what the point is of making the players choose. If the point is to give them a chance to exercise strategic or logistic ability, you're going to have to give them more information, or at least the possibility of more information. Without information, the choice looks like a sheer gamble from the players' strategic perspective. They may as well roll a die!And as a GM, I'm not clear what your overall goal is. Presumably you have already decided whether or not the battery (=artefact?) is dead. But you've also decided to keep this information from the players (and thereby from the PCs). Presumably you have a reason for doing this, though I'm not clear on what it is.But anyway, here is a preliminary suggested wording (I imagine this as coming from an appropriate NPC):You know of the threat we face? [Presumably players, in character, signal their agreement.] You know of the Artefact? [Presumably players, in character, signal their agreement.] Well, there is something else you need to know. In the distant [N/S/E/W] lies an ancient temple. Within it is a tunnel to a planar hub. And within the hub is a cache of mighty weaponry [say a bit more about the awesomeness of the weapons]. If we could open the tunnel, we could get those weapons. [Presumably, players ask/talk excitedly about opening the tunnel.] The tunnel can only be opened in one way: a potent source of magical energy must be placed in the temple doorway and its energy released. The only source of such energy known to us today is . . . the Artefact. [Presumably, players get excited about activating the artefact to open the tunnel.] But because we cannot test the Artefact, for the reasons that you know so well [ie it's tendency to obliterate everything if activated], we do not know whether it stil has the power within it. Perhaps, over the centuries it was lost, its power all leeched away!At which point the players hopefully start debating what to do, ways of checking if the battery (=artefact?) is still potent  before they actually try to use it, if there are other possible sources of energy to open the tunnel, etc. Divination spells and the like, or going to talk to the people who made the arefact (or the temple), or who last used it (it's a fantasy world, they might still be alive!), would seem the main ways of doing that.Is that at all on point, I have I completely misunderstood your situation?</blockquote>

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