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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Darwin's Goat" data-source="post: 5145337" data-attributes="member: 88734">I'm looking for ideas to help me flesh out a three stage encounter I have planned. It's kinda hackneyed, but the players are rushing to stop an evil wizard from finishing a magic ritual. The main thing is that I want to try to turn the different checks involved in stopping the ritual into a game, and not just a boring run of lame die rolls where the people participating (possibly more than half the players) see it as a fair and fun trade off to combat. Big room. Eight circles on the outside edge of the room that are gates to different places in the material plane (one of these gates is the way home). There's a central raised platform with one big circle that's running the whole show. The mage's basic plan is to fiinish the ritual which will in turn corrupt each of the eight outer gates, and then open up one super gate to the dimension where the super evil bad demon prince was imprisoned. Stage 1 - The mage is trying to complete the ritual while his underlings deal with the PCs.  Characters who are trained in Arcana or Religion can try to figure out exactly what the mage is trying to do (DC 25). Understanding the ritual will give a character a +2 to help stop it, either with trained Arcana checks (DC 19), trained Religion checks (DC 19) or Thievery checks (DC 21).  In addition to the checks at each of the circles, I'm up for having to spend a turn in the circle (fun for pushing and pulling) and maybe including an Endurance check in the process (mostly cause the wizard player always complains about how the skill is never used anymore). Maybe spending a turn in a circle gives a bonus to sever it from the main circle? Maybe if you take damage while trying to sever a circle you need to make an endurance check to keep your concentration? There are eight outer circles, and one big central circle running the whole show. The central circle will latch itself to one random gate each round, and the mage can (with an arcana roll of some kind) connect a second. I'm imagining the characters running around the outskirts of the room, fighting to get to the center of each of the circles, trying to basically turn them on or off while at the same time dealing with the hired goons and manuevring the fight to get in the way of the evil wizard. Stage 1 will end by one of three different things happening: If they kill the mage, the magic of the ritual sputters and goes haywire, The difficulty of Stage 3 will depend on how many gates were tied to the central circle. There's a backlash of magical energy, which everyone can treat like a short rest, and we march on to stage 2. If they stop the ritual, Stage 3 will be a cake walk, but stage 2 will be a lot tougher. There will be the same backlash of energy allowing people to heal and get back encounter powers. If they fail to stop the ritual, both Stage 2 and Stage 3 will be pretty tough, and the future looks really really bleak. Backlash, energy, blah blah blah. Stage 2 - In X rounds, the central circle will open a gate to the imprisoned demon lord and any gates it's tied to will basically funnel lesser demons and servitors out into the laps of the unsuspecting populace. Being at a safe distance would be a good idea no matter what side you're on. If the mage and his goons are still alive, they try like hell to get out through the portal they came in through, and maybe even try to block the PCs from being able to escape. If and when the mage dies, he comes back as a necromancer/death knight kinda something and tries to murder everyone whilst raising up undead versions of his probably dead thugs.  The death knight version of the mage tries to kill them/trap them and will follow them out through whatever portal they end up trying to escape through. I'd like to have a slightly tougher method in place for trying to sever the outer gates once the ritual is in this stage. Maybe it's an active participant in this part of the encounter who will act out against people attacking it? Stage 3 - Hopefully the undead mage and his goons are dead at this point.  If the PCs severed all the ties the central circle had to the outer gates, then there's only a simple fight in this chamber and a single gate they have to defend (the one they came in through) If they didn't stop the ritual, or manage to break the connection between the gates, then I'd like the fight to ramp up a little (depending on what kind of shape the characters are in), and then lead to more bad stuff where they need to hunt down escaped demon guys. So anyway, there's the rough outline. Ideas are welcome, especially if you've come across an interesting magic circles/end the ritual kind of challenge.</blockquote>

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