Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aberzanzorax" data-source="post: 4770236" data-attributes="member: 64209">THIS is the best of D&D.  I'm so impressed/pleased by your recountings of your DMing. You have done the following (and done it well): 1. NOT railroaded at all. 2. NOT given the PCs a free out. You gave them options, which were very hard, but not unrealistic. Their actions have consequences, and it seems like they are loving it, while their characters are HATING it. 3. Really Dungeon Mastered it well, from your reports. It seems you've done an excellent job of rolling with the situations, adding creative nuances, and just plain sticking it to the PCs, but with the idea in mind of keeping the Players in good stead. Bravo! Truly, I'm very impressed with what you've done there, and it is apparent you've got the players on the run but not defeated/hopeless. That's a delicate balance, and one you seem to have achieved nicely! There were more points, but I think I hit the big ones. My players would live for this type of situation (as would I if I were playing rather than DMing).   As to where to go from here: 1. Use the fact that the cleric's player is abandoning her character as a story advantage. There are several ways you could take this. The two most obvious (to me) are:  a) take the cleric with Aushana to the alternate dimension "I'll not have my child raised without a father!"...and the trio returns later (cleric, half demon cleric's child, and Aushana...and likely the child turns on both the cleric and Aushana, being a greater evil/power than either parent). b) allow the player of the cleric to play the monk. BUT, when the story is appropriate, the monk can be captured (forcecage is a nice strong "you are GONNA be captured"  spell). When that happens, let them play the cleric again briefly. Is the cleric still good? Where has the cleric been? How much trust should the other characters put into the cleric? Will that be their downfall? Here, I personally would go against type/cliche. Cleric in a hell dimension for 50 years (1 year real time)....well that has only tightened the cleric's resolve.  If lg before, the cleric is now LG!!! If they expect the cleric to be goody goody, make it E.V.I.L. The idea is not to trick them here, but to challenge cliches and go against the blah fantasy that is out there.   How I would bring Aushanna back later: I think that it would be good to have her just "dissapear" unless they use all their resources to find her. She has her own agenda, and to her they are just pawns/underlings.  So why would she come back? Two reasons, IMO:  1. She wants them to be her evil soul trophies. She wants to push them toward deeper evil. I think there is a danger at this point of them feeling railroaded and such. I might not make this the choice, but if it fits, and they're up for it, full steam ahead. 2. They know stuff. She doesn't want to stir things up more, and they're helpful in her bid for power. She wants to play them again. This time, she has underestimated them. They've hidden all of their loved ones as well as those of the cleric. She no longer has anything on them...and they have 3 scrolls of dimensional anchor. She is totally f---ed. She's smart, but she's superior. It's reasonable that these players have simply advanced far faster than any mortals she's seen in her long afterlifespan...and they just might pwn her. That's where I'd go from here.</blockquote>

Verification