Should I punish my players with a high CR encounter

[Empirate]

On handling the actual combat:

It's no fun and it costs a lot of time to announce a hundred times: "the peasant attacks with his pitchfork. He fails to hit. The next peasant attacks with his pitchfork. He fails to hit. The next peasant attacks with his pitchfork. He... rolls a twenty! Oh, nevermind, DR stopped the damage..." and so on.

This kind of combat is better done by description. The demon will quickly discover that fighting peasants are no more threat than moscitoes, and take its time slaughtering them in 'imaginative' ways. The peasants know they have no chance, but fight regardless, to save their families.

What's the PCs' role in all of this? That's the question that really matters. So coming up with a mechanical solution to the actual combat may not be that important, if the PCs are actually not there to fight, but to deliver grandfathers, wives and children to safety.
If, on the other hand, the PCs ARE in the actual fight, make sure their actions aren't drowned in a bunch of meaningless peasants-with-pitchforks, drawing everything out for hours.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

I may have not done a good job expressing the necessity for speed. I have told them that a powerful demon is there, and that bad guys are trying to release it, but I feel like I have not really rammed home the fact that the demon is a problem, and I never expressed a definite timeline. I wanted the party to make their own decisions, so most NPCs said "Well, on one hand, they are trying to release a demon, but on the other hand; if they were able to release it they would have done it by now. They've been down in that dungeon for days now! Stop them quick, but if you need to rest first, I am not in a position to tell you to do otherwise... brave heroes."

Now is the time to remedy that. Tell them before you guys start that this is serious business and that you aren't going to hold your punches. You hinted at the demon being released, they know it's powerful, and they know that they needed to do something to prevent it. Now it is loose, they failed to act in time to prevent it from being released. It's time to clean up their mess and fix the situation somehow.

I see this happening in three different ways if I was running it:
1) This could be a covert rescue mission to free enslaved townspeople where they do little to no fighting.
2) They attempt to take down the Demon with wiles, luck, and power (most likely not succeeding in the process).
3) A big fight with help, with PCs running off to a much more powerful NPC to aid their cause. The battle could be the PCs vs the Cultists and then do a cinematic fight (think Gandolf vs the Balrog) going on in the background. If the PCs lose vs the Cultists the NPC loses vs the Demon. It would be a linked combat.

 

[rkarnes]

It's no fun and it costs a lot of time to announce a hundred times: "the peasant attacks with his pitchfork. He fails to hit. The next peasant attacks with his pitchfork. He fails to hit. The next peasant attacks with his pitchfork. He... rolls a twenty! Oh, nevermind, DR stopped the damage..." and so on.

I have pre-planned actions for every peasant (who are actually monastic clerks) which basically includes "bar the door", "run and hide" and "charge once only to get eaten". I want the players to see the peasants as being in need of rescue, not as pawns to move around the battle map (although, on a literal interpretation of the real world space we are using to represent the game space, they will be literal pawns).

What's the PCs' role in all of this? That's the question that really matters. So coming up with a mechanical solution to the actual combat may not be that important, if the PCs are actually not there to fight, but to deliver grandfathers, wives and children to safety.
If, on the other hand, the PCs ARE in the actual fight, make sure their actions aren't drowned in a bunch of meaningless peasants-with-pitchforks, drawing everything out for hours.

To be honest, I have no idea what the players will do. They have never encountered things like this before. The PCs each responded to a want ad that read "Heroes Wanted", and when the PC's showed up at the listed location and time, they "just happened" to be there to stumble over a criminal syndicate's shake-down. Soon after, the party's benefactor showed up and began painting them as heroes. Each job they did, they did for the money, but their benefactor spins it to make them look like heroes (although the group has not quite seen the effect of their new found reputation). This is the first time the group has been in a situation where there is no immediate monetary benefit for the group. Basically, this would be the moment in the game that the players decide to live up to the hype and become what everyone expects them to be. I have no idea if they will run, fight, or think of a third option.

 

[Empirate]

This sounds good, you seem to have your bases covered. Not knowing what the PCs will do will keep things interesting for you, too, which is a benefit in my book!
Looking forward to how this one will play out.

 

[rkarnes]

I see this happening in three different ways if I was running it:
1) This could be a covert rescue mission to free enslaved townspeople where they do little to no fighting.

I was planning on the demon killing all the town's people, but taking a few prisoners as a hook for future missions is a good idea. I do not think there is enough room in the plot for a long rescue adventure immediately though. I want this to be a climax to a story-arch that really gives the players a sense of growth, and then I would like to bring the story back to the characters who were introduced at the start of the arch and give the players some denouement before we start talking about rescue.

2) They attempt to take down the Demon with wiles, luck, and power (most likely not succeeding in the process).

I have intentions of luring my players into combat with the beast. Primarily, I want them to make the decision to either A) rescue the NPCS or B) run away. I am going to let the chips fall where they may, but I am going to play the monster as being powerful enough as to have little or no regard for the adventurers. He'll smack them around, let them fall, and then continue knocking down the village (which is actually a monastery) and killing the peasants (who are actually religious adherents, some of who are children training to be monks (as in monastic, not as in the class)). If the players decide to run away, I have a few encounters planned for the session, but ultimately they have the option of choosing to be self-serving.

3) A big fight with help, with PCs running off to a much more powerful NPC to aid their cause. The battle could be the PCs vs the Cultists and then do a cinematic fight (think Gandolf vs the Balrog) going on in the background. If the PCs lose vs the Cultists the NPC loses vs the Demon. It would be a linked combat.

There are no powerful NPCs. In this campaign, there are no bartenders who have 8 levels of wizard, no king who gained 14 levels of fighter before taking the crown, no BBEG who is a lich and the prime-minister of the country to the east. The most powerful NPC I introduced was level 9. The party met and bartered with a reasonably friendly wizard who was level 7 in the previous game. I never tell the party what level a character is, but the more metagamey players have a tendency to guess the class. The level 7 wizard will be in the fight, but... he's probably going to be the focus of the monster's attention. As for the bad guys? They will be there too, and I intend to use them exactly as I would have had the party met them in the dungeon before they managed to release the demon. Even then, it would have been a challenging encounter, but now that they have a demon on their side, even more so. I most of the three NPC bad guys will survive, and the party will have to run away.

 

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Sounds like you have things worked out pretty well now. Just roll with what you got planned and see how it all shakes out. You'll have to let us know what ends up happening in your next session as it sounds like it should be pretty interesting with the group you have.

 

[rkarnes]

I do need to plan on what happens if the party suffers a total knock-out. If some of the party gets knocked out, I intend the fight to last 9 rounds, then on the tenth have the demon fall back a distance and begin using darkness to shield himself from the light. Depending on if the fight is going well for the bad guys, they may fall back into the jungle as well. By that point, the demon will choose his moment to plane shift away from the dawning sun, which will end its involvement with the fight.

If everyone goes down, I will have them wake up in a prison cell in a dungeon. I have been laying the ground work for the exploration of a prominent ruin nearby, mentioning and describing it every chance I got, and I think it would really tie in nicely if the bad guys and the demon used that as a base of operations.

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions! You guys are great, and I feel confident that I can make this a great encounter, one my group will remember for a long time... even if it's for a TPK

 

[Herobizkit]

TL;DR, but releasing the demon and then having the players decide to do actual research on ways to bring it down is all awesome in my book.

 

[The Red King]

Remember: It is never a hopless battle if you have time to prepare. They can always go get help.

 

[N'raac]

To the original question, I'd say no, you should not punish them.

But you should certainly make the repercussions of their failure known in the campaign, and use that as a springboard for further challenges and adventure. Great discussion on this thread!

Ultimately, the result will hopefully be looked back on, not with regret that they failed to prevent the summoning, but with fond memories of a great adventure that began with the summoning of the demon. Sometimes, failure is much more interesting and fun than success.