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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rkarnes" data-source="post: 5949735" data-attributes="member: 6694707">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.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.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.</blockquote>

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