Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5952553" data-attributes="member: 150">First: I don't think it's punishment to hit them with the Demon. You've warned them, they know it's potentially coming, and that it's bad.  A TPK would be bad, because it would end the story, but there are LOTs of ways to work around that. Maybe they get knocked down, dying, and some peasant saves them, pulls them into a root cellar under a demolished house where they can recover while they Demon prowls the landscape. I'd be tempted to immobilize them with the horrific presence -- maybe go so far as to INCREASE the save DC so they're less likely to save very often -- and leave them to watch, paralyzed and helpless, as the demon trashes the town.One of the Keys is what the demon wants. It will help a lot of the demon's goals don't include necessarily fighting the PCs.  That way, it can allow it's aura to take them out of the equation and ignore them.  Demons and devils are supposed to trade in mortal souls, and being summoned through to the mortal plane is like getting some free time in the vaults of Fort knox.  With so many souls around, it's possible that this thing doesn't want just any souls -- it wants the tasiest, most valuable ones.  The caviar of souls -- the souls of children. So, what if the demon trashes the whole town rounding up all of the children in town -- infants up pre-pubescents.  Takes them all off to some hideout to wait through the painful daylight hours, where it can kill and harvest the souls of the children without interruption. Then, in the morning, it might move on to another town -- or do as others have suggested, and start building a power base and sending out agents and servants. Maybe each soul harvested grants the power to bring in another lesser demon to serve it -- which both helps develop the reason for taking the kids alive (so they can be sacrificed in the ritual) and starts to build a power base of demons that the PCs can reasonably fight while they try to figure out what to do about the demon.  I'd be inclined to keep the demon around for a while as a for that can't be defeated in a toe-to-toe fight, so the PCs have to start looking for other ways to deal with it -- banish it, undo the summoning, etc.  There's a whole campaign sitting there waiting for you. -rg</blockquote>

Verification