DM_Blake
First Post
Ashrem Bayle said:We had come upon an enemy encampment. There was a guard tower, at the top of which was a guard on watch. He had a bell which he would ring if he saw anything. So the rogue hatched his devious plan. He drank an invisibility potion, scaled the outer wall of the tower, and stealthily sneaked up beside the guard. His goal was to eliminate the guard silently so the others could approach.
The guard stood there, unaware of the rogue, looking out over the surrounding area. But what could the rogue do? His only option was a sneak attack. So he did it, inflicting a nice chunk of damage. But the guard wasn't killed, and on his next action, he rang the bell.
Round 1:
Still silent and invisible, the rogue refocuses. Guaranteed initiative advantage.
Round 2:
Rogue positions himself within reach of the guard and the bell, then he sneak attacks from invisibility. This is a surprise round, so guard does nothing.
Round 3:
Guard rolls initiative, but not very likely he beats the refocused rogue. Rogue full attacks with sneak attack since guard is still flat-footed. If guard survives all that, guard can try to ring bell which provokes an attack of opportunity.
If, after all this, then I begin to question why the DM is so determined to foil the player's well-laid plans. As a DM, I would be saying, "Gosh, seems I made this guard a little to overpowered. The rogue did 60 points of damage, but the guard has 80 HP. Well, I'll just pretend he had 50 and tell the rogue he dropped the guard."
The only way I wouldn't propagate the story and reward the player's creative problem solving by allowing the plan to work is if
A. The rogue rolled horribly, natural 1s on this attacks, incredibly low damage. I would, at this point, say "Great plan, but fate obviously had it in for you. The guard rings the bell."
B. I had carefully scripted this event to fail. I have a definite plan for this encounter, and ringing that bell is part of it. Although, I would still probably reward the player by letting his plan work, but something else fails. Thinking on my feet, I would probably do something like "The guard dies silently, but then falls over the rail and plummets to the ground below where his corpse crashes into a pile of spears and other metal weapons, causing a horrible rucus. From somewhere inside the encampment you hear people shouting an alarm."
But in truth, in the initial scenario, I would have simply ruled that this was a situation where a coup-de-grace would be applicable, and I would inform the player that his character recognizes this opportunity (in case the player doesn't know of the rule, or in case he knows it well enough to know that normally he couldn't do it here).