Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 2429304" data-attributes="member: 704">While looking at a different thread where someone was asking how to allow the players to encounter an overwhelmingly powerful opponent without ending the encounter in a TPK, something occured to me.  With the rules as written, there is pretty much no way to have a knock down drag out fight without one side or the other ending up dead.You can choose to start the encounter with dialog easily enough.  You can make the opponent pretty much invulnerable to the players and disinclined to even bother fighting them.  You can use magical communication so the players cannot even get near an opponent while still being able to talk to them.  You can even make the opponent pretty much inaccessible behind a locked door and force the players to find the key first.But you cannot have a face to face encounter that results in a fight wherein you can have either the players or the villians beaten to a bloody smear without logically having the losers killed.Example:  Lets say you happen to like the idea of having a local crime lord as an element in your campaign.  Lets put him at 18th level, with adequate bodyguards on hand.  Your players run into him in a bar at 9th level.  One of the players happens to like hitting things with his sword.  So after the 18th level rogue tells the players to leave the bar so he can do some business, the reckless player tries to stab him.At this point, a cuthroat DM is going to just TPK the players.  The Rogue probably has the means to completly destroy the players in combat.  Some DM's sove this by taking people prisoner.  The players escape, and later on, they take a 2nd shot at the opponent.  But if the rogue will be disinclined to take prisoners, the DM's pretty much limited to causing a slaughter and killing players.Potentially worse, the players could get the upper hand and kill the Rogue by the virtue of dog piling him, or rolling very well.The only viable solution I see is to have a 3rd party use a Raise Dead type spell on the loser of the fight.So what am I over looking?  What is the simplest way to let the players get in way over their heads without feeling obligated to TPK, or having to kludge in a 3rd party rescue, or taking the players prisoner?END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

Verification