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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5731638" data-attributes="member: 52073">It's not really a DM vs. players thing--when I say "think very carefully" I don't mean "I'm going to completely screw you over if you use this" I actually mean to consider whether you want to go ahead with the plan, and if you do the NPCs will adapt to suit as appropriate for those NPCs.  This works as much for introducing new material as it does for crazy tactics, and it works both ways: if the PCs don't want to deal with something, whether it's psionics or dragons or particular spells or whatever, the NPCs don't get to use it either.  Fair is fair.A fun example of how this policy can work out for the better, spoilered for length: [sblock]Four or five campaigns ago, one of my parties managed to establish a huge trading company and, through shrewd business dealings and plenty of theft and acquisition of competitors, managed to amass a rather large sum of funds, somewhere in the area of 3,000,000gp at level 8 or so.  Instead of trying to buy the best magic items they could to become nigh-invincible (which wouldn't necessarily have worked anyway; I'm permissive, not insane <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />), they decided that upon leveling up they were all going to take the Landlord feat and <s>abuse</s> make use of the Stronghold Builder's Guide to make a gigantic flying plane-shifting turtle-shaped fortress resembling Blastoise, complete with disintegrator cannons, scrying wards, anti-boarding weapons, and so forth.  When I said "Do you really want to do that?" they decided that yes, they had thought about it and really did want to do that.So over the course of the next four sessions, they sought out the best and most discreet crafters they could find, mined literal tons of adamantine, and otherwise got to work on their ship.  When it was done, they took it on a test flight that leveled a small town of the Evil Empire[sup]TM[/sup] they'd been covertly fighting.  The empire quickly got word of this, sent a bunch of assault teams against the turtle fortress (unsuccessfully), and decided that they needed some flying fortresses of their own to defeat the PCs.  The empire was ruled by elves who had made various pacts with Baator and the Abyss, so they had plenty of manpower and wealth to work with, and the construction commenced.  The PCs managed to screw with most of the ships being built, but enough reached completion through wards around the construction sites and plain ol' secrecy to give the Empire some breathing room.Now, this particular campaign had two parties of 5 PCs each in the same world, as I had 10 players wanting to play with me and didn't want to run them all in one party.  When the other party heard about the turtle fortress, they decided they wanted a ship too.  Not to be outdone, they spent a session in planning and recon, then assaulted a githyanki stronghold on the Astral Plane to steal one of their larger scouting vessels, take it back to their base on the Plane of Shadows, and trick it out with an intelligent item "artificial intelligence," prismatic hull shielding, rapid-fire transdimensional ballistas, the works.  They proceeded to engage in their own guerrilla warfare against the Empire.By the end of the campaign, we'd transitioned from a covert sneak-and-destroy campaign of infiltration, misdirection, and subterfuge against the Empire to a major plane-wide war fought by flying battleships, culminating in a massive battle between the most powerful vessels on each side.  On the PC side, the F.T.F.[sup](Flying Turtle Fortress)[/sup] Godzilla and the S.G.S.[sup](Stolen Gith Ship)[/sup] Astral Dreadnought; on the Empire side, a similarly tricked-out Ship of Chaos flown by demons and the custom-built Star-Destroyer-esque Hammer of Nessus flown by devils.  After a series of plane-hopping conflicts including a cat-and-mouse chase through Limbo, an ambush in Pandemonium, an attempted boarding action in the Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum, and a brief jaunt to the Far Realm, the PCs emerged victorious, though it was a very close call with lots of lucky rolls on both sides.Now, most DMs, being relatively sane, might have said "Stronghold Builder's Guide?  No way in the Hells!" or would have had it disallowed from the beginning.  Some might have fiated their way around the PCs' protections and preparations or otherwise tried to make their plans fail to get "back on track" with the plot.  However, it worked out very well for us, everyone loved the campaign, and they're still talking about it 4 years later. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />[/sblock]</blockquote>

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