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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ForceUser" data-source="post: 2739013" data-attributes="member: 2785">I just don't put players in those situations. If they do face an overwhelmingly superior foe, I make sure that it's a role-play encounter and that the bad guy isn't planning on fighting. There are plenty of ways to rationalize this. Perhaps the BBEG doesn't consider them important enough to waste energy killing. Perhaps he's baiting them because he wants to goad them into some sort of action. Perhaps he simply swung by to gloat. Even if the BBEG isn't aware of who the PCs are or has no qualms about killing them offhandedly, it is still your responsibility to ensure that the PCs have an opportunity to escape. Let me give you an example from my current campaign.After the 5th-level group crawled through a dungeon filled with kobolds, they found the lair of the kobolds' leaders--a cabal of kobold necromancers intent upon raising up a dark power and controlling it. As is dramatically appropriate, the PCs encounter the necros while they are in the middle of a summoning ritual to call forth a Great Dark Entity. The PCs disrupt the ritual, but the entity arrives anyway--and starts killing kobold necromancers. Taking this as their cue, the PCs flee. Through description and some Spellcraft checks, I make it quite clear that the creature seems to be a huge living version of a combination of some nasty spells (Evard's black tentacles and vampiric touch, to be precise). As the creature gorged itself on terrified kobolds, they escaped the dungeon and didn't look back.Later, they encountered the creature again, but it still did not kill them, this time because the living spell (a living wish, actually), had gained self-awareness and wanted to thank the PCs for freeing it. The problem, of course, is that the creature is horribly amoral, but they can do nothing but try to persuade it not to kill people, and they know it. They will have to deal with the horrid creature decisively much later in their careers.That's how I tend to run BBEGs that the PCs can't hope to defeat. Still, if I for some reason felt that I *must* place them in violent opposition to a creature much more powerful than they, I would make sure that they had help, such as a powerful artifact that levels the playing field. Or, I might make it such that the goal is not to defeat the creature, but to keep it at bay while they accomplish a vital task.Hope that helps.</blockquote>

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