Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5064028" data-attributes="member: 8835">One of the flops I ran was an encounter modeled off of B5's the gathering.The Paladin was the commander of an island city, and an ambassador was kidnapped.  He has a lead as to where the bad guy was, so he went down there to confront him.The bad guy sees him, says a a few words, and moves to attack (with initiative being rolled).  The paladin player continues trying to talk to the bad guy for several rounds, taking damage, but not fighting back.  It wasn't until he was nearly dead that he finally started attacking.I had to have the ambassador sweep in to rescue him, just as he fell unconcious (went below 1HP).  Not the feel I was going for...One of the mistakes I had made, was in a pre-campaign talk with the player, explaining how this campaign would require more diplomacy and delegation, than just going in chopping.  He took that to an extreme.  I had meant for him to "issue orders to investigate/accompany" to felllow PCs (much as in StarTrek:TNG, Dr. Crusher goes on away missions because she showed up on the set that day of filming).  Instead, he'd delegate to NPCs (ignoring perfectly capable PCs sitting at the table), and he'd try to talk to bad guys when it should have been painfully obvious that he needed to be chopping...The other mistake was in how I had structured that encounter/adventure.  I assumed it would be a hack-n-slash with a few dying words encounter.  I had completely negated diplomacy as an option.I standby the fix to bring in an outside assist.  The player/PC knew they lost, no sense killing them and ruining a longer story arc.  If an encounter's going bad and you want to spare the PCs, you have to bring in an external event or party to change the nature of the situation, so they can escape, parley or win.  The trick is to not be deus ex machina about it.One thing to ponder, if the current encounter is going south, it is probably not worth adhering to the rest of the adventure, especially when the next encounters is more of the same.  It's time for the dragon to not be home, and for enemies of the current encounter to be in the area for some "enemy of my enemy assistance".  I'd be really hesitant to follow the original adventure if the first encounter nearly trashed the party, and they haven't gotten any new advantage. Something's gotta change, or defeat is obvious.</blockquote>

Verification