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It sounds to me like the problem is with the players, not the scenario. Speak to them out of game, punishing them in game seems to me to be about as immature as these players are acting.

Losing druid and ranger powers over a single event to me implies they went out and burned down a forest and chased down the surviving creatures and tortured them to death. Allowing a combat creature to participate in the dangers of combat is pretty much the whole point of an animal companion. If in character they enjoyed the death of the companion and acted in this manner for several encounters then the measures you used sound more reasonable.

weaselmcguff wrote:

A little more insight to what has happened.

The party comes across a cart, rogue opens the chest, reads the runes on the bottom of small devices. Spells name out to party. Ranger says Hi Ted. device disolves and becomes mist. Ranger pass will save, rogue fails. That night 2 Fire elementals come in and teleport rogue off to mage. (Who party was looking for). Rogue is out of picture now, detained not with party. they get to this tower, search the tower, they find stuff take it put it back etc. come to top 4 statues facing 1 way, 2 tombs facing 1 way, all which is up. Portal that changes colors in the middle. They didnt investigate the statues or tombs at all. (which was the way out). wanted to hack and slash, no RP. finally rogue freed, boss comes, and then tells them to give items back. items go back party on their own. party been placed in a "different" plane. Cleric, ranger and druid want to hack and slash. Get attacked by ankhegs ranger uses cat as tank. Ankhegs killed. Ranger and druid said make cat tank now. 5 Hell hounds jump the party, 1st thing ranger does is ask for buff on cat then has it attack hell hound, they then split the party to keep healing cat. Ranger and druid hitting hounds but splitting their hits up amoung the 5. Cleric is surging healing pet and healing hounds due to only 2 can be not healed. Rogue was trying to get 1 off healer while everyone else was worried about the other 3 on the cat.

Uhm... this sounds REALLY reasonable, moreover they seemed to do a good job. how bad was the dm rolling that he couldn't kill the cat with (max) 24 hp. each hell hound doing 1d8+1d6+1 is average 8 damage. if there was a turn where they all hit for average damage the cat is at 0 unconscious and prone so when the cleric healed it would need to take 3 AOOs to stand up probably killing it.

What should they have done, the only reasonable thing could have been for the ranger to move to the front. but i've gotta say, props go to that little cat, no matter how buffed a level 2...

Agreed, they literally could not have done more to help the cat. You have stated you have a problem with theses 2 players and it appears to me that your judgement is guided by this fact. As a DM you can do literally whatever you want, but if I saw you doing this in a campaign to someone then I would not be playing with you.

In all honesty you sound completely out of line here both stretching the bounds of how rangers and druids losing their powers to an unintended extreme, whilst simultaneously attacking an animal companion over the party (and then blaming the party) and then being blind to the fact that few could have done more to help the animal. Finally you fudged in crits to kill the animal which is literally the OPPOSITE of what most Gm's would do.

You should deal with your problems with these players outside of the game imo, in game they have done nothing wrong. You should probably apologise too.

Here is my humble submission:

Cathy the Crazy Cat Lady (Summoner 10):
** spoiler omitted **

Terry the (Eidolon) Tiger:
** spoiler omitted **

Here's how it goes down: Cathy casts the wordspell Selected Servitor VI Boost as a standard action to summon 1d4+1 Celestial/Fiendish Dire Tigers, plus and additional one due to Superior Summoning. She summons each 10 feet away from the BBEG (who is hopefully not Neutral) from where each attacks to the best of its ability (charge + pounce +...

Except you have made one of the easiest mistakes to make with a wordcaster. Boosting "summon servitor" boosts the TARGET word (selected). Boosting the selected target word raises the level of ALL of the effect words in a spell by 4! This means that you are trying to use a level 10 spell. It's a REALLY easy mistake to make though, so I don't blame you for thinking it works in that way.