I have a hostage situation, at first I thought they would fight there way in and battle it out. I set up a moderatly difficult enounter if they chose to do so.
They opted to make a deal and give them a way out of town in the form of a boat for the hostages. On the way to get the boat in the undead risen mess that is now the city they came across several smaller groups of undead. One of my players says, "Well we are not going to have to fight the hostage takers now so go ahead a blow all your spells". They fireball and blast away the whole parties spells per day on sub-par enemies.
Now they are going to deliver the boat and I have a surprise in mind for them. Before releasing the most important noblewoman the badguy is going to instead at the last minute take her with them as insurance that they will be able to leave the town unharmed. "I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further."
This will lead to an awesome boat chase and combat between the groups no doubt. Now because of the great advice of my player they will have pretty much no spells to do this challenge, which would have been moderately difficult at full power.
I am really not a fan of fudging numbers or dice rolls, it must be the table top gamer in me. Would you change the encounter to make it easier because of the party's dumb tactical error in judgment, or would you just let lay in the bed they made? They could always run away if things get really bad I guess.
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They made their bed. Hopefully they don't all die but really they need to learn a lesson here. Don't pull punches here. Maybe fudge a roll(or lower an AC/HPs) or two if it looks like a possible TPK, but if a party member or 2 die, let them.
Changing the encounter is really no different than fudging the rolls....They made a big tactical mistake that should have big consequences.
They made their bed. Hopefully they don't all die but really they need to learn a lesson here. Don't pull punches here. Maybe fudge a roll(or lower an AC/HPs) or two if it looks like a possible TPK, but if a party member or 2 die, let them.
Changing the encounter is really no different than fudging the rolls....They made a big tactical mistake that should have big consequences.
What he said. They had their fun blasting mooks let them learn from that. There is never a good reason to waste your spells, because evil will always try and get at you when you are not ready for it.
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Bad news is they will will be going in low on spells. The good news is that the baddies primary goal isn't to murder the PCs but to make a tactical withdrawal out of the city safely. The hostage they are taking is a means to an end only. So it won't be like their enemies are trying to kill them, just delay them until the big bad can leave.
So being low on spells just means it will be unlikely they will be able to stop them from leaving the scene and taking the most important hostage! So at most you're looking at having some PCs with bruised egos as the big bad does whatever he wants and they are powerless to stop them or they heroically try to save the hostage and do well enough that the big bad is forced to dump the hostage into a deadly situation (death trap, waterfall, bottom of the river, etc.) so the PCs have to save them and the big bad gets away. All in all, sounds like great story and a villain the PCs will come to love to hate. Fun!
Agreed. Besides, this will give your players a chance to exercise some ingenuity. If they can pull it off low on spells, it'll be a bigger triumph than if they were fresh. Never underestimate 'em. They may surprise you!
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What you have here is a situation that game masters dream of, but can never engineer on purpose. A villain who escapes without a teleportation spell of some kind. All this guy has to do is leave some minions behind to stall the players and he's "won" by escaping with the hostage. Now the players have to track the villain down and go round 2 with him. Hopefully with their resources in tact.
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And since the group was parting ways with the terrorists on somewhat amiable terms (is there an alignment discussion in there somewhere?!) I don't expect that the terrorists would have any problem with a spellcaster using message with the hostage in order to keep apprised of whether the hostage was being harmed while the bad guys flee in the boat.
I agree with the others: don't pull any punches.
However, I don't think it would be a good idea for you to pump up the encounter just because you knew that the PCs had blown through all their spells. It's one thing to set up this parting shot in advance and have the party run smack into it, and it's another to let the party burn through their spells and then decide to add this extra encounter.
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I run a low resources game...er, in every game. It is probably more hardcore then most people are used to (not saying I'm better, that its just a style we play in all our games) but my players have learned to count on one thing that I can't take away -their wits.
The short answer is - no, do not adjust the cr based upon spells per day. Is a trap worth more because the party didn't bring a rogue? Spells are not and should not be the cornerstone of party power, it is a huge factor but not the only one.
Remember there are tons of resources available to PCS. Magic items (potions, wands, weapons with uses), there are also NPCs - who might be of some great or limited use - for some kind of trade off, makes for some great role-playing and quirky characters who can be helpful (think Zeus - Samuel Jackson - in Diehard 3, super helpful, super pain in the ass for McClane).
Also remember that the bad guy also has limited resources, even if he has an army of mooks most of those guys may not be that reliable, he may have aspects of his out which got screwed up, need to change plans, etc. He doesn't have unlimited casting ability, creatures, etc. Wouldn't it be funny if one of the bad guys lead henchies decided to take the hostage for himself - or broke the rules and went after the characters while there is a "no fire" rule between the bad guy and the pcs?
It isn't a perfect world for either side - use that. If will add a depth of cool the players will enjoy. Also, depending on the type of game you want to run it may be a good lesson for casters to not nova and waste spells at every encounter (ok, now we sleep!) - fighters need to be cautious about their hp at every encounter and play smart, casters should learn to do the same.
All this is my opinion of course.
Agreeing with the agreeing of the agreements above. Play it as it lies. It's a great new adventure hook, because if the villain gets away, well, looks like we have to actually chase him down and win back fair maiden. Oh, and don't forget the possible anger of relatives of the noblewoman who were also hostages. Man did the players blow it, and they may have a lot to answer for out of combat too. It really makes for a great roleplaying scenario.
My players have done some idiotic things in their time. But never twice. Leave it as is. Next time someone gives them bad advice they may think twice before following it.
This is a learning experience. The lesson they are learning is: "If you assume, you might end up being cut up in little pieces and fed to the villain's pet lion, so don't frikkin' think you can do something foolish because of your poorly misguided belief that you know the future."
I'm not saying you should ruthlessly punish metagaming (you are allowed to show a bit of ruth), but you shouldn't encourage it by rewarding them.
My personal policy is that the first time, I'll go easy on them - they'll feel their defeat, but they will live to regret their error, and still be able to win.
But if they insist? I always have several blank character sheets with me when I'm running the game....}>
This bad guy is in no means the BIG bad guy and essential to have live past this event. I would just as well see him taken down right now, I have soooo many plot tangents all running into this point of the cursed item destruction casting the mass empowered unhallow which raised the dead and caused super-natural darkness for 20 miles around the city.
Iron Kingdoms RPG, check it out it is awesome.
Anyway they made the exchange for prisoners. Th party tried to sabotage the boat but I had an inspector sent out by the terrorists to check things before anyone was released. They seemed to think it was reasonable to have the control room drenched in oil and barrels of coal next to it. After much diliberation they fixed things up in exchange for a hostage, then the others in the tower used a feather fall rod to float down, with the key noblewomen hostage to the boat.
So the deal was once everyone was on the boat she gets let go. But of course I had to have the leader change the deal to where he is taking the woman to ensure no foul play is afoot, and agrees to drop her off on the docks on the end of the town as they leave the city.
"That wasn't the deal!!!!!!"
"I have altered the deal, pray that I do not alter it further!"
(Corney yes, but too good to pass up!)
One of my PCs loses his mind and has an angry freak out because of this twist (he apologized later for it but he gets really frusterated about nothing going easy for the party, which it doesn't, but hey, without conflict how much fun are we having?).
One of my PCs has a fire bomb which he starts charging to the boat to toss at them. The other players talk him out of it saying they will kill the girl, (Damn that would have been awesome, then they could have tracked him down with the launch and had the awesome boat scene I wanted).
So they have to fight their way through the city, where they do find the hostage dropped off as planned, but not for the reason they think. The hostage has a bonded magic item that it atracted unwanted attention fron the creatures the massive unhallow has summoned as well as the malicious raiding necromancers who are taking advantage ot the dire situation.
So I guess everything worked out fine, I will have to save the awesome NPC character build I set up in case of a fight for another time, sigh.
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Good job, sounds like things went well (despite the faux pas by one of your players). Haha I like the magic item left behind to attract undead attention, nice touch that.
As for the surviving baddie, count your blessings! Having a re-occurring baddie will always yield some fun story. Whether its spotting the guy in the middle of a crowd that spontaneously generates a chase sequence (I like to use if a session's pacing starts lagging a bit), finding the bastard smirking at the foot of some big-bad, or seeing that some other group of do-gooders managed to bag the guy where their group had failed. All present some fun interactions and events.
Cheers and happy gaming!