*SPOILERS WITHIN* GMs, how do you keep your PCs alive?

[Kiniticyst]

They've burnt through their Pharasma's blessings to protect them from death, the steward has already turned up (twice) to save them from death that I'm running out of ideas and continuing to save their bacon is becoming cheap.

The AP works on the basis that the party has survived long enough to have given themselves divine gifts, have been told of visions of themselves in the future etc. So how many times have you had to deus ex machina to intervene and keep them alive? And how have your players reacted to it?

My party is currently in such an absolutely awful situation thanks to banging their heads against the wall that is Xanderghul multiple times. We've already had to do one planar rescue mission because of his prismatic sprays and now that they've fought him a second time we've ended up with:

One a statue and 3 on different planes with no means to return themselves, one of which will die in like 8 rounds (positive energy plane). How can I fix this without it being incredibly unsatisfying? I don't even know if the Steward can turn up this time as her Discern Location spell takes 10 minutes to cast..

[W E Ray]

I can't really offer AP-specific suggestions since my home-game is radically different than the published AP, but....

I recommend backing up and taking a look at the group as a whole -- remind yourself this game is suppose to be FUN. Not frustrating or Turtling or Railroaded. ....Are the Players having fun or are they getting frustrated?

There's no problem with changing material so as to make the game better for the Players -- yourself included. And if, when you take a step back to look at the past several sessions to analyze how much (or little) fun is being had, you realize that no one's having as much fun but a few little tweaks or changes A'INT gonna be enough to fix it-- have a Metagame conversation with the Players the very next session: "Hey guys, I've noticed the game is getting frustrated cuz the published material is too Turtling and too hard, and, looking at the game, it's gonna take more than a few minor tweaks to fix things. So I'm gonna introduce a few wacky-tacky things to help. Just, ramp up your level of verisimilitude a bit here-- Hey, Warpriest of Sarenrae, The Dawnflower comes to you in a dream and gives you six Ability Score Points to put whereever you want, an extra Feat, and $15K in gold. Hey, Ranger, your Dire Bear Animal Companion was diggin' in the dirt when y'all made camp and found an old Ranger's bag with his famous +4 Longbow and Belt of DEX & CON +6. Hey, Wizard,... Hey, Ninja, Hey Magus."

Give them a free Commune Spell and be generous with the 'Yes' or 'No' answers. Or, if Commune is a bit too much, Divination -- and be generous with the answer.

But they ought to have an idea of Xanderghul's tactics and can come up with a tactical plan for returning for the x time to fight him.

- - - -

In my own game all the RuneLords are awakening and none have gotten killed by other RuneLords yet. So, again, specifics from my RotRL campaign can't really help. But if you're having problems with the published material -- change it.

[Tangent101]

Give them Hero Points. Include a Temporary Hero Point for each game. Then reduce the number of Hero Points to "not die" from 2 points to 1. The group will probably hoard those Hero Points and use them to escape death each time.

[Yakman]

Well... for your particular dilemma... something like:

Spoiler:

Xanderghul is taking them out to the wood shed. You know who doesn’t like ole X? Alaznist. You know who is causing weird issues with time? Alaznist.

Your PCs are going to die from this battle. Hero points won’t help.

What will help is a rewind. Alaznist attacks in the middle of combat, trying to get X off the board before he can attain his full power.

The effect of this is a time whatever, and the PCs relive the fight backwards. In the end, you have 2 runelords facing off, and the party can skeedaddle while the Temple of the Peacock Spirit collapses around them.

Alternatively, X might just want to capture them. He knows he is too weak to fight Alaznist (for now) and needs the PCs to release the Sihedron heroes for him. Instead of killing the party, he locks them in a prison and you can have some fun super villain exposition. Maybe he gives them further directions when he releases them, and some cool Thassilonian gear.

After you get them out of the current pickle, then you can discuss hero points or other boosts to help them out.

I dunno. Just a thought.

[Kiniticyst]

Really appreciate the responses everyone, took everything on board and wen't with most of it!

My players in this group are against hero points as they don't like the faceless metagamyness of them (I love them in games I play in and we use them with my other runelords group I run simultaneously) so I didn't enforce them.

I went all out with divine intervention/gifts (as most of the PCs are deeply religious) and time travel shenanigans whilst all the while trying to keep the agency ball in the players court so they felt they were fixing themselves rather than the GM & deities sticking bandaids on everything (I find that tends to make their actions as players less meaningful).

W E Ray's notes really hit home the most, I had been too busy on trying to make the game serious and enjoyable instead of plain ol' fun. Most of my players tastes in fiction/games/movies tend to be more on the serious side as opposed to fun movies/comedies so moving forward I'm swaying the needle a little more in the latter's direction!