How do you introduce a powerful boss character, making it clear that he shouldn't be attacked yet?
I've been running games for about ten years and haven't run into this problem often, but recently I have started running a campaign for a couple of friends that seem to be in this mindset that the only two solutions for any challenge are "initiate combat, kill everything," or "no one draw a weapon, let's talk this out." No one is willing to try stealth, or running from combat. For context, the party is level one, and was just introduced to a character I have been building up as a major threat for the past three sessions.
When the guy finally shows up, I describe him as being a massive man with "equipment that clearly outclasses your own." I made it clear that he was powerful enough to be dominating an entire district of the city. The party decided that I was trying to hint that they should kill him and take his gear, even though the plans they had come to his base to steal were clearly visible and unguarded.
I panicked and scaled him down on the fly so that this level 8 character didn't immediately wipe the party.
What did I do wrong? I'm trying to avoid railroading and just saying they can't attack him, but I also don't want to punish them by killing everyone if I'm not doing a good enough job seeing him up as a long term fight.
Sure, they can attack. After one or two rounds when even their highest rolls don't hit him, and he's hitting for half their health or more... they'll get the message.
And if he's a real badass, maybe the party is so far beneath him that the ones who he drops into negatives... he just leaves, bleeding in the street. What's he care?
Anthony Thomas
You aren't going about it right if that's how your players think. I mean, I don't think anyone is in the wrong, but if that's how your players are thinking then you need to plan around it or accept that they are probably going to bum rush it and get themselves killed. If things did go as you explained it with you laying out the situation as well as making it clear that they should not attack the person and they did it anyways, there's not much else you can do.
The best advice I can give is to introduce it through reputation or in a scenario they can't attack them. (Not shouldn't, but actually cannot.) it might not be how you would like to do it, but if you don't want this party attacking them before they're ready then that's how it will probably have to be.
Unless you can think of a way to force them to go about things differently, but normally people will cry railroad.
Noah Gray
Kill one of your players
William Barnes
I had a similar situation with my group.
What I did was have them be flanked by body guards. Not a battalion or anything, but two dude/ttes with a shield, someone with a crossbow and sword, and a discount mage makes it clear that this person is important. Describe something of there's as being part of a Uniform, some crest/insignia/whatever and they usually get the point.
I do let the PCs kill them, but they have to know that there will be repercussions/reinforcements on the way.
Isaiah Moore
> >The best advice I can give is to introduce it through reputation or in a scenario they can't attack them. (Not shouldn't, but actually cannot.) it might not be how you would like to do it, but if you don't want this party attacking them before they're ready then that's how it will probably have to be.
Yeah that is a much smarter way to handle it. I haven't played a game with this group before, so I wasn't prepared for them to go all blood thirsty on this guy. I'm used to the kind of players that are always working to come up with some weird solution to avoid designed encounters. These guys are taking pretty much everything I put in front of them at face value, like if an enemy appears, it is there to be killed.
Jack Lopez
Have an important NPC let them know that it isn't a viable option.
Maybe they really want to kill someone, but it will end up worse for everyone. Killing some Officer in a podunk colony would cause the even more intolerable prince to come rule, and so on.
Adrian Lee
Decimate the group without killing them and burn the town/city they're in to cinders around them. Mob them with overwhelming mooks and introduce viable options of escape. Then don't give them access to bbeg until much later.
Ryan Campbell
I like this, particularity as it shows the consequences of them acting too soon - they get their asses kicked and innocents suffer in the process.
Henry Thomas
It's the only way to teach them really.
Xavier Cox
>I wanna attack him >alright, roll initiative >I got a 14 >k. Bad guy won initiative. He uses his turn to self-buff. Gimme a second while I roll out his bonuses Then pour an entire chessex pound-o-dice bag out on the table and start counting. I guarantee you your players will run like the wind first round.
Lincoln Nguyen
No panicking and scaling down. If they can't take a hint, they get what they deserve. If TPK is not your style, or are solid alternatives. Humiliating the party while leaving them alive (or maybe most of them alive except that one dude who was just asking for it, if there's indeed such a dude) is also much more effective.
William Wilson
Another option for future reference is have the party travel with an NPC as sort of a guide - to keep things on the rails. Make the NPC a higher level and have him/her demonstrate advanced abilities that the party might hope to achieve. This will help with low level encounters and starting out.
Phase two: Kill your darlings. If they fight it, use the NPC as cannon fodder to absorb damage and protect them - ultimately leading to him/her dying in a grand and bloody fashion. Make sure to drive home that even with the advanced abilities they were no match for this enemy.
>He is too powerful. I will stay and hold off bad guy! Take this item and deliver it to so and so. It is the only way to find the way to defeat him. GO NOW RUN!
white knight has been slain and evil is using his corpse as a flesh puppet.
Elijah Baker
By making it look weak and an easy prey, this way players attack it and I beat their asses hard, usually I kill 1 or 2 PCs.
Kayden Jackson
That's considered murder in my country. Also I probably wouldn't be able to GM for a few decades.
Alexander Powell
By destroying them so hard that if there's any survivor they won't want to continue the game I spent so much creating.
>party fighting scorpion covered in baby scorpions (look up scorpion spawning) >knocked swarm off momma, drove momma off >finishing off swarm/getting fucked up by swarm >humongous spider bursts out of the desert, snaps up momma, drags her back under the sand
PCs decided to fuck off.
James Scott
The party is so beneath them the won't bother killing them all.
The person fights and kills a thing that kicked the party's ass.
They are warned about the guy being super stronk
Easton Ortiz
I usually have them wreck an NPC in front of the party if I want to drive it home that they outclass the PCs. That or make sure to have some other display of power.
Rumors they hear in town or from NPCs are just that to them - rumors and hearsay. Show them that the guy is a boss in person and they'll start to believe it.
Cameron Bailey
>I panicked and scaled him down on the fly so that this level 8 character didn't immediately wipe the party. >What did I do wrong You just said it. >I panicked and scaled him down on the fly so that this level 8 character didn't immediately wipe the party.
You should've kept him how it was. The players would have learned.
Brayden Parker
From a distance, preferably with already established and strong NPCs dying as they fight him far away from where the characters can get to, making it clear he is strong and deadly.
This can have the side effect of makign your players overcautious and makign them call you "lkiller GM" and "trying to put them up agaisnt too powerful mosnters".
Players are annoying that way.
Luis Evans
God, are they. I had physical barriers, and NPCS telling them not to go into a basement, they went in, died, then blamed me.
Like....
Jaxon Nelson
Place him in a situation where he would clearly get the drop on the party if they attempted to fight him, even assuming he was remotely on their level. If they don't know that his figure is concealing a demigod, they can at least know that attacking him when he has the high ground is still a bad idea.
Adrian Lee
>Stealth
Honestly i hear this alot of the times but it always seems like an awful thing to do. You either have one person that can do it decently well, he does it but hes suddenly got all the spotlight and noone else does anything or fudges one roll and suddenly hes completely screwed. Alternatively you can have a party with several people completely incapable of stealth attempt it and its going to go about as well as you'd expect it.
In combat fucking up a roll can vary from not mattering to being bad, but in stealth its just a fail, gig is up. Stealth seriously doesn't seem to work at all in systems with large variance dice. I dont think id ever attempt any serious sneaking unless i knew for sure the gm wouldnt have me roll checks for every step I took.
Jace Mitchell
Have the character no-sell the party.
Fiat him appropriate stats/spells/abilities to take literally no damage in the first round and have him respond with stern patience.
"You are wasting your time. If you continue down this path, I will waste none of mine. Stand aside."
If anyone repeats, hit them with heavy blows and significant temporary stat damage. If your players have more than one level, hit them with a dose of level drain (This works rather well at low levels, especially if it occurs on a "normal" attack; No one wants to risk getting wrighted.).
A personal favorite of mine is to make the character cordial and pleasant: The Red Dragon Knight is a smiling, rambunctious carouser and loves telling campfire stories. He's also here to level the good King Harlus's castle single handedly, so if you have business in town, say so and he'll give you the morning to outpace him.
Jackson Bailey
First off, your players have to know what it is to lose. If they don't even know the possibility of loss they will never run no matter how grim the circumstances. They don't have to have lost to this foe, or even in this game, and the loss doesn't have to be total. But you need to establish the possibility. In my current campaign's first adventure, the players were defeated and captured by slavers while tracking some thieves, and working together with the thieves they had been trying to capture to escape. Losing the fight with the slavers meant I established the possibility they could lose early on, leading them to more carefully gauge their odds of victory later.
Then, you need a situation where either the odds seem overwhelming or death is certain. For the former, exponential reinforcements work well. For the latter, save or die poison or similar effects generally do the trick. Of course you'll need someone disposable to show it off (the foe's tardy messenger is always a fun one), and you'll need to provide enough of a threat for the players to not want to risk it. If one enemy holds the threat, players will want to rush him and disable it as quickly as possible. On the other hand, 12 archers on the balconies with poison-tipped arrows drawn do the job quite well.
Finally, never assume there is no possibility your players won't still risk it. Treat a choice by the players like a roll of the dice. The only way to keep it from going the way you don't want it to is to prevent it being rolled at all. Of course, if you prevent all the dice from rolling it won't be a game any more. But always account for what you'll do if your players do what you don't want them to, and try to avoid creating extra opportunities for a 'bad roll.' Even cautious players will take their chances if presented an opportunity often enough.
Daniel Jackson
But back to your problem, an easy way would be to actually present the character before they get to meet him in person. A party is much less likely to attack some dude with cool gear if they heard from many folks living around his hideout that he has a personal vendetta against paladins and slew a dozen already. Can be anything really, hearsays in the tavern, wanted posters detailing the deeds or even a field of corpses whose wounds match the villains weapon.
Evan Kelly
*and ended up working together with the thieves
I swear no matter how many times I proofread a post there's always something I miss.
Josiah Cooper
Presentation.
"Big and scary" is not much of a threat when just about everything they should fight is "big and scary".
If you properly presented him, and they still choose to fight him, then act accordingly. Have him spare them out of a sense of amusement, just kill one, TPK them, straight-up refuse to fight them as they are not a proper entertainment, there's many ways to do it.
If you give them options other than fighting, because fighting is suicidal, and they still choose fighting, then let them deal with the consequences. You'll be forced to either keep doing that, or have the stronger dude kill them much later in the campaign, when they have more of an attachment to their characters and therefore it'll hurt more.
It's better to teach them a lesson with your 8 level dude against a bunch of level 1s than having a beholder slaughter all their level 8s. Him being a human actually lets you be merciful even if he kicks their teeth in
Evan Kelly
Not sure if this has been said cause I couldn't be assed to read every reply but what I do is have them foght a scaled down but still more powerful than them version. Make it clear they fucked up but don't make it seem impossible. Just as he seems weakened have him pull out some actual power, cast the party away, applaud them for their strength and then leave. Doesn't have to be exactly that. But show somehow that BB McEG was holding back.
Noah Sanders
Humiliation doesnt work, kill one of them or have somebody relevant to that character show up. Like if the boss character is that cyber oni have her still human master or the person she trained with show up to fufil their own personal vendetta against them. After they run away have the last thing they see of that character be them getting killed. If you pick the kill one player option have the boss kill one of them and say something cheesy like you arent worth my time.
Zachary Sanders
Skywalker their shit
Joshua Lopez
1.discourage them from engaging by putting some kind of obstacle in the way,like a chasm or the city guard.
Wyatt Ortiz
If you have a snowflake PC/DMPC, use the Worf effect.
Jayden Rodriguez
>I'm trying to avoid railroading and just saying they can't attack him
Having a deadly character fight at his actual level isn't railroading at all. Railroading is completely shutting down choices; it's completely reasonable for choices to have consequences - even if those consequences result in a TPK.
If a PC attempts suicide, would you change the damage to nonlethal? Always fudging in the player's favour is just railroading by another method - no matter what boneheaded decisions the PCs make nothing bad will ever happen and the PCs will always come through.
As for advice, it's unclear which of the two possible scenarios you fall under::
1) You don't actually want a TPK to be a real possibility in the campaign. If this is the case, why even throw a clearly labeled enemy at your PCs that could potentially TPK them this early? There's plenty of alternatives - the BBEG could send a minion or lieutenant that's difficult but not unkillable.
2) TPKs are acceptable consequences, but you didn't want to lose the rest of the session. In that case, you need to first establish clearly that that "yes, this will be a no-fudge campaign" and that "I will not scale encounters to your level". If you've done both of those, already, do not fudge - kill the PCs. That will definitely get your players to realize "oh, he was actually serious," and they'll definitely pay attention in the future.
Many GMs promise "challenging sandboxes", but unless you actually let the dice fall as they will that threat will always be empty.
Luis Green
There's also a number of in-between options. The bad guy could kill a couple and then have the remainder taken alive, for example. This salvages a potential TPK scenario - replacement characters can be introduced as fellow prisoners.
You could spare all of the PCs, of course, but this again risks communicating the idea that their (virtual) lives will never be in (simulated) peril. For all that people complain about killer DMs, it actually takes guts to be one (or a certain detached sociopathy, at least).
Brandon James
They're level 1, so let them leeroy at the boss and the boss starts casually maiming and killing them. Better now than after six months of gaming.
Either they're seriously taking this like a curated themepark MMO main quest line and seriously believe you would never show them something they can't kill - in which case you really need to break them from that crippling mindset;
Or they're just kind of dense, in which case it's perfectly ok to hold a "here's where you fucked up" post mortem where you explain about not poking sleeping dragons.
Ryder Campbell
Hearsay leading up to the encounter, strangers and questgivers telling the players not to fight the character, or bard's singing of how powerful the character is.
Description. Have the character do something truly ridiculous as a dynamic entry. Punching out a dragon or something. If that isn't possible, just try to accurately capture how strong he is and hint to the players that fighting him is a bad idea. Sounds like you tried this one, but maybe emphasise it a little more? Seems like more of an issue with your players than anything though, so we move to option three.
If all else fails, just let the NPC fuck the party up.
After two turns of them either completely failing to pierce his defense while he chunks them for half their hitpoints every time he makes a move, the party will hopefully realise that this isn't a fight they can win. If they STILL don't get the message, introduce long term penalties to a character or two as he breaks them over his knee or some such, then have him tire of the fight and wander off, telling some minions to finish up. The proceeding fight should be tough, but not unwinnable for the now crippled party, and when they win they should have an opportunity to leave alive with their injured comrades.
If they don't leave, and instead decide to go after the guy again, just declare them too stupid to live and let the TPK fall where it may.
Gavin Morales
Don't introduce boss characters that shouldn't be attacked yet. Chances are players will attack them anyway.
To deal with that issue, you unfortunately have to teach players the hard way. If they attack someone obviously stronger than themselves, have him fight back ordinarily. Unfortunately this might kill a few PC:s, but hopefully they learn about "think first, act later" afterwards.
Oliver Harris
You have somehow tell them that he is stronger than them, if not ooc, than ingame through NPCs, or the feelings PCs get. Or his reputation. If nothing works, just tell them that he is very strong and the chances of winning are very low.
Justin Jenkins
Just tell them, he is level 8. Problem solved. If the hinting how strong he is doesn't work, than this is a good solution.
John Parker
If you're certain the players will attack the boss at first sight, give the boss monster a reason not to kill the PC's the first time it/he/she defeats them.
If you think they might anyway, but aren't sure, make the reason something the players wouldn't be privy to until AFTER they wake up, unconscious or captured etc... and if they don't attack the boss monster, discard the unrevealed reason to not-kill.
Owen Gray
Boss soundly defeats the party, but was not amused enough by their efforts to give them a clean death. Instead leaves the party tied up naked with carrots in their asses in a local town square.
Jaxson Long
Allowing a player to shine when their abilities most matter would be good DMing. They should be rewarded for using their skills to the best of their ability.
For example, my group wasn't capable of walking around with our weapons (being attacked on site if caught with them). so the druid pipes up "just hand all the weapons to me and i'll wild shape". Me and the gm, simultaneously, and after a short pause went "ok". Neither of us expected it, but in that moment she shined.
Not everyone good at everything, and highlighting strengths feels better than pointing out weaknesses.
Jonathan Anderson
Make sure they've heard about this person before they meet. A teacher, mentor, parent, sure, or other ally should mention them to strike fear.
Jonathan Hill
>with carrots in their asses
This is hilariously specific.
Justin Gonzalez
Did it once. Very famous evil warrior with a legendary armor. It was clear the guy was on the way to take over the kingdom, single-handedly. Army piled-up outside of the gates and charged him when they saw him. He just casually strolled by as their weapons shattered on him and they just stared in horror. He never attacked the guards or anything, because they literally couldn't do anything to him. Party decided it wasn't their problem when the king was killed by the warrior.
Hudson Young
In essence, they finally decided that they should do something and started researching stuff when the warrior didn't actually take over the kingdom. He just started killing everyone, walked to the next kingdom and kept doing it.
Hudson Perez
Perhaps consider non-lethal damage if it is appropriate for situation.
