Have you ever created an undefeatable enemy for your players?

What if none of that matters, and you lose anyway because the DM has thought of all that.

What if I destroy bad guy's army, kill his children (who were leaders of said army) and kill the dragon personally (because I was smart and got a dragon slaying sword beforehand), while my teammates prevent the evil mastermind's escape? What if I manage to pull the mcguffin out of his hands and now I control the dragon?

There is no foolproof plans no matter how many layers you add. You plan for the best, prepare for the worst and look for openings to exploit (which may also be traps), but nothing guarantees your success.

What if the DM didn't think that I poisoned his drink?

Occasionally, or at least an enemy that the PCs can't defeat, and not undefeatable per se.

What if the DM didn't think of shit and is just pulling things out of his ass so he can jerk off about it later?

"Chellenge" what a miss guiding word. The pc would shrink the bastard and loot the corpse first, use the dragon to kill the army, kill the dragon, and hunt the son down for sport.

Undefeatable at the scale of the characters, or undefeatable at any level they can see?

Because the Nazi war machine was not defeatable by any group of allied soldiers. No matter how successful they were, any true victory would have been impossible without the entire military alliance.

Violating that principle should be rare. Depending on game it is not even difficult to have the players win the war through their own personal efforts, fighting each bit of the enemy's forces in individual battles until they're all gone, but it loses verisimilitude. What is the point on having a faction if they're a footnote to what you personally did? The entire might of a kingdom being reduced to a cheerleading squad and loot is a bad, bad decision to make, IMO despite being very easy.

Enemies which can't be defeated, at all, are typically best done as broad abstract things- man vs. nature, rather than man vs. man. A zombie apocalypse with no cure, a planet knocked from it's orbit and spiraling into the sun- you can do those sorts of stories, where it is not intended that the players defeat the force, only successfully fight against specific manifestations.

Don't bullshit undefeatability, though. If you didn't figure something out and didn't plan for it, no-selling tactics that *should* work requires that you either come up with, on the spot, good and interesting reasons it doesn't, or just letting it work despite your plans.

You don't have to get everything you wanted, the train does not have to remain completely on the rails. If the players outperform expectations let them have their win, there is always next session.

The DM thought of that and is still way ahead of you.
What do you do?

What if I caused the apocalypse? By unleashing Pelor's unbridled wrath against anything not LG, of course.

>Tfw I invested in Disarming abilities and finally get to use them.
>Tfw I grab the macguffin out of the enemies hand and order the dragon to eat him.
>tfw my group is still at full power and ready to fight the army and we now have a dragon on our side.
>tfw when our cleric slaps the son with a geas to force the son to atone for the enemies sins.
>tfw we take the dragon out to a place with little to no civilized inhabitants and destroy the macguffin, so we can subdue the dragon without risking the death of civilians.

you will notice that I give no fucks see here
ergo he can not be ahead of me, if anything I come out on top here. at least in the second case

also I don't think I signed up for grim derp, because this is the only place this is acceptable, barring fighting GOD. and if I have to do that then why the fuck am I playing?

Point out that more than half of his wins are actually losses, and he's only trying to soothe his ego by pretending that they are wins.

Of course, if he is way ahead of me, he'd be dead from my poison by now.

The DMPC escapes on his space ship, and you are reviled for destroying an entire planet.

The MacGuffin was superglued to his hands

He built up an immunity to said poison long ago. And he still continues live and to win.

why would you do that?

realy, that's lawful stupid at absolute best and chaotic evil at worst

I see you missed out mine, now riddle me this. are you this foul wretch whom despoils this good game??

Maybe he dis-armed him, get it dis-armed him hahaha

You know avatars are against the rules, right, Frank?

What if the entirety of reality has Pelor's light spread across it?
You've got to smite ALL the evil.

I kill and eat the meat of the villain's son and wear their skin as a disguise. When the other players arrive to defeat the villain I stab him in the back and take the macguffin. Still wearing my villainson disguise and using the macguffin I assemble the army and have the dragon attack it, then control the dragon into an active volcano.

With all three issues handled I flex out of my boy costume, abandoning any association with the villain and write a best selling novel in which the players defeated the villain using teamwork and the power of friendship.

Yes, I just slapped Immortality on and that's about it.

chaotic good and neutral

It is Pelor's will to enforce order.

hmph if we are to bring our worst then so be it.

I am sorry fa Veeky Forums uys but I must unleash hell upon this failure of a DM
I unleash..the furrys and weeaboos

Dude, in the "escape" one, the villain gets the shit beaten out of him, loses his dragon, and is forced to run away. That's not a victory.
And in the martyr ending he fucking dies, his plans are foiled and all he accomplishes is making the hero look bad.

Because not every campaign is Save the World from The Big Bad, and sometimes the PCs are more limited in scope.

Kill BBEG. Take macguffian, command dragon to kill the son and any other high ranking commanders of note.

Tell the army to disband before I kill them too.

I win.

>you kill me
>I win
Haha, what?

>doesn't even specify how macguffin works
Shit post

realy, you only just figured that out?

Wait how does the guy know to kill her in the past?

he comes back with her, idiot.

Yes, everyone here started reading at the threads inception

She drags his mind with her. Duh?

not even that look at the fucking title, it don't get more blunt than that.

[forgive my grammar, just imagine a red neck saying it]

He's afraid of a damn tomato.

Bush at least took a shoe.

hahaha wow so funny! epic!

>Then die again, freak!
>again
It implies both of them are sent back to the past, fully aware of the events that happened "previously" (later in the chain of events, but also earlier in time).

Good answer, and a good example of a way to use an invincible NPC. Not really an "enemy" though, more of a setting referee.

>Because the Nazi war machine was not defeatable by any group of allied soldiers.
Sure they were. It was just brad pitt and that guy from the office and that one other weird looking dude. I saw the movie.

>doesn't even specify how macguffin works
How the macguffin works is immaterial. That's what that word means. It's a thing that means a great deal to the characters but nothing to the audience. Hitchcock said of it:

"The main thing I've learned over the years is that the MacGuffin is nothing. I'm convinced of this, but I find it very difficult to prove it to others. My best MacGuffin, and by that I mean the emptiest, the most nonexistent, and the most absurd, is the one we used in North by Northwest. The picture is about espionage, and the only question that's raised in the story is to find out what the spies are after. Well, during the scene at the Chicago airport, the Central Intelligence man explains the whole situation to Cary Grant, and Grant, referring to the James Mason character, asks, "What does he do?" The counterintelligence man replies, "Let's just say that he's an importer and exporter." "But what does he sell?" "Oh, just government secrets!" is the answer. Here, you see, the MacGuffin has been boiled down to its purest expression: nothing at all!"

Yes. He was an immortal that returned to life quickly after being killed, but forgot everything if he suffered enough cranial or mental or spiritual trauma, such as decapitation by the fighter, mind rape by the wizard, and soul rape by the cleric. Then he would have to regain a reason for hating the party again, which was pretty easy seeing as they made no attempts to disguise their misanthropy.

Yup. Turns out when you create an ancient goddess of a city who has been really pissed off at an invading army, intending her to be an on the edge annoyance (stuff like putting small curses on the party, making one party member unable to drink alcohol without vomiting stuff like that) and your players attack her, you do need to slap them down. You are competent street thugs. Not godslayers.

What if I befriend the dragon after freeing it from your control?
What if I seduce the dragon?

True, but do you have enough murder to solve this specific problem?

I'm a PC. I'm insulted you even felt the need to ask that question.

This would be more fun if you were thinking of specific ways to "think ahead" but you aren't even saying how he thought ahead. This is lazy bait, the worst kind.

Well, he's overthinking it, of course.

I'd skip all the nonsense about the dragon and the McGuffin and such. There are only a few relevant outcomes:

>We both live, and differences are resolved amicably
>He gets away and I live; we are still enemies
>I die or am otherwise incapacitated and he is free to act
>He dies or is otherwise incapacitated and I am free to act
>Both of us die or are otherwise incapacitated

Come up with a solid plan for each of those contingencies, and deal with the details as they come up. The framework is what's important.

In this case, for example, ensure that someone else is killing his son while you're killing him. This is a very important guard against a lot of things, and a clear weak point no matter what the guy's plan for fighting me is.

What if I steal the macguffin?

I wont tasked my players with vanquishing a single stick.

If your only goal was to maybe cause slight inconvenience to me, then yes, all of those actions in that chart make you win.

Maybe you should more strongly define what your goals are before you declare that you win first?

>defeat BBEG ugh
>somehow avoids me just stabbing him and ending his life long enough to release a dragon, because real life has health bars and people don't just get stabbed and fucking die
>defeat dragon
>he tries to leave
>'HAHA I WIN' he shouts, as I follow behind to murder him