This campaign does not take place in space. The players were in close contact with an NPC that knows the teleport spell and is over powered. The NPC was meant to be an enemy, but they befriended them and were able to change her world view with a Nat 20 Persuasion check when she was still figuring out what she wants.
Bearing in mind everything works how you say it does, RAW:
The Nat 20 on a Persuasion check is meaningless, just like a Nat 1 would be. What matters is the total check result against the DC you decided was appropriate for that attempt.
It only works on willing creatures, so the dragon has to consent to be teleported. Getting that consent is unlikely to be easy.
If you house-rule it to be resisted with a save or something, it should be a Charisma save, as that's how teleports work.
You would use the "Description" accuracy row for the spell.
The spell takes the caster with it, so the NPC casting the spell has to be willing to teleport into a star with the dragon. That's a really big ask.
Stars deal fire damage, which the dragon is immune to. It's not radiant, not force, it's just very, very hot. In general, an ancient gold dragon is harder to kill than a fire elemental, and there's no sane reason a star would hurt a fire elemental. You can think of stars as pockets in the Prime Material of the Elemental Plane of Fire.
In fact, in previous editions of D&D, we had natives from the elemental plane of fire explicitly inhabiting stars.
So again, the dragon wouldn't take any damage from this, just as an efreet would not.
The DC for the check was 25. The bard at that level needed to roll a Nat 20 to do this. The op NPC had the dragon trapped in a special demiplane and could pull the dragon out at any time as a bonus action. So she did not need the dragon to be willing to teleport to the sun and drop the dragon from a mile up into the sun. I've decided that the sun deals massive amounts of radiant and fire damage based on your suggestion and the fact that Sunbeam and Crown of Stars deal radiant damage. I would have gone for just fire, but I am going to set some sort of divine entity that powers the sun instead of how the sun works in real life. So, both my NPC and the dragon will die; however, my NPC had the clone spell up and the dragon (who is alive after dying, trapped in an artifact) still has the possibility of returning to the planet because of that divine entity. Thank you all for the suggestions.
As the DM, you are the "Divine entity" that powers the sun. When you are telling a story that requires something specific that is always able to come back, you have put plot armor on your story. The player characters will then require plot weapons of some sort, like getting DC 30 persuasion checks without having to roll dice, the Sword of Divine Entity Slaying, or permanent total immunity to charm spells.
So far as I am concerned the damage type the Sun actually does is "silly", and thus far, I haven't seen any listed thing in the game that is immune to that damage type, nor can it be resisted, but I'm quite happy to make things vulnerable to a silly amount of damage.
Ok, so a deus ex machina cast (kinda literally) the dragon into the sun. At that point deus ex machina does as you design it. Let's me clear now that your players didn't do anything, except basically obtaining the equivalent of divine intervention. Unless the dragon was window dressing and you didn't mean for the players to really fight it, I wouldn't have been as generous with the results of a nat 20 persuasion. Like in the regular rules, you're talking the odds of a level 20 cleric. I dunno, unless you're playing a social and politics game, I'm not a fan of NPCs doing away with PCs problems and giving the PCs the credit.
I was disappointed this thread had to wait till page 2 for someone to bring up Spelljammer.
The PCs were never meant to fight this dragon at their current level since it would not see them as a threat until they were level 15 or so. The DC for that persuasion check was 25 and the bard that did it had only a +5 to persuasion at the time so he had to get a Nat 20 to succeed. Yes, the players effectively got a deus ex machina from this creature I made to be their enemy. The players only came up with the plan based on my NPC's abilities. The PCs did not physically do anything and are thus not getting any experience for this. I hated this moment in my campaign; however, I still got rid of my NPC's extra life (The clone spell) and I have one way to bring my dragon (trapped in an artifact when it dies) back to the planet to exact revenge.
If the players were never meant to fight the dragon 1.) why was it even there? Again, they didn't fight the dragon, they rolled a nat 20 with a liberal persuasion adjudication, and then you actually played out the NPC vs. the Dragon drama or something. When things get that removed from the player's actual in game agency (really there is nothing they can do after that nat 20 role) cascading a bunch of NPC actions and force of nature (like the sun) damage die is just a lot of clatter. Literally your just in narrative space and can "say so what happened." No dice. If you want a dragon immolated by the sun, cook it. If you want it a prisoner of the sun, bind it. There's really no need to get set to mechanical resolution of any of it if the players are really that out of touch of the action. I mean the characters are standing around, even aware of it? And the players are sitting around the table to waiting for you to calculate ... story. Stop rolling sun damage for an event predicated on the Bard's good fortune. If the players could literally do nothing from that moment, the dice should just stop. The players aren't doing anything. Roll on an encounter table and give them something other to do besides bear witness.
In all seriousness the reason why I encourage you to just narrate instead of mechanically resolve stuff that's literally out of touch to your characters' power level isn't just efficiency/player engagement (thought that's key). It's also because your game hasn't gone to that level really before and you're sort of boxing yourself into precedent by determining how mechanically a sun may or may not kill a dragon. You don't need mechanics for something that's really illustrative and happening off stage from where the characters are. You can allude to greater powers in the game, but there's no need to make the table watch the DM roll dice to determine effects on entities the players may have never met.
If the players were never meant to fight the dragon 1.) why was it even there? Again, they didn't fight the dragon, they rolled a nat 20 with a liberal persuasion adjudication, and then you actually played out the NPC vs. the Dragon drama or something. When things get that removed from the player's actual in game agency (really there is nothing they can do after that nat 20 role) cascading a bunch of NPC actions and force of nature (like the sun) damage die is just a lot of clatter. Literally your just in narrative space and can "say so what happened." No dice. If you want a dragon immolated by the sun, cook it. If you want it a prisoner of the sun, bind it. There's really no need to get set to mechanical resolution of any of it if the players are really that out of touch of the action. I mean the characters are standing around, even aware of it? And the players are sitting around the table to waiting for you to calculate ... story. Stop rolling sun damage for an event predicated on the Bard's good fortune. If the players could literally do nothing from that moment, the dice should just stop. The players aren't doing anything. Roll on an encounter table and give them something other to do besides bear witness.
The Nat 20 I was talking about was them effectively befriend a powerful NPC that was intended to be their enemy. After that, they had many sessions interacting with this NPC until the same NPC was deceived into unleashing the dragon. When the NPC realised the deception, she attempted to deceive the dragon, saying she would bring it to a more plentiful space. The divination wizard of the party replaced the dragon's insight check with a 1 using Portent, and the NPC trapped the dragon in her demiplane. After many sessions, the party came up with the plan to have the NPC drop the dragon into the sun. They assumed the NPC and dragon would take no damage since both were immune to fire. Both died. I rewarded their planning by letting the players see what was about to occur (using NPC ability). The PCs never fought so they did not gain experience. However, they heavily contributed to this occurring through many interactions with this NPC, building a trusting relationship between the NPC and the party. Many things that the party was directly involved in occured spanning manying sessions, leading to this trip to the sun.
Originally, the dragon fell into the sun while the NPC teleported away. I had no idea how to rule this so I said in the moment that the dragon and NPC would live because of fire immunity. I did not waste my players time since they were actively trying to convince me that this plan would work the entire time. Now that I have taken more time to think about the situation and what should had, I have redone the scene, having the NPC and dragon die. This does not change what happened in the session much since the NPC would have instead reappeared with the party out of her clone spell instead of teleporting to her lair next to them. I ran one scenario expecting to change it once I looked into things further and posted this question on DND beyond.
If the players were never meant to fight the dragon 1.) why was it even there? Again, they didn't fight the dragon, they rolled a nat 20 with a liberal persuasion adjudication, and then you actually played out the NPC vs. the Dragon drama or something. When things get that removed from the player's actual in game agency (really there is nothing they can do after that nat 20 role) cascading a bunch of NPC actions and force of nature (like the sun) damage die is just a lot of clatter. Literally your just in narrative space and can "say so what happened." No dice. If you want a dragon immolated by the sun, cook it. If you want it a prisoner of the sun, bind it. There's really no need to get set to mechanical resolution of any of it if the players are really that out of touch of the action. I mean the characters are standing around, even aware of it? And the players are sitting around the table to waiting for you to calculate ... story. Stop rolling sun damage for an event predicated on the Bard's good fortune. If the players could literally do nothing from that moment, the dice should just stop. The players aren't doing anything. Roll on an encounter table and give them something other to do besides bear witness.
In all seriousness the reason why I encourage you to just narrate instead of mechanically resolve stuff that's literally out of touch to your characters' power level isn't just efficiency/player engagement (thought that's key). It's also because your game hasn't gone to that level really before and you're sort of boxing yourself into precedent by determining how mechanically a sun may or may not kill a dragon. You don't need mechanics for something that's really illustrative and happening off stage from where the characters are. You can allude to greater powers in the game, but there's no need to make the table watch the DM roll dice to determine effects on entities the players may have never met.
I understand that (the second paragraph). I have this habit of wanting to make sure that something is mechanically sound before I run it so that I don't have to retcon something (it takes to long to explain the changes over phone calls after a session). One of my players, the bard, knows way more about space and physics than I do, so when the wizard came up with the idea to have the NPC drop the dragon into the sun and the bard's player kept saying it would work and not kill the dragon, I was more worried about how this was going to completely derail my campaign. I have had my campaign derailed so many times by my players; so, I was more shocked in the session with the sun that it was happening again, and that I could not think of a way to remedy this in the session. So, I made a call so as to not be so divided in my attention (I was going to end the session afterwards anyway), and then researched the sun and posted this thread after the session to figure out what should have happened. After the posts reached two pages in this thread, I had already stopped considering the amount of damage (knowing it would be enough to kill anyone) and was only concerned about what type of damage the sun would deal. Thank you for your input. This is my first campaign as a DM, and I am still learning (as my players say). I hope that you understand that.
Primed_Horyzon, please don't take to heart the criticism you're getting for your DMing. It sounds like you run a narrative-heavy game, where social encounters are at least as important as combat. "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Players are able to use their alliances with stronger beings to go toe to toe with other powerful beings. This is good! There is a huge tradition in fantasy and myth of heroes facing enemies that vastly outmatch them and defeating them or persuading them with their wits. Bilbo and Smaug, for example. Odysseus and the cyclopes.
Don't listen to the criticism that your encounters must be "balanced" and that it's "totally inappropriate" to have a level 6 party encounter a CR 25 creature if they're unable to beat it in a straight fight. The idea that D&D should always resolve through a straight fight is wrong. Your game sounds really cool. I'd want to play in it. If I waa a powergamer who'd min-maxed my dpr, I might be bored, since I wasn't getting to roll my bucket of dice, but I'm a role player.
Primed_Horyzon, please don't take to heart the criticism you're getting for your DMing. It sounds like you run a narrative-heavy game, where social encounters are at least as important as combat. "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Players are able to use their alliances with stronger beings to go toe to toe with other powerful beings. This is good! There is a huge tradition in fantasy and myth of heroes facing enemies that vastly outmatch them and defeating them or persuading them with their wits. Bilbo and Smaug, for example. Odysseus and the cyclopes.
Don't listen to the criticism that your encounters must be "balanced" and that it's "totally inappropriate" to have a level 6 party encounter a CR 25 creature if they're unable to beat it in a straight fight. The idea that D&D should always resolve through a straight fight is wrong. Your game sounds really cool. I'd want to play in it. If I waa a powergamer who'd min-maxed my dpr, I might be bored, since I wasn't getting to roll my bucket of dice, but I'm a role player.
Thank you. I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do halve the experience though). The only reason I do this is because they seem to find a way to befriend or make nice with the unlikeliest of people. They convinced gargantuan water elemental to stop killing the people of a port town since the party knew they could not defeat this creature. The only major entities in the campaign that they have chosen not to befriend is someone from the Arcane Archer's backstory that is trying to capture the fighter, the BBEG (an ever reviving creature) who killed the bards childhood friend two sessions ago, and the dragon who has openly spoken about wanting to consume souls (when it does not need to eat, but can choose to) but has yet to do anything to them. Everyone else major to the story, they have tried to befriend. Even the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun, they befriended. And that NPC is an aberration that possessed a child and nearly took full control of (when the NPC did not have legendary actions) a Divine Soul Sorcerer who had wish. My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this.
"My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this." Winning?
You have a Water elemental which cannot be defeated. You a BBEG from the Arcane Archer's backstory that cannot die. You have a dragon what still won't die after having been dropped into the sun.
There is something they all have in common. All of them act in very evil ways, none of them can be defeated, and I'm unsure if any of them can be killed at all.
There is a book about the Kobiashi Maru. It is a Star Trek story about a no-win situation. They were fighting against a computer. It's set up on purpose so that there is no way of winning. Captain Kirk is the only one who ever actually beat it, and he did so by cheating. In the story about it, the only other one who came close was Mr. Scott. He proved to them that he could destroy Klingon warships so long as he had photon torpedoes, and the supply of those in the story was unlimited. He didn't win, but he didn't lose either.
Your players are exceedingly tolerant. I don't think they have ever personally won at anything themselves, they do it by getting an NPC to do it for them, and whatever it was that the npc defeated comes back again and again.
"I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do have the experience though)." Might I ask, just what experience do you personally have with using words to defeat someone instead of fighting with them? The most obvious thing is something very nasty indeed.
Primed_Horyzon, please don't take to heart the criticism you're getting for your DMing. It sounds like you run a narrative-heavy game, where social encounters are at least as important as combat. "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Players are able to use their alliances with stronger beings to go toe to toe with other powerful beings. This is good! There is a huge tradition in fantasy and myth of heroes facing enemies that vastly outmatch them and defeating them or persuading them with their wits. Bilbo and Smaug, for example. Odysseus and the cyclopes.
Don't listen to the criticism that your encounters must be "balanced" and that it's "totally inappropriate" to have a level 6 party encounter a CR 25 creature if they're unable to beat it in a straight fight. The idea that D&D should always resolve through a straight fight is wrong. Your game sounds really cool. I'd want to play in it. If I waa a powergamer who'd min-maxed my dpr, I might be bored, since I wasn't getting to roll my bucket of dice, but I'm a role player.
Great response and I wholeheartedly agree.
I love to see low level characters beating what would be impossible combats through clever play. If the game was simply a case of meandering upwards through levels rolling dice, it would be exceedingly dull. I really enjoy setting my players difficult combats to roll their way through, but I also enjoy putting in roleplay-only solutions to combats.
I ran a level 1-2 game where the PCs had to take on an entire army that was trying to cross a bridge over a rapidly flowing river into a village. The solution they needed was to repair, find ammo for (bat guano and sulphur from a giant spider haunted cave), find the command word (commune with the powerful wizard who made it through a crystal orb) and reactivate an ancient artifact mage-cannon atop the solitary guard tower, build fortifications to funnel the enemy into the killing zone (roleplaying with NPC villagers to persuade them to stay and build them), then obliterate them with 16d6 fire damage fireballs. This was at level 2. The cannon shattered after the third time they fired it, so that it wouldn't affect the campaign as it progressed, but it gave them an impossible odds situation to overcome through their quest.
Crazy games are great for players who enjoy that kind of game. It might not be for everyone, but books like Steve Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen are exactly about this kind of thing.
I have had my campaign derailed so many times by my players
Well, yeah. You're practically begging them to derail it. "The only reason I do this is because they seem to find a way to befriend or make nice with the unlikeliest of people." They don't "seem to" find a way... you let them do it. Why, for example, was the DC Persuasion check against the ultra-powerful NPC only set at 25? If you'd intended the NPC to be an antagonist to the party, why was it an achievable number at all?
But if everyone's having fun with the chaos and ridiculousness, then by all means continue.
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I have had my campaign derailed so many times by my players
Well, yeah. You're practically begging them to derail it. "The only reason I do this is because they seem to find a way to befriend or make nice with the unlikeliest of people." They don't "seem to" find a way... you let them do it. Why, for example, was the DC Persuasion check against the ultra-powerful NPC only set at 25? If you'd intended the NPC to be an antagonist to the party, why was it an achievable number at all?
But if everyone's having fun with the chaos and ridiculousness, then by all means continue.
It's perfectly fine for the PCs to resolve storylines through befriending creatures in some situations, but I do think that AntonSirius is right: the players aren't really derailing the campaign - it does sound a bit like you're just giving them a chaos mode sandbox to do absolutely anything in. By having friendly persuadable NPCs with very high level spells on hand, they have access to power way beyond their pay grade.
The issue that a campaign may have as it progresses is that if the PCs have learned early on that they can enlist massively powerful NPCs to solve their problems, or just talk a bad guy down, they may well expect this to continue into the future, and it may not be very satisfying.
There is some sense in holding back on these epic NPCs and adversaries. How important are the PCs to the story, really? The enemies you're mentioning are completely unbeatable for a level 6 party, and if they are enlisting god-like creatures to solve the world's problems, it takes away a bit of the fun. No matter what your PCs are achieving, they are not really participants in the key events of the world outside of persuading other more powerful beings to solve their issues! Or in other words: if your PCs defeated an ancient gold shadow dragon at level 6 through talking to an NPC, how are they every going to top that?
My current players are nearly level 9, and they befriended a level 13 wizard. This is already a bit problematic: they've given him a Sending Stone, and since he's sympathetic, they're basically phoning him up to get him to Teleport them around the world (interestingly, this exact issue occurred in Critical Role campaign 2 as well)- unless I come up with a reason for why he won't, or can't. Even that level gap is problematic. I gave the wizard 2 children whom he won't leave, so he won't go into danger with them, but why wouldn't he teleport in, pick them up and port out again? It's a matter of seconds only.
My current players are nearly level 9, and they befriended a level 13 wizard. This is already a bit problematic: they've given him a Sending Stone, and since he's sympathetic, they're basically phoning him up to get him to Teleport them around the world (interestingly, this exact issue occurred in Critical Role campaign 2 as well)- unless I come up with a reason for why he won't, or can't. Even that level gap is problematic. I gave the wizard 2 children whom he won't leave, so he won't go into danger with them, but why wouldn't he teleport in, pick them up and port out again? It's a matter of seconds only.
LOL. I have a higher-level NPC wizard the party is getting quests from in my campaign and I built a reason why he can't be their teleporting uber service into his backstory, just in case they got any ideas.
Balancing out how much help powerful NPCs should give lower-level parties could be an entire chapter in a future book.
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
"My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this." Winning?
You have a Water elemental which cannot be defeated. You a BBEG from the Arcane Archer's backstory that cannot die. You have a dragon what still won't die after having been dropped into the sun.
There is something they all have in common. All of them act in very evil ways, none of them can be defeated, and I'm unsure if any of them can be killed at all.
There is a book about the Kobiashi Maru. It is a Star Trek story about a no-win situation. They were fighting against a computer. It's set up on purpose so that there is no way of winning. Captain Kirk is the only one who ever actually beat it, and he did so by cheating. In the story about it, the only other one who came close was Mr. Scott. He proved to them that he could destroy Klingon warships so long as he had photon torpedoes, and the supply of those in the story was unlimited. He didn't win, but he didn't lose either.
Your players are exceedingly tolerant. I don't think they have ever personally won at anything themselves, they do it by getting an NPC to do it for them, and whatever it was that the npc defeated comes back again and again.
"I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do have the experience though)." Might I ask, just what experience do you personally have with using words to defeat someone instead of fighting with them? The most obvious thing is something very nasty indeed.
I feel you're being a bit critical of this.
Winning doesn't mean defeating - it would be an unimaginative game indeed if every encounter was one where "swing sword, cast fireball" would always prevail. The idea of a game where there are enemies who are clearly too powerful to kill, but are open to other means of overcoming, sounds much more appealing.
The water elemental couldn't be defeated at the time, so they stopped it from killing people. The issue wasn't the elementals continued existence, but the fact that it was killing people! making it stop without killing it is a success, otherwise known as winning. "Encounter" doesn't mean "Combat".
In the Kobiashi Maru, Would you consider it failure if they managed to open communications with the other ships and broker a peace agreement? The desired result is the end of the conflict and surviving, and this is either completed by killing everyone or by stopping them from being enemies.
If the players are the ones doing the persuading, and they are enjoying the game because of all the options beside attack, then that's most definitely winning. Though I agree that if the NPC's they befriend are the ones who are doing the actions, and the players just steer them by walking around and asking them to follow, then it might be said that the PC's aren't winning the encounters. But however you make a water elemental stop eating people, the encounter is succeeded if they stop!
My current players are nearly level 9, and they befriended a level 13 wizard. This is already a bit problematic: they've given him a Sending Stone, and since he's sympathetic, they're basically phoning him up to get him to Teleport them around the world (interestingly, this exact issue occurred in Critical Role campaign 2 as well)- unless I come up with a reason for why he won't, or can't. Even that level gap is problematic. I gave the wizard 2 children whom he won't leave, so he won't go into danger with them, but why wouldn't he teleport in, pick them up and port out again? It's a matter of seconds only.
LOL. I have a higher-level NPC wizard the party is getting quests from in my campaign and I built a reason why he can't be their teleporting uber service into his backstory, just in case they got any ideas.
Balancing out how much help powerful NPCs should give lower-level parties could be an entire chapter in a future book.
I have some higher level wizards the party is on the good side of. So far the only spell one has cast on their behalf is Etherealness, which isn't really something I'm worried they'll want to spam. But in any case, I made it clear that he's very busy with his own stuff, and doesn't generally have time or spell slots to spare.
"My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this." Winning?
You have a Water elemental which cannot be defeated. You a BBEG from the Arcane Archer's backstory that cannot die. You have a dragon what still won't die after having been dropped into the sun.
There is something they all have in common. All of them act in very evil ways, none of them can be defeated, and I'm unsure if any of them can be killed at all.
There is a book about the Kobiashi Maru. It is a Star Trek story about a no-win situation. They were fighting against a computer. It's set up on purpose so that there is no way of winning. Captain Kirk is the only one who ever actually beat it, and he did so by cheating. In the story about it, the only other one who came close was Mr. Scott. He proved to them that he could destroy Klingon warships so long as he had photon torpedoes, and the supply of those in the story was unlimited. He didn't win, but he didn't lose either.
Your players are exceedingly tolerant. I don't think they have ever personally won at anything themselves, they do it by getting an NPC to do it for them, and whatever it was that the npc defeated comes back again and again.
"I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do have the experience though)." Might I ask, just what experience do you personally have with using words to defeat someone instead of fighting with them? The most obvious thing is something very nasty indeed.
It is rare for me to give them experience for this. I have only done it twice (and I meant to say "halve the experience") when I needed them to level up because I did not want them to die in the upcoming sessions, and I am still debating doing this again for this scenario with the sun since this creature can return and I am not needing them to level up anytime soon. The players have won encounters themselves: against an allip, two black wyrmling dragons, a skeleton encounter that involved a skeletal juggernaut, they have also fought 3 chuuls underwater and defeated them. Granted, one of them died and was resurrected so they ran and asked their group patron for magic items to help them fight underwater since that was the first time I had actually run an underwater encounter and did not realize that pitting players against a hard encounter in an environment that is only at the detriment of the players actually increases the severity of the encounter to deadly. I have gotten better at making encounters now. I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
Also, the BBEG is from no one's backstory. It just happened to kill (forever) the bard's childhood friend. The BBEG is meant to be a threat that they can kill (and have), but don't have the means to kill forever. They are trying to get the information out there on how to stop the BBEG from resurrecting itself (and the BBEG has yet to figure out that they know this information). As the story progresses and the party gets stronger, so will the BBEG (who is CR 17 right now; I checked that it was only a hard encounter without NPCs).
The reason why I let the persuasion check succeed is because I wanted to see where the story would go if this creature considered other people's feelings (which I regret now but my players apparently like this version of the NPC better than what I had planned so okay then). When the dragon was put into the NPC's demiplane (the NPC can talk to anyone in her demiplane and vise versa), I started to have the dragon begin to corrupt the NPC again, revealing how limiting this idea thinking of others was in comparison to the NPC's goal of creating a new world (this dragon is so terrible). I even started having the NPC actually start doing what I originally designed her to do. But then, the party came up with the plan to chuck the dragon into the sun. I acknowledge that I should not have given my party access to this creature now that I know she is capable of this. Recently, I have been getting rid of the NPCs in my campaign that are two powerful, be they by true polymorphing them, or casting the gate spell only to use a combo with a divination wizard of my own and a retriever. I will soon get rid of the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun using a DM tool that I have made for myself if I need to take something out, as the campaign is meant to progress when she dies.
"My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this." Winning?
You have a Water elemental which cannot be defeated. You a BBEG from the Arcane Archer's backstory that cannot die. You have a dragon what still won't die after having been dropped into the sun.
There is something they all have in common. All of them act in very evil ways, none of them can be defeated, and I'm unsure if any of them can be killed at all.
There is a book about the Kobiashi Maru. It is a Star Trek story about a no-win situation. They were fighting against a computer. It's set up on purpose so that there is no way of winning. Captain Kirk is the only one who ever actually beat it, and he did so by cheating. In the story about it, the only other one who came close was Mr. Scott. He proved to them that he could destroy Klingon warships so long as he had photon torpedoes, and the supply of those in the story was unlimited. He didn't win, but he didn't lose either.
Your players are exceedingly tolerant. I don't think they have ever personally won at anything themselves, they do it by getting an NPC to do it for them, and whatever it was that the npc defeated comes back again and again.
"I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do have the experience though)." Might I ask, just what experience do you personally have with using words to defeat someone instead of fighting with them? The most obvious thing is something very nasty indeed.
It is rare for me to give them experience for this. I have only done it twice (and I meant to say "halve the experience") when I needed them to level up because I did not want them to die in the upcoming sessions, and I am still debating doing this again for this scenario with the sun since this creature can return and I am not needing them to level up anytime soon. The players have won encounters themselves: against an allip, two black wyrmling dragons, a skeleton encounter that involved a skeletal juggernaut, they have also fought 3 chuuls underwater and defeated them. Granted, one of them died and was resurrected so they ran and asked their group patron for magic items to help them fight underwater since that was the first time I had actually run an underwater encounter and did not realize that pitting players against a hard encounter in an environment that is only at the detriment of the players actually increases the severity of the encounter to deadly. I have gotten better at making encounters now. I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
Also, the BBEG is from no one's backstory. It just happened to kill (forever) the bard's childhood friend. The BBEG is meant to be a threat that they can kill (and have), but don't have the means to kill forever. They are trying to get the information out there on how to stop the BBEG from resurrecting itself (and the BBEG has yet to figure out that they know this information). As the story progresses and the party gets stronger, so will the BBEG (who is CR 17 right now; I checked that it was only a hard encounter without NPCs).
The reason why I let the persuasion check succeed is because I wanted to see where the story would go if this creature considered other people's feelings (which I regret now but my players apparently like this version of the NPC better than what I had planned so okay then). When the dragon was put into the NPC's demiplane (the NPC can talk to anyone in her demiplane and vise versa), I started to have the dragon begin to corrupt the NPC again, revealing how limiting this idea thinking of others was in comparison to the NPC's goal of creating a new world (this dragon is so terrible). I even started having the NPC actually start doing what I originally designed her to do. But then, the party came up with the plan to chuck the dragon into the sun. I acknowledge that I should not have given my party access to this creature now that I know she is capable of this. Recently, I have been getting rid of the NPCs in my campaign that are two powerful, be they by true polymorphing them, or casting the gate spell only to use a combo with a divination wizard of my own and a retriever. I will soon get rid of the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun using a DM tool that I have made for myself if I need to take something out, as the campaign is meant to progress when she dies.
Did this campaign start at level 1? I only ask because you listed the encounters as though they were the only ones that the players have faced. We're talking way off course from what you originally asked in the post now, but I assume that's ok as you're engaging and discussing it. As stated earlier, campaigns can go any way you want to, and as long as everyone is having fun there is no right or wrong. I would ask some questions though!
I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
It sounds a bit to me as though this campaign seems to have a lot of your own NPCs involved in the action, along with lots of extremely powerful creatures that the players can't possibly beat, and that the PCs are frequently having to go to them to solve problems. I guess this advice is unsolicited, but most campaigns would suffer from that because the players will end up feeling unimportant in the game. Why are the bad guys fighting NPCs? Allied NPCs in combat are generally not that much fun for the players. Weak NPCs just take up time; strong NPCs dominate the fight, making the actions of the players less important.
My current party are level 8. They have not yet encountered anything higher than CR11, and one CR15 dragon that they had to hide from (it was high in the sky - the point of the encounter was to hide, there was little chance of it finding them and only appeared as a prelude to when they fight it in a couple of levels time). From what you've described you essentially have the PCs involved with creatures that most games wouldn't introduce until tier 3, while your characters are barely tier 2. At that stage of the game I'd expect them to be taking on local leaders and raiding lost ruins rather than interacting with the BBEG in any direct manner.
I have had my campaign derailed so many times by my players
Well, yeah. You're practically begging them to derail it. "The only reason I do this is because they seem to find a way to befriend or make nice with the unlikeliest of people." They don't "seem to" find a way... you let them do it. Why, for example, was the DC Persuasion check against the ultra-powerful NPC only set at 25? If you'd intended the NPC to be an antagonist to the party, why was it an achievable number at all?
But if everyone's having fun with the chaos and ridiculousness, then by all means continue.
It's perfectly fine for the PCs to resolve storylines through befriending creatures in some situations, but I do think that AntonSirius is right: the players aren't really derailing the campaign - it does sound a bit like you're just giving them a chaos mode sandbox to do absolutely anything in. By having friendly persuadable NPCs with very high level spells on hand, they have access to power way beyond their pay grade.
The issue that a campaign may have as it progresses is that if the PCs have learned early on that they can enlist massively powerful NPCs to solve their problems, or just talk a bad guy down, they may well expect this to continue into the future, and it may not be very satisfying.
There is some sense in holding back on these epic NPCs and adversaries. How important are the PCs to the story, really? The enemies you're mentioning are completely unbeatable for a level 6 party, and if they are enlisting god-like creatures to solve the world's problems, it takes away a bit of the fun. No matter what your PCs are achieving, they are not really participants in the key events of the world outside of persuading other more powerful beings to solve their issues! Or in other words: if your PCs defeated an ancient gold shadow dragon at level 6 through talking to an NPC, how are they every going to top that?
My current players are nearly level 9, and they befriended a level 13 wizard. This is already a bit problematic: they've given him a Sending Stone, and since he's sympathetic, they're basically phoning him up to get him to Teleport them around the world (interestingly, this exact issue occurred in Critical Role campaign 2 as well)- unless I come up with a reason for why he won't, or can't. Even that level gap is problematic. I gave the wizard 2 children whom he won't leave, so he won't go into danger with them, but why wouldn't he teleport in, pick them up and port out again? It's a matter of seconds only.
The PCs are the people who released the NPC from her prison (an artifact) after making a deal with their sorcerer friend (who is now gone). They sail the world (as this is a sailing campaign) fighting different creatures and solving minor problems (they are Level 6, they should not mess with god-like creatures). I gave one of them a magic key to a specific lock in the world which (they did not know this was a key) would bring them to the prison of the dragon (an artifact). They decided to let the NPC put the artifact in her demiplane; however, she was tricked by the dragon who said they would help her bring about her perfect world if the NPC let the Dragon out. Three of the PCs are descendants of legendary heroes from long ago; however, the others happen to just be people that wanted to start adventuring (some don't even have edgy backstories). All of them just coincidentally appeared on shore (in various ways) in the first session and began to work together seeing these terrible things starting to happen around them. And now that the BBEG has 1) killed the bard's childhood friend, 2) destroyed his hometown, and 3) been connected to the villain of the fighter's backstory who is actively pursuing her, those two players are going to be even more intent on ending the BBEG. I am also going to kill the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun since she was meant to be the first to die. So that level gap will end with her death.
"My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this." Winning?
You have a Water elemental which cannot be defeated. You a BBEG from the Arcane Archer's backstory that cannot die. You have a dragon what still won't die after having been dropped into the sun.
There is something they all have in common. All of them act in very evil ways, none of them can be defeated, and I'm unsure if any of them can be killed at all.
There is a book about the Kobiashi Maru. It is a Star Trek story about a no-win situation. They were fighting against a computer. It's set up on purpose so that there is no way of winning. Captain Kirk is the only one who ever actually beat it, and he did so by cheating. In the story about it, the only other one who came close was Mr. Scott. He proved to them that he could destroy Klingon warships so long as he had photon torpedoes, and the supply of those in the story was unlimited. He didn't win, but he didn't lose either.
Your players are exceedingly tolerant. I don't think they have ever personally won at anything themselves, they do it by getting an NPC to do it for them, and whatever it was that the npc defeated comes back again and again.
"I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do have the experience though)." Might I ask, just what experience do you personally have with using words to defeat someone instead of fighting with them? The most obvious thing is something very nasty indeed.
It is rare for me to give them experience for this. I have only done it twice (and I meant to say "halve the experience") when I needed them to level up because I did not want them to die in the upcoming sessions, and I am still debating doing this again for this scenario with the sun since this creature can return and I am not needing them to level up anytime soon. The players have won encounters themselves: against an allip, two black wyrmling dragons, a skeleton encounter that involved a skeletal juggernaut, they have also fought 3 chuuls underwater and defeated them. Granted, one of them died and was resurrected so they ran and asked their group patron for magic items to help them fight underwater since that was the first time I had actually run an underwater encounter and did not realize that pitting players against a hard encounter in an environment that is only at the detriment of the players actually increases the severity of the encounter to deadly. I have gotten better at making encounters now. I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
Also, the BBEG is from no one's backstory. It just happened to kill (forever) the bard's childhood friend. The BBEG is meant to be a threat that they can kill (and have), but don't have the means to kill forever. They are trying to get the information out there on how to stop the BBEG from resurrecting itself (and the BBEG has yet to figure out that they know this information). As the story progresses and the party gets stronger, so will the BBEG (who is CR 17 right now; I checked that it was only a hard encounter without NPCs).
The reason why I let the persuasion check succeed is because I wanted to see where the story would go if this creature considered other people's feelings (which I regret now but my players apparently like this version of the NPC better than what I had planned so okay then). When the dragon was put into the NPC's demiplane (the NPC can talk to anyone in her demiplane and vise versa), I started to have the dragon begin to corrupt the NPC again, revealing how limiting this idea thinking of others was in comparison to the NPC's goal of creating a new world (this dragon is so terrible). I even started having the NPC actually start doing what I originally designed her to do. But then, the party came up with the plan to chuck the dragon into the sun. I acknowledge that I should not have given my party access to this creature now that I know she is capable of this. Recently, I have been getting rid of the NPCs in my campaign that are two powerful, be they by true polymorphing them, or casting the gate spell only to use a combo with a divination wizard of my own and a retriever. I will soon get rid of the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun using a DM tool that I have made for myself if I need to take something out, as the campaign is meant to progress when she dies.
Did this campaign start at level 1? I only ask because you listed the encounters as though they were the only ones that the players have faced. We're talking way off course from what you originally asked in the post now, but I assume that's ok as you're engaging and discussing it. As stated earlier, campaigns can go any way you want to, and as long as everyone is having fun there is no right or wrong. I would ask some questions though!
I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
It sounds a bit to me as though this campaign seems to have a lot of your own NPCs involved in the action, along with lots of extremely powerful creatures that the players can't possibly beat, and that the PCs are frequently having to go to them to solve problems. I guess this advice is unsolicited, but most campaigns would suffer from that because the players will end up feeling unimportant in the game. Why are the bad guys fighting NPCs? Allied NPCs in combat are generally not that much fun for the players. Weak NPCs just take up time; strong NPCs dominate the fight, making the actions of the players less important.
My current party are level 8. They have not yet encountered anything higher than CR11, and one CR15 dragon that they had to hide from (it was high in the sky - the point of the encounter was to hide, there was little chance of it finding them and only appeared as a prelude to when they fight it in a couple of levels time). From what you've described you essentially have the PCs involved with creatures that most games wouldn't introduce until tier 3, while your characters are barely tier 2. At that stage of the game I'd expect them to be taking on local leaders and raiding lost ruins rather than interacting with the BBEG in any direct manner.
I only remember doing this twice. The first time I had enemies fight NPCs was when I did not understand combat well and wanted this cool dynamic where the aberration (the NPC who hurled a dragon into the sun) would be trying to charm the Sorcerer NPC while the party was down below fighting the aberration's minions. Unfortunately, the players thought they were also supposed to fight the aberration, too since I made no indication that they were not supposed to (my bad). The encounters I have listed before were when the party was level 3, level 4, then level 5. The campaign started at level 2 since I did not want the trouble of worrying about a critical hit killing a character, especially since they didn't have a cleric and instead had a druid and a bard. The second time I had enemies fight NPCs was when the BBEG was fight the Party. The reason why my BBEG has a CR of 17 but I still thought they could take them was because it was their Offensive CR that was much lower than their Defensive CR. This creature had a lot of abilities to stay alive but not that much in the way of damage. So, I ruled that if I had the BBEG only attack people that were in its direct path (which was the Bard's childhood friend). That way, I could avoid anger from the players for killing their player without a way to bring them back (special ability of the BBEG). The BBEG would sometimes deal damage to a player with a claw attack (average of 23 slashing damage and 5 necrotic damage). After two rounds they realized that this creature just kept on using its multiattack over and over (Claw and another ability that everyone saved against). Their encounter with the BBEG was the first time I had them face a powerful enemy that would actually kill them; however, they killed the BBEG before I could kill the archmage that had figured out the BBEG's only way to die forever. I had another NPC use Gate on the Archmage later to get him out of the story. Right now in the campaign, I am trying to fix the mistakes I made with giving the party access to OP NPCs by either killing those NPCs or petrifying those NPCs. The dragon will return (it just will take a while, probably a year).
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The DC for the check was 25. The bard at that level needed to roll a Nat 20 to do this. The op NPC had the dragon trapped in a special demiplane and could pull the dragon out at any time as a bonus action. So she did not need the dragon to be willing to teleport to the sun and drop the dragon from a mile up into the sun. I've decided that the sun deals massive amounts of radiant and fire damage based on your suggestion and the fact that Sunbeam and Crown of Stars deal radiant damage. I would have gone for just fire, but I am going to set some sort of divine entity that powers the sun instead of how the sun works in real life. So, both my NPC and the dragon will die; however, my NPC had the clone spell up and the dragon (who is alive after dying, trapped in an artifact) still has the possibility of returning to the planet because of that divine entity. Thank you all for the suggestions.
As the DM, you are the "Divine entity" that powers the sun. When you are telling a story that requires something specific that is always able to come back, you have put plot armor on your story. The player characters will then require plot weapons of some sort, like getting DC 30 persuasion checks without having to roll dice, the Sword of Divine Entity Slaying, or permanent total immunity to charm spells.
So far as I am concerned the damage type the Sun actually does is "silly", and thus far, I haven't seen any listed thing in the game that is immune to that damage type, nor can it be resisted, but I'm quite happy to make things vulnerable to a silly amount of damage.
<Insert clever signature here>
The PCs were never meant to fight this dragon at their current level since it would not see them as a threat until they were level 15 or so. The DC for that persuasion check was 25 and the bard that did it had only a +5 to persuasion at the time so he had to get a Nat 20 to succeed. Yes, the players effectively got a deus ex machina from this creature I made to be their enemy. The players only came up with the plan based on my NPC's abilities. The PCs did not physically do anything and are thus not getting any experience for this. I hated this moment in my campaign; however, I still got rid of my NPC's extra life (The clone spell) and I have one way to bring my dragon (trapped in an artifact when it dies) back to the planet to exact revenge.
If the players were never meant to fight the dragon 1.) why was it even there? Again, they didn't fight the dragon, they rolled a nat 20 with a liberal persuasion adjudication, and then you actually played out the NPC vs. the Dragon drama or something. When things get that removed from the player's actual in game agency (really there is nothing they can do after that nat 20 role) cascading a bunch of NPC actions and force of nature (like the sun) damage die is just a lot of clatter. Literally your just in narrative space and can "say so what happened." No dice. If you want a dragon immolated by the sun, cook it. If you want it a prisoner of the sun, bind it. There's really no need to get set to mechanical resolution of any of it if the players are really that out of touch of the action. I mean the characters are standing around, even aware of it? And the players are sitting around the table to waiting for you to calculate ... story. Stop rolling sun damage for an event predicated on the Bard's good fortune. If the players could literally do nothing from that moment, the dice should just stop. The players aren't doing anything. Roll on an encounter table and give them something other to do besides bear witness.
In all seriousness the reason why I encourage you to just narrate instead of mechanically resolve stuff that's literally out of touch to your characters' power level isn't just efficiency/player engagement (thought that's key). It's also because your game hasn't gone to that level really before and you're sort of boxing yourself into precedent by determining how mechanically a sun may or may not kill a dragon. You don't need mechanics for something that's really illustrative and happening off stage from where the characters are. You can allude to greater powers in the game, but there's no need to make the table watch the DM roll dice to determine effects on entities the players may have never met.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The Nat 20 I was talking about was them effectively befriend a powerful NPC that was intended to be their enemy. After that, they had many sessions interacting with this NPC until the same NPC was deceived into unleashing the dragon. When the NPC realised the deception, she attempted to deceive the dragon, saying she would bring it to a more plentiful space. The divination wizard of the party replaced the dragon's insight check with a 1 using Portent, and the NPC trapped the dragon in her demiplane. After many sessions, the party came up with the plan to have the NPC drop the dragon into the sun. They assumed the NPC and dragon would take no damage since both were immune to fire. Both died. I rewarded their planning by letting the players see what was about to occur (using NPC ability). The PCs never fought so they did not gain experience. However, they heavily contributed to this occurring through many interactions with this NPC, building a trusting relationship between the NPC and the party. Many things that the party was directly involved in occured spanning manying sessions, leading to this trip to the sun.
Originally, the dragon fell into the sun while the NPC teleported away. I had no idea how to rule this so I said in the moment that the dragon and NPC would live because of fire immunity. I did not waste my players time since they were actively trying to convince me that this plan would work the entire time. Now that I have taken more time to think about the situation and what should had, I have redone the scene, having the NPC and dragon die. This does not change what happened in the session much since the NPC would have instead reappeared with the party out of her clone spell instead of teleporting to her lair next to them. I ran one scenario expecting to change it once I looked into things further and posted this question on DND beyond.
I understand that (the second paragraph). I have this habit of wanting to make sure that something is mechanically sound before I run it so that I don't have to retcon something (it takes to long to explain the changes over phone calls after a session). One of my players, the bard, knows way more about space and physics than I do, so when the wizard came up with the idea to have the NPC drop the dragon into the sun and the bard's player kept saying it would work and not kill the dragon, I was more worried about how this was going to completely derail my campaign. I have had my campaign derailed so many times by my players; so, I was more shocked in the session with the sun that it was happening again, and that I could not think of a way to remedy this in the session. So, I made a call so as to not be so divided in my attention (I was going to end the session afterwards anyway), and then researched the sun and posted this thread after the session to figure out what should have happened. After the posts reached two pages in this thread, I had already stopped considering the amount of damage (knowing it would be enough to kill anyone) and was only concerned about what type of damage the sun would deal. Thank you for your input. This is my first campaign as a DM, and I am still learning (as my players say). I hope that you understand that.
Primed_Horyzon, please don't take to heart the criticism you're getting for your DMing. It sounds like you run a narrative-heavy game, where social encounters are at least as important as combat. "It's not what you know, it's who you know." Players are able to use their alliances with stronger beings to go toe to toe with other powerful beings. This is good! There is a huge tradition in fantasy and myth of heroes facing enemies that vastly outmatch them and defeating them or persuading them with their wits. Bilbo and Smaug, for example. Odysseus and the cyclopes.
Don't listen to the criticism that your encounters must be "balanced" and that it's "totally inappropriate" to have a level 6 party encounter a CR 25 creature if they're unable to beat it in a straight fight. The idea that D&D should always resolve through a straight fight is wrong. Your game sounds really cool. I'd want to play in it. If I waa a powergamer who'd min-maxed my dpr, I might be bored, since I wasn't getting to roll my bucket of dice, but I'm a role player.
Thank you. I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do halve the experience though). The only reason I do this is because they seem to find a way to befriend or make nice with the unlikeliest of people. They convinced gargantuan water elemental to stop killing the people of a port town since the party knew they could not defeat this creature. The only major entities in the campaign that they have chosen not to befriend is someone from the Arcane Archer's backstory that is trying to capture the fighter, the BBEG (an ever reviving creature) who killed the bards childhood friend two sessions ago, and the dragon who has openly spoken about wanting to consume souls (when it does not need to eat, but can choose to) but has yet to do anything to them. Everyone else major to the story, they have tried to befriend. Even the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun, they befriended. And that NPC is an aberration that possessed a child and nearly took full control of (when the NPC did not have legendary actions) a Divine Soul Sorcerer who had wish. My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this.
"My campaign has become so much more by encouraging winning encounters like this." Winning?
You have a Water elemental which cannot be defeated. You a BBEG from the Arcane Archer's backstory that cannot die. You have a dragon what still won't die after having been dropped into the sun.
There is something they all have in common. All of them act in very evil ways, none of them can be defeated, and I'm unsure if any of them can be killed at all.
There is a book about the Kobiashi Maru. It is a Star Trek story about a no-win situation. They were fighting against a computer. It's set up on purpose so that there is no way of winning. Captain Kirk is the only one who ever actually beat it, and he did so by cheating. In the story about it, the only other one who came close was Mr. Scott. He proved to them that he could destroy Klingon warships so long as he had photon torpedoes, and the supply of those in the story was unlimited. He didn't win, but he didn't lose either.
Your players are exceedingly tolerant. I don't think they have ever personally won at anything themselves, they do it by getting an NPC to do it for them, and whatever it was that the npc defeated comes back again and again.
"I have given players experience for solving situations with monster using words instead of fighting (I do have the experience though)." Might I ask, just what experience do you personally have with using words to defeat someone instead of fighting with them? The most obvious thing is something very nasty indeed.
<Insert clever signature here>
Great response and I wholeheartedly agree.
I love to see low level characters beating what would be impossible combats through clever play. If the game was simply a case of meandering upwards through levels rolling dice, it would be exceedingly dull. I really enjoy setting my players difficult combats to roll their way through, but I also enjoy putting in roleplay-only solutions to combats.
I ran a level 1-2 game where the PCs had to take on an entire army that was trying to cross a bridge over a rapidly flowing river into a village. The solution they needed was to repair, find ammo for (bat guano and sulphur from a giant spider haunted cave), find the command word (commune with the powerful wizard who made it through a crystal orb) and reactivate an ancient artifact mage-cannon atop the solitary guard tower, build fortifications to funnel the enemy into the killing zone (roleplaying with NPC villagers to persuade them to stay and build them), then obliterate them with 16d6 fire damage fireballs. This was at level 2. The cannon shattered after the third time they fired it, so that it wouldn't affect the campaign as it progressed, but it gave them an impossible odds situation to overcome through their quest.
Crazy games are great for players who enjoy that kind of game. It might not be for everyone, but books like Steve Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen are exactly about this kind of thing.
Well, yeah. You're practically begging them to derail it. "The only reason I do this is because they seem to find a way to befriend or make nice with the unlikeliest of people." They don't "seem to" find a way... you let them do it. Why, for example, was the DC Persuasion check against the ultra-powerful NPC only set at 25? If you'd intended the NPC to be an antagonist to the party, why was it an achievable number at all?
But if everyone's having fun with the chaos and ridiculousness, then by all means continue.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's perfectly fine for the PCs to resolve storylines through befriending creatures in some situations, but I do think that AntonSirius is right: the players aren't really derailing the campaign - it does sound a bit like you're just giving them a chaos mode sandbox to do absolutely anything in. By having friendly persuadable NPCs with very high level spells on hand, they have access to power way beyond their pay grade.
The issue that a campaign may have as it progresses is that if the PCs have learned early on that they can enlist massively powerful NPCs to solve their problems, or just talk a bad guy down, they may well expect this to continue into the future, and it may not be very satisfying.
There is some sense in holding back on these epic NPCs and adversaries. How important are the PCs to the story, really? The enemies you're mentioning are completely unbeatable for a level 6 party, and if they are enlisting god-like creatures to solve the world's problems, it takes away a bit of the fun. No matter what your PCs are achieving, they are not really participants in the key events of the world outside of persuading other more powerful beings to solve their issues! Or in other words: if your PCs defeated an ancient gold shadow dragon at level 6 through talking to an NPC, how are they every going to top that?
My current players are nearly level 9, and they befriended a level 13 wizard. This is already a bit problematic: they've given him a Sending Stone, and since he's sympathetic, they're basically phoning him up to get him to Teleport them around the world (interestingly, this exact issue occurred in Critical Role campaign 2 as well)- unless I come up with a reason for why he won't, or can't. Even that level gap is problematic. I gave the wizard 2 children whom he won't leave, so he won't go into danger with them, but why wouldn't he teleport in, pick them up and port out again? It's a matter of seconds only.
LOL. I have a higher-level NPC wizard the party is getting quests from in my campaign and I built a reason why he can't be their teleporting uber service into his backstory, just in case they got any ideas.
Balancing out how much help powerful NPCs should give lower-level parties could be an entire chapter in a future book.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I feel you're being a bit critical of this.
Winning doesn't mean defeating - it would be an unimaginative game indeed if every encounter was one where "swing sword, cast fireball" would always prevail. The idea of a game where there are enemies who are clearly too powerful to kill, but are open to other means of overcoming, sounds much more appealing.
The water elemental couldn't be defeated at the time, so they stopped it from killing people. The issue wasn't the elementals continued existence, but the fact that it was killing people! making it stop without killing it is a success, otherwise known as winning. "Encounter" doesn't mean "Combat".
In the Kobiashi Maru, Would you consider it failure if they managed to open communications with the other ships and broker a peace agreement? The desired result is the end of the conflict and surviving, and this is either completed by killing everyone or by stopping them from being enemies.
If the players are the ones doing the persuading, and they are enjoying the game because of all the options beside attack, then that's most definitely winning. Though I agree that if the NPC's they befriend are the ones who are doing the actions, and the players just steer them by walking around and asking them to follow, then it might be said that the PC's aren't winning the encounters. But however you make a water elemental stop eating people, the encounter is succeeded if they stop!
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I have some higher level wizards the party is on the good side of. So far the only spell one has cast on their behalf is Etherealness, which isn't really something I'm worried they'll want to spam. But in any case, I made it clear that he's very busy with his own stuff, and doesn't generally have time or spell slots to spare.
It is rare for me to give them experience for this. I have only done it twice (and I meant to say "halve the experience") when I needed them to level up because I did not want them to die in the upcoming sessions, and I am still debating doing this again for this scenario with the sun since this creature can return and I am not needing them to level up anytime soon. The players have won encounters themselves: against an allip, two black wyrmling dragons, a skeleton encounter that involved a skeletal juggernaut, they have also fought 3 chuuls underwater and defeated them. Granted, one of them died and was resurrected so they ran and asked their group patron for magic items to help them fight underwater since that was the first time I had actually run an underwater encounter and did not realize that pitting players against a hard encounter in an environment that is only at the detriment of the players actually increases the severity of the encounter to deadly. I have gotten better at making encounters now. I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
Also, the BBEG is from no one's backstory. It just happened to kill (forever) the bard's childhood friend. The BBEG is meant to be a threat that they can kill (and have), but don't have the means to kill forever. They are trying to get the information out there on how to stop the BBEG from resurrecting itself (and the BBEG has yet to figure out that they know this information). As the story progresses and the party gets stronger, so will the BBEG (who is CR 17 right now; I checked that it was only a hard encounter without NPCs).
The reason why I let the persuasion check succeed is because I wanted to see where the story would go if this creature considered other people's feelings (which I regret now but my players apparently like this version of the NPC better than what I had planned so okay then). When the dragon was put into the NPC's demiplane (the NPC can talk to anyone in her demiplane and vise versa), I started to have the dragon begin to corrupt the NPC again, revealing how limiting this idea thinking of others was in comparison to the NPC's goal of creating a new world (this dragon is so terrible). I even started having the NPC actually start doing what I originally designed her to do. But then, the party came up with the plan to chuck the dragon into the sun. I acknowledge that I should not have given my party access to this creature now that I know she is capable of this. Recently, I have been getting rid of the NPCs in my campaign that are two powerful, be they by true polymorphing them, or casting the gate spell only to use a combo with a divination wizard of my own and a retriever. I will soon get rid of the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun using a DM tool that I have made for myself if I need to take something out, as the campaign is meant to progress when she dies.
Did this campaign start at level 1? I only ask because you listed the encounters as though they were the only ones that the players have faced. We're talking way off course from what you originally asked in the post now, but I assume that's ok as you're engaging and discussing it. As stated earlier, campaigns can go any way you want to, and as long as everyone is having fun there is no right or wrong. I would ask some questions though!
I make sure that the creatures that the party faces, if they are too powerful for the party, will not fight them in combat and only my NPCs since the powerful creatures have a goal that concerns those creatures and not the party.
It sounds a bit to me as though this campaign seems to have a lot of your own NPCs involved in the action, along with lots of extremely powerful creatures that the players can't possibly beat, and that the PCs are frequently having to go to them to solve problems. I guess this advice is unsolicited, but most campaigns would suffer from that because the players will end up feeling unimportant in the game. Why are the bad guys fighting NPCs? Allied NPCs in combat are generally not that much fun for the players. Weak NPCs just take up time; strong NPCs dominate the fight, making the actions of the players less important.
My current party are level 8. They have not yet encountered anything higher than CR11, and one CR15 dragon that they had to hide from (it was high in the sky - the point of the encounter was to hide, there was little chance of it finding them and only appeared as a prelude to when they fight it in a couple of levels time). From what you've described you essentially have the PCs involved with creatures that most games wouldn't introduce until tier 3, while your characters are barely tier 2. At that stage of the game I'd expect them to be taking on local leaders and raiding lost ruins rather than interacting with the BBEG in any direct manner.
The PCs are the people who released the NPC from her prison (an artifact) after making a deal with their sorcerer friend (who is now gone). They sail the world (as this is a sailing campaign) fighting different creatures and solving minor problems (they are Level 6, they should not mess with god-like creatures). I gave one of them a magic key to a specific lock in the world which (they did not know this was a key) would bring them to the prison of the dragon (an artifact). They decided to let the NPC put the artifact in her demiplane; however, she was tricked by the dragon who said they would help her bring about her perfect world if the NPC let the Dragon out. Three of the PCs are descendants of legendary heroes from long ago; however, the others happen to just be people that wanted to start adventuring (some don't even have edgy backstories). All of them just coincidentally appeared on shore (in various ways) in the first session and began to work together seeing these terrible things starting to happen around them. And now that the BBEG has 1) killed the bard's childhood friend, 2) destroyed his hometown, and 3) been connected to the villain of the fighter's backstory who is actively pursuing her, those two players are going to be even more intent on ending the BBEG. I am also going to kill the NPC that dropped the dragon into the sun since she was meant to be the first to die. So that level gap will end with her death.
I only remember doing this twice. The first time I had enemies fight NPCs was when I did not understand combat well and wanted this cool dynamic where the aberration (the NPC who hurled a dragon into the sun) would be trying to charm the Sorcerer NPC while the party was down below fighting the aberration's minions. Unfortunately, the players thought they were also supposed to fight the aberration, too since I made no indication that they were not supposed to (my bad). The encounters I have listed before were when the party was level 3, level 4, then level 5. The campaign started at level 2 since I did not want the trouble of worrying about a critical hit killing a character, especially since they didn't have a cleric and instead had a druid and a bard. The second time I had enemies fight NPCs was when the BBEG was fight the Party. The reason why my BBEG has a CR of 17 but I still thought they could take them was because it was their Offensive CR that was much lower than their Defensive CR. This creature had a lot of abilities to stay alive but not that much in the way of damage. So, I ruled that if I had the BBEG only attack people that were in its direct path (which was the Bard's childhood friend). That way, I could avoid anger from the players for killing their player without a way to bring them back (special ability of the BBEG). The BBEG would sometimes deal damage to a player with a claw attack (average of 23 slashing damage and 5 necrotic damage). After two rounds they realized that this creature just kept on using its multiattack over and over (Claw and another ability that everyone saved against). Their encounter with the BBEG was the first time I had them face a powerful enemy that would actually kill them; however, they killed the BBEG before I could kill the archmage that had figured out the BBEG's only way to die forever. I had another NPC use Gate on the Archmage later to get him out of the story. Right now in the campaign, I am trying to fix the mistakes I made with giving the party access to OP NPCs by either killing those NPCs or petrifying those NPCs. The dragon will return (it just will take a while, probably a year).