Concern over a potential feels-bad bit of realism coming up

Hello all!

If you're in my Cheese Chase campaign in Devon, UK, please stop reading and go to another page or something!

Now that they're gone...

My party is currently in a neighbouring kingdom trying to persuade them to help with a war. This kingdom has a precious vault which they protect, and the enemy the party are facing is a smart adversary with far-reaching powers of necromancy.

I am considering having the enemy raise a small force of undead to assault the vault. Then, when the party + guards kill them, one of them will declare (before dying): "Whilst your armies are at war, I will take your vault".

The intent of the enemy, who is smart, is to force the neighbouring kingdom to remain out of the war and defend their own borders.

Logically, this is a smart tactic from the enemy, and makes sense. However, the party has been in the kingdom for several sessions doing sidequests to try and get them to help. I feel like the enemy making such a strong move against the kingdom and thwarting the party's efforts so ruthlessly would feel extremely bad for them.  Whilst I can have things turn around later to dramatic effect, I worry that I will make everyone feel like they wasted their time here. There's no railroad ahead which means that the kingdom has to decline to help, I just want to include some realism and a counter-power to their efforts. They think that they are beyond his reach - this would emphasise otherwise.

AITA?

If I hear that as a PC, my first thought is, then we’ll stay here to protect the vault.

My second thought is, What if we secretly take the stuff out of the vault, and hide it somewhere else? Or at least hide whatever it is the necromancers want that’s in there. Third is, what about those friends we made a few sessions back, maybe some of them can come help guard the vault. 

I can see your point that it might feel frustrating, but it also might be another challenge for the PCs to overcome. Because I would just start brainstorming with the rest of the party about alternative ways to protect the vault. Or really, protect what’s in the vault, as that’s likely more important than the physical vault itself.

To me it really seems like a bit of a strategic error on the part of the enemies to tip their hand about their plans. Why not let the kingdom join the war, then when everyone is distracted, go raid the vault. That might be enough to get the kingdom to back off so they can protect other assets, and now the bad guys have what’s in the vault and they take the kingdom off the board. It was their plan all along to have the kingdom, briefly, join the war.

That's all good points. 

For context, the party were planning to get this kingdom on-side then make a beeline for the other kingdom to try and rally the war effort there. They're quite focussed on haste and have, so far, expressed some frustration at how long this arc has become.

Regarding the threat to the vault, the enemy are basically using it to manipulate them into not joining the war. They have no need for what's in the vault, but to the kingdom it is sacred. Kind of like if Italy offered to join a war and someone said "If you do, we destroy the Vatican". It's intended to stop them from fighting!

Instead of having the villain say what their plan is, you should instead have the ally commander say "the necromancer has attacked our vault once, and he doesn't give up easily. I'm concerned that if we commit our armies to helping you, we cannot continue to protect it."

Now it's a diplomatic problem that's less "the DM says we can't recruit the allies" and more "how much does this character trust us? How can we convince him? How *can* we continue to protect the vault?" It puts the ball in the party's court to find a solution 

Not to mention it makes the commander or whoever's in charge of the ally forces seem like a canny leader able to logically determine the enemy's next move, rather than having the villain mustache twirl while telling them his plan for some reason. 

Quote from ThorukDuckSlayer >>

That's all good points. 

For context, the party were planning to get this kingdom on-side then make a beeline for the other kingdom to try and rally the war effort there. They're quite focussed on haste and have, so far, expressed some frustration at how long this arc has become.

Regarding the threat to the vault, the enemy are basically using it to manipulate them into not joining the war. They have no need for what's in the vault, but to the kingdom it is sacred. Kind of like if Italy offered to join a war and someone said "If you do, we destroy the Vatican". It's intended to stop them from fighting!

 Then it seems like it becomes a resource question. Does the enemy have sufficient force to prosecute their war and also to credibly threaten the vault? Do the PCs know how large the enemy forces are? Because then they could also choose to be the ruthless ones. Maybe they don’t mention what the attackers said to the king and let the enemies spread their troops a bit thinner. If it means sacrificing the vault, well, wars are about sacrifice. 

So to really answer the question from the first post, I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s presenting some interesting strategic choices for the party to make. 
But that’s me, I could see some tables where they get frustrated about not having a clean win condition. 

From a different POV. 

Use the insight roll.  Both Passive and active.  Let the passive insight goad a PC or two to actively roll.   I assume you are a good enough DM you can role play the insight rolls.

If the PCS bomb getting 1s and 2s , then maybe drop some hints that they are not a true statement.

Let the dice determine if the statement is true/False or somewhere in the middle.

Set it up so that there are known times that the dying have talked smack and gave false intel.

So france and germany are at war. 

The party is friendly to france and  trying to convince russia to join the war against germany.

Germany sent some undead to moscow to try and steal something precious to the russians, and then said, we will continue our attempts as long as you fight germany?

First of all, you threaten a national treasure, a lot of nations get furious. You send an undead army in to destroy a national treasure, a lot of nations view that as an act of war and will demand to go to war. So im not sure how this is the brilliant plan on the part of thr germans to keep thr russians out.

In the 1930s the US was vehemently against getting involved in the war then the japanese attaced pearl harbor and we declared war on japan and germany.  The snowball effect that caused ww1 was a single person being assassinated.

Second, is this a political intrique campaign? If not, this is a secondary layer of political intrique, and may be why the players are getting frustrated. Just have russia declare war and let the players move on might be the thing to do.

Make it less direct, like above suggested have the kingdom worry about their vault. Then let the players find their own solutions to the vault problem, and if they get stuck, a trusty advisor can recommend something. Make the kingdom apologetic and open to the players, to reflect the hard work they are putting into gaining the alliance.

"Whilst your armies are at war, I will take your vault"

If I were a PC in your game, I would find this to be intensely annoying.

1: Having invested a lot of time in persuading this kingdom to help, either (a) yet another obstacle emerges for the players to overcome, resulting in more delays or (b) the players fail to win the kingdom's cooperation, and the entire subplot has been pointless. Either way, a lot of time and effort for little or nothing.

2: Were I a player, this would look to me like a railroad. Sometimes looks are what counts. I'd be trying to work out what it was that you, as GM, actually wanted me to do.

3: It sounds like a detour from the main plot line. It also sounds as though your PCs find the main plot line to be engaging (well done, good for you!). I'd let them get back to it.

4: It may be a smart tactic on the part of the enemy, but it doesn't sound like fun for the players.

Just my opinion. Hope it might be useful. Sounds like an interesting campaign.

This doesn't sound like undermining the players or railroading anything, it sounds more like an interesting story point that the players could do a lot with... if they're into the story-telling parts of the game and feel like they're allowed to have a hand in directing how the story unfolds.

The obvious retort from the players, to the vault being threatened, would be something like, "well, they just threatened your sovereignty.  What will you do when he comes back making the same threat, and demanding tribute from you?  Staying neutral now tells him that you can be threatened into submission."  If the king is a compassionate ruler who wants to stay out of a war because he's worried about the well-being of his people, then the party just needs to show him that the short-term benefit is actually a worse deal in the end.  

You said the party was already doing sidequests to help this kingdom, so it sounds like they are invested in the outcome.  So the final story-focused sidequest there could be just figuring out how to safeguard the vault (or move the contents to a secret location, or whatever - maybe let the players come up with their own solution), to finish securing that kingdom's help.

If your players tend toward patience, this dramatic reversal could work beautifully. The potential ally would have strong incentive to feign acquiescence, only to send aid at a crucial moment--direct payback for the threats the necromancer made.

Another option: have a small contingent of allies join the PCs personally. This creates a clearer sense of accomplishment and adds meaningful NPCs rather than disposable mooks.