I feel like you gotta know the party a little bit… If they aren’t the type to talk their way out of a problem, then the monologue has to happen from some relative safety instead of within arms reach of the not-paralyzed barbarian. Hold person exists. Magic Mouth. Message. Hell, a big ol’ balcony above the party.
Else you gotta have a back-up plan like fallout where the players get the information from a journal or something - maybe it isn’t as clearly laid out and it’s harder to follow the breadcrumbs but the party isn’t just lost in the wind looking for the next guy to punch.
Hell, a big ol’ balcony above the party.
My DM understood this. As a bonus, by the end of the battle, everyone had taken so much fall damage.
If your BBEG doesn’t have at least one counterspell (or someone who does on their team) your casters are always gonna go in guns blazing lol
No, counter spells are strictly reserved for revivify
Oof that’s awesome
lol this happened in a campaign I was running. I foolishly thought the villain should reveal details of his evil plan across rounds of combat. And also that it would be cool to have the battle on the backs of giant rocs.
You can probably see where this is going but let’s just say the battle lasted about 2 rounds.
Isn’t that where you just put the plan away and then the next campaign happens to be the same evil plan with minor tweaks? Throw it two campaigns from now if you wanna be fancy about it.
Clearly the campaigns weren’t the same. They never found out the details of the first one, so how can it be the same?
The issue was a lot of the events had already happened. So the plot just ended up making less sense than it should have. His speech was more about his motives and why he betrayed the party since he was a former ally.
But yeah maybe I should have brought him back (since they never saw the body and he was an archfey) but I never saw the right time for it and that campaign ended.
Does the process of getting to the BBEG not involve unraveling their plans? Like, shouldn’t the party to a certain extent know their goal(s) before deciding to go after them? And then particulars are divulged as they uncover the threads tying the BBEG to all his henchpeople as they defeat them. And then they understand the steps of the BBEG plan as they track down the items needed to stop them? I’m sure there are some minor things not 100% spelled out, but what did you really want your party to know that they didn’t already?
This particular character was more of the penultimate evil dude and was also a former ally that betrayed them. So it was more of his motives for why he did what he did.
In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a huge deal they just thought oh well that guy went crazy or something rather than understanding his personal motives which would have made the overall plot a little more coherent.
Ooh. Nice. I never mess with ally betrayals because I honestly don’t think I have the chops for it. Very hard to do, so I totally get how you wanted to give them a proper send off. I’m sure the players enjoyed their swift revenge though!
I would caution players to think of the logical endpoint of zealously interrupting villians with combat.
Players: “Stop you thugs or face the wrath of-”
DM: “They attack you, sounds like they get a surprise round”
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Talking is (not) a free action sounds like it could be a fun mechanic if everyone agrees to it.
Let the big bad talk, but players get to write down an attempted action and roll for successful sneak for as long as he’s yapping.
