>>

01/03/10(Sun)03:18 No.7403609 >>7403236



Case in point on this: we recently had the party confront a group of their enemies' minions, including a female follower of this villainess who's hopelessly infatuated with one of the PCs (long story). Anyway, the party fights them a few times, ends up briefly cooperating with them when their interests coincide, and over time this follower finds out the PC in question is every bit the cool guy she's heard, and begins to consider defecting to the players' side. The PC party convinces her to do so, which of course prompts one of the rest of her group, nasty bugger that he is, to try and assassinate her.



She wasn't that important story-wise, nor did the PC really need another love interest, so I decided I'd probably have the assassin kill her off in an attempt to motivate the players.



Now, the aforementioned PC is quite difficult to catch off-guard, so he happens to catch the assassin right after she's been stabbed, preventing her from being finished off, as the assassin now has to deal with escaping from one very enraged PC. Meanwhile, another PC attends to the female NPC, who is very badly wounded, not to mention poisoned. I decide it'll be a very difficult roll inded to save her at this point, something on the order of -8 or -10 or so. But the guy rolls a critical success, all while the other PC proceeds to kick the ass of the assassin. So, no point in trying to railroad things at this point - good end it is, at least for now.



My point here is, even if you do decide to kill off that NPC, do give the party a fair chance to save him if that would be remotely plausible. But do not make it too easy for them, either.