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• Don't want to start an edition war, especially since I play 4e myself, but I think that you're describing one of the out-of-the-box difficulties with both 3e and 4e: DMs are expected to scale encounters to the characters. It's not a fatal flaw, but the DM has to make it clear out of game that there the world is not built to provide them with increasing levels of success. With all of the 4e-mmo connections, its easy to explain that they should think of leveled zones.

  Even with this, it's a hard habit for players to break; my players are in the middle of a similar situation, although its not as intense as you've described.

• First off, the DM did the right thing. the powerful NPC thing is a good way to go. Or the DM should account for the fact that the PCs might be foolish enough to start the fight and then give them a way out after they realize how outclassed they are. At the point in the fight where the PCs realize they are in trouble, that's when the super powerful NPC comes in. That NPC sacrifices themself to give the party a chance to get through the portal. Or the creature lets them live but at a huge personal cost to the PCs. When the party finally faces the super creature again, they'll have great respect for the creature and feel greater accomplishment when they finally defeat him.

  I've run into this twice. Once, we were 2nd level in a 3E campagin and ran across a roper. We knew the roper was there because we saw it snag a fish from an underground stream. We tried to sneak by, but when the paladin used detect evil and saw this thing needed to be purified, we ended up fighting it. In this case, after the roper trounced us, it made a deal with us to go on a mission for it. (strength draining attacks work good for subduing a party that way)

  Second time was just a few weeks ago. Our party was being fired upon from attackers on a cliff and we could see more attackers up ahead in the treeline. Thinking they were all part of the same encounter, our party split up- half to take the tree line and half flew up to take out the archers. It turns out they were 2 separate encounters and we were meant to fight in the forest first which would give us total cover from the archers. The fliying party got beat down bad and quickly retreated down to the forest to barely finish off the first encounter, using all our dailies and action points. In this case, the DM forgot about our flying abilities and never considered us tkaing on everyone at once. And the players, seeing an encounter with 15 combatants between the 2 locations, assumed nearly everyone was a minion and charged headfirst into combat. It was only after a few members were surrounded did we realize that they weren't going down after a single hit.

  Jay

• An excellent article, and a good heads-up to all of us players who have never faced the Kobayashi Maru (which has excellent sushi, by the way). There are going to battles that we cannot win, and opponents that we cannot beat.

  In my own experience DMing, it was a rundown tenement that had been converted into a giant ant nest. The party charged in and attacked, even though I had tried to make clear that this was a nest, a whole nest, and nothing but the nest. Hundreds, thousands, millions of ants. I did everything but post a giant KEEP AWAY sign on the nest.

  When playing, I (the sneaky halfling rogue) blew a stealth check while circling a huge stockage and was fired upon by the archers on the walls. Instead of attacking, I ran the heck out of there, because I saw an obstacle I had no hope of overcoming. Bless the DM, he let me escape, but not before porcupining me with arrows.

  I guess the only thing a DM can really do is to plan for the characters failure, given the nature of the game and today's players. "If they do attack and inevitably die, I will do this, this, and this." In my giant ant example above, I had their patron (who was still monitoring the characters' progress) swoop in and drag them out, and tried to convince them there are fights they can't win.

  The lesson didn't really stick, but at least I tried.

• As has been mentioned above, this is to some extent a problem with the way encounters are suppose to be constructed in 4e (agreeing with the 'no edition wars' mantra of numenetics above). But a coherent fantasy world will have monsters/being that characters of level X cannot cope with. It certainly sounds like the DM tried to give every warning he could without breaking the 4th wall (until the end) and saying "you cannot beat this monster right now."

  It sounds like a failure to communicate as the players were expecting one thing because of game convention ('of course we can beat the monster') while the DM knew differently because that was how he designed this part of the campaign and was trying to warn the characters in-game
  .-= Sean Holland´s last blog ..L5R JYSB Campaign Report 7 =-.

• I've run into this kind of thing in many different systems, including D&D 1.0, Hero System, Traveller, what have you. (I'm a 3000-year-old high elf, so I've played a lot of different systems over the years). If you want to make an ongoing villain, who appears onscreen, but can't be defeated right away, it's a problem. The villain either needs to be so tough that he would flatten the PCs right away, or you risk Darth Vader getting killed in the first 10 minutes of "A New Hope".

  By the way, playing in an established world with reference to known figures, will help this. First level Star Wars characters do not think they can take on Darth Vader. Because they know what he can do, and what they can do.

  But there's lots of ways to dramatize more powerful characters to the PCs. Show them a "vision" of the bad guy in a Reflecting Pool or something. Let there be tales of his evil exploits in taverns, told by bards. Give them a mission, but let the mission giver tell them, "stay away from Darth Vader, you can't handle him. He did X".

  The other kind of ongoing villian is the one that has a surefire escape route. The PC's COULD beat him, but he teleports away. Or he has a high government post, and is effectively untouchable. Or he has an impenetrable fortress and talks to you (And taunts you) via hologram.
  .-= Toldain´s last blog ..Lucky in Love, Unlucky in PVP =-.

• I have used the powerful NPC in my game a few times. Most recently was the Age of Worms campaign in 3rd Edition. (I am now DMing 4th Edition.) The players were about 12th level when I introduced the NPC Mazorian. He was a level 22 Epic mage. His talking about the places the party shouldn't go to yet because he was hard pressed to survive there, well if the epic level guy told them it was dangerous they immediately understood he was describing the end game battle they could look forward to.
  .-= Coign´s last blog ..That's lotta snow =-.

• I've found two approaches to this situation that have worked in the past.

  The first approach was that during character creation the DM explained that not every encounter will be scaled to the PCs, and some encounters will be easier or tougher than we would normally expect. As a player I found that information very useful.

  The second approach was something I've used. I describe to the players the creature's attacks and its health. It soon becomes apparent that it is tougher than they are and is capable of eventually wiping them out. My example would be a tough bear (can't remember the build as this was for a D&D 3.0 campaign a while ago) against a 3rd-level party. It pulled off a rend in the first round and I was able to describe the pain and wound sufficiently enough that the group was able to retreat and try a different strategy.

• I think I have two things to say here:

  I think that perhaps this is a question of meta-game vs in-game. Now let me explain. The player's expect to defeat everything they encounter, or as Arcade says above, they expect a certain percentage of a large encounter to be minions. This is not true of your characters. They see the imminent danger in each situation. They live in worlds with Dragons and Tarrasque and other destructive creature which ruin kingdoms, let alone a few heroes. They know there are gods and other fantastic creature who will smite them without much effort.

  Now let me take off my DM hat and put on my player hat...

  I can definitely understand how the heroes can get wrapped up their hero-ness and figure... if its in the story... we must be able to defeat it. A la smaug.

  It's a tough situation. I'm currently in a situation where i want to kill off my pc's (for plot purposes), but im afraid they arent going to bite on the encounter.... how do i inspire the pcs to wade into the horde of orcs?

• The DM should have introduce the monster but from a different perspective by introducing evidence of its power first and then have the PC's encounter it. Let's say the monster is a red dragon for example to make this easier.

  1. First, have the PC's encounter a fellow set of NPC's who are total ubertough. Maybe the PC's consider these guys mentors, or rivals, but the players know that when they spar off with these NPC's, they get their butts handed to them hand over fist. A good way to do that is for the PC's to take part in some kind of non-lethal arena games and have the NPC's decimate them in their match easily. Now the PC's know that these NPC's are tough and where they fit in the pecking order between themselves and the NPC's.
  2. Now, there's this red dragon going around terrorizing the villages. The NPC's go off to fight the red dragon and they are wiped out. Add flowery description of how easily they were wiped out. Now the players have perspective of the challenge of the monster because they KNOW that the NPCs who can clean their clock were killed, now they KNOW that this red dragon is serious business and if they are to avenge the NPC's, rescue the village, whatever, they got to gain levels and firepower.
  3. Another way for evidence of power is to kill off an iconic character from your campaign that everyone knows is uberpowerful. Elminster or Blackstaff in the Forgotten Realms are examples. Have them go off and face against this red dragon and then word gets to the PC's that these guys fell in battle. Of course, as DM, you can always bring them back later since they are NPC's, but right now, they've served as cannon fodder.
  4. Another tactic of evidence of power if the monster is a new creation of the DM which the player's have no idea how to guage the "power level", then have it served by "lesser" monsters that the players do know are tough. For example, if the DM wants to create some kind of intelligent undead, have it command balors to do its bidding. It's the stories of how this creature can summon and command balors that will establish that A. It's tougher than balors, and B. balors are tougher than PC's, therefore C. PC's should tackle this thing until they can tackle balors first.

  For DM's who are creating some kind of tough monster to introduce it to the PC's, there does need to be an evidence of power, but that it has to be immediately recognizable in that players can metagame and think about the risks involved should they decide to head up to Skull Mountain, or whatever evil lair of the creature is and face off. Of course, I'm assuming your players have thorough knowledge of other creatures, but if they are total noobs where they can't frame the sense of a pecking order, then establish it with NPC's.

• Ah, one of the timeless problems of D&D players...

  I've found 5 solutions to the invincible player syndrome, 3 of which have been mentioned already in the comments:

  1) Earlier, when they are getting destroyed in a fight, have an NPC show up and kill the remaining bad guys with little effort. Then, when you encounter the big unbeatable baddie, have that same NPC get torn to shreds in front of them - it's not subtle, but should infer the power difference.

  Problem with this: the players will assume that they're meant to avenge the NPC right then, and that they're able to do so, because they're players! Not some wussy NPC!

  2) Constantly encourage your players to do monster knowledge checks, and plainly tell them the monster is far beyond their skill level. In my game, a successful knowledge check gives the players a small bonus to damage rolls, so they check everything as soon as possible. Usually I'll respond with a key word to let them know if it's out of their league: "this monster would be a challenge even for heroes powerful enough to be considered paragons of the world" or "this dragon is matched only by the most epic heroes." It's cheesy, but they get the point.

  Problem with this: some jackass player will try to "test" the monster to see how hard it hits, and the other players will stick around to help out and watch. The tester usually dies before he can get away, unless you play the monster off as uncaring toward something that attacked it - and if you DO do that, the players will stick around anyway, assuming it's not aggressive and they can just wail on it.

  3) Wait for one of your players to land their all-powerful damaging daily, let them roll the 7 different dice and add up all the modifiers, and when they lean back, grin, and fold their hands behind their head before giving you a smirk and telling you, with pride, the massive damage they just inflicted, THEN: say something like "your attack lands, but leaves barely a scratch. the monster doesn't even look in your direction."

  Problem with this: your players will assume there's another way to beat the encounter or damage the monster, and will start looking all over for the right damage type, usable terrain, or anything they think solves the puzzle to killing the monster.

  4) Before the game, plainly tell your players that there are going to be fights they cannot win; the players will not be invincible, and need to act accordingly. This works the best, in my opinion, as most players will either a) act more carefully, or b) admit that you warned them when they're killed by a big baddie they wouldn't leave alone.

  Problem with this: from my experience, players will still attack the giant monster and die, and when you remind them of what you said before the campaign, they'll say "I know, but I didn't think it was THIS monster."

  5) KILL THEM. KILL THEM FOR THEIR TRANSGRESSIONS. When I played a campaign a long time ago and thought I was the all-invincible player, we engaged a monster that we should have known we had no chance at defeating. The GM didn't say anything, and let it kill all of us. We were pissed at first, but the GM simply asked "what made you think that five 4th-level heroes could kill an elder dragon?" There wasn't anything in the game that made us think that, just our own feelings of safety and security. So we rerolled new characters and continued. And didn't attack anything giant for a long time. It worked.

  Problem with this: players don't like being killed, especially if they think you are intentionally trying to "teach them a lesson." They'll see it as a punishment, you become an evil GM, and they think you killed them just 'cuz.

  Wow, that's long. Anyway, great discussion! Fun to read.