The party has gathered in the home of the Golgari Swarm's Matka, Izoni. They are searching for the Lost District Tartelos, a region of the deep undercity of Ravnica that has passed into myth and legend. They have reason to believe that vast Phyrexian conspiracy has used this remote location as the site for the Plagueworks, which the conspiracy will use to create monstrosities and biological weapons to unleash upon the city and corrupt its citizens into bio-industrial horrors. The party is there because the party's Eladrin Druid is Izoni's black sheep daughter, the product of an affair with a high elf in the Simic Combine. The Golgari Swarm is a guild with many powerful factions and houses, and as such, for reasons both political and genuinely romantic, Izoni has been seeing a younger devkarin man named Taelos vod Savo, a member of the Golgari guildmaster's own house.
Taelos comes off as arrogant and prissy at first, but when the party first tells him that they are searching for this lost district, a boyish enthusiasm ignites, and he eagerly begins to gather all the books and research he has done on this esoteric subject.
Going to speak with him again, the party comes to dinner at Izoni's house and awaits Taelos' arrival. He comes in, carrying a stack of books and several rolled-up scrolls, and sets them down on the grand banquet hall. They discuss the history of the Lost District, and his theory that it might actually be closer (at least horizontally) than they might have previously thought.
And then, mid-sentence, he drops dead.
Midnight Tears - a clever, magical poison that has no effect when ingested until the clock strikes midnight. And then - death, abrupt and instant.
This was the scenario that took place in my Ravnica game this past Monday. I'd threaded in hints that there was some tumult in the Swarm, and that someone might be making a play for Jarad vod Savo's seat (I should specify that they were making a credible play, as the Golgari Swarm is always a massive overlap of court intrigue and secret vendettas and plots).
But this assassination, the party quickly (and correctly) theorizes, was not about who stands to rule the Golgari, but was instead an effort to delay their discovery of the Plagueworks.
Here, however, is where things get tricky.
The Artificer, knowing that the party's Cleric was unavailable, prepared Revivify. Seconds after Taelos' body slumped in his chair, his mouth foaming with poison (he would have had to been given many, many doses given that he had a "Drow Favored Consort" stat block, but whatever) the artificer popped over and cast the spell.
Now, I guess in theory I could have just let that happen. Indeed, I'd even considered allowing Taelos to serve as a powerful NPC ally in their dungeon delve down into the deep undercity. But dramatically, it would have been pretty damned anti-climactic to just have him go "wow, that sucked. But I guess I'm fine now?"
This is one of the issues you get with D&D as a storytelling medium. TTRPGs are built more than any other type of game I've played to let the story drive the game, and for players to interact with a world that can respond immediately to unconventional (or even just unexpected) ideas.
But I also think this is an area where the abilities that characters get can make it hard to dramatize certain moments - especially as they get to higher levels.
Because really, D&D is two separate things stapled together. It's a tactical strategy game, where players are encouraged to build characters as platforms for the most useful and effective abilities to defeat monsters and navigate dungeons, but it's also a storytelling game in which players are encouraged to inhabit a role that is different from how they are in real life and imagine how that person would act in a way that is dramatically interesting.
For the first version of the game to work, resurrection has to be relatively cheap (ok, you could argue that you could do a game without any resurrection magic - like Tomb of Annihilation - but I think resurrection magic is a net positive for the game). But in a certain way, especially given that the game's rules don't really make any strict distinctions between player characters and NPCs, it can sometimes break the drama.
My goal in this post is not really to find a solution to that problem, but more to simply observe it. As a DM, we're all kind of in an endless pursuit to provide the most satisfying game - coming up with engaging and challenging tactical situations that are just hard enough to make the players feel they really earned their victories (but also balancing them so that the players are likely to win) while also telling an engaging fantasy tale that gives each character (and thus the players playing them) satisfying emotional arcs sprinkled with badass moments.
Figuring out how to balance the sometimes-conflicting goals of a game like D&D is one of the big challenges for a DM (and, frankly, a player - I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to get my naive recent college graduate wizard in our Wildemount campaign to start feeling more comfortable melting peoples faces off with Tasha's Caustic Brew, which is something I think that, tactically, he'll need to start doing relatively soon.)
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