I remember someone mentioning that sometimes, the worst thing you can do to a player on a miss is to give them…

I remember someone mentioning that sometimes, the worst thing you can do to a player on a miss is to give them exactly what they asked for.

In our last session, the cult was sacrificing people (or about to anyway) to open a pathway to the prison of their evil god.

In the ensuing fight, the Druid lost control of a fire spirit, which then consumed a captured villager’s body in flames, as he was lying tied down on the sacrificial alter. The villager’s soul visually left his body, looking like a bluish vapor, and was pulled into a statue of an armored warrior, holding a giant stone seal in place.

The statue animated and let go of the seal. This was a soft move from my point of view that triggered because the Druid chose to pay the price of nature and to loose control over the fire spirit (he was using elemental mastery). The seal was not yet broken, as there were a second statue holding the seal. I just wanted to show them that they had to stop further sacrifices.

Later, the druid had fled the scene after getting a skull fracture from being hit square in the back head of an owlbear, which resulted in him having only 1 hp left and getting confused from the resulting concussion. The fighter finished off the rest of the fight.

After everyone were dead, except the cultist leader and the Fighter, the Fighter stood right in front of the alter, blovking the cult leaders escape. After trying to convince the cultist to surrender, the cultist takes a run for it, and the fighter tried to prevent his escape by tripping him. That’s when he rolled a miss.

I told the player that I was tempted to give him exactly what he desired, and let the cult leader fall over and crack his head open on the alter, just behind the fighter. He just responded: “Go for it”.

It was glorious. That was when demons began to spawn and reality started falling apart. Good times…