Hey Weirdos,
I’m playing 5e with some of Hankerin’s Hardcore rules and recently introduced Zymer’s Candle because there was a big, tough encounter in the party’s future and I wanted to pull out all the stops. Suffice to say they got owned and used the candle.
Now they plan to rest up, get tactical and try again. My worry is that it won’t be fun a second (or third) time around. The encounter took about 2 hours to play through online and that was with a reset, so I’m wondering what folks do to make replays interesting and enjoyable. Or is the fun being able to try over and over, like Dark Souls?
I’m also fairly certain they cannot beat the encounter. They are a party of glass cannons who had a pair of NPCs who handled the front-line fighting, but they have not been kind to the NPCs and it boiled over after the reset, resulting in the PCs killing one NPC and the other fleeing. (Things have taken a very dark turn in the game.) Without their front-liners, I don’t think they will be successful, but due to the nature of the encounter there is extreme time pressure and they cannot get help without failing the mission, which is a rescue situation.
Long ramble but TL;DR: is replaying the same room fun? And tips or pitfalls to avoid?
Yours in brau,
MT