And now the ifrit can return! Encountering it later could tie to the story (if you can make that work narratively), and it would be kinda awesome. Now the banished elemental has returned and is out for vengance, perhaps with stonger allies... In my experience as a DM, players' unforseen actions can (sometimes) lead to even better story-telling!
I actually had a grave-bound pact devil do this after my DMPC cleric zealously banished it, but the campaign ended before anything more than foreshadowing and teases came of it. Same character also had a role in banishing a nightwalker that had been tormenting a city for generations, and he's thus far remained banished. We had prep time.
I'm pretty sure your players would remember fight this ifrit, and tell stories. But, the time that they banished an villain while he was taunting them, and it worked, will be a story to tell their grandsons. You did awesome by allowing it, fudging must be tempting, but accepting was amazing!
One thing one should be ESPECIALLY careful with when it comes to homebrew items that can be used in boss encounters: always have your party maintain/discharge magic items you give them and give the items a charge cap. I had a quest-related treasure of three metal skulls that charge beams of disintegration when they're assembled together. Lifted wholesale from The Phantom. There's a max safe charge limit and a total charge dump if you try to use them when over that charge limit. What happened was that a lot of other stuff happened and we basically upgraded ourselves through true polymorph to angelic beings and pulled out the skulls in midair to use them, and we annihilated the quest's BBEG, his entourage of frost paladins, werewolf guards and 20 feet of the earth beneath their feet on the first turn of the encounter because none of us (myself, the DM, included) had remembered to do daily discharges of the skulls OR keep the skulls separated. For months of ingame time the charge had been building up and I had written no catastrophic failure maximum cap for them. So we nuked the enemy and his guard, nuked all their equipment, and made a 20ft deep pit of dust in the middle of the road.
Reminds me of a game I played where the party managed to sneak around a fire giant fortress enough to find what we needed plus saw this giant ruby in the forehead of this mechanical giant they were building. 3 of 4 of the party had access to dimension door so when we got trapped in the room with the maguffin one pair immediately DD'd out, the other DD'd to the ruby, spent a round pulling it out, then DD'd out too. I had just gotten teleportation circle and started casting that once outside. Giants caught up towards the end of casting, but just had to hold off a few rounds and we were back in town with both. DM said we skipped most of what he planned for the fortress, but we had a lot of fun pulling that off.
I accidentally killed off what was supposed to be an entire campaign arc in my sister's campaign. We were fighting an undead enemy boss that was suppose to keep resurrecting and hunting is down and there was this big grand adventure to learn the secrets of the few ways to permanently kill it. Anyway, it had almost TPK'd us, but had like, 1hp (I learned later) so in an act of desperation, I just threw my torch at it with one hand, and a vial of holy water with the other. The session ended with us BARELY surviving (I was literally the last member alive with like, 3 hp myself). My sister sits down to give out XP, looks at her notes, and completely dejectedly says... "you all gain 1,400,000 xp" Were all shocked into complete silence when she says, "that boss was supposed to resurrect itself every few full moon, and come hunt you down for the entire campaign. Learning how to kill it WAS the campaign. By the time you finally learned how to kill it, he was supposed to give you enough XP each to matter at like, level 17. But you killed it. You SOMEHOW 'oopsed' into dealing the killing blow with NON-MAGICAL fire, and then focusing the flames with holy water. You literally did the ONE thing to end this campaign, and I'm... not going to punish you for it. But God I hate you all so much right now." It was easily one of the funniest moments I've ever had in DnD. A bunch of level 3 characters gaining 1.4 million experience, and killing the end game boss? Absolutely brilliant.
Yes! That's exactly what I'm talking about. While certainly not what she had planned, you'll remember that session forever, I bet. Awesome story, thanks for sharing! :)
I upscaled Nezznar The Black Spider in my LMoP adventure to a 7th level Spellcaster (including appropriate HP and AC) with spells flavored for a drow mage. Added villain actions, too. Included in the encounter were 4 giant spiders and 2 bugbear as written. First round. Two PCs go before Nezznar. Two crits, from the ranger and rogue (over 60 pts of total damage) and he was dead- sure I could’ve dialed up the HP a bit but I went with it and played on
Ok. But what if you brew it so that the magic circle on the floor keeps the effrit summoned? Destroy the circle and the banishment goes through. The effrit is stuck in the circle and the encounter just happens. Or maybe make it so the iffrit can’t leave the circle or else get banished. It opens a lot more tactical play, and maintains the tension. The giants now have an opportunity to betray, and the players can use it.
any high magic creature like the efreet will have contingency spell on it, to prevent one shots like this. a simple counter spell like dispel magic tied to a continency spell would save it. and possibly tick it off or a chance to taunt the players.
Many options indeed, but for me, it ended in the best way. Not with me one-upping the players, but owning my mistake in not preparing properly - and creating an awesome memory for us all! :)
Whenever we had snuffed the DM, that Karma would definitely come back on us later. For Example: Banished Ifrit has Ifritah looking for him and she is enraged that you are responcible for his disapearance. Battle ensues anyway
I can get that, and I've done it as well, but it can be lame for players to feel like stuff is inevitable. I. E. No matter what we do, this encounter is happening. Do we really have agency then?
A) It is a concentration spell. You sold yourself and the players short. B) The Djinn would most likely be able to return within the minute/before the players could make an escape. C) In the end you sold yourself, as the DM, and the players short. Lesson learned for next time (or 5 years later) if this story is that old. Banishment is a delay and not a solution.
I know, but it ended perfectly in my eyes. I cut it from the video, but the fire giants were unwilling slaves, so they were unlikely to try to aid the banished efreeti. So yeah, many ways I could have preserved the encounter, but in the end, letting the players get that victory was the right call. We're still laughing about it!
This is why all BBEGs should have legendary resistance. Even if it was not something the DM thought of previously, it should have been added on the fly.
