A DM's Woes: What Just Happened? (2 BBEG Dead in 1 Round)

[Empedocles]

Could you post the character sheets of all involved? And could you explain, in precise detail, exactly how the combats and such happened, what tactics were used, what houserules are in play, etc. etc.?

Also, isn't the first thing you do, when thinking of a character, come up with a basic idea of what to do should the party end up killing them?

That's a major point of D&D. Parties kill things. Its what they do! That is what the system is geared towards enabling.

I'll take a look but I'm not sure I could find them. As to with the BBEGs and my lack of foresight...the issue was really that right until the end I didn't think the PCs would attack especially since I told them their CR OoC. Both villains were meant to die in other places, in much more epicways.

Some of the guards, after seeing how powerful the PCs were, could have transmitted a 'buff or run' message to the villains. See the Dancing Lights OOTS strip for a magical example of coded communication. A network of active Message spells might work better in a more confined environment (and has the advantage of being a free action and harder to detect and counter than an in-battle spellcasting), though you'd need some pretty strict stationing and scheduling to pull it off..

The thing is...the only guards that lasted more then a round were at the very beginning on the surface, and there wouldn't have been much of a justification for them to have dancing lights since they were draconian gulley dwarves.

Erm, if you have a warblade its 3.5. Haste gives an extra attack at your highest attack, it doesn't give you an extra standard action to use a manuever I don't think. Otherwise Time standstill would be 4 attacks long, followed by white raven tactics shenanigans.

Oops.

Actually, that might not have made a difference since the wizard had yet to act on the surprise