Quote Originally Posted by Darth Ultron View Post
Well, I'm not sure failing counts as a option ever. The players can make more then a ripple with some sort of planned action.
Just running this by you, even though I already know the answer.

Say you have an adventure where the players are given the task of defending the village from a raid of goblins. Do you have a plan set for them in advance that they should follow? Or do they need to plan the defense?

Say that the fight starts, and you've made the entire thing to be reasonable challenging given what you know they have in their reserves. But if they don't use the wand of fireballs you provided, they might have a tougher time, but you account for this. How do you account for this? Do you have an outcome where they win anyway or will you just let the dice fall?

Say they do not manage to hold the lines and forgot about the wand you gave them. One of them orders a retreat. You had planned a pincer attack by the goblins in anticipation of this earlier. Is the only outcome death at this point?

Say they now run into the ambush, get surrounded and finally, with all the villagers dead and some of the party members dead, they remember the fireball wand and use it, easily clearing out the goblins, after they'd effectively failed. Did you account for this? Is this a failure or a success? What do you do to prevent this from happening ever in your games?