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Opportunities

Source Ultimate Intrigue pg. 136
An opportunity is the PCs’ chance to strike back at their nemesis. Each time you choose a stratagem, decide what sort of opportunity, vulnerability, or clue the PCs might be able to discover as a result of either foiling or enduring the stratagem. The descriptions of the strategems in the following section include the kinds of opportunities each might expose; these optional plot hooks are meant to give the PCs more influence over the sorts of the adventures they undertake, and they can help the PCs feel like they’re guiding the campaign’s story based on their reactions to the nemesis’s schemes. Opportunities lend themselves to player-devised counter-stratagems, which might take the form of single encounters or whole adventures (see Heists and Infiltration). While the Stratagems section has many options for nemeses, the opportunities listed along with each strategem are merely some of the possibilities. You should feel free to guide the PCs toward other opportunities that match your nemesis’s modus operandi and that mesh better with the campaign. Of course, each opportunity the PCs take likely encourages their nemesis to continue his antagonism, continuing— and likely intensifying—the rivalry.

This back and forth between the PCs and their nemesis should culminate in a natural, plot-driven conclusion— such as a dramatic final encounter or the end of a campaign arc. Such interplay works best if there is a reason that the nemesis and PCs haven’t faced one another in combat until this climax. PCs tend to find ways to kill enemies with even the most foolproof-seeming escape plans, and using storytelling tricks to save the nemesis can breed resentment among players. Nonetheless, if a nemesis somehow dies early but still has plenty of resources, the nemesis may be able to manage a resurrection—just like the PCs would if one of their own died in the struggle. Unless special events (or even deliberately laid stratagems) deem otherwise, a nemesis likely continues to antagonize the PCs until either he dies or somehow reconciles with his foes.