So yeah, I’ll admit, I’m not above using various tricks to provide the illusion of agency to the players when it wouldn’t be otherwise possible to give them actual real choices. In this case, hindsight I realize I didn’t really give them a choice… See they found two possible ways out of the buried castle of Astidax, and happened to choose the one that had a ridiculously difficult monster at the end. In this case, it was a Zombie Cactus or some such. Something that maybe, theoretically, if the party scored a couple crits they might be able to defeat. On the bright side, the thing was slow as balls, so when they realized just how nasty it was, they wisely fled back into the dungeon to check out the other route. The entire top of the butte was also covered in a minorly annoying in small quantities, but fairly deadly for Level 3 characters, terrain, specifically thorn-trees… sure it was only like 1hp damage per 5’, but it was, like … miles to the edge or something. They couldn’t really tell. So yeah, kind of a shit choice to offer, and I feel a little bad in hindsight, but whatever, they escaped with no really serious injuries (okay, I think someone got bloodied w/ one hit, but they all LIVED, and bloodied is basically nothing in 4th.)
The other exit lead them to a small outcropping only a hundred feet or so off the the ground which also gave them a nice view of the area around in about a 100 degree arc.