Post/Author/DateTime	Post
WotC_Bart 09-23-05, 12:11 PM	Hi folks, We've posted the latest Design & Development column (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20050923a) -- Undercover at Gen Con, part 2 -- this time discussing "TPK"s in games. Have a Total Party Kill experience you'd like to share?
MindWandererB 09-23-05, 04:55 PM	My experiences with TPK's have been very different from what Dave reported. They very rarely have anything to do with players keeping track of strategy/abilities, and communication is only rarely a problem. Here are my main TPKillers: 1) Metagame thinking. Players often assume that the DM won't "really" kill them. Until it happens once, anyway- then the mentality shifts to either "I won't really stay dead" or "I just won't get attached to my character." Either tendency leads to a certain berserker mentality, as well as a "no one gets left behind" mentality, where players would rather all die together than have one player have to suffer the loss of level or reroll a character. 2) Independent thinking. Players of mine often concentrate so hard on their character that they forget they're part of a team, and deliberately ignore other characters. It's not a lack of communication, it's a lack of cooperation. Many times I've seen something like the monk charge in at high speeds, gets separated from the others, and clobbered; the rogue stays hidden for multiple rounds waiting for the perfect time to strike (worst for short rogues due to slow movement); other characters focus on healing any minor injuries and slinking away when frightened. 3) Certain special abilities that the party just isn't equipped to handle. Damage resistance is a big one of these; I also had the Troglodyte's stench and Ghoul's paralysis be 100% responsible for TPK's. This is all mostly important at low levels, where the party lacks options to deal with these things. 4) High strength opponent+low HP character+multiple attacks or a crit. The loss of a character at the very beginning of a fight often results in a challenge too high for everyone else, especially if point 1 above is true.
borfaxer 09-23-05, 05:40 PM	The information in the column was great food for thought, and I especially liked the advice about having clear character sheets that are indexed to relevant rules in the books. Instead of not worrying about where the bonuses to your reflex save come from, you could easily have another sheet with breakdowns of your bonuses and lists of other possible bonuses. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that Dave Noonan observed TPKs at Gen Con. Thus communication is going to occur a bit less and people will think as individuals a bit more because they are not as familiar with each other as your standard regular gaming group (or am I wrong about this?). The groups I've gamed with have all had pretty good communication and are quite willing to cooperate extensively as a team -- after all, the group members are the only ones who are players. However, there can be situations where players don't realize the encounter is as dangerous as it is, and don't cooperate until key opportunities are missed. The mention of "no one running away" was a good one; I've seen it occur multiple times where people are supposed to get together to do something, and no one gets around to starting and no one else joins in. By my language, you can guess this occurs a lot in real life as well as the game. I'm not sure there's a good way to avoid this problem, other than communication which includes strategy: "We need to retreat. I'll fire some arrows into the nearest wight to cover your guys' escape. Someone grab the halfling," for example, instead of just "We need to retreat. I fire arrows at the nearest wight." Starting conversation about a strategy will help others join in its implementation. And in my experience, the fastest way to get killed is to assume the DM won't let it happen to your character... especially if the DM finds out you're assuming it.
Lenarior 09-24-05, 03:53 AM	I have to say that lately TPKs just don't happen in my games. Before the d20 system I was infamous as the DM that always killed of the entire party, but now it never happens. Of course from time to time things go realy bad, but usually thing turn brighter again towards the end and the party seldom looses more than two characters. It should also be noted that I know of one time when I acctually withdrew the enemies to give the characters a chance as it wasn't a good place for the campaign to crash. If I have done this more than once it was entierly subconscious.
Tristram 09-24-05, 06:54 AM	I was running a level 8 dungeon crawl for 4 PCs (asamir sorceror, elf bladesinger, werebear (human) barbarian, and human cleric of pelor). After an easy battle, the PC's decide to camp for the night. The asamir desides that since she gained a level, she would take the feat from the races of faerun book that gives her wings. Being the sadistic DM that I am had her roll a percentile to decide if her wings blisfully appeared in a shower of shiny sprinky lights or if they erupted violently from her back. Well the dice had a sence of humor and the wings erupted violently. Needless to say she passed out and (with another percentile) she was left with 3 hp. She wakes up an hour later and the group decides to press on. Keep in mind that she still has 3 hp. Well in the next room they meet a succubus who's disguised as an old man who's been tortured by the demons that run the dungeon. the sorceror fails her save vs charm and launches her maximized fireball into the party, killing her and since 2 people rolled a natural 1 and the other rolled a 2, they all take full damage and the fight just goes downhill from there. The bladesinger was next to go down, severely hurt from the fireball and the cleric was next, spending all his healing on the barbarian so he could kill the succubus, which he did, but triggered the spike pit trap and died. It was fun for everyone, accept the sorceror, who's player decided that I was being unfair. He was always a sore loser anyways though.
Sweethug 09-24-05, 07:02 AM	I noted the fact (as a DM and player) that no one is thinking to the surrender option. In modern or post-moderm games where PCs always have interactions with other human beings, the party often choose to surrender. In D&D, this could be an option when facing opponents that can take advantage of prisonners, but this really never happens. In my mind this is because, PCs, most of the time, fight against monsters. The term monster says it all !! As a Dm i try to suggest to my players that even goblins, orcs, minotaurs and whatnot have FEELINGS. Not all of the "monsters" enjoy killing. Some of them just make it to steal things, obey orders, because they are afraid... To let this option open to my players i just have to show them. Thus, NPCS, monsters or not, often surrender. If they are not fanatics (and most are not) they simply rise their hands, throw weapons... This works. And it adds to the list of troubles my PCS have to worry about. Dugeon crawling with prisonners is not the same :D . Sometimes they just let them run, sometimes PCs tie their ennemies up only to remember a few hours after that they let some people tied to a tree in a very unfriendly forest. The paladin gets mad and throw a rescue party... So now my PCs know that surrender is possible.
Chazmon 09-24-05, 12:49 PM	i always feel guilty when killing off charecters, at the moment im running a city game where the PC's are really charecterful (and as it happens evil) i really dont want to kill them off as they are a family. So far ive killed off one charecter and i only did that with the knowledge that in the upper level of the tower was a wizard with a potion of true resurection (long story) which they were sent to retrieve yet i didnt want them to give to the gang leader who sent them to retrieve it. A pitfall our group often falls into is the battle which we know we have to lose, too many times have we been taken prisoner had all our stuff knicked and made into gladiators.... its like the whole caravan situation all over again (ie its going to get attacked and you clearly arnt going to get paid)
Antioch 09-25-05, 06:22 PM	This encounter may or may not have been a true TPK, depending on how you look at it. On one hand, the DMs were far more than merciful in their blatant disregard of concealment and AoO mechanics. Truly, we were all hosed. Prior to the encounter, the party is guided to a small region within a massive swamp known as Blackmud. Apparently, it is a cursed blight upon the otherwise majestic nature of the swamp (as told to us by the green hag delivering us there by raft). She never went there, but knew of things that were corrupted by Blackmud and left that were no longer "of the swamp". We were only there looking for a legendary axe, and since she was the only lead we had in a swamp with little visibility range and over a thousand miles across, we figured we'd check the place out and see what we could find. We arrive with no incident and proceed trudging across the thick mud, layered over the water like a baleful scab. As we moved, we spotted a large three-layered ziggurat. The fog was too thick to make out any features, and there were things moving about on top. We dicided to continue and check it out later. Now we were seeing bodies within the mud. Mostly remains decked in rotting armor. Our militant leader identified the armor as being roughly 150 years old by the style and make of the equipment, and seeing as the axe disappeared 150 years ago, the facts fit. Some of the bodies lay on top of eachother, with weapons thrust through by others, suggesting two or more armires fought here and all died at once. We stumble upon a large tree. The only tree we've seen in a long time, with a stone array next to it. My character (sphinx diviner) casts detect magic, and registers epic-level magic radiating from the array. We find four symbols on it, but cant make heads or tails of them. We move to the tree, which has a skeleton stuck to it due to a massive axe sticking out of its chest. Bingo, we think. My detect magic registers some Conjuration, Enchantment, and Abjuration effects on the axe, so I suggest that it might be an intelligent weapon (the axe is forged in the likeness of a demon, teeth, eyes and all, the haft is actually a massive spinal column). I cast protection from evil on a party member who just wants to grab it. We eventually plan on just grabbing it and putting it in our bag of holding. We manage to use a javelin to dislodge it and catch it in the bag, and immediately the skeleton on the tree grabs the neck of Gar (the rogue who dislodged it and was closest). As soon as the axe enters the bag, the eyes look at Kent (the halfling who got it in the bag), and a massive earthquake kicks up. We all fail Balance checks (including the skeleton) and fall to the ground. The quake continues, and bodies start to surface. And move. Kent's innate undead detection (Nemesis feat) registers undead everywhere, and for three rounds we continually botch Balance checks while the undead surface up. So now, combat starts. We all get good Initiative results, but are more or less surrounded by a combination of 75 skeletons and two skeletal hydras (that are much farther away). The party level is 5th at the time, and we are all somewhat weakened by a previous encounter a couple days back. We have no cleric (and have done well this far into the game without one). I'm almost out of spells from various detection attempts aside from a couple stat buffs and blur spells. My turn runs around, I just run. Thanks to 40 foot movement rate and a path in which most of the skeletons arent out of the mud yet, I only take about 16 points of damage from rampant AoOs as a wind my tail out of there (I cant fly yet, not high enough level). Since I have no offensive spells and dont want to be surrounded, I tell the party this is the only option for me. The rest of the party decides that they will just stand there and try to hold their ground. The skeletons converge and it dawns on half the party that they dont have blunt weapons (only Kent and Khoral, who is a classic cliche of a dumb fighter). Now with their avenue of escape cut off and everyone surrounded by about three rows thick of skeletons, they have no way of getting out. Gar uses a smoke stick, and blinds everything. The combat turns into a wussy slapfest in which everyone wails pathetically at eachother as the party attempts in vain to find their way around the smoke. The mobs were so thick that the hydras picked at themselves for entertainment while waiting for the party to blunder through enough skeletons that their extensive reach would allow them to do something. Of course, the battle went horrible. The DMs just shoook their heads, sat back, and had the skeletons wander about until the players could escape. Had they let the dice fall, only my character would have made it out alive. We later regrouped in a Leomund's Hidden Lodge, rested, and took them out with much greater ease, but clearly the first round would have had the skeletons arguing over who gets the biggest XP share.
mystraca 09-25-05, 08:38 PM	A DM can easily be responcible for a TPK One of the things that can easily turn a normal encounter into a TPK is a DM adding in extra effects to try and add their spin of reality. The example of the asimir sorcorer suddenly taking damage, after taking a feat available to her, is an good one. The player died because the DM malicely hurt the player outside of the rules in the game, while hiding under the guise of "She had a chance in the dice to avoid it". The base game rules say nothing of the emergence of wings causing an injury or the time period in which they develop. Generally speaking it is far more damaging to the party when a DM choses to give a negative effect on a party/player, than benifical for a DM to give a positive effect for the party/player.
storybookknight 09-26-05, 03:18 AM	Speaking as a DM, several of my best TPKs occurred as a result of a little-known third edition supplement called The Book of Challenges , which has several exceedingly nasty encounters for many levels. The best of these, however, I adapted for my own personal use on an average 13th level party. The actual encounter is a CR 14 - by no means out of reach for a typical party. Moreover, the party had only been through one encounter prior to that and had suffered no critical wounds, ability score penalties, or used any of their best spells. The encounter: One eleventh-level Gnome Illusionist Lich (CR 13 alone) - I could easily have had him be just a thirteenth-level illusionist, but this was more stylistically appropriate for the setting - and one CR 11 Stone Golem. CR 13 = 2 CR 11s, 3 CR 11 = 1 CR 14. The math checks out. Key ingredients - Programmed Image and Improved Invisibility. Programmed Image has no spell resistance - ergo, it's easily to make the Golem temporarily look like a giant undead lich. Spellcasters threw all of their best damage spells at the creature, which (naturally) ignored everything. While the Image spells do allow for a Will save to disbelieve, the Gnome had high intelligence, natural illusory ability, Spell Focus and Greater Spell focus, making the save DC beyond ugly. The image was programmed to go through the motions of casting spells, and started with lower-level ones while the party was distracted - spectral hand, fear, energy drain, touch of idocy - basically spells that dropped players' Will saves. Then came the Phantasmal Killers - given the same combo of things I mentioned before, the PK save DC was in the low twenties. The wizard, who was the only person who had successfully disbelieved the illusion, had a low Wisdom and died on the first phantasmal killer. The Rogue had no chance. The remaining characters were a druid and a Paladin, who were having little luck attempting to wound the golem, not having adamantine weapons handy, nor knowing they would be necessary. By the time the other two were dead, the Paladin had taken heavy damage from the Golem and the Druid was out of higher-level spells. Then the summon monsters, web spells, and other anti-escape spells came out and the Golem finished the job. In this case, it helped that the creature was not a boss monster (as was mentioned in the wizards.com article), because the players had no idea that there was an illusionist running around. The reason the party failed was actually primarily due to failed skill checks - not recognizing the golem, not hearing the gnome casting spells under the loud boom of the programmed image, not knowing enough about liches to be totally effective.... a good encounter for parties that don't diversify sufficiently. The moral of the story is that Gnome Illusionists are not to be trifled with. Long live Volkor the Librarian!
Tristram 09-26-05, 09:15 PM	A DM can easily be responcible for a TPK One of the things that can easily turn a normal encounter into a TPK is a DM adding in extra effects to try and add their spin of reality. The example of the asimir sorcorer suddenly taking damage, after taking a feat available to her, is an good one. The player died because the DM malicely hurt the player outside of the rules in the game, while hiding under the guise of "She had a chance in the dice to avoid it". The base game rules say nothing of the emergence of wings causing an injury or the time period in which they develop. Generally speaking it is far more damaging to the party when a DM choses to give a negative effect on a party/player, than benifical for a DM to give a positive effect for the party/player. I wasn't hiding under anything. The only reason that the asamir went around with 3 hp is the fact that the group and more importantly the player, decided that they didn't need to rest or heal up. Also, she gained the full benefits of the wings feat. When I DM (and everyone in the group takes turns and we have several games running so nobody gets burnt out) I normally take very good care of my players. But when players make blatently stupid decisions, then I let everything fall on the rolls of the dice.
Some_call_me_Tim 09-29-05, 04:00 PM	I've never DM'ed a TPK, I guess I'm just too much of a softie. :D As a player I was involved in two near TPKs. One was a result of the DM not playing by the rules--we weren't allowed to make a spot check to see a huge pyro-hydra hiding in the sand (because the module author wrote it that way). The DM clumped us together (nice target for area effects), cut off our retreat (we had just crossed a river), and denied the use of our abilites. I will admit there was things we could have done better, we had no cleric for one. We attacked his little friends first (thinking it's just a hydra we can take him). We didn't spread out fast enough. But the DM hosed out of any possibility of retreat or running away (the boat just dropped us and left). Since we couldn't spot him, he had auto suprise and with our team in a clump he could use his breath weapon on the entire party. It was just plain ugly. The second near TPK was an end-fight so we should have expected it to go poorly. But here it was communication and cooperation that cost us big time. We were invading a dragon's lair, I was playing a tank, I figured I could go a few rounds toe-to-toe with them, we had two rogues, a barbarian, and a sorcerer (who unfortunately had energy substitution (acid) and these were green dragons). We had a plan the tank and barbie rush in, rogues go for the flank and attempt to grab the McGuffin and we then beat feet outta there. Well, we start taking much more damage than we figured, we took too many AoO's in closing. The sorcerer went down and then the barbarian. We had the McGuffin and everyone left alive was heading for the exits, when I, rather foolishly, went to try and retrieve the down members. We got the sorcerer back up and at this point he goes "I want to try and use my Dragon Bane spear before I leave." :eek: I'm dumbfounded, all this time I was flailing away on the dragons this guy is using a dragon bane spear as a walking stick. So, I get a bit cocky grab the spear and run back down to try and grab the barbarian's body (despite the player's assurance that it was ok to leave). I manage to kill one of the dragons with the spear, but one tank against three dragons is not a good idea. I'm nearing my last few hit points, when 'help' arrives. The rest of party comes back to help me. Unfortunately, they are now more of a liability. I probably had more hp then all of them combined. A breath weapon or two later the sorcerer and one of the rogues is down. Now I have to fight a retreat while picking up their bodies as well. I've learned since then to ask (before or during the fight) if anyone has a weapon or magic item that could help but they aren't planing on using. I believe that if I (or the barbarian) had been using that dragon bane spear at the begining that we likely would have killed all three dragons. If you have such an item speak up and offer it. If someone goes down. It might very well be the beginning of a TPK don't necessarily have to have everyone rush to help that person, stay focused. If you don't you might end up loosing the whole party instead. In both of the cases of these near TPKs a lot of resources were used to save/retrieve the fallen characters that might have been better spent to protect the living. Learn to recognize when you (or your party members) are more of a liability than a help. If you have to keep healing the sorcerer (or whoever) back up and they aren't useful offensive tell them to leave. Once you decide to leave, for Pelor's sake--Leave. The only thing worse than indecsion is not following that decision. This is just what the article described, everyone realizing it was time to flee but no one doing it. Plus once you leave don't come back. There was a reason you left.
philopharynx 10-01-05, 02:22 AM	My TPK had to do with playing intelligent opponents and the players not noticing big hints. They were fighting the drow in their tower. They had started at the top of the tower and were fighting their way down. They decimated the opposition on the upper levels, but they weren't subtle and let a few opponents get away. They found the middle levels deserted. There were even guard posts with nobody there. The players noticed this, but did not figure this out. They were ambushed by a large group in the lower levels. The players didn't realize how bad this was until it was too late.
Remiel 05-10-06, 08:20 PM	Although I have a number of TPK stories these two stand out: 1) We were stuck in Undermountain (due to a curse) and so we decided to clear out a portion of a level to live in (not an unreasonable idea). We had hints from talking to monsters that there were two bosses on the level one was a spell caster and the other a dragon, it turned out that the spell caster was the nearer and we decided to try to defeat him. It wasn't until we were actually in his lair that the words 'failed lich' were used and by then we felt committed. A lich is a tough opponent but we had six 9-11th level characters and he had 'failed' at his attempt to become a lich, so we pressed on. In our own defence we had been playing 3-3.5 for some time so we knew that lichdom is available from around 11-12th level and expected that the boss would be close to this range. We forgot that the GM was converting from first edition where minimum level to attempt lichdom was 18th. First spell - Weird (mass phantasmal killer) killed my rogue, one fighter and the wizard. The rest of the party rallied fought valiantly and managed though some very lucky rolling to get the lich down to single digit hit points before the last of us died. This is where the GM told us what being a 'failed lich' meant - the monster had all the powers of a lich, except rebirth - once killed he was dead for good, and we missed killing him by four hit points. 2) In the course of my campaign the PC's found a sealed and warded tomb and were preparing to open the door when a divine messenger appeared and warned them that 'eternal evil' waited behind that door and that it should never be opened. Of course several of the PC's thought that this meant they should IMMEDIATELY open the door! The rest of the party shouted them down however and they decided to move on. Unfortunately their discussion had been quite heated (both in and out of character) so i rolled for a wandering monsters and they got the toughest monster in the dungeon, a giant. Things were looking bleak, but the reason they had come to the area was to recover a cache of weapons 'from the wizard war' which they had done before finding the door. Further one of these weapons was supposed to be the 'greatest weapon ever made by the Wizards of Old'. So the paladin drew the sword and charged the giant. The sword named Slaughter was indeed epic, the magic of the sword was such that the first time it hit a creature it did 10% of the creatures total hp in damage. The second hit was 20%, third 30% and fourth and final hit 40%. So 4 hits would kill anything without regeneration or healing, additionally it healed the wielder on a hp for hp basis - fantastic - so why had it been locked away? Well there was just one minor problem, the wielders hp could actually go above their normal maximum through this healing but if it did so then there was 1% chance per hp over max that the wielder would go berserk! The paladin charged the giant; four swings, four hits and the giant fell with a massive crash. The party were amazed and vastly relieved; they knew they were no match for the giant. Then the paladin turned to face them and his eyes were glowing with a blood red glow...