Post/Author/DateTime	Post
the_old_noob 10-04-06, 09:51 AM	Well, last night my party sat down to play the "Splitting Heirs" module. And to make sure I don't do any spoilers, I'll just say: We all died. TOTAL PARTY KILL. First of all we found out almost nothing from anyone - we failed 90% of our gather information, spot, and search checks. We knew almost nothing about what was going on, so wandered around blindly. Secondly, we nearly died from the early "easy" encounters - we rolled more 1s in combat than I've ever seen in 24+ years of gaming. Thirdly, we failed almost every saving throw. Not to mention that we were all at the absolute minimum level to play the module (first LG module we've ever played). Ah, what fun. So for the 2nd time in a week we all get to make new LG characters. Well, first time TPK. One less thing on my gaming "never done" list. (it is quite small)
kenobi65 10-04-06, 10:17 AM	We all died. TOTAL PARTY KILL. Though, based on what you described, it sounds like it was far more a function of awesomely bad dice than anything else. Sounds like you may be willing to try again; hopefully, the dice won't stink so much, and you'll actually be able to enjoy it.
Lomiat 10-04-06, 11:04 AM	I agree with Kenobi. Sounds like bad dice rolling, but it should turn around if you keep at it. Meanwhile, I'd recommend you play some intro mods to get to second level, rather than tackle Core or Regional adventures right off the bat. A lot of them will presume that at least one of you is going to have a magical or adamantine or cold iron or etc. weapon. APL 2 adventures are written keeping in mind the relative prowess of a 6-player table with an AVERAGE party level of 2. Playing up, especially if the mod has a "tough reputation," can be deadly. I'd recommend, too, that you ask your DM to gauge your chances of survival before you pick your next adventure. Hope this helps and that you have more fun the next time around.
pedr 10-04-06, 12:16 PM	Though 'play intros' isn't always the best advice ... Until last month I'd never killed a Living Greyhawk character as a DM before. I convinced my housemate to play, and we were joined by another new player plus two very experienced ones. Now admittedly the module was one which had been revised and re-issued in a new, less lethal version following the events of the premiere, and admittedly there were only four players... but it was an intro, right?? One TPK later, you have a very embarrassed DM, an earlier night than planned and some slightly annoyed players. Ok, they actually took it in good humour. I've not lived it down though - first TPK in the goodness knows how many tables our local group has run since Year 1! Both the newbies came back, thankfully. Though my housemate's character was captured by slavers one and a half encounters into his next module, a two-round introduction. Guess we just have a tough region!
Lomiat 10-04-06, 12:52 PM	Yeah, intros can be deadly, but they are written for 1st level characters. Therefore, the expectation is that a balanced group of 4 to 6 PCs right out of the gate will (or should) have the means available to defeat whatever baddies they face. This doesn't mean that it will necessarily be easy, and unbalanced tables will suffer even more than at higher-level adventures, because with only 1 HD, the PCs don't have much room for bad luck. I've seen swarms in intro mods, and without arcane casters, those are brutal. I've also seen shadows and monsters with DR, but those mods tend to give the PCs the equipment they need. In an APL 2 adventure, the author can simply toss the CR 5 ghost into the adventure, and the players have to deal with it, even if they don't have magic weapons or a turning cleric of sufficient level or an arcanist with the ability to do 40+ HPs of damage with magic missile. That's why 1st level PCs benefit from intros.
Gelth 10-04-06, 02:22 PM	The only actual TPK I've seen was a table of 6 experienced players, all making Dwarven characters to complement each other, sitting down to play some year 2 Core or other (as I remember it anyway), and nobody surviving. Correction, one guy was alive, but in negatives and stable, but unable to naturally heal due to a curse. He'd start the next module still in negatives if he chose to keep the character. He didn't. --Penn, Ket Triad
solbergb 10-04-06, 02:46 PM	If you don't get any information, you have lost some resiliency. If you use lots of resources on early encounters, you've lost some resiliency. Resiliency is what lets you survive disasters like failing every save. You had 3 bad things in a row, and APL2 parties tend to not be very resilient anyway. Not only do you lack raw toughness in hitpoints etc, all low level characters are very much alike, meaning you've got no oddball tricks to rescue things. Plus you've also not been around long enough to earn one-shot favors that can sometimes salvage the situation. What you're describing is a textbook TPK scenario. If that much goes wrong..well..there has to be SOME danger. It's extraordinarily rare, considering how many tables get played and how random the mustering is. I know of exactly one (back in year 3, one of those encounters that was EL+6 on paper, but "mitigated" because they'd retreat if they took casualties....except they didn't take enough casualties before they splatted the party). There was another near TPK caused by a trap in a minimission that was a bit over the top at low APL's too...I believe when the judge slowed things down and made the consequences of failure clear, then let each character take their actions (not frivolously this time) they found a way out. TPK's happen when 1. Bad choices or lack of character skills requiring the party to "muscle" through the module, stumbling into stuff unprepared. 2. a long string of bad luck, meaning the party fails to muscle through 3. lack of capability or party cohesion to retreat combined with unwillingness to leave the downed party members behind. (retreat is tough at APL2 a lot of the time and is very hard if anyone is unable to act) I had something like this happen at APL12 recently, but we pulled off the retreat. Luckily the encounter we failed wasn't a big part of the adventure rewards but we weren't terribly happy about it. We had a plan to come back, but the mastermind moved the guardians and the thing they were guarding away while we were regrouping. We wouldn't have TPK'd but we were in danger of several unrecoverable deaths if we'd been a little less organized and, yes, lucky on executing the retreat.
Lupo 10-04-06, 03:12 PM	The only actual TPK I've seen was a table of 6 experienced players, all making Dwarven characters to complement each other, sitting down to play some year 2 Core or other (as I remember it anyway), and nobody surviving. Correction, one guy was alive, but in negatives and stable, but unable to naturally heal due to a curse. He'd start the next module still in negatives if he chose to keep the character. He didn't. --Penn, Ket Triad yea, experience comes from errors you survive :rolleyes: a certain sunndi adventure nearly wipded out a balanced APL 2 party. one should have told the players that playing 4 elven charcters in sunndi with bullywuggs being (in)famous for sporting ranger levels with favoured enemy [elven] was a bad bad bad idea. the "warming up" encounter is a simple ambush, from the far side of a collapsed bridge, only 4 first level bullywug . . . . rangers :), comp. longbows, [only strength +2], only half the bullywugs got point blank bonus. nobody spotted them, 8 arrows later half of the party was dead, one negative, two dragging the neagative one along. ciao martin m. ps: now everyone who was at that con knows about it, and spread the word, will most probably never happen again.
Lomiat 10-04-06, 03:42 PM	3. lack of capability or party cohesion to retreat combined with unwillingness to leave the downed party members behind. (retreat is tough at APL2 a lot of the time and is very hard if anyone is unable to act) The only TPK I've witnessed was due to this. I played a core mod with several of my friends, and we got into a bad spot, tactically, to fight. I told everyone we should retreat to a better tactical position. Half the party retreated immediately, and the other two stayed in front, trying to fight in the bad spot. One dropped the next round. Then the other guy had to start hauling him and dropped on the way back. That left the weaker of us without high-AC, high-HP characters to protect us, and we were dropped shortly afterward. Fortunately, it was the first AR for all PCs involved, so it stung quite a bit less.
Mommy was an Orc 10-04-06, 06:38 PM	TPK's happen when 1. Bad choices or lack of character skills requiring the party to "muscle" through the module, stumbling into stuff unprepared. 2. a long string of bad luck, meaning the party fails to muscle through 3. lack of capability or party cohesion to retreat combined with unwillingness to leave the downed party members behind. (retreat is tough at APL2 a lot of the time and is very hard if anyone is unable to act) I think there's another major TPK case: 4. Character playing down drags party APL up, but is either a poor build, played incompetently, and/or fails a crucial save - there's a famous '9th level archer playing down either 3 or 5 levels, gets dominated and guns down the rest of the party'
Arinaad 10-05-06, 08:41 PM	I ran into a similar situation in Bissell, but it was the reverse. Our tank player decided to pull out a level 1 character and drag the APL down to 4 instead of having a tank and playing 6. I know this doesn't sound bad, but without that tank, my Wiz3/Cle3/Mystic Theurge1 was the tank... now to this point in the con *last round!* the mods had been about 80% RP/investigation... how was I supposed to know that this was a combat heavy mod?? Anyways, 4k gp worth of "disposable" magical items later, 1 dead first level rogue, and one sage (now without the long flowing beard), we managed to finish the mod (well, 5 of us anyways). But that could quickly have turned into a TPK had I not been saving some interesting items for a really sour day (and blown all but 1 favour in a stack of about 40 ARs)... All because of one player's bad decisions (which was apparently my fault, but I digress) S.Walker
solbergb 10-06-06, 01:25 PM	Usually pulling the level down isn't so bad. Everybody in the party but the new squishie is suddenly "more powerful". I suspect if your party had gone level 6, with the same folks but a L6 tank, you would have been in even bigger trouble, because only one character was stronger, and the rest weaker. To me, folks who play down should actually play down (ie, don't drag the table up to where it can't handle it). Sometimes con mixing can go bad though. My most recent scary encounter featured us losing a L13 blaster sorcerer, receiving a L10ish non-UMD-no-damage-without-sneak-attack rogue instead, not noticing we were now an EL11 party, playing APL12 anyway and catching a really dangerous elemental encounter (we went from having a really effective char for the encounter to one who was incapable of contributing at all) We weren't in TPK danger unless we got caught in a rescue-loop, but we did find ourselves in a position where we had to run away, and it was looking like we might have one unrecoverable death (and two if the rescuer had not had a onetime favor that could have gotten one of the two out, but it was an "exit from the module" favor, ensuring the party would have been down two members halfway through the mod). We weren't in a rescue loop because I insisted that if I failed nobody come in after me. I knew what would happen, we just didn't have the muscle to win, and if folks didn't start running RIGHT NOW, they'd be chased down and killed. I'd just spent the last two rounds getting us into position to retreat, I wasn't going to have my efforts undone :) Afterwards, when my sorc flew past huge AOO's and was knocked into single digit hitpoints via average dice, I figured I'd taken about a 40% chance of losing my character to rescue another (it would have been the familiar's decision who to save with the favor, and its last orders were to get the barbarian out, and it was safely next to the barb, not next to me). My wife later told me that she had a close wounds spell left, which meant I had more margin than I thought. But...yeouch!
Bogjob 10-06-06, 04:37 PM	Recently I DM'd The Barbarous Coast and the only thing that saved the party (as they were all down and bleeding to death) was a crit from a crossbow shot from the bard (who was last woman standing) that took out the last remaining bad guy lol. Two of the players that were supposed to be there couldn't make it and the other 4 played on anyway on what can be a tough module. The closest I have come to a tpk which isn't something I would like to have done on my friends :eek:
Rerednaw 10-06-06, 08:28 PM	My 4th or 5th game with my only LG character was a TPK. At APL2. A pair of barbarians, a ranger (archer), and me (sorceror). Same situation. All of us were experienced players. No matter how good your planning and tactics, d20 will kill you with a series of low rolls. What made it worse was we blew through all the other encounters, which were roleplaying or puzzle-solving. The DM said the final combat was simple. Well he critted us twice, made all but one save (the one guy I slept) and our guys continually missed on almost every strike. I was tempted to run but stayed out of party loyalty. It was too bad the 8th level NPC we made a friend of was expressly forbidden to help or heal any of us in the final encounter. I'm now on my second LG character. So don't feel alone it happens to all of us.
SgtHulka 10-06-06, 08:51 PM	Recently I DM'd The Barbarous Coast and the only thing that saved the party (as they were all down and bleeding to death) was a crit from a crossbow shot from the bard (who was last woman standing) that took out the last remaining bad guy lol. Two of the players that were supposed to be there couldn't make it and the other 4 played on anyway on what can be a tough module. The closest I have come to a tpk which isn't something I would like to have done on my friends :eek: Barbarous Coast can go south quickly. SPOILER I think, though, in the case of a TPK, it's well within the spirit of the mod to have the bad guys stabilize the characters and sell them into slavery. Still not optimal, but at least not a true TPK, and at low levels not that devestating.
Mommy was an Orc 10-06-06, 10:35 PM	Potential spoiler. Well, yes, when writers ignore the CR rules for stats and NPC wealth or for that matter common sense, that can happen... Barbarous Coast can go south quickly.
Prochytes 10-07-06, 06:47 AM	We thought that we were goners on that one as well. At one point, two of our front-line fighters were respectively a) impaired to the point of missing a lot (I am not saying how because of spoilers) and b) on the deck, having taken 40+ (or so) points of non-lethal damage from about two hits (APL 4, I think). My cleric burned through a lot of disposables, lent to her by a friendly centaur PC, to keep the others on their feet until we won. Just.
thorinXXX 10-07-06, 12:07 PM	I remember an intro mod where a TPK was avoided only due to overt DM benevolence. It had something to do with no one in the party being able to roll over an 8 for 8 rounds. And that was with a full table. The BDF (me) dropped playing rearguard so that the sorcerer (who was the most effective fighter in the encounter) could have enough of a headstart to get the kidnap victim back to town.
copper_wyrmling 10-07-06, 01:14 PM	I remember an intro mod where a TPK was avoided only due to overt DM benevolence. It had something to do with no one in the party being able to roll over an 8 for 8 rounds. And that was with a full table. The BDF (me) dropped playing rearguard so that the sorcerer (who was the most effective fighter in the encounter) could have enough of a headstart to get the kidnap victim back to town. I playtested an intro mod where that happened. We had five L1 characters, the enemy was a party of three L1 characters (sorcerer, rogue, fighter from memory). The problem was that they couldn't roll below 15, and we couldn't roll above 10, and the fight was on top of a tower with no real way to escape except killing them. Our characters were all brand new and created with five minutes notice (it was one of those, "Are you guys doing anything this slot? I have an intro mod I need playtested..." situations), so they had very little equipment. When we finally dropped the last one, we had two characters still standing, one on 2HP and one on 1HP, and neither of them had any healing capability. Fortunately, that was the last encounter. The game seems to be much swingier at the baby APLs. At high APLs, at least in my experience, PCs are a lot more resilient and their abilities work much more reliably (e.g. if you have +15 to hit on touch attacks and a once / day reroll, your d20 roll rarely matters; if you have four attacks at +30/+30/+25/+20, then almost always a couple of them will connect). It's much easier to recover from a terrible first round, or first few rounds. A couple of people have mentioned Barbarous Coast. I played that at APL 10, with a very arcane-heavy table (wizard, sorcerer, sorcerer/rogue/arcane trickster, bard, ranger / arcane archer), and we didn't have any trouble, because our abilities meant that we could avoid meeting the enemy on their terms, and when one of us ended up in a bad position, we had plenty of ways to extricate her.
Prochytes 10-08-06, 02:21 PM	The game seems to be much swingier at the baby APLs. At high APLs, at least in my experience, PCs are a lot more resilient and their abilities work much more reliably There is a great deal of truth in that. I have been playing a lot at low APLs recently. I had forgotten how easy it is for even the wannabe martial characters to miss most of the time when the dice are against them. Sword and sorcery stands at a discreet distance, while the characters enact the immortal fight scene from Bridget Jones' Diary (a sequence that reminds us, for anyone who has not seen it, that, despite the prevalence of black belts and ninjas in the movies, many brawls on this planet happen between people who really suck at hitting one another).
Lupo 10-08-06, 02:57 PM	There is a great deal of truth in that. I have been playing a lot at low APLs recently. I had forgotten how easy it is for even the wannabe martial characters to miss most of the time when the dice are against them. Sword and sorcery stands at a discreet distance, while the characters enact the immortal fight scene from Bridget Jones' Diary (a sequence that reminds us, for anyone who has not seen it, that, despite the prevalence of black belts and ninjas in the movies, many brawls on this planet happen between people who really suck at hitting one another). yea, a medium level melee type just lowers the amount of power atttack, a medium level wizard just pulls some expensive consumables (maybe even some self scribed scrolls) and a cleric just does one of the two, depending on whether a melee or a caster type. the problem for first level characters is, when a fight is turning against them, they don't have the resources to hack through it and they often even don't have the means to get out of it alive. ciao martin m.
Maesto 10-09-06, 05:26 AM	As a DM, I've seen a number of situations where TPKs are likely to occur, and will occur if I continue to play the baddies "smart". I've twice seen a party run away, unable to go on, and have developed a reputation as a nasty DM, but otherwise I do my best to get the pc's through their lot. As a player, the only module I've been TPKed in was From The Dust at APL 2. I was playing a 4th level archer, and we had a second level druid and three first level charaters. Granted, the first combat encounter was subsequently errataed from EL 8 to EL 3. The third combat encounter I was critted with a composite longbow from the top of the initiative and fell over, then we were all hit with a sleep spell which the DM didn't quite know took a full round to pull off, leaving one character standing. DM took us all hostage, and the Duke of Tenh was assassinated.
solbergb 10-09-06, 08:46 PM	As a point...some mods scale badly in the lower levels. (FYI, doing a APL2 with a L4 and three level 1s is one of the most dangerous things my monk ever did. If anything happens to the "big guy" the party is often toast...as you discovered) Some mods scale badly in the higher levels. Barbarous Coat is very "Swingy" in the low levels and evens out as you go higher. Anything involving a straight elemental encounter scaled evenly from 2-12 will suddenly become very deadly about APL8 and then slowly get better to APL12, wheras APL2-4 will be trivial and APL6 usually just normally difficult. You can't tell just from APL. It's just what can cause a mod to go south is different at different APL's. Low APL's are most likely hosed because of bad/favorable melee die rolls, or AC/DR too high to affect the monster High APL's are most likely hosed because of bad/favorable saving throws, or attack rolls/hitpoints too high to be resisted/defeated in time. Low APL parties rely more on every player trying to "be prepared" to use equipment to make up for lack of reliable character abilities. High APL parties rely more on each player bringing a character that has something they can do reliably, most of the time. Secondary specialities tend to be less important, beyond the same minimal levels that were needed in the low APL's. Tiering is really interesting. LG is extremely ambitious in how many APL's it tries to cover in one adventure, and weird stuff does slip throught the cracks. When it does, you'll hear about multiple tables having a rough time, rather than one isolated "damn, we had a string of bad decisions and bad luck and sure enough we were staring a TPK in the face".
ezreal2001 10-09-06, 09:36 PM	As a DM, I've seen a number of situations where TPKs are likely to occur, and will occur if I continue to play the baddies "smart". I've twice seen a party run away, unable to go on, and have developed a reputation as a nasty DM, but otherwise I do my best to get the pc's through their lot. There's alot to be said for having an exit strategy. Seriously its much better for a party to recognise that its just not up to a task and bail, rather than carry on in the hope that the gm will cut them some slack.
gomeztoo 10-11-06, 03:01 AM	I recall us going up with a mostly elven party against elven-hating bullywug rangers. We rolled crap - the only time I actually hit one was with an AoO, I neve rolled anything above 10 after that. In the end, my characters dog saved us by biting the lasts standing about-to-coup-de-grace bullywug... Real close to a TPK. In alater scenario, the bullwyugs killed her friend. Pity I can't play in the region anymore... still looking for vengeance... Oh, And my poor dog survived for quite some time but bit the dust when it was eaten in another tough fight by a plant. See, that's why my char is a vegetarian!