Rel
Liquid Awesome
It was bound to happen sooner or later and last night it did.
First TPK in my long history as a GM. I guess that I've just been very lucky up to this point because my style of GMing is just asking for a TPK. I almost always ask too much of the PC's. Their "easy" encounters are the ones that are at the appropriate CR for their level and the major encounters are ones with CR's that are simply horrific for their level. And yet over the years my players have always managed to win through against seemingly impossible odds and loved it.
I never felt bad about handing out fairly lavish treasures because I knew that the players had fought hard to get them. The XP system I use gives a bit slower progression than is standard but they could always tell when they had fought the big bad guys in terms of how much extra XP they got. And the sense of accomplisment was unrivaled.
I roll in the open and they knew that I pulled no punches. My evil baddies were Evil. My intelligent baddies were Smart. My ruthless baddies were just plain Nasty. That's who they ran into last night.
They were up against a 6th level Ashbound Druid (the Ashbound guys are from Eberron and their Summon spells last twice as long as normal and the summoned creature gets +3 to hit). In addition I gave the guy the Augment Summoning feat so his summoned critters were even nastier with more Hit Points. To top it off he had used a magic item on loan from his sect to Awaken several dinosaurs (Deinonychus) and a Dire Ape. The final encounter was two of the Dino's, the Dire Ape and the Druid vs. the 4th level party of 4 PC's. Yes, I know that this was a tough row to hoe and so did the PC's but they had managed to fight the Druid, four (4!) of the Dino's and a summoned Ape the session before and come out of it ok. I figured that they would be able to tough it out against the group in the final battle.
I'll save you all the gory details but suffice it to say that I rolled well and the PC's rolled poorly. Even so they had a slight chance to pull things out in the end by threatening the Dino's eggs but an untimely Natural 20 by one of the angry Dino's against the Rogue/Cleric ended that possibility. The last PC tried to flee but the Dino's are FAST.
When I had them down my mind was racing as to how I could offer them a slim hope of survival. The Druid brought the Halfling Rogue/Cleric back to consciousness and demanded that he tell them where to find the rest of the Halfling Dinosaur Wranglers they had been hunting were. The Rogue/Cleric refused to talk so the Druid healed the Elf Sorcerer/Fighter to consciousness and demanded the same answers. He then told the Elf that the Halfling had refused to answer and ordered the Dino's to tear him apart as an object lesson for the Elf. The Elf of course immediately attacked the Druid and managed to grapple him and the Halfling even stole his sickle. But without their armor and equipment they had basically no chance and were quickly and permenantly killed by the Dino's.
I had hoped that by offering the chance to lead the Druid to the other Halflings that the PC's might have taken the opportunity to buy some time. The PC's also knew (and the Druid did NOT) that with the Halfling refugees was also a powerful ally of theirs, a Psion5/Soulknife1 who was their patron. If they had managed to lead the Druid and Dino's into the Halfling camp then there was a chance that the Psion could have delayed and distracted the Druid and his minions long enough for the PC's to escape. But the PC's refused to lead the Druid there and he killed them out of anger.
So, what's the fallout from all of this? Really not very much. None of the players were mad and they all basically said, "We like the tough challenges and we've always known this was a possibility. We're glad you didn't cheese out and try to save us with some deux ex machina at the buzzer." They are good guys and great friends so I guess if I'm gonna suffer a TPK, this is the way to do it.
In the future I might try and dial things back just a bit but I'm pleased to see that the players have not adopted a "Min-Max to the Max or we may die!" attitude. We spent the balance of the night with them knocking around new character ideas and we're basically going to pick up where we left off. After all, the Psion patron needs some new adventurers to pursue his agenda.
So anyway, that's the story of my first TPK.
First TPK in my long history as a GM. I guess that I've just been very lucky up to this point because my style of GMing is just asking for a TPK. I almost always ask too much of the PC's. Their "easy" encounters are the ones that are at the appropriate CR for their level and the major encounters are ones with CR's that are simply horrific for their level. And yet over the years my players have always managed to win through against seemingly impossible odds and loved it.
I never felt bad about handing out fairly lavish treasures because I knew that the players had fought hard to get them. The XP system I use gives a bit slower progression than is standard but they could always tell when they had fought the big bad guys in terms of how much extra XP they got. And the sense of accomplisment was unrivaled.
I roll in the open and they knew that I pulled no punches. My evil baddies were Evil. My intelligent baddies were Smart. My ruthless baddies were just plain Nasty. That's who they ran into last night.
They were up against a 6th level Ashbound Druid (the Ashbound guys are from Eberron and their Summon spells last twice as long as normal and the summoned creature gets +3 to hit). In addition I gave the guy the Augment Summoning feat so his summoned critters were even nastier with more Hit Points. To top it off he had used a magic item on loan from his sect to Awaken several dinosaurs (Deinonychus) and a Dire Ape. The final encounter was two of the Dino's, the Dire Ape and the Druid vs. the 4th level party of 4 PC's. Yes, I know that this was a tough row to hoe and so did the PC's but they had managed to fight the Druid, four (4!) of the Dino's and a summoned Ape the session before and come out of it ok. I figured that they would be able to tough it out against the group in the final battle.
I'll save you all the gory details but suffice it to say that I rolled well and the PC's rolled poorly. Even so they had a slight chance to pull things out in the end by threatening the Dino's eggs but an untimely Natural 20 by one of the angry Dino's against the Rogue/Cleric ended that possibility. The last PC tried to flee but the Dino's are FAST.
When I had them down my mind was racing as to how I could offer them a slim hope of survival. The Druid brought the Halfling Rogue/Cleric back to consciousness and demanded that he tell them where to find the rest of the Halfling Dinosaur Wranglers they had been hunting were. The Rogue/Cleric refused to talk so the Druid healed the Elf Sorcerer/Fighter to consciousness and demanded the same answers. He then told the Elf that the Halfling had refused to answer and ordered the Dino's to tear him apart as an object lesson for the Elf. The Elf of course immediately attacked the Druid and managed to grapple him and the Halfling even stole his sickle. But without their armor and equipment they had basically no chance and were quickly and permenantly killed by the Dino's.
I had hoped that by offering the chance to lead the Druid to the other Halflings that the PC's might have taken the opportunity to buy some time. The PC's also knew (and the Druid did NOT) that with the Halfling refugees was also a powerful ally of theirs, a Psion5/Soulknife1 who was their patron. If they had managed to lead the Druid and Dino's into the Halfling camp then there was a chance that the Psion could have delayed and distracted the Druid and his minions long enough for the PC's to escape. But the PC's refused to lead the Druid there and he killed them out of anger.
So, what's the fallout from all of this? Really not very much. None of the players were mad and they all basically said, "We like the tough challenges and we've always known this was a possibility. We're glad you didn't cheese out and try to save us with some deux ex machina at the buzzer." They are good guys and great friends so I guess if I'm gonna suffer a TPK, this is the way to do it.
In the future I might try and dial things back just a bit but I'm pleased to see that the players have not adopted a "Min-Max to the Max or we may die!" attitude. We spent the balance of the night with them knocking around new character ideas and we're basically going to pick up where we left off. After all, the Psion patron needs some new adventurers to pursue his agenda.
So anyway, that's the story of my first TPK.
