Recent TPK... would you have?

[Azzemmell]

So I've been a DM for about twenty years. I started DM'ing with the basic/expert set, though most of my experience is with 2ed and 3ed. In all that time I've only had two TPK's (that I can remember).

The most recent occurred a few weeks ago (heavily house-ruled 3ed campaign). The two players and one NPC were exploring an underground waterway. They came to a chamber where the water flow branched two ways, one of which quickly became submerged.

One player swam some distance down the submerged way and returned after a bad swim roll.

At this point I had the NPC say, "No, you guys go ahead down the underwater passage if you want. I'm not a good swimmer, and it sounds like it goes for a long way."

So they both decide to try the submerged way again, getting good swim rolls.

(On my maps this channel was simply an outlet for the subterranean stream system and was just noted as going for miles, deeper and deeper with no chambers or air).

At this point I told the two players, "You've found no air pockets and the tunnel is still going down. You can tell that you've reached a point of no return - if you go back now you could probably make it back to the chamber you came from and live. ... or you can try to keep going.

They looked at each other for a moment and then both said they wanted to keep going. Yeesh. Both dead. Two very surprised players. Two kinda upset players.

I told them we'd end the night there and I'd think about what, if anything, I was going to do about it (they had begun to offer suggestions as to how their characters might have survived). They did concede that I had given them two vague hints that they shouldn't swim down this tunnel, but also made a good point that it was such an ignoble and lackluster way to die.

Just curious how other DM's would have handled this...

 

[haakon1]

I'd start the next session with them unconscious and pulled out by the heroic NPC. They have also lost 1 permanent point of Con due to the near death experience, and they are at -9 hp.

Hopefully, the NPC is good aligned.

 

[Treebore]

You made it clear to them that it was a point of no return. They chose not to return. Now they have to deal with it.

If you wish for them to live the NPC is a possibility, however the current was taking their bodies away from the poor swimmer. It would be a huge reach.

You could have them enslaved by Locathah, Kuotoan, or other underwater creatures. See if they can escape.

 

[S'mon]

That seems like a real Darwin Award sort of TPK. I mean, would you do that IRL? It's tantamount to jumping off a cliff and expecting a haystack at the bottom.

That said, if I were feeling lenient I might tell the players that swimming down an airless underground river was a bad idea, then let them do it if they were set on dying.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

I would let it stand myself. You warned em. You could go with some other way out like the npc or slaves or some such, but to me they took there chances and it just didn't work for em.
Some times PC's die, and sometimes players need to learn that you will let them die.

 

[Azzemmell]

You made it clear to them that it was a point of no return. They chose not to return. Now they have to deal with it.

If you wish for them to live the NPC is a possibility, however the current was taking their bodies away from the poor swimmer. It would be a huge reach.

You could have them enslaved by Locathah, Kuotoan, or other underwater creatures. See if they can escape.

As it turned out I did let them live. However...

Lost all but one or two of their possessions, gave a powerful water-breathing potion to the NPC and had him catch up with them several months later and many of thousands of feet underground - he helped them escape from an underground city of spider-goblins and demons.

Though they don't know it, an evil goddess of this city wants to invade the surface world, found their corpses, raised them, implanted a magical gem that lets her experience their senses and at any time take control of them, let them escape with little resistance, and plans to sit back and use them as spies until she feels it is the right time to act.

It's taken them several sessions to reach the surface again, and I don't think they've given a lot of thought to who REALLY saved them. Should be fun

But I'm still left with the nagging feeling that maybe I should have let the dice lie where they fell, so to speak, and let them die. It's a hard balance for me to reach, at times, to maintain the feeling of danger for the players and yet not have them rolling up new characters every other session.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the amount of time it takes a player to create a new character is inversely proportional to how put-out that player feels if said character bites it?

 

[Thanee]

At this point I told the two players, "You've found no air pockets and the tunnel is still going down. You can tell that you've reached a point of no return - if you go back now you could probably make it back to the chamber you came from and live. ... or you can try to keep going.

They looked at each other for a moment and then both said they wanted to keep going.

This is exactly what I would expect from nearly everyone at this point (in a game, that is).

If a situation like this came up in a novel or a movie... it would also be exactly what the heroes would do.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Azzemmell]

This is exactly what I would expect from nearly everyone at this point (in a game, that is).

If a situation like this came up in a novel or a movie... it would also be exactly what the heroes would do.

Bye
Thanee

Yes, that's what eventually swayed me into letting them live; it's a game. Of course these two guys would never undertake such a thing in real life, so in a game... they figure, hey if its there... and the DM has never put such an obvious death trap in front of us before, there's always been the possibility of a way out.... and imagine the treasure that might be down there...

I think that I've come to the decision that if these two characters ever do die it will be in battle or in a situation where they accomplish some great goal by dying... we'll see. As for now, they are the unwitting harbingers of a tide of evil from the depths below.

 

[Pbartender]

(On my maps this channel was simply an outlet for the subterranean stream system and was just noted as going for miles, deeper and deeper with no chambers or air).

The question is, how are the players supposed to know this?

A modest skill check... Knowledge (nature), Knowledge (geography) or Survival, for example... might have let you give them a stronger clue.

Also, the players needn't have known anything... "You continue swimming until your breath runs out. In the darkness, you can feel the tug of the current gently pulling your body along, bobbing and floating like a leaf of the wind. So gently... So relaxing... So sleepy... Your eyes finally close, and you drift into unconciousness winthin the caressing embrace of the water."

Then, they sputter awake on the unknown shore of some underground lake (or where ever they happen to wash ashore). After all, as Thanee mentioned, that's how it would inevitably turn out if the same situation occurred in a novel or a movie.

 

[Tikigod]

Giving them a Dungeoneering check would have been appropriate. Success = "you will die if you continue". Failure = "you have no idea how far the river continues."