TPK Dillema

[KarinsDad]

I'm guilty enough of altering my tactics to avoid killing people... but I roll everything on the table and don't really like the idea of altering dice to softball things. Not bothering to use certain abilities, maybe, but I'd rather not change crits to misses or whatever.

I've never TPKed, but I've had _3_ TPKs narrowly avoided by someone rolling a 20 to spend a surge while down.

I rarely modify my tactics.

But, I have had one TPK. Irontooth. The first 4E session when players were not yet familiar with the game system. The PCs wiped out the outdoor portion, then chased a Goblin inside without resting. Additionally, one player used his Eladrin teleport for no good reason at all outside and then didn't have it available once he got inside and needed it. We asked him after the game why he did that and he replied that he thought that he was supposed to use every Encounter power every encounter. Otherwise, what was the point of calling them Encounter powers.

 

[ffy]

I'm guilty enough of altering my tactics to avoid killing people... but I roll everything on the table and don't really like the idea of altering dice to softball things. Not bothering to use certain abilities, maybe, but I'd rather not change crits to misses or whatever.

I've never TPKed, but I've had _3_ TPKs narrowly avoided by someone rolling a 20 to spend a surge while down.

I actually think the monsters not bothering with some abilities when the party is nearly defeated makes sense. After all, when the PCs are winning a fight and there's only a couple of weak enemies standing, the DM either calls the fight saying something like 'Unresponsive to your request of their surrender, the bandits fight furiously to the death. The final bandit dies with your axe embedded in his skull,' or the PCs kill them in a couple of turns using just at-will abilities. Basically, nobody will be blowing a daily on the last monster standing.
The same works with the opponents - if there are only two heavily blooded opponents left standing, why would they bother mustering all their might and using their rechargeable encounter power to bring them down? Might as well do it with a MBA. Little do they know they are actually fighting heroes, who might just spontaneously jump back up on their feet and unleash hell!

I guess I am going a bit off the topic here, but I just now had an interesting idea. If your group is prone to having close calls, maybe houserule a mechanic for it. If rolling a 20 on a death save might allow them to wake up, a 19 might allow them to (requiring the use of an action point also would make sense) take one last heroic action which would end the encounter with at least a Pyrrhic victory for the opponents or a draw, driving them to escape rather than finish off the party. Imagine the defeated hero opening his eyes, gathering all his strength and tossing some heavy item he is carrying at a structural weakpoint in the dungeon, causing part of the room to cave in, crushing himself along with most of the opponents. With his final act of heroism he saves the rest of the party (and by extension, the world?).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't ever fudge dice rolls. I roll all of the dice in front of the players.

I only fudge in favor of players when NOT fudging means a bigger headache for me. Such as when the PC carrying The Campaign MacGuffin does something like try to hug a Sphere of Annihilation.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

TPK's are just a part of the game. As long as we roll dice in a game then TPK's are possible. There are plenty of ways to survive in a game and I believe if a TPK happens then it was meant to happen.

The dice should roll where they roll because it's fair.

 

[S'mon]

I'm always willing to TPK in D&D; the whole point of the game is to go in the dungeon, kill things, & try not to die yourself.

If a DM is not willing to TPK then I'd think the best thing would be not to place the PCs in situations where that is a likely outcome. If you look at a typical fantasy novel there are usually only a few places where protagonist death is likely, whereas in a D&D game the PCs may be facing death 4 times/night or more. A novelistic style can certainly work, but there should generally be a much lower default threat level: the PCs will not normally be going into dungeons & trying to kill everything there, they should be acting more like real people and (eg) running away from stuff. It's best if your XP system accommodates the different play style.

 

[keterys]

It's pretty easy to avoid killing too many people in D&D, so as long as you avoid coup de grace and other ("and you die") abilities, they're fairly unlikely. So my experience is that it's possible for some deaths (too many failed death saves, ongoing, auras, etc) but an actual TPK is pretty avoidable.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The thing I've found with that, is once a PC drops, it can set off a cascade that leads to TPK. Especially if that first kill is the leader. Focus fire is just really powerful like that.

 

[keterys]

The key word was "avoid". That implies the DM isn't trying to TPK people and has appropriate tactics.

If you're _trying_ to TPK, then it's not hard at all... but it never has been, either

 

[Major Moab]

As long as the death is appropriate to the character, I have no problem with my character dying. Even a TPK is fine, provided it is appropriate to the heroic nature of the PC's.

If my character; however, dies from a critical hit after tripping over a stone in the middle of the street, I AM going to be furious at the DM. I really don't care what the dice said at that point. My character was one of the heroes of the story. Heroes can't die like that. If he is hanged as a result of his attitude problem, or assassinated in the dark by a rival, fine. That is dramatic enough. Ideally, if he has to die, it should be facing a ravening horde of evil critters intent on ravaging the idyllic village, but that can't always happen.
Remember, not all heroes die in battle. Think of Eddard Stark in the Game of Thrones. His death was heroic, in this context, because it was appropriate to his character.

I tend to get angrier at character breaking mutilations than at character death. It feels like a railroad of the character toward a story I am not part of.

 

[Ranes]

A DM who kills your PC because he tripped up sounds a bit tough.

As DM, I am not out to kill the PCs. I am out to create viable threats to the PCs when and where appropriate. What happens after that is partly down to player tactics and partly down to luck. And it is only fair to make players aware of this at the beginning of a campaign and to remind them of it occasionally. As DannyAlcatraz illustrated, there are ways of doing this.

Then a TPK may end a campaign but that does not necessarily equate to ruining it.

As both a player and a DM, I do not see the problem with permanent PC deaths and storyline-ending TPKs. It makes the PCs and games that make it to the end of the campaign all the more memorable. I may believe that Zebedee is destined to be the great hero of The Elemental Age. I might want Zebedee to be instrumental in the overthrow of evil Grand Vizier Yurzic. However, developments may prove me tragically wrong. Tragedy can provide truly memorable moments, even if they are the final, unexpected moments of the story everyone's been really enjoying for months or years. And tragic deaths are often not heroic.

It is I think quite difficult to find a group of players who all share that view. There are players who would accuse me of being a confrontational or otherwise bad DM, because I allow character or party death at any point, not simply as a possible outcome of some telegraphed combat encounter. Certainly, some players expect the DM to provide a game that services their PC's scaling of all the game's levels via a series of things that look like heroic challenges. That's great. Good for them. I just prefer everyone to understand that, as DM, I want to provide adventures in which there are appropriately designed challenges that feel heroic, because success is possible but not guaranteed.

No, I'm not going to kill off a PC with an ill-conceived and poorly contrived accident that happens while she's resting between missions. But a PC who loses her footing on the cliff edge I put in her way and fails her saving throw? That would be an unlucky roll. Tragic. Next PC. The party who fail to notice the runes warning of the TPK-shaped deathtrap ahead or who fail to translate the runes or who get the warning but disbelieve it or don't recognise the Teleport of People Killing when they see it? Tragicomedy. Next party please.