Voluntary TPK?

[Sheltem]

Has anyone had experience with a party trying to kill themselves?

I'm not talking 1st level party attacking a dragon.

I DM'ed a game in which the party heard of a certain pool, which a (very) obscure source referred to as "A Test To Great Power". So they went there and found a pool of boiling viscous liquid, obviously NOT healthy.
At this point the rogue and the fighter decided to undress and go for a nude swim.
Well, they both went beneath the surface screaming and never appeared again. The cleric said "they are my friends, I go and see if they are still alive"! He too jumped in, in full battlegear. He too died. Only the Paladin thought, so they are dead, well I'll find new companions somewhere.


The thing is, the first two would have survived if they had not discarded their stuff (including saving throw enhancers) and the cleric just went out of luck.

So I ask myself are my players the only ones to have suicidal tendencies or are there others?
Please tell

 

[Yair]

My players once discussed how to penetrate a wizard's house on the house's doorstep. Literally. Just as soon as the wizard closed the door, they started discussing strategy.
Needless to say, the wizard was suprisingly well-prepared to deal with their plan. Hmph. I don't think the players will ever forgive me for being killed by dolls...

 

[Seeten]

I had a first level PC in an old campaign of mine decide to enter "The Kings Woods". Not an entirely crazy idea, as he was royalty of a sort himself, but then he decided to enter the kings personal hunting grounds. He found a place with a hydra sunning itself on "The Kings Preserve" all this stuff clearly marked with these signs, and Danger: Keep Out signs, etc.

He decides that I wouldnt put a hydra there if I didnt want them to fight it. So, he talks the rest of the party into fighting the 9 headed fire breathing lernean hydra. In round one, it pulverizes the "Royalty" character, stuns the other characters, eats all the horses and leaves. Mr. Royalty, brought back from the brink of death, chases after the hydra, who is now comfortably eating the horses, ignoring the party, attacks it, and is completely killed and eaten in 1 turn.

Happily, the rest of the party didnt repeat their mistake.

Then after the session, he spends an hour arguing with me that I was unfair.

?

LOL

 

[diaglo]

no, you aren't the only one to have PCs committ suicide on purpose.

back in 2000, i had a DM who was so bad. i regularly tried to kill my PC so i could just leave the campaign. (i was a ride for a couple of the players and they needed me to bring them. i didn't have the nerve to just say it wasn't my thing. so i figured i'd just kill my PC and it would be an easy out.) the DM thought, i was having fun so came up with reasons to keep me alive. none of them were plausible. heck, i charged 100 hobgoblins at level 1. i killed all of them.

i know better now.

life is too short to play crappy rpgs.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

It's not suicide if the players don't know (or have reasonable grounds to suspect) that their actions will kill them. They might have thought the pool was a portal and just wanted to keep the party together (a cardinal rule of D&D!). As a DM, I would have given some sort of clue (be it visual, audible, or a "tingling sensation") that the pool was not what it seemed. In that particular situation, it seems as if it was a deathtrap.

That being said, I can't ever recall the entire party killing themselves. I would think there would have to be some serious dissatisfaction with the campaign for that to happen. I have had games where we all just agreed that we wanted to try something else after a while and there was even an evil campaign where I ended it with a TPK (although that wasn't so much intentional as I just didn't pull any punches) to start something new.

I think open communication between players and their DM can prevent mass suicide. Of course, if it's a deathtrap then that's not really suicide and I'd advise caution as players get sick of that real quick.

 

[BSF]

The Head of Vecna? (Somebody had to post it...)

 

[JoeBlank]

The Head of Vecna? (Somebody had to post it...)

I was about to say the same thing! Great story, I laugh every time I read it.

 

[Rackhir]

There is always the infamous "Pitch Black Portal" AKA Sphere of Anihilation....

 

[der_kluge]

Yea, I was just about to say, I've heard stories of people diving in, one after another, into spheres of annihilation. Those stories are just great.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I have seen characters with suicidal or quasi-suicidal tendencies (in the sense that picking fights in an underdark city - with the high priest of the temple and random visitors or the tavern that doubles as the temple no less! - is suicidal.) people who didn't want to continue playing their character. I even have a funny story about one character that was so inept that he couldn't even kill himself.

But a whole party? Nope. Haven't seen that yet.