D&D 5E Was it too much? Dealing with TPKs and more

[EzekielRaiden]

Going to second @Tony Vargas's words here. One: if you really hate TPKs, and really hate fudging, you're either going to have to reconcile those two tastes, or put on the "kid gloves" while playing 5e. 5e does not provide a solid, reliable metric for difficulty. It provides an intentionally loose, approximate guesstimate of difficulty, and sometimes (not always, but more often than *I* like) the difference between the PCs curbstomping and getting curbstomped is solely up to the fickle dice. (My own 5e group is consistently pretty unlucky, while the DM has been substantially luckier. It's super frustrating.)

Two: If the players are hurt/pissed/sad about losing their characters, follow the advice others have come up with and turn this TPK into a new plot point. Being shackled with lycanthropy and trying to find a way to break the curse is a great option. Another could be...maybe their souls are stuck, halfway between life and death, and they must find their way back to the world of the living before their bodies become too damaged/decayed/etc. to accept their souls back. Or perhaps they were recovered by a friendly (or "friendly"!) third party, who also had a bone to pick with the druids, and their rescuers now demand "payment" for saving them from certain death. Regardless of how you go about it, turn this unfortunate situation into a challenge rather than a disappointment.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Dice happen.

I don't think you need to pull back or tone down anything if that's what made sense in when you designed the encounters. It seems less like a balance issue and one of just luck with the dice. it happens. If you don't want PCs dying in a campaign or the risk of it, just forgo the dice rolling and narrate the whole campaign, since if there is no risk, there's no point in rolling dice to begin with. I.e., it doesn't matter if you get dropped to 1 hp or still have 50 hp--if you never have to worry about going to 0 hp, then it's a meaningless stat.

Above all, it's a game. I said this in the other thread. If you have a player who gets that upset and emotionally attached to a PC, then it's not a healthy hobby for them. Like all games, it's just a temporary way to have fun and chill with friends, and not something that you should have an emotional attachment to when it's not being played. PCs aren't an investment any more than putting hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place is an investment. During the game, sure. But once the game is over, it doesn't matter to your actual life.

But really, if you (general you) can't handle a PC dying in the game, then D&D probably isn't for you.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Crush your player characters.

See the party wipe before you.

Hear the lamentations as new characters are generated.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Much of it depends on the players’ tolerance for challenge and adversity. I have a player that, every time his character has died (regardless of getting raised), his attendance in that game has dwindled. On the converse, I have a player who always has a new character idea he’s excited about, prepped and ready to go if his character gets killed.

It sounds like your group, especially the barbarian (who in the previous thread sounded very attached to their character), is not keen on PC death.

As I’ve said before, it’s a tough job balancing challenge and fun as a DM. PCs shouldn’t feel invulnerable, but they should feel awesome.

My vote is to not retcon the event. It will always feel like a “freebie.” Now, you could have them all awaken, imprisoned, without their gear, by the evil mastermind behind all this...

It might also be good to sit down and talk it over with your gaming group, talking about what they want out of the difficulty level of the game, and how they’d like to proceed from this.

I would suggest not setting stakes you or the players don't enjoy. Set the stakes to success and failure conditions that are both fun and contribute to an exciting, memorable story before rolling the dice.

 

[Raunalyn]

TPK's can be rough, but as others mentioned, they don't have to be "the end."

Primary example: I'm running my players through Princes of the Apocalypse. They are only 3rd level right now, and decided to try to investigate the Earth Cultists before investigating the other cults (Air and Water should come first). So, they were actually a bit underpowered.

Things went well at first, and their first foray into the monastery brought them in contact with the Abbess. They defeated her (barely) and withdrew. So, I ruled that the monks were now on high alert. The party's second delve forced them to encounter a large, concerted effort of the monks. When the 2nd person went down with only a few of the enemies being killed, I knew that it was going to be a TPK. At that point, I started having the monks drag the unconscious bodies of the fallen party members away. I decided to go ahead and have them captured, then later be tortured. It made for an exciting escape sequence later, and a memorable session.

The point is...TPK's don't have to be completely bad. I like to think of them as interesting opportunities to give a nice twist to the current dynamic.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Crush your player characters.

See the party wipe before you.

Hear the lamentations as new characters are generated.

I was going to say something similar...but ExploderWizard here said it better. So...yeah...what he said!

I'm a harsh DM. I'm no stranger to TPK's...and neither are my players. They know, 9/10, that they could likely have survived by doing (or not doing) something else. Live and learn. My players are cautious...as they should be...and when they do split up or whatever (pretty much always for in-character reasons...even if they, as players, know it's stupid), and get themselves killed...they suck it up and make new guys.

If you are trying to figure out a way to 'save' them from their own mistakes or bad luck, all you are going to do is create and foster poor-quality players (imho, of course). They will come to rely on that as part of their play style. They will start to take "stupid" risks that SHOULD get their PC's killed, because they know that you are likely to start fudging so that they don't die or that they outright 'win'. Any successes they have will be hollow and unfulfilling (except to those who thing that using GODMODE on a video game and then beating it constitutes "winning the game"...there's no hope for those types).

Yeah...let their blood feed the belly of the world and their deeds go un-written in the annals of time. (e.g., their corpses become all that dungeon dressing you see in dungeons...hanging skeletons, skulls with candles on them, etc... ).

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Dausuul]

There are certainly things you could have done differently, but what's done is done. I definitely would not retcon anything - that always leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

My suggestion: The standard D&D cosmology explicitly includes an afterlife. So continue the campaign there. Give the PCs a chance to claw their way back into the living world - paying a price for death, of course, but perhaps discovering another layer of the plot in the process. Perhaps their heroic behavior earned them the chance to escape the netherworld.

 

[billd91]

As far as the situation went, was it death for certain - as in blew all the death saves? If you skipped over any of that, you've got an easy out. Treat them as defeated, captured by the druid, and turned into werewolves. Then the story can be them resisting the druid's control (or whatever he uses to keep them in line) and finding a cure for their afflictions.

Otherwise, if you don't want TPKs on the table, you've got to run the game in a way that avoids them. When the last blow is struck, you can determine if it's to kill or knock out. Do the latter. That's right out there in the rules so it's not even close to fudging. In this case, the creatures in the fight could easily have been motivated and intelligent enough to fight to capture, not just kill. It won't work for all encounter types, but its worth keeping in mind.

As an alternative, if you are getting a bit downcast when luck cuts one way or the other, you don't need to be a slave to the dice. You can declare skill checks successful or not based on how the PCs describe what they're doing. That reduces the chances of having an unlucky result when the PCs are otherwise doing the best they can or being particularly clever. Another alternative, would be to have monster fighting to the death less often - which it appears you did at the end.

Finally, I'd advise not being a slave to the dice in general. If you roll yet another critical hit after you've already mauled them with a few, FUDGE IT DOWN to a normal hit. Forget a strength modifier to damage. Blow a save. Blow a skill check. You don't need to pile on the misery when the dice say to do so. Screw them. They're just dice. You're the master of this game. If things aren't going down the way you'd like them to go because of the players can't catch a break with the dice despite good efforts, adjudicate in a way that produces the style of game you want. And if that means editing your dice rolls, then do it.

 

[Herobizkit]

This goes in the woulda coulda shoulda pile, but wouldn't it have been thrilling if those six wolves started hunting the PC's after a while instead of being their final barrier to escape?

Always consider "why is this encounter here?" and "Does it improve the story?"

 

[Saeviomagy]

It does kind of seem like the barbarian took a fairly innocent action and bumped into a patrol in a relatively illogical place, who also had reinforcements within immediate range. Up until there, it was a close scrape that they pulled through... and then it would seem like you just started throwing more encounters at them until they died.