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

[randrak]

I talked about my barbarian issue before, which turned out to not be an issue at all once I reworked the encounter rate and such. Problem is, now I have another issue in that I'm afraid I might have pushed the characters too much this last session.

Party comp: Level 8 Bear Totem Barbarian, Level 6 Champion Fighter and Level 6 Paladin
On their way to a certain town, the group go diverted into some dark and shady looking woods. Inside there was a druid doing experiments to people, turning them into trees and wolf monsters (Werewolves from the MM only with resistance instead of immunities). They fought the first encounter (two treants in a very weakened state) and did rather well, right after when they continued, they fought the second encounter and the barbarian was charmed by the lamia they were fighting into giving themselves up. The barbarian helped subdue the rest of the party and take them to the druid where they were all tied up and put into a cell, awaiting their turn in the treant making ritual. They managed to get free and fought the druid and his 3 wolf monsters. The fight was incredibly hard, with them killing everything but the last wolf monster before everyone was KOed (the fighter died). I had a NPC wolf monster who retained his sanity help and kill the remaining enemy, saving the barbarian and the paladin.
I had 6 dire wolves as the druid's patrols, set up to be the last encounter as they tried to escape the woods. The fighter's player was given the Sane Wolf Monster to play until his fighter gets revived. Before they set out to escape, the barbarian chose to go out of the cave they had been hiding in to retrieve his fallen shield but was spotted by the patrols (I had it planned that 3 dire wolves would be scouting that area but if they stealthed, it would be easy to escape). The wolves spotted the barbarian and attacked. They managed to kill 2 dire wolves but the other escaped and called for back-up. The group ran away but their stealth checks were low and were spotted by the other dire wolves and ambushed. Three dire wolves attacked the party but the barbarian and the paladin were KOed after killing just one and weakening the other, the Wolf Monster was fine and still kicking with his resistance to damage. He killed another and hurt the third who then ran away and called the last dire wolf. When the two dire wolves returned, the Wolf Monster fought them and was nearly killed. I had warned them that the Wolf Monster would opt for self-preservation over risking his life to saving them, yet I still had him drop down to 3 HP before running away (the last dire wolf was 11 hp away from dying), but the fighter left the decision up to me whether the Wolf Monster would run away....I figured he would and thus the TPK happened.

Honestly, during the last segment with the Dire Wolves the players had horrible luck, plus the barbarian was out of rage for the day. I, on the other hand, had amazing luck with the encounter's attacks (several crits) which made me feel even worse.
Here's the thing, I don't like fudging rolls and once I prepare a scenario I don't like taking or putting on more encounters. I feel that, if they are too difficult to fight then the players can always run away. This time it was different since they were trying to escape but bad rolls made it impossible.

I hate killing PCs, especially Total Party Kills. I don't enjoy them and I groan every time I roll high or crit against players. After the TPK, everyone just had a moment of awkward silence, we gathered our things and left. I live with the barbarian and he just went silent and locked himself in his room, quite calm looking but I know he's pissed. They had a great team with a great thing going too, they were considered local heroes and even gained a keep of their own...we spent so much time RPing out the staff in the keep. They were also the first time that the whole damn party was Good aligned and acted like it. The TPK just made me feel horrible after knowing all this.

Was it too much, should I have dialed it back a bit? Should I recon it, make it so it never happened or that they survived? Should I make some plot where they are resurrected for a greater plot? I'm at a lost here...

 

[Tony Vargas]

Here's the thing, I don't like fudging rolls and once I prepare a scenario I don't like taking or putting on more encounters. I feel that, if they are too difficult to fight then the players can always run away. This time it was different since they were trying to escape but bad rolls made it impossible.

I hate killing PCs, especially Total Party Kills.

You're going to have to reconcile those two dislikes somehow.

Was it too much, should I have dialed it back a bit?

It's not that it was 'too much' as designed, just as it turned out. You can't ever be certain how players will react and encounters play out. Yes, you should have dialed it back. It would have been easy to remove the patrols entirely, for instance and just let the party stumble back to town unmolested.

Should I recon it, make it so it never happened or that they survived?

Nah, live & learn. Well, not live, exactly.

Should I make some plot where they are resurrected for a greater plot? I'm at a lost here...

You could have them wake up as werewolves or tree monsters, with a limited window to retain their sanity and restore themselves...

 

[iserith]

I hate killing PCs, especially Total Party Kills.

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.

I don't enjoy them and I groan every time I roll high or crit against players. After the TPK, everyone just had a moment of awkward silence, we gathered our things and left. I live with the barbarian and he just went silent and locked himself in his room, quite calm looking but I know he's pissed. They had a great team with a great thing going too, they were considered local heroes and even gained a keep of their own...we spent so much time RPing out the staff in the keep. They were also the first time that the whole damn party was Good aligned and acted like it. The TPK just made me feel horrible after knowing all this.

Based on my experience, any bad feelings are likely to due to how things were presented and ran leading up to that point, rather than the fact the TPK occurred. TPKs can be really fun if how it went down was awesome - and you're prepared to play on with backup characters or some other contingency.

I've even run games where character death was actually desirable and players had their characters doing really heroic, dangerous stuff to earn their way into Valhalla. The guy who didn't die was the "loser" that game, but even the outcome for his character was awesome and memorable (the last mortal jarl, cursed to walk Midgard during the Eternal Night).

Was it too much, should I have dialed it back a bit? Should I recon it, make it so it never happened or that they survived? Should I make some plot where they are resurrected for a greater plot? I'm at a lost here...

It seems like you have some outs here. If nobody has actually died on camera, you can just have them knocked unconcious, captured again (meh), transformed, or rescued by someone to whom they now owe a debt. The "sane wolf monster" is still out there, too, right? I'm sure it's easy to figure out a way for it to help - some lingering humanity that causes a sudden change of heart or the like.

 

[Croesus]

Two things I've noticed about 5E is that it's very swingy, and smaller parties are very vulnerable. Your group ran into both issues.

If there are only 3 characters, consider providing an NPC. I usually prefer NPCs that are one level lower than the party and with a class that supports the PCs rather than claims the spotlight. So clerics, bards, fighters, divination wizards, and so on. They're also a useful tool in providing hints to the players when they're getting in over their heads.

As for swingy-ness, I give each player two hero points at the start of each session, and one hero point to the NPC. The hero points can be used to reroll any attack, save, or skill check made by that player's character, add +1d6 to a roll, immediately regain hit points equal to HD + Con Mod + Level, or to do something really cool that isn't strictly in the rules. I also give out a "party" hero point every time the bad guys roll a crit - kind of balances out the luck a bit. Party hero points can be used by any character, so they're good for the character that's had to burn their initial two.

As the encounters I run tend not to allow for many short rests, I've also experimented with allowing characters to spend hit dice in combat. Doing so is an action, and the character can only spend up to half their hit dice with a single action. The PCs rarely do so, but when they really need the hit points, spending a couple hit dice is sometimes the difference between dropping and staying up.

Just some thoughts that may help going forward. Like you, I roll in front of the players, so no fudging. We haven't had a TPK yet, but it's been close multiple times. If I'm on a hot streak, it can get pretty hairy, pretty quick. A few hero points, and allowing spending hit dice in battle seems to balance things - well, most of the time, anyway.

 

[Skyscraper]

Them having all been killed in short order allows for a story twist that you might conjure up. Think about the following (that I read in more than one place): they end up in hell, and need to buy or figtht their way out. Or, perhaps a devil has a deal to offer.

Really:

1) don't feel bad about this
2) you had good stuff going with this trio, don't let them die. Rebound from this unfortunat story twist to offer something really cool. I'm sure you can think of something. Not just a Deus Ex Machina. Something Really Cool.

Have fun,

Sky

 

[Fimbria]

You threw something that you thought your players could handle, and through some combination of imperfect judgment and poor luck, you failed in your goals. It sucks, but it kinda happens to everyone. The question is, how do you handle failure?

Generally, people who fail in their goals do one of three things.

You could throw your dice across the room and swear never to play this game again. I don't recommend that, but it's your choice.

You could do as the gamers do - analyze your failure, invent a new strategy, roll up a new character and go wreak vengeance upon that wolf pack.

The third option is to snatch victory from defeat and spin this into a plot thread. The party died and they need to suffer for that, but it need not be the end. Say that the party awakes to the sound of gloating. The druid's master has collected them all and kept them alive. Why? Because they all died to werewolves, and werewolf bites are contagious. They are now much harder to kill, but they are at risk of wolfing out and killing their own servants. In addition, the party must obey the orders of the master (the pack alpha) whenever he feels like giving them.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Was it too much, should I have dialed it back a bit? Should I recon it, make it so it never happened or that they survived? Should I make some plot where they are resurrected for a greater plot? I'm at a lost here...

Some players like being able to lose. Some of them don't. Some people play video games on Iron Man mode where saving/reloading is not allowed. Some of them don't.

One thing I do to keep the decision in the player's hands is that if things go really bad (unwanted character death or TPK), a player has the option of intervening directly in the gameworld as a player (not as a PC) to change one of the decisions leading up to the horrible event. "You (the PC) have a horrible dream [sent by player, as godlike entity] about what would have happened if you'd all gone down into the tunnel." However, doing so accumulates a karmic balance which I, the DM, can use to make their lives unhappy at some unspecified point in the future. I don't believe in secretly changing die rolls, or tailoring opposition to the party's weaknesses, or cheating to save some big important villain from an anticlimactic kill in the first round... but if the players have built up a karmic balance, all bets are off and I will spend karma to do any and all of that stuff. Last time I used karma, it was to sic space lawyers (well, more like Mafia) on the players at their space colony, which ended up costing them everything they owned and then some more in "rent." (They had a chance to escape, gambling with the chief bad guy in single combat, but the PC who fought him lost, and then lost again on a double-or-nothing bet.)

Some of my players spend karma freely. Others never spend karma and prefer to let death happen when it happens. One of them once spent two karma points in a single day while hunting for roc eggs, alone. He kept rolling poorly and getting caught and subsequently killed by the mama/papa rocs... but he really wanted a roc egg, so he just spent karma and kept going. The other players were going crazy watching the karmic debt accumulate, but I just smiled evilly and let them work it out amongst themselves.

You could do something similar if you want to put the power in the players' hands.

 

[S'mon]

Take a break from D&D, then when you're ready start a new campaign.

 

[Uchawi]

It depends on what you want to do as the DM. If you are asking the question, then do you want to continue a campaign, take a break or start a new one? Usually the players will follow your lead. If you notice the players on not into the campaign, then that is a separate discussion.

 

[Noctem]

I would have made the transformed people revert back into their former selves once the druid was killed and/or his druidic place of power was disrupted. Then there's no need to worry about getting out of the woods, it's more about finding the people and saving them. You had nothing to gain from continuing the onslaught of enemies against the party, the main story element: The druid turning people into werewolves and treants.. had been resolved when he/she died. Alternate goals in encounters are usually more fun than just constant kill or be killed which from what I can tell is what you stuck with until your party TPK'ed. Learn from the mistake.

As for how to proceed, why not have the people who were turned into monsters revert back over a few days and then bring the bodies of the heroes back to town where all the people saved by the party pitch in and rez them. That way they develop ties with the NPC's and feel like their deeds are being recognized and appreciated. If you want to tie in the druidic aspect, you could have another druid who was being forced to work for the evil one or had been captured by the evil one agree to help bring them back to life using the same energies the evil druid was using to turn people into monsters. Maybe the helpful druid had come to the dark woods to investigate the abnormal flow of energy there and stumbled onto the evil druid and his plans. That helpful druid could rez them as an apology or to maintain balance and become an important NPC for the party later. A plot hook or something.. Or they could try to convince the druid to return to the keep they have and help take care of it. There's no reason to end the campaign now if it was working super well. Just find a way to continue forward.