TPK strategies?

[Truename]

I'm taking the gloves off--I'm going to throw my players some real challenges. Fights that are easy if they're smart and hard if they aren't. (Reinforcements? You betcha!) I'm going to let the dice fall where they may. I think they'll have fun.

And... I'll probably kill 'em off at some point. Probably at multiple points.

So what do you do when you have a TPK? I'm looking for ideas that don't involve rolling up new characters. A couple of obvious ones:

- The monsters take the PCs prisoner. Kind of hard to swallow for some monsters.
- The convenient rescue by another party.
- The pact with Death (complete with hidden strings attached).

So, what other plot ideas do you use for TPKs? I want to look forward to the twists and complications that a TPK will bring. No more pulling punches because I'm afraid to derail the game.

 

[roguerouge]

Check out Ghost Walk and Escape from the Forest of Lanterns. The former is a splat book dealing with this issue; the latter, a module by Goodman Games that's surreal enough to stand for a near death experience.

 

[DaveyJones]

don't cheapen the deaths too much.

but some ideas that can be used. evil priest animates dead. the body of the old pc is used to carryout some menial task like emptying waste or gathering wood for the priest. priest is slain by other monster or rival or adventuring party. animated corpse then ends up wandering. enter old party...

 

[DaveyJones]

along similar lines...

polymorphed old pc is bought as a pet or food

or petrified old pc is bought as a statue for a garden

 

[Scribble]

Have them "Wake up" on the shadowfell.

Put them on some sort of disease track but instead of endurance maybe a charisma check? (Or maybe someone with knowledge religion or soemthing can treat them in place of a heal check?)

Each time they fail a memory from their former life slips away, and they feel themselves becoming more "distant."

If they can't find a way back to life before the end, they slip away to that place no one knows where dead people go.

 

[thedungeondelver]

High-level magic user (way higher than the PCs), with levitate and invisibility cast on self, above them (high ceilings) drops a fireball which, even if saved for half, will still kill them.

 

[diaglo]

after the TPK the party doesn't make it to their heaven/hell. they encounter trouble along the way.




as a reward for overcoming the trouble plane shift them back 500 miles away from their death site.

 

[Rechan]

This only applies if they're on an adventure of significant proportions (rather than killed while battling random monsters or no one with significant goals):

The PCs wake up. They have been brought back from the dead by a haggard, ragtag outfit. It has been 100-500 years since the PCs died. The villain they were trying to stop followed through with their plan unchecked, to its inevitable conclusion. The villain is either dead, or now undead, but the mess they left is still rather potent and destructive.

The PCs were the closest ones to stop the villain and their plot, so some survivors have decided they might be the best to tackle the situation/clean up the mess. They get the pleasure of seeing what their failure means.

There's also the possibility of the PCs just waking up in their graves, requiring them to claw their way out, and they find themselves buried in a shallow grave. All of them have a strange mark on them. Don't explain anything. However, something has brought them back, and it also expects payment due/a great task done (or, will simply toss them back where they were after death).

 

[ExploderWizard]

after the TPK the party doesn't make it to their heaven/hell. they encounter trouble along the way.




as a reward for overcoming the trouble plane shift them back 500 miles away from their death site.

What! I gotta do a quest just for the pleasure of a 500 mile corpse run!! Screw this game!

 

[diaglo]

What! I gotta do a quest just for the pleasure of a 500 mile corpse run!! Screw this game!

also taking rechan's idea. make it a time shift too.
reincarnation is a fun spell