Do you "save" the PCs?

[Reynard]

The dice rolls are bad. The tactics have failed. The situation is grim. Yet, they won't run away. So what do you do?

If you are GMing and the PCs get themselves in a pickle, but through poor judgement, overconfidence or just plain stubbornness they refuse to leave a losing encounter and a TPK or similar fate seems imminent, do you save them? Do you fudge the dice or have some deus ex machina event save them? Or do you leave them to cruel fate?

 

[Nightson]

I prevent a TPK unless I can't think of a way to do that consistent with the situation.

 

[darjr]

Kill em all let the GM sort em ou.... oh... yea, make em dead.

 

[Nagol]

I start to look really worried and double check and double count all results so that when the characters fall, it will not have been because of my table mistake.

Then I run the encounter as written until it is resolved.

 

[Crothian]

Depends on the game. If a TPK is prevented though it will come at a cost but some times that is better then just starting a new campaign.

 

[Victim]

Depends on the game. In Mutants and Masterminds (which is what I'm running), I would give them all a hero point and have them wake up in some fiendish trap or something. Casual lethality isn't really part of the sub genre I'm going for - and that works both ways. By not pressuring the PCs with immediate death should they fail, I diminish the incentives for them to use lethal attacks on villains. I'd rather not tempt some of my players. And since they're supposed to be super heroes, I'd be kind of peeved if they wanted to run away before all the nearby bystanders could vacate the area.

Similarly, I'd be more inclined towards generosity if I had underestimated the enemy force than if it seemed like the party just screwed up.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Whatever happens happens. Adventuring is a contact sport after all. Part of the game is the possibility of losing. If I take that away from the players then I have left them without a game at all.

 

[Nifft]

Take all their magic items. It's a fate more hated than death, and allows for some awesome revenge stories.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Doug McCrae]

Yeah, sometimes. I never fudge the dice though, I just don't like to do that. My most recent campaign was M&M, which is, by genre, strongly against killing PCs. That said, I did kill individual PCs on three occasions over a 20 session campaign. For one of those the PC came back, also very in genre, because he'd just acquired a self-resurrect power.

The party in that game had amazing movement powers - one PC was a speedster, another had a global-range teleport - so they were mostly able to escape when fights went bad, come back and win round two. Also, very in genre. (Also very old school, come to think of it.) Twice, the party just lost and was unable to escape, both times I stuck em in death-traps. Also, very in genre (hmm, I see a pattern developing here).

But there was one time where the PCs were losing and I just saved them with a bit of a deus ex machina. They were fighting an army of plant monsters. I was finding the battle a bit dull and overlong, I was getting a bit tired, so I decided to have the enemy leader, the Great Growth, call for a cease-fire, appalled that there had been so many deaths on his side. (The players had been using lethal attacks in this battle, it had become pretty much a war rather than a traditional superhero fight. That this had happened was largely my fault, as I obviously hadn't made sufficiently clear at the start that the 'quest' NPCs only wanted one particular plant monster slain, not the whole gang.) It wasn't unreasonable or implausible but I definitely let the PCs off the hook, probably partly cause I just couldn't be arsed with the consequences of them losing and also cause I had had enough of this encounter and wanted to move on. Rather imperfect, certainly.

 

[weem]

The dice rolls are bad. The tactics have failed. The situation is grim. Yet, they won't run away. So what do you do?

I let it play out. I'm there to referee the fight, not throw in the towel.

I understand the point of 'saving the PC's' and have done it before in some previous campaigns - but I never really like doing that, and in most cases I say up front, before a campaign that I will not be doing so (and the players love this).

In those cases, if the players appear to be prepping to fight something(s) that I feel is out of their league, I may give hints such as "you feel like there is certainly a chance for victory... but you can tell it will be messy and the margin for error is slim at best" etc. Or on the other side, "you can tell this would be an easy victory... you outmatch them in every regard" etc. These are usually in situations where combat is not something that was planned by me, as those are well balanced.

If they go on regardless, it's in their hands. And of course in encounters I plan, I do not pull punches either.