I run a Planescape game. I do it all of the time.
My point is, even when the DM tells you that an encounter is near impossible, the players are not always going to care. It seems like a lot of players won't care. Do you really think you guys would have avoided that encounter if the DM told you, "These guys are much more powerful than you guys"? I'll bet money on it that even metagaming and giving out the CR won't deter some groups from attacking a CR 6 levels higher. And I don't like to metagame like that as a DM. I'll keep it in-game and leave it up to the players to pick up on my cues.
Yea but that is consistancy in story-telling and DM-ing. Once the DM starts to add impossible/very-difficult encounters to the game on a regular basis, the kind the the players are not meant to fight, then yea its alright, cause you can plan for that. In this case its was duck-duck-duck-beholder.
Now if we would have known that the encounter was much higher level, then we would have probably went with sneak tactic... in a normal situation. I don't know of the other players, but I think in a Tabletop RPG, any problem can be solved, no matter how high its level. And if it can't be killed then its a plot device, courtesy of the DM (and I do mean indestructible).
DM should warn players, but it doesn't always take. Some DMs will got to incredible lengths to warn players, and sometimes it still does not take.
Actually, it seems like the DM gave "some" warning, though insufficient.
The familiar's level is normally that of the wizard, so that should have given some hint. However, the DM should have given more hints, such as making that ogre cook and frankly everything else about the castle really tough.
You should have retreated after the first PC died. As many people have stated, round 1 was enough warning at that point. (Or not. It's hard for NPCs to escape, but after the first round, the PCs might have been cooked had the wizard pursued.)
Like I mentioned before, the warning should have been consistent DM-ing.
Yea the warning were there meta-game wise, now in game not so much.
We as players clearly knew that a mephit as familiar indicates a high level wizard, that and the unnatural winter indicates "high-power-levels". Yes we saw the DM roll 11d6+ -es for the cold blast, only the ranger ate the damage in game, the rest of us saved and had some energy res vs cold.
We were ready for a big fight, but not a round/PC fighter.
Retreat was not an option as I see it, FS went down round 1. Even if we ran, me as the cleric can't get far with 20 movement speed, the ranger would have gotten some good distance. Outside the snow slowed us to half speed, and the ranger would have died in the cold after a few day.
So in conclusion, we rather died in battle then as losers trying to out run the inevitable.
Your DM executed it incorrectly. If he doesn't effectively communicate that a fight will probably end in your death then it is squarely his fault when you die in to a massively more powerful foe. D&D is a game about fighting things. This is why 99% of the rules are devoted to fighting things. The default expectation of the players is (and should be) to fight things because that is generally what their characters are best at (and if your character is better at something than fighting you probably ought to question why you are playing D&D specifically).
If he did it by accident he's incompetent. Hopefully he's learned and you'll give him another chance.
If he did it on purpose he's a jerk and I wouldn't recommend playing with him again.
I agree, tho I can sort of see the DM's thought process:
"So I lead them to the castle, allow them to enter very easily, then I make the room where the NPC are accasable so I can deliver the exposition. Then the PCs will leave go back to town and report this, then amass an army cause there is a Cleric of War in the group, so i can cater to his character...." and so on. But that is just me assuming.
Don't worry he is the only competent DM around, so we will probably look the other way in this case.
...It looks like you're running a 3.5 campaign. If so, then yes, the DM probably made the encounter too powerful for your group to overcome. A 5th level NPC cleric with an AC of over 22 is a little much. So is a 5th level fighter with 3 attacks per round and +12 to his damage rolls.
...However, your post states that your objective was to gather intel on these folks, not attack them. If so, they were probably recurring villains that you were expected to fight later, when you were higher level. In that scenario, I would have to side with the DM.
...It's important to remember that role-playing relies heavily on creative problem solving. Brute force is not always the best answer. Sometimes it helps to stop, regroup and come at the problem from a different angle.
...but still, my condolences on the TPK. Regardless of how they occurred, they always suck.
The objective was to find the source of the ice skeletons, we found it the mephit, but we learned that it has a master so we followed the trail placed by a plot-ghost.
Like I mentioned above, the DM lead us directly to the NPC room, it could not have been anymore obvious. Yes the DM obvoiusly wanted us to listen to the exposition, then they heard us and the excrement hit the gust of wind.
Isn't calling BS, in this instance, pretty much laying the blame at the DM's feet?
When one enemy (of a bunch!) cuts down one of the party members in a single round, YES that's a warning.
I'll do better than that. I'm running 4e (where the influence of level difference on balance is MUCH stronger than in 3e, IMHO), and my 19th to 20th level pcs just had an encounter with a 33rd level elite npc who hit them all (except the pixie who had flown off to throw a lever), in her first action, for 60 to 120 points each (120 on a hit/60 on a miss).
Said lvl 33 monster had a TON of lackeys of various sorts, from level 15 to level 20, with her.
So did my group have a TPK? Nope. Why not? I assure you, it isn't because I play nice; I don't. My super-intelligent 33rd level bad guys fight like super-intelligent bad guys who have been around long enough to achieve 33rd level- they don't pick the pc with the most remaining hps to attack, they don't give the pcs time to recover, they don't stay in flanking. No- the party escaped a TPK because they ran like Hell!
So, while you have my condolences, it really sounds like the encounter's difficulty was telegraphed fairly to me (it was a scouting/don't attack mission, you got hit by an 11-dice spell, etc). Definitely fair play IMHO.
It was more of a general call of BS, yes I blame the DM sort of, what I meant was there was no "how dare you use much higher level NPC on us" or "this is unfair, your playing dirty"...yes the call for BS probably encompassed all of this. But the doesn't' matter.
You lost me at 4e (I dislike that edition very much, and I can't respect anyone playing it, please don't change the subject to edition wars, even tho I mentioned it first.)
Yes it was telegraphed in the meta-game section of the session. But since we rather RP then meta-game. Meta wise yea it was an 11d6+ spell, in game it was, Ranger got hit for 30+ dmg, FS 5 dmg, Cleric 0 dmg.
We did not break character for on one moment, for the characters it was an obvious fight or die-fleeing scenario.
When the FS died in the first round to the fighter, that was a taunt, so the characters concentrated on the only threat. And like I said retreating was not an option for the characters.
Yea we could have meta-gamed it, but then we would be just playing 4e now wouldn't we? XD
I would absolutely do that as DM, and my players know it. I run sandbox style games. There are plenty of encounters at the ready for which the players are a perfect match. But if they go too far afield despite warnings that powerful dangers lurk there, then they know that they'd better be ready at any moment to flee.
Fleeing is a survival skill, and one that not enough PC parties learn to utilize.
If every danger is defeatable at any time, then what's the point of playing? "Hey guys, I wrote that great scenario for our group! You guys can kill everything in it without any character deaths!" Response: "Great! Let's not waste time playing it. Just call it done, give us the experience points, and then we can go out for drinks."
On the other hand, if your first level characters know that an ancient white dragon lives in the mountains to the north, and they want to kill it, then they've got a lot of work ahead of them leveling up and getting ready. If they instead just march into the mountains and confront it immediately, they will make wonderful PC-flavored Jolly Pops.
Your DM changed his style. Good for him. Sounds like he improved. Now roll up some new characters and enjoy the much improved game that he's now ready to throw at you.
I highlighted it for you, constancy. That is you DM style, the players know it, there ready for it.
We usually get the encounters that can be overcome 95% of the time with a death now and then (about 1 in 10 encounters result in a death).
Now for us as I see it, for our group, the encounters are there for fun to "play", there like mini-games, just to change the games pace now and then.
Yea I know some groups place the combat before everything else and play the crunch and less of the fluff, they might have more options in combat and they might be used to that kind of play.
For us "lukewarm" combat is enough, we like to overcome it fast and go on with our RP-ing.
With the white dragon entry, it is still up to the DM to handle the situation, make a story out of it, you know RP it, not just "em, there is the dragon, role initiative". Fluff it up, there might be a rebellion in the dragons army, some secret organization is trying to kill the dragon, the players might need some items first....and so on.
Now that would be a bad DM who went, "so every one done with there character? Good, roll initiative".
The last part of your post is just insulting. Insinuating that the DM was lacking something up to this point, he is a good DM, we have fun, for the past 3-4 years now with this group setup we had fun playing his campaigns.
That and change is not a bad thing, just don't do it mid session, without warning. Like changing the rules of a skill mid usage, after the players has used that skill for years now, you should not do that IMO.
---------------------------------------------
Word of the day:
consistency. (yea I miss spelled it at every point before)
In conclusin, yes the danger level was telegraphed on the meta-game plane, yes we could have played the situation out as the DM clearly intended (meta-game, yay) OR we role-play our characters as we see fit (in an Role-Playing Game I think this was the apropriate choice to role-play our characters
).
Thank you guys for the replies.
