All PC dead, what to do?

[irdeggman]

Have them wake up in the Shadow World (see Birthright - I know you know it Thomas ; ))

They need to find their way back to the "real world" because they don't want their souls to their final resting place.

Could be an interesting side adventure to get back.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the last 2Ed PCs I designed died from a maxed-out crit from a 2-handed sword on the first swing of the first combat of the campaign. Hours of PC design, a campaign-specific PC history, etc...gone on a fluke roll.

Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

Yep, and as an experienced player, I have no problem with that. Personally, I have a backlog of FRPG PCs a hundred or so deep (not including concepts that only exist as a description, or PCs for other genres), and growing.

But some people do.

For instance, I wouldn't wish that death on a n00b.

I remember my first adventure 29 years ago- all of the players were n00bs except the DM. Nobody died in the first combat, or even the third...but by the end of the adventure (which took months to get to), there were just 2 PCs left (no replacement PCs allowed)- my fighter and a wizard. We had an audience (the other players) cheering us on in the pentultimate encounter...in which we died.

AFAIK, nobody left the hobby that day...

But had we had a death on encounter 1, do you honestly think that green player would have stuck around until the end? You spend all that time, working on a PC, only to have your guy struck down in 10 minutes? Do you think that player would have stuck around to see the results months down the road?

Playing the game is a lot of fun, watching the others play- not nearly so much.

If important results are going to be fudged, why bother with the dice? Just tell me what you want to have happen.

Let me ask you about fudging in the context of second example I gave.

Would you as a player rather have started the campaign:

1) Walking naked out of a ship's hold in another dimension being told you're being hunted as prey...

2) or would you rather have had the chance to rack up some RP time getting to know everybody's PCs, followed by an attack by intradimensional raiders whom you battle heroically (racking up XP) until you're finally overwhelmed, THEN walking naked out of a ship's hold in another dimension being told you're being hunted as prey...

3) or would you rather have had the chance to rack up some RP time getting to know everybody's PCs, followed by an attack by intradimensional raiders whom you battle heroically (racking up XP) until you get away, only keep getting adventures where you're crossing that body of water again and again until you're finally overwhelmed, THEN walking naked out of a ship's hold in another dimension being told you're being hunted as prey...

4) or would you rather have had the chance to rack up some RP time getting to know everybody's PCs, followed by an attack by intradimensional raiders whom you battle heroically (racking up XP) until you get away, THEN waiting while the DM tries to figure out how to get you across that dimensional barrier?

 

[Engilbrand]

I don't fudge. I don't use a screen. All dice rolls are on the table for the world to see. If it falls of the table or lands at an angle or falls right out of their hands, they reroll. I do the same. I agree with this quote, "If important results are going to be fudged, why bother with the dice? Just tell me what you want to have happen." I'm dropped to low HP and get hit for a lot, I die. If I don't die, it sucks. It's just ridiculous. Do I like dying? Hell no! Will I take a "good" death. Yes. If you have ideas for how you want things to go, why even bother with the dice? "You're hit. You take 5 damage." Would this way of playing be possible? Maybe. Maybe. (That was typed twice on purpose.) BUT, I could see it devolving to a simple child's game of, "NUH UH!! You didn't hit me! I shoot your with my lazer!" Dice are their for the randomness. Sometimes people just get lucky.

 

[billd91]

I agree with this quote, "If important results are going to be fudged, why bother with the dice? Just tell me what you want to have happen."

Why roll the dice? Usually because there's no way of knowing in advance that the PC was going to fall afoul of the dice in the first place. Saying that you might as well get rid of the dice is getting dangerously close to putting up a straw man. Few people in D&D generally wants to set the dice aside and just dictate what's going on. What we want to do is provide a little insulation from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when the dice do take that particularly nasty turn.

 

[takyris]

While I'm no fan of TPKs, I dislike the idea of having a dozen Listen checks. I've played games where the DM makes any task have a large number of checks associated with it. Past a certain point, you're almost definitely going to fail one of them. It's not fun, and I believe that it perverts the spirit of the rules.

I could possibly see one extremely difficult Listen check for picking the lock and opening the door, and one easier Listen check for moving toward the PC. Assuming that the thief takes 10 both times, I'd assume that the DCs are some like 30 for the lock-opening check and 20 for the Move Silently check. That would reward anyone with an absurdly high Listen check and give anyone else a fighting chance.

In this case, things went badly. That's too bad, but the solution to things going badly isn't to completely change the rules or force an absurd number of skill checks in the hopes that the PCs will make (or the thief will fail) one of them.

At 7th level, I wouldn't have wards on my room every night, but I would have, say, a chair behind the door and a bell on the chair. The door opens, the chair moves, the bell rings, I get a better chance to wake up. Costs me a gold or two, tops, and I can easily do it every night, unless I'm entertaining company for the evening, in which case, if I die, at least I die happy.

And if the players don't want to have to play their characters as careful enough to do something like this (not a full ward, but a trap, essentially, that the intruding thief would have to find and disable like any other trap to avoid ringing the bell), then the DM probably shouldn't put in encounters like this.

(In a published adventure, this is hard -- published adventures ought to, and sometimes do, come with warnings about the difficulty level and how players should play their PCs in order to succeed. As a player, I appreciate a friendly, "If you don't have a lot of hit points AND a high AC, this module will be difficult and frustrating for you" or "If you don't have many ranks in social skills, it will be tough to get much enjoyment from this module" from the module writers.)

 

[Thomas Percy]

I have never caused a TPK in 3.X by a stupid mistake, though I have caused them in previous editions. I personally hate rewinding time, but if the deaths were caused by my making a mistake then I will do it. If it were entirely the players' fault (and they had a bit more reason to suspect an assassin) then I would let the PCs die. Learning to admit mistakes is generally a good thing.

This is my first TPK in 12 years DM career,
so I'm little confused.

Have them wake up in the Shadow World. They need to find their way back to the "real world" because they don't want their souls to their final resting place.

So, I have another interesting idea to propose my players.

I wouldn't want to either run or play in a game where such a level of paranoia was required all the time. Do they have to go to the bathroom in pairs too?I'm sure it's only the female characters

And another, because only female character of fellowship was absent, and she will help her friends if she can play next session.

The rest ideas to handle TPK are (for now):
3.

Turn it into a capture scenario. The coup de grace was with a sap, not a shortsword, and each of the PCs was knocked out. They wake up in the prison of the guy who hired the rogue to get them, due to be questioned in a few days time. They then have the opportunity to escape from the prison, find their stuff, kick off the adventure in a new direction (and with a new enemy that they can really hate).

4.

I guess if the PC's have some unfinished business, you might want to consider letting them stay in this world as gosts, give them a time limit, limited area of influence and some harsh esoteric restrictions.
They need to either have it arranged that they get raised or finish their business within those limitation, otherwhise afterlife claims them and they are truly lost. Don't make it to hard, but fun.

5.

Assuming that the PCs were sleeping in an inn in some sort of town or city, then their bodies will be discovered in the morning. The next game session could start with one of the PCs being questioned by a cleric using Speak with Dead. Once the authorities discover that a mass murderer in on the loose in their town, they may want to hunt him down. But their militia leaders are off somewhere else on official business, who could we get? Hmmmm. Why not make a deal with the dead PCs, cast raise dead on them, in exchange for a quest? A quest that is over and above finding their murderer. This gives the DM the chance to have the PCs take revenge, and sets them up for the next adventure.

6.

My solution? Continue the campaign in the afterlife. All the PCs go to Limbo / The Astral Plane / etc. and have to earn their mortality back. After a couple of adventures, the PCs regain their lives and are shunted back to the moment before the assassin began to pick the lock. Now, with an extra level or so (in addition to being awake), the assassin fails miserably.

I'm personally not happy with last solution, because we are playing campaign, saga, adventure path, and my PCs have a lot of plans in THIS world for now.

 

[werk]

If you don't like the chance of something happening that you don't like, don't roll the dice. I can't be the only person that, as a player and GM, is bothered by the idea of fudging.

The DM in my newest pick-up group did this last session. The combat kept getting easier and easier the more PCs were lying dead on the ground. At the end, I thought the dragon was going to slit its own wrists, but, miraculously, the next hit killed it.

Definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

This is my first TPK in 12 years DM career,
so I'm little confused.

Sorry, I meant to edit out the 'stupid', and thought that I had. I tend to think of overlooking things as stupid mistakes, and this is what I have called them when it has been my mistake. It has been about twelve years or so since I have killed of a party because of an oversight, but I still think of them as 'stupid' - the reference was to my own mistakes, not yours.

The last time that I killed a party by my own stupidity was in 2nd ed. when I forgot that the unidentified ring that a PC was wearing allowed water breathing. Heck, the trap involved was why they had found the ring in a previous adventure. (Essentially they were in a room that is filling up with water from a large pipe that emptied into a sloped hall leading to the room that they were trapped in. A character with waterbreathing could travel back down the corridor to close a valve... I still feel stupid when I remember this one.) I did have to rewind time on that one.

I have had two TPKs since 3.X came out, both of those were because the party didn't pick up on clues that they were outmatched. (And in one case that the critter could be reasoned with rather than attacked....) One near TPK involved the bulk of the party trying to swim the Rhine in spring.... and none of the characters having swim as a skill. (Actually the one survivor did have swim, but decided to just go upstream to a bridge instead.)

It seems that I spend a fair amount of time drowning characters.

The Auld Grump

 

[Engilbrand]

Why roll the dice? Usually because there's no way of knowing in advance that the PC was going to fall afoul of the dice in the first place. Saying that you might as well get rid of the dice is getting dangerously close to putting up a straw man. Few people in D&D generally wants to set the dice aside and just dictate what's going on. What we want to do is provide a little insulation from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when the dice do take that particularly nasty turn.

I would like to point out that that was what I was saying. I DON'T want to put the dice aside. I DON'T think that fudging dice rolls is a good thing.

 

[billd91]

I would like to point out that that was what I was saying. I DON'T want to put the dice aside. I DON'T think that fudging dice rolls is a good thing.

Since I was defending the fudging of dice rolls, I'm not sure how what I said is the same as what you were saying. Fudging provides that insurance from outrageous dice, and that's how I suspect most people use it. When the dice provide a result that would result in an unlucky TPK, we roll the dice back a bit so they don't. We don't determine the outcome well in advance, we just give it a nudging with a little fudging to produce results that are acceptible.