Another TPK - Sigh.

[takyris]

So the other day, I had to do a TPK. It was really unfortunate.

The PCs were trying to make this trek through an underground dungeon as a shortcut, and they really made a mess of it. I described everything in perfect detail, and the characters knew that there were monsters there that could wake up if they made any noise. So what do they do? They poke around and pick up a sword, which I ruled caused some armor to rattle and make the monsters start waking up.

So now they're running, and they come into an enormous cavern. I had a bunch of low-level grunts in there, as well as some larger and more powerful monsters. I was hoping that the party would use mirrors on poles to scout out the territory, then use flaming arrows to create a distracting fire while the stealthy folks did hit-and-run tactics on the monsters. But no, they just ran right in, leaving me no choice but to send all the monsters in to attack them at once. They burned most of their good spells in that fight, and they ended up losing the party wizard when one of the monsters made a grapple check and pulled the wizard into a pit.

So the party escapes, now minus one wizard. I told them that they were in enemy territory. They knew perfectly well that there were monsters patrolling the countryside. But do they put on concealing outfits and camouflage to hide themselves? Do they go into stealth mode and make wilderness lore checks? No, they go on whining about their dead wizard -- and then there's some intra-party conflict, and the party actually SPLITS UP. You read that right. Middle of enemy territory, and the party SPLITS UP, arguing over magical items and saying that it was so unfair that the wizard died and now they couldn't finish the adventure.

I had the monsters ambush all of the party members simultaneously, since the party was doing all this whining and arguing and wasn't really paying attention. There was one fighter and rogue together, and I could have focused everything on the fighter, leaving the rogue alive, but it didn't really make much sense. I ended up killing the rogue first and then grappling the fighter and having my monsters swarm him.

Over in another part of the battle, there were a pair of little guys -- halfling bard and halfing fighter/rogue, both of them lower level because they were new characters. I considered ruling that the bad guys would want to capture them instead of killing them, but in the end, it just didn't seem fair. I had my melee grunts wade in and grapple them, and then my rogue monsters did sneak attacks to finish them off.

The party was now down to a human paladin/ranger, a dwarven fighter/barbarian, and an elven ranger/fighter specializing in archery. Since the party made no effort to conceal its abilities or powers, I had no real reason to make the bad guys play things stupid. The dwarf got engaged by some grunts with Expertise who soaked damage for a few rounds while archers with Precise Shot whittled the dwarf down into kindling. I didn't even try to hit the elf, who had a pretty good AC -- I just kept trying to sunder his bow. Once I got lucky on one of the rolls, the elf, whose player began whining about me being out to get him, was easy enough to grapple and kill with a raging barbarian grunt.

The paladin/ranger was the highest-level guy, but I had a whole lot of melee grunts, all of whom aided another on grapple checks, so that the rogues could move in and sneak attack. Every time he broke out of the grapple, I had the archers with Precise shot unload on him -- with 20 of them, one or two always hit, and since the archers were firing from concealed positions (it wasn't like they didn't have time to hide), they got to use Sneak attacks for their bow shots.

I don't think this attack was overpowering. The heroes ranged from level 2 (for the new guys) to level 7 (for the paladin/ranger and the elven archer), and the grunts were never more than 4th level, with most of them being about 2nd level, and were either fighters, rogues, or occasionally rangers. They didn't use any tactics that a reasonably intelligent person wouldn't have thought of while the party split up and wandered around complaining, but now my players think I'm a killer DM.

And I pretty much have to remake a campaign world now, since there was no real way to handwave the fact that the bad guys got ahold of the Ring of Invisibility that one of the players had (the least-powerful guy -- what kind of planning is that?) and brought it to their master, which I'd said right from the get-go would mean the destruction of the world, for all intents and purposes.

If my players hadn't been so stupid as to have their people split up, and if they'd used any kind of cooperative strategy during the fight itself, none of this would have happened. I just don't know what to do with them.

NB: Not aimed directly at Force-User.

 

[The Grackle]

That's two keyboards ruined now, Takyris. :\ Although this time it was just me spitting out my coffee.

 

[jmucchiello]

Did all seven or so ogres roll high and, yes they had posted a watch, overcome the awake guy's roll?

Point is this... if the GM cared one wit about not having tpk's, int 6 ogre mobs and -8 hide/silent checks give him ample opportunities to not have it work out to be a flawlessly staged ogre ambush with no warning without breaking his "narrative truth" one bit. if the party had heard one ogre before things went terrible and gotten up, then this might have turned into just the sort of "lesson" everyone wants them taught... an incredibly tough fight they might be able to get away from.

You are forgetting that the Ogre Druid cast entangle on the party. A 5th level druid can drop an entangle from 600 feet away. If you are asleep, I think you fail the reflex saving throw. It lasts 5 minutes. Ample time for Ogres to get within ranged striking distance and just whittling down the party. If the ogre leader is a druid, perhaps these ogres have learned to avoid areas where the leader says not to tread. Listen checks from 600 feet away get a -60 penalty. And while I'm guessing the druid didn't drop the entangle from that rediculous distance. 120 feet is reasonable and a -12 penalty more than makes up for the -8 check you are talking about.

 

[Hjorimir]

So the other day, we had this really tough adventure. But we were awesome.

We were cruising through this underground dungeon as a shortcut and pretty much owned up on the place. The DM goes on and on about all these boring details and how there were monsters all around. But we ignored that and my paladin snuck past a bunch and swiped a magic sword which turned out to be a holy avenger with all the powers of a staff of the magi. It was pretty neat.

So anyway, we’re making our way through and come to some big cave. There was a ton of mooks in there and some “scary” monsters too. So we just wade into the middle of their army and started tearing them up. I killed something like 80 orcs and a red dragon (with my neat new sword) and the wizard cooked a bunch of other orcs and fire giants down as well with some empowered fireballs (I don’t think he did more than like 100 points to the dragon though). Not all of them though. The wizard got mauled by one of the fire giants in a pit but managed to push it back then jump out and we all escaped.

So we pull back to the sword room and sit down for some dragon stew (and let me tell you it was tough dragging that dragon corpse back through that cave) while we divided up some of our phat loots. Once that was done we took an eight-hour power nap to get our spells back. I thought about standing watch, but I had cast cure light wounds that morning and wanted to get that back just in case we had to face another dragon.

We got lucky though, a huge group of monsters came from the big cave by the room (but I woke up to hear them coming outside the door and down the hall). Luckily my DM lets me sleep in my plate so I was ready to go. So anyway, like 100 guys go by our door, but we’re hiding inside with the door closed so they don’t see us. High-five!

A couple of new guys had shown up to the game and made some 4th-level characters. You’d think that they’d get eaten up traveling with the rest of us who are all around 12th level (which took us 2 hard months of adventuring to earn). But those little guys ended up fighting off something like 16 ninja ogres. It was kewl because the ogres just couldn’t roll well enough to hit! They seemed like nice guys, but they took off early. I wonder why…

So, anyway, after the other guys left, we were down to just three of us. So we go back to the big cave with all the monsters and buff up before attacking (but we couldn’t get there in one round because the cave was something like 100 feet across and I don’t move that fact in my armor). So anyway, we’re fighting all these stupid giants and dark elf archers. There is like 30 of these guys shooting at Bob’s dwarf, but they can’t hit him really so it is all good. Oh yeah, and this stupid fire giant is trying to sunder Mike’s bow (he plays this elf archer dewd) and he can’t even break it! Furthermore, Mike just keeps on doing a 5’ step to get back from the giants a little and starts making porcupines out of them! Whoot! One of the giants raged at the end there but he just got shot down.

Meanwhile, like five of the giants are trying to grapple me and finally one got a hold of me. But that was okay because on my next action I just decapitated him with my new longsword. Man that thing is sweetness on a stick! Seeing how the archers couldn’t hit Bob they started shooting at me. But, hey, my AC is even better so I just laughed at them as they cowered in fear from us from behind some kind of stupid rocks or something. We pretty much ignored the archers because they are not worth as much experience as the giants and I was pretty close to leveling after that first fight.

Overall though, I think the DM really challenged us. We took on something like 30 fire giants, a red dragon, an army of humanoids and those silly archers. But we had the good strategy and managed to kill them all. But really, this has to be the toughest DM I’ve ever played with (he has all the books).

We’re just about done with the campaign world now, since we killed about every last monster on the plane over that last two months. Hey, you want to join in our next game? The DM said I get to play Asmodeus, I can’t wait!


Just offering the other side of the coin.

 

[Plane Sailing]

And I pretty much have to remake a campaign world now, since there was no real way to handwave the fact that the bad guys got ahold of the Ring of Invisibility that one of the players had

heh. You had me going right up to this point, you bastard!

Cheers,

 

[takyris]

So the other day, we had this really tough adventure. But we were awesome...

My point was that if the authors of the classics had their bad guys act with the precision and control that some of the more tactically minded DMs here do, the heroes of those stories wouldn't be able to do the things that they did. I was implying that DMs who play their monsters as smarter than they actually should be played, and who radically outstrategize their players through experience, metagame knowledge, or description errors, are forcing their players to either turn into wargamers or give up the game.

(the critical part of that paragraph above is "experience, metagame knowledge, or description errors". Three TPKs makes it pretty unlikely that the problem lies solely with the players. Either the DM is using his real-life intelligence to play the monsters smarter than they really are, he's not separating his knowledge from monster knowledge well enough, or he's not giving the players enough information to keep their PCs alive.

It could be "really stupid players", mind you. But it's unlikely, and much less interesting to talk about.)

Your point seems to be that munchkins are bad. Bully for you. I agree with you 110%. The problem is that your description is an over-the-top story that most of us here would agree is pretty silly*, whereas my description isn't that far from what Force-User actually did, intentionally or unintentionally. I don't actually see that as the other side of the coin.

* And if the DM and the Players are still having fun in that game, then go them. That's the most important part of D&D -- people having fun as a group.

 

[Rel]

Are these the only two reasons? Both reasons assume that you (the DM) is a genius nonpareil and your players are either snotty smart-alecks or lack basic common sense (in either case, they clearly deserve a come-uppance/lesson). Maybe you're right. But its possible there's another reason, isn't it?

Yes. That's why I said:

There are two reasons that come to my mind immediately for why the players did not treat this encounter with respect (there may well be others)

But those were the first two that sprang to mind. It is very possible that the GM did not adequately communicate something to the players in question, or maybe the one guy in the group who is the smart planner got up to go pee when this issue was being addressed or one of any number of other things could have taken place. I don't see a lot of profit in trying to speculate on all of them.

What I think would really be of benefit is if the players in question chimed in here and gave us their perspective. Since so many of us seem to be of the "WHAT were they thinking?!" bent then it would be nice to know what they WERE thinking. I'd genuinely be interested.

 

[Hjorimir]

Well then we agree. So bully for us!

I've played in more of ForceUser's campaigns than I can quickly count. I also know that his current group is pretty darn new to D&D in general (some of them have some VtM experience though...but that is a different kind of game).

I really think this boils down to two things:

1) He is used to very tactical and knowledge players (our more experienced group often ran all over his opponents to the point where he shook his head thinking that the encounters would have prooven far more difficult than they actually were)
2) His players are still green when it comes to the lethality of D&D

I remain firm in my opinion that he didn't do anything wrong and that the players have some things to learn. Hopefully he will take the opportunity to talk to them about their mistakes so they can move forward having grasped the lesson. I've met one of them and she seems pretty darn smart to me. I'm sure they will figure it out.

I will admit, however, that I wasn't actually there. So I don't know exactly what took place. Maybe he didn't think all of the mechanics through. But, from this thread and my experiences with him, I don't think that is the case.

BTW, my point is if you don't DM with a little heavy handedness (when deserved) the game can quickly devolve into what I described (which was a group of players that got away with murder, not a group of munchkins as I never once described character builds or one bit of min/maxing).

 

[Sunderstone]

Remember, dead PCs learn no lessons, get no better.
Live PCs who may be alive by running away and are now suffering from loss of gear and what not, learn a lesson and pay a price.

Unless of course, you just assume their next PCs retain the knowledg of the old dead ones, in which case tpks can be teaching tools.

ummm.... common sense here sw, I was talking about the players learning a lesson.

Maybe the head on a spike was to enrage the ogres, so they would come after them in "angry mob of ogres" style instead of "spetznaz ogre" style

An angry mob doesnt have to be a stupid mob. Why do they have to come in with burning testoserone? Why wouldnt they want to soften them up from afar first with an Entangle and possibly a Call lightning?
And what is it with your "Tom Clancy-like" Ogre references?

I, for one, would not expect a sentry to be surprised by seven ogres barring some really weird terrain issue. No real mention has been made of terrain so not much to go on there.

Thats if they would come in the way you would play them, each DM has his own feelings and style. Even if he wasnt surprised, the party was still hit with an Entangle from a good distance. Those caught would not have been able to do much with the incoming "angry mob".

or get anrgy and rush out for revenge, maybe forgetting their commando spetznaz training for a moment.

again with the Ogre SpecOps stuff.

I usually prefer for people to enjoy the game, and frankly, before i would consider telling a GM "great job" that would be one necessary criteria.

but thats just me.

I agree here, but it doesnt mean you need to run a Barbie-style game to have fun. If they didnt have fun, they would have gotten a new DM probably one of the players.
Saving the players every time would take away all the danger from it. Constantly coming up with viable easier alternatives does the same. When is it enough hand-holding for you?
3 tpk's 10 months could be different for them, maybe they play twice a week where your group plays biweekly. Maybe they also have longer sessions. I dont think I would ever pass judgement on a DM based on time between frags.

 

[takyris]

Oh, fine. Go ahead and agree with me. Take all the fun out of my day.