Another TPK - Sigh.

[swrushing]

I agree with you totally on this but no matter how you slice it, swrushing believes that INT 6 = throwing all caution out the window and charging hell-bent with revenge and being too slow upstairs to follow a simple order of "wait" when given by their leader whom they also might fear. (woot! run-on sentence!)

wow, given i never said such, that is one heckuva psychic read on your part.

When does the ogre leader say 'wait"? After he has spotted the party? Thats what, 2d8x10' in medium woods. 2d6x10' in dense. his mob of siz spetznaz commando ogres made it that close with narry a bump along the way, a flawless setup, flawless tactics, in flawless situation.

I just feel that, given the majority of the opposition were morons who lumber like a truck, that thew weather and other such factors were entirely in the Gms hands all worked to not hinder the ogres in any way and facilitate the flawless assault, i just feel there was less "my hands were tied" "stay true to the narratve truth" shackling the Gm than a genuine lack of effort to not be "gunning for the pcs".

One simple hypothetical, even for those who cannot fathom six int 6 hide-8 ogres and a leader possibly ever failing to flawlessly execute a flawless tacical plan, is a simple sotmr in the afternoon starts wiping away the party tracks and if it continues into the night makes keeping the fire untenable or at least muffles it somewhat and restricts visibility and wind. The net result of this may be one of several things...

1. the ogres lose the trail completely or do not set out and wait for morning.
2. the ogres dont spot the party quite as incredibly far out (150' if i read his message right was how far he spotted them which means medium woods AT BEST and a roll of 15+ on 2d8) and so neither side got the total surprise.
3. the ogres search but miss the party until the next morning, when they and the party engage in a tough fight.

of course, somewhere he probably had a roll for weather, right? So his Gm hands were tied there too?

if the ring wraith had as flawless a spot check and track check as this ogre did, he would have snatched frodo and his buds from uner the roots overhang as they escaped the shire and that would have been that. No need for three books.

fortunately, tolkien was not so "hands tied" as perhaps forceuser seems to feel he was. if he had been, we might not have this game to discuss.

 

[The Grackle]

Sometimes its hard to remember that the rules ARE complex, and I've been gaming since 1987. I take for granted just how much I know about the system. Going forward, we're going to start at 1st level again. And I'm going to take pains to communicate their environment to them in as much detail as I can manage. Hopefully they'll make wiser decisions.

...With this particular group, I think less is more when it comes to combat. I've found that balance with them a few times and its worked beautifully. I will find it again.

Thanks for all the input. This is why I love ENWorld.

awesome.
good luck w/the next one.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

swrushing, I think your vitriol is off-base, and I think your frustration that other opinions differ from yours has made you downright insulting. Take a breather, would you?

thanks for ther analysis. are you a professional shrink or just an amateur?

Hopefully, my players will also ask more questions about what's going on around them and think about the consequences of their actions. We need to meet somewhere in the middle.

You are the eyes and ears and noses for your players. The mass of the onus is on you to tell them and show them whats happening, what their character ssee hear and know. if its painfully obvious to you as the Gm that 1/2 mile given what you know as Gm about the situation is too close, is too obvious, is certain death, then its on you to make sure the PCs (if they have someone with appropriate skills so that its obvious to them) knowledge is shared fairly with the players.

IMX, almost everytime my players did something AS A GROUP that i looked at and went "but thats stupid" it wasn't because my players were just a bunch of morons but because there was something i had not told them that they should have known. It wasn't "them being stupid" it was me basing my reasoning on facts they did not know about the scene.

individuals will sometimes do incredibly stupid things. Anyone can have a brain fart at anytime. But a group of reasonable players rarely all have brain farts simultaneously.

the entire tone and tenor of your original post paints yourself in the victim role hamsstrung by principles and the players as dolts. As Gm blaming the players for egregious failure is more akin to asking what the rape victim was wearing in spirit though certainly not in severity.

you had options to stay within your "narrative truth" and dish out consequences without making the int 6 ogres flawless in their execution and tactics. There is NOTHING forcing you to have them not only come up with a great plan but to then execute it without hitch. if average int 10 soldiers always did the good tactics, executed them flawlessly, and had conditions of terrain and weather always work in their favor, leaders of armies and sqwuads worldwide would be singing their praises.

Funny, in over ten years of pre-3E gaming I never had a single TPK. Since switching to 3E, I've had two, and more near-wipeouts than I can immediately recall.

This should be a clue. The first thing it should make you wonder is "is my understanding and execution of balance in this new system up to snuff?"

the second thing might be " are my scenarios providing too advantageous situations for the adversaries?"

the third might be "am i not playing up the adversary weaknesses enough?"

the last thing you ever wonder about ought to be "are my players all suddenyl going stupid on me?"

It's true that my gamemastering style has changed since 3E to become more tactically focused.

an incredibly important rule i learned long long ago is "me bign tactically minded" should NOT equate to "all my npcs being so as well". ogres are stupid and thats part of their threat rating. ogres are loud and nosiy and that is too. ogres suck at range and that is as well.

your DELIBERATE CHOICE to have the circumstances (weather, terrain), the tactics and the execution all favor the ogres with no mitigating element whatsoever was what raised this to a tpk.

again, one serious thing to look at... if a party with skills like the ogres hatched this ambush as the master plan for assaulting some bad guys who had a sentry posted... would you have had everything work as smoothly and flawlessly for them?

At times, I have allowed the grid to overshadow the storytelling. But it's also true that D&D has just gotten deadlier than in previous editions.

I cannot say that i agree, but than i skipped second entirely. IMX DND 3 is less deadly than AD&D but, again, that could be to experience differences as well.

With this particular group, I think less is more when it comes to combat.

or, after three tpks, the wording might ought to be "with this GM, less combat is more"? Again, as the eyes and ears and sole funnel through which they get the info on which they base their decisions, as the sole creator of their adversaries, as the man in charge totally of most of the "other stuff" that can produce serious impacts on events... its really a bad idea to focus on the players as the source of the bad events. IMX most of the weight lies on the Gm.

I do recall one time where i said, as Gm when something went wrong, categorically "not my fault."

The gang runs into a room with bad guys and the monk uses his boots of spider whatsit to run along the walls anf get to one particular bad guy and whack him and hurts him. I describe it as "noticeable but not serious damage"

The bad guy on his turn full attacks the monk and does damage.

Monk player says out loud "man, he did not even roll well and he did more than half my total hit points in one round."

Now, for everyone in the room, apparently except him, "more than half" was a BIG RED WARNING SIGN which said "so don't let him do it again or you are dead."

on his next action, the monk player says outloud "guess i better swing." Even after one of the other player says "you could run, or swing and tumble away" he decided to go ahead and full attack.

with his position, none of the other character could get to his bad guy to hit it and give it "a better target" so the bad guy struck again and did similar damage and killed the monk.

afterwards the player said he had no idea why he did not run.

About every other time though, i start with mea culpa and look to where i erred.

the situation you described, even taking it as is, does not sound that bad.

 

[takyris]

ForceUser, if you don't mind me asking, how did you describe the woods.

I'm from California. When I think of forest, I think of massively different terrain than my wife, who is from New Mexico. My wife would read fairy tales about children getting lost in the woods as a child, and she would think, "How could anyone get lost in the woods? You just climb a hill and look around, and your house will be there off to the West, and you can always idenfity the west because that's where the mountains are."

Having grown up near massive redwood forests that can get you completely turned around within five minutes, I had a somewhat different conception. The first time she drove through a small patch of woods in the Bay Area with me, she said aloud, "Okay, now I understand how people can get lost in the woods."

If you're thinking New Mexico forest, then yeah, that campfire is visible for miles. If you're thinking California forest, it might not be visible for more than a couple hundred feet, if that -- and darkvision or no, I'd give a penalty for trying to follow tracks in the dark.

I'm not saying you did anything wrong. I'm suggesting a possible point of miscommunication.

 

[pogre]

Tonight my players rolled new characters for the third time in ten months of regular play.

Good lord! I feel inadequate. I am falling behind in the body count!

Sounds like you reflect on TPKs much as I do - always a bummer, but you definitely have the right attitude on keeping the game moving forward. Best of luck!

 

[Arkhandus]

Wow, swrushing, you sure are wordy and argumentative. People have opinions. Forums are for expressing opinions. Don't get all bent out of shape over it. As mentioned, take a breather or something. Don't sweat it.

Forceuser, remember that even though the players may or may not be clever and wise, their characters very well might be! Just because the player of a 14-Wisdom ranger for instance fails to realize it would be bad to leave a head behind on a pike, camp a short distance away with a fire going, and go to sleep afterwards, doesn't mean that the ranger himself In-Character wouldn't realize that; you have a responsibility as DM to point things out to your players which their characters should rightly realize In-Character! Roleplaying isn't about simply playing a fantasy version of yourself, so you shouldn't expect players to only RP characters who are of no greater cunning than themselves. I often give minor hints, advice, or the like as appropriate to players when I think their PC is, in-character, intelligent enough or wise enough or knowledgeable enough to conclude such things themselves IC.

Now, as for Forceuser's situation, here's my 2cp (and only 2cp worth): He overestimated his players' cunning, and didn't plan for the possibility of disaster. Unfortunate, as a DM should always expect that something may go very awry, but stuff happens. Now, something he misjudged is that each ogre stood about as good a chance of killing each PC mano-a-mano as each PC stood of killing each ogre mano-a-mano, and that there were about as many ogres as there were PCs; ogres have good attack/damage bonuses for their CR, so they can give quite a pounding to PCs who lack great AC or great luck. The ogre leader was even mightier too, and could have taken down a PC or two himself at the same time. And yes, as mentioned already, greatclubs are not normally targetable by Shillelagh (the spell only targets, very specifically, clubs and quarterstaffs, not all weapons of the 'club' or 'staff' general categories). Also, Forceuser may not have bothered making spot/listen/hide/move silently checks for/against the angry/stupid/lumbering group of ogres, and may not have bothered considering the terrain. And as others have mentioned, the ogres should have been fatigued and low on hit points/spells/whatnot at the time if they had been away raiding that very day. People forget things sometimes, even DMs. Given that Forceuser expected the PCs to get off a perfect ambush, the encounter would have been rather challenging but likely not to the point of a TPK (though I quite expect 2 or 3 of the 7 PCs would die, at the least, as ogres are wont to gang up for a good barshin').

Ambushes and such can greatly alter the CR/EL of an encounter, as has been my experience. As DM you should have realized that the encounter, while already made to verily challenge the PCs under good circumstances, would totally waste 'em all if those circumstances were reversed or even just negated. The story does not control you, you are free to choose NOT to arbitrarily follow the likeliest-seeming course when PCs do stupid things. Maybe the ogres didn't like that sentry anyway and that's why they left him behind? So they don't bother seeking out the PCs for revenge, they just make sure to move their lair to a new location and to set up more thorough defenses or something. Perhaps several of the ogres perished during the raiding earlier that day, due to unexpected resistance by a bunch of militiamen or some farmer who happened to keep a herd of bulls and unleashed them on the raiding ogres, so thus the remaining ogres decided not to risk going after the killers of their sentry that evening (or perhaps there were only one or two left besides the leader, to where the party could have stood a chance against the ambush). Maybe the ogres got a good haul during that day's raiding but learned of some mercenaries or whatnot who were heading into the area to fight them off, so the ogres decided they should just leave behind their old lair and just find fresh hunting grounds or something.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Hey there ForceUser!
I know the feeling. There isn't much worse than when my party does something that is just incredibly bone-headed. Except for the situations where we disagree about the level of bone-headeness and arguements break out. So, I've been in your shoes on a couple of occasions.

There's one part of the situation that I'm curious about though. Why the ogre head on a stick? If there was a logical/strategic reason for it (ie: A macho display of intimidating strength) could it have worked? Sometimes I find that I need to swing some of the non-combat things in my player's favor. There are times when their choices make a lot of sense, but only after I get them to explicitly state what they're trying to do.

Anyway, it sounds like you've got more than enough to think about on the non-mechanical topic. So, on to mechanics. I heartily reccomend something along the lines of action points/ hero points/ extra effort/ force points/ willpower. Basically, you need some emergency bad roll buffers. It sounds like if one or two of those rolls had been transformed into successes the fight would have gone down better. Using some sort of re-roll mechanic should help cover some of those situations when the PC's are in over their heads. I think more than anything else this is an easy change that will help a lot in increasing survivability.

Best of luck in the future.

 

[Meadred]

Why do people think that a 6 intelligence isnt capable of following a simple order like "wait"? We once had a Barbarian with a 5 intelligence in an old 1st edition campaign. The rest of the party made the attack plans while giving him orders when it came time like "wait" and "attack".

Well, the problem isn't that an Int 6 person can't follow orders when you're up-front, leading the group. The main problem is that as soon as you turn your back, they'll wander off to do something else, usually rather unpredictable. They also have problems understanding even basic group tactics, meaning that they have great difficulties acting as part of a group, other than perhaps a mob.

I'm in the Army Reserves, and have some experience of leading squads and platoons as well as being an instructor for conscripts. During my days in the Army, I have met a few individuals that probably were close to having an Int of 6. While I never have had any trouble with them obeying a direct order, it has generally been really, really hard to have them in the squad or platoon. They usually have trouble understanding anything beyond simple orders such as "go to that tree there" or "wait here until I get back". I have also found that they're generally easily distracted and bored, so they may very well fall asleep while on guard duty, or stop performing an important task because they found something that was, in their minds, more interesting to do.

So, based on my experiences, I would say that leading a group of Int 6 individuals, that are not trained in group tactics, on a search mission through the woods, would be very, very difficult. Even if each and every group member could remember not to chatter among themselves, wouldn't get distracted, and managed to move as silent as ghosts, the group leader would problably have to give a lot of orders and directions, thus giving the group away long before they got in position to execute an ambush. The sound of people talking carries real well, and can easily give you away to the enemy. That's the reason why armed forces include simple sign language skills in basic training.

Cheers,
Meadred

Edit: Minor spelling and added a few words.

 

[Darklone]

Well... raiding ogres IMHO do have experience in "group tactics". At least their one typical tactic.

 

[Meadred]

Well... raiding ogres IMHO do have experience in "group tactics". At least their one typical tactic.

Ah, you mean the tactic of "Yelling loudly and charging the puny humans while waving our greatclubs menacingly"?

Yes, I agree that a group of ogres that have been raiding for a while, probably would have one often used way of attacking, in effect a "group tactical maneuver" (or something like that). I don't think that they would have developed more than one such "tactic" though (the one that has worked the last few raids), and I definitely do not believe that they would be able to improvise according to the situation, adopting a new tactic on the fly. That's the problem with having Int 6.

Anyway, IMHO, ogres are creatures that take a "brute force"-approach to soldiering. They will attempt to scare their opponents by yelling loudly and charging. They are cunningly enough to go after spell casters, if they have encountered such before, and they will use tactical maneuvers such as flanking in melee. If I was the DM, a group of ogres would probably not be able to restrain themselves if they caught scent of humans, and would charge uncoordinated through the woods at the camp while yelling loudly, thus alerting the sentry, cause every ogre knows that the last one to enter the fray gets latrine duty for the next week. But that's in my campaign...

Cheers,
Meadred