As DM, ever TRIED a T.P.K. -- and FAILED?

[Altalazar]

I had one TPK attempt that failed, though I can't say I tried that hard. This particular party was sometimes rather strange in its pursuits.

One party member managed to escape, basically by being smart and not walking into the trap to begin with.

There was an evil NPC in the group that they thought was good - and seemed to not notice anything strange about her "wand of sleep" that she used quite often. (As she actually cast Death Spell while waving around a Nystull's Magic Aura'd stick - on more than one occasion).

Now, you could forgive them not noticing it on the orcs, as they quickly slit all of their throats afterwards - without checking and finding out they were already dead. But when it took down nearly a dozen drow, you'd think that might set off SOME alarm bells... much later, after they were captured, I pointed that out to them (when they knew who the NPC was and what she could do). Hmm... sleep against DROW - (magic resistance on top of sleep resistance of 90%). Not to mention the hit dice amount.

So I wasn't, strictly speaking, thinking I would get a TPK (captured, really) but in the sense that the NPCs were attempting to do one, and had a decent chance of succeeding (due to certain party blunders) it turned out that way - save the smart one who stayed out of the cave entirely.

 

[dbm]

I've had two 'over powering' encounters be knocked for six by my group of players in my current campaign. Both are from modules.

In one, the PCs are supposed to get knocked out by the bad guys and have to fight their way out of prison with improvised equipment. Firstly, one of the PCs was so paranoid they refused to walk in to the trap, then secondly one of the characters in the trap made four DC25 Fort saves giving him the time to open a door, charge up some stares (all filled with gas) then butcher the three people who had dropped gas bombs on them.

The second one was an EL12 encounter where the party are attacked by an Ogre Mage, a Ranger/Assassin, a Sorceror, a Cleric, three Rogues and two Rogue/Assassins (all atleast 4th). The group was by this time mostly 6th level and had only one fighter. They kicked everyone but the Ogre Mage, who fled after being hit with Flaming Sphere and an extended Melf's Acid Arrow. The point of this encounter was to encourage the party to flee...

Dan

 

[kigmatzomat]

I was part of one in a "die and go to ravenloft" scenario. None of us signed up for ravenloft (most of us hated the setting, especially the guy playing the paladin) and once we realized the "dark mists rise up and eerie sounds" bit, we decided to fight like mad.

This was 2e and right after the kit books came out. We were tricked out, since the model expected you to die a lot and lose levels and all your gear. I had the monk-equivalent fighter-cleric. Silly number of attacks and while I had the greatest attacks, I wasn't the most damaging.

We then took nearly a dozen headless horsemen, a handeful of elder beholders, some odd little critters hailing from ravenloft, and untold undead.

The GM was ready to pull his hair out. We finally looked at him and said "we can do this all night and it'll probably be great fun for us, but we'll give in for now."

We then proceded to threaten the very concept of the module at every possible turn by consistently *almost* achieving the impossible and followed it up by finally getting turned evil by monsters and saying "hey, we're evil, right? Why do we care now? Let's go take over a village!"

The GM was ready to cry. But he never ran Ravenloft again without asking the players first.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Sure, but as players we all tend to have some pretty big blind spots. They were recruiting civilians to train, but not checking them out thoroughly. They would trash a Security station, but take too long, allowing Security to send reinforcements. They would hit targets too often - which prompted Security to form a massive response unit, which should have TPK'd them.

I would love to play in a Blackcollar game.

I find that in an average D&D game, a party tends to think one or maybe two steps ahead.

It would be very cool playing characters who are all about thinking six steps ahead, and trying to live up to it...

No actions taken that aren't a part of the master plan that doesn't even show up until three sessions later...

-Hyp.

 

[frankthedm]

When i go for a TPK, I get a TPK.

I have had whole parties climb a mountain to be killed by a wyvern, that they KNEW was stronger than they were.

 

[Mac Callum]

I don't think that I've ever attempted a TPK and failed. I have had an attempted party discouragement that went suprisingly well for the PCs, but ended up being a TPK anyway.

So the PCs had just escaped Zhentil Keep with news that the Zhentilar were going to attack the Dalelands in force - really try to take them over. The PCs head south for a bit when I inform them that they can continue south through the pass, or turn east towards the desert and skirt the edges of the hills. They elect to go south. [7 PCs, levels 8 - 11, AD&D 2e]

The PCs discovered the Zhentilar army. There were close to 1000 soldiers in the southern pass, just camped there. In addition to fighters there were Wizards of course. I gave the PCs plenty of warning so that they could turn east. I said "So, the army is holding the pass. What do you do?"

PCs: Charge!
Me: Huh? Are you sure?
PCs: Death to the Zhents, kill them all!!

Fittingly, the only player that was not there that night (but whose PC was) was a Cleric of the Red Knight, the Goddess of Sound Tactics.

Anyway, they did surprisingly well. The first PC died on the first charge to a natural 20 Heavy Crossbow shot (Combat & Tactics critical hits system - location: Face). The next two PCs cut through a swath of low-level infantry to get mowed down by a charge of heavy cavalry. A 10th level, dual-longsword wielding, Dire Wolf riding Ranger did an amazing amount of damage before being surrounded, and attacked on all sides, by pikeman. The PC who did the most damage by far, was the 11th level Cleric. He was a Fire Cleric with a Ring of the Phoenix (homebrew item). He died by fireball, arising fully healed the next round, twice. His Ring of Spell Storing only had Heal spells in it, and he had a spell which had a % chance of reflecting magical attacks in random directions, causing the Zhentilar attacks to cause more damage to themselves than the party.

All told they must have killed close to 350 Zhentilar before being taken down. I never intended it to be a fight, let along a TPK, but it was pretty amazing really, and they did accomplish their mission: The Zhentilar were so damaged they called off the invasion, saving the Dalelands.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The PCs discovered the Zhentilar army. There were close to 1000 soldiers in the southern pass, just camped there. In addition to fighters there were Wizards of course. I gave the PCs plenty of warning so that they could turn east. I said "So, the army is holding the pass. What do you do?"

PCs: Charge!
Me: Huh? Are you sure?
PCs: Death to the Zhents, kill them all!!

Heh.

I'm at work, so I'm afraid I'm paraphrasing from memory... but this reminds me of an exchange in Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards. An army of a thousand Easterners has just come over the hill into Imperial territory, and Khaavren of Castlerock and his five friends, who happened to be there, are speaking with their leader.

"I presume you are here to offer tribute to the Emperor, since you cannot be here to invade," Khaavren said.
"How, cannot?" replied the Easterner.
"Well, there are six of us," Khaavren pointed out.
"So, there are six of you?"
"Well, then, as you can perceive," Khaavren explained, "you are outnumbered."
"Oh, well said," murmured Aerich.

-Hyp.

 

[Rel]

I'm at work, so I'm afraid I'm paraphrasing from memory... but this reminds me of an exchange in Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards. An army of a thousand Easterners has just come over the hill into Imperial territory, and Khaavren of Castlerock and his five friends, who happened to be there, are speaking with their leader.

"I presume you are here to offer tribute to the Emperor, since you cannot be here to invade," Khaavren said.
"How, cannot?" replied the Easterner.
"Well, there are six of us," Khaavren pointed out.
"So, there are six of you?"
"Well, then, as you can perceive," Khaavren explained, "you are outnumbered."
"Oh, well said," murmured Aerich.

-Hyp.

I love those books. I just finished Paths of the Dead last night (way late last night after a D&D session ). In an upcoming Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade game, I plan for my character to affect that manner of speaking. It is going to be a challenge but I think it will be fun.

As to the topic at hand, I've haven't attempted a TPK or party capture in years that I tried to run in-game. Any time (which is almost never) I want the party captured, I just make it a fait accompli to avoid any ill feelings among the group. There was one time when I wish the GM had done the same:

We (three 3rd level characters) were investigating these Drow ruins and were about to exit the place through a meandering series of 5' wide tunnels when we were beset by Hobgoblins. They had obviously entered the same way we did and were trying to prevent us from leaving. Because of the narrow corridors, they could only come at us one at a time at first. Eventually they found ways around behind us but by then we were actively backing down these corridors to find a way around them.

At first we figured that it was half a dozen of them but quickly revised our opinion to around a dozen. Soon we were thinking that there must be more like 20 or 25. After that, we lost count for a while. And still they kept coming. Thanks to the prowess of the Fighter and Rogue and my Elven Cleric/Wizard casting Shield and doing a lot of "5' step, shoot my Longbow" routine, we managed to keep killing them.

Finally we fought our way almost all the way out when we were beset by a Drider who rapidly Webbed us and put us unconscious. Unfortunately for him, we had utterly destroyed his small army of Hobgoblins. When we tallied it up, we killed 48 out of 50 of them between the three of us.

At the end of the session, the GM indicated that he only wanted to try and capture us so that the Drider could threaten us, take the artifact we had found and leave. I asked why the Drider didn't have the Hobgoblins Grapple us (which would have worked easily). He said it never occurred to him. :\

In his defense, this was the first time he had run a full fledged campaign, but still...yuck. It sure sucked to acquit ourselves so well against so many enemies only to be railroaded into a final "capture sequence" against a bad guy over double our CR rating.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I love those books. I just finished Paths of the Dead last night.

You know, while I love pretty much everything of Brust's I've read (Athyra was weak, and To Reign In Hell was.. interesting...), and particularly enjoy The Phoenix Guards and Five Hundred Years After, Paths of the Dead just didn't grab me.

I'm waiting for Lord of Castle Black to come out here in paperback. I snapped up Paths of the Dead in hardback as soon as it hit the shelves, but it disappointed me a little.

-Hyp.

 

[Azlan]

The one and only time I purposely tried a TPK, I did not fail. But how could I fail, if a TPK was my purpose and I was the DM? Anyway, that was back during my first days of DM'ing, which was with 1st Edition AD&D.

I had given the group's fighter an artifact sword that was similar to Elric's Stormbringer, i.e. this was actually an evil demi-god in the form of a sword. The fighter (i.e. the player) quickly grew to love this sword, since it was a really cool and quite powerful weapon. But after a few game sessions, he realized the sword was evil and bloodthirsty; and after the sword tried taking him over a few times during combat (and one of those times, succeeding), the fighter eventually saw fit to discard the sword. (He threw it into a chasm and walked away.)

A couple of game sessions later, I placed the PC group in a seemingly no-win confrontation with a group of arch villains, and in the middle of this, the sword came back, making a grand re-entrance. Radiating waves of hellfire, it floated across the room and addressed the group's fighter: "Take me back into your possession, and I will help you out of this. Together, we shall be a most powerful, unstopable duo! But if you do take me back, know that only you will survive the hellfire blast that I will unleash -- your comrades as well as your enemies, here, will all perish." After thinking about it for only 10 seconds or so, the fighter took the sword -- and it exploded, wiping out everyone in the room, including the fighter.

And, of course, the sword then reverted to its true form and flew away, laughing and saying, "Farewell, friend! I was a thousand times more evil than thou!"

Well, that was the end of that campaign! And that the night, I witnessed two guys actually weeping over their slain characters; one, a 16-year-old, who played a halfling thief; and the other, an 18-year-old, who played a half-orc ranger. But the guy who played the fighter, he thought the ending was damned amusing.