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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Faerl'Elghinn" data-source="post: 1547458" data-attributes="member: 17810">Sure, death is an inevitable part of the game, and a huge contributing factor to the excitement, but it should never become a regular, everyday part of the game.  That's just not fun.  Planned TPKs are bullpuckey.  This practice removes the "game" element altogether, in its stead installing some twisted fulfillment of the DM's sadistic desires.  The example you provide is one where the potential for deaths in the party is understood, but where is your real success if you just annihilate the entire party?  IMHO, TPKs should never happen except in instances of EXTREME player stupidity.  If the party, or a few surviving members, realizes that it is completely overmatched, it should always be provided the opportunity to flee and regroup.  If the last standing member of the party attempts to flee, almost makes it, and gets cut down by a lucky critical hit by the monster, then a little leeway should be given, usually by way of some minor "divine intervention".  How often do your players find themselves waltzing into a dragon's lair during a random encounter?  Exactly.  They don't.  Entering the lair of a dragon is generally the climax of an adventure, or often even the most memorable experience of an entire campaign.  Heavy casualties are totally acceptable and generally expected by the party when it chooses to undertake such an expedition.  When heavy casualties are unacceptable, however, is just out of the blue, during a spur of the moment ambush by the DM, where the PCs are surrounded with no means of escape by creatures with faster movement than the characters possess.  That just plain sucks.  How anticlimactic can you get?As for the EL stuff, argument was expected, although I fail to see a point to argument with a mathematical inevitability.  I feel that I have provided simple, easy to understand, irrefutible proof of my arguments, and I challenge anyone to prove me mathematically incorrect in my aforementioned theories.-Faerl'Elghinn</blockquote>

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