DMs - how often do you get nervous that a big encounter will be a TPK?

[El Mahdi]

Not to get into the fudge or not-fudge debate again, but I never worry about TPK's (and I've never had one). As the GM, I have absolute control of whether this happens or not. If a TPK would "ruin" my campaign, then a TPK just isn't going to happen. Simple as that.


edit: Just so nobody takes this as an advocation of fudging as a cure-all, I'm also talking about narrative elements that can be introduced: the fortuitous rescue by a known or unknown NPC, the sudden discovery of an avenue of escape (trapdoor, PC generated cave-in, etc.), the sudden noticing of the means for a diversion (explosion, extinguishing of light, etc.). There are just as many ways to do this from a narrative angle as their are simply fudging, although I will occasionally resort to fudging. Of course, if the PC's keep consistently placing themselves in situations, due to their actions, that require an inordinate amount of narrative help, they will start paying a price for the "help".

 

[The Green Adam]

Never Had One, Never Will

I can't imagine designing an encounter in which my entire group of players is so unprepared, so careless and so overpowered that there is absolutely no chance at least 1 will make it.

This doesn't mean they can't die. Far from it. It means if they play their cards right, pay attention, work together and get creative, they won't die.

For one thing, I don't create no win scenarios. Death is dramatic, not fun. I get no joy or challenge out of killing PCs. Any slob with a rulebook and dice and kill player characters. "Ok 3rd level team of 5, in the next room you see...12 Umber Hulks! The door slams shut and magically seals behind you! Enjoy." Wow. That's a real test of the player's skill and ingenuity.

Second, I have a very smart, very experienced and very creative group of players. They never cease to wow me as to the crazy schemes they will come up with to get a mission completed. From the unorthodox use of skills, spells, powers and equipment to the vast array of real life skills and interests the players bring to the table, there is always someone who will find some way to save the teams bacon.

I believe that in my last long term campaign, a Final Fantasy-esque D&D 3E camapign played roughly once a week for 3 years, there were approximately 5 deaths. Each one was epic, dramatic and memorable. Each death furthered the plot, enabled others (PCs and NPCs) to survive and each one was felt by all the players and myself, not just the person whose character died.

AD
"Quellek... by Grabthar's hammer... by the Sons of Warvan... you shall be... avenged."

 

[Cryptos]

I've never really been afraid of a TPK... I'm confident in my ability to improvise if it starts going badly, and in groups I've had in the past many of them have been able to improvise, as well.

The closest I've come to TPKs was back in a couple of Mutants and Masterminds or Hero System games, oddly enough. In one situation, I did make it a bit too hard on the characters after overcompensating for what started out as an easy fight. The players were all ground-based damage-dealing types. A telekinetic opponent they were mopping the floor with rose up into the air, pulled a couple dozen bystanders out of a nearby office building and surrounded herself with them from 10 stories up for protection... if they tried to attack her and missed, they might have hit a bystander, but if they attacked her and hit, she might wind up dropping them all. I recovered by letting one of the other villain's multiple personalities take over due to the strain of manipulating so many things at once, one that was less willing to hurt bystanders, giving the PCs a chance to negotiate.

Another was the same characters against a feral regenerating killer (a la Sabertooth)... they were going to die until the usually quiet girl playing with us asked what was with her on the fire escape she was standing on. I didn't see what she was getting at, so I said there was a pair of tennis shoes and some flower pots. She asked if she could perform a stunt to leap down and phase the tennis shoes through the killer mutant's head and leave it there. I was so surprised (and amused) that after that, I just let that end the fight, the regenerating killer dead by leaving a tennis shoe stuck through the middle of his brain.

If the players don't come up with something, I'll come up with something.

Generally, what I'm more worried about is that players won't pick up on plot hooks or clues, or take an opportunity that is placed in front of them to advance the story; or conversely, that they'll jump straight to something that unravels a whole plot. Mostly, I worry about that happening in World of Darkness games.

Speaking of which, I've been more worried that I was going to cause a TPK as a player than as a GM/DM/storyteller.

I antagonized the leader of a group of vampire hunters by using illusion and mind control powers to frame him for various crimes and perversions because my character was annoyed that he had sent his little minions after us. I was just coming into the game, as it had been running for some time, and so I didn't realize there was a reason they weren't bothering to go after him. I thought the vampire hunters were the plot, rather than a nuisance side quest type of thing that came up from time to time. No one bothered to explain (in or out of character.) Eventually, I escalated it to the point where I had set up the lead hunter (who was some kind of priest) so that everyone thought he was a molestor and a sex fiend, and so as revenge he took the important McGuffin we needed for the plot to his fortified cabin in werewolf-infested woods and we had to get it. That confrontation turned really nasty.

 

[Jack7]

However I am worried that it could be a TPK

Why can't your party just retreat? (The one you are running as DM.)

This is something I have never understood about the unreality of RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs. (I'm not speaking to you personally, but to the whole genre, and the backasswards way so many games go about the idea of killing.)

Unless your party walks into a blind ambush with absolutely no avenue of escape, including the one by which they entered, if you're overmatched, you just retreat.

Anyone who has ever been in any kinda real fight knows that when the enemy
has the advantage of terrain, numbers, superior firepower, etc. you either redeploy and/or reposition for better advantage, or retreat so that you may kill the enemy later on. Killing is not a joke, it's not a game, it's not something you rely upon dice roll to settle. You don't stand around waiting to see what might happen if you get lucky. If a fight goes your way, finish it quick. If a fight goes against you, then just signal a retreat and get out.

No-one who knows anything at all about real fights is ever reluctant to retreat for advantage.

My monsters retreat, my NPCs retreat, and when they need to, the characters I DM retreat. The characters i play retreat. They retreat and they live, and because they retreat they come back and kill later on.

There is nothing heroic about standing to fight when you suspect the fight will lead to your own annihilation, or the annihilation of your comrades.

The point of a fight is not to see how close you can come to dying, it is to see how fast your can dispatch your enemy while suffering the least amount of harm to yourself and your brothers at arms.

But it seems like in RPGs too often the idea is to stand to losing ground til you die. That the idea of a retreat never crosses the mind. That's not heroic, that's just stupid.

You kill the enemy, and if you encounter one you can't kill, who is a real danger to you then you retreat out and come back later better prepared and with a better battle plan. One whose purpose is to conclude with a dead enemy, and a safe team of compatriots.

If you fight to the death because you are truly forced to, then that's one thing (but just to be honest, it's rare), if you fight to death because you just can't understand the difference between killing the enemy, and letting him kill you - because you just can't conceive of the idea that your legs will move you backwards or sideways as well as forwards then you probably deserve what ya got coming.

Retreat out, think about what you just encountered, come back with the proper plan and the right tools and men for the job, and kill the enemy. Dead.

Case closed.

 

[Thanee]

Yep, retreating is somehow a rarely followed course...

Bye
Thanee

 

[doppelganger]

Why can't your party just retreat? (The one you are running as DM.)

This is something I have never understood about the unreality of RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs. (I'm not speaking to you personally, but to the whole genre, and the backasswards way so many games go about the idea of killing.)

Unless your party walks into a blind ambush with absolutely no avenue of escape, including the one by which they entered, if you're overmatched, you just retreat.

Anyone who has ever been in any kinda real fight knows that when the enemy
has the advantage of terrain, numbers, superior firepower, etc. you either redeploy and/or reposition for better advantage, or retreat so that you may kill the enemy later on. Killing is not a joke, it's not a game, it's not something you rely upon dice roll to settle. You don't stand around waiting to see what might happen if you get lucky. If a fight goes your way, finish it quick. If a fight goes against you, then just signal a retreat and get out.

No-one who knows anything at all about real fights is ever reluctant to retreat for advantage.

My monsters retreat, my NPCs retreat, and when they need to, the characters I DM retreat. The characters i play retreat. They retreat and they live, and because they retreat they come back and kill later on.

There is nothing heroic about standing to fight when you suspect the fight will lead to your own annihilation, or the annihilation of your comrades.

The point of a fight is not to see how close you can come to dying, it is to see how fast your can dispatch your enemy while suffering the least amount of harm to yourself and your brothers at arms.

But it seems like in RPGs too often the idea is to stand to losing ground til you die. That the idea of a retreat never crosses the mind. That's not heroic, that's just stupid.

You kill the enemy, and if you encounter one you can't kill, who is a real danger to you then you retreat out and come back later better prepared and with a better battle plan. One whose purpose is to conclude with a dead enemy, and a safe team of compatriots.

If you fight to the death because you are truly forced to, then that's one thing (but just to be honest, it's rare), if you fight to death because you just can't understand the difference between killing the enemy, and letting him kill you - because you just can't conceive of the idea that your legs will move you backwards or sideways as well as forwards then you probably deserve what ya got coming.

Retreat out, think about what you just encountered, come back with the proper plan and the right tools and men for the job, and kill the enemy. Dead.

Case closed.

Strangely enough, I almost never see the NPC opponents following these ideas either. Maybe it is the metagame nature of combat (with real world entertainment as a major reason for battle) that causes this?

 

[Alan Shutko]

The point of a fight is not to see how close you can come to dying, it is to see how fast your can dispatch your enemy while suffering the least amount of harm to yourself and your brothers at arms.

Too often, DMs punish that behavior by rewarding little or no XP for an encounter, because it was "too easy". The encounters are supposed to be close calls. And since they are, it's not until a party member falls that it starts to look like a losing proposition. The rest of the party could retreat, but extracting the fallen comrade could slow them down so much they wouldn't make it, so either they stand and fight or explain to their friend sitting at the table "Start rolling up a new character. Sorry the rest of the evening is toast."

 

[NewJeffCT]

Strangely enough, I almost never see the NPC opponents following these ideas either. Maybe it is the metagame nature of combat (with real world entertainment as a major reason for battle) that causes this?

My bad guys retreat all the time - heck, the big encounter I spoke of before featured in Act 1 the werefox sorceress they encountered about 2 months ago in game (and 10 months ago out of game) and in act 2, the drow duskblade they had encountered twice before, once 11 months ago out of game, and then another time about 7 months ago (out of game)

Heck, last night, the drow duskblade and the evil cleric were both down in hit points, so they fled via transportation magics... and, the prior session, they fought a mind-flayer that plane-shifted outta town when they got it down to a few hit points, though they did manage to defeat the mind-flayers demonic ally. The werefox sorceress bought it last night as well.

 

[Grand_Director]

I'm terrified about TPKs. I worry about certain encounters and then my guys will rock it untouched in two rounds. It's the encounters that look innocent that wipe out my players and take me totally by surprise. It's the encounters that when taken in part are a breeze but when combined (monster, environment, other limiting factors) can totally rip the party to shreds.

As to the suggestion that players should just retreat in the face of a potential TPK; I think that may be a little unfair. Too often the players don't realize that they are in over their heads until one or two players drop. Sometimes the fight is too hard because the players allowed themselves to be divided and cut off from support then it's five rounds in and that feeling of "uh oh" sets in and it's too late. At that point every group I have ever ran would never think about running away because it would be seen as abandoning the unconscious PC's and I think there would be bad feelings all around. All my players have always exhibited a sink or swim together mentality and it's pretty pervasive.

I used to run Marvel Superheroes and that game no one ever died...zero HP and it's unconscious time. That freed the players to flee the field knowing they could regroup and rescue their fallen friends at a later time. It freed the DM from fearing a TPK because that just meant capture and a heroic escape. As a DM I would love to get rid of PC death all together and I think that most players would as well; but that illusion of risk needs to be present. I'd like it if defeat led to in game consequences and story implications but more often defeat means death and the story comes to a screeching halt.

 

[Drowbane]

Nervous? Why? Let the dice fall where they may! Crit happens!! I cackle when a PC dies. I grin like the cheshire cat if I pull off a TPK.

My players are good, if things are looking bad... they get the F out of there... or aim to die like heroes. More often than not, they pull it off.

I dunno, no fear of death would make D&D extremely boring... no?