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

[justanobody]

Crit happens

I want a shirt with that on it!

 

[Drowbane]

I want a shirt with that on it!

I think I saw one down at Comic Con one year. I think the guy had it made. I've been meaning to have half a dozen made up to give out to my new group-mates.

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.

I don't understand this. Defeat means whatever the DM wants it to mean. NPCs don't have to kill dropped PCs. Especially since rescue senarios are so fun to plan and run... there is often a sense of excitement at the table during them that isn't present for more mundane missions. Just cause WotC says -10hp = death and all your players know that doesn't make it so.

 

[Grand_Director]

I think I saw one down at Comic Con one year. I think the guy had it made. I've been meaning to have half a dozen made up to give out to my new group-mates.



I don't understand this. Defeat means whatever the DM wants it to mean. NPCs don't have to kill dropped PCs. Especially since rescue senarios are so fun to plan and run... there is often a sense of excitement at the table during them that isn't present for more mundane missions. Just cause WotC says -10hp = death and all your players know that doesn't make it so.

I know that I could take PC death out of the game. My point is that the same players who complain that they are having a hard time getting into the campaign with new characters after a TPK are the same ones who would sputter "what's the point" if negative 10 didn't mean dead.

It's the culture of the game and it's a weird dichotomy. Players want the threat of dead PCs but too many dead PCs and the players get frustrated.

 

[Drowbane]

Sure they dropped to "-10"... but they don't know how much (if any) of that was subdual. I don't share that kind of info.... until its truely relevant. Not all of my players have figured this out... but I almost always deal at least 20% subdual... just in case. Sometimes this is enough to allow a PC to live... sometimes not.

Sometimes I accidently TPK the party with a well placed Unholy Blight... oops. (thats what they get for playing 1/2 celestials? ) hehe.

 

[Jack7]

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.

That's a very good and very real point. But as for me, as a DM, I reward shrewdness and surviving difficult situations, not unnecessarily endangering yourself and your comrades. I reward all kinds of behavior, as long as it furthers the mission, is honorable (and retreat is not only honorable if done right, it is sometimes vital to avoiding disaster), and is effective. I try not to have too many preconceived ideas about what I would have done, or how I would have solved the problem, the players aren't me and shouldn't be treated as if they should read my mind or take my natural course of action. Cleverness and ingenuity should be rewarded, even if it isn't what I would have done as a player... I think DMs should ask themselves, "if I was in a life or death situation like this, wouldn't I retreat?" And if they do, let them, and reward them for their cleverness.

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."

That's true enough too, and also a good point. But that's the difference between a disorganized rout and a real, well-organized, well-practiced retreat. A retreat is a plan of action, not a wild abandon of duty.

In a well organized retreat you secure your line of retreat, your protect your rear, and you don't leave people behind. The point of the real retreat is to get everybody out and to safety, not to just throw down your weapons and bolt for the door. So I'm not advocating rout, I'm advocating retreat as a systematic and useful combat technique.

 

[Leatherhead]

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."

I personally hate it when DM's do that, and from time to time I go out of my way to set up a combat encounter that can be outwitted instead of simply outmuscled.

As for the thread topic: I have never had to worry about a TPK, ever. Even when the party themselves were worried that they would all die (like to the green dragon that used hit-and-run tactics*), I knew that they could beat it with no help from me. Also, the only times when TPK would have happened, someone was smart enough to run for their lives. Over all, my players end up loosing more PC's threw their own stupidity than my nefarious plots, and I don't feel bad about them dieing like that.


*If you were wondering, they ended up beating that encounter without a single death after they got their act together and started thinking about their environment.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Like Treebore, I'm very good at balancing encounters, and I like to challenge my players.

But the reason I don't worry about TPKs is that I have no problems with having my bad guys behave suboptimally in the chaos of combat. If one PC is getting pounded on, and another PC makes a determined effort to distract the attacker, I've got no problem with that effort paying off. (My intelligent opponents don't behave stupidly, but they do sometimes behave suboptimally.)

(What may surprise people is that I'm very much against the fudging of dice, in my favor or not, as a player or as a DM. What's the precise difference between the two types of fudging? I dunno, but I know it when I feel it.)

I am also depressed by TPKs, BTW, and of course I'm well aware that the possibility is part of the game. (In fact, I believe the possibility is what makes combat fun.) But TPKs disrupt or destroy campaign momentum, and, part of the game or not, character death makes most players feel bad. I don't enjoy making people feel bad. (Unless they deserve it, and my players rarely do, and never all at once.)

 

[Stalker0]

I know that I could take PC death out of the game. My point is that the same players who complain that they are having a hard time getting into the campaign with new characters after a TPK are the same ones who would sputter "what's the point" if negative 10 didn't mean dead.

It's the culture of the game and it's a weird dichotomy. Players want the threat of dead PCs but too many dead PCs and the players get frustrated.

Well to me that's part of the great story. We've had games where the PC was put in a situation that he was most likely going to die in....and lived. We still talk about those characters to this day. And then there are those characters in a similar situation, the dice fell as expected, and they died. Those characters are forgotten and we move on.

I've found over the years I've played that some of the best parts of the story are those moments when both player and GM alike know that this might be it...and the player makes it out somehow. However, the price to it is sometimes it doesn't go the players way and then you lose a character. But I would much rather risk it to have some of those truely memorable characters that I can talk about months and years later than to always play it safe.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Well to me that's part of the great story. We've had games where the PC was put in a situation that he was most likely going to die in....and lived. We still talk about those characters to this day. And then there are those characters in a similar situation, the dice fell as expected, and they died. Those characters are forgotten and we move on.

I've found over the years I've played that some of the best parts of the story are those moments when both player and GM alike know that this might be it...and the player makes it out somehow. However, the price to it is sometimes it doesn't go the players way and then you lose a character. But I would much rather risk it to have some of those truely memorable characters that I can talk about months and years later than to always play it safe.

True, when we talk about old campaigns, it is those moments of heroism where the PC expects to die, but survives that we still talk about 10 years later... in an old Kalamar campaign from 2E days, my 7th level human ranger charged an evil elf bladesinger that must have been at least 11th level. Back in 2E days, bladesingers were one of the most powerful "kits" around (old style prestige classes) and multi-classing was not nearly as balanced as 3E. But, my guy won initiative and caused enough damage with his first hit to consult our rather brutal 2E crit chart, and I ended up getting a 5 time damage modifier and did 60 points of damage with that one hit, knocking him down to like 1 or 2 hit points, where it was a simple matter of a magic missile from the party wizard to finish the bad guy off... (of course, since most bad guys were not around for more than 1 battle, the crit chart tended to hurt the PCs more than the bad guys, because it would often leave one of us with a permanent injury. But, that time it was a memorable victory for the good guys!)

 

[Rel]

I run quite a lot of combats that have the possibility of being a TPK. Do I worry about it? Never.

First of all, my players are brilliant and cunning. They can be counted on to find a way to defeat almost every encounter I place before them, no matter the difficulty. It may not be pretty. I might be certain that several of them are going to die. But they nearly always find a way.

And if they don't? Well it's happened once. And we just have a laugh about it and start talking about what their next characters will be. Both players and GM are resiliant enough to roll with the consequences.