D&D 5E Egregious TPK retcon in Hoard of the Dragon Queen

[Reynard]

Only a meaningful life can make for a meaningful death.

Imagine the character is a young farm hand who managed to procure some armor and a sword from a fallen soldier on the road to market. He hooks up with a shifty dwarf who has a thing for traps and gold and a mysterious horned wizard who says she knows where ancient treasure is buried. A few days later, he is bleeding out at the bottom of a crude pit, a soiled pungee stick sprouting from his abdomen. Above, goblins snicker and whisper in their own language. Before darkness takes him, the farmhand imagines a life where he left the armor to rust on the bones of its last owner, where he marries his sweetheart and earns enough to buy a little plot and raise pigs and a dozen children. Just before he dies he wonders if some other naive kid is going to die in this suit of chain mail.

Is that a meaningless death? Is that a meaningless death? Is it a fun character to have played and a fun story to tell sitting at the bar at the con?

 

[pkt77242]

Only a meaningful life can make for a meaningful death.

Imagine the character is a young farm hand who managed to procure some armor and a sword from a fallen soldier on the road to market. He hooks up with a shifty dwarf who has a thing for traps and gold and a mysterious horned wizard who says she knows where ancient treasure is buried. A few days later, he is bleeding out at the bottom of a crude pit, a soiled pungee stick sprouting from his abdomen. Above, goblins snicker and whisper in their own language. Before darkness takes him, the farmhand imagines a life where he left the armor to rust on the bones of its last owner, where he marries his sweetheart and earns enough to buy a little plot and raise pigs and a dozen children. Just before he dies he wonders if some other naive kid is going to die in this suit of chain mail.

Is that a meaningless death? Is that a meaningless death? Is it a fun character to have played and a fun story to tell sitting at the bar at the con?

Is that a fun character to have played? Yes, but only once, frequent low level deaths or TPK become frustrating (and annoying) very fast.

 

[Reynard]

Is that a fun character to have played? Yes, but only once, frequent low level deaths or TPK become frustrating (and annoying) very fast.

None should be the same, and all things being equal some will have long and illustrious careers and others will die ignominiously. The point is that you don't know which is which unless you allow the game and the stories that emerge therefrom to occur as the result of actual play, not predetermination.

 

[pemerton]

I WOULD say that those going through the motions of action resolution that can only have one ultimate outcome are not actually playing a game.

There is no immutable rule of RPG design that says the only options for action resolution must be alive/dead. It is possible to have multiple options for action resolution, yet none of them be TPK.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Why do you need game mechanics/ a resolution system to tell a story with a known outcome?

Spoiler for a movie released a couple of decades ago: The Titanic Sinks.

Spoiler: My life story and yours will end in death. What matters is what we do in the middle.

Spoiler: Montsegur 1244 has a predefined ending. Which doesn't prevent it being an awesome RPG with the right group.

 

[Eirikrautha]

These arguments always annoy me, because both sides are treating assumptions as if they are facts. First of all, references to TPKs as part of a "game" require that the definition of game be warped to the point where it means "the way I play."

For example, randomness is NOT a defining feature of games. Chess is one of the oldest games played in the western world, and randomness has no part in it. So appeals to the dice as justification for any outcome have NOTHING to do with the "game" of D&D. The inclusion of randomness is a play style. What makes a "game" is choice and consequence. That's it. Each choice you make has some consequence that either increases or decreases the number and kind of available choices you have afterwards. In a game like D&D, the game rules incorporate the random rolling of dice to add chance as an additional factor in your choices. Without it, you could say "I'm stronger than this goblin, so I kill it." You'd still be playing a game (as you might have many other things you could do other than killing the goblin). Adding randomness means that not all logical choices will be correct (as I could roll crappily and the goblin crits twice, leading to my death rather than its). So randomness serves as a confounding factor in D&D, rather than a foundational element of the game.

For this reason, arguments over whether or not a DM should abide by the dice are pretty stupid. What should actually be discussed is the role of randomness in narrative outcomes. If the dice rolls matter that much, why not simply roll a d100 on a chart and determine the character's career that way ("I rolled a 63. My character makes it to 7th level, then dies in a random encounter with a manticore. Let's play again.")? Because the dice don't matter, except to confound expectations. It's the thousands of choices along the way that makes the "game." A party of four 3rd-level PCs should beat four goblins. That is the reasonable expectations, and 99 times out of 100 they will, regardless of any individual dice rolls. An adult dragon should kill the same party, 99 out of 100 times. So, without a single dice roll, we could play this game and tell this "story." The question is, how tolerant is your group to counter-intuitive (non-logical) outcomes? A group that is not very comfortable with said counter-intuitive results will be very uncomfortable with TPKs that result from logical choices ("How did we lose to 4 goblins? This game is stupid!") or from encounters with no obvious good choices ("How can we be expected to kill a dragon? Your adventure sucks!").

Note that randomness plays no role in this; it is the outcome that causes the issue. A different group with more tolerance might be OK with the idea that death can come in an illogical manner ("Oh, well, that was just bad luck.") or that characters might encounter no win scenarios. But the results would be the same if the DM just announced the outcome based on a single roll of the dice and skipped the entire combat (or if he just decide it in advance).

This is one reason a game like Texas Hold-Em is such a difficult game for non-professionals to succeed at. There are many cases in a game with limited information (you can only see a few of the cards) and a high degree of randomness where a player can play exactly right and still lose. It is a rare person who can be comfortable with this. It would also be a rare gaming group that would be comfortable with the same.

To the OPs story, it is obvious that the consequence of the player's choices were logical, but without a good choice obvious to the PCs (due to the encounter being played differently that written). Based on the type of group he describes, it seems to be no big deal to retcon the encounter.

 

[KarinsDad]

This is where I come down on this: if a dragon is strafing the town and the PCs can duck and run without danger, but one of them decides to attack, all bets are off. Don't poke the dragon.

The problem is that since 2000 and 3E, a lot of D&D players have faced off against a lot of dragons. The game system has been designed to allow PCs of all levels to face off against them.

I do not know the details of how large the dragon is, but WotC with 5E is suddenly throwing powerful dragons at low level PCs.

I'm not sure it this is to teach players a lesson, or to illustrate how powerful dragons are in 5E, or what.

But whatever it is, it sucks. You don't have a system of dragons being reasonable opponents for 14 years and then suddenly out of the blue, have a serious probability of overwhelming one round or so PC deaths or TPKs due to dragons.

This is not a player screwed up issue. This is a design decision by WotC which does not take nearly a decade and a half of gaming into consideration.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Rather than just have the Dragon strafe everyone but them, I had the dragon respond to the Ranger putting a 22hp hit on him (3rd level, w Colossus hunter and Hunter's Mark) by using his breath weapon. 12d10. None stood a chance. I had to say, "Oh. Well. That didn't happen actually."
It's tough when you yell, "Everybody make a saving throw" then look at the statblock.

DMs make mistakes, players make mistakes. You both made little mistakes at the wrong moment, and a TPK ensued.

It happens. I've been there. You brush yourself off, laugh, and say, "Same time next week?"

I agree with [MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION], the one thing I really wouldn't have done is say "That didn't actually happen." You gotta live with the consequences of what happens at the table, for good or ill.

One thing I've found that can help take the sting off potential TPKs is to have your players roll a 'B-team'. These are secondary characters that are ready to step up to the plate and take over the story if the 'A-team' doesn't make it. This has a lot of advantages. One advantage is that, well, it's fun to roll characters. This lets your players experiment with new options. Another advantage is that if enough of your table doesn't show up to make running a session of the regular game problematic, you can just run a short improv session with the B-Team. Again, the players love trying out different characters so they are probably fine with this. And finally, of course, when the A-Team pokes the wrong dragon and goes to that great big dungeon in the sky, the B-Team, older and a little wiser, is ready to step up to the plate.

 

[Daern]

Well, what I actually did, after a bit of hemming and hawing was to say that the roof of the keep was ironshod (because red dragon no doubt) so that attracted the lightning breath and blew the top off the tower, showering everyone in rubble. The dragon lurked around for a minute said, "This is small coinage" in Draconic and flew away (having actually taken 24 dmg).
I think there's lots of good points people are making. I'm mostly stoked that an adult dragon actually WILL slay a 3rd level party in a single blow!

 

[Reynard]

The problem is that since 2000 and 3E, a lot of D&D players have faced off against a lot of dragons. The game system has been designed to allow PCs of all levels to face off against them.

I do not know the details of how large the dragon is, but WotC with 5E is suddenly throwing powerful dragons at low level PCs.

I'm not sure it this is to teach players a lesson, or to illustrate how powerful dragons are in 5E, or what.

But whatever it is, it sucks. You don't have a system of dragons being reasonable opponents for 14 years and then suddenly out of the blue, have a serious probability of overwhelming one round or so PC deaths or TPKs due to dragons.

This is not a player screwed up issue. This is a design decision by WotC which does not take nearly a decade and a half of gaming into consideration.

I don't think you can appeal to some sort of trickery based on expectations here. There is nothing to indicate tis adventure is designed for experienced players more so than new ones -- in fact, it's linear structure alone seems to favor the latter. Moreover, the Starter Set also has an encounter with a too powerful dragon, again with special rules regarding breaking off after taking significant damage. That scenario is explicitly aimed at new players. Given the similar uses in both modules, it is clear WotC is trying to convey something specific about dragon to 5E players (regardless of their previous level of experience with D&D): dragons are dangerous, but they also value their lives. That, all told, is a very good thing. Less fighting to the death on either side of the screen is a good thing IMO.