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

[KarinsDad]

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.

Yes, the one for Starter Set players breaks off after 68 points of damage, the first main adventure breaks off after 24 points of damage.

Both dragons do 12D6 with their breath weapon.

In the Starter Set, one of the PCs is set up to want to attack the dragon and their are other indications that the PCs should attack the dragon. The players are encouraged to attack.

I have no problem with adventure design with a monster that is just too powerful for the PCs to attack. I have a problem with adventure design with a monster that can knock PCs unconscious or kill them in round one if they fail a saving throw (and go unconscious even if they make the saving throw in many cases).

That's bad encounter design, I do not care who the author is and I do not care if WotC wrote the product. Just because WotC put it down on paper does not make it a good idea. A simple mistake on the part of the DM like the OP and a lot of time and effort is wasted.

I know that the players in my group took 2 hours each to create their PCs. They read through a lot of decision points. People are just not yet familiar with Backgrounds and the revised spells and races and such.


PC death should be due to extremely unlucky dice rolls, stupidity on the part of the players (which I do not agree attacking a dragon is after 14 years of D&D being that way), or due to some extremely heroic sacrifice. It shouldn't be a likely outcome given the most obvious set of actions for many players in the first two adventures designed for the new edition. That's f-ed up.

PCs are the protagonists and their lives should not so cavalierly thrown into the waste basket because a game designer wants to prove to everyone that the new version of dragon is not supposed to be messed with. I have no problem with dragons being super uber fighting machines, I do have a problem with the designers throwing those super uber fighting machines at 3rd level PCs. That's stupid encounter design, even for the encounter here that has the dragon run away so quickly. Not every DM (like the OP) necessarily reads or remembers everything written down in an adventure module.

DMs are human and it is not that hard to make a simple mistake.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, the one for Starter Set players breaks off after 68 points of damage, the first main adventure breaks off after 24 points of damage.

Both dragons do 12D6 with their breath weapon.

In the Starter Set, one of the PCs is set up to want to attack the dragon and their are other indications that the PCs should attack the dragon. The players are encouraged to attack.

I have no problem with adventure design with a monster that is just too powerful for the PCs to attack. I have a problem with adventure design with a monster that can knock PCs unconscious or kill them in round one if they fail a saving throw (and go unconscious even if they make the saving throw in many cases).

That's bad encounter design, I do not care who the author is and I do not care if WotC wrote the product. Just because WotC put it down on paper does not make it a good idea. A simple mistake on the part of the DM like the OP and a lot of time and effort is wasted.

I know that the players in my group took 2 hours each to create their PCs. They read through a lot of decision points. People are just not yet familiar with Backgrounds and the revised spells and races and such.


PC death should be due to extremely unlucky dice rolls, stupidity on the part of the players (which I do not agree attacking a dragon is after 14 years of D&D being that way), or due to some extremely heroic sacrifice. It shouldn't be a likely outcome given the most obvious set of actions for many players in the first two adventures designed for the new edition. That's f-ed up.

PCs are the protagonists and their lives should not so cavalierly thrown into the waste basket because a game designer wants to prove to everyone that the new version of dragon is not supposed to be messed with. I have no problem with dragons being super uber fighting machines, I do have a problem with the designers throwing those super uber fighting machines at 3rd level PCs. That's stupid encounter design, even for the encounter here that has the dragon run away so quickly. Not every DM (like the OP) necessarily reads or remembers everything written down in an adventure module.

DMs are human and it is not that hard to make a simple mistake.

You obviously feel strongly about it so I won't bother arguing, but I will say this: in the absolute worst case scenario of a group of 3rd level PCs getting obliterated by a dragon, what is lost? In 5E 3rd level comes in about 4 hours of play and is also the expected starting level for players not dead new to the game. In the absolute worst case scenario, players learn dragons are tough and should be avoided or death with with much care at low levels. Then they create their new 3rd level PCs -- after all, they've been through the tutorial -- in half the time or less I took them the first go around e cause they are more familiar now, and get ack o adventuring. It hardly seems traumatic enough to send folks screaming from the hobby.

 

[Xantherion]

I can understand why people do not like TPK's. However have no problems with having encounters that much higher as the PC's. I also don't have an issue with set guidelines during the encounter detailing that the creature abandons the fight at a certain point. That reminds me of the morale rules. Basically the creature takes a set amount of damage, makes a morale check, if fails it flees.


I can easily see a scenario where the PC's are in a city that is being attacked by an adult dragon. Fire rains down on the buildings, people running for their lives. The PC's are doing what they can to save peoples lives, and maybe taking pot shots at the dragon. The party and the dragon do not directly attack each other, stand up fight, but fight indirectly. At a certain point the dragon bails. This can lead to the party with a great intro storyline, and swear to avenge the town and slay the dragon.

This is a story that has been done a lot in fiction.

I can easily see this type of thing happening in Lake Town, when Smaug attacks it. Instead of being killed, he is wounded and driven off.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Which isn't to say what you did was wrong; only that it isn't always right, and it really depends on the group you're playing with. It certainly sounds like you made the right call for your group, but I know most of mine wouldn't be back for another session. We like combat as war, we like real consequences for our pcs, we like it when we hit 8th level and feel like it was not a given that our characters would survive.

My ears were burning, so I had to quote you back! I do like that you acknowledged the idea that other groups have different styles - it makes a refreshing change from the badwrongfun atittitudes that I usually get on Warhammer boards. And I think that you are right to say that styles are different: I would probably leave a group if my PC kept dying. I was going to give an example, but it got long and bitter, so let's keep it to: I've played games where the GM kept killing my dudes. I only have so many dudes in my mind that I want to play for any given game. Once I run out of them, I don't want to play that game any more. This is clearly not your style, so horses and courses and whatnot.

There are, however, other considerations to keep in mind.

1. I was running the Starter Box, which has pre-gens, and the Basic rules will only make the same characters. So if the players lose characters, they actually have no way to roll up a 'new' character, or at least one who is different; they can only make the same dude again, but with a different name. That doesn't interest me.
2. The Starter Box - and specifically its storyline - don't really suit starting again with a new group. How would the new characters know to go to Cragmaw Castle? What is their involvement? I can see that in a Sandbox campaign, of the kind that I'm hoping to run in October with the PHB, this isn't a problem, as the story is focused on the characters, and their doings, so with a new party you are just telling a new story in the same frame. But with the Starter Box, and with games that focus on a single storyline (ala adventure paths, etc) then this is a big problem. The story has stopped, and somehow a new group has to sort of squeeze into it halfway through. I always found the CoC dodge of 'the players keep diaries and have relatives' to be really weird.

So yeah, I would say that not only is there a case for the group style being different, but also that the game style doesn't lend itself to simply accepting the TPK and moving on. In this specific case, there basically wouldn't have been a way to carry on, except for some really unconvincing "your new characters happened to be walking by and found your diaries" or something, which would have been a much bigger mental issue for me.

This is a point that shouldn't be ignored. A general distake for 'taking stuff back' can and should be trumped by a consideration of the specific circumstances of the game in question.

 

[ExploderWizard]

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.

There may be many failure conditions that fall short of death. I have no problem with degrees of failure or success that aren't total. Sometimes the PCs waste too much time and the bad guy gets away with his most valuable treasure. This is a small victory because the PCs have still put a stop to the villain's current plans, and also a setback because the villain is still on the loose.

If death is removed as a possibility though, the sense of mortal danger goes out the door with it.

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

Oh how philosophical.

Of course everyone dies eventually. The idea behind dangerous adventure is that the activities you have chosen to pursue might end your life sooner rather than later.

If we all are going to die anyway why isn't EVERYONE an adventurer. What does it matter if we get killed in a kobold lair today or quietly surrounded by a loving family sixty years from now?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There may be many failure conditions that fall short of death. I have no problem with degrees of failure or success that aren't total. Sometimes the PCs waste too much time and the bad guy gets away with his most valuable treasure. This is a small victory because the PCs have still put a stop to the villain's current plans, and also a setback because the villain is still on the loose.

If death is removed as a possibility though, the sense of mortal danger goes out the door with it.

Only if you say "Right guys I will never TPK you ever, here's a signed contract to that effect".

Which is pretty far-fetched.

Not only do you have a million failure conditions which aren't death, but you can also have deaths without TPKs, so it's even more silly business.

Finally, you can just restrict TPKs to when the PCs all/largely deserve it. One PC doing something dumb doesn't fit that. I've TPK'd a number of parties who insisted on pursuing a suicidal course of action - but my experience is that "oops bad rolls" TPKs and "lol the CN dude pressed the red button"-type TPKs add nothing to the game for a lot of players (and further this has nothing to do with their moral character, and suggesting it does merely calls the suggester's own moral character into question!).
[MENTION=1210]the Jester[/MENTION] - No, the discussion was of "valuable lesson", and you're simply wrong to assert that all TPKs will provide a "valuable" lesson - many lessons will have zero value, particularly if the wrong lesson is learned, because it's not like the DM usually runs some kind of detailed "Debrief" with the PCs after a TPK (they should, if they want there to be "valuable" lessons, though!). I mean, the players may think they screwed up when the DM was actually being a jerk, bad lesson, or they may think the pre-written adventure sucked when the DM actually misread it, bad lesson, or they may think that they just got bad dice rolls when they actually did something really dumb, bad lesson etc. etc.

So, no, unless you conduct detail debriefs with the players, and have a full and frank discussion of the TPK in general (including discussing adventure design and being totally transparent about what you were doing as a DM), you can't guarantee a lesson of any value whatsoever.

 

[Grazzt]

One PC doing something dumb doesn't fit that. I've TPK'd a number of parties who insisted on pursuing a suicidal course of action - but my experience is that "oops bad rolls" TPKs and "lol the CN dude pressed the red button"-type TPKs add nothing to the game for a lot of players (and further this has nothing to do with their moral character, and suggesting it does merely calls the suggester's own moral character into question!).

It does when the wizard casts fireball in an enclosed space (like a 10x10 room or a small tunnel). This happened in a 1e game a long time ago.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It does when the wizard casts fireball in an enclosed space (like a 10x10 room or a small tunnel). This happened in a 1e game a long time ago.

Sure, and that particular, rare scenario is pretty unavoidable without retcon or the like. I'm talking about where you have an option as to how the situation plays out (such as how a monster behaves). It's very surprising that a single fireball would wipe an entire party of similar XP to the Wizard in 1E, though! They must have had poor HP rolls and/or depleted HP, or the bloody Wizard made some good damage rolls!

If the DM chose to make the fireball do extra damage though, then he chose to kill them, not the Wizard. It's not RAW or RAI.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Finally, you can just restrict TPKs to when the PCs all/largely deserve it. One PC doing something dumb doesn't fit that. I've TPK'd a number of parties who insisted on pursuing a suicidal course of action - but my experience is that "oops bad rolls" TPKs and "lol the CN dude pressed the red button"-type TPKs add nothing to the game for a lot of players (and further this has nothing to do with their moral character, and suggesting it does merely calls the suggester's own moral character into question!).

The question isn't one of moral character at all. It's a game and sometimes things go really wrong. There isn't any loss of actual life. The players can end the game at that point or continue playing. It's no different then going bankrupt in Monopoly, it doesn't mean that you can never play again.

Character deaths or TPKs don't add or subtract anything from the game, it is simply one possible outcome of play nothing more.

@the Jester - No, the discussion was of "valuable lesson", and you're simply wrong to assert that all TPKs will provide a "valuable" lesson - many lessons will have zero value, particularly if the wrong lesson is learned, because it's not like the DM usually runs some kind of detailed "Debrief" with the PCs after a TPK (they should, if they want there to be "valuable" lessons, though!). I mean, the players may think they screwed up when the DM was actually being a jerk, bad lesson, or they may think the pre-written adventure sucked when the DM actually misread it, bad lesson, or they may think that they just got bad dice rolls when they actually did something really dumb, bad lesson etc. etc.

So, no, unless you conduct detail debriefs with the players, and have a full and frank discussion of the TPK in general (including discussing adventure design and being totally transparent about what you were doing as a DM), you can't guarantee a lesson of any value whatsoever.

This I kind of agree with. Not every loss or setback in a game with random elements provides a valuable lesson. Sometimes bad luck just strikes. There will also be times of extremely good fortune. It is important to let players know when extremely poor judgment was the proximate cause of a disaster. If players are unaware that they are making mistakes there isn't much chance of learning from them.

 

[Pickles JG]

We used to have a club with a plaque listing the members....

edit: response to RE Once it was a fireball from an artefact at very high level cf the party. Once it was in the Hidden Shrine of Temoachan (Sp) or some other 1e tournament dungeon which also collapsed the roof, cant remember other cases - 30 years etc