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<blockquote data-quote="Charles Rampant" data-source="post: 6965001" data-attributes="member: 32659">If the party doesn't have access to Teleport or equivalent, then a TPK can happen pretty much anytime; the core ingredients are the monsters doing too much damage, the players not eliminating monsters fast enough (for whatever reason) and the party's Cleric or other healer going down. Once the party has the ability to escape from a fight in one round, with Teleport or the like, then their chances of having a TPK go down to 'very unlikely'. As to how likely one will happen by accident, which I interpret as 'when you're not expecting the fight to be very dangerous', then that is more of a dice thing than anything. If the players decide to chance it against a Basilisk, and then all fluff their saves, that'll be a TPK or close to one, despite being a fairly easy fight in general. Huge AoE attacks are the real culprits I think, such as a Cone of Cold from a Mage, since they can make the entire party more fragile to then be brought to 0 in quick succession. From my experience of parties going down the toilet - though I've only had one TPK so far, which was against Aeresi in Princes of the Apocalypse - it doesn't take that long. Once one person goes down, and the bad guys start focus-firing on the rest, the scales can very quickly tip from 'dangerous' to 'find 4d6'.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charles Rampant, post: 6965001, member: 32659"] If the party doesn't have access to [i]Teleport[/i] or equivalent, then a TPK can happen pretty much anytime; the core ingredients are the monsters doing too much damage, the players not eliminating monsters fast enough (for whatever reason) and the party's Cleric or other healer going down. Once the party has the ability to escape from a fight in one round, with [i]Teleport[/i] or the like, then their chances of having a TPK go down to 'very unlikely'. As to how likely one will happen by accident, which I interpret as 'when you're not expecting the fight to be very dangerous', then that is more of a dice thing than anything. If the players decide to chance it against a Basilisk, and then all fluff their saves, that'll be a TPK or close to one, despite being a fairly easy fight in general. Huge AoE attacks are the real culprits I think, such as a [i]Cone of Cold[/i] from a Mage, since they can make the entire party more fragile to then be brought to 0 in quick succession. From my experience of parties going down the toilet - though I've only had one TPK so far, which was against Aeresi in Princes of the Apocalypse - it doesn't take that long. Once one person goes down, and the bad guys start focus-firing on the rest, the scales can very quickly tip from 'dangerous' to 'find 4d6'. [/QUOTE]

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