How have you handled TPKs?

[Hida Bukkorosu]

move the campaign to the outer planes/afterlife

 

[reapersaurus]

Party totally wiped out or perhaps one or two left. Campaign lost or in jepordy. Character plot lines shreded.

Can it be saved? Should it be saved?

Player/DM vote.

DO OVER.

 

[Elf Witch]

Did you have to restart?

With the first we didn't start again the group kind of broke up for a while and we didn't play for a while. The second time the game never statred again but we just picked up a different game. It was really bad about the last one it would have been a great campaign.

As a DM I would do everything in my power to prevent a TPK. But then I want my players to invest in their characters and the world.

 

[rounser]

Problem is players somtimes have bad luck or do really stupid things,and the only belivable thing is they all die [or at least most of them].

It works the other way around too - I can see how it would be extremely easy to force a TPK because of DM error. In fact, I think I can pin the last two near-TPKs I've been involved in on the DM overestimating our ability to fight and/or escape (coupled with some SR/critical hit disasters).

 

[Zappo]

Near the end of Dead Gods, the heroes managed to complete their quest,

Spoiler

preventing the return of Orcus

, but remained trapped in a remote plane with no way out. They all died of starvation. I let them be discovered and raised by another party of adventurers some time later, so that they could complete the final bit of the adventure, but with hindsight it would have been better and more memorable if I had let them die and create new PCs.

 

[d4]

Problem is players somtimes have bad luck or do really stupid things,and the only belivable thing is they all die [or at least most of them].

i can't imagine ever being in the situation as a GM where i couldn't stop a TPK from happening if i saw the signs it was coming on.

it could be as blatant as stopping the game and saying, "Hey guys, if this combat continues as it's going, you're all going to die. are you all right with that?"

if they are worried that the TPK will ruin the campaign (as the original poster alludes), then we can work together to come up with a mutually satisfactory solution to the problem.

on the other hand, if the players don't mind having their characters killed, game on!

since Lela talked as if a TPK was a bad thing to happen to a campaign, i suggested the best way to stop it from wrecking the campaign was to simply avoid them.

 

[rounser]

I don't think many people expect to complete a CRPG without "having to go back to a saved game" at least once.

With this in mind, perhaps PnP campaigns should be started with the full expectation of multiple TPKs ocurring, and have safety valves ready to compensate (like Dark Sun's character tree). How to pick up the reins whilst maintaining suspension of disbelief seems to be the challenge, though.

One possible approach is to have one or more other adventuring companies working to compete with the PC party, and at TPK time to jump scene to the adventure they're involved in. As an added bonus, competition from peers of about the same level keeps the players from dragging their feet ("Ah heck, looks like Ragnar's Band beat us here - the place is cleared out. So much for the treasure map we paid for being unique.") And if the players created the other party, they may even be looking forward to playing them...or if the currently played adventure or set of PCs is getting stale, the game could even flip flop to the other party for a change of pace. Another advantage is that these (N)PCs don't just pop into existence when the original PCs die; they're already part of the world, doing their own thing, and with their own histories building up.

The only problem is, what if the two parties fight one another, resulting in mutual near-TPK.

 

[Templetroll]

Lela I have two words for you, Dream Sequence.

I wiped out an entire party of 1 and second level players with a Yellow Musk Creeper and 4 Gnoll Yellow Musk Zombies. It was horrible and the players kept on fighting on and on until there was the mage with a dagger. The three Gnolls closed on him and then I had him make a will save. He rolled and I said that it was good enough and told him that he woke up.

I managed to play the whole thing off as pre planned but just bearly. Let me say that quick thinking saved my butt and the campaign that day. Hople that helps you out a bit.

Mine was spiders. I killed the entire group in my third adventure that I ever ran. I wasn't as quick or clever, I just said "That sucked. You all wake up from a bad dream, the same bad dream, a day's travel away from where the dream was set." The players accepted that and the party unanimously decided to head back north away from those woods! They never went there during the five years I ran that group.

With the GM we game with now we had one campaign TPK because the party were the only people with enough knowledge to stop the BBEG from destroying everything when the party TPKed. Oh, well. Another group got stuck in a tomb with some undead because we were finally trying to be careful explorers. It led to our demise because we came in in stages instead of our usual recon in force.

Latest campaign has gone on two years and only one character has been around since the first game; everyone else is on the second or fourth characters.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Whenever I DM a brand new group I try to do a TPK the very first game to establish my authortiy as DM.

Just Kidding.

That nearly happened to us today.

First session of a new 3.5 campaign. Brand new first level characters. Seven of us.

We sent the ranger and the bowman to take out the remote watchpost silently. Easy fight, no problem.

We found a blind spot where the climbers could scale the cliff up to the fort and lower a rope for the others, without the sentries being able to see. No problem.

Once up the top of the cliff, there was no cover until a hundred feet away, but all the hobgoblins were watching the expected approaches... all we needed to do was sneak across that hundred feet without being noticed, and we'd be fine.

One blown Move Silently roll later, all hell broke loose.

Half a dozen hobgoblins boiled out of the sentry tower... but the main fort still didn't know we were there. The rogue and the ranger went for cover - the bowman took a critical crossbow bolt and dropped to 5 hit points. He had a choice - stand his ground and shoot the hobgoblin with the horn, and be the only available target for six crossbows next round... or go for cover.

I probably should have taken the shot...

What resulted was sheer chaos. The horn being blown alerted the main fort. Due to the vagaries of the ensuing combat, the party ended up entering the fort from three directions at once - the main gate (covered by eight manned arrowslits - yikes!), the back door (lightly guarded), and a hole in the roof. Which meant that we were generally outnumbered at all three places at once.

As the DM explained later, "You pretty much activated every single encounter on the top level simultaneously."

He spent the next four hours (thirty combat rounds) fudging attack and damage rolls like mad to avoid a TPK on the very first session of a new campaign.

I know he's not afraid to kill characters - I've seen him kill several in the past - but this was just such a complete foul-up that he really only had two choices - fudge, or kill us all. And he managed it without upsetting anyone - I've been known to fudge a couple of rolls to avoid a TPK myself, so I don't have a problem with him doing it.

I nearly died anyway - dropped to -2, and failed every stabilisation check while the ranger and the hobgoblin that dropped me traded attack rolls of 3 and 4 for six rounds... the ranger finally dropped him and managed an untrained Heal check to stabilise me at -9.

By the time we wrapped the session up, the party was actually nearly reassembled... though we're still mid-combat, and I'm still at -9.

I had a lot of sympathy for the DM, though. It wasn't really that any one person did anything monumentally stupid... it was the combination of a few crucially ill-timed bad rolls, and a lot of incremental slightly-foolish moves that meant that the whole thing cascaded into really-really-bad-position before anyone could stop it... and I could see the DM thinking "How do I not kill everyone!?"

I spent about a third of the session unconscious, and even though I knew not all the rolls were kosher, I still found the combat tense and exciting... so I definitely approve of how he managed things

-Hyp.

 

[Trainz]

Cool fight ! Don't you love it when everything goes as planned... for the critters ?

Something similar happened to us in Sunless Citadel.

SPOILER:

We were 1st level, and in one of the first rooms there's some sort of steam sealed cauldron. I use all my Paladin's strength to open it, and sure enough, a steam mephit emerges from the thing and attacks us. We started fighting, and soon the only guy standing was the rogue. We all went into negs. The rogue decided to drag our carcasses into the previous room, and the DM decided that the mephit would not follow, that he would simply stand guard where he was.

Of course, that's fudging of sorts, because the Mephit would have been way better off by following the rogue and finishing him, and the rest of us. But It was only the second fight of the campaign, and we didn't mind the DM doing this.