How have you handled TPKs?

[Altamont Ravenard]

With a particular DM, there have been 3 near-complete TPK's in the last year or so. In the first one, the survivors went off on a tangent, and we all made up new characters in a new campaign. In the new campaign, we all died (except one) at the hand of displacer beasts in the first adventure. Second adventure, we all die except for the same guy (the bard) in the first adventure, and the monk. Last session, we played our third session in the new campaign. We managed to survive, but the bard is plagued with the fact that everyone that adventures with him seems to die a horrible death.

AR

 

[Lela]

Well, I could see the Mephit wanting to hang around his steam cauldren. After all, those adventurers (the ones still alive) aren't likely to bug him again.

Then again, he might be hungry.

 

[Stalker0]

TPK's are bad, often real bad. But what I hate worse is a series of deaths. The whole party never dies, but all of the players get cycled often, resulting in a new mismash of characters that don't know each other and often just don't have business being together.

So sometimes I think a tpk is good if you get back to everyone on the same page and going for teh same goals.

 

[Saeviomagy]

That nearly happened to us today.

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

My question is:

Why didn't you retreat?

Once the plan was blown, why didn't you just say
"That's it, we've blown it - we'll back off and try again later".

Why did you press forward?

Probably 50% or more of TPK's happen because retreat is impossible (this is my favourite gripe about monsters which grapple, or which move especially quickly).

The other 50% happen because the party are too damn dense to just run away when the going is plainly too tough.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Why didn't you retreat?

Once the plan was blown, why didn't you just say
"That's it, we've blown it - we'll back off and try again later".

Why did you press forward?

Partly because it didn't seem like it was going so badly, until we realised just how badly it was going, and at that point, retreating was likely more dangerous than maintaining momentum.

Partly because given how the party was separated, none of the characters really had a picture of the battle as a whole... at least until the wizard and the rogue, running around the fort in opposite directions from the two main points of skirmish, bumped into each other and simultaneously yelled "Help! We're in big trouble!"

Partly because we seriously underestimated what we were up against... we were expecting a dozen or so hobgoblins, and we'd just taken out six... so we assumed that if we kept the momentum going, we'd be on top of the last few before they could sort out a serious defence. It turned out that there were more like three dozen hobgoblins, so the six we'd killed didn't make as big a dent as we'd hoped...

-Hyp.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Partly because it didn't seem like it was going so badly, until we realised just how badly it was going, and at that point, retreating was likely more dangerous than maintaining momentum.

-Hyp.

Fair enough. Mind you, years of playing shadowrun have taught me - if the plan goes askew, stop advancing and bail in short order (ie - a round or two later). If you find out later that you've left half the garrison alive... at least you've only left _half_ the garrison alive.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Fair enough. Mind you, years of playing shadowrun have taught me - if the plan goes askew, stop advancing and bail in short order (ie - a round or two later).

And never split the party

Mind you, at least I got a little more action than the dwarf wizard.

There was a trail leading up to the plateau the fort was on, but obviously it was being watched. So we scaled the hundred-foot cliffs behind the fort instead.

A couple of us could manage it Taking 10. The rest could manage to Take 10 once we'd lowered a rope...

... all but the dwarf wizard, who needed to roll an 11. And flubbing a Climb check ninety feet up a cliff is Bad.

So he was going to wait until he could hear combat, and then run up the trail, with the assumption that the people normally watching the trail would be distracted by the half-dozen adventurers popping up behind them.

And it worked perfectly... the trail was unguarded when he ran up. 'course, it took six or seven rounds of combat on the plateau before he got to the top.

... and while the trail was unguarded, once he reached the top of the trail, he was suddenly in full view of several arrow slits on the fort itself. And got dropped to -1 in the first volley.

He stabilised almost immediately, but it meant he spent seven rounds getting to the battle, and then then next twenty-or-so rounds unconscious...

-Hyp.

 

[Rel]

In the campaign that I'm currently running, especially in the early days when I only had three players, there were several close calls. One early session in particular, I can recall thinking, "This is it. They're going to die." They wound up with an average of -2 hit points after the fight with the Gnolls. I roll in the open and so do they and I don't generally fudge things so it was a very real possibility. But they always managed to pull things out.

And they love it.

They know that I don't fudge for them or against them. Their accomplishments are their own. I know that not everybody likes to play this way and I'm not asking you to play this way. But that's how we play and we like it.

If it happened in my current campaign (unlikely but possible) then it would probably be the end of the campaign, for now at least. I might cook up some way for another group to fill their shoes and have that be the new party, or maybe somebody would resurrect them. But we'd probably take a break for a while.

It did happen when another player in my group was DMing. It was a case similar to Hyp's where one blown Move Silently check brought down a world of hurt on us. The foes had superior mobility and so there was no running from the fight. We fought to the end and almost pulled out. Until the Fireball. That was the end of that campaign but we just shrugged our shoulders, laughed and fired up the next campaign about three weeks later.

 

[Arnwyn]

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?

For our group: We let 'em go, let 'em die, and then make new characters. We all realize that TPKs are part of the game - and we all prefer that the chance is there. But that's just us.

 

[tleilaxu]

its an opportunity for the players to talk about what they enjoyed and didn't enjoy in the last adventure and for the dm to start from scratch with their input included.