Most Unplanned Party Wipe
- Thread starter Bardsandsages
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howandwhy99
Adventurer
I have to say I would never plan to wipe out a party of PCs. Nor would I want to play in a campaign where such was planned.Bardsandsages said:Now as GMs, there are times when we really do try to wipe out the party. Either because we want to give them a real challenge, or because they ticked us off the previous session. But have you ever wiped out a party by accident with a quirky twist of fate?
Quirks of fate? Yeah, I put the team up against a 50/50 odds in the beginning to set the tone of the campaign and a lot of PCs ended up dying. But only before many of the decisions made were recognized as bad ones and PCs shaped up to living in a dangerous world.
Finster
First Post
I once placed a puzzle door straight out of the FFG Traps and Treachery book outside of a treasure room. It was intended to give them something to do other than fighting. It was a simple cryptogram, and the players had solved the entire puzzle except for one word (I believe the word was "egress"). They spent about a half hour mulling over and over this one word, of which only the G was missing. Out of boredom, I finally demanded a decision. They decided that this word was a trick and didn't follow the rest of the cryptogram's solution, but instead contained more than one letter substitution for the character representing G. They decided the real word had to be empress. 
Well...
The door had four symbols of death on it that would activate if the correct word (egress) was not spoken. Each party member approached the door one at a time. Four party members, four symbols of death, four failed saves.
What gets me is that they tried the same wrong solution four times. Even after they had decided that it was the wrong answer, and that the correct word indeed was egress, they still walked up to the door like lemmings, one right after the other, and uttered the wrong word!
Well...
The door had four symbols of death on it that would activate if the correct word (egress) was not spoken. Each party member approached the door one at a time. Four party members, four symbols of death, four failed saves.
What gets me is that they tried the same wrong solution four times. Even after they had decided that it was the wrong answer, and that the correct word indeed was egress, they still walked up to the door like lemmings, one right after the other, and uttered the wrong word!
Bardsandsages
First Post
howandwhy99 said:
Oh, you wouldn't have anything to worry about with me. Whenever I've actually TRIED to wipe the party, the Dice Gods always turned against me, and the party ended up with far more treasure than they should have had.
(which reminds me...never use a vorpal weapon against the party unless you are prepared for the fact that the party will get said weapon when they kill your villian.)
jefgorbach
First Post
Most ignoble TPK I recall occurred during original trip thru T1:Homlet.
Tick wins initative and lands on the Fighter...fine, until the klutzy paladin (played by an equally inept player IRL) standing next to him declared he'd shoot it off at point-blank with his bow (why?!)...rolling a "1" leading to a Critical to-hit vs the Fighter (gone). Theif decides since the fighter's dead anyway, he'd toss a lighted oil-flask....taking out both the Cleric and Mage, who had just as he finished casting Burning Hands...taking out the Paladin. Theif looks at the mess, the feeding tick, and flees down the steps previously Grease spell'd during earlier encounter...dies from falling damage. The paladin's real-life bruises faded about 2wks later as i recall. lol
Tick wins initative and lands on the Fighter...fine, until the klutzy paladin (played by an equally inept player IRL) standing next to him declared he'd shoot it off at point-blank with his bow (why?!)...rolling a "1" leading to a Critical to-hit vs the Fighter (gone). Theif decides since the fighter's dead anyway, he'd toss a lighted oil-flask....taking out both the Cleric and Mage, who had just as he finished casting Burning Hands...taking out the Paladin. Theif looks at the mess, the feeding tick, and flees down the steps previously Grease spell'd during earlier encounter...dies from falling damage. The paladin's real-life bruises faded about 2wks later as i recall. lol
Our last TPK happened when the GM got bored and threw a couple random encounters at us in an arctic region. We were beating up the wolves easily, so he tosses in a frost wyrm (which causes the remaining wolves to flee). We were only around 8th level, IIRC, but we were just barely able to kill it without losing a single character. That's when the GM mentioned that it has death throes - 20 HD of damage later, everyone is dead or dying. The surviving wolves came back and feasted on our bodies...
I was running a low-level Champions campaign based on the book Blackcollar. The PC's had really ticked off the Security prefect, so he set up an obscenely powerful ambush for them. I threw *everything* at the party (grenades, lasers, dozens of guards). But for once the players cooperated and fought intelligently, and they got away clean, dead and injured Security guards in their wake. It was a thing of beauty. Never underestimate your players.
Bardsandsages said:
I was running a low-level Champions campaign based on the book Blackcollar. The PC's had really ticked off the Security prefect, so he set up an obscenely powerful ambush for them. I threw *everything* at the party (grenades, lasers, dozens of guards). But for once the players cooperated and fought intelligently, and they got away clean, dead and injured Security guards in their wake. It was a thing of beauty. Never underestimate your players.
MonkeyDragon
Explorer
It hasn't happened yet, but we'll see what the Kenkus do to the 7th level party in a couple of weeks....
Had one happen a couple of years ago in a homebrew campaign I ran. It had been a good session - the party was assulting the BBEG's home base, some exciting chases, a couple of failed ambushes, & they reached the BBEG after killing the last of his guards. None of the party was undamaged but nobody was in danger.
Then my dice caught fire ... almost couldn't miss, confirmed most hits as criticals ( very nasty weapon from the original 3E source material ), & rolled really well on damage. In about a half dozen rounds it went from laughing players & characters looking to get home to stunned silence.
I called a ten minute break while I tried to figure out a way to "unsink" matters. Must've done okay because we went on to part two of the campaign - after terminating the BBEG with a great deal of prejudice.
Then my dice caught fire ... almost couldn't miss, confirmed most hits as criticals ( very nasty weapon from the original 3E source material ), & rolled really well on damage. In about a half dozen rounds it went from laughing players & characters looking to get home to stunned silence.
I called a ten minute break while I tried to figure out a way to "unsink" matters. Must've done okay because we went on to part two of the campaign - after terminating the BBEG with a great deal of prejudice.
Aeric
Explorer
We had a "technical" party wipe last week. Only one character survived, and really that was only so the DM would have a way to continue the campaign. He should have died right along with the rest of us.
We were in a kuo-toan temple to rescue a dwarf, and we had just finished off the priests and archers in the main worship area. It was a hard fight and we were all down to less than 20 hit points (at 7th level). After the fight, we stopped to rest and heal up. Well, we didn't have time to do that, for less than 2 minutes after we entered the main worship area, an erinyes appeared and started using multishot on us with her flaming bow.
The warlock was the first to drop. At that point, we got the hint and ran for the doors. We tried to brace the door shut behind us but she broke through. I tried to buy the others time to escape, but she was having none of that. I was dead, and the fighter soon after. The cleric was next. The ranger, whose player was absent that night due to medical reasons, was presumed killed as well. Only the rogue/monk escaped, by using a potion of Gaseous Form to flee across the lake that the temple was sitting in the middle of. Again, he really should have died; the erinyes could have used True Seeing to spot him in the fog and pepper him with arrows.
I don't remember what the DM's excuse was for this slaughter, but the real reason for it was evident--he put too much faith in the adventure designers making each encounter fair and balanced. The erinyes, he said, was CR 9--normally not a problem for a party of five 7th level characters. But this attack came right after a battle with 4 kuo-toan clerics and 4 archer guards, so really it was one big encounter.
We were in a kuo-toan temple to rescue a dwarf, and we had just finished off the priests and archers in the main worship area. It was a hard fight and we were all down to less than 20 hit points (at 7th level). After the fight, we stopped to rest and heal up. Well, we didn't have time to do that, for less than 2 minutes after we entered the main worship area, an erinyes appeared and started using multishot on us with her flaming bow.
The warlock was the first to drop. At that point, we got the hint and ran for the doors. We tried to brace the door shut behind us but she broke through. I tried to buy the others time to escape, but she was having none of that. I was dead, and the fighter soon after. The cleric was next. The ranger, whose player was absent that night due to medical reasons, was presumed killed as well. Only the rogue/monk escaped, by using a potion of Gaseous Form to flee across the lake that the temple was sitting in the middle of. Again, he really should have died; the erinyes could have used True Seeing to spot him in the fog and pepper him with arrows.
I don't remember what the DM's excuse was for this slaughter, but the real reason for it was evident--he put too much faith in the adventure designers making each encounter fair and balanced. The erinyes, he said, was CR 9--normally not a problem for a party of five 7th level characters. But this attack came right after a battle with 4 kuo-toan clerics and 4 archer guards, so really it was one big encounter.
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