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<blockquote data-quote="gribble" data-source="post: 4795412" data-attributes="member: 12430">I've had 3 TPKs that I can remember in 4e, and I don't run 4e that often. So a fairly high rate.One thing I've observed about 4e is that combat is much more inevitable. Usually, a combat in 4e reaches a point when a TPK (or rout of the monsters) is pretty much guaranteed unless one party or the other retreats, although it's usually quite a few rounds before it actually happens. It's much harder to have a &quot;miracle turn&quot; that swings a combat back from the brink of disaster (for either side). In fact I've only encountered it once in so far in all the 4e games I've run/played, and that required my character and another character to both roll a natural 20 and then have a couple of really lucky turns (in terms of not getting hit again by the monster, and then rolling really well to hit and damage him).I'm not sure if I'd consider this a feature or a bug - it has both positive and negative implications on gameplay. But I think that's why a lot of DMs of 4e seem to either think TPKs occur very frequently (those who push their players and/or have unoptimised PCs are more likely to end up in an inevitably bad situation) or never (those who tend to be kind and/or have optimised PCs so are usually in the inevitably good situation).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="gribble, post: 4795412, member: 12430"] I've had 3 TPKs that I can remember in 4e, and I don't run 4e that often. So a fairly high rate. One thing I've observed about 4e is that combat is much more [I]inevitable[/I]. Usually, a combat in 4e reaches a point when a TPK (or rout of the monsters) is pretty much guaranteed unless one party or the other retreats, although it's usually quite a few rounds before it actually happens. It's much harder to have a "miracle turn" that swings a combat back from the brink of disaster (for either side). In fact I've only encountered it once in so far in all the 4e games I've run/played, and that required my character and another character to both roll a natural 20 and then have a couple of really lucky turns (in terms of not getting hit again by the monster, and then rolling really well to hit and damage him). I'm not sure if I'd consider this a feature or a bug - it has both positive and negative implications on gameplay. But I think that's why a lot of DMs of 4e seem to either think TPKs occur very frequently (those who push their players and/or have unoptimised PCs are more likely to end up in an inevitably bad situation) or never (those who tend to be kind and/or have optimised PCs so are usually in the inevitably good situation). [/QUOTE]

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