PC Tales of Woe, I caused a TPK!

[Voadam]

One of the pbp games I played in just had a TPK, and I feel it was my fault.

Slight spoilers for Sunless Citadel as experienced by a player in the game up until the TPK.



















We entered a dungeon with me as acting leader on a time sensitive mission, met the first group of intelligent adversaries and made a deal with them to rescue a hostage from the second set of bad guys deeper in who the first set is at war with. The second group served the BBEG who had more evil servants even deeper in. Did so but the first group wouldn't make an actual alliance with us, just free passage through their territory. So we go to the second group and trade the prisoners we had captured in our rescue attempt for passage through their territory to the BBEG area.

Unfortunately I didn't notice until we were in negotiations with the second group that we were not just not fully healed, but that our main melee combatant, the barbarian, was down more than half his hp. My druid (the party's only healer) then planned to heal the barbarian as soon as I finished active negotiations and we were passed the second group and sure they would not attack us.

We got passed them and were going down a vine covered hole to the next area where I planned to do the healing when we hit enemies with only half the party down the multi round climbing distance pit. A fight ensued and party members started dropping and soon it was a TPK.


I think if we had flat out attacked the second group, or made a deal with the 1st group for a combined assault on the second group we could have defeated them and gotten enough xp to go from 1st to second level and then started fully healed for going into the pit encounter. If we had been fully healed before going into the pit we might have madit it. I think I got us passed the relatively easy combat encounters appropriate to our level through talking and then we were in over our heads and a bad tactical situation made us more vulnerable when we engaged a more powerful set of enemies who proved more than our match.

Oh well, that is my tale of woe.

You can read the campaign in the playing the game forum, Indypendant's Sunless Citadel.

So what are your tales of woe as a player?

 

[anton1066]

If you managed to get passed the lesser of the two evils you should have earned XP for it. Talking can be just as demanding on a player, and indeed more so, then fighting. Possibly just bad luck, not enough healing, or DM not giving out the proper amount of experience.

 

[Voadam]

If you managed to get passed the lesser of the two evils you should have earned XP for it. Talking can be just as demanding on a player, and indeed more so, then fighting. Possibly just bad luck, not enough healing, or DM not giving out the proper amount of experience.

We also never left the dungeon to rest up at the safe village so the DM might have awarded us xp for getting past them but no opportunity to level up. It was a time sensitive mission so we kept going with urgency.

 

[Evilhalfling]

In the same place we lost half the party. The paladin, and our human thief, bought it while the small characters(gnome, halfling and kobold) ran for the hills. Our biggest mistake was not bringing rope. Our first time DM asked us what we had been thinking. "Its Heavy" we whined. I still have no idea how we got our paladin out of that pit.

 

[JimAde]

Well we don't blame you Voadam. You did a great job being in command. It was a fun game and any of us could have piped up with "Maybe we should rest up some more." That's one of the problems with PbP: It's easy to lose track of exactly what's going on.

Memo to me: Don't make archer characters when you KNOW you're going into a dungeon adventure.