Should this have been a TPK?

[Bigwilly]

Deadly encounter

I use a HTML encounter calculator by John Dells, the Mathinator - his claim to fame, not my addition. I plugged in the character levels (assuming that the orc's elite stats balanced out the party's high values and gear) and this was its opinion:

Difficulty: Deadly
Advice to party: Run Away!

I would tend to agree with this opinion and that's not even taking into account the fact that they got ambushed. With the amount of damage the orcs were dishing out, the party had hardly any time to work on tactics, even bad ones.

In addition, I have noticed that high strength melee characters can really chew up the opposition if they get toe-to-toe. One party that I play in recently got TPKed by a high strength demon (whose CR was also too high for the party level I suspect).

A more balanced encounter would have been 4-5 level 3 orc barbarians. While it is still rated as Very hard and advises the players to Pull out all the Stops, at least the glitterdust and color spray spells would have been more effective.

Bigwilly

 

[Nail]

This seems a bit of a "Dog Pile" on the DM, but: The encounter was definitely too difficult, and the DM played the actual ambush poorly. He withheld valuable description, and rail-roaded the PCs during the ambush.

Still, the party's tactics sucked! (sacrificial role-playing aside)

...and more importantly, the spell repertoire of the casters (Wiz & Clr) sucked too!

Bar none, Web is the most powerful combat spell in the 2nd level category. One web spell would have taken out all of the poor orcs, and allowed the party to regroup, focus on one foe at a time, and/or flee when necessary. Why have *any* other spell? Glitterdust? Eeesh.

(Even given the orc Bbn strength, it would have taken them multiple rounds to free themselves; read that spell description!)

As for the Cleric: Why, in the name of all that's holy, did he try to go toe-to-toe with raging Orcs!!!??? Hello? Heavenly message to Mr Cleric: <cue AOL voice> "You've got spells!" Sorry, but this is cause for a big "duh!" stamp on the ole character sheet.

And as for the Ftr, Mnk, and Rgr: Let the enemy come to you! Use missile weapons! Concentrate your fire! Etc.

Finally: The DM should look over the modifiers for Forested terrain in the DMG. Movement in the forest ain't either pretty or quick, unless there's a path involved. Long range Wiz spells rule the day.

 

[Silveras]

Still, at this point it should have become apparent to everyone watching that those weren't likely to be untrained (read, classless Monster Manual) orcs.

Small quibble: There are no "classless Monster Manual orcs". All humanoids in the MM in 3rd Edition are 1st level Warriors with the non-Elite stat array. Monstrous Humanoids (which generally have 2 or more "Monster Levels" or Racial Hit Dice) do not usually have character classes.

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Ideally, your analysis of the tactics is probably sound. At the time, for the players involved, without the luxury of being able to look at it after it was over, I don't fault them much.

However... where I do so see fault/error is here:

DM: Overkill on the encounter. Much too strong. As mentioned, the DM is relatively new to 3rd Edition, though, and some things just don't get learned until you make a few mistakes - balancing encounters, IMHO, happens to be one of those.

Also, as mentioned, th Orcs having an ambush prepared smacks of the circumstances being pre-set. That gave the Orcs an advantage they did not need.

Players: As mentioned, the scout was a little too far ahead. The Monk ... from what has been posted so far, it sound like s/he saw something and took off to "handle it". Bad move. Some time ago (in 2nd edition), I DM'd an ambush encounter that ran worse for the party than it should have because the one character who noticed the "warning clue" did not tell anyone else. Seems like the same kind of situation, here.

Bad rolling just made it worse. I've watched that happen before, as well.

 

[Mystery Man]

In The Dmg...

In 3.5 page 48 and 49 talk about appropriate encounter levels. Especially the chart on the bottom corner of page 49, table 3-2. If your new to 3E you'll find it very useful to follow that chart as close as you can.

 

[spectre72]

Sometimes even good GM's have troubles

I would like to give an example of a similar occurance that almost killed our play group, and since I live in Vermont groups (especially good ones) are hard to come by...

We have been playing once a month since 3E came out, and early in 2002 we changed DM's because the group had gotten too big and after splitting the party into 2 games the GM was not able to handle both sessions.

The new GM was fair and the game was going along well up until this winter when we traveled south in his game world in search of the Giants who had invaded the North.

Things started to get more challenging (due to comments from a single player that things were too easy), and characters started to die (ALOT of CHARACTERS )...

Well on the fatefull day which almost ended the campaign one of the players sister and fiance were visiting so the DM allowed the sister to play the character of someone who was unable to attend, and the fiance (who was a DM for another group) was give the duty of running some of the monsters.

Well this started with a bang as characters started to die to "WANDERING MONSTER" encounters in the wilderness.

In retrospect it becomes apparent that the guest GM was bending rules, but we had strict rules against player having either the DMG or MM at the table.

It was also apparent that it had turned into a us vs. him sort of game with him desiring more kill markers on his GM screen, and our GM did not know how to stop the boulder that had started rolling down the hill.

So we pressed on after our numberous losses (we were weeks into the wilderness with the closest town days to the South), and headed further South toward the pass through the mountain.

Now came the roll for spot/listen and we find ourselves on a raised trail approching the pass through the mountains, and within 100 feet are a number of wolves and giants (something like a dozed wolves (dire wolves If I remember correctly) and 8 giants (some with class levels) behind fortifications (boulders and such along the road).

The rocks start raining down, and characters start to die.

Since we were at 1/2 of our original number from the beginning of the session we were in serious trouble, and that is when the wolves attacked.

More bending of the rules, and more character deaths.

In the end out of ~8 characters (between level 6 and 9) only one character survived, and that was my Gnome monk 8/Psion 1 who turned on skate and ran and hid (there was no way I would allow a TPK).

Everyone in the final battle knew they were dead before the first batch of rocks had hit.

After the session things blew up, and we worked things out with the GM who will probably never get into the situation again.

The scenario was one that we would not have won (It equated to the beyond this door is death type of thing), but combine other factors and you end up with a dead party.

Well it is a couple of months later and the game is still running and now my monk knows what lies to the South.

She is returning to the North and starting a fighting school to train warriors for the coming invasion that she believes is coming.

 

[StalkingBlue]

...Ideally, your analysis of the tactics is probably sound. At the time, for the players involved, without the luxury of being able to look at it after it was over, I don't fault them much...

That was a post-mortem tactical analysis - see what went wrong, try to learn for the future. I do that with my own stupid mistakes as well.

 

[ph0rk]

edit: ok I forgot to take into account that the orcs might have high wis, so the %'s may be lower by 5% per bonus they get from the wis. My bad. Still, it's a very good chance to immobilize at least one, and turning a fight from 5 vs 4 to 5 vs 3 is still significant.

Also, I think the saves for orcs listen in the MM are due to a crappy wisdom score, so a good score would grant a bonus and negate that -2 I'd have figured for a +5 will, as the orcs had similar stats to the pcs, and I'm sure they'd put a decent number in wis before int and cha. Hell, wisdom is about the only mental stat orcs have a prayer of getting a good score in anyway.

Which makes one think, why the hell did they ambush the party? Seems rather non-orky, to me.

ORC1: We wait here do ambush.

ORC2: What ambush? Why not just go smash? SMASH SMASH SMASH!

ORC1: (Yelling) Quiet! We being sneaky! Hide THEN smash!

ORCS3 and 4: SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!

Ranger: Do you hear something?

Monk: It sounds like someone yelling 'smash smash smash' up ahead. Want to go check it out?

Ranger: Sure!


etc.

There were a couple of additional issues that stopped the party from running. Of the three characters left standing after the initial foray, one was a LG Cleric of Tyr renowned for hating Orcs and a Half-Orc who loves him mum - and thus not Orcs. These guys did not even flinch before charging in.

What was that Cleric's wisdom score?

Then again, meta-game, they couldn't have possibly escaped, as the orcs would have automatically caught them (the new chase rules). They didn't 'know' they were barbarians with faster movement ingame though.

Really, very similar results could have come from 4 3rd level orcs jumping the party; and ambush is a very powerful tactic, especially when the party is split.

Of all the replies in this thread, this one struck me the most:You know, in some societies, he would have been given a (posthumous) medal of honor for risking/giving his life to try to save his comrades.

I'd say, of the description given, the wizard was the most heroic of the party. Perhaps the monk, too -- he ran up to help the ranger.

Is there no praise for heroics anymore? Or should PCs abandon each other at the first set back?

The nature-loving scout and the kung-fu master biting the dust in the surprise round is hardly just a 'set back'. There is a line between heroism and stupidity, and the wizard crossed it, imho. Not that it mattered much, they'd have just run her down anyway.

 

[Darkness]

Herremann, could you explain how the heck your party of 3rd level characters beat a dire bear? Especially if that somehow involved besting it in melee combat, which should've been completely impossible?

Eh, 'completely impossible' isn't. I've seen a 1st-level human rogue kill a troll without any assistance. Granted, she had slightly higher stats than many, but not that high.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Herremann, could you explain how the heck your party of 3rd level characters beat a dire bear? Especially if that somehow involved besting it in melee combat, which should've been completely impossible?

Hi Epametheus,

This was a story unto itself.

We were trying to escape from the situation as best as we could when we stumbled upon the cave when the Ranger pulled off a good enough roll to stop the bear from attacking for a moment. We tried to leave quietly when the monk walked directly in front of the Ranger forcing a break in eye contact.
It then went feral but our fighter and our cleric got in some good damage. The Fighter criticaled while the Cleric maxed out. The fighter then went down but was rescued by the wizard with a healing potion.
[By the way, I noticed a few people questioning her having the healing equipment. The reason she took it up is that it meant we effectively had two healers, one of which - her - who was very mobile and could get to people easily if they needed it - I almost did the unseen servant thing too.]
The Ranger quickly shifted to attack mode and put two very good arrows into the thing. Another smashing from the fighter and it went down, just before it would have likely killed the rest of the party.
In the end, we got very lucky with our rolls and the bear missed a sitter.
Unfortunately, this gave the DM encouragement to give us the Orc encounter.
Oh well these things happen.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise