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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agemegos" data-source="post: 1533066" data-attributes="member: 18377">Five 3rd level characters are a little weaker than 4 fourth. Your 'elite' stats are partly balanced by the orcs' 'elite' stats, and I doubt your gear amounts to the equivalent of a whole level. So you weren't really as tough as a 5th-level party.One of those orcs would have been a fair challenge, and would have used up 25% of your resources and hit points. Four one after the other would have run you into the ground. Four all at the same time is not an encounter that you should be expected to win: it is a tough encounter that you are quite likely to lose. And that is in a stand-up fight. So when your GM had those orcs attempt an ambush, he or she really ought to have figured that if the ambush came off your party would be defeated.A defeat is not necessarily a TPK, of course. But you have to figure that monsters do not have their levels, stats, and hit-point totals printed on their foreheads. It is going to take a few turns for the players to realise that the orcs they face are too tough. And raging STR 20 orcs with greataxes stand a very good chance of of putting a couple of 3rd-level characters down in two or three turns.Which means that that encounter was very likely to kill a couple of the PCs, and that if your GM didn't recognise that his judgement is drifting to starboard.That is turned out to be a TPK is partly as result of bad rolls at crucial times and party a result of the fact that no battle-plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Which are also things that GMs have to learn to live with. I would not have used such an encouter as this without clearly marking to the party that they were getting into deep water. There are challenges in my worlds that PCs cannot take on, but I don't put them where weak parties are likely to trip over them.</blockquote>

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