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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fieari" data-source="post: 1957779" data-attributes="member: 16221">I just gave my players their first TPK last night.  It's my second TPK ever, the first of which was during a "rules learning" mini-session where myself and another group were finally converting from 2ed to 3ed, and I had been so used to the very bad rules of 2ed (so bad, we'd simply make up half the rules everywhere 2ed was lacking, which was almost everywhere) that I overestimated what the party could handle, and overwhelmed them.  But that was okay, we were just learning the rules anyway.This one was a little more complicated, but regardless, I think it ended well.Now I was having a little bit of a problem with the party.  The party consisted almost entirely of fighter-types, and they were coming to a section of the campaign where I really thought it would be cool if the players had a wizard.  There was a sorcerer in the party, but he wasn't very good at it... his spell selection was terrible, and hardly ever used the correct spell in the correct situation.  So before the session, I had a little talk with my players about this, and one of the players.... heck, two of the players volunteered to roll up a new character.  After a little more discussion, we agreed that we would retire the old character in a dramatic method... going down in a blaze of glory.  It was supposed to be only one of the two.  Everyone was looking forewards to what was comming up, knowing that someone was going to die by the end of the session, not knowing -exactly- who it was going to be, or how it was going to work.And so the party started off to reach their destination of one of the northern cities, located in the mountains.  Their very first encounter was with a blizzard, and the second was a White Dragon that they managed to kill via a cursed artifact they carry (I usually have a problem with "Disposable Dragons", but since every time they use this artifact I get to do cool things with the plot later on, I was fine with this case).  After that, I kept throwing them against more and more dangerous situations... any one of which could be fatal, but wasn't really how I planned to strike the final blow.The final blow would come in the form of some tunnels later on.  I'd have them fight a gelatanous cube or two in these tunnels, and when they kill it (they being ECL8, it being a CR3) it would turn out that the cube was actually a main support for the tunnel.  Then one of the two players, who has a strength of 27, would get to hold up the ceiling as the others get to run to safety... nice dramatic ending.Except.That the cubes killed them all.I'm not quite sure how this happened.  I did advance the cubes slightly, giving them a heftier grapple check and some more hit points, but I didn't think that could possibly make them a SERIOUS threat... but the person in front failed his spot check and walked right INTO the first cube.  The second player ran up to engage the cube in hand to hand melee (he was a monk).  The others wisely fired on it from a distance, while the two now engulfed players fought as best they could from the inside, but neglected to run away at first, allowing the cube to advance it's 15' movement and grab them too.  Then they did run away, but failed the spot check on the OTHER cube, leaving just the sorcerer outside.  And then the engulfed players started... one by one... to fail their saves against paralyzation for 3d6 rounds.  In desperation, the sorcerer looked at his list, considered his spells, realized that magic missile just wasn't going to cut it, and did the only thing that had any hope of killing a cube: He cast fireball.We'd already houseruled previously that fireball produces volumetric fire... meaning that if there are walls, like in a tunnel here, it will cover (pi)(30')^2 feet.  This had been used to great effect by the party before against other enemies.  So I couldn't in any conscience or consistancy not have the same thing happen here.  The tunnels were 10' wide, and the way back (I didn't want them fleeing BACKWARDS while the cave in was happening) was a slippery slope that would be nearly impossible to climb up, so there was no way he was going to avoid his own flames.The fireball managed to kill one of the cubes.  And the sorcerer (-11, instant char).  The characters freed from the cube that died were all paralyzed.  The cube still living, being mindless, could do nothing but engulf them too, slowly digesting them to their deaths.Oops.These characters had been making a political splash in the world so far.  They'd annoyed powerful beings who were hunting them down.  They possesed a power (although evil and cursed) artifact.Which means that the new party will get to be mired in all the whirlpools and eddies their previous party created.  Their first quest will be to recover the artifact from the tunnels it was lost in.  Their new characters will start with informaton that their old characters were journeying long and hard to find, and then some more.  They have a wide world of adventure in front of them.  And they've learned to fear a CR3 creature.We ended the session with everyone rolling up new characters, discussing Min/Max combinations, getting really excited about their future prospects.  I have high hopes for next week.Although I didn't intend it to be a TPK, I think it turned out to be pretty cool, and I'm glad we all decided to stick to the dice rolls.</blockquote>

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