Too many TPKs?

[Mort]

There are many iterations here, and there really should not be a default position of blame. For ex: in the DonTadow thread the initial post leans strongly to DM fault. But when more details are revealed, the players are certainly not blamesless and situation is quite murky.

Bottom line, fight any default assumptions and learn as many facts as possible before weighing in. And in fact, make sure weighing in at all is appropriate or appreciated.

 

[Mark CMG]

this is a fork from DonTadow's DM Intervention thread.

he describes a GM who's had like 5 TPKs with the same party.

My question is, by default, would you suspect the problem lies in the GM, the players, or be so neutral that the Swiss would be jealous?

My initial reaction would be that the group is playing a very gritty, deadly game and unless someone is complaining, I wouldn't think that there was anything necessarily wrong with that. I'd probably be more prone to suspect a problem if it only happened once or twice, but once it gets to five times and they are still playing, I would be more inclined to believe it was merely a playstyle choice for the group.

 

[jonesy]

We've had more TPK's than I can even remember over the years. We tend to run games on varying degrees of deadly, and usually in a kind of sandboxy way, so a foolish party might end up taking on a much bigger enemy than they can possibly handle in combat (although, sometimes we have).

And that's just D&D, before we even get to Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer, MERP, Traveller, O.R.E., or Kult.

 

[Ale]

But I have a question. Do you have any ideas to not end the group or campaing IC a TPK happens?

Like the enemies can make characters prisioner, could be a dream, could travel back in time, etc. More ideas?

 

[Kzach]

But I have a question. Do you have any ideas to not end the group or campaing IC a TPK happens?

Like the enemies can make characters prisioner, could be a dream, could travel back in time, etc. More ideas?

Most groups I know tend to hate "DM Saves" like that.

 

[Chimera]

Yeah, a DM Save is pretty much an admission of failure on the part of the GM.

But then, sometimes the die rolls just go the wrong way. We faced 24 Dread Wraith minions plus some Sand Golems in our last session, with five 24th level characters. If the rolls had gone the wrong way and if people hadn't listened when it was time to get out of the middle of them, we could have lost most of the party to their dying explosive healing surge drains. A stupid party would have tried to slug it out with them and that would have been the end of them.

In short, there are too many things that can lead to TPKs. I'd have to look at the GM and the group before assigning any blame.

 

[Evilhalfling]

In the last 3 years parties I was running have been utterly defeated twice.
The first time was in a 4e game where the party was fighting slavers. Of course the slavers took them alive. Of course it eventually ended badly for the slavers. Only 1 PC actually died.

The second time was a clash of styles - a 1st level group was told to scout a threat and report back. I failed to realize that by personality not one PC was capable of abandoning a fight. They ended the night rolling up a new party. On the second session of that game....

 

[KiloGex]

I have a group that has run 5 campaigns that have ended in all but 1 of the players dying each time; every time, the player who has survived was the one that ran away. Often times, my TPKs have been due to the party falling apart towards the end, causing the team to be unbalanced and out of sorts by the time they reach the fight. I have told them time and time again that the world does not change simply because they've run into some complications and yet they still insist on going into the fight balls to the wall and throw it all into the ring.

My last campaign I had a player running a scout mission while the rest of the party waited for her return. She ran into a complication and was discovered; during the combat she had several opportunities to run away, but insisted on attempting to take out the guards (all 4 of them) on her own. Needless to say....

 

[Niccodaemus]

But I have a question. Do you have any ideas to not end the group or campaing IC a TPK happens?

Like the enemies can make characters prisioner, could be a dream, could travel back in time, etc. More ideas?

If it happen, it happens. I don't ever recall DMing one myself. I didn't even know what TPK was until a couple of days ago.

I don't have monsters that take captives unless it was decided by me beforehand that that is what there goal was. Sometimes a TPK could result from players refusing to allow themselves to be captured, despite obvious overwhelming conditions. I can't think of many instances that might result in a TPK with experienced or the least bit careful players.

 

[IronWolf]

I would likely start with a neutral reaction as I think we need to know a bit more about the game. Is the group having fun with a grinder? If so then sounds like nothing is wrong.

If people are complaining though then it is probably time to figure out what is going wrong. Likely it is a case of expectations from the game and the GM/Players not quite being on the same page with those expectations. Talking it out might help in those cases.

I know when I first got back to GMing my campaign was overly lethal. Way too many character deaths to the point the game fell apart because no character's were left that knew the original purpose of the campaign. That was purely my fault as a GM. I was making encounters much too lethal and not adjusting to the players. I have since learned from that experience and I think have become a much more balanced GM.