hammymchamham
First Post
for TPKs? Personally, I make sure I have enough d6s for the players to roll up stats at the start of every game....
Total Party Kill -- How do you recover?
- Thread starter Ramien Meltides
- Start date
I'm in the midst of trying to recover from my first total party kill as well.
SPOILER for "HEADLESS" from DUNGEON #89:
S
P
O
I
L
E
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The PCs got themselves killed one room short of where the deadgate is being constructed, and they'd spent so long getting there that it was just about ready to be activated. After blabbing all about their weaknesses to the "friendly" frost giant jarl, they were ambushed and everyone was slain. (We played it out down to the last negative hit point, and the last one still standing was the sorceress' familiar, a toad, who was cut down after downing a potion of dragon breath and breathing fire--twice!--on a frost giant mohrg. He went down fighting, at least!)
Yeah, they were kind of stupid (or at least far too trusting), but we've invested so much time in these characters (1st level to 13th, at half-normal xp rates) that I kind of hate to see them dead for good. So...I think they'll "wake up" on the Abyss, in front of Orcus, with no memories of who they are or how they got there. (In "real life," they were decapitated and their heads are now part of the deadgate that sucks the souls of everyone who dies within a 200-mile radius straight into Orcus' realm.)
I'm not sure what they'll do beyond that. Probably get sent on some "missions" for Orcus against devils or celestials, until (hopefully) they somehow regain their memories of their previous lives.
Johnathan
SPOILER for "HEADLESS" from DUNGEON #89:
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
The PCs got themselves killed one room short of where the deadgate is being constructed, and they'd spent so long getting there that it was just about ready to be activated. After blabbing all about their weaknesses to the "friendly" frost giant jarl, they were ambushed and everyone was slain. (We played it out down to the last negative hit point, and the last one still standing was the sorceress' familiar, a toad, who was cut down after downing a potion of dragon breath and breathing fire--twice!--on a frost giant mohrg. He went down fighting, at least!)
Yeah, they were kind of stupid (or at least far too trusting), but we've invested so much time in these characters (1st level to 13th, at half-normal xp rates) that I kind of hate to see them dead for good. So...I think they'll "wake up" on the Abyss, in front of Orcus, with no memories of who they are or how they got there. (In "real life," they were decapitated and their heads are now part of the deadgate that sucks the souls of everyone who dies within a 200-mile radius straight into Orcus' realm.)
I'm not sure what they'll do beyond that. Probably get sent on some "missions" for Orcus against devils or celestials, until (hopefully) they somehow regain their memories of their previous lives.
Johnathan
well, i've been GMing for 20+ years now, and i've never had a TPK. i don't think i've ever (permanently) killed a single PC, either.Ramien Meltides said:
this is where we part ways. i am NOT an advocate of open (non-fudging) rolling for DMs. this is the sole reason for your TPK -- you can't modify the results to bring about a more dramatic or more satisfying conclusion.
IMO it's more fair to the players to fudge a few rolls here and there to tell a better story. it's more fair to spare a much-beloved PC than let him die to some random rolls.
i've never seen the DM's role as an impartial one. i'm always rooting for the PCs too. the PCs are the heroes -- they're supposed to win. my job as DM is to provide an entertaining session. IMO if the DM is being 100% impartial and automatically accepting every die roll out in the open, he might as well be replaced by a computer. a human DM can modify results in the game to make them more dramatically appropriate to the situation. he knows when to throw out a roll that would badly disrupt the game. by definition, a TPK is an entire series of bad rolls that severely disrupt the game.
i hope i'm not coming off sounding too adversarial, but if you allowed yourself to fudge a few rolls every now and then, you'd never get that feeling of being behind the 8-ball.
fudging isn't just for being a softie and giving the players what they want. it's also a C.Y.A. (cover-your-posterior) measure -- you said yourself you underestimated the power of that half-dragon ogre. by rolling everything in the open, you committed yourself to that mistake and left yourself no way to fix it.
it's all about being flexible! as far as your situation, you didn't realize the half-dragon was too powerful until the battle was already raging. but you could've removed a handful of hit points or whatever to make it easier to take down as soon as you realized the combat was heading toward a TPK. what's really more important, your "integrity" about keeping to the adventure as planned NO MATTER WHAT or the enjoyment of the group as a whole? who really would've suffered if that half-dragon had a few less hit points than originally planned? you'd of course give out less XP for defeating it, but at least the campaign could continue...
your friend, though, when he saw that less players showed up than he anticipated, really has no excuse for not modifying that gnoll encounter downward. the just-missed TPK sounds to be more his fault than the players.
again, i'm sorry if this all sounds a bit adversarial. i don't mean any ill will and i'm not trying to denigrate your position, i'm just trying to explain why i think your decisions could've been made in a different direction.
I do everything behind the DM screen. I never let players see what I'm doing because I don't want a silly 1 to result in the end of a campaign I've worked on for hours on end. In your situation, I would have definitely ended the game before the final battle. Not to let the players figure anything out. I doubt they would have got together later in the week to discuss strategy. I would have ended the game to better prepare for a battle that could possibly end my campaign.
I feel that you have to take control of the situation on all levels in order to paint that picture of great deeds done. Yes, my players die all the time (two PCs were recently made into vampires, and became awful party enemies), but they only die when I want them to die. I make sure things happen in an interesting way. My party will not get wiped out because of some bad die rolls, they get wiped out because of bad decisions.
I've wiped out my party before, but it was because of greed that they died. I won't get into the particulars (unless called on to do so), but their actions were incredibly reckless, and the dwarven tomb they were exploring became a deathtrap very quickly, and no one had even the slightest desire to flee (even when multiple teleports were at their disposal). The drow lich entombed there slew the surviving party members to a man, and by the end of the evening everyone knew what the problem was.
The only way to bounce back is to roll new characters. Unless you can stomach some divine entity stepping down from the Heavens to bring everyone back to life, starting over is the only choice. It's unfortunate that has to happen. Tossing a campaign because of bad die rolls just doesn't seem right.
I feel that you have to take control of the situation on all levels in order to paint that picture of great deeds done. Yes, my players die all the time (two PCs were recently made into vampires, and became awful party enemies), but they only die when I want them to die. I make sure things happen in an interesting way. My party will not get wiped out because of some bad die rolls, they get wiped out because of bad decisions.
I've wiped out my party before, but it was because of greed that they died. I won't get into the particulars (unless called on to do so), but their actions were incredibly reckless, and the dwarven tomb they were exploring became a deathtrap very quickly, and no one had even the slightest desire to flee (even when multiple teleports were at their disposal). The drow lich entombed there slew the surviving party members to a man, and by the end of the evening everyone knew what the problem was.
The only way to bounce back is to roll new characters. Unless you can stomach some divine entity stepping down from the Heavens to bring everyone back to life, starting over is the only choice. It's unfortunate that has to happen. Tossing a campaign because of bad die rolls just doesn't seem right.
Guilt Puppy
First Post
I've run into a few possible TPKs myself... All were solved by 'fudging,' yes... Here's some over-explained anecdotes which you might want to skip and just read the moral:
First was with a module I found on-line, built for a first-level part and featuring a CR 4 level boss. First encounter he could have easily killed them, but I'd given him a pre-defined lifespan of four rounds before vanishing... This was consistent (he did this on a nightly basis), but it was also the only way the party survived. Their response, of course, was to do everything in their power to ensure survival on the next nights... And they did that successfully. Still, I look at that as a premeditated fudge.
Next was in a dungeon where a cult of Vecna was planning to do evil stuff. They were having trouble getting into the lower levels, until an NPC showed them to a secret door they'd missed (for a rather princely sum). Now, given its location they should have been able to determine it was the primary thoroughfare for the cultists... Whether or not they realized that, the hallway leading up to it still wasn't the finest place to camp. So I rolled up a random encounter with monks for them: It randomly came out to be four fourth-level characters (the party was five third-levels), and I decided to stick with that, since camping there was frickin foolish and they should be lucky to all survive.
However, they chose to deal with the encounter by backing themselves into a corner so they couldn't escape -- meaning it was either kill them all, or have the monks let them live. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but they bargained with them (in retrospect, they should have at least stripped them of their equipment.) So I fudged that one. They live to this day.
Last one was another premeditated fudge... There was a lich involved in some evil-doings near the PCs, and they had no chance at their level of surviving a combat with him. They didn't know about him, so to be fair I'd planned beforehand that if they did encounter him, he'd laugh them off and send them away with a spanking. Unfortunately, they never got there: Just four ghouls managed to paralyze the entire party (the Cleric and Barbarian first, which really made it tough on the other three characters.). So, I pulled out the fudge I'd plan, have the lich come out and call off the ghouls (after they'd been chewing on the party for a couple of minutes) and send them along their merry way. (I had to pull a similar fudge again when they decided to come back... At least this time they managed to kill the ghouls.)
The moral of all this: You'll notice that at none of these points did I have to fudge dice rolls. In other words, you can still fudge with open rolling: You just have to fudge on storyline. Not everyone the players fight will be bent on slaughtering them, just like most players will try to keep a few enemies alive to interrogate.
That said, I do still fudge the die rolls myself, although never by much... I do this both in favor of the players and of NPCs I don't want killed, and it's never more than a +/-1 on a d20, or a few hit points shaved off a damage roll. (For instance, a held player was recently coup de grace'd by an NPC... Dice said 13 damage, I dropped it to ten, to give him a good chance of survival. He still failed his Fort save, but at least I'd given him his chance.)
In short, TPKs are the one thing I avoid at all costs, even if it does end up stretching the plot in weird directions. There's still a chance of it happening, but I'll only pull it if they do something really foolish, and even then I try to give them a fighting chance. (For instance, they currently have the realm's most feared band of assassins trailing them, although they don't realize it. After storming the home of a sinister nobleman, killing off his guards and releasing a prisoner, they left him tied up and humiliated... certainly more in keeping with their alignment than killing him, but also loaded with its own consequences.)
First was with a module I found on-line, built for a first-level part and featuring a CR 4 level boss. First encounter he could have easily killed them, but I'd given him a pre-defined lifespan of four rounds before vanishing... This was consistent (he did this on a nightly basis), but it was also the only way the party survived. Their response, of course, was to do everything in their power to ensure survival on the next nights... And they did that successfully. Still, I look at that as a premeditated fudge.
Next was in a dungeon where a cult of Vecna was planning to do evil stuff. They were having trouble getting into the lower levels, until an NPC showed them to a secret door they'd missed (for a rather princely sum). Now, given its location they should have been able to determine it was the primary thoroughfare for the cultists... Whether or not they realized that, the hallway leading up to it still wasn't the finest place to camp. So I rolled up a random encounter with monks for them: It randomly came out to be four fourth-level characters (the party was five third-levels), and I decided to stick with that, since camping there was frickin foolish and they should be lucky to all survive.
However, they chose to deal with the encounter by backing themselves into a corner so they couldn't escape -- meaning it was either kill them all, or have the monks let them live. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but they bargained with them (in retrospect, they should have at least stripped them of their equipment.) So I fudged that one. They live to this day.
Last one was another premeditated fudge... There was a lich involved in some evil-doings near the PCs, and they had no chance at their level of surviving a combat with him. They didn't know about him, so to be fair I'd planned beforehand that if they did encounter him, he'd laugh them off and send them away with a spanking. Unfortunately, they never got there: Just four ghouls managed to paralyze the entire party (the Cleric and Barbarian first, which really made it tough on the other three characters.). So, I pulled out the fudge I'd plan, have the lich come out and call off the ghouls (after they'd been chewing on the party for a couple of minutes) and send them along their merry way. (I had to pull a similar fudge again when they decided to come back... At least this time they managed to kill the ghouls.)
The moral of all this: You'll notice that at none of these points did I have to fudge dice rolls. In other words, you can still fudge with open rolling: You just have to fudge on storyline. Not everyone the players fight will be bent on slaughtering them, just like most players will try to keep a few enemies alive to interrogate.
That said, I do still fudge the die rolls myself, although never by much... I do this both in favor of the players and of NPCs I don't want killed, and it's never more than a +/-1 on a d20, or a few hit points shaved off a damage roll. (For instance, a held player was recently coup de grace'd by an NPC... Dice said 13 damage, I dropped it to ten, to give him a good chance of survival. He still failed his Fort save, but at least I'd given him his chance.)
In short, TPKs are the one thing I avoid at all costs, even if it does end up stretching the plot in weird directions. There's still a chance of it happening, but I'll only pull it if they do something really foolish, and even then I try to give them a fighting chance. (For instance, they currently have the realm's most feared band of assassins trailing them, although they don't realize it. After storming the home of a sinister nobleman, killing off his guards and releasing a prisoner, they left him tied up and humiliated... certainly more in keeping with their alignment than killing him, but also loaded with its own consequences.)
Ramien Meltides said:
Don't get into them.
Seriously. Unless you want to destroy any semblence of suspension of disbelief your players have, you can't really recover from a TPK. What can you do? Have their allies resurrect them? Yeah, but it's a copout, and worse, your players will know it. Divine intervention? How do you explain that one?
Chances are that by the time you've wiped out the party, they're pretty ticked of at you as a DM.
Lie. Cheat. Fudge rolls in their favor up the wazoo. Do whatever it takes to not kill the whole party. Even if it means that your red dragon rolls a 1 on his next 5 attack rolls. Cause the alternative is the campaign is effectively over. Even if you bring the party back, in their eyes, the campaign will have "jumped the shark".
Something that I'm planning on using:
Have an NPC party who are friends with the PCs, and about their level. If there are fatalities in the PC group, the NPC party happens to be taking time off at the time when the PC survivors drag themselves back to town, and as many adventurers as needed from that group get taken over by players and become PCs.
If a TPK happens to the PC party, the DM can say, "So ended the legend of the Crusaders of the Black Shield. Meanwhile, in the depths of the Gaardaark Chasm..." (DM hands out NPC party character sheets, play continues.)
I'm thinking that such an NPC party should be rolled up, created and named by the players so that if they ever have to use them, they'll like them.
Other ideas involving an NPC "backup PCs" party:
For a change of pace, the two parties might even gang up on a particularly challenging outing, with the players controlling two characters each. At other times, the NPC party should probably be too busy with their own obligations to join the PC party on a quest. Maybe they need rescuing, and it's up to the PC party to do it. You could even flip-flop the campaign between the two parties if playing one of them gets boring.
Have an NPC party who are friends with the PCs, and about their level. If there are fatalities in the PC group, the NPC party happens to be taking time off at the time when the PC survivors drag themselves back to town, and as many adventurers as needed from that group get taken over by players and become PCs.
If a TPK happens to the PC party, the DM can say, "So ended the legend of the Crusaders of the Black Shield. Meanwhile, in the depths of the Gaardaark Chasm..." (DM hands out NPC party character sheets, play continues.)
I'm thinking that such an NPC party should be rolled up, created and named by the players so that if they ever have to use them, they'll like them.
Other ideas involving an NPC "backup PCs" party:
For a change of pace, the two parties might even gang up on a particularly challenging outing, with the players controlling two characters each. At other times, the NPC party should probably be too busy with their own obligations to join the PC party on a quest. Maybe they need rescuing, and it's up to the PC party to do it. You could even flip-flop the campaign between the two parties if playing one of them gets boring.
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thundershot
Adventurer
I've never had a TPK, but I will fudge if things go really bad.
My only problem is that if even ONE PC dies, the rest will pack up and leave the dungeon, go back to town, and try to find someone to resurrect them. It's frustrating to me, because it halts my adventure, so I tend to either not kill completely, or make it impossible to leave... easily... I dunno. What's the best way to deal with this?
My only problem is that if even ONE PC dies, the rest will pack up and leave the dungeon, go back to town, and try to find someone to resurrect them. It's frustrating to me, because it halts my adventure, so I tend to either not kill completely, or make it impossible to leave... easily... I dunno. What's the best way to deal with this?
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