Total Party Kill -- How do you recover?

[brak1]

When we started playing 3rd ed. our group had some trouble with Sunless Citadel module. (some possible SPOILERS coming up) Having come off some relatively high-level 2nd ed. adventures we were, perhaps, too eager to continue on despite injuries and depleted spell arsenals. Our first try ended in a TPK.

We were stunned. This, unfortunately, was with the skeletons near the very beginning. (Damn rats had gotten some good licks in first.) We moaned, we cried, we shouted. ("This edition sucks!" Was a frequent utterance.)

Then we tried again. Got as far as the goblin encampment this time, before another TPK. (Watch your back.) So we tried again. By this time we all had made the damn thing mythic in our minds. It was impossible. The Sunless Death Trap became our bane. This third try left one survivor - the character fled the scene and the player said he wouldn't ever come back.

So the next game our DM decided on a different game. We played a few sessions with our 4th try at characters. We leveled up, we started to think 3rd ed. was not so bad.

And then we stumbled across the Sunless Citadel.

As players we dreaded it. Once we realized what was going on we had our DM pause and pleaded with him not to do it. He insisted and we played on.

And it was great. He had the SC become this epic thing in the game as well. For miles around everyone knew: adventurers check in and they don't check out. Because we treated it that way as players it made it easier for our characters to do so as well.

That time we did well and (barely!) made it through. All of the obstacles/monsters were now bigger than life and it made getting past them/killing them a big thrill. (And finding the bodies of our previous characters added a bit of fun.)

So what's the point, you ask? I guess it's that a TPK doesn't have to ruin your game. Letting the new characters come back to the same point and succeed can even help alleviate any interpersonal problems that cropped up because of the TPK.

Just my two bits.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Think about it this way, what do the monsters/bad guys do when they lose? They get replaced sorta ...

Bad luck goes both ways when you roll in the open. Last Saturday night in a Scarred Lands campaign our party got lucky when entering a Rat-man warren. Through their bad luck, and our good luck, they ended up surrendering to us. A few different rolls and things would have been VERY different.

If your players can deal with it, it is time to re-roll. If they can't, take a short break before starting a new campaign.

 

[Kerrick]

Or you could just rule that they weren't in fact killed, but knocked out and taken prisoner. Of coruse, this only works if they were fighting gnolls or goblins or something, but it's a good deus ex machina if things go south through no fault of the players.
It's always fun to note where the former parties died and leave their bodies/gear there; we play Undermountain like that. One of the guys in the group, back when he DMed FR, kept notes of all the stuff players had done - graffiti, items left, bodies, etc etc. It was great fun.
I started DMing our FR campaign a few weeks ago, and I got my first player kill last weekend. They were in UMT, trying to bash down a door. I, of course, decided that all the racket would bring some monsters, so I decided on a couple of ogres (they're mostly 1st level, with a 3rd level ranger NPC). The ranger's watching the corridor, and he calls out a warning. The halfling monk comes forward to stand beside the ranger, along with the paladin. First ogre charges, the halfling rolls a crit and does 26 damage with his kamas. Drops the ogre. The second one runs over his companion's body, swings his club, and smashes the halfling into jelly. The others kill the ogre, and the player wanders off to call his gf.
He comes back a little while later and sends me a note asking if he could keep his character if he took an XP penalty and maybe an ability drop. So I decided I would be nice, and let the halfling live, but he lost 2 points of INT from the blow to his skull, and he was in a coma until the party could get him a cure moderate wounds. Well, they happened to find a potion of cure moderate later on, when they fought some gnolls, so everyone ended up happy, more or less.

 

[Pyske]

My group's play contract includes fudging to avoid this, so I have not yet had a TPK. In general, though, for a story-based game I suggest having a new group stumble acrosss evidence of the party's original purpose and the fact of their death. Additional evidence gathering is required to find out all the original party knew and how do avoid a similar death.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

 

[Kyramus]

Two things to consider.
1) if the game is not neck deep in plot threads and webs and such, then roll a new char and start anew.
2) If everything is tied into events the pc's do, then you give the players a choice.

Choice a: Roll up new characters and start anew, or come in a level below their original characters.

Choice b: Give them NPC's to play that will "Save" themselves. A rival adventuring group would work well for this, and also humiliates the pc's a little, especially when the rival npc group will harp on the pc's owing them one, etc.

Other thoughts:
TPK means everyone was dead, ie all beyond -10. Obviously if they were left alone with the enemy they will be beyond -10, but if they are all in the negatives but not -10, we can do a count down before they die.

say the worst case is a -8. In the next 2 rounds something has to happen to stabilize him, whether it is himself or by a saving force.

Another thing i've instituted in the game is a god call. It's been a house rule for a long time. If the player doesn't have a god, they have to choose one right there and then and roll. a base 5% chance. If they succeed they will be saved in some fashion the DM would like it to appear. The next time they try a god call it is half round up. so it's 3% then 2% then 1%. the numbers reflect successes. obviously the god might not come himself, might send servants or whatever. AND may charge them with a task for saving them.

In an older game, I ran a ranger that has successfully god called twice. The first time I was charged with bringing back a place that got shunted into an isolated dimension (haven't completed that when I had to do the second god call). The second one charges me to uphold my deity above all else. (epic sounding and most probably will be).

Long plot and campaign possibilities from just those two things.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I have a spin on this with a couple of my home campaigns. In one campaign the party tracked down and destroyed an evil god. Actually he was more of an exiled evil god that lived on the prime material plane. Upon his death he exploded, the magnitude of the explosion being on par with a nuke. Obviously they all died in the blast.

Or at least they thought they did. A few days later a peasant pulled their unconscious bodies back into the local town. The truth is that yes, they were killed, but the gods that they served recreated them from the point just before they were destroyed along with their equipment.

Then, in the next campaign, after most of those characters had been retired, the new party, which consisted of 1 of the previous characers, had to go back to that place to find them. What they found were undead with likeness and all the equipment of the previous party... thus ending the debate over whether or not they had actually been killed at that place.

 

[ForceUser]

The one time I've ever been involved in a TPK in my 15 years of gaming, I was a player. We were playing in the heyday of 2E when clerics were at their most unpopular. Nobody in the group wanted to play one, not even multiclassed. Heck, we didn't even have a druid with us. The DM, knowing what we were about to go up against, wisely inserted an NPC cleric who offered to come along with us, but we blew her off.

Five of six PCs died in a single encounter. The sixth guy lived, but the DM decided that he died of exposure before making it back to town from the wilderness we'd entered. Probably because he wanted to wipe the slate clean and move on. The funny thing is we may have lived, but a couple of guys *cough* decided they were roleplaying *cough* and, playing an elf and a dwarf, got in a pissing contest and drew swords. The dwarf killed the elf, but was so wounded himself that he was easy prey for the monsters.

Ah, memories.

If by some radical misfortune I DMed a TPK these days, I don't know what I'd do. Cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.

 

[fusangite]

Well, you've made a very compelling case against open rolling.

I am different from many DMs because I believe that story, above all else, is the paramount interest of the game. If story is not your paramount interest, I have no capacity to advise you as you are working from a radically different hierarchy of values than I am.

That said, my characters often send an NPC villain down to negative hit points and then heal him up to single digit HPs to interrogate him. The reverse is always possible.

 

[S'mon]

Have everyone roll up a new character and start it off with an adventure hook about a group of "adventurers" who had wondered off after a goblin tribe and never returned...(maybe friends or familly of the TPK party would like to bury their loved ones or whatever)...

You've just made it clear to your players that the danger of death and the possibility of failure are very real in your game. Go with it. The half-dragon dude will make for a wonderful recurring villian later.

While you should avoid TPKs they should not be beyond the realm of possibilities.

I think this is good advice. I've always been an open-rolling, 'World Before Story' GM - the players build the story through their actions, there's no preordained story, and sometimes they die.

I had a TPK at the beginning of my current campaign with 1st level PCs - it turned out my gameworld was too harsh for 1st level PCs. So we switched to a different GM, once we were sick of him I started GMing again, but the PCs started with 1/2 the XP of their characters from the other GM's campaign, putting them around 4th-5th level and able to survive on Ea. So taking a break from GMing can work well.

 

[StalkingBlue]

I've had only one TPK and that one can only be described as a collective suicide.

The party waded into battle with The Big Villain and his minions - knowingly, without any plan or preparation, every single PC already low in hp and Str before battle even started.

I hated this. But I knew I'd have to pull this through or they'd never believe me in anything again. I sat back, took a couple of deep breaths (inconspicuously, I hoped), and off we went.

It was clear to them after minutes that they would lose, and die. One character, a non-healer, had a single chance to escape alone. He chose to make a final, desperate charge at The Big Villain instead, with no hit.

We played it out to the end.

Then we cleared the table. We ate triple helpings of ice cream and drank the rest of our evening's wine, and slowly talk began to unfold on what we wanted to do next.
Do you want a "revenge party"? I asked them. Nope, they said.
What level would you like to start at? I asked. First, they said. Okay, I said.
So they made new level 1 characters and the next session, we started a new campaign.



And by the way - I was rolling in the open, and I still do that very consistently in combat. I've discussed this with my players and they say they would not have it any other way.