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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guilt Puppy" data-source="post: 374679" data-attributes="member: 6521">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.)</blockquote>

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