Total Party Kills

[JoeGKushner]

Now I haven't killed the party yet, just one dwarf who was the subject of a huge greataxe critical.

No, instead, I was thinking of the effects of Total Party Kills.

Do you are a GM go out of your way to insure that they don't happen? Do you feel it's the end of the campaign if they do?

I remember in one game I was in, I touched some stone that charmed me and I actually talked all of the other players into touching the stone as well and all became charmed. GM fudged us through it a little but the campaign was pretty much over at that point.

I've also been involved in TPK as a GM where the party made bad decesions.

In the past, I've used other options like Dungeon World and Oathbound as places where the party can come back, but try to minimize that aspect of the game. If it becomes nothing more than Neverwinter Nights with a different restart button, what's the overall point?

One thing I've tried to do is have the players keep secondary characters that others in the party may know, so if something does happen, there is a hook to draw the new party into the game and minimize down time.

What about everyone else?

 

[Wormwood]

Do you are a GM go out of your way to insure that they don't happen? Do you feel it's the end of the campaign if they do?

I work very hard to balance encounters. I've never made an encounter so difficult that it would ensure the deaths of even one character.

That's my job, and I do it well.

The players try to overcome my challenges and gain experience. That's their job, and they do it well.

But once they hosed themselves big-time---by depleting their resources early in a series of minor encounters, then charging off (wounded and low on spells) into a challenging encounter (Ogres, IIRC).

Then, idiots that they are, they ran from combat---not down the area they had cleared, but into an unexplored area. Containing a Orc Adept and his war party.

TPK ensued.

I hate rambling campaign storied as much as the next guy, but I feel the previous story illustrates my point: In a well-balanced game, only stupid players earn a TPK.

My solution at the time was to give the players the option to make up new characters (at one level lower, naturally).

I stand by that.

 

[Nighthawk]

As a GM, this has happened often enough that any group I am a part discusses this issue before the campaign begins. Whatever the group decides is fine with me. I used to prefer secondary characters, but I found that players tend to want to play both of them, often switching between the two during adventures. That's difficult for me to deal with. Nowadays, I will work with whatever is handed to me, but I try not to "stress" over the details.

 

[Pseudonym]

I've had two near TPKs in my Forgotten Realms game. It's a major pain as all of the plot points I had worked in, NPCs they party had met etc. had lost connection to the current crop of PCs.

I'm about to restart the game after the second near TPK (two survivors out of seven, one because she wasn't able to make the session). I'm going to have to talk with my players about secondary characters that are connected to the plot so I won't have to start from scratch every time.

 

[CombatWombat51]

The one time I accidentally achieved a TPK (in a very similar manner to Wormwood's experience), I thought of who would notice and care that the PC's never returned. There were two NPC's a bit below the level of the party and who the players where familiar with, and I temporarily handed them to two players. The two ex-NPC's hired extra muscle (enough so that every player had something to play), and extracted the PCs' petrified bodies. I then snatched back my NPC's, fired the mercs, and eventually redemed the favor of saving the lives of the PC's.

 

[Nightfall]

I've had half a party killed. This usually meant trying to justify getting old party members to accept new ones. It didn't always work out trust me. As for the effect of killing the entire party, it depends on how heavily vest my plot was on that SINGLE party. Fortunately so far it's been fairly easy, but not always, to change up parties. But even so, its not something I relish doing.

 

[pogre]

I have has two TPKs in the last year. It sucks - completely.

I may have made mistakes in both cases, but I have come to realize my current group will not run from an encounter. I do not give them overwhelming encounters, but there are times when resources are low, one should hit the bricks.

Knowing my players will not run tempts me to run a (contact) RttToEE style campaign where we are rolling up characters constantly.

I start over after a TPK. Completely over in the case of the new campaign. I have significantly powered up the starting PCs for the next game in the hope we can get past the mid levels. I have endeavored to recognize my group's playing style, but I just cannot pull all punches. However, I am going to be even more careful this time around and slant the odds even more in the PCs favor.

Now, TPKs used to be unusual for my campaigns. The campaign prior to these two went to epic levels. Other campaigns, using other game systems lasted for years and years. I very nearly gave up RPGs for a while after the last TPK I was so frustrated.

 

[AeroDm]

We have a real problem with TPKs. First and foremost we alternate DMs and most of them are real quitters, so they just TPK everyone whenever they want to quit DMing. Unfortunately this has created an immensly poor image of death in our campaign, and then when a 'real' campaign experiences a bad turn of events the player lose faith in it. I can recall several campaigns I've DMed where two or three of the four people perished, and they decided to quit the campaign.

It is quite frustrating and thus I hate player death entirely. However, they also won't accept ressurected players either so we have a tough situation. Pretty much the only thing we can do to run a campaign that feels dangerous but continues is to perfectly gauge the challenges so the group collectively has about 2 HP at the end of most battles, but no one dies. Sucks.

 

[EtherHulkRending]

Our agreed upon rule was as long as half the party lives the campaign continues. Our Dm was running us through Pools of Radiance only we didn't know it. At a point we encountered a big nasty that we weren't supposed to fight and instead of playing said nasty as the mod described he sent it after us. It was a CR 19 and we were only 7th or 8th level at that point. We lost our two front line fighters several rounds into combat, our rogue was almost dead, our druid and his companion had already fled after failing a few reflex saves and the sorceror and my cleric were in the process of withdrawing when we were again attacked by said nasty(which was supposed to be run as a pacifist that would ask to leave first and then fight only enough to flee).
This dropped the rogue and nearly dropped me. But of the six of us, half survived but the DM was not happy that we lasted so long against the nasty, as a matter of fact we killed it twice over. So he tried to restart the campaign at 1st level, at that point we revolted and he quit.

I guess the point is to make an agreement between players and DM and stick to it as to what to do in the event of a near, or total TPK.

As to what I think of them in general, they suck but they happen. Usually I will bend a little as a DM unless the party does something stupid IC to warrant getting slaughtered, otherwise I use less brutal but still effective tactics for whatever they are fighting so that I'm not totally softballing them. Deaths are regrettable but they happen.

 

[BSF]

I hate TPK and try to avoid them like the plague. I am not reluctant to kill off characters, but all at once seems a bit harsh. Fortunately, my players are pretty good about taking care of themselves. Heck, I have even seen them engage in a strategic withdrawal on occasion. It is rare, yes.

The closest I have come to a TPK lately is when my group of 7 PC's fought a group of ghouls. In one round, the Paladin, the Barbarian and the Fighter/Cleric all failed their saves to avoid being paralyzed. Seriously, it's a DC 14 Fort save right? Each one doomed his karma by starting off the roll like this: Player picks up a d20. Oh, so long as I roll higher than a 3, I save. Rolls d20 and gets a 3. It was funny, but in a sucky kind of way. By the end of that encounter, everyone except the Psion (Telepath) was paralyzed. The Psion and the Paladin's warhorse managed to beat back the last ghoul.

My newest campaign is a different issue. I am trying to make it much more freeform and the characters haven't established themselves in any meaningful way yet. Though, I might ask for some secondary characters so we have a good starting point for character death, including a TPK.