TPK Dillema

[Ale]

Well, I've realized a problem.

I have an Eberron campaing and my players are very dedicated (great BG, great builds and they play good tactics). One of them told me a thing that I must agree.

Ok, in all the fights, DM can fright us almost killing the group, but in the end some miracle happens and the monsters always miss the attacks or uses poor tactics and we always won the combat.

The DM does not want to ruin the campaing with a TPK, specially a long campaing with detailed characters and everything else. So, in fact, experienced players "knows" they WILL win the fight or the DM is gonna having problem rebuilding a new campaing. This takes of all the feelings of dungerous, like a tactic game you always win. So, why we have to "study" to build a decent character if we gonna win the combat anyway?

On occasional games, TPK can happen, but I never saw in campaings.

I was think and maybe he's right.

What do you think about that? How do you manage the situation without ruin a strutured campaing?

 

[Infiniti2000]

A TPK in a climactic, meaningful battle is okay. A TPK in a random encounter (or other non-climactic battle) is not okay, but also extremely unlikely because a DM shouldn't allow such a difficult encounter in such a circumstance. (Caveat emptor is when you have a true sandbox and the party is just stupid, but then in a true sandbox you wouldn't be asking this question.)

However, a TPK doesn't have to be the end result, does it? How about killing a couple of PCs and taking the others prisoner? How about the PCs instead flee, maybe after 1 or 2 deaths? How about the PCs surrender?

 

[wedgeski]

TPK's should always be a threat. A good, violent, dramatic party kill can be a fantastic and memorable end to a campaign, but at the same time a lame, wet fart of a TPK which arrives on the tail of a string of bad dice can leave everyone disappointed. That leaves a nice wide middle ground for the majority of TPK's to happen.

If you think you see a TPK coming, resist the urge to interfere until the very last second, if indeed you must interfere at all. It's absolutely amazing what a group can pull out of the fire when they absolutely have to, and in fact, the round-by-round struggle to stay alive just long enough to beat your enemies or escape to fight another day can become the very thing which makes for the most satisfying party kills.

The last time my group faced a TPK, we were forced to stop the session with one PC dead, two others on death's door inside a crocodile's stomach, and a heavily depleted Paladin and Fighter fighting for their lives against two lethal skirmishers. It didn't look good... but sure as you like, next session they rescued the situation in just two rounds. We had all been so convinced the end was coming that I had actually canvassed the group to choose from several ideas for the next campaign.

Ultimately though, as a DM you should *always* be prepared for a TPK to "derail" your plans. Don't get too attached to NPC's, locations, worlds, or campaigns, because the end can be just a few dice rolls away.

 

[ffy]

It is a good idea for the DM to have contingencies in place. For example, you are questing to help the ruler of the kingdom to defeat the incoming evil horde of necromancers. Once in a while when you are talking to him, he drops hints that some of his other agents managed to secure this information; or that some other hirelings will support your assault on the opposing camp by cutting off the reinforcements. If all goes well, the players never meet those background characters. But they are already built into the story.

Now with such a backup plan in place, should the party suffer a TPK there will be another group of adventurers already built into the story that the players might jump into. Maybe the ruler both groups are working for found the first group of adventurers of enough importance, that the 'background' group is called back in and sent on a mission to reclaim the corpses of the old party and bring them in for resurrection (or reanimation or whatever suits the campaign/characters). All kinds of stuff might happen, but resurrecting the old party or not - the world and the campaign is now much darker/more difficult, due to the group having failed an important task (during which they got the TPK).

Even if the first group gets resurrected, maybe the players enjoy the new characters enough to keep them on as guest stars, playing them every other session or so. I think it makes for an awesome final scene, with the players taking part in the final confrontation of the campaign arc playing two characters (two characters at different points in the battlefield, or hell, having a huge battle with all the PCs on the table at once!).

The other choice the DM has is to just bring totally new characters into the same campaign from a different point of view. They might start at the same time in-world and during their travels hear stories of what the previous group did. The story might develop in a way that leads them to the same point as the other party was at when they all got killed.

I believe there are many ways for a DM to keep his campaign going without cheating for the party in order to avoid a TPK. Actually, I think challenges like this are what keeps the game fun for the DM. If i wanted to make a story and have it develop exactly as I imagined it I would just sit in my hammock and imagine the story unfolding all day long. The element of chaos that dice and players introduce are what makes it fun to see your world develop and your plot turn out much deeper than you imagined.

Then again, if the gaming group really wants a game in which total failure is a definite option (the party dies, the world ends) they should play shorter adventure paths (super-adventures), rather than long campaigns. That way the DM will not be wasting times fleshing out worlds and plots that can end at every moment.

 

[Will Doyle]

As a DM, I try to avoid a TPK under almost any circumstance if the players are heavily invested in their characters.

This said, characters still die often, and the group as a whole can still fail catastrophically.

Things I've done in the past when a TPK happens to an invested group:

• Had the last surviving characters KO'd instead of killed, and then thrown before the villain.
• Had them raised by a third party as part of some hidden agenda, with "kill switches" embedded into their skulls.
• Had the dead characters partially eaten on the battlefield by ghouls, so they rise as ghouls themselves.
• Had the characters wake up a few days into the past, thrown back by the schemes of a mischievous god, so they could prevent their real selves from dying without them knowing (surprisingly, this worked really well!)

In short, a great loss can often be turned on its head to become a defining moment of a campaign.

 

[the Jester]

Ok, in all the fights, DM can fright us almost killing the group, but in the end some miracle happens and the monsters always miss the attacks or uses poor tactics and we always won the combat.

The DM does not want to ruin the campaing with a TPK, specially a long campaing with detailed characters and everything else. So, in fact, experienced players "knows" they WILL win the fight or the DM is gonna having problem rebuilding a new campaing. This takes of all the feelings of dungerous, like a tactic game you always win. So, why we have to "study" to build a decent character if we gonna win the combat anyway?

On occasional games, TPK can happen, but I never saw in campaings

Oh, tpks happen in campaigns all right. As both a player and a dm, I can attest to that!

Perhaps your dm is too unwilling to kill the pcs; that's a shame. But don't think for a second that means that all dms are like that. I am notorious for running a pretty lethal game; at one point we invited a new prospective gamer to sit in on a session of my epic 3e game, and... we had a tpk. (He still joined up with us, though!)

The best way to handle this concern, honestly, is to talk to your dm and let him know that you feel that your characters aren't really at risk; let him know basically what you said in your first post.

 

[wedgeski]

I believe there are many ways for a DM to keep his campaign going without cheating for the party in order to avoid a TPK. Actually, I think challenges like this are what keeps the game fun for the DM. If i wanted to make a story and have it develop exactly as I imagined it I would just sit in my hammock and imagine the story unfolding all day long. The element of chaos that dice and players introduce are what makes it fun to see your world develop and your plot turn out much deeper than you imagined.

In short, a great loss can often be turned on its head to become a defining moment of a campaign.

Well-said both.

What I did was ask myself: what happens if the PC's are the *only* ones placed to seriously affect the bad guy's plans, and then they go and get themselves killed? My players know that some kind of very nasty necromantic forces are arraying themselves to consume the world of the living, even if they don't know the exact details, so one of the campaign options I discussed with them was a post-apocalyptic version of the existing campaign. In fact, that's the one that ultimately won the vote, and boy would I have had some fun with that.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In 34 years in roleplaying games, I've only game mastered over 1 TPK...and in that case, the players' stupidity did them in.

What I try to do is establish that I'm willing to kill characters, so I don't generally fudge things in the players' favor. At some point, a PC will die or will get so close to dying that only extreme measures kept them from doing so... And then I'm free to fudge if I feel like it, because the threat has been established.

Because once the players think, "He's killed before- he could do it again!", the threat of a TPK is always there.

But the other side of the equation is not to overmatch your players' PCs every combat so that you NEED to fudge. Otherwise, they'll notice- just as your friend did- that you always succeed, even when you have no reasonable expectation of doing so.

That TPK? They thought I was kidding about something being a Sphere of Annihilation. So one guy touched it. *ZZZAP*

Thinking I was kidding, and that the black thing was actually a disguised teleportation device, another PC touched it. *ZZZAP* I told them again that it was a Sphere of Annihilation. Another PC touched it. *ZZZAP*

It was like watching bugs drawn to an electric bug zapper light as one by one, each PC walked up to it and *ZZZAP*.

(Remember A Bug's Life? "Don't go into the light!" "I can't help it!" *ZAP*)

 

[keterys]

I'm guilty enough of altering my tactics to avoid killing people... but I roll everything on the table and don't really like the idea of altering dice to softball things. Not bothering to use certain abilities, maybe, but I'd rather not change crits to misses or whatever.

I've never TPKed, but I've had _3_ TPKs narrowly avoided by someone rolling a 20 to spend a surge while down.

 

[KarinsDad]

What I try to do is establish that I'm willing to kill characters, so I don't generally fudge things in the players' favor.

I don't ever fudge dice rolls. I roll all of the dice in front of the players.

I rarely fudge NPC actions. One exception to this is when a PC is unconscious on the ground. Last week, I had these elementals that could shift through PC squares, attacking each PC as it went. Each time I did this attack, an elemental would shift through multiple PC squares, but only if the PC was not unconscious. The elementals were not very bright, so it didn't make a lot of sense for them to target unconscious PCs.

Typically, I wait to target unconscious PCs with a reoccurring villain. The villain has fought them before and it's about the third time the PCs have come back, so the villain will target unconscious foes, just so that they won't bother him a fourth time.


My preferred method for making the campaign seem deadly, but to still avoid TPKs, is to give the PCs "go to the well" items. If each PC has one or more Daily items, they have options to save their own bacon without me having to do anything to help. It doesn't always work, but it does take the responsibility of trying to save an encounter from myself as DM to the players.