TPK - Therapy session.

[was]

.....I have some questions. Is the DM running a story-arc type campaign? Or is it more of a sandbox approach?
.....In a campaign, I'd say you're probably right to expect reasonable encounters adjusted to be near your level.
.....If it's a sandbox approach, then you cannot expect to charge in and defeat everything that you run across. In this approach, it's up to you to determine when retreating is the better strategy. You cannot leave it up to the DM to make that determination that for you.

 

[Ragmon]

.....I have some questions. Is the DM running a story-arc type campaign? Or is it more of a sandbox approach?
.....In a campaign, I'd say you're probably right to expect reasonable encounters adjusted to be near your level.
.....If it's a sandbox approach, then you cannot expect to charge in and defeat everything that you run across. In this approach, it's up to you to determine when retreating is the better strategy. You cannot leave it up to the DM to make that determination that for you.

We never confirmed it verbally, but it was a story-arc campaign.
(Unnatural winter, ice skeleton groups lead by the wizards familiar. Ice castle on top of a larger rocky hill. FS was asked to look into the occurrences.)

PS: We were lead to the castle via "plot-ghost".

 

[Oryan77]

PS: Even still, using a group of enemies that are minimum of 6 levels higher then the PC group? Let me know if as a DM you ever did that.

I run a Planescape game. I do it all of the time.

I just played in a guys Pathfinder game where he rolled a random encounter (Will-o-Wisp vs a 1st level party). He felt bad and gave us the choice to encounter it. The group said yes, so I went along with it even though I would have voted no. I made them promise one thing though; if I say "run away", we run (cause they never run). They all agreed.

Unfortunately, the Barbarian made a critical hit in the first round and took it down to half HP. All that did was boost his confidence and he is the player I mentioned from my game that I compared to you guys. He thinks he can kill anything with any character, and I've seen a lot of his characters die.

He was the first PC to drop. Then the fighter PC dropped. I told the wizard PC to use a cure potion on the barbarian, then grab the fighter's body, and ride off on our horses while I lured the Will-o-Wisp away. I was a cleric in light armor with a speed of 40 and could cast Predator’s Grace (gain 10ft speed for 1 round) 8 times a day. So I cast a heal on the Barbarian and ran off.

I had to position the end of each move so that a tree trunk was between me and the Will-o-Wisp each round so it could not charge me. I lured it far far away and had to loop back around since I was running out of Predator's Grace. Rather than them keeping their promise to "run away", the confident barbarian figured he could kill it (like he always does with every PC). When I looped back around to get my horse, the Barbarian attacked again without being full HP (we only had 2 cure potions & I used all of my heals on myself when I couldn't avoid the charging Will-o-Wisp). The barbarian dropped that very round, and I made 1 last effort to rescue him, but the Will-o-Wisp finished him off before I could help. So me & the Wizard finally fled. Technically, I fled by round 2 after seeing the 2nd PC drop.

My point is, even when the DM tells you that an encounter is near impossible, the players are not always going to care. It seems like a lot of players won't care. Do you really think you guys would have avoided that encounter if the DM told you, "These guys are much more powerful than you guys"? I'll bet money on it that even metagaming and giving out the CR won't deter some groups from attacking a CR 6 levels higher. And I don't like to metagame like that as a DM. I'll keep it in-game and leave it up to the players to pick up on my cues.

 

[MarkB]

Managing a retreat can be a difficult problem in D&D, compounded by party disagreement over when it's necessary, D&D's movement rules, and the options the opposition may have for impeding retreat.

I've rarely seen it pulled off without casualties. On one memorable occasion a couple of years ago, the party's fighter and paladin basically fought over who would get to be the one that stayed at the back of the group to cover their retreat, both slowing to a crawl as they insisted the other one go first.

 

[Wiseblood]

TPK'd by the Fighter. Oryan77 was that Kingmaker? Yeah... I did that too.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

DM should warn players, but it doesn't always take. Some DMs will got to incredible lengths to warn players, and sometimes it still does not take.

Here, I'll give an example from my own Dark Sun campaign. The PCs were 7th-level, and they were facing an 11th-level boss (plus allies). Not fighting him directly yet, but they knew who he was, and he knew who they were, and that he was coming for them, since they carrying "psychic Jesus", as one player described an allied NPC. The villain was a high templar, not the StarCraft variety Templars are basically evil cleric/warlock-types serving the sorcerer-king of a city, so this was the templar's turf.

The PCs didn't immediately head out of town (like they were "supposed" to do) because the bad guy had captured a bunch of their friends and they wanted to get them back. Even putting aside this guy's power, they would probably fail. A real-life jailbreak is hard to do, and while the PCs had extraordinary abilities, so did their opponents, so it "evens out".

The PCs were too motivated to do the smart thing, so I had to find a way to curb their enthusiasm. Overnight, the bad guy, who was frantically trying to catch them, spent a big chunk of his office's finances spreading Alarm rituals near the docks (since he figured the PCs would try to steal silt skimmers from there), and each Alarm would specifically should out the name of the sector it was in (using names like "Red Beans" because the NPCs were generally illiterate). He also took the giant-killer teams (consisting of dwarf slayers and some other elite troops, about the PCs' level, although he couldn't have known that) off their usual giant-killing duties and spread them in the dock area.

The PCs tried to sneak to the docks, only for the Alarms to go off. The Alarms were set to the templar's level (so they used his stats; they were nearly impossible to see and nearly impossible to sneak past because they were +4 levels on the PCs) but the PCs didn't even seem to notice that. However, they did notice that sneaking was basically impossible. The first team of giant-killers fell on the PCs, and the PCs won, but only barely. Only then did they realize they were in over their heads. They figured they'd prompt multiple teams to fall on them and possibly kill them before they even met the boss! The PCs left the city, and a very angry templar wasted several hours trying to find them before he realized they had left! Also, he was tired, and had to be taken after them on a relatively slow wagon. (The PCs later killed him, several days later, when they occupied a strong position and were able to free their friends. Total victory for them, just not right away.)

That was... a lot of effort. It's a good thing I've basically memorized the rules behind the most interesting rituals and pre-made "traps" out of them. (The Eye of Alarm trap in my notes was only level 2, because it's a 2nd-level ritual, but I could consult the DC by level chart for the level 11 version.)

Actually, it seems like the DM gave "some" warning, though insufficient.

killed the a wizards familiar maphit

The familiar's level is normally that of the wizard, so that should have given some hint. However, the DM should have given more hints, such as making that ogre cook and frankly everything else about the castle really tough.

You should have retreated after the first PC died. As many people have stated, round 1 was enough warning at that point. (Or not. It's hard for NPCs to escape, but after the first round, the PCs might have been cooked had the wizard pursued.)

 

[Oryan77]

Oryan77 was that Kingmaker? Yeah... I did that too.

Yeah it was. How did you know that? Is the Will-o-Wisp a known (sucky) random encounter for that 1st adventure?

Our group would have had a chance to defeat it with a little luck and due to our PCs being well built. But the fact is, they didn't retreat like they said they would.

Sometimes I just don't understand how some players don't "get it". The barbarian player said, "if I could have hit it one more time, I probably could have killed it." Then I had to remind him that by that point, it had regenerated back to full HP, he had only 7 HP after becoming conscious, I was out of cure spells & channel energy, & the only reason he knocked it down to half HP is because he got a critical. Then he said, "Oh, yeah."

If they retreated, we could have maybe tried again the next day with a better strategy. I guarantee that if I was in this OP's game, you would see a cloud of dust where my PC was standing on round 3. And it wouldn't be from disintegration. Then he'd be meeting a new group of adventurers to continue forward. Or if that PC Cleric couldn't escape on his initiative on round 3, why not surrender? At that point, what is there to lose? Why on earth would he spend his action attacking the fighter? What the hell does he think will happen after that action? I don't get why PCs would rather die than just surrender.

I've never been involved in a TPK, cause I don't stand my ground till the end. Some of my fondest memories of a D&D session have to do with me surrendering, and then orchestrating my escape later on.

 

[n00bdragon]

Your DM executed it incorrectly. If he doesn't effectively communicate that a fight will probably end in your death then it is squarely his fault when you die in to a massively more powerful foe. D&D is a game about fighting things. This is why 99% of the rules are devoted to fighting things. The default expectation of the players is (and should be) to fight things because that is generally what their characters are best at (and if your character is better at something than fighting you probably ought to question why you are playing D&D specifically).

If he did it by accident he's incompetent. Hopefully he's learned and you'll give him another chance.

If he did it on purpose he's a jerk and I wouldn't recommend playing with him again.

 

[was]

We started getting suspicious when the enemy cleric (woman in a dress) didn't get hit with a 22 attack. Well that and that the fighter attacked 3 times as a full-round action and dealt 14 dmg with a long sword when he rolled a 2.

...It looks like you're running a 3.5 campaign. If so, then yes, the DM probably made the encounter too powerful for your group to overcome. A 5th level NPC cleric with an AC of over 22 is a little much. So is a 5th level fighter with 3 attacks per round and +12 to his damage rolls.
...However, your post states that your objective was to gather intel on these folks, not attack them. If so, they were probably recurring villains that you were expected to fight later, when you were higher level. In that scenario, I would have to side with the DM.
...It's important to remember that role-playing relies heavily on creative problem solving. Brute force is not always the best answer. Sometimes it helps to stop, regroup and come at the problem from a different angle.
...but still, my condolences on the TPK. Regardless of how they occurred, they always suck.

 

[the Jester]

Sounds like you guys had the early warning signs of a very dangerous/lethal encounter and walked right into it. How is the DM at fault here?

No-one is at fault. It was the DM's choice, we did not argue...I called BS tho.

Isn't calling BS, in this instance, pretty much laying the blame at the DM's feet?

A warning is consistent DM-ing.

That and it was one of those situations where we got the drop on the enemy, even tho they noticed us.
Buffed up and ready to go, we were assuming a high level wizard, hence no retreating on the 11d6+ warning shot, and a Large Wasp has a nice grapple check to take em out of the fight fast.

Round 1
- us getting damaged.
- summoning the wasp and grappling the wizard, wizard activating Dimension Door are a ready action or a contingency spell.
- FS running in and criting the fighter for 35+ dmg.
- Ranger drank 2 potions.
- Fighter full-attacks the FS, FS dies.
*Yea its a fair warning, we were doing alright until the fighter attacked 3 freakin' times, probably power attacking and still hitting the 26 AC of the FS*

Round 2
- Ranger attacks the fighter with a makeshift javelin, misses.
- Cleric casts prayer.
- Wasp attacks the woman, missing with a 22, even tho she is in a dress, that is fine.
- The woman casts Unholy Blight.
- Fighter full-attacks the ranger, ranger dies.
*See the pattern? *

Round 3
- Cleric attacks the fighter, some damage is dealt.
- Fighter full-attacks the cleric, cleric dies.
*The fighter never missed an attack, even tho we were all AC 23+, and that he dealt d8+12 on each hit.*

So, was round 1 not a warning enough? No, there was only death.

When one enemy (of a bunch!) cuts down one of the party members in a single round, YES that's a warning.

PS: Even still, using a group of enemies that are minimum of 6 levels higher then the PC group? Let me know if as a DM you ever did that.

I'll do better than that. I'm running 4e (where the influence of level difference on balance is MUCH stronger than in 3e, IMHO), and my 19th to 20th level pcs just had an encounter with a 33rd level elite npc who hit them all (except the pixie who had flown off to throw a lever), in her first action, for 60 to 120 points each (120 on a hit/60 on a miss).

Said lvl 33 monster had a TON of lackeys of various sorts, from level 15 to level 20, with her.

So did my group have a TPK? Nope. Why not? I assure you, it isn't because I play nice; I don't. My super-intelligent 33rd level bad guys fight like super-intelligent bad guys who have been around long enough to achieve 33rd level- they don't pick the pc with the most remaining hps to attack, they don't give the pcs time to recover, they don't stay in flanking. No- the party escaped a TPK because they ran like Hell!

So, while you have my condolences, it really sounds like the encounter's difficulty was telegraphed fairly to me (it was a scouting/don't attack mission, you got hit by an 11-dice spell, etc). Definitely fair play IMHO.