Henrix
Explorer
There is an interesting article about TPKs up on Wizards’ site.
How they happen, what happens and how to avoid them, both from a players and a DM’s perspective.
Now, I recently had, or perhaps I should say inflicted, a TPK (or, well, really a NTPP, read below), so I am interested in the subject. Nothing stops a campaign in its tracks as firmly as a badly timed TPK.
The article spelled out some ways that make TPKs happen.
The main reasons I've seen are a lack of communication between the party members, the just-one-more-room-before-we-rest syndrome, and of course a lot of really bad luck and feeble dice rolling.
What other causes of TPK are there, and what varieties of the above are there?
And, not the least important, do you have any funny TPK stories to share?
My two most memorable TPKs are the Domino TPK and the one I mentioned earlier, the NTPP. I am 90%+ DM, so both are from games I’ve DMed, and they both caught me unawares at the time.
The Domino TPK.
The bold adventurers are down in a dungeon and haven’t really met anything yet, barring some nuisance, when a bunch of Shadows step out of the walls.
First round one of them hits the combat focussed Cleric, and drains 6 points of strength from him. Cleric rolls miserably on his Turn Undead and fail. The rest of the party kill all but one of the Shadows, but the Cleric dies in the three rounds the combat takes (one hit each round doing 6, 4 and 6 points of Strength damage. They start to pull out, knowing there’s still a wounded Shadow lurking nearby in the walls.
1d4 rounds later the Cleric becomes a Shadow! And the wounded Shadow steps forth again.
A few rounds later both Shadows are down, but so’s another party member (the rogue? I don’t remember).
1d4 rounds later he rises as a Shadow, hunting after the rest of the now rather scared party (all are low on Strength, if I reall correctly).
This time they, or at least the two remaining memebers, destroy the Shadow, only to be confronted with their lastly killed friend’s Shadow the round after.
They both start to run. The shadow catches up with the fighter, who is rather encumbered as he only has a Strength of four or thereabouts, and kills him too.
The last member, the Wizard, and the druid’s animal companion, a wolverine, is running all they can for the entrance and daylight. But Shadows have a fly speed of 40 and can pass through walls…..
The wolverine, Logan, survives, and lives happily still, even if he is a bit afraid of shadows.
The NTPP, or Near Total Party Petrification
This time it starts with the heroes hearing sounds of approaching movement from two different directions. The elven barbarian/sorcerer/dragon disciple and the dwarven fighter charges of in direction of some of the enemies, a bunch of grimlocks, leaving the druid, the illusionist and the halfling ranger/rogue to fight another grimlock, but this one with a trained basilisk!
All three seemingly panic, and don’t really know what to do. The illusionist casts a phantasmal killer on the beast, but it gets lucky on it’s save.
Then the druid sends her wolf on it and remains close by, trying to hit the basilisk with her bow while averting (50% miss chance) her eyes. The wolf is petrified, followed shortly by the druidess.
The other two scramble away towards where the others are fighting, the basilisk and its keeper slowly ambling after. The halfling just keeps out of sight a bit away, and the illusionist (a little low on spells, having used up a lot earlier) turns invisible and levitates up to the roof. However the grimlock basilisk handler has no trouble sensing the illusionist, and directs the basilisk to look upwards towards him. And since he’s only averting his eyes, not closing them, he turns to a levitating little garden gnome statue.
The fighters are locked in combat this whole time, slowly battering down the tougher grimlock fighters, aided a little by the the halfling taking pot shots from a way off. But then they start falling to the basilisks gaze as well. Still not closing their eyes, which would have been hard, as they wanted to run away at this point, and half speed would not get them out fast enough.
The halfling gets away, though, but with no means of getting the others out and unstoned.
Analysis of some sort
Well, the Domino TPK…. I don’t really know what went wrong there. They had a bit of bad luck against a bunch of Shadows fighting smart (hitting and running through walls and stuff), and I had a streak of really good dice rolls. Can’t really see what they could have done better, except perhaps concentrate their fire a bit.
The NTPP on the other hand was clearly a case where the party didn’t communicate at all with each other. Everyone was fighting only for themselves, and basically nobody was trying to do anything about the basilisk (except a little at the beginning).
But a lot of bad luck was involved, as well. When they averted their eyes they failed their miss chances, while the basilisk succeeded, and nobody succeeded on their fort saves (DC13).
(They had also more or less run past the remains of several earlier petrified victims without stopping to inspect them and being warned.)
How they happen, what happens and how to avoid them, both from a players and a DM’s perspective.
Now, I recently had, or perhaps I should say inflicted, a TPK (or, well, really a NTPP, read below), so I am interested in the subject. Nothing stops a campaign in its tracks as firmly as a badly timed TPK.
The article spelled out some ways that make TPKs happen.
The main reasons I've seen are a lack of communication between the party members, the just-one-more-room-before-we-rest syndrome, and of course a lot of really bad luck and feeble dice rolling.
What other causes of TPK are there, and what varieties of the above are there?
And, not the least important, do you have any funny TPK stories to share?
My two most memorable TPKs are the Domino TPK and the one I mentioned earlier, the NTPP. I am 90%+ DM, so both are from games I’ve DMed, and they both caught me unawares at the time.
The Domino TPK.
The bold adventurers are down in a dungeon and haven’t really met anything yet, barring some nuisance, when a bunch of Shadows step out of the walls.
First round one of them hits the combat focussed Cleric, and drains 6 points of strength from him. Cleric rolls miserably on his Turn Undead and fail. The rest of the party kill all but one of the Shadows, but the Cleric dies in the three rounds the combat takes (one hit each round doing 6, 4 and 6 points of Strength damage. They start to pull out, knowing there’s still a wounded Shadow lurking nearby in the walls.
1d4 rounds later the Cleric becomes a Shadow! And the wounded Shadow steps forth again.
A few rounds later both Shadows are down, but so’s another party member (the rogue? I don’t remember).
1d4 rounds later he rises as a Shadow, hunting after the rest of the now rather scared party (all are low on Strength, if I reall correctly).
This time they, or at least the two remaining memebers, destroy the Shadow, only to be confronted with their lastly killed friend’s Shadow the round after.
They both start to run. The shadow catches up with the fighter, who is rather encumbered as he only has a Strength of four or thereabouts, and kills him too.
The last member, the Wizard, and the druid’s animal companion, a wolverine, is running all they can for the entrance and daylight. But Shadows have a fly speed of 40 and can pass through walls…..
The wolverine, Logan, survives, and lives happily still, even if he is a bit afraid of shadows.
The NTPP, or Near Total Party Petrification
This time it starts with the heroes hearing sounds of approaching movement from two different directions. The elven barbarian/sorcerer/dragon disciple and the dwarven fighter charges of in direction of some of the enemies, a bunch of grimlocks, leaving the druid, the illusionist and the halfling ranger/rogue to fight another grimlock, but this one with a trained basilisk!
All three seemingly panic, and don’t really know what to do. The illusionist casts a phantasmal killer on the beast, but it gets lucky on it’s save.
Then the druid sends her wolf on it and remains close by, trying to hit the basilisk with her bow while averting (50% miss chance) her eyes. The wolf is petrified, followed shortly by the druidess.
The other two scramble away towards where the others are fighting, the basilisk and its keeper slowly ambling after. The halfling just keeps out of sight a bit away, and the illusionist (a little low on spells, having used up a lot earlier) turns invisible and levitates up to the roof. However the grimlock basilisk handler has no trouble sensing the illusionist, and directs the basilisk to look upwards towards him. And since he’s only averting his eyes, not closing them, he turns to a levitating little garden gnome statue.
The fighters are locked in combat this whole time, slowly battering down the tougher grimlock fighters, aided a little by the the halfling taking pot shots from a way off. But then they start falling to the basilisks gaze as well. Still not closing their eyes, which would have been hard, as they wanted to run away at this point, and half speed would not get them out fast enough.
The halfling gets away, though, but with no means of getting the others out and unstoned.
Analysis of some sort
Well, the Domino TPK…. I don’t really know what went wrong there. They had a bit of bad luck against a bunch of Shadows fighting smart (hitting and running through walls and stuff), and I had a streak of really good dice rolls. Can’t really see what they could have done better, except perhaps concentrate their fire a bit.
The NTPP on the other hand was clearly a case where the party didn’t communicate at all with each other. Everyone was fighting only for themselves, and basically nobody was trying to do anything about the basilisk (except a little at the beginning).
But a lot of bad luck was involved, as well. When they averted their eyes they failed their miss chances, while the basilisk succeeded, and nobody succeeded on their fort saves (DC13).
(They had also more or less run past the remains of several earlier petrified victims without stopping to inspect them and being warned.)
