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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 7732040" data-attributes="member: 92239">The furthest I've gone down the nobility track with players has either been "ok it's around 15th level and you're the nobles" or "ok it's 1st level and you're all the second/third sons and daughters of nobility".  But as far as mercantile stuff goes, I've had more than a couple players open a "magic shop" with spare stuff they didn't want or couldn't use and expand into other things like mercenary armies.  The harder you play the game, the bigger the opposition gets.  Until you get an LN Imperial Prince and evil Blackguard each with significant resources/armies annoyed at you, you haven't lived as a player.  Especially when one of your other players has significant ties with an Assassin's guild and the church needs to stride the middle to maintain power.  Good times.  Death everywhere.1. Viable exit strategies done on the fly allow the enemies to plan better next time.  Just let one of them live to come after them later with more knowledge of the party's capability and congratulate the players.  They'll feel good, until they don't.2. Cowards that live get reputations.  Have one of the new player characters secretly be a relation of one who died saving him with a strong opinion of who is at fault.  The coward either proves himself and lives or mystery meat shows up at the campfire the next morning for breakfast.3. This is what I like to call the "Your Savior has Arrived" moment. (Thor: Ragnarok)  It's classic for role-playing.  Let them have fun with it.  If I was the coward player, I'd try to commission a bard and have a statue built in the party's hometown later in the campaign.  Preferably with funds that someone else got me.  I'm like that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />For me 5E - Only run a few games with no TPK.  We were just trying to figure out the rules so not a campaign yet.All others - TPK about once a module.  Mostly due to good use of tactics and players not coordinating efficiently at all times, plus I've got good luck with dice (all rolls in front of players)Important to note about my TPK's.  When a TPK is going to happen, my regular players can smell it and generally start acting smart while trying to retreat.  When they don't manage to do so themselves, I do allow at least one, usually two players to escape just so we have game continuity if we're in the middle of a module.  If we're at the big blow off at the end of a module, I don't let up and deaths do happen.  It's up to the group to take precautions to afford whatever version of raise dead they can get their hands on.Just because it's hard to kill players doesn't mean it can't be done regularly.  Figure out what the game's standard difficulty is and if it doesn't suit your preferred playstyle, make it more dangerous.BTW, the shaft la machine is great and gave me a good laugh this morning.  Thanks.KB(edit: Yes I realize that near TPK is not actually TPK, but in the event my players have to run away it's a major shock to their system, moreso than rolling up the new characters to replace those who aren't raised.  Raise magic is not widely available as it's considered heresy by most major religions in my world - Thus the differentiation.  TPKs are nasty.)</blockquote>

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