D&D 5E You've just TPK'd in the final fight. What do?

[Fauchard1520]

Suppose your party TPK’d in the final fight. Would you reset and try again? Would you accept defeat? Or would you expect your GM to fudge the dice just enough to keep the BAD ENDING from ruining a good campaign? What's your philosophy of failure when it comes to the campaign finale?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

 

[Maxperson]

Start a new campaign. If the failure has long reaching effects on my game, then the next campaign will have those in effect. I once had a massive orc invasion in the forgotten realms, from the same area that Obould(sp) came from. This was before that story, so neener neener. Anyway, the party had been prophesized to be the only one that could stop it. They failed. The next campaign had much of the area below the Anouroch occupied by the orcs. The new group had to deal with that reality during their campaign.

 

[John R Davis]

My group did the Kingmaker AP and lost at the last hurdle. Everyone seemed fine with it.

 

[thullgrim]

Apply consequences. If there’s not failure state you don’t really have an tension.

Failing to stop the meteor means the meteors slams in planet fantasy. Narrate outcomes. Show players the consequences and then time jump for the new campaign into the new starting position where they can recognize what happens.

 

[overgeeked]

No reason for death to be the end. Resurrection. Raise dead. Animate dead. Have the party come back a decade later and fix their screw up. Bring them back as undead and have them fight to regain control of themselves…then go fix their screw up. Have them wake in the afterlife and have to fight and/or convince their way back to the mortal realm to fix their mistake.

 

[el-remmen]

I can understand a group feeling disappointed with this outcome in a campaign where that final boss fight was the main goal throughout and failing it means big picture failure and a sense of "having done it all for nothing."
In a campaign with a variety of large and small, related and unrelated goals and/or goals determined by players that fit their character it'd be less of an an overall disappointment because your group could have accomplished plenty of other significant goals satisfactorily.

That said, I like the idea of starting a new campaign that begins with the consequences of that failure upon the world and looking for new ways and goals to overcome it.

 

[Reynard]

While the TPK would stand, if everyone wanted to try it again to "see how it might have gone otherwise" assuming it ended too quickly. I would do the same if the bad guy went down in a quick, unsatisfying way: consequences stand, but let's see how it might have gone.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No reason for death to be the end. Resurrection. Raise dead. Animate dead. Have the party come back a decade later and fix their screw up. Bring them back as undead and have them fight to regain control of themselves…then go fix their screw up. Have them wake in the afterlife and have to fight and/or convince their way back to the mortal realm to fix their mistake.

I did something like the last one, once. The PCs had access to rez magic and to time magic, and the ear of a mostly benevolent trickster god (basically Sehanine with some stuff added), and I kind of hinted at there being options, narrated the afterlife a bit, and they bit and started coming up with ideas, which I ran with.

In the end, they got a top-down view of their own past showing what they failed to do that would have made the battle easier, and got a set of epic boons, and got air dropped at the BBEG’s secondary base, and destroyed her forces in an Age of Ultron style sweep.

Then they hunted down the BBEG again, and fixed their mistake. And then they died, as their renewed life had been a loan, not a gift.

 

[Reynard]

Have them wake in the afterlife and have to fight and/or convince their way back to the mortal realm to fix their mistake.

I recently worked on a module that does exactly this.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Not so much a TPK, but a total defeat (wizardwas alive but could not cast spells any more) we had it happen... we did a wrap up night talking about how bad things got worse... then moved to a new campaign.

that was years ago... today if it happened I would immediately pitch "Who wants to make the plucky rebellion 20 years from now?"