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Kaww
2010-11-08, 02:43 PM
What are reasonable circumstances for a TPK to happen?

I'd say that bad dice rolls and bad ideas are reasonably often causes of TPKs. I'm just asking: 'What do you think, is it ok to do it to punish your group for OoG behavior which is game related - like talking, being rude, being late, standing you up etc?

I'm not asking this if the DM is to blame: 'They don't follow the rails, they killed that cr 25 dragon in one round because I forgot they have slaycr25inaround item which I forgot I gave them...'

Duke of URL
2010-11-08, 02:54 PM
No, it's bad form to kill off (or even punish) characters to punish players. If a player is being disruptive or rude, talk to them about it, and eventually uninvite them if the problems can't be overcome.

BlckDv
2010-11-08, 02:57 PM
I'm not crystal clear on the OP question, but in a nutshell:

When the dice say it happens, most of the time.

A TPK should never be the result of a fiat narration by the DM or a "cut scene" unless this was a mutual decision by a party who had grown tired of (or at least ready to end) a campaign.

Edit to add: Likewise a TPK is always an in-game event, dealing with problem players should not equal punishing their PCs.

In my games, as long as the party had a fair knowledge of the danger of an encounter (or had ignored the means to gain such knowledge willfully), I usually let the dice ride.

If a party ended up in a situation that outclassed them by sheer bad luck (or sometimes DM ignorance/mistake... rolled a random attack on camp that ended up being nastier than expected) or with no reasonable way to have known, I will try to work in an "escape hatch" to allow the party to escape without a TPK, whether it is a way to retreat I had not originally intended, being captured with a chance to escape, or something similar.

On the flip side, if the party elects *not* to flee when they can and have already noted OOC they know the fight outclasses them, I let the dice ride.

dsmiles
2010-11-08, 02:59 PM
Personally, no. TPKs are more of a 'crap happens' scenario in my book.

Meaning: "CRAP! I forgot you only had 5 hp left when you took 15 hp of damage!"

I don't TPK on purpose, unless the campaign grows stale, and the players want to roll new characters. Even then, I usually just hand-wave it.

Meaning: "Ok guys, the last party died in a horrible hunting accident. A horrible atropal hunting accident, that is."

Callista
2010-11-08, 02:59 PM
Yeah, constant TPKs are a sign of a bad DM... well, that or terminally stupid players.

You want to get as close to TPK as you can get without actually killing any characters or making everyone so paranoid that they are afraid to try things.

BBEG fights can kill off one or more PCs. Most other fights shouldn't, though they sometimes will because that's the way the dice roll. At higher levels as resurrection becomes easier, replace "kill off" with "irretrievably kill off" (destruction of souls and similar unrecoverable situations).

If you are at the very end of a campaign, a TPK pyrrhic victory is fine.

Kaww
2010-11-08, 03:07 PM
I'm not crystal clear on the OP question...

What I meant was: Did you do them, how did you feel about it happening when it shouldn't have happened, did you do them on purpose?

I fudge it, unless party gets in a nochanceinhellwillyouwinthis and they don't see death playing with it's agricultural instrument of choice...

Edit:
You want to get as close to TPK as you can get without actually killing any characters or making everyone so paranoid that they are afraid to try things.

Yeah, but in this attempt you may misjudge what your players might do. Famous last words: 'I don't need healing. So what if I lost 90 hp in last round I still have 100 remaining...'

Callista
2010-11-08, 03:08 PM
If there's no chance of losing, then winning isn't as fun. Let the dice fall as they may.

But don't set up situations where those dice are highly likely to fall in ways that kill everybody.

dsmiles
2010-11-08, 03:14 PM
If there's no chance of losing, then winning isn't as fun. Let the dice fall as they may.

Let's not get into that debate again. I prefer not to TPK, so I won't, unless I'm distracted and forget to look at my DM sheets where I keep track of the HP, AC, Saves, and some skills for each character. (That's why I never need to ask "What's your AC again?") If there is TPK danger, I minimize some damage rolls, or occasionally miss when the dice indicate a hit. That's what DM screens are for. (Well, that and hiding my notes/minis.)

Kaww
2010-11-08, 03:18 PM
Let's not get into that debate again. I prefer not to TPK, so I won't, unless I'm distracted and forget to look at my DM sheets where I keep track of the HP, AC, Saves, and some skills for each character. (That's why I never need to ask "What's your AC again?") If there is TPK danger, I minimize some damage rolls, or occasionally miss when the dice indicate a hit. That's what DM screens are for. (Well, that and hiding my notes/minis.)

But this and "What did you say your fort WAS?" are foundations for a fun paranoid party... :smallfrown: I also have my notes, doesn't every DM have these?

dsmiles
2010-11-08, 03:20 PM
But this and "What did you say your fort WAS?" are foundations for a fun paranoid party... :smallfrown: I also have my notes, doesn't every DM have these?

I actually just use the occasional random die roll behind the screen, followed by a meaningful look at one of the players. Either that, or I'll take a player aside, discuss the weather, and tell said player that our conversation is secret, and is not to be repeated. I also pass notes. (Sometimes, they even have writing on them.)

Works wonders on the rest of the party.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-11-08, 03:30 PM
It is never OK to plan a TPK and then force the Players to play through it. Railroading is bad enough; railroading someone to death is even worse.

On a related note, never let your OOC interfere with your IC. This means no IC penalties for OOC action: it turns the RL portion of running a RPG into a game as well and that can lead to terrible results.

BTW - I would include XP penalties for OOC actions within the "never do" category; better to talk to the Player directly if he's doing something OOC that is disruptive to the game.

When to TPK
(1) When the Players want it
If the Players want their characters to die, let them. If all the Players want their party to die, make it so. Usually used to end the game on a Heroic note.

(2) When the dice demand it and it's not the DM's fault
Players learn from trial and error. Allowing them to survive when they should be dead to rights will lead to a game where your Players will make increasingly suicidal plans. To counter this, you can either make OOC statements about the obvious flaws in their plan (not recommended) or you can let the dice do the talking.

The trick is to "shout three times before firing:"

The first shout is usually IC description - the heavy guard out front, tales of horrible death. This reaily works.

The second shout is a Wake Up Call Boss (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WakeUpCallBoss); a brutal encounter that will drop several PCs (and may kill one) but which they will be able to ultimately win. This usually is enough to get Players to rethink their tactics.

The third shout is Impending Doom. Make sure the PCs can see the TPK Encounter coming and that they have time to run. Make sure they know it's as bad as a the Wake-Up Call Boss they just faced, and then some. A boss this tough can be defeated if the PCs are fresh, but trying to face it right after getting shellacked by the Wake-Up Call Boss before it is going to be murder. Note that it is essential that "running away" must be a clear and realistic option before the Doom descends upon the PCs.

If the PCs still press on, fire. Designed properly, some of the PCs might be able to escape with their lives and a healthy appreciation of looking before they leap. But if they don't, then at least the Players will have learned this lesson when they roll up their new characters :smallamused:

Kaww
2010-11-08, 03:40 PM
It is never OK to plan a TPK and then force the Players to play through it. Railroading is bad enough; railroading someone to death is even worse.

On a related note, never let your OOC interfere with your IC. This means no IC penalties for OOC action: it turns the RL portion of running a RPG into a game as well and that can lead to terrible results.

BTW - I would include XP penalties for OOC actions within the "never do" category; better to talk to the Player directly if he's doing something OOC that is disruptive to the game.

When to TPK
(1) When the Players want it
If the Players want their characters to die, let them. If all the Players want their party to die, make it so. Usually used to end the game on a Heroic note.

(2) When the dice demand it and it's not the DM's fault
Players learn from trial and error. Allowing them to survive when they should be dead to rights will lead to a game where your Players will make increasingly suicidal plans. To counter this, you can either make OOC statements about the obvious flaws in their plan (not recommended) or you can let the dice do the talking.

The trick is to "shout three times before firing:"

The first shout is usually IC description - the heavy guard out front, tales of horrible death. This reaily works.

The second shout is a Wake Up Call Boss (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WakeUpCallBoss); a brutal encounter that will drop several PCs (and may kill one) but which they will be able to ultimately win. This usually is enough to get Players to rethink their tactics.

The third shout is Impending Doom. Make sure the PCs can see the TPK Encounter coming and that they have time to run. Make sure they know it's as bad as a the Wake-Up Call Boss they just faced, and then some. A boss this tough can be defeated if the PCs are fresh, but trying to face it right after getting shellacked by the Wake-Up Call Boss before it is going to be murder. Note that it is essential that "running away" must be a clear and realistic option before the Doom descends upon the PCs.

If the PCs still press on, fire. Designed properly, some of the PCs might be able to escape with their lives and a healthy appreciation of looking before they leap. But if they don't, then at least the Players will have learned this lesson when they roll up their new characters :smallamused:

Please read the clarification of the question. I'm not seeking advice, when I do I include help needed somewhere in my first post. I'm just asking for both player's and DM's view and their experiences...

Amphetryon
2010-11-08, 03:45 PM
It is never OK to plan a TPK and then force the Players to play through it. Railroading is bad enough; railroading someone to death is even worse.

On a related note, never let your OOC interfere with your IC. This means no IC penalties for OOC action: it turns the RL portion of running a RPG into a game as well and that can lead to terrible results.

BTW - I would include XP penalties for OOC actions within the "never do" category; better to talk to the Player directly if he's doing something OOC that is disruptive to the game.

When to TPK
(1) When the Players want it
If the Players want their characters to die, let them. If all the Players want their party to die, make it so. Usually used to end the game on a Heroic note.

(2) When the dice demand it and it's not the DM's fault
Players learn from trial and error. Allowing them to survive when they should be dead to rights will lead to a game where your Players will make increasingly suicidal plans. To counter this, you can either make OOC statements about the obvious flaws in their plan (not recommended) or you can let the dice do the talking.

The trick is to "shout three times before firing:"

The first shout is usually IC description - the heavy guard out front, tales of horrible death. This reaily works.

The second shout is a Wake Up Call Boss (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WakeUpCallBoss); a brutal encounter that will drop several PCs (and may kill one) but which they will be able to ultimately win. This usually is enough to get Players to rethink their tactics.

The third shout is Impending Doom. Make sure the PCs can see the TPK Encounter coming and that they have time to run. Make sure they know it's as bad as a the Wake-Up Call Boss they just faced, and then some. A boss this tough can be defeated if the PCs are fresh, but trying to face it right after getting shellacked by the Wake-Up Call Boss before it is going to be murder. Note that it is essential that "running away" must be a clear and realistic option before the Doom descends upon the PCs.

If the PCs still press on, fire. Designed properly, some of the PCs might be able to escape with their lives and a healthy appreciation of looking before they leap. But if they don't, then at least the Players will have learned this lesson when they roll up their new characters :smallamused:

Just FYI, not only have I seen the warning system completely fail to deter the party from a suicidal course, but I've been told, on this very board and others, that setting them against the Wake-Up Call Boss when they could not reasonably (ie, with a loss of 20% or less of their resources) expect to defeat said boss was both railroading and Bad DMing.

In other words, YMMV.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-11-08, 04:22 PM
Please read the clarification of the question. I'm not seeking advice, when I do I include help needed somewhere in my first post. I'm just asking for both player's and DM's view and their experiences...
Well, you have mine then :smallbiggrin:

That is how I do it. Whenever a TPK (or near TPK) happens, I always ask my Players what they were thinking. Depending on their answers I can either clear up misconceptions or alter my signaling for future games. Consequently, I rarely have TPKs but character deaths are more common.

But, if you want war stories:
In a recent D&D4 game, my Players were tasked with assaulting a Gnoll Fortress. After being told that previous parties had driven out the gnolls by bleeding them white through skirmishes and ambushes, they decided to sneak into the Fortress and assault the main keep. Fine.

Before they attacked the keep, they made a disturbance (i.e. shouting loudly outside the fortress) to draw out some gnolls. This brought a hunting party in on the flank, who were them joined by the fortress gate guards. The two groups were minion-heavy and staggered so, while it wasn't a walk in the park it wasn't too hard either. That, with my previous warnings, count as Shout #1.

Now, despite seeing that gnolls were easy to bait, they still want to assault the main tower. They sneak in pretty easily but have a rough time taking care of the gnolls hanging out in the first floor of the tower. Since this dropped an NPC and made the PCs burn through some dailies I figured that was a fine Wake-Up Boss. Plus, two of the baddies they were facing had just run upstairs to alert The Boss that they were coming. Shout #2

Despite this, they barricade their way out (afraid, apparently, that the gnoll camp hundreds of yards away would be alerted by sounds of violence within the tower :smallsigh:) and charge upstairs without so much as a Short Rest. There they find the Gnoll Chieftan and his bodyguard. On the first round, the flanking and charging nearly kills one PC; yet, despite being by the stairs and basically out of healing the PCs press into the room. Shout #3 was fired, and they were still advancing.

Now, I could have just gone with the TPK there, but since the Players were still pretty new, I allowed them to escape with their lives; well, most of them - one PC was killed stone dead in the meantime. The justification I used was fairly weak: the PCs had finally achieved a defensible position and the Chief had just been knocked back pretty hard - so the Gnolls ran out to the camp to get the rest of their forces assembled to overwhelm the PCs. The PCs were then able to slip out the way they came, lugging two corpses with them.

Afterwards, I asked why they did what they did. The reasons

(1) They had assumed that the rest of the gnolls had already trapped them in the tower. When I asked why, they said that they figured I would have told them if the gnolls were not outside the tower. I then informed them what happens when you assume - and that I am not about to spend my time telling them everything they don't hear when they make Perception checks.

(2) They had assumed that, if escape were an option, I would have told them so. I then asked if they wanted me detail all possible options whenever they face an encounter. Chastened, they withdrew their complaint.

It also turns out that they had assumed that the Gnolls were variously master tacticians and mindless animals. I then emphaized the importance of Knowledge checks and made a note to be more explicit when answering Knowledge check questions. Still, even after going back to town to revive their fallen comrades (yes, even the NPC) one of the Players continued to believe that Gnolls were mindless animals until I told him "they're INT 9" which - apparently - was all he needed to hear.
tl;dr: Communication is very important, so be sure to communicate with your Players as much as you can.

@Amphetryon
Don't trust everything you read on the Internet :smalltongue:

IM(V)HO, the my method preserves the risk of failure while providing safeguards against poor encounter design and miscommunication between Players and DMs. In particular, I've found it shocks WotC D&D Players out of their complacence with "level appropriate encounters" without actually setting them up for TPKs. All it takes is a single PC death to get Players to take their planning seriously; even basic "hack & slash" parties start sending out scouts and planning retreats.

For me, this creates the sort of gaming atmosphere that my Players enjoy. Some groups prefer less death; others, more. Obviously YMMV but unless you're at one extreme or another, I think that my approach will work well for the reader.

Kesnit
2010-11-08, 06:29 PM
Communication is very important, so be sure to communicate with your Players as much as you can.

This.

My 4e DM has told us that his campaign is brutal and we can expect PCs to die. That has happened, although my Gnome Artificer has made it from LVL 1 to almost 11. (The only one to do so, though not all were due to PC death.)

In a recent encounter, the party (Human Druid, Human Fighter, and me) encountered some kind of dragon. The dragon asked for an item that the party had just recovered. We'd been told this item was part of another item that could destroy the world. Since we know nothing about this dragon, the last thing we are going to do is hand it over!

The dice hated us. I only had to roll an 11 to hit with any power - and couldn't roll above a 6. The Druid (who was more Defender than Controller) hit only slightly more than I did. The Fighter could hit, but when he was the only one, the dragon wasn't going down. Plus, the DM kept managing to roll to refresh the dragon's breath weapon - which was hitting all of us.

The Fighter and Druid went down. My Artificer managed to run away with 4 HP left.

When the DM asked why we fought, we told him we thought it would be a very bad idea. He said he thought we would turn over the item. But there was no way to know that the dragon wasn't going to use it to destroy the world.

Erom
2010-11-08, 06:47 PM
If there's no chance of losing, then winning isn't as fun. Let the dice fall as they may.

But don't set up situations where those dice are highly likely to fall in ways that kill everybody.
A thousand times this. A game without risk lacks life, lacks interest, lacks vitality.

If you can't lose the game, it's about as interesting as grinding trivial mobs for XP in the MMO of your choice.

Skorj
2010-11-08, 10:03 PM
Once a campaign has been running long enough that the players have invested themselves in the world and their PCs, I'll always set up an IC method for the group to survive a TPK - but with a cost.

The method for this depend on the game and setting. If they're a Good party, then some poweful Good church might offer them "insurance" in return for complying with some specific moral code on a given adventure (effectively raising the difficulty level or annoyance value of many encounters). An Neutral or Evil party might be offered "insurance" by a powerful Evil outsider - if you fall you'll be rezzed, but you'll owe a year's (degrading, horrible) service. Whatever seems to fit the mood.

This preserves the incentive for the party to avoid a TPK, but gives us all the option to continue the campaign after one happens, if we want to.

ryzouken
2010-11-08, 10:45 PM
"Kid gloves" go on at campaign start and are removed once party gains access to reincarnate/resurrection magic. Til then, any PC deaths that occur are "oopsies" on my behalf or measures of just how nasty a midboss NPC is. Once they get res magic til the BBEG at the end, player deaths will occur when the dice fall that way, and monsters will routinely fight intelligently, if suicidally in most instances (they're in their own homes, ne? Makes sense they'd fight to the death to protect said homes in most cases).

BBEG is a game changer. I will play them ruthlessly and work for that TPK. Last game I ran was Legacy of Fire, and my write up of Jhavul (Pathfinder-ization of the 3.5 statline) saw him break three rules of NPC creation and he single-handedly slew 2 PC's, the druid's companion, and two important NPC's before getting dealt with. It literally boiled down to a race as the party tried to whittle off the last 100 hp off the efreet before he shredded the rogue, wizard, and cleric (he dropped the fighter and the druid in as many rounds).

I wouldn't gun for a TPK in every encounter, but I definitely wouldn't shy from it when it comes to important fights. Sometimes heroes lose. The rest of the time, they rise to the higher challenge and win out against horrendous odds. Ultimately it's those near TPK fights that players remember.