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ken-do-nim
2006-12-30, 11:10 PM
I thought it would be interesting to have a thread on TPKs you've been through or DM'd. I'll tell you that as a DM, when you've made (or tweaked) the encounter to be just too hard, you get a lurching feeling in your stomach when you realize what's happening, a kinda "oops".

I guess I'll start us off. The party had just finished Lost City, including the extended bit I added about the Temple of Zargon in the city below, and were all about 8th level. I remember flipping through the Monster Manual looking at giants and saying, "Why do they only get 1 attack per round? They are just big people, and all the fighter characters get multiple attacks per round." So the party ran into a wilderness encounter with a group of giants (fire, maybe?) who all had 3/2 attacks per round instead of one. That extra attack made a huge difference, and the party was slaughtered. So that was my oops moment. I had the gods resurrect the party, on condition that they fulfill a mission for them. When I was a newbie DM there was a lot of divine intervention.

Thrawn183
2006-12-30, 11:55 PM
I have a group of 4 13th level pc's with an 11th level sorceror cohort. Since it was their first time playing as a group I decided to throw a 15th level cleric at them to force them to pull out all the stops and show me exactly what they were capable of.
I had already planned for them to all get free true res'es if they died. So I didn't feel bad about the tpk at all. They even still got their signing bonus to work for the dread emperor. The only penalty was they only got 10k gp each for deafeating 2 of the challenges instead of 15k for defeating all three.

Avenger337
2006-12-31, 12:04 AM
Wait, what??? How is that even possible? The cleric should've been slaughtered by the party. Even with all his buffs, the entire party can just gang up on him and pummel him into the ground. If he's lucky the cleric would take one party member with him, and if the party's dumb he could probably get two. I don't see how you could get a TPK with that, though.

Jarl
2006-12-31, 12:35 AM
I'm working towards one with my d20 Modern campaign.

Yes, I realize that d20 Modern, with its high ballistic damage die and "Your Constitution score" massive damage rules is right above Call of Cthulhu on the list of "Life Expectencies in P&P RPGS: Ascending", but I've got wily players and I've been luring them in with a false sense of security and very lame enemies.

-Only two of my players have multiple attacks per round. Can you believe that?

goken04
2006-12-31, 01:43 AM
I had one just last gaming session. Although it was entirely intentional and they were all, essentially, in a basic sense, ressurrected by Pelor himself. But shh, they don't know/understand any of that.

enderrocksonall
2006-12-31, 05:57 AM
We had one a little while ago where the party took down the entire cult of Nehrul. The whole cult went down, except for the lvl 10 cleric. Keep in mind that at the time the party was level drained and had an average level of about 3. Even so we took the whole cult but the cleric beat the living crap out of us using just a dagger he had been enchanting for abpout ten rounds while we took down the cultists.

It actually made for a good story twist since two of us were rezzed by heironious, the favored soul and my pally, and the other two were rezzed by Nehrul himself in exchange for them handing over an artifact that we were looking for. So when we finally get the artifact half the group will be trying to give it to Nehrul and the other half will be trying to destroy it. As an added bonus, all the players and the DM agreed that none of the new players would be told about this, so when it happens they will have to choose sides in this struggle.

Altair_the_Vexed
2006-12-31, 08:16 AM
The D&D Basic game, encounter #3.

My partner and I thought that the Basic Game would be a good introduction to DMing for her, so I took all the characters in the box (4 first levellers - a rogue, a cleric, a wizard and a fighter) and off we went.
We walked the first couple of encounters and then came to a room with a glowing altar and stone coffins. Skeletons rise from the coffins and the altar cackles and fires "arcane bolts" for 1d4+4 (save for half) every round, hitting anyone in any straight line from the squares it occupies. To stop the altar firing said bolts, one has to smash it (AC13 and 32 hp). We aren't using criticals in this basic game, so on average, with everyone attacking it in rotation, it takes the party of four characters two rounds to do 32 hp - but we're also fighting a zombie and a skeleton. Whenever the skeleton is dispatched, a new one rises up, until the altar is destroyed. The altar can kill any of the characters in a couple of rounds, regardless of saves.

Of course, averages don't work too well - one miss from the key damage dealer means you lose another party member to the altar's next bolt. The rules of the basic game (fixed initiatives, no chance to hold actions or set conditions) mean that we can't actually cycle around hitting the altar, and only get two hits in per round... Oh yeah - and the Cleric can't turn or rebuke undead.

We tried that encounter several times, and everyone died, every time - until we changed the altar to have a 1d4 delay between "arcane bolts". Then it became a challenging but possible encounter, using up healing and spells, but no TPK.

The adventure texts gives the characters 300XP for defeating the altar.

blackout
2006-12-31, 09:09 AM
Six words. Level 30 Human Barbarian with enchanted greataxe.

Saph
2006-12-31, 09:19 AM
I think I can top all these stories.

Just yesterday, at my gaming club. It's Dec 30th, so not many people are around. Me and one other guy are playing a 4th-level one-shot with a DM who's theoretically playing in the Forgotten Realms but would much rather be playing Ravenloft. Meanwhile, the main Forgotten Realms campaign, with six players, is running next to us.

You'd think the Ravenloft-esque game would be the lethal one, wouldn't you? Nope. We came through just fine. The main group, on the other hand . . .

They were investigating an orc camp, but found it to be a little tougher than anticipated. The scout got discovered and killed, then the rest of the party was trapped on the forest trail, which was only 5 feet wide with very difficult terrain on either side of it. They got attacked by orcs and a Dire Boar from in front, and while that fight was going on another orc with Improved Trip and a silence spell on him came up behind them and started hitting the spellcasters in the back.

Final body count: four PCs dead, and two unconscious and captured who were about to be taken off to the orc's citadel and sacrificed. No chance of a resurrection, either.

So effectively that's six out of six dead, permanently. I think that gives them the current record. :)

- Saph

blackout
2006-12-31, 09:31 AM
You think that's bad?! I'm in a party of EIGHT. Sure, we may all be humanoid monsters, but we all got killed by one guy, while we all had decent hardware and buffs, and were each about level eight. Sure, he was epic level, but shouldn't we have at least stood a chance?!.

ken-do-nim
2006-12-31, 10:46 AM
I think I can top all these stories.

Just yesterday, at my gaming club. It's Dec 30th, so not many people are around. Me and one other guy are playing a 4th-level one-shot with a DM who's theoretically playing in the Forgotten Realms but would much rather be playing Ravenloft. Meanwhile, the main Forgotten Realms campaign, with six players, is running next to us.

You'd think the Ravenloft-esque game would be the lethal one, wouldn't you? Nope. We came through just fine. The main group, on the other hand . . .

They were investigating an orc camp, but found it to be a little tougher than anticipated. The scout got discovered and killed, then the rest of the party was trapped on the forest trail, which was only 5 feet wide with very difficult terrain on either side of it. They got attacked by orcs and a Dire Boar from in front, and while that fight was going on another orc with Improved Trip and a silence spell on him came up behind them and started hitting the spellcasters in the back.

Final body count: four PCs dead, and two unconscious and captured who were about to be taken off to the orc's citadel and sacrificed. No chance of a resurrection, either.

So effectively that's six out of six dead, permanently. I think that gives them the current record. :)

- Saph

Yeah, I'm surprised more players don't worry about the silence spell. Maybe we should have a thread on "situations you should have contingencies for". A lesser rod of silent metamagic (3000 gp) probably would have saved that party's life.

Lilivati
2006-12-31, 11:04 AM
I used to co-DM with a friend of mine a lot, and at one point we were running a bunch of one-shots for various people, most of whom we hadn't played with before. Most of these were fairly clear-cut games intended to be over in a few hours.

The one this party had selected to play was a goblin hunt, and it's hard to get more basic than that. Our style of DMing requires the players to have a certain level of interaction with their world- i.e., talking to NPCs, making checks, actually using the information from the checks we make for them... Had the players actually used the knowledge we were giving them, or asked any of about 4 NPCs about the goblin situation in the area, they would have known there was a small goblin army augmented by orcs, rather than just the few goblins dancing around a campfire (or whatever it is they thought). With our increasingly unsubtle hints, we were all but telling them point blank, out of character, what the situation was, because although we state quite clearly when we run this kind of thing that the players' lives are in their own hands, we don't actually like seeing them die.

Anyway, they get in the vicinity of the goblins, and despite all evidence for caution, the wizard decides to go bombing over the hill, alone, yelling battlecries, and winds up as a kabob. The rest of the party, caught by surprise by the wizard's actions, follows him in a disorganized fashion, and quickly fall as well. Apparently, although they read the warnings, it was inconceivable to them that DMs might actually let characters take the consequences of their actions...

Athenodorus
2006-12-31, 11:39 AM
Forgive my collosal (+3) ignorance, but what would a silence rod do against a silenced orc? Or am I misunderstanding the story?

Jades
2006-12-31, 11:53 AM
7 level 10 characters in the Kobold metropolis. One round and the entire party died.

Paladin: So, we just go in and slaughter the evil bastards, right?
Barbarian: Yep. I gots cleave on.
Sorcerer: We'll do fine, I'll put the nearest ones to sleep with a few words and gestures, just to take some of the pressure off.
Ranger: Still, we should be careful... they might have trianed guards.
Barbarian: Like last city? Ha!
Rogue: I can get past the guards.

They enter the city.

Its huge, the kobolds lived in caves along the cliff walls, and then the low level guards show up. Kobold's favored class is Sorcerer. Several magic missiles later, the kobolds got some pretty shiney new stuff.

I told them I could TPK them with kobolds...

Saph
2006-12-31, 12:33 PM
7 level 10 characters in the Kobold metropolis. One round and the entire party died.

Its huge, the kobolds lived in caves along the cliff walls, and then the low level guards show up. Kobold's favored class is Sorcerer. Several magic missiles later, the kobolds got some pretty shiney new stuff.

I told them I could TPK them with kobolds...

How on earth can seven level 10 characters die to magic missiles in one round? That'd take about two hundred missiles all hitting them at once.

- Saph

ken-do-nim
2006-12-31, 12:39 PM
Forgive my collosal (+3) ignorance, but what would a silence rod do against a silenced orc? Or am I misunderstanding the story?

One of the problems was that the party was surrounded. The silenced orc stopped the spell-casters from casting I take it, in addition to sneaking up on them. So once the party got to act, I gather that the spellcasters were useless. Had they a rod of silent metamagic, the wizard could have fired off a web to slow things down, or a ray of enfeeblement to weaken the toughest orc, etc. The cleric could have maybe stone shaped up a defense, or even summoned a monster for help, etc. I wasn't there so I'm only surmising how it all went down.

Saph
2006-12-31, 12:43 PM
One of the problems was that the party was surrounded. The silenced orc stopped the spell-casters from casting I take it, in addition to sneaking up on them. So once the party got to act, I gather that the spellcasters were useless. Had they a rod of silent metamagic, the wizard could have fired off a web to slow things down, or a ray of enfeeblement to weaken the toughest orc, etc. The cleric could have maybe stone shaped up a defense, or even summoned a monster for help, etc. I wasn't there so I'm only surmising how it all went down.

Yeah, that describes it pretty well. Plus, since the orc was silenced, he made no noise, and the wizard at the back wasn't looking behind him. So he got knocked down to negatives in one round. The sorcerer right next to him, was then stuck in a silence field with nowhere to go, while the dire boar was chopping up the fighters at the front.

- Saph

ken-do-nim
2006-12-31, 01:55 PM
I think I started this thread because I'm worried about doing a TPK in my next session, and I guess I wanted to commiserate in advance. The thing is, I'm only throwing the party up against challenge ratings equal to their cr or less, but I don't see how they'll survive the nasty combo of Evard's tentacles + stone shaping the area around the party to seal them in. Maybe my tactics are too perfected from reading all these Batman threads.

Jewel Thief
2006-12-31, 02:19 PM
We had a party of adventurers - a cleric following Cuthbert, a rogue (me), and a tiefling duskblade. We've been playing for awhile, some big story with lots of sorceries and corrupt rulers ooo... and our big bad guy is some jerk on the throne who shouldn't be there. Anyway, we finally figure out who has been causing all of the problems - the corrupt King. Who would have guessed? - and are headed towards the throne room when we're surronded by guards. Turns out on one of his latest side adventures, the Tiefling sided with the King and told him all about our little party of adventurers. So we have to fight off a baleful of guards and our Tiefling companion, who's sitting in the corner of the room, by the DM, gloating like a devilish imp.

We all die. Except for the Tiefling. Something our DM had not expected (he'd hoped the Tiefling would be defeated and the cleric, who'd so far been a very forgiving character, would bring the captured Tiefling along with the party). It was a very frustrating night.

Anyway, the corrupt King went on ruling, now with the Tiefling on his side. Later, we'd play in the same world, to find that the Tiefling had assassinated the old king and become ruler of the land. We, thinking a demon had inhabited the throne (because of his horns), went out of our way to take him out (still a little mad at the last game). This time we have the cleric playing a paladin (with a level in barbarian, some backstory), me playing a swash-buckling pirate, a few more players (an annoying female druid, a dwarf fighter). We're better prepared, we're higher levels. The player for the Tiefling isn't a part of this gaming session, but we still want to kill him.

We all die again.

Valairn
2006-12-31, 02:23 PM
Fly spells and dead magic zones.... that's all I'm gonna say....

Athenodorus
2006-12-31, 02:58 PM
Had they a rod of silent metamagic, the wizard could have fired off a web to slow things down, or a ray of enfeeblement to weaken the toughest orc, etc.


Ahhh, I see. I misunderstood the silence rod as per the spell, not metamagic. Thanks :)

Diggorian
2006-12-31, 04:37 PM
A good way to prevent TPK's I've found is to be conservative with Encounter Levels yet describe them as much more dire then they really are. Overcoming things that look horrific is extrememly gratifying. Also, keep yourself open to all possibilities.

Had a TPK in a Star Wars D20 game I ran a few years back.

PC's ship is in orbit of a planet and being approached by an Imperial Star Destroyer not quite in tractoring range. A PC decided to manually jump the ship to hyperspace in orbit and disabled all the ship's safeties to allow this; AND, he failed every single Knowledge, Intelligence, and Wisdom to realize this was a fatal error. To the players credit, he stayed in character completely.:smallannoyed:

So the ship goes from zero to many times the speed of light in less than a nanosecond with no inertial compensation ... quantumly shredding the whole party.

Although the blame fell rightfully and fully on the player (a friend of mine I'd gamed with for many years), in retrospect, I could have ruled that the dismantling took longer in game. However, it proved to the newer players that I'm not a Deus-Ex DM. You break it, you buy it (the farm that is :smallbiggrin: ).

illyrus
2006-12-31, 05:30 PM
This is a semi-TPK story with a capture instead of a bunch of deaths.

Did a 1 shot game awhile ago. The premise of the game was that the PCs had to break into a bank vault and steal some jewels that were being transported thru the city. I gave them free reign over the game, they could accomplish it however they wished.

The PCs found out the date of when the jewels would be brought into town, and planned the heist. The NPCs travelling with the jewels learned about the possible heist(the PCs failed to cover their tracks of planning the heist well) and planned accordingly.

Late at night, the PCs silenced the top of the bank, then blew a hole in the top of the bank vault. The guards felt the ground shake with the 400 lb of ceiling crashed onto the floor and openned the vault door. This is where things went badly for the PCs. One PC decided(even though he couldn't see or hear what had just happened) that he was going to run away. Another PC greased the entrance to the vault, which would have been a good plan except for all the guards except one used ranged weapons and the PCs were all close range. The guards(4 low level rogues) picked them off fairly easily using a wand of sleep and low level poison.

The PCs were captured and told that they had 2 choices, to capture or kill their employeer and the PC that ran at the beginning (they NPCs knew about him thru questioning). At the end of the 1-shot their old employeer cut a deal with them and they killed the PC that had bolted on them and brought him in.

Had that PC not run, they would have fairly easily taken out the rogue guards and gotten off with the loot. So everyone was happy to kill that PC.

Edit - I had them make spot checks throughout the adventure and stated "you see a rat run across the room". I described their employeer as always scratching his arms while he talked to them. Yet they were surprised when their employeer turned out to be a wererat.

Deathcow
2006-12-31, 05:48 PM
So we had a beginning DM who, as a player, was an awful powergamer. Our characters were 5th-6th level, in the first session of the campaign, fighting lizardfolk. The DM's boss monsters (who he had statted out as PC characters for another game and then decided to reuse) were two Poison Dusk Lizardfolk, each with +24 Hide checks, each with poison that did +2d12 damage on a successful hit; one a rogue, the other a ranger with Distracting Strike. We were cleaving through some low-level lizards, feeling fairly good about ourselves, when ranger-boy opens up with some arrows from a nearby rooftop (the lizardfolk were invading a city). Most of the rest of the party was killed from the poison and the annoyingly twinked Distracting Strike/sneak attack combo, while my Beguiler just cast Invisibility and ran away. And that was pretty much the end of that campaign.

dungeon_munky
2006-12-31, 09:10 PM
Forgive me if you've heared this one before. Star Wars d20 during the rebellion, party is jedi guardian (me), soldier, scoundrel, and tech specialist.

Basically we are running from a planed because the empire is after me. On our ship, we safely lift off and are happily cruising through hyperspace. Scoundrel and techie are in the cockpit, myself and the soldier are in the cabin, and he gets it in his head that he wants to be a jedi. I tell him I'll train him if possible, but not now for there are more pressing matters. So he decides to take my lightsaber. Big beefy soldier, he gets it from me in one or two rounds. Which is when a sith inquisitor decides to reveal her hiding place in the cabin. Slashes me down quickly, and anihilates the soldier who is still trying to use the saber. The scoundrel hears and comes running in, his blaster bolt deflected right into him. Leaving the techie, who was hopeless in combat before going against lightsaber flinging death mistresses. Luckily this was only our second adventure with those characters.

blackout
2006-12-31, 09:36 PM
Forgive me if you've heared this one before. Star Wars d20 during the rebellion, party is jedi guardian (me), soldier, scoundrel, and tech specialist.

Basically we are running from a planed because the empire is after me. On our ship, we safely lift off and are happily cruising through hyperspace. Scoundrel and techie are in the cockpit, myself and the soldier are in the cabin, and he gets it in his head that he wants to be a jedi. I tell him I'll train him if possible, but not now for there are more pressing matters. So he decides to take my lightsaber. Big beefy soldier, he gets it from me in one or two rounds. Which is when a sith inquisitor decides to reveal her hiding place in the cabin. Slashes me down quickly, and anihilates the soldier who is still trying to use the saber. The scoundrel hears and comes running in, his blaster bolt deflected right into him. Leaving the techie, who was hopeless in combat before going against lightsaber flinging death mistresses. Luckily this was only our second adventure with those characters.

Soooo, your soldier buddy pretty much caused the death of the whole party?

Voyager_I
2006-12-31, 10:46 PM
You think that's bad?! I'm in a party of EIGHT. Sure, we may all be humanoid monsters, but we all got killed by one guy, while we all had decent hardware and buffs, and were each about level eight. Sure, he was epic level, but shouldn't we have at least stood a chance?!.

Not at all. Twenty level 1 characters don't equal one level 20 character and all that. An epic spellcaster could completely annihilate you with a single spell. If he's an appropriately equipped combatant, then he'll have an attack bonus so high that he'll never miss, an AC so that high you'll never touch him, and such good saves that your best spells will do nothing. Crap, an epic naked Bard could probably beat down a bunch of level 8's.

Thrawn183
2006-12-31, 10:58 PM
Wait, what??? How is that even possible? The cleric should've been slaughtered by the party. Even with all his buffs, the entire party can just gang up on him and pummel him into the ground. If he's lucky the cleric would take one party member with him, and if the party's dumb he could probably get two. I don't see how you could get a TPK with that, though.

Well it involved him enterring combat with 17 buffs active, of which spell resistance was one. It also involved a firestorm to start things off. After that it was straight melee combat. If the party had had dispel magic they could have taken him pretty easily as he had no real spells left after the buffing. But they didn't, so they got TPK'd :biggrin: (Oh, and they knew ahead of time that it was "magical combat" so they didn't have any excuse for not having dispel magic)

krossbow
2006-12-31, 10:59 PM
Not at all. Twenty level 1 characters don't equal one level 20 character and all that. An epic spellcaster could completely annihilate you with a single spell. If he's an appropriately equipped combatant, then he'll have an attack bonus so high that he'll never miss, an AC so that high you'll never touch him, and such good saves that your best spells will do nothing. Crap, an epic naked Bard could probably beat down a bunch of level 8's.



Wll, yeah, he just fascinates them, mass suggestion, and then "OMG! THE TARRASQUE is coming! WE MUST JUMP OFF THE CLIFF TO ESCAPE! AIM FOR THE RIVER! IT IS THE ONLY WAY!"
________
Iolite Vaporizer (http://vaporizers.net/portable-vaporizers)

Diggorian
2006-12-31, 11:04 PM
Crap, an epic naked Bard could probably beat down a bunch of level 8's.

True, especially with the invisibility granted by his nudity. :smallbiggrin: A 30th level Barbarian should be out unifying the tribes of this world as an application to deity status instead of fighting up-and-comers.


Soooo, your soldier buddy pretty much caused the death of the whole party?

Soldier admiring lightsaber: "Dude, are sabers really that sharp?"
Sith coming out of hiding: "You tell me ... 'dude'."
*VROOM* *sizzle'in-thwappage* *CLEAVE* *thwap* *sizzle* *thwap* PWNAGEx4 -- Dark Zide FTW !1!1!

This was a hasty GM. A Sith Inquisitor with time to buff in hiding (no verbal or somatics) is tough for anyone.

blackout
2006-12-31, 11:13 PM
I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

Indoril
2006-12-31, 11:16 PM
I have but two things to say...

Intensified Delay Blast Fireball
Failed Reflex Saves

One attack by my NPC wizard. Not one PC left standing.

blackout
2006-12-31, 11:20 PM
Ouch. That's gotta hurt the ego for a certain party of adventurers, eh?

Indoril
2006-12-31, 11:23 PM
Yeah. They wouldn't play with me for a while after that lol.

blackout
2006-12-31, 11:32 PM
Hehe. Noobs.

Proven_Paradox
2007-01-01, 12:01 AM
I've got one. Okay, so this is my first campaign with this group and DM. We start at level two; I'm playing an aasimar favored soul of Heironeous, and we've got some sort of variant lizardfolk, claustrophobic ranger, a human spiked-chain fighter, and a pyromaniac wizard.

As you can probably tell, that last one was the start of this problem.

So we enter this small, quiet town. The kind that always seems to have problems for some reason. So eventually a necromancer(?) shows up at this lovely little tavern, and something the barkeep says pisses him off. He goes out back, kills a couple of stable boys, and makes zombies out of 'em. We get called into the tavern, along with the barkeep, to fight them off. Our wizard "forgot" his spell components and runs back to his room to get them, and we fight them off. Tavernkeeper gets killed first round, and we're all using slashing/piercing weapons, so we can't overcome damage resistance. I have mostly healing and buffing spells known, so without the wizard we can't overcome the things' DR, and I can't turn them. After a few rounds of them not getting around our AC, they run, and the three of us spend the rest of the night running around the city looking for them.

This wizard, naturally, went to the taproom with a vial of alchemist's fire and a really low wisdom score. He successfully blows the tavern up, with only minor burns to show for it. No one else is hurt, but these people (lumberjacks, mostly) are PISSED.

So the three of us get back and are immediately surrounded by axe-wielding, pissed off lumberjacks. We are reunited with the wizard, who is grinning sheepishly, and pushed up against a brick wall. I happen to be the only character with ANY charisma at all, and a few ranks in diplomacy, so I try to get the first word in. The dialog went something like this...

Me: "PLEASE gentlemen, if you'll let me explain what--" *Diplomacy check: 8*
Head lumberjack: "Shut up, you. Wizard: Explain yourself!"
Wizard: "Well, you see..." *Abysmal bluff check*
Head lumberjack: "You're obviously lying."
Random dude: "Guys! Johnny’s dead in the stables!"
Head lumberjack: "WHAT YOU SAY!?"
Me: "I can explain, he died valiantl--" *Diplomacy check: 7*
Head lumberjack: "I TOLD you to SHUT UP! Wizard, what happened?"
Wizard-who-wasn't-there: "I... don't know?"
Townsfolk: "KILL THE MURDERERS!" *Grabs and begins hacking up wizard*
Wizard: "OH SHI--" *Dies*
DM: "Okay, will save against fear."
Me and Fighter: "Passed. We're fine."
Clautrophobic ranger: "...Natural one. OH SHI--" *Faints*
DM: "You have one round before this mob mows you down."
Fighter: "I'm a level two human fighter. OH SHI--" *Useless*
Me: "I take a five-foot step back and cast--"
DM: "You're against a wall."
Me: "I defensively cast Sanctuary."
DM: "Good choice. That's DC... 11, right?"
Me: "Yeah, I think so. I've got a good constitution score, and I've maxed concentration, and I took Combat Casting, so I just need to roll a... five." *Rolls a three* "OH SHI--" *Spell fizzles*

Jades
2007-01-01, 12:11 AM
How on earth can seven level 10 characters die to magic missiles in one round? That'd take about two hundred missiles all hitting them at once.

- Saph

And when you have upwards of 7,000 kobolds in the area, assuming that only ten percent are sorcerers (their favored class), you'd have about 700 Sorcerers. The majority will only be level one, but that's still 1d4+1 damage times about five hundred and fifty. 2d4+2 for one hundred, 3d4+3 for 35, 4d4 +4 for ten, and 5d4+5 for five.

Meynolds
2007-01-01, 12:11 AM
A tarrasque dropped through the ceiling. The ranger wet his pants and fled. The wizard was the first to fall. The Barbarian/Blackguard went next. Then the Warforged (MMIII) fighter died. And that was only two rounds.

Ali
2007-01-01, 10:17 AM
Head lumberjack: "WHAT YOU SAY!?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!! Wizards... always getting into trouble.

That was the worst set of rolls ever, Paradox.

blackout
2007-01-01, 10:26 AM
This is why my team wizard is at least marginally less stupid then any others you can think of.

Pegasos989
2007-01-01, 10:29 AM
And when you have upwards of 7,000 kobolds in the area, assuming that only ten percent are sorcerers (their favored class), you'd have about 700 Sorcerers. The majority will only be level one, but that's still 1d4+1 damage times about five hundred and fifty. 2d4+2 for one hundred, 3d4+3 for 35, 4d4 +4 for ten, and 5d4+5 for five.


Umm, "only 10%"? If we assume DMG guidelines (which are already pretty high) and then assume them maximized for favored class (so instead of rolling d4, we assume it is 4. I also round everything up when halving), for a small city (5k-10k people) we get

2x 10th level sorcerers
4x 5th level sorcerer
8x 3rd level sorcerer
16x 2nd level sorcerers
32x 1st level sorcerers

Those are from the whole city with a lot of sorcerers.

If we assume normal amount, we would get
2x 8th level sorcerers
4x 4th level sorcerers
8x 2nd level sorcerers
16x 1st level sorcerers

Player classes are not so common, you know. anyways, even with that upper rating of 62 sorcerers, let's assume third would be able to hear (being outdoors and stuff) and from those 20 outdoor sorcerers of the whole city, assuming 10% hear the shout...

So 2 sorcerers acting is about the right number.

700 is just screwing over your players because they mocked your encounter.

EDIT: And even if we assume that instead of the normal 30 sorcerers of that sized community, we have 700 - which is really that big change that you should tell your players about it beforehand - AND they all happen to be outside AND they all hear and react in one round... are they all inside 110 feet? Is the city of 7000 people only less than 220 feet wide?

Saph
2007-01-01, 10:52 AM
And when you have upwards of 7,000 kobolds in the area, assuming that only ten percent are sorcerers (their favored class), you'd have about 700 Sorcerers. The majority will only be level one, but that's still 1d4+1 damage times about five hundred and fifty. 2d4+2 for one hundred, 3d4+3 for 35, 4d4 +4 for ten, and 5d4+5 for five.

I think you've got the numbers slightly wrong . . . just because a monster lists 'favoured class' as sorcerer, doesn't mean that 10% of them will be sorcerers. The vast majority of inhabitants of a city are NPC classes.

And it's a bit silly for the sorcerers to all be standing there with full spells/day, lined up shoulder to shoulder in a giant semicircle (remember that they need Line of Sight to cast Magic Missile), waiting to fire on command. Why would they all know the Magic Missile spell, anyway?

That said, maybe you shouldn't tell this to your players, especially if they were attached to their characters.

- Saph

Pegasos989
2007-01-01, 10:58 AM
Yeah. Actually, as favored class is just what their culture helps to develop - not necessarily meaning that something in the blood is that much more common, we could go back to the normal numbers. So city has:

2x 8th level sorcerers
4x 4th level sorcerers
8x 2nd level sorcerers
16x 1st level sorcerers

From those 30, let's say third are outside. From those 10, let's say 1 hear the shout (come on. city of 7000 people? shout there and even assuming 10% of people outside hear is just rediculously high). Then, the chances that the one sorcerer has manifested magic missile... And has line of sight... And is fast enough to react...

I would propably leave a game in which my DM said "700 magic missiles are shot towards you. rocks fall. everybody dies. Start new characters."

It is a bit diffrent if you told your PCs beforehand that every character in your world has pc classes and that 10% of kobold are sorcerers, but still from 700, about 350 would be outside, about 30 might hear/see/be close enough to act on it and maybe about 10 of them might have magic missile...

Saph
2007-01-01, 11:27 AM
Okay, here's a low-level one I took part in last week.

This was actually a published adventure, from Dragon magazine, which pits a party of 2nd-level adventurers against wererats. Wererats have damage reduction 10/silver. None of us have silver weapons, none of us have two-handed weapons. You can guess that the fight didn't go well.

My enchanter, Niriel, finally manages to Sleep the first wererat and we kill it off, but not before Bob the Cleric is dead from a critical hit. He's swiftly replaced by his brother, Rob the Cleric (yes, that was his name - the player doesn't like playing clerics), and we press onwards.

We're prepared this time with a vial of silversheen, but before we can reach the wererat boss we run into a giant cockroach with AC 21 or something ridiculous which takes down Rob and the party rogue before we squish it. Me and the remaining PC (a paladin of Heironeous, heroic but not too bright) are left above the lair of the boss wererat with two unconscious party members. Here's how the conversation went:


Paladin of Heironeous: "I drag them both back towards the town and-"
DM: "That'll hurt them. They'll have to keep making stabilisation checks."
Paladin of Heironeous: "Oh. Um . . ."
Niriel (Me): "Just carry one of them at a time."
Paladin: "I'll take one, you take the other."
Niriel: "What? No. I can't carry that much! You take one of them."
Paladin: "Very well. My lady, I will stay here and guard my fallen comrades. You go back to the town and get help."
Niriel: "I'm not leaving you on your own to get killed! Just carry them back with me."
Paladin: "I cannot carry both."
Niriel: "You don't have to. Just take them one at a time."
Paladin: "Save yourself, my lady. I will watch over them."
Niriel: "Stop trying to sacrifice yourself and start carrying them back!"
Paladin: "Please escape while you can, my lady."
Niriel: "Arrrgh! Would you just pick one and-"
DM: "A door opens and the wererat comes out to see what the noise is."

I cast Sleep on the wererat. He makes his save. I cast Sleep again. He makes his save. I cast. He saves. I cast. He saves. I cast. He saves. The wererat kills the paladin and I'm left on my own with all my spells expended and the bodies of the rest of the party around me.

I cast Expeditious Retreat from a scroll and run. I felt really guilty about that one afterwards.

- Saph

ken-do-nim
2007-01-01, 11:44 AM
I cast Expeditious Retreat from a scroll and run. I felt really guilty about that one afterwards.

- Saph

Hmmm... first at the next table over, now at your own game. Remind me not to bring any of my cherished characters within 1000 feet of you when you game :-)

Diggorian
2007-01-01, 02:13 PM
Saph's sad story reminds me another virtual TPK in a sewer. Use the bathroom and get a snack before proceeding :smallbiggrin:

After a full day of not hearing from my party mates that investigated slavers (and got captured) my 4th level halforc cleric assumes the worst and gets other members of his order to help bust up the slaver ring. This is a big city so my cleric was the lowest level in the church rescue squad. The players with captured PCs got to play one of them each. A 9th level church elder, two 7th levels, a fourth level, and my guy. We even had a reformed wererat rogue to guide us.

We plow through the sewers easily enough and get to the main temple of the cult that backs the slavers. Inside are the two living slavers, their evil cleric master, and a freshly summoned Chuul (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/chuul.htm).

In my experience, although they're only CR 7 Chuul's are the Tarrasques of low levels.

Evil cleric casts confusion and only the 9th level failed! (Becomes useless). The 7th levels move past the creature to engage the slavers. Our wererat starts sneaking towards the evil cleric. The 4th level ranged attacks the monster. I start buffing. The Chuul closes while putting on it's PC-eating bib and selecting the appetizer.

Slavers go down. Rogue sneaks the evil cleric. I'm still buffing. 9th level runs away. 4th level keeps shooting the monster, whose decided to start with the 7th levels.

Rogue fights cleric flanking with one of the now wounded 7ths, the other gives the Chull heartsburn. 4th levels moves try to save him with me backing her up.

Evil cleric kills the other 7th, fighting just the wererat. Monster belches 7th level hero and starts sampling sweet 4th level. I'm healing chuul bites. 9th level jabbers about sewer architecture, still confused.

Wererat kills cleric. Monster finishes 4th level and starts eyeing me. I withdraw. 9th levels bashes me with a mace.

Wererat starts searching for the captured party. 9th level snaps out of it and buffs himself. I heal myself. Monster wonders what it's dead allies taste like.

I back up the 9th level cleric who goes after the Chuul, bashing it good. Monster crits the 9th level twice, grabs and constricts for max damage. I annoy it with a jab.

Chuul eats 9th level cleric! I wonder about going back to get help or trying to sneak past. Wererat hides picking the lock to free my teamamtes.

I try to sneak past. Monster picks me up like a can of Dew, pops my top and enjoys (this is my real PC!!!). Wererat frees my teammates and goes to get their weapons.

THe PC party unarmored save a mage armor for the Barbarian approach the stuffed Chuul. It looks at them and exhales wearily, figuring it'll get a doggy bag.

Barbarian PC power attacks the Chuul in a rage, taking away it's last HP. *thud* My cleric's entire church leadership, including me, is dead. The highest level acolyte (Expert 2) was named bishop and his first act was to declare a year of mourning. :smallannoyed:

This was all done with straight up, not-behind-the-DM screen, unfudgeable rolls. Though I still dont advocate fudging, I havent eaten lobster in real life since.

Deathcow
2007-01-01, 02:15 PM
We were doing the Worldwide DnD Game Day adventure (with the woefully inadequate characters that Wizards pregenerated) and managed to get ourselves in a room with one exit while the BBEG and his hordes of summoned minions were battering at the door outside. The only thing that prevented a TPK right there was a) the fact that the dwarf cleric rolled a natural 20 to Diplomacy-crush one of the BBEG's demons when it teleported right in next to us, and b) that my character had a scroll of Rope Trick handy. We hid extradimensionally, waited for them to leave, and then ran like hell.

It was actually one of the funner games I've played in a while.

Shazzbaa
2007-01-01, 02:19 PM
I've got one. Okay, so this is my first campaign with this group and DM. We start at level two; I'm playing an aasimar favored soul of Heironeous, and we've got some sort of variant lizardfolk, claustrophobic ranger, a human spiked-chain fighter, and a pyromaniac wizard.

As you can probably tell, that last one was the start of this problem.
Oh, my sides! Yours is hilarious, Paradox! :smallbiggrin:

Saph, you and the paladin cracked me up also. ^^

Jades
2007-01-01, 02:58 PM
Part of what I told the group when they started in the setting was that everybody had PC levels. Each "commoner" had at least one level as a fighter. This includes monsters. Hell, the party ranger was a kobold, and I even told him that they were looking at damn near one thousand kobold sorcerers.

And the group bet me ten bucks (each) that I couldn't do it. It was a non-cannon session anyways. What happened in the session had no impact on the game.


Umm, "only 10%"? If we assume DMG guidelines (which are already pretty high) and then assume them maximized for favored class (so instead of rolling d4, we assume it is 4. I also round everything up when halving), for a small city (5k-10k people) we get

2x 10th level sorcerers
4x 5th level sorcerer
8x 3rd level sorcerer
16x 2nd level sorcerers
32x 1st level sorcerers

Those are from the whole city with a lot of sorcerers.

If we assume normal amount, we would get
2x 8th level sorcerers
4x 4th level sorcerers
8x 2nd level sorcerers
16x 1st level sorcerers

Player classes are not so common, you know. anyways, even with that upper rating of 62 sorcerers, let's assume third would be able to hear (being outdoors and stuff) and from those 20 outdoor sorcerers of the whole city, assuming 10% hear the shout...

So 2 sorcerers acting is about the right number.

700 is just screwing over your players because they mocked your encounter.

EDIT: And even if we assume that instead of the normal 30 sorcerers of that sized community, we have 700 - which is really that big change that you should tell your players about it beforehand - AND they all happen to be outside AND they all hear and react in one round... are they all inside 110 feet? Is the city of 7000 people only less than 220 feet wide?


That Day, through the Kobold's eyes:
Kobold Ranger (Guard at Outpost): We seem to have visitors.
Kobold Sorcerer (Also a Guard): I'll send my hawk to check them out. *hawk is killed by an arrow shot by party ranger*
Kobold Ranger: I'll take a look, here if anything goes wrong, stay out of sight. *hands sorcerer a spyglass*
Kobold Sorcerer: *watches Kobold Ranger get killed, uses Companion Spirit (DMG II) to contact the other Sorcerer Guard Captians* Adventurers, killed Hedsput. Get ready for an invasion.

Party passes the outpost, not seeing the sorcerer.

In the city, the kobold guards gather, and being kobolds set an ambush in every street. Since the kobolds don't like strangers, and don't let non-kobolds into the city usually, it is easy enough for the guards to see them. Like the humans, all kobolds are trained to act as guards in time of trouble.

Party notices that they are being watched, and they begin to push their way through the swarms of kobolds, not making any effort to hide what they're saying. The Kobold Sorcerer Guards get the first act, then the archers will shoot, finally the kobold fighters will wade in. That's the plan.

Kobolds wait for the signal, and they get it. Plan launches into action.

Peregrin_Tooc
2007-01-01, 04:39 PM
Sounds not too twisted save the "everybody has a PC-Class", but if you told them it's allright.

Pegasos989
2007-01-01, 05:33 PM
*stuff*


Oh, okay. Wasn't half as bad then. Still, I doubt nearly all sorcerers would have had magic missile, etc... Also, if the kobolds didn't know just how powerful the party was (just that they were able to kill a guard or two), that massive defencive operation seems a bit over the top. And having enough sorcerers cast in the same round that the party can't just notice "We lost half our hp/people... Let's flee!" sems also kinda wierd.

However, if the whole damn city knew they were coming, their mission was pretty much doomed from that point on anyways. I would have propably just made the kobolds wait that party comes in and then have wizard/sorcerer/something cast wall of force type spell to prevent them from escaping and have a few higher level guards attack them rather than hundreds of low level ones... But the end result is same. If the party knew they would be in a lot of trouble if detected and that every kobold had levels in pc class, it was justified enough that they died after that. :P

I personally prefer slaying people with kobold adepts (level 4 kobold adept has two ((assuming array of 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 and increase to wisdom at 4th level for a bonus spell of 2nd level)) scorching rays and then several 4d4 burning hands for CR 1?) though.

Jades
2007-01-01, 05:43 PM
What can I say, that kobold nation was particularly paranoid, and what combat sorcerer doesn't know Magic Missiles?

The world was one in which the humans were in constant fear of a kobold invasion, and the kobolds in fear of a human one. It is reasonable enough to assume that the first scouting party would be elites. Especially if the party is talking about how they're going to slaughter all the kobolds easily.


Oh, okay. Wasn't half as bad then. Still, I doubt nearly all sorcerers would have had magic missile, etc... Also, if the kobolds didn't know just how powerful the party was (just that they were able to kill a guard or two), that massive defencive operation seems a bit over the top. And having enough sorcerers cast in the same round that the party can't just notice "We lost half our hp/people... Let's flee!" sems also kinda wierd.

However, if the whole damn city knew they were coming, their mission was pretty much doomed from that point on anyways. I would have propably just made the kobolds wait that party comes in and then have wizard/sorcerer/something cast wall of force type spell to prevent them from escaping and have a few higher level guards attack them rather than hundreds of low level ones... But the end result is same. If the party knew they would be in a lot of trouble if detected and that every kobold had levels in pc class, it was justified enough that they died after that. :P

I personally prefer slaying people with kobold adepts (level 4 kobold adept has two ((assuming array of 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8 and increase to wisdom at 4th level for a bonus spell of 2nd level)) scorching rays and then several 4d4 burning hands for CR 1?) though.

Pegasos989
2007-01-01, 06:08 PM
What can I say, that kobold nation was particularly paranoid, and what combat sorcerer doesn't know Magic Missiles?

The world was one in which the humans were in constant fear of a kobold invasion, and the kobolds in fear of a human one. It is reasonable enough to assume that the first scouting party would be elites. Especially if the party is talking about how they're going to slaughter all the kobolds easily.

Well, it depends on your view on sorcerers. One might think that they simply manifest inborn powers through their blood and thus couldn't choose which spells to take. However, if you see them as being trained and able to choose how to manifest them, there is no problem in everyone knowing magic missile. I personally can't decide for which one I would go, so I normally think that their first few spells are nearly random (for NPCs that is, my PC sorcerers just happen to have had good luck on the spells...) and after that they learn to control their powers.

The thing that I wonder about such a massive reaction is that what if a group would have been just a distraction? If four men can take that big amount of forces to one location, some other locations would be left less heavily guarded, I assume...

(And don't take me wrong, I am not trying to attack you or anything, just generally discussing the situation. I agree that in the said situation the party would pretty much should have been killed ((Or possibly captured for interrogation but anyways)))

Jades
2007-01-01, 06:13 PM
Yes, well, paranoid and intelligent do not go hand in hand necessarily. But, short of airships (which nobody had at that point in the timeline), the path that the PCs were taking was the only one to the kobold villiage on the surface. Below Ground, sure but heavily trapped.

(And I don't see it as attacks, I merely want to explain my actions)

Glundrall
2007-01-01, 07:51 PM
It was my first campaign and our second session. We had been sent off to protect this guy's son on a trip to a larger city and were traveling by boat. The son didn't want us around because for some reason he was really suppose to be protecting us (we were all level 5-6 at the time, he was a level 12 paladin).

He somehow convinces or tricks us to get off the boat and investigate some smoke we see one afternoon. I don't remember how since my character wasn't part of it. He (my character) had been looking for a magic item to help him turn into a half dragon, he thought it was more than possible, and the item in question had been found while the group was in the city, but the mage had claimed it and wouldn't give it up.

So we got off the boat and found a village that had been raided by a band of orcs. We see what is at least 60 orcs, and they are level 3-4 we found out by running into some stragglers that decided they could jump us and not need to share the loot with anyone else.

We sneak around to behind most of the orcs and are waiting to see what is going on. There are some orcs out in the field between the woods we are hiding in and this massive mansion that the orcs are camped in front of. Our mage decides to sneak out and try to get a closer look (entirely in character, but you can see where this gets bad.). He gets spotted and is jump by three orcs, but not far enough away from the woods that we can't help.

My character jumps out to get the item before the mage dies, and the rest of the party follows thinking I mean to save him and fight. The mage starts running away in a random direction and the roll says towards the mansion. My character needs the item (in his mind) and tries to follow. When he catches up the mage is dead, so he just grabs the item and turns to run and finds the entire raiding part had come around the corner, in a matter of speaking, and he needed to fight his way out.

It then goes like this:

Me: "curses"
*party dies in the confusion*
*I get away by the grace of god and a couple natural 20s*
*I get killed by a lucky arrow that hits me in the eye when I turn to look and see how many actually followed me*

Not the best way to recap it, but I think I got the point across. I swear the DMs dice were rigged because of the three natural 20s it got for the arrow to spell my instant death (not that I was far away from dead anyways >_<)

EDIT: Yes I know that having five natural 20s isn't very common at all in that short a time, but I wasn't complaining until I died too :P

blackout
2007-01-01, 08:11 PM
*I get killed by a lucky arrow that hits me in the eye when I turn to look and see how many actually followed me*

Dude...that has to be the crappiest death ever. Seriously. If I died like that, I'd be telling the DM he just forcefed me some WTF-Soup.

Glundrall
2007-01-01, 08:16 PM
I think it's funny how it all happened. The best part was the DM response.

*raises eyebrows*
"Well, uh, dude...you just got killed by an arrow through your eye when you turned to do your spot check"
*Has one of the faces that you never have a camera to capture but you can never describe or forget.*