Was this encounter intrinsically too rough?

[VariSami]

Hello.

I have noticed a tendency of casting the DM spell Total Party Kill on parties across the board whenever I DM, always unintentionally of course. And while this was the lamest attempt at a joke in quite a while, I do indeed have a problem with TPKs and unlike the other DM in another thread, I am not sure whether it is about my players playing unintelligently or not. Thus, I would like to use the latest case as an example to determine whether or not the problem lies primarily with the encounters I design or with the players' capacity to plan ahead. Of course, either way - this is a problem which results from incompatibility.

Although providing exact builds is beyond what I am ready to do at this point, the party consists of 4 level 8 characters which were built straight to that level. (This was our first session of this campaign.) Each has 36 points of point buy, maximum hp on each level and receives a feat at each level so the characters have the potential to be pretty damn powerful although most of these rules are intended to loosen the restrictiveness of needing to optimize. The characters are a Human Swordsage who is quite a capable grappler and possesses the whole Mage Slayer feat tree; a Sharakim (LA bought off) Duskblade which was semi-optimized using the Duskblade Handbook as a general guideline; a Whisper Gnome Dragonfire Adept who was optimized to hide and has paid the feat tax of Entangling Exhalation and Darkstalker; and an intelligent longsword generated using the rules in the Complete Book of Eldritch Might and wielded by its cohort, a Necropolitan (for free) Kalashtar Cleric/Ordained Champion with Hidden Talent for Synchronicity.

The encounter was the party at full power and with time to prepare (they cast Bull's Strength on most characters as well as Ghost Touch Weapon and another temporary enhancement on the intelligent sword; each character was protected from the Dragonfire Adept's breath weapon). Their opponent was the ghost (Ghostwalk rules) of a middle-aged Human Focused Specialist Necromancer/Eidolomancer (https://the-apocalypse-of-yesterday.obsidianportal.com/characters/john-tucker-ghost) who also had enough time to prepare to cast Mage Armor and Spectral Hand and who was challenged on his home turf where he could also be helped by 9 Skeleton Wolves. The ghost has some really powerful spells like Black Tentacles and Shivering Touch but is otherwise quite unoptimized.

Basically, the party was almost completely caught in the Black Tentacles. They had detected the ghost under the floor of its hut (where it has a secret room) but did its Black Tentacles still caught everyone except the Swordsage. However, the Swordsage was surrounded by 6 skeleton wolves and could not fight his was out successfully because his weapons were quite ineffective against these CR1 enemies. After the ghost appeared aboveground and dropped the Duskblade with Shivering Touch (barely hit; barely paralyzed), everything went down-hill so badly that it was a definitive TPK which I needed to fudge less than discreetly by allowing the characters to be cursed and made to retrieve an item for the ghost.

The question is, was this encounter intrinsically neighboring impossible or were the players simply acting really unoptimally, everything considered? They knew they were against a ghost on its home turf and that the enemy was a strong necromancer.

[jiriku]

At first glance, I'd say your encounter was intrinsically bordering on impossible. Although I'm only glancingly familiar with Ghostwalk, a typical ghost with 9 character levels is a CR 11 monster. Assuming your wolf skeletons were CR 1-ish each, nine of them combined with the home terrain advantage was probably enough to push the encounter as a whole to EL 12.

An EL 12 encounter against a group of 4 8th level PCs is described in the DMG as "Very Difficult: One PC might very well die. The Encounter Level is higher than the party level. This sort of encounter may be more dangerous than an overpowering one, because it’s not immediately obvious to the players that the PCs should flee." Further, the wizard class is inherently more capable than the classes of most of the PCs, and the spells and combos you opened with are among the more powerful combos available. Ultimately, this is an encounter that the players probably should have run from; they could have expected crippling casualties even if they managed to succeed. However, you used spells to disable and immobilize them and they faced fast, mobile opponents. They never really had a chance.

You really don't need a detailed breakdown to get to the problem, though. If you intentionally overpower your PCs and yet still manage to TPK your groups, then the problem is on your end. Try scaling your average encounter difficulty down by about 30-50% until you get a better handle on encounter design. Speaking from experience, I also find it a lot of fun to give myself a very low "budget" for Encounter Level and then try to optimize the encounter enough to make it challenging even though "by the numbers" it would be expected to be fairly easy.

[Spore]

The encounter was balanced. Black Tentacles however is known as a combat ender. None of your characters had full BAB or comparatively high strength to cope with a high grapple check. Then a thing that happens to me way too often. I am not extremely experienced with building characters. So I unintentionally leave HUGE glaring gaps in my defense because I solely optimize my offensive capability.

I have 15th level ninjas without Nondetection getting killed from a simple 2nd level See Invisibility or a 1st level Alarm spell. I build rangers that lack a way to heal themselves or do anything else than hitting really hard. I build summoning sorcerers that summon worse than a wizard or summoner of equal level and use their Magic Jar spell effectively (only to be killed in our backstabbing evil campaign).

That's just a problem of mid to high level D&D. If you make mistakes or have no counter available you die. Regardless of stats or builds. My PF melee alchemist almost dies most evenings (but that's because I play him aggressively when I should use 1-2 of my ranged touch attack bombs first instead of charging in). But I have learnt his strengths and weaknesses in several evenings (and single mooks aren't strong enough to outright kill him if I DO make a mistake).

[nedz]

Part of the problem with new parties is that the player's don't really know what their own characters can do let along how they synergise together into a party — so you could get a whole chain of TPK—new party—TPK—...

I find that I need to run a few easy encounters with such parties so that both they, and I, can get a feel for their strengths and, more importantly, how they work together.

In short: the strength of a party is variable and increases with practice, even without levelling.

[VariSami]

Well, Ghostwalk's ghosts are intrinsically much weaker than normal ghosts, and officially they add +1 to CR. Basically, incorporeality is the greatest strength they gain - not to understate its effectiveness in any way. This gives a difficulty of 10.7 against a party of effectively nearing 9th level characters in power level due to all the boosts (5 extra feats, maximum hp, 36pb.). Still Very Difficult, hmmm... Different calculators give these as 15% to 38% of encounters to use. The latter number seems really high, really.

But basically, the problems with the design were:
1. Too damn many skeleton wolves. I really under-estimated the effect multiple CR1 monsters have on a party of 8th level characters.
2. Too powerful spells.
3. Overestimating the effects of time to prepare, pre-knowledge and the boosts the characters had received during creation.

And yes, while I strive to challenge my players, I detest actively attempting to kill characters as a goal in itself. Each TPK is a transgression in my record. While this might seem like shifting the blame, I suppose one reason is having played under a completely trigger-happy DM who failed to kill our characters despite actively seeking to do so with encounters like three Destrachans, a dozen Meenlocks which were advanced beyond the maximum recommended by MM2 and around 20 enemies, including casters, when we were level 1 (the first two cases were somewhere around level 10). Oh, and a Nightwalker when we were level 12 (this actually forced us to flee, though).

I suppose I should use the encounter calculator more in advance instead of approximating the effect mooks have.

Edit: Oh, I suppose I forgot to mention how the encounter actually ended because I intentionally fudged it not to become a TPK which it had effectively already become at that point. Basically, the necromancer took back his Slaymate daughter which the characters were trying to protect from him and slayed the Slaymate's adoptive awakened zombie family brutally. He then tasked all willing PCs to find a certain artifact of great power and to bring it to him. Only the intelligent weapon's owner/cohort refused and was destroyed. They were also cursed to be unable to see ghosts (custom curse according to BoVD guidelines), just so that they can never be sure whether or not they are being monitored during the quest. This was less than subtle because I was literally repeating the question 'how do I save you from this' out loud. Bad DM'ing on the subtlety part, I suppose, but at least a TPK on the first session was avoided in a somewhat logical vein.

[jiriku]

I have had DMs like that! I've known more than one DM who felt that a gaming session without at least one character death was a personal failure on their part.

What can be great fun is to take the opposite direction in encounter-building. Start with opponents who are significantly lower level than the PCs and try to find a way to make the encounter work. for example a mixed group of 5 CR3 opponents is a fair challenge for four 8th level characters. Can you find a way to make such an encounter challenging? I think three shadows, a 3rd-level wizard able to cast darkness, web, and color spray, plus a CR3 advanced huge monstrous centipede (strong grappler) could be a tough fight.

[VariSami]

What can be great fun is to take the opposite direction in encounter-building. Start with opponents who are significantly lower level than the PCs and try to find a way to make the encounter work.
Oh yes, the 'Tucker's Kobolds' approach. I actually like it quite a bit and there have been such encounters in my games in the past. Shadar-Kai can become a major pain quite easily when they utilize hit-and-run tactics alongside weak monsters which distract the party whenever the Shadow Fey flee.

[nedz]

I don't think that this was a CR related issue. You hit them with one very powerful BC spell, which they had no counter too, and they one PC who got out could take out CR1 skeletons. You could have done this with a single level 7 caster: Evards + Summon Undead x2.

[Jeff the Green]

The encounter was balanced. Black Tentacles however is known as a combat ender.

Basically this. With almost any other spells, your group should have been able to take him out. Assuming the wolves were garden-variety skeletons, one breath from the dragonfire adept would have taken them out and even if not their offense is pretty lousy since they lose their trip.

That leaves the wizard, who should have been fairly tough but manageable.

[Vogonjeltz]

Hello.

I have noticed a tendency of casting the DM spell Total Party Kill on parties across the board whenever I DM, always unintentionally of course. And while this was the lamest attempt at a joke in quite a while, I do indeed have a problem with TPKs and unlike the other DM in another thread, I am not sure whether it is about my players playing unintelligently or not. Thus, I would like to use the latest case as an example to determine whether or not the problem lies primarily with the encounters I design or with the players' capacity to plan ahead. Of course, either way - this is a problem which results from incompatibility.

Although providing exact builds is beyond what I am ready to do at this point, the party consists of 4 level 8 characters which were built straight to that level. (This was our first session of this campaign.) Each has 36 points of point buy, maximum hp on each level and receives a feat at each level so the characters have the potential to be pretty damn powerful although most of these rules are intended to loosen the restrictiveness of needing to optimize. The characters are a Human Swordsage who is quite a capable grappler and possesses the whole Mage Slayer feat tree; a Sharakim (LA bought off) Duskblade which was semi-optimized using the Duskblade Handbook as a general guideline; a Whisper Gnome Dragonfire Adept who was optimized to hide and has paid the feat tax of Entangling Exhalation and Darkstalker; and an intelligent longsword generated using the rules in the Complete Book of Eldritch Might and wielded by its cohort, a Necropolitan (for free) Kalashtar Cleric/Ordained Champion with Hidden Talent for Synchronicity.

The encounter was the party at full power and with time to prepare (they cast Bull's Strength on most characters as well as Ghost Touch Weapon and another temporary enhancement on the intelligent sword; each character was protected from the Dragonfire Adept's breath weapon). Their opponent was the ghost (Ghostwalk rules) of a middle-aged Human Focused Specialist Necromancer/Eidolomancer (https://the-apocalypse-of-yesterday.obsidianportal.com/characters/john-tucker-ghost) who also had enough time to prepare to cast Mage Armor and Spectral Hand and who was challenged on his home turf where he could also be helped by 9 Skeleton Wolves. The ghost has some really powerful spells like Black Tentacles and Shivering Touch but is otherwise quite unoptimized.

Basically, the party was almost completely caught in the Black Tentacles. They had detected the ghost under the floor of its hut (where it has a secret room) but did its Black Tentacles still caught everyone except the Swordsage. However, the Swordsage was surrounded by 6 skeleton wolves and could not fight his was out successfully because his weapons were quite ineffective against these CR1 enemies. After the ghost appeared aboveground and dropped the Duskblade with Shivering Touch (barely hit; barely paralyzed), everything went down-hill so badly that it was a definitive TPK which I needed to fudge less than discreetly by allowing the characters to be cursed and made to retrieve an item for the ghost.

The question is, was this encounter intrinsically neighboring impossible or were the players simply acting really unoptimally, everything considered? They knew they were against a ghost on its home turf and that the enemy was a strong necromancer.

Sorry how was the grappling monk, I mean swordsage, not capable of taking down at least 2 wolves per round? Or killing one wolf and then stepping outside of the circle of wolves with a tumble check?

The skeleton wolf has all of 13 hp and no trip.

And did the rest of the party die to the lone spell? It only deals 20-46 damage (assuming all grapple checks by the party fail)

I guess I'm having difficulty believing they could lose this fight, given the premise.

*And that cleric cohort could have just used turn undead to instantly destroy the wolves. And probably mess with the ghost. This is a critical failure on the players end of things.

[Adverb]

I feel like the Swordsage in that party should have been able to teleport to the Wizard and generally ruin his day.

As it is, though, undead are very effective against any party which doesn't have a few anti-undead clubs in their bag.

[Jeff the Green]

And that cleric cohort could have just used turn undead to instantly destroy the wolves. And probably mess with the ghost. This is a critical failure on the players end of things.

Ghostwalk ghosts are outsiders, so it wouldn't have been affected. Wolves should have been dust, though.

[Brookshw]

I didn't bother reading any of this.

The truth is sometimes despite knowledgeable people planning out encounters, things happen. I've watched in horror as encounters lower rated than the party wiped high powered groups well over wbl without hitting outlying lucky roll streaks. It happens. Sometimes you just need to pick up the pieces and move on.

[jiriku]

I don't think that this was a CR related issue. You hit them with one very powerful BC spell, which they had no counter too, and they one PC who got out could take out CR1 skeletons. You could have done this with a single level 7 caster: Evards + Summon Undead x2.


I didn't bother reading any of this.

The truth is sometimes despite knowledgeable people planning out encounters, things happen. I've watched in horror as encounters lower rated than the party wiped high powered groups well over wbl without hitting outlying lucky roll streaks. It happens. Sometimes you just need to pick up the pieces and move on.

I can agree that black tentacles is a very effective spell, but a 9th level wizard has half a dozen others that work just as well, and the ghost template enabled him to get in a surprise attack quite easily. An EL 8 encounter would have featured a Big Bad who was either not a ghost or unable to access 4th level spells; either change would have greatly improved the party's odds of survival.

It's true that random die rolls and player decisions play a huge role in the outcome, but I've known DMs who have run challenging campaigns for over a decade and never wiped a party, while I've known others whose grasp of encounter design was so poor that they could pull off multiple TPKs in one game session without consciously attempting to do so. The DM is really the deciding factor in whether the party faces a risk of TPK or not.

[VariSami]

Just to answer the questions raised concerning 'how the heck did they fail this badly?'

1. The swordsage used his shadow teleportation capacities to close in on the wolves, and I think the player might have entered a mindset that they need to defeat the things which surrounded him before entering the area of black tentacles. However, we already noted how he would have done a lot more damage simply by using his fists (Improved Unarmed Strike) instead of his collection of non-bludgeoning weapons. Now that I think back, he did for some reason refuse to use his stronger maneuvers. For example, I know for a fact that he had Insightful Strike. Here, I suppose, the player indeed fumbled a bit although the fact that 6 wolves were surrounding him did somewhat affect the chances of tumbling away.

2. Like was mentioned, the ghost was an outsider due to Ghostwalk rules. Also, I believe undead creatures who attempt turning undead actually start from themselves because of how the rules work. That cleric was Necropolitan; his turning attempts are (were) mostly for smiting purposes through Ordained Champion.

3. While the Black Tentacles does little damage, it also prevented the characters almost completely from using their actions effectively. When a malicious ghost wizard is free to take shots at you while you struggle utterly helplessly, you have effectively lost. However, this was not played to the logical conclusion simply because the players had already given up and we ran out of time (it was past midnight).

Well, thank you for all the contributions thus far. I suppose the greatest problem is the fact that the players did not plan for ahead for this eventuality: they were under no real time pressures in-game but wanted to have the fight over with out of game. As the intelligent sword's player noted: if only he had realized to prepare Dispel Magic. Thus, while the encounter was far from impossible, having not prepared for it and some actual bad rolling did make it much harder than it should have been. My players mentioned that they are quite happy with the conclusion, though, since it gives the party an unified purpose and sets up a story I had clearly not planned for in advance. No player characters actually died because only the sword's cohort refused to serve the ghost. Nevertheless, I find the insight provided here quite valuable for avoiding such misplays during future encounters - which was what this thread was about.

[Medic!]

Was this a typical encounter for your group? Are the challenges they faced (Incorporeal casters, BFC spells, mook-hoarde-of-distraction, etc) ones that are found often or from time to time when you DM, or was this a new-type thing? Players tend to get into conditioned mindsets...a player employs a specific spell or ability or technique effectively and that becomes part of their staple. A group never faces a caster, so nobody even bothers looking at counterspelling, let alone thinks to try it, etc.

[VariSami]

Was this a typical encounter for your group? Are the challenges they faced (Incorporeal casters, BFC spells, mook-hoarde-of-distraction, etc) ones that are found often or from time to time when you DM, or was this a new-type thing? Players tend to get into conditioned mindsets...a player employs a specific spell or ability or technique effectively and that becomes part of their staple. A group never faces a caster, so nobody even bothers looking at counterspelling, let alone thinks to try it, etc.

Well, I have had more players than I have games active, and thus, there is no such things as 'my group' per se. This group consists of 3 regular players from my long-running Planescape game which has been on hold for some time now as well as one player to whom I have ran nWoD and one other game. Thus, they probably have slightly different expectations. I have made the philosophy that 'games should be challenging' explicit and continued this with 'be prepared'. In this case, as has been noted, they were very much forewarned because they had interacted with the ghost before, having seen that the person was a ghost, and an NPC warned them that he is a terrible necromancer. Some sample encounters I have had with one or more of these players present include the aforementioned Shadar-Kai which utilized their HiPS to the best of their ability alongside a few weak shadow elementals, a group of elite Shadar-Kai (Rogue, Paladin of Tyranny and Warlock), a Totem Hunter (from the Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon), a group of Warforged Knights, a Xaositect Air Genasi Sorcerer, Yellow Musk Creeper, Moon Rats, giant spiders, an Insectile Half-Ogre Fighter... among other things. Of these, none was admittedly too keen on battlefield control although a few were quite threatening spellcasters on their own right. One thing they do know - or should know - is that I utilize custom enemies a lot. In this case, though, like I said: they were forewarned of the enemy's status as a spellcaster. And the players themselves remembered that Dispel Magic should always be a part of the arsenal as soon as the fight began.

[Spuddles]

Level 8 is about the time that any non-fullcaster needs to begin itemization optimization. Only the swordsage had a way to get out of the grapple despite the cheapness of, say, an anklet of translocation.

In my games that start above level 10, I basically tell everyone to look at the book of necessary magical items & bunkos basement bargains to see what their character needs to cover that their class abilities dont.

Black Tentacles is a perfect example of that, IMO.

Using Shivering Touch on your PCs is downright brutal.