My First 5E TPK

[CockroachTeaParty]

Howdy folks, I just wanted to share my experience running a short game last night, in the hopes that you don't repeat any mistakes I made.

I got my mitts on a monster manual, and I was itching to run a game, so I figured I'd take a stab at designing some encounters. I should preface this by saying that my friends and I were playing for fun, without much investment in our characters, the setting, etc.

The party composition was: a stout halfling barbarian, a tiefling wild-magic sorcerer, a human infernal warlock, and a wild elf rogue. I was a bit concerned that they did not have any healers; this might have partially contributed to their ultimate demise.

The scenario was the following: they were milling about in town square when a small demonic invasion happened, instigated by crazed cultists. A series of combats followed, most of which they did very well.

First they fought 6 manes, dispatching them all without taking a single wound.

This was followed by 6 cultists, again defeating them without taking any damage.

The next fight was 2 cultists, 1 dretch, and 4 manes. Again, they did very well, although the barbarian got ganged up on by a pair of manes and wound up taking significant damage.

After this fight, I threw them a bone, and they found a healing potion on one of the fallen cultists, which they used to heal up the barbarian. I probably should have given them one more; the barbarian was just over half hp, 7/16 I believe. He still had a rage, left, though, so I was optimistic.

Everyone but the barbarian was at full hp (the warlock even had some temp hp), and everyone still had spells remaining (or in the warlock's case, his Hex spell was still up and running). I didn't think they needed a short rest; perhaps I should have given it to them, so that the barbarian could have healed up more.

The final encounter was then upon them. Their opponents were 2 cultists, 2 dretches, and 1 cult fanatic leader. The cult fanatic is a challenge 2 monster, easily the hardest thing they had fought so far, but I didn't realize how much of a gap in challenge there is between 1 and 2.

They did pretty well all things considered, but the barbarian went down about halfway through the fight. They mopped up the dretches and cultists, but had a hard time pinning down the fanatic, who was harrying them with spiritual weapon and sacred flame. They got the fanatic down to 3 hp, but in the end the last PC standing (the rogue) was downed by sacred flame.

The threat of enemy casters should not be underestimated; spamming sacred flame in particular is nasty, especially for a group with no healer. The warlock was insta-killed by an Inflict Wounds spell; 3d10 necrotic damage was enough to kill him twice over. The fanatic was extremely inaccurate with spiritual weapon; he had it up most of the battle, but he only hit with it once.

I probably should have gotten rid of the dretches or cultists... but it was a learning experience for all. I suppose I'll actually need the DMG to really understand proper encounter design. I was just sort of eyeballing it, and wound up giving my players more than they could handle.

[LaserFace]

This may be a useful resource: http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMDnDBasicRules_v0.1.pdf

On page 57, there is a table labeled "Encounter Difficulty XP per Character", which is used as a budgeting tool. My understanding is this:

For a single level 1 character, 25xp is Easy. This means a party of four could handle a single monster valued at 100xp Easily.

However, it's not as simple as saying that four monsters valued at 25xp are fought just as easily; you need to apply modifiers based on group size, found on another table on the same page. Four enemies that are individually valued at 25xp are together as a group a 200xp budget. This doesn't mean you're awarding 200xp, but you refer this number back to the previous chart, to see if it's above the capabilities of the party. This would instead be a Medium encounter.

A CR 2 dude is worth 450 xp alone, which is actually over the Deadly threshold for a party of four at level 1 (which would be 400). If you added four small threats worth 25xp each to his side, the added XP is 550, and then multiplied by 2 for being a "Group" (3-6 enemies). At a rating of 1,100, this is even among the harder challenges for level 3 characters, although not quite a rating of Deadly.

[randomodo]

Ouch. Yep, a single CR 2 monster is a hard battle for a level 1 party, especially as fight #4 in a row and accompanied by other critters. I think, using the basic DM pdf they released a while ago, that encounter falls into the "deadly" range for level 1 characters.

Admittedly, I'm ballparking it, since I don't have my MM handy, and the encounter building math is beta. But yeah, I reckon you underestimated the deadly nature of that fight.

Not horribly surprising, we're all learning the new system and these sorts of things are going to happen to most groups - encounters intended to be climactic challenges might be resolved in a trivially easy fashion or encounters that were supposed to be surmountable may turn out to be unexpectedly deadly.

[INDYSTAR188]

This would be a concern of mine as well. I just don't have a great feel for how deadly monsters are yet. I imagine there is a small difference in circumstances that take a low level encounter from 'don't break a sweat' to 'run away!'. Looking at some of the encounters presented in HotDQ, it appears that some of those can be very challenging with, at times, overwhelming numbers of enemies possible.

For example, there is one mission in the first episode where the characters are supposed to rescue civilians at a temple. There are three groups of enemies surrounding the temple and the second group roams around the building. So it's possible PC's could face two groups during an initial combat and if their too loud, they might have to deal with the third group as well.

[Tenmujiin]

From what I've seen of posters in this forum, CR seems to be fairly out of whack for many monsters, I find the best way to deal with this is to fudge numbers. For example, the final fight of my groups LMoP was against the party's rogue who had been devoured and transformed by the ochre jelly (doesn't work in the slightest RAW but it fitted into my modified story well). He was shooting 2 bolts of slime for 3d6 every round and had eight minions hitting for 2d6 each (at range). The fight was hard and they used about all 5 of their health pots but beat the monster barely. In reality the monster's health was between 150 and 300, however much health ended up being required to use all their remaining resources.

The PCs all agreed that it was an amazingly fun fight but little did they know if I had decided on its health (or damage since the entire fight was ad-hoc) and stuck with it the fight would have been super easy (they hadn't even used 1/2 their resources by 150 hp) or a TPK (3/4 PCs were down and their resources were all gone at 267 hp).

TL;DR: If you misjudged a fight's difficulty and threw too much at the PCs or there was some serious bad luck on the PC's part then there is nothing wrong with having the BBEG die a few hits earlier. Besides, there is a reason bombs are always defused at 0:01.

Edit: I should mention that I take a rather ad-hock approach to DMing, that entire encounter was part of the attack on the mine by Gundren Rockseeker (the PCs patron) and his army of 80 grey dwarves, an extra chapter I made up on the fly for the adventure since we had extra time and decided that the Black Spider (the BBEG) was actually a good guy. Not a single creature that I added had stats. Its not the approach many would take but even just dropping/raising the health of monsters slightly on the fly can help the plot advance and the PCs survive with difficulty.

[archaeo]

This may be a useful resource: http://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/DMDnDBasicRules_v0.1.pdf

Alternately, a really good encounter builder is available online as well (http://asmor.com/5e/monsters/#/main).

[MadGrady]

Its not the approach many would take but even just dropping/raising the health of monsters slightly on the fly can help the plot advance and the PCs survive with difficulty.

This is typically how I DM as well, as I find often the grind of a combat (especially if rolls tend to be low on both sides), tends to grind on my own and my player's nerves. I will quite often reduce a baddie's HP based upon when I think they should go down, and there have been a number of times that I have raised it when I find that a baddied went down much easier than planned. If you let the story run the combat, and not the stats (as long as you give players their reward for building and investing in characters), then everyone usually ends up happy. Although sometimes TPKs can be fun :smallbiggrin:

[Shining Wrath]

I whipped together a spreadsheet with some Virtual Basic under the hood for this; as noted above, you need to sum XP, then apply a multiplier based on number of foes. Essentially, they tell you that action economy is a thing.

[Human Paragon 3]

One thing I've learned so far is to actually give out short rests. The PCs that are balanced on short rest abilities recharging need it to keep contributing, and the adventuring day is balanced with short-rest healing in mind. No short rest? TPK once a hard encounter comes.

[Ramshack]

One thing I've learned so far is to actually give out short rests. The PCs that are balanced on short rest abilities recharging need it to keep contributing, and the adventuring day is balanced with short-rest healing in mind. No short rest? TPK once a hard encounter comes.

This fine while traveling, but how do you justify the characters getting a short rest while invading an orc fort or clearing a dungeon out. Realistically NPCs wouldn't let their attacks sip a cup of tea in the armory for an hour after they just finished killing a few dozen of their friends.

I'm not saying that to be a sarcastic ass, it's a concern and problem I run into while DMing, while I want them to get HP and resources back I don't know how to justify letting them get away with it. Unless they left and recouped, in which case I would prepare defenses and fortifications for when they return lol...

[Ramshack]

This is typically how I DM as well, as I find often the grind of a combat (especially if rolls tend to be low on both sides), tends to grind on my own and my player's nerves. I will quite often reduce a baddie's HP based upon when I think they should go down, and there have been a number of times that I have raised it when I find that a baddied went down much easier than planned. If you let the story run the combat, and not the stats (as long as you give players their reward for building and investing in characters), then everyone usually ends up happy. Although sometimes TPKs can be fun :smallbiggrin:

I also do this to an extent, if creatures are dropping too fast I max their hp, or have a few more flank or join the fray. Though I'm hesitant to go too easy on the PCs. My players know if I'm pulling punches and they'll play much more recklessly if they know i'll fudge dice rolls to keep them alive. I don't want to trivialize their choices. I guess if I simply made the encounter too hard i'll lower ac or hp, but if the PCs made stupid choices and that's why they're losing, i'll play out the consequences. Sometimes they need to learn it's okay to run, and not all challenges are over come with an initiative roll..

[MadGrady]

if the PCs made stupid choices and that's why they're losing, i'll play out the consequences. Sometimes they need to learn it's okay to run, and not all challenges are over come with an initiative roll..

Wholeheartedly agree. More often than not, Im making the baddies harder

[Sartharina]

This fine while traveling, but how do you justify the characters getting a short rest while invading an orc fort or clearing a dungeon out. Realistically NPCs wouldn't let their attacks sip a cup of tea in the armory for an hour after they just finished killing a few dozen of their friends.

I'm not saying that to be a sarcastic ass, it's a concern and problem I run into while DMing, while I want them to get HP and resources back I don't know how to justify letting them get away with it. Unless they left and recouped, in which case I would prepare defenses and fortifications for when they return lol...An hour is shorter than you give it credit for, partially excacerbated by the breakneck speed of round-by-round combat. Clearing a dungeon out should have plenty of opportunities of a short rest - there's only a 10-25% chance of a random encounter per hour. Invading an orc fort's a bit harder, but taking a defensive perimeter should be able to discourage attack for long enough to rest after sending the enemies reeling - Monsters aren't individually suicidal, which is what trying to charge a resting band of adventurers would be.

[Rummy]

Also, Rope Use.

[Demonic Spoon]

This fine while traveling, but how do you justify the characters getting a short rest while invading an orc fort or clearing a dungeon out. Realistically NPCs wouldn't let their attacks sip a cup of tea in the armory for an hour after they just finished killing a few dozen of their friends.

I'm not saying that to be a sarcastic ass, it's a concern and problem I run into while DMing, while I want them to get HP and resources back I don't know how to justify letting them get away with it. Unless they left and recouped, in which case I would prepare defenses and fortifications for when they return lol...


I'm thinking that the dungeon shouldn't be so incredibly dense with monsters that every new room you waltz into has a new set of enemies. If the monsters don't just stay in their rooms, then presumably the monsters would compete with each other for space anyway.

Instead of making a dungeon where each room has a ton of monsters and you're expected to short rest every room, make a dungeon with a bunch of rooms, most of which are empty and a few have some monsters living in it.

With regards to an orc fort: I would expect that the orcs, as vaguely intelligent creatures, should sound the alarm as soon as adventurers start busting down the front door. Unless there was exceptionally good use of stealth, I wouldn't expect storming an orc fort to be something that a party of adventurers by themselves could do before reaching mid to high level. As you're running into, the orcs would take notice and they sure as hell wouldn't just let the adventurers sit by and rest...but that happens regardless of whether short rests are 10 minutes or an hour.