Tpk?

[Alucard2099]

This may seem like an odd question, but i heard a lot of people talking about TPKs in the earlier levels. I have done a lot with 5e over the last few months, and i haven't seen even one of my players die. And yes, I'm using unchanged monsters straight from the MM.

Can someone shed some light on why people were dying all the time? Or did i just hear wrong?

[Rilak]

Can someone shed some light on why people were dying all the time?

The published adventures are pretty brutal at levels 1 and 2.

[Ranting Fool]

Played the first session of our new 5th campaign and 6 of us (2 fighters, 1 barbarian, 1 wizard, 1 cleric, 1 Warlock) were ambushed by 6 orcs and while we won we had 1 fighter and barbarian down, 1 fighter at 1 hp and cleric att 3 hp. The smart (Read: Cowardly) casters remained untouched. We had a bit of bad luck but when you've only got 12 to 6 HP an orc with a big choppa can just knock you out of the fight easy enough.

[MadGrady]

Yeah, published adventures are pretty brutal. We've had a TPK playing Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

[Person_Man]

We had TPK using the module in the freaking Basic boxed set.

1st level hit points start between 5ish (Wizard with low Con) up to 18 (Barbarian Dwarf with 20 Con).

Wherever you fall in that spectrum, you can still be be knocked unconscious with just 1 or 3ish hits. (Though obvisouly more hit points are better).

So if four goblins attack four 1st level PCs and get lucky by winning Initiative and/or rolling a critical hit, they can easily knock out one or two PCs in the first round.

Then if the remaining 2-3 PCs get unlucky and fail to kill any goblins with their counter attack, they're probably going to be knocked unconscious the next round as well.

Goblins eat the players. The end.


It's notable that the designers actually did this on purpose. Some players like the old school, gritty, anyone can die at any time feel that was very common in 1E/2E, and/or the "rocket tag" that typified mid-high level 3.X. That's why the "Apprentice" levels exist, and why most signature class abilities are front loaded into them.

Also, the modules contain some encounters where the players are specifically supposed to just watch and/or run away from and/or come up with a clever solution to defeating a superior enemy. Again, this type of encounter was somewhat common in every non-4E version of the game, especially in 1E/2E with its heavy focus on resource management. Players who just walk up to such enemies and engage in combat are likely to die.

[Feldarove]

The difference between a difficult encounter and a difficult day of encounters is what typically causes TPKs.

The modules they've released so far are very taxing on resources at low levels. And, when one goblin crit takes out a character, you start blowing resources quickly (might seem foolishly).

The modules, especially the box set, make a lot of assumptions about what your party should do instead of running into combat. The problem is either or both; your players are either new, or new to the concept, of doing something besides fighting baddies OR your DM is new to doing something other then fight the baddies.

I've D&D for over a decade, but most of what my groups have run have been homebrew. There is typically an obvious distinction between combat and "think of something other than combat" time. With 5e we decided to get all the books because A) we are older, with jobs that can afford it and B) it seems like there will be a limited amount of books released each year. So when we started running these modules, whoever was DM-ing didn't really aid the players in non rushing in headlong to each combat, and the players didn't really understand a dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl where additional resources might be given out after the party was drained of theirs, or time could be taken to rest, etc.

Long story short: TPKs are both a mix of DM and Player styles.

However many TPKs you are having, are probably not indicative of the edition, but of your play style within the edition.

[MadGrady]

From my experience, most deaths so far that I have encountered from 5e have been due to crits from bad guys. These are nasty lol.

Did play a game the other day (Encounters game) where both myself, and a fellow member both got knocked to 0, and both were due to crits from bad guy rolls. Rolled our death saves, both failed the first roll. We BOTH rolled a 1 on our second rolls, meaning it counted as 2 and we died.

It was hilarious.

[rhouck]

The difference between a difficult encounter and a difficult day of encounters is what typically causes TPKs.

Spot on. It is also what is most challenging to a DM. Balancing one encounter against a party isn't that hard -- balancing 5, 6, 7 encounters in a row against a party (especially a low level one) definitely is. And the published modules can definitely push the limit.

If your DM allows you to take long rests fairly often, then resource management is far less of a concern and encounters are easier. Plus everyone is at full health going into most fights, which is good for obvious reasons. Even short rests are very useful due to HD and certain class features refreshing.

But if your DM is stingy about letting you rest... things can get tough :)

[Tynyss]

My normal gaming group of a few friends, former 3.5 Players, were very close to a tpk in our first session of the starter set.


After the goblin ambush on the road to Phandalin we followed the trail to the cave. The fights against the goblins went well and we thought clearing the cave shouldn't be too much of an issue, that quickly changed when we met the bugbear.
Our Fighter charged into the small room at the end of the cave and was one-shotted by the bugbear. Our Monk was critted by a Goblin and collapsed as well.
In the end it was up to me(Wizard) and the other party member who was still alive(Druid) to fight a bugbear, a wolf and a goblin. While we managed to kill the wolf and the goblin the bugbear killed our druid and I decided to run for it. I jumped into those water things, opened the small dam and flooded out of the cave surviving with 1 hp.


Edit: Spelling

[The Shadowdove]

I followed the advice of other 5e Dms on how to run the difficulty on my first sessions.

Our dragonborn fighter was killed in the first full combat session.

We mostly blamed it on his thought to tank two basic skeletons at level 1...

Yet... The first hit that landed on him took him into the negatives.

My pcs were so hard pressed to kill this two as a four man
(now three man) team, that I intentionally allowed my archer up on the ledge to miss a few attacks while they caught up.

I leveled them up after their next encounter with more undeads, which took them pretty low. Yet they had learned to fear for their lives more by now.

They eventually caught up to the mysterious guy they were chasing, and he threw down some orb to summon something...I killed the paladin in the end fight that included a summoned undead minotaur(also in the monster manual).

That greataxe... And that gore damage...instakill on some low levels.

Even with the better positioning to take out the Minotaur. I dared not add any more creatures or surprises into the combat.

However, despite everything, my players thanked me for running the game. They like 5e more. And they all were sure that they hated it before we even played.

The risk factor and faced pace combat accompanied by more dm and player tools for role play, interactions, and passive abilities made it an enjoyable experience it seems.

I'm excited to do our second session this week.

[Slipperychicken]

The difference between a difficult encounter and a difficult day of encounters is what typically causes TPKs.


Agreed. My group got TPK'd twice. Both times, we had already used up most of our LR (Long Rest. This is now an acronym) stuff, took an SR (Short Rest. Because spell-resistance isn't really a thing this edition) then decided to press on and engage another group of enemies. Also, NPCs which are built like PCs are apparently really tough.


If you ask me, my advice for avoiding TPKs is to be careful:

Don't announce your presence. Negotiation is for merchants, not monsters.
Be aware that numerical advantages are a big deal now.
After an encounter where you use a lot of LR abilities or take significant damage, always pull back for a long rest. Unless you're on a strict time-limit, in which case you pull back for a short rest.
Check for traps no matter how much your party bitches about heroism or makes 10ft-pole jokes.
Know that you cannot simply "mop up" a pack of mooks like in 3.x. They have a lot more hitpoints than you'd expect.
Teamwork is essential. If your wizard detects magic traps and isn't sure how to disarm them, try to help out instead of rushing through the traps like a doofus. Really, any time an ally does something, use the Help action to give them advantage on it (PHB 192). Even if someone's crafting, having a proficient assistant speeds up the work considerably.