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Hobbes1266
2015-03-13, 12:17 PM
I would like to start a thread for people to post there most notable TPKs. These would include any TPKs that are unexpected, annoying, frustrating, funny, etc...

Maglubiyet
2015-03-13, 02:01 PM
Game of Runequest, the GM was trying out the new rules for mounted combat. We got caught out in the open by a group of dragonewts on riding lizards. Both my characters were impaled on the first found (one in the abdomen, the other I think in the leg) and took lethal damage.

Everyone else tried to run. On round 2 the GM asked what my guys were going to do and I said, "bleed". A couple of critical strikes later and the rest of the party lay bleeding to death on the field.

Lesson: when trying new rules, it's best to run through the numbers first to make sure it's not majorly overpowering.

Kid Jake
2015-03-13, 02:15 PM
It was a party of one, but the guy who played McCrow in my M&M game made my first ever game/TPK pretty memorable.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y207/UnLegend/FirstTime_zps739e0a5e.png

There's also the time in a Star Wars game he flushed everyone out of an airlock trying to get Mynocks out of the cargo bay. They just flew right back in while he suffocated in the cold vacuum of space.

Or the time him and the guy who plays Fanboy in the same game were playing a pair of 10 year old Pokemon trainers/psychopaths (seriously, one of them was a drug dealer; the other went around skinning and wearing Pokemon; they both made their living selling badges they found off legitimate trainers) who got into a standoff with the police. Let's just say that in the grand battle between Arcanine and 10 year old thugs, Arcanine is almost always the winner.

Or the time those two guys tried to play Pathfinder and both tried to abandon the other one to a warren of angry kobolds at the same time, only to be killed by traps as they blindly ran back the way they thought the exit was.

Maglubiyet
2015-03-13, 02:16 PM
Lesson: when trying new rules, it's best to run through the numbers first to make sure it's not majorly overpowering.

ps - I am guilty of doing this myself. A long time ago my group upgraded from the old superhero RPG, Villains and Vigilantes, to V&V2. I knew all the original rules pretty well, so I assumed V&V2 was pretty similar. I rolled up some NPC's and threw them at the players' new characters. Turns out some of the powers I thought I understood, I actually had no idea. So when it came to resolving combat, the PC's started dropping like flies.

This wasn't like superhero, shrug off the blow after a minute, type stuff either. They were dead. Never coming back dead. One of the players had a character named the Milkman and to this day a "Milkman Adventure" is what we call a total party kill.

BWR
2015-03-13, 02:20 PM
A d20 Rokugan game. Two noobs and me. The others thought the Shadowlands sounded like a cool place to go adventuring. IC and OOC I strenuously objected on the grounds it would lead to a certain TPK.
I was right.

D&D. We had passed a trapped tanar'r (a glabrezu I think) on the way up as we cleared out the BBEG's tower. We were about level 6 or 7. We curbstomped all opposition in the tower and easily trounced the BBEG and were left at nearly full power, with only minor damage and a few spells used. Someone suggested we take out the demon. I objected IC and OOC, saying it was too powerful for us. They refused to listen. We fought an epic battle and left it with 4 hit points before the last of us died (PW: stun on me round one putting me out of action for 14 rounds was the biggest obstacle - one round less and I would have killed it and been the lone survivor). It was annoying at the time but a kind of fun afterwards.

Freelance GM
2015-03-13, 03:57 PM
I've got two that I DM'ed.


So, remember that sacred law, "Never Split the Party?" Well, they broke it, so I broke them.

It was in the Web of the Spider-Queen season of D&D Encounters, so this was with 4E Essentials rules. The party just met the BBEG, a Drow Wizard who delivered a monologue from behind the safety of a heavy portcullis. More Drow ambush the party, and the party Wizard decides the best course of action would be to teleport to the other side of the portcullis and take on the BBEG. The party ranger flees into nearby tunnels, leaving the party fighter and rogue against the Drow. They actually put up a good fight, but the BBEG mops the floor with the party Wizard. Some Drow peel off from the group and ambush the Ranger in the tunnels. Soon, the Ranger is killed (and his little dog, too), and the Wizard is bleeding out on the wrong side of a heavy portcullis.

The party fighter and rogue work together to try and lift the portcullis and save the wizard. They aren't strong enough. The remaining drow line up on the wall behind them, readying their poison-tipped crossbows... Game Over.


So, remember the Goblin ambush at the very beginning of Lost Mine of Phandelver? I got a TPK in the first 20 minutes.
Despite numerous hints, the party manages to blunder into the ambush without spotting the goblins first. The goblins get a surprise round, damaging the Fighter and the Rogue. Everyone rolls Initiative. The Goblins win Initiative, and attack again, finishing off the Fighter and Rogue. The Wizard dives into a cart and ready an action to Ray of Frost the first goblin that steps into view.

There is a full round of silence.

One of the goblins stumbles into the muddy road, as if shoved. The Wizard pops out and blasts him with a Ray of Frost.

The remaining goblins all loose arrows at the Wizard.

Game Over.

Since this was within the first 20 minutes, I ruled that the party was merely knocked unconscious, but the Goblins looted their bodies while they were out, taking any weapons small enough for them to use, as well as anything obviously valuable.

And while it's not a TPK...

It's technically not a TPK, since 2 PC's were asleep at the time, but every party member involved was killed.

D&D: Next June playtest, with a Level 5 party. Again, the idiots split the party. The Fighter tried sneaking (which is in itself a problem) and the Illusionist noticed. The irrationally paranoid Illusionist follows him out of the castle into the woods. Catching the fighter off-guard, the Illusionist paralyzes the Fighter with Hold Person and ties him up for interrogation about why he was ditching the party.

As this is happening, I roll a Random Encounter. 2 Ghouls. They roll well on their Stealth checks, and both of the players were too preoccupied to be looking around.

Surprise round. The Illusionist goes down from the Ghoul's paralyzing claws. The fighter is restrained and still paralyzed from Hold Person. Unable to defend themselves, I describe in vivid detail how the Ghouls feast on the helpless (and stupid) party members, emphasizing that because of the paralysis, their characters can't feel it happening, they just watch in horror.

Ghouls quickly became one of my favorite low-level monsters after that session.

Traab
2015-03-13, 10:27 PM
Ok, to set the scene, this is a MMORPG called Everquest. My guild wanted to transition from a casual group guild into a raiding guild, meaning we would be taking on the hardest content in the game (eventually) So our guild leader got the bright idea that to practice our group communication and ability to work together, we would take over entire zones. Not a bad idea really, and it did help, but at one point we took over this zone called cazic thule. My group was sent to an area in the zone called the maze. The monsters were fairly weak, most were barely still worth exp so we cleaned house. After an hour or so we got the word to gather back at the entrance before leaving so we did.

As we were leaving the maze, I looked down to type a message and when I looked up I had obviously missed a turn somewhere because I was alone.... except for three monsters staring at me. I cursed, and ran with them chasing me. I was playing a druid, which has a spell that lets me run really fast, so I was able to stay ahead of the mobs just fine. The only problem was, i was lost, and every hall and room I passed by had more monsters in them, that all thought I looked tasty. Oh yeah, and a fun part of this game is, nothing ever stops chasing you until it dies, you die, or you leave the zone. I ran through the maze several times before I was able to get directions on how to escape. By this point I have at least two dozen monsters chasing me. I warn my guild they need to zone out because I have an army chasing me.

So I get out of the maze only to see my entire guild sitting there at the zone line. I am now pulling everything from half the zone, plus whatever was between me and the zone line. Now, one final tidbit that makes things fun. This game has collision detection, so you cant just run through other players, they can actually block you quite well if they want to. So there are 40+ people just sitting at the zone line, ignoring my /yells to gtfo quick. I hit the exit but cant get past all my guildies, when suddenly the entire freaking zone nearly grinds to a halt. So many monsters and players are on my screen the game has lagged out to hell and back. (Gotta love dialup) All I get are snapshots of everyone dying horribly, including me. Several members of the guild zoned out, then came back in, only to find out that half the guild refused to leave and are busy still being killed, so they also end up killed. Others die, run back to loot their body, only to get killed again because these mobs STILL arent done killing everyone yet. It took 20 minutes for the guild leader to get everyone to shut up, zone out, and WAIT for the damn zone to reset so we could walk back in and loot the mountain of our own corpses.

One last one, that was actually pretty amusing. This was another MMORPG World of Warcraft. WAAAAAY back, years ago when there werent any expansions, you used to be able to run dungeons with up to 15 players. My guild was running one of the highest level (at the time) dungeons, called Upper Blackrock Spire. They had gotten roughly 75% of the way through when a player had to leave so they invited me to join. I zone in and start making my way to them. Its easy enough, I have done it before. However, unbeknownst to me, at the halfway point, I got the attention of a monster that casts a spell which summons powerful warriors to fight for him. Due to how we travel through the zone, this monster had to take the long way around to catch up, so its not my fault I didnt notice. The other downside being, this longer path runs straight through tons of other monsters the group didnt bother to fight. I eventually make my way to the party when suddenly everyone starts cursing in ventrillo. I turn around and see a line going back past clipping range of all sorts of enemy monsters (many summoned) streaming for me. Unfortunately, healers had already cast spells on me, which means now the rest of the crew was on the list of available targets. We got wiped and wiped HARD! Thankfully I played a shaman, which is a class that can resurrect itself as well as allies, so I apologized profusely, popped back up and rezzed the other 14 dead people in my group and we were able to move on. But yeah, it took a bit of deduction to figure out wtf happened. Apparently, there is this staircase where you can go up the right or the left side and keep going after clearing the mobs there in the various alcoves, and I picked the wrong side.

critter3of4
2015-03-14, 02:16 AM
I would like to start a thread for people to post there most notable TPKs. These would include any TPKs that are unexpected, annoying, frustrating, funny, etc...

Orange goo.

Disclaimer: I'm a mediocre DM at best.

This happened about 15 years ago.

I created a dungeon crawl that was simple hack'n'slash. A dungeon filled with kobolds. Nothing special about it except two things 1) the temperature of the dungeon was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit 2) A small canal of orange goo emerged from a wall near the entrance. The canal bisected the only hallway leading into the heart of the dungeon. The party stood at the hallway entrance, torches flickering.

Orange goo is a save or die poison with some hefty penalties to the save (please see disclaimer above). Besides its fatal qualities, Orange goo is nearly impossible to freeze. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, Orange goo turns into a gas. That's when things get really interesting.

After describing the entrance, the cold and the strange Orange Goo; the party pondered their next move. Now I should mention here that the party usually likes to squabble over a decision until somebody just says "screw this!" and makes a bold choice, usually dragging down the rest of the party. This was one of those moments.

The party deliberated for fifteen minutes on which way to go (forward or back to town), checking for secret doors("double check, triple check...uh...um...I spend an hour staring intently on this five feet of space!") and making small talk. That's when my brother figuratively said "screw this!" and plunged his torch into the canal. My face fell, "your torch goes out, Orange steam rises to happily greet your nostrils and internal organs. Roll to save vs poison"* ...and TPK.

The adventure took a total of twenty minutes, fifteen of those minutes were spent on small talk and jokes which is a consistent time ratio for me. I consider it the greatest moments of my mediocre DMing career. We still joke about it.

* i'm embellishing here. I probably just said something like "your all dead. Not sure what to do now. Got any sandwiches?"

I like my rewrite better.

Rallicus
2015-03-14, 10:05 AM
snip

Uh oh, someone got lost on the way to the video game board.

Or maybe I'm just jaded and feeling old at the notion of Vanilla WoW being "WAAAAAY" back. Oh, lost some XP and durability that can be repaired for pennies, didja? Well let me tell you a little something about Ultima Online, child... *grumble grumble*

Back on topic, I've only had one TPK ever. This was back when I was first learning how to DM and was really trying to railroad the party; they refused the NPC's order, which resulted in them being outright slaughtered. Poor form on my part and a learning experience to say the least.

I suppose a close second involves the time my friend ran a 4e module with 3e characters, wherein half the party died and the rest would have as well had the kobolds not retreated for no logical reason.

EDIT: Third involves my first 2e game when my character died opening a sack of flour in the first room. TPK because I was the only character? :p

Wraith
2015-03-14, 02:43 PM
My friends and I were big fans of WFRP 2nd Edition, and when 3rd Ed. came out we were psyched up to give it a try.

We'd TPK'd in the second encounter of the in-book starter campaign. We're not even sure how it happened - we weren't rolling particularly badly, and we all had decent characters, but we were just brutalised by the small band of Beastmen that were scripted to be there. :smalltongue:

SowZ
2015-03-14, 02:52 PM
I sometimes run these one shots where the players split into two groups and compete for some objective. They have always been very good at orchestrating strategems to kill each other, and every time I've done it, (about 3 or 4 times now,) has resulted in a TPK. Typically in a climactic battle where they face off and die one by one. Thing is, killing each other is never the objective. They could just as easily race for the prize and ignore each other. Alas, I think they fear being weakened while doing whatever encounter the objective is and being easy prey.

Madara
2015-03-14, 03:38 PM
The first party which ever suffered a TPK at my hands was composed of four players

A Dwarf Fighter(the sixth dwarf fighter the player had played, only varying their names)
An Assassin
A Cleric
A Druid

The party was a few halls into a kobold fortress(Yes, inspired by those kobolds)

When a group of kobolds were peppering the party with crossbow bolts through wall slits, the dwarven fighter decided to try and hammer his way through the wall...

He started to bleed to death.

The Cleric had already proceeded beyond that trap and saw no need to turn back and walk through the bolts again, thus he was no where near the fighter.

The Assassin had been stalking the Druid, the two working together to proceed. I still remember the assassin's turns.
Me: So what are you doing while the Dwarf is dying?
Assassin: I stare at the druid..
Me: Ok...

Me: The Dwarf is bleeding out, and the Cleric has proceeded ahead. What do you do?
Assassin: I stare at the druid..

Me: Your turn. Gonna stare again?
Assassin: Yup, I continue to watch the Druid.

Me: Your move again.
Assassin: I make a death attack on the Druid.

With that, only the assassin and the druid remained. The player, wanting the session to end without hard feelings, charged the cleric and rushed him into a pit trap, killing both of them.

I have no idea why the party decided to die. They could have easily just walked past the bolts at their level. It's mainly amusing to me because I didn't know what the assassin was doing until he made the death attack.

SowZ
2015-03-14, 03:44 PM
The first party which ever suffered a TPK at my hands was composed of four players

A Dwarf Fighter(the sixth dwarf fighter the player had played, only varying their names)
An Assassin
A Cleric
A Druid

The party was a few halls into a kobold fortress(Yes, inspired by those kobolds)

When a group of kobolds were peppering the party with crossbow bolts through wall slits, the dwarven fighter decided to try and hammer his way through the wall...

He started to bleed to death.

The Cleric had already proceeded beyond that trap and saw no need to turn back and walk through the bolts again, thus he was no where near the fighter.

The Assassin had been stalking the Druid, the two working together to proceed. I still remember the assassin's turns.
Me: So what are you doing while the Dwarf is dying?
Assassin: I stare at the druid..
Me: Ok...

Me: The Dwarf is bleeding out, and the Cleric has proceeded ahead. What do you do?
Assassin: I stare at the druid..

Me: Your turn. Gonna stare again?
Assassin: Yup, I continue to watch the Druid.

Me: Your move again.
Assassin: I make a death attack on the Druid.

With that, only the assassin and the druid remained. The player, wanting the session to end without hard feelings, charged the cleric and rushed him into a pit trap, killing both of them.

I have no idea why the party decided to die. They could have easily just walked past the bolts at their level. It's mainly amusing to me because I didn't know what the assassin was doing until he made the death attack.

Wait, do you mean only the assassin and the cleric remained?

denthor
2015-03-14, 03:45 PM
Players

New player rouge

Me Wizard

DM fighter and a cleric to be played later by a new player


New players first adventure.

We enter a tomb of a general.

First fight is against a scorpion this goes well.

Second fight against two scorpions TKP

We enter a small lab type room.

monsters get jump on us from get go they get attacks of opportunity.

Critical hit on fighter he is hurt bad but two hit points left

Round 2

Scorpions win dice roll for initiative

fighter down.

Me hit but up

Unable to cast I swing my got to love half orcs great axe.

I swing hit but no kill

rouge goes to flank attack of opportunity she is hit

bad dice roll no damage

Round three

Scorpions attack hit me two hit points left.

Rouge attacks and misses

I call for healing from the cleric



DM says I run cleric differently than you do moves in to attack

Round four

Critical hit on the cleric she goes down

Hit on me I go down.

Rouge can escape but does the right thing and defends down bodies

She misses next round she is down and negative

Total party kill because DM does not think clerics should heal in battle

SowZ
2015-03-14, 04:27 PM
Players

New player rouge

Me Wizard

DM fighter and a cleric to be played later by a new player


New players first adventure.

We enter a tomb of a general.

First fight is against a scorpion this goes well.

Second fight against two scorpions TKP

We enter a small lab type room.

monsters get jump on us from get go they get attacks of opportunity.

Critical hit on fighter he is hurt bad but two hit points left

Round 2

Scorpions win dice roll for initiative

fighter down.

Me hit but up

Unable to cast I swing my got to love half orcs great axe.

I swing hit but no kill

rouge goes to flank attack of opportunity she is hit

bad dice roll no damage

Round three

Scorpions attack hit me two hit points left.

Rouge attacks and misses

I call for healing from the cleric



DM says I run cleric differently than you do moves in to attack

Round four

Critical hit on the cleric she goes down

Hit on me I go down.

Rouge can escape but does the right thing and defends down bodies

She misses next round she is down and negative

Total party kill because DM does not think clerics should heal in battle

I don't blame the DM much. It's largely WOTCs fault for making healing so horribly ineffective as a combat tactic and playing a healbot so boring.

BootStrapTommy
2015-03-14, 06:23 PM
Not sure if this meets the traditional definition of TPK, but close. More PvP, betrayal style. TPK for all but the backstabbers.

A buddy of mine was putting together a 5e campaign late last fall with a bunch of friends. Originally the idea was for each of us to build a character at home, without knowledge of the others, and come ready for a campaign with full PvP.

The idea of us not communicating about our builds collapsed long before dates were even set, but I personally didn't like the idea of PvP. I'm a synergy guy, and there is enough intraparty violence in this group without it actually being encouraged. Yet a few days before we began, my nephew sends me a text. The DM had leaked some info to him, and he had a question.

My nephew can be a bit spiteful in real life, and he's notorious for taking out real life grudges in games through betrayal (we rose as a powerful alliance in a free-to-play MMO once, back when they first started being a thing, and he sold us out, resulting in a massive power shift through the whole server). With free rein for betrayal, it was predictable he would do it.

But here's where he threw a curve ball. He recruited me His logic was simple. I'm the outspoken critic of intraparty violence in our campaigns. It generally annoys me. I'd rather play in a party where I can trust fellow PCs than one where they might stab me in the back. Mainly because I'm a cooperation, not a competition, kind of guy. As a result, interparty violence in our previous campaigns has largely just been the manifestation of players' munchkinry ****-measuring contests.

So in his eyes, I made the perfect ally because I was the least suspect player. I was honestly surprised. His logic was quit sound in that regard. So we teamed up. He was a bit surprised I actually agreed. Our idea was that we actually worked for the BBG, and as an initiation into our assassin's guild we had to take the party out.

The resulting campaign pitted the players, in alternate-timeline Europe under the employ of a group of wizard/archaeologists, against a mysterious band of assassins and their dragon leader (the assassins we worked for). I played the party's Cleric, a war cleric in service of Anubis (my logic: wouldn't it suck if the healer betrayed the party?). My nephew played the party trap-monkey, a Rogue. While furtive glances where sent his way through out the campaign, he took my suggestion to be excessively generous to the party, buying him the party's respect. Meanwhile, I played main party healer, as well as off-tank.

A few sessions in we arrive at the assassin's base. Just inside, our second devious plan emerges. One of our fellow players is known as something of a troll. He tends to possess a knack for oneupsmanship and a flare for just being a ****. Something about being an underachieving middle child makes him have to prove himself. Next to my nephew, he was the next most suspect. After my nephew recruited me, I had my nephew recruit him. But my nephew wasn't allowed to let this guy know I was on board.

This guy was not known for his subtly, so upon arrival at the lair of the BBG he springs his trap, as agreed upon by my nephew. His sorc alerts the enemies to our presence, then turns on the party (stupidly without back up yet). He's surprised when my nephew Sneak Attacks him and the party levels him before help arrives. He sells out my nephew when he dies, but my nephew actually manages to play it off as the guy just trying to sow discord, after all everyone always expects him to betray the party anyway. Just that guy trying to sow distrusted. My nephew acts so perturbed by the accusation IRL, everyone buys it.

The next round, the assassins swarm in, the BBG (a black dragon) in tow. Players go through the motions, the assassins oddly ignoring my nephew and me. Finely my initative comes up.

I wander over to the BBG (frowns cross the remainder of the party's faces as I provoke not OAs) and immediately debuff the party's martials characters. The room becomes dead quiet. Everyone but my nephew has a stunned look on their face. Assassins attack. At the top of the initiative, my nephew turncoats too with a devistating Sneak Attack (he crit).

The remaining three players are livid. And they don't stand a chance. But they play it out. The last survivor is the party Hermit, an insane Cthulhu warlock. His last stand is surprisingly effective. He actually emerges quit happy, since his one of his favorite characters goes out with an epic last stand.

The campaign ended. And my nephew's and my PCs will now enter the realm of infamy. And the catalog of future BBGs.

Rakoa
2015-03-14, 06:45 PM
I was running a game consisting of a Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. Cleric agrees to handle the healing, letting the Druid focus on summoning and utility while the Wizard does blasting and (de)buffing. The Cleric, however, refused to heal the wounds of the party on the grounds that they "didn't need it yet". Evidently, they weren't damaged enough to be worth his spells yet, despite them begging his spells. The Cleric, for some reason, assumed that healing in combat would be better.

The Druid dies, and the other two are woefully unprepared for the following encounter down a player and many hitpoints. TPK.

Traab
2015-03-14, 07:34 PM
Uh oh, someone got lost on the way to the video game board.

Or maybe I'm just jaded and feeling old at the notion of Vanilla WoW being "WAAAAAY" back. Oh, lost some XP and durability that can be repaired for pennies, didja? Well let me tell you a little something about Ultima Online, child... *grumble grumble*

Back on topic, I've only had one TPK ever. This was back when I was first learning how to DM and was really trying to railroad the party; they refused the NPC's order, which resulted in them being outright slaughtered. Poor form on my part and a learning experience to say the least.

I suppose a close second involves the time my friend ran a 4e module with 3e characters, wherein half the party died and the rest would have as well had the kobolds not retreated for no logical reason.

EDIT: Third involves my first 2e game when my character died opening a sack of flour in the first room. TPK because I was the only character? :p


Pfft, you dont scare me greybeard, my first story was set in Everquest when Kunark was the newest expansion back in 00. But no matter how much you may scoff, the WoW wipe happened ten years ago. Thats pretty way back in video game years ya know. And you may have wiped your group of 5. I got 15 people killed. I dont recall the exact totals in EQ but im pretty sure there were 60+ of us in the zone at the time.

Silus
2015-03-14, 07:39 PM
As a player, I've this weird knack for surviving TPKs, be it either through strategic withdrawal (i.e. running away at the right time), dumb luck or by just not being there.

Case in point, a NWoD Hunter game. I'll save ya'll the details and just boil it down to the essentials:

Everybody but me was playing Italian Mafia guys, whereas I was playing an Irish ex-military guy that was called on to handle certain jobs (and spent his free time watching Golden Girls). Rufus (my character) was also the only one with any combat capabilities in the party. Well any ACTUAL combat capabilities (I had more than a single dot in firearms).

The party died as such:

1) One of the guys, having been turned into either a vampire or a ghoul, made the mistake of walking into a Hunter bar. That turned out more or less as well as you would have expected it to.
2) One of the guys, apparently under some curse by a Haitian voodoo guy that we were contracted to kill, walked into the man's base of operations to have a talk with him. Again, ended about how you would have expected.
3) The last two ended up dying when they tried to storm the above Haitian's base. I think one took a machete to the face or something.

And where was Rufus? At home watching Golden Girls. #3 in particular irks me because they decided to pull the violent option after I (the player) had left the game to go to work. "Hey guys, let's go shoot up this apartment building. Bring the ex-soldier with all the weapons? Naaaaah."

Gamgee
2015-03-14, 11:01 PM
This (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=11373907&postcount=8) always gives me a chuckle in these threads.

Amphetryon
2015-03-15, 06:28 AM
3.5 game with an old-school DM who still has, and uses, a book of weird magical artifacts from 1e. As one of our treasure hauls around level 6 or so, we got 1) a Portable Hole and 2) a big overstuffed chair that just oozed magic. We got it Identified and Legend Lored to be a chair that transported its occupant from any point in our prime material plane, through the astral plane, to any other point in our prime material plane. Hmm, seems useful. Fast forward a few sessions to find that the plot needs us to be on the other side of Faerun, considerably quicker than our newly-7th level Wu-Jen could get us there. We had a bright idea. All but one of us hopped into the Portable Hole, with the one with the highest UMD left outside to shout 'All Aboard!', settle into the La-Z-Boy of Translocation, and proclaim the activation word. The activation word, naturally, activated the curse. Captain UMD was gagged and bound to the chair, by the chair, which then teleported to a random spot in the middle of the woods. He was going to be stuck there for several hours before the chair released him, and we would be stuck in the Portable Hole until he released us. DM told him that as long as he didn't roll a random encounter, there should be no issue. Cue the Natural 1 on the random encounter check. We still had a couple of outs, as the random encounter table could have given us merchants or similarly innocuous beings. Of course, Captain UMD rolled up... wolves. He was devoured where he sat in the chair, and we, stuck in a folded Portable Hole in his pocket that the DM ruled (before the activation word was used) that he needed to release us from, suffocated to death. TPK by La-Z-Boy and Portable Hole.

Lord Torath
2015-03-16, 12:31 PM
And while it's not a TPK...

It's technically not a TPK, since 2 PC's were asleep at the time, but every party member involved was killed.

D&D: Next June playtest, with a Level 5 party. Again, the idiots split the party. The Fighter tried sneaking (which is in itself a problem) and the Illusionist noticed. The irrationally paranoid Illusionist follows him out of the castle into the woods. Catching the fighter off-guard, the Illusionist paralyzes the Fighter with Hold Person and ties him up for interrogation about why he was ditching the party.

As this is happening, I roll a Random Encounter. 2 Ghouls. They roll well on their Stealth checks, and both of the players were too preoccupied to be looking around.

Surprise round. The Illusionist goes down from the Ghoul's paralyzing claws. The fighter is restrained and still paralyzed from Hold Person. Unable to defend themselves, I describe in vivid detail how the Ghouls feast on the helpless (and stupid) party members, emphasizing that because of the paralysis, their characters can't feel it happening, they just watch in horror.

Ghouls quickly became one of my favorite low-level monsters after that session. You know, just because you're paralyzed, doesn't mean you can't feel anything. There are different kinds of paralysis....:belkar: Some kinds you're rigid as a board, some kinds you go completely limp, and some kinds you're pose-able! And in all cases, you may or may not be able to still feel.

Malimar
2015-03-16, 02:14 PM
The party's scout learned that I would allow him to make fire arrows with lamp oil. So he bought as much oil as he could carry without becoming encumbered, which turned out to be some 50-odd flasks, which I think worked out to about 8 gallons.

At one point later on, the party found themselves on the plane of air (a high-oxygen environment in this setting), in a fight with a vampire.

OOC, another person entered the room and for some reason it came to his attention that one of the players was carrying 50 flasks of lamp oil, so he brought it to my attention. I was all "oh, I allowed that, it's within the scout's carrying capacity, it's all good". But then I realized the vampire they were fighting was very intelligent indeed, and he did happen to have a scorching ray prepared.

The vampire made his attack, and the scout went up in flames, boom, along with most of the rest of the party. (The lone survivor, a wizard, subsequently attempted to duel the vampire, and lost.)