Advice on TPK *spoilers*

[Mjolnirbear]

So we're in the Underdark in Whorlstone caverns. The party is four level 4 characters: awakened Mystic, champion fighter, land druid and death cleric. The cleric was absent for this fight. They all are 33 point buy builds and started with a free feat.

They tripped the pit trap and the druid lost his shield. They saw the shrieker and proceeded in anyways. They killed the death dog, moon beamed the head cultist, and then the ettin came out.

The ettin wiped the floor with them.

The champion hit once the entire fight, for a critical. The Mystic suited the death dog before the ettin came out and spend all the rest of his points healing. The ettin crit three times. The head cultist did nothing but avoid the moon beam and turn invisible. The other cultists attacked with crossbows.

My problem is I'm not sure what to do about the TPK. On the one hand, I'm a new DM. Maybe I shouldn't have let them into that room short a player. Maybe I should have adjusted the fight. Maybe I should have cancelled the game until we had all four players (but if I did that every time we'd play once a month or less... We're all adults with different life priorities).

On the other hand, they saw the shrieker and proceeded anyways. They could have run, indeed when they were low but no one was dead, elected to keep fighting. They regularly blow their wad on small fights, and the champion has not ever used Shield Master. No one thought to ask about cover, avoiding the crossbows, or any kind of tactical thinking.

Further, the champion missed almost every attack; the ettin got two crits.

So I'm not sure if it's crappy luck, my inexperience, or their inexperience-slash-foolishness. I gave them more powerful characters expressly to prevent dying from bad luck but I don't know if it was enough.

I can fix it; I can have Derendil grab them and run; have the faerzess rez them; use the AL free rez rule; have the giants rez them (they saved the rampaging cursed giant) even have Droki come in screaming about Themberchaud burning everyone as a distraction so they can escape (they decided to give the egg to Themberchaud when the obelisk interrupted their exploration of Whorlstone. They can be captured and escape later, or captured for experiments, or left for dead but make their saves.

My question is whether I should. If its my inexperience that killed them, I feel I should fix it. But luck and foolishness?

What input can you guys offer?

[Zman]

Well, you let a party of three take on encounters meant for a party of four which greatly increases the difficulty. That increased lethality became lethal. Are you at least partially at fault, yes.

How could you have "fixed" the problem?

1. Tone down the encounter to appropriate levels.
2. NPC the Cleric while he player is absent.

[Laereth]

2. NPC the Cleric while he player is absent.

At the very least this. I understand people that don't want the burden of having to run another character, but me and my gaming friends are also adults with multiple priorities. What we found best was having absent players' characters' run (during fights) by the other players (they either elect someone for the night or group play it), that way the DM's load stays the same and fighting effectiveness is more or less unchanged.

[ClintACK]

In future, yeah, definitely NPC the missing character's player -- let the party run them, or just have them do their normal things. (Edit to add: Mainly, this is to save you the hassle of trying to rebalance the encounters on the fly.)

For now, you really only have two options: Let the TPK stand, or undo it somehow. With one, the players lose the characters they've made. With the other, they lose the sense of risk.

Lots of ways to make either one interesting.

If you want to bring them back... have an extremely surreal session where they're faerzress shades wandering a chaotic demiplane that's acting as a bridge to the Abyss before they find their way back to the physical plane.

If you want to continue the campaign but let the TPK stand... let them pick their favorite NPCs from the campaign so far (within reason) and continue the quest.

Or merge the two -- let their faerzress shades possess new hosts -- so they're rolling up new characters, but remember who they were before the TPK... maybe have them take the bodies of some of the cultists?

[RickAllison]

How about a quest to get back? The cleric is Death domain, have him beseech his deity to open a pathway to save his friends in exchange for their service, then open up a portal to the realm of the dead and have them either do the quest in a plane-hopping journey (maybe he needs you to go where his servants are unable to?) or have him break their shackles and crawl out of hell "God of War"-style! Make sure their exit is in a suitably dramatic place, so future enemies are prepared for the terrifying adventurers who escaped death.

[Zman]

Honestly, what is done is done, I am not a fan of reneging the characters alive,mor giving them plot fuel resurrection. Have the cleric arrive a day or two later having gone for reinforcements, i.e. the new party members, go from there and forever have your party fear character death. The last thing I'd advise was simply resurrecting them.

[Gastronomie]

Given the nature of OotA, it'll actually be more interesting to show the players that there's a "fate worse than death".

One idea is the "gain the bodies of the cultists". Or the players may wake up, only to realize they're slowly turning into demons - growing tentacles, hunching back, fangs sprouting, eyes popping up on their faces... That could make one possibility.

Perhaps get them into a sub-campaign in which the characters try to cure their demonic influence through interaction with some supernatural power. Of course it could be the gods - but another intriguing idea could be to have the players turn to the Devils, who are no doubt extremely interested in the demonic invasion on the Realms.

[Mjolnirbear]

Ok. Running the absent PC seems like a good idea. We were just handwaving it every time a player was absent, so I'm in favour of this for multiple reasons.

I'm tempted to let the TPK stand for several reasons, but the main two are that they *could* have run, even debated it, but decided to stick it out; the second is because I warned them from the very beginning that the Underdark was dangerous and some encounters can only be survived by fleeing. I backed that up with nearly every NPC in Velkynvelve to set the lesson early.

I'll have to learn how to re-balance on the fly at some point... I'm guessing I do that by reverse-engineering the XP budget?

Thank you all for your input. I really appreciate it.

[ad_hoc]

There is nothing wrong with a TPK.

If it can't happen then the PCs will just automatically succeed in every combat encounter they are in. Why bother?

[Zman]

Also, defeat doesn't necessarily mean death. PCs can be captured, saved by an Ettin as food for later, etc. there are creative ways to spin a TPK into a defeat and plot point. Though, I usually make some kind of penalties like descriptive scars, lost items, etc.

[RickAllison]

Also, defeat doesn't necessarily mean death. PCs can be captured, saved by an Ettin as food for later, etc. there are creative ways to spin a TPK into a defeat and plot point. Though, I usually make some kind of penalties like descriptive scars, lost items, etc.

The classic example is the wampa from Empire Strikes Back. Kills the tauntaun, but saves Luke for a snack.

[Temperjoke]

There's blame to go all around here, you left the challenge a little too strong, they didn't choose discretion over glory, and they weren't using proper technique and tactics. I'd show them a fate worse than death, and have them get rescued by someone they helped previously if possible, who chides them for flinging themselves into danger. This would serve to highlight several realities of the game: defeat isn't always death, helping NPCs can have a better pay off than what they might have in their pockets, and be careful to not bite off more than you can chew. Also, running an absent PC as a basic NPC can help things, especially if it's someone with a big role like a healer for the group.

[Vogonjeltz]

The ettin crit three times.

It's a 5% (natural 20) crit chance right? That's a little over a 1 in ten thousand chance of occurring. Sounds pretty unlucky.

[Sabeta]

Also, defeat doesn't necessarily mean death. PCs can be captured, saved by an Ettin as food for later, etc. there are creative ways to spin a TPK into a defeat and plot point. Though, I usually make some kind of penalties like descriptive scars, lost items, etc.

We had this happen once. All but one person got KO'd, and so he ran to a nearby town we all made new characters who for various reasons would be willing to invade an enemy stronghold and rescue our comrades.

After the operation we got to choose which character to keep. The one left behind either retired from Adventuring or was handed to the DM for potential use as an NPC later in the story.

[MrStabby]

It's a 5% (natural 20) crit chance right? That's a little over a 1 in ten thousand chance of occurring. Sounds pretty unlucky.

OP says Ettin crit twice I think, also doesn't say out of how many attacks. Getting two crits out of 8 attacks is still unlucky but not that unlikely.




All in all though I would say that you need to select the tone of your campaign here. If it is exciting as no one knows if the PCs will survive then you have to teach them death is real. If it is about epic heroism and how they escape scrapes then they can be saved.

For me, I prefer the notion that they put the rules on character death in the PHB for a reason and they can be used. You don't have to kill all of them though. Draw straws to see who gets executed when if you like - and who gets ransomed for some other consideration (bonus points if the ransom makes things harder for the PCs by giving their enemies a boost).

[Hudsonian]

I've recently dealt with this...
In my campaign it was a much lighter, "for the fun of it" flavor and the party was robbed, put in dresses, laid in an alley, and had flyers posted all around town of them in their dresses. They then had to raise enough money to buy back gear, then proceed to wreck the organization that had defamed them.

I allowed this for three main reasons: 1. My players were just really getting comfortable with their characters and becoming a party and I didn't want to go through the learning process again. 2. It was mostly the fault of one party member and their dice being weighted to roll 4s (not really, but seriously... SO many 4s). 3. It seemed to sufficiently warn the players that they weren't invincible and that death wasn't the only bad thing that could happen.

That being said.

My advice:
According to your post earlier, you were VERY clear that this was going to be a gritty and plausibly fatal campaign, so.... Make it fatal. it seems to me, that if you have been abundantly clear that you were running a lethal campaign and they died... Stand by your word. Otherwise you could lose a little credibility later on.

Edit: I sounded like a pompous idiot.... I tried to sound like a less pompous idiot.

[Naicz]

Well you are running OotA, which in my experience is extremely punishing for players, and tedious for the DM (how many ways can I say "Yeah, its really dark and foreboding and creepy, also there is no food and you are lost...RANDOM ENCOUNTER").

The simplest solution I see is to have the Ettin tie up the party and then "sell" them to the Drow.

The Drow are tracking the party constantly, so maybe they knew the party went into the caverns and didn't come out. Drow enter, see the Ettin's new prizes and either take them by force or barter for them. They are just outside of Gracklstugh (sp?) where slavery is EXTREMELY common, so I would assume that nearby intelligent creatures know the value of taking prisoners and selling them off to the Duergar.

This at least plays into the "Drow pursuers" aspect of the campaign and can lead them to a new area without any of their shiny goodies (thereby punishing them for the TPK without ending the campaign. Perhaps the party can plan an escape while the bulk of the Drow are occupied and now find themselves lost in the Underdark, and eventually stumble upon Blingdenstone/Netherlight Grove/etc.

IF you want to avoid the TPK that is... In my opinion OotA isn't that much fun to start again from scratch, and having a fresh adventuring party conveniently close by in this alien-underground world seems like a stretch in logic. The adventure path uses slavery and capture extensively, so I would just play off of that.

Best of luck to you and your group with whatever you decide. :)