TPK after idea

[Railak]

So watching Titans (live action series) and there's an episode where several dead characters are in purgatory. They find a bridge back to the real world.

I was thinking if I accidentally TPK.. or intentionally.. could that be an interesting idea to use for the party to come back to life?

[pabelfly]

Question. If you implemented this idea, what risk do your players have in combat, especially after they learn about it?

[Maat Mons]

Even if it's easy to come back from the dead, you still risk the worst fate of all, losing your hard-won loot! Unless, somehow, coming back to life teleports your stuff to you from whatever market your killers hocked it at. And if that does happen, you'd better figure out how to make sure the things you kill stay dead, or the merchants you hock their stuff to are going to come looking for you when everything you sold them mysteriously disappears.

[Jay R]

My favorite approach is for the PCs to wake up chained to an oar in the hold of a ship. Their conquerors saved their lives and sold them into slavery.

There is now a bunch of other slaves to organize into a rebellion, a ship to take over, and a bunch of sea adventures before they can get back to their old lives.

If you want to do this, I urge you to watch the Errol Flynn movies Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk as preparation.

[Psyren]

So watching Titans (live action series) and there's an episode where several dead characters are in purgatory. They find a bridge back to the real world.

I was thinking if I accidentally TPK.. or intentionally.. could that be an interesting idea to use for the party to come back to life?

Sure. Would likely require divine intervention, but almost anything beats "campaign ends abruptly, everyone get out of my house and go home!" or "Hope you weren't attached to the characters you spent days if not weeks building, time to reroll."

As Jay R stated though, you don't actually have to make them die simply because they hit the game's "death threshold." It's perfectly acceptable to have them all black out and then wake up in captivity somewhere with their wounds tended (partially or wholly.)


Question. If you implemented this idea, what risk do your players have in combat, especially after they learn about it?

"You don't stay dead" is not at all the same thing as "there are no consequences to dying." Be creative.

[Railak]

Sure. Would likely require divine intervention, but almost anything beats "campaign ends abruptly, everyone get out of my house and go home!" or "Hope you weren't attached to the characters you spent days if not weeks building, time to reroll."

As Jay R stated though, you don't actually have to make them die simply because they hit the game's "death threshold." It's perfectly acceptable to have them all black out and then wake up in captivity somewhere with their wounds tended (partially or wholly.)



"You don't stay dead" is not at all the same thing as "there are no consequences to dying." Be creative.

There's definitely be more than them just deciding to come back to life, actually divine intervention works out fairly well, cause the party is being sort of, I don't want to say messed with, but has the attention of a god of mischief. It would make sense he wouldn't want his entertainment to stop.

[icefractal]

So watching Titans (live action series) and there's an episode where several dead characters are in purgatory. They find a bridge back to the real world.Sounds like an interesting idea, could be lots of fun.


I was thinking if I accidentally TPK.. or intentionally..But i don't recommend the bolded part. YMMV, but IME most players hate being railroaded into a meaningful loss - even players that are fine with a linear plot in general.

Meaningful loss definitely includes death, death-but-not-permanent, slavery, imprisonment, loss of gear, significant harm to friends/allies, or having to plead/bargain for their lives. Even a non-meaningful forced loss - for example, the foe just knocks them out and leaves - will still annoy a fair number of players if it was anything but scrupulously fair.

In fact, even being too prepared for the event can be a problem if the group doesn't have enough trust in you, because it raises the question "If the GM was so ready for this and happy for it to occur, maybe they subtly railroaded things toward this outcome?"

So IMO, the two best paths to using something like this:
A) Legitimately as a fallback in case of TPK, with the understanding that it might never happen, and no manipulating events to make it happen.
B) Get player buy-in. Sometimes you have to die to succeed - like explosively sabotaging a powerful magic device the BBEG has, way too well guarded to disassemble safely. Or facing odds that are a 99% certain TPK in order to buy others time to escape. You don't have to spill all the details, just that you have a plan to continue past a TPK that'll be fun, and knowing that ... here's a chance to significantly advance your goals/ideals at the cost of a probable TPK.

You do need to mention the "continue past a TPK part", because otherwise, even if the players are totally willing to enter a TPK situation, they could easily end up with a plan that saves the lives of 1-2 PCs, and then what? Also the part about the continuation being fun better be true, since you're staking your GM cred on it. :smalltongue:

[Battlebooze]

After blacking out, they could wake up in the back of a wagon, being taking to a fortress for their execution. Then you could have something exciting and dangerous happen for them to escape, like a Dragon attack. I'm really liking this idea.

[Faily]

Some years ago, a GM I played with liked to have brutal BS encounters (CR way above the character level, skimping out on loot so PCs weren't able to handle threats they normally should, etc, long story there), but he also wanted to have a theme of "Chosen by the Gods" for this particular campaign.

And kind of implemented it in a clunky and bad way.

When your character died, The Gods would bring back a dead hero to continue the quest... which had to be a former character of yours in that campaign. So basically:
- play Character 1
- Character 1 dies
- Character 2 is rolled up and enters play
- Character 2 dies
- Character 1 can now return from the dead to take their place.

The returning character would be restored to the level they were at when they died (yay...) and with the same gear they had when they died.

My big gripe with it then was more that "if the gods think this character is so important why didn't they just save them from death earlier or give them a Raise Dead back then?" because I felt it kind of lame and annoying. In retrospect I still think that, but I also think more that it is mechanically not very well thought out (due to returning with a level 3 character in 3.5 when the party is like level 5-6) and kind of just makes some characters feel like road-bumps along the way so you can quickly bring an old one back into play.



That aside, I do think that it can be neat to have "get out of jail"-cards for dead PCs. Twice I've come across different boons that do something of a contingency-Resurrection on the character (even including that they'll be teleported to a safe location before being raised) and I think that's cool.

I also think that if a TPK happens, it could be a fun change in the narrative to play the characters trying to escape Purgatory (or similar place) to return to life. That in itself could be an interesting adventure.

[Efrate]

This can work as a neat 1 time thing but not as an always on thing. There need to be consequences. Your bbeg is doing some kind of big planar magic using ritual or death magic ritual, or artifact or macguffin, it's rough, but bbeg wins.

Tpk....but because of the weird energies of the ritual/mcguffin/artifact they are sent to purgatory with everything exactly like it was as far as gear, expended resources etc. When they lost. They are now under time pressure to get out to continue fighting. Because if you stay too long you do not want to leave.

Works well if purgatory is part of hades for the entrapment trait, or in pathfinder because the boneyard is kind of like that and it exists already so it's not some weird new unknown thing so in universe its consistent.