[3.5] Learning from a TPK...

[mucat]

Why did I know the first thing anyone said would be a crack at Samurai?

The party didn't lose because they had a samurai; that's totally irrelevant. A level-1 samurai isn't significantly worse than a level-1 fighter.

They lost primarily because they fought stupidly. Secondarily, if you strongly wanted them to survive, you could have been more flexible in changing the encounter on the fly once they started losing.

First point first: they were stupid. Their arrows weren't doing anything? Quit firing arrows and grab a weapon that counts! If they're not carrying slashing weapons, and their friends can't toss them a spare, then this is an inn, right? Let there be a meat cleaver or two, or an axe for chopping firewood. (This is where DM flexibility comes in: once they start acting smart and looking for better weapons, let 'em find something.) Once a zombie falls, grab his weapon.

And -- DM flexibility again -- let 'em get away with Rule of Cool here. In movies and popular culture (though not so much in D&D usually) fighting zombies is a canonical badass moment. So when they quit plinking away with arrows, which they ought to know won't work (not because they've memorized the SRD, but because why the hell would a zombie care if you poke a hole in it?) and do something badass, let it work.

If they light a zombie on fire, have it flail like a living torch (except for the living part), spreading the flame to other zombies before it falls. (Of course, rule of cool works both ways -- if that burning zombie hits the players before it collapses, they'll take a bit of fire damage too. Not enough to be devastating, just enough to remind them that there's a frikkin' burning zombie here!) Come up with a cool improvised weapon (and in an abandoned inn, there should be plenty!) and it works better than the rules might say it does.

Your players didn't do any of this. They used the same tactics they would have used against living opponents. When those tactics didn't work, they kept using 'em anyway. You could be forgiven for using the phrase "too stupid to live" here. But even then, if you wanted to improve their chances, you could still have altered some things on the fly.

You don't want to do a full-blown deus ex machina rescue unless there's truly no other choice. But you can do things that seem like they were part of the encounter to begin with. If the party is having a rough time with the zombies already in the room, then that third barrier could hold out a little longer than the dice say. Or better yet, it could collapse after the zombies breach it ,temporarily pinning them in rubble, giving the players a few rounds of breathing room while they claw their way out, and maybe even injuring the zombies.

And by the way, if you do suddenly decide the zombies are iinjured by falling rubble, don't just say "they take some damage". I mean, that's bland at the best of times, but it's worse when they might be suspecting you're just doing it to make things easier (which you are.) So have the pinned zombie tear off its own arm to escape, and stagger lopsidedly toward them waving the severed arm as a weapon. It won't occur to them that you're going easy on them, because you made the encounter cooler, rather than just easier. (And if one of the melee types tosses the zombie's original weapon to one of the poor archers, all the better.)