Total Party Kill stories

[ken-do-nim]

I thought it would be interesting to have a thread on TPKs you've been through or DM'd. I'll tell you that as a DM, when you've made (or tweaked) the encounter to be just too hard, you get a lurching feeling in your stomach when you realize what's happening, a kinda "oops".

I guess I'll start us off. The party had just finished Lost City, including the extended bit I added about the Temple of Zargon in the city below, and were all about 8th level. I remember flipping through the Monster Manual looking at giants and saying, "Why do they only get 1 attack per round? They are just big people, and all the fighter characters get multiple attacks per round." So the party ran into a wilderness encounter with a group of giants (fire, maybe?) who all had 3/2 attacks per round instead of one. That extra attack made a huge difference, and the party was slaughtered. So that was my oops moment. I had the gods resurrect the party, on condition that they fulfill a mission for them. When I was a newbie DM there was a lot of divine intervention.

[Thrawn183]

I have a group of 4 13th level pc's with an 11th level sorceror cohort. Since it was their first time playing as a group I decided to throw a 15th level cleric at them to force them to pull out all the stops and show me exactly what they were capable of.
I had already planned for them to all get free true res'es if they died. So I didn't feel bad about the tpk at all. They even still got their signing bonus to work for the dread emperor. The only penalty was they only got 10k gp each for deafeating 2 of the challenges instead of 15k for defeating all three.

[Avenger337]

Wait, what??? How is that even possible? The cleric should've been slaughtered by the party. Even with all his buffs, the entire party can just gang up on him and pummel him into the ground. If he's lucky the cleric would take one party member with him, and if the party's dumb he could probably get two. I don't see how you could get a TPK with that, though.

[Jarl]

I'm working towards one with my d20 Modern campaign.

Yes, I realize that d20 Modern, with its high ballistic damage die and "Your Constitution score" massive damage rules is right above Call of Cthulhu on the list of "Life Expectencies in P&P RPGS: Ascending", but I've got wily players and I've been luring them in with a false sense of security and very lame enemies.

-Only two of my players have multiple attacks per round. Can you believe that?

[goken04]

I had one just last gaming session. Although it was entirely intentional and they were all, essentially, in a basic sense, ressurrected by Pelor himself. But shh, they don't know/understand any of that.

[enderrocksonall]

We had one a little while ago where the party took down the entire cult of Nehrul. The whole cult went down, except for the lvl 10 cleric. Keep in mind that at the time the party was level drained and had an average level of about 3. Even so we took the whole cult but the cleric beat the living crap out of us using just a dagger he had been enchanting for abpout ten rounds while we took down the cultists.

It actually made for a good story twist since two of us were rezzed by heironious, the favored soul and my pally, and the other two were rezzed by Nehrul himself in exchange for them handing over an artifact that we were looking for. So when we finally get the artifact half the group will be trying to give it to Nehrul and the other half will be trying to destroy it. As an added bonus, all the players and the DM agreed that none of the new players would be told about this, so when it happens they will have to choose sides in this struggle.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

The D&D Basic game, encounter #3.

My partner and I thought that the Basic Game would be a good introduction to DMing for her, so I took all the characters in the box (4 first levellers - a rogue, a cleric, a wizard and a fighter) and off we went.
We walked the first couple of encounters and then came to a room with a glowing altar and stone coffins. Skeletons rise from the coffins and the altar cackles and fires "arcane bolts" for 1d4+4 (save for half) every round, hitting anyone in any straight line from the squares it occupies. To stop the altar firing said bolts, one has to smash it (AC13 and 32 hp). We aren't using criticals in this basic game, so on average, with everyone attacking it in rotation, it takes the party of four characters two rounds to do 32 hp - but we're also fighting a zombie and a skeleton. Whenever the skeleton is dispatched, a new one rises up, until the altar is destroyed. The altar can kill any of the characters in a couple of rounds, regardless of saves.

Of course, averages don't work too well - one miss from the key damage dealer means you lose another party member to the altar's next bolt. The rules of the basic game (fixed initiatives, no chance to hold actions or set conditions) mean that we can't actually cycle around hitting the altar, and only get two hits in per round... Oh yeah - and the Cleric can't turn or rebuke undead.

We tried that encounter several times, and everyone died, every time - until we changed the altar to have a 1d4 delay between "arcane bolts". Then it became a challenging but possible encounter, using up healing and spells, but no TPK.

The adventure texts gives the characters 300XP for defeating the altar.

[blackout]

Six words. Level 30 Human Barbarian with enchanted greataxe.

[Saph]

I think I can top all these stories.

Just yesterday, at my gaming club. It's Dec 30th, so not many people are around. Me and one other guy are playing a 4th-level one-shot with a DM who's theoretically playing in the Forgotten Realms but would much rather be playing Ravenloft. Meanwhile, the main Forgotten Realms campaign, with six players, is running next to us.

You'd think the Ravenloft-esque game would be the lethal one, wouldn't you? Nope. We came through just fine. The main group, on the other hand . . .

They were investigating an orc camp, but found it to be a little tougher than anticipated. The scout got discovered and killed, then the rest of the party was trapped on the forest trail, which was only 5 feet wide with very difficult terrain on either side of it. They got attacked by orcs and a Dire Boar from in front, and while that fight was going on another orc with Improved Trip and a silence spell on him came up behind them and started hitting the spellcasters in the back.

Final body count: four PCs dead, and two unconscious and captured who were about to be taken off to the orc's citadel and sacrificed. No chance of a resurrection, either.

So effectively that's six out of six dead, permanently. I think that gives them the current record. :)

- Saph

[blackout]

You think that's bad?! I'm in a party of EIGHT. Sure, we may all be humanoid monsters, but we all got killed by one guy, while we all had decent hardware and buffs, and were each about level eight. Sure, he was epic level, but shouldn't we have at least stood a chance?!.

[ken-do-nim]

I think I can top all these stories.

Just yesterday, at my gaming club. It's Dec 30th, so not many people are around. Me and one other guy are playing a 4th-level one-shot with a DM who's theoretically playing in the Forgotten Realms but would much rather be playing Ravenloft. Meanwhile, the main Forgotten Realms campaign, with six players, is running next to us.

You'd think the Ravenloft-esque game would be the lethal one, wouldn't you? Nope. We came through just fine. The main group, on the other hand . . .

They were investigating an orc camp, but found it to be a little tougher than anticipated. The scout got discovered and killed, then the rest of the party was trapped on the forest trail, which was only 5 feet wide with very difficult terrain on either side of it. They got attacked by orcs and a Dire Boar from in front, and while that fight was going on another orc with Improved Trip and a silence spell on him came up behind them and started hitting the spellcasters in the back.

Final body count: four PCs dead, and two unconscious and captured who were about to be taken off to the orc's citadel and sacrificed. No chance of a resurrection, either.

So effectively that's six out of six dead, permanently. I think that gives them the current record. :)

- Saph

Yeah, I'm surprised more players don't worry about the silence spell. Maybe we should have a thread on "situations you should have contingencies for". A lesser rod of silent metamagic (3000 gp) probably would have saved that party's life.

[Lilivati]

I used to co-DM with a friend of mine a lot, and at one point we were running a bunch of one-shots for various people, most of whom we hadn't played with before. Most of these were fairly clear-cut games intended to be over in a few hours.

The one this party had selected to play was a goblin hunt, and it's hard to get more basic than that. Our style of DMing requires the players to have a certain level of interaction with their world- i.e., talking to NPCs, making checks, actually using the information from the checks we make for them... Had the players actually used the knowledge we were giving them, or asked any of about 4 NPCs about the goblin situation in the area, they would have known there was a small goblin army augmented by orcs, rather than just the few goblins dancing around a campfire (or whatever it is they thought). With our increasingly unsubtle hints, we were all but telling them point blank, out of character, what the situation was, because although we state quite clearly when we run this kind of thing that the players' lives are in their own hands, we don't actually like seeing them die.

Anyway, they get in the vicinity of the goblins, and despite all evidence for caution, the wizard decides to go bombing over the hill, alone, yelling battlecries, and winds up as a kabob. The rest of the party, caught by surprise by the wizard's actions, follows him in a disorganized fashion, and quickly fall as well. Apparently, although they read the warnings, it was inconceivable to them that DMs might actually let characters take the consequences of their actions...

[Athenodorus]

Forgive my collosal (+3) ignorance, but what would a silence rod do against a silenced orc? Or am I misunderstanding the story?

[Jades]

7 level 10 characters in the Kobold metropolis. One round and the entire party died.

Paladin: So, we just go in and slaughter the evil bastards, right?
Barbarian: Yep. I gots cleave on.
Sorcerer: We'll do fine, I'll put the nearest ones to sleep with a few words and gestures, just to take some of the pressure off.
Ranger: Still, we should be careful... they might have trianed guards.
Barbarian: Like last city? Ha!
Rogue: I can get past the guards.

They enter the city.

Its huge, the kobolds lived in caves along the cliff walls, and then the low level guards show up. Kobold's favored class is Sorcerer. Several magic missiles later, the kobolds got some pretty shiney new stuff.

I told them I could TPK them with kobolds...

[Saph]

7 level 10 characters in the Kobold metropolis. One round and the entire party died.

Its huge, the kobolds lived in caves along the cliff walls, and then the low level guards show up. Kobold's favored class is Sorcerer. Several magic missiles later, the kobolds got some pretty shiney new stuff.

I told them I could TPK them with kobolds...

How on earth can seven level 10 characters die to magic missiles in one round? That'd take about two hundred missiles all hitting them at once.

- Saph

[ken-do-nim]

Forgive my collosal (+3) ignorance, but what would a silence rod do against a silenced orc? Or am I misunderstanding the story?

One of the problems was that the party was surrounded. The silenced orc stopped the spell-casters from casting I take it, in addition to sneaking up on them. So once the party got to act, I gather that the spellcasters were useless. Had they a rod of silent metamagic, the wizard could have fired off a web to slow things down, or a ray of enfeeblement to weaken the toughest orc, etc. The cleric could have maybe stone shaped up a defense, or even summoned a monster for help, etc. I wasn't there so I'm only surmising how it all went down.

[Saph]

One of the problems was that the party was surrounded. The silenced orc stopped the spell-casters from casting I take it, in addition to sneaking up on them. So once the party got to act, I gather that the spellcasters were useless. Had they a rod of silent metamagic, the wizard could have fired off a web to slow things down, or a ray of enfeeblement to weaken the toughest orc, etc. The cleric could have maybe stone shaped up a defense, or even summoned a monster for help, etc. I wasn't there so I'm only surmising how it all went down.

Yeah, that describes it pretty well. Plus, since the orc was silenced, he made no noise, and the wizard at the back wasn't looking behind him. So he got knocked down to negatives in one round. The sorcerer right next to him, was then stuck in a silence field with nowhere to go, while the dire boar was chopping up the fighters at the front.

- Saph

[ken-do-nim]

I think I started this thread because I'm worried about doing a TPK in my next session, and I guess I wanted to commiserate in advance. The thing is, I'm only throwing the party up against challenge ratings equal to their cr or less, but I don't see how they'll survive the nasty combo of Evard's tentacles + stone shaping the area around the party to seal them in. Maybe my tactics are too perfected from reading all these Batman threads.

[Jewel Thief]

We had a party of adventurers - a cleric following Cuthbert, a rogue (me), and a tiefling duskblade. We've been playing for awhile, some big story with lots of sorceries and corrupt rulers ooo... and our big bad guy is some jerk on the throne who shouldn't be there. Anyway, we finally figure out who has been causing all of the problems - the corrupt King. Who would have guessed? - and are headed towards the throne room when we're surronded by guards. Turns out on one of his latest side adventures, the Tiefling sided with the King and told him all about our little party of adventurers. So we have to fight off a baleful of guards and our Tiefling companion, who's sitting in the corner of the room, by the DM, gloating like a devilish imp.

We all die. Except for the Tiefling. Something our DM had not expected (he'd hoped the Tiefling would be defeated and the cleric, who'd so far been a very forgiving character, would bring the captured Tiefling along with the party). It was a very frustrating night.

Anyway, the corrupt King went on ruling, now with the Tiefling on his side. Later, we'd play in the same world, to find that the Tiefling had assassinated the old king and become ruler of the land. We, thinking a demon had inhabited the throne (because of his horns), went out of our way to take him out (still a little mad at the last game). This time we have the cleric playing a paladin (with a level in barbarian, some backstory), me playing a swash-buckling pirate, a few more players (an annoying female druid, a dwarf fighter). We're better prepared, we're higher levels. The player for the Tiefling isn't a part of this gaming session, but we still want to kill him.

We all die again.

[Valairn]

Fly spells and dead magic zones.... that's all I'm gonna say....

[Athenodorus]

Had they a rod of silent metamagic, the wizard could have fired off a web to slow things down, or a ray of enfeeblement to weaken the toughest orc, etc.

Ahhh, I see. I misunderstood the silence rod as per the spell, not metamagic. Thanks :)

[Diggorian]

A good way to prevent TPK's I've found is to be conservative with Encounter Levels yet describe them as much more dire then they really are. Overcoming things that look horrific is extrememly gratifying. Also, keep yourself open to all possibilities.

Had a TPK in a Star Wars D20 game I ran a few years back.

PC's ship is in orbit of a planet and being approached by an Imperial Star Destroyer not quite in tractoring range. A PC decided to manually jump the ship to hyperspace in orbit and disabled all the ship's safeties to allow this; AND, he failed every single Knowledge, Intelligence, and Wisdom to realize this was a fatal error. To the players credit, he stayed in character completely.

So the ship goes from zero to many times the speed of light in less than a nanosecond with no inertial compensation ... quantumly shredding the whole party.

Although the blame fell rightfully and fully on the player (a friend of mine I'd gamed with for many years), in retrospect, I could have ruled that the dismantling took longer in game. However, it proved to the newer players that I'm not a Deus-Ex DM. You break it, you buy it (the farm that is ).

[illyrus]

This is a semi-TPK story with a capture instead of a bunch of deaths.

Did a 1 shot game awhile ago. The premise of the game was that the PCs had to break into a bank vault and steal some jewels that were being transported thru the city. I gave them free reign over the game, they could accomplish it however they wished.

The PCs found out the date of when the jewels would be brought into town, and planned the heist. The NPCs travelling with the jewels learned about the possible heist(the PCs failed to cover their tracks of planning the heist well) and planned accordingly.

Late at night, the PCs silenced the top of the bank, then blew a hole in the top of the bank vault. The guards felt the ground shake with the 400 lb of ceiling crashed onto the floor and openned the vault door. This is where things went badly for the PCs. One PC decided(even though he couldn't see or hear what had just happened) that he was going to run away. Another PC greased the entrance to the vault, which would have been a good plan except for all the guards except one used ranged weapons and the PCs were all close range. The guards(4 low level rogues) picked them off fairly easily using a wand of sleep and low level poison.

The PCs were captured and told that they had 2 choices, to capture or kill their employeer and the PC that ran at the beginning (they NPCs knew about him thru questioning). At the end of the 1-shot their old employeer cut a deal with them and they killed the PC that had bolted on them and brought him in.

Had that PC not run, they would have fairly easily taken out the rogue guards and gotten off with the loot. So everyone was happy to kill that PC.

Edit - I had them make spot checks throughout the adventure and stated "you see a rat run across the room". I described their employeer as always scratching his arms while he talked to them. Yet they were surprised when their employeer turned out to be a wererat.

[Deathcow]

So we had a beginning DM who, as a player, was an awful powergamer. Our characters were 5th-6th level, in the first session of the campaign, fighting lizardfolk. The DM's boss monsters (who he had statted out as PC characters for another game and then decided to reuse) were two Poison Dusk Lizardfolk, each with +24 Hide checks, each with poison that did +2d12 damage on a successful hit; one a rogue, the other a ranger with Distracting Strike. We were cleaving through some low-level lizards, feeling fairly good about ourselves, when ranger-boy opens up with some arrows from a nearby rooftop (the lizardfolk were invading a city). Most of the rest of the party was killed from the poison and the annoyingly twinked Distracting Strike/sneak attack combo, while my Beguiler just cast Invisibility and ran away. And that was pretty much the end of that campaign.

[dungeon_munky]

Forgive me if you've heared this one before. Star Wars d20 during the rebellion, party is jedi guardian (me), soldier, scoundrel, and tech specialist.

Basically we are running from a planed because the empire is after me. On our ship, we safely lift off and are happily cruising through hyperspace. Scoundrel and techie are in the cockpit, myself and the soldier are in the cabin, and he gets it in his head that he wants to be a jedi. I tell him I'll train him if possible, but not now for there are more pressing matters. So he decides to take my lightsaber. Big beefy soldier, he gets it from me in one or two rounds. Which is when a sith inquisitor decides to reveal her hiding place in the cabin. Slashes me down quickly, and anihilates the soldier who is still trying to use the saber. The scoundrel hears and comes running in, his blaster bolt deflected right into him. Leaving the techie, who was hopeless in combat before going against lightsaber flinging death mistresses. Luckily this was only our second adventure with those characters.

[blackout]

Forgive me if you've heared this one before. Star Wars d20 during the rebellion, party is jedi guardian (me), soldier, scoundrel, and tech specialist.

Basically we are running from a planed because the empire is after me. On our ship, we safely lift off and are happily cruising through hyperspace. Scoundrel and techie are in the cockpit, myself and the soldier are in the cabin, and he gets it in his head that he wants to be a jedi. I tell him I'll train him if possible, but not now for there are more pressing matters. So he decides to take my lightsaber. Big beefy soldier, he gets it from me in one or two rounds. Which is when a sith inquisitor decides to reveal her hiding place in the cabin. Slashes me down quickly, and anihilates the soldier who is still trying to use the saber. The scoundrel hears and comes running in, his blaster bolt deflected right into him. Leaving the techie, who was hopeless in combat before going against lightsaber flinging death mistresses. Luckily this was only our second adventure with those characters.

Soooo, your soldier buddy pretty much caused the death of the whole party?

[Voyager_I]

You think that's bad?! I'm in a party of EIGHT. Sure, we may all be humanoid monsters, but we all got killed by one guy, while we all had decent hardware and buffs, and were each about level eight. Sure, he was epic level, but shouldn't we have at least stood a chance?!.

Not at all. Twenty level 1 characters don't equal one level 20 character and all that. An epic spellcaster could completely annihilate you with a single spell. If he's an appropriately equipped combatant, then he'll have an attack bonus so high that he'll never miss, an AC so that high you'll never touch him, and such good saves that your best spells will do nothing. Crap, an epic naked Bard could probably beat down a bunch of level 8's.

[Thrawn183]

Wait, what??? How is that even possible? The cleric should've been slaughtered by the party. Even with all his buffs, the entire party can just gang up on him and pummel him into the ground. If he's lucky the cleric would take one party member with him, and if the party's dumb he could probably get two. I don't see how you could get a TPK with that, though.

Well it involved him enterring combat with 17 buffs active, of which spell resistance was one. It also involved a firestorm to start things off. After that it was straight melee combat. If the party had had dispel magic they could have taken him pretty easily as he had no real spells left after the buffing. But they didn't, so they got TPK'd (Oh, and they knew ahead of time that it was "magical combat" so they didn't have any excuse for not having dispel magic)

[krossbow]

Not at all. Twenty level 1 characters don't equal one level 20 character and all that. An epic spellcaster could completely annihilate you with a single spell. If he's an appropriately equipped combatant, then he'll have an attack bonus so high that he'll never miss, an AC so that high you'll never touch him, and such good saves that your best spells will do nothing. Crap, an epic naked Bard could probably beat down a bunch of level 8's.

Wll, yeah, he just fascinates them, mass suggestion, and then "OMG! THE TARRASQUE is coming! WE MUST JUMP OFF THE CLIFF TO ESCAPE! AIM FOR THE RIVER! IT IS THE ONLY WAY!"
________
Iolite Vaporizer

[Diggorian]

Crap, an epic naked Bard could probably beat down a bunch of level 8's.

True, especially with the invisibility granted by his nudity. A 30th level Barbarian should be out unifying the tribes of this world as an application to deity status instead of fighting up-and-comers.

Soooo, your soldier buddy pretty much caused the death of the whole party?

Soldier admiring lightsaber: "Dude, are sabers really that sharp?"
Sith coming out of hiding: "You tell me ... 'dude'."
*VROOM* *sizzle'in-thwappage* *CLEAVE* *thwap* *sizzle* *thwap* PWNAGEx4 -- Dark Zide FTW !1!1!

This was a hasty GM. A Sith Inquisitor with time to buff in hiding (no verbal or somatics) is tough for anyone.