Closest Call In A TTRPG?

[C-Moon]

What is your closest call in a TTRPG?

That is, whats a memory you have where you, your party or an ally came so close to losing it all but be it through tactics, rolls, luck, or that one ability you had been saving that you recovered?

For me, it was during a one-shot community game we did for Suzerain in the Wilderlands campaign. I was using one of our pre-made characters ‘Pretty Boy’ who was a great marksman but had his fair share of hindrances. While being attacked by huge monstrous wasps, one of my party members was close to pushing up the daisies. We kept missing and missing and missing and then boom, straight shot, aced and with a raise narrowly avoiding my teammate as he swatted away the wasps and I blasted those bugs. Perhaps not the end of the world scenario but it was a great experience after so many failures to then bring it all back around.

[Duff]

Playing Ars Magica I was playing an overconfident wizard who loved to fly around. He annoyed another wizard who lightning bolted him.
Lightning bolt is brutal (d10+35 damage - every 5 points is a wound, 5 wounds is fatal, each wound past the first pretty messes you up. roll stamina (2)+d10 to reduce the damage (so I needed to roll 9 just to live). But if you roll a 1 you roll again and double. So I rolled 36 on 1d10 and shrugged off a spell which should have killed me outright, flew in to tackle the enemy wizard and cut my fly spell and stopping him from controlling his. As we plummeted toward the ground I let go at the last possible second and fastcast a fly spell to avoid becoming geography while my foe became a minor terrain feature.
He was the sort of character I can only play properly when I already have my next character ready to go

[C-Moon]

Playing Ars Magica I was playing an overconfident wizard who loved to fly around. He annoyed another wizard who lightning bolted him.
Lightning bolt is brutal (d10+35 damage - every 5 points is a wound, 5 wounds is fatal, each wound past the first pretty messes you up. roll stamina (2)+d10 to reduce the damage (so I needed to roll 9 just to live). But if you roll a 1 you roll again and double. So I rolled 36 on 1d10 and shrugged off a spell which should have killed me outright, flew in to tackle the enemy wizard and cut my fly spell and stopping him from controlling his. As we plummeted toward the ground I let go at the last possible second and fastcast a fly spell to avoid becoming geography while my foe became a minor terrain feature.
He was the sort of character I can only play properly when I already have my next character ready to go

Oh wow, now that is a close call. Playing that scenario in Suzerain I would definitely of poured out all my Karma to prevent becoming an arcane pancake

[ShadowSandbag]

I don't remember the exact numbers, so this is likely a little off, but this should get the point across.
In a Call of Cthulhu game that I ran one of the characters had I think 8 Sanity points left going into our last session. He managed to still pass his first sanity roll (8% chance)so lost 1d4 sanity instead of 1d10 and went down to six. Later in the night he rolled another sanity check, failed and had to take 1d12 sanity damage, rolled a 3, leaving him with 3 sanity left out of his original 45~ from the start of the campaign. If he had hit 0 at any point in that last session things would have gone very bad for everyone involved very quickly.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I was the GM for this, not a player, but...

It was 5e D&D. The campaign's villain was a revenant--a type of vengeance-obsessed undead that reappears a day later if it's destroyed before accomplishing its goal. He confronted the party head-on, for the first time, by building a gallows on the path they were going to take and literally hanging himself while waiting for them. Anyway, they showed up, he opened his eyes, confrontation happened, and he wound up with one hit point left, surrounded by angry PCs.

So he casts a Fireball at his own feet.

The villain evaporates, and bunch of crappy Dex saves come up, and the entire party goes down. Literally the entire five-person group was down and making death saves.

The Cleric has his turn next and rolls a natural 20 on his save. In a spirit of generosity and "oh ****, I didn't mean to do that," I rule that he wakes up with one hit point. He's too low-level to have any mass healing spells, though, and he's mostly out of spell slots in any case-- he's only going to be able to stabilize one person per turn. Cue a few very tense rounds of Spare the Dying, during which two separate players wound up one failed save away from death.

I think that's the closest I've ever seen to a TPK.

[C-Moon]

I was the GM for this, not a player, but...

It was 5e D&D. The campaign's villain was a revenant--a type of vengeance-obsessed undead that reappears a day later if it's destroyed before accomplishing its goal. He confronted the party head-on, for the first time, by building a gallows on the path they were going to take and literally hanging himself while waiting for them. Anyway, they showed up, he opened his eyes, confrontation happened, and he wound up with one hit point left, surrounded by angry PCs.

So he casts a Fireball at his own feet.

The villain evaporates, and bunch of crappy Dex saves come up, and the entire party goes down. Literally the entire five-person group was down and making death saves.

The Cleric has his turn next and rolls a natural 20 on his save. In a spirit of generosity and "oh ****, I didn't mean to do that," I rule that he wakes up with one hit point. He's too low-level to have any mass healing spells, though, and he's mostly out of spell slots in any case-- he's only going to be able to stabilize one person per turn. Cue a few very tense rounds of Spare the Dying, during which two separate players wound up one failed save away from death.

I think that's the closest I've ever seen to a TPK.

Oh lord that is terrifying to think of as both a GM and a player :')

[C-Moon]

I was the GM for this, not a player, but...

It was 5e D&D. The campaign's villain was a revenant--a type of vengeance-obsessed undead that reappears a day later if it's destroyed before accomplishing its goal. He confronted the party head-on, for the first time, by building a gallows on the path they were going to take and literally hanging himself while waiting for them. Anyway, they showed up, he opened his eyes, confrontation happened, and he wound up with one hit point left, surrounded by angry PCs.

So he casts a Fireball at his own feet.

The villain evaporates, and bunch of crappy Dex saves come up, and the entire party goes down. Literally the entire five-person group was down and making death saves.

The Cleric has his turn next and rolls a natural 20 on his save. In a spirit of generosity and "oh ****, I didn't mean to do that," I rule that he wakes up with one hit point. He's too low-level to have any mass healing spells, though, and he's mostly out of spell slots in any case-- he's only going to be able to stabilize one person per turn. Cue a few very tense rounds of Spare the Dying, during which two separate players wound up one failed save away from death.

I think that's the closest I've ever seen to a TPK.

Hahah aw man, still sounds like a rad session either way!

[Duff]

I don't remember the exact numbers, so this is likely a little off, but this should get the point across.
In a Call of Cthulhu game that I ran one of the characters had I think 8 Sanity points left going into our last session. He managed to still pass his first sanity roll (8% chance)so lost 1d4 sanity instead of 1d10 and went down to six. Later in the night he rolled another sanity check, failed and had to take 1d12 sanity damage, rolled a 3, leaving him with 3 sanity left out of his original 45~ from the start of the campaign. If he had hit 0 at any point in that last session things would have gone very bad for everyone involved very quickly.

That's a Very Cthulhu experience!