TPK in The Night Below

At least that is what I thought it was going to be. I know, false advertising. But in the previous game two weeks ago, the party went straight from the brutal fight in the Kuo Toan Priest Kings palace in The City of The Glass Pool, and depleted in hit point and vital spells went next door to the very Glass Pool itself, within the huge-domed Temple of The Sea Mother, to try and finish the job.

Not only did it turn out that the newly claimed Crown of Derro Domination would not contact Derro from a distance (the nearest ones were across the city), but on the way into the temple dome a stone giant had thrown a boulder, crushing NPC Dia into the negatives. Still, with all that against them ending last game, Andy’s bard Vaidno took up the sword Finslayer from Dia and led the charge into what was more or less the final fight of the campaign. That last game they had defeated the high priest and some others, but it left a couple of characters under Hold Person. They started this game severly down in manpower. Three strong fighters, including the badly wounded Dia, where unavailable for this combat. I confided to Terry a few days ago on the way to the Pub Session, running the held Helena, that she should not be too shocked if she lost this character and could do nothing about it. It was the decision of Andy and the others to take on the temple straight after another huge fight. I thought it would be the death of them.

So much happened in this fight. So much high level stuff. There was not just a couple of giant lobsters In the pool, but a large water elemental as well. And within a few short rounds the entirety of the Kou Toan army would be busting in. The big challenge was the statue of Blipdoolpoolp that the party came to blow up with the dwarvish bomb (their last). The statue was basically an avatar of the Sea Mother, and it was next to invulnerable to almost everything but weapons +2 or better. It also got a deadly bite if both claws hit you (for 2d8 each); if you were held in both claws and the head bite got a natural 19 or 20 on the hit roll, the victims head is taken clean off, and the body thrown into the pool for the giant lobsters to tear apart. Krysantha the drow druid turned into a bird an bravely flew the bomb over to the statue, but attacks from both the water elemental and the now animated statue made it hard to light a bomb fuse. Krys got grabbed up in those arms, and I made the bite roll in the open, telling them that a 19 or higher was the end of the character. I don’t think I have ever seen a roll watched with more baited breath in my life than Dan watching that dice I got a 15 and it hit, but no head off.

Unfortunately, I would get no more chances at the cool head bite. My rolls for the monster, which are usually notoriously good, were not so great. I think I only hit a 20 crit twice at most, and that was for lobsters and normal Kuo Toa. Man, I coulda used that 20 with the statue, or at least a water elemental attack.

At one point Lumarin the high elf MU broke out his magic gong, and summoned the Asian Gong Warrior, who held off some of the tougher Kuo Toa captains for awhile before succumbing to the hoard that was rushing in. Lumarin also had an Invisible Stalker holding back the hoard from another entrance, so plenty of good magical stuff going on. Vaidno used his gem found long ago in a dwarven forge to summon the fire elemental that had promised to help if ever released from the gem, but the water elemental quickly left the pool to extinguish the fire elemental, and hit some of the characters with some pounding wave actions.

By the time Krysantha fell down at zero hit points, the statue was already badly tore up, and when Vaidno’s final blows from his flashing blades (including Finslayer) broke the statue to bits, the kuo toan mobs fell to madness and the battle was over. Not one damn character death in this fight. Wow. I was so sure this would be at least a near TPK. Perhaps surviving characters taken down to the Sunless Sea as slaves for the Aboleth.

We ended with characters headed back to the tower in the Derro Town they previously claimed from the Mind Flayers. So it’s looking like next time will be the campaign epilogue game. They still have to deal with the slaves they saved, but there are still political groups around, including both the formerly dominated Derro, the Renegade Derro the characters dealt with, Avatara and the other drow who took over the Derro tavern (and their gang of Quaggoths), and a few other random bits. Unless the party heads back into the City of the Glass Pool to try and do some looting (although the city is insane right now, it doesn’t mean they won’t have to fight their way around the city; Kuo Toans are notoriously more dangerous insane than sane), it should be a nice and fun game to run. The campaign finale after more than two years. Wow.

TOTAL PARTY KILL!!!

Total Party Kill. Just the words together like that harkens to late 80’s/early 90’s sci fi movie techno-thrillers with phrases like MDK - Murder Death Kill or TNP - Take No Prisoners. Cold and scary.

When I was kid, the concept of an entire party of adventurers getting destroyed seemed a bit like an urban legend, and usually a slaughter at the breath weapon of some dragon that was too strong to kill. Back then we didn’t have a term for it.

I personally cannot remember one instance when I witnessed it, but I’m sure I did at some hobby shop or convention game room at some point. But maybe not - I didn’t spend much time at those places once I had my own regular groups and also started getting laid on a regular basis. Having seen it and remembering it would have meant the deaths had meaning, and in my personal games death always had big meaning. Hell, it almost never happens so when it does happen to a player in my game it is bigger than shit.

Am I just too easy-going as a DM? I’m not sure my players would describe me that way, but I’m sure they would say I am a player-friendly DM. In my AD&D games, I have a general rule that no player character will die in their first game – at least by my hand. If they end up into the negatives (as almost always happens in the first game to somebody), I just hold them up at around -5, and when they are healed they have some appropriate set-back (a few games ago a first level fighter got the shit stung out of her by a giant spider. When she got back to the positives in hit points, she had a nice little poison susceptibility). I also tend to molly coddle characters a bit until they hit 3rd level or so, trying to let them expand a bit as a character before they risk true deadly danger.

But we aren’t talking about being a nice guy DM here, we are talking about TPK, which has a tendency to occur at mid to high levels. They don’t always seem to necessarily happen at the climax of an adventure, unless that was the DM’s aim all along.

Columnist Roe Adams described it like this:

"A full TPK (total party kill) is an appalling abandonment of the players to the whims of gaming fate. It is a failure to be worthy of that trust they offered you when they sat down."(Adams III, Roe R. (2003-08-25). "First Night" (in English). RPGA Feature Article - Wizards of the Coast).

Wow. Well, it kind of is on the DM’s head, unless the party makes some foolish mistakes. I imagine it just cannot be helped in some cases. Poor strategy, bad roll, good DM rolls, all kinds of things enter into it. I decided to do a bit of research by starting a thread about it over at rpg.net. It got a big response, with lots of great stories of TPK. Here are a few excerpts from some responses:

… Most more often, one or two characters gets disabled, and the others keep on fighting in an attempt to turn the tide, and one by one they all drop as well…

… the characters completely misread a situation and blunder wildly, causing them all to be taken out of the game. Something like a pit of lava, but the characters somehow get the idea that the pit of lava is a gateway, so they all jump in (and they all die)…

…D&D 3.5 party beset wolves. the players wanted a 'straight up' fight, no DM fudging. nothing behind the screen, all rolls on the table. they lost…

… DnD 2e: Party of 1st-2nd level characters vs. one ghoul. Paralyzed all but the elf due to poor saves and mauled the elf to death. Party assumed to be eaten at leisure…

… Tomb of Horrors front entrance; party vs. a small flock of cocktrice. Failed saves aplenty and ended up with the mage up a tree trying to fend them off with a dagger….

… As GM: 3rd D+D. 5 players (2 totally new). 2nd level PCs, standard orc-ambush turns horribly bad. The scout goes ahead, gets caught in a trap (one he knew was there but wanted to see what happened anyway?). Others rush forward to save him, everybody dies no matter how much I fudge. The longest series of bad rolls ever…

… Cyberpunk 2020: With the smart players dead due to a variety of mishaps (including a headshot from a sniper) the remaining characters smart off to the cops after they get stopped for a traffic violation. After a couple of dead cops and a freeway chase SWAT gets mobilized and toasts the party van with the minigun from a AV-4…

… He wiped out the party at the climax of each of them. Sadly not because of anything the players did wrong but because he liked the whole "you think you've succeeded but you haven't" schtick and was loath to let our characters survive his campaigns. I think he was trying to teach us players something about life. The only lession we learned was how much arbitrary TPKs by a GM piss us off…



In looking at these and many other responses, I’d say the three most common reasons for the phenomenon of TPK are:

3) a miserable, asshole manchild GM with delusions of power who delights in making games shit for players. How do these guys get players coming back?

2) An encounter that is just too much for the groups power level (usually they have the option to run away, but do not.). A creature, like a ghoul or carrion crawler, that can paralyze multiple times, are common things I have heard killed low level parties.

1) A fair encounter, but the players roll terrible and the GM rolls great. Seems to be the single most common thing. More often than not, the players also have a chance to escape things, but often don’t realize how bad things are until too late. Things just happen too fast for them.

Is it best for the GM to fudge and save them? Very often I have heard of the GM just saying “ok, instead of killed you are all captured.” Or, amazingly and it happens more often than you think, the GM starts the entire scenario from scratch and let’s the party have another go at it.

Yeah, I have fudged once or twice, but in very minor ways, and never to save a character. Having said that, a side of me is a die roll purist. If you fudge things too much, you take away a lot of the chance aspect of the game, and as part of that you lose some of the life simulation aspect.

I thought about the whole Total Party Kill concept a lot in the last week, because the party in my AD&D game may be facing the possibility. A first in my games.

You see, in The Rainbow Mounds cavern, a PC hobbit cleric is tied up in a cave with a couple of old enemies, an orc troop leader, and a half elf enchantress, have her at their mercy. The enchantress (a high level illusionist) goes into her private room to freshen her make-up so she will look nice for the nasty things she is going to do to the hobbit. When she and her two charmed fighting men step away, the Orcs offer to let the hobbit go if she helps them “kill the bitch.” She is untied, gets her gear on, and the enchantress steps out with her men. The fight is on! Well, I stopped it there, because things were not going quite how I planned, and wanted to get back to it next time.

You see, the hobbit and the orcs are not much of a match for the Enchantress. As a high level illusionist, she is capable of some powerful things. Luckily, the hobbits friends are charging through the cavern system, knowing of her trouble and coming to save her. I have a certain time-frame, and the party has wasted a bit of time, including doing things like stopping to body search the few orcs they kill on the way, just for handfuls of silver. They know this hobbit chick is in need of help, but they will get there at best around 8 or 9 rounds after the fight has started, when my original “run like hell to help her” timeframe would have had them show up a round or two into the fight.

So what do I do? Fudge? Let them just show up on time, or delay them to show them the consequences of picking up chump change when a friend is in trouble. They will have a chance against the enchantress, but not as good if the hobbit and the orcs are dead when they get there and can’t assist them in the fight.

I think I’m going to let the chips fall where they may. And doing that, I may just be looking at the first TPK in my games.