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Post by kaitoujuliet on Oct 20, 2014 18:21:06 GMT -8
Congratulate(?) me, all! I had my first TPK this weekend. I was introducing some friends to D&D 5E with the starter set adventure. The party of four was wiped out by three goblins, a bugbear, and a wolf--mostly by the goblins. I think they have a little more respect for goblins now.
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Post by lowkeyoh on Oct 20, 2014 18:46:28 GMT -8
Nice! Beyond goblins players really start to learn a healthy respect for Kobolds when all three kobolds attacking you have advantage. Our FLGS has had three TPKs for low level groups with Kobolds.
I actually had my first player kill this last week, myself. Might just be something player killy in the water
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Oct 21, 2014 5:35:47 GMT -8
So what do you folks do when you have a TPK? Is that it--all the PCs are dead, and everyone has to make new characters? Do you "roll back to a save point" and let the players try again? Something else?
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Post by Kainguru on Oct 21, 2014 6:20:08 GMT -8
Two options: 1) Get an appropriate keepsake that you GM with, eg: I have a small Halloween grave stone that sits next my screen - laugh evilly as you add the characters names to it . . . then they re-roll new characters. Nothing to say that the new ones aren't related to the dead ones ie: 'I'm looking for my brother who went missing a few weeks back? he was last seen hereabouts?'. 2) Do a 'Dragonlance' (the original ADnD 1e module run) and find a way to explain the survival of one or two of the PC's, with consequences and despite the extreme odds - the old 1e modules had a 'how to' section. Aaron
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Oct 21, 2014 8:02:31 GMT -8
When we fervently played Red Box D&D, character creation took 4-5 minutes. I slaughtered 2-3 PCs a night. First level characters were like may flies. I have mentioned this elsewhere (just minutes ago) but some character death in games like D&D, Pathfinder, L5R help maintain a decent level of tension for the players. If we as GMs eternally pull or punches I think we are letting our players down and lulling them into a sense of security versus the sweaty dice clutching moments we all remember the most fondly. i
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Oct 21, 2014 8:12:09 GMT -8
The other thought I just had about this...when I play RPGs as a player I quickly get attached to my characters. Even if I don't create a seven page backstory there is one being formulated in my head. But that is me. When I play NPCs as GM I create characters I think our memorable and interesting. I often have a moment where I am very reluctant to put them in an antagonistic position where they will most likely be killed (then I get over myself and revel in the PCs cackling glee at smashing that bastards head in). This is magnified many times for me as a player with my characters. I'm a bit of a thespian idiot and just love walking around in someone else's shoes, hat, coat. Just finished the last Les Miserables show (3200 people got to see it over seven shows!) and taking off my Thenardier coat/costume for the last time was actually a very melancholy moment for me. I loved that fucking character! Now if players (especially new players) come to a table where death is a very likely possibility...this may really break (or weaken) that opportunity for them to develop that immersion and attachment. So, I guess what I'm saying is Kill 'em All. But just not when I'm at the table .
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Post by lowkeyoh on Oct 21, 2014 16:57:14 GMT -8
I've always found that setting directions for character creation is the best way to go. So if there was no grand metaplot that needs to get addressed I'd probably say "You guys are dead, create new characters who would have the goal of avenging you"
Maybe pull a Dragonlance like Kainguru says and have one of the PC survive to tell the tale, but that character is retired now. The character died in combat, the player has to make a new one, but that doesn't mean they have to be dead in the narrative.
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Post by archmagezemoc on Oct 22, 2014 8:43:43 GMT -8
I've been the main GM for my groups since we started, 6 years ago, and I've always been the 'Darksouls' style gamer and never pulled any punches. My first PC death was in dnd3.5 when I was a young lad with a heart of gold and a bright view toward GMing. I had been playing for less than a full year and the BBG just left out the backdoor after delivering his required monologue leaving the PCs with his bodyguard, a half-giant warrior with a maul. The "leader" of the party and by far most experience player ran up to the Half-giant expecting to 1 shot it like he usually does to bad guys, and instead hits once for a few damage. The players at this point were level 2, so when the half-giant crit his first attack and dealt almost 40 damage turning the players monk into a pile of unidentifiable mush the whole table erupted in laughter and shock. It was that glorious moment I got the first sick thrill of destroying a PC, and since then I've sent uncountable numbers of adventurers screaming their unfinished goals to the cold (or hot, who knows) afterlife. TPKs happen pretty frequently with us, and since we've been playing 5E since about May this year the lethality has again been ramped up pretty heavily. It only takes us about 15-30mins for our group to roll up characters so even when we all die horribly halfway through the night the game don't end, there's always some way for us to place a new bunch of adventurers in the way of horrible devastation.
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Post by ironnikki on Oct 22, 2014 11:46:30 GMT -8
I can't actually remember having a TPK... I've killed players before, but never an entire party. I try not to pull punches once weapons have been drawn, although if the PCs try to run I usually let them get away. Maybe I should stop doing that >:-)
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Post by archmagezemoc on Oct 22, 2014 20:41:19 GMT -8
Definately, it can be an awesome end to a story, but TPKs are easiest done with the party that does it to themselves. At one point in a post-apoc d20hack a player filled a zombies head with C4 and detonated it among the players after they voted to exile him for killing another player, (which he did do). Everyone had a good time there and was eager to try again, another time the game ended by us grabbin our own dicks, and bracing ourselves as we ran our ship into the heart of an Imperial space station at max velocity (W40k Rogue Trader). TPKs can be very satisfying.
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jd
Initiate Douchebag
Posts: 3
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Post by jd on Oct 25, 2014 9:27:12 GMT -8
Most memorable TPK. Characters are combination mercenaries and Imperial spies during an OTU Traveller Fifth Frontier War campaign. We had managed to cause the Zhodani a few problems,, and had accrued a fairly steep bounty on our heads. Last game we had managed to infiltrate a major Zho forward staging base, and our ground team, who was cut off from getting back to the ship, decided to take out themselves and as much of the supply depot as they could, so we blew a nuke, after sabotaging their nuclear damper. Blew up half the island the depot was on. The ship didn't get away in the confusion however, and was disabled and boarded by one of the Zho warships above, and they self-destructed taking out the ship that caught them. Glorious TPK...
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Post by The Northman on Oct 25, 2014 16:18:55 GMT -8
We were in a Rifts game (pause for gasps) playing modern earth characters who had been transported into the setting after a few months of campaigning as superspy badasses in the Ninjas and Superspies setting. When a party of Splugorth (pause for laughter) slavers ported in through a rift and began capturing/killing townsfolk we had to step in.
Of course, we stepped in by attempting to plant boots to foreheads, without much planning and with no understanding of our surroundings or enemy.
Because 'Merica.
Needless to say we spent the rest of the night making characters for D&D.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Oct 28, 2014 6:02:02 GMT -8
By the way, I should probably mention what I did in the case of my TPK. It happened at the end of a session, so I let the players "hit the reset button" back to the previous room and try the combat again at the start of the next session. I wouldn't do this for every game, but I chose to do it in this situation for the following reasons:
1. This wasn't a serious "our table's canon" adventure, but a side adventure in a different world to introduce D&D 5E to my friends. 2. My friends were new to 5E, and this was their first serious combat, so they couldn't be blamed for misjudging the threat. 3. I was hoping they would like 5E, so I didn't want to give them an unnecessarily frustrating experience. They'd already complained about how long it took them to make those characters--though really, that was just because they were unfamiliar with the system--so I felt that making them do it again would fall under unnecessarily frustrating.
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Post by archmagezemoc on Oct 29, 2014 8:29:36 GMT -8
5E can be very dangerous, we've been playing it for awhile on wednesdays (today! Yay!) but we (almost Total-)PKed 3 sessions in a row a couple weeks ago trying to finish out Mines of Phandelver. Everyone has had a great time every time, but it really set the feel for our current game (HotDQ) knowing that our characters could just flat out get killed has really tempered our murderhobo tendencies.
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Post by lowkeyoh on Oct 29, 2014 11:53:39 GMT -8
MoP and HotDQ aren't balanced to recommended difficulty. If you check the DMG preview and the Monster Manual against the encounters in both adventures, you'll see that many encounters are far more difficult than the recommended encounter design.
This, combined with just how deadly it is to only have 6 hit points in a world where people are swing around 1d8+2 means that 5e is way more killy than what a lot of people are used to.
An encounters group at my FLGS learned what six Kobolds can do to a low level party. Advantage and a lot of tiny attacks will wreck a party.
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