Partyslayer, get in here! We're telling table stories. Who was your first TPK?
DM for first time with DNDThe year is 2005... we Play the classic module "Keep on the Borderlands"... from 1979... Gygax design is Very historical... the Caves of Chaos are realistic... morale checks... rations... torches...Party is Fighter... Cleric... Magic-User... Thief... all level 1... they Move careful... mapping on Graph paper...They find the Owlbear cave... I describe the smell of Guano... the Echo of dripping Water... they Form a marching order... the Fighter holds his Spear ready...Then suddenly... the Owlbear is not an Owlbear... it is a Giant Man in a Bear costume... he speaks only in riddles about the Dow Jones... he offers them Stock options...Party is Confused... they Attack... but the Bear-Man inflates like a Balloon... floats to the Ceiling... and sings the entire "Thriller" album backwards... Then the floor turns to Pudding... not monster Pudding... actual Butterscotch... they sink and drown... TPK in 20 minutes... Later I learn the module was printed wrong... the page for Owlbear had a Coffee stain shaped like Ronald Reagan... it Cursed the game...That is why I only play DND with a Hazmat suit now...
>>98270824>Lvl 1, first session>Ogres are attacking the road>Haven't been a problem before>Baroness asks for adventurers>They go down the road, random encounter 1 ogre.>Ogre angry about "papa" not coming home>They follow him back to village> Ogre chieftain says papa lives to the east, past the swamp.>Hasn't returned, dispute papa saying he will see them again.>They ask, and papa is a human like them.>Cleric knows the monastery east past the swamp.>Of the 16 total PCs (each player has 4 characters) 4 leave to the monetary>An old kind monk recently died.>They can't bring the ogres to the island, so they decide to take the body to the ogres.>They ask a young monk to open the deceased monks coffin.>He leaves to get a crowbar.>The PCs take the coffin>Decided the only way forward is to skin the dead monk and wear it.>This will somehow convince the ogre chieftain.>They get near the shoreline when they're found by 4 lvl 5 paladins.>Turn over the body or die>They chose death. >While this transpires the other PCs are sleeping in the ogre's giant frog pens.>Well we couldn't get the body, might as well try to exterminate the village>Tell them the village has about 100 fighting aged ogres.>They start fighting the first ogre they see. >After 6 rounds of combat, they were all dead.>Theyre last stand was to charge on giant frog back. Into a line of 16 ogres
>>9827098316 characters?Why?
>>98270824I have a few>fedora the tipping one shot>characters are on a bus going on a field trip in alaska>bus winds up crashing in the middle of nowhere>they all freeze to death while making their characters sperg outThe players had fun
>>98270824>Around 2018-ish>Playing DND 5e with a group I met in college (my first real RPG group and still my closest friends)>We are playing a modified version of Hoard of the Dragon Queen>Group is a Valor Bard (me), some fighters and barbarians (can't remember who was playing what), and one ebin lolsorandumb wannabe funny man playing a bear sorcerer>We all found it kind of annoying even back then but he pestered the GM enough that he let him do it>After spending way too much time travelling with a caravan trying to investigate some Tiamat cultists, we get to an inn in a swamp>I think cultists were using it as a base>We try to infiltrate it>Le Funny Bear Man manages to get inside their storehouse and uses minor illusion to disguise himself as a crate>Eventually some cultist goes there, finds him, so he casts fireball inside the room and sets the building on fire>He finds it hilarious (we laugh too but we were also pretty annoyed)>Everyone has to flee to the swamp to hide from the cultists>We get lost and no one can pass in a roll to navigate>Eventually we find a weird frog, and the sorcerer decides to talk to it>Frog tells us to go to a cave nearby>We find the cave and the walls are corroded and smell of sulfur>Dumbass inexperienced players decide to go inside>We find an adult black dragon we were never supposed to face (I don't know why the module included it there)>We die as expected, but one of the PCs (a goliath fighter/barbarian) managed to survive a few rounds and actually do some damage before dyingAfter that our replacement characters were a group sent by the dead party's employers to find out what happened to them which I thought was funny.
>>98270824Our GM got bored after we spent two IRL months trying to figure out how to get out a prison we were all trapped in. He had some hyper-specific solution in his head and wouldn't budge for anything but what he thought up. We tried everything but the prison had tons of bullshit to make sure we never would be able to escape (besides via the one solution he thought of) and the entire experience was miserable. The cells our party was in had vents that would spill in sleeping gas that would instantly knock anyone who breathes it in unless they passed a ridiculous high save, the guards were pretty much watching us 24/7 so we couldn't even try to slowly chisel the bars or pick the locks or anything. I had it the worst because they figured out I was a spellcaster so they kept me in a silenced, sealed off room away from the rest of the party so I couldn't even fucking talk to anyone or do anything. Eventually our entire party just kept going "We wait" anytime he asked us a question. He'd ask what we'd want to do and we'd say "Clearly we can't escape, so we wait until something happens." His autistic mind couldn't comprehend how we weren't figure out whatever the fuck we were supposed to figure out, so instead of making some shit up to give us a convenient escape he instead made the entire prison collapse and kill everyone inside. We all just left and never spoke to him again.
>>98270824>Partyslayer, get in here! We're telling table stories. Who was your first TPK?None, but I only have about 7 sessions of dnd and 3 sessions of fate core
>>982708242e Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the party is: me a nagarythe shadow warrior exiled as a result of political shenanigan, a human necromancer (not an evil one, more of an anti-hero/radical inquisitor from 40k) and a mercenary dwarf.The campaign was well under way; we were in our third careers, we were returning to Praag after having looted an important amulet in the mountains of Norsca we where supposed to bring back to Altdorf.-DM:"It's the siege of Praag! Asavar Kul is here! Thousands of ennemies! Run you fool!".The necromancer recalls (PTSD) the time we fled a town overrun by beastmen in the Borderlands:-"No! Never again! I will fight with the men of Kislev!"-"Then I shall fight with you my friend!"-"Ha! I will not let the elf get all the glory!"DM:"... Guys it's the fucking siege of Praag, you know the story, there are thousands of chaos warriors, you will not make it, just go to Altdorf."-"NOOOOOO! We will fight with the defenders!"-DM: ...After a big fight on the ramparts, everybody is seriously wounded and forced to retreat into the city.-DM: "The rampart is lost, but a stable has not been overrun by the enemies! You can still escape!"The necromancer give the amulet to a random Kislevit: "Bring it to Aldorf, the fate of the world depends on it!" (full bullshit).-DM:"Okay, you've been heroic, I give you a Destiny point, now ..."-"I use my Destiny point to make sure the stable guy get to Altdorf!"-DM:" ... A bloodthirster appears! I think it's time to r..."-"Men of Kislev! We will song about this battle! Make your ancestors proud! Chaaaaarge!"-DM: ...The bloodthirster kill us all in a couple of rounds.So we all died heroically defending Praag.Total Party Kill, but totally worth it.
I've had one, and only one, TPK>be player in a relatively long-standing homebrew PF1e game circa teenaged years>GM is an improv guy/theatre nerd>keeps sending us further and further into the Underdark>understandably, had no plan for why we were down there>eventually end up so fucking far down and deep and entangled in slavery, with so many individual character deaths, that he can no longer think of what to do with the party to get us back off of a totally derailed game>asks us if we're cool moving on from the campaign, we say sure>start rolling up characters that same session for a new campaign>make a racist dwarf paladin>fuck 'em knife ears>party had a knife ear too, shit was gonna be cash>Inciting Event occurs, we leave town in pursuit of Objective>first encounter of the campaign are a group of satyr beastmen things we find while travelling out of town>CR rating way out of wack for a group of four level 1s>TPK
>>98270824>second time, first time DMing a proper RPG with combat>OSE hexcrawl>roll up a red dragon from the OSE encounter tables (1 - 6 chance IIRC)>Kinda just drop it on my players without warning>expect them to run, talk to it, anything but fight it head on>they fight it head on and get incinerated>much bickering and bitching was hadI learned OSE tables are terrible, players are retarded and that I need to signpost and spell out everything if I wish to be a better DM for my players. Was pretty good.
>>98270824Does being an old school DM, munching through characters and their replacements like popcorn count?
>>98271907Epic. This how players should play. None of that 'Look at my unique sparkly hairdo" or "I fuck up the world to get another 5xp" shyte.
>>98275038>implying there is a world in which even one single person plays games in this manner
>>98270824My first?>Friends and I playing 3.5 game>It was the first campaign where we were actually playing by our understanding of the rules rather than just freeform role playing (Up until then we just rolled a die and if the DM "felt" like the number was high enough, you succeeded.)>I'm running various modules, just getting a feel for how to GM at the time>Running one particular adventure module that takes place in an old mine>There's a part where a battle takes place on a bridge>I run it exactly how it was written in the book>"If any characters should attempt to run across the bridge, have anyone standing on the bridge roll a reflex save with a DC of 12. If they fail, they fall off the bridge.">Warn them multiple times that the bridge is old, rickety, and wobbly>Guy playing a dwarven paladin goes last>of course everyone else is on the bridge>He runs across to charge the enemy on the bridge>"Alright, everyone make a reflex save.">Everyone fails catastrophically>Then read out loud what happens to anyone that falls, "Any character that falls from the bridge takes 4d6 falling damage. Only characters near the beginning or end of the bridge get to make reflex saves to reduce damage.">Everyone took enough damage to dieThey were absolutely pissed. But it also established a rule that if you died, then YOU DIED. And it also meant we didn't pull punches.
>>98275352An average of 14 damage isn't enough to drop an entire party to -10, maybe a first level wizard but certainly not a dwarven paladin.
>>98275484Ok did some maf for the fun of it and actually it is possible to get a tpk in that scenario. Just very unlikely. By being generous and assuming a non optimized lvl 1 party composition of a dwarf paladin, a rogue, a wizard and a cleric the chances that they would all fail the Reflex save ( with +0, +3,+2,+0 modifiers respectively) are 5.5%. After that the damage needs to beat the highest death threshold that probably belongs to the paladin at 22 assuming 14 con (12 +2 racial). That is 1.16% for a total 0.064% chance. Now if we take into account that this was a battle and the death threshold was half that because some damage was dealt to the party beforehand then the chances would be aprox 1.84%. Low but far from impossible.
>>98270876DND has never been more epic
>>98271907>not an evil oneDoubt it
>>98275038why did you reply to yourself?
>>98275298To wit, anon, my group would do this if the pc attitudes lined up.
>>98275484>>98277104This is simply a case of the entire party dropped to -1 and bled out with no one to save them.
>>98270824Have a couple, probably the best was a 5 character 3.5e party, playing with the Races of Destiny book, everyone is some kind of wierdo variant human pretending to be normal (very fun, everyone did a great job roleplaying that they were missing some important normal human context and were bullshitting to cover it) but with variant appropriate secret grudges. They’re exploring/defending a town in the face of a Hobgoblin invasion lead by a elf diabolicist, and it’s going well, they’re hitting well above their weight and become the keys to the defense of the city. One of the PCs manages to ferret out an infiltrating imp, but he’s playing a skulk, and while he does kill it before it can escape, he’s vulnerable to the lies (and truths) it tells him while trying to buy an escape. The skulk decides he doesn’t want the hobgoblins or elf to carry the day, but he doesn’t want his “comrades” to have their way either. So he does his best to engineer MAD, encouraging heroics, finding ways to get the party out of defensive positions and on sallies to do maximum damage to the leadership of the enemy army, etc etc. But the chief frontline combatants, an aasimar paladin and an Illumian Eldritch Knight, are consistently rolling clutch, hitting way above their level and blendering hobgoblins and demon overseers alike, and the skulk invisible blade is both infuriated and terrified by their combat performance. Everyone is low on resources and the skulk does his best to cajole them to the final confrontation rather than allow them to retreat and regroup. They blaze through the three bugbear champions I’d built as the command staff, and come across the diabolicist trying to use a ritual to summon some not-so-level appropriate firepower. The skulk manages to interrupt the ritual/sacrifice and overcome the diabolicist, but rather than actually stop the ritual, Cont…
>>98270824Phandelver, Thundertree, dumbass party who refused to run from the dragon and clustered together
sometime in 3rd edition D&Dwe were discovering how the suffocation rules workedthere may have been a sand monster, too
>>98271896Shame I wanted to know the specific way he wanted you to escape
>>98270824My players have been good at avoiding TPKs, with one exception (that was partially my fault).>Delta Green>Extremophilia>My players stop being midwits long enough to piece the mystery together in a short time.>Figure out who the lead suspect is>Move to arrest suspect>Book says he should be picked up on the road as he's walking out of town>Fuck that>A mountaintop showdown is cooler>Suspect teleports 100+ miles, ends up on top of a mountain>Evil Ritual(tm)>Players get a helicopter to go up there>Suspect summons a Mi-Go>Gets blown up with a rocket>Mi-Go gets hit, survives>Pilot gets zapped, dies instantly>Players proceed to fail>Every>Single>Check>To survive>Helicopter crash>Instant death>Fin.
>>98281215He hijacks it, because he’s not actually an Invisible Blade, he’s a Chameleon. Adding the Elf to the sacrifice for the ritual, he gates a pit fiend. CR20 is a problem, it’s a 5 man band, theoretically, but now it’s 4 on 2 and they were all ECL 16 at this point, and low on hp and spell slots. The skulk thinks his revenge is final and ultimate, but dies immediately to two critical hits from the Sniper. Blasphemy demolishes the Aassimar Paladin, leaving him with only one round to smite the devil before the follow-up meteor storm puts him at ~ -20. The smite hit like a freight train because of some other boosts letting him burn his whole BaB and still hit comfortably using power attack, him being enlarged, and rolling high for damage with a holy +4 greatsword, so even if it was’t a crit, it was still over half the Pit Fiend’s hp in a single blow. The Eldrich Knight locks down the Pit Fiend’s teleportation, but that doesn’t stop him from flying out of reach and the same MS that kills the Paladin brutalizes everyone, they’re all in the AOE and no one makes the reflex save. At this point, the remaining PCs (the Deepwood sniper, the Illumian EK, and a Tiefling Virtuoso who basically accomplished nothing except giving other people bonuses) have maybe 15 hp collectively. The sniper manages to do another 40 something damage with holy and silver arrows, and the Virtuoso dies in melee. The EK charges the Pit Fiend, but he basically just stonewalls its regeneration. He gets hit into the negatives and his potion necklace thing stands him back up with about the same hit points he had at the beginning of the round. The sniper brings the pitfiend down to 25 hp, and gets fireballed to death, the EK manages to avoid damage in melee, and gets knocked to single digit hp by the AoO when he retreats to pick up the paladin’s sword. He kills the pit fiend with his friend’s sword and dies to the forest fire the meteor swarm started.
>>98270824my game doesn't have PC death, since it's good instead of bad.
>>98282381Disgusting.
>>98282441yeah, your game and your taste is. bitch :)
>>98281538That's when you introduce the DMPC, anon.But no, enough failed saves, they all die, at that point you're doing a disservice to pretend that they somehow made it.
>>98280686You would think that this is more likely than a TPK from half hp but it's actually not and not because putting everyone to -1 with a single damage roll is nigh impossible.Even if the hypothetical damage roll to put everyone at -1 existed they still have to first fail the save (5.5%) and then fail all their stabilization rolls (((0.9)^8)^4=3.4%) with a total chance of both happening at 0.187%.
>>98270824>"What did the mad DM say when you stabbed his DMPC in the back? I never asked. Did he call you a traitor? Did he plead for a reprieve?"
>>98270824I was running my first game of Call of Cthulhu, having only ever played DnD before and being in middle school. I decided to have a random combat encounter with some Sand Dwellers. And by some I mean “double the number of the party.”It did not end well. I’ve actually only had two TPKs and both were in Call of Cthulhu, and well before I would say I got good at running the game.
>>98270824lol my first. That must have been 35 years ago by now. Longer even, I think. I can't even remember it. The first one I remember clearly was a player group who was warned the highlands were crawling with undead. They ignored it. On the way there they saw clear evidence that there was an overwhelming number of barefoot traffic in the area, easily in the thousands. They ignored it. One of them succeeded with a lore roll and I told them in no unambiguous terms that the living dead much preferred night time, which is when they crawl out of their daytime hidey holes. The players ignored me and made camp on a hill. Night time comes, hundreds of living dead start moving, and are clearly moving towards the hill. Players will not leave, readies weapons.They fought bravely, but after some 30-40 living dead, they were overwhelmed, and TPK. The group then thought it was unfair because there were too many living dead and I should have made the encounter more evenly matched.
>running first campaign, second session>players investigating dungeon centred around a lake>players get into spat>characters attack each other>this happens right outside an orc lair>orcs hear the commotion >swat all of them with ease since there is no party cohesion.I'd never feel bad about a tpk but that one in particular was more fault of the players than most.>>98273223Lol.
