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New PCs start from another town having heard rumors and stories of the old group, so the new PCs can know basics of the campaign. I have them start talking to each other about "The problems" letting the players tell each other about the current campaign and convincing each other to go out and adventure. Any errors in story are not corrected by me. (I'm evil that way) . I might start them leveled up... or at level 1. Depends on the players and if they need to go through the intro levels to get used to the way the new PC classes work. . 1st to 3rd are levels to get used to the basics of how your PC class works. Players that always play the same class and are familiar with the class can skip these levels after having played the game a few times. I'd rather see the players try the different classes and trying different personalities for their PCs.
@@meris8486 I feel sorry for you. You get fireball and the DM throws that at you. It would of been alright to do if you always did it constantly. But 2 or 3 sessions down the road.
@@matthewhamlin392 True enough but to be fair Fireball can trivialise fights, 40 foot aoe for 8d6 and if you're evoker school you don't even need to worry about friendly fire.
In my session zero I carefully explain that sometimes if the party goes in to a place unprepared or run into something they can’t beat it is in their best interest to run. If they do not decide to preserve their lives then their characters can and will die. So all my players know up front character death is a thing.
@@meris8486 it's a pathfinder 2e module. Most pre-built stories in parhfinder 2e are apparently rather brutal, and the combats are usually pretty close.
9:27 "Then the heroes heard about the old group's demise, decided to take up their mission, and went back to the crypts, where they perished." This sentence is an excellent example of why you should be careful about where you pause for dramatic effect. The way you said this, it made it sound like the second party ALSO TPK'd in the exact same dungeon as the first one.
I caused a TPK as a player, we all were laughing at the end of it. But we did point out the narrative failings of the DM. He did a poor job explaining a few things.
That's great! As a DM, I'd just point out that it's better for everyone if you're open with your DM about their failings so they can try to improve their craft. Definitely do it outside of a session though to prevent the conversation from being rushed. And, privately so you don't embarrass the DM. Of course, hopefully, you have a DM who can constructive criticism ;)
Not gonna lie, ending up in an afterlife plane after a TPK and having to find our way back to the living sounds like a pretty epic adventure in itself. I'd be down for that. Integrate the TPK into the story fabric! Imagine starting a new campaign like that, with level 5 characters or something. You're already a team, and established. You're lost and have to find your way back. Crazy!
Fail forward TPKs are a lot of fun, and I think any DM who dismisses them because "TPKs are a necessary part of the experience" have an incredibly limited view of the breadth of people that play TTRPGs, it's old school, 2nd edition, tomb of horrors thinking I'll only ever have a *true* TPK on a meaningful encounter. Killing all my player's characters because none of them rolled high enough on perception to see the buzzsaw after we've been running these characters on their journey for 18 months knots up my stomach to think about. It also in my current game would require me to come up with a bullshit nonsensical reason why their many allies wouldn't mount an expedition to recover their bodies and get them raised, given how much money the party has wisely invested, and how many allies they've made A low level game though? Yeah I'll TPK them to gnolls in the second session if they play bad, as long as they aren't new players, they haven't gotten attached yet
The wrong setting might make this impossible. In the Forgotten Realms, characters' souls end up in the plane of their deity or their alignment if they have no deity. That's the ultimate party split. There's no united afterlife, unless some very specific condition prevents the souls from passing on.
I’d say the big reason DMs tend to spare TPKs is because it’s seen as the end of the campaign, which is something almost no happy group wants by definition.
Oh, let me share an idea that I have on the fly on a game. One day I TPK my party, i just miss calculated... with a adult red dragon... on a party lv 8... yeah I really missed the mark. Soo, they died. What did I do? I described how they wake up on a grey plane, felling the smell of death, felling NOTHING and slowly realizing they died. Then the session ended. And I created a dungeon on the Shadow fell They would try to escape the plane thought the mansion of madness. Damn, that session was good. Some players just leave their characters stuck on their resentments and so, stuck on the shadowfell. Those players choose this kind of death, and was Awesome. And just create new caracters, and may the campaign continue. (Damn i need some English lessons. Sry for the bad english i guess )
My first TPK in 5e occured after I described a simple puzzle that involved an obelisk that could be rotated, the sides of the Obelisk were carved and just needed to be aligned with the corresponding alcoves on the wall and then push the button on an raised slab next to the Obelisk and the door opens. Instead of looking at the Alcoves or the Obelisk to identify the symbols and align them like I thought they would, one of the players got bored and just walked over to push the button without checking anything. Triggering the trap and releasing a Beholder against the already very badly injured party. One got petrified, two got disintegrated and another got shoved by a telekenisis beam into a vat of acid. TPK in 2 rounds and campaign over. Because there will always be a player who cannot resist pushing an unknown button.
@@simonburling3762 true. In 5e he would probably just be a Mystic Theurge instead of having cleric levels. Porting old characters into newer editions rarely works smoothly but your solutions works perfectly fine.
What’s it like when Gary the Intern and the Rogue have a conversation with each other? Gary: I’m confused, who’s talking? Rogue: Holy Crap! Are you really this...wait...why do our voices sound exactly the same!?
I noticed that too. It's unfortunate that most people can only "do" a couple of voices besides their own natural voice. (I can do W C Fields and A Generic Old Man) ;)
Actually, your own voice in your head sounds different to you than when you hear it from elsewhere, like a recording. So they probably wouldn't notice. Someone else hearing them would have to mention it.
Haha. One of my DMs rarely remember voices. He is doing voices solely for us the players to distinguish between what he says as the DM and what an NPC says. An NPC can have anywhere from 1-8 different voices in a single session. (We all find it quite amusing)
I was DMing for just a party of two new players and even very simple encounters were hard for them, so I let them and the follower they controlled TPK and just as the last one was losing consciousness, they heard clanking armor and a shout "don't worry! I'll save you!" They woke up after this knight had defeated the goblins and she offered to help them out while they were on their quest in the area because she was just training to be a knight and wanted to do good deeds. This wasn't an on the fly save, I had designed this character that they would get to help them in the town, but I figured this would be a better way to introduce her so they would stop being on death's door from three wolves attacking them.
It can be fun depending on how it goes down. If you die in an epic battle it can be a lot of fun. Though it is possible to go your entire gaming career and not have one.
I retconned a tpk mulligan because a player was absent and they would have had a good chance with them present. 5 lvl 1s VS 4 dire wolves. That CoS encounter probably has the highest tpk frequency of any in 5E
I've been in two TPKs. One was in a poorly written book quest that had us go against a monster we just weren't ready for and we all died in glorious battle! As I became paralyzed and poisoned slowly I raised my arm to the monster and flipped him off. The giant spider that was still standing forced my arm down, but it sprung back up and flipped it off again, robbing the spider of its feeling of victory. Then we made fun of the quest and its author for half an hour.
@@angrytheclown801 Yea, one of the downsides to running out of a book. They're not all well-written! Noticing that ahead of time only comes with experience. Hopefully, the DM can learn from it and notice early enough next time.
This video is just what I needed. I am about to throw the first deadly fight on a party of mostly newbies next week. For 3 sessions they have been fighting easy stuff, and I know they are itching for a challenge.
So, here’s my nearest experience with a TPK, and it’s in a campaign I’m still playing. We were hunting down ancient, powerful weapons, all across the continent. We had tracked one of them down to a dragon’s hoard. He basically railroaded us inside and said, “Do you kick open the door?” Basically peer-pressuring our paladin to do it. Then he said, “Make a dex check,” Because apparently on the other side of that door, was an Adult Red Dragon, wich if you can’t remember has a CR of 17. We were level 9 at the time.
Admittedly, we were progressing fast and steamrolling all of his encounters, so I don’t blame him for misjudging entirely, but the damage he rolled would have killed the paladin, our tank, if he didn’t succeed the dex check. He managed to play it off by saying that he blocked it with his shield and he weakened the encounter from there. Thankfully he’s managed to turn the campaign around and I enjoy it quite a bit
I think it's important to make clear the difference between a Total Party Defeat and a TPK. When a TPK looks like it's gonna happen that's because of party mistakes or me throwing something too dangerous at them. It's never the ideal so I would always try and avoid it as GM, but I want it as a possibility or make the players feel like it could happen so the fight is intense. For example, I would give one or two of the party the chance to run away then come back later with buddies for payback. Or the party get's captured and must escape. If it's some overstatted pirates, have them rob the players blind. I think all of these can lead to a fun continuation of the story rather than, you all die... moving on. But sometimes death is inevitable in Carrion Hill (spoilers) the Big Bad Yog Sothoth spawn will simply kill the players if they go down in the fight and then it will massacre the city. I'd say that's a fitting thing to happen in a C'thulhu themed module.
As a DM, I follow a simple rule: the only thing that's truly deadly to my PCs is their own stupidity. If they use their brains, none of my stuff will kill them. It may get close, though.
3:28 first time I played dnd this was my first game session. The planned campaign was us fighting our way through the underworld but we were pretty worried in the moment.
Great video, and good advice... Obviously, most of us (as GM's) try to avoid TPK's... BUT with fair warnings, and carefully judicious use of monsters and progressions, there's really only so much we can do for the Party. TPK's can happen, and rightly, the Game should go on. I tend toward (in an actual TPK) the steps listed here in the vid' more or less... Occasionally, my own plotlines have required a TPK(ish)... Some plots require travel to a spiritual, or after-life plane, and earning the revival or reincarnation... Another plot, I had a psychic in the Party, and the "shared premonition" was part of the powers I'd already planned to drop, so in a game that had (up to that point) been light enough to allow for antics, even in combat, I tossed in a deadly encounter for the Party, knowingly pushing their limits so they'd either work together or die... I gave them fair enough warning, "The kid gloves were off"... BUT it was a massacre... and one by one, the PC's dropped... AND I sent the Players (in turn) to a different Table for a break in the next room. Sure, there were tears... That particular group had been together some time, and were quite fond of their PC's... They lacked experience in a truly "gritty" Campaign, and some feathers got ruffled about the remarkably sadistic enemies they were tasked to fight... Upon sending the last Player into the next room, I asked for five minutes, and that the first PC (dropped) come back... The five minutes was a chance to crash through the last of the note-taking, and a quick perusal of the beginning of the session... Where-upon, the entire Party got to "wake from the dream"... Only this time, it was one by one, rather than as we'd originally started... I played everything as dead-on "deja vu" as was physically possible... They walked past the same signs, took note of the same clues and hints, and found themselves going right into the exact same fight with the exact same enemies at the exact same place... I was a "little" railroady, but they'd come to a point in the Campaign where there wasn't a lot of choices to make in the game anyway... It had become pretty painfully obvious that they were "onto me" even before reaching the location of the TPK situation... AND SO just before getting the combat into motion (even before the move that would trigger the "Roll initiative") I called for a regular break, and suggested they discuss their strategy while we get to the snack-time, and just "kill two birds at one stone"... This allowed them time to really get through a decent discussion about "the plot"... and not hobble themselves over time restraints, since I wouldn't be bored as GM if I was stuffing pizza and Cherry Coke into my face... and barbecue-chili fries... can't forget those fries... The shift in "Game Tone" worked. Instead of ruthlessly "teaching these noob's a lesson"... Letting it play out as the first shared psychic premonition to intro' some new abilities and powers around the table... Not only served up some good drama for the Players, but got them to drop some of the childish silliness and antics, to become a team capable of the kind of encounter I'd designed for them. In fact, with the "deja vu" effect in full, they just about "smoked" the enemy... Okay, yes... I DO caution against rescuing the party from certain death too much. It DOES take away the consequences... BUT the dramatic twist fit in this case. With the new ability to share premonitions for one of the PC's, the others knew there would be more to come and couldn't be more excited. ;o)
Yeah I know how that ends. Played with a murderhobo in a campaign. Ended up killing him in the end and now the DM keeps saying I'm a chaotic evil player and a murderhobo/PC Killer when I was neutral evil and only killed 1 NPC and 1 PC
spiderking121 killing a murderer because of his actions if anything would’ve moved up more towards straight neutral (I’d done solely to protect yourself and the party) or neutral good (if done because of the evil actions of the other player). That’s how I’d interpret alignment shift on that one.
I prefer campaigns that start at level 5 or higher. The PCs actually feel more like heroes, and most multiclass builds have been settled into by then too. But maybe I'm spoiled by my old DM who hated low level play, lol.
Low level play allows for the GM to "use kid gloves" for the PC's to get used to their classes without necessarily creating enormous consequences... It's restrictive nature seems "cheap" in the beginning, but there's plenty of allowance for the personable antics that let the Players really "Connect" with their Characters AND with each other's Characters... There's just enough consequence to avoid total lunacy (depends on the GM) while allowing over-all strategies to develop as the Players and thereby the PC's, to better function as a team... Every victory feels earned by the shear "slog" of it when you do toss in a creature to push their limits, and as GM you have easier math in determining how to impress the PC's enough to back them off without necessarily having to kill one (or all) of them. Mostly, it's a beginner's lesson in cheap-shots and team work, and especially around noob's I love it. The antics tend to be hilarious, and they're not of a level that a "PC tantrum" can create too many unwanted consequences for everyone... It's also a great part of the game for building their trust in YOU as a GM... When you'd just rather toss the "kid gloves" aside and really try to convincingly injure or kill PC's, I have to think the game loses something... AND it's just my experience, here... Building a Character slowly in-game tends to get a Character FAR more powerful and durable than rolling one of "equivalent" level together "by the book". ;o)
For me, it depends on the campaign I'm hoping to run and/or that the players want to play in. I've run high-powered games where the players play as monsters and start with 10 Levels all the way down to Level 1 core races. I have a group who is waiting for me to run another high-powered game and I have players who don't want to start at anything but Level 1 (and others who just want to play anything).
You are a source of inspiration for me! Really appreciate the thank you video. I will make good use of your content. Friday the 13th of january we play our first game with me as DM
I really love this video, although I disagree that it's necessarily a bad idea to have the party play in the afterlife and possibly return, or seek to revive their old characters. If it was just a work-around to ignore the TPK it would be, but it could also be an awesome story which leads to an interesting change in a continued party dynamic instead of a new one. Ultimately, death shouldn't be treated as a punishment, since D&D is about creating a story and death is an important element to that. Whether new characters are made or the old remain, so long as the death acts as a significant change in direction to the story it's a valid course of action and can lead to interesting and fun plot developments.
I had a new group of players and i was running mines of phendevlar(sp?) And had the group wipe (7 players, i might add) on the first group of goblins, which was like 4 or 5 goblins.
Going into my games as dm I give far warning TPK is on the table at all time. And most of the time the groups are okay with it. And do what the can to not loss the hole party.
As terrible as a TPK is... it’s somehow even worse watching a DM unable to execute on one. It just feels like pity. And the adventure afterwards just feels like something that we didn’t earn.
We had a hill giant that we all failed our perception check and critted his stealth roll wiping us all out. We've since turned that event into a running gag about all those damn ninja hill giants.
I ran a game in 3.5 where I screwed up on an encounter and wiped my players. So without telling them anything, I just started winging it and had the awaken in the afterlife as their souls. I then had them adventure through and find a way back to the mortal world. Once they did I told them that while it only seems like a couple of weeks for them, a decade had passed and the BBEG had taken over the world. So the campaign shifted from preventing his rise to taking him down. And when the players eventually did, I then told them that they were still dead and that their return to the living was only a temporary boon granted by the gods. And with the defeat of the BBEG their task was complete and they needed to return. All the players but one did so, the later becoming a powerful litch that I used as the BBEG in a later campaign.
I was actually looking for ideas on how to "avoid" tpks to get some adventure hook ideas! I think that's far more interesting if everyone is still enjoying the game, as long as it isn't too frequent
This is definitely a good list of suggestions for such an event. This past Sunday I was running a Mythic Odyssey of Thero's Campaign, and in short I homebrewed a Mythic Elder Brain Type Enemy. The party did exceptionally well at planning and working together in this fight, and by using magic items and spells, they did a ton of enemies, instant killed 2 mind flayers meant to be in the fight, and all in all did a very good job. However, by the end of the fight, everybody was down and in death saves, the Cleric who was a weaker follower than all the players had no spell slots and was right next to a Cyclops. The only reason the party survived, was that the Barbarian currently unconscious and grappled by the Elder Brain's Tentacles, rolled a nat 20 and woke up, then by using inspiration, hero points and reckless attack, was able to kill the enemy and end the encounter. That was the closest I ever got to a TPK personally, and I was for sure worried about what to do after the fact. Thero's as a sourcebook does include adventures that could happen upon a big TPK based on the Underworld, as beings get to keep their bodies for a while down there. But knowing what else can be done should a TPK happen is very useful. Thank you for the video and the advice.
My answer, have some lvl 1 Commoner sheets ready for them lol perhaps some locals who had seen the direction the adventurers had headed when they left town. After all Adventurers are good for two things, killing monsters, and loot. Or raise them as intelligent Undead under the thrall of a Necromancer who have to find a way to escape his control and come to grips with this new terrifyingly bright and warm world they find themselves in.
My Curse of Strahd party nearly got TPK'd on Sunday. Two characters died and the other two just barely escaped the encounter. Great ideas in here and wonderful timing!
Never had a TPK. Players were never stupid enough to all die. Had two parties wipe to one left though. One party invaded hell and the Lawful Evil lived....they told him he would be back.....! The other was a full evil party killed by a good party, one evil character used dimension door to escape.
I once as a player tpkd everyone but me, turns out creating poison gas (to stop goblins from rear-end attacking us) at the only exit in a wooden building full of wooden furniture and then using a fire spell because I was a pyromancer was a bad idea. The best part was I just simply walked out with no damage from resistance and nat 20
There was this one time when one player decided (for his real-life entertainment) to lock the rest of us in a room with (at the time) undefeatable monsters when the plan was to evade them. He left the group instantly after his character did this, because he didn't want to play with us anymore. We all were flabbergasted. Those monsters (soul-sucking spiders) would have killed everybody eventually because even full-body suits wear off - and our DM was ready to let them - but after the betrayal she decided that they weren't really hungry at the moment.
We once had a TPK because my mic was accidentally muted. Playing online, I was playing an AD&D 1e game. We came across a trap that I, as a thief, had already found and was trying to speak up but unknowingly was muted. Party went forward and poison gas filled the area, killing all of us. 6th and 7th level characters. I was shouting the whole time about the trap but nobody could hear me. We use a stable of characters as backups so it wasn’t a huge deal, just lots of lost time and lost xp.
Idk I could see an early dust up with the BBEG working to establish the villain and make it personal but that just sounds a little cruel. With that difference all you can do is kiss your butt goodbye lol.
"None of those are examples of TPKs..." I don't know man. My party rolled really, really badly on their 'pet the cat's belly' checks... Things got terrible really fast... 😬
Thinking about character death, I had thought about some character that has a 'back-up plan' even if she is dead. A lawful-good type warlock girl who contracted to an archfey, which is just a magical girl in D&D world. (i will apply magical girl homebrew rule if my DM will allow it) If she dies before her backstory has been fully uncovered, I will just pull out another magical girl who will 'take on' the former's backstory. This is possible because their patreon wants her work to be done and convinces young girls specifically to work for her. I will gonna pull it if I have time for D&D. In short, If this warlock girl dies, I will say 'Oh no!' for her loss, and pulls out another character sheet with similar flavor when the party reaches another town and say 'Anyway,'
Another possibility. The patron of the party sends a rogue to the location where the party died by teleport. He pours the dead PCs into a portable hole and teleports back to the patron. The characters could be repaired. Sadly the bodies were striped and looted. when the rogue found them. They need to find new gear and magic items or return for their old gear which is now being used against them.
I know someone who even the character dies..he makes the same exact character for the replacement. With maybe just changing the name and little of the backstory. But really nothing else changes on his character sheet. I get yes there are a finite possibilities. And yes I get he is the player and can choose how he wants to play. But it's like come on....at least change it up a little.
We TPK'd right at the start of an optional dungeon, not plot related, once, everyone rolled bad on their saves on a trap and then a hard fight started and with lots of natural 1s - TPK. TBH... I don't think I'd enjoy playing with you with how ironclad you are, it absolutely can and was over. Because it was, we kicked our DM and picked a different one, because we didn't want to reroll, we didn't want to have our characters stories end there. I personally will never speak to that DM again, I don't want to have anything to do with her, yeah a few years friendship down the drain over her DMing, all because she wouldn't budge and to this day insists she was right. The other 5 of us still play together to this day. She was 100% unmmoving, like you are, and said "We have to start a new campaign or we take a month off while I get this campaign ready and you roll new characters". She wasn't interested in our opinion. I'm glad your players let you push them around, but players out there: you don't have to put up with a DM you disagree with. Sometimes people don't want to throw away years of story because of a few bad saves, sorry, you're wrong for being so absolutist about your view of how the game SHOULD BE PLAYED. It doesn't work that way for everyone. I think sometimes a lot of you youtube DMs don't realize how many people have SO LITTLE TIME to play D&D that they think people are just super keen to start a new campaign over and over when they get to play twice a month How do you stop the players from just revolting, rerolling new characters, and insisting that their sole goal is raising the old player characters? God I'm actually getting angry watching this video
personally if i know a major bbeg is going to face off with the pc's i usually have a plan of the bbeg's course of action for when they vanquish the players and i go into the fight with the mindset of the BBEG assuming he's going to win (similar to PC's always assuming they're going to win). Within the rules of the encounter i do everything i can to win and i roll everything openly so pc's can see it. one of my major boss fights had 8 pc's in and they knew exactly how much damage they needed to do to the boss, fast forward to the last round of the combat 6 of them were dead or unconscious, remaining 2 were under 20hp each and htey were facing off against a modified 2 headed proto-tiamat that only had about 50hp left before they could banish it. The ranger, who was afraid of the dragon and rolling at disadvantage proceeded to notch his last dragon slaying arrow and took a shot... rolling double nat 20's. He proceeded to do enough damage to, in turn, allow the cleric(who was the other character still up) the opportunity to cast a banish. they cast it and it came down to a dice roll in front of everyone to see if the boss would resist the banish or not. (i rolled a nat 4 out into the centre of the table and failed the save) Point is, i leave it up to the players to get themselves out of a TPK and i let the rule sof the encounter decide who wins. I was prepared in that moment for the tiamat aspect to win the fight and add the blue head to his body (party was defending a paralyzed ancient blue dragon ally). If they had lost he would have gained the head and i would have had them make new characters in that world a few years later and make some changes in the lore stating that tiamat was no 3 headed and more powerful. The whole campaign revolved around a powerful red dragon deciding to become tiamat but thats another story lol.
My players all have backup characters ready in case of death or tpk (there’s very little chance of that happening since all but one character has access to healing magic.) But it did come in handy when they dealt with an Aboleth, who asked them to join up with it, and one of them decided it was completely in character for them to leave the party and join the abomination’s cause. (They appeared a bit later as an NPC leading a whole legion of mind controlled dock workers when the city was under siege. They danced Thriller, then charged mid-song to overwhelm that very confused unit of the hobgoblin army.)
Geezer here.... Great vid as always. Brings to mind a point on starting characters level. Yep involves one of the BIGGEST mistakes I have made as DM.. Years back at a shop table I was conned into letting players start at 9th or so level. Total disaster, unhappy horror show. Your point on letting them start at the level of their deceased characters level brings it to mind. That disaster my group experienced was nothing to do with the characters level.... Everything to do with EVERYONE'S lack of experience with that level character. I whole heartily agree. Let them start at level the last ones died at. After all, their stuff, contacts and so much more has just been snatched up by the grim reaper. Just don't give someone a character level they have never worked up to. In my experience giving a nube a higher level character kills that one all the faster because the do not know how to use the characters abilities, and just die horribly. Also kills the play, they will be taking Forever looking up everything they do not know and bringing play to a standstill. Wow, that got long. Sorry to rant. Game on.
It's D&D, death is ALWAYS on the table. Retreat is ALWAYS an option. It's up to the players to show sportsmanship and move forward from the experience and the DM to show intestinal fortitude to stick by the dice and the final rulings. Yes, it's as simple as that.
A TPK is actually how I became DM. The game we were in basically had a fail condition at the point we died in so it wasn't possible to continue with new characters. We probably could have continued in the world with new PC's but the story our original PC's were in was essentially over with our deaths. They basically passed the mantle to me and we have been going since. So far I have only killed one character and that was mostly because of a series of unfortunate rolls that left him prone surrounded by monsters while the rest of the group moved to cover. Luckily my players are well accustomed to death from past DM's so they know what to expect with my campaign if a TPK sadly does happen. So far the campaign is going great even if the players are a bit too clingy with the NPCs(not sure how to stop that)
I haven't been involved in a TPK yet but I have died for reasons other than we were overwhelmed. Such as when I went down i failed all 3 death saves while the rest of my party stayed next to my body when we were fighting 1 druid that only had thunder wave and because I hit 0 it knocked me out of his range and he wasn't moving closer to us. So the fact that I was trying not to meta game when all 3 of my party members could have stablized me for 3 whole rounds.
I run a cyberpunk campaign and have homebrewed insurance plans. If a player buys insurance for their character, then when they die, then they can be medically evac'ed to a hospital and revived for a steep cost in currency and a slap down on a few of their skills/attributes that they then have to build back up. Of course they also lose their inventory.
Well, wasn't really a TPK, we just transitioned from Pathfinder to 5th Ed and rolled a new group. But the DM idea to bond us from the start was to say we where still in the same campaign world just a few decades later and that the new characters where basically reincarnations of the old ones so that we kinda recognized each other... But sadly the DM found another campaign world to take us on shortly after, so that new campaign stayed as nothing more than a one shot, yet a really fun one.
My first TPK happened in Ghost of Saltmarsh, one of the earliest encounters, the giant poisonous snakes in the well. The druid triggered the encounter, so initiative was rolled and the sneaks rolled pretty good. Therefore the druid was the first to fall, next the rogue. Until then i was only slightly worried because the feral tiefling ranger and the cleric (nature domaine) had a pretty good AC. Unfortunately i hid them BOTH with a nat20, Taking them prisoner wasn't an option, because giant poisonous snakes don't take prisoners and we were only like 30 minutes in the campaign so we decided that never happened at all and did our best to make a bow around the well.
The players in my game had a lot of powers the big bad was trying to acquire. They were sort of playing Power Rangers, in that they had magic armor, magic weapons, and giant robots. When some poor decisions on their part (one of the guys completely blames himself) led to a TPK, that let the big bad accomplish his goal. We pick up with the new group running from the big bad, now piloting a really big combined giant robot.
After my players TPKed during a pivotal moment in our campaign our next campaign took place in the same world 40 years later. The new characters had no connection to the fallen characters. This campaign had a much darker tone to the previous one as the BBEG had overrun the area with no one to stop them. A fun side effect was when they would find someone they knew from previous campaign the players would often go out of their way to help them. It was a little "meta gamey" but it made for some great moments so it didn't bother me.
I use a very common rule: if group did something stupid leading to TPK - they die. If quite literally anything else killed them (poor calculations, shitty die rolls, a good plan went very sour or so on) - I will do my best to save them from an actual TPK (maybe killing one PC in the process)
IMO it depends on wether or not the players liked the campaign or not. If yes roll new characters and continue running the same campaign with the new characters. If they didn't maybe better start a brand new campaign from scratch. Or as a compromise have them roll new characters at level 1 and start them in a different starting place in your old campaign world allowing them to go threw an all new story that might or might not eventually lead to them finding their previous characters at some point.
I have not had a TPK yet but if I did I would follow what has been brought up to me before. Just after fighting the BBEG set the next session 5 to 10 years later with the world now changed that the BBEG has won and have new heroes arise out of that situation and work towards fighting the BBEG and winning once and for all. It's funny I have not considered the idea of just starting a brand new campaign after the TPK. Considering how people may feel about wanting to start on something new.
Since this video is 3 months old, I figure the likelihood of this being answered is lower, but what might a DM do to continue a campaign such as Curse of Strahd in the case of a TPK. I'm preparing to DM that campaign, and I am trying to prepare for the event of a TPK in that setting. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be greatly appreciative.
just ran my first TPK. i’m still recovering from it. gonna need to figure out how to flip the adventure path around to show consequences…the player party died carrying an important payload for quest giver, so i need to look ahead to find out the consequences of the lost payload.
Wizard player- Who has ever heard of a monster immune to Fireball!? Ancient Red Dragons or powerful Demon Lords of the Abyss- *We'd like to introduce ourselves* 🙂
Professor DM over at rhe dungeoncraft channel has his players make multiple characters who all know one of the PCs at the start of the campaign so that they can logically replace dead PCs. I think having the players create backup characters and inserting them into the world in the beginning somehow is a pretty good idea. Downside is you might not like the backup character you rolled 3 months ago, so keep them a fairly blank slate.
I'm probably gonna get flamed a bit for this, but Elminster is technically a Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard... He's spent some significant time as each class, Wizard most of all.
You wake up within what looks like an idyllic setting within a woodland setting. "WTF are you lot doing here?!" the Fey Cleric bursts out. Shrugging helps them to their feet heads to the nearest exit and prods them outside. They're now standing next to the shrine their cleric established a full fortnight before the event that cost them their lives. "This, their cleric gestures, Is my Temple stay the fcuk out of my Temple!" she is clearly angry. "Now where's the nearest cleric of a good entity I need to discuss what the hells just happened?!" she says clearly upset they all ended up in her Feywild Refuge and Prison given she's bound there and this is the first time she actually died and was immediately sent back there...
last TPK i had the players goofed and Obliterated themselves and most of the surrounding area, i gave them a choice they could create new character or they could attempt to fight there way back to life from the underworld. they elected to fight, so the PC woke up in the Grassy fields of elysium and thus tried to find a way home. a year and half later (playing almost every sat), 6 levels and dubious amounts of tearing up the underworld they manage to find a way to get back to the prime material plane. long story short they were level 4 when they died and level 10 when they got back to where they started. the campaigned lasted another 6 months before it defused due to life reasons
For me, to avoid a TPK on the first encounter, or even before the characters get to do anything, I will give them plot armor, and try to bail them out as DM.
I'm a new DM and was running Lost Mine Of Phandelver until we reached a TPK against Venomfang. My player's looking at starting a homebrew with the same barely customised sample characters; human wizard, halfling rogue, etc. I'm dreading it so I'm going to print off a dozen of my own characters and homebrew until they're strong enough to handle the fight.
My party sorta TPK'd recently. Well, no one died, but it was decided that the characters would never work with each other again and that the campaign couldn't continue. So, what we did instead was start a new campaign with new characters at the same level. The players seem excited about it.
*Edit : I always love when a Cat pops into a video .* *You win extra comments .* *I have a fun solutions for a TPK .* *I will someday post them in a video on my channel .*
I have a player that has had his character die four times since my campaign started about two months ago. I cant tell if he's doing it intentionally or not because he constantly runs into rooms not thinking of reproductions or he runs ahead of the party. But he gets upset about his character dieing.. any tips on how to deal with this? I've tried talking to him about it before. Ps this is my first time ever being the dungeon masted
The dm driven tpk is less innocuous than you’re making it out to be, assuming the players are as invested in the game as you are. Negating the work and time that your group has put in for the entirety of the game because “Oops, haha” or “it seemed appropriate” is the dm equivalent of players refusing plot hooks and doing random shit instead of progressing the story and saying “it’s what my character would do.”, in my opinion. The story and its villains aren’t more important than the main characters of the story, especially in high fantasy. If tpking is happening beyond player mistakes, I’d recommend writing a novel with some good characters you can be invested in and like enough to want to see them succeed. Otherwise you campaign is a series of vignettes about random people until you get bored or lazy and kill them off.
Gave my friends the bag of beans. They were in a tough battle. Threw 5 BEANS. Made an easy victory (granted, they would take some damage) impossible. The ended up summoning treents. they were surrounded by trees. They were level 5 almost 6. There was no reason they would keep them alive. So, they turned a winnable fight to a tpk
Shouldn't the druid have healing magic? ...Also, what ever happened to the mute warlock? If the party had an employer or a reputation, a TPK can be an excuse to start a new adventure investigating their disappearance - basically picking up where you left off, but with new characters. That honestly sounds kinda fun!
Druids have access to healing spells yeah, as they have access to the entire spellbook up to their spell level.. but they still need to prepare spells after all, and if they haven't prepared any healing spells, well... :P
I give my groups the option of a game save, if they think they are about to go do something momentous they can save the game. They have to be unanimous, and they can use it for something other than just TPK.
I've really enjoyed these videos over the years. I wish you would do some Pathfinder 2e stuff now. And I know that a lot of this stuff is system neutral but there just seems to be so much more specific PF2e stuff that hasn't been addressed in a similar way available on RU-vid.
