Author Topic: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...  (Read 20883 times)

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #40 on: June 12, 2013, 06:23:53 PM »
For the record, the Dragon was under the effect of an extended See Invisibility, not True Seeing.

Also, my game doesn't play on the level of "Invisible Spell to screw over True Seers!"  I'm not saying your tactic is bad (it's actually quite ingenious, and I've seen it mentioned before), but my game doesn't generally operate on such a level.  Threads like this one would be the expected result...

So I described the situation to the former player, and he seemed to not really come up with a game plan that would have led to success either, so I suppose it really was too hard of a puzzle.

I'll grant you that none of them are playing Clerics, but a simple Divination would have been a great help to them.  Hell, even an Augury would have had a pretty good chance of telling them "don't do that."  Perhaps I'll mention the utility that Limited Wish could have in replicating such things.

Offline dither

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #41 on: July 05, 2013, 02:46:01 PM »
Your story reminds me of a 4e campaign I ran with a group of fairly new players -- though I'm not really suggesting experience made the difference here.

As suggested earlier in the thread, the flow of information often seems a sticking point for groups that face a preventable TPK.

I ran the campaign over a year or so, and I took a fair amount of time outside the game -- creating email chains and discussing strategy with players -- and we had a lot of conversations about the effectiveness of scouting, Divination, and whatnot. What proved one of the bigger sticking points was my players' inability to form effective questions.

There's a quality of playstyle I haven't quite nailed down that reflects a player's willingness to probe and experiment. I'm not sure what the connection is (if any) to GMstyle, but I've observed in myself a diminished interest in experimentation when the DM rewards players for "witless" play ("Why should I try when that other guys is rewarded for sucking so hard?") but that doesn't sound like the case here.

Whatever the case, I think it's probably more important to maintain player morale than worry about whether you devised an impossible puzzle or they failed to foresee a preventable TPK...

...Having been there myself several times... I permitted the party to escape every TPK but the very last one (at the end of the campaign), where they decided they were tough enough to challenge the King of the Gods. Yup. That particular party wound up in a Very Special Hell Of Their Own Making (TM). It worked out pretty well, actually.


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Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #42 on: July 05, 2013, 10:06:46 PM »
Monday will be our first session back since the TPK.  Despite some questions from me, they haven't given any hint what they want to do going forward.  DMing by the seat of your pants is fun!

Offline dither

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #43 on: July 08, 2013, 05:44:09 PM »
Monday will be our first session back since the TPK.  Despite some questions from me, they haven't given any hint what they want to do going forward.  DMing by the seat of your pants is fun!

It's definitely important to have a positive attitude about the thing. Occasionally, if only rarely, things will go precisely the way you hope they will -- and sometimes better. :)


--Dither
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Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #44 on: July 09, 2013, 12:55:53 AM »
Things actually went pretty well tonight.  They ended up taking the track I figured they would (get true resurrected, then head to Vanaheim to attempt to rescue the NPC from the Unseelie agents).  Everyone seemed to be in good spirits when the game started, and their spirits got higher and higher as they discovered the perimeter guards are decked out with NPC wealth.

One of the foes they killed (a Satyr sorcerer who tried to disintegrate them twice) had an Artificer's Monocle, so they can identify stuff on the fly.  Thus they will end up being fairly well equipped by the time they face the BBEG Master of the Wild Hunt who is guarding their friend.  They also have an NPC helper from the Seelie Court - a Saint Ghaele, and they took his proffered advice to deal with the perimeter guards first, rather than sneak straight to the final boss.  He suggested this after seeing their meager accoutrements (remember, they basically have no equipment, aside from the mundane stuff the Hathran gave them after resurrecting them).

In tonight's session they scored the Monocle, a Headband of Intellect +4, an Amulet of Health +2, a Ring of Protection +2, a +1 Nimble Mithril Chain Shirt, a +4 Keen Rapier, some +3 Gal-Ralan (one of the foes was a Shadar-Kai), and an assortment of scrolls (solid fog, cloudkill, wall of stone, polymorph other, dimensional anchor).  They see the opportunity to score big, and that has put a belated salve on their hurts.

Offline Elevevated Beat

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #45 on: July 09, 2013, 01:17:47 AM »
*snip*

Aww *tear*
Can you tell me bedtime stories? :flutter

But seriously, that's very good news.
Do you know how long someone who is as sarcastic as I am would last in prison? Suuuuuuch a long time.

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Offline dither

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #46 on: July 09, 2013, 12:23:15 PM »
They see the opportunity to score big, and that has put a belated salve on their hurts.
Sometimes, that's all it takes. Huzzah~! :)


--Dither
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Offline Iainuki

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #47 on: July 23, 2013, 11:45:00 AM »
If my experience playing and DMing has taught me one thing, it's that it's very difficult for one person to judge how difficult another person will find a puzzle without lots of actual testing.  Sometimes friends have been known to use me a guinea pig when I'm not playing just to get an idea how hard whatever they're planning to throw at their players is.  It's for this reason that I don't much like putting puzzles where failure leads to an immediate TPK in games.

Offline Meiliken

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #48 on: July 27, 2013, 03:58:00 AM »
This reminds me of one of the campaigns i was a player in.  Our DM had spent about 2 weeks planning every detail of a tower that was impassable(between 2 sheer clifs), the floors, the items, the enemies.  Our party was very paranoid since even though we were all lvl 9, we'd been pretty much poor since the DM had almost nothing from the earlier encounters for rewards.  Because we were so poor, we had to think up fairly mundane solutions.  One of our members had used alchemy to create explosives and alchemists fire, alot of them.  The tower had guards inside and outside.  We killed all the outside guards, and even managed to rescue some prisoners in one of the outer gate houses.  The door into the main part of the tower was shut(we'd been very quiet the entire time outside), from what rescued prisoners told us, there was about 50 guys garrisoned in the tower.  Keep in mind, we were paranoid.  So we planned to light all the fuses from the explosives and the alchemists fires, open the door, and throw them in, close the door, and run.  Unbeknownst to us, one of the guard was also on his way out to do his rounds.  So the door opened, he got hit several times by canisters, others flew over and around him behind him to several other guards.  We slammed the door, and ran.  The resulting mushroom cloud completely destroyed the entire tower, and part of the cliff face with it.  The DM was swearing behind his screen because he did all the rolls behind it, and apparently they were all bad.  Turns out, since he had not given us much, his plan was for us to get the items in the tower, because it was also a depot.  The explosion detonated oil canisters as well as pitch, and other explosives that were already in the tower.  His rolls were to see if they ignited(which they did).  It destroyed the entire tower, and about 2 sessions worth of work he had planned.

 Moral of the story is this.  For DM's and players, you can't plan for everything.
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Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #49 on: July 28, 2013, 09:13:23 PM »
 :lol :clap Hilarious story, Meiliken. Welcome to the boards.
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Offline Elevevated Beat

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #50 on: August 11, 2013, 06:03:15 AM »
 :lol
Very funny story!
Do you know how long someone who is as sarcastic as I am would last in prison? Suuuuuuch a long time.

Bhu: Favorite quote of the day: “I’ll make love to you like a confused bear. Awkwardly. And in a manner that suggests I’m trying to escape.”

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #51 on: August 24, 2013, 12:38:51 PM »
So...We just had a pretty brutal almost-TPK in my group. I have a policy about the world not adjusting to the players, meaning that if they unknowingly put themselves in a bad situation, I'm not going to fix it for them behind the scenes. In this case they managed to get themselves in serious trouble by finding the entire mercenary group in one place at the worst time, then charging right into it.

What was supposed to be a fight with 4 different pairs of modified Ogre-Mages at different points in a mansion ended up being a fight with 8 Ogre-Mages in an open lawn in front of the mansion. The Ogres only had Charm Person prepared, but it was still brutal.

Turn 1:
Psion buffs himself (psion gish using control body)
Ogre-Mages 1-4 Attempt to Charm the Hexblade, all fail (hexblade has highest saves vs charm, only fails the save on a 1)
Ogre-Mages 5-8 Attempt to Charm the Psion...He rolls a one, then fails secondary save. (note that he ALSO only fails vs charm on a 1)
Druid casts entangle, which accidentally screws the hexblade who was going to charge (normally they talk about it telepathically through the psion's psicrystal, but he's charmed now, so they are all acting independently), Fleshraker walks up and bites one (bad planning :()
Hexblade uses Augment Familiar on his howler, who then walks over and attacks an ogre.

At this point, the ogres are unharmed, and the team is already down a player (who was the main blaster) and the ogre mages have a windstorm level aura that's keeping the party from closing effectively...Druid ended up dying 2 turns later, Hexblade managed to stun the Psion and load him onto the howler, then run. The charm still lasted hours per level though, so they dueled to the death, the Hexblade lost, and the Psion retired from adventuring in grief.

Good News: Everyone had backup characters planned. Psion is making a Hood (what he normally plays), Druid is making an arcane Gish (Testing my homebrew!), and the Hexblade is making a Halruaan Elder+Reserve Feat Wizard.


Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #52 on: August 24, 2013, 03:08:00 PM »
Why would Charm Person cause the Psion to dual his friend to the death. It makes view the Ogre Mage as his friend, but it doesn't. Break his existing bonds of friendship (unlike dominate would).

The Halruaan Elder should be fun.

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #53 on: August 25, 2013, 02:27:01 AM »
Why would Charm Person cause the Psion to dual his friend to the death. It makes view the Ogre Mage as his friend, but it doesn't. Break his existing bonds of friendship (unlike dominate would).

The Halruaan Elder should be fun.

They were a mercenary party, and the hexblade was the newest arrival (and had previously been prickly towards him).

Halruaan Elder should indeed be fun. We don't generally have downtime for it, so he'll be getting his circle magic as a once per story arc boost.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #54 on: August 25, 2013, 10:55:45 AM »
So not only was it a TPK, but they didn't even managed to hurt a single enemy?  :lmao
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Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #55 on: August 25, 2013, 10:55:03 PM »
So not only was it a TPK, but they didn't even managed to hurt a single enemy?  :lmao

The tiny bit of damage the party did was countered by the enemy fast healing...so yeah.

Offline Risada

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #56 on: August 25, 2013, 11:01:57 PM »
I wonder if this is going to happen again in the near future, in this neighborhood?  :twitch

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #57 on: August 25, 2013, 11:03:01 PM »
I wonder if this is going to happen again in the near future, in this neighborhood?  :twitch
:plotting

Offline ksbsnowowl

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #58 on: August 29, 2013, 02:46:13 PM »
So, the events surrounding the party's involvement with the Unseelie and Seelie courts have reached a pay-off.  Due to the party's failure to deliver the McGuffin to the Unseelie Princess, they took it upon themselves mount a rescue mission to save their friend.

They enlisted the help of the Seelie, prior to their decent into Niflheim, to try to locate the captive for a potential rescue.  The Seelie were able to determine approximately where the Unseelie's agents were holding the kidnapped victim (on Vanaheim's Shadow Plane).  After all the PC's were resurrected, they contacted the Seelie once again, and were asked if they "knew how to travel the tree."  There was some confusion about that (they thought I meant Transport via Plants), but after I explained, they traveled to Yggdrasil, Shadow Walked to the shadow plane, and entered the tree.  About 45 minutes of step-climbing brought them to a landing where an elfish-looking male stood.  He introduced himself as Kimball, and he was a Saint Ghaele Eladrin (ie - a Seelie courtier).  He accompanied them through the adventure, and pointed out the ability to use the time flow traits of Vanaheim to their advantage (they retreated to Yggdrasil several times to reprep spells a total of two times).

He assisted the party, and after all was said and done, and the Shadow Creature Master of the Hunt was slain, he told the PC's to come visit his princess at the next full moon (via the fey ruins and the seat that allows someone on Midgard to see through the veil into Vanaheim).

The PC's spent the next two months in game recreating spellbooks, selling the Hunter's Large items to the Troll King, and crafting new items.  Along the way, at the next full moon the Wizard//Rogue and the Barb//Beguiler went to the fey ruins, and Barb//Beguiler sat on the stone bench and conversed with Tatiana.  He asked for advice and ways to protect against Unseelie retaliation, and Tatiana said she could do two things.  One, she would send Kimball to teach them things (I have to figure out WHAT he will teach them, exactly... hmmm), and two, after Kimball's report on their actions to save their friend, she could "bless" them, and make them agents of the Seelie.

I then broke out of character and explained what her blessing entailed.  She could bestow the Saint template upon any of them that were of Good alignment.  I explained how the LA would work (in my gestalt games, the LA is split between both sides; as a +2 LA template, it would effectively take up their next level, +1 LA on each "side,") and the benefits the template would bestow.  The player of the Druid//Sorcerer... his eyes kept getting larger and larger.  Though his character wasn't present at the time, he was giggling and saying "yes" before I was half-way through reading the template.  He is currently CN, so I am forcing him to roleplay his change, first the true neutral, then to neutral good, over the course of a few sessions.  Then Tatiana will bestow it upon him during a full moon.

The Good Wizard//Rogue is debating whether or not to take it.  The CN Barbarian/Duskblade//Beguiler/Mindbender with Mindsight is actually quite bummed, because Mindbender (and thus Mindsight) require him to be non-good.  He can, of course, choose to become a "better man," if the Saint Template is more enticing, but he is quite conflicted, and it seems to be a very hard decision for him.

In talking with the Barb//Beguiler player after the game, I mentioned the effect events in game have had.  Not to rub his face in anything, but just an observation.  Had they succeeded in returning from Niflheim with the Hammer of Thunderbolts, the Unseelie princess might have seen them as powerful enough to become agents for the Unseelie Court, and would have offered the Shadow Creature template.  Due to the outcome of events, that option is pretty well shut down, but I've been intending for one of the archways in the fey ruins to periodically function as the Failed Shadow Gate magical location from Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave, which can bestow the Dark Creature template (but only for 10 minutes, 1/day; the book says many of the foes passed through it more than 10 times, however, permanently becoming Dark Creatures).

I've not yet decided how, but I plan to make that option known at some point.

Offline nijineko

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Re: Well, I Killed the Whole Party...
« Reply #59 on: August 30, 2013, 11:22:44 AM »
i petitioned my dm for an exemption to the rule that mindbender be non-good, as the first instance of the ability which grants 'forcing others to your will' (the fluff described 'evil or non-good act' in question) does not occur till forth level, iirc.

the dm agreed with the caveat that should that character being behaving in an inappropriate fashion, they might be required to take more levels of mindbender, until they 'fall to the dark side'. and of course if i ever take that level on my own, i would be required to change alignment and rp style to match.

as a natural consequence, that character is on the outs with their mentor, who occasionally attempts to persuade them to resume training, and even causes obstructions for that character, 'for their own good' and to 'free them from their silly self-imposed limits which are preventing them from reaching their full potential' and other similar reasonings.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2013, 11:26:42 AM by nijineko »