Times you almost doomed the entire party?

[hotsauceman]

So. What are some times you almost doomed the entire party? With disaterous consequences?
Mine was a couple
Spoilers obvious
The Many Favors of Grandmaster Torch

Spoiler:

We are chasing him into the spice warehouse and I am just outside. Im playimg my ifrit gunslinger so she perceives him and is about to cast burning hands, but I cant do it without hurting a worker. So I settle for my Gun. Which then fires and sets ablaze a small fireball worth of spice. If I cant burning hands, that wuld have been a TPK right there

Wardstone Patrol

Spoiler:

My barbarion falls his will save several times, so he is paranoid and starts attacking the party, no one can kill him. So Im doing attackig the party members while the demon laughs.

[Jiggy]

From Shore to Sea:

That village is creepy, especially in the beginning. It looked like the villagers were all evil cultists or something. Each step of investigation gave increasingly stronger feelings that the next such step could land us in serious trouble, so I made a suggestion.

See, it's a tiny village at the bottom of a semi-circular cliff, with the only open side facing the sea. Nice and contained; hard to get out of in a hurry. And we were all convinced that probably everyone in the village needed to die. So... why not leave town, camp out on the clifftop (we hadn't drawn too much attention yet, so could probably rest without issue), then nuke the whole site from orbit.

I was playing my Eldritch Knight, so between spell slots and my bonded item I could cast somewhere in the neighborhood of half a dozen fireballs. Long range, good area, ignites wooden houses... Basically, if we rested, I could level the village in about 30 seconds; then add the rest of the party's capabilities on top of it.

This option was seriously considered, but finally we decided to investigate further instead. And it's lucky we did, as it turns out the villagers were the victims; I almost became a mass-murderer. O_O

[RainyDayNinja]

I have witnessed two separate instances of PCs sinking the ship that the rest of the party was busy fighting on.

[Lamontius]

uh 'almost' or just 'oh man sorry guys for the tpk?'

[Jiggy]

The Cyphermage Dilemma:

So, the goal is to locate and confront a very successful pirate who is likely to take out a VIP who's expected to arrive soon (the next day, I think).

Unfortunately, we have no leads for finding said pirate, as no one knows what her ship looks like or where she calls home. So we can't go find her before the event.

Naturally, the party's next idea (or rather, the idea I almost got everyone on board with) is to sail out and meet the VIP's ship ahead of time, and lie in wait on the ship so we can defend it when the pirate attacks. Brilliant, right?

Well, I don't remember why, but we did something else instead. Found out later that the reason there were no leads on where the pirate lives or what her boat looks like is that her typical M.O. is to disguise herself and get a job as a sailor on her next target's ship, then take the ship from within.

So had we gone ahead with our plan, she'd have already been there when we arrived; she'd have easily slit all our throats in our sleep.

[wakedown]

Lamontius wrote:

uh 'almost' or just 'oh man sorry guys for the tpk?'

Almost... :)

That thing you are thinking -- doesn't count!

[Zach W.]

We Be Goblins 2:

Spoiler:

Playing the Cleric Goblin, who for some reason has a wand of fireballs.

First encounter with the pig after someone ELSE was crowned king. I am a goblin, I figure throwing a fireball in combat is a great plan! Goblins dodge so good!

Sadly the necklace of fireballs I completely forgot about does not dodge so good.

15D6 later I was the only one besides an unconscious goblin teamate left standing.

The pig was destroyed though! I return a hero and am crowned king!

[Mystically Inclined]

I have this really cracked out Sorcerer/Oracle of Heavens named Farkle that I bring out every now and again when the group and GM are right. We were playing a 1-5 season 0 scenario (not named for spoilers) and ended up facing three giant scorpians. Farkle didn't have the requisite knowledge skill and nobody in the party was rolling, so he proceeded to use the same old dazzle spell tricks that always worked in the past. Being level 5, he'd just learned his very first level 2 spell (Hypnotic Pattern) and was eager to try it out. This was, by the by, the first time I'd ever used the spell as a player too. Farkle casts it directly over and behind the vermin. He also rolled high for the number of hit dice that could be fascinated. Combine this with subtracting 5 hit dice per person because of the Awesome Display revelation...

The hypnotic pattern effect rolled right over the (immune to mind affecting) vermin, through 6 bystandards that had been fleeing the scene from a dispersing crowd, and right back onto our party. By the time the hit dice had been taken up, I'd managed to fascinate 4 out of the 6 party members, including a pet. Farkle stopped concentrating when he got caught in his own spell effect, but the majority of the party were still standing still for 3 rounds while surrounded by three giant scorpians. One of the two non-affected people was already unconscious. We all looked at each other and grimly acknowledged the TPK to come.

That was when our resident rules lawyer finished reading the spell and pointed out that I'd read the entry wrong. The effect doesn't extend beyond a 10 foot radius.

Party saved.

[Dragnmoon]

Anytime I sit at the table as a GM or player... ;)

[Lamontius]

wakedown wrote:

Lamontius wrote:

uh 'almost' or just 'oh man sorry guys for the tpk?'

Almost... :)

That thing you are thinking -- doesn't count!

rofl

[Rapthorn2ndform]

So we're on our boat in the middle of a forest (No water, a sailing ship, forest...it's a long story.) and are surrounded by dozens of what we call tom-goblins (Hobgoblins with an 18 str, 20 dex, and magic composite longbows with a 4 strength rating) The Cheif shouts "Let us discuss surrender."

Without missing a beat I step forward "Well, we'll take your bow's, armor, money and any other magic you have. Then you can leave, and be glad that i showed you such mercy."

edit: oops...home game not society play

[Amanda Hamon]

Posted something in here, but I just realized it's not a PFS story, so it'll have to wait for another time. :)

I'm really enjoying reading everyone else's stories, though. I will say that my party narrowly (and I mean NARROWLY) avoided a TPK a couple of weeks ago in the Blakros Matrimony, when the BBEG ...

spoiler:

Threw an illusory AOE spell at four out of the six of us. Everyone failed their Will save and all but one PC failed their Reflex. Full damage was, I think, something like 43 hp. I still have no idea how anyone survived that fight (and all but two of us who did were unconscious). I think our GM must have had mercy on us.

[Kyrie Ebonblade]

Not MY goof, but the BEST one I've seen down here.

Tower @ Ironwood Watch:

We had just finished off the Drow and while the others were searching the bodies and myself and another player were setting sentry on the path down. The LAST player decided that he'd impulsively kick in the door and look in the side room.
Where he got promptly magic jared by a shadow demon. The highlights after that? One player put to negs in 2 hits from said player, another only still standing thanks to a samurai's resolve. The other players: myself, a magus and an iconic cleric (7th), beat down the demons and the player by the barest edge.
Total fail of scenario. Net cost: every scroll I had, every spell ALL the casters had, most of the magus AND samurai's potions and the loss of the possessed player's body after my character killed him while fleeing the Shadow Demon

Sidenote: Shadow Demons SUCK.

[trollbill]

Wonders in the Weave, Part II: Snakes in the Fold

Spoiler:

So we have a table of 7 players; 3 high tier, 3 low tier and one in the middle. The 3 low tiers are dubious about playing up but the high tiers are mostly front rankers, the low tier is all back rankers, we have 7 players and it's only a Year 3 adventures to we convince them to play up through both parts. I am playing my flying gnome grenadier alchemist. Everything goes just fine until we get to the end of the last mod, with the high levels taking the brunt of the punishment to protect to low level back rankers. We get to the spellcasting mummy at the end. The high levels immediately charge into the room to engage and protect the low levels in the back. I start lobbing bombs which, not surprisingly, gets the fire vulnerable mummy's attention so he hits me in my Achilles left heal, my Will saves, Dominates me and orders me to attack my allies. I am, at this point, hovering directly over those low level back ranker's we had been protecting from the get go. So I start dropping my remaining load out of Snake & Nape. One round later 3 almost dead and on fire squishies are now screaming down the hallway to quench themselves in the pool of water in the previous encounter before they burn alive and I am now free to turn my attention to the higher levels now engaged in a life & death struggle against the mummy. Fortunately for everyone, I only had 3 bombs left at the time or it could have very well been a TPK.

The Red Hand of Doom

Spoiler:

Okay, not actually a PFS adventure but a great adventure none the less. We had just finished a 'boss' battle and most of the party was pretty low on resources but my sorcerer still had plenty of juice. We had gone the entire day without finding any treasure and I was sure this boss had some just behind a side door. I was certain that if the treasure even had a guard, it couldn't be worse than the boss we just fought. So against party objections I cast Invisibility and Fly, opened the door and entered the room. Well, I was half right. The boss's treasure was indeed in the room but it was guarded by a demon that could fly, see invisible and cast wall spells. We barely made it out of that one alive.

[nosig]

This was not me... but I saw it happen.

Players: "heck, this is a season zero scenario! Playing up is no problem!"

Later - Judge statement: "make a Will save - 3 times. So everyone missed at least one of them?..."

[Muser]

Almost doomed? ALMOST?! HAH!

Get this. There's a creepy cellar. Imagine a box inside that cellar. It's an ornate but otherwise ordinary metal box. Perhaps there's treasure inside? HECK NO, the adventurers gathered around the object sing in unison! This has to be a trap. Let us buff, prepare our weapons and open the box, but do it eyes closed so that any vision-based nasties wouldn't cleave us in twain.

...

There was a spider swarm inside the box. Number of survivors? Zero.

[Finlanderboy]

My gnome was confused colorsprayed half the team into unconsiousness, then got grappled before he could cast aqeous orb to drown them to death.

[quibblemuch]

My inquisitor of Groetus had a portable hole AND a bag of holding for nearly a year of real time... everyone KNEW that Plan G was eventually going to happen, but no one knew WHEN... every time things got the least bit dire looking, everyone would get all twitchy and try to stay at least 10 feet away from him...

[Sior]

Night March of Kalkamedes:

I played this at Gen Con having already GM'ed it a couple times. When it got to the end scene, my inquisitor rolled a nat 18 or 19 on the Sense Motive check on the gnome. Which wasn't enough to disbelieve him. So... I trusted the little gnome and ended up releasing the glabrezu. No one died, thankfully, but we didn't get an extra prestige at that point. All of the other players were upset, some furious it seemed, but I had no reason to not believe him in-character! Only GM meta-knowledge.

[Caderyn]

Hmm mine would be from the Hellknights feast

Hellknights feast:

So we handled the social encounters amazingly my monk managed to talk wardstones with the mage at the party so I did not feel useless, we then went downstairs and found the obvious murders and replacements, so before we reported to Maldris I decided I would just take a quick look in the kitchens and see if I could find the replacements, queue 2 nat 20's one on will saves and once on perception (giving me a score over 40), I managed to see through the succubi's disguise, I then roll a 5 on the bluff check to make sure she does not know I have noticed something is amiss (giving me a 3), We then end up fighting all the remaining encounters including the optional at the same time. We all survived but we did end up failing the secondary mission as we lacked the sword Maldris would have given us to stop the teleport

[Partizanski]

I was wearing a recently found necklace of fireballs and got hit by an alchemist bomb...

as I was standing in the middle of the party...

Yeh. This was low enough level that if the bard didn't know saving finale, we would have been toast.

[Nathan Hartshorn]

Ooh, ooh, mine could've doomed the party potentially...

Feast of Ravenmoor:

My Ranger was crushing on the queen of the festival pretty hard. 6 man party for the mod, so I decided to sleep on the walkway outside of the rooms with my dog, Ruckus, asleep next to me. The girl wouldn't have even had to wake the others before convincing me to go outside with her. Luckily the Wizard/Fighter/Eldritch Knight of the party cast an audible alarm spell on the stairwell...

[Jiggy]

Partizanski wrote:

I was wearing a recently found necklace of fireballs and got hit by an alchemist bomb...

as I was standing in the middle of the party...

Yeh. This was low enough level that if the bard didn't know saving finale, we would have been toast.

If you're wearing a necklace of fireballs, you WANT to the bomb to hit you.

[gnoams]

We went to talk to this lady to get some information, I innocently ask "hey, is that a sand elemental over there?"
"You know my secret, now you must die!" screams the lady.
We get hit by the sand creature's sleep aura, 3 of us blow our shirt re-rolls so the entire party doesn't collapse at once.

Sometimes being highly perceptive is a bad thing.

[Aranna]

It was a bright and sunny day and our spirits were high as we climbed the narrow path up Dead Man's ravine toward the ruin of Guardian's Gate. Namia my elven ranger was in lead as we made our way high up the steep trail followed by Tark the mighty a human barbarian, Harken the ratman rogue, and Kallam the elven wizard.

Earlier I had cautioned the team when I had discovered refuse of giantish origin. But we were full of bravado and pushed upward with no additional preparation. At the top we faced a giant to nobodies surprise and combat began. After a round and some bad rolls the giant had critically hit the barbarian doing massive damage. But it was round two that spelled disaster when Kallam decided to pull out the big guns and blasted the giant (and the entire rest of the party) with an enhanced fireball. The only one who made the save was the giant. Harken was knocked unconcious by a neary max damage roll while I got off lucky with a low roll. (we roll for each target in this game). Facing a certain TPK at this point I call a retreat and leap into the ravine followed by Tark but not Kallam, who claimed it was suicide and the KOed Harken. The fall was brutal. I was nearly KOed and Tark was KOed. I healed Tark a bit while the giant was murdering Kallam and we made our way home to rest and put up help wanted signs.

Kallam still blames poor Namia to this day while everyone else claims this was Kallam's fault.

[Orthos]

Council of Thieves - What Lies in Dust:

In the final vampire fight in Delvehaven, the GM decided we'd made enough noise that all of them were waiting for us in the area below, so we had four Spawn, the Mazeflesh Man, and Jair all waiting and ready to ambush. (Thankfully we'd beaten the timer she put us on to potentially save Vahnwynne before she got Turned; she'd introduced her earlier in the campaign as a friend of Ailyn and looking for her when she went missing was one of our two main leads to Delvehaven.) My Sorcerer panicked and used the scroll of sunburst we'd found in the Crux; that had the unpleasant side effect of blinding half the party. On the other hand, it DID dust all the vamps except Jair, who was injured enough to flee, and then got chased down by our Barbarian. But better rolls on the enemies' part and poorer rolls on ours could have easily turned us all into sitting ducks.

My Sorc is now very much disliked by the party's Warpriest (who prior was basically one of the two first real friends she'd ever had, along with the party's Investigator) and for a short time even nearly risked breaking the party apart over such a risky ploy.

[Buri]

My group was in a cave fighting some giants and had just finished a fight. They were retreating and I just wanted to take a peak down a hallway with my inquisitive witch character. I rolled perception and saw some silhouettes indicating creatures were there. I thought this was some groovy intel we could use going back in. Well, they saw my character and a huge ambush laid in wait. It wasn't entirely my fault as there was some scry vs scry going on but I tipped them off that we were at their door step, basically.

[Haladir]

Old-school AD&D 1st Edition game, some time in the mid-'80s.

The PCs were dungeon-delving, I was playing a wizard.While exploring some twisty natural caves, we encountered some unfriendly ice lizards, so I let 'em have it with a fireball.

Except that I forgot to clarify with the GM the dimensions of the room we were in. (Since this was old-school gaming, there was no battlemat or minis.) The room we were in was only about 15' x 15', and the corridors leading out were less than 5' wide. Under AD&D 1e rules, a fireball exploded to its full volume of approx. 33,000 cubic feet. So, the GM does some quick math on his calculator-watch, and figures out that my fireball shot through three quarters of the dungeon-- including us!

So, everyone rolls their save vs. spells, and guess what-- I'm the only one who makes the save. The cleric, the thief, and the druid all die, leaving me and the fighter to collect their bodies and beat feet out of there.

[The Shifty Mongoose]

I'm relieved at the relatively small size of this thread.

I've GM'd a few PFS tables that got doomed due to the players overestimating themselves or confusing bits of information, but there's only one time that I can think of where it was my fault.

Jade Regent, Tide of Honour:

We were barging through the home of one Yugureda Shosaito, sick of the games he was playing with us. The wizard of the group got progressively angrier with him, both over his abuse of people and their conflicting choices in magical study; when he told everyone to just fight him, Shosaito commanded his two greater shadows to "deal with the lightbringer"; the cleric of Shizuru with the Sun and Glory domains. Instead of blasting them one at a time with spells, he instead elected to channel, harming the shadows with that and his Sunlight Nimbus. That wasn't enough to kill them, though, and they both dealt maximum Strength damage with their attacks; enough to cause him to drop and become a shadow himself.

He kept trying to touch his friends, gasping out, "Let me heal you!" If it wasn't for the wizard, managing to trap the opposing one with a situational spell, we would have all had our souls corrupted or removed.

...The cleric managed to get Ressurected via outside means, and from then on was ready with Undeath to Death. It came in handy once.

In summary, I was terminally over-confident in the face of an uncommon foe and its ability to kill me in a non-standard fashion.

[Castilliano]

Not me, I was DM, but pretty funny.
They go down to a level where everything is cracked, the ceilings are unsteady and about to collapse, and they pretty much surmise not to make any loud noises or cast any AoE spells.
One guy, running a rogue with a sorceress follower, is particularly adamant about it. He's constantly reminding everyone, and me, that the party should be walking quietly and not touching the walls.
All's fine.
They enter a cavern where they see two Umber Hulks, a sizable challenge.
"Oh, crap! Fireball!", this the sorceress. Every player at the table goes wide-eyed, but the dice are already hitting the table before he realizes what he's done.
"Oh...OOHHH."
Well, the fireball didn't do to much damage to the Umber Hulks, but the roof collapsing hurt them enough to take them out quickly.
The collapsing roof damage, as per module, 1d100. Average would drop anybody except the Barbarian, killing most. And the Barb, he was destined via confusion gaze to wander the dungeon level, and through sheer chance, walk in a circle back to the party.
Thankfully everyone had a low roll except the sorceress, pancaked to -20 or such. The rogue used a reroll, but she ended up taking even more damage. They Stoneshaped the rock on her and dragged out her sloppy mess out on her cloak.
There's a fitting end for you.
Cheers.

[strayshift]

I had an Arcane Trickster who had a lucky habit of surviving 3 otherwise total party kills. The first was an undead tomb and I had chickened out of scouting out up front (claiming a combination of poor ac, spells & hit points as I was not yet a trickster) which meant that when the fight did start the spells hit the bulk of the group (I was at the back) rendering most helpless...

Where the character not Neutral Evil he may have considered the consequences of his 'caution'... But he didn't.

[Laurefindel]

Haladir wrote:

Old-school AD&D 1st Edition game (...) fireball

I knew there HAD to be a spreading fireball or bouncing lightning bolt in this thread somewhere!

[Set]

The best TPKs have been in Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia, where it's not entirely unexpected for one or more of the characters to freak out and blowing up everyone in an overreaction. (Or, in the case of Call of Cthulhu, a woefully ineffective reaction that kills the entire party, and doesn't really do much more than inconvenience the Thing that caused him to blow a San check...)

A fun one in D&D was in the Temple of Elemental Evil. My fighter got eviled-up by a magical item, and chose as his first 'attack the party' action to say, 'Hey, I think this is magic. Can you tell what it does?' and toss it to the wizard, taking her out of the fight (she didn't turn evil, but was knocked out for some reason), while he turned and attacked the cleric, whom he took down pretty fast. The remaining party member (a paladin or ranger, IIRC) had 4 hit points left when he finally beat my fighter... So close to a TPK!