I'm not a regular poster, but I like this thread and have a story that needs to be told.
This one is a TPK that was pretty epic.
We were playing City of the Spider Queen and coming towards the end of the module. For those of you not familiar with it, it is Forgotten Realms based and pretty much a long trek through the Underdark. I was the DM although I had just taken over for this module and had a character that the party insited on accompanying them--even if it would be a DMPC.
The party was fairly high level, somewhere in the teens and consisted of an Aasimar paladin of Kelemvor (with dire lion mount) that was the default leader, a Tiefling rogue (my DMPC) and foil to the paladin, a half elven archer ranger that was a living gatling gun, a bear warrior that was a backup character for a human monk of Ilmater that had been previously abducted by demons, and a gnome air elemental savant sorcerer that dubbed his lightning bolts 'shraks' and used them on pretty much everything.
The party had finally made it to the Underdark city where the evil undead army that would destroy the world would be unleashed. The drow 9all but the ones raising the army) had abandoned the city but it had been taken over by all sorts of monstrous humanoids, giants, and goblinoids. It was a war zone with bands of monsters roaming the streets causing whatever havoc they could.
The monsters were led by a half-fiend fire giant blackguard residing in the city arena complete with Balor advisor. As expected, the party went straight for him and demanded an audience. And, again, as expected the result of the audience was combat in the arena between the blackguard and paladin. If the paladin one, the party went unmolested to the temple of the drow priestesses raising the undead army. If the blackguard one, then the rest of the pary would be enslaved. Of course it was to the death and of course there would be NO outside interference. The rest of the party would watch from the VIP boxe seats with the balor and elite ogre guard. Mounts were allowed and the blackguard countered the paladin's dire lion with a fiendish dire elephant.
It was at this moment that the paladin gave the rogue 'the nod'. 'The nod' meant 'I know your not going to listen and do something that I'm going to find questionable so I'm just going to look away and I never want to hear about it'. We knew going in that it might go bad but if we wern't coming out, none of the bad guys were either. The rogue slipped off (a convenient way to get the DMPC out of the real action) to bar all the doors going into the arena and rig the portcullis that the blackguard would be coming out of when the fight began.
The balor announced for the battle to begin and good and evil charge. The blackguard and his mount are surprised when the portcullis come down on them, but it does very little to slow them. When the two clash, the paladin is still standing but his mount isn't so lucky.
The gnome air elemental savant is the first to crack (I knew one of them would). it's already looking bad for the paladin since he's now on foot and the blackguard is still mounted. There is a moment of indecision, a look at the balor, and then, "F**k it, SHRAK". Followed shortly after by an Implosion cast by the balor. No more gnome.
All hell breaks loose at this point. The lightning bolt did very little to the blackguard and his mount, but the volley of arrows from the archer that followed took the elephant down. The rogue returned and provided protection from the elite ogres as best he could so the archer continued to decimate the crowd of monsters in the stands watching the fight. The bear warrior quaffed a fly potion (love those potion belts), raged, shifted to bear form, and launched himself at the balor. Not the best of tactics, to grab a balor, but remember the player's other character was a monk of Ilmater--god of suffering.
The battle on the arena floor raged on and the paladin was getting his licks in but taking a beating. The archer managed to eliminate the mooks in the stands but a rogue, even a high level one, isn't meant to defend against several leveled ogres. Awesome Blow is a bad feat to be on the recieving end of, especially off the upper deck of an arena built for large and huge humanoids. The rogue fell to his death in front of the paladin. The paladin, saddened and enraged, burned a smite and cut the blackguard for decent damage. The bear warrior, smartly I might add, focused on disarming the balor of his vorpal sword and succeeded but managed to get entangled in the balor's whip.
Without the rogue running interference, the archer was overwhelmed by the remnants of the elite guard. Even a gatling gun runs out of ammo, and a short sword doesn't really match up to great clubs. The paladin finally kills the blackguard, but he's low on hp's (in the teens) and out of resources. The bear warrior is trapped and will soon die, in single digit hp's. The balor's grapple check is just too much.
I should mention here that the previous DM was the paladin's player and the adventure was a redemption of his character after he'd been the victim of a cursed ring that caused him to commit genocide of the elven race. He had been just recently atoned for his acts.
And he was failing again
The undead army would succeed
His closest friend, the monk, would be tortured for eternity
The rest of his friends, even the bear warrior that he barely knew, were dead or dying around him.
There was nothing he could do, no matter how much he wanted to. He was spent, there was nothing left.
Except the vorpal sword at his feat that he picks up and hurls in frustration at the demon.
Natural 20.
But.....we all know what happens to balor's when they are killed.
We went on to finish the campaign. I did a pretty big deus ex machina to bring the party back (Hey, it was the realms. Not like it never happens.) In hindsight though, I should have had the blast of light destroy the entire city, temple and all.
