Clever ways to deal with accidental TPK's


Advice


Got any?

Thanks!


It was all a dream!


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Rocks lift, you live!

Would need examples, kinda.
It's easier to give advice or tips based on the foiled circumstances...

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

If you've already TPKed the party, there isn't much.

IF you're ABOUT to tpk the party, a third party interruption might help, like a sudden earthquake or local area collapse that gets the baddies running away from your position until the dust settles down.


The characters all awaken on the floor of a strange and dilapidated hallway. They each have three pieces of their old equipment of their choice and a small penalty to their stats related to the way that they were killed. The players get to keep the same characters and there is a new mystery to explore.

Or just reroll and start a new campaign since that sort of thing just happens sometimes.


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fold a tent with your fingers and say "excellent, exactly as planned".

Make them come to life in the not too distant future as intelligent zombies who have to eat as many brains as their intelligence score, as many muscles as his strength, hearts as con, etc. (can't say the Charisma one, there are children here) to come to life once more.

As an alternative, they are dead, and that's it. Life is luck, and dice are fickle somethings.


Dan E wrote:
It was all a dream!

Or just a really high level Illusionist messing with their heads.


I am going to start the Serpent Skull AP next week. The party is lacking any healing.

Our group tends to suffer from terrible luck and I know that the TPK situation will rear its head. I want to be able to foresee this and have a backup plan.

LazarX, I like the idea of earthquakes etc, as it will fit handily in this AP i think!


Throw them tons of curing wands/potions. Anyone able to use those?


nategar05 wrote:
Throw them tons of curing wands/potions. Anyone able to use those?

I am planning some extra healing items, however this luck thing..

saves WILL be failed

my rolls WILL critical

Their rolls WILL fail.

Our table has the weirdest luck.

our DMs always roll in the open. Just what we prefer, from an outside perspective it seems hilarious in a "friend slipping and falling on dog-poop" sort of way, however I want to keep it fun for 'em without giving em a redo.


Are you the DM? Do you have a screen to hide your dice rolls? If yes to both of these then fudge just enough rolls to prevent a TPK when you don't want one. Something as simple as the baddie missing an attack, "accidentally" provoking an attack of opportunity, or failing to hit with a spell can make the difference.

Edit: Oops, missed the "DMs roll in the open" clause. If that's the case then perhaps modify the monsters' stats on the fly. Unless you also keep all prepped material in the open.

Sovereign Court

I've long bee waiting for the right campaign where a TPK happens and then I pull out the Ghostwalk book from D&D 3.0 and adapt it to Pathfinder.

Basically, all the players are dead and now are ghosts and they'll spend a few levels adventuring as ghosts, with the intention that eventually they come back to life and then continue on with their lives.

Further, make their "journey into the underworld" and eventual resurrection be a big deal in the larger metaplot of the campaign, just like how zillions of myths throughout history have been told.


Give the party a Healbot. Just an NPC that can do some heals and minor restorations. If I am not mistaken, there is one amongst the castaways that should work fine for this.

Dark Archive

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Keltoi wrote:

I am going to start the Serpent Skull AP next week. The party is lacking any healing.

Our group tends to suffer from terrible luck and I know that the TPK situation will rear its head. I want to be able to foresee this and have a backup plan.

LazarX, I like the idea of earthquakes etc, as it will fit handily in this AP i think!

One thing you might consider is using the enemy against itself.

Murder on the Silken Caravan Spoilers:

During the goblin ambush in the desert, I was worried my group might be wiped by a concentrated force of goblins attacking them. What I did was play to goblin insanity, and had several of them ignoring the PCs in favour of looting, harassing/riding the camels, or arguing with each other.

Basically, if the enemy is a group of people with feelings and emotions, they are allowed to make mistakes. If you do it carefully it's not transparent, and the PCs won't think they got it easy.


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I DM'ed a session in the hereafter once, where the PCs were witness to the power void in the realm of the god of death and took advantage of the chaos there to find a way back to the realm of the living.

I've had other characters be approached by their gods (or even another god who needed a boon from the PCs) and sent back to accomplish some goal. This is actually a great way to make an adventure's or the campaign's goal the PC's goal as well.


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I'm a big fan of, "You wake up. You definately remember dieing. The fact that you're not dead is probably a plot point."

And run with it :)

Sovereign Court

You as the DM/GM has the ability to prevent TPK. If you do it, it is never by accident. Only truly stupid players should suffer TPK or death.

You as a DM/GM can fudge rolls to their advantage, or lesson DC checks. The party need not know what a save DC is. If they roll a 1 then... well they roll a 1 but you as the DM/GM has the ability to adjust to what happens and for how long.

As I said stupid players deserve to die. An example a player I had in 2 different games went into a situation with 1HP and the ability to heal themselves and in both games did not and in both games they died. Had the person healed themselves as they could have, they would not have died.

The game is suppose to be fun. Push them to the edge, then have them survive or the smarter ones survive.

As someone who has been a DM/GM for 33 years you learn when and where and all of this

Shadow Lodge

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Hand a card to one of the pc's to have him say to another PC,

"And that's what would happen if we followed YOUR plan! Now, who else has any ideas to..." Insert Pre-TPK scenario here.

Spoiler:
I know there are already a good collection of potions available you could provide more as well as a large collection of alchemical items, and Jask is a pretty good healer, though frail. I'd give them the advice, "Sometimes 'tis better to run away and live to fight another day"


KrispyXIV wrote:

I'm a big fan of, "You wake up. You definately remember dieing. The fact that you're not dead is probably a plot point."

And run with it :)

I've done that and it worked out well. I once planned a dream sequence to happen because I knew the party would have to see "what's behind Door C" which would release a big bad that they could not hope to defeat at the time. Sure enough, they did. Party wakes up remembering a horrific dream...that they all shared. They then encountered the same mini-dungeon but this time left the mcguffin alone.

I ran a gritty, horror module at GenCon once that came with backup characters (like 5 sets of them, the module was intended to be that lethal). After the first TPK I narrated that "The camera pans back from the grisly scene in the back alley across the rooftops to the familiar view of the brightly lit inn. Inside are 6 companions keeping the night's chill at bay over mulled wine, when in barges a constable with a serious look on his face." And the adventure continued where the previous one left off. The players thought it was great.

I have less concerns over TPKs than I do over multi-PC deaths. It's easier for me to restart than it is to figure out in-game ways of bringing back 3 or 4 (of a 6 PC party) people if they are attached to their characters (and our groups gets very attached).


Have the npcs attack with the intent of gaining prisoners. Most stat damage/drain ends up paralyzing or making you catatonic, and the difference between that and dead is mostly visual in the heat of battle.

Or you could dose them with pain inhibiting drugs that make them unaware of how hurt they are, and just keep track of the HPs on your side of the screen.

The Exchange

Just as that last sword swing is headed for the last character - he get's a call from an old friend/NPC who has a Bracelet of Friends. "I hope you weren't right in the middle of something old boy, but I really could use some help with this and I knew you wouldn't mind if I interrupted you. What? you want me to call some other friends of yours'? Well, I guess - but while I do that, see if you can get me out of here". The friend is in a small section of a dungeon and has been trapped by a cave in, he needs the players to dig him out.

The Exchange

"You mean you didn't notice they were using Mercy weapons? LOL! I really had you guys going that time!"


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Accidental TPKs are the reason why prison adventures were created.


This is why it helps for the PCs to have a patron character. He can have them recovered and raised from the dead when necessary. It helps if he's related to (or the teacher of) one of the PCs, so that they don't go "Why is this guy raising us from the dead again?" :D


J.S. wrote:
Accidental TPKs are the reason why prison adventures were created.

Are they actually really dead, or are some just dying?

Intelligent enemies may want to interrogate the PCs for information, may think they're worth a ransom, or even just want to keep them alive to torment them for fun. Unintelligent creatures can carry them to their lair to devour later. They may also be 'left for dead' (how many times do the PC coup de gras everything just to be sure? No reason for the monsters to be that anal about their kills either).

Stabilise the dying behind the screen, and work it into the story


Dan E wrote:
It was all a dream!

I've pulled this one. Without tooting my own horn too much I consider myself pretty good about changing and thinking up new ideas on the fly. So I recalled an item the PCs had picked up but not identified yet, and changed it to a cursed item. By the time the next session rolled around I had the characters on the hunt for an artifact that would free them from its curse. Going through the process I had several "dreams" occur while they were traveling. Half the time they couldn't tell the differences between reality and the dream world.

The PCs loved it.

Recently I had a TPK in a city with the Undead Uprising disaster from the GMG. Rather than ending it there, I had all the PCs raised with alignments changed to Evil. The party is now working for the enemy now working toward furthering the destruction rather than stopping it.


If you are really dead set against killing off your characters:

Introduce a rumor... People have been vanishing for years from their homes their bodies turning up months later either starved, poisoned, beaten, burned, or riddled with arrows.

Now when ever your characters "die" have them wake up with only the most basic of equipment in a small room. It turns out that they were captured not killed and brought to the pit of despair a dungeon/maze that is run by "some group" ala the "running man" movie. Your captors received a huge reward for your lives.

I had a DM use the dungeon as a training ground for an assassin guild. The nice part is that when we left we had earned the guilds "respect" and were each given token (tattoo on our wrist) marking us as untouchable. When we rolled back into town we found that all of a sudden every thief and cut purse were falling over each other to get out of the way or help us as best they could.

Or you could just kill them...


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J.S. wrote:
Accidental TPKs are the reason why prison adventures were created.

This. Prisoners are often more valuable than corpses, and the enemies know this.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Dark Sun (back in 2e) used to have a "character tree" concept b/c death was so expected. Basically each player had a "tree" of his/her own characters that all had a background knowing each other. Each player could only have a single PC active at one time, though the inactive PCs were assumed to be off elsewhere earning 50% of the active PC's earned xp. If an active PC died, word soon got back to the Inactive PCs and they player could quickly arrange for the replacement to arrive. Players could also switch out PCs between adventures. This method prolly would require some adjustment to an adventure path, given its linear, level-dependent progression though. Basically, the thing to take away here is to give future replacement PCs connections to existent PCs so that you have IC reasons for replacement PCs to get into the game quicker (whether it be next of kin, former adventuring buddies, people who escaped prison together, etc).

In the short term to prevent tpks, hiring NPC meatshields/hirelings is prolly your best option. Long run, you might look into making clones of everybody.

Another (little bit more far out there) option would be to explore a sort of automatic reincarnation system (having everybody play reincarnation druids, for example). Basically each of a given player's PC shares a common, immortal soul that jumps from from one host to the next, kinda like the old kharma spell from the Rokugan campaign setting book for 3.0 D&D. Basically, the soul merges with the already existing being and upgrades him/her to PC status, giving the new PC a dim recollection of the previous PC's memories as well as an idea of what has been left undone. That way you can have some continuity while letting some freshness into the game.

Lantern Lodge

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

For the Serpent's Skull AP, there's a lot of randomly generated loot here and there. If the PCs don't have a healer, just make sure they score a wand of cure light wounds with a dozen charges or so in one of the early shipwrecks. This should be plenty for healing during the day, and Jask can heal them up whenever they get back to camp for the night if he's friendly enough (and Jask is the easiest NPC to make friendly).

Serpent's Skull:

Also, remember that Jask's domain spell from the Magic domain is identify, if your arcane caster didn't take a high enough spellcraft to identify stuff. His character sheet lists comprehend languages from the Knowledge domain, but you can always change up which spells he takes if you want (or if he's friendly and your PCs ask him to).


Mok wrote:

I've long bee waiting for the right campaign where a TPK happens and then I pull out the Ghostwalk book from D&D 3.0 and adapt it to Pathfinder.

Basically, all the players are dead and now are ghosts and they'll spend a few levels adventuring as ghosts, with the intention that eventually they come back to life and then continue on with their lives.

Further, make their "journey into the underworld" and eventual resurrection be a big deal in the larger metaplot of the campaign, just like how zillions of myths throughout history have been told.

Our DM started a 2 player campaign to help transition us into Pathfinder. He (intentionally) killed us off around 5th level, partly to scare us a bit, and partly so we could descend into Hell and continue the story. We are currently fighting our way through the different planes of the Netherworld towards our next plot device that will allow us to return to the land of the living and continue on our previous quest (most likely WAY in the future because the transition of time is different in the afterlife). It has been hella fun.

If you're too attached to the story you had planned, it can be difficult to make adjustments on the fly. Personally as a player I like knowing that my character's actions have helped to give the story as much direction as the DM.

Lantern Lodge

Drop them in another plane and have them work their way back to the living.

Dark Archive

I am using Hero-points to help prevent this. Rules for them are in the APG. It is a good way to reward players for certain things, but also gives them an out in some situations they may not have prepared for.

If this still happens, and I do not wish them to re-roll, then I may either rescue them to have them wake up somewhere else the next morning by a powerful wizard, I might use the old dream route, or simular is the preminition witnessed by the whole group, it really depends on the campaign story and characters themselves.

The Exchange

I know plenty of other posters have said it, but if the entire party died in the same encounter, they don't have to be separated. You can actually describe whatever happens in the early stages of the Afterlife. Is Death waiting for them? (And if it's Neil Gaiman's version of Death, tell her I said "Keep up the good work.") Is there a long, boring wait in a sort of Limbo? If so, perhaps they could play a game of Pathfinder to pass the time. (OK, I admit stealing that idea from Futurama.) Or perhaps instead of a limbo there's an enormous churning vortex - possibly even with souls of enemies the PCs killed once, waiting to bushwhack them as they go by (of course, I'm not sure whether a dead soul can be killed or where it goes when it's killed on its way to the afterlife... but none of the characters would know that for sure anyway.) The Place of Judgement (the alignment system almost guarantees some sort of Ellis Island for Dead Dudes) might be very impressive indeed, especially if the long window for resurrection to work implies that it'll be 200 years of standing in line before the PCs actually get to be judged.

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