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There are so many directions one could go with this.
First thought: "Unfair encounter or am I just a whiner?" If you're posting on the paizo forums with anything that contains the word 'unfair,' someone somewhere is going to deem you a whiner. ;)
Second thought: Always a good laugh to see responses that boil down to "Oh, this is totally winnable. You just have to have a coordinated group of minmaxed characters run by players who are thoroughly experienced and have the mindset of veteran soldiers." Really, isn't every group like that?
More seriously though, there's some genuinely good advice in this thread. Arturick's post above is a prime example. There are also some great links in the Guide to the Class Guide post on tactics and using cheap consumable items to amp your character's versatility and firepower. A group of players in my area can do some truly frightening things with lamp oil, and that's 1 silver piece each.
One of the hardest and bloodiest lessons I'm still trying to learn is when to retreat. As has already been pointed out, there's a big difference between leaving the dungeon for a day and making a temporary tactical withdrawal. It's a difficult art to master... simply because a wrong judgment can seriously set you back. A big step in the right direction is discussing it with your group both in and out of character. Coming up with tactics and a few coded messages could save lives. Using the linguistics skill to have your characters learn an obscure language after the party has formed is another good step. I'm a big fan of putting an additional linguistics point into a sign language the following level for battle purposes.
To answer the original question, I'd say the group (GM included) got suckered by the AP. The GM may or may not have realized your group was underpowered going into the encounter, but probably assumed you'd have a difficult but winnable fight since the synthesist had been helping the group get through everything intact so far. I doubt it was malicious.
Just remember that the point of the Kobayashi Maru was to test the reaction to failure. Now that your group has faced its unwinnable encounter, how are you going to learn from it?
Firstly, I think this encounter was winnable.
Second, a 50-50% chance at winning an encounter is not unreasonable for a "boss fight". Not every fight has to be drastically skewed in the PC's favor.
Lastly, even if you had no chance of defeating the encounter, unwinnable does not mean unfair. Unfair would be to throw like a Ancient Red Dragon in an open field at you who breath weapons the party and even a nat20 save still is instant fry, with the dragons super speed easily able to hunt down anyone who maybe wasn't in the breath weapon area. Unfair is the party having no chance to win, and no chance to escape.
Even if you feel you could not have won (which I dispute), you certainly had a chance to escape. It was not an unfair encounter, just a difficult one.
...CR is determined by party. I certainly thing that the PC fighter and 3 of his friends ought to be able to kill 2 level 1 npcs half the time.
Just because the enemy cleric has a hold person spell doesn't mean anything. Did you know he had a hold person spell? Did he even cast it? Run away. The DC is only probably 15-16. Even with a +0 bonus, there's still a fair chance to make the save. If your ranger gets held, well then it sucks to be him. The rest of you escape. Drink to his memory when you're safe and sound in the bar.
Does any one believe that the PC fighter will beat 2 NPC fighters half the time? The CR system says that's the case, but simple common sense will tell you that it's nonsense.
But that's not really what the CR system is supposed to indicate. It's not designed to find an encounter that's a 50-50 chance between 1 PC and whatever. It's estimating an encounter difficulty for a 4 member party in which about 20% of the party's resources may be expended. Trying to infer anything else (and even that is mainly ballpark) is bound to be error prone.
at some point you had to realize things were going poorly. MAYBE THE SECOND THE ROOM WAS BLANKETED IN DARKNESS, Y'KNO? That's when you retreat, as I have been trying to explain this whole time. If someone fails a save and gets held, too bad for them. That's the danger of that spell. At least you dont all die.
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Actually, how do they retreat? They're blind. They are in pitch darkness because torches do not affect Darkness spells and their highest-level spell will not negate Darkness.
So where is the door? How do they know they've turned exactly 180 degrees to retreat? Don't forget, this is pitch darkness. No vague hints of light to help. So you roll randomly for every single character.
Sure, any player with darkvision can still act, but you can be sure any intelligent enemy will target any foe who can still see. So the only PCs who can act will be targeted by foes, their allies are blundering around blind, and one of their own is doing nothing because he's Held.
In addition, because it's pitch darkness, anyone without darkvision is flatfooted. All rogues do Sneak Attack damage with their attacks. So this group will suffer 2d6 damage from shortbows. While blundering around in the dark unable to effectively retreat.
But yes, I'm sure the party can easily overcome this obstacle and prevail.
tangent... trolling?
You don't roll randomly to see where people move. The fact that you are not 100% sure where you are going is represented in the rules by moving at half speed.
Actually, a heroic NPC with PC wealth is CR=level, and 4 enemies is CR+4, so a party with APL=X that fights of against an enemy party with exactly equal level and wealth, will have that challenge at CR+4.
That said, characters and monsters are not created equally and CR is a very very rough measurement. It can give a hint of "red dragons are bad for first level parties" but you can't rely on them, unfortunately.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the CR system breaks down here.
4 level 2 PCs have 8 total levels and 4000 wealth according to the chart.
1 level 4, 2 level 3, and 3 level 1 NPCs have 13 total levels and 6870 wealth according to the chart.
So the first party is down 5 levels and has over 40% less wealth and yet is expected to have a 50% chance of winning?
To a large degree in this case though, it's because of how wealth is so much relatively lower at low levels - each level increases the amount of wealth a LOT.
That example encounter also seems to go above a CR6 encounter by 400 xp; 800+1200+800=2800, CR6 monsters are 2400 xp. To make it the proper amount, you need to either drop the level 4 to a level 2, or drop it to a level 3 and skip one of the level ones.
2400 xp = 2x3 + 2 + 3x1 or 3x3 + 2x1.
Unless I calculated wrong somewhere.
But of course, the CR system can be gamed. It's a rough measurement to begin with, and optimizing encounters can make them insanely hard.
One of the things I started doing in D&D/Pathfinder after playing World of Warcraft was "pulling." With a party like yours, I would have the ranger initiating combat by stealthing up to the enemies, shooting them with an arrow, then leading them back to the summoner and cleric.
There are issues with this though, namely that the PC's are usually on the offense while the NPC's are usually defending a position. The ranger stealthing up and shooting someone can end in several different ways:
1. The enemies retaliate with ranged attacks or incapacitate the ranger in some way so she can't escape.2. The enemies put down some kind of cover from ranged attacks and begins preparing a defense instead.
3. The enemies for some reason decide not to buff up but to simply walk out and follow the ranger into a very obvious ambush.
I understand this might work in computer games, but it would only very very rarely work in our games, except against mindless creatures like giant spiders and maybe against some animals.
Stock up on things like nets, caltrops, and Tanglefoot bags to debuff the enemy when you're low on spells. Alchemist Fire, Acid, and Holy Water can be good for high AC foes.
This however is fantastic advice. Also, smokesticks are fantastic and in this case it would mean everyone is blind rather than just the PC's. Get spring-loaded wrist sheaths and load'em up with smokestick and similar!
Question for those who have played/run this particular part of council of thieves, should the party be so undergeared or that was a GM mistake also?
How is the PC party to know who the minions are?
Decent point. I don't know the adventure in question, but often things like this are a bit obvious. The one who gloats and talks big is the boss and the others are the minions, for example, or the one who looks startlingly different than the mob of mindless undead is probably the one controlling them. Likewise, since this was explicitly a 'boss' sort of encounter from the sounds of it, there's a possibility they might have known ahead of time who the main enemy they were going up against was.
Sometimes, admittedly, you don't know such things (and it can be amusing to trick a party into mistaking a minion for a main villain once in a while), but I'm going to assume by default that in a big final battle, a party should generally have some capability of figuring out who is the villain and who are his undead minions/trained monsters/hired thugs/etc.
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Remember, as soon as the ranger was held, retreat meant death for him, which means trying it again one man down and with the dire consequences from the GM.
The second thing is that, at low levels Pathfinder is closer to Call of Cthulhu, "The orc mook gets a crit... 16 damage." means the end of any level one and half of the level two people.
At this level, an enemy force with any kind of ability to prep is a pretty sure TPK. At that point, a mobilized enemy can easily hunt down the PCs in the lair even if they do withdraw.
IMHO, the encounter was very tough, bordering on unfair. But continuing to complain about it in a thread a day and a half later is definitely whining.
tangent... trolling?
You don't roll randomly to see where people move. The fact that you are not 100% sure where you are going is represented in the rules by moving at half speed.
Trolling?
No. I'm serious. I've seen this used before for blinded characters. If they don't know where they are going, then you roll to see where they go.
Of course, if you do want to have them wandering around at half-speed to find where they are going, then this is a full-action move and the enemy should definitely get that sneak attack bonus because you have a party of adventurers playing Blind Man's Bluff.
By the way you also forgot the fundamental aspect of any game: die rolls. "Oh you should have easily have won this combat!" ignores the fact that if the players fail to hit and the enemy gets a couple critical hits, even the most optimized and awesome of parties will DIE. Combine good die rolls for the enemy with a setting in which the enemy is at an advantage AND the GM has ignored the recommended tactics for the enemy... and you end up with a situation where the party cannot win.
(Only tangentially-related discussion on another TPK behind the Spoiler about an encounter in Reign of Winter follows)
The end result? They decided against playing the game. Why go through all those encounters again just to face off against this cleric with new characters and be at a disadvantage? All because the GM failed to read the tactics (or chose to use different tactics) that said "the Cleric ONLY uses Channel Energy to heal the undead."
But hey, an optimized group of 1st level characters SHOULD be able to take the bandits out without a scratch and then waltz all over that cleric (who used invisibility and Animate Dead to sneak around the party who were dealing with Frost-variant Skeletons at the time which auto-cause damage to any foe within five feet without any saves possible) even with an Area Affect 2-12 damage each round because hey, it makes more sense not to listen to "recommended tactics." No problem!
Face it, awp. The GM screwed up in this encounter. The end result was the party died. If the GM had not told the party "you can't retreat" (and that's what he basically said!) and had run the cleric AS THE GAME SUGGESTS then the party would have had a chance.
I want to emphasize that NPC CR = PC CR - 1 is a complete myth at low levels. People keep referring to this even after it's been refuted multiple times in this thread.
It's not really a myth. Let's look at the synthesist, for example. 20 pb is pretty standard for PCs. Even if you had 15 pb, I would be massively shocked if the game was point buy and synth didn't dump strength and dexterity for higher stats, essentially getting free build points (and if you rolled, you almost certainly used a rolling method better than 15 pb, which the NPCs were stuck with). Now, it would normally cost 4000 gp to get +2 to a stat with an item, so even if the synthesist just used their extra points to raise a 14 to a 16, that's worth a 4000 gp item.
In Curse of the Crimson Throne, our group had a very...unusual GM, who is no longer with the group. In a certain encounter, our 3 extremely-under-WBL (roughly had as much gear as your CoT team) 2nd-level PCs (Druid2, Rogue1/Barbarian1, and Alchemist2) were supposed to fight a drug-dealing rogue3 and his ~10 (I can't remember exactly how many) 1st-level warrior minions. The GM made the minions 2nd-level Fighters. Fortunately for us, we sneaked into the area really well. Unfortunately, the round before we attacked the enemies, we went past a small spider on his web. There was an ettercap about, and the GM ruled that the ettercap was constantly pinging everyone on the ship with telepathy, so he instantly knew that a spider saw us and alerted everyone, who stopped playing a knife game, drew their weapons, and got into a deadly ambush position all in that one round. It was an extremely rough fight, but we won.
Now, I'm not agreeing with the people who say the fight was super-winnable for you guys. Just saying that the understanding that an NPC should be rated at their level - 1 for CR was an extremely wise one that Paizo made after all the years of 3.0 and 3.5 of GMs realizing that those encounters were being over-CRed (they used to not be level - 1 CR). CR+4 is still extremely high and should be used sparingly or never (though admittedly, given a synthesist, I can see the temptation; this is the classic dilemma of "if you make it hard enough for Superman, you're going to kill the other members of the Justice League")
It's actually 2600 XP since you counted 4 CR 1/2 instead of 3.
From what I've understood, 3 CR1/2 equals CR 3. 3 creatures is CR+3, so it's three bumps from 1/2 to 3 (or actually CR 3 and a half but that's rounded down when the CR is above 1 I think).
Looking at the WBL charts, it's clear that NPC 1-2 should be equal to PC 1-2 since they have fairly similar wealth.
When it comes to PC classed characters, I'm bound to agree, at least at level 1, and at least if the PC's where just starting out and not close to level 2 (where their wealth is closer). Also, when it comes to low-level creatures, it's all about the equipment of choice. Whether a warrior has a splint mail or not can completely change the encounter.
So if we took the original encounter, we get CR 3.5, 2 CR 2, and 3 CR 1 monsters. That's 1000 (halfway between 3 and 4) + 1200 + 1200 or 3400 xp or slightly higher than a CR 7 encounter.
The original monsters are 1xCR3=CR3, 2xCR1=CR3, and 3xCR1/2=CR3. So quite close to what you suggested.
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You know, players don't always create super-optimized characters and if allowed by race to put a +2 to any specific stat, might not put it in something to create an uber-stat but instead put it elsewhere to have a more rounded character.
For that matter, you could have a Dwarven Bard or Sorcerer. Except of course the Optimalists are going to cry "you shouldn't do that, Dwarves have a -2 to Charisma, this is a wasted effort! You're playing to lose! You deserved to die because you didn't have a halfling sorcerer instead!"
Sorry. I prefer my games to be fun. If a player wanted to run a dwarven Sorcerer? I'd let him or her. And I'd not do an encounter where the players can't survive without lucky die rolls... and in this situation may very well say "you know, you CAN retreat" after a couple characters were badly hurt. Except of course this GM said "no retreat" so the players felt obligated to toss their characters into a meatgrinder and watch them die.
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You know, players don't always create super-optimized characters and if allowed by race to put a +2 to any specific stat, might not put it in something to create an uber-stat but instead put it elsewhere to have a more rounded character.
This probably points to a problem with the point-buy system, but if you are doing point buy, then that is a bad decision. Because it costs more to buy higher scores, it's better to point your racial stat increase in one of your highest scores and use the extra points to increase the less important stats. For example, let's make a 15 point-buy well-rounded half-orc paladin. First, we'll put the +2 in an off stat:
S: 14
D: 12
C: 12
I: 10 + 2
W: 11
C: 14
Now, let's put the +2 in our highest stat and use the points we saved elsewhere:
S: 12 + 2
D: 12
C: 12
I: 12
W: 12
C: 14
This is a strictly better character, who is even more rounded than the one with the +2 in Int. The difference is even more pronounced with higher scores.
I understand the point you are making, but you didn't choose the best example to make it. If I were DMing and a player came up with the first stat array, I'd advise them to rearrange things to put the bonus in one of their highest scores.
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True with point buy, not true with rolled stats. I've added a human +2 to an 8 before because I wanted to avoid an Int or Cha penalty more than I wanted to turn a 16 in my key stat into an 18.
Even if you use point buy, the general point stands. If you spend fewer points on your high stat because you're planning on adding a racial +2 to it, you're still not ending up with "optimized" stats. The second half-orc paladin array you posted may be using its racial bonus more intelligently, but it is not an optimized array.
The GM did not "screw up" Celanian still hasn't ever said that the ranger was held, only that he could have been held. That's mountains of difference. I feel a retreat was imminently possible.
The GM did not say "you can't retreat" . He was saying he didn't want a 15 minute adventuring day. He didn't want the party to run a single encounter, rest, and be a t full strength every fight. Thats a perfectly reasonable request. He was not going to ream the party for taking a 10 minute break, please. They waste more time than that by searching for treasure, I'm sure.
If you're following the "leave no man behind" policy then fine, but you should understand that there are some risks that this entails. When people IRL in the military go out into the field of fire to save a wounded comrade it's considered heroic. Why? because they are doing it at great personal risk to themselves. Fighting to save your friend is heroic, it's also in some cases foolhardy. It doesn't always work out, it's a risk you take when you try to save someone.
Have you seen the movie Full Metal Jacket ? If you're over 18 (it's rated R), I suggest you watch it. The sniper scene is an excellent example of this principle in action.
Question for those who have played/run this particular part of council of thieves, should the party be so undergeared or that was a GM mistake also?
The AP made a mistake which the GM then perpetuated. The AP does not give enough treasure or experience at this point. When I ran the AP I fixed that problem but still my players had a hard time with this encounter.
- Gauss
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Celanian, your GM made two major mistakes. The first mistake was setting your party against a CR APL+4 challenge with terrain advantage (a dimly-lit room is terrain advantage for a race with Darkness once per day and darkvision). The second mistake was informing you that the party's defeat was a Total Party Kill.
Imagine instead that the GM had ended the game session by saying, "You all wake up in dingy jail cells in a dimly-lit underground room, stripped down to your underwear with no armor, weapons, spell components, or divine focus. Three of you share one cell, but the summoner is in a cell by himself across the room. The elderly jailor notices that you awoke, and runs out of the jail room, locking a massive wooden door behind him.
"Soon he returns with the tiefling cleric who defeated you. 'Ha, you all survived," he says. He turns to the summoner. 'Not that I care about your friends. But you are intriguing. A synthesist with a most impressive eidolon. I put you in my strongest cell for safekeeping. I have learned of a spell that will let me steal your eidolon for myself. A scroll will arrive in a few weeks. Then all four of you will be sold as slaves to a pirate captain I know.' He turns and leaves, chortling."
The GM then informs you are each at 2 hit points, And that you each earned 500 xp, enough to level up to 3rd level and the new hit points you roll will be added to your total. And he hints, "And if the tiefling boss locked the summoner in the strongest cell, which cell did he put the rest of you in?" You will have the next game session to escape, and if you fail, the campaign converts into a pirate adventure.
We also presumed that the DM would throw us up against a fight we could handle.
False assumption. Even a level-appropriate encounter can turn bad if the dice roll against the party. You should learn how to retreat. For example, the Hold on the ranger did not turn him into immovable stone. You could have dragged him less than 20 feet to the light.
Besides, if you want to only have a series of combats where you always have a sure advantage, you should not play a Paizo Adventure Path. Paizo writes its paths with stories. Your party will encounter combat, ambushes, mysteries, allies, bad guys who look like good guys, good guys who look like bad guys, daring rescues against overwhelming odds, etc. Such variety is more fun than hack and slash, but the variety also prevents a solid advantage in every encounter.
Despite the variety, the Great Escape is difficult to write into an Adventure Path. At high levels, the party is too dependent on its gear. Even at low levels, getting the party into jail without a critical hit killing one is impossible to guarantee. Your GM had an opportunity to let your party play a Great Escape--but he missed it.
Unless you email him right now and ask for a retcon!
No, he didn't. He said the first thing the cleric did was cast hold person on the ranger. He didn't necessarily say the ranger failed his save. But regardless, it's a moot point. See the main body of my above post where I talked about rescuing party members.
For that matter, you could have a Dwarven Bard or Sorcerer.
My current dwarven Bard agrees with this, even with her CHA 14.
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The first job of any GM is to try and ensure the players have a fun time. Total Party Kills is not a fun time unless you're playing something like Paranoia or maybe Call of Cthulhu.
You don't do this by telling your PCs "you don't want to retreat, trust me" as this is translated into the heads of the players as "if you retreat then you're going to suffer a fate worse than death." So from the very start the GM encouraged the players to go in and fight to the death.
Then while you argue the Ranger made his save, from every sound of it the Ranger failed his saving throw. Thus he was Held. So you want the party to retreat while being sneak attacked from an ambush and abandon one of their own. After being told by the GM "you don't want to retreat."
You say the group should have survived and that if they'd been properly optimized (min/max anyone?) they'd have breezed through the encounter. You ignore what has been said above and defend a GM who from appearances did not run the game effectively.
I've screwed things up as a GM before. I learn from those mistakes. But the most important thing I do is work to ensure the party does not die because of some bad die rolls.
The end result? You have a dead group. You have hours of work done preparing characters for naught, you have a module ended, and you have no incentive by the players to run that game again. To me, that sounds like a failed campaign. Blaming the players ignores facts out there.
My suggestion? The GM should consider another AP that does not suffer from a similar problem (thus he should avoid Reign of Winter and possibly Runelords). And when looking at nasty encounters like this? Don't ad-lib things. 1st and 2nd level characters are too fragile to just blithely expect them to survive a beefed up encounter unless you are very careful and willing to fudge things.
Celanian, happy to help. I suggest your GM (any GM actually) head over to the appropriate forum for the AP he is running to find the problems that other people who have ran the AP report. It can be quite helpful. :)
For your AP here is the link: Link
- Gauss
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He did say that the reason he beefed up the skeletons to champions was because we were clearing the earlier encounters too easily and acknowledged that this was a mistake. And he did not realize we were supposed to be level 3 with level 3 WBL at this point.
Ahh, I thought as much. Sometimes a GM will try to beef things up to keep it fun for the players, and accidentally beef it up too much. I've been guilty of that before; it happens and it's not always easy to correct.
Sometimes you mess up so bad that you've just got to admit your mistake and pull the retcon card, I think.
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I'm going to sound like a mean old DM because my group has run into this sort of situation before. I usually say the following as I see them pain over each and every excruciating option available. It usually goes something like this:
"For the love of all that is sacred...RUN AWAY!!!!"
Seriously, it's like it's no longer an option for my group.
In turn, that is my opinion on what you and your group could have done. There's no shame in running away to fight another day. Or you could think of it in different terms. Call it "tactically repositioning" and pat yourselves on the back for your ingenuity. Regroup and refocus.
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Yes, so if the fighter has 3 buddies, there are 8 NPC's of level 1 fighting them (2 of each class). After all, the 8 NPCs would be CR+4 which according to you is a 50-50.
I guess you also always run away at the start of every encounter and abandon any party members when they're in trouble because you always assume every encounter is with a big boss. Either that or your DM always has his big bad conveniently wear a t-shirt saying "big bad level 4 cleric here". That would certainly change how you approach encounters...
8 Creatures CR +6
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The sneak attack volley fire with light crossbows against low armor flat footed party members wasn't a picnic either. 1d8+1d6 damage with a possibility of a critical hit will take down level 2 squishies pretty quickly (Which 2 of the rogues could do immediately). 2 hits or 1 crit could easily take down the sorcerer or even the wizard or ranger. If the party had retreated the first round after ranger was held, the rogues could simply walk up into the darkness and fire sneak attack crossbow bolts into our backs, focusing on wounded. And we had no idea if the cleric had more than 1 hold person so he could probably try holding or maybe command (don't know if he had command memorized) another party member from the darkness to approach or fall. I suppose the summoner could hold off the enemies while the cleric and sorcerer ran, but that means we lose 2 party members instead of 1.
Plus frankly we almost never abandon a fellow party member. Certainly not as long as we think we had a decent chance. For all we knew, the cleric could be level 3 and the skeletons could be normal human skeletons instead of champions. There's no t-shirts on them stating their type and level. We also presumed that the DM would throw us up against a fight we could handle.
What I don't get and how you were all in the room when the rogues did cast darkens and all were surprised.
Granted at first level you could easily all have failed your perception check against the rouge stealth, but against the cleric and the skeletons?
So, hypothetic scenario: someone open the door and you see the cleric and 2 skeletons.
There is a surprise round as you don't have seen all the enemies.
The members of your group roll initiative, the enemies roll imitative.
Some of the rogue go first and cast darkness. You see the first of them when he cast darkness with his standard action (using a spell like ability break stealth and if you don't see him because of obstacles the darkness do nothing to you, it radiate from a specific point, it is not a spread).
At that point the guy that has opened the door close it. Darkness don't bypass the closed door, if the enemy want to engage you they have to move and fight your point man where the party was capable to support him.
- * -
Hypothetic scenario 2: someone open the door and you see the cleric and 2 skeletons, no one see the rogues.
Initiative is rolled, you play a surprise round.
The rogue initiative come, they delay or set up a ready action "when the enemies are in the room we cast darkens."
Your move into the room to engage with cleric, ranger and syntetist (as you are all 1st level character and, with the exception of the syntetist, don't get extra attacks from a from a full attack, you could have waited for the first full round to move and attack, but people are eager to act), the sorcerer stay outside and cast magic missile, or acid splash.
At this point the rogues cast darkness. At least 2 characters in the room have a higher initiative count than the rogues.
The cleric cast hold person, the skeletons attack.
Ok, you are in a bad situation:
- the cleric with the longspear can't attack anything without eating AoO (no 5' step if you don't see and a reach weapon).
- the sorcerer with magic missiles has no visible targets.
- the ranger is probably held.
But:
- most of the group can act before the enemies
- the rogue used their action to cast darkness, so they aren't in melee range
- the syntetist has seen them all, so he can shout a warning
- the syntetist see in the darkness and is strong enough the drag the ranger out of the room.
- the sorcerer should be still outside the room.
A tactical retreat is more than doable.
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Assuming I'm right about this being from the AP I mentioned, Palavine and the two skeletons are in a back room compared to the others, so it probably took at least one round for them to come out (and I think Palavine likes to buff, and he likes his skeletons to be bodyguards). First round would have probably just been against the mook rogues.
Unless the GM didn't read the tactics (it happens, guys!) and had the whole group rush them all at once, resulting in a TPK.
Even if a GM takes written tactics into account, they should still adjust these, as the situation develops.
First thing the cleric did was cast hold person on ranger. It makes sense and I'm not going to hold that against the DM since we already had a couple of encounters and the lair was alerted at that point.
It sounds like he had time to buff, and go round up the rogues, maybe even go looking for the intruders.
I'm going to sound like a mean old DM because my group has run into this sort of situation before. I usually say the following as I see them pain over each and every excruciating option available. It usually goes something like this:
"For the love of all that is sacred...RUN AWAY!!!!"
Seriously, it's like it's no longer an option for my group.
In turn, that is my opinion on what you and your group could have done. There's no shame in running away to fight another day. Or you could think of it in different terms. Call it "tactically repositioning" and pat yourselves on the back for your ingenuity. Regroup and refocus.
Agree entirely.
I run games where some encounters are simply too strong for the PCs at their current level of experience. If they players insist that they want to tackle these encounters I will throw in a handful of clues (subtle or not) that the encounter will defeat them. Something like a demonstration of the Bad Guy's attack (an NPC running in first and getting thoroughly toasted is often enough), or an intelligent NPC using non-lethal methods against them but quite obviously not trying very hard (I like this one as it allows him to taunt the PCs and thus set up a later grudge match).
Sometimes it is as easy as giving the PCs a chance to run - maybe the monster pauses to eat the body of one of his victims, or maybe they find a patch of ground that the monster is reluctant to cross (I had a powerful Runequest dragonsnail who didn't want to crawl out of his nice wet swamp to pursue the party).
In a nutshell, not every encounter should require immediate attention.
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remember that the point of the Kobayashi Maru was to test the reaction to failure. Now that your group has faced its unwinnable encounter, how are you going to learn from it?
And also, how best can the campaign be salvaged?
Can a new group of PCs be sent to find out what happened to the previous group?
Did they leave enough clues with allied NPCs, that someone could retrace their steps?
Or do the gang abandon their hideout? Do they leave enough evidence of their activities, that the Westcrown law enforcement can put together a dossier to pass to a new group of mercenary PCs?
The players should discuss continuing with the campaign, but not let one bad encounter put them off, or cause bad feeling.
The GM here should not be blamed for his handling of the encounter; he was probably just as surprised as the players with how it turned out.
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Celanian, your GM made two major mistakes. The first mistake was setting your party against a CR APL+4 challenge with terrain advantage (a dimly-lit room is terrain advantage for a race with Darkness once per day and darkvision). The second mistake was informing you that the party's defeat was a Total Party Kill.
You can still play the Great Escape, after a TPK, but you have to be creative.
I played a 2nd Ed game, where all the PCs died, but the GM gave us a second chance.
Because it was a Greek-themed setting, all the dead go to Hades, and have a chance to appeal.
We went on the run, and tried to break out, back to the world of the living, and succeeded, after several weeks of play, ending (almost in another TPK) when my spellless wizard and fellow boxing gladiator were last men standing, winning a fist-fight with a clockwork 'time golem', and stole the hourglass from its innards, containing the sand of all our natural lifespans.