Epic TPKs
Number of Views :171
Today’s topic: Epic TPKs. For those of you out there who don’t read such blogs as The Art of the Near-TPK or The Fine Art of the TPK (two phenomenal blogs worth their weight in gold [though since electronic data technically weighs nothing {or does it? I'm not a physicist, nor do I know why I keep bracketing myself deeper and deeper into this post}, you can take that as you will]), the TPK is known as the Total Party Kill.
I have only experienced one of these in all my years, and it was caused by me. But for good reason.
You see, last summer, as we drifted out in the Arabian Gulf, I decided to run a Star Wars game. And not an ordinary Star Wars game. These characters would be Jedi Knights, ready to take on the world. But then Order 66 happened, and their world was turned upside down. On the lam from the Empire, the heroes fought long and hard throughout the galaxy, at times trapped on mythical worlds for up to a year (it’s true. Iago is a harsh planet), until stumbling upon Korriban and becoming possessed by Sith Lord spirits. When they were finally captured and brought before Vader himself, the spirits abandoned them, and they decided that instead of allying with the Dark Lord of the Sith, they would kill him.
Ask how that went.
They were doomed to fail. But not before one of them demolished the Sith spirit in his soul, redeeming himself and becoming one with the Force and all the players bringing the Coruscanti skyscraper collapsing to the city below. Darth Vader barely escaped, and all the other players were crushed.
And they loved it.
They thought it was the perfect ending to their campaign, in which evil was vanquished (them), and good won out in the end (again, them).
Do you have any tales of your Epic TPKs?
Not Epik in the slightest, but we had a TPK the other nite, which we discovered was because the DM had read
“2 Skeleton Warriors (S)”
as
“Skeleton Warriors (5)”
The (S) is the symbol used on the map to signify the Skeletons and was mistaken for a five. And yes, before you ask he does wear glasses
Very funny when we looked back at it, and he has agreed a rematch.
Thank you for the shout out!
TPK’s arent always bad things. I’ve had three in all my years DMing. One was a total party clusterfrack, I take no responsibility : )
The other two were true heroic moments of sacrifice. The Dracolich was killed along with the party when the last surviving party member broke her staff of the magi for a retributive strike (guess what edition that was).
The other was an all evil party that had a “heroic” last stand reminiscent of many good movies out there. They STILL brag about how many “lawmen” (Paladins) they took to hell with them.
It’s simply another tool to end a great campaign, albeit, one that should be used sparingly.
Heh. I think I just might suck more as a DM than I thought. Most of my campaigns end in TPKs.
One that is commonly remembered is a campaign from a while back in which there was an incredibly powerful group of PCs. I’d allowed the artificer from Eberron, which was a damned mistake because suddenly magic items were everywhere. There was all kinds of fighting monsters ten times as strong as the players.
This was before we started playing on skype, or I never would have believed what happened next. They were fighting a great demon, wielding a vorpal sword. It was a four-person party. I’m just setting this up so that you know how godawful insane it is, and you probably already know what happened.
In one round, with four successive strikes, the demon rolled natural 20s on each initial to-hit. 20, then match AC. Dead. 20, surpass AC, dead. 20, surpass, dead. 20, surpass, dead.
In one round, all the majestic and incredible power had come to an end, in the arena of some demon lord. All that, with the dice visible to the players. 5%^4 is the likelyhood of that many twenties in those positions, which is equivalent to 0.000625% chance. Still, four straight natural twenties, and four headless, dead PCs. I don’t think I’ll ever live it down.
Fun times!