Questions tagged [total-party-kill]
A Total Party Kill (TPK) is when the whole PC party is killed at once, preventing restoration of the party to life. Often (but not always) considered an undesired failure state to be solved or prevented.
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Is the Umbrage Hill Quest in Dragon of Icespire Peak likely to kill 1st-level PCs?
1st-level characters in the adventure Dragon of Icespire Peak have 3 quests available to them, and one of these is the Umbrage Hill Quest. This pits the players up against a single enemy, a CR 3
The ...
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Can you use Glyph of Warding to prepare for a difficult fight and avoid total party kill?
I was wondering if in the past our party could have prepared better to fight a potentially deadly foe. We had time to prepare for this and could have used a Glyph of Warding or two, but we didn't. We ...
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What are the risks of TPK-ing the party at the start of a campaign deliberately?
I've been planning out an idea for a campaign to run with a group that would consist of both veteran and new players, and I'm unsure if I should follow a particular plot point. I would start the party ...
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Creating a campaign that ends with a TPK by design
I'm creating a campaign that takes players from level 3 to level 15+. The premise is that the party is granted a special role by the reigning good King to protect and serve (essentially they are ...
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How do I kill the party?
I have twice before had a game in which, for story reasons, I wanted to kill the entire party all in one go. Once because I needed the players to enter the afterlife, the second because I wanted the ...
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How is the Old Bonegrinder supposed to be appropriate for 4th level?
Spoiler Warning
This question is about Curse of Strahd. It is essentially a completely-spoiler question, so, if you plan to run it (as a player) and you do not want to get spoilers, avoid reading this ...
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What can a GM do if player's rolls are just terrible?
I ran a game last night, a pre-written module (the game is not relevant) with a certain difficulty level (not so difficult in my opinion), and the party is composed of moderately experienced players ...
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How can I handle blown cover in a high-stakes game as a GM?
I will be running a high-stakes Eclipse Phase game in the coming weeks and I find myself anticipating a severe problem.
The scenario (The Devotees, for any EP players) is based on infiltrating a ...
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The DM is unapologetically providing TPK encounters; what can we do?
Situation
I have a friend who is just starting as a DM. They've run a couple of one-shots that were really hard and ended with TPKs. Both one-shots were miserable slogs, and the encounters were ...
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When designing an adventure, how can I ensure a continuous player experience in a setting that's likely to favor TPKs?
I am planning to design a Adventure which has a strong political flavor and is taking place in the Nine Hells. Its gonna be an evil campaign. I plan to let the heroes start at level 15 and require the ...
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PCs enraged high level NPC that is vital to the story and could TPK them [closed]
The 3 PCs enraged the main quest giver in my campaign by the PCs threatening to kill him and doing things to try to get more money out of him. They are level 1 and could easily get TPK'ed by this NPC. ...
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Can an encounter that is designed to be a TPK ever be fair? [closed]
My campaign is ending.
My players and I have agreed due to time commitment issues that our campaign should end soon. They have just encountered a summoning ritual of the Avatar of the Evil God of ...
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How can I make battles to the death less random?
This is the thing:
One of my players has a character with Fighting in 6. Last session, the entire patrol fought an Owl, and the last action was an Attack vs Attack with lots of successes, so they ...
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Stop PCs from Killing a Town / Running Amok?
So hear me out, because this is probably one of the craziest things that's ever happened in one of my campaigns. I'll also need to give general backstory, so that there's context.
Quick exposition: ...
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How should I handle TPK's and retrying in a dungeon crawl?
I will be running a group through Tomb of Horrors from the 5e adaptation in Tales from the Yawning Portal. For those who don't know, Tomb of Horrors is infamously sadistic. The book itself claims that ...
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