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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 9:41PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Feb 23, 2012
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So I experienced my first TPK as a player tonight which led to an argument at the table about the GMs style. I've been playing about 2 years and never have been TPKed though I've had some really close calls that you pull off by the skin of your teeth. When I GM I try to avoid them for the party unless they do something incredibly dumb, if not I'll pull a few punches in the end. Here's the basic story, I'd like to know if this is just one of those things or was the GM a little heavy handed?
Party was:
1) TWF ranger level 15
2) Prescient Bard - more of an immediate interrupt controller with some wizard stuff than leader
3) another bard that was specced heals
4) a fighter
Basically we had 5 monsters. I was the ranger and came out and obliterated 2 in a couple turns with an AP and some good rolls. The next went down to focus fire. The last two were pretty nasty. One had an at will close blast 5 save ends that says you have one action on your turn and it is to target the closest creature to you with a melee basic. He locked the fighter and healer bard down with that every turn by hitting them with it and then making sure they were closer to each other than to the monster. The other had an at will immobilize. he immobilized my ranger and moved away from me and kept me there mid field and useless for 4-5 rounds with no end in sight. During that time he focus fired me with both monsters with the stated goal of "KOing the ranger until he had no healing surges and the bards had no heals left." I was down 4 surges, the bards were out of healing, I'd been KOed 4 times and the defender and leader had spent most of the fight beating on each other. If we ran we would have to leave half the party behind so not really an option. We finally just said lets call it after 3 hours of running 1 battle, exhausting all dailies, all tricks, etc. It was a published D&D mod so its not like he threw something crazy at us but it just seemed like he used the monsters in a way that would totally screw the party over.
I know from my experience as a DM that you can usually TPK if you want to. I can come in with eveything and focus fire the leader then blitz the strikers or look at the monsters powers and know that I can counter the players easily with a certain combo. I just kinda thought most DMs chose not to do that so it would be a fun adventure.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 05, 2012 - 9:47PM
#2
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Some DMs are very 'by the dice' and don't really cut the players any breaks on that, and sometimes the dice just rolls really bad against players. TPK's happen. It sucks, but all you can do is try to learn something from it, and give it another shot. And at the end of the day, as much as it sucks, there is something at least a little pleasant about rolling a fresh character, in my own opinion.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 4:54AM
#3
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Date Joined:
Oct 28, 2010
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I'd say this really, really shows you the value of knowledge checks. Knowing what the mobs can do, tells you who your ranger should be nuking, and it clearly should have been the guy with the daze/dominate blast.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 5:43AM
#4
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tpks in 4e are rare but do indeed happen, you should have fled, or at least the ranged pcs should have. sounds like your dm played it fair to me
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 7:02AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2011
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I would be very frustrated with this too. Within a round or two, because what happen was the DM took away your turns. I think the worst situation is when the players have no option to do anything. Combinations of daze, stun, immobilize, and dominate are horrible for the game. The situation that piss me off the most as a play are when these effects are combined over most of the characters. Another is being put in an artifcial situation that force characters to have no movement options. Spawning minions all around several characters or such. Basically, I hate when, as a player, you take away my turn over and over, or when I have no options. Its a game, and is suppose to be fun, and those things aren't fun. I think he should have recognized what was going to happen right away and changed the at-will powers to recharge powers. He could have kept using them, but not necessarily every round. The battle could have gone either way then and the player felt extremely threatened and not quite been so frustrated. Maybe knowledge check would have keyed the players into something, maybe not. plenty of time initiative order means you may not be able to make an effect check before its to late. And if you are dazed, are you going to waste your one action on a knowledge check? My frustration would not have been the tpk, but the that I didn't have any viable options on my turn, over and over again, and then we all died - that I had to sit on my hands and watch the dm kill my party, that we all had to sit on our hands and watch the dm kill the party. TjD
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 7:14AM
#6
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When I GM I try to avoid them for the party unless they do something incredibly dumb, if not I'll pull a few punches in the end. Here's the basic story, I'd like to know if this is just one of those things or was the GM a little heavy handed?
....If we ran we would have to leave half the party behind so not really an option.......
I know from my experience as a DM that you can usually TPK if you want to. I can come in with eveything and focus fire the leader then blitz the strikers or look at the monsters powers and know that I can counter the players easily with a certain combo. I just kinda thought most DMs chose not to do that so it would be a fun adventure.
First off, you should try really, really hard not to fudge dice as a GM. I tend to roll all dice in plain view of the players; it makes things a bit more exciting.
Second, if you felt you should have run, then you should have run. As a GM, if I can't "encourage" my players to run once in a blue moon, I'm doing something wrong or they are.
Third, the GM should play the monsters' combat abilities as smart as he feels they are. If the party is fighting giant ants, they are going to use very simple tactics; kill the closest enemy. But if they are fighting skilled opponents, absolutely the opponents should play smartly; take out the healer fast, isolate the wizard, focus fire, etc. Absolutely they should be doing that. A GM should never have such opponents show mercy and not attack a player cause he got heavily injured the last two rounds or something similar.
About the only thing I think your GM did wrong was to state his goals like that, particularly using meta-gaming terms, 'use all their surges' is not something any PC or NPC within the game would ever know about.
Last, if a TPK means 'end of story' for those characters, then that's not good GM'ing in my book. I encourage my players to be daring, promising them that the story will never end. Maybe some of them might die, or they might wake up chained to a wall, or enslaved and working in a mine, etc. Even if they all die, death is rarely permanent in D&D. It doesn't have to automatically mean the end of those characters' stories, unless the GM has a limited imagination.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 9:54AM
#7
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A TPK should never end in actual death. It should be a huge setback (capture, you have to be rescued by another group, etc.) but killing the party is not in the spirit of 4E.
I actually created a rule at my table where the players, if they get themselves in over their head, can bargain with me. IE: "We escape but one of our companion characters is taken prisoner, now we have to save him/her. We escape but I lose my main weapon. We flee into a neighboring chamber with no other exit, so we are now trapped." These are clear setbacks but push the story forward, not stop it dead in its tracks.
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 1:15PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Jun 30, 2008
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I don't have a problem with TPKs and think the game is better when they are a real threat, but that doesn't sound like a fun TPK. The only 4E TPK I have been a part of was not fun and it was because we didn't feel like we had a realistic chance.
Dominates and stuns should be used sparingly, but there are a couple of monsters that can do what you describe or something similar. I think for some its not even a standard action for them. I kind of think the game would have been better if both PCs and Monsters got to save first when these conditions were applied because in general they are not fun.
Making it at will is harsh and why enemy controllers, especially when they are elites or solos, can be some of the toughest enemies to deal with. Its stuff like this that makes ally save granting so important.
And by the time this stuff comes up you can be doing similar stuff with PCs as well, which wouldn't be fun to DM with.
my handbooks & builds
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 1:22PM
#9
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And if you are dazed, are you going to waste your one action on a knowledge check?
monster knowledge checks are "no action" according to rules compendium pg 130
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12 months ago ::
Jun 06, 2012 - 5:09PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Nov 13, 2004
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TPKs are okay in my book, at least theoretically. I don't mind them if I know the team has screwed up royal; from experience, though, if the dice kill us or I somehow felt incapable of avoiding the 'Game Over,' I can't help being upset. Stun is simply not fun. Dominate is slightly better, so long as the DM lets you roll.  I'm okay with Immobilize, as there's always a chance you'll need to bust out some sub-par melee or ranged combat skills. The 'save before your turn' thing seems like a good houserule for the Stun condition.
4e D&D is not a "Tabletop MMO." It is not Massively Multiplayer, and is usually not played Online. Come up with better descriptions of your complaints, cuz this one means jack ****.
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