The closest my D&D group ever came to a total party kill is one in which the DM finally introduced a magic sword in a very magic-weak world. Being the chaotic-evil one in the group I ended the discussion of who should get the sword by just taking it and then running away from the group into the catacombs. One-by-one they found me and I killed them. Finally the DM's girlfriend caught up to me and I left her with her formerly 18 charisma face scarred and her foot clubbed, but alive. Amazingly, she managed a 1 in 1000 dice role to her goddess (which only her and the DM saw), and she prayed for revenge. She was made whole again and her god sent "messengers" to kill me and retrieve the sword for the girl. She was the only one in the party left alive. However, all the chaos really destroyed the group because they didn't feel they could trust the DM after this.
Closest we came with my old DnD group was with a rookie DM (he created the dungeon). He was running a little exploration that ended up with the discovery of a Dracholich. He didn't realize just how powerful the things were and that our party at low level was not up to fighting it (though we were supposed to run). We lost 3 of the 6 man party, the Paladin and the Cleric (both with a hate on for undead) charged without thinking. And the ranger who played distraction. The rogue, wizard, and druid made it out thanks to a hasty teleport and camouflage.
Was table top with about 5 other RL friends when we were younger. We didnt play often and decided to lef someone DM who hasnt. Basically starts everyone out tied up and blind in some hellacious dungeon. The party clearly got out just fine even though the DM thru some absurd obstacles into the mix. After we get outside he is like its foggy, you can't see and there is a black dragon.. ><.. Before we get any further he stands up.. says, "You all dead, lets go outside and shoot ball."
I don't remember the name of the dungeon but it was in second edition dungeons and dragons...
It's not quite a kill scenario but it was an instance where the DM actually won by default.
On the top of a hill we came across a mummy. All eight of our characters went to slaughter the beast but of course we had to first be brave enough to deal with the abomination. Every single time we went to face the beast seven of the eight wouldrun down the hill in terror. The last man standing would scream, "YEAH! We got this!" before also succumbing to the fear of facing a mummy on his own...and ended up peeing his pants running down the hill too.
This happened about 5-10 times before the DM simply chose to remove the fear effect because it was obvious, if he wanted, he could easily send the mummy to kill our scared behinds.
Not exactly all of us dieing...but truly the DM was only being polite by not having the mummy chase us around while we cried for our mommy's.
And that is why we need Paladin Class in this game!
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jaffrojonesMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
A party of mine tpk'd on the way to the Temple of Elemental Evil. This is in a PnP game by the way. Those stupid frogs killed us. It was the worst case of bad roll syndrome I have ever seen in my life. After we all died the DM told us the last thing we heard as we neared our final slumber was "Riiiiiiiibbbbbbbiiiiitttttt".
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fergus1138Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 7Arc User
I was playing with a group in a now-defunct shard. We had made it to one-room-off of where the main boss of the area would have been. The minion Captain of the guard and his flunkies wound up wiping out our party. Of course, since we were all seasoned player characters, we weren't about to take this lying down (so to speak). As our characters laid there, face down, on the ground, with the nasties hovering over us, one of the party members said that he'd log out and back in as one of his more powerful Tank characters and rod rez us.
We said that would be great so that we wouldn't lose XP and be able to continue on.
He logged. Came back in. Vanquished all the minor nasties (that had respawned by this time) and finally made it to where we were.
We figured, the 10 minutes that it took him to do that wasn't too bad, considering that it had taken us about 30 min as a group of 4.
We heard him enter the area. The nasties left their vigilance of our bodies and engage him in battle. He was decimating them.
Then we see a comment come through on the shout channel "NOOOOOOO!". Our hero, with his uber gear and uber stats had rolled a 1 and was paralyzed.
A couple minutes later, as the guards whittled down his HPs, he was joining us in ground kissing.
Not to be outdone, a second teammate said that he would try with one of his mains. Long story short - same result.
Third attempt proved that discretion was the better part of valor and that it was better not to engage until more friendly forces were available to help. A combination of some nice buffs and stealth resulted in two Tank-types being rez'd and us being able to move on with our adventure. Funny how a little humility was forced-fed to some tanks that day.
Question: What dungeon was the closest you came to a total party kill? Was it a premade adventure, or did your DM build a death-trap?
Answer and you could win this Neverwinter shirt:
This contest ends Monday, 01/21, at 12 PM PST. Good luck, Adventurers!
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cosmictimberMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
Evil Carnival... with an evil clown... everyone trapped in mirrors except for the one kid who was new. DM death trap designed to put the vets on ice and give the new kid some time to learn and problem solve.
actually wound up being very cool for everyone. Never had an adventure that actually evoked fear like this one did with the events leading up to the mirror room.
For me the most memorable are the PnP games where I was the DM. Probably the worst was one I created for my group after that had spent the previous night talking about how lame 1st level adventures with goblins where. We started playing and the local village ask them to help end the goblin menuse in the mountain. They all laughed and headed up the mountain. They went inside the cave and found a very deep chasm with a wet stone bridge and no hand rail across it and a couple goblins sitting by a fire on the other side.
They charged across the bridge to face the goblins. The goblins jumped up and pulled up bows behind the rocks please two more popped out and also started firing. They all died before they got across. boring right?
Well they insisted on doing it over and over again building new 1st level charators built to storm across a bridge. Couple of nights later they finally gave up. Turns out 4 1st level goblins in the right position can wipe a 4 man party of idiot heros many times.
Tough question … I remember a lot of close calls, but the closest must have been during the Shackled City adventure. We had a Frenzied Berserker with us and he was—of course—last man standing (at around −100 hit points, certain to die within only a few rounds) when we were kicking in the door on some clandestine meeting of the bad guys in Cauldron. It was a mean combination of evil cultists and their shady associates who had all the nasty tricks readily available (and the DM played them all too well). Just a few rounds before it would have become a TPK, our berserk managed to stabilize the only person in the world that he could still recognize in his frenzy: his own twin brother (who eventually became Half-Demon Prince of Occipitus,… but we wiped in a lava pool before that could happen). Such an awesome moment, great fun!
A place for race pilots in STO: /channel_join Racing
Win 15,000 GPL in the Hodos Racing Challenge!
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Question: What dungeon was the closest you came to a total party kill? Was it a premade adventure, or did your DM build a death-trap?
This contest ends Monday, 01/21, at 12 PM PST. Good luck, Adventurers!
I played a RPGA Newtworked D&D "Living City" character for years. We started high level campaigns, and I chose a planar path. In one game, not only did I die, but our bodies dissolved, and the mission was ultra secret (so the few that knew couldn't recover us.) I mean this was like a 5+ year character taken to sanctioned conventions, so it was just the same as that long time tabletop at home.
Oh man, that would have to be the death trapped created by the DM. It would of made Indiana Jones look like a mouse. Two steps forward, dead party member, three steps back, dead party member. 15 steps forward, okay we can do this, bam, two dead party members. Holy God Almighty. You called? Welcome to the afterlife, care to pass beyond the gate, or return to hell?
Fleet Admiral Zach Caldwell
Commanding Officer, Starfleet Strategic Operations Force
It wasn't a dungeon, exactly (or even a D&D game), but there was this one time I sort of maybe had my character behead the spiritual leader of a giant violent mob. On a narrow bridge with nowhere to hide. Right in front of and in full view of said giant violent mob. It did not end well.
it was a dead trap made by my master, the last room in an orc's lair was a blast 5 size room and the boss was a shaman orc lv 3 solo type with 2 area attacks and 1 interrupt, me and my party were lv 5, but yeah in a room so small there was no way to avoid the AOE, and the fighter from the group was victim of the interrupt attack which effect was to redirect range attacks targeting the shaman to the nearest target, so when our tank died we all decided to flee leaving everything behind ..... ah happy times!
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bluesteel8Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited January 2013
I’ve only ever run one session that resulted in a TPK. It was Weird War II one-shot, and in one shots, character deaths are fine and not devastating. However, it was the first and only time a story could not reach a resolution. Usually in my deadlier one-shots, at least one character would make it to the end and the group could feel a sense of victory even if they were not actually alive to see it.
In my case, it was totally a case of player ineptitude. Many rookies (only one veteran player), a few of them doing silly things and not helping in combat situations. Even my usual fudging could not help them, nor, in the final analysis, did they deserve it. We laugh about it today, so nobody burned out over it, at least!
Question: What dungeon was the closest you came to a total party kill? Was it a premade adventure, or did your DM build a death-trap?
Answer and you could win this Neverwinter shirt:
This contest ends Monday, 01/21, at 12 PM PST. Good luck, Adventurers!
Well first off it took place in Greyhawk so dont hold that against me, blame our DM at the time who loved the setting, but I digress. The campaign took place in The Ghost Tower of Iverness. Seeing as we had no clerics and no Thiefs and only 1 Magic-User in our group the DM played an NPC cleric(YES we were a boring brutish lot who enjoyed playing fighters lol). At the end of the adventure when we finally got to the room with the Gem that shoots death rays out periodically we each over the course of about several hours of hilarity and incompetence decided to fail our saves versus magic twice each, resulting in the first save draining all our magic items and the second failed save resulted in our deaths. We spent a solid month playing that adventure on weekends and to have us all die at the very end was so funny. Our DM felt so bad he allowed his NPC cleric to save the day and rescue us.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Character is what a man is in the dark
4th edition. I hate it so much, thanks to the DM ruining it with his unwillingness to modify it to be fun. It was a premade campaign and we were all 4th level, so.. pretty low.
We were in a room that had two giant statues with massive swords. I think each was 20ft tall, and their swords were close to the same. The room was separated into different parts with pools of acidic blood that were all seven feet deep, and had demons swimming in them. There was a pillar on the far side of the room that had a hand sitting on its top, 20 feet up in the air.
By the way, those statues come to life when you get to a certain point. So all in all, we had to swim through blood that was also acid and had demons in it, climb up a pillar while slicked with acid blood WHILE being swung at by giant statues. At fourth level.
We went back to playing second edition after we gave up the campaign there.
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iamtruthseekerMember, Moonstars, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
4th edition. I hate it so much, thanks to the DM ruining it with his unwillingness to modify it to be fun. It was a premade campaign and we were all 4th level, so.. pretty low.
We were in a room that had two giant statues with massive swords. I think each was 20ft tall, and their swords were close to the same. The room was separated into different parts with pools of acidic blood that were all seven feet deep, and had demons swimming in them. There was a pillar on the far side of the room that had a hand sitting on its top, 20 feet up in the air.
By the way, those statues come to life when you get to a certain point. So all in all, we had to swim through blood that was also acid and had demons in it, climb up a pillar while slicked with acid blood WHILE being swung at by giant statues. At fourth level.
We went back to playing second edition after we gave up the campaign there.
On behalf of 4th ed players and GM's I apologize for the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> who ruined 4th ed for you. It has its benefits and drawbacks like any edition, but this was not one of them, and was caused by that tool alone that would happen no matter WHAT edition that loser ran in.
4th edition. I hate it so much, thanks to the DM ruining it with his unwillingness to modify it to be fun. It was a premade campaign and we were all 4th level, so.. pretty low.
We were in a room that had two giant statues with massive swords. I think each was 20ft tall, and their swords were close to the same. The room was separated into different parts with pools of acidic blood that were all seven feet deep, and had demons swimming in them. There was a pillar on the far side of the room that had a hand sitting on its top, 20 feet up in the air.
By the way, those statues come to life when you get to a certain point. So all in all, we had to swim through blood that was also acid and had demons in it, climb up a pillar while slicked with acid blood WHILE being swung at by giant statues. At fourth level.
We went back to playing second edition after we gave up the campaign there.
Normally a room like that means the crappy DM is telling you to go somewhere else. With it being premade I'm not sure what was going on.
Da kitties don't speak for me, deez kitties speak fur us all!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I'll Keep this up till beta goes live. I'll improve it soon.
Tabletalk RPG. Our GM had a nice premade story, but we didn't acted like he thought we would (1 idiot started killing people in the inn, and killed the questgiver npc). GM got mad, and started to imrovise. That is when things got out of control. There was no turning back. One of our best games ever!
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vinylitaMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 5Arc User
edited January 2013
Premade Dungeon. Room full of harmless treasure chests it looked nice and all but it didn't end well
Many years ago in a place called Land Of Nordock, sounds familar? ;-)
It was in the city of Brosna, we were under siege of drow players with some help from DM's.
That was rly great time of my life
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ottokranzMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, SilverstarsPosts: 16Arc User
edited January 2013
Call me the Crazy DM .... and screaming: "It can BE DONE!!!!" (a light and a thinder break the night).... DM story with traps, puzzles (the SAW is a newbie) and enemies.... what do you think about the most intellingent people in the universe? (I mean mice).
I TPK'd a Party that refused to annoint their weapons in half a dozen pools of holy water (with signs gradually increasing in size) then when i got sick of creating another room with a pool in it.. I dropped a vampire on them.. how they panicked to get back to the pools then.. mwahahah..
was a dungeon our DM made himself we rarely play premade stuff.
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xxxtottyriosxxxMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 1Arc User
edited January 2013
someone forgot to cast a protection from evil on the group and summoned a demon
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barbareflex1Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 2Arc User
edited January 2013
my very first quest, DM made a werebear and it beat the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of my fighter who was wearing full plate armor :mad::mad::D
Comments
And that is why we need Paladin Class in this game!
An Aboleth. In a DM-designed campaign in which my friend's Fire Genasi was unwittingly impregnated by a pit fiend earlier in the game.
We said that would be great so that we wouldn't lose XP and be able to continue on.
He logged. Came back in. Vanquished all the minor nasties (that had respawned by this time) and finally made it to where we were.
We figured, the 10 minutes that it took him to do that wasn't too bad, considering that it had taken us about 30 min as a group of 4.
We heard him enter the area. The nasties left their vigilance of our bodies and engage him in battle. He was decimating them.
Then we see a comment come through on the shout channel "NOOOOOOO!". Our hero, with his uber gear and uber stats had rolled a 1 and was paralyzed.
A couple minutes later, as the guards whittled down his HPs, he was joining us in ground kissing.
Not to be outdone, a second teammate said that he would try with one of his mains. Long story short - same result.
Third attempt proved that discretion was the better part of valor and that it was better not to engage until more friendly forces were available to help. A combination of some nice buffs and stealth resulted in two Tank-types being rez'd and us being able to move on with our adventure. Funny how a little humility was forced-fed to some tanks that day.
actually wound up being very cool for everyone. Never had an adventure that actually evoked fear like this one did with the events leading up to the mirror room.
They charged across the bridge to face the goblins. The goblins jumped up and pulled up bows behind the rocks please two more popped out and also started firing. They all died before they got across. boring right?
Well they insisted on doing it over and over again building new 1st level charators built to storm across a bridge. Couple of nights later they finally gave up. Turns out 4 1st level goblins in the right position can wipe a 4 man party of idiot heros many times.
Win 15,000 GPL in the Hodos Racing Challenge!
I played a RPGA Newtworked D&D "Living City" character for years. We started high level campaigns, and I chose a planar path. In one game, not only did I die, but our bodies dissolved, and the mission was ultra secret (so the few that knew couldn't recover us.) I mean this was like a 5+ year character taken to sanctioned conventions, so it was just the same as that long time tabletop at home.
Commanding Officer, Starfleet Strategic Operations Force
What? He was pissing me off!
In my case, it was totally a case of player ineptitude. Many rookies (only one veteran player), a few of them doing silly things and not helping in combat situations. Even my usual fudging could not help them, nor, in the final analysis, did they deserve it. We laugh about it today, so nobody burned out over it, at least!
[/SIGPIC]
The Older Gamers (25+) - Never too old to play games
Well first off it took place in Greyhawk so dont hold that against me, blame our DM at the time who loved the setting, but I digress. The campaign took place in The Ghost Tower of Iverness. Seeing as we had no clerics and no Thiefs and only 1 Magic-User in our group the DM played an NPC cleric(YES we were a boring brutish lot who enjoyed playing fighters lol). At the end of the adventure when we finally got to the room with the Gem that shoots death rays out periodically we each over the course of about several hours of hilarity and incompetence decided to fail our saves versus magic twice each, resulting in the first save draining all our magic items and the second failed save resulted in our deaths. We spent a solid month playing that adventure on weekends and to have us all die at the very end was so funny. Our DM felt so bad he allowed his NPC cleric to save the day and rescue us.
Character is what a man is in the dark
We were in a room that had two giant statues with massive swords. I think each was 20ft tall, and their swords were close to the same. The room was separated into different parts with pools of acidic blood that were all seven feet deep, and had demons swimming in them. There was a pillar on the far side of the room that had a hand sitting on its top, 20 feet up in the air.
By the way, those statues come to life when you get to a certain point. So all in all, we had to swim through blood that was also acid and had demons in it, climb up a pillar while slicked with acid blood WHILE being swung at by giant statues. At fourth level.
We went back to playing second edition after we gave up the campaign there.
On behalf of 4th ed players and GM's I apologize for the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> who ruined 4th ed for you. It has its benefits and drawbacks like any edition, but this was not one of them, and was caused by that tool alone that would happen no matter WHAT edition that loser ran in.
But as you can see, I have no opinion of him
Normally a room like that means the crappy DM is telling you to go somewhere else. With it being premade I'm not sure what was going on.
It was in the city of Brosna, we were under siege of drow players with some help from DM's.
That was rly great time of my life
And of course the solution at the end is: 42!.
Malamak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]