TPK: Lessons to Learn from Them | TTRPG | 5e D&D | Web DM
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- Have you ever had a TPK? Jim sure has, and believe it or not, they taught him good lessons about how to be a better dungeon master, D&D player, and lover of ttrpgs. Here's our TPK DnD stories!
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Time stamps:
0:00 intro
2:21 Total Party Kills
3:12 My Greatest TPK - Campaign Climax
7:46 My first TPKs as a GM - The good and the bad
12:31 How to get back into the game after a TPK
15:27 TPK insurance
18:52 Total Party Survival
25:08 TPK tidbits
#dnd #ttrpg #dungeonsanddragons
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Hey Jim, followed your channel for a while and love it, thank! Side note looking back at your old episodes and you didn't have that lesion on your forehead. Seems it's growing. Might want to see a dermatologist to ensure it isn't a melanoma.
Hey wanted to ask the web dm team about the dragonlance module are you guys excited nervous disappointed it isn’t getting a slip case treatment off the bat like spelljammer how do you feel? Also does the new spelljammer have you excited now that it has moved to the astral sea instead of the phloagetsion like it was in older editions. Along with it’s now a sea but outer space and a giant magical arcane ocean linking planets.
Hey. It's been a while since your last episode. Is everything allright?
Hey you guys ok? Been a while since we’ve seen you guys on here.
Hey is everything ok? It’s been a whole year since we seen a web dm video.
Man, I'm waiting for these legends to return. I absolutely love all these videos and desperately want to see more. I hope everyone at Web DM is doing okay, and I shall await their return.
I’m also curious about where these guys went
Unfortunately I think they just ran out of steam. They had some of the most imaginative suggestions and advice for a while there, but I think you can only talk about dnd so much before you just run out of stuff to say. And their viewership dropped off a lot too after Pruitt left. I think they both have a ton to contribute but their chemistry was definitely the thing that made the channel so special at least to me. It's a bummer and I hope they're doing well. It seems like a pretty natural ending to a channel unfortunately. @@lighterknot4385
Last I heard, Pruitt's still basically gone because work and family, and Jim's just doing things on patreon now. Like they've still got thier book coming out, last social media post was about that back in june. But it's just the patreon podcast. which is...odd. since you don't really GAIN people on patreon, so that well will slowly dry up...
@@maromania7 thanks for the information
Jim and Pruitt were essentially the older cousins that taught me how to play dnd almost 7 or 8 years ago now. I legitimately miss them.
My heart sank when the thought hit that this was gonna be the last video for a while. Now its been a year, miss you both and really hope this comes back. Your long discussions, passion, and personal taste blazed my path to becoming a DM 4 years ago, and this was my reference anytime I needed inspiration, clarification, or interpretation. Hope you both are well.
Still waiting for these absolute legends to make their return. I miss you guys.
Just checking in. As a fan I just wanted reach out say I miss your content and hope you return soon. Cheers
It’s been two years. I’ve essentially come to realize the channel has most likely died, but just in case you ever pop in to check the comments…Thanks for getting me into D&D. I draw heavily from DMing techniques from you and my players think I’m a fantastic DM.
It’s poetic that this is the last video in the channel
I miss web dm.......ironic that tpk is the last video
I'd say more like "fitting".
Miss the old days with Jim and Pruitt. Hopefully you guys cast resurrection on the channel some day.
My best TPK was thwarted with an UNO reverse card. 3 high level hags cast fireball at one of the PCs weddings, killing over 70 NPCs and everyone in the party... except for the Archmage.
He had a necklace of fire immunity. Then he rewound time by one round, bringing everyone back. Now the party and the 70 most important NPCs in the game had 1 round to drop the hags.
Amazing oneshot idea tbh
That's amazing :)
We use The gritty rules variants from the DMG so death is always on the table, even at high levels. However, death and TPKs have never been a problem but more things that happen in battle. We've found that it makes our characters feel more special knowing that they can be taken away easily. The game's no fun if losing is impossible. Also, on our first time playing D&D, Klarg the Bugbear TPK'd us 3 times before we finally won. It was awesome and we still talk about it to this day. Character Death is an important part of the game and should be treated as so.
When I began playing in 1978-9, our characters experienced TPKs frequently. Having a character advance to 3rd lvl was a major and rare accomplishment. I just assumed that it was the way the game was supposed to be played. Losing a character, alone or in a TPK, felt like a loss but rolling a new character was routine.
Oh yes, the early, deadly days!
We used to go through characters so fast that for their first few levels they had basically no personality or backstory. Barely had names, we just called them "my guy"
*Player:* So, my guy will listen at the door."
*DM:* "- And gets a poison dart through the neck."
One of my most memorable TPKs, not that I've had many, was a party of 3 fighting a black shadow dragon. The fight lead on for 5 rounds before the paladin went down, and for two more before the warlock and wizard agreed that breaking their staff of power (that they had been bickering about the whole game) was the only option left. So the wizard dove into the dragons maw and broke the staff- destroying them all.
Good times.
I hope you're all well. Thanks for the years of entertainment, and a hope for the triumphant return!
Here is the work of one man, doing to job of two.
I love your work and ideas. I must admit to stealing them for myself. We all wait with nailed breath for your return, Web DM
What a great subject!! Super excited what y’all’s thoughts are!!!
I JUST remembered a campaign where having a TPK was kind of the point: we went into the game knowing that the campaign would be split into two parts, the 'prologue' where our low-ish level characters (I think around level six?) would ultimately be killed in a fight with the Big Bad, then the rest of the game with new higher-level characters that were assembled after the first group's defeat.
Our DM set it up that way to cover the absence of two of our players who knew they couldn't make the game after a certain date so the Prologue mini-campaign and TPK was there so they still got to play a significant part in the story, even if they couldn't be there for the whole thing. I'm surprised I forgot it because I'm pretty sure it set the stage for the "Adventuring Company" Westmarches-style games we've been playing ever since.
i love how much of dm advice is talk to your players , and communicate the stakes /risks
Really love the chill music and the title cards. Excellent production, folks. Content's good too, Jim!
I LOVE your perspectives especially with your background in history, change is necessary and you hold the show very well, a solo video is so much harder than having another person to share screen and script time with. Tell Pruitt he is loved and missed.
Not been watching the channel for a couple of years, but glad to see it's still great even now you've gone solo! Really like the more relaxed feel.
Is this channel still going? It's been 8 months, just wondering
They've gone full into Patreon it seems... Ah well.
Jim (apologize for the familiarity - hard to know how to address people personally on here), Just wanted to say thank you for hanging in and continuing to produce quality/entertaining/interesting content for the channel. I can imagine the transition has provided challenges but you guys/gals (I'm not sure how big the team is and I don't want to leave anyone out) have done an excellent job. I know I've made some long-winded (though always appreciative) comments in the past, but I'm limiting this one to thanks and to keep up the good work. I look forward to the videos each week and ya'll don't disappoint.
*And before/in case I give the wrong impression above - I also wish the best of luck to Pruitt as well and hope he's doing alright and very much appreciate everything he has contributed to the channel.
In this solo format, we def need to keep this chill Mr. Roger's vibe with the tone and reddish sweater. +1 vote for "Mister Davis' Neighborhood."
Love your work. You and Pruet have been the best influence in my dnd and life
Most climactic TPK (but not the end of our campaign): 12 PCs vs Grazz't wielding Blackrazor, ended with the last PC standing crossing a Staff of Power and Staff of the Magi and breaking them over his knee directly in front of Grazz't, who straight up survived the damage. We then played out the souls of the party that Blackrazor had absorbed avoiding getting sucked into oblivion until they figured out a way to escape back to the Abyss and fight Grazz't again. The great thing about D&D is the afterlife is also an adventure.
Another great video Jim! Love it, as always.
Pruitt lives.
What happened to Pruitt?
@@robertf3606 Nothing sinister... bwahahahaha
Even at high levels, you can still TPK a party.
Truth!
My first TPK was in the Amber Temple in Curse of Strahd.
Hey Jim Davis, hope your doing well.
Miss your presence on youtube
-A Fan
Three reasons for a TPK...1-bad luck, 2-mistakes were made by the players, and 3-maybe I accidentally put the players up against a bit too much. DM screens were invented specifically for #3.
Don't forget heroic sacrifices
Great topic. I've lucked out as a new DM and only ran games for two sets of my friends who are much more invested in playing the game as a group than being the heroes that "win". I warned both groups that things might get out of hand because of my lack of experience. We had an almost TPK in one group and a TPK in the other. I'm running the same sandbox for both groups and they were all happy rolling new characters with slightly different motivations for exploring the region.
The most interesting thing about the wiped group was that they totally ignored the monster giving them an out. They were exploring a side dungeon that had no bearing on the plot, and they were not quite ready for everything in it. I had the banshee that they stumbled onto at the end of a rough fight give them two rounds of warnings so they could regroup if they wanted. When we talked about it later, they didn't remember it happening. After what I thought was a clear branching point away from conflict was ignored, she screamed and started the ball rolling toward the TPK.
I really like you suggestion to have the option of regaining the info and loot of the first party. I was already planning a way for the new party to get a lead on where the first party died, and based on this video, I'm going to have the new NPC the party just rescued inform them of all the relevant plot points the other party knew.
I was wondering if pruitt is ever coming back? I never saw anything about where he went. Great video as always jim!
ua-cam.com/video/RUOF3sybD8U/v-deo.html here ya go. It was announced in this webdm video. Hope to see him back some day.
He is on perpetual hiatus due to burn-out. He said that he might return to the channel sometime, but it is not a guarantee.
Jim absorbed Pruitt hence the beard
He was in the video about spell jammer and is still on Patreon sometimes
Yeah I hope he never feels pressured to come back on from fans but it’s always cool seeing him. Jim does a really good job soloing this videos though. Honestly the transition went better than I expected. Both just really cool ppl
I am currently running a “urban” campaign. They have intrigue with the noble families of the city or explore the dungeons below the city (city has been built upon numerous older cities over the years). The players know the the guild that maps out these dungeons has had a low survival rate, but those who do survive have found amazing treasures and wonders. They players know the risks involved and have 3-4 backups already, just in case.
I just wanted to say I'm having an absolute blast playing the weird wastelands content, way of the wondering fist monk has been an absolute powerhouse that monks have not only needed but also completely thematically appropriate. Playing a bugbear wandering fist monk/reaver fighter in a gestalt game, first time trying out Martial classes and boy am I having a blast, strength based monk is such a fun combo I didn't expect to completely fall in love with
Nice video, falls well in line with how I've tried to run things so far. Allowing shit to hit the fan if desired by the players, but not forcing the possibility in every situation.
Thank you. Thus was very well done.
Recently had my PCs not turn away from pushing forward through the dungeon and they were eventually in a situation where they would be TPK'd, but I thought it would be more fun to capture them than just kill them. Next session (which WAS supposed to be tonight, but schedules fell through) they will be given 1/2 a day in game to escape their bonds before execution. Sudden death overtime! haha
Hi there long time listener first time caller. The famous meme goes something like "if you pronounce it apple-lay-shun, I'll throw an apple-atcha". Round here that's the proper pronunciation
Keep them up. Great videos
best way i can describe TPK is with a joker quote
joker to batnan" Hahahahahaha! I dont wanna... I dont want to k!ll you! What would i do without you?"
"The source of new PC's needs to be connected to what's happening in the campaign" As someone who has played in and run about 5 west marches campaigns now (Yes really) this is GOLDEN advice.
Looking forward to the Kickstarter update Sunday!
Absolutely killer video!
Long-time Web DM Viewer & almost decade DM Prisoner Here!
Before video comment about topic - *ALSO Big note: I roll in front of my players openly... they prefer it... I prefer it... Keep that in mind for the below.*
I have moved to pathfinder about a year ago to play the Pathfinder Kingmaker adventure path (Followed by Wrath of the Righteous and then probably Skulls and Shackles) and something that I put into those games that has made TPK's not just *the worst* is the following. The party as a whole gets basically one "Miracle TPK Save" per book (6 books per campaign at roughly 3 to 4 levels per book). These generally aren't good things and the player still might get punished with resources/items, but it keeps the story going and gives the party a real enemy to hate.
1st book the party wiped going directly to the Thorn River Crossing at night and failing their stealth checks horribly, sparking the alarm, then staying around to fight some 6 to a dozen bandits at lvl 1... Instead of killing everyone, the bandits just took the party captive and took them to the Stag Lord... They then escaped with the help of 2 fey friends that they met and befriended earlier in the Narlmarches BUT they lost all their "Not taped down to you" items and it got added to the Stag Lord's fort loot page.
In the 2nd book, dealing with Hargulka and his trolls, the party got a little bit full of themselves when a random encounter was rolled with 6 trolls! They were confident at lvl 6 so they stayed and fought, but the moment the trolls pulled the "Oh yeah, I'm a giant and can just grapple you and pin you to the ground and such" - the party was in huge trouble. They managed to down 4 trolls, but they ultimately wiped at the end of it all. To "massage the TPK", one of the trolls was one of Hargulka's Lieutenants (Cough totally planned) who recognized the Baron among them and knew to take the party back to Hargulka rather than eat them then and there. On the way back, a dryad and satyr that they helped earlier managed to spook the trolls away from their prize saving them from certain doom. No major punishments from this one aside from marred pride and time spent recovering...it was a random encounter, not a planned locale...so yeah.
Note: Books are easier to do this in as they have a LOT of stuff pre set up for you that you can use for stuff like this "Miracle TPK Save"...still... hooking old allies they've made and what not into a save is believable and makes people feel like they got out of it through their choices rather than the DM is "just being lenient". . which everyone knows that that is their miracle TPK save, mind you, but it keeps everything feeling believable so they don't mind. The 2nd TPK that happens in 1 book, though, I'm not lenient about at all and will basically play out what would happen with the remainder of NPC's back in their barony/kingdom, etc etc (to which I'm literally giving them an NPC of every single class in pathfinder so... there's that). At that point it would completely be up to the players as to whether or not they want to continue and how with those other characters... do they take the other NPC's on a daring mission to retrieve the bodies of their fallen lord and retinue? Do the new NPC's take over and maybe let the Players "Modify" the NPC's in question to be something more their speed? Whatever works. :D
---
After video comment about topic -
I definitely agree with every point here and it definitely takes some harsh lessons to really attain "Good TPK's" if you can call it that. I've had 1 reeeeeaaally bad TPK in 5e Tyranny of Dragons where the party side tracked to Dragonspear Castle that was occupied by a lich...did not...end well. Cough. It literally derailed the campaign even though he gave the party a choice to "Give me a magic item blablabla and I'll let you live" etc etc... party was like "NoPE, We ArE ThA GoOd GuYs AnD YoU'Re GoINg doWN eVen THougH wE'rE lvl 9!".... The two TPK's listed above were definitely well received, and another TPK I had was playing a sci-fi variant of 5e I made which was just insane over the top action that the party was flying a sorta...helicarrier quinjet type thing and one player had to pilot as they got attacked by cthulu minions or w/e. Fight went great etc, ship got latched onto by this big weird cthulu monster that was leeching the quinjet's power systems so they had to evacuate, kill it somehow from inside, or crash landing... they decided to "Scrape off the jellyfish bastard against a mountainside" so the pilot goes for it and I tell him before "If you roll a 1, you crash and everyone dies... any other failure is just you miss the mark... do you still want to do this?" . . everyone nodded silently, the epic intense music still going... and he rolled.... Nat 1. The table. Died. Laughing. I've never seen more glee from a nat 1 and TPK all at the same time.
So my 2 lessons about TPK's I'd say is. . . Throw tons of Ally NPC's at your players. They don't have to love them, but letting a party have a "Retinue" of sorts in any format of adventure really is great for "saving the dead party" or even for players to jump into other NPC's skins...Heck, my paladin in 2e died 7 times by the time I got to lvl 13... on the 8th time I failed my revival roll so he was DEAD dead and we had to go to the outer planes to get his soul back... We had an NPC that was a huge ally of my paladin who served the same God and I played him throughout the planar adventure.. OR... make combat insanely over the top and wacky so that nobody has time to get upset because their character just got flung up in the air by the giant, landing on his head and used a sword to its neck to "steer the giant" off a cliff but failed to jump off in time - also falling to his death. . . totally didn't happen in storm king's thunder or anything to one of my PC's. Cough.
Saw a great TPK in 3.5 - A Fang Dragon was marauding and party thought they were bosses. Ignoring the obvious evacuate and rescue mission for the nearby village, they decide to confront it head on in an open plane. Only 1 PC out of 5 had significant ranged capability. In the End when only 2 PCs were left, the heal-bot cleric uses Cape of the Mountebank to teleport a mile away and run, forever living in shame.
The look on everyone's jaw dropped faces was beautiful.
My group played with this old greybeard for a while, and one thing I loved that he did was his 'Death or..." rule. Essentially, most any death (even TPK) could be survived...but at an unrecoverable cost. You might lose your legs and most of your movement. If you're a monk you might straight up lose your arms. A TPK might end with us alive but permanently exiled, or bound under magical oath to a powerful creature antithetical to our cause. That last one was especially fun, as I ended that Changeling campaign with fealty sworn to the Morrigan in exchange for my soul back, while we were still bound to try to bring hope and wonder back to the world.
Another DM we had was different. He had no qualms about killing. One campaign spawned an entire family with as many brothers as needed, given he killed 16 of a players characters before they even made it into the campaign, made them roll a save-or-die to even catch up to us. In one campaign I made it to the end, with surprise reveal level up choices that survived even the DM, I was the only one to survive....and then basically every named character appeared from nowhere and gunned me down, regardless of if they knew me or should be on that side of the continent. Because the next campaign was supposed to take place in a world where we lost, so I couldn't be allowed to win, surely I understood? No, I didn't. nobody did.
Miss you guys and love you dearly. Hope all is well!
Hope to see a return one day.
Wish you all the best
Yeah, telegraphing the danger (and the rewards), and leaving an option for escaping are really good GM techniques to make the game fair, and for the TPK to not feel so bad. In the end, when things are fair like that, a character death is more of a consequence of specific player choices rather than the will of the GM.
I would also suggest a module specifically designed to deal with characters in a purgatory-like plane having the possibility to go back to life. It is called Spiral Isles, by Stygian Studio. It is available for 5e and Swords & Wizardry. It can be interesting, especially for those heavily invested 5e characters, to have the opportunity to adventure in the netherworld and come back from the dead!
Just jumping in to wish you well
I've always kind of wondered what it would be like to have a campaign loosely based on a Re: Zero premise. Like throw the party into an unwinnable encounter, and have them all die, only for them to instantly revert back to a time before the encounter and then have them figure out unique ways to prevent their deaths and achieve a successful outcome. The only real problem is infinite reverts would kill any tension, so maybe just limit it to a one off occurrence or once per hard encounter. Maybe tie it to a unique relic or something.
Ha! Loved the bloopers.
I hope WebDM (Jim and Pruit) returns to UA-cam in the near future. The videos are some of the best RPG commentary on the web. I would like to see one on Rob Schwalb’ s Shadow of the Weird Wizard as you have extolled his Shadow of the Demon Lord products in the past.
But when the world needed them the most, they vanished..
I have only ever run TPK situations is when the players have done it to their characters, themselves. The druid who shape-shifted into raven ... to take on a falcon familiar ... a rapidly darkening Jedi who put a tiny whole into a porthole in a starship .... and spaghettied out into hyperspace ... good times ...
Today I learn spaghetti is a verb.
TPK is a total party kill. You're talking about individual player idiocy or IPI situations.
@@Casanuda In the above examples, each was the catalyst for the rest of the party following suit. The first was a matter of course, as the rest of the party, unprepared but unwilling to just let their buddy die, took on the familiar's wizard. In the second, the whole party were trying to escape a pirate ship and turning on each other in the process. Half of them were jettisoned in the process; the other half died fighting off the pirates. The Jedi's predicament is what gave their position away in the ship.
Alternate TPK outcome. "Well you're all dead. And you've all done some bad things. Welcome to hell guys... (cracks open dante's inferno inspired campaign)."
Heck yeah
I love the idea of starting my campaign off with a TPK and then the characters either have to find their way back to the living world or they get resurrected a century later and now have to prepare for their second go at the BBEG.
My next campaign is going to start with a high level party of mercenaries. Fight the big bad. Everyone dies. 4 centuries pass. The actual party then is level 1 descendants who have been pulled together by an eccentric history buff who needs a legendary mercenary band to stop the evil their ancestors couldn't.
@@whymthrad Wow! Awesome idea!
Cinematic opening act, player investment, and character backstories all hardwired into the scenario. I'm putting that in the files for when my current campaign is done
Good video, it is how I like to run my games too, with death always an option but rarely actually happening... except of course I run explicitly a horror game. Sure, there are worse things than death too in horror games, and that is often enough the reason why characters prefer to die instead of facing such a terrible fate. I am a merciful GM after all!
I was playing in my oldest son's campaign and the werewolf domitor of one of our companions (escaped slave) took down our entire party with me being the last conscience. I made a break toward or fallen bard, grabbed his bag of holding and threw it inside my own bag of holding... creating a dimensional rip and sucked us into the Astral Sea. Yes we lost 2 bags and the contents of them, but we did survive.
Jim erudite and interesting as ever!
Got yout dungeons riddle and traps book today, since it's released in germany.
Thank you very much (:
Something I've been thinking about for a while is that d&d presents a pseudo-medieval setting... and then throws magic on top of it without accounting for how magic would change the world.
Given your historical knowledge, do you think you could make a video talking about how the existence of magic would affect aspects of a psuedo-medieval world? Like:
Would magic cause a middle class to exist where in real life it didn't?
Would the medieval system of warfare break down into something more like world war 1 trench warfare? With flying wizards doing fireball bombing runs, cloud kill acting like mustard gas, soldiers in trenches exchanging fire bolts & Eldritch blasts back and forth, & every Platoon of soldiers containing at least one member who knows the message cantrip for long distance communication, and another member with the mold earth cantrip to help dig trenches?
Would City guards that are higher up in the chain of command be expected to multiclass into wizard, in order to obtain detect magic, dispel magic, counter spell, and hold person?
Obviously I've thought about this a fair amount but given my lack of historical medieval knowledge I'm sure there's little facets and interesting details that I'm missing.
Thanxs for your time!
Miss you guys
Just checking in, seeing if this awesome guys ever continue with this amaizing channel
I keep checking every so often as well
Player doesn't use coasters at my table?
Time for a TPK.
No. I'm serious.
Use the coasters.
Use the coasters everybody
You were talking about "Make it clear that in this world, if you surrender you'll be ransomed or something like that" and I immediately remembered back to a point where another commenter was remarking on how they were upset that every D&D bad guy seemed to be slave-takers.... and I realized that something like this was exactly the reason why so many bad guys were slave takers... because no one's gonna ransom a bunch of common folk whose relations are either dead (hmmm, shame your player character was an orphan, you know?), or poor, or unknown.... if you surrender, they'll take you as slaves, but that buys you time to escape.
The important thing is to learn from the situations that cause TPKs. My players have learned not to split the party and not to let an easily-defeated enemy run off to get reinforcements.
what happned its been a whole year, feels like this channel had a TPK
OK guys. The time has come.
The people call for you to return to your post.
We need you WebDM, You are our only hope!
Jim “Percolating Cement” Davis
My last campaign ended in a TPK. It was player's choice. One player opened a hatch in a dungeon with 2 bodaks behind it after they had already rescued the child they were there for and were badly beaten up. From a fairness stand point it was fine. I still felt bad, not for the characters, but for the untold story.
damn guess web dm got TPK'ed themselves lmao
Best D&D Channel on UA-cam, even after 1 year hiatus
I miss you guys
As a DM, anything the players inflict upon themselves after making an informed choice always stands. Especially PK.
One alternative to allowing PC death is what I call "save points". If a battle turns out in a way that the group isnt satisfied with it, either because of player death or TPK, they can get a redo, back to the point just prior to the start of battle. I haven't tried this yet, but I think borrowing from the video game world is a cool idea.
Nothing says zero consequences like save points.
@@thefallenmonk605 Point taken. But I think it has to be done judiciously. If the party was always going to fight the boss at the end, consequences aren't really the issue.
Where’s Jim?
Miss your content hope all is well
It almost happened to my group last weekend.
A bard, a ranger, a wizard, a druid, a warlock, and a barbarian werebear greatly underestimated the danger of fighting a gargantuan sized, intelligent green slime.
The wizard was the 1st caught in its grip. The group worked together to free him. Then the barbarian got caught. The wizard charged back in to save him and they both slowly began dissolving within its acidic bulk.
The ranger, druid and warlock made a stand and got caught. The ranger barely managed to slice open a hole and just barely escape.
The druid turned into a huge snake and forced her way out.
The warlock was digested but ressurected (in a way) by his patron.
The bard kept his distance the whole time and was almost the only survivor.
In the end, the survivors ran, the bard remarking "didn't they tell us this creature was here" , to which the ranger replied "yeah, they said dont come here because its too dangerous " and they all just looked at each other.
Yeah I try to avoid when I can but have ran a few after really making it clear the situation was dire and probably a bad idea without more info and a plan at the very least. Still... they do happen
God I miss this channel
Jim unhinged😂
Never had a real TPK but I had one encounter where almost everyone that was at the table there died. I the day it happened our warlock couldn't show up but we had the bard, the druid, and the barbarian. They were in a subterranean lair full of goblins and to explain away the warlock I had his patron magic him away for some side mission. What happened was that they walked into an ambush set up by the goblins which the goblins had a lot of prep time for because they attacked their above ground base the day before. The bard went ahead into a storage room where a bunch of goblins popped out and shot her with arrows. The druid and barbarian where in the other room when this happened and rushed as the bard was 1v1 with the goblin, Garshank. The druid was parkouring across crates to try and get to her while the barbarian took the long way around and was bogged down with giant rats and goblins in chain shirts. The bard went down from the posion the whip the boss was using had and the lizardfolk druid got right within 5ft of her to heal with a cure wounds, but he had ended his turn ontop of a 10ft crate and she failed her last death save her next turn. The fight continued a bit longer and the barbarian got the last of the rats and landed a hit on Garshank but he used his special ability that threw a minion infront of it. Then Garshank fled as the druid chases him while the barbarian was held up by the last goblins, finally the druid made it into a pitch black chamber with Garshank waiting for him. In the end Garshank got a big attack on him and left him to die. The barbarian finally made his way there and the druid died in his arms. The warlock had hell to pay next session.
kinda funny how TPK was the last topic
It's a shame that this seems like the last video I always loved the content I'm still waiting around for an uodate
Amazing thumbnail today
Thank you!
The problem I ran into with a group in the past was that the players were incredibly risk-averse. If there was even the slightest suggestion of danger they would back out. It got so bad at one point during a superhero-themed campaign that they would arrive at a situation and then immediately try to call other superheroes to come help them.
I've had groups like that.
Something I learned from another DM back in the day that I've found useful is what he called "throwaways". Characters doomed to die, in limited scenarios, like a one-shot or mini-campaign, often tangential to the main campaign arc.
Like maybe playing a previous party going up against the BBEG, or the last stand of some legendary heroes. Knowing their fate is already sealed, the players kinda relax and enjoy playing in the moment, even lean into the idea: "Well lads, we're not walking away from this one. But there'll be songs sung for ages about this day. Let's go out in glory!"
After a couple of these, a TPK can be seen as not a failure of the party, but another chapter in the world's history. Takes some of the sting out of it. Offers a change in perspective.
Just a suggestion, of course, but I found it helps my groups deal with risk-aversion
Man, Web DM and Taking 20 gone dark, really feels like the end of an era. Sad. The only constant is change.
I don't run as an adversarial DM. I like to be the story teller. That said I've had a few TPK instances where players killed themselves with just dumb tactics. I don't play against the group, but I also don't dumb down an encounter.
It's been a year since I heard from web dm. No vids or anything? I don't do social media so if they have said what's up there idk. If anyone sees this and knows what's up, than hit me with a reply.
What happens to the flowers after the funeral
Every time I find goid dnd content creators they end up not having a new upload in over a year 😭
Eagerly awaiting the return of our WebDM overlords. The patreon is worth it imo. Love you guys
Is Prewet still doing stuff on Web DM? I haven't seen him on the channel since they released their book.
He's involved but not recording videos for now. They made a video about it, you'll have to scroll back a way.
@@Jedwoods oh, okay. Thanks for the info.
idk I think id be mad depending on the simulacrum situation. Like on the one hand, as player just deciding you want to beef with an ally for their stuff seems like bad role-play. I don't know the details though so maybe it made sense? But as a player, unless this dragon had a good reason to suspect an ambush, fighting a simulacrum only to find out the dragon has been waiting the whole time seems cheesy. I think it comes down to a common disagreement I've had on both the player side and dm side when it comes to a tpk, whether the players ought to die. ought to meaning, in game, does it make sense that a tpk occurred? often times that's a big disagreement at any table I've been at that involves a tpk.
RIP Pruitt, RIP WebDM
Where are these gentlemen? I miss the content
Not only do the dice tell their own story, they often tell a better story than we (I) can.
Hope you're doing alright.