Whose oops was it, anyway?

I’ll go first. I had a group of 2E AD&D characters run head long into a fight with a lich in its lair. They started at full health and mostly full resources. By the time it was all over, the poor ranger managed to drag the petrified cleric to safety. The other characters perished in the fight. Fortunately, the group managed to recover the dead characters and their gear with secondary characters. Eventually everyone’s original characters were resurrected if they chose to do so. That’s one advantage of being higher level.

In fantasy games, the concept of a Total Party Kill (TPK) usually takes place on a lower to the ground, more personal level to the characters. A sword doesn’t randomly fall out of the sky and splatter the characters’ wagon instantly. Even fireballs don’t do that kind of damage and have zero survival probability.

There are a lot of reasons for TPKs, more than I have time to go into right now. Many times, it’s a combination of decision-making on the parts of the players or the GM, bad die rolls (or good ones on the part of the GM,) and circumstances.

Lethal character ending encounters often aren’t planned.

As a GM, I try to at least warn the group when they’re going to be in way over their heads. They usually get multiple opportunities to avoid whatever ugly fate is going to befall them with a bit of planning or by embracing cowardice. For example, multiple former adventurers try to warn the group about the dragon that lives just on the other side of the mountain. (First level characters, 10th level dragon.) If the group sees multiple headless skeletons in a hallway, maybe they want to be wary of that buzzsaw trap.

But anyone who has run a game for any serious length of time knows that there’s always at least one headstrong player who will insist whatever challenge was meant for them to overcome no matter what or the encounter wouldn’t be there. The group goes plunging ahead, throwing caution to the wind, until the characters start dropping dead one by one. Sometimes, through absolutely no fudging of dice or bias on the part of the GM, the group pulls off a coup and beats the challenge 9 levels over their head. It seldom happens, but even the most well prepared GM can get schooled by the players on a good day.

Other days, the players’ decisions leave them in a heap at the boss’ feet. Sometimes one character gets lucky and drags at least one injured comrade away from the fight before they both die. Other times, no matter what dice are rolled, there’s just no logical getting away from the grim fate that awaits the party.

Seasoned TTRPG veterans know when to avoid a fight. They sneak. They sometimes negotiate. Other times they just plain run the other direction before the fight can start. Seasoned vets know when to have their characters rest and recover resources. Their characters live a lot longer than bravely (foolishly) pushing ahead.

Dice play an important role in any fight.

Sometimes no matter how awesome the group plans things, somebody has cold dice while the GM has really hot dice. The GM rolls Nat 20s like rain in front of the group. Everyone biffs a clutch save and half the party gets turned to stone in the first round. The healer gets disintegrated, and the rogue gets picked off by a stray Death Ray. Everyone screws up their Saving Throws vs Death. Sometimes the dice just do what they’re going to do. It’s part of the game. Otherwise, why are we rolling dice?

Games such as Cypher System have a somewhat unique advantage in that the dice are all rolled by the players. That way no one can cry that the GM’s dice were just too hot that night. (Obviously not my dice. LOL!) If the players are making all of the rolls, then their decision making plays a more crucial role in their characters’ survival.

In more random games, or even in random encounters, the GM’s dice can just spell certain doom for the PCs. It’s not on the random encounter tables if the party can’t ever run into it. Random encounters are never planned to be a disaster. Sometimes the party has to make the decision to surrender, flee, negotiate, or hide until the coast is clear. Yes, a few lucky crits by low level Orc bandits can devastate a party, but sometimes the whole combat was unnecessary and could have been treated as such by the group. Yes, random encounters can and should happen. The group needs to assess and react accordingly.

Sometimes it’s all about timing.

Sometimes things just go to pieces in a way that no one could have planned. For example, the cleric’s player calls in sick the night of the big boss battle. The rest of the group decides to run the cleric by proxy. During the fight itself, the group forgets one of the cleric’s spells such as Cure Blindness. The fighter gets zapped with a spell that causes blindness and subsequently dies. The cleric gets focused down by the boss. The rogue has a few bad die rolls and ends up skulking away instead of fighting. The wizard can’t land a spell for love or money. Don’t worry, the rogue ran into a patrol elsewhere in the dungeon before he could escape.

As another example, a low level party randomly encounters a pack of gnolls on the road. The group is somewhat low on spells and resources having just left the dungeon when the GM makes his regular check on the random encounter table for the night. The fighter’s player rolls a Nat 1 and fumbles. The biggest gnoll rolls a Nat 20 and takes the fighter down in one hit. The wizard rolls exceptionally well and burns a gnoll to the ground in front of its packmates. They gang tackle the wizard in response until there’s nothing left. The cleric is no tank and the rogue’s initiative roll was awful. The rogue sees the writing on the billboard and flees only to have the pack hunt him down by scent.

Sometimes all it takes is for one player to roll poorly to hit, forget a spell on the sheet, or press ahead with resources they don’t have. Sometimes the GM just has a runaway die roll that flattens a character outright. This is a case where rolling out in plain sight can really help or hurt the party, depending. Sometimes the GM looks at the encounter he just rolled an thinks, “Oh they can handle this.”

More on this subject and what can be done when it happens in a future article. Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate it.