You didn't have a TPK you had a TPW, Total Party Wipeout, probably because the DM didn't want to end their campaign there. Did you prefer that situation, where you had a chance to continue with your character's or would you have preferred to have being all killed outright?

I can be this type of DM, though I'd rather have to whole party present on every session but I guess if you want to not commit to being present when you're called for attendance then fine go ahead and miss free pizza Friday or slutty Saturdays sinful Sundays magnificence Monday Tavern Tuesday wicked Wednesday thirsty Thursday Tavern 😂 oh look it's already free pizza Friday

Imagine your wife can't make it to the dinner date and you say “Oh, I'm not cancelling it. I'll just call one of the backup girls I have in line" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

I like to bring the players back at a cost but with a special boon! It makes the dead player/s not feel like “they lost”. Death can still be a “failing forward” moment and can move the story as well.

Agreed, I wouldn't have the cost be anything mechanically detrimental. That just increases the chance of a death spiral! @@CaseyWilkesmusic

Everyone levels DOWN. The players themselves get to decide what they have to discard to meet the new level stats. They can choose just to reset the character back to their old level, or they can mix things up so they still meet the stats but it isn't the same old-same old. It is important to discuss character deaths and consequences at Session Zero though.

Sorry but... that option kinda sucks. I get where you're going with it, but having cool abilities then have them taken away is rough. Plus, if it happens too many times, well, looks like the BBEGs gonna win as the PC's get reset back to level 3!@@rhisands2063

@@rhisands2063 played a curse of strahd campaign and that was the rule from session 1. fun way to play if you want some real stakes.

Reschedule? Nah I try again next week then I don't here from anyone on it anymore its like did yall forget or yall something better to do? Idc either way but damn I already most people I already know don't give a damn and the ones that do are too far away to make it and I didn't give a damn to make a world anvil r20 and other things you posers say to use because yall Jenks are hogging everyone like pigs in shit.

Nigel my apologies but that's how this community makes me feel

contingency spell within a artificer device.

@@edwardbirdsall6580 That would be cool, but Contingency is only a Wizard Spell and can only target yourself even if it can normally target others.

As the DM lair and so many others say all the time: COMMUNICATION IS KEY. Don't keep that to yourself. Talk to your DM. Tell him how you're feeling. Give a chance for you and the DM to come to an understanding about what's going on. Maybe it's because of your bad choices and so on and so forth. Maybe it's the DM underestimating the situation. Maybe it's just perception differences. BUT TALK TO YOUR DM. Nothing kills a group faster than people staying quiet when they have concerns to address.

Agreed, I would like to see these return, even if it is not every episode. Having it happen sometimes will still be cool.

I suppose if you are running a module RAW this could be true. I’ve never run a module. I am currently playing in two different modules run by different GMs. That said, my current campaign is based off of no less than three modules from at least three versions of D&D and playing in yet another version (5e). I have modified and rewritten what I needed to fit the narrative of my world. I’ve not seen anything in any module that would prevent me from continuing the campaign after a TPK if that’s what the players wanted. My world is living and dynamic. The actions of the PCs have lasting effects (As my players recently found out. And are about to find out again. They have unknowingly tipped another domino. One that I didn’t see coming and have no idea where it will lead.) All that to say, if the GM and the players want to continue the campaign I see no reason why that can’t be the case. As a player and a GM I sometime tell people, “I have a masters in MSU.” (Making Sh!t Up.) And so do you. Grab your ketchup and crunch away my friends.

I've got things structured right now to support this. We've capped every character at level 15, we're not even pretending to be targeting high level play. This means that for the most part, anything a party can get up to (for good or ill) will only have effects one one planet. Therefore it's fine to just say "the bad guys won, here are the consequences, roll your new first level party". If it's Ultimate Failure and the whole planet is lost (as in rendered uninhabitable), we move on to a new planet. The complete absence of 8th and 9th level spells in our game limits the damage. I've had to do a little houseruling over Teleportation Circles because otherwise it would be trivial to hop between planets (they're all on the same Prime Material Plane, which is actually a galaxy), but this also offers a good way to hook in multiple DMs agreeing to a basic structure on how characters are constructed and how much magic loot they're allowed to carry. Once we set up a baseline, each DM can have their own world with its own lore and inhabitants -- to a point. There is only one set of planes, so anything that happens in the Feywild or Abyss or wherever in one DM's setting has to be reported in detail, as this is "common ground". But all that necessarily can only happen from levels 13 to 15, so it's pretty easy not to step on another DM's toes. It was harder when we had 17th level spellcasters throwing Wishes around. BTW the houserule on Teleportation Circle is that while on the Prime Material Plane, you can only target Circles that are within 100,000 miles of you. That takes care of planet-hopping. If the players _want_ to move to another planet, they have to use a 7th level spell. The full-blown _Teleport_ spell does not have the 100,000 mile limitation.

You wanna talk about salty? I'm in a group, we had spend the last 5 hours, of real time, trying to figure out a way to find evidence on a crooked judge. We come up with a plan and decide to do it that night, in about 10 hrs in-game. As a group, we prepare and take a long rest at the inn. The frikken GM says "Everybody roll a wisdom save". Everybody rolls below a 10. The GM says we all take 36 points of damage as the entire inn explodes, flinging our bodies into the streets, completely leveling the inn and disintergrating ALL of our gear. We then got death saves. We were 3rd level. I was pissed. That was some BS. It just blew up for no reason, without any warning. At least if we had a fighting chance I'd have been ok with it but that had me basically just getting up and walking out once we were done. No small talk, no "good game". I just left.

A level 1 restart is okay in some scenarios, but deeply impractical in others. Like, if you're 3/4 of the way through a 1-10 campaign like Shadow of the Dragon Queen when a TPK happens, your new level 1 party would be completely useless and helpless against anything being fielded at that point in the campaign's progression.

If you are 3/4 of a way through a Campaign, your DM skills should be enough to create your own, new start, and then meet up where you left off by the end. If I want a congruent story I would read a book. But a party needs time to gel and develop, and a totally new party of high level characters misses out on the party bonding that happens in the first 2 or 3 levels, before they start getting powerful. Leveled parties miss out on a lot of that early growth that makes the end game all that much more memorable. It comes down to what is more important, sticking to your story you have all planned out, or adapting to have a better playing experience as the new party develops. Of course I would listen to the players, and do what they want, but all things being equal, I'd try to restart and adapt.

It even makes sense as a vision by a cleric: bad ideas by his companions, terrible luck, etc. all things that would represent the fear and dangers of their line of work

Side note I made them decide at the end to either leave the old PC dead or sacrifice the new PC in resurrect their dead one most chose to keep their new characters as they started getting attached to them

Yet DMs wonder why the players don't want to invest in a background and keep making loner/silent characters who live to fight. Recently, I was a player while one of the players was trying his hand as DM. I gave him all my encounter building tools, and anything else I use to shorten prep time like a script that takes Donjon maps (which are 10' per square) and converts them to the more useful 5'-a-square format. He was insistent that "there's nothing wrong with the rules" and that I fudge and curate far more than is necessary. He also brings his little sister into the campaign which has probably been the best part of all this, but anyhow he insists on lots of lore and backstory and worldbuilding. We get to level 4, and in the very first round of the very first encounter when we hit the misty forest: beholder zombie, disintegrate ray, one failed save, and the sorlock is perma-dead. The remainder of the party completes the encounter, then walks out of the forest the way they entered, packs up shop, and moves out and lets the vampires take the city. At that point, the DM realized that maybe there _are_ some things wrong with the rules, and retconned the sorlock's death into an ordinary death that could be remedied by means of Raise Dead. Investing emotionally in a character is incompatible with a game where your entire existence could be wiped by one failed saving throw. We now have a rule which the other players haven't been told, it's just between us DMs: no PC death prior to level 5 is permanent. Stupid and pointless PC deaths are also not permanent. I always run with the understanding that there are TWO ways a character can perma-die. One is a TPK where the most reasonable interpretation of the outcome is that everyone stays dead -- say the bodies are incinerated and scattered. The other is that they encounter something that can perma-kill them, and they decide to press on in spite of a warning shot. There will be times when your character's life is on the line without a safety net, but you should _know when those times are._ They shouldn't be "you failed a save on a random encounter, now you're dust in the wind". Mind you, we _also_ do brutal one-shots where perma-death is absolutely on the table, but we know going in that this is the case and don't waste our time building a world around them.

@@mal2ksc I actually think it's a mistake to craft a story around specifics in a character background---using those specifics as little Easter eggs from time to time is interesting and rewarding, but the over all game...not a great idea. The first philosophical problem I have with running games that are deeply dependent on character backstories is that you wind up singling out certain PCs to essentially be the star of the show, at least for a few sessions. This relegates your other players to playing the supporting cast. While I think it is essential that each character has their moment in the sun, this comes in moments--not entire game sessions. This can quickly become very unfair to the rest of the players. Remember, you're dealing with an ensemble cast of characters where the star of the show is the whole party as a collective--it's not dependent on one single character. Next, there is the question of what happens if a character dies and you have lots of game scenarios that depend on that character being present? That's when game elements of the game are being sacrificed to provide the characters plot armor. I've always seen that as a mistake. I'd much rather have one failed roll end a character then have characters who are protected by plot armor. And if you take death off the table, how much of the game really a game anymore? Part of the fun of running low level characters is surviving those early levels---you get to push your characters to their breaking point and sometimes beyond. These are truly some of the very best adventuring levels--when you're fighting like every combat could be your last. One of my players used to joke that ever even numbered level was one the party spent on it's knees, spitting blood. So if you make it to 4th level, you've earned it. From my perspective, death or worse always have to be a possibility. (As I've been working on undead lately, worse than death is a real possibility) Even if it's because of one failed roll. That's akin to, the only reason you got shot was the sniper happened to see you first. You don't have to be doing anything wrong or tactically unsound. You just botched a roll and he caught you in his sight. When I was a teen and in my early 20's I allowed spells like raise dead, but not anymore. In my 30s I made moves to take it off the table by saying the gods of death demanded that another soul must take the risen character's place in the halls of death. So someone, somewhere will die as a result of bringing a character back to life, and the priests don't get to choose whose life gets taken. Most priests of goodly deities won't even entertain such a request, no matter how much gold is thrust at them. (Though evil priests might) What happens if the king's infant son or daughter is as taken by death as the price bringing Nimble Nell the 5th level thief back to life? I don't even do that anymore. For death to have meaning it needs to be permanent.

@@andrewlustfield6079 Then we're playing two different games, we just happen to be sharing part of the rule set. Perma-death is on the table, but not at every waking moment which would more closely resemble being infantry in a trench war. The players don't want the stress of having to be 100% on their game at all times. I've made the mistake of waiting until the players get inattentive to spring something deadly on them. It just makes them paranoid and resentful. I'd rather have ways to say "alright, spa time is over, so put on a helmet". That's when perma-death appears on the table, and sometimes the players say "nah, not today". We've played through so many campaign arcs at this point, and know our builds so well, that we can find it difficult to come up with a character that is in any way memorable or unique. But it's part of the bargain that they'll live long enough to make the effort worth it, otherwise screw it, I'm just gonna recycle something.

@@mal2ksc By the by, Happy New Year. And I'm sure we are running very different styles of games. That said, my game is not super deadly. We have had two character deaths in roughly a year-and-a-half of gaming on a once a month schedule. Both character deaths were a result of dumb luck situations where the monsters rolled nat 20s. Most of the time in combat, I'm not rolling behind the screen, and I'm not tracking character HP either. It's rolling without a safety net to be sure. Unlike PDM on Dungeon Craft, however, (excellent channel by the by), where characters die at zero in his games, I'm more forgiving than that. At zero--you're on the ground, bleeding out 1-2 hp every round. At -10---you're dead. So if someone can't stabilize you in (x) number of rounds, you'll have bled to death. That can create some dramatic and intense moments in combat where characters have to leave the combat order to apply direct pressure to the wound while other characters have to pug the hole in the battle order that opened up. So with this kind of death mechanic, depending on the damage roll, a nat 20 can get you to -10 instantly. Just as one example: an orc's battle axe does 1-8 then add 3 for strength (16 is not an unreasonable Str. for an orc)--say you roll a six. So that's 9 HPx2 for a nat 20--you have 18 HP in one hit. Nat 20's can happen in any combat. So if you're rolling in front of your players, there's never a time when the helmet comes off. My players are quite different than yours. They would pissed at me if they thought I was fudging dice for them. Our current main party is fourth on their way to fifth level now. The back-ups are all still first.

My rule on that is that they could "check out" if there's a reasonable way for them to leave the party temporarily, and this can usually be arranged if they let me know in advance. But if they just don't show, the character is still there and the remainder of the players get to decide what they do. I'll veto acts that are obviously exploitative like having the character give all their gear away, but otherwise the absent player just has to live with the consequences of what was done in their absence. Miss enough sessions and the character effectively becomes a disposable NPC.

Also, we do reschedule. But it's just me and my roommates at the table. If schedules change, we're reliable enough to plan on playing another day.

I am 100% in agreement with a DM saying "I made a bad ruling, it probably led to a bad result, so you get to replay it from the point of the foul". That's just playing fair. In exchange, the players have to accept your rulings, knowing that they'll get a replay or some other compensation if you screw up.