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It would be cool if they went back later with their new characters and encountered the undead versions of their former characters.

Generally if you TPK the party, the players made a serious mistake.

When your DM says you hear a click and hear a bolder coming your way and your players say "let's take a long rest" there deaths are on them

It wasn't your fault. It is common sense that allowing enemies to have "reenforcements" or worse, to ambush them is a bad idea. They should have stood by and ambushed the drummer boys and then afterwards taken a rest. It was clear that the boys were not protecting something as they indeed were slow to catch up with the party.

What's better than having the BBEG's lieutenant kidnap a PC's mom? Having the BBEG's lieutenant BE the PC's mom.

They could have barricaded the doors, even put some traps for the undead following them; they had all the time in the world. They handled this very badly.

The threat of dying needs to be a serious thing, if they know they will always survive, it's not as fun. You did great.

5:36 Well, I'm glad you specified undead zombies, I thought they might be alive

It took me a while to realize this as a DM, but if the PCs dont feel any real threat of death, then there is no drama to the game. There is no tension without that threat of dying, and if there is no tension, the game becomes boring and predictable, and THAT is how you get murder-hobos.

“Not that I’ve *ever* done that.” Roll to bluff.

There is an adage amongst the people who ran the LARP I played. "Stupid should hurt."

"Guys...are you SURE that you want to move on to the next encounter even though I warned you THREE TIMES that there was another encounter tailing you?" "Yeah." "They will continue to follow you even if you start this next encounter." "Yeah let's keep going." "Have you ever heard of the pincer tactic?" "No lol. We keep going." You tried your best. You placed multiple red flags for them and they still decided to go on. It's not your fault at all. In a dungeon negligence of ones situation is the deadliest foe.

Nope it was a fair tpk, I was one of those players. We pressed on, I believe, because we were going through what was described as a sort of maze with multiple turns and we thought we could lose the pursuing monsters. Obviously that didn’t happen. Why I would say I wasn’t mad at luke is not only did we feel like it was our fault but the point at which it got down to me being the only one alive and everyone at the table rooting for me to get out and stay alive was exciting. I was hiding in some tombs off to the side in the boss room and was starting to take out the drummer party one by one but eventually I was simply overwhelmed. POOR N-124!!!

My first TPK? It was the Shadow Hunter. It's a monster in the universe of the RPG I'm GM-ing. It's a postapo world with a lot of crazy monsters. Well, I warned them, they have seen the spoils of its attacks numerous times, they have heard the stories. They have been told that It's impossible to kill it, that you can only run. And they have been told that Hunter never shows in the light, and he dessapears as soon as the battlefield is lit up. They tried to fight him with the night-vision... They had torches and flashlights! The beast has no Damage treshold, because you can't bloody hit it. It teleports around, has insane agility, It's attacks can be evaded only with extremely hard hearing AND agility checks, and did I mention that it can deal *Every* *Single* *Damage* *Type* *In The Game!?* Why isn't it Op? because it dissapears after you turn the lights on! I'TS THE SOLE REASON EVERY PERSON IN THE GAME UNIVERSE IS AFRAID OF THE DARK! I had an NPC *YELL* at someone to "Please set something on fire or turn the fucking lights on before we are all dead!" Aaand they didn't! I gave them all the time in the world, I had the monster RIP A TANK APART before their very fucking eyes and they didn't run... Why? Why did they do it? Why were they trying to hunt it down? Near the end I TOLD THEM THEY CAN'T KILL IT! Sometimes I don't understand the Players at all, were they hoping that I just let them kill the strongest creature like that? because they have a good gun and nv goggles?

I've got to say that I've never had a TPK yet ... Yet. If it happens, it happens. I do my best to give my players sufficient information to make good choices. Well, okay. I do my best to make sufficient information available to my players _should they actively look for_ such information. Sounds like you did the same thing. Nice setup too, man.

I've been DMing for two years, so far I've only had one character death. The Aarakocra ranger decided to chase after an invisible necromancer who was fleeing without the rest of the party. Everyone else was trying to catch up, but had to deal with a couple dozen undead critters (mice, birds, deer, foxes, etc). One lightning bolt and 12 rounds later the party found a crispy chicken.

You cannot save players from their own stupidity. After multiple chances to deal with a threat that is tracking them, they continue to ignore it.... it was their call, they face the consequences.

When players get cocky and act like demigods a tpk is just waiting for them. TPKs are important for the game

Being really new to D&D and to being a DM, your videos have really helped me with trying to figure out ways to cultivate an exciting, challenging, yet enjoyable tabletop experience mainly impart because your videos don't feel like a tutorial that I have to sit through. They are very enjoyable to watch and yet I still am able to gather a lot of useful info. Thank you so much on the tips and I'm really excited to see your new videos

0:20 "Are you sure you wanna do that?" ~Gygax Making us question our lifes choices since 1974.

Honestly u gave them tons of chances to deal with the situation in various ways. So in my eyes you are completely in the right. I recently had 3 players die during a encounter against a few imps and two gargoyles. I mentioned to them how strong they seemed to be and that reinforcements were able to be heard, they chose to keep fighting. In the end it resulted in a techinal TPK, however 1 of the PC's is gonna make a return due to some very smart choices he made

When you whip it out 🍤 Her explaining to her friends: 14:35

A classic sandwich splits the front line force... you'll need a large group of like 6 ppl imo to really handle that... which is why you should try to prevent that as a player lol

That was quite the lesson you had there, kudos on the story telling ability you have there. I wonder if some of them were too focused on roleplaying, and knew their character would be too dumb too realize it is a bad idea to continue on without taking care of 1 threat at a time? - I am glad it essentially worked out for you and your group, I am sure it was a great learning experience in more ways than one for your players, both in and out of game. I am glad you mentioned that you dont always move the "tower" or "big bad"/the encounter in the direction of the players. Sometimes it is indeed better to improvise a little even if your players aren't aware that you are doing so.

5% chance override rules = 1/20 I see what you did there 🧐

They were about as bad as the group that said "You don't have the rocks to kill us!"

What i like to do if I want players to be alerted to a danger: make the players take a wisdom check. These are experienced adventurers who should have a sense of when danger is coming and where danger will be. Its like if the players cant figure out a seemingly obvious riddle and making them take an intelligence check to ‘give’ them a tip through their own character’s intelligence. Players are rarely as intelligent as their 20 int wizard. Players are rarely wise to how dangerous dungeons actually are. Sometimes you need to supplement traits that a player couldnt practically have because players unfortunately are not their own character, however similar they may be. Note: this is just my way of avoiding tpks because even though my party has yet to get angry at me over their own mistakes, it isnt as fun when they get invested in a character and they die or they get stumped at a riddle door for half an hour IRL when i planned for it to take 5 minutes

If my players can find a non-standard way to end a combat encounter (such as smoke bombing out) with the items I've given them throughout the campaign, or talk their way out of a fight, or anything like that, I typically treat it as if they won the battle, because they did. They obviously don't get loot off the bodies and can't go back through the room where the enemies lived, but they did overcome the obstacle.

I really like this! This is especially helpful when you have people who have no idea what an RPG is. I want to get my cousins into D&D but considering they don’t know a lot about rpgs or even high fantasy tropes I’m going to have to baby them through some things at first. But I still want them to feel the danger and know that they can’t just do stupid things all the time.

In my experience, when the DM smiles, that means something funny is about to happen. But if they give you a "I'm so sorry" look, that's when it's too late. I'm referring the shirt he's wearing.

I remember my first TPK. Back in 3.5 We came across this little town. The ground was muddy in fact everything was caked in mud and brush. We entered into a chapel and our perception checks shows that the inside of the buildings walls are also caked in mud all the way up to the roof. We discovered that the entire town would sink and rise occasionally and the chapel began to slowly descend into the ground with us in it. We went to run out and we were ambushed by an Anti-Party. My Dwarven barbarian died instantly to an arrow of dwarf slaying. (I rolled terribly low like a 2,3.) that left our elven rogue, dwarven cleric, human fighter and human wizard to fight the 5 team Anti-Party. With the chapel slowly descending and this team we were faced against were obviously higher level than us the rest of the team tried to escape. Unfortunately only a few party members were able to make it out of the chapel laving the fighter and the cleric inside to fight a few members of the anti team. To cut it short they ended up bursting through a window and the fight continued outside. Our party lost. We didn’t even take down one of the enemies party. Although our fighter and wizard lit up a couple of their team members we ultimately failed. We couldn’t believe what had just occurred. We lost. Our DM at the time told us that this party was two levels higher than all of us. And they had better magical gear. Our DM told us he was wanting to change into a different world and wanted to see if the party had any chance at all at defeating his anti party. (We didn’t) However we all came to the agreement that we had been playing this team for a long time (over a year) and we were all getting excited to enter into Stormwrack (can’t remember the name exactly) but it was a water world. Anyways. TPKs can suck sometimes but you can always make a new character.

We had 2/3 of the party die to a swarm of elemental (including my character). This was mostly bad luck, bad rolls and the fact i was the main healer and went down on the first round of combat due to my poor positioning.

The way you voice the rogue makes me feel like you don't think much of him but I could be reading too deep into a silly voice lol Great video and story. This is the kind of thing that makes me want pick up the DM mantle and give it a try. I've only played one game as one of two players, and the only thing I can remember about it was my friends kicking open a door causing otherwise peaceful centaurs to become hostile. Good times.

Lol @ wangrod DMs! Yeah, I have done that too. Fortunately my players were able to undo a serious mistake with a wish from a luckblade. It would have resulted in a party wipe, but the druid carrying the luckblade saw my reaction and panicked.

I like the red and blue to distinguish the two differing points of view. Very helpful, thanks

This has to be my favorite DND channel

Definitely entertaining to watch, bonus came from the woo! when seeing the stack of Wheel of Time books in the background.

TPKs are nearly always either the result of the players completely ignoring something the DM put in front of them or DM accidentally making an encounter way too hard and telegraphing it as something manageable. DM of mine did the latter twice. In a row. First they threw a black dragon wrymling at our 1st level party (killed the wizard instantly) and then later someone we were told was just a generic thief turned out to be a Veteran fighter and nearly killed us all. These would have been TPKs had the DM not scrambled to save us both times. The wizard didn’t actually die; when we counted the damage from the acid breath and announced that the wizard was well and truly dead (23 damage vs 9 hit points is deader than dead), the DM gave us a pained expression, rolled 1d100 and said “uh, no, you’re not dead. You’re fine.” After another round of trying to run away from this wrymling that was way faster than all of us, a Young Bronze Dragon swooped down and killed it for us. It was extremely unsatisfying, especially since we were basically forced into the encounter in the first place. The time with the Veteran was a situation we got into because our rogue picked a fight, but we were given no indication that this guy was so strong. In fact, the DM explicitly said that he looked like a generic goon before we attacked, at which point he was suddenly revealed to be *LUCILLIAN FALKINTHOR, FIRST OF HIS NAME AND SCION OF DRAGONS*. I, a squishy vampire, was downed immediately. Our winged tiefling flew me to safety into the top floor of an inn and the rogue fled into the inn itself. Again, rather than letting the chips fall where they may, the DM had a passing wizard jump in and decimate him with a beefed up Magic Stone spell. Again, super unsatisfying. Tl;dr - the DM didn’t want to kill characters at all, but accidentally put us in situations where we were almost certain to die through sheer bad luck or poor information and then used DM fiat to rescue us much to everyone’s dissatisfaction. Similar things have happened with other DMs too, like when we got swarmed by ghouls in a sewer and the DM had a weird siren 🚨 put them to sleep without explanation (clearly they made it up on the spot to save us). This was after I explicitly said it was ok to let the encounter play out however it was going to, even if it led to our deaths! Sigh. Basically DMs, don’t pull your punches unless you can adequately hide the fact. If you can’t come up with satisfying or interesting ways to do that, don’t bother. May I suggest the method of giving players opportunities rather than wins when they’re in trouble? Let’s take the wrymling scenario. Rather than having the dragon just swoop down to help, maybe the DM could have placed an old ruined fort nearby with a ballista mounted on the wall. The encounter would go from unwinnable to a mad dash to get to the ballista in time to kill this dragon. For extra points, the DM could have chosen not to recharge the breath weapon by pretending to never roll a 6 on the recharge die. And as for the Veteran scenario, the simplest solution would have been that the wizard was unwilling to join the fight unless we did her some kind of favour, maybe an unpleasant one. That way, the win feels earned because we had to give something to get something. Obviously, when you’ve already been DMing for an hour or two and you’re panicking that your party is going to die, such solutions don’t always come to mind. All I can say is that you need to practice this sort of thing to get good at it. Talk to other DMs constantly and soon you start to think in the right ways. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I think I’ve improved a lot over my time DMing to the point where I can give this sort of advice. No mistake, I have a loonnnnng way to go though 😅

"... and he parishes along with the rest of his adventuring party." *continues same campaign but with undead characters controlled by the drummers that all serve under the fallen angel

Age of Worms had a room in the second module where my group TPK'd twice. It inherently presses the party into a room surrounded by most of the dungeon's monsters.

extra waterskins, soap, and ball bearings make a great way to slow things that are trying to catch you down.

Honestly deserves so many more subscribers

"Hahaha, I'm special." That's great.

I had a near TPK situation last session, it was the first time I broke out of my "DM Character" and told the group they had a choice, 1 Guranteed TPK, 2 Fight gets a lot harder but still feasible, 3 I ignore the druids desicion to cast thunder wave in a cave system filled to the brim with cultist and there bodyguards/leaders. I gave them the option because ita a group of 6 with 4 relatively new players. It was a good learning point for them, everything has a consequence especially loud spells.

Subscribed, been watching a lot of your videos lately thanks for the content and ideas

Yeah, I had one yesterday, first one. My Party made a wrong decision, and I hinted as Luke says. They just didn't listen

I love your party characters so much. They’re all great and hilarious.

I’m jelly of your backdrop man. I love that shelf

Awesome as always. Greetings from Germany

Found you by accident, loving the content, had to subscribe.

Very good as always mate!

HA ! Your Player character impersonations are so enjoyable that I just might have TO add you onto my game's movie's cast selection...

Just a suggestion but I generally say you feel a essence of great power ahead

I had a pseudo-TPK happen in the last session I played. (I was not the DM, though.) We needed to get a handful of supplies for a divine blacksmith to string his magical repeaters. One of the materials he needed was three handfuls of werewolf fur. We were fully aware that werewolves were bound to find us eventually if we ventured far enough from camp, but this divine blacksmith knew someone who eventually became a werewolf alpha. He told us where his old friend's den was, and we headed in that direction to attempt diplomacy with werewolves. We walked right into their territory, no ambush. So far, so good. Then, one werewolf reveals himself to us. He demands to know why we've entreated upon his territory. After he reveals himself, a few more pop up. And we know that there are even more beyond the darkness that surrounds us. We were surrounded; one werewolf would be an ordeal, but we could see six, and knew there might be dozens more. Combat means death here. We attempted diplomacy. We asked for three handfuls of fur. The werewolf alpha mercifully humors us. "Why would I give you my fur?" Then the paladin chimed in. "Give us your fur, or we will kill you." The Shadow Monk/Rogue hybrid was the only one fast enough to get away. Everyone else got turned. The paladin player had to say "Hey, lawful good doesn't mean lawful nice."

The moment your players had been sure they was being followed is when the choice was up to the players. If anything the wise player would have stopped, waited in one place, and prepared their surroundings to make the battlefield give them an upper hand when the drummer boy undead comes.

Sounds like fair result to me. Ignoring very obvious DM nudging is generally a poor decision, but sometimes it can work out in some fun ways. I've discussed previously my party's escapade in assaulting the less sophisticated of a city's 2 Thieves' Guilds, but I didn't discuss the aftermath. Grab some popcorn. This'll take a while. The building was burned down, but we decided to take a look inside anyways, knowing that the real valuables would remain intact. Since our Wizard was by far nicest too the random pickpocket that we had, ahem, _convinced_ to spill the beans, the thief told him how to find their vault underground before bolting off into the sunset. Several hidden doors, disarmed traps, and _not_ disarmed traps (I and the Bloodhunter started standing about 20 ft back and taking bets on whether the Wizard would notice the explode-y thing on every door. He ended up 1 silver up on me by the end.), we made it in, and were not disappointed. These guys had been raiding tax shipments for months, and man did it show. Almost 20,000 gold worth of coin, all neatly tucked into a few chest. Being that it had already been written up as a loss, we decided it was only fair to avoid burdening some poor scribe with re-filing the paperwork. The only issue being that there was no way we could carry all of our coin by hand, and the Bag of Holding we'd ordered previously wouldn't be ready for pickup until the next morning. So, we did what any party would- we closed up all the well hidden doors we'd come in through, and camped on top of the gold. Looking back on it, the DM was already using his "are you sure about that?" voice (which would come up repeatedly that session) at that point, but we were too excited to notice or care. We'd been having a run of bad luck lately, and this was exactly the sort of windfall we were hoping could change the tides. The night went by pretty uneventfully. A thief came back during my watch, but was quickly and easily dispatched, and there was a shuffling sound from the sewer exit during the Bloodhunter's, but nothing really came of it. The morning came, and we decided to send the Wizard out to pick up the bag while the rest of us guarded the trove. We knew that probably meant being benched as players for a bit, but we didn't mind. This is where the fun starts. The Wizard heads out through the sewer exit, and hears more shuffling. He didn't see the source but managed to avoid it. Those sewers are more like catacombs to be honest- a combination of more modern sewage tunnels, and the leftover bones and structures from several older civilizations that had stood on this spot. Creepy crap was pretty normal down there, so he didn't think much about it. Things at surface level, however, were _weird._ City was like a ghost town. Streets empty, shutters closed, doors locked. So, Alexander the wizard does as Alexander the Wizard does anytime he gets moderately nervous- he cast Invisibility. When he gets to the gate for the Academy district, where our bag should be waiting, it's closed, properly barred, and surrounded by guards. It's also just short enough to Misty Step over. You can guess what happened there. Now in the Academy District, Alexander realized the source of all the commotion outside: the place was filled to the brim with zombies and ghouls trotting the streets. His greed beat out his sense, and he carried on. Unfortunately, he's not very good at stealth, and ended up with a train of zombies waddling after his footsteps. He makes it to the shop, looks in through a window, and Misty Steps inside, dropping Invisibility and calling out for the shop owner. The DM rolls dice to see if the owner even recognizes him (it had been a week, after all). He does. DM then rolls dice to see if he just disintegrates Alexander on principle. He does not. Alexander manages to convince the understandably irritated gentleman to give him the bag, but pushes his luck too far by asking if he can take a short rest inside the shop. The Shopkeeper laughs, cast what I'm pretty sure was Scatter, and Alexander finds himself outside the store, surrounded by a mob of zombies, utterly gassed of second level spells. Thank Helm for Shield. By the time he manages to find a build tall enough that the undead forget about him and go back to their general business of mulling around moaning after he climbs it, he's down to about 5 hit points, and zip on spell slots. It was about this time, I feel it warranted to mention, that my character (Alsen) and the Bloodhunter (Zaleir) started playing "Go Fish." Tense moments from this point forward were often intercut by "Got any 2s?" and the like. Alexander got a short rest on the building, taking back a bit of HP and regaining a single, 2nd level slot. Using his familiar, he managed to scope out the optimal pathway to the district gate, and got about halfway there before getting spotted and drawing in another horde. He narrowly dodged a couple swings, and just barely got close enough to the gate to Misty Step onto it. It was at that point which he heard "Oi, cap'n! One uv those things climbed up onta the gate!" What followed was a volley of crossbow bolts (thankfully only one of which hit), and a barely made dex save to not fall off the top of this thing. Alexander's response was fair, but unfortunate: "Ow!" "Cap'n, it's still up there moanin at us!" Another volley. Luckily, these all missed, and Alexander had the sense to yell "I'm not dead you morons" at his assailants. He managed to climb down, got a solid dressing down for ignoring lockdown procedures, and then made his way back to us to relay events and pack up our coin in the newly acquired bag. So, that's the story of how we accidentally slept through a miniature zombie apocalypse, and sent our Wizard on shopping trip where he nearly died horribly at least 4 times before 11AM. Moral of the story: It's never wise to ignore the DM dropping hints, but it can sure be entertaining.

I think the best move in that situation would have been the DM forcing the encounter with their pursuers. Justify it with some lame excuse, like „Yeah they used a secret passage and infront of you you see a sarcophagus that is leaning against the wall pop open with xx enemies blocking your path further into the crypts“

This is gold. Yes, let them make the ‘wrong’ decision. Verisimilitude. Brilliant!!!

The barbarian certainly is special! My favorite of your characters.

Can you do a video; - on friendly fire with projectiles and melee? - on automatic weapons (if there is such an expansion for D&D)? - on how to manage the group when they split up im the dungeon so they can cover more ground?

DMing for 38 years now I have only a handful of TPK stories (most of the time I like to have a character live to tell the horrible tale of their demise)...first one was Isle of Dread. The party had done well in exploring the northern half of the island where they docked their ship but upon reaching the southern end they were ambushed during a nights rest by rakasta riding sabre-toothed tigers. 5 out of 8 were killed in that attack. Already having stockpiled a ton of treasure onto the ship they decided to split up increasing their chances that one of them would go home rich. And one did. But after surviving all of that and returning home he was defeated by an aquatic fresh water hydra while trying to get the loot home on a raft. The second near TPK was when a party of 12 unwittingly released Zuggtmuy from her prison on level 3 of the T.E.E.. Once again after she went on a rampaging killing spree the party split up thinking once again, (Cue Scooby-Doo chase scene music) "she can't kill us all before some of us escape if we split up", knowing that they did a pretty good job of clearing out the first 2 levels of the Temple. Kudos went to the paladin who held her off long enough for 3 other party members to escape. In the Desert of Desolation series 8 went in....4 came out. Ghost Tower of Inverness, same results. You are right death is a necessary part of the game it also usually separates the weak from the strong. There were also a few low level TPK's not worth remembering the details....usually those involve either spiders or undead.

MY first TPK... My party decided that it was a good idea to rest in castle Ravenloft.

Honestly was more then fair for you to tpk them. And hey, at least they took it pretty well too! I’ve never Dmed (I’ve only just started playing DND) but there was one time where we did a one off for the holidays that turned into a TPK. We were fighting through different rooms, one of our party members found a lamp and essentially tried to wish that everyone besides us died. Needless to say, they didn’t exactly word it right and our DM has the djin does exactly what the character asked, and our world basically imploded on us killing us all. Quickest end to a Christmas one off ever. We haven’t had any characters permanently die in our actual campaign yet. (Though their were ones that retired, and I say permanently died since The whole premise of most of our party is that we were revived to help save the world, and one of us became a lich who had died a bunch and would just come back.) My character has gotten pretty close to death a few times though.

I ran into something like that as a player. We had knights and guards following behind us that our GM had planned as a combat encounter, but we thought of it as a timer we had to outrun. So they were a lot closer than we thought and caught us unprepared and really badly positioned when initative was rolled.

This is the first of your videos I've seen, and my first thought was, "Does this guy LARP? If he does, that's very cool." My second, "Nice shelving unit(s)."

A big mistake I made as an early DM was to let my players explore each room as an isolated compartment. Letting them rest and tackle each room as if the others next to and nearby didn't exist. Not only did it make things less believable but more dangerous is I taught my players bad habits (charge, nuke, rest, repeat). Now I try to think ahead and look at the big picture - teach my players good habits.

"Never leave a living enemy behind you." -Sir Ulath, Sparhawk series

Dude, great visual ques.

I punish poor tactical decisions without mercy. You gave them opportunities to rectify the situation and they chose not to.

This is why Stone Shape or any other type of instant barricade spell is always useful on hand. Even if they can break down the wall, it'll still buy you a few rounds to come up with a plan.

I remember the time my Warforged Juggernaut Barbarian Frenzied Berserker (before he started taking levels into Legendary Dreadnought) nearly TPK'd the party. Kept failing the will save to get out of Frenzy as that character had a -2 Wisdom modifier (6 wisdom). Did about 600 damage off of just a single swing and cleaving off every person in the party in range (4 of the other players) and launched them into the other party members that weren't in range (large scale Warforged, with a large scale Talenta Sharrash with a monster trait that let him launch anything smaller per attack). Just managed to make the will save to stop after that attack. Needless to say, the Artificer in our party got up with a NPC Wizard that our party were good friends with and essentially created a Remote Control system for my character. Funnily enough, the Artificer had the funny idea to add in an alarm system on my character as well when he entered Frenzy, like the panic function on a car lol. If you wondered how he cleaved off the party members without killing them, the DM interpreted a successful cleave as when an enemy "fell." That meant, to him, if the enemy died, was knocked down by the attack, or launched by the attack.

My players were in a Kruthik Hive, looking for stuff they needed to craft some magic items. It was a 5 player party, all lvl 6. Later, the Wizard casts Fireball (obviously) which shakes the tunnels and makes a large explosion. This attracts many Kruthiks, 8 adults and 5 young. The Monk goes down, and the Warlock dies. They then have a short rest, and SPLIT THE PARTY. They go into separate tunnels, and are ambushed. Wizard and Monk are cornered, and killed. The last 2 players encounter a Black Pudding, and are trapped from behind by 2 adult Kruthiks. They died. They shouldn’t have split the party, and we’re taught a hard lesson. They haven’t split since.

I'm doing a three-session wrap-up for a several month long campaign for just two players. The first two sessions are the PCs finding powerful artifacts that are supposedly going to make them as powerful as a god, and then the final session is going to be the big final battle to end the campaign. But just a few nights ago we did that first session, and it took place at the bottom of an ocean, they had the spell 'Water Bubble' inscribed on scrolls to allow them to retrieve the artifact and defeat the beast that protected it. This big final battle was literally down to the wire. One of the PCs got out with a measly 2 HP. Both of the PCs had been swallowed by this giant underwater creature, and it was all up to their adventuring partner(An NPC Healer that was following them and a good friend of one of the PC's, because none of them were healers and they desperately needed it). But anyways, this was the end of the battle. The creature had 4HP left, both PCs were swallowed and not going to survive another round bathing in it's stomach acids, and the Water Bubble spell was about to run out of time. The NPC healer has advantage on her attack and rolls 2d4's. An extremely unfortunate 3 damage. I had written the second session already, and had some ideas for the final boss fight. The player's had been extremely hyped up and desperate, clawing for any bit of extra damage or HP they could muster a reasoning for. When I saw the creature's 4HP and the 3 damage on the NPC's attack I felt like I'd be cheating them to end the campaign with a TPK on the first part of a 3 part wrap-up. So I acted it out, pretending to be getting excited and using my magic DM powers, turned that 3 damage into a 4(without letting the players know of course), the NPC saved them in the nick of time, barely managing to slice through the beast, the water bubble spell ran out as they swam towards the surface, and while their lungs felt like they were on fire, they all just barely managed to get to the surface, their blood tainting the oceans. Sorry for the long story, but the reason I shared this was to ask, do you guys think I should've allowed the players to be TPKed by this sea monster? Perhaps as it should've? I'm typically not one to fudge dice rolls, but I really didn't want to dishearten the party while they were so close to that big campaign wrap-up.

Loved it, more please

About the backstory thing, i can say from experience. Its a great way to get some party drama and possibly bonding. For instance, i was playing a Fighter who had his tongue cut out while he was a slave, and my DM put a city that ran of off slavery. Not only that, but there was a resistance that fought agains the slavers, and while my character was very much for this resistance, and helped them out a hell of alot more than the party knew, he did find out that they would occasionally burn down camps, killing the slaves. He came across one to find a lot of old friends while he was a slave burned to death. This created some interesting conflict

I for one applaud you good sir. I was in a very similar situation - where my world is Open World and I encourage my players to "Get off the beaten path once in awhile", and yet for this campaign I gave a couple of hints here and there, as to where they should go next..... completely ignored. An Incubus puts the moves on the elf, and her guardian (A Wilden(fey) Warden) goes nuts and makes it his personal mission to cut the incubus's .... sword .... off. And so the party goes on this side campaign quest to hunt down the incubus lol It was a fun time, but it was the wrong way :P And now we've lead down a whole different path than I intended (like they are attempting to assassinate the Empress of a foreign invading country because one of the villain NPCs was preparing to do that - the villain being the elf girl's father - and lots of political BS going on in the background of the world). So the players ended up killing the villain but later decided to resurrect him to get his help against the Empress to finish the job! (btw the Empress is actually an ancient gargantuan red dragon who considers her empire as her horde in the guise of an elven woman)

ah, the wizard, the voice of reason in any party.

Ah man... My first top was such a nightmare. I set up a low level encounter against a crazy druid with a single owlbear. It was just a quick encounter to get them primed for the session. The rolls were horrific! The druid was the single most powerful mook in the history of mookdom. I needed at least 1 member of the party alive to keep the campaign going because of a choke point in the plot... That's when I learned to keep plots flexible. More like story boards than full fledged epics.

My first TPK where my first actual running of D&D as a DM. The players expected that the boss where going to be a smooth sailing, but due to multiple hurdles, it became my first TPK. I apollogied to the players afterwards. I did not want it to end up at a TPK

Great video. Thak you so much Sir! :-)

I'm really new to DM'ing D&D and I haven't run a game in almost 10 years and getting a TPK is a really scary concept to me which hopefully won't come up any time soon, but in your case thete was ample warnings, nothing else you could do

I had this awesome area planned out. Basically a hall of heroes. In this place they would face powerful enemies but get great treasures In this hall i had statted out some of the great dnd heroes (Drizzt, artemis, the dragonlance heroes and such) and knowing how powerful and dangerous this place one the group made some really good plans to deal with it. However the last battle. . .they just failed The setup was mage in the back, barbarian holding the line. my thought was they would try to get someone past the barbarian to deal with the mage. Tactics 101. . .they didnt. . .the whole group decided to fight the barbarian and take him down first. . .it was a slaughter because the mage just fired off spells while the barbarian just soaked up the damage. I was shocked that not a single player decided to stop the mage or even ready an action to shoot him while he casted

I often lamented that so few players want to give out any backstory beyond "family is dead I'm all alone and decided to go on an adventure" this is regardless if I am a player or the GM. While players might love having a personal stake a lot in my experience also seems to think that GMs will just use the backstory to "screw" the player over by having said backstory character kidnapped, killed, or betray them. I am guessing that many players feel that they are "railroaded" if you draw on a character's relationship or similar "forcing" them to act against their own wishes and are "forced" to act as the character would want. Also, the players made the wrong choice and went to the swamp and went with it for a LONG time despite nothing relevant showing up (and probably dooming the kidnapped villagers) and when they finally got to the tower they decided to easy mode it right from the start ie. ignoring the initial encounter, failing to capitalize on the fleeing undead and just continuing on, failing to deal with the pursuers on all three occasions it was hinted. No, not your fault, they were at this point willfully ignorant and suffered the inevitable consequence. I am, however, applauding their reaction to it, TPK can make things a bit sour.

How to know if someone is a good story teller. Step 1 like a video. Step 2 have a good memory. Step 3 listen on the edge of your seat as he or she retells the story. step 4 Realize it is all subjective. Step 5 If their name is the dm lair. - Seriously though, love the stories you tell of you and your party, it is quite captivating listening/hearing how you and your friends tackle adventures.

Sometimes events have to unfold for there to be an outcome. In my courent campaign I placed a recurring Black Paladin (antipaladin) who grows in level as my players do. It's a twist to have that ever present challenge that is always a day or two, or a week, ahead of the party. Directly involved in the plot of a levels 1 to 18 chain of old-school (1E) modules and side tracks. I love leaving bread crumbs, to see if anyone is paying attention to the storyline.

Honestly, TPKing the party WAS mercy. Could you imagine having that one surviving character roleplay all of his friends perishing and then having to face that he was partially to blame, and then going back with a new party, maybe even the party who saved him at the expense of one of their own member, to finish the job. Could you imagine the raw tragedy of being the sole survivor?

This sounds super fun and it makes me wish I was still there to play with you. :-(

Total Party Kill... I need to remember that because this whole time I've been watching Dnd vids, I never knew what tpk meant until now. 😅

Silence in the drummer boys? Aim for the drum and wait for that Nat 20 attack.

Is your wizard Gandalf with the Elder Wand? That's hilarious!

I ran a homebrew adventure a while ago that I’d designed for 5th level characters. I nearly got a TPK with the Rug of Smothering I’d set up as a special encounter. That CR 2 monster can punch way, way above its weight.

Enemies sneaking up behind you? This sounds like a job for Delayed Fireball!

The barbarian must be ascended to be able to communicate with the party from that distance

lol great story with practical advice!

One time I was playing a tabletop rpg and we were in a similar scenario as a town we were in was about to get swarmed with undead. I quickly came up with and improvised a plan which I convinced the other players to go along with. It involved some trenches, TNT, a detignator, and some spoons and other silverware. Basically we had spoons and silverware on a string and dynamite around the town before they got there. So every time an undead came near the silverware would act like a wind-chime if they got too close letting me know which trap to spring since I now knew where the noise came from.

The group I used to play with always made sure that everything we encountered was dead or truly neutralized before moving on. In this particular scenario, the first time we heard the drummer boys' music behind us, we would have turned and fought them. This TPK was definitely the party's fault.

I remember a TPK where my players where trying to escape from a lair, and a heavy armored cleric was trying to pass through 10 guards (I told him about the problem of sneaking around wearing heavy armor), so he failed the Stealth check, and he found himself being chased by 10+ guards. The cleric ran where his partners were taking a small rest and the TPK happened. They were not happy but they understood why they died, and learned about it.

I genuinely believe that it’s the players done goofed

My favorite near TPK moment is when a player that wasn't really digging my game disengaged from a room that the rest of the party was exploring, threw a stone in a massive unlit cavern triggering a random encounter check and subsequently a drow mage and a pack of subservient muscle. She took her time observing this character and held her hand up to the two enslaved quaggoths as to silence them, she heard the voices of the other characters and waiting until they were all clustered, cast a cloudkill spell at them, killing this one guy and severely hurting everyone else. What followed was a tense, tactical battle where my players employed their abilities to compromise the mage while their muscle could bottleneck her quaggoths and everyone but that guy had a blast. I don't intervene in my games because it robs players of their agency and victories, it also taught me that people should really solve their problems OUT of game and not use the game to passive-aggressively do it FOR them. I also TPK'd another party that decided to explore a sepulcher under a hollowed, opalescent, gilded obsidian tree when they were transported into the feywild. Breath weapons, 5' wide hallways and side initiative may have been involved but at least I opened the encounter with a parley where I could reasonably demonstrate that these guys did not want them there.