𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐎𝐍 - Monthly high-quality D&D 5e adventures and DM resources ▶▶ www.patreon.com/thedmlair 𝐊𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑 - Pre-Order my level 1 to 5 adventure module, Into the Fey, here ▶▶ www.kickstarter.com/projects/thedmlair/into-the-fey Snagjaw Castle Part 2 (where the TPK happens) ▶▶ kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rLmFqNh0p6y9pas.html

Now that the rogue is dead, he should reincarnate as a pyromaniac arcane trickster. His catchphrase: blasty blasty

Honestly that is a fair TPK

This story reminds me of an incident from one of my own campaigns that we universally refer to as "the Battle of the Balcony." Essentially, the party had broken into the mansion used as a base by a mafia-like group they had really pissed off. They managed to go around the back, climb over a wall and get in through a second-floor window. They then took out a security patrol before it could react, which was pretty cool, but also involved explosions and gunfire because this was Pathfinder and we had an Alchemist. So they quickly aggro'd the ENTIRE building, which approached the second-floor landing they were on. Fortunately, I had the foes come in waves and the PCs specialized in battlefield control abilities, but it was still insane. One highlight was when the Wizard trapped himself in a side room with an invisible enemy wizard, and his turns consisted of rolling saving throws and picking random squares to shoot at. Finally, the party had defeated about 15 enemies (including some elites), took a minute to heal up, and moved forward... to immediately run into another wave of enemies. After defeating that, their sometimes-friend NPC who rents people devils approached the mafia boss and gave him a limited-time offer of some elite devils in exchange for a pile of cash. He agreed and so the party was beset by these devils and Fiendish Bison (TM) conjured via Summon Monster. This almost killed a PC. (Not the fiendish bison, specifically, but bleed damage from another foe.) The party retreated to another side room and healed up yet again (aided by a pile of healing items the devil-renting NPC secretly sent them as "a finder's fee") before pushing forward and running into a heavily-buffed (and literally enlarged) elite. After taking THAT guy down, they finally, FINALLY reached the boss's office... and found he was long gone, had taken his vital papers and most of his loot with him, and left magic bomb traps on everything. EVERYTHING. (They really hate that guy now.) All in all, it took 4 sessions (which, because of breaks, was a month and a half of real time) for them to secure that corpse-covered balcony once and for all. Well, until the city's invincible warlord showed up and they fled the house, but that's another story. Not a TPK, but the second-closest my players have come. (The closest was when I made five Level 6 PCs, their pet and two allied NPCs fight a CR 11 encounter of ghouls and disabling spellcasters so that a faction could introduce itself by rescuing them. The players thought they were about doomed, but from how things worked out, I am pretty sure that without the reinforcements they would have made it with 1 PC death. Their wiggle room was very low, though.)

Just noticed that the DM screen is a heroes quest boardgame screen. Now I've got to rewatch old episodes to see if it's always been the Dzm screen.

I was hooked to finish the video because you started with Giant Goats. My DM just presented my party with a herd of giant goats recently and we decided to ride them instead of fight them. The dice gods were on our side and we managed to ride these wild giant goats using Dancing Lights to steer them in the direction we wanted to go. (Basically the goats wanted to headbut the figure made of light for a couple hours without bothering to try to buck us off due to really lucky animal handling checks)

It's a fortress, full of enemies, on alert because the alarm just went off. If they go in they know what they're getting into. Sounds like a fun and epic session.

That skit was worth the price of admission for this whole video. Great job.

Hi I just got the dnd starter set. Be happy for me.

Firstly: I love this story Secondly: My qualifications I don’t usually post this stuff publicly but you asked DM for DnD and probably a dozen different game systems since 1990. Professional Voice Actor Actor Freelance Writer Long time fan of the DMs Lair Giant C’thulhu tattoo on my Arm My wife among many others thinks I look like a DnD Dwarf I have references

Simply awesome. More recently I just got done with my Tyranny of Dragons campaign and it ended with only 3 out of 8 alive but victorious. The near TPK, describing their afterlives, and the legendary battle that happened had everyone shocked, overjoyed, and emotional at the end

I haven't had a truly EPIC total party kill in a long time. Oh, there have been some TPKs, but none that scream, "HOLY GUACAMOLE!" like a seven hour struggle with a BBEG. Great story, Luke!

Thanks for sharing your TPK stories! I think there is a lot that a DM can learn by hearing how other DMs resolve these high-stakes moments in games. Very much appreciate your excellent work in these videos and your quality players who makes such stories happen!

Vermilion Snack Jaw; you brought a bunch of orcs. We have a Hulk. Lol

also, the fact that "Sir Weighted Dice" (forgot his name..) was talking loads of crap about the Orcs at the start of the session made the TPK far far funnier!

BTW, Anyone else want to see the goats play d&d in the intro?

A party of lukes fighting poorly esited goats has to be the best concept for a skit i have seen on this chanel

Wow that was bloody cruel. It's almost like the orcs are known for that sort of thing. Fair tpk, and a cool one at that

Blood for the blood God, interaction for the algorithm!

We had a similar situation at Skyreach Castle in Tyranny of Dragons. The group let two kobolds escape an encounter that would barely have been a speed bump if they'd taken it alone. Those kobolds informed the higher-ups and set a pair of wyverns free from the stables. All of a sudden, the PCs are facing the equivalent of four or five encounters at once. I would have gone easier on them, but they'd let a similar thing happen with less dramatic results at Castle Naerytar. I think now they've learned not to let enemies run for reinforcements. Maybe.

Having only the bard survive is pretty sick. They can tell the tale of the fallen party.

Great job as always. You were 100% correct under the circumstance to have the horde forces converge on the player. It is what I would do in that situation and the players could of done things to avoid it

Qualifications for Skits: I have been playing TTRPGs since 2014 and have been GMing since 2016. I have experience in improvisation, voice acting and video editing which I use mostly for my ESL classes to entertain with short stories and when teaching grammar points. One of my favorite things to do as an GM is come up with a wide range of voices, think in depth about character motivations and come up with querks when running games. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me! Thanks in advance for reading my comment.

"The orcs are reaching for their horns. What do you do?" Bard: I cast Silence.

Dear KZfaq “Luke does not completely suck” 🤪. Seriously though, I love the stories you share, and I always look forward to the lead-in skits.

I just recently found your channel last week, and as a new DM I am very grateful to you for your content. It has helped me so much with getting my new campaign together after we finish Dragon of Icespire Peak. Please keep being amazing and if you could choose what kind of deity you were in D&D what would you be the god of? I ask cause it'd be awesome to have you as a Deity in my world.

A 7 hour game session? That is awesome

Love that Hero's Quest DM screen. Brings back memories!

So fun story, one where the DM face palms in disbelief. Different system: Hunter the vigil. When I’m learning a new system I tend to make characters who’s thoughts and motivations are mine. I run myself+ in the game, I find it easier to learn as I can more easily “role play”. Well IRL I’m a retired EOD tech, so that’s what my hunter in the game was. All the characters lived in an apartment complex and had just managed to narrowly kill and unidentified monster that had been stealing toddlers for food from the surrounding area. The next monsters we ran into, albeit without the characters knowledge was one of the cities cabal of vampires. They’d been tracking the monster that had been disturbing their “cattle” and were rather perturbed that the cattle managed to kill the poacher and decided to look a little deeper into it. Our group, being paranoid having just learned that monsters did in fact exist noticed the new rennet acting strangely and investigated a bit our selves. After the back and forth cat and clueless mice routine we decided to have one person confront the suspicious person with the others trying to remain hidden to provide backup just in case. Well not knowing what we were dealing with or how hard it might be to kill it my character made some home made explosives similar to C4 and modified a pair of training grenades to function like actual grenades. And then hooked them to a cell phone to trigger them and strapped em to a modified RC car. Modified to be far more quiet. So while my teammate approached the car the vamp was sitting in to ask him his intentions I drove the rc car under the vamps ass. So when the vamp charmed our scout and convinced him to walk away without giving the signal that all was good, I waited till the scout was clear and blew the vamp to paste. Then, having cleared the apartment of any evidence that might even hint at my connection, made my self busy having an alibi for not having been anywhere near the apartment that day. DM really wasn’t expecting that, had to call the session so he could figure out how that’d play out. Ahh good times. There’s a reason I’m on watchlists....

That skit is great. Glad you told us about your second TPK. That one is pretty good and makes since

Loving the Heroes Quest screen in the opening

Qualifications for Battle Table scenes: -Can do silly voices -Won acting award once -Newer D&D player who wants to learn more -I like your videos!

More war stories such as this would be amazing. Loved it

dope video. can't wait for the next one!

That's some good work there Zach.

14:06 Oh look Fat Cat survived the goats

Attack animation yet with 🐐!! I didn't know I needed this in my life and now it is here I am complete

I was in a really really good 1 shot where a tpk was pretty likely, and heavily hinted at. We had 'points' to acquire for a bit of competitiveness. We knew all of them things we could get points for at the beginning. One of them was 'die gloriously' or something to that effect. I was very disappointed that we didn't die.

A+ commentary as always - goat sounds were ON POINT

The fight montage brought a smile to my face

A TPK is one of the best learning tools out there.

I have been rolling so my players can seen recently. Saves, attacks, damage, all of it. I am on 8 tpks and honestly, each one feels so much less scummy when they can see it all happening

IS THAT A HERO'S QUEST DM SCREEN? THAT'S AWESOME!

I'm LOVING the HeroQuest DM Screen!!

Crazy enough - my first TPK was kind of similar to this. The party had to rescue an NPC from an orc camp inside an abandoned castle in the frozen north. They decided to lure a frost giant (that I mentioned nearby for flavor - this was my second campaign 🤷‍♂️) which meant when they went charging in behind him, they had a whole mess on their hands. They were level 6 and I had already mentioned there was around 50-75 orcs in there. You can do the math.

Great video! Keep up the fine work. You don’t completely suck. 😁

Great stuff friend 👏 👍

Poor Nigel, sole survivor of the sword coast guard, he probably really missed his friends.

Hey Mister Luke! I would love a video full of ideas of after-wipes or TPKs ; where players failed and how as a DM you managed to string something back up for the campaign to continue. A video full of examples would rock!

Oh man! Do i love a good TPK story! NICE!

Já chego dando like! Greetings from Brazil.

I play a bard. I think my first move (assuming I have infiltrated the castle while EVERYONE is on alert), would be to cast Tiny Hut. Once we clear out the enemies within the hut, the party can regroup, short rest, and gradually wane the numbers down).

I would take a 1 session epic last stand tpk over a full vanilla adventure any day. Love this game. And your content 🫶

Maybe I'd try out if I were more qualified. Haven't had many friends who play D&D, so my experience is meh. I will be DMing for the first time this coming month, though, so I've been spamming your resources into my head muscles. Thought you deserved a thank you, Zack. Thank you, Zack.

Can't fault this fella. Poor choices should have poor consequences... It's not like a few dice rolls went against them, I'm sure there were several opportunities for the group to bail out. Great video

This sounds like a wonderful time. It’s been awhile since I was in a proper TPK, but I would love to fight off a castle full of orcs like this.

That sounds like a TPK that I would have loved to be in.

If you looking for new characters should do a Goliath pally with the oath of vengeance. However give her the personality of Susan strong from adventure time. Makes for hellla fun

We are playing through storm king's thunder, We are LVL 7 now and mine is the only original character. My character is the one who has the motivation to do this quest, and he's the one who's been convincing new characters to join My character is worried that if he dies, the quest will die with him (obviously I know it won't, but the character thinks it will) It's making it very interesting from a role play perspective, especially during combat

Yet to have a full TPK with any of my parties, but I hope it is as epic as this one. Just have to wait and see

After Squeacky showing up you starting to talk about Patreon made me think: if you sign up the $25 tier you will have access to more cats

I want to try my hand at dming but if I do I’m going to start the campaign off with “tpks are possible” and depending how they play “tpks are likely”

I have a similar story from my last campaign. Except my party were college kids. And the Orcs were giant genetically altered chickens.

I actually created the beginning of a campaign built to introduce new groups... Everyone begins as 1st lvl human fighters or rogues who grew up in a small kingdom and had joined the local military... Over 2 or 3 levels of gameplay, the focus would be defense of home and other missions... At 3rd level, they would be allowed to create a new character with no restrictions, but they wouldn't be able to play them until they gave their original characters a "good death" to be worked out with the DM. The 1st group is destined (without the players knowledge) to be the prologue introducing the players to the much larger world of the campaign. I would have accepted a character to survive if someone actually wanted to keep them. 10 years and counting and I haven't found a group yet.

One time when I was DMing, there was a monster that by itself wasn't likely to TPK necessarily (though it possibly could) however it WAS extremely likely to permanently kill at least 1 PC if given the opportunity. All of the players seemed to be extremely attached to their characters, in addition to the specific relationship forming between each of these specific characters, so even 1 PC death would be deviating to them I'm sure. This monster used it's first turn to instantly kill a different monster that the PCs were heavily struggling against earlier, which should have shown that this was not something to take lightly. I even gave them one turn where this monster wasn't paying attention to them, as sort of an opportunity for them to flee, especially since the party wasn't currently at maximum capability. However, they decided to fight to the death anyways. It didn't actually result in anyone dying, since they got extremely lucky, and they were able to deal a significant amount of damage in each of their turns, so they downed the creature in 2 full rounds, with it only using 1 of those rounds to try and kill a player, but it missed since it rolled a 3 to hit. That being said, I was legitimately scared they were going to die, and it makes me nervous for the future, because eventually it's inevitable that they'll face something they cannot fight and survive.

Great TPK story. I have yet to have a TPK.. but i'm still hopeful :)

Ive always wished for a combat situation like this. Ive been in several skin of the teeth encounters but hours??? That would be cool

I definitely would have done the same thing and I am glad you agreed! My group has on several occasions come close to a tpk but luckly they have evaded each time :)

I liked and commented so KZfaq knows the DM Lair doesn't completely suck.

Good job 👍

One problem with playing the enemy smart (all the time) is that often the enemy in total is far superior in numbers (and power) then the group. That always becomes a problem when running adventures in castles or mansions (or similar places). First battle, they start shouting, alerting the entire place, everyone comes running. The End. It's a difficult balancing act, doing that too many times and the PCs will never even try to get inside the place to do the adventure because they know its more then likely that the entire place will crash down on them more or less instantly.

I appreciate you looking at sandbox vs railroad, but I think it would be good to look at sandbox vs open world as well. Many get those two confused.

I've been in battles that took 'several' sessions to resolve.

That TPK made a great story!

7:46 "I'm thinking my players are going to retreat" - yeaaah, no. Not happening. I had planned a "retreat" scenario twice and both resulted in a near-TPK. Scenario 1: Every round, 2-4 new enemies spawn semi-randomly on the map. The quote from that encounter: "They die in 1 hit, we can take them." 3/5 died there, 2 of which got Reincarnated, because the party were helping out a druid camp. Although they did lose all of their gear that actually mattered and got no reward. Scenario 2: Ancient Ironscale Hydra, where the main body was underground and only its heads were visible - each head was considered as an individual creature with 35 HP, but otherwise identical to the statblock (some other common sense restrictions were also applied, like no multiattack and movement restrictions). The encounter was planned that when it lost about half its total head count (it had 16 at the start, 8 on the surface) it crawled out (end session). (Between sessions) Quote: "Yeah, we should have ran when it ate our horses in one bite each. Time for new characters." (Next session) I did come up with a way to help them out, without it being *too* forced - the mud they were in rushed into the now open space of where the Hydra was resting. My "mercy" was - make this save and you have a chance of escaping, anyone that fails is almost certainly going to die. Everyone made the save. One PC still died, another one was saved because the Hydra got shrunk by Enlarge/Reduce and the damage reduction from that was enough to keep him alive.

Qualifications - I have a DnD campaign which I run as the DM. It's posted on KZfaq if you wanna watch. I kinda guessed that the intro was a joke but it's nice to think that it wasn't lol

Fair and just TPK. Excellent DMing. Orcs fall (on them), people die.

I know a great guy who'd love to be in your skits. He's very experienced with D&D and has been DMing for a long time. If I recall, he's been doing it since High School actually. I'm sure he'll be in touch.

Every TPK is a new opportunity to start a jailbreak plot.

In all honesty, I would probably let the last standing character win. Especially if it was a close battle. That would make the session way more enjoyable. And it would not feel unearned to the players, because it was such a close battle.

Funny coincidence that this video got released right before my villain is bringing a murder party for my game's PCs. They killed the villain, but didn't check to see for any come-back-to-life stuff... Even though they're in a campaign where they can come back to life. I introduced the Villain's allies. They've been scrying on my players to get their battle tactics. And have come up with a way to potentially murder the PCs. I can't wait to see what happens!

Most TPKs follow a series of either bad rolls, bad choices, or both. Imagine my surprise when a group of level 3 heroes decide to stay on a sinking ship to fight a lone cockatrice on deck (being smuggled by pirates)...and then proceed to never roll over a 7 on a saving throw. Sure, the petrification only lasts 24 hours, but by that time, they're at the bottom of the sea.

We've been waiting for the CoS group to TPK, but this confirms we need to wait until level 10, guys!

Not that the Videos themself aren't worth watching BUT theese sketches are the best part

Nice DM sreen ;)

Ooo! I’m a Paladin who loves those single big blow attacks that would make a Rogue blush, I try to sound like an Asgardian when I play my Paladin, and I’ve never made someone do a fight montage!

nice hero quest screen 👌

If the player has nothing to fear, the fun will not last.

I see this happening in the next campaign that I'm planning. Mostly because it's gonna be combat focused and VS Orcs and such, but close enough.

4:54 I had a feeling you were also from Michigan... Greetings from Cadillac!

33 years of DM & play experience in multiple systems

If the XP To Level 3 Wizard was there, this could have been avoided. Just don't let him DM.

Just another comment for the algorithm to let KZfaq know that Luke Hart doesn't suck.

My BBEG for my next campaign: Gaint Goats.

To be fair i dont think retreat is a typical player mindset. I wouldn't really assume players are likely or would even want to retreat for a day or two. I typically take that mindset into consideration.

Personally I think I would have done the same as the players - going into the castle when it's emptied of troops sounds like a reasonably smart thing to do, to me. I mean, yes they could have gone in when the alert level was lower, but all that would mean is that if they'd slipped up and the alarm was sounded - which is more likely if there are more goblins in the castle - then there are even more goblins to bring down on them. Plus, it's not like their alert level would drop the next day or anything, so unless they waited a couple of weeks, they'd have just ended up going into a castle on high alert, but with even more goblins than there would have been.

Dang 4 am? Why am I still awake to see this XD

That sounds like an epic defeat of the player characters. Down to the very last character vs the very last enemy. Sweet. It would have been epic if he won. What would you have done if he did win that battle? Would you have allowed the party to be resurrected due to the awesome situation or something or just go with, "They're dead" and be done with it?

Fair TPK, but I think I would have had them capture the players and either interrogate them or parade them before the other orc factions. Tho it sounds like they had a good finale haha

Snagjaw Castle more like Cragmaw Castle 😳