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"If I weren't meant to kill your characters, there wouldn't be mechanics for dying."

Anakin would be proud

I thought that Anakin is the one that kills younglings, not Luke...

Lich: cr21 Tarrasque: cr 30 But the most dangerous thing in dungeons and dragons The consequences of your stupid actions: cr 99999999999999999999

DM: This is a trap. Players: Well, let's see what it does! DM: There's two Umber Hulks behind a Wall of Force. Players: I'll just roll my Initiative now, if you don't mind.

I bet that group worked together a lot better in the future.

"Dungeon Master, there's too many of them, what are we going to do?"

Those players, despite messing up, learned well. I'm impressed. Here's for the algorithm.

Wise, benevolent jerk? Is that an option? :P

The whole thing seemed fair to me. Good on the group for taking the time to look back at what happened and realizing their mistake in not working together.

I would have done the beginning scene of Mulan and got one of the escaping PCs to deliver a message of how not to mess with the Big Bad and then kill the other and have it as a coin flip as to who was killed.

“The Druid, nobody ever picks me” lol

Loved the gibbering mouther trap! So crafty. Reminds me of the "Ecology of..." article Dragon magazine ran for the monster in the days of AD&D 2e...

This intro reminded me that I have never, in my 5+ decades of life, played Candy Land. - Hey Luke, crying is not immature. Some tears are fine. Wailing on and bemoaning fate go too far for the death of a fictional character. Except Hoban Washburn. Wailing and goopy snot-accompanied tears at his death are manly.

I have found that most players, including me, are slow to change their decisions no matter what you give them. Happened in a recent game for me where my players had an item that kept summoning monsters, but a player kept trying to cast identify as a ritual... took like 10 turns of constant monster flow to determine they should either get rid of it or break it. No matter what hints I gave, they were set and almost killed a few of them. You can always count on players making the smartest and dumbest decisions in the game!

Sounded like it wasn't that bad for a TPK. My guess was that their reaction was going to be something like "What were we supposed to do?!". Also, great video as always.

Three rounds worth of action economy thrown away VS a CR15. Yeah that's how you wipe. Sounds like the two girls were trying to play your game like it's Undertale or something and MERCY every encounter.

So... the moral I am getting out of this story is "Never accept a bounty hunting contract from Luke, because it'll be for something way above your pay grade that he'll play absolutely ruthlessly and then blame you for failing to beat it." In all seriousness, it seems to me like letting the fleeing PCs get away would have served the exact same lesson as killing them, especially since they were the ones who had been acting fairly sensibly. It sounds like the players would still have gotten the message "Yeah, we really screwed that up" and done some self-reflection. It could be a learning experience for both players and PCs, and wouldn't sacrifice 3 years of character investment. I might feel this way because for me, personally, a high-casualty campaign actually LESSENS my sense of peril and suspense. It doesn't make me feel like all precautions must be taken or death is likely - instead, it reminds me of the artificiality of the game and that death really has no consequence because you can also send in a replacement. My fantasy, like most action-heavy fiction, is somewhat dependent on an illusion of peril, and, strangely, PC deaths risk damaging that illusion. As a story-focused guy, I also prefer maintaining continuity of characters and relationships, and avoiding the inherent contrivance of introducing new PCs at JUST the right time to replace a fallen ally. (This is not to say that PC deaths should never happen, and at the right time they can even be pretty epic. I'm just trying to lay out why I personally find the game to be better if they are few and far between, and only when necessary.)

Speaking of finding secret doors: I've DM a game for the past 3 years or so for mostly new players. When they were brand new, I offered hints and suggestions like you should have a night watch; place the tanks in front of your marching order, etc. The usual standard stuff that experienced players would know to do. At some point, I realized that they were looking to me for hints all the time instead of discovering things on their own. To break them of that habit, after a close encounter in a dungeon room, I asked if anyone wanted to search for a secret passage. (Spoiler: there were none). After searching all the walls, twice, I asked "does anyone want to search the floor?". And, then "does anyone want to search the ceiling?". After 20 minutes (1 hour in-game), they realized that there was not a secret passage. They stopped relying on hints from the DM after that. Mission Accomplished!

I made a whole underground dungeon with a HUGE pile of loot hidden inside. It was pitch black and full of winding caverns. The party missed a single pathway that led to the loot room, it was so hard to not drop hints and help them find it. After the campaign, I told one player where the loot was because I couldn't keep it a secret anymore LOL

In my opinion, Kate's character should become the black knight's apprentice. Then in climactic battle, the players have to fight not only him, but also his most loyal and most powerful subordinate; one that the players have seen before.

I designed my very first campaign cherrypicking from pretty much every module I could get my hands on. Players started at a session 0 regional festival at the Crimson Crossroads, then went on to use a few adventures from Ghosts of Saltmarsh. They earned a ship, and went on an amalgamation of high seas adventures from Ghosts and Tomb of Annihilation. From there, the overall major plot hooks were set, segueing into content from Princes of the Apocalypse and some modified Temple of Elemental Evil, all interwoven into original homebrew storyline. The only way my players would TPK is if they made REALLY stupid decisions combined with truly horrible rolls. I've always looked at the game as a way to weave a really awesome story with my friends. I don't have an adversarial "DM vs the Players" mentality, and I prefer to look at myself as a facilitator as opposed to an executioner. I personally wouldn't have Dimension Doored in front of the other two players, and would have let them escape and live with the guilt of losing two beloved characters. I would let the other two girls roll new characters, then the ones with survivors guilt could decide whether to go seek revenge and save the surviving Dark Queen, or whatever. You still get the impact of the character death, rolled in some crunchy plot goodness. But that's just me, though 🤐

I'm glad your youngling group handled the TPK so well! :) As you said, a lot of adult players don't. :P

The problem is not that characters dies. The problem often comes to get new characters into the group dynamic. Not the introduction, that's the easy part. But I have so often seen or been the player that feel they couldn't be an equal part of the party.

Total noob error, you have to have the entire party on the same page when deciding how to deal with an encounter. Having the party split on decisions is just as bad as ACTUALLY splitting the party.

For the algorithm: Luke would have sucked if he'd taken it easy on those younglings.

I usually say that most monsters don’t pursue a fleeing enemy unless they jave something it wants or if they were being mean to it

Intern beastmaster ranger Gary and Fat cat? Sounds like some good shenanigan synergy.

FOR THE ALGORITHM! ~ Paraphrased shout of inspiration 👍👍👍

Great video as always. Love when you retell adventure anecdotes, it helps illustrate how nuanced DMing can be.

Just joined your news letter and got the free adventure and love the set up! Really great DM resources. As a new DM I really appreciate all that you give out, it’s really helping me with adventure design

So long as Fat Cat gets to stay!

A couple of the pieces of artwork shown for Into The Fey look really cool; the Satyr Firebomber and the floating cauldrons.

Maaaan....I really need "Into the Fey" soon!

I love the Rogue so much!

Mocking your players for empathy towards their characters is mean, they invested in it and tried their best to become them at your table. Sure, they might be dumb and totally deserved the death, but going ahead and calling them immature is a tad bit too much. Everyone's different.

Late to the party but you're absolutely right saying the "what could have happened" things are great! I once made a side chamber in my dungeon with a little puzzle and some treasure, my players looked inside, saw the scary glowing cauldron and said "nah, we're good" and carried on with their goal. I think giving players those optional bits here and there is what makes adventures come to life, screw linear paths! :) Back to youngling murder...

Love your videos Luke. I always get something from them. Keep 'em coming.

The first session I ever tried to DM in Star Wars to learn the D20 system I had two friends starting out at a meetup in a cantina like ya do, (only to find they were double crossed and sold out to the authorities). I tried to railroad them into being arrested and taken to some Imperial Officer type who would end up forcing them to take a suicide mission or face jail / death and decided 20 Stormtroopers would be enough to "warn" them that they should put their hands up and get arrested. "We're going to attack them." Years and years later, seeing the episodes where The Mandalorian and his friends were trapped in the cantina trying to shoot their way out was pretty damned epic and there was no way to explain how rad that was to my girlfriend watching alongside me.

Why..... why do all of Luke’s groups think it’s good to long rest in a dungeon... give me some players like that please!

The first time I ever played D&D, my character died. I was a half-orc fighter. The wizard decided to coat the hallway in grease and launch a fireball while we were being chased by a flesh golem. My character nat 1 on the DeX save vs Grease. Then nat 1 fail vs the fireball save. Roasty toasty orc :(

But but Luke... The Barbarian was supposed to go!

Nicely done. What I notice is that too many people, when they DM, hold back. Especially when running dragons this is super detrimental. Reducing a real threat into a puppy encounter. I've always ran on the premise of being honest and transparent with providing information. So if the players investigate, scout etc they get quite a bit of information. Allowing them to make more tactically sound information. After that it is up to the roll of the dice and how well their plans are executed. Normally I don't have a ton of deaths, but in the current campaign.... during the 45 sessions I've had 4 PC's die. Had a cleric keep hobgoblin assassin's and an Oni pre-occupied while the rest of the party could flee. Great self sacrifice. Made future interactions with the Oni a lot more personal. Poor dog of the cleric whined about the loss of her master. But the party's druid decided to take care of the doge from now on. One of my more favorite moments in the current campaign was early on. In a room with a Gulthias Tree, which I had given a charm like effect on a 5-6 cool down. Eventually half the party was trying to kill the other half as part of protecting the tree against aggressors. With the Ranger ending up killing the druid. Barbarian beating the cleric within 1 death save of his life. All I had to do was sit back and enjoy my tea while it all played out :D In regards to the bugbear assassin's joining with the Youngling Party. Would they really just have joined the party? Personally I would've rolled a d20. At a 1-5 roll the Bugbears would've still joined the party. However when arriving face to face with the Black Mage they would've turned their backs on the party. Going back to their original boss. Just because PC's convince NPC's to join. Doesn't mean they join without some manipulative/alterior motives. Still seeing a way out somehow while reluctantly following the PC's for a while. As for the player trying to have her character become the Black Mages queen/wife... Well now that she's dead. He can revive her into an undead wife indeed. Spring it back into the player's face and their new characters in the future. Then again. Would the Mage be interested in having such a weakling as his wife though? I think he might just turn the dead PC's instead his undead twisted minions instead.

I don't remember if I have already posted this on a previous video, but it's still relevant. When I GM for my wife & her friends, she told me that she never wants her characters to die. So I gave her a compromise, we normally play Savage Worlds and in the Superhero expansion there is a "death" table. Draw a card from a deck of cards, and the card tells you what happens. 2 = Death . . . Joker = Life

I think the PC Term is 'Mage of Colour. ' lol.

My players walk past an important door, many times. It doesn't have anything to due with their task, so I don't even think about it. They make a mistake, thinking it was the path they already explored, and blundered into it. If they never found it, and found one of the many other ways forward, that puzzle room would have been recycled.

I will miss fat cat :(

Your job as a good DM is to save your players from bad luck ... Not stupidity!

That bit at the end about it being a game but not just a game, your right. I think, fiction is not just there to entertain but to teach and inspire people to do better and be better.

Here's my idea for a TPK: There will be a oneshot before the campaign. I will tell each player to make two character sheets, a character sheet for their oneshot character and a character sheet for their campaign character. The oneshot will be at lv 10, and I will warn the players in advance that the characters in the oneshot all die at the end, and the main campaign characters start at lv 1, finish at lv 10. I will give the players time to get attached to their oneshot characters, and get to know and get attached to the other oneshot characters, before everything goes to hell. The only TPKs I tolerate are planned, from the players having a brain fart, or from sheer bad luck.

Almost had a TPK but the party managed to escape...I had a banshee and a Wight against 5 level 5 players. The Banshee used her wail, three players went down, and the Wight used his Life Drain to wittle away their hit points. The party barely managed to escape on their canoe.

Omg the heroes quest DM screen is amazing. I still have mine as well.

Bravo, Bravo! I strongly agree with all of it. I also strive for the title of 'wise and benevolent, narky ****hole' every time I step behind the screen.

Breaking new! Graduate from dungeon master school mercilessly kills a group of children

Luke doesn't suck, he helps me second guess myself when I 'punish' my players for doing stupid stuff. Like shouting really hard right after entering a dungeon filled with badies.

One of my players decided to take a Dire Bear on by himself instead of alerting the rest of the party. He has a new character now.

And this is one of the reasons why I'm glad that I always convince one of my players to take 'common sense' as a quality in shadowrun, usually as some free throw in in some devil's deal(like offering a pure mage in an all caster party double build points for taking a quality that debuffs all magic users near them).

Seen them all, you're the most underrated DND KZfaqr. Easily better then nerdarchy

"Let KZfaq know that I don't suck. Or! That I do" Five seconds later: *Cuts off his own outro*

Man...sometimes you just gotta touch the stove to learn not to touch the stove... And when it comes to the power of dnd to teach about life - I couldn't agree more.

I'm overcautious af and it serves me well in games where there are real consequences for mistakes. I always feel let down when games are too easy, like i spent all that time being careful for no good reason.

One of the hardest things I had to learn was as a DM to allow a player's character to die. I felt that I messed up the encounter. The player was okay with his character dying, but I wasn't. What is amusing is I am okay with one of my characters dying, but not with killing off someone else's character. The two times I have lost a character to death, rather than a DnD group breaking up, my character gave up her life in order to slow down the enemy so the NPCs could survive.

I think the closest we ever came to long resting in a dungeon was in a very complex cave system with no light in it and we passed some difficult survival checks to find a place in the cave system that we were pretty sure had not been used in a long time and use leomund's tiny hut, made the outside black and had a short rest. We had also not alerted enemies at that point, so they did not know we were there, and nobody was actively looking for us.

I never had a real tpk, just a group who didn't wanted to play anymore(3 player, 1 not amused that other get turns too, 1 just had no time anymore). After that I started that adventure again but with the already achieved progession(about third of the dungeon), because one of the old group was in the new group. And at the end the new group fought the old group, because the old group was controlled by the bbe. So technically a tpk but not with player controlled pc's.

I think the reason your TPK went well was because a party of young people with an older DM is going to assume that they're a greater authority on how the game should run than them. It's like how teenagers sometimes hang on every word from their high school teachers as truth when they're just regular old grown-ups. I don't think I'd hear the end of it if I TPK'd my party of grown-up players, because they're all thinking "This idiot totally got us killed."

I've only ever had 1 TPK and it was at the very end of a one-shot. The end boss was a devil and one of the characters was specifically made as a fire mage, so he was pretty much useless. The party in general was more focused on passing around a Vorpal blade they had rolled to get from a chest, hoping that they could get a Nat 20 and immediately kill the boss. One of the players swore their allegiance to the devil so that he wouldn't be killed, spent the next two turns doing nothing, then started attacking again. Had they focused more on what their characters could do and less about that Vorpal blade, and if the player who swore fealty didn't do that and instead attacked, they would have won the battle, hands down, even with the useless fire mage (who they should have given the vorpal blade to to help counteract the problem but never did). Oh, did I mention that the devil was only brought out in the first place because they decided to have the party member with the weakest constitution participate in a ritual that required concentration checks to keep the devil sealed? They might have done it because he was the only one with Inspiration... and he decided not to use it >.> on the most important check of the game with his weakest skill. Had he even succeeded once, all of the players would have been fully healed towards the end of the devil battle, but since the ritual was cut far too short the devil got there early. My players were all incredibly salty about it. One of them is really competitive and just doesn't like losing. The fire mage thought it was stupid that his character was useless. Another one was really passive about it and just didn't say anything, pretty much checked out. The other one was the other DM in our group who thought it sucked, but knew that the group had to get used to death soon since both of our actual campaigns were getting into pretty high levels and the chance of death was rising, particularly in my campaign where there is only 1 character that knows Revivify and that's it... another character has Wish so that can get them out in a bind for sure, but still, it's probably gonna' get pretty messy and with super high stakes, too.

While the TPK was fair and made sense and should have happened. I'm a little sad the guys had to die too as a consequence of the other 2 being busy with role play shenanigans.

nice video! kkk tons of fun and cool advices

3/5 of my characters that I have played have died. first got killed by a goblin, second by a trap, and third was just straight up executed for conspiracy.

I would say in an Aquisitions Incorporated home office would likely keep some sort of record as to what magic items the players have for the exact reasons you used. Think of how useful it would be as a company if you could say, "We need you to deal with this problem, your payment will be *insert list of former adventurers magic items*. They should all be in the area your going. If you fail to find them we will offer monetary compensation."

My first character died because a party member threw a fireball at the boss who was within about 10 feet of the rest of our party. There weren't even minions to get rid of. Even worse, the boss made the DEX save and all the rest of us failed it. Still massively salty. Ended up kicking this guy from our group a year or two later for other issues.

“I’ve been a dungeon master since high school” curious when did you graduate?

Let the Darkness flow through you

This is all about knowing your players. Think about the people who loved Game of Thrones (at least the first 4-5 seasons), vs this who couldn’t bear to watch it because of the loss. I’ve seen that players tend to land on one side or the other, and I coordinate with them ahead of time to know what they are okay with. Some players find the risk of death thrilling for a supposed hero, and if that risk is never realized the game can get boring. However, some players use D&D to strictly feel heroic, and character death can bring them out of it enough that they stop enjoying D&D as much. The risk becomes too real for them (including NPC death for some players). So it depends on the players in my experience :)

the group I'm in almost had a similar fate. We use a different system (The One Ring) but we've gotten by just by sheer force of arms rather than strategy (I generally come up with the strategy when we're starting to lose and I need you to heal people up) and we got cocky after killing a giant snake that was supposed to be a climactic fight in just a few rounds, and we almost immediately got into another fight with an ettin (basically a troll) and it took us until we were all below 10 health and I was on one to realize how badly we messed up and ran. Still planning on coming back with an actual strategy tho. Can't have a big black mark on our win record after all.

I don't know which is more cringe inducing, the people that book hoo and cry when their level 1 pc they "put so much work into" kicks the bucket, or those defending said player's emotional immaturity. I am so glad you made this video, and I 100% agree

The Death Knight rises, clutching it's Soul Blade as green abyssal flames spew from its mouth. What little life dotting the area begins to curdle and rot. All of the soldiers drop their weapons and run. "I attack it." ..... Are you sure?

**Raises paw** "Yeaaaaah... I'm an exploration player. If given the opportunity, I will explore and scrutinize every square millimeter of every single room of a given area. :-/

Like with princes of the apocalypse.. you can separate the keeps into different adventures

Honest question... Luke said that the Rogues/players used maximum movement to escape the fight. At least another round of battle occurred while the two rogues/players were fleeing. The Skull Lord ended up taking one of the PC's prisoner. The Skull Lord then used DD to cut off the two fleeing PC's to finish them off. How!? Maybe he just abbreviated the end fight for the final two PC's simply dying to a Cone of Cold. Yet realistically I wonder how the Skull Lord knew where to DD too. And why the PC's didn't make adjustments (or again, maybe they did and the story was just abbreviated) and they then failed their saves? Maybe I am overthinking this. Hence why I am asking.

I really want to hear more about this Joe guy....

DMs are supposed to be arbiters. Bad choices tend to lead to bad consequences. To that end, I have seen 12 player character deaths at my table since 2014. I might save you from a bad dice roll I may save you from a monster I refuse to save you from yourself.

TPK made my day. Teach the players that choices matter. Bad choices give bad results.

6:16 looks like Squeaky's been cat in the act!!

Props for the kitty but the real like was 'SURELY' nothing wrong would happen ahahaha

My problem with kills is when it happens or nearly happens through no fault of their own and with no chance of escaping. He wouldn’t give us anything at all to work with. There was entirely no chance of any ingenuity on my part to save my own pc. Every idea I came up with was met with a immediate, nope there aren’t any or no time, etc. it ended up being a railroad to evolve another character who wasn’t even with mine (he couldn’t even see them nearly dying) and depended on him making a pact, which he had no outside knowledge of OoC even. So the life of my pc was dangled in hopes of one of two other PCs making a really bad deal to save us. If they hadn’t I’d be dead cause there really wasn’t any way out besides divine intervention of some sort, which I guess creates a powerful moment for their pc, but at the expense of taking all power from me to save my own pc…. It felt really frustrating to come up with ideas that should feasibly be able to work but nope.

A character death is generally on the player a TKP usually means the Dungeon Master screwed up. There is still room for something custom done to that character or the party as a whole doing something epicly stupid. It's not hard to steer character deaths when you control the setting.

Two ancient dragon shout outs!

You should post that adventure that did the tpk. I'd love to actually run it

I'ld say it was a fair TPK. I would say getting the bugbear retainers was on the generous end, and the mage dimention-dooring after them was on the mean end, but both had a good roleplay and rule-of-cool justification.

I love these stories videos

I very similar thing happened to me as a player (note this was the 3rd session and I was the only one that played dnd before this campaign so there is some leniency to the other players) but essentially we fought our way through a group of bandits hideout who were working with a cult. We then got into this arena and you know wit the fight. Now the bbeg of the campaign was sitting on a balcony watching us, and as combat ensues it was 2 bugbears and 3 wolves vs 7 pcs at level three. Shouldn’t be a hard fight right? Wrong…. We had a fighter who was just watching us cuz they were to scared of getting hit (did not attack once thst encounter) 2 rogues who made it their mission to try to throw a mace at the bbeg 30 feet in the air. A Druid who was healing me, and a Druid who was trying to befriend one of the wolves after she STABBED IT WITH A DAGGER IN THE FACE and then a monk who ran into a hidden doorway and just hid. And me…. The lonely bard who for 3 continuous rounds of combat. That’s 21 player turns btw, I was the only one as the bard who did even a single point of damage to the enemy. Luckily we won cuz the dm took potty on me and let me use my song of creation to summon a block of granite on top of one of the bugbears heads and then I used some other spells (burnt every slot) killing the wolves and other bugbear. But to make matters worse half way through combat the rogues started climbing the wall to the balcony and pulled the bbeg down to fight us… we can all probably guess how thst went

grown man kills the imaginary friends of 3 kids & uses a girl's big but. great story.

You’re amazing!

LOL, Just TPK'd my group Sunday (4/4/2021) best game ever >:) Best part for me is I now can stop running 5e, whew. But the group took it pretty well, 20+ year core so not surprised. Downside I'm now investing $100's for a new game system and setting. Including analog pdfs (things called books) and FG. From the "what we do now?" convo the switch has energized the group.

Just preordered Into the Fey! I can’t wait to dm this for the kiddos!

You are once again hilarious! I thought my DM was a murderous bugger. Now, I know you all are

Sweet video today my friend

DM almost killed every single one of us, at lvl 1 in our third fight today. We started off injured and missing spell slots and it was a 4v5. Tbh, we could've won it, but the dice weren't with us. My bard is the only one that died cause I rolled a 1 on my first death saving throw and an 8 on the second one. The paladin and the fighter both went down and the real mvp was our druid who killed 4 of the guards by himself and got our bodies out of the fray with 2 Nat 20s.