Ok, I though I'd throw this out to you guys who've been playing D&D / Pathfinder for, like, ever! There are a couple of questions that I've been thinking over; one about dying and one about time and wondered how you guys handle them.

Dying
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If your adventurers are, say half way through an adventure (that's took some time to get through), and they all end up dying, what do you do? Fudge dice rolls to keep them alive so they don't waste the rest of the adventure? Replay the adventure from the beginning? Abandon the adventure because they never made it?


Time
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How do you calculate game-time in your adventures? How do you calculate a day so a Daily Power can be reused? If a spell lasts "10 minutes" how do you calculate that ten minutes? If a poison last X minutes, how do you determine when those minutes are up?

Well for my games if a party manages to get TPKed, then they probably did something dumb enough to deserve it. We start over with new PC's, though in reality I think I have had this happen twice, once in a home campaign and once in a PFS module were the players decided to play up level.

As for time I have always used the old AD&D method of combat time and travel time as defined in the DMG which are both in in rounds and turns, then for random things like talking, planning, haggling I use the wall clock time.

tracking "Daily" powers was never a big deal as you have to sleep a full nights rest to get reloaded, so it always mostly took care of itself.

dieing
I always had an astral plane set of adventures in case they died (unexpectedly) they might spend a few gaming nights wandering the astral planes before the merited a resurrection spell and could return to there moral lives and the campaign I painstakingly wrote . there bodies always seem to be found by a group of wandering monks that take them to a healing monastery.

I haven't played or refed a game in so long with a tpk, usually I start fudging ahead of time to keep everything from going pear-shaped. You could always go the route of the "save-point" and let them start back somewhere but impose stiff penalties, like taking away some goodies. You could even have the friendly traveling cleric pass by, of course after everybody has been looted. Another one I've had done on me is we all got wiped out, but then we got revived in prison to be tortured for information and eventually sold into slavery.

As far as spell duration, most of the time they are so short that after a combat with all the healing, searching, and looting (10 to 30 minutes) they run out anyway.

TPK's are a real nuisance; fortunately they are rare.

Sometimes a party never gets it's act together. When a party repeatedly stumbles from stupid action to stupid action, it becomes just a matter of time before their decisions and actions lead them blindly into a TPK. If this happens the TPK is it is more of a mercy killing and the players are better off rolling up new characters and starting again.

If the party is competent, then the challenge is to find a way to keep some or all of them alive, in some way. The afterlife adventure which eventually brings them back to the 'real' world is a good one. Alternatively, there's that old but very useful cliche of having the party wake to discover they are not dead after all but imprisoned and (of course) sentenced to a much more interesting death. This can also be a good time for the Arch-fiend to deliver a gleeful monologue, to his/her captives, that fills out the plot points the party have missed and hopefully sets them firmly on the track of the adventure when they finally escape.

In those situations where you really can't keep the original party alive, I've found the following works very well: Have the party roll up a new party at similar level and with connections to the original party (e.g. brothers), and send them on a mission to find out what happened to the first party. Finding the remains of the first party lets the new party pick up any items, notes, etc., and then take over the original adventure from there.

I play with my kids. They have one character to play, and they're pretty attached to their character. I've had a couple times where they've just botched something up, like rather than trying to talk to the evil-looking dude, the dragonborn yells Attaaaaaack! and that's the end of them. I treat extended rests as checkpoints. If they die, they wake up from their extended rest, having had a terrible vision of things to come. Sometimes I try to change things up so it's not like they're playing the same things again, but if they are having fun, what do I care?

Thanks guys, some interesting stuff, I like the idea of a 'mini afterlife' adventure that would bring them back and I was also thinking of having some sort of 'Resurrection Points', a bit like action points; either each adventurer gets one or there's just x amount for the entire party, once they dead they can spend a point to become unconscious and can be healed from there.

As for having the party start again, wouldn't they then know what's coming and do things differently? Is that a good thing?

I go out of my way to punish my players if they do anything stupid. If I can hurt them for it I will intentionally do it.


The Magus in the party I'm DMing keeps charging in.. getting surrounded... getting beat up bad to the point of near death, then sucking up all the healing in the party. He's not a team player. He appears pretty stupid to my eyes. He should be the fighter... if charges in... at least he has hit points... at least he has armour. Right now... he's ADD boy... he runs in.. "No wait.. cast a spell.. no wait.. I need armour..." He constantly lies about what spells he's memorized or used. Every single fight is 30 minutes of him balling for some healing while he bleeds out. I also notice that in a situation where he can do little of any value he will often do the stupidest thing you can possibly imagine.


That being said they have come close to some seriously bad situations many a time. And I'm happy to scare them.

Two sessions ago they behaved correctly. They had a half assed plan and stuck to it. Plenty went wrong including being victimized my lucky dice. Buuut because they stuck to a reasonable plan, they pulled through and won. That was a real victory, and something they can hold their heads up high for.



If the players are undeservedly victims of my lucky dice... I'll make the bad guys behave tactically poorly. Usually one or two players are down at that point. (In truth, the fighter is the power house of the party... if he's in good shape I just let it ride.)

It hasn't happened yet... but in case of TPK, I have Revenant versions of their characters that will wake in the Shadowfell...

I am a big proponent of it being a game and games being played for fun. With that in mind, I try hard to make sure players are successful but not cheated out of a genuine experience. Character deaths in our games only happen when players are dumb...at which time we decide if ressurection, side quest or new PC is best. I also have a strict no douchebag policy that is enforced.

I meant to comment on time as well, but sidetracked myself. I personally deal with time in a similar fashion. The speed of time is whatever is fun for the group as a whole.

With a focus on fun, I find that we don't focus on travel often, but rather locations. We have less random encounters and more cinematic ones. We also seem to have much more memorable social interactions.

I typically let the dice fall as they may. As the saying goes 'Crit Happens'.

That said... I have also seen my BBEG prepare for battle by greasing his sword and putting on his banana peel shoes. Sighed as he went down if a spate of fumbles, only to snicker when a goblin gets a crit for maximum damage and kills the mage with one shot.

My dice hate everybody! Myself not excepted.

Time is handled by keeping track of rounds and distance. Conversation, including planning, is real time.

Fun is in the challenge - I am a big fan of the Diehard Effect -

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I do not like handing the PCs victory on a silver charger - I want them to win, but I want them to fight for it.

The trick is to design a scenario that fills that niche - and encourage players to run away if needed, only to return when the time is right.

Sometimes optional rules can tilt the feel - Action Dice in Spycraft, Action/Hero points in others.

Casualties tend to happen early in a campaign, before players realize that I am willing to have PCs die.

The only two times I will fudge an encounter is when I realize that I balanced it poorly or when a player is having epic dice failure. (I had a day like that week before last - hitting almost every time, then rolling a 1 for damage with every success....)

The Auld Grump

I've been playing for a while now, and have never had a TPK. We had one situation where we were all captured by slavers, because we were stupid, but never a TPK. Now...that said...The last session I ran, two weeks ago, the group decided to revisit a place where they had lost one of their friends to shadows. They had gone into a building near dusk, where 5 greater shadows were holed up, and hidden. The shadows were well aware of the group and allowed the group to get far enough inside the building that they would need to take several rounds to get out.

Short story, they got out. The cleric died and became a shadow. The mage needed to be carried out with a 2 Strength. Both fighters were down to less than 12 Strength.

The next day, they decided to go back, at dusk, to get the cleric's gear....

...without optimally preparing... "We'll just run in and get the body."

Sorry, not going to let you waltz in and walk away with 25000gp of gear without a fight.

Mage died and became a shadow. Everyone else was down to single digit strengths and actually needed to ditch gear to get away. It very well could have been a TPK. The shadows could easily outpace them and finish them off. I decided to be nice and have the shadows not leave the building, even though nothing was holding them back.

What would have happened if it was a TPK? Well fortunately, the way our group runs, we have two GM's who switch off campaigns. We would have switched over to the other GM's campaign for a while. When we got back to my game, I most likely would have started a new campaign. Player's need to learn they are not invinceable. It will either occur from TPK, or the monetary hit from having to raise a dead character. I'm hoping my group learns that they can't just walk into this place. Yes they can damage and kill these shadows, and know they are there, so they can optimize for killing them. But just walking in all cocky-like will get you killed.

...and if you all die....we start from scratch....

http://www.dungeonmastering.com/tools-r ... -character

I found this interesting. Thought you would like to check it out.