FA+
Shop
Pathfinder Shenanigans: Know your foe
11 years ago
General
The Pathfinder game where I am a player rather than the DM came to an abrupt end last week because of a total party kill (TPK). Everyone died, and honestly it seems like everyone is to blame for it, including myself. Here's what happened:
Our group had not had a good run so far. We were in an insanity-themed dungeon, and after four or five sessions had -finally- managed to clear the first floor. Three party members died, only to be reincarnated by an NPC druid, and I don't think we had full attendance from the players for any of the sessions. And then to top it all off, the DM informed us that we had two more levels to go (he had also planned on another level, but we were all getting tired of the place and wanted to just get back to the "thieves' guild" campaign we had wanted). So already we were kind of in a rush.
We step down into the second level and immediately see a large guardian demon before us. Fortunately, he's not immediately hostile, so we talk to him for a bit. It was clear that he didn't have anything against us and really wanted to be released from his servitude of guarding the door into the rest of the second floor. Now, this is kind of a tangent, but this is the first time we've actually had a chance to really RP or discuss a non-combat option for getting past an obstacle. Literally every other time, the big, stupid fighter (BSF) would do a token effort at diplomacy, then start swinging if anything took longer than a few minutes. But this time, he had left our campaign to join the Marines. Hence, I was really enjoying the chance to puzzle out a non-combat solution to the problem.
It does take us the better part of an hour, but we finally manage to get past it and break its summoning circle with some clever use of cantrips and the bluff skill. No combat at all. Everyone involved seemed to enjoy it and I definitely felt great after finding a use for the "Minor Creation" psionic talent. So we move on and find a little girl. If we were metagaming, we would have wasted no time slaughtering her immediately because a little girl trapped deep in a dungeon is ALWAYS a trap. But no, we did the morally right thing and allowed her to come with us. She informed us that she and her family had been tortured by some blue-skinned and white-haired monsters down here. We hadn't encountered anything like that yet, but we felt that we could handle them if we saw them.
A little bit later on, we do encounter those things. Or rather, we saw -one- of them. We talked with it for a bit, and it was very clear that the thing was quite crazy and egotistical. His dialogue made it seem like combat was inevitable no matter what happened, especially once the little girl came into view, so we took the initiative and got a surprise round in combat. We didn't realize until about 20 minutes later that this was a monumentally bad idea.
See, we had only seen -one- guy and his two bodyguards. Even without our BSF, we felt that we could take these guys easily, and we could. What we hadn't planned on were his 8 other buddies in the nearby rooms. Literally every other encounter in the game so far had been an isolated incident - we fight the monsters in that particular room, then move on to the next. This time, as we move to flank the blue guy and his bodyguards, we find three additional bodyguards in the next hallway as well as two more blue guys. Fortunately the hallway is very narrow, so we're able to bottleneck them fairly easily. But just as we start getting those guys under control, three more come out from behind us and kill our magus in a single round because all of them had sneak attack.
Our NPC gunslinger panics and runs away, only to be run down and killed by the rogues. This separated the rogues from the group, and gave us a chance to recover. When we're ready, we go up after the rogues and manage to bring them down without too much further hassle. Oh, and the little girl? Turns out she was a monster too, but a rather frail one. As soon as the fighting began, she jumped atop our healer and started to -drink- his back, but we then dropped her in a single hit.
Obviously the fight had really taken us by surprise, and we needed to step back and rest (and get our magus reincarnated). So we do that after backtracking upstairs to our holdout. Next session rolls around. Everyone's ready to continue, but the DM has expressed serious doubts about our likelihood to survive. I'm confident that we can figure something out with a bit of planning, but he's still skeptical. This session, our main healer is away, and we're still short one BSF due to him leaving the game. But at least this time we have our useless rogue (seriously, this guy has been the worst rogue I've ever seen. More on him later if you'd like), and our NPC druid at the front this time, ready to tank for the group.
The session goes south immediately. We round the first corner into a room we had previously cleared, only to find it filled with about a half dozen blue guys, plus one in the room behind us. The rogue manages to pin the one behind us behind a door and sets him on fire, which does little damage but keeps him out of the fight for a few rounds. The NPC druid rushes forward to be a boss and gets surrounded. Thankfully, he has an AC of 26, so it's -really- unlikely that he'll get hit, but when you're surrounded like that it becomes pretty likely that -someone- will roll a 20 to hit you each round. I take a moment to adjust my psionic focus element, and then start using my full-power blast spells, hitting five enemies at once each round for 6d6 electric damage.
Things seem to be going okay - we're gradually wearing them down. However, after two or three rounds, the druid is starting to take some serious hits. And two enemy spellcasters have joined the fray. Since the healer is AFK, the only one that can heal the druid is me (he didn't have any good healing spells prepared). I rush forward and heal the druid for about 30 HP, taking 15 damage in the process because of the nature of the heal. Then everything goes bad. The first spellcaster casts lightning bolt. I fail the reflex save and get reduced to single-digit HP. The next spellcaster casts fireball. I fail the reflex save again and get killed instantly. So the group's best (and only) blaster is now dead, and the rest of the group is in serious pain because of the fireball and lightning bolt. By now, thankfully, most of the blue guys are dead, and the group manages to rush forward and bring down the two casters. They retreat back to the stairs with my body to recover, but don't get long to do that because even more of the blue guys chase after them and ultimately kill them all.
Turns out that when we attacked that -one- guy, we had angered an entire intelligent tribe of crazy blue egotistical assholes. They were all well-armed, had demonic minions, and even an umber hulk that would tunnel its way to attack us if we were to hole up somewhere. So who's to blame for the TPK?
DM - We had never encountered any kind of organized opposing force before, and every previous encounter had been isolated. Our only instance of compounded fighting prior to this had been when a different BSF did a war cry in the middle of four enemy groups that otherwise would have been isolated. The DM explained that diplomacy with the blue guys would have been possible and was the intended outcome. They -were- crazy, evil, and egotistical, but not -that- intelligent. We could have stroked their egos and probably gotten by them, or at least separated them to handle individually. We didn't receive any kind of indication of their numbers or presence until we had pulled -all- of them. He was also the one that moved the druid into the room to get surrounded during our final battle.
Myself - I was the one who asked the group if they wanted to do the surprise attack on the first blue guy, so I "shot first." Though they did all agree to it. I could have thought to ask the little girl how many of the blue guys there were, or else try to reason with them.
The group - For so many players being absent, and the rogue for being incompetent. If we had had our healer in the final battle, I wouldn't have had to get in range of the blast spells that killed me to heal the druid, and the healer would have been able to heal at range too. We may have been able to blast through them, but without my damaging potential, it was over.
So yeah, everyone loses there, but at least we start up a new campaign now. This time hopefully without the two people that really frustrated me the last two games. And I get to play a summoner with an awesome anthro hawk eidolon!
KNOW YOUR FOEOur group had not had a good run so far. We were in an insanity-themed dungeon, and after four or five sessions had -finally- managed to clear the first floor. Three party members died, only to be reincarnated by an NPC druid, and I don't think we had full attendance from the players for any of the sessions. And then to top it all off, the DM informed us that we had two more levels to go (he had also planned on another level, but we were all getting tired of the place and wanted to just get back to the "thieves' guild" campaign we had wanted). So already we were kind of in a rush.
We step down into the second level and immediately see a large guardian demon before us. Fortunately, he's not immediately hostile, so we talk to him for a bit. It was clear that he didn't have anything against us and really wanted to be released from his servitude of guarding the door into the rest of the second floor. Now, this is kind of a tangent, but this is the first time we've actually had a chance to really RP or discuss a non-combat option for getting past an obstacle. Literally every other time, the big, stupid fighter (BSF) would do a token effort at diplomacy, then start swinging if anything took longer than a few minutes. But this time, he had left our campaign to join the Marines. Hence, I was really enjoying the chance to puzzle out a non-combat solution to the problem.
It does take us the better part of an hour, but we finally manage to get past it and break its summoning circle with some clever use of cantrips and the bluff skill. No combat at all. Everyone involved seemed to enjoy it and I definitely felt great after finding a use for the "Minor Creation" psionic talent. So we move on and find a little girl. If we were metagaming, we would have wasted no time slaughtering her immediately because a little girl trapped deep in a dungeon is ALWAYS a trap. But no, we did the morally right thing and allowed her to come with us. She informed us that she and her family had been tortured by some blue-skinned and white-haired monsters down here. We hadn't encountered anything like that yet, but we felt that we could handle them if we saw them.
A little bit later on, we do encounter those things. Or rather, we saw -one- of them. We talked with it for a bit, and it was very clear that the thing was quite crazy and egotistical. His dialogue made it seem like combat was inevitable no matter what happened, especially once the little girl came into view, so we took the initiative and got a surprise round in combat. We didn't realize until about 20 minutes later that this was a monumentally bad idea.
See, we had only seen -one- guy and his two bodyguards. Even without our BSF, we felt that we could take these guys easily, and we could. What we hadn't planned on were his 8 other buddies in the nearby rooms. Literally every other encounter in the game so far had been an isolated incident - we fight the monsters in that particular room, then move on to the next. This time, as we move to flank the blue guy and his bodyguards, we find three additional bodyguards in the next hallway as well as two more blue guys. Fortunately the hallway is very narrow, so we're able to bottleneck them fairly easily. But just as we start getting those guys under control, three more come out from behind us and kill our magus in a single round because all of them had sneak attack.
Our NPC gunslinger panics and runs away, only to be run down and killed by the rogues. This separated the rogues from the group, and gave us a chance to recover. When we're ready, we go up after the rogues and manage to bring them down without too much further hassle. Oh, and the little girl? Turns out she was a monster too, but a rather frail one. As soon as the fighting began, she jumped atop our healer and started to -drink- his back, but we then dropped her in a single hit.
Obviously the fight had really taken us by surprise, and we needed to step back and rest (and get our magus reincarnated). So we do that after backtracking upstairs to our holdout. Next session rolls around. Everyone's ready to continue, but the DM has expressed serious doubts about our likelihood to survive. I'm confident that we can figure something out with a bit of planning, but he's still skeptical. This session, our main healer is away, and we're still short one BSF due to him leaving the game. But at least this time we have our useless rogue (seriously, this guy has been the worst rogue I've ever seen. More on him later if you'd like), and our NPC druid at the front this time, ready to tank for the group.
The session goes south immediately. We round the first corner into a room we had previously cleared, only to find it filled with about a half dozen blue guys, plus one in the room behind us. The rogue manages to pin the one behind us behind a door and sets him on fire, which does little damage but keeps him out of the fight for a few rounds. The NPC druid rushes forward to be a boss and gets surrounded. Thankfully, he has an AC of 26, so it's -really- unlikely that he'll get hit, but when you're surrounded like that it becomes pretty likely that -someone- will roll a 20 to hit you each round. I take a moment to adjust my psionic focus element, and then start using my full-power blast spells, hitting five enemies at once each round for 6d6 electric damage.
Things seem to be going okay - we're gradually wearing them down. However, after two or three rounds, the druid is starting to take some serious hits. And two enemy spellcasters have joined the fray. Since the healer is AFK, the only one that can heal the druid is me (he didn't have any good healing spells prepared). I rush forward and heal the druid for about 30 HP, taking 15 damage in the process because of the nature of the heal. Then everything goes bad. The first spellcaster casts lightning bolt. I fail the reflex save and get reduced to single-digit HP. The next spellcaster casts fireball. I fail the reflex save again and get killed instantly. So the group's best (and only) blaster is now dead, and the rest of the group is in serious pain because of the fireball and lightning bolt. By now, thankfully, most of the blue guys are dead, and the group manages to rush forward and bring down the two casters. They retreat back to the stairs with my body to recover, but don't get long to do that because even more of the blue guys chase after them and ultimately kill them all.
Turns out that when we attacked that -one- guy, we had angered an entire intelligent tribe of crazy blue egotistical assholes. They were all well-armed, had demonic minions, and even an umber hulk that would tunnel its way to attack us if we were to hole up somewhere. So who's to blame for the TPK?
DM - We had never encountered any kind of organized opposing force before, and every previous encounter had been isolated. Our only instance of compounded fighting prior to this had been when a different BSF did a war cry in the middle of four enemy groups that otherwise would have been isolated. The DM explained that diplomacy with the blue guys would have been possible and was the intended outcome. They -were- crazy, evil, and egotistical, but not -that- intelligent. We could have stroked their egos and probably gotten by them, or at least separated them to handle individually. We didn't receive any kind of indication of their numbers or presence until we had pulled -all- of them. He was also the one that moved the druid into the room to get surrounded during our final battle.
Myself - I was the one who asked the group if they wanted to do the surprise attack on the first blue guy, so I "shot first." Though they did all agree to it. I could have thought to ask the little girl how many of the blue guys there were, or else try to reason with them.
The group - For so many players being absent, and the rogue for being incompetent. If we had had our healer in the final battle, I wouldn't have had to get in range of the blast spells that killed me to heal the druid, and the healer would have been able to heal at range too. We may have been able to blast through them, but without my damaging potential, it was over.
So yeah, everyone loses there, but at least we start up a new campaign now. This time hopefully without the two people that really frustrated me the last two games. And I get to play a summoner with an awesome anthro hawk eidolon!
