this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Completely bollocksed up last night's session. Abject fucking failure as a DM. (hexbear.net)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I was busy keeping track of Black Tentacles and Crushing Despair's effects so I forgot about the second save for creatures who critically fail against Phantasmal Calamity, which could have stopped the two standing PCs from reviving the two downed PCs and led to a complete TPK. Just one of them failing the save would have guaranteed a dead party member, and they only had about a 20% chance each to succeed. After that they would have had to roll a 19 or 20 to escape the illusion thanks to their debuffs, which they'd need to get on their first attempt or lose both of the downed party members.

And now one of my players has pointed out Black Tentacles has been upgraded to Slither in the remaster so they should have been even more killed. With an extra 2d6 damage plus persistent poison every round I could have absolutely tpk'd them. This is so fucking upsetting. They should have all died and had to make new characters and the paladin player forced to write the backstory on why the help he requested took so long to arrive angery

i just wanna kill PCs and everyone said this AP would kill loads but I trained my players too well and now I missed my chance to kill them aaaaaaaAAAAAA lenin-rage

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Weird.

I tend to view any TPK as the failure of GMing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

About a decade ago I was in the same boat, until I played Paizo's We Be Goblins oneshot and we completely fucked up by starting the final fight in the worst possible position, leading to a TPK that made perfect sense with the story so far and had us falling out of our chairs laughing. With a little inspiration from a statblock I saw online I threw together a oneshot system that specifically intended to end each session by killing all the player characters, and ran it with my group several times to great success.

You consider a TPK a failure of GMing because to you, a TPK is a mistake - a misbalanced encounter or overly punishing consequences - that unintentionally and prematurely ends a story, but properly used it's a storytelling tool that intentionally progresses the plot and creates new events and options. In the context of my campaign, this was the second encounter and first of several combats with the final boss, that happen long before the party have any way to win the fight, nevermind permanently destroy her. She's such an extreme threat that PF2e's encounter building guidelines don't have a name for it. The encounter should have demonstrated her monstrous power by not only killing some or all of the party, but by killing them with the lingering effects of her spells after she had already left, but because I forgot the second save I completely failed at that. Every death in that fight would not only have reinforced her role as the BBEG after having been little more than a rumour over the last year of play, but also itself been the backstory of a whole new character - the mother who comes out of retirement to avenge her daughter's death, the aging priest who must undertake one final task for his god, the blacksmith that feels a sense of duty to those who once protected him.

Certainly TPKs can be a failure of GM, but like with many things it's entirely dependent on the context of your table, system, and story, and thinking it's always a failure of GMing misunderstands storytelling.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If your intent as a group of players is to TPK, then obviously that's not a failure. (If you don't TPK with Paranoia for example, you dun fucked up.)

But if you're playing just an ordinary game without explicitly stating in advance that TPKs are the goal, it's a failure of GMing, IMO.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

So you agree it's contextual. Why mention it at all then? You're not one of my players, you didn't attend our session zero, what context do you have that makes your comment relevant to the situation?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

One time a party in my dungeon came into an empty room with a fresco. There were carvings of fish and they'd been painted red.

Five real time hours later they were still trying to solve the riddle so I took pity on them and revealed that they were red herring.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

Don't beat yourself up too much. It happens to every DM eventually. Not me, though, I'm perfect.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (2 children)

That's what you get for not using owlbears

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Creature idea: The Hex Owlbear, it has a flight speed

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Holy shit imagine just stumbling upon one of those and trying to run, just to have it start flying

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Unfortunately Owlbears are no longer in Pathfinder... deeper-sadness

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

There are a few significant Drow in the AP, but we started after it was announced they were out and before Cavern Elves were revealed as the semi-replacement, so I've just being doing a running joke of mentioning that Drow aren't real every time they come up. The one they already met and killed was bugs so I more concentrated on that side of his accent, but they'll be visiting his hometown later and I think I'm gonna make all the not-Drow down there camp Bavarians who are very offended about being called Drow.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Lessons learned

I will always cherish the time I had a "friendly" NPC hand one of the players a scroll to "get them out of a jam"

They thought it was a teleport scroll, but not the kind they thought it was

It was an Anywhere but Here scroll, and they ended up teleporking themselves to Akiton and fighting a band of Shobad raiders who shot them up good

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh, that's mean. A long time ago I reminded my players they had collected a bottle of liquid from the alter of an evil god earlier in the dungeon when a boss fight was going extremely south, so they fed it to the unconscious fighter on the basis that whatever it did, it couldn't make things worse.

The Waters of Lamashtu corrupt any who drink it, and in extreme cases can permanently transform people into horrifying abominations. One poor roll later and the boss had a brand new minion.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

i-cant

Amazing, i love it!