3 Strategies For Coming Back From a TPK

Hanging over nearly every encounter in every RPG is the potential that none of the player characters survive this fight, this trap, or this riddle contest with a devil. Whether the characters make bad decisions, the dice are against them, or something goes horribly awry, there's a chance that everyone winds up dead. It might be a remote chance in some circumstances, but it's usually in the background, watching and waiting.

The problem with a total party kill is, of course, that it severs the story you were all trying to tell, and it leaves everyone in a difficult position. The players need to come up with motivation to make new characters who want to pick up where the others left off, and the Game Master has to figure out some way to accommodate that new party so the story can keep going.

That's a massive headache, so I thought that this week I'd expand on some of the thoughts I had forever and a day ago in Undoing Character Death, and talk about methods and ideas for moving on/fixing a TPK so your game can continue, and you can finish the story you were all collectively telling.

Would you look at that? Seems the game goes on...

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Avoid Death Entirely

The first, and most obvious, solution to dealing with a TPK is to instead have a TPL... Total Party Loss. The PCs still came out on the losing end of the encounter, but for one reason or another they all survived to tell the tale. So the characters are still in the game, but now they're at a significant disadvantage, and they've got to try to overcome their current circumstances.

Look, I'm just saying, you ain't worth much if I bring you in dead.

As a for-instance, say the party was brought down by a bandit ambush. If the PCs are low enough level, the bandits might just take any of their valuable gear, and move on, leaving them where they fell. After all, the penalty for murder is a lot worse than the penalty for highway robbery, so they might just take what they want and move on. If the PCs were fighting a cult, perhaps the cult wants to sacrifice them, so they have to keep the PCs alive for now. If the enemy was from another faction, perhaps they want to trade the PCs to a more powerful villain, or they might even want to try to sell them into slavery.

Whatever the reason, the PCs are at least not killed, and they might actively be kept alive to serve a purpose.

This is not a perfect solution, of course. After all, animals like manticores, mindless foes like undead or automatons, and creatures who hate the PCs may not wish to allow them to live. But there are a lot of TPKs that can be fixed by simply moving to a TPL instead. Especially because the PCs then have to regroup, and come up with new plans like how they're going to escape captivity, how they're going to get their gear back, and so on. The PCs might also have temporary (or permanent) injuries such as a loss of a hand or eye, or negatives to certain attributes until they can receive proper healing. This can make it feel like the GM isn't just giving the players a get-out-of-dead-free card, maintaining that balance of challenge.

This is also where having friends can help the PCs out a lot, as I mentioned back in The Case For Using Recurring NPCs in Your Game.

"Outsider" Intervention

So, the PCs are well and truly dead. Now what? Well, if the task they've been set is truly important (or if they are pawns in a cosmic game, as often happens in our campaigns), it's possible that some variety of outsider might step in and offer them a chance to try again.

Now, this can be simple or complicated. For example, if your party is slain on holy ground, perhaps they are offered a chance to return to life by the spirit or god who claims that place. This might mark them in some way going forward, requiring them to follow certain vows, or to accomplish certain tasks (mechanically represented by a geas, perhaps). The PCs might be given a chance to flee the afterlife, returning to their bodies, but now there are bounty hunters from the afterworld on their trail to drag them back for judgment. A spirit, a god, or a devil might offer the PCs a chance at life for its own purposes, as well. So even if a devil offers them the bargain, it might be doing so because the PCs are going to inconvenience one of its rivals, potentially creating a power gap that this devil can step into when the PCs achieve their goals. So while it might seem like the devil's bargain is too good to be true, it has its own motives the PCs may not be aware of.

You could make it more complicated, as well, if you want.

You can choose to make this part as complicated as you and your players want, as well. You could even make escaping the underworld a whole arc of the campaign... or a new campaign in and of itself if you check out my earlier post The Black Ballad... A Campaign That Begins Once Your TPK Ends! This particular game went live on BackerKit today, so go check that out if this is something that interests you.

Adding a Template

This is usually something I advocate for when it comes to villain survival after the PCs killed them, but turnabout is fair play when you're the GM. If you want the party to come back, and to come back hard, consider adding a template to them, or altering their creature type... at least temporarily.

Raven 1, going dark.

While you could grab ideas out of I'm Back- 25 Reasons For a Villain's Survival, I'd suggest that any GM who wants to use this particular tactic put a little more effort into making this feel organic. Because whatever template your characters are given should make sense for where they are, who they are, what they're trying to accomplish, and how they died.

For example, ask what it would be like to bring characters back as sentient undead for an arc. Vengeful ghosts, haunted armor, shambling zombies, or wrathful, spellcasting skeletons might be a fun thing to do for a party that was slain in the Forest of Spirits. Having the party reanimated as various golems or cybernetic creatures could work if they were used as subjects by a mad alchemist. Vows that allow them to temporarily become celestial or infernal creatures could be fun as well! Just ask yourself if this is a template you want everyone to have for the rest of the campaign, or if there will be a quest to undo this state of being once the immediate goal is achieved.

For Pathfinder players, corruptions are a ideal for this. These sets of dark powers put a burden on the character, while also giving them some additional abilities, and they are an ideal way to explain why someone isn't dead. Additionally, corruptions can be removed with time and effort, making them an even better choice than a template for this strategy. For those who are interested in them, consider the following articles as a jumping off point:

- 5 Classes To Pair With The Shadowbound Corruption

- 5 Classes To Pair With The Promethean Corruption

Paying The Iron Price

It really isn't all that expensive.

While that's all for my suggestions on coming back from a TPK today, I did want to make folks aware of something new that dropped recently. The Price of Iron is a module I wrote over a year ago for High Level Games, and it's a DND 5E adventure. When the party is offered a sack of silver and a masterfully crafted cold iron weapon each for a single night's work guarding a warehouse, it seems too good to be true. Of course, when portals to other realities begin to open, and the servants of a dark fey begin trying to break out, they realize they have quite a challenge before them.

If you've been looking forward to more modules from me, consider picking this one up, and keeping an ear out because I should have another piece that's long overdue finally becoming available in the very near future!

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DMs, Think Outside Traditional Templates (Orcs Can Be Vampires, Too, You Know!)

A while ago I came across a forum post from a DM asking for help. The situation was that he had a vampire as the big bad of the current arc of his campaign in Golarion, and he wanted it to be sort of a mystery as to who the leech was. The problem was that as soon as the players walked into the local tavern, they saw the lord of the manor seated near the fire with his manservant. He was tall, angular, pale, with a high widow's peak, a commanding presence, and he didn't seem to eat anything.

And when the party trigged that the baron was the vampire? Well, the DM didn't know what to do.

Well, making it someone less obvious might have helped.

Now, there were all sorts of things the DM could have done here, but pretty much all of them boil down to, "Don't make the vampire the most obvious guy in the room!" The most common suggestion was to make the lord a servant to the vampire, but have his "manservant" be the actual vampire. With all the eyes focused on the baron, no one would have noticed someone so lowly and unimportant. A few folks suggested going a step further, and making the vampire the innkeeper, or a traveling merchant, but mostly the consensus was to make it the guy standing next to the most suspicious dude in the room.

All I could think, looking at that setup, was that the vampire should not only have been someone different, but someone that no one in the party would have expected based on trope and stereotype. For example... what about the soldier of fortune from the Mwangi Expanse? Or the traveling mystic from the Dragon Empire? Why not the Varisian fortune teller, or the Taldan tinker?

While those were all fine options, it eventually struck me that vampire is a template we can apply to any living creature. So while changing the nationality into something we don't expect a traditional vampire to be, that's just the tip of the ice berg (and one I explored in The Draugr's Bastard, An Unexpected Dhampir). The vampire could have been nearly any fantasy race as well... and that idea opened up all kinds of possibilities that I think DMs often overlook.

Step Outside The Box, And See What You Can Make

The first scenario that came to my mind was a small army of orc sellswords, led by Garrak Blooddrinker. A huge, heavily muscled brute, Garrak has a vicious bite, and he often tears out the throat of his victims on the battlefield. It's said he drinks the blood of his enemies from a goblet made from a jeweled skull, and that he avoids the daylight like the plague. His eyes are bright red, and glow in the dark when he rages across the field, encarmined sword in hand.

Because why wouldn't an orc war master be a vampire? All the clues are there, but because we think, "Ah, he's just an orc, that's what orcs do!" it has the potential to teach a valuable lesson. Take nothing at face value, and always ask if what you're seeing might mean more.

And then my mind went to silly places.

At that point, I asked why one would stop with vampires? There are dozens (if not hundreds) of templates in Pathfinder alone, so why apply them only to traditional, predictable circumstances? Because sure, we expect an alchemically quickened creature in a crumbling castle full of bizarre laboratories... but why not apply the template to a tiefling assassin who stalks the party on behalf of his unknown masters? The apostle kyton is a terror to behold, but to add some extra horror, why not add it to an aasimar to create a true perversion of celestial beauty? If your players are raiding the ruins of a giant's tomb, why not have stone giant mummies? Or boreal lizardfolk who hunt the frozen peaks of the northern mountains? Why not make fire giant werewolves who command packs of hellhounds?

With so many options, and so much potential, why do we limit our thinking when it comes to our monsters? Make something new, or unexpected, and you might be surprised at the reactions you get from your table. If nothing else, you'll teach your players to make Knowledge checks to be sure they aren't overlooking a big hazard.

And for more fun on templates, and resurrecting fallen minions, check out this advice from the Dungeon Keeper!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday update. Hopefully it gave fuel to the fire, and has some folks thinking about what to do with their monsters in the near future. If you'd like more content from yours truly, check out my Vocal archive, or head over to the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I put shows and skits together with other, talented gamers. To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you want to help me keep doing what I'm doing, consider heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron. Or, if you'd rather do a one-time tip, you could just Buy Me A Coffee. Either way, I'll be happy to send you some sweet gaming swag as a thank you!