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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