Our characters were in this abandoned mansion where we were to recover this sacred stone from a brass dragon.

After some negotiation we got the stone and headed out and down this path and through this town where we got ambushed by four goblin warrors and a Shaman.   We killed three of the goblin warriors but manged to end in a tpk with the other 2 goblin warriors and the shaman injured.

Now I had problems with the way the DM was running the game and depending on his changing schedule he discussed doing a Resurrection of the characters or doing a "save game" back at the mansion we left.

I am just not sure if I am going to want to pay in this guys game again.  He is a nice person and all and I like 4e but I just dont know with this on top of other things if I want to be in his game.

He did feel bad about the tpk but pitting 1st level characters against 3rd and 4th level bad guys just seemed a little too much for us.

What do you guys think?

Yeah. The rewinding to the save game thing is a bad move. I'd tell the DM to grow some balls: there was a TPK. That's it. The end. The players should grow a pair too and live with the consequences. Pick up the game with new characters investigating the previous ones' disparition, or play another game, whatnot... PCs deaths are opportunities. They represent a chance at new beginnings. Not ends.

If you had an extended rest prior to this encounter, the odds should have been with you to win that battle (though wounded and exhausting your dailies). It's built into the encounter rules that you should be able to handle an encounter with higher level challenges such as those. Were you just particularly unlucky in rolls and/or tactics?

No one says you have to fight every fight. Can't you outrun goblins?

Quote from: Daedalus;476850What do you guys think?

Forget about the "rewind/safe" button. If the GM goes for retroactive ruling at all, I'd rather he says the final hits by the goblins caused non-lethal damage (i.e. knocked the PCs unconscious rather than dead), and that the goblins carried the goblins back to the brass dragon who, upon the characters waking up, will negotiate with them for their lives.

I know the module in question - it happens to be the best published lvl 1 module for 4E to be written. We are talking about an infiltration & stealth module. It got lots of branching points for parties who move in 'not so stealthily-here I come- kick in the door - run fighting all our way back' mode, but it ramps up the difficulty accordingly.

In that light, wouldn't it be much more fun to write up a new set of characters who not only got to retrieve the stone(s) but also the set of bumbling fools ( ) who ran rampage in the city last time? (Assume again the characters were knocked unconscious, not dead, and that the dragon now holds them hostage.) Cue dialogue from Hot Shots Part Deux,

QuoteI don't know how much you know
about ______ the last war but...
                   
...several of our men
were missing in action.
                   
Since then on two occasions we sent in
squads to rescue those men.
                   
Both missions failed.
                   
Now we have to go and get the men who went to
get the men who went to get the men.

Awesome! Start over with new PCs.

"Rewind" is a horrible thing to do, since it removes consequences from play.

In the 3.0 campaign I am currently playing in, we suffered a TPK two sessions ago (we were trying to melt down a massive golden door in a lich's dungeon, and got jumped by his elite minions), and the next session, [edit]with a new GM[/edit], the new PCs found that specific dungeon room again, molten slag and scarred corpses laying everywhere. That was a cool moment. That was a more memorable moment than going back to a "save game."

Did the characters all die? AKA, negative bloodied HP or 3 failed death saves?
If not, then the goblins could have easily taken you prisoner.

In general, I find TPKs do provide great opportunities...to end the group, change GMs or change campaigns. Rarely have I seen a campaign continue. I've done it, but that was an exceptional group.

Grow a pair and do as Melan suggests. I've never stopped a campaign due to a TPK, and no one has ever complained, in 25 years of gaming. So it must not be so terrible.

My 4e campaign almost ended in a TPK several times, but they always managed to just barely survive.  And it was almost always because they were not very good at using tactics.

How unbalanced was this ambush encounter?  Was it after a long series of battles?

IME with the 4e rules, it's pretty difficult to get a TPK unless:
A) You've had a long series of at least 4 fights without resting
B) The fight is level +5 or more
C) The PCs are not very good at using their powers/tactics

Just because your group had a bad session doesn't mean you should re-invent the wheel. If you and your group were having fun it's up to you as a group to discuss where to go from here. If you are not happy with the game and feel like your time is better spend elsewhere, than by all means, bow out and exit stage left.

There are other options available to your group that I think may be more viable than restarting the session(s) leading up to your party's demise. A cleric could have resurected you all. A God could intervene on your deaths (campy, I know, but I did it once for one player who died in a spectacular fashion which created a interesting plot hook for the group's future adventure). Or you guys can just create new characters. What I am saying is don't let this bring you guys down. It sucks when it happens, but it happens. Learn from it. Talk about it, and move on.

Good luck!

I've seen a bunch of TPKs in 4e by this time. I've personally been a player in two, and a third one I'm not counting because one survivor ran away.

But as a DM you do have an option:

The final blow of any attack can be declared a "knocked unconscious" blow by any PC. This is harder for the Dm to get away with because there are a lot of ways for players to revive. However, if it isn't too implausible (say a PC was killed by being devoured and died from ongoing acid damage- that's an implausible one). the Dm can always say "ok, everyone is down.. but what happens is you are all really knocked out.. and then dragged off as captives"

And then you can do the escapee bit as the next adventure. Or not.

I personally feel a little robbed when someone brings my character back from a pretty good death. My main LFR character for example, probably should be dead because at GenCon 2008, she was poisoned in the first Adventuring Company adventure, taking ongoing poison damage. Once you go to zero, your'e out, and once you go to negative bloodied, there's no saving you.  The players finished the encounter with the green dragon, which essentially stopped the clock on my ongoing poison.. but I couldn't see how anyone would have gotten to my characters body in time to help me. Nevertheless the DM called it, and so Sheena survives to this day. As a sort of penance I make sure she is neurotically equipped with vials of antivenom at all times.

TPKs happen. Personally i dont mind encounters that are above or below my character's power level (it adds some belirvability to the game). If something looks too tough, running away and coming back to fight it anotger day is one option. For me the fun of tge game is lost if the stakes aren't real. When every combat is designed for the party to win with little to no losses, it makes mt victories less meaningful.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;476895But as a DM you do have an option:

The final blow of any attack can be declared a "knocked unconscious" blow by any PC. This is harder for the Dm to get away with because there are a lot of ways for players to revive. However, if it isn't too implausible (say a PC was killed by being devoured and died from ongoing acid damage- that's an implausible one). the Dm can always say "ok, everyone is down.. but what happens is you are all really knocked out.. and then dragged off as captives"

And then you can do the escapee bit as the next adventure. Or not.

That's the exact rule I had in mind in my own post (above). I'll reference it for the benefit of the OP - it's in the PHB, p. 295:

QuoteKnocking Creatures Unconscious

When you reduce a creature to 0 hp or fewer, you can choose to knock it unconscious rather than kill it. Until it regains hit points, the creature is unconscious but not dying. Any healing makes the creature conscious.
If the creature doesn't receive any healing, it is restored to 1 hp and becomes conscious after a short rest.

However, I'd avise against frequent use of this rule to avoid TPKs. Retracted or avoided TPKs detract from the joy of RPGs. Cf. Settembrini's signature.

And, replying to this one:

Quote from: jgants;476889IME with the 4e rules, it's pretty difficult to get a TPK unless:
A) You've had a long series of at least 4 fights without resting
B) The fight is level +5 or more
C) The PCs are not very good at using their powers/tactics

All true, but still not applicable to the case at hand. As I said upthread, this module's difficulty scales according to the choices of the PCs outside combat - in particular, to how perceptive and stealthy they are.

Whenever I was DMing, I generally try to avoid TPKs.  But nevertheless they do happen.

The times where I don't try to avoid TPKs, is whenever we're playing a one-shot evening game or a short game lasting several sessions.  (A short game would be one where we play several sessions over a long weekend, for example).