This post has been a while in coming since it took about three weeks for things to play out.
The moral of this post, is surrender is usually a forgotten option for PC’s. They don’t usually like the idea that they get beat, but that’s part of the game. Everything doesn’t always go your way, and a good DM can help turn a down moment into story element and not just a punishment more than what it needs to be. For me I’ve seen parties refuse to surrender when given the option and it results in a TPK. I’ve seen parties surrender and escape, and have a great side story wrapped up in it. But with 4E it’s been difficult to see how capture would play out or even if could play out via a published module. But upon reading the adventure the Mottled Tower, I was amazed to see that not only was there a chance, but if not played well a TPK could be a result as well.
Well, it finally happened, we almost had a total party kill (TPK) in a fourth edition (non Fourthcore) campaign. As I had hinted to before hitting paragon tier and the drastic increase in the cost of Raise Dead will make the potential of 4E lethality a bit more closer to possible since PC’s will be loath to cough up the 50k to bring back a Paragon hero.
For those of you not aware, I’ve been running the Scales of War saga published by Dragon Magazine which was designed to take the PC’s from level 1-30. Being set in the Forgotten Realms this saga is a follow up to the old Red Hand of Doom module and in my opinion is done very well.
Surrender FTW!
In our latest episode, The Mottled Tower, the PC’s found themselves in pursuit of the main villainous figure they have identified in the big conspiracy thus far. Having encountered him several time before they knew their opponent was tough. On their approach to his lair, they made a mistake by trying to camp out right outside the bad guys lair, which was the subject of a previous post. However once we continued the next week, one player was not able to make the session, which undoubtedly hurt them.
The party chose to assault our villains tower which basically leads up to a triple/quadruple fight with very little chance for a rest. This is done intentionally by the module. I read this several times to estimate the viability of this challenge, and in my judgement, this task would be difficult, yet not impossible to win.
The party is first pitted against some mobs, in a room with a rising pool of lava as they attempt to reach a portal in the room. The best solution of course is to avoid the mobs, and move quickly to the portal. Naturally the PC’s will try to engage the mobs before the realization of the situation sinks in. Unfortunately for my party one PC misjudged the speed at which the Lava rises and was caught in the lava and burned to death. (more…)
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