TPK: The most hilarious, outlandish, awesome and terrifying therein.

[atemu1234]

Killing a party. Always a pain, especially when they get to high levels. No one wants to drop a bridge on them, of course. We want it to be fun. We want it to be awesome. Or, we want it to be hilarious. We want it to sting a little bit, and we want (as DMs) to lap at their delicious tears (it's a joke, don't take it seriously).

So how have you done it? Specifically, what did you find the most fun ways of doing it? Even if you didn't feel free to chime in, I don't care whether it's a real story or not, if it fits it belongs in this thread.

[Mr Adventurer]

Tauric Hydra/Delver which an Elder Brain had Psionic Mind Jarred into to put an anti-magic field on it. Had to burn a whole Ring of Wishes to get out of that one.

Zargon on a poorly-prepared party. They had to lure him to a nearby friendly Solar who drowned Z in lava.

Fire-immune monsters, a PC wizard with Searing Spell - and a terrain feature that vents inappropriately lethal poison gas when exposed to fire.

All true, but all narrow escapes rather than true TPKs...

[Nibbens]

A long time ago I had a group of 5 level 1 characters, put them up against a 2nd level sorcerer, a whole crap ton of crawling hands, and a pit of acid. The crawling hands were "dragging" the players into the pit of acid while the sorc rained down spells on them. It was a bare miss - almost a TPK, and then years later I realized that even though crawling hands could "grab" a creature of medium size, they could not "drag." I didn't realize the mistake until much later and the players didn't care, it was a fun game and I almost killed them all. It was awesome. lol

[Ssalarn]

The party had on numerous occasions inadvertently disrupted the plots of a scheming cabal of necromancers enough times that the necromancers finally decided it was time to take decisive action against the adventurers they believed were out there countering their every move like tactical geniuses. So a True Necromancer, a Necrocarnate, a Dread Necromancer, a Pale Master wizard, and a cleric of some god of undeath I can no longer recall gather up all the undead they can control and march their armies out to crush the party, managing to entrap them in a broken field studded with streams of slow moving lava from a recently erupted volcano (the eruption being the result of the party's decision to destroy an evil artifact in the volcano's heart).

The party consisted of a gnome Crusader, a kalash-tar Lurk, a shifter Swordsage, a goliath dragonborn Warblade, and a duskling Totemist. The necromancers, having studied their foes, had a plan of action all in place to deal with them, which included the Dread Necromancer using baleful polymorph to turn the Swordsage into a squirrel (backfired due to the Swordsage succeeding on his Will save and turning into a kung-fu death squirrel), the True Necromancer using a conga line of ogre zombies to drag the gnome Crusader into the lava flows (originally they were just going to grapple and pummel him, but environmental hazards were too good to pass up), the Necrocarnate using his frost giant necrocarnate zombie to lay down the big blows, and the Pale Master and Cleric controlling and buffing shades and wights and other critters capable of laying some stat drain/damage or energy drain effects on the group. It was a fairly colossal fight: the Crusader kept wading out of the lava flows and getting thrown back in as he hammered apart the ogre zombies, the Swordsage squirrel running arround dropping flaming, dual-boosted attacks, the Lurk sniping and trying to get close enough to the necromancers to drop some serious disruption on them, etc. Ultimately, a few bad turns, including the frost giant necrocarnate zombie critting on the Warblade the round before they brought the Necrocarnate down and the Totemist getting dragged down by level draining effects cost them the fight, but it was actually a very close deal and by the end of it they'd defeated the Dread Necromancer, the Necrocarnate, and the cleric, as well as most of the undead they were controlling. Most of the party died, the Lurk and the Squirrelsage managed to sneak away, and we all agreed it was an excellent wrap-up to the campaign, which had to end anyways since my fiancee and I were moving out of state.

[Krobar]

A few years ago i was running a new 3.5 edition game. The party was 3rd level. They were all standing at the top of a 1000 foot cliff they had to climb down. The wizard said "let's just jump. I got this." They'd seen him cast Featherfall before and figured that's what he'd do. After everyone jumped he said "uhhhh... I just remembered I didn't memorize that today... "

So I said "you better figure something out before I get to zero... 8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1... everybody roll 20d6."

We still laugh about "I got this..."

I've been skydiving many times and it takes about 8 seconds to fall 1000 feet from a standstill.

[Blackhawk748]

It may not be a TPK but it was the best boss fight i ever DMed for.
In this corner: Half Elf Bard, Half Elf Sorceress, Elf Druid and a Human Knight!
In this corner: Weighing in at 2 tons of undead rippling muscle, forged in the freezing fires of Carceri. Malakath the Half Farspawn 8 headed Hydra Lich Cleric!!

Basically i gave Malakath an extra Standard action to use on "mental actions" (ie spells and SLAs) and unleashed him on the party. He was a fusion of a Half Farspawn Hydra which the party had beaten earlier (and taken off two heads he was a 6 headed one then) and the Mistress, a cleric of Nerull who they also defeated. I think it was like a 15 round combat (a record in our group) and it took multiple Walls of Fire and the Knight tanking like a madman as the bard played pocket medic and the druid (turned into a tiger) Produce Flamed Pounced Malakath and the Sorcerer was chucking Greater Disrupt Undeads.

They may not have died but i almost killed them a few times and the battle was just plain epic.

[Dr TPK]

and we want (as DMs) to lap at their delicious tears (it's a joke, don't take it seriously).

A joke? Not for me, my friend ;)

[Milodiah]

Only TPK I've ever had was in Call of Cthulhu. And that, my friends, was a man with a Thompson sub-machine gun.

[Ferronach]

I almost TPKd a five player group of level 6 or 7s (can't recall) with a single bodak in a dark room.
The ninja save the party by throwing a bag of holding over the things head and pulling the strings tight (he rolled a nat 20 on the "called shot" so I felt obliged to give it to him).

The same party then went through a long tunnel with alternating dark and light sections. All of the dark sections were filled with shadows which stat damaged the party quite badly. I kept telling them that they felt a little weaker after passing through a dark section. They finally figured it out when the wizard (lowest STR) was at a STR score of 2...

In another group my buddy playing a H-Ogre bbn decided to throw the dwarf in full plate at the trapped wall in a treasure vault... lightning trap almost wiped the party out. Thank goodness I was guarding the door at the time. XD

My friend TPKed a group with a wondrous potion (similar to a deck of many things but in potion form) and rolled a three nat 1s in a row... he died and his corpse spawned a sphere of annihilation :(

[Theobod]

Once had a party TPK themselves. was a scifi game on a beat up old ship with two brothers, on a orbital friction deceleration before docking one party member needed drug money so he decides to steal ship parts... poorly, he caused a fire his brother had to put out, lied about it and responded to the clip round the ear he got with breaking his brothers nose.... long story short the fight spilled out into the observation lounge and a gun was drawn.... the party was informed early and repeatedly that where it counts ricochets would be tracked...