T-P-K - has it happened to you?

[skreweded]

We had a TPK a while back. I won't go into game detail, but it was warranted. We take turns DMing, and the next DM up was consistently whining about how "I would have done it better" and "lets hurry up this meet, maybe we can finish the story!" when we had barley started. The DM then decided to kill him, and it turned into a TPK. It's actually a funny story. That guy DMed (The annoying one) once. Everyone all of a sudden had plans all the time.


We actually havn't had meets in months, now that i think about it.

[Lavidor]

Once, we met a Copper dragon. I and one other player bowed deeply to show respect, but for some reason the other four players attacked it ()!
Well, the other guy who bowed, a fighter survived ( lucky), but everyone else (including me) died. The DM was nice enough to let him get the dragon ressurect us, but since then he was the one who represented us (I had low Carisma anyway).

[Tobimaro]

Well, I was part of a near TPK. Let me tell you my tail.

This event was a slot-zero for a convention, and before the table formed, one of the players was pulled out to help out another slot-zero table. This left us as a rather weak party (our most combat-capable PC was our cleric).

In the midst of our mission, we found a local noble who claimed to have been missing for some time, but in actuality had been replaced some years ago. At that point we found out that the imposter was going to marry the lady who had hired us to conduct an investigation.

When the final battle started, we were supposed to have interrupted the ceremony. In our case, the final battle started in a large room, and our party was swarmed by the imposter's guards. Outnumbered, we fell one by one, with my bard being the only one to almost escape, but even he fell. Afterwards, the DM talked to someone else, and he ruled that we had been rescued by the noble. It turns out that we should not have started in the middle of the enemy, but in a hallway just outside of there.

Our other problem was that some of us should have escaped when we felt that our situation was hopeless, but we were caught up in the moment of being heroic instead of being smart. I've kept that situation in mind since then.

[jng2058]

In my very first Basic D&D game, as played by a group of third and fourth graders, I made a thief and a friend made a fighter. Here's how it went:

DM: You're in a hallway.

Me: We are? Okay. Ummm, is there anything in the hallway?

DM: <flips through rulebook> Yeah...there's a troll.

Fighter: Is that bad? I kill it with my sword.

DM: Roll to hit.

Fighter: 6.

DM: You miss. The troll attacks the thief....

Me: What'd I do?

DM: The troll hits you. It does 8 points of damage. How many hit points did you have?

Me: Umm....3.

DM: Okay, you're dead.

Not surprisingly, my friend's Fighter dropped dead immediately thereafter. All things considered, its a miracle I kept on playing the game after that. There may be something to do with childish optimism involved there.

Another time at a con, I wanna say it was maybe Gencon XX but it might have been a Winter Fantasy or a local con, I don't really remember, I was in a Cyberpunk (2013) game. We got our characters and were told to infiltrate a corporate HQ. We sneak in, silence a couple of guards, then get in an elevator to to the top floor. The elevator door opens up and we walk into a meat grinder. A dozen heavily armed and armored guards, some auto-turrets, major firepower. The whole party's dead in two rounds, and we're like fifteen minutes into a four hour event.

GM: <hands out new characters as he's talking> Your boss flips off the monitor. "That's what happened to the last team we sent in. Let's hope you do better...."

And then the event REALLY started.

Frankly, I though it was brilliant...albeit the kind of thing you can only get away with in a one shot situation, such as at a con event.

This was proved to be the case when the DM of a long standing AD&D2 game decided to assassinate the party and ended up killing the game instead. At its peak, this game had seven players plus the DM, all in high school. By the time of the event we're talking about here, we were down to just three players still toughing it out. It was my first long term game, and one where I'd managed to take a Gnome Fighter from lvl 1 to lvl 9, my greatest AD&D accomplishment to that point. It was a game that I attended faithfully each and every week, come hell or high water (or, in my case, come hell or a father who was convinced that D&D was "evil"). We'd indulged the DM's Spelljammer phase when he got that boxed set, and now that he'd gotten the Menzoberranzan boxed set, we indulged him again, selling our tricked out Hammerhead class 'Jammer, returning to our native Faerun (the Forgotten Realms), and taking a job to try and save a town of Deep Gnomes from a Drow attack.

Now you've gotta understand that the DM's best friend was playing the game. This best friend had, when his original rolled up Elf Fighter/Mage had died, been allowed to create his new character using some point system buy that ended up with his Human Fighter having an 18/00 Str, 18s in Dex and Con, and 8s in Int, Wis, and Cha. Of course, he soon "discovered" a Ring of Human Influence that gave him a 18 Cha too. Needless to say, the rest of us were a little annoyed at the blatant favoritism, especially when the next character to join the part was forced to roll his stats, and ended up with an incredibly mediocre set of stats that the DM made him play. But, we rationalized, Deltar was on our side, so that was okay.

Back to the Drow and the Gnomes. We figure out what's going on, that the Drow are using some big lava demon to try and awaken a volcano to destroy the town. We track them down and get into a big fight. It looks rough. There's a Balron, a high level Drow priestess, the giant lava demon, a bunch of lesser demons, and some support Drow. Looks tough, but we're a reasonably well equipped band of 9th and 10th level characters, and we should be able to pull it out, right?

First thing that happens, though, is that the priestess waves her hand, and Deltar falls into a crevasse. We're like, okay, no problem, Deltar's got the Boots of Flying. No, the DM says, he can't fly out. Okay, say we, we toss him a rope. No again, the DM says, you can't rescue him. At all.

What the ****?

We press on, and realize we're totally out-matched, and indeed, might have been out-matched even if our heaviest hitter hadn't been removed from the fight by DM fiat. Well, there'd been a long standing house rule in the campaign that once per character, you could make a Divine Intervention roll. You had a % chance equal to your level, and it had to be in a cause that helps the god you worship, and you can only try the roll once over the life of your character. I'm a gnome who worships the gnome god of war while defending a city of gnomes...if there was ever a time I could make the roll, it was now, so I go for it. The dice are kind, I get a 06, and I'm like "Yeah, we're saved!!"

After all, when Deltar succeeded in HIS D.I. roll a few months back, he'd gotten turned into a Divine Champion, giving him the equivalent of a Potion of Invulnerability, A Potion of Haste, an a Potion of Super-Heroism all at once, turning an already badass fighter into a killing machine.

Okay, says the DM, you feel protected by your god. You get a free parry every round for the next six rounds.

What the ****?

Surprisingly enough, six free parries don't turn the tide, and in short order everyone's dead but Deltar, who's trapped in the crevasse. The DM says that we can come back next week to find out what happens next.

So next week we show up, figuring that maybe the DM and Deltar were running a Deltar solo session during the week, highlighting Deltar's stunning escape, and we'll come back and our loyal buddy will find a way to get us raised and we can do the "you got us last time, but now we're back!" storyline and all will be well.

Not exactly...it turns out that what the DM wants to run is for us to make new characters to be Deltar's supporting cast as he does a "mess around in Menzo" storyline. Our long running characters, one of which had been in the game longer than Deltar, who had traveled with the guy for YEARS? Nah, they're dead and gone. Get over it.

**** THAT.

Needless to say, the campaign broke up shortly thereafter.

[Gilligan]

It's only happened with me when our DM just wanted to end the campaign and didn't really want to think of another way how. Like he had us ambush a political meeting between some mind flayers and drow who were going to start fighting anyway. It was actually quite close with only two mind flayers left standing.

[Iranon]

To me, doing a TPK as a DM would be a sign of failure, and I've wiggled out of it without resorting to cheesy Dei ex Machina so far. As a player, there were 2 cases where I killed the rest of the party (obnoxious jerks playing blatantly illegitimate characters in both cases).

Once when I played a relic from my munchkining days (heavily optimised caster with enough magical safeguards and permanent enhancements to make Detect Magic burn your eyes out) in an unassuming manner until enough was enough ('I cast a magic missile... by that I mean I throw the mage at them. He sucks anyway').

Another time, my humble halfling rogue got fed up with being patronised by characters 10 levels higher. Spellbooks somehow got lost, healing potions were replaced with rather potent poison, weapons snapped without good reason, traps thought to be disabled were suddenly armed again, and the lich whose abode we were invading seemd to be extremely well informed about our doings.

Edit: The funniest bit was where my fellow players kept raging against the DM for 'stacking things against them'. That would have been my hard work... don't mess with the lowbies.



The only true TPK I faced was at the supposed start of a Krynn campagin. Pitting 1st-level characters against Draconians under circumstances where retreat is impossible is... not nice.

[brant167]

Yes, it has happened in one of my games. The party had managed to work their way up from 5-23ish and this was one of the final battles against an invading abyssal army infused with a psionic hive mind which was controlled by a far realm being of near demigod status. Anyway I had 6 pc’s that each had control of part of the army the assembled. There was a barbarian, rogue, ninja, Samaria, favored soul, and a wu-jen.
The Wu-jen was the Samaria’s lord.
Anyway, the party manages to device a great strategy so they will be able to flank the fortified position of the heavy artillery while the army causes a distraction. However they didn’t take into consideration (which I gave like 10 hints for) that the battle ground had been warded against teleportation. Basically the demi-god had used a spell to cause teleportation and summoning spells and powers to divert characters randomly on the battlefield.
The Wu-Jen summons a fire elemental monolith during a time stop as well as 3 delayed meteor-storms against the catapults while the favored soul used prismatic wall to keep the back up from coming. The fire elemental appeared on the opposite side of the battle field and held up a good bit of the army.
While all this was going on the ninja, the rogue, the Samaria and the Barbarian were making their way to the demi-god. There was a great deal of trouble getting towards the demigod which severely weekend the pc; seeing this the Wu-jen dimension doored to help the party. However because of the wild magic field he was thrown into the prismatic wall, which killed him.
The barbarian was the first to reach the demigod and used pounce to take out a good bit of the demigod’s health. However because the barbarians health was so low he was taken out by the demigod the next round. The favored soul started to fly over their as the ninja and the rogue team up on the demigod. When the favored soul got there he saw that the army was advancing on their position. So he flew down and cast an enlarged prismatic sphere separating the army from the 4 remaining pcs and the demigod.
The demigod used divine blast in the closed proximity and took the remaining heath out of the ninja and the rogue leaving the Samaria and the favored soul. The favored soul healed the Samaria but was killed the next round by the demigod. The Samaria being the last one left rolled extremely lucky and was able to kill off the demigod. As the prismatic sphere ran out of time the Samaria saw their army overwhelming the enemies. However he also saw his lord laying dead and needed to do the honorable thing as the reaming enemy army was destroyed.

[Thorin]

TPK happenes to me; not exactly in d&d, but in a similar game

We where 6 pc at the beggining; and only 3 of us managed to stay alive long enough. a Berserker, a mounted archer and a shaman (in this game is a full-buffer. but i learn a lot of spells so i coud face most situations).

We defeated an archvillian that was ruling the land; and we started a boat trip to look for some rare materials to restore the town portals (think in a train station, but instead or rails you bend the multiverse to get from one portal to other).
As the trip was suposse to last 4 month (booooo), the dm make us role a d6 dice to make things faster. We roled 1 and a bunch of pirates (and i mean a really big army of them) surrounded us in the middle of the trip. We didn´t get the cahnce of fight, we simply died (in a rain of big heavy cannon ammo)

[Vhaidara]

It would have, but it was a two person group, with cousin1 asthe DM and cousin2 as the other player. We were level 4 full combos (like multiclass, except it's class fusion. Hey, we were the only players, and we each only got one character. Cousin2 was a divine warrior [fighter-cleric] and I was an arcane monk [wizard-monk]) and we were fighting a lot of undead. Cousin1 decides it's time for a challenge. He gives us an ogre zombie. This is the first game my cousin and I had ever played. My cousin had just gotten +1 full plate. So, after three rounds of my opening the door, cousin2's spirtual weapon attacking and failing to hit, and the zombie closing the door, my cousin gets impatient and runs in, attacks, rolls a 3, misses, moves out of the way so that I can step in and start using Flurry of Blows, AOO, ogre zombie rolls a naturaul 20, confirms crit, and kills cousin2's chracter in one hit. My character then goes insane and runs away, screaming like a little girl for comedy purposes. And no, he couldn't be rezed, because the whole plot was "The chuch just fell into a giant hole from nowhere! The curch just fell into a giant hole from nowhere!"

[Pakka]

T-P-K's happen some times.

I had a game where I was running and on ether the first adventure or the second, a party of 6 Level 1 players were attacked by 8 kobolds. It was figured to be a tough fight but it shouldn't have been deadly.

I think the Highest roll the 5 players made was a 15, and the Lowest I rolled was like a 12. With some 6 20's in the battle. I couldn't do anything really, it just was all over so fast, and they were gone :(

The good news was the next morning their (3rd level) characters woke from a really nasty dream. I don't think I've started a group at 1st level since. I like to keep the players on their toe's and so long as they don't make mistakes I'll do my part not to kill them. Now if your stupid, your going to die. But at 1st level its a situation where "Your fault, My fault, No ones fault you can and will die".

Been on the other side several times, but generally it was because we were trying something we shouldn't have, or it was a designated NOT REAL Adventure :) .

6 Level 12 players Vs. a Small Town of 200 Level 1 NPCs, and then Various Specialty NPCs up through the Blacksmith who was a retired 9th level Warrior.

We had a ball, and if you have 6 people a round swinging at you, even if they need a 20 to hit, your going to get chipped away at until you drop. Especially when a few of them are willing to die for the cause :)

It was a great adventure, and broke up a very long and tedious adventure we were having in the city. The Mayor was being unreasonable, and being the good guys we just couldn't kill everyone and do it our way. (or could we) :)

Good Luck & Good Hunting
Pakka

[Liliedhe]

In my very early D&D days - back in the 80s ;) - I supervised two TPKs. One came from bad judgement on my part (too many enemies) and the general sentiment that the campaign sucked and we wanted to start a new one. The second was planned, because I had an 'afterlife campaign' that I wanted to try out. Ok, I didn't kill the characters on purpose, they just managed to split up in the dungeon and stumbled across things that were too big for only one of them. But since it wasn't the end I didn't warn them as much as I could have. The campaign afterwards worked fine and I have been recycling that one every time when a party got themselves killed...

[Weiser_Cain]

No because if someone did that to me I'd make him eat the DM guide.

[Vhaidara]

I have noticed that T-P-K has a habit of occuring in your first game.

[Gitman00]

Not quite TPK'ed, but darn close. I was playing a half-elf sorcerer, and the others in the group included a cleric, a ranger, and a druid, all elves. I think we were about 5th level. We had fought our way through a dungeon full of dire rats and wererats, and we were surprised by a couple of gargoyles. In two or three rounds, everyone was down except my sorcerer and one gargoyle. I fire my last magic missile at the gargoyle, but it's still coming, and it slashes me down to 2 hp.
I whip out my... wand of missiles!
I missile the gargoyle, finally taking it down.
I look around, seeing my entire party bleeding out around me. Digging through the cleric's things, I find his last potion of Cure Light Wounds, which I pour down his throat, bringing him to 1 hp. He then proceeds to stabilize the rest of the party with Cure Minor Wounds.

[chibibar]

I DM many games at conventions and my own personal gaming group. At conventions you usually get some people who "tweak" their character for game play, they optimize everything and becomes "uber" in their eyes. :) I always have a trick or two/story up my sleeve for such a case and lay the smackdown.

I only killed a whole party once... that was back in 1st edition where we roll our first level HP. Most of the party had 4 the highest (that was the fighter) and they didn't get out of the way of the cart and got ran over for 2d10 damage....

oops.

[jindra34]

I DM many games at conventions and my own personal gaming group. At conventions you usually get some people who "tweak" their character for game play, they optimize everything and becomes "uber" in their eyes. :) I always have a trick or two/story up my sleeve for such a case and lay the smackdown.

I only killed a whole party once... that was back in 1st edition where we roll our first level HP. Most of the party had 4 the highest (that was the fighter) and they didn't get out of the way of the cart and got ran over for 2d10 damage....

oops.

Even now a cart could still kill a team of level 1s but not very likely... carts are dangerous though...

[TheLogman]

I had a few of those back when I played 1st edition. There were about 4 fighters, a cleric with a low wisdom score, and 2 wizards. It was a large party, but it suffered from a lack of good bonuses, and almost no hp on anyone, including the fighters. Needless to say, we didn't get very far at all. About 7-10 rooms into the published adventure, the party comes across a room with a dirty floor *Hint* *Hint* Giant Vermin. After a grueling battle with said vermin (I think a few of the NPC fighters we brought died), we found some coffins. Because we liked treasure, and we were naive 1st level characters on our first dungeon, we decided to open the coffins, even if it meant using out terrible strength scores. DM rolls some dice, we roll strength checks, coffins still stuck, DM rolls more dice, more vermin come. Vermin kill everyone still alive, basically the weak remaining fighter and the magic users, now unprotected. Theres a T-P-K, but not by a spell, or an epic-magic user, a fiendish trap, or some clever kobolds, we got killed by Rats.

[Tobimaro]

I have noticed that T-P-K has a habit of occuring in your first game.

A lot of times it has to do with the players (and the DM) being inexperienced with the game and its mechanics. But even experienced players can get into a TPK situation when they try to act heroic and forget about their survival instinct.

I can remember that my first PC died in his first combat ever. I was just starting out in playing D&D (box set), and after coming up with a poor fighter-type, he died in his first combat before having a chance to attack.

That was not one of the better groups that I was a part of, and it ended like it began. We were on a dungeon crawl and had just finished off a bunch of fire beetles. We ran into a red dragon in the next chamber. The DM told us later that only his NPCs survived that encounter. Needless to say that I never played with that DM after that.

[gadren]

I've TPKed a few times as a DM. THe one that stands out was when the players got themselves killed by being incredibly greedy. The party was provided with tons of warnings in game that a BBEG was going to come after them if they didn't leave soon, but they decided to try and completely empty a treasure room instead.
I then told them to roll up new characters, and then set the campaign 5 years down the road in a post-apocolyptic world where the BBEG had "won" without the fated heroes to stop him.

[Wyrd]

I am quite a careful player because I like creating elaborate backgrounds for my characters and thus dislike losing them easily. My chars then tend to have a wide array of skills to allow them to get out various lethal situation and a good reason to carry a weapon. For example in Cthulu I play rather the private detective who knows a bit how to sneak, think, talk, drive and shoot a gun rather than the specialist who knows only one thing and gets killed by the first danger outside his domain of expertise.

Because of that I often am the last man standing during near-TPKs.

The first near TPK was during my first campaign a few years ago : AD&D. Our DM was far from tender and after a particularly nasty string of events there were only my NPC clutch-mate and I, a thri-kreen fighter left standing out of a group of 6 PCs and 3 NPCs. We had no money, no cleric, nothing ... but a deck of these awful magical cards (the one with half good / half bad effects).

I am not sure if he was using the official version of these cards but ours worked like this : you chose a number and drew this many cards and the effect on these cards happened to you in the order you drew them. The bad effects included, among others niceties, destruction of your soul and the good ones included a card with three wishes or something like that. Once you drew your number of card the whole card game disappeared.

The only solution to revive my fallen team was to get the card that grants you the three wishes ... so I said I would draw them all. I had 50% of drawing the wishes before my soul was destroyed and I got lucky. I wished my teammates to be alive once again (with all the proper wording altough the DM managed to find one loophole to make them reappear without their equipement) and I wished all the bad effects of the cards to be redirected to our worst enemies (we had tons of them at the time, usually 20-25 levels over our own lvl 7-8).

I got also the "Plot-TPK" where we all go slaughtered but reincarnated in another plane... nothing to do about this one.

I actually lost three characters in my whole RPG career and never could roll a dice to avoid it, twice I was assassinated by the GM as it being part of the plot (gotta love those ...) and once it was by a traitor in the group who revealed himself by backstabbing my char with the local equivalent of a silent lightsaber.

As a DM I never killed an entire party. The players who get killed usually do extremely stupid things "The next round, the guy will have retreated on the catwalk where his 12 friends with bows can cover him, you sure you pursue him ? - Yeah !" "They shoot at you with a ballista ! You see the sharpened tree trunk flying towards you at great speed ! For your defense, do you parry or dodge ? - I parry !". I usually plan for failures other than death when I make a scenario so it doesnt looks like I am "saving the party"

[Edna]

A near-TPK (I think some of us survived--it happened around 15 years ago and I don't remember all the details). Definitely the fault of a player.

Wand of Fireballs in a small room...

Edna

[warlock]

this thread just reaffirms my belief that most TPKs are the GMs fault. (excluding anencephalic player failures like the rpg-in-a-shuttle or the cluster up around the medic)

[Dentarg]

As a DM i've only had to experience one TPK, and it was completely in the player's fault in this case.

A NG fighter and a CN wizard got attacked by Assassins during a return from a dungeon crawl. After they dispatched the assassins, they ran into someone further down the road (I meant for this to be a dialogue later on), the CN wizard Lightning Bolts the NPC, and after the NPC warns him to cease his attacks, he's Fireballed a moment later by the wizard again, forcing the NPC to defend himself. The NPC was a level 20 NE Rogue while the NG fighter was 10 and the CN wizard was 9. The Rogue killed the wizard in 3 turns (His dagger was vorpal and he criticalled the wizard on the 3rd turn) and then proceeded to kill the fighter when he intervened.

Initially the rogue was there to merely be a bit of a spin doctor in the case of the assassin attack, to attempt to veer the adventurers off onto a false run against another assassin group rather than his own group which attacked the players. The rogue wasn't even dressed like the other assassins, but before I could even get that far out, the previous events happened.

- Dentarg

[Gavin Sage]

I've had a single TPK. We'd been playing for maybe 10 minute and run into our first encounter. I think this was around level 7 or so but anyways it was a bunch of spiders and assorted vermin. Should have been no sweat but then things started going terribly wrong. I swear there must have been three Nat 1s and hardly anything above ten. While the monsters of course rolled wonderfully. Three rounds later I'm down, the Fighter is sacked with ability damage, the mage is surrounded, and the rest were the most unoptimized lot you've ever seen.

When we were all dead the DM kinda looked at us and said he really hadn't prepared for that. Gave us all like -9 hitpoints and had the enemies get bored and leave because like hell was he going to have his hours of work wasted by us getting boinked off in the first fight of the night in the middle of the campaign.

[CorganHetfield]

My first campaign ended with a TPK in our first encounter. We were fighting a couple of dire wolves and a 5th level druid. It should have been an easy victory, but 10 rounds later, none of us had managed to make the DC 15 spot check to find the druid.

"Doesn't anybody have any ranks in spot!?!?!?"

[Breaon]

Hasn't happened in 15+ years, since my days at University. We played some 1st Ed. AD&D (GM refused to accept 2nd Ed, and eventually moved us to Dangerous Journies instead), and it was a common occurance to have multiple-PC deaths, with occasionl TPKs. This was before I discovered groups that actually tried to cooperate to solve problems. Thankfully, nothing since then has been so bad.

[wackodraco]

Just the other night, actually.

Us:

Half-Umbragen Warlock 5/Urban Druid 2 (Me!)
Half Elf Duskblade 5
Human Paladin 7
Human Favored Soul of Anubis 6

against

Uttar Rakzir, Dwarven Monk 12

He DANCED. ON. MY. HEAD.
For 50 points of damage.

TPK from hell.

[Gavin Sage]

My first campaign ended with a TPK in our first encounter. We were fighting a couple of dire wolves and a 5th level druid. It should have been an easy victory, but 10 rounds later, none of us had managed to make the DC 15 spot check to find the druid.

"Doesn't anybody have any ranks in spot!?!?!?"

You know that blow mine out of the water I think.

[Sage in the Playground]

I decided to post a WoW TPK or "wipe".


"Aggro the murlocs."

[RedNec]

the ultimate legend of TPK.

I did not see this personally, only heard the story, but there is no doubt in my mind that it - like the gazebo - is real. - because you cant make stuff like this up. it may be exagerated, but there is some truth in it.
either way, i'm telling it as i heard it.

setup:
1 DM, 2 competing parties.
the games ran alternating weeks, and the two parties were constantly trying to place stumbling blocks in each other's way.
Then party A gets a stupid idea that would only work if your compeditors are roleplayers.....

party A delves into a dungeon and kills a mummy. they then build a pedistal upon which they place the mummified head. they reset all the traps, repopulate the dungeon with creatures, add a few spells and traps of their own and then leave.
At the nearest town, and every town they visit, they tell tales of an artifact in the dungeon. The Legendary:

"Head Of Vecna"

(by now some people should be giggling. if not, go through your DMG and read about the hand and eye of Vecna before continueing. - trust me.)

skip forward 2 weeks. still Group A. the party's rogue, missing in action last session, shows up for game. The GM rules that he needs to find the others and forbid's the players from speaking.
Rogue rolls gather information - 25!
GM looks at his notes and there it is.Tells him about these rumors about the Head Of Vecna.
To the party's horror, their rogue desides to find the artifact on his own so he doesn't have to share it. goes into dungeon, sneaks to the last room with the pedistal. Sees the mummified head, walks forward.
The players are horrified when the rogue draws his shortsword and...

....attempts to chop off his own head.....!


*****
"well at least we know it works..."


*****

Forward a few weeks. Group B arrives in a fated town and gathers information....

Delving into the dungeon, Party B is surprised to find that most of the traps have already been disarmed. some of the creatures have been killed by weapons. They get paranoid.

In the final room, they find the pedistal, the Legendary head, and a body on the ground. on closer inspection, it is obvious that the man killed himself with a chop to the neck, from his shortsword. They get more paranoid.

they search for traps. nothing.
They scan for magic. nothing. (.............NOTHING)

they reason that whatever magic killed the rogue, must have been a one time effect.

"so....who wants to wear the head?"
All six players raise their hands.
they argue about who gets it and eventually deside by means of rock-paper-scissors.

Cleric steps up. the party holds him up. rogue CHOPS off his head, picks up the Head Of Vecna, PLOPS it to the stump and watches as the (headless) body THUDS to the ground........

"maybe we didn't do it fast enough!"
"ranger, kneel."

CHOP-PLOP........Thud! now they have 2 bodies.

"I know! Vecna was an arcane caster! Wizzard, kneel."

CHOP, PLOP .........thud.

"what are we missing guys?"
"Vecna was Evil, maybe it only works for evil people."
"do we have any Evil partymembers?"
"i'm Neutral."
"close enough, kneel."

CHOP, PLOP .........thud.

"Um........How about we try..."

CHOP, PLOP .........thud.


Rogue is left holding the head. all other partymembers dead. He takes a look at the situation, desides "F--- that", drops the head and leaves.

then he comes back, loots the party's corpses, and leaves.


they didn't even check how many eyes the head had!

-- "no plan is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool"