Let's see - in 40 years of playing D&D I have been in two party wipes (or near party wipes - and both were near, not total.) The first came back int he 80s - kind of at the end fo the first stretch of playing D&D, when I was in college, my brothers were in high school, we played summers and holidays, and so on. This was one of the last games we played in First Edition. A Death Knight did the deed: fireballs and chain lightning finished off the party. There were reasons - good play by the monsters, maybe some carelessness by the players, I don't remember for sure, probably some bad roles. The party was decent - 8th and 9th level probably, which meant something in 1E. We had stronger characters, though - this was not quite the A team. Anyway: it's hard to reconstruct all the details of the fight, even who was in the party and who died, and how - but a few things are certain. Three characters were definitely dead - John the elven Fighter/Magic User (probably 5/5 or so), Simon the 8th level ranger, and Nathan, an 8th level cleric. I know, because Brandon the thief survived the fight - killed the Death Knight, even - took Simon's vorpal sword and rolled a 20 against the villain. I know who died because I have Brandon's character sheet - with John's Defender, Simon's Vorpal, and Nathan's staff of withering on there. Yep.
That was back in the day. The second wipe came last week. Hoard of the Dragon Queen - 4 characters, who'd gotten to 3rd level. We were in the caves by the cultists' camp - we ran into a bunch of guards and cultists and what not - we'd already been in a couple fights, and though we had most of our hit points, we had no spells. We were a decent party - a paladin, bard, monk and thief, all decent builds. But these frigging dragon claws, whatever they are, took us out in a round. I think there were three crits in there. The paladin, bard and monk went down. The thief scarpered. We rolled death saves - the paladin immediately rolled a 1, then somehow passed three straight saves! The other two - rolled 6 times and might have passed 1 of them. Oops.
We're going to play Ghosts of Saltmarsh next. This adventure - that was a frustrating ending. We had been having a blast with the characters - it was a good sized group, we were working together, we were working out personalities and stories, it was good. We had some good scenes, and some atrocious luck - a couple sessions ago, two characters went to 0 trying to cross a rope to a tower. Both were well suited to the endeavor - the monk and bard, both high dex characters with acrobatics or athletics skills - they needed to roll fairly modest numbers - 8 or 9, maybe - to get across. They did not roll 8s and 9s. The monk railed one check; got a saving thrown to not fall, and failed that, might have had another roll, and failed that - and fell 50 feet and went splat. The bard then tried it - and repeated the performance. 2s and 3s, maybe a 4. Splat. It was comical - we were able to save them, th paladin gave up on the acrobatics and just slid down the rope to the ground and healed them - but still. It was comic gold!
Last week was not comic.
It raises issues: like - should DMs cheat? if he's really rolling 20s - does he have to use them? I don't think that's all that important - I would rather roll everything out int he open anyway, and if you do that, those 20s are even harder to fudge. More importantly - should he have asked for those death saves? We were down - he could have had the guards drag us off to whatever cruel fate they had in mind. Feed us to whatever is in there - give us to some NPC to torture or abuse or something - I don't know. Something to keep us alive and give the thief a chance to try to rescue us - give the paladin a chance to get his lay on hands back - things like that. Give us a chance to keep playing the adventure and the characters. It is disappointing.
Back in first edition - those characters came back. The thief lived, and I think a wizard did as well. The thief looted them, but let them take the treasure and the bodies and pay for resurrections. I know that's what happened, because poor Nathan failed the con save you had to make to be resurrected back in the day! But now? Those guys are gone - though I imagine they will be recycled. A couple of us decided to recycle characters from and aborted Strahd game for the Saltmarsh game - characters that had potential but never got the chance to develop. I suspect these guys might see the light again.
But it was still a shame. And an interesting contrast to that first wipe - which felt - epic, earned, a fair fight, and generated a really cool story line, with the thief winning the fight after the party was gone with a lucky role. This one? just ended.
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