TPK?

[KillWatch]

share your TPK events so that we may all laugh and enjoy

[Dog_O_War]

While not exactly a TPK, it may as well have been.

Myself and two friends are playing a trio of PA pilots; two of us are in SAMAS models (I don't remember exactly which we were in, though we were in different ones than each other) and one friend was in a Glitterboy.

For whatever reason, we decided to try and assault/loot a CS outpost. We were in CS model SAMAS, expecting to get close to the outpost based on one of us being an ex-CS pilot and knowing "the lingo", while the Glitterboy would remain back in hiding in heavy undergrowth.

We did get close, but then someone started up the conversation of, "hey - we're in SAMAS, and they're sending out some SAMAS; how are you gonna tell us apart?" to which the Glitterboy replied, "don't worry, I have friend/foe recognition". Everyone (GM included) agreed that this was fine and acceptable.

First shot he took though, natural 1, which was followed by some kind of bystanders rule (possibly a house-rule) wherein he rolled to see if he hit one of us - he hit my friend with a natural 20 - took out my wing-man and pretty much ended the game right there.

[say652]

My first rifts pc. A leyline walker. Asgardian elf. Charmed by vampires turned on the party. Then rune sword to the eye by one of the pc's.

[Alrik Vas]

Playing a group of samurai, tracking down gold thieves for our lord. Come across a rival clan who h as fo-und them first, but didn't know they had tons of gold hidden in their carts. They're thirty horsemen. We're three dudes on foot, but one of us is a mostly caster, another a bit of a fighter caster and I'm all fight and punch and hammer to the face.

The lead horseman spots the gold, claims it in the name of his clan. He barely gets the words out before i acrobat through his guys and plant my sledgehammer in his skull. It's a pretty epic fight. I'm ducking and dodging, got lots of extra hits i can take thanks to the casters, they summon a giant, angry elemental, we really put the screws to them.

Then they killed the fighter/caster because he wasn't careful, then they bring the elemental down and kill the other caster.

At this point, there are only 8 out of thirty left, but i'm only one guy and my buffs had worn off long ago.

So yeah, we all ended up as dog-food in the end, and honestly those guys should have broken and run when we were grinding them down and keeping them in disarray (especially without their officer), but the GM knew we couldn't last forever and he was playing against us. Which was too bad. He just didn't want us to succeed because he thought we were taking on too much, so he wanted us to "pay for it", but honestly if he'd run the NPC's like real soldiers, they would have broken and regrouped.

Anyway, still dog-food.

[Mechghost]

Our party ran into a CS skelebot patrol and didn't have a chance to evade it (first bad roll by our party) so we engage in a fighting retreat, out-numbered like 4 or 5 to 1, and we only have 2 real stand up fighters out of 6 players. First the Linewalker and Operator buy it when the truck goes up in a fireball, then the Wilderness Scout bolts and is never seen again. Our Cyber-Doc gamely keeps shooting but is mowed down, now it's just my very battered Kill-Cat and our RPA in a Forager, I'm in HTH and somehow still alive and we're down to just 4 Skelebots left when the RPA decides to use his last missile - an AP - to cut the odds a little and figures I'm clear of the blast radius. He doesn't realize it's a PLASMA missile (he didn't keep count properly LOL) and rolls a 20, we cheer figuring we would survive, the GM laughs and states the fact the missile is a Plasma not AP and I'm way to close. Rolls damage - max roll of course - skelebots are slagged but I'm Cat-Chow-Meow. The Forager had a damaged leg and couldn't get away before a pair of SAMAS show up and finish the job.

[Alrik Vas]

That reminds me of one of my guys dropping a grenade in a magic darkness zone, not knowing one of the other PC's was there. Rolls Nat 20, kills the PC, doesn't finish off the badguys.

/sigh

[The Dark Elf]

funny, I dont think Ive ever had a total party wipe! Cant recall any time that everyone has died. WOW!

[Alrik Vas]

Ever...really...that's just flat out bizarre.

[The Dark Elf]

Ever...really...that's just flat out bizarre.

[Devjannz]

Never had a TPK situation in a Palladium game but did have a character that was "killed" by another player in a cross-genre game.

I was playing a Transferred Intelligence Robot Headhunter (used SB1 Robot RCC rules to make him) who travelled around in a salvaged Mark V APC (missing most weapons) with a Juicer and a Wilderness Scout. We came across a group that was under attack by some weird crab-looking aliens (Invid from Robotech). The group was an REF Patrol that had gotten caught in a D-Shift that deposited them on Rifts Earth. We decided to help them and I saw one large robot of some kind that had one hanging off it's large barrel looking arm (it was an REF Spartan from Sentinels book). I took a shot at it with a JA-12 (using the Rapid-Pulse setting) and rolled a Nat 20 to hit and rolled max damage (which was almost triple what it's main body was). Needless to say it was dead, well the GM had a house-rule that said in a situation like that the blast went completely through the Invid and stuck the Spartan and did damage to it as well (what ever remaining amount was left after subtracting the amount the Invid took to die). The player of the Spartan (who was much younger than I normally would have liked gaming with) decided that since I did damage to him, I must have been trying to kill him so he launched a volley of 24 Plasma mini-missiles at me and needless to say I got turned to scrap.

Lucky for me, my character had the ability to download his mind into a another body (which was an exact duplicate of the original) and was able to do so before the missiles hit him. Once I woke up in the new body back on the APC, I walked out with NE-75H "Shoulder Cannon" and fired it at the Spartan and ended up doing enough damage to shut him down (he had already taken damage from the battle). I almost fired a second shot to finish him off but was stopped by another player.

[Alrik Vas]

Then there's shooting a rocket launcher at a fusion bomb with a bunch of fusion blocks stacked on it (armed of course) and thinking the blast wouldn't destroy half the city. (this is why i don't leave the other players alone anymore, and if i must, i keep in constant radio contact and incessantly ask them what they are doing).

[say652]

My vagabond Simon. Using my mutant powers of sneakiness and the rest of the party just opens fire without waiting for my intel. So intangibility and sonic flight. And after I was able to intetcept the fire all missiles order. I promptly flew the other direction very fast. Lol.

[Jerell]

I only took out the whole party twice, when I was a player. I was playing a Valkyrie pilot in a 3G campaign where we were running around in a ship like something our of Farscape. I had a Strike Valkyrie that had happened to be armed with 6 RMS-1 anti-ship Reaction Warheads (3D6x1,000 MD per missile, blast radius of 2,500 feet). I was returning to our ship after nuking a destroyer or something that was attacking us, with one missile. I still had 5 RMS-1s when something latched onto my VF-1 just before I got to the ship. Ended up in a standoff right in front of the hangar, with my thumb on the button to launch all missiles. Told the dude I was NOT bluffing and I'd blow us all to Hel before I'd let him shoot me. He called my bluff. Something like 60,000+ Megadamage later the campaign was over. Now-a-days I'm sorry I blew up my sister's whole campaign over a decade ago, it was probably out of alignment play on my part too. Character should not have been so eager to nuke is traveling companions because he was in a stand off. But still, what GM calls a bluff when the player has his finger on the trigger of 5 anti-ship Reaction Warheads at point blank range?

The other time was in another GM's Phase World Campaign in the late 90s. We ended up taking over a Star Destroyer that was mostly automated with a bluff (totally bluffed the GM with a good ol' claim that we were holding a "thermal detonator" on the bridge, which of course we didn't have, it was just a grenade or something of similar size. But the dude on the bridge/GM totally fell for it). There was a space station near by a gate that was taking us out with heavy fire after, and FTL was offline, so two of the characters on the bridge, mine included, decided to lock course and set ramming speed. If we were going down, they were coming with us. That was another 3G campaign that ended too early... After everyone got blown up (again), the GM was like, how did you guys get a Thermal Detonator? That's when I told him I didn't even think rules for such a thing existed and it was a bluff with something else. No sir, he was not happy. He was a fairly killer GM too, so the fact we put one over on him was hilarious to us. The only way it worked was the one of the other players somehow knew exactly what I was thinking and played along during the bluff, otherwise it probably wouldn't have worked. Now I look back on that and laugh, that was a great time.

[Alrik Vas]

Oh, it's no big deal. I just have these anti-warship missiles. THey don't knickname them Angel of Death or anything, no. Checks out.

[Jerell]

The GM and the whole party new what I was packing. It was quite some time ago, we were all in high school at the time, I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise how it ended up. I'm going to go on record here and say high schoolers and nukes don't need to mix.

[say652]

Top party beatdown. We miffed off a Temporal Raider. Jerk would show up at random and just trash us. Lasted until the team leader apologized for insulting his mother AND said she was a very nice woman.