this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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I once (as the DM) caused a TPK with fireball.
A cultist mage was about to die. He knew fireball. The whole party was around him.
The reasonable thing to do was a con check to see if he had the mental fortitude to follow through, then kill himself for the cause. So he mustered his strength and fireballed himself.
People were mad
To be fair, if the party can’t handle the heat they should get out of the kitchen.
Assuming this is either dnd or pathfinder, if by the time a rando cultist can cast fireball, 6-30 (and half of a save) damage kills your whole party you really shouldn’t be in meele :D
They were low level, so it was kind of a dick move, but the module stated this cultist knew fireball as one of their spells.
It was intended as a boss fight.
Did they know he knew fireball before he suicide bombed them?
Then they should have rolled tieflings or dragonborns.
If you TPK your party, that's on you. DnD is supposed to be fun. You know what isn't fun? Getting TPK'ed in a random encounter that isn't a boss fight at the end of the campaign.
Speak for yourself. I would absolutely LOVE that.
You know what isn't fun, to me? Playing random fights that have no meaning because there's no danger anyway, since the DM is too afraid to kill us.
And I would know, I quit my campaign because of that.
I've played campaigns where you can die a lot. It got old after a while. I'm not talking about a player dying here or there anyway. I'm talking about TPK'ing the whole party. If you do that, it's your fault as the DM. Your job is not to TPK the party, but rather make it fun. That does include danger, but seriously, if you think being TPK'ed is okay, don't sit at my table.
You shouldn't talk in absolutes. It's everyone's job (not just the DM) to have fun, and if fun = risk of getting TPK'd, then that option should be included as well. Just make sure that everyone's on the same page.
But if you preemptively remove the option because you think that nobody likes it, you lose players like me who like the challenge and find enjoyment in surviving each session.
That's fair.
Well, you do you.
I talked about that with my players in session 0 and they would rather have consequences and a challenge instead.
So far we had 2 PC deaths in 3 years of pathfinder 1e but many close calls. If I were to TPK them fair and square (either because of unfortunate crits on my part or them getting cocky or just plain old messing up) I would do so. I have 0 interest in pulling some “37 red dragons appear, roll for initiative” bullshit but when, like last session, they choose(!) not to heal between encounters and then continue exploring heads might roll.
I don’t intend to TPK them but if it happened we would have a conversation about how to continue, probably either with a new party or an epilogue.
No, your just a bad DM.
Alright, sure buddy. I’ll tell my players that they aren’t actually having fun.
I accidentally killed the DM's unofficial character who was a rogue with a fireball. Said rogue was a party member that had been hired early in the campaign, and stuck around reasoning that a wizard as an employer was more profitable than being a tax collector.
We had been given a task to go deal with 3 trolls that turned out to be 5 trolls. Fehldar specifically pulled my wizard aside and said not to worry if he's in the mix, he'd seen me cast multiple fireballs and lightning bolts, and said, "I can dodge your fireballs easily, they aren't that big."
Fast forward to us finding the trolls and all 5 get within range of each other with one fireball, and no party member was gonna get hit, except Fehldar and he was on the edge of fireball. I cast and roll rather high on damage. Like close to 54 points of damage which was the most I could have done. Great!
DM rolls Fehldar's dodge save and critically fails taking either full or half damage, but enough to outright kill both him and all 5 trolls. We raced back to the closest temple and I personally paid for a Ressurection.
Once he was raised and recovering, the party went into the tent, and my character looked at him and asked, "I thought you could dodge my fireballs?" To which he just flipped me off.
I was rather irritated because that hurt my Leadership score.
If you don't like getting TPKed because you're out of position and you didn't use knowledge skills to determine what "out of position" is, then you should not be using D&D's combat system. It's a waste of admin effort to have all those systems without being willing to use them.
I understand some people like to play at tables like this, but I'd be annoyed at this type of dm'ing.
Fair.
We paused after that and replayed from a reasonable checkpoint.
The goal is fun, and ending the story on an early session would be lame.
I think if you just cast it immediately then you’re a bad person, but if you show them “charging up” for a turn then the party gets to decide their own next steps.
Does the party not realize they're standing ass to elbows with a fire mage? I'd be giving him a wide berth under all circumstances, not just when he's "charging up". That motherfucker can throw fire from his fingertips in a cone just as easily as he can call a fireball from the heavens.
They may not have. DMs are imperfect, too, and it may not have been communicated. There’s also the problem where D&D is a game and people will have certain expectations. I’ve got our DM to now include the occasional meta note when it comes to changes in how the world works mechanically so we don’t fuck everything up based on previously set precedent.
If the DM had never shown them suicide bombing NPCs and this was just a mage who happened to have fireball(i.e.: not a fire mage) and then went straight to a no-warning TPK then buddy can get fucked. If that setup was in place, then it’s party’s fault. We don’t know this from their comment.
I don't think that kind of fudging makes for good DND. You could maybe remind the players that wizards cast spells earlier in the scene. But if you want something like that play a different system, or add a consistent house rule that's written down. Some games let you interrupt spell casters.
Huge anti-fan of ad hoc stuff in otherwise rules driven games.
It’s not fudging, it’s setting expectations and following through so everyone can have a fun time. If you act one way for months and then suddenly start blaming them for a TPK because “the system doesn’t have a mechanic for interrupting spellcasters” then you’re just a massive piece of garbage and should write a book because being a DM just ain’t it. People get very invested in their characters and ending it all over that is such a fucking awful thing to do. Frankly, the entire idea that it’s fun to be an evil DM needs to die because too many mouth-breathers forget that being a DM comes with certain responsibilities.
Anyway, we know that a DM or a system or whatever has not planned for every single possible event and cannot just immediately drum up highly complex interactions with the world in ways where every single person can be guaranteed to have understood precisely the same thing from a spoken description. We can’t all pick up on the fact that this dude’s a fire-bug from the fact that he cast a few standard-issue firebolts, and the mage blowing himself up over this is pretty fucking extreme behaviour.
“Play a different system” go fuck yourself, actually.
You're a presumptuous and unpleasant little person, aren't you?
Widely regarded as extremely pleasant, just not very tolerant of the immensely stupid these days. Just because you don’t have any kind of legitmate comeback doesn’t make your embarrassment my responsibility.
Considering how you are behaving here I find it extremely unlikely that you are widely regarded as pleasant. Really. Go read your post again, where you escalated all the way to "go fuck yourself".
Furthermore, your post is foolish.
First, an ad hoc change of rules to benefit the players is fudging. You should talk about it with your table because groups are different, but many people feel strongly about it.
Second of all, in my post I suggested that if players like being able to interrupt big spells, they could either add a house rule to cover that, or change to a system that does it out of the box. And you're blowing up over that?
Third of all, not every table is the same. Some tables would enjoy the wreckage of "wow we really shouldn't have bunched up like that. Well, I think I'm going to roll a rogue next because evasion sounds nice".
Your post is garbage. You're mad at some imaginary "evil GM" story in your head.
Look, I have explained myself clearly already and it was obvious that you lacked the ability or desire to understand back when you snidely told me that maybe I should go find another system.
I cannot say a single thing that will work for you because your energy is just being contrarian so that you can hear the sound of your own voice. Pathetic.
You spent days coming up with that reply?
And you take offense at "If you want to do X, maybe look for a system that does it out of the box"? You're ignoring the "add a house rule" option, too. Did someone hurt you by telling you to play another system, and this is trauma shutting down your brain?
You're a mess.
You ignored the house rule option by being a baby about “ad-hoc rules”. And I’m the mess lol
Yes. You are a mess. An embarrassment, even. The only one being a baby here is you.
Furthermore, a house rule is not the same as an ad-hoc on-the-spot ruling that may or may not be repeated later.
All I said was that the DM should understand how setting expectations works, chief. And yea, to account for a change in expectations they may need to do something mildly creative. That’s not a rule and it doesn’t need to be anything special.
Big yikes.
You also said to go fuck yourself over the idea that if you want rules for something, you could play a system that does that out of the box. You also called people massive pieces of garbage. So "all I said" is some bullshit.
You're so mad over some imaginary scenario and that other tables play differently.
That breaks the expectations of how combat works. IMO it should be telegraphed beforehand, but not explicitly.
A statement or two about how the cultists seems to be getting emotionally unstable to the point where your characters are deeply uncomfortable would suffice.
Sure, and why I put it in quotes. Maybe it’s because I’m in a bad mood, but can I write just one comment on an imagination-driven-TTRPG thread just once and not have to spell out every single detail so precisely?
Denied! Lol. We need details!
Most of us aren't judging. We've have had similar craziness in our games.
But we do want all the juicy details to go with our popcorn, and to compare with our own unplanned character deaths and party wipes.
Thank you for sharing your game story.