I really don't understand how you can get a TPK unless that is your intent as a DM. Sure, you could have an enemy cast a Fireball on a whole party of wounded characters and kill them but, are you not bright enough to see that this could end up in a TPK? Letting the whole party die because they made a few mistakes(or you did as a DM when you overmatched the party with your encounter) is not preserving player agency. Expecting characters to run/escape an encounter is absolutely not player agency.
If you have to undo a TPK, I'm thinking there's a better chance that the DM has to undo their own mistakes. That said, there are exceptions depending on a gaming groups play style preference.
If you are playing Hardcore Survival mode and everyone pretty much understands this. TPKs could happen.
I agree beyond level 3 accidental TPKs are harder, but can happen, yes I will totally have the enemy cast fireball on a wounded party if that move makes sense to that npc in the moment. But expecting players to retreat or escape a tough situation is totally giving them agency, I very much believe that not all situations should be designed to be fair and beatable and my players understand that. I will always make sure in these situations there is an out, and I will not trap them in a no win no escape scenario. But, sometimes making them feel weak and squishy is what players need :).
I really don't understand how you can get a TPK unless that is your intent as a DM. Sure, you could have an enemy cast a Fireball on a whole party of wounded characters and kill them but, are you not bright enough to see that this could end up in a TPK? Letting the whole party die because they made a few mistakes(or you did as a DM when you overmatched the party with your encounter) is not preserving player agency. Expecting characters to run/escape an encounter is absolutely not player agency.
If you have to undo a TPK, I'm thinking there's a better chance that the DM has to undo their own mistakes. That said, there are exceptions depending on a gaming groups play style preference.
If you are playing Hardcore Survival mode and everyone pretty much understands this. TPKs could happen.
If you are at a point where a hostile NPC has a Fireball spell slot, the party are all wounded and clustered together, why would the NPC not cast Fireball? If they don't, it will signal to the players that, hey, we're playing with kid gloves here. You don't ever need to worry that any combat encounter is dangerous ever again. That takes away all the excitement from combat.
Player agency includes player agency to do something stupid and pay the consequences. If you walk off a cliff I'm not going to invent a helpful NPC on the fly that comes to your rescue and casts Featherfall.
I really don't understand how you can get a TPK unless that is your intent as a DM. Sure, you could have an enemy cast a Fireball on a whole party of wounded characters and kill them but, are you not bright enough to see that this could end up in a TPK? Letting the whole party die because they made a few mistakes(or you did as a DM when you overmatched the party with your encounter) is not preserving player agency. Expecting characters to run/escape an encounter is absolutely not player agency.
If you have to undo a TPK, I'm thinking there's a better chance that the DM has to undo their own mistakes. That said, there are exceptions depending on a gaming groups play style preference.
If you are playing Hardcore Survival mode and everyone pretty much understands this. TPKs could happen.
If you are at a point where a hostile NPC has a Fireball spell slot, the party are all wounded and clustered together, why would the NPC not cast Fireball? If they don't, it will signal to the players that, hey, we're playing with kid gloves here. You don't ever need to worry that any combat encounter is dangerous ever again. That takes away all the excitement from combat.
Player agency includes player agency to do something stupid and pay the consequences. If you walk off a cliff I'm not going to invent a helpful NPC on the fly that comes to your rescue and casts Featherfall.
I mean you can fudge this stuff to some extent. If you're running a dragon, you can be like, "Oh man, I just can't roll a 5 or 6 to recharge its breath weapon, even after 5 rounds." But I think if you do this too much, the players might get wise.
You guys still don't understand player agency or what I said about TPKs.
If the only option is to escape an encounter, you are railroading, which I'm pretty sure is the antithesis of player agency.
If you decide to cast a fireball at a clustered, wounded party, you as a DM have decided to create a potential TPK. You don't divorce your actions from accountability by looking at what the characters have done. If your goal is to have champions that survive and triumph over the campaign objectives, you might not want to take the TPK option just because "the NPC would do it". You control a whole world and that's the only interesting in peril option you can concoct?
Normally a good story is one where the characters almost die, but do not. Much depends on the tone of your game. If you want to players to feel like heroes, killing more than one of them isn't the way to do it. One dying shows that they are indeed mortal, and that's good enough to warn them they need better tactics. Escaping somehow is a fine option but it should be just that, one of many options. The players should be able to pick a few other things and win. If you want to be more realistic, and that seems to be the goal, feel free to kill them all out of hand, and they have the option then of getting raised somehow, but that's kind of Deus Ex Machina, making new characters, or leaving the game. That is Player Agency.
You guys still don't understand player agency or what I said about TPKs.
If the only option is to escape an encounter, you are railroading, which I'm pretty sure is the antithesis of player agency.
If you decide to cast a fireball at a clustered, wounded party, you as a DM have decided to create a potential TPK. You don't divorce your actions from accountability by looking at what the characters have done. If your goal is to have champions that survive and triumph over the campaign objectives, you might not want to take the TPK option just because "the NPC would do it". You control a whole world and that's the only interesting in peril option you can concoct?
My aim is to be unbiased it isn’t DM vs party but also it isn’t DM rescues party. If the characters have chosen to cluster together knowing there is the potential of area effect spells, if an enemy has one of those available and if it is the right thing to do then absolutely I am casting fireball. Now at higher levels the characters are more likely to have ways to survive this but if I over think that then in my opinion as a dm I am meta gaming.
As for situations they are meant to escape, yes that instant, that moment might be a little railroad, but I am not telling them how to escape. But it is also absolutely a good narriative story wise.
The party try and fight the great liche only to find they have no hope of damaging him, they escape and go and seek “mcguffin” to defeat him.
The characters look to the sky to see 5 ancient dragons attack the city. Watching innocents get slaughtered the Barbarian charges forward, I roll a 20 to hit. 20 missed. That look in a players eyes as realisation dawns, they look to the other players, 20 misses we better run.
That last example is lifted from critical roll, where the DM got 3-4 sessions out of the party running away to survive another day. Only to return and triumph eventually.
Player agency doesn't mean that every player choice has to work. If you give them the option to fight and die or run and live, that's still an option. (There was also the option that they didn't have to walk into the fight in the first place.)
What you're talking about is not player agency. If you want there to be multiple branches that continue the story, that's fine for your story. That doesn't fall under the concept of player agency. Player agency just means the players are in charge of their actions, and the DM is charge of the effects of their actions, subject to the rules.
And the idea of an unwinnable battle doesn't mean that you declare them the losers if they fail to make the right choice and run. They might fight cleverly and surprise you. They still have a chance. But you don't have to guarantee that if they decide to battle a giant or take on a whole army that they have a chance to win.
Normally a good story is one where the characters almost die, but do not. Much depends on the tone of your game. If you want to players to feel like heroes, killing more than one of them isn't the way to do it. One dying shows that they are indeed mortal, and that's good enough to warn them they need better tactics. Escaping somehow is a fine option but it should be just that, one of many options. The players should be able to pick a few other things and win. If you want to be more realistic, and that seems to be the goal, feel free to kill them all out of hand, and they have the option then of getting raised somehow, but that's kind of Deus Ex Machina, making new characters, or leaving the game. That is Player Agency.
I don’t want my players to feel anything other then they want, I present options, I have the world react to there actions and I present outcomes. I create a narriative in the background but it is up to my players what they want to do. They want to hunt down the grand liche and kill him, great I will facilitate that. They want to go try to overthrow the king and enforce democracy, ok I didn’t see that coming but ok. They want to go find that portal to the salt plane, build a mine, disrupt the local economy and become rich and powerful, ok let me rip my campaign notes up and start over.
Generally the players I play with like to have fun and do crazy stuff, if they become heroic doing it great, but as one players character once told me. “History will call us hero’s, we know reality is we where just ******** who got lucky”
You guys still don't understand player agency or what I said about TPKs.
If the only option is to escape an encounter, you are railroading, which I'm pretty sure is the antithesis of player agency.
If you decide to cast a fireball at a clustered, wounded party, you as a DM have decided to create a potential TPK. You don't divorce your actions from accountability by looking at what the characters have done. If your goal is to have champions that survive and triumph over the campaign objectives, you might not want to take the TPK option just because "the NPC would do it". You control a whole world and that's the only interesting in peril option you can concoct?
My aim is to be unbiased it isn’t DM vs party but also it isn’t DM rescues party. If the characters have chosen to cluster together knowing there is the potential of area effect spells, if an enemy has one of those available and if it is the right thing to do then absolutely I am casting fireball. Now at higher levels the characters are more likely to have ways to survive this but if I over think that then in my opinion as a dm I am meta gaming.
As for situations they are meant to escape, yes that instant, that moment might be a little railroad, but I am not telling them how to escape. But it is also absolutely a good narriative story wise.
The party try and fight the great liche only to find they have no hope of damaging him, they escape and go and seek “mcguffin” to defeat him.
The characters look to the sky to see 5 ancient dragons attack the city. Watching innocents get slaughtered the Barbarian charges forward, I roll a 20 to hit. 20 missed. That look in a players eyes as realisation dawns, they look to the other players, 20 misses we better run.
That last example is lifted from critical roll, where the DM got 3-4 sessions out of the party running away to survive another day. Only to return and triumph eventually.
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. In your logic, the ancient dragons were already killing innocents so, when the Barb attacked the dragons would naturally do what they do, right? Rip the party to shreds? Matt chose his story and did not TPK the players for their brief attempt at player agency.
You guys still don't understand player agency or what I said about TPKs.
If the only option is to escape an encounter, you are railroading, which I'm pretty sure is the antithesis of player agency.
If you decide to cast a fireball at a clustered, wounded party, you as a DM have decided to create a potential TPK. You don't divorce your actions from accountability by looking at what the characters have done. If your goal is to have champions that survive and triumph over the campaign objectives, you might not want to take the TPK option just because "the NPC would do it". You control a whole world and that's the only interesting in peril option you can concoct?
My aim is to be unbiased it isn’t DM vs party but also it isn’t DM rescues party. If the characters have chosen to cluster together knowing there is the potential of area effect spells, if an enemy has one of those available and if it is the right thing to do then absolutely I am casting fireball. Now at higher levels the characters are more likely to have ways to survive this but if I over think that then in my opinion as a dm I am meta gaming.
As for situations they are meant to escape, yes that instant, that moment might be a little railroad, but I am not telling them how to escape. But it is also absolutely a good narriative story wise.
The party try and fight the great liche only to find they have no hope of damaging him, they escape and go and seek “mcguffin” to defeat him.
The characters look to the sky to see 5 ancient dragons attack the city. Watching innocents get slaughtered the Barbarian charges forward, I roll a 20 to hit. 20 missed. That look in a players eyes as realisation dawns, they look to the other players, 20 misses we better run.
That last example is lifted from critical roll, where the DM got 3-4 sessions out of the party running away to survive another day. Only to return and triumph eventually.
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. In your logic, the ancient dragons were already killing innocents so, when the Barb attacked the dragons would naturally do what they do, right? Rip the party to shreds? Matt chose his story and did not TPK the players for their brief attempt at player agency.
But the dragon did seriously hurt the party and, if they had not run away and had kept fighting it would have probably been a TPK he would not have kept the party alive indefinitely. It is one thing he is really good at, having monsters take actions that could kill the party because it is what the monster would do and I think then we are both agreeing, I said I like to give my players no win situations where they have to escape only to come back stronger another day, battles they can win,
In terms of TPK If you know critical roll another example was the death of Molly, that combat Matt openly said could and would have resulted in TPK or at least more characters dying if one player (a guest for that matter) had not done one thing and caused the fight to end. Player agency can totally lead to player death and the DM should not do that, if the players act in a way that leads to them dying then the dm should not pull punches, and that includes fireball a clustered group.
In 5e, i have found the following problems with the encounter-balance.
Encounters are balanced for characters with no magical items. So if you're party is equipped with +1 Weapons or other magical weapons, the Resistance against piercing, bludgeoning and Slashing damage is pretty useless but infact considered for the CR of the monster. Doubled HP is therefore needed to eventually get back on the track. On top of that, the bounded accuracy doesn't work anymore if you hand out +1/+2/+3 armor, shields or Rings of protections. A PC with 26+ AC is too heavy to hit for nearly all monster. But the Monsters that will hit, will hit really hard. That makes combat really swingy sometimes.
DM's tend to be too nice. Especially new DM's don't want to kill new players. If your NPC's see's the opportunity of killing a PC, they will probably go for it. A Hero, that is down but still breathing, can be healed. Smart NPC's will know that. So if they can't get rid of the healer, they will try to finish off the easy prey.
DM's are not better tactician's than 4 - 6 player's! Seriously! You won't outsmart 4-6 other player's at the table, so use your advantage: preparation! And use your NPC's intelligent and carefully. I can't recommend themonsterknow.com enough. Don't use each and every monster as brute force. Set ambushes, use movability, set up interessting and challenging terrain and make your plan in advance. While you run the encounter, try to think like a player, for your NPC's and stick to your prepared plan and adapt as the players come up with interesting solutions. But the players will outsmart you, which is totally fine, because that will lead them to victory. And that will feel awesome to them.
Action economy (AE) is on the players side In addition to the fact, that every Player tries to make us of their action, bonus action and reaction, a lot of the times there will be even more players than monster. While Legendary monsters get legendary actions to compensate this fact a lot of little bosses or bruteforce monsters don't have access to these special actions. In my encounters i often homebrew the Following things:
Lair Actions or Villain Actions Special actions, that will give a little narrative to the battle and add some hazard's to the table. I.E.: A fight in a Tavern causes a fire to start in the first round, which spreads to explosive barrels in the second round, which explode in the third round and bring the tavern down. If the Players uses their action to fight the fire, the AE shifts in Favor of the monsters
I come up with meaningful BA and Reactions for my bosses and enemies, to even out the AE a little.
There is only one reason, when you as DM should do something to avoid a TPK. If you, or your missconception is responsible for the tpk. If you lure your party in a Dragonlair without some foreshadowing, that this encounter might be to hard for them or you build an encounter, that is too hard for the players, then you should do something about it. In any other case, the TPK is an absolut reasonable and fine outcome of a difficult (but not too hard) encounter. If unsure ask you the following questions:
Are the decisions of the players responsible for the TPK?
Had they the chance to flee or avoid the situation?
You would be surprised how often the answer to BOTH of these questions is yes.
Closest I've come to TPK'ing my current players was at level 5. There were 4 PCs, and 2 NPCs of level 5 with them.
The players decided that, having taken down a major NPC, that they would conduct a frontal assault on the Hobgoblin fortress. They snuck up on the walls, stealth killed 3 guards. But then a guard got away, and made it all the way into the fort. The PCs pursued, and spent several turns smashing the door down.
I had to calculate on the spot who was in the fortress. I had already written, many, many sessions ago, how many Hobgoblins there were in the garrison.
25 Hobgoblins
2 Hobgoblin Devastators
2 Hobgoblin Captains (they had nearly killed one earlier in the day, but he'd escaped, was still on low hit points)
1 Hobgoblin Warlord
A quick count up told me that there were 2 Hobgoblins on guard at the town gates, they'd killed 3 attacking the fort, at least 2 were in the streets, 2 were at a tavern, and they'd killed 7 others leaving 9 Hobgoblins, 2 Devastators, 2 Captains and a Warlord.
The PCs fought them all after smashing the door down. The battle ended with the Barbarian (on about 35 hit points) and the Ranger (on 9) finishing the last Hobgoblin, captain and warlord in one round, with everyone else on death saving throws.
Sometimes as a DM you have to go with the world's logical consistency and you just cannot know what's going to happen. I'd never expected the players to raid the fort, but they did (with no knowledge of numbers) so they went up against what was there. It was the best battle I've ever run!
I've also encountered a miserable TPK in a game where I was a player in Curse of Strahd.
CURSE OF STRAHD SPOILER BELOW
Having been told by Esmerelda to go to Baba Lysaga's hut, we marched down there due to try to find a vital item. We were level 6 at the time. We'd been given no warning of how dangerous this was, and my character was a brash, arrogant warrior who believed in challenging foes head on. We marched towards the hut.
Baba Lysaga (CR11) appears, and flings a couple of spells as we approach. The Hut (also CR11) then attacked. The Scarecrows animated, but hadn't even had their turn and my fighter (built to tank) and our healer were both down, with the sorcerer on 8 hit points, and we'd dealt zero damage to any enemies. We all stared at the battle map with horror on our faces. The DM just stopped the game right there and then: there was no possible way we could have survived that encounter, and we'd been very clearly led to it by a friendly NPC.
The DM reversed what had happened, building in that we were in fact hallucinating it all under the influence of Mind Flayers and ran an escape from the Mind Flayer lair, with Esmerelda killed off as the cost of it all. But essentially the DM had just failed to signpost that the enemy we approached was vastly too powerful for our party to fight.
You could say that it was our fault for not stealthing up to her, but the game shouldn't be built around a format of having to be sneak-assassins. That wasn't who we were. The DM learned from the error, and did well at making amends, but the key to avoiding that TPK would have been signposting to us just how powerful the potential opponents were.
See, the problem with letting players know straight up that they should run makes the encounter boring. Giving no clue that that they should run means they will expect to fight, and probably die. I think DMs need to realize that creating encounters that are just opportunities for an NPC to flex on the characters is a bad idea unless you already know that NPC will break off it's attacks for some reason if the party doesn't try to escape. Or, keep flex NPCs limited to narrative only and not a combat encounter option.
People aren't mind readers. The Storm King's Thunder, possible spoiler.
One time an ancient blue dragon came to attack us in a temple and we thought we were supposed to fight it, until the DM had an NPC step in and make a self sacrificing act to allow us the escape. He basically pulled a Samson by toppling a huge statue bringing down the temple.
In another encounter, we were fighting an Ancient Kraken's servants on a ship. After taking quite a bit of damage, being low on spell slots and dropping the seaworthiness of the boat significantly due to damage from magic, the DM decides to have the Ancient Kraken attack us. We didn't feel that the boat would survive the fight, we were out at open sea and we were at many other disadvantages. We had the means to leave(Wind Walk) so, we did. The DM was like "Wait...wut?"
I agree beyond level 3 accidental TPKs are harder, but can happen, yes I will totally have the enemy cast fireball on a wounded party if that move makes sense to that npc in the moment. But expecting players to retreat or escape a tough situation is totally giving them agency, I very much believe that not all situations should be designed to be fair and beatable and my players understand that. I will always make sure in these situations there is an out, and I will not trap them in a no win no escape scenario. But, sometimes making them feel weak and squishy is what players need :).
If you are at a point where a hostile NPC has a Fireball spell slot, the party are all wounded and clustered together, why would the NPC not cast Fireball? If they don't, it will signal to the players that, hey, we're playing with kid gloves here. You don't ever need to worry that any combat encounter is dangerous ever again. That takes away all the excitement from combat.
Player agency includes player agency to do something stupid and pay the consequences. If you walk off a cliff I'm not going to invent a helpful NPC on the fly that comes to your rescue and casts Featherfall.
I mean you can fudge this stuff to some extent. If you're running a dragon, you can be like, "Oh man, I just can't roll a 5 or 6 to recharge its breath weapon, even after 5 rounds." But I think if you do this too much, the players might get wise.
You guys still don't understand player agency or what I said about TPKs.
If the only option is to escape an encounter, you are railroading, which I'm pretty sure is the antithesis of player agency.
If you decide to cast a fireball at a clustered, wounded party, you as a DM have decided to create a potential TPK. You don't divorce your actions from accountability by looking at what the characters have done. If your goal is to have champions that survive and triumph over the campaign objectives, you might not want to take the TPK option just because "the NPC would do it". You control a whole world and that's the only interesting in peril option you can concoct?
Normally a good story is one where the characters almost die, but do not. Much depends on the tone of your game. If you want to players to feel like heroes, killing more than one of them isn't the way to do it. One dying shows that they are indeed mortal, and that's good enough to warn them they need better tactics. Escaping somehow is a fine option but it should be just that, one of many options. The players should be able to pick a few other things and win. If you want to be more realistic, and that seems to be the goal, feel free to kill them all out of hand, and they have the option then of getting raised somehow, but that's kind of Deus Ex Machina, making new characters, or leaving the game. That is Player Agency.
<Insert clever signature here>
My aim is to be unbiased it isn’t DM vs party but also it isn’t DM rescues party. If the characters have chosen to cluster together knowing there is the potential of area effect spells, if an enemy has one of those available and if it is the right thing to do then absolutely I am casting fireball. Now at higher levels the characters are more likely to have ways to survive this but if I over think that then in my opinion as a dm I am meta gaming.
As for situations they are meant to escape, yes that instant, that moment might be a little railroad, but I am not telling them how to escape. But it is also absolutely a good narriative story wise.
The party try and fight the great liche only to find they have no hope of damaging him, they escape and go and seek “mcguffin” to defeat him.
The characters look to the sky to see 5 ancient dragons attack the city. Watching innocents get slaughtered the Barbarian charges forward, I roll a 20 to hit. 20 missed. That look in a players eyes as realisation dawns, they look to the other players, 20 misses we better run.
That last example is lifted from critical roll, where the DM got 3-4 sessions out of the party running away to survive another day. Only to return and triumph eventually.
Player agency doesn't mean that every player choice has to work. If you give them the option to fight and die or run and live, that's still an option. (There was also the option that they didn't have to walk into the fight in the first place.)
What you're talking about is not player agency. If you want there to be multiple branches that continue the story, that's fine for your story. That doesn't fall under the concept of player agency. Player agency just means the players are in charge of their actions, and the DM is charge of the effects of their actions, subject to the rules.
And the idea of an unwinnable battle doesn't mean that you declare them the losers if they fail to make the right choice and run. They might fight cleverly and surprise you. They still have a chance. But you don't have to guarantee that if they decide to battle a giant or take on a whole army that they have a chance to win.
Gotten pretty off topic, though.
I don’t want my players to feel anything other then they want, I present options, I have the world react to there actions and I present outcomes. I create a narriative in the background but it is up to my players what they want to do. They want to hunt down the grand liche and kill him, great I will facilitate that. They want to go try to overthrow the king and enforce democracy, ok I didn’t see that coming but ok. They want to go find that portal to the salt plane, build a mine, disrupt the local economy and become rich and powerful, ok let me rip my campaign notes up and start over.
Generally the players I play with like to have fun and do crazy stuff, if they become heroic doing it great, but as one players character once told me. “History will call us hero’s, we know reality is we where just ******** who got lucky”
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. In your logic, the ancient dragons were already killing innocents so, when the Barb attacked the dragons would naturally do what they do, right? Rip the party to shreds? Matt chose his story and did not TPK the players for their brief attempt at player agency.
But the dragon did seriously hurt the party and, if they had not run away and had kept fighting it would have probably been a TPK he would not have kept the party alive indefinitely. It is one thing he is really good at, having monsters take actions that could kill the party because it is what the monster would do and I think then we are both agreeing, I said I like to give my players no win situations where they have to escape only to come back stronger another day, battles they can win,
In terms of TPK If you know critical roll another example was the death of Molly, that combat Matt openly said could and would have resulted in TPK or at least more characters dying if one player (a guest for that matter) had not done one thing and caused the fight to end. Player agency can totally lead to player death and the DM should not do that, if the players act in a way that leads to them dying then the dm should not pull punches, and that includes fireball a clustered group.
In 5e, i have found the following problems with the encounter-balance.
So if you're party is equipped with +1 Weapons or other magical weapons, the Resistance against piercing, bludgeoning and Slashing damage is pretty useless but infact considered for the CR of the monster. Doubled HP is therefore needed to eventually get back on the track. On top of that, the bounded accuracy doesn't work anymore if you hand out +1/+2/+3 armor, shields or Rings of protections. A PC with 26+ AC is too heavy to hit for nearly all monster. But the Monsters that will hit, will hit really hard. That makes combat really swingy sometimes.
Especially new DM's don't want to kill new players. If your NPC's see's the opportunity of killing a PC, they will probably go for it. A Hero, that is down but still breathing, can be healed. Smart NPC's will know that. So if they can't get rid of the healer, they will try to finish off the easy prey.
Seriously! You won't outsmart 4-6 other player's at the table, so use your advantage: preparation! And use your NPC's intelligent and carefully. I can't recommend themonsterknow.com enough. Don't use each and every monster as brute force. Set ambushes, use movability, set up interessting and challenging terrain and make your plan in advance. While you run the encounter, try to think like a player, for your NPC's and stick to your prepared plan and adapt as the players come up with interesting solutions. But the players will outsmart you, which is totally fine, because that will lead them to victory. And that will feel awesome to them.
In addition to the fact, that every Player tries to make us of their action, bonus action and reaction, a lot of the times there will be even more players than monster. While Legendary monsters get legendary actions to compensate this fact a lot of little bosses or bruteforce monsters don't have access to these special actions. In my encounters i often homebrew the Following things:
Special actions, that will give a little narrative to the battle and add some hazard's to the table. I.E.: A fight in a Tavern causes a fire to start in the first round, which spreads to explosive barrels in the second round, which explode in the third round and bring the tavern down.
If the Players uses their action to fight the fire, the AE shifts in Favor of the monsters
There is only one reason, when you as DM should do something to avoid a TPK. If you, or your missconception is responsible for the tpk. If you lure your party in a Dragonlair without some foreshadowing, that this encounter might be to hard for them or you build an encounter, that is too hard for the players, then you should do something about it. In any other case, the TPK is an absolut reasonable and fine outcome of a difficult (but not too hard) encounter. If unsure ask you the following questions:
You would be surprised how often the answer to BOTH of these questions is yes.
Closest I've come to TPK'ing my current players was at level 5. There were 4 PCs, and 2 NPCs of level 5 with them.
The players decided that, having taken down a major NPC, that they would conduct a frontal assault on the Hobgoblin fortress. They snuck up on the walls, stealth killed 3 guards. But then a guard got away, and made it all the way into the fort. The PCs pursued, and spent several turns smashing the door down.
I had to calculate on the spot who was in the fortress. I had already written, many, many sessions ago, how many Hobgoblins there were in the garrison.
A quick count up told me that there were 2 Hobgoblins on guard at the town gates, they'd killed 3 attacking the fort, at least 2 were in the streets, 2 were at a tavern, and they'd killed 7 others leaving 9 Hobgoblins, 2 Devastators, 2 Captains and a Warlord.
The PCs fought them all after smashing the door down. The battle ended with the Barbarian (on about 35 hit points) and the Ranger (on 9) finishing the last Hobgoblin, captain and warlord in one round, with everyone else on death saving throws.
Sometimes as a DM you have to go with the world's logical consistency and you just cannot know what's going to happen. I'd never expected the players to raid the fort, but they did (with no knowledge of numbers) so they went up against what was there. It was the best battle I've ever run!
I've also encountered a miserable TPK in a game where I was a player in Curse of Strahd.
CURSE OF STRAHD SPOILER BELOW
Having been told by Esmerelda to go to Baba Lysaga's hut, we marched down there due to try to find a vital item. We were level 6 at the time. We'd been given no warning of how dangerous this was, and my character was a brash, arrogant warrior who believed in challenging foes head on. We marched towards the hut.
Baba Lysaga (CR11) appears, and flings a couple of spells as we approach. The Hut (also CR11) then attacked. The Scarecrows animated, but hadn't even had their turn and my fighter (built to tank) and our healer were both down, with the sorcerer on 8 hit points, and we'd dealt zero damage to any enemies. We all stared at the battle map with horror on our faces. The DM just stopped the game right there and then: there was no possible way we could have survived that encounter, and we'd been very clearly led to it by a friendly NPC.
The DM reversed what had happened, building in that we were in fact hallucinating it all under the influence of Mind Flayers and ran an escape from the Mind Flayer lair, with Esmerelda killed off as the cost of it all. But essentially the DM had just failed to signpost that the enemy we approached was vastly too powerful for our party to fight.
You could say that it was our fault for not stealthing up to her, but the game shouldn't be built around a format of having to be sneak-assassins. That wasn't who we were. The DM learned from the error, and did well at making amends, but the key to avoiding that TPK would have been signposting to us just how powerful the potential opponents were.
See, the problem with letting players know straight up that they should run makes the encounter boring. Giving no clue that that they should run means they will expect to fight, and probably die. I think DMs need to realize that creating encounters that are just opportunities for an NPC to flex on the characters is a bad idea unless you already know that NPC will break off it's attacks for some reason if the party doesn't try to escape. Or, keep flex NPCs limited to narrative only and not a combat encounter option.
People aren't mind readers. The Storm King's Thunder, possible spoiler.
One time an ancient blue dragon came to attack us in a temple and we thought we were supposed to fight it, until the DM had an NPC step in and make a self sacrificing act to allow us the escape. He basically pulled a Samson by toppling a huge statue bringing down the temple.
In another encounter, we were fighting an Ancient Kraken's servants on a ship. After taking quite a bit of damage, being low on spell slots and dropping the seaworthiness of the boat significantly due to damage from magic, the DM decides to have the Ancient Kraken attack us. We didn't feel that the boat would survive the fight, we were out at open sea and we were at many other disadvantages. We had the means to leave(Wind Walk) so, we did. The DM was like "Wait...wut?"