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
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.
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.
if the party can’t handle the heat
Then they should have rolled tieflings or dragonborns.
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?
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?
Joke’s on you. I took metamagic adept and transmuted spell. Now my fireball comes in every flavor!
If there’s a spell better than fireball I’d like to hear it!
