How my Cleric TPK’d his entire party.

When a good group loses its way sometimes they end themselves.


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Hello, i'll begin this story by stating that i am relatively new to DnD by like 6 months. I am in no way a pro but, I have been playing 1-2 sessions a week and love the concept and most executions. I learned my lessons quick as to how to be respectful of the party and not to split it. The One Shot story begins with a group of 5 adventurers in a guild who were given the opportunity to go to find and elimenate a lych queen somewhere in one of the planes. I dont remember which exactly because we play alot and the sessions sometimes blend into eachother. We were all lvl 13 and excited to find lych queen. We had me Kalashtar cleric of the life domain who was a healer and part tank. I also followed Ilmater which will be important to note. A necromancer, A warlock, A Barbarian, and a ranger. We were a very strong party and are all good friends outside of the game. We had established before the session started that we were trying to be a good campaign as most of our campaigns we play chaotic evil and its fun so we wanted a new prospective. We begin our adventure gathering supplies for the campaign and proceeding to be sent into this new plane to hunt this lych queen. We show up on a road with which seemed more like an ally only to immediatly hear in our heads "spare the weak one, Kill the rest". We look ahead into the road and there stand 3 humanoid figures that we cant make out cause we were not really trying to start confrentation so early. Then three dwarvish figures in full plate come out of the side of the road between us and the suspicios figures.The dwarves are fully armed and seem hostile. Me, anxious to see my new abilities as a tank (I typically play bard or ranger) rush in towards the dwarves and gain their attantion so the rest of my party can deal the dmg. Unforunately for me my entire party managed to not get above a 10 on initiative due to the RNG gods being angry. Immediately the dwarves try to stike me but with an AC of 22 they didnt hit much. but little did i know they werent the dangerous ones.. My ranger who was proficient with duel weilding managed to join me on the front line which he later regreted as the three figures behind the dwarves decided to join us. To our surprise … mind flayers… thank god my wisdom was my best stat cause i saved my roll but unfortunately my ranger friend failed and most of the rest of the party failed as well. So now Im at a delema as i have to use my turns to heal the party and tank the dwarves as i wait for my party to pass their saves. I manage to kill the dwarves and decimate one of the mind flayers, but not before one of them takes my rangers brains and drops him to 0. I was waiting for my next turn to finish them off but in typical mind flayer fashion they teleport away with my friends brain in tow. now we are one man down and my charecter feels personally responsible for his death as i intiated combat without investigating the situation first. We are then confronted by a female elf who says we need to help her save her brother who has vital information on the lych's base and forces. The brother is held inside the prison of this town we are in. We manage to collect ourselves and pass ourselves off as legal council to the defendant to see him. Before this goes further i tell them that most of these people are innocent and we should avoid killing anyone if at all possible. We do a great job! our warlock casts stone wall to block off the wardens gaurds from interrupting us and my hold person works flawlessly on the warden. My party quickly busts the brother out and on our way out the barbarian and necromancer want to kill the warden and i state frimly in charecter that he is held and we can escape with no harm to an innocent man just doing his job. They of course cut his clean off after our chaotic neutral warlock convinves them that its an easy opportunity kill since he's already held and it wouldnt waste time. I storm out of the prison angry in and out of charecter. This is alreay starting off terribly for my lawful good life domain cleric who hates needless death and as a trait will protect innocents with his life. Now out of prison we head out to find transportation which in this plane was in the form of floating ships. we are walking down a very crowded business section(Which is important for later that i stress very crowded) of town when one of the floating ships above clearly sporting city gaurd colors lands in front of us and and the group of 6-8 gaurds come down to ask us our intentions. They dont seem to be onto us for the prison break but unfortunetly i was the head of the party and so i had to speak to them. I am very bad at diplomacy. i try to pursuade them that we are just travlers on our way to the docks to purchase a ship. NAT1.. well where diplomacy fails i immediately jump to intimate him with my Yklwa which i cast light on. Bad decision.. They draw their swords and combat begins. I roll low on my initiative this time so i dont get to make a single action this combat. The warlock and necromancer open with two fireballs. In the middle of very crowded business district.. Instantly evicerating 20 or more innocent bystanders along with the gaurd. my charecter is in sheer disbelief that this occured. I state to the party that i am very disturbed by what just happended and describe how my hands are shaking and my attitude is now very sad and i will not stand for a another single death of an inocent if it can be helped. They tell me its my fault for trying to intimidate the gaurd and i agree and accept my part of the responsibility but that moving forward i will not allow it. We get to the docks where there are mutiple ships. two of which we can commendeer. One larger ship is protected by 5 gaurds while a smaller merchant vessel i down a ways and only gaurded by one gaurd. We opt for smaller as i tell them i can hold person the gaurd and we can take it with no casualties. I cannot stress that this is a merchant vessel and we are stealing it. The hold person works perfectly and we manage to all scoot into the vessel as the barbarian and necromancer decide to grab another quick and easy kill. I yell at them as they do it completely fed up with their behavior and deeply dissapointed witht the group as a whole for not stopping this. I go into the vessels only cabin to begin speaking to Ilmater to ask forgiveness when the party comes in to begin to loot the vessel of its gold and valuables. I stand up furious with the party. the barbarian reaches for the gold and i grappel his arm. i issue a stern warning to the group that we will not rob this merchant vessel as it could be the only belongings an honest merchant and that we have done enough damagae by just stealing the vessel. (My plan was to returen it). Disregarding everything i said the necromancer reaches for the gold as well. I rolled great on both grappel checks surprisingly as i only had 12 strength. I figured after stopping two of my party that the third would get the hint and leave it be. Nope.. The Warlock Reaches for the gold and since i was already grappling two others i couldnt stop him. I release them both and tell them we have lost our way and will suffer greatly for it. I fall to my knees and begin praying to Ilmater. As i commune with my diety the party leaves the room to fly the vessel. I tell the DM I want to speak with him privately outside. The party starts getting all defense as we leave the room saying " oh dont be such a baby its just a little gold" and "your lawful good not lawful stupid". Once outside I tell the DM that i want to speak to my diety and tell him that "i cannot continue seeing so much death and evil being done by a group who was supposed to be good. I tell him i cannot live with the suffering i have caused in such a short time and for him to end this party before it brings greater perril to this world." I cast devine intervention. and only being lvl 13 that means that the DM if he so wanted had to roll a d100 and get a 12 or lower for it to succeed. We walk back into the room and the ship is moving forward toward our next lead towards the lych queen. suddenly the DM calls me over behind the screen to reveal to me what he just rolled. a 12!! evryone is now seeing an adult dragon fly towards us as suddenly time seems to stop. The DM describes how a bruised and battered man in simple robes stands before the party at the head of the ship. The man is bound at the hands by a red rope and asks them the reason for their misdeeds and transgressions. Instead of answering him. The party stares at me angrily and begins to yell at me for summoning him "You really summoned your deity over petty gold and a few dead gaurds?! this isnt even our plane of existance!" says the warlock. The necromancer just laughs and says "well.. I guess theres consequences for not respecting our party" Ilmatar not hearing a response from any party members lashes out his rope and smites everyone including myself. we all fall dead instantly and the one shot is over. Our warlock is now furious and yelling at me for being so petty and the DM tells him that it wasnt stealing the gold that caused this but the entire journey of killing those who could be spared and i state my case almost the same addiding that "everytime i tried to do good you all spat in my face and blatenly disregarded the lives of innocents." I emphasise that gaurds are not enemies. They are just service of the populus and lawful good. The Warlock was very heated about it and made it a mission to backstab my charecters in other campaigns i was in just to try and punish me. How do you feel about That scenario? was i in the wrong for what i did? I understand i may have gone too far with smiting everyone but i couldnt have roleplayed my charecters anger any better. I just really wanted to teach the warlock that a good campaign isnt like an evil one. not everyone is an enemy and you cant just kill innocent civilians without consequences. Thank you for hearing my story


One Comment

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  1. Dang. I expected the cleric to go full-on one-man-army and slaughter the party, not summon their deity to smite them all. Overall, great story!

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