Total Party Kill: Difference between revisions

If we're dead, our hit points worn away,<br />

Then sorry dude, you won't be coming back now;<br />

 

The entire adventuring party dies in an epic blaze of glory!

* All of Alpha Flight, which, granted, are mostly C list by fame, got killed in a Bendis penned New Avengers in a [[Worf Barrage]] moment. After that, two of them were shown to be [[Not Quite Dead]] and those that weren't have apparently [[Death Is Cheap|come back anyway.]]

* The [[Ur Example]] of this Trope for comic books was the original [[Doom Patrol]] - small fishing town, enemy with a nuke, and DC canceling the title.

 

 

== New Media ==

* Many fun stories of [[Total Party Kill|Total Party Kills]] caused by player stupidity can be found at [http://web.archive.org/web/20070404045719/http://archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/index.php3 The C.L.U.E. Foundation], a former feature of The [[Shadowrun]] Archive.

 

 

* The nicer ''[[Dark Heresy]]'' and ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'' games end like this. The bad ones don't bear thinking about.

** That's a bit of an exaggeration; unlike in Call of Cthulhu, the player characters have Fate Points that allow them to escape death (until they run out, that is).

* So much expected in ''[[Dark Sun]]'' that players are advised to have '''three''' backup characters handy at any given time.

* A TPK is more than common in the Indie Game ''The Mountain Witch''. One notable session ended with one character committing seppuku, one character being killed by another character (who was in turn killed by an enemy), and one character giving up and going back home.

 

== Video Games ==

** Not just in the early ones... Of course there is the option of load and save in the newer ones.

** The later games had what was known as the "Boffo" endings; where, if you took a particular path, everyone died. {{spoiler|In Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge, the "Boffo" was giving the wrong answer to one of the final bosses. Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant had the "Boffo" as taking the totally selfish/unchivalric option at the end of the game (taking the GLOBE instead of the GIRL). Wizardry 8 pulled the stops out on the "Boffo" which resulted in not only your party, but the whole world exploding, if you neglected to disarm a certain bomb before heading off to the endgame...}}

* Happened in the lore for the dungeon Frore in ''[[Asherons Call]]''.

* As far as ''[http://www.armadaonline.com Armada Online]'' is concerned, a common occurrence on the Alliance side if Nomads are equal to or greater than your own side, due to the ghastly Runabout (structure building NPC) AI which causes him to run in circles around the designated area, launch into an assault against immensely more powerful opponent(s), run into a horde of [[Mooks]] guns blazing and die to the inevitable gangraping, or be stuck in a fight-or-flight cycle while low on health going back to base and returning over and over without building a damned thing. This happens most often when trying to take the middle of the three Sci Lab locations, and if you focus on the middle when one of these is occurring your team is pretty much baked. There is a reason Alliance takes the outer sci-labs first unless experience farming. There have even been instances of the runabout latching onto a group of NPC raiding ships and attempting to assault an enemy outpost with its pitiful mining gun. Needless to say with your builder constantly dying and respawning, this has the potential to lead to an agonizingly lengthy and unavoidable TPK through sheer attrition. Nomad rarely seem to have such problems.

## Friendly Fire is on.

## A Titan assault force breaks into the reactor chamber.

** Firstly, he has the ability to cast Almagest, a spell that inflicts the Sap status (constantly draining the party's health), instantly followed by Maelstrom, which reduces the party's health to single digits. Of course, he can also cast them the other way round, which is just as deadly, as Almagest also deals around 1600 damage to the entire party.

** Secondly, he has the spell Grand Cross, which can inflict Death on the entire party. Or Petrify.

** Alien rocket launchers and railguns explode in the midst of the party, who start out bunched and haven't had time to spread out before the ammmunition begins flying.

** A [[Demonic Spiders|Deathbellows]] hurls a gobbet of flesh-devouring [[Bee-Bee Gun|bees]] ([[Memetic Mutation|my God]]) into the heart of your group.

** There's also the much-dreaded 'grenade thrown into the Skyranger on first turn'.

* If you have played a ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' game, you have probably seen an enemy cast [[One-Hit Kill|Mahamaon or Mamudoon]], realized that nobody in your party is immune, and seen everyone drop simultaneously. Or, worse, Megidolaon.

* Star Ocean: Till the end of time has this in spades if you get struck by an Ether Strike fighting the final bonus boss Freya, who makes a parody appearance from a sister game called Valkyrie profiles. Despite being a huge bitch in that game she manages to make it entirely worse in this one, there is no way to survive a direct ether strike on the "easiest" difficulty without actively trying to make your defense broken to anything but a Freya fight, and even then you're still likely to die unless you learn her pattern and bring lot's of bombs.

* In ''[[Oregon Trail]]'', this will probably happen if you try to ford the Green River, or hit a rock while rafting down the Columbia River. "Everyone in your party has died". In the sequel, your entire party can be wiped out at once by freezing or starving to death in a blizzard (especially if you can't hunt or don't have winter clothing), a contagious disease, thirst(if you don't have canteens or water kegs), etc.

* At the end of the second chapter of ''[[Neverwinter Nights]] Hordes of the Underdark'', Mephistopheles kills the player and his/her companions are all killed in the imminent diabolical invasion. The third chapter is set in Hell (specifically Cania, the eighth layer, reserved for traitors), in which your entire party is technically dead.

** ''Pray'' the first boss is introduced smacking a [[Red Shirt|guy in red underwear]] across the room like a ragdoll. Using the [[Too Dumb to Live|wrench]] will have the same thing happen to you.

* Unusually for an arcade game, this shows up in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons Shadow Over Mystara]]''. At one point, the players are given the choice to stay overnight in some city or other (the exact details are not presently recalled), or to press on with their quest immediately. [[Rocks Fall Everybody Dies|If you stay, the whole party gets wiped when a dragon (that you would have fought had you gone on) annihilates the city that night. Game Over, no continuing.]] Sounds harsh, but the option to stay inverts [[But Thou Must!]] so hard that anyone who doesn't take the hint frankly deserves it.

** In the series as a whole, thresher maws tend to be this for NPCs (in fact, one backstory you can choose involves being the sole survivor of a group that ran afoul of one). For you, thresher maws just tend to be a battle which isn't so much a challenge as it is a trial of patience.

* Some fusion spells in [[Persona 2]] instantaneously kill any enemy that can't void a specific element. There are spells for Earth, Fire, Water and Wind. Another [[Guide Dang It|ridiculously specific]] Fusion Spell not only kills every enemy, but also kills two of your party members as well.

* The primary cause of mission failure in ''[[Rainbow Six]]''. "Mission failed, your team was wiped out". Can instantly result from [[Explosive Stupidity|grenade mishaps]].

** The middle of these the R7038 can't be defeated at all and will ''always'' wipeout your party. (People have hacked the game to discover that even if you somehow mange to lower it's HP to 0, it still won't be defeated.) However, right after the party wiped a friend of yours will appear in the [[Brick Joke|newly rebuilt tank]] that was used to defeat the R7037 and [[Big Damn Heroes|obliterate it.]]

 

 

== Web Original ==

* [[Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do In An RPG]] gives a guide on what's an appropriate TPK

{{quote| 1430. If the party goes out like ~300~, that's cool. [[Thelma and Louise]] not so much.}}

* Referenced in ''[[Erfworld]]''.

{{quote| '''[[Manipulative Bastard|Charlie]]:''' What am I looking at here, Parson?<br />

* In ''[[Absurd Notions]]'', it [http://www.absurdnotions.org/page47.html takes a while] to convince the designers of "Traps and Treasures" that they shouldn't make ''all'' the traps [http://www.absurdnotions.org/page38.html result in TPKs].

* In ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', {{spoiler|[[La Résistance]] of Azure City, bar one survivor, ends up like this after being ambushed by [[The Dragon|Redcloak]].}}

* The end of the Ruby arc of the original ''[[Nuzlocke Comics]]'' had this occur to the last remnants of Ruby's team against [[True Final Boss|Steven]], thus setting up his [[Failure Knight]] status for the FireRed arc.