“While it is usually immune to nonmagical damage from +0 bolts, because you rolled a 20, the kraken will recognize you next time you’re nearby. It is currently too busy gleefully dismembering dozens of legendary adventurers to respond to your provocation. The captain, noticing that the titan’s gaze is fixed directly upon you, has put it to a vote whether to toss you off the ship. 0 damage, by the way.”

Many whelps! Handle it!

I had a thing set up with a Illithid giving the party a quest, hitting them with a psionic holding ability to coerce them and one of my players threw a fit about being held when he had a feat that specifically said it only prevented him from being held by magic spells, and not spell-like abilities or psionics or any other “magic but not really” mechanic.

So I let him move. He attacked the Illithid. So he also died.

I had a friend who would go straight to the final boss in Chrono Trigger at the start of the game. Somehow he knew how to stalemate the fight so that he could keep the party alive for hours even though everyone was level 1 and impossibly outclassed.

it’s weird they didn’t use either the WoW trading card

or the Hearthstone card

which are both part of real games.

Because the kraken art in op post is from a mtg card. I forgot the name but I have it somewhere in my binders

Edit I’m not that sure anymore, I might be hallucinating I cannot find it anymore

Some stuff to remember, if you don’t want a TPK

Never expect that the party will surrender.

If you tell the party it’s dangerous don’t go there , you can bet they’ll be there by the end of the evening

Ignore the critical fail rules when a PC use explosive

Fourth thing to remember:

If your party suffers an avoidable TPK once, they won’t do it again

“Shoot him again Steve!”

It’s by Craig J Spearing on Bloomburrow Commander’s Octopus token: https://scryfall.com/card/tblc/14/octopus

OH it was a token, that’s why. Many thanks.

If your party suffers an avoidable TPK once, they won’t do it again

Maybe not the exact same TPK, but some will definitely find another very avoidable TPK and try to solve it via headbutts

It’s kinda a game flaw. Combat is usually encouraged by most modules, and fleeing is typically a bad option mechanically. So what else do players do?

The only solution is to make running the painfully obvious choice

The other solution is to have an alternative ‘out’. Like if the overpowered enemy doesn’t actually want to kill the players, but knock them out and capture them. Or if there’s an established (non–deus ex) rescuer who can come in and save them…preferably in a way that forces them to escape without removing the threat from being there in the future.

Enemy clerics and paladins can be so tremendously badass. “I will bring you back to life just to kill you again for having the audacity to invade my temple, you Godless worm.”

Then they keep gloating until the wizard casts Dimension Door or Boblin the Goblin shows up with his friends and throws a molotov.

this is where dm’ing is much more about storytelling and less about direct mechanics.

for example, in this case I’d let them attack the kraken, only for them to realize as the crossbow bolt sails up towards the eye, then down, into the sea… “Your weapon doesn’t have the range, for shit’s sake, the arms are hundreds of feet long, it’s much larger and further away than you assumed.” Block out a disengagement - it grabs a few villagers and smashes some stuff (roll for athletics to dodge flying debris) and is gone leaving a trail of slime and destruction to the sea before you know what’s happened.

Now, when they follow the fucker to it’s lair… then it’s on like donkey kong lol, stupidity can only survive so many attempts.

Some games ask the players to define the stakes and goals when a conflict starts. This can help keep players on track.

Like, the players are on a journey through the mountains, and as they pass through a tunnel they encounter a giant spider. The default mode is “fight the spider to the death!”. But if you ask the players again “what is your goal here?” they might remember it’s “get through the mountains”, not “kill everything we meet.” Now they might focus on how to get past it safely.

If the DM rewards players for advancing their goals instead of just murder, that can also encourage non-murder behavior.

* Laughs in Pathfinder 2 level scaling.

I’ll try a backstab!