Bobo
June 8, 2013, 5:33pm
4
Allow me to quote another thread, half in support of Jared and half as an answer to your question:
While death is decidedly on the table for characters in Torchbearer, it generally doesn’t come quickly–this is one of the major points of departure from early D&D. In Torchbearer, you can get beaten down to the point where your character will probably wish she was dead because the laundry list of conditions she’s accumulated feel pretty debilitating. To quote one of our play testers in a session after running into monsters tending a massive cauldron on a fire: “I just get in the cauldron.”
This tends to come about because parties overestimate their capabilities, underestimate monsters, or push on too hard for too long without finding a place to rest. You can be doing fine, and then before you know it, a few poor decisions will snowball on you and you’ll find yourself in a world of pain. Combine this with the fact that novice players tend not to think about accumulating checks until they’re already in trouble condition-wise, and, well, you see where this is going…
Someone else will have to answer your question fully; I have only seen a few bits and pieces of TB. That said, I know there were some TPKs, so yeah, that kind of thing can happen.
– Kai