Last battle of the session was *really* close to a TPK. I think it's fair to say everyone made some mistakes, largely because it was getting late IRL. While my dwarf fighter was filling waterskins, the other two rushed a room with a couple troglodytes... which turned out to be a *lot* of troglodytes, a nest even, with a sorcerer chieftain.
To make a rather long fight short, it's very fortunate that they managed to stabilize themselves. Also my class (arcane fighter with the Shield spell, and some scribed scrolls of burning hands) was well suited to the situation. Retreating into a tunnel so I didn't get swarmed: also helped.
My familiar Mr Stones helped set up a couple of flanks when I rushed in, but went down fast. 1HP, as far as we can tell (technically 8 due to our caster's Inspiring Speech, but still). Still may have turned the tide. Mr Stones is dead, long live Mr Spices!
But here's the actually cool part: The chieftain had a pet. Now, I'd like to say I intentionally did nonlethal to the pet, but that's not quite true. I did that in the past, to a ogre's pet dog, and the cur critted my ass off and gave me a "werewolf" phobia. So I was *trying* to murder this pet, but I rolled a critfail (3 critfails that battle, even). We use a deck of critfail cards, and in this case the effect was that I do nonlethal damage for 3 rounds.
So after cutting down the lesser trogs, I advanced towards the chieftain over the unconscious body of his pet snek. I thought he was out of spells, but the DM later revealed OOC that he still had burning hands - but I was accidentally holding his pet hostage. Wounded and spent though I was, I clearly would win the melee... So he drew a dagger and held it to our sorcerer's neck.
Now, I was deaf due to a separate critfail, but this was a clear message. I was actually quite delighted, OOC, and my character was willing to play along. I threw my weapon aside (nevermind that I could summon it to my hand as a bonus action - a fallback plan) and shoved the snek toward the chieftain. Watching me suspiciously, he gathered up his snek and gestured to the door. It took all my 18 strength, but I managed to drag my party members away to safety.
Idunno, I guess I like Tarantino-style standoffs, especially if they deescalate.
Our paladin of vengeance ran back to retrieve his dropped weapon (and kill the chief) as soon as he woke up, but that's fair. The chief managed to dimension door away anyway. We are mapping out this infested mountainhome for dwarven resettlement, so if he's smart he'll leave and not return.