The Tavern

A promising low level ghoul is doing quite well after some close calls, steps on a shaft trap, is sent down 3 levels and has landed in the middle of a vault with about 20 various animals on all sides, completely blocking the gate out. Despite good character development and decent drops, there is basically no way to tank long enough to even try to run away, if I could have. Really sucked. I'm calling it a stupid death because it was so random, mostly nothing much I could have done, and why can you be shafted into a vault anyways?!

Yeah, shafting into a non-full-floor vault seems unfair. But I guess one can get banished to the middle of a rune vault?

I take it you had an limited supply of consumables available? My first thought was "hm, if I don't have enough ability to tank for long enough for a teleport, then maybe I could blink past the encircling creatures and/or use fear with haste to slip by them", surrounded doesn't automatically imply no escape options at all.

While much less likely, it's possible to be shafted into a circumstance where you were surrounded in a non-vault (or into another situation where you can't simply "walk away") I mean it sounds like this is frustrating, and like you got the far end of the unlucky stick, but at the other extreme, the game would be pretty boring if *all* circumstances could always be handled by simply walking away.

Sure, but to me at least being shafted into a very dangerous non-vault situation feels like luck of the draw and a test of skill, whereas being shafted into a vault feels worse --- possibly because vaults are often intentionally balanced around being avoidable?