D&D 5E Grind-out fights, unconscious heroes, and retreat

[redrick]

So I ran an encounter the other night that started to balloon in difficulty as monsters from other areas heard shouting and screaming and started to come running. A couple of rounds in, I had that realization that, "crap, this is a TPK fight." I assume the players realized this as well, because they were outnumbered 2:1 by a mix of dangerous opponents who had them surrounded on 3 sides. (Notably, there was an escape to the north.)

While there was some discussion of retreat, the PCs decided to grind it out, and as soon as one PC was knocked unconscious, they doubled down on the combat and abandoned all thought of retreat. By the end, half of the PCs were down, one was almost down, and the other was about 2/3 of the way down. The last enemy managed to escape by grabbing an unconscious PC and holding a dagger to her throat until he was able to get to a safe position to bolt. I probably held back and made some poor tactical decisions subconsciously in a couple places (beyond my usual poor tactical decisions because I'm no Napoleon of Monsters), but I didn't fudge any dice or hp.

The whole thing got me thinking about PC vulnerability and retreat, and how one of the problems with grind-out fights in D&D is that there really isn't much reason for the PCs to avoid a knock-down fight in 5e (I'm gonna take another look at the lingering wounds table, but, for now, we'll leave that out of this.) Generally, my rationale for monsters has been that, when a PC goes down, they focus their attention on conscious opponents. After all, from a pure damage optimization standpoint, the PCs still standing pose the most threat, and going after unconscious PCs has felt a little vindictive. I've decided to rethink that rationale, and that monsters attacking unconscious PCs should be a normal combat event.

First of all, from a game perspective, I don't want combat outcomes to be either: loss of some short term resources or death or capture of everybody in the party. As long as players know that they only need one surviving character to "win" a fight, they will only run away from absurdly unbelievable unwinnable fights. Otherwise, they'll always opt to finish what they started, because running away once combat is engaged is hard.

Also, from a narrative perspective, it just makes a lot more sense. Think about some of the common motivations for monsters and NPCs in combat:

• Trying not to be killed by PCs they can't outrun
• Defending a home, hideout, nest, fortress, etc
• Hungry monsters looking for food
• Trying to kill PCs for personal or sociopathic reasons
• Looking to capture PCs for some other use

Monsters just want to live. More often than not, PCs are in their homes. And sure, one of the best ways to live is to kill everything that threatens you, but the next best solution is to drive off the thing that threatens you. A group of enemies might not be able to kill off every PC in a party (who can these days?), but they can probably kill one of those PCs. What's more threatening and likely to drive off a pack of invading murder-hobos: "I just killed your friend and in a moment, I'll be coming for you," or, "I've just knocked out and stepped over your friend, who is bleeding out and will probably die if he doesn't receive medical attention in the next 30 seconds?" Monsters looking to drive off PCs are definitely shooting to kill.

Sometimes, monsters are thinking about their kids back in A6, or their unforgiving overlord back in A5. If these monsters are going to lay their life down for the greater good of greater evil, they probably want the most bang for their buck, right? What seems better, "We were forced to abandon the gates, but before we did, we managed to knock one out for a few seconds, and get them to use up a bunch of their spell slots and maybe some hit dice!" Or, "We were forced to abandon the gates, but before we did, we managed to kill 1 (out of 5) of them. Oh, and use up a bunch of their spell slots and maybe some hit dice."

Hungry monsters looking for food are probably just trying to drag one PC back to their lair for tasty chompings. In some cases, such as the giant spider, they need the PC alive, but other monsters probably just don't care. Once they get one PC unconscious, they'll start dragging it off. They'll probably need to drive the rest of the PCs off after this, so, wanting to live, they might go ahead and kill their prey to reinforce the idea that coming for the chump who got caught by ghouls is more danger than it's worth. (See first bullet point.)

Sociopaths need no explanation. If you're looking for revenge against those dirty rotten PCs who killed your brother and stole your clan's treasure horde, you are probably looking to get them in the grave, unless you are a James Bond villain.

Monsters looking to capture PCs to take them back to somebody else will actually try to take them alive. On the other hand, once they have 2 unconscious, they still might kill 1 if things start looking back.

Ultimately, the only time monsters won't seriously consider killing PCs as they take them down is if the odds of a TPK are so assured that it is more efficient to knock everybody out first, or if the monsters are themselves marching into Total Monster Kill, in which case they'll do their best to maximize their slender, slender odds at killing all the PCs before the PCs kill all of them, which means focusing fire on the PC with the best damage to vulnerability ratio.

Anyway, just my thoughts and revelations. Not saying that every monster will follow up every knock-out blow with a coup-de-grace, but it will become a likely action. I'll definitely warn the players before the next session.

 

[the Jester]

Note that 5e has no coup de grace action, but instead uses failed death saves and automatic critical hits when you're unconscious.

Personally, I favor a style of "monsters do what makes sense" when deciding what they will attack and when they'll hit unconscious pcs. A ghoul? Oh hell yeah, take that lunch away and eat it up! An ooze that nobody has attacked since last round? Yep. A goblin still facing active enemies? Unlikely. A savvy hobgoblin? He'll make the best choice, but is certainly more likely than the dumb goblin.

 

[redrick]

Note that 5e has no coup de grace action, but instead uses failed death saves and automatic critical hits when you're unconscious.

Personally, I favor a style of "monsters do what makes sense" when deciding what they will attack and when they'll hit unconscious pcs. A ghoul? Oh hell yeah, take that lunch away and eat it up! An ooze that nobody has attacked since last round? Yep. A goblin still facing active enemies? Unlikely. A savvy hobgoblin? He'll make the best choice, but is certainly more likely than the dumb goblin.

Yeah, I didn't mean coup-de-grace in a mechanical sense. It just writes out more nicely than "attack the unconscious character with advantage and an automatic critical on a hit, thereby causing that character to fail two death saves."

I guess the point of my post was that monsters killing PCs makes sense a lot more often than we give it credit when we play under the "gentleman's agreement" that monsters, generally, will attack conscious PCs before unconscious ones. Goblins aren't brilliant, but they have a decent sense of self-preservation, and will certainly kill or try to kill a downed PC if it has a better chance of saving their skin than attacking a conscious PC. If there's one thing that's pretty much guaranteed to get a goblin killed, it's standing between a healthy PC and a downed PC in need of healing.

Now, in practice, it still plays out with different enemies taking different approaches. Some might take the opportunity of a downed enemy to say, "Stop this madness! If you let us retreat safely, we will allow you to tend to your wounded!" A bear will probably focus on whatever is moving. Regardless, I think the idea that outright killing unconscious PCs should be saved for the most savage and depraved attackers (an idea that I feel like is common) is not a good one. Players should assume that their opponents are fighting to kill, and be relieved to find out that they are not.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

First of all, I have to say that the fight you ran sounds AWESOME. Congrats to the players on winning instead of dying!

Second of all, I'd say that coming within a hairsbreadth of dying is its own punishment/reward. Do you really need to change that?

Third, I definitely do have some monsters whose goal is to grab a tasty bite to eat and then leave. Allosaurs, ghouls, mustard jellies, chain worms have all been known to be satisfied with a single kill. Sometimes that is to the PCs advantage (monster is eating your dead buddy for the next minute, which gives you time to sneak away) and sometimes it is not (you won the combat but your buddy is still dead).

Fourth, since I take gameworld physics seriously (it is a known fact to all monsters and NPCs that most wounds take less than a day to heal), winning the field is far more important to NPCs in D&D land than it is to armies in our world. There can still be pyrrhic victories, but for the most part as long as you "win" the battle, your casualties are temporary. (Death checks result in life something like 2/3 of the time, which is almost as good of a result as real-world ICU scenarios, but without any requirement to actually get casualties to the ICU.) The most common reason for my monsters to fail a morale check and run away is when the combat turns against them enough that they realize we're not going to win this one, and if I die here I die for real. That didn't faze your PCs, and they toughed it out and won anyway--but the average hill giant doesn't think that way. Instead of toughing it out to win the battle, he saves his own skin by running away.

As a result of the above dynamic (monsters attacking only when they think they can win), I use larger monster bands than some DMs do, but enemies also usually break at around the 50% casualty mark, at which point the PCs are often able to kill them while they're running away. (PCs are reluctant to let enemies run away successfully for some reason. It's a very human but nonetheless interesting response.) Intelligent enemies may surrender instead of running, depending on their reasons for initiating combat in the first place. So my combats are both harder and easier than vanilla combats.

Conclusion: I don't think it's a problem that your PCs are willing to fight it out to the bitter end, but if you have a reason to make monsters start finishing off downed enemies, go ahead! It may or may not be smart tactics (depending on the situation) but it's certainly not unfair.

P.S. One final comment: I also use a AD&D/Speed Factor-ish initiative variant, so it's quite common for monsters not to precisely calibrate their attacks to PC hit points. If you're at 7 HP and there are three monsters attacking you, they're not going to abort their attacks the instant you hit zero HP. It's "oh, two of them hit you, for 8 and 10 points of damage apiece--that means you're at two failed death checks already." So even monsters who wouldn't deliberately waste time finishing you off might do so accidentally, due to the way initiative works.

 

[the Jester]

I guess the point of my post was that monsters killing PCs makes sense a lot more often than we give it credit when we play under the "gentleman's agreement" that monsters, generally, will attack conscious PCs before unconscious ones.

Oh, I agree with that! (In fact, I got a bunch of crap for pointing out that this is a valid tactic to prevent the "pc yoyo" of conscious/unconscious in a thread here a couple of months ago.) With the caveat that I do nothing to encourage the illusion of such a gentleman's agreement in the first place.

Goblins aren't brilliant, but they have a decent sense of self-preservation, and will certainly kill or try to kill a downed PC if it has a better chance of saving their skin than attacking a conscious PC.

Yeah, I guess that's where the debate is... I see goblins as somewhat tactically... disheveled, good at ganging up on and stopping the guy who's being a big threat right now, but not so good at foreseeing the healing to come (at least, until it has happened once).

Now, their larger hobgoblin cousins? Tactically genius. Kill the KOed pcs? Oh yes, if they can spare half a second from repelling the onslaught of the conscious pcs, that sounds very likely indeed.

Differences in how we approach specific monsters aside, though, sounds like we're on very similar if not the same pages here.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Now, their larger hobgoblin cousins? Tactically genius. Kill the KOed pcs? Oh yes, if they can spare half a second from repelling the onslaught of the conscious pcs, that sounds very likely indeed.

I love hobgoblins.

 

[redrick]

First of all, I have to say that the fight you ran sounds AWESOME. Congrats to the players on winning instead of dying!

Second of all, I'd say that coming within a hairsbreadth of dying is its own punishment/reward. Do you really need to change that?

Yes, it was quite a bang-up fight! I hope they enjoyed it, though there was also an air of miserable desperation. Maybe it's a little unfair of me to take some of that sense of accomplishment away from them by saying, "next time that happens, expect unconscious PCs to get it a lot sooner."

I'm all for the players having moments where they come within a hair's breadth of death, and where they decide to stick it out against all odds and all reason. I think those moments are fun, and everybody likes winning a lot more than running away. The problem is that running away is also hard to do, especially once melee combat is engaged. You have attacks of opportunity, a dwarf who can't run too fast, possibly blocked exits, etc. I think, in my campaign, the pendulum has swung to the point where running away seems harder to the players than sticking around and winning a fight that's orders of magnitude off the DMG encounter charts. (Which I don't tend to follow too closely, but one of the players made the point of walking everybody else through the encounter difficulty while I was getting a drink from the kitchen.) And my solution to that is just to make the costly wins a little costlier, so that running away, while not being any easier, at least becomes more attractive.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Running away is actually quite easy in my opinion, if your enemies are primarily melee (as most monsters are). That might be because I build in "run away" options for every single PC I make, but even with a vanilla PC, you just need to suffer one opportunity attack and buy one round of distance between yourself and the enemy. That could mean everyone runs away while the party monk or rogue Dodges for a turn, then catches up next turn while the monsters fall behind. Or it could mean a wizard casting Grease (or better, Web) in a strategic location during the retreat.

Not being able to run away is one of the major downsides of being a dwarf, but it can be mitigated with the Longstrider spell. That's both a major reason why I never play dwarves, and a reason why I always take Longstrider.

I've thought about this a lot because, as I've said, PCs hate letting monsters run away successfully.

Edited to add: RE: "orders of magnitude off the DMG charts," I love fights that are way off the DMG charts. I just ran a test party through a quadruple deadly encounter to test my mass combat rules. It was 32,000 XP when the Deadly threshold is 1700 XP per PC (6800 total), and I "cheated" in favor of the monsters a little by letting too many of them attack the chokepoint at a time, in TotM combat. The fight cost the PCs a grand total of 26 HP and 4 Spell Points, and netted a tidy profit of 2000 XP per PC. Big fights are waaaaay more fun than easy fights, which is one reason I'm so interested in mass combat rules. Also, big fights give the PCs an incentive to fight smart, which might mean defeating the enemy in detail or finding good terrain. If you stick to the DMG chart it will always be easier to just brute-force the speed bump. Who bothers retreating to favorable terrain when all you're facing is a couple of trolls? AD&D would make it 2d6 trolls, which is much more fun!

Also the players seem to enjoy knowing that they beat an encounter that maxes out the difficulty scale and then some. Presumably that is why your player was walking everyone through those charts--he wanted everyone to know just how awesome it was that they won!

 

[DaveDash]

I knocked out a player who made a poor tactical choice, and I told my players straight up "If you don't save him, the Driders will kill him for sure". They frantically pooled their resources together to save him, and they treat most fights as unconscious = death.

 

[redrick]

Running away is actually quite easy in my opinion, if your enemies are primarily melee (as most monsters are). That might be because I build in "run away" options for every single PC I make, but even with a vanilla PC, you just need to suffer one opportunity attack and buy one round of distance between yourself and the enemy. That could mean everyone runs away while the party monk or rogue Dodges for a turn, then catches up next turn while the monsters fall behind. Or it could mean a wizard casting Grease (or better, Web) in a strategic location during the retreat.

Not being able to run away is one of the major downsides of being a dwarf, but it can be mitigated with the Longstrider spell. That's both a major reason why I never play dwarves, and a reason why I always take Longstrider.

I've thought about this a lot because, as I've said, PCs hate letting monsters run away successfully.

Edited to add: RE: "orders of magnitude off the DMG charts," I love fights that are way off the DMG charts. I just ran a test party through a quadruple deadly encounter to test my mass combat rules. It was 32,000 XP when the Deadly threshold is 1700 XP per PC (6800 total), and I "cheated" in favor of the monsters a little by letting too many of them attack the chokepoint at a time, in TotM combat. The fight cost the PCs a grand total of 26 HP and 4 Spell Points, and netted a tidy profit of 2000 XP per PC. Big fights are waaaaay more fun than easy fights, which is one reason I'm so interested in mass combat rules. Also, big fights give the PCs an incentive to fight smart, which might mean defeating the enemy in detail or finding good terrain. If you stick to the DMG chart it will always be easier to just brute-force the speed bump. Who bothers retreating to favorable terrain when all you're facing is a couple of trolls? AD&D would make it 2d6 trolls, which is much more fun!

Also the players seem to enjoy knowing that they beat an encounter that maxes out the difficulty scale and then some. Presumably that is why your player was walking everyone through those charts--he wanted everyone to know just how awesome it was that they won!

I think you are presenting a rose-tinted version of how well my session went the other week, and I love it.