redrick
First Post
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:
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.
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.