"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

[MarkB]

The worse is when the party retreats, one person gets caught, and the entire party comes back, which is enormously counter productive. I've seen them do this once before - maybe they learned a lesson? Although that time they retreated more because the enemy was slow and annoying, not overwhelmingly dangerous...

The worse one than that is when everyone realises that retreat is necessary, it's also clear that retreat will be difficult, and so each member of the party independently decides to be the one who stays behind to hold off the enemy while the others flee.

 

[Satyrn]

There are Chase mechanics in the DMG. I'm starting to think I'm the only one who uses them.

Dude. You're the only one who's even read the DMG!



(I'm getting way more mileage out of that old, silly thread than I ever expected)

 

[iserith]

Alll of that brings me to that matter of "evaluating" an opponent's power. The tools to do such a thing are not really emphasized in D&D 5. I suggested to my players that they should, when they spot something or someone and things start going south, they should try and evaluate the threat. I'd ask for insight or perception or investigation checks. I also tried to tell them, especially since they're growing in power, that intimidation might be a powerful tool and avoid them to spend some valuable resources. But I don't know... it feels like they distrust those methods... they don't feel like it's very intuitive. But I have to admit, the game isn't built around them. There are lots of spells to burn or ice your ennemies, but none to tell that they'll most likely tear you to shreds. Only clue my players seem to value for that matter is basic lore, my intonations, and meta-gaming clues ( It's that kind of monster, I know it's bad/fair game/useless...)

I should probably think of some elegant powers and spells meant to evaluate the power or the offensive abilities of a foe.

The battlemaster fighter has an ability that might give you some ideas of how to handle it. In general, however, I recommend a policy of reminding the players they can have their characters try to recall lore about specific monsters or NPCs that might be useful or at least interesting. On top of that, I try to telegraph traits, vulnerabilities, immunities, resistances, and big attacks when describing the environment. If the players are paying attention, they might be able to pick up on those clues and act accordingly. But of course they can take specific action as well to recall lore or deduce clues which may or may not call for an ability check.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

There are Chase mechanics in the DMG. I'm starting to think I'm the only one who uses them.

Hah! I'll be honest.. I've read so little of the 5E DMG that I'd totally missed it. However that was kind of my point, a player wouldnt necessarily bey reading the DMG, so from their perspective it would be easy to assume they couldn't reasonably escape.

 

[iserith]

Hah! I'll be honest.. I've read so little of the 5E DMG that I'd totally missed it. However that was kind of my point, a player wouldnt necessarily bey reading the DMG, so from their perspective it would be easy to assume they couldn't reasonably escape.

That's true. It's a good idea for the DM to tell the players there's a subsystem for that, if they choose to run away or run after someone. In particular, the PCs will have a better chance of success if they have a reasonable chance of hiding since the quarry gets a free chance to hide at the end of each round. Constitution also helps as that increases the number of Dash actions that are possible before the risk of exhaustion sets in. Inspiration is also useful here to avoid complications or to negate complications for allies.

I recently used it to resolve a PC's membership test to join a faction called the Xaositects - he had to outrun a three-legged Aoskian hound from the Ditch to the Hive in Sigil while naked. It was pretty hilarious.

In my other game (Sunless Citadel), I have it set up as a handout the players and I can reference and I have a screen set up to track relative distances easily.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The worse is when the party retreats, one person gets caught, and the entire party comes back, which is enormously counter productive....

"Oh, 'fly you fools' - we thought you said 'follow, fools!'"

Dead characters learn no lessons.

But players do, thus is meta-gaming (or was that 'player skill?') born...

I think it is a mistake to design an encounter in such a way that fleeing is the only option. I don't think encounters should be scripted like that. If you set up an encounter where the players must flee the dragon, they WILL fight it. I guarantee it.

It's one of those things traditional D&D play styles have issues with. D&D was something of a puzzle-solving, treasure-hunting variation on a wargame in the past, one puzzle was whether to fight or flee, that is, to choose your battles. Fairly quickly, though, people started treating it as an RPG, instead - an heroic-fantasy RPG, even, sometimes, and there's a world of difference between 'heroic fantasy' and 'choose your battles wisely.'

So there's this impulse to pull in dramatic genre tropes, but no support from the system for it, and, even where there is support, a culture of play that doesn't expect or avail itself of it. For instance, one issue has generally been that a monster calibrated to challenge a very high-level party is not something a low-level party can hide from using opposed checks. Not a chance, really. Like the dragon has +32 spot and a +35 listen, and the party stealth scores range from -3 to +17... oh yeah, that'll work out. They can know they shouldn't fight it all they want, they're not hiding from it, they can't outrun it. What? trick it, negotiate? Go for it, sense motive is +33.

CR and Threat Level and all these concepts were introduced by D&D, and many people who have only played D&D seem to think that all encounters must be balanced.

A 'balanced' encounter is just one that's going to (if it's balanced correctly, rarely the case in D&D) present a challenge appropriate to it's level. A Dragon might be a balanced 19th level challenge, it still is, when a 9th level party encoutners it. Still balanced. You're dead, but it's still a perfectly balanced encounter. Too bad you were 10 levels lower than it...

Dude. You're the only one who's even read the DMG!

...but, I already know how to DM... why would I read it?

"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

TPK. If that's not a bad enough result to teach them to be better at running, make them sit through Monty Python and the Holy Grail after each TPK.

Now this is not a universal opinion, but some DMs (and I'm one of them) believe that not all encounters should be balanced. Once in a while your party should encounter bandits and crush them, but also once in a while the party should encounter a monster that is just *too much*. The encounter isn't a "fight the monster!" challenge, it's a Let's get the hell outta here!" challenge. If the party manages to hide, move quickly, create a distraction etc etc, they can escape.

BUT... what if they don't?

They get squashed if that's the stakes you set. Or, maybe they get captured & escape later, or captured and bargain their way out by promising to perform a quest for their captors, or whatever... or maybe they get killed, wake up in Hell (even though none of them are evil nor sold their souls, and the adventure continues from there...)

It's the GM's job to telegraph that the incoming monster is *particularly* dangerous. ..It should be really clear that this monster is exceedingly dangerous, and I think most GMs are up to the task. It should also be an "escapable" monster

This is where a formal sub-system, like stakes-setting in an indie game, or even just a skill challenge, can be helpful, it frames the challenge and gives the players a sense of whether it can be overcome.

So... what to do if this happens? I think that "oh, look at that, those Fire Giants all had 14 hit points each, lucky you!" isn't a great solution for the GM. Anything else that isn't lame?

TPK & capture scenarios are the obvious first steps. (I don't care for it, but you could awlays have some Deus Ex Machina swoop in with some giant eagles and fly them to safety.) From a TPK you can build a new party, or have the old one raised for some weird reason (possibly Ressurected or miss-wished back to life at a much later date), or follow them into the afterlife with a chance at getting back. Capture scenarios are familiar from genre, but fraught in D&D for many reasons (you have to beat the party to 0 hps to capture them, and nullify casting to hold them, so they won't be up to fight their way out for a while, many D&D characters are extremely equipment-dependent, so loss of gear can be worse than death, etc).

 

[5ekyu]

Intentionally playing badly isn't really role playing, at least role playing anyone else should be playing with for their own safety. Role Playing "my character always fights, goes on suicide missions and doesn't care if he lives or dies" is just another way of telling the DM "No" to everything he is working hard on, and the players "too bad" if they are enjoying the game or their characters.

Not sure what if anything led you to jump from what i said all the way to suicide missions and dont care live or die.

Maybe those are the only options available in your ganes but in my experience most games have played well in that vast area between the extremes.

Now, staying out of the extremes, if by playing badly you include making sub-optimal choices like say chasing the glowy creature floating thing or going for the pretty shiney before waiting for the trap checker or rushing headlong the orc gang that killed your wife and kids on sight instead of waiting for "the plan"... I would have to say those can be and often are used as examples of role-playing so perhaps your definition of what is "really role playing" or even "role playing anyone else should be playing with" may serve you well - other may have a broader acceptance of role playing.

I myself dont assume my pcs know what my other pcs did as a matter of course and so there have bern plenty of times my new character had tp re-learn the lessons my old character already learned, cuz, you know, "not the same friggin' PC."

 

[Lanefan]

I’m kind of surprised at how often TPKs are being condoned. I am all for encounters where combat is a bad idea for the PCs, and all for maintaining danger for the PCs. But I also realize that when I present them with a challenge that is beyond their ability to defeat in combat, I’ve chosen to do so. Everyone seems to site the players’ choice to resort to combat as justification for a TPK....but no one seems to question the DM’s choice to set things up this way.

What if the “clues” that the foe was beyond them wasn’t as obvious as the DM thinks? What if the other conditions present in the fiction override the players’ sense of caution? Perhaps the DM really stressed how horrible the giants’ attacks have been on the nearby community and didn’t realize that he did so. And so on.

What the players do largely depends on what the DM provides to them. I don’t say that to lessen their responsibility...ultimately, their choices are theirs....but t I don’t think we should ignore the DM’s influence over this kind of scenario.

It’s why I’d say that a TPK seems unnecessarily harsh. There’s no reason that a party loss must equal a TPK. Sure, the PCs should face negative consequences for bad decisions....but that doesn’t mean those consequences must be as bad as possible.

I think you're underestimating just how difficult a full TPK really is.

There's always at least one character, and more often several, who will have some sort of escape clause or "getaway car" handy to get out of a sticky situation: invisibility/stealth/rope trick at low levels, flight/haste/wraithform at mid-levels, teleport/planeshift/etc. at higher levels; never mind illusion or deception of any kind at any level. These can all come from either spell or device.

Another variant of the "getaway car" is to have a party martyr along for the trip, a heroic-stupid type who will gladly sacrifice him/herself in order to allow the others to escape. Paladins are good for this.

So of a party of 8 you might well kill 6 but there'll still be those two who escape, and who can then rebuild the party (i.e. recruit the other players' new PCs) and carry on. As player and DM I've seen this scenario play out probably a dozen times or more, but I've only ever seen one true TPK with no survivors.

Lan-"adventuring parties are like the most resilient of weeds - no matter how harshly you prune them they just keep coming back"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

I do expect a level of metagaming as its silly to not expect a player to get better at the game and I hate the whole "how many times do I have to do what I know is wrong before I can do what I know is right" situation.

I prefer the opposite: that they play each character as it would think and act. The difference from the player's meta-perspective is that she has to be more intentional about playing below her own capabilities when playing a low-level and-or highly unwise character.

Intentionally playing badly isn't really role playing,

Intentionally playing badly may in fact be the epitome of great role playing - you're doing what the naive uneducated character would do, rather than what you-the-experienced-player think you should do.

at least role playing anyone else should be playing with for their own safety. Role Playing "my character always fights, goes on suicide missions and doesn't care if he lives or dies" is just another way of telling the DM "No" to everything he is working hard on, and the players "too bad" if they are enjoying the game or their characters.

If every character you play is like this, yeah it'll get old after a while. But now and then, playing one of these can be a blast.

And no matter how hard the DM has worked to put the campaign together she still can't tell you how to play your characters.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

I am playing in a 1e game over roll20 currently. After 20 sessions in we are all 2nd level. Yesterday we literally ran into a Hill Giant throwing boulders at us. A Hill Giant encounter at 2nd level. Needless to say we did not attack and had we attacked our fate would be entirely our own making. We ran and went somewhere else.

Just because you are 2nd level does not mean you live in a world without Hill Giants.

Exactly!

At the start of my current 1e-based campaign I did much the same thing - from their somewhat-concealed camp the raw 1st-level party saw a Hill Giant walking by on the road below. As DM my intent was merely to show them that a) the area they were in had dangers beyond their means, and b) that there was much more to the goings-on here than met the eye (they were camped near the Caves of Chaos, which they'd been nibbling at) in hopes of setting up a later storyline.

So what did they do?

Yeah, that's right: they charged the bloody thing en masse!

Better yet, with some good luck and half-decent tactics they actually managed to kill it, at cost of 3 (or 4?) party members out of 7.

Lan-"that was one of the very few things that went right for that otherwise ill-fated party"-efan