D&D General Run Away!

[aco175]

I was thinking of talking to my players and try to come up with a "Run-Away" mechanic. Something where you can flee to safety of the whole group wants to. I like the idea of establishing a safe zone on the map to gather before fleeing. Then I though about; What about monsters wanting to flee. Most of the time the players want to chase every monster down and kill them before they return with friends. There should be something for both sides of the table.

 

[MarkB]

Is Dragon fear a supernatural effect or the legitimate reaction to 20 tons of enraged beast trying to bite your head off?

Given that there are plenty of other 20-ton trying-to-bite-your-head-off beasts which don't produce such effects I'm going to go with option 1.

 

[iserith]

I was thinking of talking to my players and try to come up with a "Run-Away" mechanic. Something where you can flee to safety of the whole group wants to. I like the idea of establishing a safe zone on the map to gather before fleeing. Then I though about; What about monsters wanting to flee. Most of the time the players want to chase every monster down and kill them before they return with friends. There should be something for both sides of the table.

The Chase rules in the DMG work for either players or monsters.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Because it is a temporary status effect and because it is universally a magical/supernatural effect that is effecting the character and not the DM reveling in the idea that they made the party flee.

This appears to reflect a attitude I see here a lot, that in my opinion can be summarised as "I don't trust the DM". It is a trivial matter to TPK a party or even to get them to flee in terror. Or even flee in not terror. It is equally trivial to justify the encounter.

The DM should only be reveling is the players had a good time.

Before I go any further I an not a fan of the unbeatable encounter where the party is supposed to flee. I will create tough and even deadly encounters as well as easy ones.

Most of the times I have TPK'ed (or near TPK'ed) it was an accident. I either under estimated the difficultly or they triggered multiple encounters at once.

I have made the party flee by giving them a tough encounter and letting know that reinforcements are inbound.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why?

Because the 20 ton flying flamethrower that is also a wizard needs to magically scare people because their name is on the game but we don't give LITERAL GODS that superpower to force people to care about their yammering.

 

[Vaalingrade]

This appears to reflect a attitude I see here a lot, that in my opinion can be summarised as "I don't trust the DM".

When the DM is trying to force me to do something I don't want to and will do things like kill my characters until I comply or enact rules to force me to do it without my agency?

Yeah, I don't trust them.

 

[MGibster]

There's a fundamental difference between a Fear condition being applied as a result of a spell or supernatural effect, as opposed to imposing it as an involuntary reaction to an adverse situation.

In both cases, we're talking about a character compelled to behave a certain way without the player having any choice in the matter. I don't see a fundamental difference between the origin of that compulsion being a spell or an adverse situation. In fact, isn't a spell cast against you just an adverse situation?

But maybe D&D isn't the type of game where we should be concerned with PCs being negatively affected by most adverse situations. It is high adventure after all.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The Frightened condition says nothing of being compelled to run away.

• A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.
• The creature can't willingly move closer to the source of its fear.

 

[iserith]

The Frightened condition says nothing of being compelled to run away.

• A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.
• The creature can't willingly move closer to the source of its fear.

Running away from the idea of moving closer is probably what they meant.

 

[Reynard]

In about 10 minutes we will find out whether any of them re-thought their current "stand here until it kills one of us" strategy.