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What happened to Morale?
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<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 7465837" data-attributes="member: 12377"><p>Those are very good questions. In general, I'd say abstract systems should never be used if their results would cause a discontinuity by glossing over details that are actually very important. In this particular case, I'd say that a prerequisite for "quick retreat" is a plausible story for what's going to happen.</p><p></p><p>It's like when the party returns to the dungeon, and they cleared level 1 the previous day, and they say, "OK, we go through level one to the stairs down." Most DMs say "sure" and then select the most likely path (asking the players, if there's any doubt) and then if the party stumbles into a wandering monster, so be it. So yes, you can flee the dungeon, when you are not in combat; it just might go sideways.</p><p></p><p>I treat abstract flight the same way: "I'm running for the secret room where we slept for the night" or "I'm fleeing through the alleys back to headquarters" or "I'm just high-tailing it into the woods as far as I can in the hopes they lose me." If that won't work, I usually tell them up-front ("Uh, that secret room is right around the corner, they might hear you go in there..." or "You can't flee through the alleys when you are already cornered; that's what 'cornered' means" or "It has a flight speed of 80 and can detect thoughts up to 120 feet, so running into the forest probably isn't going to help") but sometimes panicked flight leads from one bad situation to another.</p><p></p><p>The object of abstract retreat is to speed up the tedious process and make it more likely to succeed, but not necessarily make it automatically always succeed.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="77IM, post: 7465837, member: 12377"] Those are very good questions. In general, I'd say abstract systems should never be used if their results would cause a discontinuity by glossing over details that are actually very important. In this particular case, I'd say that a prerequisite for "quick retreat" is a plausible story for what's going to happen. It's like when the party returns to the dungeon, and they cleared level 1 the previous day, and they say, "OK, we go through level one to the stairs down." Most DMs say "sure" and then select the most likely path (asking the players, if there's any doubt) and then if the party stumbles into a wandering monster, so be it. So yes, you can flee the dungeon, when you are not in combat; it just might go sideways. I treat abstract flight the same way: "I'm running for the secret room where we slept for the night" or "I'm fleeing through the alleys back to headquarters" or "I'm just high-tailing it into the woods as far as I can in the hopes they lose me." If that won't work, I usually tell them up-front ("Uh, that secret room is right around the corner, they might hear you go in there..." or "You can't flee through the alleys when you are already cornered; that's what 'cornered' means" or "It has a flight speed of 80 and can detect thoughts up to 120 feet, so running into the forest probably isn't going to help") but sometimes panicked flight leads from one bad situation to another. The object of abstract retreat is to speed up the tedious process and make it more likely to succeed, but not necessarily make it automatically always succeed. [/QUOTE]
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