D&D 5E Villains that are supposed to escape

Beleriphon · Jun 22, 2019

MonsterEnvy said:
One villain has a teleporter to get away, but I think that's it. No villains other then that are assumed to escape.

Only other one kind of like this is the mind flayer in Dragon Heist, during the sewer run before the plot really gets going. I think it probably better the mind flayer leaves, since that part of the adventure is gearing to first or second level characters.

Mind you, in that instance the creature isn't escaping, so much as leaving as soon as the players show up. And the area is setup so that there is no way for the characters to reach the mind flayer before it leaves. If they manage it some how, it just mind blasts them until it can leave.

Swarmkeeper · Jun 22, 2019

If the BBEG is a spellcaster and going down too soon: Simulacrum

Fenris-77 · Jun 22, 2019

DM Dave1 said:
If the BBEG is a spellcaster and going down too soon: Simulacrum

I thought immediately of this as well but I think it comes with a caveat of needing plausibility. It'll seem like just another cheap trick otherwise.

Eltab · Jun 23, 2019

At the end of HotDQ, one villian in the flying castle had a Ring of Feather Fall, and used it in the most dramatic fashion I could think of on-the-fly: he jumped off his own balcony to escape a PC ambush. All was not lost, though, because the vampire (in bat form) power-dove after him.
I never did tell the PCs the outcome of that (because I wanted the suspense and thought "he might come back with reinforcements" - indeed I thought about him being in charge of one of the Assassin Squads in Rise of Tiamat.)

One thing that did give me problems, though: Arauthator is supposed to flee the fight and his lair when he reaches 10% original HP. My PCs (7 of them, IIRC) bowshot him out of the air dead and he crashed in a heap by the slush-filled escape hatch. Is there a guide/formula somewhere as to how many HP - a %age or a total - at which point an NPC should flee, so he actually does make it out of the scenario?

Eltab · Jun 23, 2019

DM Dave1 said:
If the BBEG is a spellcaster and going down too soon: Simulacrum

Or Seeming (may be the wrong name; I'm AFB). You turn invisible, an illusion of you appears in your space and moves as you wish. Get away while the PCs beat on the decoy.

Eltab · Jun 23, 2019

Beleriphon said:
Mind you, in that instance the creature isn't escaping, so much as leaving as soon as the players show up. And the area is setup so that there is no way for the characters to reach the mind flayer before it leaves. If they manage it some how, it just mind blasts them until it can leave.

Edit to that thought: in my group, I got into a position where, by coincidence, I could opportunity-attack the mind flayer as it left. (I was trying to lurk next to a pillar, did not know that it was a magical 'escape hatch'.) The mind flayer did get away drat it.

77IM · Jun 23, 2019

If the villain can miraculously escape for "plot reasons," can the PCs do that too?

Tony Vargas · Jun 23, 2019

77IM said:
If the villain can miraculously escape for "plot reasons," can the PCs do that too?

Sure, the DM is as free, in 5e, to narrate success when players declare the characters flee, upon realizing they've taken on something too much for them too soon.

13A even has a formal mechanic for it, a "Campaign Loss," I think it's called.

TaranTheWanderer · Jun 23, 2019

If I think the story will be better if the villain escapes and I see the players are about to win I may ask them ooc if they want to have him escape. If they agree, we come up with a narration. It’s pretty rare though. I may have done it once in D&D and the players said no. It happens often enough in games like FATE though.

Story: we had a whole campaign revolving around our characters hunting down a group of assassins who had poisoned a well in our home town and who killed lots of friends and family. Our characters had tracked and murdered 3 of 7. Each one was a ‘boss fight’. When we brought the body of the 4th back to the town to bury (we brought back each body to the town and buried them in the local graveyard), we discovered two of the bodies were missing.

It turns out someone had come and raised them. We had to find out who it was and track them down. The plot thickened.