If we're looking to build something that represents a realistic depiction of retreating from a determined enemy in who will doggedly pursue you in the context of a mostly melee skirmish than it will be brutal. Historically most successful retreats (when armies mostly fought with melee weapons) depended on what Sun Tzu called the golden bridge, meaning to allows leave your enemy with a means to escape. When retreat is not an option you fight much more fiercely and are likely to do the same to your enemies.
Within the context of a game where we want to reward proactive action a realistic depiction of fleeing is most likely not the best design decision.
Not doing so says the first time things go wrong, a TPK is the likely result since D&D and related game characters often have all the counterincentive to surrender you could want.
Also, one should note that a good part of the time, the PCs are initiators as you note, proactive and the ones who engage, so the enemy often has little to say about a possible retreat path. And they can well have a number of reasons to not want to do an unlimited pursuit.
I'm saying that the rules for fleeing do not need to be particularly realistic or universally applied. Fleeing is already something players are going to be naturally averse to (above and beyond the aversion their characters would have) because it feels like losing. The more we can do to incentivize that behavior the better in my opinion.
I'm rather prone to having a slightly more detailed system in terms of having discussion of the 3-5 important elements, but otherwise I and Kenada are fundamentally on the same page, if in slightly different paragraphs.
I think a difference is my focus is more on escape’s function in the core exploration loop rather than on the elements of the escape itself. I’m coming at things from a more OSR perspective, so dungeons aren’t going to be designed with the capabilities of the PCs in mind. PCs need a way to get out of bad situations if/when they stumbled into them.
For example, my PCs encountered coffer corpses recently while exploring the ruins of a settlement. Coffer corpses can only be harmed by magical attacks, but none of the PCs have magical weapons. This set up would be taboo in a curated game, but it’s not unreasonable in an OSR one. The coffer corpses are effectively a hazard that can’t just be beat to death (though the PCs certainly have tried).
I'm saying that the rules for fleeing do not need to be particularly realistic or universally applied. Fleeing is already something players are going to be naturally averse to (above and beyond the aversion their characters would have) because it feels like losing. The more we can do to incentivize that behavior the better in my opinion.
I think a difference is my focus is more on escape’s function in the core exploration loop rather than on the elements of the escape itself. I’m coming at things from a more OSR perspective, so dungeons aren’t going to be designed with the capabilities of the PCs in mind. PCs need a way to get out of bad situations if/when they stumbled into them.
For example, my PCs encountered coffer corpses recently while exploring the ruins of a settlement. Coffer corpses can only be harmed by magical attacks, but none of the PCs have magical weapons. This set up would be taboo in a curated game, but it’s not unreasonable in an OSR one. The coffer corpses are effectively a hazard that can’t just be beat to death (though the PCs certainly have tried).
Eh, I run what would generally be considered "curated" games, and I wouldn't consider that taboo; only time I'd think of it that way was if it was likely to turn into a roach motel for some reason. But then, I still tend toward at least minimalist sandboxing in my designs.
Would it be too costly (or not costly enough) to require the characters' Hero Points to run away - and then just handle it narratively? Thematically, it is showing that they are losing their heroism by retreating. Characters with no Hero Points either can't take this option, or are maybe given a "negative" Hero Point - we'll call it a Threat Point.
The GM can spend the Threat Point against a character who has it in the same way a player can spend a Hero Point.
If the GM spends the Threat or if the player earns a Hero Point, that takes away the Threat Point.
Would it be too costly (or not costly enough) to require the characters' Hero Points to run away - and then just handle it narratively? Thematically, it is showing that they are losing their heroism by retreating.
That’s an interesting idea, particularly if escape has a cost or chance of failure (e.g., the PCs are caught and combat begins again in a new location). The hero point could guarantee escape or serve as an alternate cost.
Characters with no Hero Points either can't take this option, or are maybe given a "negative" Hero Point - we'll call it a Threat Point.
The GM can spend the Threat Point against a character who has it in the same way a player can spend a Hero Point.
If the GM spends the Threat or if the player earns a Hero Point, that takes away the Threat Point.
That would need tested. My concern is players might be even more frugal with their hero points or remain in combat when they should run just to avoid gaining a threat point.
Here’s an idea. Maybe the threat points are added to a pool for the party? Anyone can opt to have the GM use the point against them. If they do, they gain a hero point for their suffering.
1. This isn't just an indoor problem, so there needs to be factoring in what outdoor cover people can use here;
2. And people seem to have radically different ideas of how easy it is to to this; in the parent thread someone was pretty much insisting that in most cases there was no significant chance to do this in most environments (and this is a thing I've seen all the way back to the 1970's in how some people, maybe most viewed it.
So I think having a more formalized system rather than just trying to use the extent combat system movement and hoping the GM is sensible is warranted.
The problem people are having in the other thread are that they are playing a system heavily slanted towards Combat as War and are having their characters try to accomplish something difficult without giving any thought on how they can do it effectively or investing any resources in accomplishing it. Of course they are going to have a bad time.
But as soon as you remove those conditions then things like retreating across wilderness becomes a lot easier. Let's take an example:
Oops there were two trolls in that cave and a party of adventurers only brought enough alchemist fire for one. Now they are being chased by a troll out of the cave and through the forest back to town. The party, expecting the worst, brought mounts and made sure everybody (well the illusionist wizard, everyone else was already trained in nature with decent wisdom scores) had the ability to ride them. So they perform a fighting retreat out of the cave slowing the troll down with spells (such as warped terrain and illusionary object), yell at their hirelings (someone had to watch the mounts while they were in the cave so they spent a couple of gold piece for some hirelings) to prepare to GTFO and finish mounting up and ride off before it can catch them. A galloping horse moves at 140 feet/round (and is incredibly motivated to get away from the troll). An angry troll moves at 90 feet. The party will quickly break contact with the troll. If the troll wants to continue (horses can't gallop endlessly) and try to out endurance the horses, then it becomes a chase.
When you look at the system in light of that example then feats like Hireling Manager and Ride and spells like Warped Terrain and Lock start to make a lot more sense as options for players. Why would anyone memorize Lock for instance? Well consider another example:
The party, level 3, snuck into an evil temple and disrupted a ceremony conducted by a bunch of cultists. Ritual disrupted, they are now fighting the cultists, but they didn’t realize there were quite so many of them and decide to retreat. Coordinating their actions: the rogue (in back) moves through the door and readies an action to close it. The fighter and cleric (in the front 30 feet away from the door) strike and spend two of their actions to move through the door. Then the wizard (closest to the door) moves through, the rogue closes the door, and the wizard casts lock. The cultists now have to move up 35 feet to the door (2 actions) and attempt to break it down (using the Force Open action) to get to the PCs. The DC is 19 and the cultists athletics skill is +4-2 (not having a pry bar). That gives the cultist pretty bad odds of breaking the door down in one turn. They will probably get the door down the second turn as there is a lot of them, but the by then the party has regrouped or retreated.
And once you understand that tactic (which also works with barring the door so NPCs can use it to), you see why a barbarian might take feats like Adrenaline Surge or Bashing Charge. And if you keep thinking about tactics and refining them and figuring out how your character can do things, eventually you will realize that the game is Combat as War and things like the monk feat “Sleeper Hold” that nobody can figure out from a Combat as Sport perspective make incredible amount of sense (it's a sentry removal tool, it has incapacitate because it's meant to be use to one shot level-3 or -4 sentries, the victims don't fall prone or drop their weapons because that would make noise and it lets the monk hide the body with less actions).
So the problem (for me at least) with the retreat system isn’t: there is no retreat system, but how can I get players to think about tactics ahead of time and invest resources in things other than frontliners move towards the enemy and everyone attacks until its dead. And that’s a tricky thing that I think about a lot. I do have some thoughts on how to do it (if you are a very tactical and roleplay minded person like me), but teaching tactics is a topic for another thread.
All that being said, I do have a couple on topic ideas:
1) A set of tactics cards such as (these are preliminary and bad names) “capture location”, “defend location”, “withdraw to location”, “retreat”, “panicked flight”, etc. Each card could give you mechanical benefits such as increased movement speeds for “panicked flight” (you would have to do a lot of playtesting to balance these). Then each turn you decide (or have a player spend an action?) which tactic your going to use. You could also do a tutorial adventure where you have a Jack the NPC style character choosing the tactics for the party so they can get used to the system and thinking tactically.
2) You could run it as a chase with the first obstacle being “Escape the X” (X being the monster or situtation) and make a custom hazard to represent what your fleeing from. The hazard deals damage to players each turn they fail their check until they overcome the first obstacle.
Would it be too costly (or not costly enough) to require the characters' Hero Points to run away - and then just handle it narratively? Thematically, it is showing that they are losing their heroism by retreating. Characters with no Hero Points either can't take this option, or are maybe given a "negative" Hero Point - we'll call it a Threat Point.
The GM can spend the Threat Point against a character who has it in the same way a player can spend a Hero Point.
If the GM spends the Threat or if the player earns a Hero Point, that takes away the Threat Point.
This is a really nice and simple way to go about it, although like mentioned it could lead to odd player behavior with regards to Hero Points. Another really simple retreat rule could be to inflict a longer lasting condition. So, for example, if the party retreats, it works, but everyone is fatigued. Fatigued lasts until you finish a full night’s rest, so it’ll stick around a bit. Another good condition is drained. Thus if you retreat while fatigued, you increase your drained value by 1. Drained goes down by 1 after a full rest, so it also persists unlike say damage, which is trivial to heal in PF2.
