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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrunkonDuty" data-source="post: 3749109" data-attributes="member: 54364">Reasons to let the BBEG get away vary as much as BBEGs. Ask yourself: why is the BBEG here at this time? Do they need to be here at all? OK, to add drama but in what way? Slaughter a village to show their evilness/power? Steal something that the PCs need/want/must protect? Wind up the PCs? (I like this one.)If you work out why they're there ways in which they can avoid capture at the same time as not killing the PCs may occur to you. Frinstance:The classic over-confident BBEG. Too arrogant (or busy) to kill the annoying little PCs and just tells the mooks to finish them off. This is why a BBEG has mooks after all. Mooks fight, BBEG wanders off. Make sure you have enough mooks.A retroengineering fix if the BBEG is killed/caught could be that it turns out it wasn't the BBEG. Just a minion who talks big. Or maybe a Doombot.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" /> OK this would suck if the players knew you'd fudged, but if they don't know then they won't feel gypped.Wizardly BBEGs can have clones and simulacrums. Simulacrums can be used as heralds in place of the BBEG but make a good taster. Clones can come into effect after the BBEG is killed. Contingency used cleverly can cover a lot of possibilities.Live with it. A while back IMC the PC's were fighting a Duergar cleric and his troops. Now this guy wasn't the BBEG of the campaign but I did want him to recur. Poor bugger got royally stuffed when a weakness spell dropped his strength to 3. Too low to stand up-right in his own plate armour. A silence spell prevented him from casting a dispel. Poor bugger had to crawl away, very slowly, while his troops died up at the front line against the PC's. Thing is I decided just to let the guy die if he couldn't get away. It wasn't what I had wanted at the start of the encounter but hey-ho, the PCs earned it.Hostages. If the PC's attack the hostages may die. The BBEG may not be bothered to take the hostage with him when he goes.The BBEG may be too tough to be taken out but isn't interested in killing the PCs. (Can't be bothered, may want them to take news of the BBEG's evilness to the world at large.) This works best with the the megalomaniac type. A more efficient BBEG, the sort who ties up lose ends as they go along, would be a risky proposition for this. But see the one about letting the mooks do it above. The BBEG may be in a defensive position that the PCs can't successfully storm. Other side of a ravine/river. Behind castle walls. IMC my actual BBEG was recently caught by the PCs. I didn't want this to happen but they came up with such a good lure and trap that I couldn't in any fairness resist letting them beat her. But what I did do was let her survive (fudged the hp damage by a couple of points.) Fortunately the heroes are law abiding types and wouldn't kill her out of hand, that was for the courts to decide. Captured yes, but alive. And she'll escape and come back bigger and meaner than ever. And the players are not only expecting this, they're looking forward to it.hope this provides some inspiration.cheers,</blockquote>

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