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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7758734" data-attributes="member: 6873517">I make use of morale as GM. I stopped for a while but I try to use it to differentiate monsters. For example, in my planar 2E (with house rules) Rod of Seven Parts campaign, one thing that the PCs really don't like is facing yuan ti, because they never break or surrender. This is generally true of chaos monsters, most of which have embraced the notion that "death is life." By contrast, other foes will retreat, sometimes to their detriment. They haven't faced goblins in a while (they're 10th-11th level characters, that would be fairly pointless) but I made sure they were shifty and would run or shirk unless forced into battle by something they fear more. Goblins are legendarily subservient. Other monsters really fear certain things and will flee from them when they can (e.g., trolls and fire) but fight to the death for other threats. This really helps differentiate monsters. There are games that have reintroduced it in some fashion, such as Conan 2D20. Morale is a key part of the way the swords and sorcery genre runs---S&S is a branch on the horror genre tree, after all. In addition, morale attacks are also part of what makes social characters useful in combat and not just chumps. Characters have two wound tracks, one is for physical and the other mental and morale attacks do mental damage. In 5E D&D, one good way to represent that is through the frightened condition and/or psychic damage. A monster defeated with psychic damage might not actually be dead, or may have died of fright. I do wish 5E made more use of vulnerabilities. A more cowardly monster could have disadvantage on saves vs fear and/or vulnerability to psychic damage.</blockquote>

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