Do you ever cut and run?

[Legildur]

Run? Rarely. But it does happen.

We're finding it tougher to judge in 4E because of the debilitating area attacks that some monsters have. We have a tendency to not want to cluster for area attacks, but that's competing with the desire to maintain a choke point to allow escape should things turn sour.

Usually the catalyst to flee is when someone suffers bloodied value damage in one attack or 2 or more characters are down. Otherwise it's unload daily powers and action points and crack on!

 

[pawsplay]

Brave, brave Sir Robin!

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The rules make fleeing hard. I don't recall if armor had any impact on your speed in 2e, but since 3e, parties tend to have at least one heavily armored character who just cannot outrun the bad guys. Unless they want to sacrifice themself as a rear guard, the whole party sticks around to fight with them.

In 3e, fighters coudln't even do rear guard well, either.

Furthermore, the initiative system means you flee, your opponent charges and hits you, you flee, they get an AoO/opportunity attack and then they charge you again, etc. You can only really run away if the terrain is flat and clear (since you have to run in straight lines). If you stay, you actually get hit less!

And if your opponents have ranged weapons, that's several rounds under fire that you're not fighting back in. (Oh yes, running gives you a slight bonus to AC against ranged attacks in 3e, but you lose your Dex bonus, so some characters fall behind there too.)

The rules make it difficult for anyone who can't teleport to flee; this applies even to villains. (GMs often try to make bad guys run away, and it rarely works.)

A lot of movement-enhancing options are too fragile. Speed-burst spells that only last a short time (and take an action to cast, actually putting you behind for a little bit), magic carpets with few hit points, horses with few hit points and little survivability otherwise, etc.

But I'm not surprised. When d20 Future came out, people complained that the spaceship rules made running away too easy. There's a reason so many sci-fi settings force a recharge time or force spaceships to only use wormholes for FTL, etc. Runinng away too easily harms drama. Apparently finding a happy medium is next to impossible.

 

[pawsplay]

Furthermore, the initiative system means you flee, your opponent charges and hits you, you flee, they get an AoO/opportunity attack and then they charge you again, etc.

Actually, the withdraw action protects you from an AoO in that scenario. Or you can all-out Run, going 4x movement, taking on AoO, but putting yourself completely out of reach of most charges, unless your opponent is much faster than you are. 3e did this pretty well, I think.

 

[howandwhy99]

Morale Checks means the NPCs sure do. As a player running, or even just trying to avoid encounters, has often been the only way we are able to survive.

 

[TheYeti1775]

Yup I've run, and I've stayed and been slaughtered.

Just last Friday in a Star Wars game, we ran like a beaten dog.
2 Capital Ships + 6 frigate sized ships = our freighter runs.
We did manage to take out 2 of the 6 on our escape.

Though the best run away was playing a heavily armored fighter in 3e and telling the rest of them to run for it he would hold the line in the small corridor while they made the escape. Not sure how but using a doorway he held the line defeating the 50+ goblinoids single handedly while the rest of the party fled. I figured I would be making a new character and giving the rest of the PC's a 2 maybe 3 round headstart. Odds were stacked against survival. But luck of the dice dictated a turn of fortune. I do think I did threaten the DM against any Random Encounters while I made my way back to town with a bag full of ears for bounty.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Actually, the withdraw action protects you from an AoO in that scenario.

I disagree. Withdrawing is a full round action, and you can only move one full move action. Your opponent can, on their turn, just walk up to you and hit you (or charge you, if they prefer). Withdrawing is only good in the real short term, IMO.

Or you can all-out Run, going 4x movement, taking on AoO, but putting yourself completely out of reach of most charges, unless your opponent is much faster than you are. 3e did this pretty well, I think.

As I mentioned earlier, this only works if the terrain is really clear. In a dungeon, it won't work. In a cave or forest, it probably won't work. (It'd actually be a pretty strange, sparse forest if it did.) It works on plains though.

 

[S'mon]

I disagree. Withdrawing is a full round action, and you can only move one full move action. Your opponent can, on their turn, just walk up to you and hit you (or charge you, if they prefer). Withdrawing is only good in the real short term, IMO.

Withdrawing is a double move (30'+30'=60'). Your opponent cannot just walk up & hit you (30'+0'=30'), but they can indeed charge you (60') and hit you, if they have the same 30' speed as you and can reach you in a straight line. It's probably better to Run (30x4=120') and suck up the AoO.

 

[TarionzCousin]

Wow. That's bad. I only called Gary Gygax an asparagus. Parsa/paras (asparagus/best). Almost the same thing.

"I am a jelly donut."




In my first 4E group, exploring KotS resulted in our wizard fireballing our group several times, then fleeing--but he wasn't running from the monsters!

 

[Storminator]

We've run in 4e a couple times, and a few times in 3e.

In the old days of 1e, we proudly proclaimed that we had run from

• a creature
• a fight
• a dungeon room
• a dungeon area
• a dungeon level
• an adventure module
• a barony
• a kingdom
• a continent
• the world

We'd covered the gamut of running possibilities!

PS