D&D 5E Ending combat guide

[DMSage]

I agree with this partially. Yes, DMs often need to better consider the motivations of the PC enemies, lest they feel more like props set up for the PCs to knock down rather than living, breathing creatures with lives of their own.

That said, I am usually quite loathe to handwave a fight. If you are putting a large group of skeletons against a group of PCs that can easily decimate them, then that seems to be a design issue to me. I don't know enough about 4th edition to comment on it, but in 3.5 given the lack of bounded accuracy, there are probably time you can handwave it. A good guideline is if the creatures cannot provide the PCs with XP.

But in 5th edition, with bounded accuracy, a couple of lucky criticals can do some damage, and since the PCs are getting XP for the critters (assuming you are not using milestones) they should have to earn them.

One behavior I often see in some games is creatures attacking downed and helpless PCs. This is almost never appropriate. And I mean for logical reasons. The fact that it also serves to keep PCs alive is an added benefit.

Think about it. Put yourself in the place of an orc. An orc who doesn't actually know what hit points and levels are. You and your 3 mates are attacking some elves and one of the elves goes down. Are you really going to take the time to coup de grace the elf, thereby taking yourself out of the combat for 6 seconds and put yourself and your orc friends in danger? Or are you going to immediately go after the elves who still threaten you? With the added bonus that if you win the fight, you can take captive the elf and then torture him and eventually eat or sacrifice him at your leisure.

Captives are almost always preferable to corpses. Whether to ransom them, torture them, sacrifice them, enslave them, or just eat them later.

Even non-intelligent creatures would act this way. No beast is going to stop to consume a meal while it or its packmates are being attacked. Beasts tend to prefer to eat a meal in safety, as satiating oneself is not conducive to being in fighting trim.

I'm not saying that it's not possible for the skeletons to do some damage or that you should never finish the fight. But most of the time it's just not worth the extra time out into it. If you need a thematic reason. You can simply say that there are five of you and two skeletons, while the group of them provided a significant challenge, with the two do them oh put your paladin in front and he just walks at them with arrows pinging off his shield and the rogue shoots arrows at them around the corner and the monk walks up behind the paladin to get in range for attacks. If the party is level one this is a different story. When the party is level 8. Even a crit means nothing to them. They can come back from the dead.

I would agree with not having the orcs attack downed players in th middle of a fight. I only do that with aoe spells that are aimed at the party. However I do have them take hostages. If the Orc is smart enough and knocks a character unconscious, I'll have him put his sword to the characters throat and start a hostage situation. This adds so many levels of challenge and decision making to the combat that doesn't happen when you just duke it out.

 

[S'mon]

Everything you you say is true. And yet, I have personally played in a handful of games in the past few weeks (most of which are D&d encounters) where this happens all the time. In most of these battles we even ended up resting right after. So we played out 20 minutes of an already won fight and then rested, negating all resource drain.

If the GM is rolling for wandering monsters as you rest, your state going into the rest matters. If PCs can rest at whim then yes it's pointless rolling out can't-lose encounters. Personally I always use morale & nearly all critters flee if losing. If it's zombies etc then in older editions they can be easily destroyed by the Cleric. If it's 2 skels & it will take 20 mins to play out & there's no resource issue then yes, handwave it.

 

[Sunseeker]

I follow something similar (though I've never written it out) expressed through morale checks, once the enemy force is below half (and aren't insane).

*rolls enemy morale*
Failed Check - Retreat or otherwise assume defensive posture or THROW THE SWITCH!
Successful Check - Keep fighting.

Rinse and repeat until player victory is clear.

 

[DMSage]

Haha, people love their random. That works for the most part. I just don't know why it should be done with a check. You can judge better than the random dice if your players are having fun. If they aren't, don't let the dice tell you to keep it going if they crit while all your players are starting to pull out their phones when it's not their turn.