D&D 5E Fleeing

[S'mon]

I use the rules on the battlemat/in line of sight, but enemies that have fled out of sight are out of combat, chasing them down typically requires Athletics checks or equivalent. I ran games with goblins Saturday & Sunday, with a goblin successfully fleeing both times (easy w bonus Disengage action). In the first case the PCs chased the goblin right into a nest of other goblins and nearly got TPK'd, I had to be very kind to let them escape. They may have learned the unwisdom of extended chasing through dungeons after that.
In the second game the (different) players were smart enough to break off pursuit rather than have that happen to them.

I roll all dice in the open of course so players can see the to-hit bonus. I normally tell them the enemy AC when they attack. Information is key to letting players make good choices.

I too tell players when a monster is 'bloodied' at half hp.

 

[Li Shenron]

But for everyone else, how do you resolve the dilemma that it's very hard to determine the difficulty of an opponent until you engage them in combat, and once you are in combat with them it's hard to flee without them following or using ranged attacks to bring you down?

1. I have no problem giving hints to the players such as "this foe looks hard to kill" or "this foe looks really beyond your league". I could also flat-out tell them what is the monster's CR, but you can put that behind an Intelligence check if you don't want it to feel too much of a cheat.

2. Because they don't want to. If you were attacked by someone in the street, then punch him hard in the face, and he would start fleeing, would you go after him? You've already won and got what you wanted, why would you risk? Sometimes, the defendants would be motivated to counterattack, and some other times they would not. There isn't a "must do" in every case. For instance, if the defendants are guarding a place, they would be very foolish to leave their posts to follow the attackers, running the risk of leaving their place open for a second attack or even running into a trap?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Look at it from the other direction. If the PCs were guarding a location, and some mercenaries broke in to wreck the place, how motivated would the PCs be to prevent one of them from fleeing? How well would it go over if you just rolled a die, and said that one of them got away? Or even rolled a series of dice, trying for five successes before three failures? My guess is that the players might feel cheated, because they had no say in the outcome, where they would expect to have a fairly strong influence based on the rules that they know (the "combat" rules).

If you want to play a game where running away is a common occurrence, then feel free to add that as a combat action, but everyone at the table needs to be aware that it works both ways. Including a special PC-only rule is just a recipe for discontent, since every player at the table will be fully aware that they should have failed, whenever they need to invoke it.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Recently saw another of those memes discussing "never assume that everything in the world is an appropriate challenge for your level -be prepared to flee". This kind of philosophy has always seemed odd to me, because IMO every edition of D&D has made fleeing/running a sucker's move if you go only by the written rules. Basically, two problems:

1. Unless you have fought specific types of creatures before, you don't know their relative challenge level until you fight them (still doesn't help much against specific creatures). Even if you fight them, you might not be able to gauge their true difficulty if the DM is opaque about their exact stats (HP, Attack Bonus, AC, etc.) until it's several rounds in and party members are dropping. Did that guy who hit you with a 25 (not-critical) have a +6 and roll a 19, or did he roll a 13 with a +12? A PC's first few attack rolls are 23 and 24, which are both hits, so couldn't tell the enemy has a whopping 22 AC. Also, half of your team is down and that Ogre hits like a train -but is the 40 points of damage that you have done to him almost enough to drop him or merely a small dent?

2. Suppose that you do the math and *do* determine that you are out of your league. This is obvious when the players are vastly out-numbered, but trickier when it's a single creature or a small number of enemies. Party (or whoever is left) decides to flee. Except almost every monster in the book can move just as fast as the PCs and/or has ranged weapons that can pick them off as they flee. To be true to RP, I sometimes have enemy mooks flee when it's down to 1 or 2 of their originally much larger party, and they're almost always mowed down before they can get away. True, not every enemy will chase the PCs down, but the PCs don't know that.

So, are people using special rules for fleeing not in the actual books? When I ran Curse of Strahd, I knew that this might be an issue and told the players that they had a special "Flee" action for narrative purposes. If they were not provoking Opportunity Attacks and could move their normal speed on their turn, the "Fled" -gone from the combat, can't be chased without an opposed skill challenge, but can't change their mind and come back until after the battle in case their other party members stay in combat.

But for everyone else, how do you resolve the dilemma that it's very hard to determine the difficulty of an opponent until you engage them in combat, and once you are in combat with them it's hard to flee without them following or using ranged attacks to bring you down?

Yep the lack of a formal Party Retreat rules is a major flaw of 5e. A number of modern games have such a rule, including 13th Age and Low Fantasy Gaming rpg. Earlier D&D also had a retreat rule (see D&D Cyclopedia) but alas it was lost around 3rd edition, I think. Which was a big mistake.

A simple 5e retreat rule would be make an athletics skill check, and then suffer 1 level of exhaustion, and the party escapes. But whatever you settle on, you want it transparent and consistent, so the players know the odds (and price) of escape.

http://dndhackersguild.weebly.com/blog/party-retreat-rule

 

[transtemporal]

But for everyone else, how do you resolve the dilemma that it's very hard to determine the difficulty of an opponent until you engage them in combat, and once you are in combat with them it's hard to flee without them following or using ranged attacks to bring you down?

I don't really see what the problem is. The DM isn't obliged to give you the encounter rating. You have to determine for yourself whether you think you can beat an enemy, or not. That's part of the fun. If you don't think you can, run or don't start the fight in the first place.

Our group has done this twice. Once from a rampaging adult black dragon (not sure why we thought we could beat it at 3rd level) and once from a tribe of gnolls (we blindly ran into their lair and got surrounded). For the dragon we ran through the tunnels it couldn't fit through til we got out of its lair, then hid in the swamp. With the gnolls, we made a hole in their ranks then ran (thankfully we had an exit strategy there, invisibility and/or gaseous form). Always have an exit strategy.

 

[transtemporal]

Yep the lack of a formal Party Retreat rules is a major flaw of 5e.

What?! Why on earth wouldn't you want to play this out? Retreats are exciting and fun!

 

[S'mon]

What?! Why on earth wouldn't you want to play this out? Retreats are exciting and fun!

The problem is just with (theoretical) GMs who don't use monster morale, don't have much sense of the game environment as a real place, and robotically apply the combat rules to chase down & kill the PCs*. Even then I would have thought a lone PC holding a doorway could often give the others time to flee. But formal retreat rules would probably help the more rules-bound GMs in avoiding TPKs.

*I guess if I were running the Aliens from Aliens, I'd do that too - but that should be a rare exception.

 

[Psikerlord#]

What?! Why on earth wouldn't you want to play this out? Retreats are exciting and fun!

Because if the monsters have a faster movement rate, escape generally wont be possible (barring magic like teleport, invisibility perhaps, etc). Of course you can still use chase rules etc as well if you want an exciting escape: http://dndhackersguild.weebly.com/blog/fast-and-fun-chase-rules-for-dnd-5e

 

[Li Shenron]

Yep the lack of a formal Party Retreat rules is a major flaw of 5e.

Well the DMG has chase rules, but I suppose you mean something simpler that those.

The possibly tricky part is how to seamlessly go from combat to chase. As long as you are in combat, the RAW makes it seem that you can never get away from your pursuer, unless you have higher speed (you can dash and provoke an OA, but next round the enemy moves back to adjacent). But the DM can help, and decide that the chase starts after the last PC's turn and before the monsters' turn, after which point no OA can be done anymore.

I haven't actually used those chase rules so I may not remember them properly. I think that they should be used in such a way that even tho the PC and monsters take individual turns according to initiative, their mutual distance is updated at the end of each round, rather than at the end of each turn as in regular combat.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Well the DMG has chase rules, but I suppose you mean something simpler that those.

The possibly tricky part is how to seamlessly go from combat to chase. As long as you are in combat, the RAW makes it seem that you can never get away from your pursuer, unless you have higher speed (you can dash and provoke an OA, but next round the enemy moves back to adjacent). But the DM can help, and decide that the chase starts after the last PC's turn and before the monsters' turn, after which point no OA can be done anymore.

I haven't actually used those chase rules so I may not remember them properly. I think that they should be used in such a way that even tho the PC and monsters take individual turns according to initiative, their mutual distance is updated at the end of each round, rather than at the end of each turn as in regular combat.

To "break" from combat, in 5e, I would go with something like roleplay a bit to convince the GM that escape is possible. If ok, then make athletics check (or similar). Then decide if you need to use chase rules. If not, gain exhaustion level, but you escape (ie escape with a cost). If you do need to do a chase, do that first, then gain your level of exhaustion (unless you get caught, in which case, you're sh*t out of luck). I think the retreat/chase can be their own thing, they dont have to follow the usual combat rules (in fact they shouldnt, or you get the move rate vs move rate problem, ie boring and predetermined outcome).

I dont think the 5e chase rules are much good. I'd make my own (and have done).