D&D 5E Fleeing

[ExploderWizard]

They even have an optional rule that they say they borrowed from 7th Sea (1st ed, this was before 7th Sea 2nd was out) which is that you can't be killed by people without a name. So you could get knocked way out and captured and brought tot he named NPC to be sacrificed, but that still gave the rest of the party a chance to rescue you.

"OMG!!.....RUN!"

"Whats the problem?"

" THEY HAVE NAME TAGS!"

 

[Warmaster Horus]

In my games if PCs need to run they should expect pursuit unless they've put a serious hurt on their opponent. They'll usually need to deter being followed by spiking doors, hurling alchemist's fire or other means of slowing up anything chasing them. There's no 'Retreat Rule', this is a role playing game and it's up to the players and DM to determine the outcome of actions using the standard rules and what the story demands.

 

[jasper]

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.

..?

0. because IMO every edition of D&D has made fleeing/running a sucker's move if you go only by the written rules. ...Ok I have never thought of it that way.
1. I have done nice descriptions of you out of your league. And have said "WHAT your 3rd level and want to attack the ancient dragon. Unless it hits of min, you are dead on the first strike.!" I also say "the crawdad is down around 40 hp".
2. Run away. Most monsters lair are not as flat and open as 4 football fields, so breaking line of sight means you out of range attacks also. Not every monster(s) are going to chase down pcs. They may just pick on Jasper's barbarian and all 12 of the orcs decide they like Jasper Jerky. The remaining party, once they get back to town and clean their shorts, decides whether to recover the body. Or Jasper decides to roll a new barbarian up.
To sum up.
1. DM tells the group you out your league.
2. If the group runs away, the dm decides to nuke a pc, tpk the party, or let them run away with brown pants.

 

[snickersnax]

There are so many ways to escape in 5e I don't think there needs to be any special rules for it. If your party needs help, next time they are in town have them encounter a street merchant loudly extolling the benefits of caltrops, ball bearings, bear traps and horses. Anyone who can cast spells (and in 5e that probably means more than half the party should have at least one spell by 3rd level that will assist them and maybe others get out of a bad situations). IMO a serious party of 6 or more should have a dedicated battlefield control specialist with evac capacity.

 

[jasper]

...a street merchant loudly extolling the benefits of caltrops, ball bearings, bear traps and horses. ....

grand papa orc "Why do I eat horses and street merchants kids?"
grand orcs yawning " because when you were just an young Orc guarding your first pie, you chase a band of adventurers only to slip on some ball bearings, roll into a hand full of caltrops, fall head first into a bear trap, and then get down trodden by the horse they escape on."

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There are so many ways to escape in 5e I don't think there needs to be any special rules for it. If your party needs help, next time they are in town have them encounter a street merchant loudly extolling the benefits of caltrops, ball bearings, bear traps and horses.

Sure, you can also try to sell them some snake oil. Caltrops and ball bearing have virtually no effect against anything that you would want to run away from. It only might be effective against the kinds of chumps that you could defeat easily, but even then you are trading an action to potentially slow someone else down for one round as they avoid your trap.

 

[Lanefan]

Casters also share some of the blame - how about preparing some evasion and cover spells now and then instead of just more buff and blast?

At low level there's Darkness, Wall of Fog (or whatever it's called now), Silence, Invisibility, Haste, Grease, various illusions, 3e had Expeditious Retreat and 1e had Run, and the list goes on.

At higher level there's Wall of <anything>, Blade Barrier, Dimension Door-Teleport-Planeshift, various Bigby's get-in-the-way spells, etc.

Lanefan

 

[snickersnax]

Sure, you can also try to sell them some snake oil. Caltrops and ball bearing have virtually no effect against anything that you would want to run away from. It only might be effective against the kinds of chumps that you could defeat easily, but even then you are trading an action to potentially slow someone else down for one round as they avoid your trap.

"Indeed, you are discerning customer, it helps if you have a way to move them onto your scattered caltrops like a shove or a thunderwave.
But someone of your sharp intellect and high social standing needs to buy my special invisibly Sequestered caltrops. Invisible caltrops coated with a special ruby dust. Because they can't be seen, You can't avoid them easily.

Yes, they must be yours, Sir. As you can imagine, they are quite an upgrade to my already excellent standard version caltrops. Ruby dust isn't cheap you know. Now, these aren't just plain, ruby-dust covered, invisible caltrops they are also precoated in silver. Do you know what that means, Sir?

Yes, you can use these caltrops. Against Lycans. Terrifying creatures that would be immune to my already excellent standard version caltrops. But

When you purchase these silver-coated invisible Caltrops. You would have a chance to survive a hungry Were and live to tell the tale.

Now, normally I don't even have these in stock, but I have one very special bag left.

And I know what your are thinking! Silver, Ruby, Invisible these have got to be worth 20,000 gp if not more. But, allow me to let you in on a little secret. I have an archmage who owes me a big favor, and so he gives me a break on the price of his truly fantastic transmutation.

Today, these Silver-coated, Ruby-dust covered, Invisibly sequestered, truly excellent caltrops could be yours for only 10000gp.
What do you say will you buy these before the Lycans show up?" - Tribulus the Caltrop merchant

 

[hastur_nz]

I don't tend to throw overwhelming opponents into a fight vs the PC's, I tend to give some clues, and not force it into combat immediately. That's how some people roll, but not me. I prefer to give the players some idea of what they are up against, and give them a decision-point or two before anything like combat breaks out. For example, the PC's see (in the distance) a Hill Giant trying to man-handle a huge vegetable, and a group of Ogres and Orcs are nearby... what do they want to do? vs throwing the same group at each other and saying "roll for initiative!" - I try not to do that.

As for running away, if and when my groups ever decide to do that, I tend to ignore the rules as much as possible, and focus on the monster / NPC Objectives... does the owlbear care if the PC's run away (probably not, especially if it's hurt)? A real-world example: in Curse of Strahd, I killed and dragged off one PC, dropped another, and also killed an NPC (Irena) - the rest of the players decided to bail, so I let them run away with no chase scene, I even let them pick up the fallen gnome to be revived later; Strahd had succeeded in that phase of his cat and mouse game, he won, the PC's lost. All good.

Good chase scenes are difficult to design and run in a way that is actually fun for people, at least that's my experience. And let's say you do chase down the PC's, what then, you kill them all? Then do you expect them to ever try running away again, or just keep fighting until TPK? Players tend to Fight to the Death way more than they should already; personally I'd like to encourage them to realise they are in danger, and safely bail out.

 

[transtemporal]

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

I see what you mean. I just don't like mechanics like that because one PC specialises in it and suddenly the whole group has a get-out-of-jail-free card. Hell, if there's no consequences to using it, they'll use it in every combat to essentially port out rest up and port back in.