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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lluewhyn" data-source="post: 7144741" data-attributes="member: 6887379">Thank you. The first half of your reply answers my second question -what to do when a choice to flee has occurred. For the few times it's come up, I've done something similar, but maybe not as harsh. It would be something like opposed Constitution checks to keep up a running speed, and the party that failed would end up in combat with the pursuer again, and know that flight was not an available option. Either way, we're both coming up with a system beyond "X moves 30' and uses their Action to take a Dash/Y moves 30' and uses their action to fire at X with a Longbow".I was going to ask how this related to my first question, which is determining when flight should be an option, but then saw the part about "in practice". Your answer was pretty good about both dealing with the hypothetical (realizing that an NPC was way beyond their level just by its nature Lich/Dragon), and the actual practice that fleeing really only tends to occur in game-play when the party is screwed and its the remaining PCs are trying to keep it to being a mostly-TPK instead of full TPK. Also, in higher level games, there may be more opportunities for the players to realize they're in trouble before the bodies have already hit the floor: For example, in Curse of Strahd my players engaged Baba Lysaga's Hut after dispatching her earlier, and realized that it was going to be able to take them down (50+ a turn) long before they could drop it, and managed to get away.But that seems to be the exception to me- that PCs can determine it's time to run and still have an opportunity for all of them to get away, when more typically it's just the few survivors from a total wipe. But I've seen so many people talking about games where their PCs learned the value of running away from fights and not thinking they can take everything down when it seems to me the default system mechanics tend to discourage this option, not just PC cockiness.</blockquote>

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