Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hastur_nz" data-source="post: 7145833" data-attributes="member: 40592">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.</blockquote>

Verification