D&D 5E Grind-out fights, unconscious heroes, and retreat

[Libramarian]

Now, if a PC is already unconscious, things do get a lot harder. This is one of the challenges that we face in my game a lot — the party doesn't realize they are outclassed until somebody gets knocked out, at which point, if healing spells are not available, they are stuck trying to drag a character away. I still think a determined party could figure out how to extricate a fallen comrade from a combat without ever resorting to any pesky role-playing, but that is certainly harder than just holding your ground and grinding it out. (After all, the DM isn't really going to let a TPK happen, will he?)

You could allow unconscious PCs to get up and escape with the rest of the party, Final Fantasy-style. I honestly wouldn't consider that out of place with the rest of 5e's death & dying rules from a simulation perspective. Especially if you imagine "unconscious" as not literally unconscious but more of an abstract hors de combat.

 

[Tony Vargas]

In my opinion, the things that most get in the way of retreat are:
* People are stubborn and hate admitting defeat
* Retreat requires a major strategic and tactical shift as the players and their characters adopt all new objectives

There's even more basic things. Like the slowest PC being slower than the fastest monster (or, likely, even slower than all the monsters). Or a possible mode of escape - flight, teleportation, etc - not being possessed by/able to take all the PCs. That can nip the thought of escape in the bud.

* When playing on a battlemat, there is a bit of a subconscious instinct to "stay in bounds". "You're off the battlemat, you got away",

I think those more or less cancel out. Yes, having an imaginary boundry could create this sense of not being able to get away, but, at the same time, it creates a sense of having gotten away if you do make that intuitive leap and move 'off the edge.' :shrug:

TotM, OTOH, you have no immediate sense of terrain or layout, and the impulse is to just compare relative speeds - which is rarely in the PC's favor, thanks to the occasional slow character. But, by the same token, the DM can easily insert possible getaways into the description - alleys or side passages or whatever that you might duck down and hide in, for instance.

 

[redrick]

You could allow unconscious PCs to get up and escape with the rest of the party, Final Fantasy-style. I honestly wouldn't consider that out of place with the rest of 5e's death & dying rules from a simulation perspective. Especially if you imagine "unconscious" as not literally unconscious but more of an abstract hors de combat.

My suggestion was to have monsters off the unconscious PCs, thereby providing a little more single-minded clarity to the surviving PCs and their players. Less likely to risk your own life just to bring back the severed head of the reckless fighter.

 

[redrick]

Isn't that the vast majority of situations, though? Whenever the odds aren't overwhelmingly in your favor, it's always possible that one attack will be the difference between your own life and death. If the monster wastes a turn on the unconscious target, instead of the active one, then that increases the chance of a PC taking that monster down in the next round.

This is true even when you're talking about hungry monsters, who want to drag an enemy back to their lair. During those three rounds of dragging, there's a good chance that a living PC is going to cut you down. The greatest chance of you getting out of any situation alive, short of fleeing immediately upon seeing the party, is to engage the living PCs and ignore the fallen ones. (In the presence of healing magic, treat "fallen" characters as "potentially living, and highly vulnerable".) Stopping to dispatch the non-combatants will do nothing for you if you end up dead.

I guess, short of an Evil Overlord that the monster fears much worse than death. In that kind of situation, you might get minions who are willing to do the tactically stupid thing and dispatch the fallen immediately, even knowing that it's probably going to get them killed in short order.

I disagree. In the vast majority of situations, monsters are looking to accomplish a specific objective that isn't "kill or incapacitate all the player characters." What I outlined above was that, in many of those situations, killing unconscious PCs could advance that objective more effectively than another action.

Most combats are as much about a show of force as an actual total application of force. You demonstrate to your opponent, "whatever it is that you want, it will cost you more than you'd like to pay." A bargain of death. If your opponent won't sell at "minor bodily harm," you escalate to "major bodily harm." If your opponents don't seem threatened by major bodily harm, you try to kill one.

That's the point where you're saying, "if we go to the mats, you, as a team, might win, but I will kill at least one of you in the process. Are you sure you want to die today?" That speech is a lot more convincing if you've just killed somebody, and your opponents are now thinking, "who's next?"

Monsters aren't usually trying to kill every last adventurer. They're trying to get the adventurers to retreat, to stop fighting, to stop opposing whatever objective it is that the monsters have. The strategy of, "how do I incapacitate all of my opponents," is different from the strategy of, "how do I drive off all of my opponents?"

It's also much, much easier to kill one PC than to knock out two.

 

[mlund]

Bah, properly killing people in armor and whatnot is a waste of money. Mussing up the armor (like driving an ax or a spear through the breastplate) ruins its value. Dead enemies can't be ransomed or sold into slavery either. Yeah, killing farmers, bandits, and militia in rubbish armor is one thing. Killing knights, clerics, and wizards - on the other hand - is a giant waste of money. It also generally doesn't warn off adventurer-types and knights / dukes / kings either. It just makes them vindictive.

Enemies who are truly dangerous because of their intelligence aren't going to waste an opportunity unless you give them a compelling reason to act irrationally.

If the hobgoblins are truly vindictive they'll be all Byzantine about it and ransom your wizard back minus his eyes or sell you a freshly gelded fighter ...

Marty Lund

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I disagree. In the vast majority of situations, monsters are looking to accomplish a specific objective that isn't "kill or incapacitate all the player characters." What I outlined above was that, in many of those situations, killing unconscious PCs could advance that objective more effectively than another action.

Maybe it varies from table to table. In my experience, the primary goal of any monster is to survive, and that's not something which will happen if they leave any PC alive. They're monsters, and heroes kill monsters.

There's some more wiggle room when it comes to intelligent NPCs, or minions of the big bad. There might be a case where killing a single PC will cause the rest of the PCs to back off. Sometimes. Usually, it will just make them mad.

Even then, though, the concept of lasting injury is somewhat foreign to the world of D&D. This isn't L5R. You can't seriously injure anyone without bringing them within a hair's breadth of death. And combat rarely lasts more than a few rounds, so if you're giving up one of those rounds to finish someone off, then you're sacrificing a lot of your combat potential; if you couldn't drop the whole party without skipping your turn, then you have significantly less chance of doing so after you waste a round.

At a meta-game level, if the DM is expected to tailor encounters to be tough (yet beatable) challenges for the group, then an enemy who wastes a turn on such a maneuver will shift the whole encounter from tough to easy. In order to have any chance of winning, they really need to go all out on offense rather than playing mind games with a coup de grace. That will vary between tables, though, since not every table uses tailored encounters.

The real exception is if you can perform a one-hit KO, in which case you might convince the PCs that you're more trouble than you're worth. If you can't clearly demonstrate that you're way out of their league, though, then you've just signed your own death certificate.

 

[S'mon]

* When playing on a battlemat, there is a bit of a subconscious instinct to "stay in bounds". "You're off the battlemat, you got away", doesn't always feel believable to players or DM. Players know exactly what is detailed on their 30x30 grid, but have only vague imaginations of whatever lies beyond it, so it's harder to visualize and articulate a strategy for retreat.

Believability - obviously if you're being attacked by cavalry on the open plain, retreat may be hard. Most battles are fought in dungeons, forests etc.
Strategy - in 1e the PCs were expected to throw loot, food etc to cover their retreat. All this stuff which
made status-quo sandboxing viable was lost by 3e. But it's not rocket science, and even just "we run away" should often work.

I have trouble grokking this issue because while my PCs retreat sometimes - and GMs tend to let it work, just like me - my *monsters* run away all the time! And they usually get away; I recall one hobgoblin
captain in heavy armour who was successfully tracked down and killed by Ranger PC, but usually neither monsters
nor PCs engage in extended pursuits and there's usually a monster or two that gets away.

 

[Rhenny]

The more I play/DM 5e, the more I'm beginning to think that attacking an unconscious PC works well with most evil intelligent and ravenous foes especially if DM wants more grit and if players take 0 hp too lightly. Fear that a downed PC will be killed changes sets up a very tense decision for the rest of the party. They are forced to react more strongly when a PC goes down; it basically forces someone (or more) to give up an action or use resources instead of attack, which helps foes survive. It also makes players fear even when only 1 party member goes down, which sometimes negates the pressure on the DM to make many encounters too challenging/deadly.

 

[n00b f00]

Executions sometimes good mostly not
It mostly depends on the tastes of the table. For me there's a lot of situations where it makes sense for the monsters to go "I'm going to spend 4 turns killing this player while a close battle rages on 10 feet from me." If they're zombies, they are dumb and going to chew on a dude's face after he's dead unless they start getting poked. An assassin whose only objective is to kill one PC and run away. A crazed death cult, who are willing to eat a TPK of their own to end the lives of the PCs. They know they can't TPK the party, but they know they can focus fire one into oblivion. They're making the intelligent decision to handicap their chances, and ensure their own death by wailing on a downed PC.

Generally I think that most intelligent enemies are more likely to either flee or fight the moving threats than they are to execute a fool(the players aren't slapping downed goblins are they?). You're fighting some bandits, they drop the cleric in the same round a couple of their own get dropped. They can still win the fight if they go all out, and they can still get away if they start running now. But sitting there for 3 turns poking at the cleric while the warlock is plinking you with eldritch blast is a bad idea. But like you said, if an enemy has multiattack he drops you with his first hit, he has another, and no one else is in range. Well just sitting on it is just as dumb. Of course he slaps you, unless the GM is intentionally playing him dumb.

Like Miami Vice(2006, a chill but flawed movie) has some moments along these lines. In the middle of a fight two enemies are incapped but alive. There's a lull in the fighting and a bit of a standoff, during this lull they execute one of them as a display of power(a narrative moment when the combat had more or less resolved, and the only thing left was to sue for peace or die in a cool way). Some people are shot more times than was strictly needed, but it was when they were falling down(in the same turn). People in gunfights are shot at when wounded, because there's no other available targets or they're still actively shooting(using up the last of this turn's multi attacks if no one else is in range before moving on). But they never dead check writhing or unresponsive enemies when lead is passing right over their heads(slapping a PC for multiple turns in the middle of a fight).

That's what I'd expect from most intelligent enemies personally. There's always exceptions of course. Insane, vindictive, and/or incredibly stupid enemies. But they're exceptions. An intelligent enemy that doesn't use it's multi attacks correctly, or wastes turns on downed PCs as a rule feels like the GM metagaming. Which is fine, if you want to swing it one way or the other that's totally cool. If you want to have it where the PCs all escape no strings attached with their wounded and dead when they say "We escape". Or have them just straight up die when they hit 0 hitpoints. Cool man, if that's what your table enjoys then go for it. But I in general I don't expect the bandit to bash the one incapped PC while his friends are being murdered 10 feet from him.

How to make them run instead
If you want to incentivise retreating in general. I'd consider making it easier to retreat. The roll initiative as a group then apply dex bonus, is a good houserule that makes retreat easier in general. Let PCs throw open health potions at incapped PCs with disadvantage. Tell the healers to take ranged heals. Have the NPCs threaten to murder an incapped NPC if they don't retreat or surrender(how many times do the badguys tell the villain to drop the gun or have their sidekicked murdered). Have the NPCs offer a trade of each others' wounded/dead. Or have them regroup to catch their breath if they are in control of a tough fight, ostensibly because they don't want to take pointless losses by not properly leveraging their superior fighting power(if reinforcements are streaming in, why not disengage and wait for them to catch up, why risk taking the barbarian straight up) heal up a bit and catch their breaths, but actually to give the PCs a chance to get back on their feet and say "We need to run or die." A cutscene where you take away the main reason for them refusing to run and basically leave the likely tpk in their hands, because the tide is turning and the fight is resource wise tougher now than before the break.

That might sound overly soft, but it'll make retreating a realistic and attractive option, giving you the chase scenes you want to run. And it makes it less likely that some particularly stubborn players say "Well now we HAVE to kill them, for revenge or to resurrect/rob the dead guy." And of course, you can use the carrot and the stick if you so choice, going back and forth on a whim depending on your mood and the feel of the table. You can always slap incapped players with a level of exhaustion if you wanna make them progressively pay for incaps, without going super lethal.

When I'm GMing and things get out of hand I'll generally just say "You will almost definitely die if you don't retreat," and if they agree shift into a chase scene or them escaping, but I am a man without tack. Those events are unplanned, and this is easily the most thought I've put into chase scenes. Before this topic I've always considered resolving it almost entirely divorced from the combat rules the most natural situation. "Roll charisma to confuse them, roll strength to pick up Ellaria, everyone make dex checks to see how far you get away," mixxed in with some narrative descriptions and suggestions from the players of how they try to get away. Or I just say "you get away" when I think it'd be more interesting to get to how they respond to this failure or just want to keep up the pace.

Either way I hope it all works out.

 

[iserith]

If you're going to start offing unconscious PCs on the regular, my advice is to make sure you have a plan for what happens after a character dies. One of the crummy parts of Monopoly is that when a player goes bankrupt, he or she is no longer really participating in the game. So for however long the game lasts (and boy can it last), you've got your friend twiddling his or her thumbs watching everyone else play. That's not very fun. A lot of modern games end when the first person is "out" or are set up where nobody can be forced out of play before it ends.

Unfortunately, D&D suffers from the same issue as Monopoly. Short of the party having a raise dead spell prepared or the like, your friend is going to be a spectator instead of an active participant. Therefore, it's a good idea in my view to plan for PC death since it can happen even when you're not gunning for unconscious characters. Backup characters that have already been introduced in the fiction and can seamlessly be brought into play is a good way to get the player back into the action (henchmen and hirelings are great for this). Bob's character, Lack-Toes the Intolerant, has just had his brain sucked out by a mind flayer? Damn the bad luck. Okay, let's tap his backup PC, Lucida Blackletter into play. Because we've created the context that allows Lucida to hop into the scene, it's not jarring at all that she turns up and is promoted to protagonist status.

Other options include making deals with Death to come back from the Other Side or having mechanical death mean that you're taken out of the scene and suffering some cost rather than mean actual death occurred. Bottom line, I think the ideal situation is that the player who came to the table to play does so and isn't put outside primary participation in the game unless he or she wants to spectate. It's worth considering how to handle that if you plan on increasing the lethality of your games.

Good luck!