How do you handle an unexpetedly overwhelming enounter?

[Nifft]

I'm the DM, but I can tell you how NPCs react when the party turns out to be stronger than they look -- they run the hell away!

(This happened last session in Carceri -- a group of tiefling and genasi rogues tried to ambush the party, but when the rogue's leader got three arrows in the chest for like ~50 hp, he yelled "RUN AWAY!" and they all did. It was a 1-round fight, because my NPCs prefer life -- even life in hell.)

-- N

 

[Mana]

As aforementioned about a bazillion times, it really depends on the DM and campaign session. Sometimes, though, (especially in a difficult campaign), attacking what seems impossible may be a viable (or the only) option.

In one campaign, the DM's sole purpose was to try to kill the players off. We started in the middle of a desert with no food, water, and rudimentary supplies. Our characters were forced to drink half-coagulated blood from the carcasses of some bandits to survive (shifting us all a bit toward evil), and there was no holding back; nothing prevented the DM from unleashing something way over our heads.

One day, we were attacked by what can be described as a half-fiend penguin-bat. (Did I mention this campaign world was really screwed up?) It quickly tore through the low-level party, leaving most of them in the negative HPs, and turned to face my character. My PC was a level 1 druid with a Scythe (house rule allowed it), and I attacked it. I missed, and it brought me to 0 HP. Everyone else was practically dead, and my character was staggering his way to death.

It's a situation like that, despite its stupidity, attacking is pretty much the only alternative. I could have tried to get a Cure Light Wounds off on myself, but that would have only delayed death, really. Knowing it'd bring me to -1 HP and soon death, I took another swing.

Attack Roll: 20.
Roll to Confirm Critical: 20.
Roll to Assess Possibility for an Insta-Kill: 20.

Three 20's in a row. (That campaign had a house rule I often adopt where three 20's in a row is an insta-kill, unless it really really doesn't make any sense, e.g. a deity or somesuch. It tries to account for the fact that a pointy-thing in something's heart will kill it regardless of character levels.)

I sliced the penguin-thing in half, and promptly collapsed with -1 HP. Turned out that I made the stabalization rolls, and managed to get a Cure Light Wounds on myself before I died. The other characters stabalized, too, and a few Cure Light Wounds later, we were ready to go.

It's a great example of how much more rewarding a difficult challenge can be than a string of easy challenges.

THAT was experience well-earned.

-Mana

Edit: Fixed a few typos.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Run away, then try to gather information about these foes. Where did they come from? What do they want? Should we engage them, avoid them, or just ignore them? I like to play paranoid, and I try to encourage my players to be that way too. Otherwise -- I hand them 4d6.

 

[enworldatemylogin]

I guess this would depend on who was playing and who was running, so I could have at least 4 different answers.

If I was running, it would most likely be with the weekend group. They don't seem to react well to character death so if I was the DM, I'd pull punches behind the scenes. They do not believe the DM would normally put them in situations they couldn't handle. Or perhaps that should read, they don't think the DM should place the characters in a situation they can't handle.

Now, if I was playing with the weekend group, I would expect us to fight until almost a TPK, then maybe someone will run away, heal up and come back either do die like the rest of maybe grab a body hoping to raise the dead and repeat the process.

If I was playing with the Wednesday night group, we could do any of the above or each could do a separate choice. We are currently playing Mage, so combat is not high on the list of activities, since the 3rd edition system means getting hit with anything except fists means serious injury. Playing d20 games, DnD and Farscape, we have surrendered usually when two characters are down or when we can't escape the situation.

If I was playing with the Monday night group, it would almost always be we fight no matter what happens, until each player comes to the conclusion they must run away. In this group, "meta-gaming" is a bad word. I hate that mentality. It's how I think. I can suppress it for a short time, I can forget when having fun or I'm really involved, but eventually my mind will start flipping through my mental notebook and ask, "What can I do about this" or "What do I know about this"?

The first or second session I gamed with the Monday group we ran into a golem. I asked the DM what I might know about these creatures and observed all the spells and attacks we used against it, until finally I said, "We have to run!" So I get down the hall past it, finally the halfling follows, but 3 rounds later the 2 sorcerers are still dumping spells at the thing trying to take it down.

To be fair, this group is the best tactically minded of the three, so we seem to have either unusual good luck or cover each other's weaknesses. I think part of it stems from this idea we can out think the DM.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

This just happened to us Saturday. Our party was set upon by four constructs that were really powerful. Of course it would not have been overwhelming if the party had listened to me and fallen back forcing them to come at us one at a time down the stairs. One hit from them would likely have killed my mage and was doing a pretty nasty job on the rest of the party. They managed to get themselves pretty spread out and isolated. As party members hit single digits they finally retreated, but one fighter tried to be the hero and "hold them off so the rest can retreat!" Unfortunately his dead body didn't slow them down much. We managed to make it by having the barbarian (who didn't charge into the room and had held back expecting everyone else to retreat) hold them on the stairs and pound on them while raging and buffed while I poured every spell I had into them.

 

[Crothian]

maim your campaion and run. THis way, you can get away while whatever goes after your lame friend

It just depends on how bad it gets. If there is a good idea that can defeat it though be very tough, go for that. Otherwise, attempt a retreat.

 

[shilsen]

In all likelihood get killed while screaming at party-members, "Why, oh why, won't you idiots ever run away?"

 

[Caspian Marqine]

Hmm, this raises a point that came up in a session that I was playing in two weeks back. The guy was using DM genie, and somehow didn't account for their ACs being really fricking high (32-33 or so, we were level 4) and let them run like that. I complained about the stupidity of that, he didn't listen, and then we resorted to using oil from another fight which I didn't get to use, throwing oil and lighting them on fire and burning them to death.

There are different levels of unfair I would suppose, generally there's the unfair and unexpected, ie dudes with ACs higher than is nice to give to people or monsters that are built to be mean, like multi-headed legendary templated dragons, or the peasant you run accross is for some reason a legendary ninja or something, and hacks the party to death. That IMO that is the worst. I guess I'm still cheezed about the situation above, the GM should have known there was a problem.

There's the unfair fight which is outrightly shown to be not fighteable, like lets say, a portal opening in the sky and a horde of dragons show up, the PC level being like 10 in this case. In those cases I figure stuff like that is generally plot based, it happens, everyone says "bugger" and runs away.



Jonathan

 

[Greylock]

The newbie makes his presence known...

Attack. It's not bad to get in a free shot where you can. You can always sort it out in the next round. Well, maybe not always, but the "Flee!" option doesn't necessarily disappear. Knee-jerk stuff, I know, but it works sometimes.

That'll only work for the melee types, of course. Any Rogue/Ranger type I've ever played would have been so insulted by the initial suprise, his retreat would have been more like a slow slink away...

 

[S'mon]

Player answer - Run Away (or surrender - did that twice recently)
GM answer - wince & start killing PCs until they flee, or TPK.