Hubris 4e

[Dausuul]

That really depends on the assumptions of the game and setting, doesn't it?

In most of our games, we are adventurers, and picking and choosing our fights is the job description. If we strode boldly into every potential battle we've run into, we would all have died ages ago.

Oh, my campaigns are the same; the PCs often meet things too big for them to take in a straight-up fight. But when I put those encounters in, they aren't designed as combat encounters. The OP was talking about "throwing [an encounter] at the party," which to me reads like, "the monster attacks them."

What I meant was, when battle starts, PCs stride boldly into it... I've known hyper-aggressive players and cautious players in my time as a DM, but once battle was joined, they were almost all reluctant to back down. If they didn't want to fight, they didn't start the fight in the first place; if they underestimated the opposition or the DM forced them into battle, it usually took one or two deaths before the rest of the group decided to run.

The rules of the game encourage this sort of behavior. Fleeing characters are usually subject to opportunity attacks, blasts from the enemy artillery, and other such penalties; plus it means leaving behind unconscious characters to die who could otherwise have been stabilized. And the hit point model makes it very hard to determine which way a fight is trending until people start dropping.

 

[ExploderWizard]

One time honored way of helping players understand that not every encounter can be won with a stand up fight is to demonstrate the ability of whatever they are supposed to run from on a third party at a time the PC's can actually witness the demonstration. It can be helpful to use something that the PC's might have defeated (with great difficulty and/or at great cost) as the victim in such a demonstration.

For example, if your party recently had a scary encounter with an ogre and barely made it through the fight then perhaps when the party sees whatever horror you spring on them, they can see the creature scoop up an ogre, bite its head off, and fling it aside like trash. This would be a fairly sure sign that whatever the thing is, it will be more than a match in open combat.

Try and avoid placing the PC's in a situation where it appears that others may suffer if they run away. A skill challenge to evacuate a small village before the creature destroys it might be in order but putting the PC's in a situation where they have no option but to fight an unwinnable fight or let innocents suffer isn't a good idea in a game where the PC's are supposed to be heroic.

 

[Umbran]

A giant turtle so big it at first appears to be an island, with trees growing on its back. Don't bother giving it stats, it doesn't need any, the PCs can't hurt it.

While a cool image, I think that might not have the desired effect. That might end up looking like a castle wall. It is so obvious that they shouldn't attack it that they aren't apt to even bother trying, and thus fail to have the desired effect.

You probably want something that actually looks like a reasonable target, but turns out to be above their abilities. You have it punch the party around for a bit, but you give it a reason not to outright kill the party.

For example:

1) The mother guarding eggs or young - they take on the monster, and it whoops their butts. However, if the party retreats it does not give chase because the young need to be protected.

2) The new Big Bad - the party meets a new foe (say, in their current situation, a pirate and his crew, or a Circe-like sorceress on a remote island). They try to take on the enemy, and are used as a punching bag for a while. The Big Bad beats the party, but rather than allowing them to die, the party is captured (new plot - escape!), or they are allowed to live if they agree to do some favor (perhaps to be named later), or the like.

 

[Fluxx]

They just killed a Dragon? Let's face them motherdragon. Let her appear at the horizon searching for the killers of her youngsters. Perhaps destroying another ship...
It should be obvious soon that they wouln't have a chance against her. Make it a hunt dragon hunts party...
If you really want a fight make her planning an trap/ambush. If you described it right it should be clear from first round on that the main problem will be to escape from combatarea. perhaps the dragon blocks teh only possible escape and the goal of the fight is making the dragon move and then run away before the dragon blocks it again...

 

[Kingreaper]

You know the intimidate rules?

Play them from the other side. The thing bloodies a couple of the heroes, roars a threat, and you tell them "it's ing scary, and he wants you to leave him alone."

If they don't take the hint, maybe the opponent is strong enough to chuck one of them clear out of the combat. Hopefully the rest will follow, if not you've established a way to avoid their death, the thing can get rid of them without killing them.
They don't even have to flee this time, they can get thrown out, and just not come back for a while.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Absent evidence that your players are on the same page as you, I think it's critical that you communicate to the players that retreat is a realistic option. In particular, you need to differentiate between "this enemy will kill you if you don't run" and "this enemy will kill you if you don't figure out the trick to beating him." Many players will assume that encounters are beatable. Honestly, for the players' choices to mean anything, encounters should either be beatable or avoidable. If something the players did leads to an encounter they can't beat, then you must communicate the causal relationship, otherwise they will learn nothing.

All that said, if you really want to make your players run, I propose a horde of rust monsters.

 

[timbannock]

One time honored way of helping players understand that not every encounter can be won with a stand up fight is to demonstrate the ability of whatever they are supposed to run from on a third party at a time the PC's can actually witness the demonstration. It can be helpful to use something that the PC's might have defeated (with great difficulty and/or at great cost) as the victim in such a demonstration.

For example, if your party recently had a scary encounter with an ogre and barely made it through the fight then perhaps when the party sees whatever horror you spring on them, they can see the creature scoop up an ogre, bite its head off, and fling it aside like trash. This would be a fairly sure sign that whatever the thing is, it will be more than a match in open combat.

Try and avoid placing the PC's in a situation where it appears that others may suffer if they run away. A skill challenge to evacuate a small village before the creature destroys it might be in order but putting the PC's in a situation where they have no option but to fight an unwinnable fight or let innocents suffer isn't a good idea in a game where the PC's are supposed to be heroic.

This.

Make the "can't beat it in a fight" part of the fun of the story.

I had a DM who regularly beat the players down. You know what effect that had in addition to us knowing when to run? It made us hate playing his game.

Now, I had a different guy run a Vampire chronicle that was pretty much totally stacked against the players. The difference was, it was fun as hell, because the focus was on mitigating the problems -- saving as many people as we could -- before we all perished.

Also remember that, on a larger scale, playing RPGs CAN be a learning experience, but generally people do it so they can just have fun. I get into unwinnable (?) fights every day at work...I don't need to come to a game and have my player character go through the same crap.

 

[gizmo33]

Honestly, for the players' choices to mean anything, encounters should either be beatable or avoidable.

I don't see the logic of this at all. There are all sorts of events that your character can't control in the game that affect his fate. What about escaping (which is not avoiding AFAICT)? What about surrendering? Your choice about whether or not your character left a will, or what kind of race/class you want to create next, is certainly not rendered meaningless by your character's death. In fact, quite the opposite.

Then again, some folks don't want to make decisions about anything once they aren't having a good time according to their definition. I very well could find myself playing Monopoly and decide, once I'm no longer winning, that all my choices left are "meaningless". It's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't think things have to be that way though.

 

[Umbran]

Absent evidence that your players are on the same page as you, I think it's critical that you communicate to the players that retreat is a realistic option.

On communicating with players - in playing Mage: the Ascension, our GM had a habit of telling us the "threat rating" before each session. He didn't tell us what it was in the session that posed the major threat, but he did give us fair warning that something in there was likely to kill us if we were not careful. We'd spent a lot of time on character background and development, and while he wanted the threat of death in the game, he didn't want us to go down because we as players were being a little less paranoid than he expected.

In particular, you need to differentiate between "this enemy will kill you if you don't run" and "this enemy will kill you if you don't figure out the trick to beating him."

I am not sure I'd agree with this. You can communicate "this one is dangerous", sure. But differentiating between "run" and "find the trick" is giving the players too much information, in my humble opinion.

 

[jbear]

I have almost made my characters back down from entering a temple by the mere description of the guardian that stood in their path and the location he was situated. I had prepared hours of fun in that temple and would have been gutted if I had intimidated them out of a fight.

It was a huge ancient Naga, that with slippery words offered them the chance to turn tail and leave the temple with his blessing. They (lvl 3 party) felt outmatched. Luckily one of the charcters asked him a question about whether he had seen the person they were looking for and discovered his lie with a very high Insight vs Bluff check which put them on the track that he was hiding something else. A successful religion test (Immortal creature) revealed he was sick and slowly dying, a very tough fight but killable.

If I hadn't given them that information (although they had to work for it a bit) they were seriously considering simply leaving cos it seemed an impossible fight.

After a hard-core fight at lower levels of the temple, during which 4 of the 7 pc's were unconscious and dying at one stage (including both leaders), everyone has agreed retreat is a viable option.

As far as throwing an 'unbeatable' encounter at them...

maybe they should only be in that situation after making some blunder... this could kick start an awesome Pirate Cat-like skill challenge in order to escape. On his Campaign thread his PC's entered into some kind of strange plane of existence and came face to face with some kind of Semi-God that chased them down to prevent them fleeing...It's worth checking out the thread (don't know how to post links to threads, sorry).

How about after a tough fight, the deaths of the creatures that the PC's just killed trigger the release of the truly formidable creature their presence was holding at bay. You could give little clues that something is going on after each guardian is killed (walls trembling, things begging to take life, lights going on, things bursting into flames, the last guardian moaning unintelligibly: ttthhlooonnnt! Rummmmmm flloooorrr yooouuullliiffffeess! yet it is compelled to relentlessly fight to the death...) The fleeing could be a dangerous and exciting challenge. Failure: the beginning of a new and exciting adventure with the odds stacked against them.

Or how about a Solo Monster way above their level that guards something but can't leave the room. The challenge is getting in, getting whatever and getting out on the other side.

Just randomly chucking something at them to 'teach them' they aren't as tough as they think they are seems... pointless. As a plot hook or a Major Villain they will face again in the future seem like better options. That requires more planning.

I liked the idea of an impossible fight with only non-combat solutions. Like a 'stay alive while you resolve the puzzle and disactivate/defeat/banish/desintergrate the menace' type situation. Again a simoultaneous skill challenge during combat seems like an appropriate structure here.