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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 6698486" data-attributes="member: 7635">Its interesting because it really asks &quot;Do all fights have to be to the death?&quot; In my experience, I find the DM answers that question &quot;no&quot; a lot more often than the players do. But there is a lot of reasons for that; enemies have more uses for living PCs (ransom, slaves, interrogation, entertainment) than PCs have with living enemies (goblins don't buy back their prisoners and there are usually few places the PCs frequent that can use orc slaves or pit fighters) which often leads to the &quot;kill or capture for interrogation&quot; being the default options for PCs. That gives PCs a few more chances to &quot;live to fight another day&quot; than the average monster gets. (Another way to look at it; PCs get death saves, monsters are killed at 0 unless DM fiat). I don't mind running &quot;lethal&quot; combats; I've killed PCs before when the dice fall or bad decisions are made. My question hinged on whether a defeat by a &quot;smart&quot; foe should be a TPK (survivors killed) or does it make sense to have the PCs captured and live to escape later. The latter is more fun obviously, since it means the game continues. But the cost of this is having intelligent enemies decide to spare their foes, even ones that could be liabilities if left to live. Does it cheapen those foes to do that?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 6698486, member: 7635"] Its interesting because it really asks "Do all fights have to be to the death?" In my experience, I find the DM answers that question "no" a lot more often than the players do. But there is a lot of reasons for that; enemies have more uses for living PCs (ransom, slaves, interrogation, entertainment) than PCs have with living enemies (goblins don't buy back their prisoners and there are usually few places the PCs frequent that can use orc slaves or pit fighters) which often leads to the "kill or capture for interrogation" being the default options for PCs. That gives PCs a few more chances to "live to fight another day" than the average monster gets. (Another way to look at it; PCs get death saves, monsters are killed at 0 unless DM fiat). I don't mind running "lethal" combats; I've killed PCs before when the dice fall or bad decisions are made. My question hinged on whether a defeat by a "smart" foe should be a TPK (survivors killed) or does it make sense to have the PCs captured and live to escape later. The latter is more fun obviously, since it means the game continues. But the cost of this is having intelligent enemies decide to spare their foes, even ones that could be liabilities if left to live. Does it cheapen those foes to do that? [/QUOTE]

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