I imagine this has been discussed before, so apologies in advance.
I had an interesting situation come up tonight which surprisingly hasn’t happened before in my game. A combat had been going on for a while and eventually the monster decided to make a break for it. It ran off, provoking opportunity attacks in the process, and a couple of melee PCs gave chase and attacked it when the caught up. The creature was trying to escape so it wasn’t going to stop and fight them off it kept running on its turn and when it came to the PC’s turn they asked how close to the monster they were. I said that they were running after the creature so would be right by it (that’s how it was playing out in my head at least, because the creature continuing to move hadn’t triggered fresh opportunity attacks because the melee was “on the run”). The player naturally protested because they said they hadn’t said they’d moved, but then the creature would have moved out of melee provoking more opportunity attacks. So I said fine, the monster is now 40 ft away what do you want to do? They chose to hold their action.
It all was a bit unpleasant, which was sad as the combat had been exciting and fast paced till that point (and the monster was about to die on the next strike which is why it I thought the PC would want to be in melee range...)
So what would have been a smarter way to handle that?
I had an interesting situation come up tonight which surprisingly hasn’t happened before in my game. A combat had been going on for a while and eventually the monster decided to make a break for it. It ran off, provoking opportunity attacks in the process, and a couple of melee PCs gave chase and attacked it when the caught up. The creature was trying to escape so it wasn’t going to stop and fight them off it kept running on its turn and when it came to the PC’s turn they asked how close to the monster they were. I said that they were running after the creature so would be right by it (that’s how it was playing out in my head at least, because the creature continuing to move hadn’t triggered fresh opportunity attacks because the melee was “on the run”). The player naturally protested because they said they hadn’t said they’d moved, but then the creature would have moved out of melee provoking more opportunity attacks. So I said fine, the monster is now 40 ft away what do you want to do? They chose to hold their action.
It all was a bit unpleasant, which was sad as the combat had been exciting and fast paced till that point (and the monster was about to die on the next strike which is why it I thought the PC would want to be in melee range...)
So what would have been a smarter way to handle that?