New Staff Blog: Run Away!

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Making morale rules part of 5e as a simplistic module that could be easily referenced would be fantastic. At a glance I can see how willing a monster would flee if circumstances were dire, without having to read through paragraphs of descriptive combat tactics, society structure, and ecology. And because it would be a module it would be easily ignored when it was in the way.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Some adventure modules have morale in 3.5:
Some say fight to death
others surrender when 1/2 hp
Others flee if they only one left
Etc

I do wonder why adventure modules have it, but it never mention in any DMG.

 

[Stormonu]

I don't want rolled morale checks in 5E, I have many bad memories from rolling morale checks in 2E and prior.

I don't mind "tactical advice"/"morale statements" though for monsters, such as "The bear will withdrawl if reduced to 1/2 hp or less" or "the kobolds will break and flee if their leader is slain." and such.

 

[Andor]

Obviously, you have a different view of NPCs than I do. I only run NPCs and monsters that I know a great deal about. Conversely, my players' characters have less than a page of backstory; for my last campaign I told them not to think about it too much and let their characters develop during the game. Also, although less time is put into their psychological development, anything I decide about their history is automatically canon, so they can have quite a bit of background real fast. I consider NPCs and PCs as equals, just played by different people.

I fail to grasp this. Do your PCs never go to cities? Or come up with a plan that you failed to forsee? You've never had to come up with a baker, or street urchin, or sewer worker on the fly? You've never had PCs ignore your planned dinner with the Mayor to go off to see the swamp orcs you never got around to fully detailing?

I'm sorry, but there are fundamental differences between PCs and NPCs, not the least of which is time. Both development time, and screen time. Even under troupe style systems like Ars Magica you have different classes of characters/npcs even though which is which may change from session to session. A Magus or Companion is a more fully developed character than any Grog. And that is because you have few Mages/Companions and lots of grogs. They can't all get equal treatment because there simply isn't time. Likewise unless your world only contains a dozen people your NPC cannot be as fully fleshed as a decent PC as you simply don't have the time to fully develop all the hundreds, or thousands of people/monsters they might bump into in a years campaign.

In any event, as has been mentioned, morale listings are valuable even if the mechanical system is completely ignored. Even a plain language listing with no supporting mechanical system but a single line entry like "Pathetic/low/Normal/high/fanatical" is still a tool to inform you what, in general, this race is meant to be like. You as a GM are always free to ignore it, or decide that these goblins are hopped on "magic" potions and won't retreat, or that these kobolds are a bunch of slackers and will run away at the drop of a hp.

Incidently, in Ars Magica your character may have passions which drive their lives and yes, the players might have to make rolls to allow common sense to overcome the yearnings of the heart or ambition. So some games do have reaction systems that can overrule players desires for his PC, but D&D has never been one of these.

 

[Lanefan]

XP was generally awarded based on what you killed in the encounter. Sure, you could choose to not kill something, but when you're fighting a dozen bandits and each one gives you 200xp, there's a real incentive to kill them all in order to get the most XP.

I thought it was based on what you defeated, whether you actually killed it or not. If you club half the bandits unconscious and the other half surrender you'd get full XP for the battle - right? As in...

But in 4e, XP was designed to be awarded on the basis of the whole encounter. So capturing and interrogating a bandit and killing 8 of them while one ran away gave you the same XP as if you had killed all 10, or ran away from 6 of them.

...this example. This sort of thing was around long before 4e.

And in 1e, if you knew a foe was there and you took steps to avoid combat entirely whihe still achieving your goal e.g. sneaking past a watchman instead of killing him, you got XP as if you had defeated that same foe.

Lanefan

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yap. 3.x said:

xp are awarded for overcoming the challenge. And avoiding combat and just getting to the treasure was a legal tactic to get the xp.

 

[Blackwarder]

I would like to have a moral mechanic that it comprehensive yet optinal, one might think that it's a *gasp!* rule module!!!!

Warder

 

[Ahnehnois]

I fail to grasp this. Do your PCs never go to cities? Or come up with a plan that you failed to forsee? You've never had to come up with a baker, or street urchin, or sewer worker on the fly? You've never had PCs ignore your planned dinner with the Mayor to go off to see the swamp orcs you never got around to fully detailing.

First, my prep is to make a bunch of characters. The session is improvised largely by finding excuses to use them. So if my players go to a city, they find the people that I have ready.

Second, if I need to, I improvise a character, pause for a moment, and then come up with detail.

Third, even if I don't know everything about an NPC, I operate under the assumption that there is something to be known. If some random swamp orc attacks the PCs, he has a reason for doing so. If he gets in a dire situation, I have no difficulty considering what that reason might be, and then figuring out whether he would retreat, surrender, or try some desperate tactic.

Likewise unless your world only contains a dozen people your NPC cannot be as fully fleshed as a decent PC as you simply don't have the time to fully develop all the hundreds, or thousands of people/monsters they might bump into in a years campaign.

I think of D&D like a TV show in real time. One of the similarities is that there may only be twelve viable characters in play during a session, just like a show can only cast so many speaking parts. I simply try to avoid using the other background players unless I need to.

But it's also important that I have the philosophical stance that all those scenery characters are in every way the PCs' equals. If I'm watching something on the screen, and I get the sense that the main cast and the other characters aren't following the same rules, that's one of the fastest things to take me out of it. Some people don't mind the notion that the heroes shoot straight and the stormtroopers don't, but that is completely unacceptable to me (and my players). By the same token, I would not use a morale rule that did not apply equally to PCs and NPCs (which as I said would cause my players to rebel against me).

In any event, as has been mentioned, morale listings are valuable even if the mechanical system is completely ignored. Even a plain language listing with no supporting mechanical system but a single line entry like "Pathetic/low/Normal/high/fanatical" is still a tool to inform you what, in general, this race is meant to be like.

At that point, it's basically fluff. Fluff is okay, but I don't use it much. I just wouldn't use this type of rule in any form, that's all there is to it. I don't see the need for it. If it was included in an unobtrusive, optional way, I wouldn't revolt against our WotC overlords, I'd just be mildly disappointed because it reflects a philosophy I don't agree with.

To each, his own.

 

[Gentlegamer]

First, my prep is to make a bunch of characters.

For many, it isn't.

Tools that help the in-game improv of DMing are a great help. Morale rules are one of them.

 

[Andor]

But it's also important that I have the philosophical stance that all those scenery characters are in every way the PCs' equals. If I'm watching something on the screen, and I get the sense that the main cast and the other characters aren't following the same rules, that's one of the fastest things to take me out of it. Some people don't mind the notion that the heroes shoot straight and the stormtroopers don't, but that is completely unacceptable to me (and my players). By the same token, I would not use a morale rule that did not apply equally to PCs and NPCs (which as I said would cause my players to rebel against me).

For the record, I fully approve of your stance that the PCs are just part of the world. The "PCs are super-duper-secial" meme smacks of ego-centrism bordering the intersection of mary-sueism and solipsism, both of which fill me with creeping horror.

I do wonder though, if you do yourself a disservice by spurning randomizing mechanics. Sometimes, I have found, the dice will tell you wierd or wonderful things which work out in play much better than what I might have planned. The real world is weird and doesn't make sense, why should a fictional world be less so? E.G: I went to a pizza place in central Florida a couple of weeks ago, in the course of conversation it turned out that, by random chance, every one of the dozen people in the resturant was from New York. It was a new resturant too, btw and hadn't had time to attract a loyal crowd of ex-pats and snowbirds. *shrug* I wouldn't have made it that way had I been GMing.