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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cerebral Paladin" data-source="post: 5883411" data-attributes="member: 3448">I think that KidSnide, Hussar, and others are hitting on the solution:  include morale rules, but make it extra clear that these are guidelines, that GMs should feel free to have monsters fight to the bitter end (or flee early) even if the rules/dice suggest that they should flee (or keep fighting) if it makes sense in game.In my experience, the disappearance of morale rules went hand in hand with an increased assumption that encounters would end when the last monster died (sometimes with the last one or two monsters fudged away "and then you finish them off").  The connection isn't perfect--some GMs I played with did an informal morale in 3.x or 4, and I played with plenty of GMs who never used the morale rules in 2e, 1e, or BECMI, with monsters fighting to the bitter end.  But if you put in guidelines, it can adjust how GMs in general run fights, and it give guidance to answer questions like "how likely are these orcs to run away after half of them are killed?  Okay, what if they were hobgoblins?  Would that be different?"  KidSnide's comparison to "number appearing" is perfect.  Is the GM cheating if the number of a monster in a given encounter is outside the stated normal range?  No, of course not.  Is a GM cheating by disregarding morale under certain circumstances (i.e. these particular orcs are defending the holy site of Gruumsh and will fight to the death)?  Of course not.  And some GMs will choose to handle all number appearing or all morale by feel, which is fine.  But having the rules (or guidelines, really) there will make the game more fun on aggregate.</blockquote>

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