PCs Running away when they should

[Lela]

The thing about an army of 3000 goblins, against a party of like 4 PCs, is that they may THINK they outnumber you 750 to 1, but they really don't. See, there are only 8 squares surrounding any 1 square, so really, no matter how many of them there are, they can only outnumber you 8 to 1 at a time! When you think of it like that, it's almost stupid NOT to fight the army. They'll be totally overconfident!

That's when you start Trip Attacks and attempt a grapple or twelve. You're also going to want to have a few hundred goblin spell casters in there. 8 or 9 Magic Missles can make a big difference as well as 1 or 2 Flame Strikes.

And then there's the archers. Fear the archers.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

This is really the problem. It's not. People (PCs or NPCs) only ever escape through DM sayso, and it's so arbitrary that you can't include "retreat to fight another day" in your repertoire of useful tactics, at least until you get to the level that some magic (teleport, etc) makes it workable.

At lower levels, the bad men you fight have mostly the same movement as you, and if they have any archers, it's usually more suicidal to run away and get shot at as you go, than to charge and try to kill the archers.

Likewise, by the rules, it's really hard verging on impossible to escape on foot. The bad guys can stay right with you, or move up, double-team, and kill your lower-initiative comrades after the high-initiative PCs take flight. A party of monks and barbarians might pull it off, but your dwarves and heavy-armored buddies are screwed.

Well said.

If the DM is a stickler for the rules, someone in heavy armor has a zero chance of escaping under his own power. Those characters are always going to stand their ground. Once the battle begins, there is no point in even attempting to get away.

My mid-level characters always keep a few potions in reserve, just in case retreat is necessary. A significant benefit of the DM putting Ye Olde Magick Shoppe is the PCs can stock up on some modest priced items that will give them the option to bug out.

 

[ES2]

I can say with full confidence that I have never played in a D&D game where the party would run away, either as a player or as a DM. I think this mainly comes down to a big metagame missconception: Players don't think the DM will provide them a challenge that is too tough for them to handle.

I do say this in general, as some of you have stated that some of your players are learning that its better to sometimes run away and live to fight another day, but for the majority, the idea of running away is ludicrous and something to not be considered.

In the last game I ran, I flat out told the group that some encounters will be based around the group, and some won't. When they were 3rd level (5 characters), they exited a cave and heard a loud bashing sound coming from the other side of a hill. Upon investigation, they saw a hill giant, minding his own business, banging the bodies of an elf and a goblin together, along with some rocks. They had all the time in the world to run away, decide what to do, come up with a plan, anything. Did they? No. After seeing the giant, one of the players even stated that there is no way it could be a giant, the DM (me) wouldn't do that to us, we are only 3rd level characters, and they charge the giant. 5 rounds later, 3 dead pC's later, the other two ran away.

Then, the player who said that was pissed because he felt I was trying to screw them over.

This is metagame thinking at its worst, and I think all players who play rpg's think this way, at one point or another.

 

[Caeden]

I actually just had an interesting experiance that shows my parties view on when to retreat. In one capaign, we came up against a cat guarding a hoard of gold. When we approached, in looked at us, and despite our better judgement, we started trying to provoke it. Well, it was a black dragon of undetermined age, so, with a few swipes of some swords we tried to determine it. While still a mystery, on PC ended up dead and the others half dead and moneyless, excluding me thanks to speed of thought and boots of striding and springing. The rest followed shortly, similarly short of breath.

The next week on a different campaign, we ran into another black dragon of undetermined age. Bad memories flashed back to us and tactics somehow flooded our minds, as I guess most learn from experiance. With a few landed hits, we figured we could take this thing, especially when the wizard survived the line of acid. We probably should have run, but thanks to some crit misses, we lived another day with a hefty amount of experience.

Sometimes, the lust for power, experiance or fun is just to much for common sense to come into play. I find myself especially reluctant to run from a good fight before things get too ugly. Take a few hits and see how things go, then fight for flee. Unless of course you're dead.

 

[BSF]

Sometimes, the lust for power, experiance or fun is just to much for common sense to come into play. I find myself especially reluctant to run from a good fight before things get too ugly. Take a few hits and see how things go, then fight for flee. Unless of course you're dead.

See, this I have no problems with! If you want to push your luck because you are lusting for power, great! Just don't all weepy eyed if it gets you killed.

Generally speaking, I am not out to get my players. I am out to give the characters a living world to adventure in. I was lucky with my group in that I established I wasn't afraid to kill them off if they got into a bad situation. But, I am also not afraid to let them succeed. So, they seem to enjoy the game. Though, they still take some risks that aren't exactly healthy. And they still get far too much into metagame thinking.

Example: Party encounters a half-fiendish Blue with some levels, leading a band of 30 goblins. Party toasts the goblins quick, but the melee combatants can't touch the Blue. He is all happy until the Sorceror hits him with Magic Missiles. And the Psion starts Inflicting Pain.

Keep in mind that none of the other characters has even hurt this guy. Not even 1 point. But, the Psion and the Sorceror are starting to drop his HP!

The Blue tumbles out of melee, starts beating up the Sorceror. Melee combatants still can't hit this guy. (Combo of bad rolls and high NPC AC.) Blue manages to kill Sorceror before Psion brings him down. The other combatants did manage to hit once.

The Sorceror player thought I was out to get him. He couldn't grasp the mindset of the Blue. "These yokels with swords, etc, can't touch me. I can take them out at leisure. That spellcasty guy and the girl with mind powers like mine are a threat that I need to get rid of!" No, the Sorceror is thinking that the NPC _should_ have stayed in toe-to-toe with the fighters and just let himself get magic-ed/psionic-ed to death.

*shaking my head sadly* Metagame thinking that if he stayed back out of melee range, the NPC's would never dare try to get behind the fighters. Yeah, 'cause that's what the PC's would do. They would just keep fighting the front line cannon fodder and let the spellcasters in the back ranks cast spells. Silly!

 

[S'mon]

Yeah, but then there's all that stone, or all those trees in the way. Massed archers need open space and a clear line of sight. Kinda hard to fire of hundreds of arrows when there's a foot of solid rock between you and the target

Caverns -
Big caverns for the hails of arrows.
Otherwise deadfalls, cavern collapses etc work better.

Forest -
In a normal mature growth forest, there's not much undergrowth, so although it shields you from the air you may still be able to see (and shoot) a considerable distance horizontally.

IME the smart PCs taking on the invading humanoid army make sure to choose the battlefield to suit themselves - usually waiting until the enemy is out in the open or (preferably) assaulting a castle/town etc to attack them. Without air cover and preferably 'fixed' by the need to assault the castle (etc) the horde is very vulnerable.

Attacking a humanoid army of thousands 'in their lair' (underground), smart PCs typically fight their way in, kill the leaders and a few hundred mooks, then skedaddle once the spells run low. This kind of attacking the lair fight is very tough if the enemy are prepared though, traps & ambushes may well kill overconfident PCs.

 

[S'mon]

Uhgh, that sounds horribly tedious.

Not at all - I'd typically say "after an hour's fighting" (30 minutes combat, 30 minutes resting between combat to avoid fatigue, so circa 300 combat rounds) "you have killed 300 enemy and taken 15x5=75 hp damage" (obviously the hp damage can be healed), and I would roll for random encounters with individual high-level enemy champions doing the same thing on the other side. This treats the battle itself something like in The Iliad - the spear-carriers are a background abstraction, the important thing is the heroic duels with enemy heroes.

 

[S'mon]

If you have players who want to take on the 200,000 strong Mongali horde, more power to them, I say. Unless you don't want the burden of working out the consequences of such a major change to the world, which is a perfectly fine reason, but is metagame rather than in-game. Or unless the player is an annoying git, in which case, I'd just kick them out.

Sure, "more power to them" - I expect they'd lose - probably obliterated by the enemy's hakomons (sorcerers) rather than by the arrow-storm, but it'd be their choice.

I don't think we're that far apart on this, except perhaps that I (nowadays) tend to play NPC mooks with a little more thought to plausibility. In that Hero movie, of course the fanatical elite guards kept charging the heroes - they were sworn to protect the emperor or die trying. There are NPCs like this in my game too - just not every orc or common soldier. The LOTR movie orcs' behaviour was a big departure from the way they were presented in the novel, of course. In the novel they acted exactly as I described (stand off and shoot the superior foe), because Tolkien wasn't obsessed with demonstrating the coolness of his protagonists to the extent Jackson was.

In summary the PCs IMC have plenty of chances to demonstrate their coolness and Great Cleave hordes of mooks, but I play most mooks as somewhat rational - normally, once the hero has slaughtered a score or so of regular goblins in 2 rounds of combat, the other 180 may think twice about approaching him. If he was fighting the Sultan's Fanatical Death Commandoes in the Royal Palace it'd be different.

 

[S'mon]

If you prefer more realism or grittiness, then high-level D&D (which is basically a supers or wuxia game in disguise) basically isn't for you.

D&D as written is far more tactically oriented than a true Wuxia-inspired game like Exalted. It's also more flexible - you can run Wuxia or Supers type games, but don't have to, even at high level (IMO). Shark's game doesn't sound particularly Wuxia or Supers-ish to me. My 1e/2e deity campaign (the one Thrin/Upper_Krust talks about) certainly wasn't Wuxia or Superhero inspired - for one thing I haven't seen that much of either type of film, or had any particular desire to emulate them. Primary inspiration for my campaigns is epic swords & sorcery fantasy, stuff like Moorcock's Elric saga. Sometimes Elric slaughters small enemy armies mano-a-mano. Against large enemy armies he resorts to other tactics (eg get a bunch of dragons and burn them from above). I just don't see the game as being solely about showing how cool the heroes are. Coolness IMC is earned, not granted.

 

[heimdall]

As a DM, I will put encounters in that the party has no chance at. They'll have received notice in some manner as well. I guess I've been lucky in that I've had several groups who are smart enough to realize, "Gotta go!" is a valid option. This was especially true in my Werewolf, Ravenloft, and FR campaigns.

Then again, as a player in a recent campaign I took a quick stock of the situation. We're 10th-11th level, but we're all short on spells after a couple of big battles. Everyone is wounded and we're out of healing potions. And the thief just set off the alarm that alerts the entire keep. We know there are some baddies left from a previous recon. So I turn to the group and say, "It's time to leave. We can't stand and fight in our current condition. Some of us will fall." The DM not so subtly said something to the effect of , "The bard must have just made his intelligence check on this one, folks. Sounds like a lot of stuff is coming. The sunlight beckons."

What did the party say? You guessed it. "We can take 'em!" We did, but half the party died as a result. Grrr. At least I lived and didn't have to create a new character.