Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6668524" data-attributes="member: 4937">While I agree with the general sentiment that not every encounter should be overcome by combat, unless the entire party is mounted or has access to high level magic, 'running away' is rarely a successful strategy.&nbsp; Or to put it more bluntly, literally running on your feet never works on anything that is worth running from, and anything slow enough to be ran from can usually be successfully kited anyway (zombies, oozes, etc.)Most monsters are simply faster than party members generally and at least some party members specifically (heavily armored characters and short characters, for example).&nbsp; All running away tends to accomplish is separating the party and sacrificing the slower members to whatever you are running away from.&nbsp; In general, by the time that the party knows it needs to run away, it's already far too late to do so.&nbsp; One really nasty thing that happens when the party makes the decision to flee is that party cohesion breaks down entirely.&nbsp; I've had far more PC's die when the decision was made to run, because it turned into a rout and 'every man for himself' than I've had PC's survive because they ran.&nbsp; One of the worst sessions I ever have had in terms of body count, with 4 of 6 PC's dying, happened because the PC's panicked and ran in a situation where if they'd stayed and fought they almost certain would have had no deaths.&nbsp; &quot;Hopefully enough monsters will stay behind to devour the corpses so we can get away.&quot;, isn't a very good strategy for anyone in the long run.&nbsp; In fact, one of the many reasons I dropped the Monk from my games is that practical experience with the 3e Monk in play showed that literally the only thing it was good at relative to other character choices was abandoning the rest of the party.&nbsp; It was a clear situation where the suboptimal nature of the class combined with its class defining high mobility was causing other PC's to die.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6668524, member: 4937"] While I agree with the general sentiment that not every encounter should be overcome by combat, unless the entire party is mounted or has access to high level magic, 'running away' is rarely a successful strategy. Or to put it more bluntly, literally running on your feet never works on anything that is worth running from, and anything slow enough to be ran from can usually be successfully kited anyway (zombies, oozes, etc.) Most monsters are simply faster than party members generally and at least some party members specifically (heavily armored characters and short characters, for example). All running away tends to accomplish is separating the party and sacrificing the slower members to whatever you are running away from. In general, by the time that the party knows it needs to run away, it's already far too late to do so. One really nasty thing that happens when the party makes the decision to flee is that party cohesion breaks down entirely. I've had far more PC's die when the decision was made to run, because it turned into a rout and 'every man for himself' than I've had PC's survive because they ran. One of the worst sessions I ever have had in terms of body count, with 4 of 6 PC's dying, happened because the PC's panicked and ran in a situation where if they'd stayed and fought they almost certain would have had no deaths. "Hopefully enough monsters will stay behind to devour the corpses so we can get away.", isn't a very good strategy for anyone in the long run. In fact, one of the many reasons I dropped the Monk from my games is that practical experience with the 3e Monk in play showed that literally the only thing it was good at relative to other character choices was abandoning the rest of the party. It was a clear situation where the suboptimal nature of the class combined with its class defining high mobility was causing other PC's to die. [/QUOTE]

Verification