RPG Evolution: What Do You Mean, "Run"?

Sometimes, you're not supposed to kill the monster.
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It's hard. As Dungeon Masters, we meticulously craft encounters, balancing challenge ratings, hit points, and legendary actions, to make an encounter challenging. But sometimes, that intent is for the party to face an insurmountable obstacle, a force meant to inspire awe, dread, and most importantly, flight. Yet, time and again, players, despite overwhelming odds and even downed party members, stand their ground, swords drawn, with the unspoken (or sometimes very spoken) question: "If you wanted us to flee, why is it here?"

If It Bleeds, We Can Kill It​

In my campaign, the player characters are currently in the Wildlands, a realm where few smaller humanoids stay put because giants and kaiju roam the land. Every battle is a risk, because it might bring the attention of something much larger. In theory, PCs should be trying to be quiet; in practice, they never are, blasting fireballs and storm spheres left and right. So when, after a grueling fight, a giant monster shows up, my PCs turned ... and decided to battle it to the death. They didn't even really need to fight it -- they had completed their mission -- but because it was there, they stubbornly fought it head on.

This player philosophy, that "if it has stats, it can be killed," isn't new; its roots stretch back to the very earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons. A prime example is the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Deities & Demigods (1980) sourcebook, which famously provided game statistics for various mythological pantheons, from Greek gods to Norse Aesir. While seemingly a boon for DMs, it inadvertently solidified the "killable if statted" mentality. Players, looking at a deity's colossal hit points and saving throws, immediately began planning how to take them down, diminishing (supposedly) cosmic forces beyond mortal reckoning to a few stats. The very act of assigning numerical values to omnipotent beings led to countless legendary (and sometimes disastrous) player attempts at god-slaying.

This player-centric view stems from how various iterations of D&D often framed problem-solving: through combat. The game's mechanics rewarded direct confrontation—experience points, loot, and clear victory conditions were tied to defeating foes. When presented with a monster, the default solution path in a player's mind quickly defaulted to reducing its hit points to zero. Which can make it difficult for players to pivot from combat as the only solution.

What to Do About It​

So, how does a DM introduce a truly overwhelming threat without resorting to a total party kill simply because players refuse to retreat? It requires a shift in tactics and, crucially, clear communication.
  • Subtle Environmental and Narrative Hints: Before a single dice roll, describe the creature with palpable dread. Emphasize its sheer size, the way the ground trembles with its steps, or the aura of ancient power it exudes. Show, don't just tell, its capabilities: perhaps it effortlessly demolishes a section of the dungeon or shrugs off attacks from powerful NPCs who are quickly dispatched. Use the environment to reinforce its danger – unholy altars, scorched earth, or piles of ancient, indestructible armor hint at its destructive power and age.
  • Tactical Retreats and Alternative Objectives: Design encounters where immediate combat isn't the only, or even the best, option. Can the monster be lured into a trap? Is there a magical artifact that can temporarily banish it? Perhaps the goal isn't to kill it, but to retrieve a MacGuffin from its lair while avoiding detection, or to trigger a mechanism that seals it away. Providing clear alternative choices beyond head-on combat encourages creative problem-solving. This might involve tactical retreats to areas where the monster can be contained, or finding weaknesses in the environment rather than its stat block.
  • Direct, Honest Communication (The "Session Zero" Talk): This is perhaps the most powerful tool. In a Session Zero (or a mid-campaign check-in), explicitly discuss expectations. Explain that not every encounter is designed to be a slugfest to the death. Sometimes, monsters are environmental hazards, plot devices, or forces too mighty to be overcome by conventional means. Clarify that tactical retreats are not failures but smart strategic moves. This open dialogue helps set the tone for the campaign and gives players permission to think outside the combat box.
The "harshest lesson" – a total party kill – is always an option, and sometimes, it's the only way to drive home the reality of a threat in a brutal, unforgettable manner. However, unless that's the established tone of your game, it's a very blunt instrument that can lead to frustration rather than learning.

Fight ... or Die!​

Introducing a monster meant to be avoided rather than killed requires both a change in DM tactics and a crucial shift in player play style. The expectation that every creature can and should be killed runs deep in D&D, stemming from its very foundations. It's imperative to equip players with the tools and understanding to recognize when discretion is the better part of valor. Communication is key to preventing frustration and ensuring that players don't feel cheated when the monster potentially slaughters the party.

In the end, I had a frank conversation with my players, and I realized I had not given them obvious reasons to flee for most of the campaign (with a few exceptions). They always prevailed, and even though the monsters have gotten harder and the party nearly died a few times, they still stuck it out. So it's on me to make it clear the stakes are being raised, particularly as they increase in level.

Sometimes the best solution to defeating a monster isn't at the end of a sword. But it's also on DMs to make sure the PCs learn that, and how that's conveyed is the difference from a desperate retreat to fight again another day ... or a brutal TPK.
 

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Michael Tresca

Michael Tresca

Direct, Honest Communication (The "Session Zero" Talk): This is perhaps the most powerful tool. In a Session Zero (or a mid-campaign check-in), explicitly discuss expectations. Explain that not every encounter is designed to be a slugfest to the death. Sometimes, monsters are environmental hazards, plot devices, or forces too mighty to be overcome by conventional means.
I'd certainly agree the direct, honest communication at the beginning of the campaign is the way to go. When I ran Delta Green years ago, I told my players the following: "If you're ever in a situation where a bunch of government goons wearing masks, armor, and armed with MP-5s are coming for you, it's time to get the <bleep> out of Dodge. They're going to eat your lunch in a standup firefight."

There's a document called "Axioms for Agents" for Delta Green with some good little tips. One of the axioms is "If you're attacked, break contact. Do not stand and fight when the opposition has the initiative. Retreat, regroup at the rallying point, and go back and kill them in their sleep."

But Delta Green is a lot different from D&D in how it handles combat and encounters. A big problem with D&D is that it's specifically designed to have a certain number of encounters per adventure. Encounters which are mostly speed bumps designed to impose some resource cost rather than being an actual threat to anyone. With these assumptions in place, it's not unreasonable for players to treat most every encounter as an obstacle they're expected to beat. Even when the creatures the PCs are fighting are low CR, like skeletons, I will often describe them in a manner to make them seem threatening. Even when I describe a creature as being threatening, players are most likely going to assume I don't mean it like I didn't really mean it with the skeleton.
 

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An actual conversation I had with my players.

Me: This monster is CR 24, you are 5 tier 3 level 8 PCs with half your resources. If you fight it, it will be a TPK. The monster is not even chasing you, it's just guarding this barren area.

The party: *Fights anyway and gets killed"
 

An actual conversation I had with my players.

Me: This monster is CR 24, you are 5 tier 3 level 8 PCs with half your resources. If you fight it, it will be a TPK. The monster is not even chasing you, it's just guarding this barren area.

The party: *Fights anyway and gets killed"
Did they learn their lesson though???
 

I always point to, and try to use, 13th Age's Flee/Retreat rule.

From their (new) second edition draft:
Retreat (Party Action)

The players decide as a group whether to retreat. At any point during the battle, any player can propose that the fight is going so badly the characters should give up and run for it. If all the other players agree, the heroes beat a hasty and successful retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. When your friend is on their last death save, or when a vicious foe is about to deliver a coup de grace to a fallen hero, that’s a good time to talk about retreating. The GM should pause at any make-or-break moment to remind the players that they can get away!

In exchange for using this extraordinarily generous retreating rule, the party suffers a narrative loss. At the GM’s discretion, something the party or their patron was trying to accomplish fails in a way that going back and finishing off those enemies later won’t entirely fix. There needs to be some permanent effect from a narrative loss, even when future heroic actions can keep things from getting even worse!

Don’t worry, overcoming setbacks is exactly what heroism is about—you don’t lose the campaign because of retreating—you lose something you cared about, but you live to seek vengeance.

A battle from which the heroes retreat still counts toward their next heal-up. In fact, the GM should count it as two battles if it was the sort of grueling fight we’ve seen at our table before the heroes are forced to retreat. If they haven’t earned a heal-up and their resources are low, they can take a second narrative loss and get an unearned heal-up.
---
In response to 3E, grognards lamented that parties hardly ever fled any more. It's true that running
away isn’t as much a part of the game as it used to be. The retreat rule makes sure parties can get away without leaving PCs behind and without taking more damage as they flee. Ideally, it lets players be more daring because the PCs can evacuate on a moment’s notice, and it lets GMs cut loose with truly challenging encounters when the party calls trouble down on themselves. In 13th Age, PCs get all sorts of advantages, so we implore you, please, make them flee for their lives every now and then.

From 13A 1e:
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The system teaches players not to retreat.

As someone else stated in another post, there are many mechanical incentives not to retreat.

1: Every turn spent retreating is a turn not spent trying to defeat the opposition.

2: Initiative order. Consider following turn order Paladin -> Fighter -> Monster -> Wizard -> repeat. If the paladin and fighter retreat, they potentially expose the wizard to attacks from the monster. This means that the paladin and fighter now have to delay actions until after the wizard, and people rarely want to faff about with initiative turn order like that anyway.

3: Attacks of opportunity. Sure you can take a withdraw action or equivalent to avoid attacks of opportunity, but when you do that you eschew your chance at taking a normal action during your turn.

4: Since the party is, during escape attempts, incapable of taking conventional actions, they're a lot more vulnerable to attacks from enemies. What happens if a player gets downed? Imagine this scenario: A party of 3 decides to attempt to escape so they spent 3 turns to do this, giving all monsters free rounds, and now the paladin is downed. They've spent turns to run away and now they have to chose between abandoning a downed player (who was downed because they spent their turns running away) or stand and fight at a disadvantage. It would've been easier to just stand and fight from the beginning.
 

One of the things that complicates this is a lot of games have really poor rules for handling attempts to flee. The net effect of that is that it can seem like it'll make the situation worse rather than better.
Again, that is where the game master says, "These rules are poor. If the players want to FLEE, they must FLEE to x distance or hours away."
 

The system teaches players not to retreat.

As someone else stated in another post, there are many mechanical incentives not to retreat.
......

4: Since the party is, during escape attempts, incapable of taking conventional actions, they're a lot more vulnerable to attacks from enemies. What happens if a player gets downed? Imagine this scenario: A party of 3 decides to attempt to escape so they spent 3 turns to do this, giving all monsters free rounds, and now the paladin is downed. They've spent turns to run away and now they have to chose between abandoning a downed player (who was downed because they spent their turns running away) or stand and fight at a disadvantage. It would've been easier to just stand and fight from the beginning.
Sorry Peter Parker the Purple Paladin must pray to his god, or hey Muhverisimilitude after we spend a week long resting and resupplying we go recover your paladin's body.
 

Sorry Peter Parker the Purple Paladin must pray to his god, or hey Muhverisimilitude after we spend a week long resting and resupplying we go recover your paladin's body.
But my poor Paladin!!!!

Seriously though. I think there's opportunity here for some kind of unified escape mechanic. Perhaps if all players declare together that they're running away the system switches to "side initiative" and the PCs go first, followed by the foes.
 

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