"Run away! Run away!" ... what if they don't?

[5ekyu]

Dead characters learn no lessons.

 

[Eltab]

The worse is when the party retreats, one person gets caught, and the entire party comes back, which is enormously counter productive. I've seen them do this once before - maybe they learned a lesson? Although that time they retreated more because the enemy was slow and annoying, not overwhelmingly dangerous...

Loyalty is not a bad thing.

As I realized I was going to convert from player to DM of my Tiamat group, I had to find a believable (in-story) reason why my character wasn't adventuring with the group any more. I decided to sacrifice him to enable the group's escape when somebody else got caught and surrounded. Wouldn't you know that I made all my Death Saves while Team Monster chased everybody else off?
He turned into an NPC because he got pounded into the pavement and did not heal fully in body … but he got a lot better in mind. He became my in-game voice "I as DM think it would be a good idea for you guys to do X."

 

[Riley37]

I played for a while in a campaign which started at level 13, with plot lines only relevant to those who can cast Plane Shift (and their martial counterparts). Several encounters ended with PC retreat, often using Plane Shift. In most of those cases, the PCs took a long rest, sometimes adjusted spell preparation, revised tactics, returned, and won.

In some cases, the PCs had killed minions, and while both the PCs and the BBEG recovered HP and spell slots during the long rest between engagements, the BBEG didn't recover slain minions, and that made round 2 more winnable for the PCs.

Of course, BBEGs on defense can prepare for the return of the PCs; round 2 might include traps and similar complications.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

Reread the OP. If one is looking for solutions for what happens when the bad guys win...then there are any number of fairly obvious possibilities that do not involve character death:
* Enemies strip the PCs of their valuables, then leave them for dead.
* Capture one or more PCs and hold them for ransom. Might accept exchange payment in gold or service from the other PCs.
* Enslave the PC and/or sell it to someone else. Can take any number of forms...giant keeps one of the PCs in a cage for entertainment when bored. Evil mage keeps the PC around to experiment on with magic or poisons. The PC's next mission probably becomes how to escape...
* Torture the PCs and leave them for dead. Maybe involves levels of permanent madness, scars, or disability. Which might later be addressed with magic or prosthetics for a suitable cost or quest.
* Eat the PC's leg(s), then leave the rest behind. May be addressed with magic/prosthetics.
* Drags the PCs back to its lair for later consumption....escape mission.
* Something bizarre. The evil hag steals the victim's voice or physical beauty and then lets them go.

 

[Ancalagon]

Loyalty is not a bad thing.

Indeed - but it can transform a single PC death to a TPK.

 

[ClaytonCross]

Its funny you mention this as it seemed to come up in our last session.

We had a mission to scout the enemy. The GM said the enemy was a skill military group. We found them successful evaded patrols and snuck in to scout out and see what they were doing. We get to the end of a cave they are protecting and I check for any signs of life of an enemy role 24 perception check... nothing it look as nothing is alive in here. We move in to investigate because we see some excavation has been taking place and find and alter. A Dragon then crawls out of the water... apparently the perception check to look for living things was an auto fail for me since the dragon was in the water, however the dragon did not auto fail know we where there from its under water layer we were there... go figure. But now we are cornered and the dragon is blocking the door and we are a group of level 6 characters. The dragon gets to go first, we are all grouped up so dragon breath.. I am down before my first turn. Bard casts Tasha's Hideous Laughter, the dragon fails the save and the bard yells run as it starts laughing. I get revived by a basic healing potion and we start running. The thing is the dragon has an army out side and can move faster than us with great perception. We have no where to hide and no where to run.

We head for the exit with a small hope of sneaking out before the dragon can catch us to find the army already alerted mobilized and standing in front of the only exit. Now we are now fighting on two fronts what might have been a lose on one.

The GMs response to our growing despair? Well what did you expect your scouting a well trained army. My response was well we were sent on a mission to scout a well trained army and we were not fighting them we were sneaking around them and scouting them. We lost our chance to escape when we checked to make sure we were not ambushed which was the right move, and autofail so that the GM could setup a story moment to capture us because in the end that was the plan all along. We were never intended to succeed and any chance of success was precluded. No dice role or player choice would have saved us. Fortunately, the GM having the opportunity to kill my character allowed me to live by stopping the fight then giving the party a chance to surrender and heal me before I died.


As a player I don't like being railroaded… however, from a GM perspective, the GM spent a lot of work on content, character scrips, back story, combat encounter designs, and plot points. If we just bypass it, that work is lost and could be very frustrating. So when, we sneak past obstacles to steal a boat successfully its not uncommon for the boat to be directly under a guard tower and a watchful eye that just can't miss a boat being moved. While I don't like this... I do understand it.

The OP is talking about encounters that aren't scaled and is a slightly different point. The answer to me is the same. If your willing to auto-fail for the stake of story … you should also be willing to auto-success when you have hooked your players into a no win situation. You should give them a way out after they realize they are done. It they then willingly choose to go down fighting... well … give them what they want. If in my example above the group kept fighting after the dragon called for his troops to stop. The GM would have easily and rightfully been able to TPK the group.

 

[KenNYC]

If it is a railroady situation then don't put them into that kind of predicament. If it is more sandboxy where the characters choose their path and the players are effectively co-writing the story and campaign, let them die. Death is a great learning experience for players early on, and hopefully it will teach them not to attack every thing they see. I was playing recently and we were facing something that looked particularly threatening, and I voted to run. My friend said "but killing things is how we get XP". That player needs a dead character--or six--to learn not to think along those lines.

 

[ClaytonCross]

If it is a railroady situation then don't put them into that kind of predicament. If it is more sandboxy where the characters choose their path and the players are effectively co-writing the story and campaign, let them die. Death is a great learning experience for players early on, and hopefully it will teach them not to attack every thing they see. I was playing recently and we were facing something that looked particularly threatening, and I voted to run. My friend said "but killing things is how we get XP". That player needs a dead character--or six--to learn not to think along those lines.

At the same time, sometimes players are handed one and only one story hook by the GM and with nothing else to grab they take it. Then it leads to a monster they know they can't beet but they don't think their is another path so they think, "well I guess the GM wants to start a new campaign, at the very lest I am going down swinging." If the Same GM gives opens up an exit the players are likely to take it. This is not strictly railroading but the players can't tell the difference because they don't see the world the way the GM does and don't know what else to do. 99% of the time if players have an option to not die they take it. The second they believe they are going to die or die they tend to stand and fight. So if a GM wants player not to TPK, usually any subtle option will be snatched up both giving player agency and showing their choice.

 

[5ekyu]

If it is a railroady situation then don't put them into that kind of predicament. If it is more sandboxy where the characters choose their path and the players are effectively co-writing the story and campaign, let them die. Death is a great learning experience for players early on, and hopefully it will teach them not to attack every thing they see. I was playing recently and we were facing something that looked particularly threatening, and I voted to run. My friend said "but killing things is how we get XP". That player needs a dead character--or six--to learn not to think along those lines.

Personal peeve... GMs who think dead pcs are valid teaching (metagame cuz the dead pc did not impart wisdom to its replacement) but players thinking meta-game for their choices is wrong.

In the gameplay your describe, as long as i was allowed replacement characters, each would be role-played "greener" than the last, not "educated" by the previous failures.

 

[Imaculata]

Usually when I set up an encounter that is deliberately 'too tough', I will foreshadow the difficulty clearly, or set up the encounter in such a way that retreat is easy. I might have the opponent first kill off an npc, to foreshadow its attacks.

For example, I had a crocodile first eat an npc prisoner, before it turned on my level 1 players. This informed the players that the crocodile could reduce anyone to 0 hp in one attack, if they got too close.

Sometimes I will simply have an opponent do a ton of damage to the strongest player in the party, but facilitate an easy escape.

For example, I had my players run into a Chaukeedaar, a powerful animated statue that had six arms and does a ton of damage. During one round it easily knocked half of the hit points off of the main tank of the party, but I also described how it tried to stay away from sunlight. At first the players thought it couldn't stand sunlight, but then it became clear that the statues froze during the day, to hide themselves from the gaze of a vengeful god. The players blew the roof off the ruins, to expose the statue to the wrath of the angry god, thus destroying it. However, the rest of the island was still crawling with these statues, so they decided to return when they were stronger. During this fight they could also have simply left the ruins where they encountered it at any time. They were not obligated to fight it.

I think it is a mistake to design an encounter in such a way that fleeing is the only option. I don't think encounters should be scripted like that. If you set up an encounter where the players must flee the dragon, they WILL fight it. I guarantee it.