D&D General Run Away!

[Celebrim]

Anyway -- what is your view on PCs fleeing fights? Do you see it happen relatively regularly? Do you design encounters to make it necessary? What is the GM's role, if any, in the party deciding to stand or flee?

In ancient warfare, the rout phase of a battle was the part where the most fatalities would take place. My experience with PC's fleeing fights is that most of the time they are routs, where the PC's turn and run because morale breaks and you end up in a panicked free for all with every PC for himself. They quite often end in near TPKs because rarely is it the case that the whole party is faster than the monster or that they have any sort of plan for survival other than run faster than the other guy.

I think that reality is what motivated PCs to stand and fight. Because things are often much more likely to go wrong if you start running away than if you stand and fight. That's in part because parties rarely have a plan for how to flee these days, and generally the plan to flee hasn't been a big part of gaming since the 1970's (when I understand fleeing out of combat was pretty common). In order to successfully run away, generally a party needs to start running away before it realizes it is in big trouble, and that rarely happens. Usually what triggers the realization is the early signs of a TPK death spiral with one or more players getting dropped, at which point not only is it hard to run away but doing so means abandoning your comrades.

It's also I think in part because there are usually not great chase/evasion mini-games that make fleeing fun, and even the good ones I've seen wouldn't necessarily make fleeing safer than standing and fighting since fighting is often what parties are optimized to do. I mean mounts are rarely treated as hugely important things.

But it's not easy for a system to have both casual realism and to make it easy for a group to run away.

 

[Reynard]

In about 10 minutes we will find out whether any of them re-thought their current "stand here until it kills one of us" strategy.

The did not run, but the dice were with them and they managed to take out the second chuul without much trouble.

 

[Immoralkickass]

Running away is really screwed in 5e. Besides the lack of proper mechanics, most monsters at high CR can also can take Legendary Actions to move/teleport. You are totally not getting away from them.

 

[kenada]

Anyway -- what is your view on PCs fleeing fights? Do you see it happen relatively regularly? Do you design encounters to make it necessary? What is the GM's role, if any, in the party deciding to stand or flee?

I do not balance encounters with the PCs’ capabilities in mind, so players should avail themselves of the escape procedure I provide. The gist of it is they make a check, and they can improve their odds by e.g., dropping treasure or things that would distract the creature. The better the thing, the better the benefit. It’s similar to but inspired by the procedure in B/X.

I also use other techniques such as reaction rolls to signal that not every encounter is a fight. We’ve only had four combats in ten sessions. Two of those happened in the first two sessions. That’s not to say play is boring. The players were very afraid of what could go wrong if they got into a fight when I ran Halls of the Blood King, which is fantastic because horror is usually hard to do in a D&D-like game.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I do not balance encounters with the PCs’ capabilities in mind, so players should avail themselves of the escape procedure I provide. The gist of it is they make a check, and they can improve their odds by e.g., dropping treasure or things that would distract the creature. The better the thing, the better the benefit. It’s similar to but inspired by the procedure in B/X.

So they get to be punished for your proclivities?

 

[iserith]

It's not a punishment to present a challenge where one solution is less effective (or even impossible) as compared to other solutions. It's just one of many types of challenges the DM can use.

 

[CleverNickName]

Well, the way I see it? The party of 1st level characters can run from the wyvern, the same wyvern they saw fly overhead a half-hour ago headed in this direction, also the same wyvern the townsfolk warned them about, and was obviously placed here to push them toward Yonder Convenient Dungeon Entrance clearly visible and only 30 feet away, so that we can all begin tonight's adventure...

...or they can plink at it with their dinky swords and cantrips, getting annihilated one by one, and glaring at me the whole time like I had broken the law or something.

Guess which one the players chose?

 

[Reynard]

Well, the way I see it? The party of 1st level characters can run from the wyvern, the same wyvern they saw fly overhead a half-hour ago headed in this direction, also the same wyvern the townsfolk warned them about, and was obviously placed here to push them toward Yonder Convenient Dungeon Entrance clearly visible and only 30 feet away, so that we can all begin tonight's adventure...

...or they can plink at it with their dinky swords and cantrips, getting annihilated one by one, and glaring at me the whole time like I had broken the law or something.

Guess which one the players chose?

In my games anyway that wyvern encounter would never turn into a TPK -- but somebody is getting taken back to the nest to get torn apart and devoured. Paralysis doesn't mean you can't feel it.

 

[kenada]

So they get to be punished for your proclivities?

My game’s not about fighting through a curated set of encounters. Combat awards no XP. Your best approach is to avoid combat or try other things first (talking has proved effective so far). Otherwise, pick fights when you have an advantage. This is standard OSR stuff.

 

[Reynard]

My game’s not about fighting through a curated set of encounters. Combat awards no XP. Your best approach is to avoid combat or try other things first (talking has proved effective so far). Otherwise, pick fights when you have an advantage. This is standard OSR stuff.

Talking to a hungry wyvern is a tough one.