D&D General Run Away!

[Reynard]

If players act that way it's the DM's fault. They think the DM won't kill their PC. Probably because they never do. Kill a few. They'll learn and start to run.

These folks have been playing with me for years -- decades in some cases. They know. Yet here we are.

 

[Mannahnin]

Doc I wrote for the players about a month or so into my current 5 Torches Deep & B/X mashup.

I will probably implement something similar the next time I run a 5E game. I'll require the PCs to declare a general retreat at the top of the round, if I'm otherwise using individual initiative.

Fleeing for Fun and Profit

I’ve written a fair amount of stuff for this game so far, and one thing I briefly mentioned early is that there are mechanics for running away and for chases. And that’s not just “move on your turn and hope you’re faster”.

Everyone who’s participated in this campaign has seen Reaction Rolls in play, where many monsters or creatures you encounter may be indifferent, open to negotiation, or friendly rather than immediately hostile. Everyone’s seen Morale Rolls too, where monsters will sometimes run away once you kill one, or half of them, or a leader or something.

One thing I haven’t seen much of yet (though it’s happened a couple of times) is fleeing, so I do want to make sure you all know this is a tool in your toolkit. There may be foes that simply overmatch you. Brave heroics are great, and a victory against the odds is sweet, but sometimes you just want to keep your cool PC alive, and come back and get that opponent another day. Friday night saw a 3rd level PC go down and very nearly die, and it would have been extra sad if the rest of his party died too…

Old school games are deliberately designed such that fights will not necessarily be balanced. There’s a general principle in the dungeon that the deeper you go, the nastier it gets (and the bigger the rewards, of course!), but it’s not always a 1-1 correlation. And of course, some fights you might handle easily when your party is fresh might become life-threatening once someone goes down, or a healer miscasts on Suture.

The basic mechanic is as follows, though I MAY make modifications in special circumstances:

On the PCs’ turn you can choose to flee. All conscious and mobile characters have the option. You can go all together or individually. Tell me which way you’re going.

If only some flee, they are under most circumstances (barring exceptional numbers of enemies, being surrounded, having a door locked behind you or something) guaranteed to escape, while the opponents focus on whoever stays behind.

As the 5TD rulebook specifies, normally no check is needed to Retreat, but if the monsters (say) are between you and your desired flight path, I may ask you to take a DEX or STR check. Remember that by default we don’t use attacks of opportunity in this game, so if you have a path you can run around the bad guys, normally no check will be needed. If you have to try to break/worm your way through a line or circle of them, it’ll be a check.

If everyone mobile flees, and the monsters are free to pursue (and don’t have a specific reason NOT to, like, say, immobile magical guardians of a location), the DM rolls 2d6, and on a 9 or higher the monsters pursue, with the following modifiers to the die roll:
-2 if any monsters have been slain
+2 if no monsters have been hit
+3 if the monsters are hunting the party

If the monsters pursue, I compare movement rates, with the party having a one round head start. If the party is faster you automatically escape, unless you are stopped or trapped somehow, or stop too soon.

While fleeing, you can also do things to discourage pursuit, such as spiking doors shut once you retreat through them, scattering caltrops or something behind you, dropping food to distract or stop hungry or animal-type monsters, or dropping treasure to stop pursuers who care about wealth and shinies! If you drop food or treasure and the monsters are interested in the type of thing dropped, there is a 50/50 chance they abandon pursuit and focus on whatever you’ve dropped. I may modify that up or down depending on how attractive the bait is. Use your judgement. J

If nothing is dropped, they pursue and I make another check every 5 rounds, with the same modifiers as before, with another +2 if the number of pursuing monsters is greater than the number of characters. They continue pursuit on a 9+. Monsters will generally give up after some extended period, known to the DM....

 

[DEFCON 1]

Also, with no degradation of character power as PCs get hurt, the thought is often that even with one or two PCs dropping, the others still on their feet have a chance to finish off the fight because they are still at full capability in terms of their abilities.

 

[BookTenTiger]

These folks have been playing with me for years -- decades in some cases. They know. Yet here we are.

It's funny, even being a lifetime DM, when I take a turn as a player I fall into this mindset so easily. I was playing a Dwarf Wizard with mostly utility / nondamaging spells (the rest of the group was an absolute damage powerhouse), and even during random encounters we could easily run from, I'd find myself thinking, "Okay, I guess this will be my character's last stand..."

There's just something about the D&D Genre (or at least its modern interpretation) that doesn't promote fleeing!

 

[payn]

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?

There has been quite a paradigm shift in expected play over the decades and editions. Earlier on combat wasn't supposed to be gleefully engaged and should be done with utmost caution. The adventure was full of deadliness and using your wits as a player, not character, was how you played the game.

Once the game grew beyond a dungeon delve sim, the characters were expected to rule kingdoms and build fancy towers. Adventures started taking place in all kinds of settings and situations. Furthermore, combat became more and more central to the game. Tons of design space was dedicated to it to make the combat more interesting and expected even more so than in the past.

I bring this stuff up again, because there can be a disconnect between player expectations and the GM. A number of things can contribute to the disconnect, such as, wanting to be a powerful being and not just a capable one and that any fight is a suitable challenge set up by the GM. It may be tough, a PC or two might die, but every encounter should be solvable for the PC's given level.

Since the disconnect has become quite obvious, I try and discuss this during sessions zero. Is the game a sandbox where the PCs can easily get in over their head if not careful? Or is this a kick in the door and take names kind of romp where the fights will all be winnable although still challenging? The group should be on the same page for this.

As a GM, I have and do run several styles of games. So, my role is going to change based on that. If its an adventure path and expected level based challenges are before them, I am going to give the PCs every chance to succeed, and likely more than enough chances to flee and regroup if the challenge proved to be too much. In an open sandbox game I am going to run as an impartial referee and do as the enemy and/or situation dictates, and the PCs need to be prepared for that.

Finally, I do believe signposting is very important for a GM. If the PCs can go left and face a kobold, but go right and face a dragon, then they need some reasonable way to determine that discrepancy in challenge. During a fight, if the enemy is in very good shape, and/or reinforcements are incoming, I try and drop clues about that state of their health. It's still up to the PCs to decide if they want to flee or not. Though, I think its very important for the GM to arm them with reasonable knowledge to make that decision. Some old school GMs believe its up to the PCs to figure this out themselves. If they are not clever enough to get their own scouting recon or whatever, then the characters just walk face first into buzzsaws. Most folks seem to land somewhere in-between the extremes.

 

[iserith]

Yes, it happens regularly in our games, and just last Wednesday in a game I was running. Two PCs ran away as three of their party were cut down by monsters. This Wednesday, the party goes back into the dungeon with three new PCs.

Although I don't purposefully make situations where the PCs need to run away, sometimes it happens because they've delved a bit too deeply with dwindling resources or the dice favored more dangerous monsters on the random encounter table. To facilitate it, I always have Escape/Chase rules ready to go so that the players understand their options.

 

[iserith]

Here's an easy escape rule that works well for grid play:

When all characters decide to make an orderly retreat and move or are moved off of the map (or into an established location), they must succeed at a DC 13 Constitution group check or suffer a level of exhaustion while running away. Characters with a speed greater than all enemies or who can Dash as a bonus action automatically succeed. Either way, the characters escape their enemies... for now.​

This can be modified easily for non-grid play (base it on minimum distance from monsters) or can be made into individual checks if one wants to do away with the assumption of the party sticking together and helping each other escape. The DC is also easily modified or set according to some other standard.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

If an enemy is going to pursue you can always move into a chase sequence.

I was not really talking about a chase scene as such but a mechanical way to run a disengage. Or even advise for it in the PHB or player facing material.
Something like a "Covering fire action " for a ranged character(s) that allows the rest of the party to disengage as a bonus action.

It is interesting that a lot of the responses are home brew disengagement rules.

In Combat the players have mechanical support for almost everything they could want to do. There are players that will operate outside that mechanical framework but they are the exceptions and likely to improvise and escape plan anyway.

Put it in there, as a explicit option, to Run Away. It is not obvious, particularly on a map. Then enemy move at the same speed as the party so how does this work then is the obvious question.

 

[Reynard]

I was not really talking about a chase scene as such but a mechanical way to run a disengage. Or even advise for it in the PHB or player facing material.
Something like a "Covering fire action " for a ranged character(s) that allows the rest of the party to disengage as a bonus action.

It is interesting that a lot of the responses are home brew disengagement rules.

In Combat the players have mechanical support for almost everything they could want to do. There are players that will operate outside that mechanical framework but they are the exceptions and likely to improvise and escape plan anyway.

Put it in there, as a explicit option, to Run Away. It is not obvious, particularly on a map. Then enemy move at the same speed as the party so how does this work then is the obvious question.

I just did a quick scan through the srd and books and you're right -- there is no method for how to escape an encounter. the closest it gets is the Chase rules but those very pointedly don't include options or information on the chase being in the dungeon.

 

[iserith]

I just did a quick scan through the srd and books and you're right -- there is no method for how to escape an encounter. the closest it gets is the Chase rules but those very pointedly don't include options or information on the chase being in the dungeon.

Much like how the DM determines when exactly initiative is rolled for a combat, the DM also decides when a chase begins. (It uses initiative, too.) If the PCs want to run away, for example, and the monsters wish to pursue, then we determine starting distances and off we go. Much like all actions in the game, all that is required is a declaration of goal and approach.

Later on in the section, the rules acknowledge that the Urban and Wilderness complication tables don't pertain to all environments (e.g. dungeons) and the DM is encouraged to come up with their own with the existing tables as inspiration.