Standing and fighting

[Banshee16]

Escape is very difficult, in most cases, as mentioned above.

Enemies that you bypass now will often need to be fought later. If the group kills the wolves first, it's easier for them to retreat if needed. Locking yourself in with an unknown danger is smart how? If the group can't deal with the stuff inside, then they're screwed because the wolves will block their retreat.

Also, given that tougher monsters are usually in the deeper areas, a group that can't hack the periphery guarding monsters should serious consider leaving the area.

I partly deal with that by having the PCs need to worry about what happens if they have the fight with the wolves. If they *do* fight them, they might beat them. But now the place is covered with the scent of blood, which in turn might attract something even bigger which might be in the neighbourhood when they have to go back through there during the retreat. It would suck to be leaving the castle, carrying one or two bodies of companions, most of their spells used up etc., walk through the bodies of wolves from the beginning of the adventure, and run into a family of wyverns busy feasting on the meal the PCs left them right at the beginning.....

Banshee

 

[howandwhy99]

Lost 2 characters on Sunday and potentially 2 more next session from the "bridge too far" syndrome. To be fair though, it was a very long combat with multiple parts. In the end they decided to rescue the 5 war1 or com1 npcs who were helping them. That's when the paladin and fatigued barbarian dropped. The other two ran while the lizards ate.

 

[Stalker0]

Two words:

Hit Points

The players know exactly how much damage they can take (even if their characters might not - which is another argument/discussion in itself), and very often they know how much damage a wolf (or many other adversarial type critters) can dish out.

Which means they know IF they have a chance of whooping the things (at least to a point), and they know they have time before they NEED to run.

I think this is a very good point, and sometimes as a dm you have to shake the players out of there metagame knowledge. The easiest way to do that is the rule: "not everything is what it seems."

Lets say one of the wolves is preternaturally strong (spiritiual strength, so it doesn't look any bigger). The party approaches it assuming there just some wolves and get a big surprise when they take a boatload of damage.

You don't necessarily want to make a high CR encounter with this technigue, you can take a cakewalk encounter and make it challenging...which will let the players know they can't always assume any fight will be easy.

 

[Ranger REG]

Heroes in books and movies often run from, hide from, and avoid unnecessary or dangerous fights. Why do RPG heroes always choose to fight?

In the early days, defeating a creature gets you an XP award, even more tempting when DM enforce a kill list and rewards individually for the kills. So the risk vs. reward seems about right in the players' eyes.

Some players may scoff at 3e XP award rules, but for the reason it promote solely teamwork.

Have you ever seen PCs run from, hide from, surrender to, or avoid unnecessary and dangerous encounters? Is it a Player mentality? Is it a DM description?

Rarely they do, unless it is blatantly obvious they won't win.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Enemies that you bypass now will often need to be fought later. ...{snip} .. Also, given that tougher monsters are usually in the deeper areas, a group that can't hack the periphery guarding monsters should serious consider leaving the area.

This is part of the play style.. where *every* encounter is part of the story line instead of a random encounter with creatures that inhabit the area the adventure is set in.

Wolves, unless supernaturally guided, tend to wander off in search of food rather than wait around a gate for some humans to come back out in the next day or so.

Personally I prefer to run games where the world is alive outside of the adventure module. 'Random' encounters with wild animals in the wilderness is expected. And it is also expected that the encounter does not always result in combat.


Banshee16 You are mean!!... and oh so cool

Clueless, if it were my game you did that in...well, you probably would not. My first question would be 'what good is long range bows/spells when your vision is limited to around 30 feet...'
My second statement would be 'sounds like they are on *this* side of the gate...'
I think that whole scenario would scream 'run away while you still can!'
{and has worked for me every time I ran it }


JMHO

 

[sniffles]

Another thought on the surrender issue: I've seldom seen the NPCs surrender, either. The GMs I play with always seem to have NPCs who are just as determined to fight to the death as the PCs are - usually with just one guy who runs away so he can go warn somebody else or come back to bother the PCs later. I don't know if the GMs refuse to surrender because the PCs do or it's just a general mindset in our group.

Running usually involves being chased, too, and hiding requires you to have someplace to go or some ability to hide or disguise yourself. Most of the adventuring parties I've been involved in didn't have many PCs who were good at Hide or Disguise.

 

[loki44]

I thought this was going to be a thread about the advantages of fighting from a prone position when one does not wish to provoke an AoO by standing up.

He who fights then runs away lives to fight another day.

 

[Ranger REG]

He who fights then runs away lives to fight another day.

The BBEG motto? Used that plenty of time to annoy my players.

 

[Clueless]

Clueless, if it were my game you did that in...well, you probably would not. My first question would be 'what good is long range bows/spells when your vision is limited to around 30 feet...' My second statement would be 'sounds like they are on *this* side of the gate...'
I think that whole scenario would scream 'run away while you still can!'

We've had that come up in game before. As I recall I think the comment at the table was : "Plan B is *always* two times as much gunpowder as Plan A" - and we just lobbed fireballs over the wall until there weren't anymore sounds. Admittedly, my group is very quick on tactical planning and best use of our spells and wands. Lately, it's pretty much a standard tactic with us that we always have a mass fly up (bought that wand for a reason) and when dealing with unexpected enemies, we go straight up in the first round.

I'll admit my group tends to deal with anything that comes our way even the random encounters - but then the characters are pretty aggressive folks - so it fits IC and OOC. There was at least one entirely random encounter on Acheron (raksasha brigand tried to rob us after we'd been forced to move camp earlier in the night once already) that cheesed the party off... the DM was *not* expecting us to scry on the raksasha's lair, attack, and choose to set up our camp for the *rest* of the night at his place... wither he liked it or not. We don't tend to let BBEG's run away.

 

[Wolfwood2]

I think this is a very good point, and sometimes as a dm you have to shake the players out of there metagame knowledge. The easiest way to do that is the rule: "not everything is what it seems."

Lets say one of the wolves is preternaturally strong (spiritiual strength, so it doesn't look any bigger). The party approaches it assuming there just some wolves and get a big surprise when they take a boatload of damage.

You don't necessarily want to make a high CR encounter with this technigue, you can take a cakewalk encounter and make it challenging...which will let the players know they can't always assume any fight will be easy.

I disagree with the idea that players take on a fight only because they think it will be "easy". IME, easy fights are the ones players don't bother to fight. They know it would be boring to play out, so they're perfectly willing to let the Druid try to chase the animals away with Wild Empathy or sneak past or have the wizard drop an illusion spell to spook the wolves away or whatever.

Its fights that are potentially tough that cause them to go in carefully prepped for violence and ready to deliver it. You don't dare try non-violent means on those encounters, because if the non-violent means fail then the party is probably out of formation, scattered, and vulnerable.

In D&D, playing things cautiously does not mean avoiding fights. Playing things cautiously means getting the jump on your opponents and making sure you take them down quick and hard in a tactically optimal fashion.