Standing and fighting

[Clueless]

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.

Bingo. My thoughts exactly.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I've nothing to add here. Many good points.

*Gate guards are assumed to be something you can beat.
*Most encounters, unless there are obvious cues to the contrary, are assumed to be beatable in a lot of games.
*When you've got a lot of HP, you're not inclined to run without a good reason.
*In most cases there will be time to R&R after a tough encounter.
*Healing spells and other big magics.
*What, and throw away all those nice shiny XPs? (And phat loot!)
*Fighting is fun, especially if things have been dull recently.
*One of the most important, really, is that in almost all games (D&D anyway) characters can fight until they drop without the slightest reduction in their fighting ability.
*Running rarely works as most monsters are faster, or at least as fast, as the characters.

&etc.

Have my characters/party ever run? You betcha! Would I ever surrender one of my characters? Hell no! (Why? Um, well, because... that's not heroic?)

 

[Hypersmurf]

It's rare for the author to make multiple main characters actually main characters. If there are multiple main characters, often only some know how to fight. Often they spend little time together - one's in Moscow, the other is in Paris. In other words, there's rarely an optimized combat party in novels, and of course little in the way of magic healing, either.

Even when there's a party (Band of Four, City of Towers) the magic is somehow nerfed so there's no awesome fireballs or insta-healing.

You know, I'm going to mention a series here... James Barclay's 'Chronicles of the Raven'.

The first time I read book one (Dawnthief), I thought 'My god, this is awful'.

And I'm pretty sure it still is But I eventually gave it another try, and I actually rather enjoyed it.

But it's got a party of mixed fighters and mages, who chuck around fireballs and healing spells.

I won't say I didn't warn you if you read it and it's awful, but it's fun at the same time

(Excerpt from one review at Amazon.com: "My idea of great fantasy fiction is strong 3-D characters, believable dialogs and coherent and well thought through plot changes. None of these are present in Dawnthief." Heh.)

As far as running from fights goes - we did plenty of running from Strahd when we played through Ravenloft a while back More recently - in a d20 Future game, we sat very quietly in the saloon, minding our own business, while the Corporate Assassin and his bodyguards came and kidnapped the genetic scientist. Hey, we didn't know the guy! (Of course, we later tracked the assassin down and took him out, but that was when the odds were more in our favour...!)

-Hyp.

 

[Rothe]

From the OP it sounds like the perfect situation to stand and fight. Set up correctly, the party can battle the beasts before the gate and if it gets too hard retreat through the gate. As a player I would never leave a pack of dire wolves behind me that may or may not be under the guidance of some evil force. Only the prospect of announcing my presence by battling at the gate would cause me to reconsidered.

 

[Victim]

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.

A wolf pack prowling the area naturally is a still a wolf pack prowling the area and thus a potential threat later even if it's not strategically directed. Not to mention all the things that can control animals: druids or rangers can have animal allies, vampires have some abilities, goblins and orcs are also associated with wolves.

Besides, I'd expect most random encounters with animals to involve them running away from PCs, not the other way around. Assuming something unusual or unnatural is hardly out of bounds, since the wolves are perhaps atypically aggressive.

Also, the same principle applies to things are definitely connected to the plot, eg guards in a fortress. Every group you bypass on the way in is another group the baddie can call in as reinforcements in the main fight.

---------------------------------------

I agree that players are often likely to attempt to bypass trivial threats.

 

[Banshee16]

Besides, I'd expect most random encounters with animals to involve them running away from PCs, not the other way around. Assuming something unusual or unnatural is hardly out of bounds, since the wolves are perhaps atypically aggressive.


I agree that players are often likely to attempt to bypass trivial threats.

It's important to keep in mind that even in RL, animals don't always run away. In North America, wolves don't have much history of attacking people if unprovoked...but that's not the case in Europe....Europe has plenty of history of attacks by wolves....same thing by tigers in India, lions in Africa, etc.

In a D&D game, given the low level of technology, and the fact that so much population is dispersed throughout rural areas, attacks by wildlife might very well not be that uncommon.

Banshee

 

[The Levitator]

This is the main reason I don't use CR's. My players have learned not to bite off more than they can chew, because the world around them is truly random and realistic. A wealthy baron with bottomless pockets is not going to guard his limitless wealth with a couple of 1st level warriors at the gate. He would get the best men he could afford, and hire a good military leader to be in charge of his security. If I were using a pack of Dire Wolves as a random encounter, I might describe them as rooting around, emphasizing that they look hungry. Since the dire wolves didn't just charge from out of the shadows, my players probably would take the hint that they are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and would probably just shut the gate. The Dire Wolves would then most likely go off and try to find easier prey. The Dire Wolves could even be worked in as a running theme in the area, where the players figure out they are being hunted and the wolves just waiting for the right opportunity until they get out of their territory. Having a pack of Dire Wolves "out there somewhere" but not instantly attacking the party is a great way to add suspense and atmosphere. The Dire Wolves may follow the group for a while, but would probably rather find easier prey.

Just 2 weeks ago I had a 2nd level party encounter a Juvenile Green Dragon. It was coming down from the hills to grab some livestock for a snack. What did they do? They hid! They watched the thing fly and swoop down and select which sheep to grab and learned a little about the habits and flying ability of dragons.

I personally don't like the idea of my players feeling invincible. It's an uphill battle to build suspense and drama when they aren't afraid of anything. Of course, it's just as bad on the other extreme. I don't want them afraid to leave their homes either. We've adopted some mechanical changes in the game that make combat a little more dicey:

+ We use the Opposed Roll Variant so that hits and misses aren't foregone conclusions.

+ I use DM Genie and we play diceless, using DM Genie's autoroll feature. This means that the players don't know their actual HP total at any given moment. We use a color coding system for relative health: Green=healthy, Yellow=slightly injured, Orange=moderately injured, Red=critcially injured. We use a VT with an HD projector on an 8' screen, so I've been using Corel to color the digital miniatures. I've recently switched to RPTools and they have text conditions that you can add to each counter.

+ We use the Clobbered Variant. This can put someone at a quick disadvantage if they are getting ganged up on as being clobbered only allows a Standard Action. It makes retreating when you are injured more difficult.

+ I've developed a Healing Rate for healing potions and prayers. There's no more back to full HP in a round anymore! I created this initially to make healing a little more miraculous than other prayers and spells, but it makes combat more tactical too. There are 5 levels of Healing Rates dependent on the caster or creator of the potion:

Level 1 - Healer Lvl1-4 - prayers and potions heal at the rate of 1 HP/8 rds.
Level 2 - Healer Lvl5-8 - prayers and potions heal at the rate of 1 HP/4 rds.
Level 3 - Healer Lvl9-12 - prayers and potions heal at the rate of 1 HP/2 rds.
Level 4 - Healer Lvl13-16 - prayers and potions heal at the rate of 1 HP/rd.
Level 5 - Healer Lvl17-20 - prayers and potions heal at the rate of 2 HP/rd.


Healing now takes a few minutes instead of 6 seconds. It's not long enough to screw a party that needs to heal up before moving on, but it's long enough to take away the healing potion's "video game power up" ability during combat.

The group I'm gaming with (some of them for more than 6 years) helped to develop these additions to make the world feel a little more dangerous without feeling overwhelming. These changes combined with as detailed descriptions as I can create help give the players a pretty clear idea of which encounters are necessary and which aren't. The interesting side effect is that I thought it might lower the amount of combat in our sessions. It's actually had the opposite effect, because the group enjoys calculating strategies and focus on being more efficient combatants. They still avoid confrontations that might kill them, but they aggressively seek out those they think they can win.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

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.

If your group doesn't have a survivalist, they might not think about that. And how do they know something bigger than dire wolves are coming?

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

That would be funny. But it's not obvious to the PCs that will happen, so it's not a good cue.

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.

Another cool scenario, but it's not obvious, so the PCs don't know they're not supposed to run.

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.

Surrender is death, especially for evil NPCs. How often do PCs raiding a castle have time to drag the NPC's arse back to civilization, and then spend time conducting a trial? PCs kill villains so often it probably gets into bards' tales and things like that. Villains expect it, so they either try to teleport away or just fight to the death. (Running isn't a good option.)

You know, I'm going to mention a series here... James Barclay's 'Chronicles of the Raven'.

I'll look out for that.

*Most encounters, unless there are obvious cues to the contrary, are assumed to be beatable in a lot of games.
*In most cases there will be time to R&R after a tough encounter.

I think these are the biggest reasons. If it's not obviously going to squash the PCs, see #1. It's also sometimes hard for the players to see a legitimate reason for a "follow-up to the boss encounter". The perception is that the DM is angry his boss died, and is just dropping something on them. DMs rarely do that, so players believe in #2.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I'll look out for that.

Don't forget: awful = not my fault!

-Hyp.

 

[Banshee16]

If your group doesn't have a survivalist, they might not think about that. And how do they know something bigger than dire wolves are coming?



That would be funny. But it's not obvious to the PCs that will happen, so it's not a good cue.

They learned through experience .

And they had a ranger in the party whose Knowledge (nature) skill pointed this kind of thing out. But, regardless, several bad experiences taught the veterans what to watch out for.

Banshee