The Mathematics of Survivability

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think Ridley brings up a point that I have noticed in many of my campaigns, that being that even experienced players seem very reluctant to flee from a battle, even an ambush that is clearly going against them. It could be just a problem with me being too easy on them or it could be the sense of invicibility players sometimes have, or it could be just that they're dumb in any event sometimes killing off a few players in an ambush is just the kind of thing to let them know that sometimes the cliche of "running away to fight another day" is true.

Many DMs accidentally train players to think that way, even if they are not softies.

I was in a 1e/2e campaign where the DM was superb with the exception we starting feeling a "him vs. us" attitude. Part of the reason is he didn't want to go soft on us.

The result was we would constantly meet seemingly countless disposable minions who were mysteriously displayed perfect loyalty to their evil overlords, and we would be lucky if they didn't drink their single potion (only magical treasure they usually carried) before we killed them. We became ruthless and recklessly aggressive in attempting to kill signficiant evil officers because it seemed to only way to get a decent reward for the risks we took. Of course the Big Boss and his body guard always had fabulously lethal combinations of magic that made the final showdown a nailbiter.

We would eventually capture all that potent magic, so the DM would silently vow to be tougher on us next time...

The end result is the campaign bred a very aggressive and stubborn approach to fighting. Quite frankly, we never got any reward for doing otherwise. What were expected to do?

Personally, I find vanilla 3e much more relaxing. The system is much more generous, so I feel my character is fairly rewarded for the risks taken.

(That last point, the perceived "fairness" of the rewards is a side effect of the 3e fast leveling. Frex, if it takes a long time to go from 6th to 7th level, the DM feels he must be stingy with each encounter or I will be "too rich" when I reach 7th. The downside is that the DM must be prepared for the rapid power increase of the PCs.)