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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8599234" data-attributes="member: 93670">One player falling back  30ft while everyone else continues fighting is different from the group deciding "this looks bad & I think this is a fight we are going to lose, lets run away before this gets worse" .  When the group chooses to run as a group they pull out all the stops  going for broke to get somewhere safe so they can rest up far away, but just one player choosing to run to the other side of the room  or something while the rest of the group continues to engage in a fight they expect to win is just fingers crossed tactical positioning.  In some past editions characters were sticky because moving more than 5 feet/1 square provoked an opportunity attack & in some cases it provoked one for each 5 foot/square moved through up to dex mod number of them per round on top of monsters with less HP so that tactical positioning was meaningful but it certainly wasn't running away then & definitely isn't in 5e.Resting up & recovering in 5e is so trivial that of course a group will have trouble running away when they try to tread the line between falling back to a closet somewhere to rest up when half the party is still doing their best imitation of a wackamole arcade game that's already been lost but is forcing the GM to run the trainwreck down to the last meeple rather than conceding to flee simply because they never committed  to either. When the group plans & proactively commits to a strategy like "lets all run & hopefully it will chase  Alice/Bob  when we scatter because they can use $ability to probably get away"  early the GM tends to be quite willing to help your strategy work for reasons colleville does a great job of explaining "Why?"[spoiler="here"][MEDIA=youtube]7In4ftJddEo[/MEDIA][/spoiler]In the past there were crunchy bit of combat that combined with things like resource attrition & a higher chance of lethality pushing players to collaborate & plan during combat.  That collaboration & planning made sure they could all be aiming for the same plan things like when to bravely run away instead of conflicting plans, but that's pretty much gone by the roadside in 5e in favor of just soloing near each other with no concern for life limb or resources. Players rarely ever consider actually running before the fight is already settled & the corpses are just waiting to fall.  During the discussion about what went wrong & what could have been done players can talk about making sure that the group considers working together & thinking about those resource expenditure things more will help avoid a repeat by running earlier.  By making it clear that the group's goal is to run like hell before the result is cemented  it makes "the line between "when combat ends" and when it's a chase" crystal clear from orbit even to the most distracted GM.  If the line is ever still unclear when a chase starts players haven't shifted from tactical repositioning to a run away commitment & can bring that up in the discussion among players after the dust settles.Then there's the example.  A <a href="https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/werewolf" target="_blank">werewolf</a> is cr3 ac11 58 hp & makes two anemic attacks (1d8+2 & 2d4+2).  Cantrips alone can handle a werewolf without much effort by a group unless the group is so low that things like a few  zombies alone are a meaningful encounter.  No group with more  than a couple levels should have much trouble dealing with a werewolf unless the encounter is edging into LMoP's goblin ambush from stealth on 1st(?) level PCs type territory.  CoS starts out hunting them with some start options but I can't see how anyone can even be injured by [spoiler="this"][/spoiler]It doesn't look like there is a werewolf till several chapters in.  By that time  a werewolf is pretty much a couple cantrips & a fireball or something. Even if a werewolf got the drop on players & ambushed them at close range it shouldn't be enough of an issue for the party to really even notice that the players still using starter weapons are doing no damage. A handful of zombies are more dangerous than a werewolf.</blockquote>

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