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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dwimmerlied" data-source="post: 6146247" data-attributes="member: 6706967">I usually find myself completely agreeing with delericho's comments, but I'll use one of his points to make one of my own:The 5% overwhelming guideline thing is a good idea, it teaches characters that they sometimes need to run. Hell, even Conan, and his conquering sword was no less heroic for fleeing (in fact, it simply highlighted he was not only strong, but wise). But when they use this device in published stuff eg. forge of fury, a good deal of space and explanation goes into warning the DM about considering this very carefully. Blatant "metagame" hints are actually suggested iirc.As a player, I agree with a lot of what you guys are saying. I'd run. I'd actually find that more interesting and believable. As a DM, I'd make certain the characters knew for a fact that in my games, TPKs are a possibility, and suggest they play carefully. If my games were, over many sessions, incorporating only CR-equal encounters, I'd then preferentially try in-game device to warn the characters of the toughness of the encounter. If it wasn't enough, i would not hesitate to then say, once off, after the first round; "this encounter is tough. Are you sure?" If they continued then? Roll the dice in the open.I have my preferred playstyle and expectations, but its a good idea, IMO to know my players. If I know, in advance that they are likely to do this or that thing, and it is likely to cause a TPK, then I have to think carefully before I go ahead with it. Because this is going to suck for everyone in the end. I'd design encounters that are likely to be tough with a few outs, at the very least. If I had a party that engaged a strategy I didn't like, or for the purpose of telling a story, decided that the characters need to learn to run sometimes, I'd make sure they understood.From what I've read, I don't think the DM did enough. I don't agree that the mephit was a good way to do this. Its no less meta-game than a brief OOC warning, and less precise anyhow;- what we as readers might infer, knowing nothing else about the game world is that in fact, the possessor of a mephit familiar is actually quite defeatable by such a party, perhaps, with a few lucky shots, even within 1 round.And further, my guess might be that the DM didn't intend this to happen; and if that's the case, thats just poor planning. I don't agree that that's incompetence tho, even the most magnificent DMs here, I'm sure, have made this easy-to-make mistake from time to time <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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