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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5441051" data-attributes="member: 4937">I personally have always had a hard time as a DM with firm and fast rules for when a foe runs away.&nbsp; The problem is that running away or surrendering is rarely a rational thing to do, and however realistic it may be on occassion, it tends to make it more difficult to judge the difficulty of an encounter.&nbsp; If you enforce it, and you don't enforce it on PCs - then it tends to up the PCs effective CR, meaning that they tend to pushover encounters that would otherwise have been hard.&nbsp; And, if you make the encounters harder to compensate, you increase the risk of a TPK when the luck runs the wrong way.Also, it's another 'save or suck' power that bypasses hit points and has to be handled carefully.Granted, in the real world, especially in antiquity most of the casualties occurred during the rout phase, but that's entirely the point.&nbsp; My monsters do surrender or flee, occasionally even successfully, but I tend to make those decisions more on the basis of the NPC's rational interests based on the NPC's current information.&nbsp; &quot;We are getting slaughtered here.&quot;, tends to provoke almost all NPCs into fleeing or if they think there is some hope for it, surrendering.&nbsp; I might allow a PC to force a surrender at a time I was already toying with the idea that it was about time to run away/seek terms, but I don't have a hard rule in place to allow for it yet.Generally speaking, that only occurs when about half of the NPC's are already dead, if the NPC's know that they are at least 4 notches below the PCs in CR (PC's hit some goblins with fireball, for example), the NPC has reason to believe the PC's are invincible, if the NPC is already down to 25% hit points or less, or if something happens to make the NPC think the fight is now hopeless (things were already pretty bad, and the PC's get reinforcements).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5441051, member: 4937"] I personally have always had a hard time as a DM with firm and fast rules for when a foe runs away. The problem is that running away or surrendering is rarely a rational thing to do, and however realistic it may be on occassion, it tends to make it more difficult to judge the difficulty of an encounter. If you enforce it, and you don't enforce it on PCs - then it tends to up the PCs effective CR, meaning that they tend to pushover encounters that would otherwise have been hard. And, if you make the encounters harder to compensate, you increase the risk of a TPK when the luck runs the wrong way. Also, it's another 'save or suck' power that bypasses hit points and has to be handled carefully. Granted, in the real world, especially in antiquity most of the casualties occurred during the rout phase, but that's entirely the point. My monsters do surrender or flee, occasionally even successfully, but I tend to make those decisions more on the basis of the NPC's rational interests based on the NPC's current information. "We are getting slaughtered here.", tends to provoke almost all NPCs into fleeing or if they think there is some hope for it, surrendering. I might allow a PC to force a surrender at a time I was already toying with the idea that it was about time to run away/seek terms, but I don't have a hard rule in place to allow for it yet. Generally speaking, that only occurs when about half of the NPC's are already dead, if the NPC's know that they are at least 4 notches below the PCs in CR (PC's hit some goblins with fireball, for example), the NPC has reason to believe the PC's are invincible, if the NPC is already down to 25% hit points or less, or if something happens to make the NPC think the fight is now hopeless (things were already pretty bad, and the PC's get reinforcements). [/QUOTE]

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