Victories and No Defeats in D&D

[delericho]

How many times can an entire party of killers be defeated an captured before it becomes silly?

Of course, back in Middle Ages warfare, nobles tended not to die, because if they were captured then their relatives would pay a handsome ransom. If the PCs had an agent in town handling their money, the same model could be used - do the evil cult just kill them, or do they take them captive, ransom them back, and thus use the money to expand?

(Which of course has a couple of other benefits, too. It serves to soak up some of that excess money they've been acquiring across their careers. And it gives them a great motive for future adventures - they now have good reason to seek revenge.)

I think it's just mathematics. You can capture them occasionally (but players tend to find that unfun and the "hah! you were only unconscious! bazinga!" thing is gonna get old pretty quick) and you can kill them once.

In general, I take the view that if the party fights until their all unconscious, the DM should absolutely show no mercy. Fight to that point, and you're dead.

But this is still supposing just two outcomes - either the PCs win or they fight to unconsciousness (or death). What happened to cutting their losses and running away? Or a negotiated surrender when it becomes obvious they're overmatched?

If the players know that there is a good possibility that they'll find themselves overmatched at times, and especially if it happens reasonably often, surely they would adapt their playstyle accordingly?

(Plus, I blame video games, where if you fight the BBEG and lose, you just load from a saved game and do-over. D&D generally doesn't have this safety valve, so players expect the game to adjust so they can always win.)

 

[Someone]

Why is fleeing the battle a loss?

You're not taking the monster's stuff. Indeed, to be taken prisoner often involves the monster taking your stuff, which is often, literally, a fate worse than death.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I would really like to see some game mechanisms in D&DN to facilitate situations where the party loses but the campaign is not destroyed. As others have mentioned, a lot of cool situations come up in literature having to do with protagonist losses, but D&D doesn't handle this well. A couple come to mind.

"Bloodied" status where PC offensive capability goes down significantly but defensive and retreat capability goes up significantly.

Party meta resources that reduce the impact of what would otherwise be a TPK. Frex, you get +1 "get our of jail free card" point each adventure. With one point you can change TPK to captured, 2 points to have enemies retreat for some reason despite their win, 3 points to have friendly reinforcements suddenly arrive, etc.

 

[Li Shenron]

You're not taking the monster's stuff.

Bah... monsters don't have stuff, NPCs do but you're not always fighting those. Still, if the DM runs a standard game, she's supposed to follow the treasure per level guidelines, so too little/too much treasure is compensated later. (This is mostly a 3ed only problem, since 3ed monsters are designed with the assumption that the PCs do have the correct level of equipment for their current XP level) Not that I am necessarily a fan of that...

 

[Ramaster]

In The Hobbit, the party of dwarves seems to lose more fights than it wins.

The dwarves are taken prisoner by the trolls.
The dwarves flee from the giants in the Misty Mountains.
The dwarves are taken prisoner by the goblins of the Misty Mountains.
The dwarves are treed by a group of worgs and wolves.
The dwarves are trapped in webs by giant spiders.
The dwarves are imprisoned by wood elves.
...

Or did they?

Don't forget that Bilbo and Gandalf are part of the "party".

Gandalf ends up turning the trolls to stone and then procedes to rout the goblins who make them prisioner and rain fire "granades" on the wolves who force them to climb trees to escape.

Bilbo also defeats the spiders (even killing a couple of them) .

I'd say they only really lost two of those fights... that leaves a total of four victories, one tactical retreat (against the giants) and a, may a say, most daring escape!

 

[KidSnide]

Retreat Rules

I agree that capture is a good tool in the DM toolbox, but retreat is also needs to be a part of the picture. Unlike capture, retreat is in the PC's hands. They can make the decision about when and where to flee, and it's usually a difficult decision because it often involves leaving some of the other party members behind.

I say "Retreat Rules" in both sense of the phrase. First, retreat rules (it also rocks) - it's a terrific way of adding defeat into a game in a way that is believable and exciting. Second, retreat really needs rules support. Many players won't have their characters flee because flight, though narratively satisfying it can be a mechanical dead fish. I don't think flight needs a whole complicated sub-system, but there needs to be a half-decent way for players to be able to predict (1) when they stand a good chance of getting away, (2) when someone needs to stay behind to give the rest of the party a head start and (3) the value of "cover retreat" spells and when wizards should cast them.

-KS

 

[Quickleaf]

Everyone knows that the dwarves were 1st level, Gandalf was 5th level, and that Tolkien wrote dungeon survival horror (as a musical).

How many times can an entire party of killers be defeated an captured before it becomes silly?

And they can kill a million opponents, but they can only be killed once.

I think it's just mathematics. You can capture them occasionally (but players tend to find that unfun and the "hah! you were only unconscious! bazinga!" thing is gonna get old pretty quick) and you can kill them once.

Killed once? Nonsense! You can kill most parties a least twice.

My group is going to face the Wild Hunt soon. There's no "kill them all" solution - the closest is "kill a bunch to open a window to planeshift somewhere safe." If the PCs flee they may be pursued by hunters into a random plane. If they negotiate they may be tricked into swearing their souls to the Hunt upon their death. If they are "killed" they are raised as specters to join the Wild Hunt.

 

[Mattachine]

Of course, many old-school gamers played with more than one PC--use two PCs, or a PC and a henchman, etc.

If one dies or is captured, then the player isn't hosed. That was great with dungeon-crawl games that had less roleplay and characterization.

These days, however, the expectation is for players to use only one character at a time. That is true in many modern rpg video games, and it is true in the rule books of the past two editions (maybe 2e, too).

I ran a 3e campaign years ago where players each had 2-4 characters (all were not used simulataneously), and killing or capturing PCs wasn't as much as an issue. On the other hand, roleplay and characterization suffered.

In my current campaign, when I suggested that players each make a secondary or backup PC, they balked. No one was interested, because it meant taking time away from their primary PC's story. They weren't worried about levels or wealth, but about the storyline.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think this sentence highlights a problem with the players (and DM's) perspective rather than with the game itself.

Why is killing the monsters but losing 1-2 PCs is a win?
On the other hand...
Why is fleeing the battle a loss?

I suppose the core of this is that there are all kinds of encounter in D&D. Almost every one I've seen as a DM or player would treat fleeing as a loss of sorts. Fleeing is only a win if the battle has no stakes others than the continued survival of the PCs. That is fine for the random attack by a hungry owlbear, but it doesn't work for a desperate battle to save a peaceful village from a band of wicked brigands. You can say my perspective comes more from thinking of D&D battles as being similar to military battles, a thought process brought on by pretty much never playing the stereotypical "kill things and take their stuff" D&D campaign.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Another possible defeat is that the PCs don't get killed or captured, but that they fail in their goal. The assassination of the king goes off successfully, the kidnapped children are lost, the dungeon's treasure goes unplundered.

In an episodic campaign, this is fine. There are some repercussions, but the campaign is still playable.

The biggest reason I don't see this as often anymore is that so many adventure paths or even single adventures which leave the campaign unplayable after failure. So many are basically "Save the world" and if you fail, well, sorry, no world left. Go start a new campaign.