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Victories and No Defeats in D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 5841433" data-attributes="member: 32536"><p>The problem with D&D is that it doesn't have many good ways to lose without a TPK. If the characters defeat all their enemies, but two characters die, it is still a win. Retreat is generally rather hard and can be a murky area in the rules. Capture is a possibility, but the rules as a whole tend to assume enemies are trying to kill the PCs, so any capture situation runs the risk of it feeling like the DM just went easy on the players. Similarly, it is hard for the enemies to escape, so having the enemies run away when the PCs <em>need</em> to defeat them isn't easy to pull off. The lack of a good gray area between "defeated" and "dead" doesn't help any of these very much...</p><p></p><p>There is no doubt that a good group can overcome a lot of this through some creativity, but it would help if the rules didn't assume so readily that any given fight will involve both sides fighting until one side is completely defeated. Better rules for disengaging from a fight and widening the gap between "defeated at 0 HP" and "dead" would help a lot.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 5841433, member: 32536"] The problem with D&D is that it doesn't have many good ways to lose without a TPK. If the characters defeat all their enemies, but two characters die, it is still a win. Retreat is generally rather hard and can be a murky area in the rules. Capture is a possibility, but the rules as a whole tend to assume enemies are trying to kill the PCs, so any capture situation runs the risk of it feeling like the DM just went easy on the players. Similarly, it is hard for the enemies to escape, so having the enemies run away when the PCs [i]need[/i] to defeat them isn't easy to pull off. The lack of a good gray area between "defeated" and "dead" doesn't help any of these very much... There is no doubt that a good group can overcome a lot of this through some creativity, but it would help if the rules didn't assume so readily that any given fight will involve both sides fighting until one side is completely defeated. Better rules for disengaging from a fight and widening the gap between "defeated at 0 HP" and "dead" would help a lot. [/QUOTE]
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