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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2776624" data-attributes="member: 3146">The dramatic exit can work in D&D; it just requires a little more planning in order to actually be able to disengage. (This is one of the reasons that PCs don't retreat often either--it's hard to get away).One example: Move action: dramatic monologue; standard action: dimension door.Another example: swift action: swift invisibility, move out of line of sight, activate hat of disguise. Next round, blend in with other guards "I'll check the gatehouse." Shortly thereafter, apply dust of tracelessness and ride off into the sunset.Without magic, the dramatic escape is harder to pull off, however, it can be done. Usually, however, the bad guy needs to 1. Be faster than most PCs. 2. Obviously be powerful enough that the one PC who could catch him doesn't relish the thought of fighting him alone. 3. Have some means to obscure line of sight so that the PCs can't target him with a fireball or other long-range effect. 4. Retreat into hostile territory.It's a lot easier to escape the PCs on a dark and stormy night when you have darkvision and a 40+ movement and the PCs don't have darkvision and most of them have a base move of 20 in their heavy armor. It's even easier if you can run through territory where the PCs know that they're likely to run into random encounter orc warbands if they try to track you down.But, after a bad guy has pulled that off once, you should expect the PCs to make some preparations and try to ensure that it doesn't happen again. If the wizard teleports or dimension doors away, you can bet that a dimensional anchor or dimensional lock is in the cards next time. If the assassin goes invisible and uses air walk to escape, you can bet that, next time, the cleric is likely to have invisibility purge prepped and may well be ready with that bead of force the party found in the first section of the mod. Etc. (When I played Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, the assassin managed to get away from us after death attacking my cleric in the middle of the moathouse; later, he showed up and tried again in a side adventure added by our DM. He barely managed to escape at about 1hp after making the save against the orb of force and air walking out of the invisibility purge radius. (Fortunately for him, we were too busy with the troglodytes to follow). The third time, however, he didn't even get the chance to make his attack. The wizard decided to cast see invisibility just in case someone was sneaking up on us invisibly. And what do you know, there was the assassin! A glitterdust later, several party members ran through three AoOs and skewered him down to about -40hp before he could get away).</blockquote>

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