D&D General Why are we fighting?

[Micah Sweet]

They don't always alert everyone when they get away, don't always return with "massive" reinforcement (or any at all), and don't always try to escape by murdering the PCs when captured.

If we can imagine a world in which adventurers fight dragons in dungeons, we can imagine reasons for these things not to happen.

Sure, but how do you use those reasons without it being wildly obvious you're putting your thumb on the scale.

 

[ECMO3]

For the games I have played surrender or flee for enemies is a problem.

If they flee the party runs them down or blocks them until they are all dead.

If they surrender, well now what do you do with the prisoners? At times this causes role play problems between the PCs that think murdering prisoners is cool and the PCs who don't.

 

[Minigiant]

Well, at least in The Edition That Must Not Be Named, a standard creature is...just that. The "baseline," mathematically speaking, for a given challenge level. "Standard" is thus contrasted against "minion" (or "mook" in similar systems), "Elite," and "Solo." A minion(/mook) is much more fragile than a Standard, but still packs a punch, the weak "cannon fodder" type. An elite creature is meaningfully stronger than normal, drawing on the thematic trope of the "crack team" of better-trained, better-equipped soldiers, though it need not actually mean that in practice (e.g. imagine a swarm of hive-mind insects, with throwaway mindless drones as minions, led by a more powerful but harder-to-raise "centurion" bug or the like.) A solo is a creature meant to be a challenge to a whole party all on its own.

A "standard" creature in other contexts is usually intended to mean one where if you had a squad of just that creature and nothing else, and that squad was the same size as the PC party, then it would provide a relatively ordinary encounter. Probably not deadly, but definitely intended to not be a cakewalk either.

It was pretty easy.

X PCs vs X standard enemies was moderate difficulty. The party should win but if 2 standard creatures ganged up on 1 PC, that PC might Die. And if 3 did, they would die unless that PC was exceptional strong on toughness or defenses.

So once one side down 2 people compared to the other side, the losing side was heavily nudged position of escape or surrender. Down an elite or bloodying 2 elites was almost the same as dropping 2 people. Dropping 8 minions was the same. Everyone knew when the fight was over.

That's the key: everyone knowing when the fights over.

Unfortunately many table run "Video Game Boss Fights" where the fight isn't over until 0 HP.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Yes, that is the problem. Here the need arises to switch from combat mode to evasion mode. I don't know if 5E has rules for this, but BECMI does. Currently when I run Pathfinder 2E, if the monsters flee, I give the party 1 round of normal action against the fleeing monsters, and if they decide to chase they enter "chase mode" where they use Athletics or Fort checks against the monster's Athletics or Fort DC to see if they can keep up, with bonuses or higher DCs depending on speed differences.

I believe the Game Mastery Guide for PF2 actually has rules for chasing, but I'm not that familiar with them. I bet there is some official 5E material somewhere for resolving pursuits.

Edit: Just looked at the PF2 chase rules. There are four pages of rules, so probably better used for special events, such as chasing the BBEG over rooftops or escaping the collapsing pyramid, rather than as a general evasion resolution system. I think those are better resolved with some simple tests of the PCs' athleticism and cardio.

Its actually rather fun and usable, I use them as a retreat system for a west marches, you have an obstacle, the players use skills with appropriate in-fiction plans and based off the die results they get points, all obstacles require a few points to overcome, usually I use a model where there are 2 obstacles "How do we create distance" and "How do we cut our pursuer off from following us" that are almost always present, and then some in between improvised based off the area they're in. If they spend resources like spells, if it makes sense, those just end up being auto-successes for the roll that would have otherwise happened.

It's easy enough that I casually adapted it for sneaking onto a pirate ship mid-session once.

 

[iserith]

Sure, but how do you use those reasons without it being wildly obvious you're putting your thumb on the scale.

Same as anything really - Set expectations and telegraph so that the outcome, whatever it is, isn't surprising (or at least they can follow the outcome back to what was telegraphed).

Scouts report the nearest orc reinforcements are 3 days away, and the PCs will be done delving in two. Warriors of the such-and-such tribe consider it taboo to murder honorable captors. The monsters of that dark place sometimes view powerful adventurers as tools to be used against their enemies, and are likely to entreat with them if they kill a few of their kind to demonstrate their strength. And so on.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Guidelines have never been precise in any edition I've played.

4E had incredibly precise and detailed guidelines that are totally unlike any other edition (very focused on "types" of monsters), has easy scaling so you could trivially level stuff up and down, and further, the wildest and most shocking thing was - the rules actually worked if you followed them closely! They reliably produced balanced and interesting encounters (so long you enjoy 4E of course lol).

3.XE had CR, which was an active detriment to encounter design, for the very simple reason that the methodology used to assign CR lead to monsters/NPCs with insanely disparate power levels having the same CR. Seriously a monster that could casually wipe an entire party of level X would commonly have the same CR as one that would struggle to last two rounds and likely achieve little.

5E has much looser guidelines than 4E, and the CR system is a lot less of a car crash than 3.XE. It's not a huge help, but at least it's not actively misleading like 3.XE's CR was.

True. I've never met a party that actually  wanted to take prisoners, mostly for logistical reasons.

My experience is that most parties love the idea of taking prisoners exactly up until logistical stuff becomes an issue, and then the problems with that gradually make them averse to the idea. In games where you can have the cops come or whatever, taking prisoners suddenly becomes vastly more common.

EDIT - I note that when henchmen/hirelings/bases were more common in 2E, we saw a lot more prisoners taken. Hell, the main base of the 2E group I ran for most (a fancy castle) had a dungeon that ended up so full they had to think about maybe releasing people. I kind of wish I still had the list of all the people they had in there, maybe do I somewhere...

 

[MGibster]

To be honest, the biggest single obstacle I've observed with D&D combat is players not knowing the rules as pertaining to their character class' abilities.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I wonder if monsters would run someone through if they get downed….

Like on a medieval battlefield, would you deliver a killing blow or let the enemy crawl away to engage someone else?

I am thinking you would deal a killing blow unless someone else was bearing down on you. If we play monsters that way, still no thrill? If getting downed = death I am not seeing how things would be boring

 

[overgeeked]

It sounds like what you're looking for is a narrative solution to a mechanical problem. I can see something like that in the DMG as an optional rule, but to make it the default is a very different way to play D&D than some would want (myself included).

I don’t think so. I’m looking for narrative and mechanical solutions to narrative and mechanical problems.

 

[Oofta]

4E had incredibly precise and detailed guidelines that are totally unlike any other edition (very focused on "types" of monsters), has easy scaling so you could trivially level stuff up and down, and further, the wildest and most shocking thing was - the rules actually worked if you followed them closely! They reliably produced balanced and interesting encounters (so long you enjoy 4E of course lol).

3.XE had CR, which was an active detriment to encounter design, for the very simple reason that the methodology used to assign CR lead to monsters/NPCs with insanely disparate power levels having the same CR. Seriously a monster that could casually wipe an entire party of level X would commonly have the same CR as one that would struggle to last two rounds and likely achieve little.

5E has much looser guidelines than 4E, and the CR system is a lot less of a car crash than 3.XE. It's not a huge help, but at least it's not actively misleading like 3.XE's CR was.

My experience is that most parties love the idea of taking prisoners exactly up until logistical stuff becomes an issue, and then the problems with that gradually make them averse to the idea. In games where you can have the cops come or whatever, taking prisoners suddenly becomes vastly more common.

EDIT - I note that when henchmen/hirelings/bases were more common in 2E, we saw a lot more prisoners taken. Hell, the main base of the 2E group I ran for most (a fancy castle) had a dungeon that ended up so full they had to think about maybe releasing people. I kind of wish I still had the list of all the people they had in there, maybe do I somewhere...

My experience is that sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Then again my estimates for 5E are fairly close as well, once I've figured out how to adjust for a specific group.

No version has ever been perfect but once I've run a few games it's not that hard.