You can't win this encounter

[Mistwell]

The "you" was responding to your words, not an assumption on how you play. Because the scenario you described was already way past most of the safeguards of non-level-specific play and was cherry-picking an example where they all had been ignored. I wasn't judging your play, I was saying that the scenario you gave was already many player decisions in and we can't just look at that tiny slice.

The premise of "flee" assumes they already engaged in a combat encounter. "Decided to leave" or "Decided to negotiate" are not "flee" situations. So I am starting where the thread started.

If you don't like that, that's fine. How about you respond to the scenario where the party has already started combat, they no longer thing they can win, and comment how you think that goes from there? If you don't want to talk about that aspect, then maybe ignore my posts in the thread? But nit picking that you don't like where I started to talk about the scenario accomplishes nothing.

Any time a scenario starts with "they are in an encounter", there are significant decisions in a non-level-specific world that have already been skipped that make the scenario incomplete and not useful for discussing this.


Absolute statement not true absolutely. Have described multiple scenarios, from defending young, to having a slower speed, to the DM providing caves unnavigable to a larger creature. Yes, in many cases a predator will attempt to give chase, but again that is already multiple intentional player descisions down the road which may lead to death - just like any other character decision.

I used the presented sample, a dragon. But MOST monsters in the monster manual have a speed of at least the slowest member of a common adventuring party. And MOST monsters the party would attack will want to kill you, particularly if you just tried to kill them. If you want to talk about exceptions to that rule, that's fine. I am talking about the general rule though.

A cave which the monster cannot navigate, in general, makes no sense. The monster got there to begin with! It's their lair! And again, if you don't like those completely normal, common scenarios for something like a dragon or similar encounters...don't comment on it then. Telling me you can imagine other scenarios doesn't do anything. OK, you can imagine other scenarios but what do you have to say about this one?

Citation please on "certain death". That's rhetoric that's not backed up by anything, especially with the discussion you have repeated not engaged with that DMing a non-level-specific world does build in flee points for some combats, especially while getting players retrained from a "if the DM put it here it's a level-appropriate encounter" mindset.

If you flee at a speed which, even with a full retreat where you are moving your full speed twice in a round and the foe can move their full speed once in a round and also attack you, then it's certain death. You will never get away. You will die from attacks, and as you're not attacking back there is no escape. That's certain death.

I never, never one time, said or implied in any way shape or form, that the players were coming at it from a "if the DM put it here it's a level-appropriate encounter" mindset. That was always your strawman. I already corrected your misunderstanding of that position. Please stop repeating it as if that's my position. It's not. Clear?

I don't think the scenario presented is that niche or unusual. Party runs into a creature that's more powerful than they thought, or the party is weaker than they though. They start combat and realize they're outmatched. Do they flee or continue the fight?

I am commenting on how darn hard it is to flee in D&D. It's essentially a non-choice in many common scenarios. If the party flees, the monster can usually just kill them for fleeing. Because the mechanics of fleeing are such that monsters have a huge advantage against them.

I think the game designers realize this, at least in part. There are a handful of mid and higher level spells intended to allow a party to basically pull the emergency rip cord and get the heck out of there. And I think they're there, at least in part, because fleeing by foot is usually a disaster.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think you have to establish "You can nearly always flee" at session zero.

 

[Blue]

If you don't like that, that's fine. How about you respond to the scenario where the party has already started combat, they no longer thing they can win, and comment how you think that goes from there?

That's like saying "How about you evaluate the survivability of a 15th fighter but only when it has 23 HPs."

That everything will start to be evaluated only after the party gets into combat is missing important gameplay steps that differ a non-level specific game. You say that it's not your position, which I will believe because you say it, but you make assumptions that would never fly in a non-level specific game, so it's clear from your words that's not your position either.

You're refusal to engage with that because "the original post says they are started combat before realizing they must flee" means we can't have a reasonable discussion about actual non-level-specific games.

 

[dragoner]

I have in encounters killed a character, or NPC or two; I don't ascribe to the "killer GM" philosophy, but things happen. Usually afterwards the players are more cautious next time around.

 

[pemerton]

What is the reason for including an encounter which (1) presents itself as a combat encounter, in the sense that it includes all the standard trappings (it takes place in a dungeon, the creature is pretty obviously a "baddy", the creature is all that stands between the PCs and wealth, etc), but which (2) the players are expected to have their PCs run from rather than tackle as they would the typical encounter presented in this fashion?

Is it to test the player's skill at reading the GM's cues? Or for some other reason?

 

[FrogReaver]

What is the reason for including an encounter which (1) presents itself as a combat encounter, in the sense that it includes all the standard trappings (it takes place in a dungeon, the creature is pretty obviously a "baddy", the creature is all that stands between the PCs and wealth, etc), but which (2) the players are expected to have their PCs run from rather than tackle as they would the typical encounter presented in this fashion?

Is it to test the player's skill at reading the GM's cues? Or for some other reason?

This 100%.

And D&D really needs a flee combat mechanic.

 

[FrogReaver]

That's like saying "How about you evaluate the survivability of a 15th fighter but only when it has 23 HPs."

That everything will start to be evaluated only after the party gets into combat is missing important gameplay steps that differ a non-level specific game. You say that it's not your position, which I will believe because you say it, but you make assumptions that would never fly in a non-level specific game, so it's clear from your words that's not your position either.

You're refusal to engage with that because "the original post says they are started combat before realizing they must flee" means we can't have a reasonable discussion about actual non-level-specific games.

To jump in here - it sounds like you agree the players often have little recourse when it comes to fleeing mid fight?

 

[pemerton]

This 100%.

My question wasn't really meant as rhetorical, though I can see how you read it that way.

And I do find the idea a bit puzzling or counter-intuitive, at least in a context where the GM is taken to have principal authority over telling the players what they encounter.

D&D really needs a flee combat mechanic.

That seems like a plausible claim.

 

[FrogReaver]

My question wasn't really meant as rhetorical, though I can see how you read it that way.

And I do find the idea a bit puzzling or counter-intuitive, at least in a context where the GM is taken to have principal authority over telling the players what they encounter.


That seems like a plausible claim.

I think the idea is more that the challenge should cease to be the combat and instead become avoiding the combat - by either finding a clever way around it now or coming back when you are stronger.

the style in theory should work really well IMO but there’s quite a few complicating factors:

It’s extradionaroly difficult to gauge combat difficulty even with all the information available. There’s typically some degree of information missing in any scenario. Also, the information is not always properly conveyed or received leading to misconceptions. There’s the fail and die issue where many actions you take to avoid the combat if failed can logically lead to certain death (fail a stealth check and the creature sees you as an example)

 

[pemerton]

I think the idea is more that the challenge should cease to be the combat and instead become avoiding the combat - by either finding a clever way around it now or coming back when you are stronger.

the style in theory should work really well IMO but there’s quite a few complicating factors:

It’s extradionaroly difficult to gauge combat difficulty even with all the information available. There’s typically some degree of information missing in any scenario. Also, the information is not always properly conveyed or received leading to misconceptions.

Gygax talks about this sort of thing in his PHB: scouting the dungeon to gain information, so that then it is the players who get to decide what encounters take place.

I think you're 100% right that there are complicating factors.

In Gygax's game, there is an assumption that you can (typically) tell what level of the dungeon you are on. (There are GM-side tricks that muck with that, like sloping passages and sliding chutes and the like, but there are also player-side counters to those tricks like demi-humans who can sense distance and direction underground.) This helps gauge difficulty (eg the lich vs wight example upthread).

There is also the assumption of the widespread use of detection magic: hence Detect Evil, ESP, Wands of Enemy Detection, magic swords, etc. I don't think this is as prevalent or commonly used in contemporary play - I would say at least in part because, frankly, it's a bit boring!

A third assumption for all this to work is that the dungeon is largely static between the PCs' incursions. Because if it's not, then the information will be unreliable. You can see that Gygax was changing his mind in relation to this assumption even in the course of writing up his AD&D manuals, as the DMG has an emphasis on a "living, breathing, organic" approach to the way a dungeon changes over time that isn't a good fit with the play advice given in the earlier-published PHB.

In this thread, a widespread assumption seems to be that the players will gain the necessary information, and act on it, not in advance of any encounter as Gygax had in mind, but during the encounter itself. As you say that is a recipe for disaster, particularly in the absence of robust rules for fleeing.