D&D General Run Away!

[UngainlyTitan]

I just did a quick scan through the srd and books and you're right -- there is no method for how to escape an encounter. the closest it gets is the Chase rules but those very pointedly don't include options or information on the chase being in the dungeon.

Then my advice, pending some official change (doubt we will see one) is come up with something for disengaging.

Talk to the players about it.

 

[overgeeked]

In my experience, the PCs fleeing combat is one of the rarest events in a D&D campaign. It often seems like they would rather fight to the death and suffer a TPK than turn tail and escape. This happens even when escape is relatively certain, and even when the fight is largely unnecessary.

It happened most recently in my new campaign. (Note, the PCs are starting at 3rd level, not 1st.) The first room in the dungeon contained 2 chuuls -- a deadly encounter for the 5 PCs -- and an easy way out that the chuuls could not follow. Despite bad luck -- not hitting and taking hits themselves -- the PCs absolutely would not take the way out. They focused fire and dropped one of the chulls, so I gave them a free round while the other devoured the innards of its mate. Even then they did not take the opportunity to leave. Injured and already almost out of their big guns, they decided to face the thing down, even though they have not hit it yet (so it is fresh).

Could be the shortest campaign ever, I guess.

Anyway -- what is your view on PCs fleeing fights? Do you see it happen relatively regularly? Do you design encounters to make it necessary? What is the GM's role, if any, in the party deciding to stand or flee?

As you say, the overwhelmingly vast majority of players would rather their characters die than run. It’s a function of game design and player training. The game, assuming 5E, is designed for the players to win. So defeat or worse running away are just not in the cards. Players assume every encounter is a fight and that they can win every fight.

I don’t design encounters. Whatever is rolled on the appropriate wandering monster table is what appears or whatever is supposed to be where the PCs are is what’s there. The encounter a warband of 17 orcs, then that’s what happens. They track the warband back to its village, then they have a village of orcs to encounter.

The referee’s role is to play the world. If the monsters would pursue, then they pursue. If the monsters would leave them to run, they do. If it’s a choice between TPK and running, the referee should tell the players if the characters think the monsters will pursue. The best way to make sure a player never decides to run again is to chase them down after fleeing.

 

[el-remmen]

My current Ghosts of Saltmarsh+ group has only ever run away once, and they used big barred double doors to slow down the pursuing force (which they never quite engaged with b/c a PC won initiative and the first thing they did was drop the bar) and then found another way out of the building they were in and then fled to an abandoned farmhouse - allowing for several hours of rest while the authorities (the bad guys in this case) went house to house in the village looking for them.

That said, they have witnessed their surviving foes run away successfully more than once - so I think they understand that they could try running away, if they needed to. It might help that I have grandfathered a version of 3E's ready and delay - which allows for more easily coordinating actions.

 

[Reynard]

Then my advice, pending some official change (doubt we will see one) is come up with something for disengaging.

Talk to the players about it.

I wasn't expressing frustration that the rules weren't there. I was just confirming that they were not, in fact, present.
I'm more of a

Player: "Oh, crap, we're getting killed! Let's get out of here!"
Me: "Ok, you guys make a break for it." ::rolls dice:: "Bob, you take a last swipe to the back as you flee. 14 points."
Bob: "Oh man, I'm down! Guys?!"
Other Players: "Thank gawd, now the monsters won't chase us. We bail."

type GM.

 

[Blue]

A couple of thoughts on retreating.

1. There seems to be a great difference in retreating between campaigns that are not level specific and the players know fights may be unfair, and campaigns where players have been trained that "if it's there, it's a fair fight" either intentionally or unintentionally through actions.

1a. The corollary to this is that in a game where retreats are expected occasionally, both the characters are more prepared to do so in terms of spells/consumables/etc, the players are more prepared to make that call are retreat as a unit, and the DM is more likely to have given reasons why retreat isn't mechanically death (just chasing from nest/younglings, small exit points the foe can't follow through, etc.)

2. Players as a whole are very loathe to leave behind another PC, so often running becomes a non-starter as at least some of the other PCs will also stay behind and at that point if the other PCs run it will be abandoning them to die and might as well try to push forward.

3. D&D rules, while varying be edition, are pretty antagonistic toward fleeing. Opportunity attacks, slow movement compared to ranged attacks, monsters faster than the slowest in the party - lots of "take lots of damage as you try to retreat, maybe die anyway".

3a. Other D&D-like sometimes add in rules to encourage this. For example the D20 game 13th Age allows a full retreat, including the bodies of those fallen/unconscious, at the cost of a campaign setback. These stakes can be hammered out in any gae, but by codifying it the players know they have something to fall back on, and the DM has a direction offered by the rules.

 

[el-remmen]

Oh and I want to add that I think player mindset is a lot more responsible for "never running away" than any mechanical aspect of the rules. Unless your fight is happening in a large clear field in the middle of the day, a lot of environments will provide opportunity to break line of sight and try to hide or run off in one direction among many possibilities - esp. since it would not take that much to leave the radius of lanterns or darkvision.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So here's the deal as I see it.

DMs tend to try to be authors at least at some point in our careers. We are always looking to generate conflict and drama. A hopeless battle where the heroes break and flee, and all is lost to us feels moving and romantic and overall like a good moment.

But.

D&D is not a book. It is not experienced like a book. Instead of being moved by the plight of a protagonist we're form a connection to, the player is in that character's shoes. They aren't watching the failure and heartbreak, they're experiencing it by proxy. It feels bad. It feels not fun for a lot of players.

So the expectation is that being put into that state is already a failure state for a lot of players.

Add into that the fact that the game doesn't have a very good means of actually disengaging from a fight and is actually punitive to characters attempting to do so and players will simply throw the whole concept out of their lexicon because it's both something they're not happy to have in the game and something the game doesn't want you to do. The only person who wants this to happen is the DM.

 

[Reynard]

So here's the deal as I see it.

DMs tend to try to be authors at least at some point in our careers. We are always looking to generate conflict and drama. A hopeless battle where the heroes break and flee, and all is lost to us feels moving and romantic and overall like a good moment.

But.

D&D is not a book. It is not experienced like a book. Instead of being moved by the plight of a protagonist we're form a connection to, the player is in that character's shoes. They aren't watching the failure and heartbreak, they're experiencing it by proxy. It feels bad. It feels not fun for a lot of players.

So the expectation is that being put into that state is already a failure state for a lot of players.

Add into that the fact that the game doesn't have a very good means of actually disengaging from a fight and is actually punitive to characters attempting to do so and players will simply throw the whole concept out of their lexicon because it's both something they're not happy to have in the game and something the game doesn't want you to do. The only person who wants this to happen is the DM.

Thank you for articulating that. If you are right (and I think you are sort of right) what is the answer: TPK or softball?

 

[payn]

Thank you for articulating that. If you are right (and I think you are sort of right) what is the answer: TPK or softball?

I know you asked Vaalingrade this, but in my posting I mentioned that "TPK or Softball" should be determined in session zero and the campaign style pitch. Both styles are still popular enough to have confusion between them. YMMV.

 

[iserith]

I would say the answer is setting appropriate expectations prior to play rather than risk a TPK nobody thought would ever happen or softballing the monster tactics all of a sudden because things aren't going the PCs' way. Either of those comes with the risk of making the group dissatisfied, so better to address this issue up front. This is discussed in the DMG under Table Rules, specifically, "metagame thinking." The example given is the players believing that the DM would never present them with a challenge they could not beat (and perhaps finding out too late that isn't the case).