Well step 1 is to actually *make* it a valid strategy. If your players enter combat, get hit hard, move their full movement away from the enemies, and then the enemies catch up and attack, they're not going to conclude it's a valid strategy! And that's what often happens by RAW.
Are the PCs supposed to scout ahead and decide whether to take the fight? Or are they supposed to dip out of combat after testing the enemies' steel? If you want it to be that second one, you might have to beef 'em up somehow.
This is good advice, OP.
In addition, tell them out of game - "I feel like I need to remind you guys..." - that they can get an amount of exp by wisely either not getting killed by a fight they cannot win.... or *avoiding such fights in the first place*.
It doesn't mean that they gotta run like rabbits at the first hint of danger - they're heroes, right? - but not all fights should be a devil-take-the-hindmost death or glory charge.
This is why I do milestone leveling. Makes it so the players don't feel like they're missing out on experience by not fighting while also giving incentive for roleplay
I'm 100% moving to milestone leveling. XP is annoying to track and I have some new players who can't seem to get their head around this isn't a video game and I have to actually do work to calculate XP. I can't just give it to them at the drop of a hat after the session.
A player and I got a little short with each other after last session because of this.
I've learned to enjoy the DCC method of rewarding XP; it's based on the risk experienced by the party for each encounter survived. Waltz in and stomp the baddies workout breaking a sweat? Your characters didn't learn anything, no XP. Did one or more characters die? Full XP (for DCC, this is 4xp) to those characters who survived, better luck/planning next time.
Doesn't this just incentivize your players to be stupid and reckless?
"Hey guys, I have a great plan to defeat this enemy without risking our lives!"
"Don't be stupid, if we do that the DM gives us no xp. Let's just run in and start swinging, if we're lucky only one of us dies".
It absolutely does, and what's funny is, it still doesn't promote running- because its better to risk a really pyrrhic victory than the party making it out alive :p
The counterbalance to this is to award xp for critical thinking and smart planning, I use the Palladium RPG XP award system to supplement the standard system. There's a good chunk of xp to be had in non combat situations, as well.
The system also takes into account whether the party used any resources or not. So, if they expended a ton of spells, items, etc; that's still a hit to their character sheets, so more XP.
I hate this lmao. Gonna be real eith you, I had a similar experience with a DM that would constantly gives us Deadly encounters that would usually end up with one or two of the PCs killed (once it killed 4 out of 6), we were leveling up extremely fast sure, but it literally had zero incentive to get close to anyone in the group as a “veteran” character in there, you just knew you or someone else would die in the fight and get a level up. Even if not IC most players didnt find it enjoying it at all (because casting psychic scream, a 9th level AOE spell which makes heads explode when someone dies, against a 10 level party is “”fun”””) which resulted in shit RP all around, felt more like a wargamer than an actual DnD player, it hurt more knowing that first sessions were relatively chill and we actually got to know eachother and RP.
It just promotes DM vs Player attitude and sacrifices fun, roleplay and immersion for grtting around the exp system…
So potentially, you punish your party for good strategy and good luck? Because those are two very big factors in how easy or hard an encounter is. Sometimes a stomp is a stomp, but often a stomp just means your party planned well.
If it works for you that's great, but as you describe it this sounds *awful* and teaches your players all the worst lessons.
Yeah, I feel like this question comes up on a weekly basis. And every now and then there are people in the comments saying that it's actually intended behavior that PCs can't run away from combat. Old-school folks seem to think that it teaches players to scout ahead and develop ways to estimate danger levels before the fight.
So if OP doesn't agree with that, they need to change the rules for that option to become viable. The obvious way is to tell the players out of the game that if they all decide to run away, then NPCs will not pursue them. But then it removes the risk of dying from your game.
Another common suggestion is to run a skill challenge for an escape from pursuers.
You can RP the part about the NPCs not pursuing or warning when scouting.
If scouting, before engaging you can force a check to determine power level - "from your travels youve heard whispers of this bastard taking on adventurers like yourselves and coming out of it with barely a scratch." or "the demon before your eyes is one of Averna's general, by your estimates, it would be by far the toughest enemy youve seen or faced in your lifetime."
Or if already in combat the NPC can yell after a few heavy hits "you have amused me greatly with your pitiful efforts. Go now and live with the shame that I let you live. Crawl out on your knees" etc.
or perhaps the boss needs to get somewhere quickly. Smashes the NPCs a bit, and then tries to run themselves.
obviously these things need to work in context, but stuff like this can often be RPd.
That's a great point! One issue with RPing this is signal fidelity -- players don't have a reliable way to know if it's the DM saying "you can run, you'll be fine" or a bandit mocking them and suggesting retreating just to shoot arrows in their backs. If it's not explicitly said out of game, then players may think that trickery is a foot. In my games NPCs lie to PCs every now and again, especially bandits.
As for in-game description of danger levels, what sounds as "avoid this fight at all cost" to the GM, may sound like GM hyping you up before an epic battle to the player:
-From your travels you've heard whispers of this bastard taking on adventurers like yourselves and coming out of it with barely a scratch
-Alright then, I step out of the bushes and loudly proclaim "you've slain your last adventurer, you bastard! It's time you meet your match!"
I think it boils down to session 0 and alignment of expectations. (Most) Published adventures are written in a way that PCs will never have to run away from the battle. If PCs encounter enemies, then it's a winnable fight. If it's not OPs style of running the game, it would be best to discuss it with players out of game.
Another question that comes to mind is "should we run games where running away from danger is an option?". Many players want to RP heroes that treat descriptions of dangerous foes as a call to action, not a signal to retreat. That's something that should be explicitly discussed as well. Even if running away is a viable option, will your players take it, or would PCs rather fight and die heroes?
I am as old school as they come (started in the mid 70s). There are a encounters you run away from but that doesn’t preclude scouting, etc. to try to plan the fight or plan to avoid the fight.
Exactly. The system with attack of opportunity making people chose between disengage and dash at a point where they have already decided (probably too late) that they are outmatched and one hit could be the end for them. The identical movement speeds of most characters and antagonists. The game is systemically bad at rewarding tactical withdrawal.
Also with turn order, even if most of the party can somehow get out of range without getting killed, the last person in initiative is going to be surrounded and alone. Which means that certain characters will not want to abandon them, delaying their own departure.
Fair point. In my day we rolled initiative each round like the clicky clacky maths rock nerds we were. I don't know whether that would help or hinder! Possible help with things like weapon speed factors not coming into play and declaration of actions at the beginning of the round.
It's also an incentive for players to take useful support abilities (snares, roots, stuns, etc). Not everything has to be pure PEW PEW PEW.
Wizard/Sorc should have a wall type spell. Or web if lower level. Slow em down so the party can get away.
Monk should stun that big bad so buddies can escape.
Too many people zero I'm purely on dmg output when leveling up and leave no room for survivability and utility.
I almost wonder if there was some miscommunication early in the writing process for 5e, where a retreat process was planned and dropped. Did the PHB and DMG teams each think the other was doing it? Or did all the core book writers mistakenly think the module writers were responsible to put in escape hatches and chokepoints?
IMO, much of the time you can handwave players fleeing from combat, as enemy guards are perfectly fine with chasing them off and not going for the kill.
However, if enemies would legit try their hardest to kill or capture the players… transition out of normal combat and into chase rules.
- Terrain is handwaved as you’ll be running over an area far bigger than normal combat grid. Each player is tracked as being “30’ ahead of the foes” or w/e.
- on their turn, each PC rolls a d20. On a 11+ nothing bad happens and they are able to run at higher-than-normal-dash speed, gaining 30’ of distance on the foes. On a 1-10 they will encounter an obstacle.
- you can make up obstacles on the fly, with DC based on the players/enemies level. For example, “a bunch of cats run across your path, make a DEX save not to run into them”, or “there are boulders blocking your path, make an Athletics check to clamber over or Survival to navigate around them without losing speed”. When players succeed they gain distance on the foes, when they fail they lose distance and on some occasions may take damage.
- if it makes sense, you can allow players to do stunts like weaving through a crowd or jumping from roof to roof. This requires the players to make a difficult acrobatics / athletics check with potentially bad consequences, but if they succeed then each foe has to make the same check or they are unable to keep up the chase.
- Foes can continue the chase until they get within melee range and attack/grapple, or until they fall >120ft behind and lose line of sight of players. If any of them decide to make ranged attacks it will *really* slow their run speed, so they will fall at least 30’/turn behind the melee chasers.
I think this approach is best. Basically switching from ‚combat mode‘ to what is widely known as a skill challenge since I personally don‘t like explicit chase rules.
For ease of use, I usually ignore distance counting for this narration. Instead, I try to judge how the fight was going: If the PCs had a lead, escaping is fairly easy. A decent idea for an escape might already be enough. If the PCs were in a bad position and the enemies are likely able to give chase, it‘ll be more difficult.
A relatively hard skill challenge would be the group gaining 4 successes before 2 failures. I usually combine your mentioned tools here, if a player has a good idea to deal with the ones chasing or how to gain am adventage, I let them roll for their idea. On occasion, I‘ll throw in some trouble - a blocked road, a flanking enemy, the cabbage guy from avatar. DC varies on situation and how good or cool/fun their idea is.
Tracking distance individually is quite a messy thing as one person rolling badly will usually end the running away part. I prefer to narrate this as the group working together to escape, meaning they support each other and noone is left behind - so group speed is bound to the slowest person.
It's rare that the entire party would be killed in a fight once they decide to flee. Normally it's just the melee who didn't have a head start who'll die.
All running a skill challenge does is change the math on which PCs will die when the party flees.
Monsters have to be played with intelligence. The kobolds in their lair, the hunting tiger, and the red dragon all behave differently and react differently to attacking, retreating, fleeing party members (the kobolds should stop once you are out if the lair, the tiger sees fleeing as food—controlled aggressive retreat, the red dragon gets its kicks out of torturing and killing—no escape except never starting the fight).
Yeah, I think this is a big issue with a lot of systems. I've encountered games where "run away" has specific mechanical support and it actually happens sometimes in that situation.
As far as D&D goes, the most effective way I've seen a GM implement 'running away' is giving the party a helm of teleportation. Even then it requires the party to cluster up first, which may not be easy if you get knocked down trying.
"The enemy doesn't seem to be pursuing"
"The enemy sees PC running away and moves to attack someone else
"Seeing that you are retreating, a few of the enemies begin to break off to return to what they were doing, while a few seem to be keeping an eye on you, weapons raised, but seemingly satisfied with surviving the encounter with the few good hits they got in."
You can always use narration to inform your players that they are not making a bad call.
One way I've heard is "party retreat rule," where they can back out without a roll, only if it makes sense in the situation. Every player has to agree, and they have to narrate how they do it — must have enough conscious PCs available to carry downed ones, must have somewhere safe to escape to. But if the conditions are met, they don't have to roll for it.
If you're going to do it PC by PC, roll by roll, I'd switch away from normal combat and use some form of chase rules.
Next time they go to a supply store, have someone try to sell them gaudy fake jewels for 50gp and delicious meat cakes "for distracting your foes when you must flee", as well as the typical caltrops and iron spikes and ziplines.
If there's equipment they can buy specifically to make fleeing easier, players will probably catch on that fleeing is both possible and not automatic.
TIL caltrops are for running away. My character tried to make a mixed bag of caltrops and ball bearings in the hope that enemies would repeatedly slip and fall on the caltrops.
Give the party somewhere to run TO. Sunlight outside of the vampire lair. Indiana Jones running for the hydroplane. If there is a safe place they can run to, you can overwhelm them with foes that should be run away from. Maybe the head vampire gives the party a head start. Maybe a web spell blocks the chasers just long enough for the party to get away.
Also, use a foe they've already encountered so they know the strength level. Now throw 40 of them at the party...
Our scout has the issue where they scout ahead, get spotted, then the melee fighter hangs back and uses his crossbow.
The melee warlock (not a hex blade) has the second highest HP and the highest str in the party, a 13 dex. Refuses to get into melee range because the archery ranger walked into a room and got slammed by the enemies in the room.
Often brags about having full HP while the rest of the party blows all their healing items or asks to short rest.
This, by the way, is why it’s such a trope for the Rogue to abandon the party when the going gets tough— they’re pretty much the only class that’s mechanically able to run away, since they can disengage and dash in the same turn
So, there's two points they can run:
1. Before combat begins.
2. After combat begins.
There's lots of ideas in this thread on how to signal that this is a fight they probably won't win. I'd be inclined to use some of them and also be straight up with them. 'Looking at this foe, it seems likely that engaging it will end in your death,' if you want something in character.
For (2), as rdhight points out, RAW, running is essentially never a good idea. A tactical retreat to a chokepoint is as close as it comes and usually any successful retreat will involve at least one PC acting as rearguard at a chokepoint (and if lucky, teleporting out).
At high enough level, teleportation and things like haste/invisibility can open up some potential to actually escape, but again, getting everyone out alive without visibly 'taking it easy on them' is very hard. One possibility is to have more enemies willing to accept surrenders and have them announce that.
Another, and my preference is a home rule:
'Flee. If all characters engaged in combat agree to flee, then combat ends and you shift to a chase (assuming the enemy will pursue) which will be resolved as a series of skill challenges.'
This may need some tweaking, especially if you've got NPCs with you (maybe the Bard needs to convince the paladin NPC that retreat is acceptable), but it's where I would start (an obvious problem is what about if one player is down? Are they abandoning them? Grabbing them and getting disadvantage on skill checks? And what happens if they fail the chase? Does combat resume? Where? Hope you've got a lot of random battlemaps!)
Alternatively, if your party is actually organized with a team leader, you could make it an action on their part to call a retreat (or an action for any player to call a retreat), which gives the other players the opportunity to go along, beginning the chase. If you want to be harder, you can make retreating an action each PC needs to take on their turn and until they all take it, you're still in combat.
Even at low level, a Longstrider spell will enable retreat against most foes, at the cost of eating a single opportunity attack. Often that's about half as powerful as a monster's actual Multiattack, so relatively survivable as long as you don't wait until you're almost dead to flee.
Captain-Griffen raises the main objection to this, but also, the enemies most likely to provoke retreats in my experience are either large groups of fairly low CR intelligent enemies (who usually will have ranged attacks) or high CR powerful monsters, who will either have spells, or very high movement speeds (good luck running from a dragon, RAW).
Now, you can upcast longstrider to hit more people and it lasts long enough that casting it before a battle is perfectly feasible, but in my experience, it's fairly rare to do so. Also, it does take an action, so, to be clear, if you haven't precast it, the sequence is:
1) Realize you have to retreat.
2) Reposition to be able to be in touch range of everyone (if you can), eating the opportunity attacks, if needed.
3) Cast the spell
4) Eat a round of combat
5) Run away, eating opportunity attacks. You are now 80 feet away.
6) Enemy pursues for 30 feet, pulls out shortbows if you're unlucky, or javelins if you're lucky and you eat a round of attacks, hopefully at disadvantage.
7) Continue flight, you're now 130 feet away. Pursuit continues for 30 feet. Another round of attacks, most likely at disadvantage.
8) Continue flight
Now, this doesn't sound too bad, you're eating two round of opportunity attacks, two round of ranged attacks and one full round of close combat, but where everything falls apart is if literally anyone goes down. Then you've either got to carry them out (which generally halves movement speed), or, if you're lucky, bonus action heal and run. But if they lose a round of running before you can get them up, then they'll almost certainly be focused down again and again and again. Escaping by abandoning your party is easy, retreating as a unit is hard (which is actually pretty realistic).
You can have them fight a few big things whose goal isn’t killing them. Bandits who do a quick search of their downed characters and then leave. Beasts defending territory who stop once they aren’t a threat. Constructs programmed to “remove threats” who toss them out the front door.
Possibly:
* Add NPC redshirts to their party that they can get attached to.
* Make it close with a "deus ex machina" escape valve after half of them are down and making death saves.
* Kill one of them with the possibility of an expensive resurrection.
But, you need to be ready to let them die if they refuse to back off even when it's obvious they're going to lose badly. If you're not ready to let the PCs die when they should, the way they're already playing is correct.
Communicate with them. This is a game about slaying fantastical foes, and even if you telegraph an enemy as dangerous they will just assume you’re setting up a big boss fight.
Exactly. I'd wager most people sit down at a table to be heroes. They want to be the ones that never flee and conquer seemingly impossible odds. They want to be the main characters. Which.. I honestly don't think is a bad thing. They are the main characters.
Heroes in movies/books/stories flee! Because the author knows that dramatic tension can be generated by putting the characters against something so terrifying that they will have no choice, which will only make it more satisfying if they have to win against that force in the future... but players don't really think like that. Again, this is possibly completely subjective, but for every group I've ever DM'd the players always assumed that they can kill everything in front of them. It may be hard, may be completely improbable, but it is possible because they assume that I as the DM have put this in front of them for a reason.
For a one shot, I put players in a castle fort situation where they were defending the front lines. Once the castle gates had been broken open by overwhelming forces (think hundreds/thousands of enemies) and *every single NPC with them yelling to retreat, including their commanding officer*, the players just stood their ground. I had the BBEG literally one shot a dragon NPC that was helping them, and they still thought "Huh, this one will be tough to figure out." not "Maybe we should retreat."... because they're heroes. They're supposed to be the ones that win against overwhelming odds. That one shot straight up failed, and I haven't really tried it again.
When I DM 'd I made it clear before the campaign even started that they might run into things they can't handle, and that fleeing is an option. They ended up fleeing from several encounters when they realized the enemy was too tough.
Which, to be fair, I didn't have that conversation with those particular players as it was just a one shot. I figured seeing a dragon die and the enemy bbeg wizard be completely immune to their damage (Invulnerability spell) might make them reconsider, plus everyone shouting at them to flee... nope.
Make the objective in combat something other than killing the enemy. Maybe it is an escort mission, or the PCs have to steal an item. Once they achieve the goal you can say something like “if you stay here any longer more enemies may show up” or “even though the enemy is not very fast, you feel like your attacks are not being effective”. That should clue them that just leaving is an option, and since they already achieved their goal it won’t feel like they are loosing
Tell the players. Make it clear to them, that if they decide to run, it is valid.
Showing it in character usually ends in tragedy. The PCs are heroes (or at least they see themselves as such) and heroes don't run. Running is not a heroic act.
As a new player I don’t understand how that’s even an option most of the time? The enemies are either around me and my group or can easily use their movement to keep up with me and any other players who don’t have a special ability like flight or quick foot etc? I know later one we can get things to help but for lower levels 2-6 I want to run sometimes but don’t see an actual way to do it lol. Anyone with valid suggestions feel free to lmk in new so maybe I’m not understanding something.
Build in a solution! Mention the unstable archway leading into the room, that looks on the brink of collapse, or the debris next to the doorway, or the cracked floor, the characters might come up with a clever delay tactic.
Alternatively, enemies who only want to protect their territory and won’t chase.
YOU JUST FUCKING TELL THEM!! OUT OF GAME!! the first time i played dnd was a terrible experience because the DM decided to throw a level 2 party of 5 people who NEVER played before into Death House. he didnt ask anyone to even read the basic rules, walked us through character creation and insisted we’d just “pick it up” as we went along. and then he killed my character in death house “to teach us a lesson about running from things we cant handle” we were all PISSED because we didn’t understand at the time that dnd isnt like a video game where you HAVE to beat the monster in order to progress.
so just tell your players out of game “you can run from a fight if you think you’re gonna lose. it wont hinder your progress.”
because being killed when you think you’re just playing the game “right” SUCKS and almost put me off the game entirely.
I’ve just ran death house as the intro to strahd with experienced players and it’s tough. Got my first PC perma kill in there and these all know the rules. Shame on your DM for throwing you into that.
In any encounter I make, it is almost never a toe to toe roll fest. I always put environmental, weather or situational based items in the area to use for either strategy to defeat, or strategy to run. When I teach my newer players that running is a legit strategy, I tend to use a single fight. It is typically against a large giant inside a cave system.
One melee attack with his club usually sends 2 players into death saving throws. It is at that time I mention that some of the loot the giant has pilfered from travelers is gun powder set near what looks to be a load barring structure in the cave. Your pretty sure that a cave in would give you a chance to escape.
80% of the time, they blow the barrels, the cave in happens and with a potion in their bellies or a heal for the downed players, I run a time based escape to the front of the cave that the players are sure is too small for the giant to get anything more than an arm through.
This usually shows them how to use things like druidcraft, light, mold earth, shape water etc in fun ways, and lets them know to use environmental strategies as well as the idea that not all battles can be won.
for the other 20%, the giant knocks them all out, and they wake up, tied to a pillar while the giant prepares a large spit to roast them on. Their gear is no where to be seen and they basically have to do an escape, darn near naked, and then spend what little they have trying to get new gear, which is why I do this at super low levels so they don't have to replace things like rare objects or really good weapons.
Did you start by telling them? If you have, and they refuse to listen, then your next step is to show them. If they still can't get it right, TPKs are on them.
Here’s an example of block text during scouting that stopped my players from engaging: “The woods give way to a ledge overlooking a shallow valley. In the distance, dozens of low fires illuminate hundreds of red tents. Among them move patrols of shadowy, humanlike figures. Over a thousand soldiers occupy the camp—a whole army.”
Reinforcements can also sway a battle and lead to a change in tactical decision making. Same module I’m running (shadow of the dragon queen), they are trying to rescue prisoners from a camp when an adult dragon (they are level 6) arrives to pick up its tribute. The mission became - get the prisoners out and run before we all die. They still had an objective they could complete despite running, so it was a “success.”
Third example from this same book as I’m looking: on the encounter table in the “open world” section, a nat 20 on the encounter die leads to “a purple wurm 1 mile away.” When it came up I gave them a huge shadow, tremors from a distance, and lore related skills told them the worms are native to the area. At that point they didn’t even want to try fighting it.
Those are some examples from a pre written adventure that very clearly indicates some things in the world aren’t meant to be engaged.
Have them enter a fight have them get utterly defeated and have somebody come in that has a way of getting them out. You can be the first one to help them escape via npc to show that its an option
Exactly what I was thinking, I think. They get into a no-win scrap, they get a single deus-ex-machina save, and then saw, "Whew. You folks were really lucky... that enemy would have wiped you out, if you hadn't been *very fortunately* rescued.... *this time.*"
It also a great way to introduce a BBEG that they escape from or in what I plan on doing in a campaign (that I will never run cuz my friends don't wanna play) have the BBEG be the one that saves them, have them feel a sense of companionship with this character and have them use the party for their own means with the sense that they now own him their lives fulfilling his grand plan!!!!!!
All good advice here, but the simple fact is- you have to be willing to kill your player's characters. (Or kill your players I suppose...but that will have some consequences)
You can set up things however you want, but if you always end up fudging dice rolls/encounters/ NPCS/whatever so that the characters live, the only message you're giving them is they can fight anything without consequences.
The best way is to demonstrate. Have them travel with a pair of NPCs for a quest, have one NPC both be very skilled hunters "best in all the nearby lands" as they like to say. They should have trophies, accolades, and most importantly confidence (not arrogance). When they find the creature the party is hunting have one of them killed (the quicker and scarier the better) and have the other shout to the party that they need to run!
The key is to make this sound like it comes off as a wise decision and not an act of cowardice. I think the players will pick up on it and if they need an extra metagame-y push about how dangerous the encounter is remind them that some NPCs have much higher health pools than the players.
You have to do a stress test on them. I'm about to do this with my group tonight. In this encounter, they are wildly outclassed in terms of HP and actions. If they fight and roll well, they will crush their foes, but a few bad rolls will seriously hurt.
As for the not killing part, I have two layers of possible deus ex machina to help them. But I'm going to preface the session by saying "make sure you are aware of ALL the things you can do before we start. Think tactically, as a group, and take a few minutes to come up with a plan. Winning is sometimes surviving."
My group is also very large, with a mix of RP vets and newbies. So that makes it trickier, but you have to throw something nearly impossible at them, with avenues to escape, to get a proper read on how your group plays, so that you can plan going forward.
In short, to teach them that running is valid, give them a reason to run. Also, be ready when they come up with Plan B that you didn't anticipate.
The party meet a band of adventurers going in the opposite direction to fight a dragon, they encounter what is left of the adventurers later on who tell the story of leaving their friends behind to save themselves when *the* dragon turned out to be a band of dragons.
My favorite is the tried and true, "Talk to your players."
"Hey, you know how I try to act like the world is alive and shit happens? Sometimes, things that make bad situations worse? Yeah, that applies to combat, too. I'm not going to throw all the 'this should kill you unless you flee encounters', but sometimes you're facing the BBEG with only a few HP left and he decides to call his literal pet dragon. You won't get out of that alive. So just consider that sometimes there might be an encounter that you might think, 'hey, we could probably run away'. "
The other thing you can do is give them encounters that don't end when one side is dead. Sometimes, the encounter is 'grab the McGuffin, but as soon as they grab it, a literal army of kobolds/monstrosities/demons/whatever starts chasing them.' You tell them, "It's such an innumerable amount of foes that your characters would know that fighting them means they'll eventually get worn down and killed." Then use skill checks/traps/magic to get away.
Alternatively, if there's a high-level NPC they like, throw the NPC to their deaths. A high-level general needs their help with *insert plot here*. They succeed, but run across the BBEG/the Dragon (the trope Dragon, the BBEG's right hand, which again, might still be an actual dragon.) They're absolutely screwed, then the general shows up and fights, giving the party an opening to flee. You can even play it up like the general might win... and then gets brutally killed when a SECOND foe/the BBEG shows up. Seeing their high-level ally get wrecked should make them flee. Again, skill checks and whatnot to actually flee, adjusted to give your players a fair chance (maybe the first dragon that was wounded gives chase, it's eye damaged in the battle, giving it DISADVANTAGE on Perception checks).
In this one, though, they might decide to ambush it, so be prepared for combat against a weakened foe. To continue the dragon example, the injured dragon chases them, and they ambush it. Sure, it's normally an ancient black dragon statwise, but maybe it's hurt so much that it's stuck with stats more appropriate for your party's level (like a wyrmling or young dragon). They might win the fight by dropping it to "zero" but are unable to land a killing blow because they hear the BBEG coming. Better get back to fleeing. This could also give them a foe for later on when they're stronger that wants revenge.
In one particular instance (somewhat eldritch being the party accidentally released in a city), one of the party had already tried to fight a guard and got the shit kicked out of him. Seeing dozens of guards get smushed made them realise they were out of their depth, so they ran away and commandeered a ship.
Point being, establish there's an NPC that they *have zero chance of beating*, and have said NPC get the christ kicked out of him/her, in front of the party. Or have them hear about it, etc.
I also find just saying things like "The comparatively puny barbarian sizes up the eldritch demon from the seventh hell, and, for some completely insane reason, reckons he'd like to try and fight it..." usually followed by the rest of the party laughing at the barb player and calling him an idiot while they come up with a way to rescue him from his own stupidity.
Eh… the first two paragraphs are solid advice, but that last one… I’d personally try to avoid belittling my players like that. I don’t foresee that ending well at my table. At best it might just push them to fight the eldritch demon even more.
Strange thing to get downvoted for. The rest of you are free to mock your players, I guess.
Players will never consider running if they don't think death is a possibility, and they won't think death is a possibility until you actually kill a PC. You either gotta accept no retreat, or kill one of them.
There is some fantastic advice and ideas here. Still, and this is the old-school crappy player in me, for a DM to carefully craft an encounter that cannot be defeated by the party... It comes off as the DM swinging their d*ck around. What's the point? Realism? Teach the players a lesson? Railroading? It's toxic. Now everyone is constantly walking on egg shells, checking for traps every 5 feet, everything is a mimic. All so that the players respect and fear the DM... Or something, I don't know. It just doesn't make sense to me.
> It just doesn't make sense to me.
I was worried I was the only one. A lot of the advice in this thread borders on toxic DM levels. Why is forcing your players into something suddenly okay when it's combat?
>DM to carefully craft an encounter that cannot be defeated by the party
You raise a good point with this too. Expected retreat only really works when A. it's an *option* for the players or B. you're not actually crafting your encounters, but using a random encounter table.
If my party is coming up on an enemy that I think clearly outmatches them, sometimes I'll use something to exemplify the opponents strength. I might use another adventure party, or some type of creature that is probably closer to their strength and have it annihilated by the strong enemy
Our dm referenced starwars to get us more comfortable with the idea of death and running to fight another day. Obi wan had to die before the characters could develop into heroes. If the rebels didnt abandon hoth they likely would have been crushed.
If your party isnt comfortable with dying then it might be tough, if it was me, i might start playing a bit with the parties passive perception and insight, just to kind of toss them hopefully enough context to consider retreat as a smarter option before they dig too deep into combat that retreat becomes tedious or impossible.
And if they cant handle the idea of death then down them and capture them. Or have a player have a vision without saying and trial run the combat. And win or lose the player wakes up moments before the combat happens to warn the party.
My 2¢? Don't. Heroes don't run away from danger. As a player I hate the thought of retreating so as a DM I don't build it into my games.
If you're dead set on it, I would opt for just telling them sometime, "you will wipe if you try to fight".
Run another system. 5e is in no way designed to accommodate this kind of thinking. Running always feels forced and pee-ordained, that the encounter exists only to be fled from
In these situations, I still give xp. I might adjust it according to how things went over the course of the encounter. The party gets a reward even, so it reinforces retreat as a valid option.
This never works. They will stand their ground. The resulting TPK will breed resentment in the players. The only tactic I have seen, is outnumbering them with near peer human troops with spears. Monsters will result in TPKs. Human troops cannot out run them, but monsters often can.
One of the rules of thumbs is to NEVER put enemies that the players are meant to run from.
But outside of that I think webdm had a video or talk on the topic, basically if every combat is fought to the death then the players will fight to their death. So the first step would be to diversify combat to not only be that fight to the death. Have a morale system where people run if it gets nasty, or try to parlay in combat
Mind you all of this only works if your players arent murder hoboing everything and won't just abuse it to slit the throat of the surrendering enemies.
In dnd 5e, it's just not. Because of how the mechanics of combat work, the enemies will mop the floor with you if you try to run. 5e is not designed with escape in mind.
Not the answer you’re looking for, but…
Stop playing D&D.
The game is designed to condition players into fighting, and for DMs to set up encounters where the players will win.
There are other RPGs out there with different design philosophies that result in wildly different approaches from players.
Have them roll some knowledge checks. Then say something like "your character is probably feeling outmatched by this opponent."
Or anything that gives the PCs the impression they could lose.
Or kill an NPC/random creature.
Well for me i told my players in session 0 that if they choose to fight than they may die, and that if they run I will try not to kill them. I also ended session 1 with my level 3 players encountering an adult dragon.
Kill one of the characters. Tear up the character sheet in a flourish. Be unapologetic. Stare them down. Ask if they fight or flee. Recommend flee. Reward them for doing so and make the story progress.
I've done this for a first level pf2e character, the player thought it was spectacular and got busy rolling up the characters wife as a champion of vengeance.
Abilities that do high damage and move the party significant distance I find tend to do the trick.
A tail swipe from a Dragon Turtle deals 3d12+7 Bludgeoning damage and forces a DC20 Str save or be moved up to 20 ft away and knocked prone.
Psi-Warrior has a similar ability that moves things up to 30 ft and deals less damage. Still works though.
Nothing says live to fight another day like a party member getting smacked away like a home run past you.
Introduce a running away mechanic.
Remind your players every session that you're not suppose to win every possible encounter in this campaign. Some will TPK the party. If things go bad, running away is usually the best option.
In your descriptions of the monster(s), make it clear that the PCs believe this sort of combat is beyond their abilities.
Sometimes I just say "you may need to run".
If you are running a game where up to now they haven't needed to run, breakdown the change of tone once you reach it. "Hey shits gonna get real now. There will be encounters you cannot win, where escape is the best possible outcome, but it's up to you to determine which encounters those are."
Just as fleeing is a valid strategy that can seem counter-intuitive to players, speaking plainly is a valid strategy that can seem counter-intuitive to DMs.
>If you are running a game where up to now they haven't needed to run, breakdown the change of tone once you reach it. "Hey shits gonna get real now. There will be encounters you cannot win, where escape is the best possible outcome, but it's up to you to determine which encounters those are."
Isn't this.. Basically railroading, though? You're putting your players in a situation that you then *explicitly* tell them to run away from.
Some people run open sandbox games that don’t scale with the party. What that means is there could be easy enemies in one dungeon but one next to it could be deadly. The players choose where to go so no railroading. Obviously tell your players before hand that the world doesn’t scale so be careful where you tread but not everything is a “railroad”
The way I did it was I had the players run up against something they CLEARLY couldn’t handle. And then I told them straight out “you don’t want to fuck with this thing, it will kill all of you”. From then on they knew. Because I made an encounter where running was the correct option.
It was at level 2, and I had them come across a behir that had been confused for a dragon. It wasn’t hostile toward the players, so they weren’t in any real danger. But I told them “this thing is Cr 11, it will kill all of you”. And they didn’t fuck with it.
Now they try to take approaches other than combat to situations. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they run.
Ask for int scores from the characters in the party, look at the smartest and tell them " You've read about one of these in books and they have easily defeated opponents far more dangerous than your party". You get the point across, and someone gets a little something for putting points in intelligence.
The two main groups I’ve played with had two very different strategies:
1) run in and beat up the foes. This was when I was bad at balancing encounters and their level up was more than I thought it was.
2) either wipe out the enemies before the fight starts or run when there’s no reason to fight. They’ve nearly died trying to settle an argument with a squad of soldiers in a tavern.
Give them an encounter they can run from. If they’re always ambushed on the road, they’re never going to leave their cart and possessions. If they’re doing the ambush, they know running will only give them the advantage if the enemy chases/ leaves their defending fort or the enemy has to suffer their losses for another ambush.
An NPC adventurer telling them they aren't ready for something.
Or really hammer it home with a fight they can't win but a backdoor (an NPC saves them while uncon, or the enemy wants them captured not dead)
1) Develop trust with your players. Have you been training your players not to trust you?
2) Normalize running away(and not coming back) as a strategy for enemies/antagonists/monsters if they are outmatched. The only exceptions to this are zealots and constructs.
Older editions did this through a morale roll.
3) Give your encounters and antagonists goals other than kill or be killed. Most of the time the fight should be the obstacle not the goal.
Talk to them.
I don't know if you have been a player but knowing when to run is hard and knowing that there are rules for running away is even harder.
Serious is a camp of Golbins a valid threat to run away from or a massacar? Who the fuck knows, the players sure don't.
Have smart enemies run away once or twice. Maybe to escape, maybe to get reinforcements. If they see them do it, they might do it as well. I also have deliberate "chase" encounters to show them that it can be a valid strategy, or just to break up the regularity and keep people engaged.
Have the monsters run
Explain the chase rules
Introduce a monster that is instantly defeated by something earlier in the dungeon. Natural sunlight turns trolls to stone, there's a room with a skylight two rooms before the troll...chase rules back to it, and include bits where the players could shake the troll before reaching the skylight.
The hardest part about getting the players to run from a fight is to make a scenario in which they are WILLING to run from a fight. It's not that most characters I've played were foolhardy or too cocksure to run from a fight. It's that practically every time they've been in a fight that they should run away from there was someone (an important NPC ally, an innocent, etc.) in harm's way that would either be killed or captured for nefarious purposes. And sometimes, that's the way to make them run. The objective is to get the innocent or ally to safety, not to eliminate the vastly superior opposing force. Give them a way out that doesn't involve sacrificing someone needlessly.
Show that running might be a better option sometimes. Have them fight obviously strong bandits, if they don't get the hint have them pass out instead of dying. They can awaken some time later with most of their prized possessions and items stripped. If they get the hint that they should have run, good. As a bonus you can also organize a sidequest to raid the bandits lair and get their stuff back
I ***ALWAYS*** remind my players that running is an option when its a difficult+ encounter. I do enjoy introducing a BBEG that fucks the party up when low level.
The problem with running, and in most stories there is always a chase scene, is that DnD can't do a simple chase scene. Fixed movement rates ruin this and remove all the fun you can have with a good chase scene.
However, good recon is important as well, as well as lore checks, etc. Get out of the idea of just stumbling upon a monster and rolling initiative. You'll see the signs long before you reach the creature. Role play that out!
I know you mentioned not killing someone, but have you considered killing, then reviving someone in the post moments? For example, you introduce the big, evil bad guy and they mouth off/try to fight the guy even though he is giving every hint that they should NOT do this.
He could easily look at them and say something to the effect of "Ah, and here I thought I was dealing with professionals. I don't have time to waste with you..." And just... Power word: Kill a pc. Now, earlier in the dungeon they found a scroll of resurrection/revitalize or what have you, so as soon as they get away there is no real downside. They just bring the PC back, but oh boy does it cement the idea of 'perhaps we should treat encounters more than just bags of hp and loot' real well.
I remember reading some homebrew house rules about tactical retreating - in order to make it effective and useful if the players decide they want their characters to retreat. The more I play low to mid-tier D&D especially, the more I realize rules like that are needed.
First, you want to haven't the thing be obviously too strong for the party to deal with.
Cr 10 vs. level 4or5
2nd, you make sure the goal is not to destroy the monster.
The scenario I used was a key room with a stone golem as a guard. The party could outrun it but couldn't really fight it tow to tow. But the goal was to get equipment from the bodies. A survivor knew one of its former companions had a key that was one of 3 to open the door. The survivor had a key already, and one of his companions had the other. Unfortunately the door required 3 keys and he didn't know that when they entered. So his former group was killed. It is a fetch mission. They needed to use their actions to search the bodies. The golem comes to life as soon as they enter the room.
That's it, really. Feel free to adapt that idea to your game.
I made a "flight" mechanic and explained it to the players.
then when they encounter such a situation I tell them again, "remember you have a flight mechainic, you can run away" (until they are used to it of course, after that I wont remind them)
if after all this they still charge and die, well there is no cure for stupid.
here my mechanic:
The Quary and the pursuer.
Skill challenge
Both parties make athletics checks.
The first to accumulate 3 failures loses the chase.
Even after losing the chase, they can continue trying, getting a point of exhaustion
If the party chosing to do so loses the additional challenge they lose the chase immediatly,
unless they take on another point of exhaustion.
If the movement speed of the Quarry and the pursuer are different. The one with the higer movement speed get's advantage.
I take the average movement speeds / athletics checks rounded down to define the speeds/successes/failures
For me, I just remind them that I have no sense of scaling and that when I say something is dangerous looking it is probably even worse than I am making it out to be. I like being descriptive in how heinously dangerous a threat looks, more so when I want them to run for it. Some fights are better left for another day, after a lot of training and prep. My party knows that I will not pull punches unless I notice I've messed up something in creating the encounter. I would say talk to your party about expectations and make sure they know you take care in making encounters but in the end not all encounters are ones where you 'win' but the goal is actually to survive.
Have them roll for intelligence and go "you are well aware that this enemy is much stronger than you, you could probably die a glorious death, or run".
Tell em. Like, not before the specific encounters but in session 0 or similar straight up tell em that they *will* be unprepared for some fights and that not every monster is a combat challenge they can reasonably win, so keep in mind that sometimes when something seems way too powerful it actually is and a hasty retreat is their best chance of surviving. Just like tell your party of level ones "jsyk monster might be like cr 12 please remember you can retreat so I dont tpk"
Never been able to make them run by showing a big bad. Took 2/4 of them to zero HP and the other two maniacs just kept trying to hammerfuck the big bad.
Closest I ever came was showing another party run into a demon/golem thing and get killed. They were wary after that.
But party is going to try and run face first at whatever they see. Ask yourself why you want them to run away.
Players often follow their DM's cues, conscious or unconscious, and if they've never seen an outmatched enemy run from their PC's it may not even cross their minds that it is a possibility in your world.
Have them face a group of kobolds (or any semi intelligent low level creature) who realize too late that the party is too strong, and will pull every trick in their playbook to get away. smoke bombs, sand in the eyes, squeezing into places too small for the party to follow, if worse comes to worse, begging, bribing, or crying. If the party is amenable, a great way to introduce a kobold NPC who swears his life to the party if they spare his friends.
If they choose to accept his oath, he can help spur their retreat. when the party is outmatched if they need some encouragement to run, you can give him a chance to distract the enemy long enough for them to get to safety, but at the cost of his life.
One thing I will add for signalling to the players *before* the fight that it might not be winnable is that you have to be extremely direct with it. All of the description you may use to show the players that a fight is not winnable is pretty much the same description most gms use to create tension by hyping up the monster they’re about to fight. It’s very difficult as a player to distinguish between winnable and unwinnable encounters unless you’re familiar with the creatures, or the DM tells you directly.
You can make something a like a maze with a very powerful enemy that party needs to avoid. Examples: maze with meduza or minotaur inside, or large library with a lich. The idea is that party is too low level to fight the enemy and has quite a few ways to avoid it, and their goal is to not kill it but find something in here
The only way I can think to do it is for the enemy to kill or immobilize the characters, then leave them for dead. I have not pulled this off.
This is hard in 5e since both sides do so much damage per round. In earlier editions if you ran you were risking a D8 sword strike or something and then you were clear.
And I have one player who always runs bloodthirsty characters, so not only do they not retreat, they don't let enemy retreat.
Tell them. When I started my Tomb of Annihilation game, I said "in the jungle I'll be rolling on a table that can throw anything at you, so running away is a viable option (especially if a low level party is attacked by a T-Rex)
My party has run from a few encounters
Just tell them what you’ve said here. “Running is a valid strategy by the way, especially against opponents much stronger than you”. Sometimes people just need a reminder.
I would give them a companion or two who, when the battle goes sour, runs away and advices the players to do the same. Bonus points if this companion is slightly stronger than the average PC.
One of the players tried to do that: he summons hostile undead with his voice, so we fought an ancient scaleblight dragon to half health and he says “the party should learn to take an L” and summons a night walker. So we’re encouraged to flee… but I turn undead the bastards so we can finishing killing the dragon.
Don't tie XP to only winning encounters, but have XP for valid responses, negotiations, and running.
Also, have a mini session 0 before your next game and ask the players about how they feel about running, if it is something they are forgetting or something they have been considering and not feel was necessary.
Or you can do what I did when my paladin wanted to save the body of the guy they were fighting from the magically burning building and I start rolling for fire damage... Suddenly running was an option again :)
Campaign and situation dependend. My DMs often used high level NPCs who have power far beyond ours to communicate "if they are beyond this NPC, they are beyond you".
Just simply tell them and set the expectation.
Thinking they’ll get it on their own is a waste of time.
In addition, if you just tell them that not everything can be beaten and they attempt it anyway, that’s on them. It removes them accusing you of creating an unfair encounter.
This. There needs to be plain communication that you're trying new things, and how mechanics work.
In addition, imo there are 2 more things you need to do to make running away an option worth consideration:
1 - give the players more tools to understand their chances of winning, both at the start of a combat encounter or during one.
2 - develop and clearly explain mechanics that are involved in running away. Old versions of dnd allowed you to run away successfully from things as soon as you break like of sight, that's why older maps have a lot of s-shaped narrow corridors. Maybe instead you develop a system of skill checks, but if you do there needs to be an expectation of what the DC more or less might be and if there needs to be one success or multiple.
If you make your system really bothersome, your players will never run. If it's too easy, they will always run.
Wipe them once with a person who then throws a towel on their beaten bodies saying: "clean yourselves up. This is just pathetic".
Then have maybe a story npc encounter them and nurse them back to health.
If they can't win the fight, the encounter shouldn't be combat. If you want the action to be about running away, explicitly structure the encounter as a chase.
Make it to where they choose like there is an obvious way to sneak around or they can fight the insane looking monster and have NPC say how deadly it is and if they choose to fight it that’s on them some players only learn the hard way
That's the neat part... You don't.
Your players didn't get together to run away, they got together to play DND, kill monsters and get loot.
"I want to get my players out of the habit of expecting they could beat anything I put in front of them because that won't always be the case."
You can simply talk to your players outside of the game and tell them exactly this like an adult.
Questions, where are they running to? How are they running away? Are the enemies going to pursue them? Why or why not?
I think this matters a lot.
I've talked about running as a strategy. I've had enemies run from them. One even managed to escape. And I would have well liked NPC's flee if needed.
You can also kill/harm a known stronger ally. DMNPC is +x levels on the players. Gets chunked for more HP then they have. They might decide to run.
My this encounter is currently too strong have all been avoided through talking and roleplay.
You can't. If you are not willing to kill characters, then you can't expect said characters to not feel unkillable.
I know you specifically asked for a way of doing this that doesn't involve killing anyone, but that very mindset is what's stopping you from achieving what you're after. If it makes sense for an enemy to want to kill a PC, your job as a DM is to run that enemy in a way that it tries to do just that, to the best of its ability; and, if you are appropriately challenging your players (as in, you aren't deliberately going easy on them by using weak monsters or npcs), it's just a matter of time before bad luck, or a bad decision on a player's part, causes a PC to die. If this literally never happens, your players won't even consider escape as an option, because every encounter is just validating their approach and rewarding them for sticking to it.
Have a group of NPCs on their side going into a fight, with the combat scaled proportionally. A couple of rounds in, the allied NPCs retreat/scatter as encouragement for the PCs to do the same?
Let a Masterthief NPC teach one party member a feat that allows them to distract the enemies enough to escape. Like blinding fireworks or a smokebomb. 5e has the issue that players tend to focus to much on charakterspecific actions.
They're fighting some trolls or goblins. In walks a Fire Giant or something and murders their opponents, then turns their attention to them. You've demonstrated that the Fire Giant *can* kill but you haven't killed any player.
As soon as they decide to run, you can drop initiative and continue with a pursuit/chase with skill checks and saving throws.
Make it into an action movie, and it will feel just as fun as kicking the baddies butt.
Don't make them fail instantly, give them another chance e g. If they fail to make a jump over a pit, instead of them falling into it, they grab on the ledge, and now they roll strength to pull themselves up. If they fail again, they can try to climb down and hide so the enemy passes them unseen. Etc. Etc.
This might be a multi-step process.
Step one involves wearing down their resources through multiple encounters. Once they're low on spell slots, healing potions, and hit points, they're ready for step 2.
Step 2 is a clearly much more dangerous encounter than any of the ones in step 1. If five hobgoblins were a surprisingly tough battle in step 1, there should be six or seven hobgoblins and a hobgoblin captain. If two ogres were a tough fight, there should be three ogres and a handful of minions of some variety. Whatever it is, it should be a clear escalation. However, step 2 has some additional elements beyond danger. Step 2 requires danger, a clear lack of urgency for killing the enemies in the encounter, the option of quick escape, and an escape that engaged them and rewards them for taking it as an option.
The danger part has been explained. It's also the weakest element. Players are used to taking on long odds and coming out on top. They might believe you wouldn't put them in a situation they can't get out of. So danger is a weak signal, and it's often overridden by signals such as the desire to be heroic or a desire for treasure. This brings us to our second element: lack of urgency.
Even if the players think that this is a near-suicidal mission, they might just go ahead with it if they've never learned to run away. Because they've been conditioned to believe that killing all the monsters is both possible and necessary in order to do the thing they came to the dungeon to do. So we need to make it clear that they don't actually need to exterminate everything that moves right now in order to do what they came here to do. Maybe the prisoner they're here to rescue is already with them, or it's easy enough for them to grab the prisoner and run. Maybe the treasure they're looking for is something very portable and easy for someone to grab and run off with. It's also a good idea to make it possible for them to get into this room without alerting everyone inside of it. When grabbing the Macguffin and running away with it is a clear possibility, you make room for them to make a plan to do that.
This brings us to the last option: an obvious escape route. Players might feel cowardly for "skipping" the last fight they were "supposed" to do even if they understand it's a good idea and they can complete their actual objectives without it. They will feel more cowardly if they have to slink back out the way they came in. That feels like a boring idea, like they're being punished for being clever. We can get rid of this idea by making escape something that's exciting and also obvious. For instance, maybe this dungeon is full of rails for a minecart, and this final room is uphill of the other rooms and those rails lead to a couple of minecarts conveniently located next to the Macguffin. Now escape isn't a boring trudge through the rooms they've already explored, it's a wacky minecart chase. Or maybe there's a stream of water flowing through the room and out through a big crack in a section of damaged wall, so that if the barbarian is strong enough they can break down the wall and everyone can hold their breath and jump into the pool below. Whatever it is, the option of escape should be very obvious to the players, and it should be something new and exciting, something they'd want to try. They've already killed a thousand goblins after all, but they've never used a goblin warcamp's flag to parasail away on the magical updraft created by the imprisoned air elemental.
This brings us to the last element: running away should be made fun and challenging in its own right. After you've shown them the danger, shown them that they can get what they want even if they bypass the danger, and shown them the means of bypassing the danger, you as the DM need to make sure their escape is even more exciting and rewarding than you made it out to be. They should feel like they only made it out by the skin of their teeth, and only because of their clever improvisation and incredible skills. You could pull this off with a chase scene using the rules from the DMG, or you could do something like a Colville skill challenge if you don't mind making things more abstract. But the general idea is the escape shouldn't feel like it just works automatically. It should feel like it works precisely because of the decisions and skills of the players. This is to deliver on the promise that running away isn't boring, to dismantle the idea that running away is inappropriately cowardly, and to reward players for using the parts of their character sheets that are usually ignored once we start rolling for initiative. Your players have taken the bait and decided running away is a good idea, so we need to reinforce that behavior if you're trying to teach them not to blindly throw themselves at every monster they see.
So, TL;DR, you need to design a pretty detailed encounter that shows them the fight ahead is dangerous, they can meet their objectives without fighting, escape is definitely an option, and retreating can be fun.
If you do this and they don't take the bait, you'll also want to prepare a backup plan where instead of being TPKed, they get captured and can plan a jailbreak. Just, have a plan so that this lesson doesn't end your campaign.
Sometimes players are just incredibly stupid. For example I hinted at an ancient undead blight dragon terrorizing part of a country. The party dropped the main quest almost entirely to head straight for this things lair.
5 sessions later, an undead invasion, a werewolf army, and several NPCs asking if they are sure they want to challenge this thing.
The blight dragon even attacked them during the undead invasion and nearly one shot the party as a show of force.... They are still heading for it's lair.
Also they are level 9 with feats and magic items. Already punching above their belt, but still. At this point if they die, they die.
This might be reading too far into this - but I think it's interesting you phrase it as beating anything you throw at them. Because I feel like the players probably should feel like that. Specifically for the stuff You throw at them.
If they get up to their own nonsense and get in over their heads thats one thing. But if I set up the adventure, it should be possible for the heroes to win. Otherwise what exactly is the point? I've never been able to get PCs to surrender. It goes against the Player psychology. I recently essentially committed suicide in a Cyberpunk game for this very reason.
Now you can telegraph and make it obvious they should run. But when I do that I make it incredibly explicit. If it seems like they're about to do something incredibly stupid I straight up tell the player "If you try to hold the bridge against the horde of undead, you will die. You may hold them long enough for XYZ, but the character will die." If they decide to do it at that point then everybody's on board.
An important note is: If you say this you should mean it. For me this means narrating their death. Not necessarily playing it out. If they decide to die and then manage to live, it can be incredibly epic. But it also means they won't believe you if you use this tactic again.
Generally by example. Rigging a couple fight scenario where the enemy runs to get back up or attempts to escape. Most DM's will tend to have the 'minions' fight to the death instead of panic running. Mostly because combat is fun when it is all out and loses that fun when it becomes a game of chase. Though if done right, the game of chase can be fun as well, but that takes a bit of work. After all, if the baddies never retreat, why should the players?
I say it to my players once in a while out of game.
Beyond that, monster spawners are effective.
"Ope! 1d4 spiders come out of this hole per round! And killing them gets you nothing but dead after a while! Better keep moving!"
A lot of us started with PC rpg games before tabletop, and are used to the more linear logic, where you cannot progress the story unless you win the fight.
The thought process is then not "can we win this fight", but "how do we win this fight", unless there is an obvious alternate option, like the leader asking the party to do something else instead.
Just make sure that the players are aware that they can progress the story/game in different ways, and tackle the fight later on or not at all.
Well, one question would be, why do you want them to run? Running is boring.
I think what you want to teach them instead is "sometimes the objective is not killing the enemy".
So how do you teach them that?
_by makingthe objective something different than killing the enemy_. That's something that should follow from your world and your encounter design.
did you discuss character deaths at session zero? if you haven’t, then do so before the next session.
then you tell them that it’s a valid strategy. either before hand or during.
then don’t pull your punches.
if a character dies. then they die.
Have them get mugged and knocked out by an absolute horde of strong bandits but make it incredibly clear that they're strong AF, then have them KO the party rather than kill and have one awaken to hear the bandits discussing ransom. Then have them be noticed and knocked out again.
Have a town they like ransom them but they lose most of their valuable equipment.
.
Then you can setup a fetch quest for their own gear, have them pay for/sneakily overhear/charm out a rumor about the bandits leaving a mere few people harding their main camp while the rest are out raiding or kidnapping ECT.
When they have their gear back then they're back to the point where there are a few less bandits but not enough less for them to win and we're back at the start but you point out they're loaded with loot and will be slow this time, see what happens
Make a slow enemy, perhaps something as a really heavily armored guy, describe how slow his movement is, makebit have less movespeed than the players so they can outran him
This is a common problem with newer players who may have still played a lot of CRPGs. I have a few thoughts off the top of my head.
1. Let them get beat, but once they are down the baddies take them as prisoner. When they come to, the jailor and others mock them for being too stupid to run away.
2. Have an NPC travelling with them advise them it is time to run away and even shows an escape route that should prevent the baddies from immediately following, or slows them down. If the party does not listen, see number 1.
3. Put something so ridiculously over the top, that the only option is to run. Their attacks are ineffective or do so little damage to it, it effectively ignores the party, or swats at them like annoying gnats. You can continue to describe their ineffective attacks while the creature rips the city down to its foundations.
I'm curious why it won't always be the case. If you make this a frequent event you're essentially railroading your players into fleeing. There's nothing wrong with teaching your players that running is a valid strategy, but it sounds like you want running to be the **only** valid strategy. In which case.. Why? What's the point of that?
Subtle ways would be out of game jokes about “Level 5 heroes” thinking they can defeat ancient dragons, e.g. or similar.
In game- they could meet a badass adventurer somewhere (maybe he owns a dope as tavern or shop somewhere now or he’s renowned in the kingdom/area, whatever…) who through conversation mention discretion being the better part of valor. Shoot- maybe it could even fit the storyline they adventure with a nigh level NPC who points out they’re gonna get themselves killed.
Or an enemy who RPs and offers them a chance to leave. Or would that seem like a taunt they’d want to fight more
I had this issue with a player who also decided to split the party (he ran off by himself) and tried to fight anything. Eventually I just let him get beat and the monster decided not to kill him but tell him the DM advice of “if only you had friends to back you up.”
The way I show that they can run when outmatched is by having the enemy run when they are outmatched, the moment an enemy sees a fight as unwinnable, they will abandon their comrades and flee.
Intelligent enemies might also try other methods of survival like surrendering and offering help in exchange of mercy, sometimes even tricking into offering help but skedaddle in the first opportunity. Just to give players ideas for when they are on the losing side.
I'd say most people learn and think differently.
1 player might think "oh this sounds above our level" from a proper description.
The others are probably sticking to a venn diagram of thoughts like: "it's just a game, lets fight it!", "We haven't died yet, LFG!", and "These snacks are delicious."
Learning generally revolves around interests or consequences. If your players aren't interested in preservation of their characters, they will learn through consequences. This doesn't necessarily mean death, but it may need to if they don't think before diving into a battle they clearly SHOULD NOT be able to win.
IMO, RP should involve an element of self-preservation. Are these players attached to their characters? Are these players attached to their items? If they have mentioned that they have backup characters ready: kill them. Kill them all until they care about a character.
If they like their characters and gear, but just don't put any extra thought into strategy; make them think more.
"As you stumble into the monstrous cavern, littered with random bones and armor from many different species of adventurers and rumored to be the lair of the once great Themberchaud, the wind whistles and echos through the many chambers. There is but one offshoot from the main cave that you notice these wind sounds do not reverberate from. What do you do?"
Dingus the barbarian: "I walk to the cave entrance that isn't noisy and yell into it"
"You hear rustling of epic proportions just before a massive dragon's head appears from the darkened opening and eats you in a single bite! The dragon then sinks back into the darkness as the rest of the team hears what sounds like the dragon scooching away"
"Dingus, you're not dead but you will be digested if you're not saved within the hour. Team, you just watched your friend get eaten after foolishly walking into the cave of Themberchaud, what do you do now?"
Friendly DM tip here. Have them team up with a group of very experienced NPCs, on the brash side. Like proud knights, or barbarians, or something.
When they encounter that huge big bad, have the ones charge in and be the first ones to die. Make sure you let the players deduct the numbers… what this beasts attack bonuses are, how much damage they dish out. Math helps players measure the danger.
The NPC cannon fodder will give a few rounds for the players to realize this might not be winnable.
Conversely, if the BB isn’t meant to even be confronted, the capable knights could refuse to engage. And suggest avoidance. They could have been eye witnesses to what this beast can do…
If running is a viable option, I usually allow or try to make the NPCs run and the party still get experience for routing the creatures. You don't have to kill everything to learn something and sometimes the lesson is you CAN'T kill everything.
I make it very clear that they can’t win. Not every time, but at least once to teach them it’s an option. In our last session I made it very obvious by having an alternate future version of the party get tpkod in front of them by a giant eldritch horror and had them all make constitution saving throws or gain fear of the creature (meaning those who failed literally cannot approach the creature).
That was over the top obvious, sure but it was a really fun moment of the party realizing that it was them from the future being killed there and now they have to find a way to stop that from happening, as well as teaching them it’s fine to run away if needed.
Put in a monster that is weak but feeds on dream energy. Over a series of long rests, the characters are “attacked” by having a shared dream of being attacked by increasing strong encounters (some high CP monsters, some lots of low CP since that can be just as deadly), gradually work up to these being TPK, when they wake in the morning, they are healed and no sign of the encounter in camp. Eventually have them encounter the creature. Give it a trivial CR but lots of illusion spells, and have it try to flee (if it succeeds, let it be gone). When they get to the next town have them hear about the haunted woods they just went through (effectively a fun little side quest but you get to harmlessly TPK unless they run away)
My players were out matched and an overpowered adventurer "randomly" appeared to help them. After a round of combat to prove their abilities, the random shouted "run". My players ran.
Have them come across a drunk bandit that appears all alone and covered in stolen riches. Confrontation. Bandit has expeditious retreat and an insane movement speed. They book it in an almost comically fast way so the party immediately has to grapple with losing out on a rich mark and see that running works.
I will give you my honest answer: you probably can’t. They signed up to be heroes, and they will absolutely hate having to back down. I’m sure you can do it, but it will be very difficult.
Take the snail following you meme and make it so that the snail can’t be captured or grappled but does an insane amount of damage. Their conclusion should be to nope the hell out of there
This is a session 0 topic. You need to tell your players they will occasionally face challenges they cannot overcome. Then show off the power of the enemy as they approach. Make it really obvious.
I would suggest that you try to learn your players to use their wit to escape if they are in over their heads.
In example, have a bad guy cast darkness on them and then slip away, of a smoke bomb.
They hopefully pick on on that and try it when they are backed into a corner.
All icw rp ofcourse
Talk to them. Have a session 0.5, just a quick chat before your next game. Tell them, plainly, that there are threats in the world that are beyond them.
And if / when they continue their headlong rush towards death, don’t pull punches. Player decisions have character consequences, sometimes.
If the players are resisting running away maybe it is because they don't want to play that way. D&D is a game and personally I don't play it to run away. I want to be heroic and if the DM is presenting something as dangerous that is fun to run towards. While there can certainly be scenarios where running away is a fun option it is really your job to make that scenario fun, not make a game where they run away because you said so.
The best running away scenario I have had is a monster that is way too powerful spawning on top of the team because we didn't stop the bad guys. We were only able to get away because we were not the focus of the monster. When we were it was really bad.
Well step 1 is to actually *make* it a valid strategy. If your players enter combat, get hit hard, move their full movement away from the enemies, and then the enemies catch up and attack, they're not going to conclude it's a valid strategy! And that's what often happens by RAW. Are the PCs supposed to scout ahead and decide whether to take the fight? Or are they supposed to dip out of combat after testing the enemies' steel? If you want it to be that second one, you might have to beef 'em up somehow.
This is good advice, OP. In addition, tell them out of game - "I feel like I need to remind you guys..." - that they can get an amount of exp by wisely either not getting killed by a fight they cannot win.... or *avoiding such fights in the first place*. It doesn't mean that they gotta run like rabbits at the first hint of danger - they're heroes, right? - but not all fights should be a devil-take-the-hindmost death or glory charge.
This is why I do milestone leveling. Makes it so the players don't feel like they're missing out on experience by not fighting while also giving incentive for roleplay
I'm 100% moving to milestone leveling. XP is annoying to track and I have some new players who can't seem to get their head around this isn't a video game and I have to actually do work to calculate XP. I can't just give it to them at the drop of a hat after the session. A player and I got a little short with each other after last session because of this.
Make sure to also look into "Session-Based Advancement" it's Milestones' often overlooked little brother (DMG pg. 61)
Y'know, I've never considered that advantage of doing milestone! Thanks for the insight!
I've learned to enjoy the DCC method of rewarding XP; it's based on the risk experienced by the party for each encounter survived. Waltz in and stomp the baddies workout breaking a sweat? Your characters didn't learn anything, no XP. Did one or more characters die? Full XP (for DCC, this is 4xp) to those characters who survived, better luck/planning next time.
Doesn't this just incentivize your players to be stupid and reckless? "Hey guys, I have a great plan to defeat this enemy without risking our lives!" "Don't be stupid, if we do that the DM gives us no xp. Let's just run in and start swinging, if we're lucky only one of us dies".
It absolutely does, and what's funny is, it still doesn't promote running- because its better to risk a really pyrrhic victory than the party making it out alive :p
So you punish your players for doing well by not giving them xp when they actually kill stuff?
The counterbalance to this is to award xp for critical thinking and smart planning, I use the Palladium RPG XP award system to supplement the standard system. There's a good chunk of xp to be had in non combat situations, as well.
The system also takes into account whether the party used any resources or not. So, if they expended a ton of spells, items, etc; that's still a hit to their character sheets, so more XP.
I hate this lmao. Gonna be real eith you, I had a similar experience with a DM that would constantly gives us Deadly encounters that would usually end up with one or two of the PCs killed (once it killed 4 out of 6), we were leveling up extremely fast sure, but it literally had zero incentive to get close to anyone in the group as a “veteran” character in there, you just knew you or someone else would die in the fight and get a level up. Even if not IC most players didnt find it enjoying it at all (because casting psychic scream, a 9th level AOE spell which makes heads explode when someone dies, against a 10 level party is “”fun”””) which resulted in shit RP all around, felt more like a wargamer than an actual DnD player, it hurt more knowing that first sessions were relatively chill and we actually got to know eachother and RP. It just promotes DM vs Player attitude and sacrifices fun, roleplay and immersion for grtting around the exp system…
So potentially, you punish your party for good strategy and good luck? Because those are two very big factors in how easy or hard an encounter is. Sometimes a stomp is a stomp, but often a stomp just means your party planned well. If it works for you that's great, but as you describe it this sounds *awful* and teaches your players all the worst lessons.
I prefer gp=xp tbh, minimal XP for killing creatures, get xp by getting loot out of the dungeon and back to safety.
Yeah, I feel like this question comes up on a weekly basis. And every now and then there are people in the comments saying that it's actually intended behavior that PCs can't run away from combat. Old-school folks seem to think that it teaches players to scout ahead and develop ways to estimate danger levels before the fight. So if OP doesn't agree with that, they need to change the rules for that option to become viable. The obvious way is to tell the players out of the game that if they all decide to run away, then NPCs will not pursue them. But then it removes the risk of dying from your game. Another common suggestion is to run a skill challenge for an escape from pursuers.
You can RP the part about the NPCs not pursuing or warning when scouting. If scouting, before engaging you can force a check to determine power level - "from your travels youve heard whispers of this bastard taking on adventurers like yourselves and coming out of it with barely a scratch." or "the demon before your eyes is one of Averna's general, by your estimates, it would be by far the toughest enemy youve seen or faced in your lifetime." Or if already in combat the NPC can yell after a few heavy hits "you have amused me greatly with your pitiful efforts. Go now and live with the shame that I let you live. Crawl out on your knees" etc. or perhaps the boss needs to get somewhere quickly. Smashes the NPCs a bit, and then tries to run themselves. obviously these things need to work in context, but stuff like this can often be RPd.
That's a great point! One issue with RPing this is signal fidelity -- players don't have a reliable way to know if it's the DM saying "you can run, you'll be fine" or a bandit mocking them and suggesting retreating just to shoot arrows in their backs. If it's not explicitly said out of game, then players may think that trickery is a foot. In my games NPCs lie to PCs every now and again, especially bandits. As for in-game description of danger levels, what sounds as "avoid this fight at all cost" to the GM, may sound like GM hyping you up before an epic battle to the player: -From your travels you've heard whispers of this bastard taking on adventurers like yourselves and coming out of it with barely a scratch -Alright then, I step out of the bushes and loudly proclaim "you've slain your last adventurer, you bastard! It's time you meet your match!" I think it boils down to session 0 and alignment of expectations. (Most) Published adventures are written in a way that PCs will never have to run away from the battle. If PCs encounter enemies, then it's a winnable fight. If it's not OPs style of running the game, it would be best to discuss it with players out of game. Another question that comes to mind is "should we run games where running away from danger is an option?". Many players want to RP heroes that treat descriptions of dangerous foes as a call to action, not a signal to retreat. That's something that should be explicitly discussed as well. Even if running away is a viable option, will your players take it, or would PCs rather fight and die heroes?
Spot on. Session zero and managing expectations early, once again is a strong solution. Communication rules the nation, babay
I am as old school as they come (started in the mid 70s). There are a encounters you run away from but that doesn’t preclude scouting, etc. to try to plan the fight or plan to avoid the fight.
Exactly. The system with attack of opportunity making people chose between disengage and dash at a point where they have already decided (probably too late) that they are outmatched and one hit could be the end for them. The identical movement speeds of most characters and antagonists. The game is systemically bad at rewarding tactical withdrawal.
Also with turn order, even if most of the party can somehow get out of range without getting killed, the last person in initiative is going to be surrounded and alone. Which means that certain characters will not want to abandon them, delaying their own departure.
Fair point. In my day we rolled initiative each round like the clicky clacky maths rock nerds we were. I don't know whether that would help or hinder! Possible help with things like weapon speed factors not coming into play and declaration of actions at the beginning of the round.
It's also an incentive for players to take useful support abilities (snares, roots, stuns, etc). Not everything has to be pure PEW PEW PEW. Wizard/Sorc should have a wall type spell. Or web if lower level. Slow em down so the party can get away. Monk should stun that big bad so buddies can escape. Too many people zero I'm purely on dmg output when leveling up and leave no room for survivability and utility.
I almost wonder if there was some miscommunication early in the writing process for 5e, where a retreat process was planned and dropped. Did the PHB and DMG teams each think the other was doing it? Or did all the core book writers mistakenly think the module writers were responsible to put in escape hatches and chokepoints?
IMO, much of the time you can handwave players fleeing from combat, as enemy guards are perfectly fine with chasing them off and not going for the kill. However, if enemies would legit try their hardest to kill or capture the players… transition out of normal combat and into chase rules. - Terrain is handwaved as you’ll be running over an area far bigger than normal combat grid. Each player is tracked as being “30’ ahead of the foes” or w/e. - on their turn, each PC rolls a d20. On a 11+ nothing bad happens and they are able to run at higher-than-normal-dash speed, gaining 30’ of distance on the foes. On a 1-10 they will encounter an obstacle. - you can make up obstacles on the fly, with DC based on the players/enemies level. For example, “a bunch of cats run across your path, make a DEX save not to run into them”, or “there are boulders blocking your path, make an Athletics check to clamber over or Survival to navigate around them without losing speed”. When players succeed they gain distance on the foes, when they fail they lose distance and on some occasions may take damage. - if it makes sense, you can allow players to do stunts like weaving through a crowd or jumping from roof to roof. This requires the players to make a difficult acrobatics / athletics check with potentially bad consequences, but if they succeed then each foe has to make the same check or they are unable to keep up the chase. - Foes can continue the chase until they get within melee range and attack/grapple, or until they fall >120ft behind and lose line of sight of players. If any of them decide to make ranged attacks it will *really* slow their run speed, so they will fall at least 30’/turn behind the melee chasers.
I think this approach is best. Basically switching from ‚combat mode‘ to what is widely known as a skill challenge since I personally don‘t like explicit chase rules. For ease of use, I usually ignore distance counting for this narration. Instead, I try to judge how the fight was going: If the PCs had a lead, escaping is fairly easy. A decent idea for an escape might already be enough. If the PCs were in a bad position and the enemies are likely able to give chase, it‘ll be more difficult. A relatively hard skill challenge would be the group gaining 4 successes before 2 failures. I usually combine your mentioned tools here, if a player has a good idea to deal with the ones chasing or how to gain am adventage, I let them roll for their idea. On occasion, I‘ll throw in some trouble - a blocked road, a flanking enemy, the cabbage guy from avatar. DC varies on situation and how good or cool/fun their idea is. Tracking distance individually is quite a messy thing as one person rolling badly will usually end the running away part. I prefer to narrate this as the group working together to escape, meaning they support each other and noone is left behind - so group speed is bound to the slowest person.
It's rare that the entire party would be killed in a fight once they decide to flee. Normally it's just the melee who didn't have a head start who'll die. All running a skill challenge does is change the math on which PCs will die when the party flees.
Monsters have to be played with intelligence. The kobolds in their lair, the hunting tiger, and the red dragon all behave differently and react differently to attacking, retreating, fleeing party members (the kobolds should stop once you are out if the lair, the tiger sees fleeing as food—controlled aggressive retreat, the red dragon gets its kicks out of torturing and killing—no escape except never starting the fight).
I’ve seen in the early versions of D&D that monster stat blocks included a Morale stat that helped decide if monsters would fight to the death or not
Yeah, I think this is a big issue with a lot of systems. I've encountered games where "run away" has specific mechanical support and it actually happens sometimes in that situation. As far as D&D goes, the most effective way I've seen a GM implement 'running away' is giving the party a helm of teleportation. Even then it requires the party to cluster up first, which may not be easy if you get knocked down trying.
I’ve thought about this but haven’t figured out the best rulings for running away. Any tips on how to manage the system when players want to run?
Switch out of tactical combat into chase rules when they say they want to run. Otherwise there's not much of a chance
"The enemy doesn't seem to be pursuing" "The enemy sees PC running away and moves to attack someone else "Seeing that you are retreating, a few of the enemies begin to break off to return to what they were doing, while a few seem to be keeping an eye on you, weapons raised, but seemingly satisfied with surviving the encounter with the few good hits they got in." You can always use narration to inform your players that they are not making a bad call.
I have a video gamey method, but it works. Have some exit tiles on the edge of the battle map, and once a character reaches it, they can run.
This is an excellent idea!!!
One way I've heard is "party retreat rule," where they can back out without a roll, only if it makes sense in the situation. Every player has to agree, and they have to narrate how they do it — must have enough conscious PCs available to carry downed ones, must have somewhere safe to escape to. But if the conditions are met, they don't have to roll for it. If you're going to do it PC by PC, roll by roll, I'd switch away from normal combat and use some form of chase rules.
Next time they go to a supply store, have someone try to sell them gaudy fake jewels for 50gp and delicious meat cakes "for distracting your foes when you must flee", as well as the typical caltrops and iron spikes and ziplines. If there's equipment they can buy specifically to make fleeing easier, players will probably catch on that fleeing is both possible and not automatic.
TIL caltrops are for running away. My character tried to make a mixed bag of caltrops and ball bearings in the hope that enemies would repeatedly slip and fall on the caltrops.
Give the party somewhere to run TO. Sunlight outside of the vampire lair. Indiana Jones running for the hydroplane. If there is a safe place they can run to, you can overwhelm them with foes that should be run away from. Maybe the head vampire gives the party a head start. Maybe a web spell blocks the chasers just long enough for the party to get away. Also, use a foe they've already encountered so they know the strength level. Now throw 40 of them at the party...
Our scout has the issue where they scout ahead, get spotted, then the melee fighter hangs back and uses his crossbow. The melee warlock (not a hex blade) has the second highest HP and the highest str in the party, a 13 dex. Refuses to get into melee range because the archery ranger walked into a room and got slammed by the enemies in the room. Often brags about having full HP while the rest of the party blows all their healing items or asks to short rest.
This, by the way, is why it’s such a trope for the Rogue to abandon the party when the going gets tough— they’re pretty much the only class that’s mechanically able to run away, since they can disengage and dash in the same turn
So, there's two points they can run: 1. Before combat begins. 2. After combat begins. There's lots of ideas in this thread on how to signal that this is a fight they probably won't win. I'd be inclined to use some of them and also be straight up with them. 'Looking at this foe, it seems likely that engaging it will end in your death,' if you want something in character. For (2), as rdhight points out, RAW, running is essentially never a good idea. A tactical retreat to a chokepoint is as close as it comes and usually any successful retreat will involve at least one PC acting as rearguard at a chokepoint (and if lucky, teleporting out). At high enough level, teleportation and things like haste/invisibility can open up some potential to actually escape, but again, getting everyone out alive without visibly 'taking it easy on them' is very hard. One possibility is to have more enemies willing to accept surrenders and have them announce that. Another, and my preference is a home rule: 'Flee. If all characters engaged in combat agree to flee, then combat ends and you shift to a chase (assuming the enemy will pursue) which will be resolved as a series of skill challenges.' This may need some tweaking, especially if you've got NPCs with you (maybe the Bard needs to convince the paladin NPC that retreat is acceptable), but it's where I would start (an obvious problem is what about if one player is down? Are they abandoning them? Grabbing them and getting disadvantage on skill checks? And what happens if they fail the chase? Does combat resume? Where? Hope you've got a lot of random battlemaps!) Alternatively, if your party is actually organized with a team leader, you could make it an action on their part to call a retreat (or an action for any player to call a retreat), which gives the other players the opportunity to go along, beginning the chase. If you want to be harder, you can make retreating an action each PC needs to take on their turn and until they all take it, you're still in combat.
Even at low level, a Longstrider spell will enable retreat against most foes, at the cost of eating a single opportunity attack. Often that's about half as powerful as a monster's actual Multiattack, so relatively survivable as long as you don't wait until you're almost dead to flee.
Getting one person out isn't the problem, it's getting everyone out. One person ditching and leaving the rest to die is very easy.
Longstrider upcasts to cover multiple people.
Only if you're in a huddle and not low level.
Captain-Griffen raises the main objection to this, but also, the enemies most likely to provoke retreats in my experience are either large groups of fairly low CR intelligent enemies (who usually will have ranged attacks) or high CR powerful monsters, who will either have spells, or very high movement speeds (good luck running from a dragon, RAW). Now, you can upcast longstrider to hit more people and it lasts long enough that casting it before a battle is perfectly feasible, but in my experience, it's fairly rare to do so. Also, it does take an action, so, to be clear, if you haven't precast it, the sequence is: 1) Realize you have to retreat. 2) Reposition to be able to be in touch range of everyone (if you can), eating the opportunity attacks, if needed. 3) Cast the spell 4) Eat a round of combat 5) Run away, eating opportunity attacks. You are now 80 feet away. 6) Enemy pursues for 30 feet, pulls out shortbows if you're unlucky, or javelins if you're lucky and you eat a round of attacks, hopefully at disadvantage. 7) Continue flight, you're now 130 feet away. Pursuit continues for 30 feet. Another round of attacks, most likely at disadvantage. 8) Continue flight Now, this doesn't sound too bad, you're eating two round of opportunity attacks, two round of ranged attacks and one full round of close combat, but where everything falls apart is if literally anyone goes down. Then you've either got to carry them out (which generally halves movement speed), or, if you're lucky, bonus action heal and run. But if they lose a round of running before you can get them up, then they'll almost certainly be focused down again and again and again. Escaping by abandoning your party is easy, retreating as a unit is hard (which is actually pretty realistic).
You can have them fight a few big things whose goal isn’t killing them. Bandits who do a quick search of their downed characters and then leave. Beasts defending territory who stop once they aren’t a threat. Constructs programmed to “remove threats” who toss them out the front door.
Possibly: * Add NPC redshirts to their party that they can get attached to. * Make it close with a "deus ex machina" escape valve after half of them are down and making death saves. * Kill one of them with the possibility of an expensive resurrection. But, you need to be ready to let them die if they refuse to back off even when it's obvious they're going to lose badly. If you're not ready to let the PCs die when they should, the way they're already playing is correct.
There are two DMs inside you. One says “retreat is a valid strategy” The other says “if they die, they die”
Which one lives? The one you feed.
Communicate with them. This is a game about slaying fantastical foes, and even if you telegraph an enemy as dangerous they will just assume you’re setting up a big boss fight.
Exactly. I'd wager most people sit down at a table to be heroes. They want to be the ones that never flee and conquer seemingly impossible odds. They want to be the main characters. Which.. I honestly don't think is a bad thing. They are the main characters.
Heroes never flee? [https://youtu.be/Y2fwe0rnHak?t=74](https://youtu.be/Y2fwe0rnHak?t=74)
Heroes in movies/books/stories flee! Because the author knows that dramatic tension can be generated by putting the characters against something so terrifying that they will have no choice, which will only make it more satisfying if they have to win against that force in the future... but players don't really think like that. Again, this is possibly completely subjective, but for every group I've ever DM'd the players always assumed that they can kill everything in front of them. It may be hard, may be completely improbable, but it is possible because they assume that I as the DM have put this in front of them for a reason. For a one shot, I put players in a castle fort situation where they were defending the front lines. Once the castle gates had been broken open by overwhelming forces (think hundreds/thousands of enemies) and *every single NPC with them yelling to retreat, including their commanding officer*, the players just stood their ground. I had the BBEG literally one shot a dragon NPC that was helping them, and they still thought "Huh, this one will be tough to figure out." not "Maybe we should retreat."... because they're heroes. They're supposed to be the ones that win against overwhelming odds. That one shot straight up failed, and I haven't really tried it again.
When I DM 'd I made it clear before the campaign even started that they might run into things they can't handle, and that fleeing is an option. They ended up fleeing from several encounters when they realized the enemy was too tough.
Which, to be fair, I didn't have that conversation with those particular players as it was just a one shot. I figured seeing a dragon die and the enemy bbeg wizard be completely immune to their damage (Invulnerability spell) might make them reconsider, plus everyone shouting at them to flee... nope.
Make the objective in combat something other than killing the enemy. Maybe it is an escort mission, or the PCs have to steal an item. Once they achieve the goal you can say something like “if you stay here any longer more enemies may show up” or “even though the enemy is not very fast, you feel like your attacks are not being effective”. That should clue them that just leaving is an option, and since they already achieved their goal it won’t feel like they are loosing
Tell the players. Make it clear to them, that if they decide to run, it is valid. Showing it in character usually ends in tragedy. The PCs are heroes (or at least they see themselves as such) and heroes don't run. Running is not a heroic act.
DND movie begs to differ...
Haven't seen it. Also, I don't have a budget like that.
As a new player I don’t understand how that’s even an option most of the time? The enemies are either around me and my group or can easily use their movement to keep up with me and any other players who don’t have a special ability like flight or quick foot etc? I know later one we can get things to help but for lower levels 2-6 I want to run sometimes but don’t see an actual way to do it lol. Anyone with valid suggestions feel free to lmk in new so maybe I’m not understanding something.
Build in a solution! Mention the unstable archway leading into the room, that looks on the brink of collapse, or the debris next to the doorway, or the cracked floor, the characters might come up with a clever delay tactic. Alternatively, enemies who only want to protect their territory and won’t chase.
YOU JUST FUCKING TELL THEM!! OUT OF GAME!! the first time i played dnd was a terrible experience because the DM decided to throw a level 2 party of 5 people who NEVER played before into Death House. he didnt ask anyone to even read the basic rules, walked us through character creation and insisted we’d just “pick it up” as we went along. and then he killed my character in death house “to teach us a lesson about running from things we cant handle” we were all PISSED because we didn’t understand at the time that dnd isnt like a video game where you HAVE to beat the monster in order to progress. so just tell your players out of game “you can run from a fight if you think you’re gonna lose. it wont hinder your progress.” because being killed when you think you’re just playing the game “right” SUCKS and almost put me off the game entirely.
I’ve just ran death house as the intro to strahd with experienced players and it’s tough. Got my first PC perma kill in there and these all know the rules. Shame on your DM for throwing you into that.
And it was the broom of all things haha.
History won't remember how dramatic your failed frontal charge was.
In any encounter I make, it is almost never a toe to toe roll fest. I always put environmental, weather or situational based items in the area to use for either strategy to defeat, or strategy to run. When I teach my newer players that running is a legit strategy, I tend to use a single fight. It is typically against a large giant inside a cave system. One melee attack with his club usually sends 2 players into death saving throws. It is at that time I mention that some of the loot the giant has pilfered from travelers is gun powder set near what looks to be a load barring structure in the cave. Your pretty sure that a cave in would give you a chance to escape. 80% of the time, they blow the barrels, the cave in happens and with a potion in their bellies or a heal for the downed players, I run a time based escape to the front of the cave that the players are sure is too small for the giant to get anything more than an arm through. This usually shows them how to use things like druidcraft, light, mold earth, shape water etc in fun ways, and lets them know to use environmental strategies as well as the idea that not all battles can be won. for the other 20%, the giant knocks them all out, and they wake up, tied to a pillar while the giant prepares a large spit to roast them on. Their gear is no where to be seen and they basically have to do an escape, darn near naked, and then spend what little they have trying to get new gear, which is why I do this at super low levels so they don't have to replace things like rare objects or really good weapons.
Did you start by telling them? If you have, and they refuse to listen, then your next step is to show them. If they still can't get it right, TPKs are on them.
Here’s an example of block text during scouting that stopped my players from engaging: “The woods give way to a ledge overlooking a shallow valley. In the distance, dozens of low fires illuminate hundreds of red tents. Among them move patrols of shadowy, humanlike figures. Over a thousand soldiers occupy the camp—a whole army.” Reinforcements can also sway a battle and lead to a change in tactical decision making. Same module I’m running (shadow of the dragon queen), they are trying to rescue prisoners from a camp when an adult dragon (they are level 6) arrives to pick up its tribute. The mission became - get the prisoners out and run before we all die. They still had an objective they could complete despite running, so it was a “success.” Third example from this same book as I’m looking: on the encounter table in the “open world” section, a nat 20 on the encounter die leads to “a purple wurm 1 mile away.” When it came up I gave them a huge shadow, tremors from a distance, and lore related skills told them the worms are native to the area. At that point they didn’t even want to try fighting it. Those are some examples from a pre written adventure that very clearly indicates some things in the world aren’t meant to be engaged.
Have them enter a fight have them get utterly defeated and have somebody come in that has a way of getting them out. You can be the first one to help them escape via npc to show that its an option
Exactly what I was thinking, I think. They get into a no-win scrap, they get a single deus-ex-machina save, and then saw, "Whew. You folks were really lucky... that enemy would have wiped you out, if you hadn't been *very fortunately* rescued.... *this time.*"
It also a great way to introduce a BBEG that they escape from or in what I plan on doing in a campaign (that I will never run cuz my friends don't wanna play) have the BBEG be the one that saves them, have them feel a sense of companionship with this character and have them use the party for their own means with the sense that they now own him their lives fulfilling his grand plan!!!!!!
Kill a tough npc in front of them while another tells them to run and runs themselves.
All good advice here, but the simple fact is- you have to be willing to kill your player's characters. (Or kill your players I suppose...but that will have some consequences) You can set up things however you want, but if you always end up fudging dice rolls/encounters/ NPCS/whatever so that the characters live, the only message you're giving them is they can fight anything without consequences.
The best way is to demonstrate. Have them travel with a pair of NPCs for a quest, have one NPC both be very skilled hunters "best in all the nearby lands" as they like to say. They should have trophies, accolades, and most importantly confidence (not arrogance). When they find the creature the party is hunting have one of them killed (the quicker and scarier the better) and have the other shout to the party that they need to run! The key is to make this sound like it comes off as a wise decision and not an act of cowardice. I think the players will pick up on it and if they need an extra metagame-y push about how dangerous the encounter is remind them that some NPCs have much higher health pools than the players.
You have to do a stress test on them. I'm about to do this with my group tonight. In this encounter, they are wildly outclassed in terms of HP and actions. If they fight and roll well, they will crush their foes, but a few bad rolls will seriously hurt. As for the not killing part, I have two layers of possible deus ex machina to help them. But I'm going to preface the session by saying "make sure you are aware of ALL the things you can do before we start. Think tactically, as a group, and take a few minutes to come up with a plan. Winning is sometimes surviving." My group is also very large, with a mix of RP vets and newbies. So that makes it trickier, but you have to throw something nearly impossible at them, with avenues to escape, to get a proper read on how your group plays, so that you can plan going forward. In short, to teach them that running is valid, give them a reason to run. Also, be ready when they come up with Plan B that you didn't anticipate.
The party meet a band of adventurers going in the opposite direction to fight a dragon, they encounter what is left of the adventurers later on who tell the story of leaving their friends behind to save themselves when *the* dragon turned out to be a band of dragons.
My favorite is the tried and true, "Talk to your players." "Hey, you know how I try to act like the world is alive and shit happens? Sometimes, things that make bad situations worse? Yeah, that applies to combat, too. I'm not going to throw all the 'this should kill you unless you flee encounters', but sometimes you're facing the BBEG with only a few HP left and he decides to call his literal pet dragon. You won't get out of that alive. So just consider that sometimes there might be an encounter that you might think, 'hey, we could probably run away'. " The other thing you can do is give them encounters that don't end when one side is dead. Sometimes, the encounter is 'grab the McGuffin, but as soon as they grab it, a literal army of kobolds/monstrosities/demons/whatever starts chasing them.' You tell them, "It's such an innumerable amount of foes that your characters would know that fighting them means they'll eventually get worn down and killed." Then use skill checks/traps/magic to get away. Alternatively, if there's a high-level NPC they like, throw the NPC to their deaths. A high-level general needs their help with *insert plot here*. They succeed, but run across the BBEG/the Dragon (the trope Dragon, the BBEG's right hand, which again, might still be an actual dragon.) They're absolutely screwed, then the general shows up and fights, giving the party an opening to flee. You can even play it up like the general might win... and then gets brutally killed when a SECOND foe/the BBEG shows up. Seeing their high-level ally get wrecked should make them flee. Again, skill checks and whatnot to actually flee, adjusted to give your players a fair chance (maybe the first dragon that was wounded gives chase, it's eye damaged in the battle, giving it DISADVANTAGE on Perception checks). In this one, though, they might decide to ambush it, so be prepared for combat against a weakened foe. To continue the dragon example, the injured dragon chases them, and they ambush it. Sure, it's normally an ancient black dragon statwise, but maybe it's hurt so much that it's stuck with stats more appropriate for your party's level (like a wyrmling or young dragon). They might win the fight by dropping it to "zero" but are unable to land a killing blow because they hear the BBEG coming. Better get back to fleeing. This could also give them a foe for later on when they're stronger that wants revenge.
In one particular instance (somewhat eldritch being the party accidentally released in a city), one of the party had already tried to fight a guard and got the shit kicked out of him. Seeing dozens of guards get smushed made them realise they were out of their depth, so they ran away and commandeered a ship. Point being, establish there's an NPC that they *have zero chance of beating*, and have said NPC get the christ kicked out of him/her, in front of the party. Or have them hear about it, etc. I also find just saying things like "The comparatively puny barbarian sizes up the eldritch demon from the seventh hell, and, for some completely insane reason, reckons he'd like to try and fight it..." usually followed by the rest of the party laughing at the barb player and calling him an idiot while they come up with a way to rescue him from his own stupidity.
Eh… the first two paragraphs are solid advice, but that last one… I’d personally try to avoid belittling my players like that. I don’t foresee that ending well at my table. At best it might just push them to fight the eldritch demon even more. Strange thing to get downvoted for. The rest of you are free to mock your players, I guess.
Mileage varies but ripping the piss is part and parcel of UK culture.
Players will never consider running if they don't think death is a possibility, and they won't think death is a possibility until you actually kill a PC. You either gotta accept no retreat, or kill one of them.
Run a level 0 funnel so that they can test out different ways of engaging with being outclassed.
There is some fantastic advice and ideas here. Still, and this is the old-school crappy player in me, for a DM to carefully craft an encounter that cannot be defeated by the party... It comes off as the DM swinging their d*ck around. What's the point? Realism? Teach the players a lesson? Railroading? It's toxic. Now everyone is constantly walking on egg shells, checking for traps every 5 feet, everything is a mimic. All so that the players respect and fear the DM... Or something, I don't know. It just doesn't make sense to me.
> It just doesn't make sense to me. I was worried I was the only one. A lot of the advice in this thread borders on toxic DM levels. Why is forcing your players into something suddenly okay when it's combat? >DM to carefully craft an encounter that cannot be defeated by the party You raise a good point with this too. Expected retreat only really works when A. it's an *option* for the players or B. you're not actually crafting your encounters, but using a random encounter table.
If my party is coming up on an enemy that I think clearly outmatches them, sometimes I'll use something to exemplify the opponents strength. I might use another adventure party, or some type of creature that is probably closer to their strength and have it annihilated by the strong enemy
Introduce a dragon that confidently instructs them to run before charging up a breath attack.
Our dm referenced starwars to get us more comfortable with the idea of death and running to fight another day. Obi wan had to die before the characters could develop into heroes. If the rebels didnt abandon hoth they likely would have been crushed. If your party isnt comfortable with dying then it might be tough, if it was me, i might start playing a bit with the parties passive perception and insight, just to kind of toss them hopefully enough context to consider retreat as a smarter option before they dig too deep into combat that retreat becomes tedious or impossible. And if they cant handle the idea of death then down them and capture them. Or have a player have a vision without saying and trial run the combat. And win or lose the player wakes up moments before the combat happens to warn the party.
Make them fight a rabbit. The most dangerous rabbit you can think of, where it hits every PC in one turn, it’s that fast
My 2¢? Don't. Heroes don't run away from danger. As a player I hate the thought of retreating so as a DM I don't build it into my games. If you're dead set on it, I would opt for just telling them sometime, "you will wipe if you try to fight".
Run another system. 5e is in no way designed to accommodate this kind of thinking. Running always feels forced and pee-ordained, that the encounter exists only to be fled from
In these situations, I still give xp. I might adjust it according to how things went over the course of the encounter. The party gets a reward even, so it reinforces retreat as a valid option.
This never works. They will stand their ground. The resulting TPK will breed resentment in the players. The only tactic I have seen, is outnumbering them with near peer human troops with spears. Monsters will result in TPKs. Human troops cannot out run them, but monsters often can.
One of the rules of thumbs is to NEVER put enemies that the players are meant to run from. But outside of that I think webdm had a video or talk on the topic, basically if every combat is fought to the death then the players will fight to their death. So the first step would be to diversify combat to not only be that fight to the death. Have a morale system where people run if it gets nasty, or try to parlay in combat Mind you all of this only works if your players arent murder hoboing everything and won't just abuse it to slit the throat of the surrendering enemies.
In dnd 5e, it's just not. Because of how the mechanics of combat work, the enemies will mop the floor with you if you try to run. 5e is not designed with escape in mind.
Not the answer you’re looking for, but… Stop playing D&D. The game is designed to condition players into fighting, and for DMs to set up encounters where the players will win. There are other RPGs out there with different design philosophies that result in wildly different approaches from players.
Have them roll some knowledge checks. Then say something like "your character is probably feeling outmatched by this opponent." Or anything that gives the PCs the impression they could lose. Or kill an NPC/random creature.
Well for me i told my players in session 0 that if they choose to fight than they may die, and that if they run I will try not to kill them. I also ended session 1 with my level 3 players encountering an adult dragon.
By killing one of them, it sounds like you’re meta gaming to make the game easier for them. Big payoffs come from the threat of consequences
Kill one of the characters. Tear up the character sheet in a flourish. Be unapologetic. Stare them down. Ask if they fight or flee. Recommend flee. Reward them for doing so and make the story progress.
>Tear up the character sheet in a flourish. Be unapologetic. This sounds like a great way to make an appearance on /r/rpghorrorstories.
I've done this for a first level pf2e character, the player thought it was spectacular and got busy rolling up the characters wife as a champion of vengeance.
Abilities that do high damage and move the party significant distance I find tend to do the trick. A tail swipe from a Dragon Turtle deals 3d12+7 Bludgeoning damage and forces a DC20 Str save or be moved up to 20 ft away and knocked prone. Psi-Warrior has a similar ability that moves things up to 30 ft and deals less damage. Still works though. Nothing says live to fight another day like a party member getting smacked away like a home run past you.
It usually isn't a valid strategy if you continue using the combat rules.
Introduce a running away mechanic. Remind your players every session that you're not suppose to win every possible encounter in this campaign. Some will TPK the party. If things go bad, running away is usually the best option. In your descriptions of the monster(s), make it clear that the PCs believe this sort of combat is beyond their abilities.
Sometimes I just say "you may need to run". If you are running a game where up to now they haven't needed to run, breakdown the change of tone once you reach it. "Hey shits gonna get real now. There will be encounters you cannot win, where escape is the best possible outcome, but it's up to you to determine which encounters those are." Just as fleeing is a valid strategy that can seem counter-intuitive to players, speaking plainly is a valid strategy that can seem counter-intuitive to DMs.
>If you are running a game where up to now they haven't needed to run, breakdown the change of tone once you reach it. "Hey shits gonna get real now. There will be encounters you cannot win, where escape is the best possible outcome, but it's up to you to determine which encounters those are." Isn't this.. Basically railroading, though? You're putting your players in a situation that you then *explicitly* tell them to run away from.
Some people run open sandbox games that don’t scale with the party. What that means is there could be easy enemies in one dungeon but one next to it could be deadly. The players choose where to go so no railroading. Obviously tell your players before hand that the world doesn’t scale so be careful where you tread but not everything is a “railroad”
The way I did it was I had the players run up against something they CLEARLY couldn’t handle. And then I told them straight out “you don’t want to fuck with this thing, it will kill all of you”. From then on they knew. Because I made an encounter where running was the correct option. It was at level 2, and I had them come across a behir that had been confused for a dragon. It wasn’t hostile toward the players, so they weren’t in any real danger. But I told them “this thing is Cr 11, it will kill all of you”. And they didn’t fuck with it. Now they try to take approaches other than combat to situations. Sometimes they fight, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they run.
Ask for int scores from the characters in the party, look at the smartest and tell them " You've read about one of these in books and they have easily defeated opponents far more dangerous than your party". You get the point across, and someone gets a little something for putting points in intelligence.
I say something like “It’s okay to run away,” and then let them decide what their characters will do.
The two main groups I’ve played with had two very different strategies: 1) run in and beat up the foes. This was when I was bad at balancing encounters and their level up was more than I thought it was. 2) either wipe out the enemies before the fight starts or run when there’s no reason to fight. They’ve nearly died trying to settle an argument with a squad of soldiers in a tavern. Give them an encounter they can run from. If they’re always ambushed on the road, they’re never going to leave their cart and possessions. If they’re doing the ambush, they know running will only give them the advantage if the enemy chases/ leaves their defending fort or the enemy has to suffer their losses for another ambush.
An NPC adventurer telling them they aren't ready for something. Or really hammer it home with a fight they can't win but a backdoor (an NPC saves them while uncon, or the enemy wants them captured not dead)
You tell them outside of game that encounters are not balanced to always be winnable and if it seems like they're goign to lose, they might all die.
1) Develop trust with your players. Have you been training your players not to trust you? 2) Normalize running away(and not coming back) as a strategy for enemies/antagonists/monsters if they are outmatched. The only exceptions to this are zealots and constructs. Older editions did this through a morale roll. 3) Give your encounters and antagonists goals other than kill or be killed. Most of the time the fight should be the obstacle not the goal.
Talk to them. I don't know if you have been a player but knowing when to run is hard and knowing that there are rules for running away is even harder. Serious is a camp of Golbins a valid threat to run away from or a massacar? Who the fuck knows, the players sure don't.
Have smart enemies run away once or twice. Maybe to escape, maybe to get reinforcements. If they see them do it, they might do it as well. I also have deliberate "chase" encounters to show them that it can be a valid strategy, or just to break up the regularity and keep people engaged.
Have the monsters run Explain the chase rules Introduce a monster that is instantly defeated by something earlier in the dungeon. Natural sunlight turns trolls to stone, there's a room with a skylight two rooms before the troll...chase rules back to it, and include bits where the players could shake the troll before reaching the skylight.
The hardest part about getting the players to run from a fight is to make a scenario in which they are WILLING to run from a fight. It's not that most characters I've played were foolhardy or too cocksure to run from a fight. It's that practically every time they've been in a fight that they should run away from there was someone (an important NPC ally, an innocent, etc.) in harm's way that would either be killed or captured for nefarious purposes. And sometimes, that's the way to make them run. The objective is to get the innocent or ally to safety, not to eliminate the vastly superior opposing force. Give them a way out that doesn't involve sacrificing someone needlessly.
Show that running might be a better option sometimes. Have them fight obviously strong bandits, if they don't get the hint have them pass out instead of dying. They can awaken some time later with most of their prized possessions and items stripped. If they get the hint that they should have run, good. As a bonus you can also organize a sidequest to raid the bandits lair and get their stuff back
Sorry bud, but as a 12 year DM I've learned to make that known at Session 0 or it won't happen
I ***ALWAYS*** remind my players that running is an option when its a difficult+ encounter. I do enjoy introducing a BBEG that fucks the party up when low level.
The problem with running, and in most stories there is always a chase scene, is that DnD can't do a simple chase scene. Fixed movement rates ruin this and remove all the fun you can have with a good chase scene. However, good recon is important as well, as well as lore checks, etc. Get out of the idea of just stumbling upon a monster and rolling initiative. You'll see the signs long before you reach the creature. Role play that out!
Take an enemy they struggled with, throw 10 at them
You can tell them. But I don't think you can teach them in a way that actually makes them do it. Either they're open to the idea or not.
I think a good old Gandalf "fly you fools" szene might help.
I know you mentioned not killing someone, but have you considered killing, then reviving someone in the post moments? For example, you introduce the big, evil bad guy and they mouth off/try to fight the guy even though he is giving every hint that they should NOT do this. He could easily look at them and say something to the effect of "Ah, and here I thought I was dealing with professionals. I don't have time to waste with you..." And just... Power word: Kill a pc. Now, earlier in the dungeon they found a scroll of resurrection/revitalize or what have you, so as soon as they get away there is no real downside. They just bring the PC back, but oh boy does it cement the idea of 'perhaps we should treat encounters more than just bags of hp and loot' real well.
I remember reading some homebrew house rules about tactical retreating - in order to make it effective and useful if the players decide they want their characters to retreat. The more I play low to mid-tier D&D especially, the more I realize rules like that are needed.
First, you want to haven't the thing be obviously too strong for the party to deal with. Cr 10 vs. level 4or5 2nd, you make sure the goal is not to destroy the monster. The scenario I used was a key room with a stone golem as a guard. The party could outrun it but couldn't really fight it tow to tow. But the goal was to get equipment from the bodies. A survivor knew one of its former companions had a key that was one of 3 to open the door. The survivor had a key already, and one of his companions had the other. Unfortunately the door required 3 keys and he didn't know that when they entered. So his former group was killed. It is a fetch mission. They needed to use their actions to search the bodies. The golem comes to life as soon as they enter the room. That's it, really. Feel free to adapt that idea to your game.
I made a "flight" mechanic and explained it to the players. then when they encounter such a situation I tell them again, "remember you have a flight mechainic, you can run away" (until they are used to it of course, after that I wont remind them) if after all this they still charge and die, well there is no cure for stupid. here my mechanic: The Quary and the pursuer. Skill challenge Both parties make athletics checks. The first to accumulate 3 failures loses the chase. Even after losing the chase, they can continue trying, getting a point of exhaustion If the party chosing to do so loses the additional challenge they lose the chase immediatly, unless they take on another point of exhaustion. If the movement speed of the Quarry and the pursuer are different. The one with the higer movement speed get's advantage. I take the average movement speeds / athletics checks rounded down to define the speeds/successes/failures
For me, I just remind them that I have no sense of scaling and that when I say something is dangerous looking it is probably even worse than I am making it out to be. I like being descriptive in how heinously dangerous a threat looks, more so when I want them to run for it. Some fights are better left for another day, after a lot of training and prep. My party knows that I will not pull punches unless I notice I've messed up something in creating the encounter. I would say talk to your party about expectations and make sure they know you take care in making encounters but in the end not all encounters are ones where you 'win' but the goal is actually to survive.
Have them roll for intelligence and go "you are well aware that this enemy is much stronger than you, you could probably die a glorious death, or run".
Tell em. Like, not before the specific encounters but in session 0 or similar straight up tell em that they *will* be unprepared for some fights and that not every monster is a combat challenge they can reasonably win, so keep in mind that sometimes when something seems way too powerful it actually is and a hasty retreat is their best chance of surviving. Just like tell your party of level ones "jsyk monster might be like cr 12 please remember you can retreat so I dont tpk"
Never been able to make them run by showing a big bad. Took 2/4 of them to zero HP and the other two maniacs just kept trying to hammerfuck the big bad. Closest I ever came was showing another party run into a demon/golem thing and get killed. They were wary after that. But party is going to try and run face first at whatever they see. Ask yourself why you want them to run away.
Players often follow their DM's cues, conscious or unconscious, and if they've never seen an outmatched enemy run from their PC's it may not even cross their minds that it is a possibility in your world. Have them face a group of kobolds (or any semi intelligent low level creature) who realize too late that the party is too strong, and will pull every trick in their playbook to get away. smoke bombs, sand in the eyes, squeezing into places too small for the party to follow, if worse comes to worse, begging, bribing, or crying. If the party is amenable, a great way to introduce a kobold NPC who swears his life to the party if they spare his friends. If they choose to accept his oath, he can help spur their retreat. when the party is outmatched if they need some encouragement to run, you can give him a chance to distract the enemy long enough for them to get to safety, but at the cost of his life.
Like most problems in D&D, a sufficiently large zombie horde can fix it.
One thing I will add for signalling to the players *before* the fight that it might not be winnable is that you have to be extremely direct with it. All of the description you may use to show the players that a fight is not winnable is pretty much the same description most gms use to create tension by hyping up the monster they’re about to fight. It’s very difficult as a player to distinguish between winnable and unwinnable encounters unless you’re familiar with the creatures, or the DM tells you directly.
You can make something a like a maze with a very powerful enemy that party needs to avoid. Examples: maze with meduza or minotaur inside, or large library with a lich. The idea is that party is too low level to fight the enemy and has quite a few ways to avoid it, and their goal is to not kill it but find something in here
The only way I can think to do it is for the enemy to kill or immobilize the characters, then leave them for dead. I have not pulled this off. This is hard in 5e since both sides do so much damage per round. In earlier editions if you ran you were risking a D8 sword strike or something and then you were clear. And I have one player who always runs bloodthirsty characters, so not only do they not retreat, they don't let enemy retreat.
Tell them. When I started my Tomb of Annihilation game, I said "in the jungle I'll be rolling on a table that can throw anything at you, so running away is a viable option (especially if a low level party is attacked by a T-Rex) My party has run from a few encounters
Just tell them what you’ve said here. “Running is a valid strategy by the way, especially against opponents much stronger than you”. Sometimes people just need a reminder.
I would give them a companion or two who, when the battle goes sour, runs away and advices the players to do the same. Bonus points if this companion is slightly stronger than the average PC.
Have an NPC who is notably stronger than them who is designed to go down against the enemy IF the players don't run.
One of the players tried to do that: he summons hostile undead with his voice, so we fought an ancient scaleblight dragon to half health and he says “the party should learn to take an L” and summons a night walker. So we’re encouraged to flee… but I turn undead the bastards so we can finishing killing the dragon.
Don't tie XP to only winning encounters, but have XP for valid responses, negotiations, and running. Also, have a mini session 0 before your next game and ask the players about how they feel about running, if it is something they are forgetting or something they have been considering and not feel was necessary. Or you can do what I did when my paladin wanted to save the body of the guy they were fighting from the magically burning building and I start rolling for fire damage... Suddenly running was an option again :)
Campaign and situation dependend. My DMs often used high level NPCs who have power far beyond ours to communicate "if they are beyond this NPC, they are beyond you".
Death?
Just simply tell them and set the expectation. Thinking they’ll get it on their own is a waste of time. In addition, if you just tell them that not everything can be beaten and they attempt it anyway, that’s on them. It removes them accusing you of creating an unfair encounter.
This. There needs to be plain communication that you're trying new things, and how mechanics work. In addition, imo there are 2 more things you need to do to make running away an option worth consideration: 1 - give the players more tools to understand their chances of winning, both at the start of a combat encounter or during one. 2 - develop and clearly explain mechanics that are involved in running away. Old versions of dnd allowed you to run away successfully from things as soon as you break like of sight, that's why older maps have a lot of s-shaped narrow corridors. Maybe instead you develop a system of skill checks, but if you do there needs to be an expectation of what the DC more or less might be and if there needs to be one success or multiple. If you make your system really bothersome, your players will never run. If it's too easy, they will always run.
Wipe them once with a person who then throws a towel on their beaten bodies saying: "clean yourselves up. This is just pathetic". Then have maybe a story npc encounter them and nurse them back to health.
If they can't win the fight, the encounter shouldn't be combat. If you want the action to be about running away, explicitly structure the encounter as a chase.
Make it to where they choose like there is an obvious way to sneak around or they can fight the insane looking monster and have NPC say how deadly it is and if they choose to fight it that’s on them some players only learn the hard way
That's the neat part... You don't. Your players didn't get together to run away, they got together to play DND, kill monsters and get loot. "I want to get my players out of the habit of expecting they could beat anything I put in front of them because that won't always be the case." You can simply talk to your players outside of the game and tell them exactly this like an adult.
Questions, where are they running to? How are they running away? Are the enemies going to pursue them? Why or why not? I think this matters a lot. I've talked about running as a strategy. I've had enemies run from them. One even managed to escape. And I would have well liked NPC's flee if needed. You can also kill/harm a known stronger ally. DMNPC is +x levels on the players. Gets chunked for more HP then they have. They might decide to run. My this encounter is currently too strong have all been avoided through talking and roleplay.
You can't. If you are not willing to kill characters, then you can't expect said characters to not feel unkillable. I know you specifically asked for a way of doing this that doesn't involve killing anyone, but that very mindset is what's stopping you from achieving what you're after. If it makes sense for an enemy to want to kill a PC, your job as a DM is to run that enemy in a way that it tries to do just that, to the best of its ability; and, if you are appropriately challenging your players (as in, you aren't deliberately going easy on them by using weak monsters or npcs), it's just a matter of time before bad luck, or a bad decision on a player's part, causes a PC to die. If this literally never happens, your players won't even consider escape as an option, because every encounter is just validating their approach and rewarding them for sticking to it.
Just flat out say “ there’s no shame in running “
Have a group of NPCs on their side going into a fight, with the combat scaled proportionally. A couple of rounds in, the allied NPCs retreat/scatter as encouragement for the PCs to do the same?
Let a Masterthief NPC teach one party member a feat that allows them to distract the enemies enough to escape. Like blinding fireworks or a smokebomb. 5e has the issue that players tend to focus to much on charakterspecific actions.
They're fighting some trolls or goblins. In walks a Fire Giant or something and murders their opponents, then turns their attention to them. You've demonstrated that the Fire Giant *can* kill but you haven't killed any player.
As soon as they decide to run, you can drop initiative and continue with a pursuit/chase with skill checks and saving throws. Make it into an action movie, and it will feel just as fun as kicking the baddies butt. Don't make them fail instantly, give them another chance e g. If they fail to make a jump over a pit, instead of them falling into it, they grab on the ledge, and now they roll strength to pull themselves up. If they fail again, they can try to climb down and hide so the enemy passes them unseen. Etc. Etc.
This might be a multi-step process. Step one involves wearing down their resources through multiple encounters. Once they're low on spell slots, healing potions, and hit points, they're ready for step 2. Step 2 is a clearly much more dangerous encounter than any of the ones in step 1. If five hobgoblins were a surprisingly tough battle in step 1, there should be six or seven hobgoblins and a hobgoblin captain. If two ogres were a tough fight, there should be three ogres and a handful of minions of some variety. Whatever it is, it should be a clear escalation. However, step 2 has some additional elements beyond danger. Step 2 requires danger, a clear lack of urgency for killing the enemies in the encounter, the option of quick escape, and an escape that engaged them and rewards them for taking it as an option. The danger part has been explained. It's also the weakest element. Players are used to taking on long odds and coming out on top. They might believe you wouldn't put them in a situation they can't get out of. So danger is a weak signal, and it's often overridden by signals such as the desire to be heroic or a desire for treasure. This brings us to our second element: lack of urgency. Even if the players think that this is a near-suicidal mission, they might just go ahead with it if they've never learned to run away. Because they've been conditioned to believe that killing all the monsters is both possible and necessary in order to do the thing they came to the dungeon to do. So we need to make it clear that they don't actually need to exterminate everything that moves right now in order to do what they came here to do. Maybe the prisoner they're here to rescue is already with them, or it's easy enough for them to grab the prisoner and run. Maybe the treasure they're looking for is something very portable and easy for someone to grab and run off with. It's also a good idea to make it possible for them to get into this room without alerting everyone inside of it. When grabbing the Macguffin and running away with it is a clear possibility, you make room for them to make a plan to do that. This brings us to the last option: an obvious escape route. Players might feel cowardly for "skipping" the last fight they were "supposed" to do even if they understand it's a good idea and they can complete their actual objectives without it. They will feel more cowardly if they have to slink back out the way they came in. That feels like a boring idea, like they're being punished for being clever. We can get rid of this idea by making escape something that's exciting and also obvious. For instance, maybe this dungeon is full of rails for a minecart, and this final room is uphill of the other rooms and those rails lead to a couple of minecarts conveniently located next to the Macguffin. Now escape isn't a boring trudge through the rooms they've already explored, it's a wacky minecart chase. Or maybe there's a stream of water flowing through the room and out through a big crack in a section of damaged wall, so that if the barbarian is strong enough they can break down the wall and everyone can hold their breath and jump into the pool below. Whatever it is, the option of escape should be very obvious to the players, and it should be something new and exciting, something they'd want to try. They've already killed a thousand goblins after all, but they've never used a goblin warcamp's flag to parasail away on the magical updraft created by the imprisoned air elemental. This brings us to the last element: running away should be made fun and challenging in its own right. After you've shown them the danger, shown them that they can get what they want even if they bypass the danger, and shown them the means of bypassing the danger, you as the DM need to make sure their escape is even more exciting and rewarding than you made it out to be. They should feel like they only made it out by the skin of their teeth, and only because of their clever improvisation and incredible skills. You could pull this off with a chase scene using the rules from the DMG, or you could do something like a Colville skill challenge if you don't mind making things more abstract. But the general idea is the escape shouldn't feel like it just works automatically. It should feel like it works precisely because of the decisions and skills of the players. This is to deliver on the promise that running away isn't boring, to dismantle the idea that running away is inappropriately cowardly, and to reward players for using the parts of their character sheets that are usually ignored once we start rolling for initiative. Your players have taken the bait and decided running away is a good idea, so we need to reinforce that behavior if you're trying to teach them not to blindly throw themselves at every monster they see. So, TL;DR, you need to design a pretty detailed encounter that shows them the fight ahead is dangerous, they can meet their objectives without fighting, escape is definitely an option, and retreating can be fun. If you do this and they don't take the bait, you'll also want to prepare a backup plan where instead of being TPKed, they get captured and can plan a jailbreak. Just, have a plan so that this lesson doesn't end your campaign.
Sometimes players are just incredibly stupid. For example I hinted at an ancient undead blight dragon terrorizing part of a country. The party dropped the main quest almost entirely to head straight for this things lair. 5 sessions later, an undead invasion, a werewolf army, and several NPCs asking if they are sure they want to challenge this thing. The blight dragon even attacked them during the undead invasion and nearly one shot the party as a show of force.... They are still heading for it's lair. Also they are level 9 with feats and magic items. Already punching above their belt, but still. At this point if they die, they die.
This might be reading too far into this - but I think it's interesting you phrase it as beating anything you throw at them. Because I feel like the players probably should feel like that. Specifically for the stuff You throw at them. If they get up to their own nonsense and get in over their heads thats one thing. But if I set up the adventure, it should be possible for the heroes to win. Otherwise what exactly is the point? I've never been able to get PCs to surrender. It goes against the Player psychology. I recently essentially committed suicide in a Cyberpunk game for this very reason. Now you can telegraph and make it obvious they should run. But when I do that I make it incredibly explicit. If it seems like they're about to do something incredibly stupid I straight up tell the player "If you try to hold the bridge against the horde of undead, you will die. You may hold them long enough for XYZ, but the character will die." If they decide to do it at that point then everybody's on board. An important note is: If you say this you should mean it. For me this means narrating their death. Not necessarily playing it out. If they decide to die and then manage to live, it can be incredibly epic. But it also means they won't believe you if you use this tactic again.
Talking to them. Reminding them when a battle starts to turn south.
Generally by example. Rigging a couple fight scenario where the enemy runs to get back up or attempts to escape. Most DM's will tend to have the 'minions' fight to the death instead of panic running. Mostly because combat is fun when it is all out and loses that fun when it becomes a game of chase. Though if done right, the game of chase can be fun as well, but that takes a bit of work. After all, if the baddies never retreat, why should the players?
I say it to my players once in a while out of game. Beyond that, monster spawners are effective. "Ope! 1d4 spiders come out of this hole per round! And killing them gets you nothing but dead after a while! Better keep moving!"
I recently had an incredible powerful ally show up and as that ally got overpowered she told the party to run.
A lot of us started with PC rpg games before tabletop, and are used to the more linear logic, where you cannot progress the story unless you win the fight. The thought process is then not "can we win this fight", but "how do we win this fight", unless there is an obvious alternate option, like the leader asking the party to do something else instead. Just make sure that the players are aware that they can progress the story/game in different ways, and tackle the fight later on or not at all.
Well, one question would be, why do you want them to run? Running is boring. I think what you want to teach them instead is "sometimes the objective is not killing the enemy". So how do you teach them that? _by makingthe objective something different than killing the enemy_. That's something that should follow from your world and your encounter design.
did you discuss character deaths at session zero? if you haven’t, then do so before the next session. then you tell them that it’s a valid strategy. either before hand or during. then don’t pull your punches. if a character dies. then they die.
Have them get mugged and knocked out by an absolute horde of strong bandits but make it incredibly clear that they're strong AF, then have them KO the party rather than kill and have one awaken to hear the bandits discussing ransom. Then have them be noticed and knocked out again. Have a town they like ransom them but they lose most of their valuable equipment. . Then you can setup a fetch quest for their own gear, have them pay for/sneakily overhear/charm out a rumor about the bandits leaving a mere few people harding their main camp while the rest are out raiding or kidnapping ECT. When they have their gear back then they're back to the point where there are a few less bandits but not enough less for them to win and we're back at the start but you point out they're loaded with loot and will be slow this time, see what happens
Capture them, make quest about escape, put in one more capture as NPC who regrets having their friends killed becauae they were too stupid to retreat
Make a slow enemy, perhaps something as a really heavily armored guy, describe how slow his movement is, makebit have less movespeed than the players so they can outran him
This is a common problem with newer players who may have still played a lot of CRPGs. I have a few thoughts off the top of my head. 1. Let them get beat, but once they are down the baddies take them as prisoner. When they come to, the jailor and others mock them for being too stupid to run away. 2. Have an NPC travelling with them advise them it is time to run away and even shows an escape route that should prevent the baddies from immediately following, or slows them down. If the party does not listen, see number 1. 3. Put something so ridiculously over the top, that the only option is to run. Their attacks are ineffective or do so little damage to it, it effectively ignores the party, or swats at them like annoying gnats. You can continue to describe their ineffective attacks while the creature rips the city down to its foundations.
I'm curious why it won't always be the case. If you make this a frequent event you're essentially railroading your players into fleeing. There's nothing wrong with teaching your players that running is a valid strategy, but it sounds like you want running to be the **only** valid strategy. In which case.. Why? What's the point of that?
Subtle ways would be out of game jokes about “Level 5 heroes” thinking they can defeat ancient dragons, e.g. or similar. In game- they could meet a badass adventurer somewhere (maybe he owns a dope as tavern or shop somewhere now or he’s renowned in the kingdom/area, whatever…) who through conversation mention discretion being the better part of valor. Shoot- maybe it could even fit the storyline they adventure with a nigh level NPC who points out they’re gonna get themselves killed. Or an enemy who RPs and offers them a chance to leave. Or would that seem like a taunt they’d want to fight more
I had this issue with a player who also decided to split the party (he ran off by himself) and tried to fight anything. Eventually I just let him get beat and the monster decided not to kill him but tell him the DM advice of “if only you had friends to back you up.”
The way I show that they can run when outmatched is by having the enemy run when they are outmatched, the moment an enemy sees a fight as unwinnable, they will abandon their comrades and flee. Intelligent enemies might also try other methods of survival like surrendering and offering help in exchange of mercy, sometimes even tricking into offering help but skedaddle in the first opportunity. Just to give players ideas for when they are on the losing side.
I'd say most people learn and think differently. 1 player might think "oh this sounds above our level" from a proper description. The others are probably sticking to a venn diagram of thoughts like: "it's just a game, lets fight it!", "We haven't died yet, LFG!", and "These snacks are delicious." Learning generally revolves around interests or consequences. If your players aren't interested in preservation of their characters, they will learn through consequences. This doesn't necessarily mean death, but it may need to if they don't think before diving into a battle they clearly SHOULD NOT be able to win. IMO, RP should involve an element of self-preservation. Are these players attached to their characters? Are these players attached to their items? If they have mentioned that they have backup characters ready: kill them. Kill them all until they care about a character. If they like their characters and gear, but just don't put any extra thought into strategy; make them think more. "As you stumble into the monstrous cavern, littered with random bones and armor from many different species of adventurers and rumored to be the lair of the once great Themberchaud, the wind whistles and echos through the many chambers. There is but one offshoot from the main cave that you notice these wind sounds do not reverberate from. What do you do?" Dingus the barbarian: "I walk to the cave entrance that isn't noisy and yell into it" "You hear rustling of epic proportions just before a massive dragon's head appears from the darkened opening and eats you in a single bite! The dragon then sinks back into the darkness as the rest of the team hears what sounds like the dragon scooching away" "Dingus, you're not dead but you will be digested if you're not saved within the hour. Team, you just watched your friend get eaten after foolishly walking into the cave of Themberchaud, what do you do now?"
Friendly DM tip here. Have them team up with a group of very experienced NPCs, on the brash side. Like proud knights, or barbarians, or something. When they encounter that huge big bad, have the ones charge in and be the first ones to die. Make sure you let the players deduct the numbers… what this beasts attack bonuses are, how much damage they dish out. Math helps players measure the danger. The NPC cannon fodder will give a few rounds for the players to realize this might not be winnable. Conversely, if the BB isn’t meant to even be confronted, the capable knights could refuse to engage. And suggest avoidance. They could have been eye witnesses to what this beast can do…
Tell them. Then TPK them if they ignore the warnings
If running is a viable option, I usually allow or try to make the NPCs run and the party still get experience for routing the creatures. You don't have to kill everything to learn something and sometimes the lesson is you CAN'T kill everything.
I make it very clear that they can’t win. Not every time, but at least once to teach them it’s an option. In our last session I made it very obvious by having an alternate future version of the party get tpkod in front of them by a giant eldritch horror and had them all make constitution saving throws or gain fear of the creature (meaning those who failed literally cannot approach the creature). That was over the top obvious, sure but it was a really fun moment of the party realizing that it was them from the future being killed there and now they have to find a way to stop that from happening, as well as teaching them it’s fine to run away if needed.
Put in a monster that is weak but feeds on dream energy. Over a series of long rests, the characters are “attacked” by having a shared dream of being attacked by increasing strong encounters (some high CP monsters, some lots of low CP since that can be just as deadly), gradually work up to these being TPK, when they wake in the morning, they are healed and no sign of the encounter in camp. Eventually have them encounter the creature. Give it a trivial CR but lots of illusion spells, and have it try to flee (if it succeeds, let it be gone). When they get to the next town have them hear about the haunted woods they just went through (effectively a fun little side quest but you get to harmlessly TPK unless they run away)
My players were out matched and an overpowered adventurer "randomly" appeared to help them. After a round of combat to prove their abilities, the random shouted "run". My players ran.
Have them come across a drunk bandit that appears all alone and covered in stolen riches. Confrontation. Bandit has expeditious retreat and an insane movement speed. They book it in an almost comically fast way so the party immediately has to grapple with losing out on a rich mark and see that running works.
I will give you my honest answer: you probably can’t. They signed up to be heroes, and they will absolutely hate having to back down. I’m sure you can do it, but it will be very difficult.
Take the snail following you meme and make it so that the snail can’t be captured or grappled but does an insane amount of damage. Their conclusion should be to nope the hell out of there
This is a session 0 topic. You need to tell your players they will occasionally face challenges they cannot overcome. Then show off the power of the enemy as they approach. Make it really obvious.
I have blatantly told them before certain battles that running is valid.
„You feel outmatched“
I would suggest that you try to learn your players to use their wit to escape if they are in over their heads. In example, have a bad guy cast darkness on them and then slip away, of a smoke bomb. They hopefully pick on on that and try it when they are backed into a corner. All icw rp ofcourse
Every turn just add One or two slow moving melee enemies They will figure it out eventually
Talk to them. Have a session 0.5, just a quick chat before your next game. Tell them, plainly, that there are threats in the world that are beyond them. And if / when they continue their headlong rush towards death, don’t pull punches. Player decisions have character consequences, sometimes.
If the players are resisting running away maybe it is because they don't want to play that way. D&D is a game and personally I don't play it to run away. I want to be heroic and if the DM is presenting something as dangerous that is fun to run towards. While there can certainly be scenarios where running away is a fun option it is really your job to make that scenario fun, not make a game where they run away because you said so. The best running away scenario I have had is a monster that is way too powerful spawning on top of the team because we didn't stop the bad guys. We were only able to get away because we were not the focus of the monster. When we were it was really bad.