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View Full Version : Run awaaay! (Or: How to spook players without using metagame knowledge)



Rixx
2010-05-03, 01:09 AM
One of the typical problems I see with D&D is that the players will never look at a monster and assume, by its appearance, that it is not to be trifled with - a player will assume that the monsters the DM throws are CR-appropriate challenges, and may fight when a their character, seeing a huge, powerful-looking monster, would flee. The things is, the players will usually only flee if they know, via metagame knowledge, that the monster they are facing is far above their challenge level. Otherwise, they'll take a hack at it or two before finding out that the monster is too tough - and anyone with a survival instinct will tell you that attacking something when you don't know its power level is fairly unwise.

Have any of you come across this problem? How do you all deal with it?

Project_Mayhem
2010-05-03, 01:12 AM
Pavlovian training. TPK them a few times and they'll learn


... why yes, I do run Cthulhu

Dr Bwaa
2010-05-03, 01:25 AM
Aww man, I was hoping this was a thread you'd made because you'd figured out how to do it. :smalltongue:

I try this often; occasionally it works. A couple scenarios that I've seen/used that actually did achieve this effect:
Omens. Fill the time before the encounter with weird portents, strange happenings, and bad signs. Maybe even be so blatant as to prophesy an unkillable creature that will require some other method of defeat than head-on conflict. Every time the players want to take an action that isn't "I run away," reply with "are you sure?" (Effectively) Infinite Enemies. If the party is struggling to deal with the current bunch, but slowly but surely going to prevail, and then they see another equal or larger (or deadlier, or whatever) group of baddies emerge from the trees 60' away, and there's continued rumbling from the forest as though a stampede was still happening, they're going to get the message. High level friendly NPCs nearby turn tail and run (teleport away, whatever). This is especially strong if they're the "always kill all evil" type. Showing that the powerful NPCs know you can't win is often a big enough hint that the PCs might possibly pick up on it (but not always (http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/8701/cluebat.jpg)).

Combine more of these elements for more likelihood of success. There is (as far as I know) no guaranteed path to victory--these are PCs you're dealing with, after all.

arguskos
2010-05-03, 01:26 AM
I periodically remind my players that not all fights can be won off the bat, and many times, they will encounter someone/something capable of crushing them mercilessly. If they wish to survive, they should perhaps not charge in guns blazing each time, and rather do some recon, take some guesses, use knowledge skills, use common sense, and make tactical plans to take down their foes.

It helps that I tend towards running a very simulationist game, so, it makes sense as it is.

Reluctance
2010-05-03, 01:36 AM
What's wrong with letting a little metagameyness inform their actions? My first reaction was to switch to a different game with deadlier combat, but that only works because the players have the meta knowledge to run risk/reward scenarios. Ditto if they learn you'll drop in the occasional huge monster as TPKbait.

Also, what's your goal here? Just to prove to the PC's that big nasties should make them mess their pants, or are you trying to make a game where combat in general is something to be avoided. The first is simple enough. The second, you'll have to monkey with some very basic assumptions about the game.

Irreverent Fool
2010-05-03, 01:46 AM
Pavlovian training. TPK them a few times and they'll learn

This. If all you do is throw CR-appropriate encounters at them, then they will of course that you will continue to do this. One of the best things you can do is to tell the players right off the bat that you are running a dangerous game and they might not be able to defeat every encounter just by fighting. If you follow this up by introducing a powerful boss-type monster/NPC that they must 'defeat' by foiling its plans or merely escaping with their lives, I feel the point will be driven home.

One of the tactics I use occasionally is derived from a tip I got from Ars Ludi (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/), a site I highly recommend. The author calls it "normal vision". When the players show up for a game, hand them some pre-generated NPCs who may or may not be important. Give them a short synopsis of goals and personality and let them play out an encounter with a monster or two... say a hill giant who has been robbing caravans. They can play the NPC caravan troupe that gets ransacked. "Normal Vision" has countless uses other than this, of course. Overall I have found it an invaluable tool and my players love it. Your mileage may vary.

A cautionary note:
I've seen many DMs (myself included) try to run the "you can't defeat everything" world and fail. The failure can often be on the DM's part. Players can be made to feel that their character aren't the heroic things they're meant to be and if they have to run away or avoid combat all the time, fun can decline. Moreover, description is highly important. If you just say, "You see a large man-shaped creature towering over the nearby trees," the party is likely to be less intimidated than if you say something like, "The earth itself shakes for a moment and a creeps across the earth toward you. Peering upwards toward the black blot in the sky where the sun once was, you see a massive silhouette, towering over the tallest of the trees nearby. The earth shakes again as the creature moves another of its massive legs forward, the forest parting like grass before its steps. You hear a lingering rattle between the thunderous footfall -- a string of countless humanoid skulls rattling at the waist of the giant. It doesn't seem to have noticed you... yet."

I won't claim that my description is the work of literary genius, but I think you get the drift. In the group in which I play, good description and poor knowledge rolls led an ECL 5 party to carefully avoid what was probably a CR 3-4 encounter of minor undead.

But when it comes down to it, don't be afraid to slaughter them once in awhile. Predator creatures are good for this, as they will likely only be interested in a single kill, leaving the rest of the party (herd) to escape. Just make sure that the PCs have a chance for vengeance eventually.

One last thing: As a personal request, can you share the outcome of any of the suggestions you use?

obnoxious
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SadisticFishing
2010-05-03, 07:03 AM
Put them up against one of it, that they barely beat. Then make six appear. I did this once with Fire Giants, it was enjoyable.

Another option - drop hints. The thing about being adventurers is that often you see something - let's say a Dragon vs a high level NPC. The Dragon is scary, but the NPC is... ridiculously powerful. There's no way for the PCs to be able to tell that the low level Large dragon is far less of a threat than the average height brown haired man with the rapier.

Drop DM hints. Levels are abstract, sure, in real life you can't tell that the rapier man is a huge threat - but in real life, shooting him will still kill him. In the game, the rapier man is a level 20 NPC, the Dragon is level 5. The dragon will take some swinging and hacking, but the NPC is unkillable. In game, players SHOULD be able to tell how powerful things are, to some degree.

"Levels" or "CR" are totally abstract concepts, but they're things the PCs have lived with their whole life, though without the numbers of a manual. They probably just get... FEELINGS about these things. Insight/Sense Motive checks, knowledge checks.

One thing... Make sure NEVER EVER to kill the party on purpose unless you're 100% clear that it's coming. They go to attack the rapier man, have him roll a passive "intimidate" check. He makes it, due to being so hardcore (even if he has no charisma), and the party realizes he is not someone to be trifled with.

The TPK route is an absolutely terrible idea. If you TPK your players a few times, they will never play with you again.

Irreverent Fool
2010-05-03, 08:18 AM
The TPK route is an absolutely terrible idea. If you TPK your players a few times, they will never play with you again.

It really depends on your players. I wouldn't go about TPK'ing a fresh group of people I don't know well (in D&D anyway). And having monsters one-shot them is usually not fun. If they fail to take the hint after a couple near-deadly blows though, they get what's coming to them. I think planning a TPK is far worse than allowing one to happen due to player mistakes.

In the game I'm currently running, the party has been effectively TPK'd three times and they keep coming back for more, learning from their mistakes. Of course, I warned them beforehand that I was going to run a deadly game and pull no punches. They died a lot in the beginning but are finally starting to use tactics to emerge victorious.

I feel that if players find out a DM is never going to TPK, then they have no fear for their characters lives and that something of value is lost. I played in a game like this and it quickly became no fun.

obnoxious
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Gnaeus
2010-05-03, 08:38 AM
Give them appropriate knowledge/bardic lore checks to realize what they are fighting. If they succeed, give them knowledge of some of the creatures more powerful abilities. Stuff like:
"you know that in the siege of Murldown one of these things got hit by 3 ballista bolts and kept fighting (it has a lot of hit points)"
"The old knight in the tavern said that they were almost impossible to hit, because of their amazingly strong scales"
"Your mentor once included it on a list of creatures that are virtually immune to magic"

That kind of thing.

Human Paragon 3
2010-05-03, 09:02 AM
A lot of good advice in this thread:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149467 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149467)

I'll boil it down to this:

1) Always expect your players to attack. Even good roleplayers in clearly dodgy situations. Maybe "expect" is the wrong word, but certainly PLAN FOR your PCs attacking even against impossible odds, because there is a fair chance they will. They are PCs and this is D&D, and your instincts that they feel everything will be CR appropriate and that they are the conquering heroes is a good one. Describing an enemy as totally awesome and badass is a good idea, but PCs take on impossible every day, and this particular bad guy probably won't immediately stand out as worse than the huge dragon they killed last week (for example) even with a paragraph of intimidating prose attached to it.

2) Leave outs. There are many different kinds of enemies out there, and some admittedly have no reason to leave your party alive. Some hold a grudge, or are murdering bastards, or are hired killers, or maybe it's personal. In cases like these, you won't want to show your NPCs or monsters backing down and letting their prey go, so leave outs. Maybe there is a great hiding place nearby. Maybe another monster comes by and distracts the original monster. Maybe a friendly NPC can show up and rescue the PCs. Chances are I haven't mentioned the exact solution to your problem here, and you'll need to come up with one on your own, but leaving outs is usually a good idea. Whatever outs you do decide to leave, make them obvious. The last think you want is for a TPK followed by "Well, if you had passed your spot check you would have seen the auto-win artifact."

3) Sometimes, you just have to beat the party down. Hopefully this won't result in frequent TPKs. If it does, either you're doing something very wrong or your party is, or maybe your party just can't deal with/doesn't want a game where they often have to run from fights. But if you do it right, you will be able to put the PCs in their places and let them know, "Not this time, not against these guys." A swift beat down sends a message that there are baddies you can't beat in a way warnings, metagame knowledge, portents and friendly advice just can't manage. After one good smack down, they'll probably wise up.

4) Think about encounter design in a larger context. The advice of sending one difficult creature against the PCs which they barely beat or survive, then showing them a large group of the monsters is sound. If they know they were almost wiped out by one baddie, taking on 30 will be an obviously suicidal action, and they will run. Probably (See point #1). This becomes more difficult if the threat is a unique monster that the PCs have not yet encountered and does not use cohorts. Having a single, unbeatable monster like this, and then having the PCs encounter it, is generally a bad idea because you can't control your players' actions, and you should always expect them to attack (point #1 again!). If for some reason you must, always remember point 2.

5) Accept you're not in control. In the final analysis, DMs need to come to terms with the fact that they don't control everything, and some player decisions will lead to character death. Once you accept this, the players will have to accept it, too. Don't stress out about how they will know to run away. They'll figure it out, or they'll die. This is a harsh-but-true reality. If you've done your job, given fair warning and left outs (preferably multiple, obvious outs), you have nothing to feel bad about. The players are responsible for their characters lives, not you.


If you master the overwhelming encounter as a plot tool, the enjoyment of the game for everyone involved can be greatly increased. Sure, it's fun to take on all comers and end up on top, heroically crushing all who stand in your way, but it's fun to be afraid, too. That's why we like thrillers and horror movies and roller coasters. When the players are afraid of the very real possibility of character death, they will be more engaged and the game will be more exciting. And when they finally become strong enough (or get the maguffin) that will let them overcome the enemy, their victory will be all the sweeter.

Anxe
2010-05-03, 09:04 AM
The rules already have something inbuilt for this, Fearful Presence. If the PCs are too low level, sometimes they are required to run away. Most of the other good ideas have already been stated.

ChrisFortyTwo
2010-05-03, 09:18 AM
Although it's still kind of metagame, I try to find a monster with a high AC and that does a significant proportion of damage in one round. For instance, I used a wartroll at my last game vs a 6th level party (non-optimized, small group). AC 32, hits on almost any roll, and does enough damage in a round to nearly knock a player down. Mix this guy in with some "normal" baddies, and the big guns feel obligated to help, while the spell-slingers start getting wailed by the "normals" and things look worse and worse.

I find that most of my players, when they are down to ~1/3 or 1/5 of their HP, try to figure out escape plans. I also reinforce with things like "this area is AoO range for spellcasting, and this area is concealed...etc."

Here's a nice trick, put an invisible spellcaster or two into the mix. The sounds of battle put the listen check to pinpoint them around 50 or 60, and they can heal, power-up, or do any number of helpful things without losing their invisibility. Nothing freaks a player out more than seeing the guy they just spent a ton of energy beating get back up for no reason at all.

Also, try killing a cohort or moderately leveled NPC (this also avoids accidentally turning your NPCs into DMPCs). Don't overuse it, but when a battle changes from "kill the bad guys" to "rescue the good guys" even meta-gamer players intuitively recognize that killing them might not be possible, even though a solution is possible. It helps even more if a nasty baddie from an earlier "run away" encounter is present for the rescue. Players remember who they ran away from much more than who they killed.

Last but not least, if you think your players aren't afraid of dying because you "save" them too much, have the church give them "one free resurrection" in the future. That's more of a prediction of death than any prophecy or anything. Suddenly, they see a major encounter and think "is someone going to die - what if more than one person does?" I've had a free resurrection available since level 3 in my group, and they are still wary about encounters, because if one dies, it's ok, but if two people die, they are in trouble.

DaTedinator
2010-05-03, 10:05 AM
Something else you wouldn't normally think of that I've found can be frightening for my players is rolling all the dice right in front of them. That way there's no fudging anything to give the party more or less of a chance, and the added sense of randomness can really contribute to the "If this thing kills us, we're dead!" sense of things.

Another option is to have the enemies do what the players usually do - gang up on one guy, preferably the wizard or the healer. If the party's smart, they'll realize those guys are going to be able to drop the squishy before the party can stop them, and they'll start using some serious strategy, both then and in the future, in order to protect everyone.

aivanther
2010-05-03, 10:54 AM
Tolkein did it well: Take an over-the-top NPC, have him send the others along. He stays to fight and gets royally screwed over by the encounter, within their view.

I had a DM do this once with a high level priest we were caravan-ing with.

DM: The High Priest tells you to run ahead, as he will slow it down.
BSF: Dude, I'm totally going to chop that thing's balls off.
DM: The priest gives you a withering glare and says, "When you get to the city, tell my order that I died defending life."
Rouge: Uh, dude...
Me (Wizard): F this, run guys.

DM: As you get to the top of the hill you hear a scream.
BSF: I turn around.
DM: You see a huge, dark, and ominous shape holding the high priest in two hands...(CENSORED TO WHITE)it grasps the priest's arms and legs off. It then starts ripping more bits off. Somehow the priest is still alive, and is screaming incoherently as blood fountains out.

That scared the living bajezzus out of us for the rest of the campaign. Heck, when it was an appropriate encounter level at the end of the campaign we almost didn't fight it.

awa
2010-05-03, 11:08 AM
I strongly disagree with deliberate tpks ive never been in a group which would enjoy the interesting characters they put so much effort into being crushed with nothing they can do about it.

The problem is lack of an ability to tell how powerful enemies are if they don't know how strong the foe is they wont know to run away. At low levels just being big (size huge or bigger) will make them think twice about picking a fight with it. having it kill creatures whose power they recognize or having said creatures work for it allows them to judge it's power with out killing them.
Be carful of monsters that the party cant get away from such as grapple/ swallower becuase if the monster grabs one charecter theirs a solid chance everyone else will stay behind and try and free them instead of running.

Finally if you what to design a monster that will cause your party to run high damage is the wrong way to go particularly if it can drop a pc in a single blow (unless of course your goal is to kill one of them which i personally feel is the wrong choice) What you want is a monster with regeneration or damage reduction and armor class at the point where they can quickly tell their not making any head way. Physical attacks that send the characters flying are also good it shows how much of a power difference their is between them and the monster and it also makes it easier to make the descion to run away.

P.s. sorry about the grammar i didn't have much time to spend on this post before i had to go to work