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View Full Version : [PF/Any] knowing when to run away



Arutema
2010-10-11, 09:59 PM
Long story short, by a miracle of dice luck our 1st-level party of mostly new players defeated a CR5 troll last session. Afterward, the DM admitted that he expected us to either run away or suffer a TPK.

My problems with that encounter:
1) The ranger who passed his Knowledge (Nature) check on the big green thing got only "can only be killed by fire or acid", not "likely to kill you all."

2) By the time any party member suggested fleeing, the cleric and barbarian were already in the negatives, and too heavy for the rest of us to lift. Running would have meant leaving them for dead, something we, (especially my paladin of the goddess of valor) were not keen to do.

How do you handle encounters like these? As players, what do you take as cues that maybe you should get out of a given combat? As DMs, what clues do you give your players that maybe attacking this would be a bad idea?

Crow
2010-10-11, 10:09 PM
My group doesn't run away from anything, or think to, until it's too late. Unfortunately, this doesn't help your situation much, except to say that once a bad guy begins nearly dropping good guys with a single full-attack, my players begin to get worried.

Soren Hero
2010-10-11, 10:14 PM
i was dming a game a few months back, and I set them (a lvl 4 unoptimized party) against a half-fiend fighter riding a skeleton T-Rex mount, thinking it would TPK them and force them to flee...i even let them have a way out, through the mountain pass i had them just explore (they didn't find the passage through the mountain the first time through)...they didn't flee, but somehow the barbarian managed to dismount and disarm the fighter, the bard greased the T-Rex, and the paladin used lay on hands/holy smite to deal lots of damage to the T-rex...the party rogue was down to -3 hp, but everyone else was fine...mostly unlucky die rolls on my part as dm (freaking nat 1 on disarm and balance)

Susano-wo
2010-10-11, 10:20 PM
well, by how much did he pass his check? each 5 above the DC gives you another useful b it of info, but nothing says you know the power level or anything. Though its vague, the bit where you ask a specific question about a subject might apply to "Is this monster too powerful?"

One caveat, though: are trolls common in the world? If they are well known, you wouldn't need a knowledge check, you would just know that trolls are pretty tough. Though, as you have said, your character(s) sound like they'd respond by meeting the challenge, which they did. [congratulations, by the way ^ ^]

Holy crap, Soren! my brain thought I had double posted for a sec! Similar name length, same first and last letters, and the same avatar [post size was similar as well]^ ^

ericgrau
2010-10-11, 10:27 PM
Since the knowledge check depends on hit dice for the difficulty, I don't see why the ranger shouldn't have at least a rough idea of how strong the thing was. And if he has a rough idea I don't see why that shouldn't be something of immediate concern which the DM ought to point out, like any other major thing the PCs see. The ranger might not know "TPK" but he may know "very hard". Heck, anyone who has even heard of a troll would know that.

On the flipside people IRL tend to have much more fear than PCs, and a little pain will send them running long before death even though they might have a good chance of winning. Occasional death is then the natural consequence of taking higher risks. I was just watching a Star Trek episode where an assault team took out two enemies but then one guy was having chest problems and they immediately beamed out. I was thinking "Man, if that were D&D..." But then Star Trek would have a lot more character deaths.

chiasaur11
2010-10-11, 10:52 PM
Since the knowledge check depends on hit dice for the difficulty, I don't see why the ranger shouldn't have at least a rough idea of how strong the thing was. And if he has a rough idea I don't see why that shouldn't be something of immediate concern which the DM ought to point out, like any other major thing the PCs see. The ranger might not know "TPK" but he may know "very hard". Heck, anyone who has even heard of a troll would know that.

On the flipside people IRL tend to have much more fear than PCs, and a little pain will send them running long before death even though they might have a good chance of winning. Occasional death is then the natural consequence of taking higher risks. I was just watching a Star Trek episode where an assault team took out two enemies but then one guy was having chest problems and they immediately beamed out. I was thinking "Man, if that were D&D..." But then Star Trek would have a lot more character deaths.

More?

Man, the redshirt union is mad enough as it is.

Il_Vec
2010-10-12, 06:36 AM
Last friday, Eberron campaign, me and 2 party members (level 4 elf archivist, barbarian orc and changeling ranger) were taking a stroll in a forest and came across a bone knight. She tells 4 karrnathi skeletons to kill us and walks away.

I don't know if it was pure unluck (I rolled 1 on both my Knowledge Devotion and my Dark Knowledge checks, and the barbarian landed like, 2 blows the whole fight) but what we thought was a manageable challenge dropped the barb and the ranger. I used Invisibility and tried to drag the barb to safety. We managed to kill 2 of the undead, but all in all, we it never ocurred to us that we should have ran.

dsmiles
2010-10-12, 07:14 AM
Man, the redshirt union is mad enough as it is.

GAH! They're unionizing! Everybody run!

Psyx
2010-10-12, 07:56 AM
I think it's important for GMs to point out at least once every 6 months that the players WILL have to run sometimes. Players tend to forget, and lack the mindset of dabbling their toes in the metaphorical water.

some guy
2010-10-12, 09:26 AM
Long story short, by a miracle of dice luck our 1st-level party of mostly new players defeated a CR5 troll last session. Afterward, the DM admitted that he expected us to either run away or suffer a TPK.

My problems with that encounter:
1) The ranger who passed his Knowledge (Nature) check on the big green thing got only "can only be killed by fire or acid", not "likely to kill you all."

2) By the time any party member suggested fleeing, the cleric and barbarian were already in the negatives, and too heavy for the rest of us to lift. Running would have meant leaving them for dead, something we, (especially my paladin of the goddess of valor) were not keen to do.

How do you handle encounters like these? As players, what do you take as cues that maybe you should get out of a given combat? As DMs, what clues do you give your players that maybe attacking this would be a bad idea?

1) If I were in a 1st level party and I got the info "can only be killed by fire or acid" I would think "man, this is going to be tough" if we were carrying fire and acid, if not "run away". If we weren't carrying fire or acid, I'd run away directly. As a player, the sentence "can only be killed by" would be enough for me to consider fleeing.
However, fighting 'till the end is fun. Exciting and exhilarating, me and my group once fought a powerful enemy when our resources were dangerously low. We all knew we had to run, we didn't run though and had a great time.
Fighting on is incredibly addictive.

As a DM, I usually count on the survivalinstinct of my PC's. When I tell them the 11-headed hydra regenerates and makes another 11 attacks, when I tell them the Umberhulk confuses one half of the party and does more damage than 3/4 of someone's hp; I expect them to run. They never do, though. And they allways end up lucky. Almost dead, but lucky.

I think it usually goes like this:
DM says: It bellows a mighty bellow, the halfling has trouble standing at the same spot from the force of the roar. It's glistening teeth are as long as a bastardsword. It's pretty deadly, you guys.
DM means: run away or TPK.
Player 1 thinks: The DM would never kill us.
Player 2 thinks: Wow! That monster has a CR six points higher than the average we encounter! A challenge worthy of my battle prowess!
Player 3 thinks: Shouldn't we be running? Eh, no one else is running, it will allright, after all they have played so much more than me.
Player 4 thinks: Just one more round, after that I will run.
Player 5 thinks: Man, I should be running, but that's not what my character would do.
Every player thinks: XP! Loot and XP!

valadil
2010-10-12, 09:35 AM
I don't think this is the type of thing you can solve over the course of one encounter, especially if they're conditioned to expect all fights to be winnable. Without derailing the game, I think the best thing to do is to make it terribly obvious that the situation is an escape scene and not a combat encounter.

I've met quite a few players who have only ever played RPGA games, and they're very insistent that everything be winnable. If they don't see the answer to a problem, they'll keep pushing forward on the assumption that the quest will provide an answer. I haven't actually had to run for any such players, but I've listened to their GMs complain.

Cyrion
2010-10-12, 09:40 AM
As so many others have pointed out, PCs tend to be tenacious and optimistic. If I really intend that the party run, I'm either very direct in the information I tell them about its power or I build the scene with enough death and destruction present that it's the same as telling them directly. Anything less than that, and I know the party will plan to stick around and try to kill it. However, biting off more than you can chew is mostly a lower level problem- as party level goes up they're less committed to a fight they get into because they have more effective options for getting out of Dodge when they need to.

Yora
2010-10-12, 09:46 AM
My current group has miracolously adopted the policy of not fighting when possible, and I'm creating my adventures to encourage them keep doing so. In this campaign, XP are not given for the amount of creatures killed or captured, so there's no actual gain for risking your life.
Though I'm very much in favor of switching to a non-d20 system, once the current adventure is over, as D&D is really all about combat.

WarKitty
2010-10-12, 11:19 AM
If you get that type I find putting in some enemies that will capture the players as a warning shot can work well, or an enemy that's clearly willing to let the PC's cut their losses ("Heal up your barbarian and get the hell out of here so I can go back to my nap!"). It gives them a fight they can't win without being a TPK.

Oracle_Hunter
2010-10-12, 11:28 AM
In general, PCs will only run away from encounters if they expect that the game they're playing will produce encounters they should run from. This is not the case in WotC D&D; it is the case in AD&D and CoC.

If, as a DM, you want your Players to run from some encounters, tell them straight-up: "this is not a game about fighting, it's a game about survival. You can't kill everything you fight and so don't expect to." Then be sure to prove your point early and often until the Players get the drill. If you instead follow up with a bunch of "kill 'em all" Encounters your Players are going to dismiss your earlier warning and then blame you when they get TPK'd.

Also: if it's something they should run from, don't frame it like an encounter. Describe the entire army, not just a nearby scout squad.

ericgrau
2010-10-12, 11:30 AM
More?

Man, the redshirt union is mad enough as it is.

A lot more main character deaths. The assault group was all main characters plus one plot centric guy so he couldn't die until the end of the episode. Thus Picard said "Gah, someone has a minor ailment, retreat!"

VirOath
2010-10-12, 11:34 AM
If you get that type I find putting in some enemies that will capture the players as a warning shot can work well, or an enemy that's clearly willing to let the PC's cut their losses ("Heal up your barbarian and get the hell out of here so I can go back to my nap!"). It gives them a fight they can't win without being a TPK.

My personal favorite falls into this line, in a manner of speaking.

Using the troll in the OP story, if I wanted the players to run away rather than fight, once it looked like it was going to end badly for anyone involved I would have pulled what I like to call an OH SHI- moment.

Have something bigger and meaner suddenly rush into the battle and take on whatever they were fighting. Generally, seeing their big challenging monster (bundle of XP) get eaten/crushed/burned/felldrained/swarmed/etc as badly as they were getting beaten is normally enough to trigger the survival instinct of the players. Now it's not just a challenging encounter, it's a challenging encounter to what was their challenging encounter, while they are already wounded. It's a case of run while it's distracted and try not to get it's attention.

And if they don't? Then your players are the type that would piss on the sleeping ancient red dragon at level 5.

dsmiles
2010-10-12, 11:45 AM
You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.

If you don't understand TPKs, and that there are things in the world that are bigger and hungrier than you, you should probably be playing video games with 'levelled encounters.'
For the sake of immersion (READ: saving characters' lives), maps are marked 'old school' (as in 'Here there be monsters') in my campaigns. If you go in and a TPK ensues, don't blame the DM, you were warned in advance.
I will throw things at you that you cannot fight, and I expect you to know that you cannot fight them. If you happen upon a beholder hive at level 2, don't be that one guy that says, "Oh, the DM wouldn't kill us, lets do a full frontal assault on this place." ('Cause you'll be wrong. :smalltongue:)

VirOath
2010-10-12, 12:10 PM
And on a random side note. Directional sign posts labeled with "Death" "More Death" "Certain Death" and "Excruciatingly Painful Death" can be quite amusing and get the note across as well.

chiasaur11
2010-10-12, 04:19 PM
A lot more main character deaths. The assault group was all main characters plus one plot centric guy so he couldn't die until the end of the episode. Thus Picard said "Gah, someone has a minor ailment, retreat!"

Oh, Picard.

That explains it.

Kirk was a MAN'S MAN and if a few people died in the course of alien fightin' and lovin'?

These things happen.

randomhero00
2010-10-12, 04:42 PM
Most of my groups never run away. Which I think is unrealistic and dumb. But its because there's always at least one character who roleplays a devil may care attitude and since our characters care about him we can't leave him behind. So we never end up running.