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bigstipidfighte
2012-07-03, 08:57 PM
I find there is a common theme here on the forums that players rarely run away from any encounter. A level six party facing down (and defeating) a Balor is probably the best example, but less extreme cases show up all the time.

In my personal experience, this phenomena is unique to D&D, with players (myself included) going into denial/becoming upset when facing a superior foe. Since the forums focus heavily on D&D as well, I'm wondering, has anyone else noticed this mindset creeping in when you sit down to play D&D, but not when playing other systems?

Craft (Cheese)
2012-07-03, 09:12 PM
This seems to be a habit that comes more from video games than from D&D: Those few modern games that DO allow running from battles, like Pokemon, only allow running from battles that are so pathetically easy they pose zero threat to you. A battle against something that's actually dangerous you'll be forced to fight no matter what, so there's no point trying to avoid it. It's a pretty tough habit to ditch once it sinks in.

vartan
2012-07-03, 09:12 PM
I'm actually pretty dejected about the current campaign I'm in because we didn't walk (or run or paddle) away from an encounter I'm pretty sure the DM hadn't actually drawn up. It's debatable, but basically my party was on the edge of a swamp in which we knew there was a black dragon of indeterminate age (read: no one gave us a straight answer even about the most relevant event of its history wherein it lost its wings). We had totally been sent to the edge of the swamp by plot hook, so why would I assume we weren't supposed to go meet this thing? We even pressed the local lizardmen into our service. After a random encounter and the realization that the poisonous swamp waters drained all physical abilities (wow) we still endured. Basically when the DM declared that a whole boat of lizardmen was breath weaponed without rolling any dice I realized the error. Whether it was his or ours I dunno. We ran away after a stupid bargaining session that pretty much set my character back.

Tl;dr: kobayashi maru scenarios are stupid if they aren't obvious until its too late, and if the party doesn't fail as intended... I woulda rather died.

Grail
2012-07-03, 09:28 PM
Definitely an issue. DnD tends to try to force level-appropriate encounters on groups by way of policy. As such, players have this expectation now that any encounter should be able to be defeated, otherwise it wouldn't have been put against them.

It is a terrible blight on the game imo. I as a DM never encourage this thought process and have been known to have characters as low as 2nd level encounter epic level creatures (normally not that high a disproportionate encounter, but occasionally it has been). If the group goes up against them, they get swatted - usually non-lethal or just to within an inch of their life (first time), to teach them that the world is dynamic, it is not about level appropriate encounters.

In RL, sometimes you go spear fishing and there's a great white in the water. Or sometimes you go spear fishing and there's nothing but sardines.

Level dis appropriate swings both ways, so I make sure that I implement this in games. But if players constantly think that everything can be defeated in my games, they usually die because they bite off more than they can chew.

Lord Tyger
2012-07-03, 10:12 PM
Part of it, I think, is that a lot of high level threats can't effectively be run from once the combat's started. A Young Red Dragon (Pathfinder) has a 200 ft fly speed, and then a forty-foot ranged attack on top of that. If you run, without favorable terrain or a distraction, you're just wasting actions

Blind Orc
2012-07-03, 10:15 PM
Because you don't get exp for running away.

Anxe
2012-07-03, 10:28 PM
My players run away from monsters all the time. I thought everyone did this.

Frenth Alunril
2012-07-03, 10:40 PM
My players run away from monsters all the time. I thought everyone did this.

Mine too, but to be honest, I play sandboxy, gloves off. My players have run from everything. They got pretty angry with me when they finally caught the level 6 cr druids while their group was 5 level seven characters with npc support and a good strategy with a surprise. They were angry because it was easy.

Then I practically killed them with slaadi, and now they are in love with shopping in the city of brass.

You want you players to think more and stand down, kill one, see what happens then. Suddenly you will have them talking strategy and all kind of things.

Synovia
2012-07-03, 11:30 PM
This seems to be a habit that comes more from video games than from D&D: Those few modern games that DO allow running from battles, like Pokemon, only allow running from battles that are so pathetically easy they pose zero threat to you. A battle against something that's actually dangerous you'll be forced to fight no matter what, so there's no point trying to avoid it. It's a pretty tough habit to ditch once it sinks in.

D&D also is very "Rocket-tag" like, and damage greatly outpaces health. Once you engage something, by the time you know you can't kill it, you're in a position where you can't really get away.

Also, trying to run is often more likely to get you killed than staying and fighting. Most of the more dangerous creatures you face move faster than you do.

Honest Tiefling
2012-07-03, 11:41 PM
My players run away from monsters all the time. I thought everyone did this.

Going to second this. I tend to be and play with people where the phrases 'parlay is French for the enemy is flat-footed' and 'Run away!' tend to get used a lot.

I wonder if some people feel obligated to stay if the entire party doesn't flee?

Aron Times
2012-07-04, 01:22 AM
My Lasombra antitribu died during an encounter with a Lasombra priest that I was supposed to run away from. Basically, the ST had statted out this NPC and given him a significant backstory, but he completely failed to convey the NPC's threat level. I was kind of pissed off when the DM said after the fact that I should have run away, never mind that his first action in the fight was to use Obtenebration 3: Arms of the Abyss, which is like springing Black Tentacles on a low-level D&D character. Oh, and he won initiative, so there really was no way for me to run.

prufock
2012-07-04, 06:50 AM
As a player, I am more than willing to run away.

- Bandits have a kid hostage, his mom is pleading with us to help him. We get the kid out of their grasp and skedaddle, not because WE don't want to fight, but because there will probably be collateral damage.

- BBEG Cleric catches us off-guard, teleport/plane shift away. Take a little time to prep, then come back and lay the smack down.

- Hey look, a gate to the Abyss with demons - including a balor - coming through. We get our level 8 butts out of there to go warn the world.

- This wizard is kicking our butts. Teleport!

Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valour. We prefer to call it a "tactical retreat," since we'll usually get out of there in order to prepare and plan. To me, this is part of character immersion. My characters mostly fall on the good side of the moral axis, and aren't above making sacrifices (I had one sorcerer who snuffed it 3 or 4 times over the run of a campaign), but people don't normally fight to the death.

EccentricCircle
2012-07-04, 07:08 AM
Dragons show up from time to time in my games. I think so far there have only been two occasions when the characters haven't run away screaming as quietly as possible, simply because it was a dragon. Frequently those dragons were level appropriate challenges, sometimes they weren't, but the players didn't know that. what they did know was that they didn't want to mess with dragons.

This is across at least five different groups, over the course of ten years. in that time, no one has ever willingly fought a dragon. On one occasion, cornered and unable to escape while trying to steal a valuable jewel from beneath the sleeping beast they actually ended up buying the item from the dragon, by giving the dragon every single piece of treasure they currently possessed in exchange.

If you want your players to not charge blindly into any encounter assuming that its been set up so that they can win it, tell them at the start of the game that there will be a vast disparity between their abilities and those of other things they may meet. That way they can't really complain if they do somethign stupid and die horribly.

Saph
2012-07-04, 07:18 AM
It's a very D&D mentality, and I think it comes from the idea that the purpose of everything in the Monster Manual is to be killed for gold and XP. There's this attitude a lot of gamers have that if you meet a monster, it MUST be there for you to kill it, otherwise why's it even in the game?

To be fair a lot of modules encourage it. I've played in way too many adventures where monsters just seem to spawn on top of the party at regular intervals with no objective other than "Adventurers! Get 'em!"

I generally explicitly tell new players to my game that not every encounter will be level-appropriate and that sooner or later they WILL run into enemies that they can't defeat in combat. They usually pick up the idea fast.


Also, trying to run is often more likely to get you killed than staying and fighting. Most of the more dangerous creatures you face move faster than you do.

Teleportation magic. If you're too low-level to afford that, invisibility is a decent substitute.

Pretty much all my characters with any resources have at least one get-out-of-jail-free card designed to let them run away. If you've got 36,000 gp worth of gear then you should be willing to drop < 1,000 gp on a retreat item.

Malak'ai
2012-07-04, 07:42 AM
I have no problems having my characters hightail it out of danger if they are drastically out matched by the encounter, this sometimes goes against the party dynamic, but hey, it's not my fault if the other party members don't have any sense.

Case in point, I was in a core only epic game when 3.5 first came out, and I was an Elf Ranger 15/Sorcerer 3/Arcane Archer 7 in a party with a Cleric of Hextor 25, a Barbarian 27 and a Wizard 16/Rogue 4/Arcane Trickster 8.
We stumbled in on a Half Dragon Balor and his "friends" (can't exactly remember what they were apart from devils of some kind) being ported into the mortal realm by 2 lvl 21 Wizards. The Barbarian charged straight in to the HDB, the Cleric went nato on the bad Wizards and failed badly (died 3 rounds later after getting hit with 2 Discentigrates and a Finger of Death).
I popped off a few arrows which only just got over the DR of the devils so I bolted.
Our Wizard survived (only just after having to teleport out himself after trying to deal with 5 high level Devils by himself), and the other players went nuts at us because we ran. The Wizard's player ended up telling them that if they hadn't of acted stupid then we might have stuck round to help out, they claimed "We were doing what we would normally do".

Yukitsu
2012-07-04, 02:51 PM
My players when I DM run from literally everything. I once ran them against a level 1 warrior when they were all level 2, and they decided to run.

Conversely, I never run from anything. I view any encounter as a challenge to be overcome. I do tactically relocate when I think the area is giving us a disadvantage, but I'm not using it as a euphemism to flee, I really do set up at a better spot and fight it out. If it turns out that I do lose (which happens from time to time) I'll just accept that I needed a better plan. If the DM is shoving things that are by all means "unkillable" by myself or the party, he may as well have just cutscened it, because there was obviously 1 "right" answer, and apparantly my input has no point anymore to what happens beyond "live a coward" or "die a good death". I don't appreciate games where I can only really do variations on 1 thing to continue.

In essence, anything truly dangerous will be able to shut down my ability to flee, just as much as they can shut down my ability to fight back. If I have some kind of mobility advantage, I will more than likely abuse that to harass the enemy into fleeing and being run down or killed than I am to just keep running. Also, I'm fully aware that my DM's view my characters as incredibly dangerous due to my ability to very often hunt down and kill NPCs that were supposed to get away from me. D&D gives most advantages to the chaser, not the one running away. A dangerous enough enemy, you're simply multiplying the advantages they have against you by trying to run.

HMS Invincible
2012-07-04, 03:21 PM
I have a different problem with the "run away" encounters. How obvious are you going to be about it? Do you expect your players to know the Monster Manual perfectly? Just the famous monsters? Don't look at it at all?

What about your description of it? Did you give a name? Some knowledge check? Did you show them burning breaking a mountain in half?

In essence, my question to you is how much metagaming do you want?

jackattack
2012-07-04, 08:22 PM
I think fighters should be able to make a tactics (INT or WIS) check to judge whether a party can handle a particular encounter. Likewise, various knowledge skills can go a long way to determining whether a party should flee or melee.

That said, I was in a party that encountered two ogres in a room in a very linear dungeon encounter. My druid/ranger got one of them to chase him all the way out of the dungeon, then taunted and dodged so the ogre fell into a rushing river. When he got back to that room, the rest of the party had run past the second ogre and locked the far door; this time, the chase ended with my character and the ogre falling in the river and going over a waterfall! Great fun.

Anxe
2012-07-04, 10:07 PM
One of the splat books expanded Sense Motive to include gauging the skill of one's opponent. Sense Motive is a WIS based skill, so that's pretty much what you're going for, jackattack.

VanBuren
2012-07-04, 10:44 PM
One of the splat books expanded Sense Motive to include gauging the skill of one's opponent. Sense Motive is a WIS based skill, so that's pretty much what you're going for, jackattack.

Well that makes sense. I wouldn't expect that to be a class skill for the fighter, seeing as how it's all about gauging whether or not you can fight it.

...

Yeah.

Xefas
2012-07-05, 01:51 AM
I'm wondering, has anyone else noticed this mindset creeping in when you sit down to play D&D, but not when playing other systems?

It's simply a matter of the D&D systems not supporting or incentivizing that behavior. So, it's possible to shirk that trend, but it's left up to each individual group to figure out their own way to do that. And, you may find a higher degree of people who successfully do that here, on this forum, simply for the fact that those people who actively seek to use their free time to discuss and consider things about D&D in an online D&D-based community are also the most likely to recognize what they do and don't like about the game, and act accordingly.

But, at it's core, D&D has several factors going against it in this regard.

Firstly, information. It's hard to figure out if an encounter is one you should run from, whether or not the encounter was "designed" to be run from. Is that mob of kobolds something your level 10 Fighter can mow through trivially? Are they the secret elite guard of some elder wyrm who have 2 Warrior levels on top of their racial stats? Or are they the secret elite guard of some elder wyrm who all have 15 Warblade levels? They look the same before they murder you. What's a Balor? A big fiery demon? Well, we killed a big fiery demon six levels ago, so this one would be a cake walk.

Yes, there are a few specific abilities here and there, some (all?) outside the Core books, which can allow you to better acquire this information. Not every character is going to have that. Not every player is going to know they exist. Not everyone has every book.

What are some ways other games deal with this? Well, for the majority of systems that I've played, nothing ever becomes completely harmless. D&D has this issue where there comes a point where being stabbed with a sword does nothing if the attacker has (completely-invisible-to-the-players number X) but being stabbed with that same sword is a death sentence if someone with (completely-invisible-to-the-players number X+5) does it.

If I play Burning Wheel, I know that anyone with a sword and nothing to lose is a possible threat to me, even if I have magical chainmail and they're a street urchin. I know that, in Dogs in the Vineyard, anyone with a gun can get angry and lucky and off me. I know that, in Mouse Guard, if I Feint when he Attacks, and he gets a good roll, I'm done. In the Dresden Files, a vanilla mortal with a street-legal handgun can shoot my world-sundering archmage. And then I've been shot. With a gun. And that's bad.

But that's not to say these games are especially gritty. In fact, I'd say they've significantly less gritty than D&D. Because, losing a fight is not instant death. If I get shot in Dresden or Dogs, things are going to be bad. Real bad. Bad stuff is going to happen. Consequences. But not death (or rather, a "loss of agency", since death doesn't mean the same thing in every game), because death is boring. Your death stops the show. Consequences make it interesting, and make you experience your failure in a way death does not.

Secondly, means. It's hard to actually run away from something. Especially if you're already engaged in battle, which is likely (see above). Once the Balor tells you it's a real threat, it's already hit you for twice your max health, eaten your corpse and flown away.

Yes, there are a few specific abilities here and there, that allow you to completely and unstoppably flee from any negative situation. Not every character is going to have that. Not every player is going to know they exist. Not everyone has every book. Not everyone is going to have the opportunity to use such an ability.

What are some ways other games deal with this? Well, different resolution mechanics, for one. If I lose a fight in Mouse Guard, depending on the degree of failure, maybe the game just dictates that I managed to get away, but lost. Or maybe the orphans I was protecting got eaten, but I got away. Or maybe my arm got torn off by a rabid wolverine, but I got away. Something not as binary as D&D. Maybe look at Don't Rest Your Head. Losing doesn't even mean you lose. You might just go a little more insane. Or misery and suffering will permeate your character's existence, or something. An escape mechanism built into the basic mechanics of the game is good.

Alternatively, take a look at a system that has many of the failings of D&D, but not necessarily in this regard. Exalted. Maybe my players piss off some god they've never heard of, and have no way of telling if he's dangerous until they're already in the thick of things. Once I say "He uses his Godspear of All-Searing Noon to automatically hit you, even if you have an ability that allows you to dodge things that automatically hit you, and deals infinity damage", they know he's a threat. And can respond with a fairly low level Charm that lets them dodge anything, even if it automatically hits, even if it automatically ignores abilities that allow you to dodge things even if they automatically hit. And then they can jump a few miles away, or open a gate to hell, or jump off the side of the universe, or whatever.

Third, as a previous poster noted. You don't get stuff! D&D is driven on XP and Gold. And you get that stuff for viciously beating things. You can't beat/maim/murder things if you run away.

What are some ways other games deal with this? The aforementioned Exalted (terrible game, don't play it) just gives you XP per session. Win/lose, you still experienced things. You still got better. Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel don't use XP, but the former requires you to get a few successes and a few failures with a skill before it levels up, and the latter requires you to get a few tests in with a skill that have such a high difficulty it's overwhelmingly likely you'll fail at some point. Just like in real life, failure is a part of learning in those games. InSpectres rewards your XP-alikes for the success of the overall mission, rather than each individual encounter. Even if you got slapped around by a poltergeist a few times, if you saved the world in the end, you still get Stuff. Shadow of Yesterday gives you XP for writing down the important parts of your character, and then actually doing the stuff you wrote down. If that's winning fights, then you get XP for winning fights. If your character is more about, say, improving the lives of the lower class, then you get XP for doing that instead, whether or not you lose a fight at some point.

Hope that helps.

Agrippa
2012-07-05, 02:40 AM
Actually Xefas, earlier D&D encourged running away from most fights, certainly at early levels. You typically got more more experience from gold than fighting and killing. Basically you're heavily armed thieves and the monsters, aside from the demon, Lovecraftian nasties, wild animals and undead, are your rivals with dragons and certain giants as your marks. Unless of course the monsters are working as most-likely underpaid security guards. And all this in an attempt to raise your social status by way of wealth and mabye even take over large areas of land. Either that or you plan to blow it on hookers and booze or donate it to your local temple. Of course so do most of the monsters.

Xefas
2012-07-05, 03:47 AM
Actually Xefas, earlier D&D encourged running away from most fights, certainly at early levels. You typically got more more experience from gold than fighting and killing. Basically you're heavily armed thieves and the monsters, aside from the demon, Lovecraftian nasties, wild animals and undead, are your rivals with dragons and certain giants as your marks. Unless of course the monsters are working as most-likely underpaid security guards. And all this in an attempt to raise your social status by way of wealth and mabye even take over large areas of land. Either that or you plan to blow it on hookers and booze or donate it to your local temple. Of course so do most of the monsters.

I'll be honest, I haven't played anything before 2nd edition. So, it may very well be different there. I'd actually be interested in what mechanics pre-2nd ed supported or encouraged running away. Gold-as-XP sounds like a pretty neat idea for a dungeon-themed game, if implemented properly of course.

Driderman
2012-07-05, 04:34 AM
Lots of people saying "high-threat monsters have ways of catching people that flee".
Yeah, they do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll bother with it.
I also think it's a tendency prevalent in D&D, but certainly also other systems as well. Its more about pride than anything I think; Players are so used to being the awesome hero that always wins that having to retreat from a battle stings their pride quite a bit.

molten_dragon
2012-07-05, 07:00 AM
Another factor that hasn't been mentioned here is that running away sucks. It isn't fun at all. It's much more fun to be awesome and slaughter stuff, so people generally want to do that a lot more than run away.

Saph
2012-07-05, 07:59 AM
Another factor that hasn't been mentioned here is that running away sucks. It isn't fun at all.

Citation needed. :smalltongue:

Personally, I find zero-challenge fights where we inevitably steamroll our opponents really, really boring. I'd much rather have an encounter where the party nearly TPKs and has to run.

It also kills verisimilitude if every single encounter the party meets is exactly level-appropriate. Are the bad guys queueing up in CR order offscreen, or what?

Tyndmyr
2012-07-05, 08:09 AM
I find there is a common theme here on the forums that players rarely run away from any encounter. A level six party facing down (and defeating) a Balor is probably the best example, but less extreme cases show up all the time.

In my personal experience, this phenomena is unique to D&D, with players (myself included) going into denial/becoming upset when facing a superior foe. Since the forums focus heavily on D&D as well, I'm wondering, has anyone else noticed this mindset creeping in when you sit down to play D&D, but not when playing other systems?

Well, often, running isn't an option. For instance, merely running from a Balor just means you're going to die tired.

Rallicus
2012-07-05, 08:20 AM
I've had players run away in my campaign when the battle was lost. Granted, they fell in a pool of water that had a sort-of vacuum mechanism at the bottom that nearly caused them to drown, but they still ran.

This reminds me of when I posted a story of the worst campaign I was ever in on another forum. Essentially it went like this: my friends and I made 3.x characters and my friend ran a level 3 module, 4 edition. We had 7 of us fighting a bunch of kobolds, and they were really wrecking us. The mage dropped in the surprise round, but we fought on, up until the point where the DM sort of copped out and caused them all to die in 1 hit.

I was really baffled by how botched the encounter was. I decided the next weekend to look at the module my friend was using, and that's when I discovered it was a 3rd level 4e module.

When I posted this on the other forum, people generally agreed that the DM was clueless and should not have run a campaign, especially with 7 people new and interested to D&D. But one guy chewed me out, claiming I was the bane of D&D's current existence, how in the past people would run when things got tough, how my friends and I were just as much to blame as the DM.

Most people argued with him, citing the level of the module and the fact that we were on two separate editions. But looking at it now, I think he was right. Most players nowadays just don't even consider the idea of running, because running nets no XP and XP is essential to create this MMO-style "planned build" that will make your character the strongest they can be.

So yeah, I think in it's current iteration, back until at least 3e, D&D players generally aren't known for running away. It's just the way the game has become, and especially since DM's so constantly give out pity retcons to avoid death, what's the point of potentially missing out on XP? The DM is most likely going to let your character live, with this "gloves on" approach so prevalent nowadays, so why run?

jackattack
2012-07-05, 08:33 AM
Shouldn't tactics be a fighter class skill? Or maybe a Knowledge topic? Sense Motive might tell you if you can take an opponent one-on-one, but it seems tactics would tell you how to deal with large groups, and how to use resources and circumstances to best advantage.

Some campaigns address the "level-appropriate encounters only" issue by simulating a sandbox environment around the survivable/intended path. Players can explore and make decisions about whether to go through the dark forest full of spiders, the valley with the dragon, or the mountain pass full of fuzzy bunnies.

As for mechanics/incentives that reward running away, this harkens to other threads about alternate XP awards. I've had DMs who assign full or partial XP for "dealing with" opponents in any capacity, including stealthing around them, bribing past them, or setting them on each other. The issue becomes how much XP should a party get for running away, or for avoiding an encounter altogether?

Kurald Galain
2012-07-05, 08:48 AM
I find there is a common theme here on the forums that players rarely run away from any encounter.

I think this is mostly about D&D, yes. D&D tends to teach the mindset that every problem is to be resolved by fighting something, and that all battle encounters will be level-appropriate for you. Furthermore, the D&D rules ensure that there are never any negative consequences from combat.

Compare this with e.g. Call of Chtulhu or Vampire, which teach you that fighting is something to avoid, and something that has a high change of getting you maimed or killed.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 09:23 AM
If the DM is shoving things that are by all means "unkillable" by myself or the party, he may as well have just cutscened it, because there was obviously 1 "right" answer, and apparantly my input has no point anymore to what happens beyond "live a coward" or "die a good death". I don't appreciate games where I can only really do variations on 1 thing to continue.

While I somewhat agree, the opposite argument could be made: if the DM doesn't put anything in your path that you can't kill, you might as well cutscene the entire campaign, because there's no point in doing anything but cutting down everything in your way.

Blind Orc
2012-07-05, 09:51 AM
While I somewhat agree, the opposite argument could be made: if the DM doesn't put anything in your path that you can't kill, you might as well cutscene the entire campaign, because there's no point in doing anything but cutting down everything in your way.

You can still die from things. You don't need overpowering encounters to be challenged.

Kurald Galain
2012-07-05, 09:55 AM
If the DM has you encounter things that are unkillable, you still can talk to them, bribe them, trick them, avoid them, convince them to fight your enemies, and lots of other things. In fact, in most RPGs that aren't D&D, that's precisely what you would do. None of that needs a cutscene.

Blind Orc
2012-07-05, 10:01 AM
If the DM has you encounter things that are unkillable, you still can talk to them, bribe them, trick them, avoid them, convince them to fight your enemies, and lots of other things. In fact, in most RPGs that aren't D&D, that's precisely what you would do. None of that needs a cutscene.

One time I played vampire it was made clear that werewolfs were to be avoided. In D&D it is impossible to know if this monster is unkillable or whatever. Even if for some reason you know it, you see it just as a harder challenge. After all, if the DM wants to kill you you are dead no matter what.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 10:05 AM
You can still die from things. You don't need overpowering encounters to be challenged.

That doesn't change what I said, IE, there's no reason to not just cut everything down.

Putting things that you can't just kill in the world makes players interact with the world in a more meaningful way, and actually THINK about what they're doing, instead of just saying "oh, theres a large animal/monster/whatever there, we should kill it"

It makes them ask the questions : do we need to kill this thing? Can we actually kill it? Why is it here? Is it preventing us from doing something we need to do? Is there some other way to deal with it?

If everything in the word is CR appropriate, then everything in the world is there to be killed.

Shadow Viper
2012-07-05, 10:07 AM
I'm actually pretty dejected about the current campaign I'm in because we didn't walk (or run or paddle) away from an encounter I'm pretty sure the DM hadn't actually drawn up. It's debatable, but basically my party was on the edge of a swamp in which we knew there was a black dragon of indeterminate age (read: no one gave us a straight answer even about the most relevant event of its history wherein it lost its wings). We had totally been sent to the edge of the swamp by plot hook, so why would I assume we weren't supposed to go meet this thing? We even pressed the local lizardmen into our service. After a random encounter and the realization that the poisonous swamp waters drained all physical abilities (wow) we still endured. Basically when the DM declared that a whole boat of lizardmen was breath weaponed without rolling any dice I realized the error. Whether it was his or ours I dunno. We ran away after a stupid bargaining session that pretty much set my character back.

Tl;dr: kobayashi maru scenarios are stupid if they aren't obvious until its too late, and if the party doesn't fail as intended... I woulda rather died.

Please define Kobayashi maru, I am unfamilar with the term.

Kurald Galain
2012-07-05, 10:08 AM
In D&D it is impossible to know if this monster is unkillable or whatever.

You could make knowledge checks to find out.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 10:17 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

Yukitsu
2012-07-05, 10:30 AM
If the DM has you encounter things that are unkillable, you still can talk to them, bribe them, trick them, avoid them, convince them to fight your enemies, and lots of other things. In fact, in most RPGs that aren't D&D, that's precisely what you would do. None of that needs a cutscene.

Whenever you have time to do any of those things, you aren't really in any sort of encounter. Still a boring presence, may as well have just put a mountain there that says "go around please." When you're in an unwinnable encounter, and have time to become cognizant that it is one, most of those options are closed up to you, as most take a 1 minute long diplomacy check.

Moreover, since those are all pre-combat actions, it has to be completely metagame clear (and then mostly mediated by metagame knowledge) that you are outgunned and should engage in those actions rather than fighting or at the very least, just trying to continue past them within eyesight.


While I somewhat agree, the opposite argument could be made: if the DM doesn't put anything in your path that you can't kill, you might as well cutscene the entire campaign, because there's no point in doing anything but cutting down everything in your way.

There are a plethora of ways to kill things. Most games in the market that focus on combat, focus on about 14 hours of you finding increasingly difficult or clever ways to kill things. Even games where combat isn't the primary option, stealth is a granted option consisting of several ways around a combat. There is no combat geared game I can think of where running away was ever a fun part of the experience, whereas no one gets tired of killing everything, so long as there is plenty of variation in "who" and "how".

Basically, things are interesting in "how" you accomplish them. Running away really only works with about 1 or 2 methods. Literally flat out running, or using teleport. Neither option is interesting, suspenseful or fun.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-05, 10:43 AM
You could make knowledge checks to find out.

Knowledge checks being HD-based....A failed check really only gives you a lower bounds on possible HD.

This is far from sufficient to establish "impossible fight", usually.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 11:05 AM
Knowledge checks being HD-based....A failed check really only gives you a lower bounds on possible HD.

This is far from sufficient to establish "impossible fight", usually.

If you houseruled the knowledge check from HD to CR, it should work I would think.

Assuming that creatures are properly CR'd (which, quite a few aren't).

Tyndmyr
2012-07-05, 11:37 AM
If you houseruled the knowledge check from HD to CR, it should work I would think.

Assuming that creatures are properly CR'd (which, quite a few aren't).

And that you have PCs with all applicable knowledge skills.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 01:16 PM
And that you have PCs with all applicable knowledge skills.

Right, but anything you do could run into the "this particular set of PCs doesn't have that skill/ability/whatever" issue.

Its no different than having a party where nobody has points in sense motive, and the characters are constantly being lied to and led around like gullible children.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-05, 01:23 PM
Right, but anything you do could run into the "this particular set of PCs doesn't have that skill/ability/whatever" issue.

Its no different than having a party where nobody has points in sense motive, and the characters are constantly being lied to and led around like gullible children.

It's not a singular skill, though. If you don't have knowledge(planes), but do have knowledge(arcana), you don't, by RAW, have any particular distinction as to what this check means. It could be a ridiculously low CR outsider or a ridiculously high CR magical beast.

And a failed check only ever gives a minimal standard for how tough it is. That's...extremely imprecise. Not at all a good standard for running.

And, as for additional house rules, let me point over at the Oberoni Fallacy...

Synovia
2012-07-05, 02:58 PM
I would respectfully ask that you actually google Oberoni fallacy, because you clearly don't have any idea what it means, as my comment has nothing to do with saying that the GM is always right. Nothing.


you don't, by RAW, have any particular distinction as to what this check means. It could be a ridiculously low CR outsider or a ridiculously high CR magical beast.


I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. If you don't have Knowledge:Planes, and you see an outsider, you should have no idea what it is, or how nasty it is. By definition, you don't know anything about it.



And a failed check only ever gives a minimal standard for how tough it is. That's...extremely imprecise. Not at all a good standard for running.


The key word in there is FAILED. If you fail the check, you shouldn't be gaining information. A failed check shouldn't necessarily even be "you don't know," it can sometimes mean the character is WRONG. IE, he thinks something is tough when its not, or vice versa.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-05, 03:03 PM
I would respectfully ask that you actually google Oberoni fallacy, because you clearly don't have any idea what it means, as my comment has nothing to do with saying that the GM is always right. Nothing.

From google: The Oberoni Fallacy (also called the Rule 0 Fallacy) is the erroneous argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored, or one or more "house rules" can be made as exceptions.

To wit, you replied that a house rule could fix the basic problem...that doesn't really address the basic issue with the game being flawed in this way.


I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. If you don't have Knowledge:Planes, and you see an outsider, you should have no idea what it is, or how nasty it is. By definition, you don't know anything about it.

Oh? And how do you even know that it IS an outsider? How do you differentiate between a magical beast too powerful to identify and an outsider?


The key word in there is FAILED. If you fail the check, you shouldn't be gaining information. A failed check shouldn't necessarily even be "you don't know," it can sometimes mean the character is WRONG. IE, he thinks something is tough when its not, or vice versa.

It's important since, as the DC is HD + 10, you can expect to fail a check against anything in the "run away or die" range unless you've severely optimized.

So, successes aren't actually that important for this.

SowZ
2012-07-05, 03:29 PM
My players run away from time to time. They know they will die if they don't, occasionally. It just depends. With maximized HD and a few other variant rules in play, they can usually escape if they are being clever.

But that is because my players know they can die if they are stupid and most of them started gaming with me as their first DM, so they didn't make bad habits about level appropriate assumptions. As far as other groups I've DMed? Yeah, players can get it in their heads they can't lose. This mentality is even worse, in my experience, with super hero games where I have seen starting characters take on entire police stations with 100+ cops by themselves.

Games like WoD or other games where the players are normal people or it is a horror game seem to have the opposite problem. Where if something isn't going 'exactly' as planned everyone books it.

(Also, to the OP, how can a level six party ever beat a Balor? The most I have seen is a party beat something maybe 9 CRs above them and even then they had the element of surprise, environmental factors, and a low-op built opponent. There was that thread about holy water a week or so back...)

Synovia
2012-07-05, 04:05 PM
From google: The Oberoni Fallacy (also called the Rule 0 Fallacy) is the erroneous argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored, or one or more "house rules" can be made as exceptions.

To wit, you replied that a house rule could fix the basic problem...that doesn't really address the basic issue with the game being flawed in this way. .

Which means you completely don't understand what the Obernoni Fallacy means. It has a VERY IMPORTANT conditional clause:

argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because

I have made no such argument.

I made the argument THAT THEY ARE FLAWED, AND SUGGESTED A FIX, which is specifically stated in Oberoni's original post as one of the things that IS NOT AN EXAMPLE OF THE FALLACY.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 04:08 PM
Oh? And how do you even know that it IS an outsider? How do you differentiate between a magical beast too powerful to identify and an outsider?


How does a player know to roll knowledge:arcana instead of knowledge:religion when something happens in the game world?

Answer: they don't, the DM tells them which one is applicable.



It's important since, as the DC is HD + 10, you can expect to fail a check against anything in the "run away or die" range unless you've severely optimized.

So, successes aren't actually that important for this.

Again, I do not see a problem with this. If the PCs have NO IDEA what something is, attacking it probably shouldn't be the first option. Figuring out what it is should be.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 04:19 PM
Here's an example:

A typical first level wizard:

16 INT = +3
4 Ranks in Knowledge:whatever

That means the wizard autosucceeds for checks where the enemy has a CR of less than 9. If you don't auto-succeed, you run.

Even with no ranks, its still autosucceed on anything with a CR of less than 5. A first level wizard should be running from anything with a CR of 5.


You fail the check, you run.

TuggyNE
2012-07-05, 04:40 PM
Here's an example:

A typical first level wizard:

16 INT = +3
4 Ranks in Knowledge:whatever

That means the wizard autosucceeds for checks where the enemy has a CR of less than 9. If you don't auto-succeed, you run.

Your math is either a little off (CR 8= DC 18, taking 10 only gives you 17; but taking 10 in a threatening circumstance doesn't work), or a lot off (autosuccess without taking 10 is only up to DC 8, and no Knowledge checks to identify are that low).


Even with no ranks, its still autosucceed on anything with a CR of less than 5. A first level wizard should be running from anything with a CR of 5.

It's impossible to make Knowledge checks to identify untrained.


Edit: Might I take this opportunity to ask for more input on my attempt to fix Knowledge checks?

molten_dragon
2012-07-05, 04:41 PM
Personally, I find zero-challenge fights where we inevitably steamroll our opponents really, really boring. I'd much rather have an encounter where the party nearly TPKs and has to run.

I'm not saying the players should steamroll everything with no risk. Encounters should be challenging, but the PCs should win the majority of them. That's how D&D is designed, for better or worse. The occasional encounter that the PCs need to retreat from is okay, but if that's overused, it gets to be unfun really fast.

SowZ
2012-07-05, 05:01 PM
I'm not saying the players should steamroll everything with no risk. Encounters should be challenging, but the PCs should win the majority of them. That's how D&D is designed, for better or worse. The occasional encounter that the PCs need to retreat from is okay, but if that's overused, it gets to be unfun really fast.

Agreed, but with an adendum. Battles should be tough. But... Players want to be reminded they are still BAs every once in a while. If you read the old spiderman comics you will notice a formula where MOST of the time, spidey is losing the fight until he either summons up willpower and beats the odds near the end or out thinks his enemy and wins via cleverness. But every fifth or sixth issue, Spidey just beats people up the whole magazine. Because the drama is in the challenge, but remembering the hero is still cool and watching him own for a while is a fun stress reliever.

So every fight shouldn't be stacked against the PCs, but there should at least be something not in their favor for most of them. An obstacle they have to overcome other than just HP. An environmental hazard or weather condition, severely outnumbered, fighting monsters in their own habitat that the monsters know so can effectively use guerilla tactics, a creature they can't seem to damage with their normal strategies or else don't have a prayer of killing it in a straight up fight without using the environment to their advantage/coming up with some other plan, shifting terrain or wierd obilisks that randomly teleport everyone around the battlefield each round, etc.

The PCs should be able to win most fights IF the PCs are willing to give up resources, use allies, plan, and develop solid tactics to do it. Only occasionally should they be able to win no problem. At least half the fights my PCs are involved in have some mitigating/challenging factor aside from just the normal battle itself. And that is what gets them to talk about the battles with each other the next day.

The one big concern here is if you do these wrong, they will be problems the wizard will always solve. Anyway, when the players fail to take whatever is stacking the deck against them into account is usually when they have to run.

oxybe
2012-07-05, 05:34 PM
part of the issue with the genre the game generally plays in.

the game generally features the party as adventurers and heroes and many focal points of modules/adventures/stories are that the PCs are actively looking for trouble, rather then avoiding it.

you rarely hear stories of "the uneventful weekend spent relaxing in Inn of Moderate Comfort".

no, it's "remember that time we were lost in the Evil Duke Vorpal von Hackenslash's Forest of Inevitable Doom and we fought the Fanged, Claw-Beast of Urx?"

D&D, in the way it presents things, encourages running towards the Fanged, Claw-Beasts and the Evil Duke Vorpal von Hackenslash, rather then going around them.

the most boring encounters i've met are those that offer only life or death as the option. if i do put an encounter that's above the PC's difficulty, it's specifically because there is a possible out other then "live" or "die".

when i play a game like D&D, as either the GM or a player, i do so specifically because i like the larger then life heroics. i fully expect the party to succeed, but dropping only "life" or "death" as the available options? seems like bad GMing, period.

now before someone jumps on me for not being enough of a sadist and carebearing my PCs, i do provide challenge. but i don't see much point in every fight grinding the PCs faces in the gravel.

Gavinfoxx
2012-07-05, 05:36 PM
Shouldn't tactics be a fighter class skill?

It should be, but it isn't. In D&D 3.5e, Tactics is Knowledge History, which the fighter doesn't have as a class skill.

Synovia
2012-07-05, 06:07 PM
Your math is either a little off (CR 8= DC 18, taking 10 only gives you 17; but taking 10 in a threatening circumstance doesn't work), or a lot off (autosuccess without taking 10 is only up to DC 8, and no Knowledge checks to identify are that low).



It's impossible to make Knowledge checks to identify untrained.


Edit: Might I take this opportunity to ask for more input on my attempt to fix Knowledge checks?

I wasn't intending to use CR+10 as the DC, but I think it would still work.

The biggest problem with the HD+10 isn't in the mechanic itself, its that HD is essentially meaningless, and balloons out of control. CR, on the other hand, doesn't. (for instance, the tarrasque has 48HD, but only a CR of 20).

Even if we do CR + 10, we're looking at a first level rogue/wizard with 14 INT rolling 7-26, which gives him a 20% chance to fail on a level approriate encounter. (and remember, a CR1 is appropriate for a 4 person party of 1st level using about 25% of their resources) The same rogue still only has a 35% chance of failing against a CR4 enemy, which is a good chance of a party wipe. You fail, running is probably a good idea.

I think CR+10 may be too low, while HD+10 is too high.

awa
2012-07-05, 06:23 PM
I have never been in a party that had access to every single knowledge check with enough ranks to be relevant. and even if you make the check you get only a small amount of information often not enough to determine if you should flee or not. and statements that the party should always flee from the unknown is not particularly heroic.

As someone may have mentioned the rocket tag nature of dnd means you often don't know if somethings to powerful until its killed someone.

I believe the sense motive to determine power level is a full rnd action and only tells you relative bab so is not particularly useful for determining whether its a winnable fight or not.

in addtion to overpowering monsters being usually faster then the party they often have superior senses making hiding impossible.

SowZ
2012-07-05, 06:41 PM
I have never been in a party that had access to every single knowledge check with enough ranks to be relevant. and even if you make the check you get only a small amount of information often not enough to determine if you should flee or not. and statements that the party should always flee from the unknown is not particularly heroic.

As someone may have mentioned the rocket tag nature of dnd means you often don't know if somethings to powerful until its killed someone.

I believe the sense motive to determine power level is a full rnd action and only tells you relative bab so is not particularly useful for determining whether its a winnable fight or not.

in addtion to overpowering monsters being usually faster then the party they often have superior senses making hiding impossible.

However, if you are weak enough, you usually aren't worth the time of monsters with super high CR unless they are the type that just attacks things on sight and chases them to death, which, I'll admit, a lot of creatures are.

Dimers
2012-07-05, 07:27 PM
I haven't found this problem to be about D&D. Sadly, it *is* a problem about the people I happen to play with. The GMs always build fights that it's clear the party is "supposed to" take part in -- not run from, not avoid with social ability, not waltz through without difficulty, just fight. They express disappointment when the difficulty level seems too high or low after-the-fact; they give lots of railroady reasons battle must occur; they deny skill checks that would significantly alter the way they planned the event. They even set up some encounters in ways that are specifically meant to be a match for particular characters. That's been my experience across all games.

From one perspective, it's like the gamemaster wants to make the events fit the party or its members. That's a nice idea. From another perspective, it's unrealistic and quite possibly unachievable anyway.

MukkTB
2012-07-06, 01:18 AM
"You run across a lizardman. He is wearing a mithril chain shirt a greatsword and a backpack. Detect magic shows he has several auras of at least moderate strength."

Would you fight that? Maybe he is a lvl 1 warrior and a major loot pinata. Maybe he is a lvl 15 warblade. Maybe hes a gish using magic to obscure his appearance.

This is the core run away problem. Its hard to tell if you should fight. The DM's descriptions of things may or may not really give you a clue. And even if you nail your knowledge check and figure out exactly what this guy is, he may have some backup hiding right around the corner.

So you guessed if you should fight or not. You're not going to find out if it was a good idea until things have had a major chance of going pear shaped. And by then it may be too late. You may have been one shot killed or debuffed into oblivion, or grappled by something with an iron grip in a single round. Assuming not, trying to run away may be hard to impossible. A monster that is slower than the party isn't a serious threat. Everyone kites it. No one is in danger. This is why the Tarrasque isn't considered a great threat. Fly above the thing and kill it at your leisure. Bail on the fight if you can't. So the really serious threats? They will be able to outmanuever you.

molten_dragon
2012-07-06, 06:53 AM
Agreed, but with an adendum. Battles should be tough. But... Players want to be reminded they are still BAs every once in a while. If you read the old spiderman comics you will notice a formula where MOST of the time, spidey is losing the fight until he either summons up willpower and beats the odds near the end or out thinks his enemy and wins via cleverness. But every fifth or sixth issue, Spidey just beats people up the whole magazine. Because the drama is in the challenge, but remembering the hero is still cool and watching him own for a while is a fun stress reliever.

So every fight shouldn't be stacked against the PCs, but there should at least be something not in their favor for most of them. An obstacle they have to overcome other than just HP. An environmental hazard or weather condition, severely outnumbered, fighting monsters in their own habitat that the monsters know so can effectively use guerilla tactics, a creature they can't seem to damage with their normal strategies or else don't have a prayer of killing it in a straight up fight without using the environment to their advantage/coming up with some other plan, shifting terrain or wierd obilisks that randomly teleport everyone around the battlefield each round, etc.

The PCs should be able to win most fights IF the PCs are willing to give up resources, use allies, plan, and develop solid tactics to do it. Only occasionally should they be able to win no problem. At least half the fights my PCs are involved in have some mitigating/challenging factor aside from just the normal battle itself. And that is what gets them to talk about the battles with each other the next day.

The one big concern here is if you do these wrong, they will be problems the wizard will always solve. Anyway, when the players fail to take whatever is stacking the deck against them into account is usually when they have to run.

I would agree with this. I feel like encounter difficulty should be a bell curve. The highest concentration of fights should be an EL right around the average party level. And the further away the EL gets from average party level, either positive or negative, the fewer of those fights you should have. So there would only be a handful of fights that the PCs have absolutely no chance of winning, and need to flee from, and a handful that they have absolutely no chance of losing.

Kurald Galain
2012-07-06, 07:24 AM
And that you have PCs with all applicable knowledge skills.

The point is that yes, the mechanics do have a way for the PCs to find out. Somebody said that there was no such mechanic, but yes, there is (even if it isn't 100% reliable). It's also not a bad trait for an adventurer, if you see a monster you don't know, to be extremely cautious.

For example, if you're low-level and you meet a monster that's either huge or non-euclidean in appearance, it's not a bad idea at all to run away. This is what separates the successful adventurers from the dead.

Maugan Ra
2012-07-06, 07:28 AM
It likely depends on the group you're with, and their previous gaming experiences, but I've gotten into the habit of retreating from an unplanned fight where possible. Then again, I don't play much D&D.

I know my Call of Cthulhu group certainly defaulted to 'run away' in the presence of the unknown, which is something of a survival trait in that game. If you have no idea what something might be capable of, then don't attack until you do. Sure, this might mean you end up retreating from something that you quite possibly could have beaten, but that's the price I'm willing to pay in exchange for survival.

Likewise, in Shadowrun, I always make it a policy to avoid a fight or confrontation that I am not being paid for. And even if I AM being paid for it, I might retreat in the face of unexpected opposition anyway - certainly it's something to be considered. I can usually come back later with a plan to deal with this new, unexpected element, and that is almost always better than simply improvising and hoping it all works out.

But, as has been noted, those are both games where defeating the monster/Eldritch horror/ hired security isn't actually tied directly into the reward you get with which to improve your character. So running away is less harmful to your future prospects.

Saph
2012-07-06, 07:45 AM
This is the core run away problem. Its hard to tell if you should fight. The DM's descriptions of things may or may not really give you a clue. And even if you nail your knowledge check and figure out exactly what this guy is, he may have some backup hiding right around the corner.

Doesn't this pretty much describe every realistic combat encounter?

Actual combat is dangerous. It's really only a very small minority of games that are built on the assumption that you should be able to regularly kill intelligent well-equipped opponents without significant risk.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-06, 08:03 AM
Here's an example:

A typical first level wizard:

16 INT = +3
4 Ranks in Knowledge:whatever

That means the wizard autosucceeds for checks where the enemy has a CR of less than 9. If you don't auto-succeed, you run.

Even with no ranks, its still autosucceed on anything with a CR of less than 5. A first level wizard should be running from anything with a CR of 5.


You fail the check, you run.

This math is terrible. First off, it's HD, not CR. Your houserule is the violation of Oberoni. You can't reasonably assume that your houserule is in very common usage.

Second, +3 from int and +4 from ranks is only +7. A HD 1 creature is 11 to identify.

Let us consider the Dire Lion. At CR 5, it's a very challenging fight for a level 1 party. So, IF the party wizard has know(nature), he has to make a DC 18 check with a +7 on it. That's a 50% failure rate.

If a non-int based char has to make the know(nature) check, thats a lower odds of success, and frankly, know(nature) tends to be associated with druids and rangers, not wizards.

If it's something of a higher CR, the odds of identifying only get worse.

All told, there is a VERY significant chance that knowledge skills will not be sufficient to tell you to run pre-combat. And frankly, the dire lion has a 40 ft speed and the run feat. If he's decided you look like prey, running won't help.

Synovia
2012-07-06, 08:20 AM
Your math is either a little off (CR 8= DC 18, taking 10 only gives you 17; but taking 10 in a threatening circumstance doesn't work), or a lot off (autosuccess without taking 10 is only up to DC 8, and no Knowledge checks to identify are that low).



It's impossible to make Knowledge checks to identify untrained.


Edit: Might I take this opportunity to ask for more input on my attempt to fix Knowledge checks?


This math is terrible. First off, it's HD, not CR. Your houserule is the violation of Oberoni. You can't reasonably assume that your houserule is in very common usage.

Second, +3 from int and +4 from ranks is only +7. A HD 1 creature is 11 to identify.

Let us consider the Dire Lion. At CR 5, it's a very challenging fight for a level 1 party. So, IF the party wizard has know(nature), he has to make a DC 18 check with a +7 on it. That's a 50% failure rate.

If a non-int based char has to make the know(nature) check, thats a lower odds of success, and frankly, know(nature) tends to be associated with druids and rangers, not wizards.

If it's something of a higher CR, the odds of identifying only get worse.

All told, there is a VERY significant chance that knowledge skills will not be sufficient to tell you to run pre-combat. And frankly, the dire lion has a 40 ft speed and the run feat. If he's decided you look like prey, running won't help.

Holy crap. Why is it that no one can be bothered to understand a fallacy before accusing people of using it?

For future reference to everyone reading this thread:


The Oberoni Fallacy (also called the Rule 0 Fallacy) is the erroneous argument that the rules of a game aren't flawed because they can be ignored, or one or more "house rules" can be made as exceptions.

The argument is logically unsound, because it supposes something isn't broken if it can be fixed. If the rule is not broken, it shouldn't need to be fixed.


There is something wrong with the rule, and I have stated it several times : HD balloon, and aren't a reasonable measure of a creatures rareness/difficulty/whatever. The rule is broken. Because I've stated that, there is no Oberoni issue.

You would do well to actually read the thread, and do a little basic research into the things you're accusing people of, and actually come to understand them.

Again, I said that a possible houserule to use instead, was to use the creature's CR isntead of HD+10. The math is fine. You could do CR+10 if you think that CR is too low.

Suggesting a houserule to fix a broken rule isn't Oberoni.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-06, 08:26 AM
We're discussing why people don't run away, in general, in D&D. This is a systemic level discussion, not one for one person's game.

Not everyone uses your house-rule, so it's not relevant to the discussion.

And in any case, even with your house rule, it's still a 40% failure chance for the listed example. Plus, yknow, the other caveats listed. Plus it brings in the terrible issue of being able to identify a level 1 gnome, but not identify a level 20 gnome. That's...frigging weird.

Kurald Galain
2012-07-06, 08:31 AM
We're discussing why people don't run away, in general, in D&D. This is a systemic level discussion, not one for one person's game.

That's pretty easy. (1) Combat directly strengthens your character, in the form of XP and loot. (2) Combat has no or almost no negative consequences for your character. And (3) it is assumed that all enemies you meet will be a level-appropriate encounter, which is actually a hard rule in 4E.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-06, 08:41 AM
That's pretty easy. (1) Combat directly strengthens your character, in the form of XP and loot. (2) Combat has no or almost no negative consequences for your character. And (3) it is assumed that all enemies you meet will be a level-appropriate encounter, which is actually a hard rule in 4E.

Yeah...I didn't even bother to prove why it's the assumption in 4e. 3.5 takes marginally more proving...but it's still a quite common assumption, and there's little more than DM foreshadowing to give you warning when it's not the case.

Synovia
2012-07-06, 08:52 AM
We're discussing why people don't run away, in general, in D&D. This is a systemic level discussion, not one for one person's game..

Again, its not my houserule.


I said there's a problem with the rule, and suggested a solution. Thats exactly what this thread is. The suggestion isn't perfect, but its clearly better than the original rule.

Tyndmyr
2012-07-06, 09:09 AM
Again, its not my houserule.


I said there's a problem with the rule, and suggested a solution. Thats exactly what this thread is. The suggestion isn't perfect, but its clearly better than the original rule.

That's not what this thread is.

This is what this thread is:


I find there is a common theme here on the forums that players rarely run away from any encounter. A level six party facing down (and defeating) a Balor is probably the best example, but less extreme cases show up all the time.

In my personal experience, this phenomena is unique to D&D, with players (myself included) going into denial/becoming upset when facing a superior foe. Since the forums focus heavily on D&D as well, I'm wondering, has anyone else noticed this mindset creeping in when you sit down to play D&D, but not when playing other systems?

I agree that it IS a common phenomenon, in D&D, and it's a result of the combat focused nature of D&D.

Coincidentally, your houserule is pretty frigging useless for the OPs example of a Balor vs a level 6 party.

Jay R
2012-07-06, 10:52 AM
Some posters seem to believe that the only reason to run away is because you know this is unwinnable encounter. This is untrue, at least in my experience.

The primary reason to run away is that you do not know what you're facing, or what its weaknesses might be.

Leave, gather data, prepare superior plan, attack.

In the game I'm currently playing, we ran away from a manor held by an evil priest. But we came back two sessions later with a big enough force and better information, besieged the castle, won, and it's currently the seat of my character's county.

We ran from a force of over 1,000 goblinoids, and slew them all a week later.

We ran from a German army, and found a defensible valley.

The technical term is "tactical retreat", and it's an important part of winning against difficult odds.

Yukitsu
2012-07-06, 10:52 AM
Doesn't this pretty much describe every realistic combat encounter?

Actual combat is dangerous. It's really only a very small minority of games that are built on the assumption that you should be able to regularly kill intelligent well-equipped opponents without significant risk.

"Realistic combat encounters" suggest that you should run from 100% everything, stay home with a warm cup of tea and read a nice book with a decent padlock and solid oak door. Realism will always state that you shouldn't fight anything ever. That's why people play RPGs. We can play something somewhat more heroic or adventurous than accounting clerk.

Kurald Galain
2012-07-06, 10:59 AM
Realism will always state that you shouldn't fight anything ever.

Hardly. Realism will state that you should prepare for the combat, ensure the odds are in your favor, and do it when you have something worth fighting for (as opposed to an arbitrary random encounter). Fights do happen, after all, in Cyberpunk, Call of Chtulhu, or Vampire.

Yukitsu
2012-07-06, 11:01 AM
Hardly. Realism will state that you should prepare for the combat, ensure the odds are in your favor, and do it when you have something worth fighting for (as opposed to an arbitrary random encounter). Fights do happen, after all, in Cyberpunk, Call of Chtulhu, or Vampire.

Canadian. We don't think like that up here, and don't think there are really things worth fighting for. :smallwink: It's why we keep our submarines in a landlocked shopping mall.

jackattack
2012-07-06, 12:41 PM
Didn't the "Ecology of" articles include, at one time, a little table that DMs could use to determine how much a PC knew about a monster based on a roll result?

MukkTB
2012-07-06, 12:46 PM
In real life there isn't HD. You don't have the same kind of spread that comes between a lvl 1 commoner and a lvl 20 wizard. Real life is a lot more like E6. You see another humanoid in E6 and you know there are physical limits on what he can do and how much punishment he can take.

My point is that people don't run away at the start of an encounter because its hard to tell if they should. They don't run away in the middle of an encounter because the encounter ends quickly with them as a greasy smear. Or they get locked in combat. Or the monster is faster than them.

I'm not saying people shouldn't run away. I'm pointing out why they often don't. I'm not saying DMs shouldn't throw overpowered opponents in the PCs' way now and then. I'm saying sometimes DMs fail to convey the challenge rating of an upcoming encounter.

I'm not saying it isn't the smart thing to scope out every encounter beforehand and retreat when you haven't. I am saying many players enjoy fast paced games where they don't bother with all that prep work.

So you often get characters that don't run away.

Beowulf DW
2012-07-06, 01:29 PM
My friends and I get that mentality sometimes. It doesn't help that we rarely lose those fights. We once faced a full-grown red dragon at level 4 and won. Our GM was completely taken aback.

Still, we do realize that sometimes survival means victory. In our group, exp is generally given to the resolution of conflicts rather than victory. Successfully evading a superior opponent can sometimes qualify as resolution.

Necroticplague
2012-07-06, 01:33 PM
In my experience, anything strong enough to require me to run away is strong enough to hunt us down while we run, regardless of what system I'm playing in. Thus, fighting tooth-and-nail and hoping for luck is better than running, because it has a slim chance of working, while running has no chance of working.

VanBuren
2012-07-06, 08:02 PM
Doesn't this pretty much describe every realistic combat encounter?

Actual combat is dangerous. It's really only a very small minority of games that are built on the assumption that you should be able to regularly kill intelligent well-equipped opponents without significant risk.

Reality is so arbitrary though. It makes for terrible game design.

jackattack
2012-07-06, 08:08 PM
I would think that running away includes avoiding a monster that hasn't detected the party yet. And nothing says that the party can't come back when it is better prepared.

And there are plenty of circumstances where running away is a viable solution. Some monsters are immobile, some can't/don't track very well, some are territorial rather than hungry, and some are unsuited to follow over/through various terrain types.

My thief was in a party exploring some ruins. After some in-game time, the vines started attacking us. We ran away. Then we did some recon, found the central trunk, and came up with a plan that killed it pretty quickly.

Also, sometimes running can change the circumstances of an encounter. Ten gnolls attacking en masse is one thing, but ten gnolls attacking by ones and twos because they have spacing issues brought about by a hasty retreat is quite another.

Changing the terrain of a battle can also be advantageous. If the party is running from the same ten gnolls and comes across a good place to stand and fight (because it restricts the number of opponents who can engage in melee, or because there are places where ranged combatants can set up at a safe distance), they can always turn and fight.

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From a narrative standpoint, sometimes running away (or being set up to run away by the DM) can set up interesting plot lines or cool RP moments later on. The dark knight you ran from might start hunting you down, forcing you to settle your business in each town and village you come to quickly. The bandits you ran from at level 3 might get a nasty surprise when they try to attack you again at level 7.

This does require an actual campaign that allows players to come back to locations and situations they have been to/in before, rather than serial modules that are never revisited.

Is there a difference in the tendency to run away, between linear and sandbox campaigns?

INDYSTAR188
2012-07-06, 10:35 PM
I've found that for the most part my PC's do NOT run. On the handful of occasions they have ran, it's usually one or two who run away leaving the other three to find their own way out. There's usually a "HEY **** WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I'M GOING TO DIE!!!", followed by a "Sorry man, I'm chaotic ____ or neutral, just run when you see the chance." There have been a couple of times where they've come together to get a cohesive plan before entering melee (and these are almost exclusively the times they do the best) but usually it's "Player X runs into the room doing this and attacking 3 or 4 baddies at once... but now he's surrounded - oh no! We gotta save him!"

OOPWER
2012-07-07, 12:25 AM
I think I have a question for those arguing for "Tactics" as a fighter skill equals "being able to see if that guy's about your level." Doesn't the very word tactics connote some form of plan? So if your fighter's "tactics" are supposed to be plans that he has established before the fight, how does that translate into: "It's OVER NINE THOUSAND!" ?
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On a side note, I GM (very occasionally) a game of Shadowrun with some people who had never played the game before. I'm using a preset adventure, and it calls for super spy action. Break into a concert (via various, super spy means), obtain a certain commlink (again, via various, super spy means) and get back out. What did they do? They came during the day, pre-concert, did recon. Pretty standard. Then they decided, "We need to kidnap and question someone." I did everything I could to tell them "That's a very bad idea." and they went and did it anyway, as is their right. They ended up using the rigger's van to run a guy over (while simultaneously destroying the MAD's [Magnetic Anomaly Detector]) and the bounty hunter knocked a second one out. As the team of three came under some serious automatic weapons fire, they bugged out.

As a sensible GM, I should've killed them instead of winging outside of the plan and letting them get away with it. As a friend, playing a game with friends, winging was a lot more entertaining than forcing them to die because they decided to pick a fight with eight security guards. I plan to tell them, after this adventure since I'm playing as an introductory thing, that they seriously need to think before they act because the next time they pull something that stupid I will kill them.

Oh, and I told them that they pissed off Horizon (I'm fairly certain it was Horizon) and the street gang the security guards belonged to. I have every intention of making them take some heat for that.

In short, it's often pride, often the video games, and often a fail on the part of the GM to illustrate how important running away is sometimes. And in Shadowrun, running away= EPIC CAR CHASE/BATTLE! I'm a little sad I couldn't work one in during that session.
----------------------
As VanBuren said, Reality makes for poor game design (usually).

Endarire
2012-07-07, 01:32 AM
The D&D system isn't like Final Fantasy. You can't just hit the 'run' button and get away.

You need to spend actions- usually more than 1 turn per person- to get enough distance between Team Monstar and you. And if you have the actions to spare, why aren't you fighting?

If the solution were as simple as, "I cast stone shape to keep the Gelatinous Cube Psychic Warrior trapped in that room so my party and I can escape!" and you could do it reliably and cheaply, then running might be a viable tactic. There's already teleport, plane shift and the like, but those are mostly single-target escape spells/powers.

Besides, I don't play D&D (or RPGs in general) to run from fights.

TuggyNE
2012-07-07, 01:58 AM
I think I have a question for those arguing for "Tactics" as a fighter skill equals "being able to see if that guy's about your level." Doesn't the very word tactics connote some form of plan? So if your fighter's "tactics" are supposed to be plans that he has established before the fight, how does that translate into: "It's OVER NINE THOUSAND!" ?

Tactics involves being able to make quick (re-)evaluations of enemy strength and dispositions in order to arrange your forces properly. So yes, it's entirely appropriate to group "evaluation of enemy strength" in a "Tactics" skill, although that's not the only possible arrangement.

VanBuren
2012-07-07, 02:17 AM
I think I have a question for those arguing for "Tactics" as a fighter skill equals "being able to see if that guy's about your level." Doesn't the very word tactics connote some form of plan? So if your fighter's "tactics" are supposed to be plans that he has established before the fight, how does that translate into: "It's OVER NINE THOUSAND!" ?

And here I thought the ability to evaluate the strength of an enemy force was a vital part of tactics.

Kurald Galain
2012-07-07, 04:49 AM
There's already teleport, plane shift and the like, but those are mostly single-target escape spells/powers.

Actually they're both multi-target spells. Teleport lets you bring at least three other people along, Plane Shift at least seven.

awa
2012-07-07, 10:25 AM
only if your all standing next to each other

OOPWER
2012-07-07, 12:57 PM
Tactics involves being able to make quick (re-)evaluations of enemy strength and dispositions in order to arrange your forces properly. So yes, it's entirely appropriate to group "evaluation of enemy strength" in a "Tactics" skill, although that's not the only possible arrangement.


And here I thought the ability to evaluate the strength of an enemy force was a vital part of tactics.

The term "tactics" is defined as: "the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle" (dictionary.com definition 1). It assumes that you already have a goal, and this is your plan to get to that goal. It does not cover being able to mystically sense your enemy's power level, nor does it cover evaluating that enemy. Tactics in the military sense relies on your intel to give you what you need to know in order to get stuff done.

VanBuren
2012-07-07, 01:22 PM
The term "tactics" is defined as: "the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle" (dictionary.com definition 1). It assumes that you already have a goal, and this is your plan to get to that goal. It does not cover being able to mystically sense your enemy's power level, nor does it cover evaluating that enemy. Tactics in the military sense relies on your intel to give you what you need to know in order to get stuff done.

And the ability to effectively maneuver forces in battle has nothing to do with gauging the strength of enemy forces?

jackattack
2012-07-07, 01:26 PM
"Legend of Five Rings" actually had a specific skill for sizing up a( huma)n opponent.

Whether tactics includes sizing up opponents in Webster's, it's a convenient placeholder for the ability and prevents needless skill propagation. We could also rationalize the skill as being divided among the various Knowledge skills.

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It's curious that so many players resist the idea of running away, considering how many literary and cinematic heroes have no problem with it. Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves tried to run away from the goblins in the Misty Mountains. Indy routinely ran from opponents, fighting when he was cornered or had the upper hand. Conan (Ahnuld) ran away a fair bit as well.

Is this an FPS mentality creeping onto the table?

OOPWER
2012-07-07, 01:26 PM
Pre-fight, that falls under "military intelligence" (there's an oxymoron for ya).

VanBuren
2012-07-07, 04:58 PM
Pre-fight, that falls under "military intelligence" (there's an oxymoron for ya).

So what happens when tactics don't go according to plan, or the enemy forces turn out to be significantly more powerful than previous intelligence led you to believe? Any sort of competent tactician also has to be able to adjust tactics on the fly to incorporate new information. That includes being able to look at the foe and make a judgement about whether or not it can match your forces.

MukkTB
2012-07-07, 05:37 PM
From a gamist perspective you should be able to determine an enemies level from looking at them.

From a simulationist perspective its silly. The problem is that from a simulationist perspective the difference between a lvl 1 character and a lvl 10 character are incredibly silly.

Yukitsu
2012-07-07, 05:37 PM
So what happens when tactics don't go according to plan, or the enemy forces turn out to be significantly more powerful than previous intelligence led you to believe? Any sort of competent tactician also has to be able to adjust tactics on the fly to incorporate new information. That includes being able to look at the foe and make a judgement about whether or not it can match your forces.

Routing in pretty much any case isn't the tactic of choice no matter how you assess the situation, and most RPGs completely prevent fighting retreats.

Slipperychicken
2012-07-07, 06:39 PM
As a player, I like to think that I know when to run away. When the enemy takes out half my PC's health in a round, when my PC is standing in the middle of an army, or when he's wounded and something scary is chasing him down. I've lost more than enough characters from letting something smack it to death.

A lot of video games can condition a player to never back down, never surrender. They mainly do this by discouraging retreat, whether by fiat (giant walls come up around the arena which only disappear after the fight's done), by making all enemies manageable, by making losing into little more than a speedbump (character wakes up in a hospital, character can re-load an earlier save, etc), or by making retreat into an extremely drawn-out process (enemy will chase you across the map, and probably catch you anyway).

I agree with dnd's problem, where a level 1 human opponent can be indistinguishable from a level 26. Similarly, even if a DM plays up how strong a guy is, there are several different messages the players can take from it:

1) He's a boss. He's supposed to be tough. Beat him and show off how awesome you are. The NPCs warning you are pansies, and you're Big Damn Heroes, so forget them and whoop some badguy butt.

2) He's a boss, he's tough, but you aren't supposed to fight him yet. You need to level up a few times or get some plot-coupon before you can beat him.

3) You have to find some way to beat him through stealth, trickery, or other feat of derring-do. You have to push something over on him, or knock him off a cliff or into a vat of acid. If he's really tough, you should be able to beat him with the aid of a whole army, right?

4) You aren't supposed to fight him at all. Why are you so persistent in fighting this guy, when I've made it clear he's the best swordsman in the land, and killed countless adventurers just like you?


Miscommunication, misinterpretation, or poor execution of hints on the DM's part can all lead to players mistaking one for the other, often with unheroic results. From the player's standpoint, it could be any one of them; it might be your Big Damn Heroes moment, or a disgraceful TPK.

awa
2012-07-07, 06:50 PM
sure many literary characters run away but as others have said running is extremely difficult in dnd as most monsters are faster then the slowest pcs (keeping in mind the fighter and or dwarf has a speed of 20) and many have scent or blind sense that makes hiding useless. trying to run and failing can make a desperate situation where some one could die into a situation where every one dies.

not to mention by the time you realizes your in over your head somebodies unconscious, grappled or otherwise unable to flee.

now sometimes you can flee you can stone shape a door closed, dimension door away, or use some kind of illusion magic. but you don't go on the internet and say i heroically decided not to fight the giant monster or my party had enough common sense not to fight an unwinable to fight when they could easily flee. stories of level 5 pc kicking a god in the shin and expecting to walk away from it are far more interesting so are going to show up far more often even if they represent a minority of encounters.

nedz
2012-07-07, 07:24 PM
How does a player know to roll knowledge:arcana instead of knowledge:religion when something happens in the game world?

Answer: they don't, the DM tells them which one is applicable.

Again, I do not see a problem with this. If the PCs have NO IDEA what something is, attacking it probably shouldn't be the first option. Figuring out what it is should be.

Well the DM could just say "Roll a D20 and pass me your character sheet". There are several DMing techniques for not giving away free information. The players shouldn't be metagaming either.

...

My players run away quite often, they even have various class features, items or spells to allow them to do it. Normally this happens sometime after first contact, i.e. when the situation has turned out to be less favourable than they first supposed.

They would also get xp for sneaking past a monster, or winning by some non-combat means.

In AD&D tough monsters moved more slowly so that the PCs could, usually, run away. This was a deliberate design decision by GG and DA. This does not exist in 3.x

INDYSTAR188
2012-07-07, 07:45 PM
There are several DMing techniques for not giving away free information. The players shouldn't be metagaming either.

*Takes out pencil and paper, readjusts glasses and looks up expectantly* You were saying? I could definitely use some advice on giving out the 'proper' amount of information, specifically on how to describe an encounter appropriately without making it seem more or less than it is. Also, tips for managing metagaming in a non-super confrontational manner would be great. This could definitely relate to the topic of the tread too...

Player A: "Dude I'm all out of stuff to do (spells/heals/turn undeads/etc)."
Player B: "I think this is a (Random Creature X), do you have any fire?"
Player C: "I don't and I'm almost dead, we better run away!"

Slipperychicken
2012-07-07, 07:46 PM
stories of level 5 pc kicking a god in the shin and expecting to walk away from it are far more interesting so are going to show up far more often even if they represent a minority of encounters.

Doing the impossible, spitting in the King's face, challenging a bear to a fistfight, is interesting. Heroism isn't about fighting a one-sided, or even a worthy encounter. It's not about winning, or losing. It's about doing something awesome, and knowing that win or lose, you will be remembered.

Now that I think about it, it's like in legends where a mortal tricks a god. It loses the "million-to-one" appeal when a level 25 party does it, because that's what we expect (as the Joker would put it: "all part of the plan"). It's only Epic when the hero is truly outmatched, and there is no plan: when he's a level 2 Commoner with nothing but a knife and his wits trying to distract a Tarrasque long enough for his family to get to safety.

OOPWER
2012-07-07, 07:58 PM
Routing in pretty much any case isn't the tactic of choice no matter how you assess the situation, and most RPGs completely prevent fighting retreats.

That's a good point. But my point was that the terminology "tactics" does not apply to "sensing how powerful the enemy is." A lot of people have mentioned knowledge checks, but I'm thinking something akin to an Intuition skill would be more accurate. Along the lines of "I've got a bad feeling about this..."

awa
2012-07-07, 08:25 PM
" You were saying? I could definitely use some advice on giving out the 'proper' amount of information, specifically on how to describe an encounter appropriately without making it seem more or less than it is. Also, tips for managing metagaming in a non-super confrontational manner would be great. This could definitely relate to the topic of the tread too..."

now of course these are little more then house rules

but generally i give players a lot of information. Their characters are there in the room with the creature so their should be a lot of things they can tell just by looking at the creature. lets take the example of the difference between the level 1 commoner kobold and the level 15 kobold warblade and how their indistinguishable.

for me I'd say something like
0 bab he holds his blade like an novice hell be lucky not to stab himself

1 bab while clearly a trained warrior his stance is amateur and simplistic

decent but less then pc he moves with skill and confidence but you can see clear flaws in his stance you could easily exploit.

higher then pc your foes stance seems effortless and flawless with out even the smallest opening to exploit.

Likewise their in the room with the thing you don't need to know what a rhino or a bear is to be able to see that it has massive muscles. so a pc should be able to get a decent grasp of a monster str just by looking at it. (creatures with supernatural strength like vampire are an exception) the same with dex you can tell a cats agile just by watching it move you don't need to be a vet to tell.

also make sure to tell them any gear an npc is wearing i hate it when dms wont even tell you what armor the enemy is wearing it's not meta gaming if it's something their characters should be able to see and figure out its false difficulty.

Jay R
2012-07-07, 08:35 PM
The term "tactics" is defined as: "the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle" (dictionary.com definition 1). It assumes that you already have a goal, and this is your plan to get to that goal.

Exactly. Running away from a group of trolls until you have fire, or running away from a group of gnolls so they'll run through an area you can use a Web spell, or running away from a defended manor house until you have a force to besiege with, are all correct use of tactics. And they are all examples from my current game.


It does not cover being able to mystically sense your enemy's power level, nor does it cover evaluating that enemy. Tactics in the military sense relies on your intel to give you what you need to know in order to get stuff done.

Well, it doesn't cover anything mystical, but except for that one word, yes it covers everything you mentioned. Backing out of a fight you're likely to loseis absolutely a tactical decision, called a tactical retreat. And yes, that requires evaluating the enemy and the current situation.

Henry V correctly assessed the superior strength of the French army, and ran away from them until he could cross the river and find a defensible place for the Battle of Agincourt.

Late in the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington retreated the middle of his line beyond the top of the ridge, where they could not be seen. The French led a series of cavalry charges over the ridge, into a bunch of infantry squares, which are the best defense against cavalry.

The Mongols had a standard tactic of retreating, to draw the enemy cavalry out of position. Then the Mongols would turn and counter-attack.

Against Napoleon's Grande Armee, the Russian Army eventually won, primarily by retreating and harrying for three months.

awa
2012-07-07, 09:07 PM
i think his comment was more along the lines of evaluating a single creatures combat ability is not an aspect of tactics.

rather then saying retreating is not a tactical choice.

TuggyNE
2012-07-07, 09:26 PM
i think his comment was more along the lines of evaluating a single creatures combat ability is not an aspect of tactics.

The problem is that, while "mystical" evaluation of an individual enemy's fighting strength may be a little beyond a bog-standard PC's skills, it's not at all unreasonable for a world defined by large variations between individual enemies' personal fighting strength to develop some techniques for evaluating them. At some point, you have to assume someone will figure out how to estimate whether you're facing a large orc, a troll, or a troll with a bunch of class levels — whether or not they know what class levels are. Otherwise, everyone is just rushing into fights blindly; PCs might survive that with plot armor, but NPCs don't even get that much.

In short: yes, a D&D fighting academy would teach it as part of tactics, or else the academy simply wouldn't work.

awa
2012-07-07, 09:36 PM
im not saying it wouldn't exist im just not certain i would stick it under a skill called tactics.

TuggyNE
2012-07-08, 05:39 AM
im not saying it wouldn't exist im just not certain i would stick it under a skill called tactics.

Well, that's why I said it might not necessarily mechanically fall under a skill labeled "Tactics", even though it's related to it; certainly there should be a mechanical representation for it.

Fortunately, D&D does make some attempt at this, although it doesn't really work as well as intended.

Jay R
2012-07-08, 10:04 AM
It's worth pointing out that running away is much less important in a game in which the DM will never kill the PCs.