How to make them run.

[Doomboy911]

By god I can't scare my players no matter what I do. Yes I draw them in with a decent plot but there fight and flight response has only the fight part. I want them to have a gripping chase scene as a very big fire elemental comes at them but the barbarian decides to attack and manages to kill it in one blow. They go wandering through a sunken castle that has just risen from the sea itself and are wandering through the tunnels where average monsters have been mutated are using guerrila tactics and they've learned that the monsters come out of the pools of water and now have to walk along a thin platform surrounded by water in pitch black darkness and they hear the sound of dripping water as though something is emerging. Not a fear at all. Wandering through an abandoned monastery that housed a cult gone wrong while something watches them from the walls. Nothing.

No I didn't deliver the environment this way this is just a quick summary but I feel that it's in the monsters I'm using. I'm unwilling to actually kill my players because one of them has this "I will never run from a fight for it lacks honor and if you make it so we can't win the fight than I'm going to quit playing" So I can't find that thin line between menacing but not impossible.

[Diarmuid]

If there's no risk of death, then your players have no reason to run ever.

Mortality is an important part of the game, and if you have to tippy-toe around it, then you're hamstrung.

On a more helpful note...there are ways for the party to "lose" a fight without dying. They could be captured, incapacitated, etc and then you've got a whole slew of options. Slaves having to escape, gladiators breaking free of their masters, revenge quest to get back their stolen loot when they were left naked and unconscious by the bad guy, etc.

[HunterOfJello]

Introduce strong (stronger than the party) adventurer NPCs early on. Then have the PCs find them dead in front of super dangerous places. Dead adventurers just screams "danger!".

Arrange the setup for a fight to include the PCs becoming aware of a massive number of enemies in one place. Anyone will make an attempt at 1 dragon even if it seems to be of a rather large size. Few people will attempt to take on 5 dragons, and everyone will attempt to get a better picture of what size and strength they really are before jumping in.

Bigger is better. Make it bigger and they will second guess themselves.

Introduce said bigger monster killing 5 dragons at the same time. Now they'll really second guess themselves!

[Trekkin]

There can be a risk of death without the risk of a character dying. Just add extras: NPCs who are for some reason useful to the party, even MORE useful to the villain's plans, and not particularly hard to kidnap or otherwise threaten. If you can get them attached to someone, you can also get them afraid of that someone being lost.

Substitute NPCs with items at your peril; I usually find my guys are more scared for people than things.

Alternately, put the entire environment in peril. Ships and plots to destroy them work well here.

One thing to remember: Just because your players aren't quaking in their shoes doesn't mean they aren't scared. It could very well be that in this context, they're all floaters rather than freezers; since the players can't die even if their characters do, that risk is more psychologically remote.

Or, when in doubt, go for shock and surprise. One of my favorite moments as a DM was basically this: the heroes stood triumphant on the beach, watching the villain's yacht (and onboard weapons labs) sinking through creative use of dolphins and desperate run for a lifeboat. One of them feels a hand clap on his shoulder, hears the villain say "thanks, guys," there's a brief flash of a grin in the darkness, and then nothing. They were jumpy for a while after that.

[AWiz_Abroad]

I'll tell you what freaked me the hell out in a campaign I'm still in.

My fire focused wizard, an assassin, a goliath hulking hurler, a bard and a competent druid, we'd been tearing through things 2 or 3 CRs above us with relative ease.

Being sent on a retrieval mission, and running into a perfectly charming little girl who wanted us to play with her (played by the DMs wife). Overwhelmingly magical to my detect magic, but perfectly harmless. . . until she got us inside the castle.

She ended up being a massively powerful Fae who's demiplane we entered by coming inside the castle. As she had the item we were retrieving, we couldn't just burn her down where she stood. . . also, she looked like a little girl who never blinked.

Facing big scary monsters are fine, but facing an unnatural fog with a little girl sobbing somewhere inside. . . creeptastic.

[Slipperychicken]

On a more helpful note...there are ways for the party to "lose" a fight without dying. They could be captured, incapacitated, etc and then you've got a whole slew of options. Slaves having to escape, gladiators breaking free of their masters, revenge quest to get back their stolen loot when they were left naked and unconscious by the bad guy, etc.

This. It can be done better with an enemy who has real objectives that don't need the party dead. Like kidnapping an important person, or stealing an item, or blowing up a building, or even just sending a message. The PCs can fail without being killed or KO'd.


For making fighting scary, first of all, don't tiptoe around death (if your group's cool with item-destruction, Sundering can be one way to lose without death). If your players know you won't let anything bad happen, nothing can scare them. And if one guy can't handle his character dying, this really isn't the game for him, and he also has bigger issues to deal with.

Play by the rules. If the DM fudges combat, then failure isn't bitter and victory isn't sweet. It's just being spoonfed to you like you're a ****ing baby. You're not playing a game at that point; just sitting at a table talking in funny voices while imagining orc heads rolling around a cavern floor. And why did you spend weeks learning rules and making a character sheet if the numbers on it don't matter and you win all the time?

Combat can be scarier when there's emotional investment in the character, like family, dependent children (can easily be some orphan), love interests, organizational ties (churches, army, local book club), and personal goals. This does require effort from players to work, the DM can't do it alone.

[robertbevan]

or you could just slaughter them all to let them know you're not screwing around.

start from scratch, and they might run next time.

[dextercorvia]

Not being able to threaten them with character death is really a big one. If they know you won't kill their characters no matter what, why would they run? It begins as 'if you kill my character, I quit,' but where does it stop? 'If you sunder my weapon I quit...' or 'if I face a single enemy that is immune to my awesome combo I quit...' or 'if you bring ranch doritos instead of nacho cheese doritos I quit.'

Well, okay the last one I understand, but hopefully you get the point.

[Antonok]

Not being able to threaten them with character death is really a big one. If they know you won't kill their characters no matter what, why would they run? It begins as 'if you kill my character, I quit,' but where does it stop? 'If you sunder my weapon I quit...' or 'if I face a single enemy that is immune to my awesome combo I quit...' or 'if you bring ranch doritos instead of nacho cheese doritos I quit.'

This in a nutshell. As others pointed out, death is a real part of the game.

Yes it sucks, and should rarely happen (usually through player choices like attacking a known epic level arch fiend for example), but the threat of it SHOULD be there. Otherwise, whats the point of resurrection magic?

I'd let them know that there are some monsters in the world that will kill them, and running IS a valid tactic, and to use knowledge checks to gain a decent perspective on the monsters.

Once they get used to the idea that depending on their actions they can die, the game opens up more.

Atleast in my opinion. Take from it what you will.

[Darrin]

There's actually two problems here, and the "fear of death" thing is more of a consequence or symptom of the larger problem, which is a mismatch of player expectations. One of your players actually put it fairly succinctly, although the threat to quit is a wee bit juvenile. Let me bold the important part:

"I will never run from a fight for it lacks honor and if you make it so we can't win the fight than I'm going to quit playing"

From the player's standpoint, the DM is *not allowed* to give them an encounter where they should retreat. That's your core problem.

The players are operating under a social contract where they expect the DM to give them only combat encounters that they can reasonably handle. They never consider retreat because that's not the kind of game they are expecting. "RUN" is just not on their "ATTACK MAGIC ITEM" menu. They sit down at the table with the assumption that every single encounter the DM throws at them is something they can win. Even worse, if the DM were to throw something at them that they *can't* handle, then the DM has broken the social contract that they were operating under. In their mind, throwing something at them that forces them to retreat is unfair, railroading, etc.

Now, it's important to note that your player's position is probably *NOT* that it's impossible to die. More likely, they want a fair fight, let the dice fall where they may, and ok, sure, sometimes bad luck or bad tactical decisions may get someone killed. But in their mind, "attack" is the default and only option. There is no retreat, because that's the equivalent of giving up narrative control of their characters, which most players consider as worse than death. How exactly your players arrived at these assumptions isn't all that important, and they're not necessarily *wrong* for feeling that way. You can still have an interesting and challenging game by playing that way... as a DM, it can be very difficult to give the PCs a suitable challenge, given how borked up the CR system is, but it's doable (just not very fun for the DM).

Your problem is you're trying to give them an entirely different game: The PCs are not "special" or hand-fed a series of 13.5 encounters-per-level that they can steamroller over and rack up XP at a steady pace. It's a dangerous world, and they may stumble into encounters that are way, way WAY above their CRs. The PCs need to evaluate each threat and make good decisions about how much they can bite off or when it's time to cut bait and run.

Unfortunately, the D&D rules are not set up to encourage running away. Combat and HPs in particular are all-or-nothing. So long as one side has at least 1 HP left, they fight to the death. Morale checks and withdrawal is for wussies. The only way to survive an encounter (and more importantly, to get the XP) is to kill everything. Narrative control is determined entirely by HPs. If you can kill something (or reduce it's HP to zero), then you control what happens to it. Retreat leaves the enemy HPs intact, puts your own HPs at risk, and now the enemy gets to dictate what happens. So this has a tendency to create a mindset that retreat is not an option.

You have two solutions:

1) Talk to the players about DM vs. PC expectations. What kind of challenges do they want, and what are they willing to risk? What assumptions do they have about the game, challenge/risk, attack/retreat, death/free magical unicorn bazookas for everyone.

2) Try a few games with a rules set that has a high mortality rate and punishes players for always resorting to combat. I find Warhammer FRP (1st or 2nd edition), Call of Cthulhu, and Paranoia are very good for this.

[Flickerdart]

The PCs meet a really tough challenge. Maybe it's a souped up golem with some unusual grafts. Maybe it's a powerful telepathic creature that possessed one of their number to fight the rest. Make sure they can beat it with a bit of HP to spare.

Around the corner, there are ten of these guys playing cards.

They'll run.

[asuev]

2 words.

Clown. Demon.

[zlefin]

most importantly; the threat from the player HAS to be handled OOC. If someone will quit the game if you give them a fight they should run from (and they refuse to run from a fight IC); then that issue has to be addressed OOC.

If you want players to run, give them a fight they HAVE to run from; where it's so overwhelmingly obvious that they can't win that retreat is the only option. Also, since the enemy is so gosh darn powerful, they won't kill the PCs anyways, they'd rather toy with them.


Sample: the PCs are sent to scout a valley deep in some mountains in wild lands. They arrive to find that it's a rare major meeting amongst the chromatic dragons of the world. The foes, should they try to fight: hundreds of great wyrm chromatic dragons; some on the gruond, many flying through the air. If the PCs try to fight, or are spotted, the dragons toy with them for sport; but won't kill them, because they enjoy the fun (and/or some start fighting amongst themselves, and they don't really care about the PCs anyway). After all, it's a conclave of elder dragons, they're not that concerned about anyone finding out.

[Herabec]

Want them to run?

"The black scaled behemoth bares down upon you, vicious fangs dripping with toxin. The beast's tail sways slightly behind it with barely contained excitement as it prepares for a feast. What do you do?"

"I roll Knowledge: Nature. 21."

"You don't know what it is."

"Whatever. I Ubercharge it. 33, 35, 32, 40 vs. AC?"

"Okay. You hit with all attacks."

"Aaaaaand that's a wrap. 182 damage total."

"Your weapon strikes slash through the creature's flesh, but the behemoth does not scream. It does not yelp in pain. It does not fall over. Instead, it stares down at you as it's wounds close as quickly as they opened - and it grins."

Watch the Ubercharger **** himself and flee.

[nedz]

One word: Kyuss

I had one guy charge in and start imperiously hacking the zombies to pieces. A worm landed on him, he ignored it, ..., then it starts burrowing into his arm and heading for his brain. Hilarious.
It ended up with the whole party teleporting out to a temple and then running around trying to find someone who could save him.
The zombies meanwhile regenerated and were waiting for them again the next day.
There was a lot more hilarity in the re-run, ... TLDR they almost wiped out a kingdom with a Kyuss-apocalypse.

[PersonMan]

Watch the Ubercharger **** himself and flee.

The problem is that, unless the party is a lot faster than their opponent and/or has teleportation magic that their enemy lacks, running won't help. At all. It'll be even worse than trying to fight, because they'll be taking AOOs as they move away. So unless the behemoth-thing is some sort of toothless wall of flesh, there aren't many options the party will have here.

[Herabec]

The problem is that, unless the party is a lot faster than their opponent and/or has teleportation magic that their enemy lacks, running won't help. At all. It'll be even worse than trying to fight, because they'll be taking AOOs as they move away. So unless the behemoth-thing is some sort of toothless wall of flesh, there aren't many options the party will have here.

Right you are!

Unless, of course, you as DM roleplay your creatures at least semi-realistically.

A creature much larger than the group, while generally the same speed or faster, won't give chase for very long. It's little use to eat the party if you burnt more calories chasing them down than they'd provide you. :P

And of course, the goal was to make them flee. You're not going to punish them (overmuch) for doing what you wanted them to do.

[Howler Dagger]

The PCs meet a really tough challenge. Maybe it's a souped up golem with some unusual grafts. Maybe it's a powerful telepathic creature that possessed one of their number to fight the rest. Make sure they can beat it with a bit of HP to spare.

Around the corner, there are ten of these guys playing cards.

They'll run.

For good measure, make it the player who refuses to retreat (that you mentioned).

[mregecko]

Low level: rust monster

High level: rust dragon

I used to play Living Greyhawk quite actively. I remember the first (and only) time I ever saw a specific group of OP/Powergamers run at APL16 was when we ran into an advanced Rust Dragon -- pretty sure it was around CR 18-20.

Death can be overcome, throw some money at it and you're back.

If you lose your hard-earned equipment, there's no recovering it.

-- Mr

[PersonMan]

Unless, of course, you as DM roleplay your creatures at least semi-realistically.

A creature much larger than the group, while generally the same speed or faster, won't give chase for very long. It's little use to eat the party if you burnt more calories chasing them down than they'd provide you. :P

You assume that they're up against a wild beast as opposed to, say, a sentient Large creature. In some situations (for example, against a Blood Knight type of opponent) running wouldn't work, but in some cases it could.

Of course, the main type of 'you run and it doesn't result in a chase or you having to come back later' encounter I can think of is a random wandering beastie, so it doesn't seem like it would be a good option most of the time.

[lsfreak]

The guy who insists on playing an Honorable Stupid character while threatening to quit if he has to deal with any of the consequences of playing an Honorable Stupid character needs a serious talking to.

If you're going to try and solve this by throwing something like the fire elemental they're supposed to run from, you have to throw the rules out. If the barbarian one-shots it, the appropriate response is not "oh... he's uh, dead," it's "okay" and keep going. It doesn't matter how many hit points he has, because he either has Power of Plot, or requires something special to defeat.

For beating the PC's without killing the PC's, even when they're self-absorbed (no interaction with/emotional tie to any NPC's, etc), nothing beats ability damage, level drain, or similar effects. Opening round, they're hit with an AoE 6 negative levels, they're going to think twice about continuing. Take your fire elemental above - every round anything within 60 feet is exhausted the first round and starts taking 4 Str damage every round after as the heat slowly saps them of all energy. The barbarian will be really hurting by the second round, while a rogue or spellcaster type will be one round from collapsing. It doesn't mean it can't be beaten by combat, but charging in won't be the way to do it.

New and interesting spells can do this too, but generally only when there's already a fear of death. Fleshshiver (no-save stun followed by nausea and damage), Avasculate (lose half health, no save, and stunned on failed save) and Blackfire (1d4 Con damage per round until death, dispel, or 3(!) saves, and spreads to others) are awesome ones, both for power and the potential description, that could be homebrewed to be lower-level and lower-power if necessary.

EDIT: If you could trust IC issues to stay IC, I'd say do the spell thing, and the rest of the PC's will probably abandon the Honorable Stupid. Judging by his threat to quit, however, I would doubt IC stays IC. Of course, if he's not a particularly good, friendly, or likeable player, you could do something like this, kill his character, and chide him saying that they can be defeated in combat, you just can't be dumb about it. Of course, that's far from the most mature response.

[Douglas]

If you're going to try and solve this by throwing something like the fire elemental they're supposed to run from, you have to throw the rules out. If the barbarian one-shots it, the appropriate response is not "oh... he's uh, dead," it's "okay" and keep going. It doesn't matter how many hit points he has, because he either has Power of Plot, or requires something special to defeat.
If you want that style of DMing, D&D is not the game to use for it. Find a more free form system.

[Flickerdart]

If you want that style of DMing, D&D is not the game to use for it. Find a more free form system.
Why not? (Ikea) Tarrasques are perfect for exactly this sort of thing - monsters that don't go down without the right approach.

[lsfreak]

If you want that style of DMing, D&D is not the game to use for it. Find a more free form system.

Not talking all the time, but if this giant elemental the likes of which haven't been seen before, it's all up in the air as to what it is like. I adjust hit points on the fly all the time when dealing with homebrewed, altered, or boss-type monsters; if I planned on a difficult encounter but it ends up easy due to underthinking on my part (rather than any intelligence on the players'), I'll decide the monster lives another round, if nothing else to keep it from being completely anticlimactic.

[eggs]

If you want that style of DMing, D&D is not the game to use for it. Find a more free form system.
Agreed.

D&D is designed around a tactically wargame. Expecting players to approach problems from a mindset other than a tactical wargamer is just setting yourself up for failure.

Even if you're going ahead and killing PCs, telling the players that none of their attacks work and so on, the takeaway message for the players isn't "This is terrifying"; it's "Time to try a different strategy."

[GenghisDon]

It's fine to have encounters the players are quite unlikely to be able to defeat. Just leave potential ways to avoid or diplomance, bribe, ect their way past. Players that are unused to this have a learning curve, but it IS learned eventually.

Sadly, this really DOES entail deaths in many cases. Warn them the kid gloves are off for now on, and that (sometimes) using alternate ways of handling encounters besides combat is mandatory for success.

I found, re-aquainting players in my case, with this concept is best served when the intial "tests" are obviously beyond the characters. Not many L5 characters will want to tangle with an iron golem or 12 headed hydra, say.

Mr "I will never run from a fight for it lacks honor and if you make it so we can't win the fight than I'm going to quit playing" should be called on his bluff. If they aren't bluffing, they probably aren't much of a loss.

I have some symapthy if they actually role play a character with over inflated honor. Is this the case or is it just for combat?

If it is indeed a case of role playing a berzerker, samurai or knight in extreme mode, it will fall to the other PLAYERS to try to save the character, if they so desire. Verbal persuassion (in &/or out of character) or even use of compulsion magics or outright drugging the character to save them from themselves. It's not really the DM's job at all.

Finally, a character with such a code is actually asking for heroic death IMHO. That's what happens to 95% of such characters in myth or legend eventually. People recall & revere such brave & heroic deaths. Be sure to have a bard later encountered sing the ballad of X (the PC that died facing impossible odds), sometimes even things like a statue in a grateful town's square, an heir/relative PC they make as a replacement character that has advantages due to his heroic ancestor/family member.

This ought remove SOME of the sting, and again, that kind of code or hero almost always dies by their code in the end.

[Deophaun]

Ok, fine. Don't run from the big scary monster because your code of honor demands it. BTW: your squishy companion was just grappled, pinned, and is now being dragged away in the opposite direction. Not that you care, what with your "code of honor" and everything.

Now, I am of the opinion that every encounter should be winnable. However, what constitutes a win is a flexible matter. Yes, the level 4 PCs can win an encounter with a great wyrm. But "win" in this case means that they managed to provide a service that the great wyrm felt was worth giving some vital piece of information for an upcoming quest. It does not mean that the great wyrm lies dead at their feet, its treasure theirs for the taking. If the players decide to take it down that road, they better learn to run.

Also, it's perfectly reasonable for the players to defeat themselves before the encounter even comes up. Yes, the players can defeat the illusion-spewing aboleth, if they bothered to investigate the rumors surrounding the "haunted" bog and prepared accordingly. If they didn't, well, they're going to want to run, because they made poor choices.

But in general, I'm against pre-programing in unwinnable encounters. There needs to be some goal that can be achieved by the encounter besides "we're still alive."

[DaedalusMkV]

There's three things that need to be in place before most PCs will even consider running. In order of most to least important:

1: They need to believe that escape is possible. If the entire party is on foot and half of them are wearing Full Plate, there's no way in hell they'll bother trying to run away from a Dragon that can outdo their Run speed with a single Move action. By the same token, why bother running away from a Wraith in a castle when you'll need to take twisting routes while it just walks through walls. This is universal; if they believe that attempting to run will just result in being caught, the PCs will consider it a waste of effort and not bother.

2: They need to believe that running will not result in horrible things. If they're in the Cave of the Important MacGuffin and expect that not retrieving the MacGuffin will result in their goals failing, they will always fight through any challenge to get there no matter how suicidal it looks. Death becomes preferable to retreat. In comparison, if you throw the horrible Doomsday Elemental at them after they have the MacGuffin? Nine times in ten they'll call it a win either way and cue the chase scene entirely willingly.

3: They need to believe that fighting is not a viable option. This can be difficult, because killing big scary things is basically an Adventurer's job description. There's a few ways to do this; first, you can abuse players' meta-knowledge by throwing monsters at them that they know they have no hope of beating. When a savvy player sees his level 2 character threatened with a pursuing twelve-headed Pyrohydra, he's not going to stick around to get reduced to a blackened stain in a single attack. Second, you can exchange an initial volley of attacks. Having an enemy tank a direct hit from your group's meanest attack without even flinching then retaliate for half the Barbarian's hit-points is a good way to convince your group that fighting is a bad plan. Finally, IC knowledge checks are always a good idea. It's entirely reasonable to include "You really don't think you have the resources to kill something like that" as a result of a passed Knowledge check.


Of course, none of the above will work on a player who has never lost a fight, doesn't believe he will be given an unwinnable one and seems to believe that being Lawful Stupid is a good character concept. If you want a horror game where the players are actually intimidated by things, you're going to need to be willing to kill off characters that deserve it. In the case of the Will Not Retreat Barbarian, you may need to horribly maim or kill him when he does something stupid to drive the point home. If you aren't willing to do that, you'll just have to accept that you're running a high-fantasy game where the hero always wins rather than anything with even a touch of Horror.

[pwykersotz]

If your party is doing that, stop letting them dictate their own feelings occaisionally. There are supernatural forces that are going to scare the pants off you. Tell the player "You break into a cold sweat swing your head as if trying to see everything at once. Your mind begins calling up all of your deepest nightmares.". Then veto any action they try to take that doesn't account for what their character feels. Make them justify why they charge and attack. Then, when they do so, describe how that person suddenly vanishes, as if turned to dust. In reality, maybe it was a large gate to the Plane of Shadow with an illusion of a monster to guard it. Then tell the rest of the party in great detail about how hopeless it feels with their powerful frontliner slain in an instant.

Tl;dr - Sometimes you need to tell them how their characters feel. Detachment happens to all players sometimes.

[GenghisDon]

Something I haven't seen mentioned is simply using fear effects more often. If characters are forced to flee by game mechanics, the others may follow suit more often.

[Slipperychicken]

If your party is doing that, stop letting them dictate their own feelings occaisionally. There are supernatural forces that are going to scare the pants off you. Tell the player "You break into a cold sweat swing your head as if trying to see everything at once. Your mind begins calling up all of your deepest nightmares.". Then veto any action they try to take that doesn't account for what their character feels. Make them justify why they charge and attack. Then, when they do so, describe how that person suddenly vanishes, as if turned to dust. In reality, maybe it was a large gate to the Plane of Shadow with an illusion of a monster to guard it. Then tell the rest of the party in great detail about how hopeless it feels with their powerful frontliner slain in an instant.

Tl;dr - Sometimes you need to tell them how their characters feel. Detachment happens to all players sometimes.

Unless I actually failed a Will save against a Panicked effect, I would quit your game in a heartbeat. The only question would be whether I curse you out beforehand.

Unless the PCs are actually affected by the Panicked condition, this is a horrible idea. Don't do it: Your players (not the characters, the players themselves) will leave if they have any integrity to speak of.

[MukkTB]

Yeah the problem is the 'You can't kill me' guy.

#1 You shouldn't often have your players face overwhelming odds in a situation they cannot flee.
#2 Capture, loss of equipment/stats, quest failure are all legitimate failure states a PC can end up in while still not ending the game for them.
#3 Resurrection magic exists.
#4 If the players make really bad mistakes or the dice just hate them, let them die.
#5 Any encounter that is beyond the PCs ability should be foreshadowed somehow as such. If the PCs attack it they should be able to look back and clearly say, "We should have known X because of Y."

This set of rules should result in PCs that flee on occasion. But it will also result in the occasional death and once in a long time the total party wipe.

[danzibr]

I'm unwilling to actually kill my players
I think this is the problem right here. Do a TPK or two and they'll have a better sense of when to flee.

[Yahzi]

From the player's standpoint, the DM is *not allowed* to give them an encounter where they should retreat. That's your core problem.
A lot of good advice in other comments, but for the OP, this is the only thing that matters.

As a general note I would also add:

4) Players want to fight. Give them a few fights they win before making trying to make them run. A bored player is a suicidally brave player.

[Treblain]

If you only need to make them run under specific circumstances, then an easy trick is to make the PCs have to help escort a weak/cowardly NPC to safety. It won't solve the long-term problem of PC complacency, but it will allow you to run the occasional escape sequence.

[RPGuru1331]

Actually talk to them about running. Simply discussing issues with your players can be surprisingly effective.

[Flickerdart]

Actually talk to them about running. Simply discussing issues with your players can be surprisingly effective.
He has a good point! Discussing issues with your players is very effective at making them run away.

[avr]

The players need to know that they can run. If the enemies are faster (often the case, esp. with small characters, dwarves or heavy armour on the PC side) the only way they can run is if they know there's a means of escape handy; a boat, a barrier that will stand up to a charging monster, whatever. Otherwise they just die looking bad instead of dying looking like heroes.

[nedz]

Actually talk to them about running. Simply discussing issues with your players can be surprisingly effective.He has a good point! Discussing issues with your players is very effective at making them run away.

OOC I suspect :smalltongue:

To get them to run away IC, well tricks like Rust Monsters, Disenchanters or even things like confusion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/confusion.htm) will work but as others have said you need to break their sense of entitlement.

There is the view that the DM should provide the players with the game they want, but you should note that this isn't necessarily the same as giving them the game which they say that they want.

You seem to have been intimidated by the LS (Lawful Stupid) player. Now many people hate this style, but I have known many players who like it. On the whole they tend to be realistic and see a heroic death as entirely appropriate and indeed desirable consequence. Rather like Sigmund or most of the Homeric heroes.

What you could try is a very large combat where they go up against lots of mooks. As the combat proceeds more mooks keep arriving until the PCs are running low on resources. You should plan on such a combat to take 20+ rounds. This gives the players plenty to do, and allows them to showcase their characters. Ultimately though they will have to withdraw or be overwhelmed. A humanoid tribe works well, with perhaps a bard and a few casters turning up occasionally. You need to pitch this carefully, the mooks should probably be 2 levels lower than the PCs or thereabouts. The casters etc. about the same level. Having some archers plinking at them from cover should shorten the combat a little. Don't make the mistake of committing the tribal leader, that would provide an easy out.

[Slipperychicken]

He has a good point! Discussing issues with your players is very effective at making them run away.

I approve this post wholeheartedly.

It reminds me of one time, the PCs were helping invade some foreign country. Since we just got some cash, we figured we spend it there. After much real-life annoyance and time-wasting, we learned that the merchants wouldn't take our gold pieces because it was a foreign currency, so we'd have to get it exchanged for these rings on hoops, and we were trying to track the exchange rate in our heads (if currency exchange is possible, why can't the merchants exchange it after selling stuff to us? It would certainly be good for business... I tried to explain this OOC, but the DM was having none of it). Also, this country for some reason didn't haggle; they just named one price and either stuck to it or left (also horrible for business). After trying to track two different currencies and remembering how much of each we had, both the players and PCs were thoroughly pissed off and unanimously decided the people of this strange land were backwards-thinking barbarians who deserve to be conquered and civilized (much to the frustration of the DM, who was desperately attempting to explain their culture to us out-of-character).

Tl;dr: Frustration with different economics got the PCs to brand the locals as barbarians, pissing off the DM too.

[Gamer Girl]

You can take the time and talk to the players(though it might be a waste of time). They might think they 'have to' fight in the rules or something.


But I also am on the side of killing characters. I after all, do it all the time. Needless to say, my players run a lot.

I have had the 'no retreat' player in my game before. And after encounter after encounter they would bite off more then they could chew or take a wrong path...and their character would die. But generally around the 25th or so time this happens the player will finally wake up and say 'hey, look there are rules for running away in the Player's Handbook!"

Also, causing the characters harm is a good motivator. Destruction of equipment, magic items and parts of a character. Such as a character loosing a hand. The trick is to make it hard to replace too, though...so they can't just go to Magic Mart and get a new hand.

I'm also an Awesome Storyteller DM. While a Normal Storyteller DM won't allow the critical to the plot 'Dragon Key' to be destroyed as it would disrupt there perfect little story, I'll let anything happen.

[demigodus]

Definitely talk this over with the player who made that statement. If he meant that phrase literally though (instead of how everyone is interpretting intent), it is not THAT bad.

All he said is he isn't willing to have a fight he can't win. This still leaves you with fights where they are out matched (so they have to out maneuver the opposition), or lose as a result. Basically, don't throw fights at them where the only way to win is by performing action X, and really, the only way to figure that out is to more or less read your mind. Especially if action X is "running away".

Sure it might be more difficult to design fights that are above the party's power level, but still beatable, but it can be done.

However, if what the player meant is that he expects to be able to charge at any problem and win, then honestly this isn't the game for him. If that is his interpretation, I honestly suggest telling him that isn't the kind of game you want to run. Maybe through together an enemy party with as many characters as their party, all with more or less the same tier classes, just 1 level or so lower. And have said enemies use intelligent tactics. After the fight show him the character sheets to demonstrate that this fight should have been very much beatable.

[Dayaz]

yeah, you're the DM... not the Honorable Stupid guy >.> If he has a IC reason to act like that, then work with it. If he dies, oh well, there are ways around it. If he's just being an idiot, then punish him for it!

My RL DM does it all the time, heh. It's why I usually have 2 or 3 character sheets at a time, because there are times i refuse to run (usually seems to be at exactly the wrong time too >.> )

Just try to understand the player and the character. If he's playin' a character who would act like that, then you'll have to work around it. If he's playing something that's supposed to be smart (rogue/bard/Wizard) then he deserves what he gets for being suicidal

[Mnemnosyne]

If you're going to try and solve this by throwing something like the fire elemental they're supposed to run from, you have to throw the rules out. If the barbarian one-shots it, the appropriate response is not "oh... he's uh, dead," it's "okay" and keep going. It doesn't matter how many hit points he has, because he either has Power of Plot, or requires something special to defeat.


If your party is doing that, stop letting them dictate their own feelings occaisionally. There are supernatural forces that are going to scare the pants off you. Tell the player "You break into a cold sweat swing your head as if trying to see everything at once. Your mind begins calling up all of your deepest nightmares.". Then veto any action they try to take that doesn't account for what their character feels. Make them justify why they charge and attack. Then, when they do so, describe how that person suddenly vanishes, as if turned to dust. In reality, maybe it was a large gate to the Plane of Shadow with an illusion of a monster to guard it. Then tell the rest of the party in great detail about how hopeless it feels with their powerful frontliner slain in an instant.

Tl;dr - Sometimes you need to tell them how their characters feel. Detachment happens to all players sometimes.
There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but I just wanted to point out the two pieces of terrible, terrible advice.

One: If you change the rules on the fly, you're breaking faith with the players. The players expect the world and its rules to function in a fair manner. If when you set down a monster it has X HP, and the players happened to deal X HP to it when you weren't expecting that, too bad. It had X HP. It's dead now. You need to design a better monster. You absolutely, positively, should not cheat that monster into having more HP all of a sudden, or having immunities that you didn't plan for it to have.

Two: Never tell a player what their character does unless their character is actually under magical control. You can describe a place to sound creepy, frightening, whatever you want, but you cannot tell a player that his character is frightened. There is one thing in the game that the players have control of: their characters. That control is absolute, except through the mechanics of the game such as enchantment spells. The DM can never, without game mechanics to back it up, dictate that a player's character feels a particular way, nor can he deny the player the ability to have his character attempt an action. The DM determines the results of the player's actions, but cannot prevent the character from taking them. That doesn't mean you can't question the character's motivation, try to get the player to see why you think the character shouldn't take a particular action, but in the end, it's his character, it's his decision.

So yeah. Lot of good advice. Just a couple bits that need mentioning as terrible advice that you should never follow.

As to your situation, my suggestion would be simply to build some stronger monsters. Don't build monsters intending for the party not to be able to defeat them, but also don't build monsters intending for the party to defeat them. Build monsters that make sense in the world. Some of them will be strong, some of them will be weak. Do this, and your characters will have to run, if they face a strong monster. But it won't be because you intentionally put them up against something they couldn't defeat - they would have done that to themselves by choosing to go wherever that particular monster happened to be.

Sometimes, don't make them run. Just make them irrelevant to the enemy, too. A powerful creature or mage or something has a specific goal. He goes and achieves it, then moves to escape, the party winds up encountering him as he escapes. He has no interest in the party; they're irrelevant to him. They can try to fight him, but he'll simply do whatever is most efficient and leave, because he has no time to kill mooks. Remember, to powerful characters, the players aren't special. They're mooks that don't even give exp or good loot, so why should I bother to kill them?

[Gandariel]

A couple suggestions:

Adjusting hp or such is TOTALLY good.

you likely made a mistake having them "flee" a monster that could be killed in one shot.
You should have totally adjusted his hp, or making three more elementals appear as the first died.

Anyway, idea for the future:
Party goes in cave to retrieve MacGuffin.
there's a huge, strong monster.
as soon as they enter the room they see another person enter the room from another side.
he kills the monster with a single spell (WARNING 1), and takes the macguffin.
he ignores the party and begins heading towards the exit.
if a player tries to attack him, he casts something like Wall of Force, Forcecage or Mass hold Person and keeps walking (WARNING 2)

if the party manages to dispel/ resist/avoid them, as soon as any one player attacks him, he casts a twinned split ray maximized enervation(or something equally powerful and single-target) , likely killing him.
after doing so, he keeps walking away.
if another player attacks him, he is killed too next round.
who doesn't attack is not hurt anyhow.

in this way, the PCs have plenty of warning, and plenty of chances to go away. if someone deliberately wants to be stupid, he dies and the rest of the party will agree that it's the player's fault

[ericgrau]

Most DMs I've had can never make the players run even when the fight is designed to be so overwhelming that they're supposed to. And then it's so overwhelming that someone dies or gets near death and everyone else has to save him...

One DM pulled it off though. He keeps his players in a constant state of fear, and a death a session is par for the course. When players aren't sure how to handle a fight, they know it was already trouble without their mistake, and then it's time to flee.

He's done good and bad things as a DM but the key lesson here is consistency. If players get coddled every fight, stomp everything like they're supposed to and then your railroad plot has a twist that requires the players to run, then they simply won't know that. The problem is that the players aren't psychic and games of "read the DMs mind or die" aren't really games, they're pre-written stories. And rather than spontaneously gaining ESP, players often die in these scenarios. And no, hint dropping never works because players don't know what you know nor have the same thought process going on (see ESP again).

[Mnemnosyne]

A couple suggestions:

Adjusting hp or such is TOTALLY good.

you likely made a mistake having them "flee" a monster that could be killed in one shot.
You should have totally adjusted his hp, or making three more elementals appear as the first died.

Anyway, idea for the future:
Party goes in cave to retrieve MacGuffin.
there's a huge, strong monster.
as soon as they enter the room they see another person enter the room from another side.
he kills the monster with a single spell (WARNING 1), and takes the macguffin.
he ignores the party and begins heading towards the exit.
if a player tries to attack him, he casts something like Wall of Force, Forcecage or Mass hold Person and keeps walking (WARNING 2)

if the party manages to dispel/ resist/avoid them, as soon as any one player attacks him, he casts a twinned split ray maximized enervation(or something equally powerful and single-target) , likely killing him.
after doing so, he keeps walking away.
if another player attacks him, he is killed too next round.
who doesn't attack is not hurt anyhow.

in this way, the PCs have plenty of warning, and plenty of chances to go away. if someone deliberately wants to be stupid, he dies and the rest of the party will agree that it's the player's fault
I would say that's a really, really bad situation to put the party in. First, you're setting up a situation where they have a goal to achieve, then intentionally stealing the goal out from under their noses. Bad, unless you have heavily foreshadowed that the party will probably not accomplish this goal, and given them alternate options. Never make the players do something that's pointless intentionally - if they manage to screw up and the circumstances dictate that their actions were pointless, that's one thing, but the example given above is setting them up to fail from the start.

The core idea - an enemy too powerful to give a damn about them - is reasonable, but it needs to be an encounter in which the party is incidental. The party shouldn't be directly going after anything that's going to be denied to them by this powerful opponent. They should come across the person and be encouraged by the setup to decide to oppose him, only to be shown the futility of such opposition when he ignores them like the mooks they are (in comparison to him). Obviously this doesn't really work if the party is past 11th level or so, because at that point you're a credible, if distant, potential threat even to a level 20 character.

As for adjusting things mid combat, no. No no no. That is bad. That's cheating. It's railroading them to achieve your vision of the combat. It's scripting a cutscene, then not informing your players that they're in a cutscene. If players wanted to watch cutscenes, they'd play Metal Gear or Final Fantasy or whatever. They want to participate, and their actions should have results determined by the rules of the world they're playing in. If you arbitrarily and unfairly change those rules mid-combat, because the combat isn't playing out like you expected, you're turning it into a cutscene. I get that a person might think things aren't dramatic enough, but if you can't change things within the rules, it's better to have an anticlimactic boss than to force the players to do it the way you want when they have fairly beaten the challenge you put before them.

That said, if you really want a boss fight to last at least a certain time, there are spells and powers that can prevent a creature from dying no matter how low they go, until they expire. Use them. If you want a boss battle that lasts no less than X rounds, give the boss a delay death with a caster level of X rounds, protect him with death ward, and add disintegrate protection in there somewhere. Now you've got a boss that can fairly go toe to toe with the party for however long you feel is dramatically appropriate. And if they discover his protections and manage to remove them, that's fair too, and it's actually much more entertaining as a game situation than just making him plot-invincible.

[danzibr]

A couple suggestions:

Adjusting hp or such is TOTALLY good.

you likely made a mistake having them "flee" a monster that could be killed in one shot.
You should have totally adjusted his hp, or making three more elementals appear as the first died.

Anyway, idea for the future:
Party goes in cave to retrieve MacGuffin.
there's a huge, strong monster.
as soon as they enter the room they see another person enter the room from another side.
he kills the monster with a single spell (WARNING 1), and takes the macguffin.
he ignores the party and begins heading towards the exit.
if a player tries to attack him, he casts something like Wall of Force, Forcecage or Mass hold Person and keeps walking (WARNING 2)

if the party manages to dispel/ resist/avoid them, as soon as any one player attacks him, he casts a twinned split ray maximized enervation(or something equally powerful and single-target) , likely killing him.
after doing so, he keeps walking away.
if another player attacks him, he is killed too next round.
who doesn't attack is not hurt anyhow.

in this way, the PCs have plenty of warning, and plenty of chances to go away. if someone deliberately wants to be stupid, he dies and the rest of the party will agree that it's the player's fault
I'm totally going to use this in a future campaign.

[Gandariel]

Well, about adjusting hp.. no, i'm still on my opinion.

In a perfect world a perfect dm manages to create an enemy who is exactly as challenging as it needs to be.

Sometimes, though, to make an otherwise anticlimatic fight more fun, you may want to correct a few minor things: 10 more hp to the bbeg, that breath attack rolls well under average to avoid tpk, or making a suboptimal tactical choiche for a monster

These adjustments are made to correct mistakes from the players AND from the GM if he made a monster which is too strong or too weak.
you are not cheating because you make the rules.
nobody knows that you made these adjustments, and everybody has fun.

Of course, TPKs are still possible, as are very short encounters.
but as long as the players don't know it small nudges make a game way more interesting.
(also, don't ever say "yeah, this is a ghoul, check its stats on the MM", players aren't supposed to know exactly everything about every monster they encounter)

[Slipperychicken]

you are not cheating because you make the rules.

Not if you're playing the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, as published by WotC

If you are playing Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 Edition, then Wizards of the Coast already made the rules for your convenience. If you tell the players you are playing by the 3.5 ruleset, but have changed the rules without telling anyone, you are not playing the same game, and you are a liar.

It's much like awarding yourself extra points in Scrabble without telling anyone else because "you make the rules", or secretly pulling an Ace out of your shoe and using it to enhance your hand in poker because "you make the rules". You do not make the rules. If you decide to change the way you play, it's your duty tell your players exactly in what ways before they make the decision to play in the game, because now it is not the same game. If you do not tell them, you have lied to them and are cheating.

[demigodus]

Well, about adjusting hp.. no, i'm still on my opinion.

In a perfect world a perfect dm manages to create an enemy who is exactly as challenging as it needs to be.

I think the problem is this concept of there being a measure of how challenging an enemy is supposed to be. Or that it is measured in how long it takes the party to kill it/how much it takes down their health, which is the same no matter what the party does. That isn't a challenging enemy. That is a cut scene with 0 challenge because you are already guaranteed to win.


These adjustments are made to correct mistakes from the players AND from the GM if he made a monster which is too strong or too weak.

Yes, lets correct the mistake of the players going nova and accidentally doing too much damage. Because that is clearly a mistake.


you are not cheating because you make the rules.
nobody knows that you made these adjustments, and everybody has fun.

That or nobody wants to inform you. There have been plenty of people on here who commented about noticing their DM's fudging habbits. Since it got obvious.

[robertbevan]

Not if you're playing the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, as published by WotC

If you are playing Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 Edition, then Wizards of the Coast already made the rules for your convenience. If you tell the players you are playing by the 3.5 ruleset, but have changed the rules without telling anyone, you are not playing the same game, and you are a liar.

It's much like awarding yourself extra points in Scrabble without telling anyone else because "you make the rules", or secretly pulling an Ace out of your shoe and using it to enhance your hand in poker because "you make the rules". You do not make the rules. If you decide to change the way you play, it's your duty tell your players exactly in what ways before they make the decision to play in the game, because now it is not the same game. If you do not tell them, you have lied to them and are cheating.


i don't know about all that. if rolls are fudged to enhance the story, and everyone is having fun... isn't that sort of what the game is about?

in scrabble, you're playing against another player. awarding yourself unearned points is cheating. scrabble is a competition. same goes for poker, especially when money is on the line.

d&d is about interactive storytelling. it's not supposed to be "players versus DM". i'd say it's a poor DM who doesn't fudge rules and rolls from time to time to make a better, more dramatic story.

[OttoVonBigby]

d&d is about interactive storytelling. it's not supposed to be "players versus DM". i'd say it's a poor DM who doesn't fudge rules and rolls from time to time to make a better, more dramatic story.

Plus I'm pretty sure the DMG outright tells you to do that when necessary. So that'd be RAW.

[Gandariel]

if it were a competition yeah, i'd be cheating.
since the game is NOT Player vs Gm, i'm only making sure they have fun

[olentu]

The problem with fudging is that once you are caught out a single time or even strongly suspected who can really say if anything done in any game you have run was legitimate. Fudging means nothing the players fought for was a victory they earned, and nothing they lost was a defeat they deserved. Fudging removes all the tension, all the excitement, basically everything that separates playing the game from listening to someone tell a story.

[prophetic_joe]

I don't agree with fudging but to the people saying that WOTC made the rules for us to abide by... WOTC wrote this directly in the DM's guide

"Do you cheat? The answer: The DM really can’t cheat. You’re the umpire, and what you say goes. As such, it’s certainly within your rights to sway things one way or another to keep people happy or keep things running smoothly."

Your problem is the guy who says he won't play if you give them an encounter they can't win. You need to take him aside and tell him ok if that is how you want it fine then don't play. Explain to him you are telling a story with their characters and help and that sometimes in the story defeat is going to happen, in reality everyone comes up against an obstacle they can't overcome and in your game they will too. If he can't deal with that he really is a terrible player.

[Doomboy911]

The problem with fudging is that once you are caught out a single time or even strongly suspected who can really say if anything done in any game you have run was legitimate. Fudging means nothing the players fought for was a victory they earned, and nothing they lost was a defeat they deserved. Fudging removes all the tension, all the excitement, basically everything that separates playing the game from listening to someone tell a story.

But that feels like an extreme. If I have my fire elemental last a round or two before it goes down the game gets enriched a little and if my players are having fun than it's not a problem. If I throw a monster that keeps going and going and the party grows weary than I make a mistake and if I throw a monster who looks big and menacing but the barbarian took him out in one swing before anyone else got a chance because the barbarian always wins initiative than I made a mistake no one is having fun if one person is just taking all the fun. Yeah everyone gets a giggle but the game shifts from the party versus the monsters to that one guy versus them all.

[olentu]

But that feels like an extreme. If I have my fire elemental last a round or two before it goes down the game gets enriched a little and if my players are having fun than it's not a problem. If I throw a monster that keeps going and going and the party grows weary than I make a mistake and if I throw a monster who looks big and menacing but the barbarian took him out in one swing before anyone else got a chance because the barbarian always wins initiative than I made a mistake no one is having fun if one person is just taking all the fun. Yeah everyone gets a giggle but the game shifts from the party versus the monsters to that one guy versus them all.

Ah, perhaps some of the the people that are in the groups I play with are a measure less trusting then those that you play with. And sure if the fire elemental lives a bit longer everyone might have fun but if they know the fire elemental is living those extra rounds and then will die regardless of what they do I would find it quite understandable if that takes all the fun out of the encounter.

As for the barbarian problem, well that is not really a problem I would handle with fudging even were I prone to fudging at all. I mean, won't that be a problem in every encounter that you put against the party. If you can't design things to keep the barbarian from one shotting the opponents won't you have to start fudging everything.

[olentu]

But that feels like an extreme. If I have my fire elemental last a round or two before it goes down the game gets enriched a little and if my players are having fun than it's not a problem. If I throw a monster that keeps going and going and the party grows weary than I make a mistake and if I throw a monster who looks big and menacing but the barbarian took him out in one swing before anyone else got a chance because the barbarian always wins initiative than I made a mistake no one is having fun if one person is just taking all the fun. Yeah everyone gets a giggle but the game shifts from the party versus the monsters to that one guy versus them all.

Ah, perhaps some of the the people that are in the groups I play with are a measure less trusting then those that you play with. And sure if the fire elemental lives a bit longer everyone might have fun but if they know the fire elemental is living those extra rounds and then will die regardless of what they do I would find it quite understandable if that takes all the fun out of the encounter.

As for the barbarian problem, well that is not really a problem I would handle with fudging even were I prone to fudging at all. I mean, won't that be a problem in every encounter that you put against the party. If you can't design things to keep the barbarian from one shotting the opponents won't you have to start fudging everything.

[Water_Bear]

The problem with fudging (not my problem with it*) is that it represents a temptation to engage in the worst forms of Bad DMing.

No-Save Plot Teleportation, Grudge Monsters, Super DMPCs; the main thing they have in common is that DMs allow their feelings (laziness, resentment, awe) to come before the needs of the game. In an ideal world, sitting behind the DM screen would make people more responsible and reasonable; but it is often the opposite. As a DM, it is important that you use fudging sparingly, if at all, because the temptation to misuse Rule 0 is something you will always have to deal with.


*My problem is that I have an irrational aversion to homebrew and anything resembling "rule-breaking." As one of my former players put it, I am a Lawful Evil person, and that spills into my DMing.

[pwykersotz]

Unless I actually failed a Will save against a Panicked effect, I would quit your game in a heartbeat. The only question would be whether I curse you out beforehand.

Unless the PCs are actually affected by the Panicked condition, this is a horrible idea. Don't do it: Your players (not the characters, the players themselves) will leave if they have any integrity to speak of.

Of course they would need to be afflicted with panicked or shaken first. There are innumerable effects that cause fear of various levels, with or without a save.

My point was not an assault on integrity, it was to put forth that most times when players do something crazy like that they are completely out of immersion and don't understand the practical factors that affect them. Sometimes a gentle veto of "Do you have any traits, feats or skills that can justify your character ignoring the terror?" can remind them that even if they WANT to do something, it's not always an option.

[Mnemnosyne]

"Enhance the story" are words that strike to the core of the problem with this method of thinking.

The story of a D&D game should be one that arises out of the actions taken by the players and the fair adjudication of those actions by a DM. It should not be one that the DM decides 'it would be better if it happened this way'.

A D&D game is not about 'story' in the sense of a written story with plans to be dramatic. The moments of awesome cannot be scripted; when they are, they ring false. What makes it interesting and special is when things happen that no one planned on. But those things don't happen often, if the DM is changing actual results in order to fit his vision of what 'should' be happening.

If the players defeat a challenge faster than you intended, don't try to cheat them out of that victory. Embrace the victory, make them seem even more heroic and even more awesome for what they managed to accomplish. Make sure it doesn't happen too often, but do it fairly. If a player is using a tactic so powerful you can't deal with it in a fair manner, then deal with the tactic. Re-examine it, discuss it with the player, and find ways to change it so that you can provide adequate challenge. Houserule it away if need be, but be consistent and open. Don't secretly "compensate" for it until the player notices what you're doing.

Another problem with changing things in the background is that, if enemies are taking the player's most powerful attacks and keep on coming, the players will think they're not doing good enough. If you fool them into thinking you're playing fair, then they'll think their characters are too weak. So they'll try to make even stronger characters. And if you keep changing things and cheating them out of the power they have built into their characters, eventually they'll realize that the world is scaling with them and no matter what they do, they can't actually be awesome.

[MukkTB]

To escape you first have to identify a monster or encounter is too much for you to handle. Then you have to survive long enough to get an action and get past AOOs of monsters that are probably faster than you. Because if those monsters are slower than you, why aren't you kiting them peppering them with arrows? Or if they're slower than you and ranged you're asking for an arrow in the back while you run away.

Even if you know the DM will place encounters in your path that you should run away from its really difficult to tell which ones they are sometimes early enough to actually make a getaway.

[Gandariel]

Seriously, you're talking like i'm saying " the monster has unlimited hp and can't fail saves until 4 rounds have passed and the tank has lost 2/3 of his life, then he dies".

I'm talking about MINOR things which are only meant to make the monster live to act once, or to save the party from a tpk, or something like that.
the outcome remains the same, the party has still squashed easily the beast, or narrowly managed to get away.

seriously, what's wrong with making the game more fun?

[Gandariel]

Seriously, you're talking like i'm saying " the monster has unlimited hp and can't fail saves until 4 rounds have passed and the tank has lost 2/3 of his life, then he dies".

I'm talking about MINOR things which are only meant to make the monster live to act once, or to save the party from a tpk, or something like that.
the outcome remains the same, the party has still squashed easily the beast, or narrowly managed to get away.

seriously, what's wrong with making the game more fun?

[Slipperychicken]

if I throw a monster who looks big and menacing but the barbarian took him out in one swing before anyone else got a chance because the barbarian always wins initiative than I made a mistake no one is having fun if one person is just taking all the fun. Yeah everyone gets a giggle but the game shifts from the party versus the monsters to that one guy versus them all.

The Barbarian overshadowing the party is the problem here. You don't need to fudge for that; just talk to him about turning the power down. Say something like "Hey, your barbarian is really effective at combat, to the point where he's overshadowing the rest of the party. Is it cool if we turn things down a few notches, so everyone can feel more involved?". If his overpowering damage is coming from Power Attack/Leap Attack/Shock Trooper, you can just get him to agree not to PA for more than 3 or 4 (or whatever number makes his average damage more fair) unless you give him the signal to go "full power" for that fight.


Of course they would need to be afflicted with panicked or shaken first. There are innumerable effects that cause fear of various levels, with or without a save.


If you do it fairly, then it's fine. No worries.

[Endarire]

How to make them run?

In short, you can't.

The game is set up so that running is bad! You go into a fight expecting to win or die. D&D 3.5 is a game about killing things, getting their loot, and moving on. Nowhere in that equation does 'run' factor in.

Running is a last resort. When you have no more viable options, you run. Not before. Why? Because, just like in the NES version of Final Fantasy, it takes an action from everyone to run. (Minor exceptions exist.) So in the turn or two it takes to flee from danger, the group could have just killed or KOed everything. That's how 3.5 works.

With that said, you can influence them. If they believe they don't want to fight, and they can't handle themselves, fleeing is an option. Still, fleeing is usually left to dimension door, teleport, and plane shift, since those get you (and maybe others near you) away very far, very fast, and can be put on a contingency.

[Gandariel]

If the barbarian overshadows the party, there are plenty of ways.
Flying monsters, ghosts, a high number of weak mooks, WALLS.

asking the player to power down should be your last resort

[lsfreak]

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, but I just wanted to point out the two pieces of terrible, terrible advice.

One: If you change the rules on the fly, you're breaking faith with the players. The players expect the world and its rules to function in a fair manner. If when you set down a monster it has X HP, and the players happened to deal X HP to it when you weren't expecting that, too bad. It had X HP. It's dead now. You need to design a better monster. You absolutely, positively, should not cheat that monster into having more HP all of a sudden, or having immunities that you didn't plan for it to have.

I had homebrewed a lower-power version of the Angel of Decay, which as-is was way too much for my party to handle. The problem was, I dropped its hit points and its damage reduction rather than just its damage output, and I'd forgotten how much damage my players could do. What was supposed to be a boss-type encounter dropped after one player and one pet charged.

If they had gone nova to kill it, I would have kept it as-is. If they had gotten a few crits to kill it, I would have kept it as-is. They didn't, they did standard tactic. It was a dumb mistake I made. So I put it's DR back up to normal and gave it half-strength Unholy Toughness, which was perfect. At that point, it was locked - all angels of that type had those stats, and I wouldn't touch them. I don't just throw out the rules completely when convenient, because like you said, the players expect and need there to be consistent rules. And there were, every angel had those stats. And the future, high-level angels were anticipatory given Unholy Toughness because I now knew they would need it.

If I had gone with a giant fire elemental, I would have used a similar approach - except, knowing I want the players to run, I would know ahead of time what that adjustment would be. But there's no appreciable difference from the player's perspective between a monster designed from the start to require X, and the DM realizing just before the encounter that it requires X, and the DM realizing during the encounter that it requires X. (Though I'd only advocate doing this with a) boss-types and b) monsters. Non-bosses aren't important enough to merit this, and NPC's have solid rules for how they work, unlike monsters which are essentially arbitrary.)

[olentu]

Seriously, you're talking like i'm saying " the monster has unlimited hp and can't fail saves until 4 rounds have passed and the tank has lost 2/3 of his life, then he dies".

I'm talking about MINOR things which are only meant to make the monster live to act once, or to save the party from a tpk, or something like that.
the outcome remains the same, the party has still squashed easily the beast, or narrowly managed to get away.

seriously, what's wrong with making the game more fun?

Hmmm, I would say that minor is a matter of opinion, but if you really think that the players would appreciate having the rules fudged why not inform them of your plan to fudge things and ask their opinions on the matter.

[Yahzi]

The game is set up so that running is bad!
Completely true.

In the original version, you didn't run; you avoided combat in the first place. You needed to be running away long before initiative dice were rolled.

[Thomasinx]

Completely true.

In the original version, you didn't run; you avoided combat in the first place. You needed to be running away long before initiative dice were rolled.

Thats still what you need to do. It's surprising how long players survive when they move silently and scout out areas ahead of time. If they see a monster they dont want to fight, they decide not to fight it before the monster can even start a fight. There are reasons for all the stealth and silence related skills/items.

[Cirrylius]

Thats still what you need to do. It's surprising how long players survive when they move silently and scout out areas ahead of time. If they see a monster they dont want to fight, they decide not to fight it before the monster can even start a fight. There are reasons for all the stealth and silence related skills/items.

Sadly, stealthy characters are often either 1) are betrayed by the presence of Wizard Stumblefoot and Fighter McClanks-a-lot, or 2) all by their lonesome when they run into trouble. Stealth is an awesome strategy, but the mechanics can screw characters over hard. Most parties I've played in used stealth exclusively with extremely stealth-specialized characters, solely for very short recon and flank-positioning, since anything more elaborate always seemed just to either alert the enemy or break up the party.

[ericgrau]

It's also a good time to take a 10, because especially in large parties someone will almost always roll low. A wand of silence is also handy for a clanky party who needs to auto-pass when 1 or 2 of them are too noisy. Besides targeting players you can strategically drop silence fields in the environment.

Side note: I've seen arguments saying you can't take a 10 because you're in danger of getting caught, which basically amount to saying you can never ever take a 10 on any skill when it actually makes the slightest bit of difference. The examples in the rules seem to imply more that you can take a 10 whenever you aren't in combat or similar, not potential danger.

Also helpful are the rules that say those who are on watch (rather than actively exploring like adventurers) automatically take a 10 on their spot and listen. Finally there's a +1 to the DC per 10 feet and more for closed doors and such. Together these remove a lot of the risk of bad luck that make poorly DMed skills a suicidal waste of time.

As for grandiose shows of overwhelming threat and then sparing the PCs who are like flies to you then continuing to run, that seems a bit heavy handed to me. Better to ask yourself "Why are you so set on railroading precisely when they fight and when they run?" Make many fights big threats but not TPK fuel and let the players decide. Rather than giving them super easy fights all the time then being surprised when they stay to fight the first ever super hard fight.

[yougi]

Edit: Wow, this is massive. I'm so sorry about that, just had a lot to say: you guys inspire me!


Not being able to threaten them with character death is really a big one. If they know you won't kill their characters no matter what, why would they run? It begins as 'if you kill my character, I quit,' but where does it stop? 'If you sunder my weapon I quit...' or 'if I face a single enemy that is immune to my awesome combo I quit...' or 'if you bring ranch doritos instead of nacho cheese doritos I quit.'

Well, okay the last one I understand, but hopefully you get the point.

First, Sweet Chili Heat is the best kind of Doritos. Second, if I bring the Doritos, I do not believe you're allowed to complain. Actually, who said you could take some? :smallbiggrin:

But all in all, YES. There are two reasons that I can think of to play such a samurai-esque character: because you want to dig deeper into that concept, in which case, you'd beg the DM to put you in that spot where you have to make that tough decision, or because you really can't stand losing. While both are acceptable, they belong in wildly different games. If you, as a DM, is offering a high fantasy game where PCs just walk knee deep in the heads of their defeated enemies while dodging everything you send to them a la James Bond, then the second option is perfect: it's a shallow character trait, but it's still characterization, and you don't need much more for such a game. If you want the game to be about exploring the characters, then you want the player who wants the same thing. All in all, neither of them is bad, it's just not a good fit with the DM's game, in which case you either change your game, change the player, or show them the door.


Unless I actually failed a Will save against a Panicked effect, I would quit your game in a heartbeat. The only question would be whether I curse you out beforehand.

Unless the PCs are actually affected by the Panicked condition, this is a horrible idea. Don't do it: Your players (not the characters, the players themselves) will leave if they have any integrity to speak of.

You might. Are you a good role player though? With somebody who plays their character correctly, indeed, you do not tell them what to do unless they are controlled. Even then, with a good role player, you should not have to say: "So Bob, you start shaking and babbling and asking the scary villain for forgiveness", but "Dude, he scares you", and they then express that fear themselves. However, with good role players, very few DMing tips are necessary.

I find that a lot of time, I have to give my players "The LOOK": raised eyebrow, head tilted down and sideways, meaning "Are you for real?" As in "Really, your uneducated fighter, right out of his farm in the temperate plains of X, with an Int score of 7 and no ranks in anything close to a knowledge skill, knows that your need to burn a troll's body?", or "Really, your cleric, follower of the Deity of Eternal Love, who just lost his wife as a direct result of his own action, is acting as if NOTHING happened?". Usually, a poor role playing performance, caused by one of many things, be it a poor role player, a player having a bad day, a player forgetting things (seeing as they are that character for a couple hours a week, while the characters are themselves for approximately 24 hours a day), or many other things. I personally let them do it if they give me a good explanation (they probably know their characters better than I do), and it's not a trick I use often. However, once again, player expectation: before we started the game, I told them I would do that, and in which circumstances I would. However, the campaign has been running for a year, and I've only used it once, when a player was going through some stuff that the character wasn't (pretty opposite actually, one of them getting dumped by their fiancée a week before the wedding, the other one's proposal being accepted), without any issue.

In the end:


That doesn't mean you can't question the character's motivation, try to get the player to see why you think the character shouldn't take a particular action, but in the end, it's his character, it's his decision.

is my point, to a certain extent, as long as they are consistent.


Actually talk to them about running. Simply discussing issues with your players can be surprisingly effective.

Yes. So much. You'Re playing a game, where everyone should have fun. If one person makes it so that another's fun is ruined, you have to address it. What would you tell a kid who, when he plays dodgeball, has a friend who doesn't leave the court when he's eliminated? To talk to an adult? Well now, you're that adult. Or maybe not, it's hard to tell with the whole Internet thing :smallbiggrin:. If you're not, go tell your teacher, or their grandma. Grandmas are usually easier to listen to. If you are an adult, you can still tell their Grandmas, although it might get weird.


(if currency exchange is possible, why can't the merchants exchange it after selling stuff to us? It would certainly be good for business... I tried to explain this OOC, but the DM was having none of it). Also, this country for some reason didn't haggle; they just named one price and either stuck to it or left (also horrible for business). After trying to track two different currencies and remembering how much of each we had, both the players and PCs were thoroughly pissed off and unanimously decided the people of this strange land were backwards-thinking barbarians who deserve to be conquered and civilized (much to the frustration of the DM, who was desperately attempting to explain their culture to us out-of-character).

Honestly, culture is culture is culture, and it's rarely logical. Many would rather lose a sale then let word out that some punk dictated THEIR price, in THEIR store, for THEIR goods. About the currency thing, maybe there are laws covering such things. I remember that in the Slave Lords series, an old 1E adventure series, the Slave Lords-ran island used only their own money, which, IIRC, was scrolls, the equivalent of checks today would be. If you showed other currency in town, you were thrown in jail. By doing it that way, they had control over every single transaction, and could claim taxes on them. In Canada, when the US dollar was worth more, stores would take them at a 1:1 exchange rate. Now that our dollar is worth more, most places don't take US money. Bad for business? Maybe. They still do it.

My point is, illogical people exist, be it IRL or in game.


If you change the rules on the fly, you're breaking faith with the players. The players expect the world and its rules to function in a fair manner. If when you set down a monster it has X HP, and the players happened to deal X HP to it when you weren't expecting that, too bad. It had X HP. It's dead now. You need to design a better monster. You absolutely, positively, should not cheat that monster into having more HP all of a sudden, or having immunities that you didn't plan for it to have.

That is IF they know. Once again, what kind of game did you sell? A tactical wargame? A cooperative storytelling game? Something in the middle?

As a DM, if my boss has 45HP, and the wizard casts scorching ray for 2x 4d6, hits on both, and rolls an insanely lucky 46 on an array of 8 to 48, I do not feel bad writing he has 1HP left so he can actually do something, under certain circumstances. No, "I want my boss to hit" is not good enough to fudge, nor is "Teleports away haha you're screwed". Giving her the time to mutter something is good. And the same thing happens in reverse: imagine a player's PC, who he loves and who is really into the game, who is active and stuff, imagine he dies because of the same WILDLY extraordinary thing: win initiative, enemy casts scorching ray for 2 rays, hits on both despite having to roll 17+ to hit (yes, the guy has really high Touch AC, making a point here), and rolls 46 damage. What? You were at 35? Sorry man, better luck next time. Why say "43 damage, she hit you GOOD", drop him at -8, and give him a chance? You're playing a game, to have fun. Losing a character is not fun, but it sometimes happens. Losing a character because the DM got incredibly lucky is just frustrating.

One thing you have to remember is that your players LEARN how to play in your game. If your players make the DUMBEST plan, and, through luck alone, win, they will learn that they don't need to plan to win a fight. If they make an AWESOME plan, and fail, they will learn the same thing. Now, OBVIOUSLY you cannot give them certainty (everytime they plan, it works!), but they have to see the connection between the kind of game you (plural you, including the players) want to play and the kind of game you're leading them to play.

Also, I don't get how saying "I'll give him a +4 on his attack because of that brilliant plan", something that is encouraged in the DMG since 1E, is accepted, but saying "That was an awesome plan, and yeah, this 9 should miss, he needs 13, but that was so great, I'll give him this one" is an automatically leaving player.

Now, this trick is on a very fine line, and you have to be very careful, know what you're doing, and make sure your players know what kind of a game you run. You don't have to say "Guys, I'm fudging most rolls, you'll only die if you do something stupid", but you still have to make sure the kind of game you play is very clear to all.



Not if you're playing the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game, as published by WotC

If you are playing Dungeons and Dragons, 3.5 Edition, then Wizards of the Coast already made the rules for your convenience. If you tell the players you are playing by the 3.5 ruleset, but have changed the rules without telling anyone, you are not playing the same game, and you are a liar.

It's much like awarding yourself extra points in Scrabble without telling anyone else because "you make the rules", or secretly pulling an Ace out of your shoe and using it to enhance your hand in poker because "you make the rules". You do not make the rules. If you decide to change the way you play, it's your duty tell your players exactly in what ways before they make the decision to play in the game, because now it is not the same game. If you do not tell them, you have lied to them and are cheating.

I hate pulling that one, but technically, rule 0. It is therefore covered in the gaming system, and for one good reason: as robertbevan has said, it is not a competitive game, it is a cooperative one. There is no such rule in scrabble, because it is a competitive game.


The problem with fudging (not my problem with it*) is that it represents a temptation to engage in the worst forms of Bad DMing.

No-Save Plot Teleportation, Grudge Monsters, Super DMPCs; the main thing they have in common is that DMs allow their feelings (laziness, resentment, awe) to come before the needs of the game. In an ideal world, sitting behind the DM screen would make people more responsible and reasonable; but it is often the opposite. As a DM, it is important that you use fudging sparingly, if at all, because the temptation to misuse Rule 0 is something you will always have to deal with.


A great man once said... No, it was actually an angsty teenager with a superpower that was an analogy to puberty... Anyways, didn't he say "With great powers come great responsibility"? Rule 0 is what I would call a GREAT power: it's basically do anything. And while it is true that Rule 0 has been used for evil, NOT using it at times can be an even greater evil.

TL;DR (of that part): Make sure DM and players are on the same page as to what kind of a game you're running.

700 words later, answer to OP:

In D&D, you have this problem that it is almost impossible to accurately gauge most enemies' power. Yes, it's an orc. Is it a 1st level warrior, or a 15th level Wizard? Yes, it's a Lion, but is it advanced, or the basic MM CR3 version?

I forced my players in my current game to run three times, and will do so a fourth time tomorrow. As a player, I've run so often, my main character having been a cowardly wizard in 1E, where invisibility lasts until you attack. So, to make the wiz run, make his invisibility last forever. He will desert quicker than you can say "Roll initiative".

The first time my players ran was in their first adventure, at 1st level. They had to find who was intercepting shipments, and on their way, met up with three guys in some funny-looking dress (a leather trenchcoat, a yellow bandana on the head and matching yellow silk pants). The 4 PCs won the fight, but were still pretty banged up. As they get further in the quest, they spot a small camp with about 20 of these guys, dressed the same, and one who was clearly the leader, so probably more powerful than his minions. Needless to say, they went to town to get some backups. Why? They knew HOW HARD KILING 3 WAS, and with the sheer number of mobs, they knew they couldn't get through it.

The second time, at 2nd level, they were in this abandoned wizard lair where the doors were actually one-way teleports. They learned that the kitchen and food supply was "owned" by the Orcs, and that they always kept people in there. They needed food though, and so planned an attack on the kitchen. When they got there, they realized two things: first, the Orcs were ready to take them on: archers behind cover, guards on duty, and an Ogre leading the pack, sitting close enough to the two entrances that both were threatened by him. The orcs under cover sent 6 arrows towards them, the two orc melee fighters each swung their axes, and the ogre also got a shot at the paladin. The funny thing is that while only 1 of the attacks hit, and for a measly 3 damage, they retreated FAST. Why? While evaluating your opponent's strength is near impossible, evaluating evident tactical advantage is a piece of pie: I'm sure if I gave them that kind of position advantage on a 12-headed Pyro-hydra, they would have tried it.

Third time, they got in a dungeon and tried to sleep in the Boss's room, and the Boss... well, he kinda had the same plan. So I had the PCs, without spells, facing the BBEG and his guards, with one of them sounding the alarm, the other making sure the PCs could not reach the BBEG, who was casting from behind. Why did they run? Two things: Their resources were exhausted, AND they saw the BBEG cast a spell of a higher level than what they could cast. It's very easy to know an opponent's stronger than you with mechanical stuff that gives it away: spell level, attacks per full-attack action, DR you can't overcome...

Tomorrow, the campaign BBEG will make its first appearance, and I want my players to see 2 things: 1- he's a threat to the universe, and has to be stopped, and 2- he's too strong to be taken head on right now. As such, it's not really running, but still, close enough I'd say! What I will do is have the BBEG kill their mentor, who has demonstrated being twice their level, and doing it easily. If A > B, and B > C, then A > C.