Snappier Combats: break through the lines

[BRC]

I'm running a scenario right now where my players are heisting a secure location, having stealthed past most of the guards, and achieved their goals, but set off the alarm at the last moment and are now fleeing out.

The various guards they got past on the way in will be converging to block their path, pretty standard stuff.

My party is 12th level, and the statblocks I've used here are ones I selected/prepared for more traditional encounters, so everybody is decently tanky and turns can take a while. We've had trouble meeting regularly, and our next session is going to start later than normal, so I don't really want to have the whole thing occupied by a big slugfest against a bunch of mooks, especially since the PC's just need to escape to safety.

Normally, this sort of fleeing battle isn't especially interesting, everybody has roughly the same movespeeds, PC's are tanky enough that an AoO isn't that much of a deterrent. I think I do want this to be a combat rather than just resolving a "Escape from the guards" skill check, I'm just looking for a way to make it snappier than A drag out fight where reinforcements keep showing up.


Current thought is just to say that bloodied enemies can't dash/make AoOs. So smacking the guards around for a bit is still worthwhile, but the fight can go a bit faster.

[Reynaert]

I'm running a scenario right now where my players are heisting a secure location, having stealthed past most of the guards, and achieved their goals, but set off the alarm at the last moment and are now fleeing out.

The various guards they got past on the way in will be converging to block their path, pretty standard stuff.

My party is 12th level, and the statblocks I've used here are ones I selected/prepared for more traditional encounters, so everybody is decently tanky and turns can take a while. We've had trouble meeting regularly, and our next session is going to start later than normal, so I don't really want to have the whole thing occupied by a big slugfest against a bunch of mooks, especially since the PC's just need to escape to safety.

Normally, this sort of fleeing battle isn't especially interesting, everybody has roughly the same movespeeds, PC's are tanky enough that an AoO isn't that much of a deterrent. I think I do want this to be a combat rather than just resolving a "Escape from the guards" skill check, I'm just looking for a way to make it snappier than A drag out fight where reinforcements keep showing up.


Current thought is just to say that bloodied enemies can't dash/make AoOs. So smacking the guards around for a bit is still worthwhile, but the fight can go a bit faster.

Stick a real clock on the table. Every real life 15 minutes some more guards arrive. Make it clear all they have to do is get to the exit. Imply something bigger is on the way. Place hazards that guards can be shoved into. Provide (and describe) a couple of different ways for attacks to temporarily disable or impair the guards, such as blinding effects. Have guards drag wounded buddies out of the way and heal them, so if the players hurt one, that takes two out of the fight.

[Frogreaver]

Group escape check each round until 3 successes. DC is 5 + number of guards with move speed and the ability to take an action within 30ft of a pc

[Easy e]

Instead of individual combats, use s skill check instead.

[Saelethil]

Stick a real clock on the table. Every real life 15 minutes some more guards arrive. Make it clear all they have to do is get to the exit. Imply something bigger is on the way. Place hazards that guards can be shoved into. Provide (and describe) a couple of different ways for attacks to temporarily disable or impair the guards, such as blinding effects. Have guards drag wounded buddies out of the way and heal them, so if the players hurt one, that takes two out of the fight.

This is fantastic. I'll need to remember this the next time I GM.

[Corran]

Reduce the combat against the guards to ability checks. Have the players describe how they contribute to the escape and let them roll the appropriate check. One might try to intimidate some of the guards, or persuade (you guys are not paid enough for this), or use stealth and perception to avoid guard patrols on the way out, or use insight and investigation to avoid any kind of trap/ambush that the guards might have in store for this exact scenario, or use arcana for determining how successful the use of spells like illusions (minor/silent image, invisibility, darkness) or of ones creating hazzards that may delay or block the guards' path will be, etc. Give them a few examples and let them figure out how they want to help (give them a bit of freedom there in justifying why their bit can be useful by not fixing what the guards are doing and thus by not having the guards' behavior be the judge of how useful their contribution will be, but having the creativity of their idea determine that alone; even if it's the answer to a problem you would not have posed them should you have been planning for this as a series of encounters).

Add their results and compare them to some grand total you will cook up (depending how difficult you want the escape to be). Have their success ratio reduce the amount of resources lost during the escape (eg assuming the escape would bring your party down to half their current resources if their total roll is below the bar you set, have every point above that limit give them back (retroactively) a % of their lost resources (capping at normal half or whatever). If you want to add more deadliness, give a chance for a (random) PC to be captured or killed during the escape if any PC rolls really low.

Once they escape and the guards are out of the equation, that's when you bring combat their way (since you wanted to avoid a prolonged fight). Have them face the defending contingency, if you tell us a bit more about the place I'll have a better idea of what would make sense as such (eg one time when the party escaped a really infamous island prison we were chased -and TPK'd- by a kraken; there were plenty of hints, but we never really found much about the place before rushing an escape attempt). Think what would make sense as one, and hopefully now you've got a quicker and less expected fight in your hands to throw at your players (if they didn't bother investigating that place all that well, maybe this surprise will even serve more than one purpose).

ps: "Normally, this sort of fleeing battle isn't especially interesting"
You've almost done it! Now all that's left to do is escape with your lives! Stakes cannot get higher than that. Because not only is death the loss condition, but because being so close to success already makes it all the most thrilling. Just a personal opinion.

[rel]

Just run your NPC's a little more realistically.
Guards aren't interested in fighting to the death. They're professionals, not fanatics. Once a guard hits half health or sees a friend get killed they should retreat.

Guards aren't likely to chase the PC's out of the place they're guarding and across half a city either.
For all the guards know, the PC's haven't gotten anything of value, and are the big flashy distraction to drag most of the defenders away while another sneakier team handles the real theft.
They also don't know if the PC's have confederates waiting in ambush on the outside.

Sure, the occasional hot head might fight to the end and give chase when the PC's get out onto the streets and start fleeing the scene but most won't.


More importantly, they don't have to. They just need to retrieve the loot or catch one PC that can then lead the authorities to the others.

So run the guards like that, have them:
- try to block and barricade doors while they wait for backup
- grapple and drag off weaker looking PC's
- snatch back the stolen loot or just cut open any obvious bags or packs so the loot spills out and the PC's have to abandon it.
- remove the PC's disguises and identify them

And whenever some loot gets retrieved or a PC gets captured a bunch of guards peel off to secure them and stop chasing the party.

Sure, the guards will be defending themselves, and trying to bludgeon the PC's unconscious. But that isn't their main threat. And once the PC's escape into the night, that's more or less it it. The guards do their job and stay and guard the place.


The advantage of this approach is you have a bunch of interesting ways the PC's can fail (lose the loot, PC gets captured, PC's escape but there are plenty of witnesses) that aren't just 'everyone died, game over I guess'.
Which means you can actually HAVE the PC's failing.

It also allows you to easily break the escape down into encounters:
- break through the defended door
- retrieve the loot the guard just took off you
- grab the wizard that just got knocked out and is now handcuffed with a bag over their head.
- beat up the conveniently CR appropriate number of loose cannon guards that decided to chase the PC's into the conveniently nearby slums.