Pacing a megadungeon

[ahyangyi]

I think I mentioned already, the big difference between real life / narrative and game rules / hit points is that a single arrow through the chest is potentially deadly or debilitating, while in game it is just something you can sleep off.

This makes hit and run tactics a lot more effective in most RPGs than they would ordinarily be.

The "hit and run tactics" in real life can be successful, and has little to do with healing speed.

But furthermore, I fail to see the relevance of this comparison. I thought your question was to avoid overly cautious player behavior? Then what's the purpose of complaining about "healing too fast" in games?

[Talakeal]

The "hit and run tactics" in real life can be successful, and has little to do with healing speed.

But furthermore, I fail to see the relevance of this comparison. I thought your question was to avoid overly cautious player behavior? Then what's the purpose of complaining about "healing too fast" in games?

I didn't say they couldn't be successful, just that they aren't wholly safe like in an RPG with HP.

In real life, if I get into a gun fight, there is a good chance I will die, regardless of whether or not it is the first gunfight of the day.

In an RPG that uses D&D style HP, that risk is basically zero unless I happen to have several fights in a row without being able to rest between, which creates a dissonance between the rules and the narrative.


A tactic like "turn around and go back after every encounter, and only actually explore the dungeon if you manage to avoid wilderness encounters on the journey" would be much MORE dangerous in real life, whereas in game it is much less dangerous. Which is why "I am just using smart tactics" doesn't hold water because you are exploiting the mechanics to produce a result that it out of sync with the narrative.

[ahyangyi]

Yep, so the natural solution in real life is

1. Bring enough gun bullets so that resource consumption is less a concern
2. And retreat for your life after you are wounded, because you can't heal your wound in the dungeon

And if you try to modify the situation further, then the natural solution in real life would be, "adventuring is stupid, go home".

[Talakeal]

Yep, so the natural solution in real life is

1. Bring enough gun bullets so that resource consumption is less a concern
2. And retreat for your life after you are wounded, because you can't heal your wound in the dungeon

And if you try to modify the situation further, then the natural solution in real life would be, "adventuring is stupid, go home".

Exactly. Risk averse people would be better off not going on adventures in the first place. That's why there are piles of unclaimed gold out there in the dungeons, because normal people aren't suicidal enough to go after them.

People whose only priority is safety would never be adventurers, and would never be the protagonists of the "high combat action and adventure" games that the players claim to want to play.


Edit: This got me thinking, does anyone know how real life combat units, say military special forces, make the call on when to give up on a mission? How many casualties are acceptable before its sop to pull out?

[ahyangyi]

Given enough loot, the dungeons will still visited by higher powered groups (such as kingdom armies).

It's just the "four men adventure team" thing will falter if you remove all healing and expect them to delve into the dungeon.

Note that this isn't an argument about being risk-averse, but just about logistics of healing. In the real-world-like setting, an army would be able to set up battlefield hospitals, the four-man band is out of luck.

BTW: the real life combat units can transport wounded troops back, receiving reinforcements simultaneously, while not abandoning the mission at all; something you can't mimic in a four-man band.

[Satinavian]

A tactic like "turn around and go back after every encounter, and only actually explore the dungeon if you manage to avoid wilderness encounters on the journey" would be much MORE dangerous in real life, whereas in game it is much less dangerous. Which is why "I am just using smart tactics" doesn't hold water because you are exploiting the mechanics to produce a result that it out of sync with the narrative.

First, what you describe would be "trying to wear down a superior force with guerilla tactics", which people regularly do IRL. Not that often successfully, because it is hard but is is the smart option compared to open field battle.

Second, even in game it needs a couple of additional assumptions to be actually OP.

- That you always can safely retreat (which should be really questionable in any halfway believable conflict)
- That all the damage you get is superficial but all the damage the enemy gets is not ( that is a rule issue) Usually the side that controls the battlefield in the end should have an easier time limiting their losses.

[Vahnavoi]

I think I mentioned already, the big difference between real life / narrative and game rules / hit points is that a single arrow through the chest is potentially deadly or debilitating, while in game it is just something you can sleep off.

This makes hit and run tactics a lot more effective in most RPGs than they would ordinarily be.

Heavily game and scenario dependent. For example, most editions of D&D have lethal risks in most combats, from surprise volley or fireball to the face, to save-or-die spells and instant kill traps. Long term ability damage, negative levels, disease and insanity are also options. Yes yes, hitpoints will protect you from a single arrow to the chest, but so would good armor in real life. Point being, if player characters can just sleep off any losses they incur, the scenario designer is already sparing them from a lot what their game system allows.

Edit: This got me thinking, does anyone know how real life combat units, say military special forces, make the call on when to give up on a mission? How many casualties are acceptable before its sop to pull out?

The rule of the thumb, which I have codified into morale rules in my games, is:

Unit is considered incapacitated upon suffering 20% casualties. "Incapacitated" roughly meaning it can no longer achieve strategic goals it set out for.

Unit is considered destroyed upon suffering 50% of casualties. "Destroyed" roughly meaning it is beyond recovery and has to be disbanded.

These are strategic-level considerations. An unit may be able to squeeze a battlefield, tactical level victory even after meeting these tresholds, these are about what happens after any given engangement.

If the tresholds seem low, remember that the Pareto principle, or law of the vital few, applies to military units. 80% of work is done by 20 % of individuals. If this sounds counter-intuitive, consider a four-man party of specialists: a locksmith, an IT personnel, a cook and a bodyguard. They come to a locked door. The work positions of the IT personnel and the cook are behind the door. They need the locksmith to get to their jobs, but once the locksmith has opened the door, they can pretty much go home. Meanwhile, the bodyguard is there mostly in case something goes wrong. If all goes fine, the bodyguard won't be doing anything related to their own area of expertise. Of the cook and the IT personnel, one is likely there to act as support for the other: either the IT person is there to fix cooking equipment, or the cook is there to make lunch for the IT person. Whichever it is, only one of them is likely to do majority of actual productive work that pays all their bills.

But, what happens if the locksmith gets injured and cannot make it? Now the actual productive members cannot get in and do their jobs. Loss of one person out of four incapacitates the other three.

All of the above applies to parties of "adventurers", or, more accurarely, small groups of military or paramilitary operatives engaging in guerilla warfare. Suppose you have classic four-man band of fighter, thief, cleric, magic-user. If the thief is killed, now the band has to retreat far enough for the cleric to revivify them, since without the thief, the next trap or locked door might stop the band in its tracks. If both the thief and the cleric are killed, the fighter and the magic-user might as well call it quits and go looking for a new group, since their ability to recover the lost members and achieve their mission goal has dropped to near zero. So on and so forth.

[kyoryu]

First, what you describe would be "trying to wear down a superior force with guerilla tactics", which people regularly do IRL. Not that often successfully, because it is hard but is is the smart option compared to open field battle.

Wearing down the opponent is rarely the goal. The goal is usually to capture strategic objectives or disrupt supply lines so that the enemy cannot continue fighting.

Blowing up a tank is good. Blowing up a fuel depot that supplies 100 tanks is better.

- That you always can safely retreat (which should be really questionable in any halfway believable conflict)

Why would that be questionable? In the majority of cases that's the goal. You don't need to kill the other side, you need to take the objective - and that's always easier if you can get the other side to leave. Trapping the opponent and forcing them to fight to the last man will just incur more casualties on your side, and the objective is where the value is anyway.

Note that this is far more true in the real world where you don't have ablative hit points, and even one last solider can kill multiple of yours if they've got good position.

Will it always be safe to retreat? Of course not. But in most cases it will be, and it's kinda smart (in the real world) to give your opponents a way to retreat for the reasons I described above.

[Satinavian]

Why would that be questionable?

Because being wounded, unconscious or having various status effects can severely hamper mobility. That is why retreating forces often have to leave wounded behind.

And whether the enemy lets you retreat depends a lot on what the enemy wants. For any long running conflict, it might be quite preferable to not let enemies retreat to fight another day. Especially as people who decide to retreat are often weaker, particularly vulnerable (not entrenched) and on low morale (which means you might even provoke a rout). If your side can afford it and you expect further engagements, there is hardly a better situation to strike.
Sure, you might want to encourage a retreat if the enemy has to give up a good defensible or important position to do so. But that is not the standard scenario nor particularly relevant here as we are talking about attackers safely retreating after they have done enough damage (to likely attack later at another place and time of their choosing). That is not something you would want to allow.

[Talakeal]

Given enough loot, the dungeons will still visited by higher powered groups (such as kingdom armies).

It's just the "four men adventure team" thing will falter if you remove all healing and expect them to delve into the dungeon.

Note that this isn't an argument about being risk-averse, but just about logistics of healing. In the real-world-like setting, an army would be able to set up battlefield hospitals, the four-man band is out of luck.

BTW: the real life combat units can transport wounded troops back, receiving reinforcements simultaneously, while not abandoning the mission at all; something you can't mimic in a four-man band.

That's all true, but highly situational.

For example, trying to steal the grave goods out of a tomb inhabited by wraiths and wights is a relatively simple straightforward adventure for PCs, but would be a nightmare for an army.

[Vahnavoi]

For any long running conflict, it might be quite preferable to not let enemies retreat to fight another day.

In real life, where wounds heal slowly or never, it's actually accepted that crippling enemy soldiers can be better than killing them. Injured soldiers cannot fight, but still tie up logistics to treat and keep alive. Depending on how much ahead the winning side is, it may even be preferable to let the losing side recover their wounded. The losing side's slow but (seemingly) safe retreat can be less risky to the winning side, than a desperate last stand in reaction to pursuit.

Also, Pareto principle applies here as well. Since only 20% of the enemy might need to be incapacitated to reduce their effectiveness by 80%, good use of resources means 80% of the work is done with 20% of effort. That last 20%, takes 80% of effort. Which is another reason to not pursue extermination when incapacatitation would suffice

[kyoryu]

In real life, where wounds heal slowly or never, it's actually accepted that crippling enemy soldiers can be better than killing them. Injured soldiers cannot fight, but still tie up logistics to treat and keep alive. Depending on how much ahead the winning side is, it may even be preferable to let the losing side recover their wounded. The losing side's slow but (seemingly) safe retreat can be less risky to the winning side, than a desperate last stand in reaction to pursuit.

There's a reason there's lots of saying about "fighitng like a cornered rat" or the like.

At the end of the day, the goal of a military is to achieve their objectives while minimizing losses. Unless the objective inherently requires killing the enemy soldiers, it's less important.

If you have achieved your objective, trying to kill additional soldiers at risk to your own is a losing proposition. And depending on the losses you take, can jeopardize your actual objective (by weakening the force you have to hold the objective).

Sure, there are exceptions, but "killing the opponents" is generally not the mission.

[Talakeal]

So I talked to some of my coworkers who are Afghanistan veterans, and their response was that every mission has its own parameters and risk assessment is a huge part of military planning, but as a general rule of thumb you need 1 person to carry an injured person and 1 person to cover the pair, so pulling out at 1/3rd casualties is standard procedure.

[kyoryu]

So I talked to some of my coworkers who are Afghanistan veterans, and their response was that every mission has its own parameters and risk assessment is a huge part of military planning, but as a general rule of thumb you need 1 person to carry an injured person and 1 person to cover the pair, so pulling out at 1/3rd casualties is standard procedure.

I'd also bet dollars that "pull out when the objective can't be achieved" is also part of standard procedure. That may require orders from above.

Throwing people at a fight you know you can't win is just stupid, and yet it is SOP in TTRPGs.

[Talakeal]

Throwing people at a fight you know you can't win is just stupid, and yet it is SOP in TTRPGs.

Are you talking about the villains sending mooks at the PCs?

If so, generally, in fiction the villains are overconfident and the PCs are plucky underdogs, and it seems like a good trade to send out minions in hopes of getting a lucky shot in or tiring out the PCs before putting oneself at risk of the same. And, of course, on a more gamist level depleting HP and spell slots is before engaging yourself is always useful.


If we are talking about monsters not retreating, well mostly is just isn't fun. Dealing with prisoners or having to execute people who are fleeing or surrendered is not something most players enjoy.
Likewise, my players can never tell why the enemies are running (I am sure this is partly my fault and now I work very hard to communicate it better) and will always chase them down and execute them for fear of a sneak attack later. This results in either A: the players getting beaten up or killed by cornering a wounded animal in its den, or B: the players feel like I am making them feel bad when I don't roll it out and just tell them they kill the helpless foes, especially if there are wives or children in said lair.

Also, modern games aren't balanced around morale. As an example / tangent, people suggested The Monsters Know What They Are Doing blog for tactics to make the game more challenging, but one thing I noticed is that his monsters always run away fairly early in the fight, and I am pretty sure that as a result they are less effective than your standard big dumb bag o' HP who charges in and full attacks until dead. I get around this by simply declaring HP to be morale and stamina as well as meat and say they run when out of HP, but then this can make the situation much worse if the PCs decide to finish them off and corner a wounded animal in its den as above.

[Vahnavoi]

"Modern games aren't balanced around morale" might be true as an observation, but it's not binding in any way on any individual game master's game design. In many cases, lack of morale considerations is just an omission, not an improvement. Ditto for dealing with surrendered enemies. I don't find much veracity in the argument that it's not "fun". For most players, it's just unfamiliar. There isn't much of a reason to believe that it cannot be gamified in a way that's interesting. You could take cues from Pokemon or Shin Megami Tensei, where most enemies are also potential allies.

In any case, paranoia is not a good plan, and in cases like your players getting mauled by a cornered animal, the joke's on them.

[gbaji]

And whether the enemy lets you retreat depends a lot on what the enemy wants. For any long running conflict, it might be quite preferable to not let enemies retreat to fight another day. Especially as people who decide to retreat are often weaker, particularly vulnerable (not entrenched) and on low morale (which means you might even provoke a rout). If your side can afford it and you expect further engagements, there is hardly a better situation to strike.

Even when the objective actually is "defeat the enemy's army", allowing them to retreat when "defeated" is usually a better option. History is chock full of military engagements where cornered/trapped (and significantly outnumbered) forces more or less curbstomped the attacking enemy. This goes to the morale factor that has been mentioned a few times, and which is often completely ignored in fantasy fiction and RPGs based on such. Soldiers who have no hope to retreat and no choice but to fight or die will tend to fight incredibly hard. They literally have no choice. And if your facing those (essentially "100% morale" forces) with soldiers who do have an option to retreat, or may be thinking "we've got this in the bag, so no point in me risking my own neck overly much", that's a recipe for disaster.

Sure, you might want to encourage a retreat if the enemy has to give up a good defensible or important position to do so. But that is not the standard scenario nor particularly relevant here as we are talking about attackers safely retreating after they have done enough damage (to likely attack later at another place and time of their choosing). That is not something you would want to allow.

Correct. When you are the one attacking, hit and run tactics can be very valuable. Again though, you should probably have an actual objective. Sometimes, just "whittling down the enemy" or "keep them guessing as to where were really are, and what strength we have" is sufficient, especially when dealing with larger scale engagements. But small level stuff (like an adventuring party), you should usually have some achievable objective that is the target of the raid, or you're just advertising your presense.

If so, generally, in fiction the villains are overconfident and the PCs are plucky underdogs, and it seems like a good trade to send out minions in hopes of getting a lucky shot in or tiring out the PCs before putting oneself at risk of the same. And, of course, on a more gamist level depleting HP and spell slots is before engaging yourself is always useful.

Eh. There's a bit of a disconnect there though. Why are the villains overconfident? They either live in a world where plucky adventurers foiling villainous plans is the norm, or they don't. And in either case, while the big boss may view his minions as expendable resources to use "whittling down" the resources of the plucky adventurers, that's not going to explain the actual minions choosing to do this. No one's actually willing to die just to "take away the first 20% of the hero's hps" or something. This sort of encounter should literally only happen *once*. The first time the party attacks a group of minions, the minions get wiped out. Ok. So someone knows that minion squad A got wiped out. They're going to prepare other minion squads for this, and put measures in place to figure out who is attacking them. So the second groups orders are "see who's attacking and get that information to us". Nothing else. Third encounter should be a massive amount of minions and leader types prepped up, spelled up, geared up, and ready to wipe out a powerful adventuring party.

No one would send their forces in at the adventurers in small discrete sets designed to not be enough to defeat them. That's not overconfidence, that's stupidity. We have to assume that the big bad became the big bad by having at least a basic grasp of tactics and common sense. Obviously, the specifics of what the big bad is doing, and how his minions are getting killed may affect the response, but there should be some sort of change of plans at some point here. I think that a key point, if there's a "big boss" situation, is to know what the big bosses actual objective is. If the purpose of the minions is "pack and move my illegal trade goods", then "defeating the PCs" isn't the goal. Said big boss should respond appropriately.

If we are talking about monsters not retreating, well mostly is just isn't fun. Dealing with prisoners or having to execute people who are fleeing or surrendered is not something most players enjoy.

I suppose this depends on the size of the monster group. A lot of times, it's a small group, and there just isn't much opportunity to flee (and yeah, I can see it being annying to players if everything they fight runs away in the first round). Um... But in some situations, the enemies should be able to flee, and should be able to do so in situations where the PCs can't reasonably stop all of them. I guess this is game system dependent, but most games should have some sort of "you can either full move, or half move and attack", which should always allow someone runnning away to just... run away. Doubly so if the PCs are still actively engaged with other opponents.

Likewise, my players can never tell why the enemies are running (I am sure this is partly my fault and now I work very hard to communicate it better) and will always chase them down and execute them for fear of a sneak attack later. This results in either A: the players getting beaten up or killed by cornering a wounded animal in its den, or B: the players feel like I am making them feel bad when I don't roll it out and just tell them they kill the helpless foes, especially if there are wives or children in said lair.

Which may point to an odd set of behavior by your own players though. Yeah. Fear of a "sneak attack later" is always a thing. But that danger is massively increased if they do exactly what you are saying they do (attacking one group, then retreating and resting to full strength before continuing). Um... Of course that's going to happen. But if you follow up your first attack with a second, and a third, then the retreating folks don't matter much. Or, at the very least, you can advance through a few more groups of bad guys before having to deal with any sort of counterattack. But then, they've moved somewhere else. The responding folks aren't sure where they are. The alternative is that the bad guys have 100% of their remaining forces, and all the time in the world to locate the PCs and plan an attack on them. It's always better to keep moving (for the PCs) in that situation.

I think also there's maybe a bit of an odd world situation going on here. I don't tend to make whole communities of "bad guys". That orc tribe in the hills? It's just a tribe of people, who happen to be orcs. The orc raiders who are attacking wandering merchants and farmlands nearby? They are no different than human raiders would be. They are just as much outlaws. Would you take out a group of human bandits, realize a few of them ran away, and then track them to their homes in a nearby village, and then muder their families? You might want to set some more realistic expectations for "bad guys", and how they fit into a larger social dynamic in your world. Even if they are fighting on a more regional raiding sort of model, and maybe the folks in their home villiage know they "go raiding" or whatever, that usually doesn't devolve into wiping out the whole village. You take the win for decimating the raiders, maybe report it to the local law enforcement, and then let them handle the situation from there. It's not on the PCs to be judge, jury, and executioner for the whole world.

And if this creates a moral problem for your players, then just have the bad guys operate out of a "base of operations" where there are no women and children (they're back in the actual village). Problem solved. Similarly, the minions of the evil dark lord also leave their families at home while serving as guards in the dark lords fortress of doom or whatever. Or, baring that sort of thing, make it really apparent when people are non-combatants. Again. If this is a problem you and your players don't want to deal with.

But if you are going to do this sort of thing, then you have to be consistent with it. You can't have some NPCs identified as non-combatants later turn up and "surprise" the PCs by actually being a super death squad coming to kill them all in revenge or something. If you do this sort of thing, you are training your players to adopt a "scorched earth" model of dealing with enemies.

Also, modern games aren't balanced around morale. As an example / tangent, people suggested The Monsters Know What They Are Doing blog for tactics to make the game more challenging, but one thing I noticed is that his monsters always run away fairly early in the fight, and I am pretty sure that as a result they are less effective than your standard big dumb bag o' HP who charges in and full attacks until dead. I get around this by simply declaring HP to be morale and stamina as well as meat and say they run when out of HP, but then this can make the situation much worse if the PCs decide to finish them off and corner a wounded animal in its den as above.

Eh. I think you get into some odd problems and edge cases if you try to abstract in that manner. Yeah. Sometimes some monsters are monsters, and will attack full on until dead. Some (usually the more intelligent and social ones) are more cautious. As long as you are consistent with how they act, it shouldn't be a problem. And a lot of this can be resolved by (again) determining what the NPC actually wants. Some NPCs (animal type monsters) are just "hungry" or "angry", and will kill anything that comes near, and will usually have to be killed. Others have goals like "feed my family and not get killed". So they may threaten a group wandering through their lands, whatever, but are more interested in "getting the PCs to leave us alone" than actually killing them, right? Play that out. Pretty much the only time you should have intelligent foes actually attacking the PCs is if they are part of some organized group structured to do exactly that (with "the PCs" perhaps within the range of "things we will attack", of course). And that should always be itself based on some larger goal (we're stealing stuff from people, or fighting for our "side", working on a secret evil plot and you're getting too close, etc). And those goals should provide for how they actually act.

[King of Nowhere]

You may also notice that modern military does engage in something similarly equivalent to the 15 minutes adventuring day. not when looking at a single day, but when looking on the large scale of resource management.
for example, you don't shoot artillery as soon as the new shells arrive. you stockpile them for an offensive. then, when it's the time - or when it's the enemy that attacks - you fire your artilllery, all the shells you carefully stockpiled, you fire as hard and as fast as you can to win the battle. then you go back to sporadic fire and stockpiling.
this is very much equivalent to a wizard using all his spells - that takes 24 hours to recharge - in a few minutes.
you tend to have big offensive rushes with one side trying to break the front on multiple sides - using resources stockpiled over months, fresh troops kept in reserve - and you get months of low intensity fighting; sure, people are still shooting on the front lines, but nobody is engaging the big expensive stuff. just like a party taking a big fight and then resting.

the key point is the same: you store up resources over time, and then you use them all in a big blow. this way, in that short time you can deliver a lot more power than you normally can, and you try to break the enemy this way. the adventuring party does it on a daily bases because its resources recharge daily. concentrating your power as much as possible is just effective.

Are you talking about the villains sending mooks at the PCs?

If so, generally, in fiction the villains are overconfident and the PCs are plucky underdogs

in fiction, people can die to a stray arrow. not in d&d.
and the same applies to fiction where people can't die to a stray arrow. I'm not an expert here, but I am pretty sure that nobody tried to send mooks one at a time against superman, because those mooks would be totally uneffective.
as a general point, I see you keep referring to fiction for reference. "movies and books do it like this, so this is what it should like"
but the world of d&d is different. it is a world where a man can stand confidently in front of an army. a high level caster can rewrite reality. so those story tropes really make no sense in this context.
I embraced this difference to make my own story. I justify the power of high level characters by them being openly superhumans - because the standard "they are normal, just extraordinarily skilled" doesn't hold at all then you look in detail. they can punch through walls. they can move supernaturally fast. swords and arrows bounce over their skin leaving shallow wounds - unless they are also wielded by someone equally strong.
people know those things, and they act accordingly. in this narrative, sending a few mooks doesn't work. the villain know fully well that those mooks stand no chance. worse, the mooks themselves know it, so they'd never accept to fight; they'd rather run or surrender. the dragon does not act arrogant and mighty towards those puny humans, because he knows there are some puny humans who can easily kill him. sure, they are rare, but if just one mosquito in 1000 was filled with a powerful explosive that would kill you and tear down your house, you wouldn't slap at any of them, just in case.
overconfidence is a thing, but it can only be pushed that much. when the other guy has a magic sword with glowing runes and an aura of flame, and a magic armor that distorts the air around it, you don't need a fancy knowledge check to know how badly outmatched you are.

Likewise, my players can never tell why the enemies are running (I am sure this is partly my fault and now I work very hard to communicate it better) and will always chase them down and execute them for fear of a sneak attack later.

strange that they can't understand fear and morale.
but understandable that they want to kill them regardless.
they have no way of knowing if those enemies will keep running and tell their mates to also run, or if they will return to their units and come back to fight.
I'd say, to treat this realistically, both those things should happen. if your players execute all the prisoners and chase those who escape, the enemies should fight harder. if the players encourage surrendering by sparing those who flee, it should be easier to rout the enemies - but some of them will try ambushes and stuff.

Also, modern games aren't balanced around morale. As an example / tangent, people suggested The Monsters Know What They Are Doing blog for tactics to make the game more challenging, but one thing I noticed is that his monsters always run away fairly early in the fight, and I am pretty sure that as a result they are less effective than your standard big dumb bag o' HP who charges in and full attacks until dead.

Depends. If that monster runs and is never seen again, then yes, of course he could deal more damage if it just kept attacking.
but if the monster realizes he has no chance, he runs before even fighting. and he tries to get reinforces. so instead of fighting your dungeon one room at a time - never seen that as realistic, unless you can justify it; won't the guards realize someone is storming their place? shouldn't they try to rush the invader instead of remaining in small groups in their rooms waiting to be picked off one by one? Instead of fighting one room at a time, you'll have everyone in the dungeon rushing you simultaneously. and blocking your retreat as first thing.

My villains are always equipped with emergency teleportation. and hey, I get to use the same npc for three or four fights! it vastly simplifies the work of statting enemies

[Talakeal]

I wrote out a longer reply to Gbaji, but the forum ate it.

In short, I don't recall ever having had villains feign surrender or disguise combatants as civilians, but because of the below, my players still assume that I am going to do it, and then they invariably feel that I tricked them and guilt tripped them when they slaughter all the civilians expecting a betrayal that never came.

I even lost a player once because after massacring a tribe's warriors, he wanted to track them back to their village and finish off the rest. I told him he is welcome to do that, but they are just civilians and cripples left, and I am just going to fade to black rather than rolling it out. He then quit the game because I wasn't "making him feel like a hero."

Of course, this is the same player who now tells people I raped his character because I faded to black when he told me he was going to seduce an NPC, so maybe there is something more going on there...

Eh. I think you get into some odd problems and edge cases if you try to abstract in that manner. Yeah. Sometimes some monsters are monsters, and will attack full on until dead. Some (usually the more intelligent and social ones) are more cautious. As long as you are consistent with how they act, it shouldn't be a problem. And a lot of this can be resolved by (again) determining what the NPC actually wants. Some NPCs (animal type monsters) are just "hungry" or "angry", and will kill anything that comes near, and will usually have to be killed. Others have goals like "feed my family and not get killed". So they may threaten a group wandering through their lands, whatever, but are more interested in "getting the PCs to leave us alone" than actually killing them, right? Play that out. Pretty much the only time you should have intelligent foes actually attacking the PCs is if they are part of some organized group structured to do exactly that (with "the PCs" perhaps within the range of "things we will attack", of course). And that should always be itself based on some larger goal (we're stealing stuff from people, or fighting for our "side", working on a secret evil plot and you're getting too close, etc). And those goals should provide for how they actually act.

I don't generally have beaten down enemies retreat and come back later.

Sometimes I will have a recurring villain who loses the fight and then survives to fight another day months or years later, but in the short case most of the time it is either monsters who set out to do legit hit and run tactics (and I don't mean just fighting normally, running away, and healing to full after the fight!), or the PCs render a monster temporarily unable to hurt them (usually through a short duration spell) and then the monster falls back and waits for the spell to expire before continuing their initial assault.

The problem is that because of the above, the players are convinced that every retreat is one of the above, even if its just a hungry alligator who decides a meal isn't worth its life or some bandits who don't want to die for gold after realizing that the PCs were a lot tougher than anticipated or losing motivation to fight after their leader is dead.

strange that they can't understand fear and morale.
but understandable that they want to kill them regardless.
they have no way of knowing if those enemies will keep running and tell their mates to also run, or if they will return to their units and come back to fight.
I'd say, to treat this realistically, both those things should happen. if your players execute all the prisoners and chase those who escape, the enemies should fight harder. if the players encourage surrendering by sparing those who flee, it should be easier to rout the enemies - but some of them will try ambushes and stuff.

Depends. If that monster runs and is never seen again, then yes, of course he could deal more damage if it just kept attacking.
but if the monster realizes he has no chance, he runs before even fighting. and he tries to get reinforces. so instead of fighting your dungeon one room at a time - never seen that as realistic, unless you can justify it; won't the guards realize someone is storming their place? shouldn't they try to rush the invader instead of remaining in small groups in their rooms waiting to be picked off one by one? Instead of fighting one room at a time, you'll have everyone in the dungeon rushing you simultaneously. and blocking your retreat as first thing.

My villains are always equipped with emergency teleportation. and hey, I get to use the same npc for three or four fights! it vastly simplifies the work of statting enemies

Yeah. I try and play it naturally. The above is why my PCs are so paranoid and kill happy.

in fiction, people can die to a stray arrow. not in d&d.
and the same applies to fiction where people can't die to a stray arrow. I'm not an expert here, but I am pretty sure that nobody tried to send mooks one at a time against superman, because those mooks would be totally uneffective.

as a general point, I see you keep referring to fiction for reference. "movies and books do it like this, so this is what it should like"

but the world of d&d is different. it is a world where a man can stand confidently in front of an army. a high level caster can rewrite reality. so those story tropes really make no sense in this context.
I embraced this difference to make my own story. I justify the power of high level characters by them being openly superhumans - because the standard "they are normal, just extraordinarily skilled" doesn't hold at all then you look in detail. they can punch through walls. they can move supernaturally fast. swords and arrows bounce over their skin leaving shallow wounds - unless they are also wielded by someone equally strong.

people know those things, and they act accordingly. in this narrative, sending a few mooks doesn't work. the villain know fully well that those mooks stand no chance. worse, the mooks themselves know it, so they'd never accept to fight; they'd rather run or surrender. the dragon does not act arrogant and mighty towards those puny humans, because he knows there are some puny humans who can easily kill him. sure, they are rare, but if just one mosquito in 1000 was filled with a powerful explosive that would kill you and tear down your house, you wouldn't slap at any of them, just in case.

overconfidence is a thing, but it can only be pushed that much. when the other guy has a magic sword with glowing runes and an aura of flame, and a magic armor that distorts the air around it, you don't need a fancy knowledge check to know how badly outmatched you are.

There are a lot of assumptions here.

As a rule, I don't give a flying fork what movies and books do. When I say fiction, I am talking about the underlying reality of the game's setting. The "simulationist" aspect of the world of the game we are running.

First, I would like to point out that this really only ever applies to certain characters at certain levels in certain editions of D&D.

HP is a super gamist and super abstract mess that can be interpreted in a lot of ways, none of which really make sense. For example, large animals can survive "falls from orbit" and "being immersed in lava" just as well as high level PCs. Reading it as everyone is Superman past low level is one way to read it (although it still has a lot of holes); but that isn't how Gygax and Arneson ever described it, it isn't how I describe it, and I don't think I have ever seen a piece of fluff in a rule book or a novel based on D&D that went that route.

In most editions of D&D, a relatively modest squad of mooks can take out even a high level PC. The idea that they can't possibly win doesn't hold water mechanically most of the time, and even if you are looking at mechanics, they can wear the PCs down, which is what they are intended to do.

The idea of a mook rebellion is an interesting one, but it makes a lot of assumptions about how much choice they have in the matter and exactly how aware they are off the PCs capabilities. I imagine there is a lot of brain washing and intimidation going on for your average soldier of the dark lord.*


For the record, I am not playing D&D, not playing at high level, and tend to run HP as "survivor bias".


*: One of the few good things about the Dark Tower movie is the scene where one of the mooks tells the Man in Black that they will stop the Gunslinger for him. He just looks at his minions for a sec, and then says "Bye!". It is great at illustrating that your average mook has no idea what they are truly up against.

[gbaji]

I think it's also important, when deciding how to play NPCs and their reactions to PC actions, that you are able to make a clear distinction between "NPCs acting intelligently based on what they know", and "Me the GM having the NPCs act based on what I think would be cool, interesting, challenging to the PCs, etc". The former works well. The latter will only annoy your players. The players have to trust that you are going to play the NPCs "well", but not abuse your knowledge and position as GM to do so.

I've played at some tables where I could literally (ok, figuratively, sheesh!) see the wheels turning in the GMs head, to be followed by some NPC action that made zero sense at all for the NPCs to take, but that just happened to be exactly the action that would cause problems for our current plan or situation. That is not a good thing.

And unfortunately, what follows when this sort of GM style is in play is that the players stop trusting the GM, and will start playing "against the GM" and not the NPCs in the game world. Symptoms of this are players who will not tell the GM what they are doing, what their plans are, or how they expect their plans to work. They've learned that if they do this ahead of time, the GM will magically have his NPCs do things that thwart them, so they have to "trick the GM" in some way. This is a terrible table environment to play in, not the least reason is that if there is trust between the players and the GM, then they can tell the GM their plans ahead of time, and the GM can actually clue them in if some parts of the plan maybe aren't such great ideas (GM is always the final arbiter as to how climbable that wall is, or how a spell works in relation to something else, or well... anything in the game world, so this is actually very important). If they don't, then this communication does not happen, and the players will constantly be surprised and upset when things they didn't think of happen, and will still blame the GM for this, thinking the GM manipulated things after the fact, or didn't fully communicate everything in the game world around them (which, having been a GM for a very long time, I can attest is absolutely impossible to do).

At a healthy table, the players should feel absolutely free to bounce their proposed plans off the GM, knowing that if there's some flaw that they the players maybe didn't notice, but that the GM determines their characters perhaps really should, that the GM will provide them good feedback so as to avoid "gotcha" situations (while still keeping actual NPC stuff hidden, of course). It's a balancing act that GMs really need to learn how to do, and when they do it correctly, will build trust and result in a friendly harmonous table environment.

If there's one bit of advice I always try to give GMs it's "play the NPCs, not yourself". You should not be trying to think of ways to thwart the players. You should be thinking about what the NPCs would try to do in any given situation. You are not playing a game "against the players". And yeah. It can be really tempting to do this one little tweak, or change this one little detail, thinking it'll make things "better" or "more interesting". Don't do it. Even when done with the best of intentions, players pick up on this, and it changes that trust dymamic. The players start playing "you" instead of the game. And yeah, as mentioned above, this will spiral into badness.

[King of Nowhere]

Yeah. I try and play it naturally. The above is why my PCs are so paranoid and kill happy.

yes, they are your players. I wasn't expecting them to be rational about things.

For the record, I am not playing D&D, not playing at high level, and tend to run HP as "survivor bias".

I don't know the power level of your games, but since your players have to do stuff like walk to the dungeon the traditional way instead of teleporting there, I can tell it's not very high.

When I was playing low level, I also tried to have hp as skill. as the party progressed, i found the illusion gradually more difficult to maintain, and i gradually switched to the superhuman model. We are happy with it; it may have a few issues (never considered the elephant falling damage, but I ascribe it to the square cube law failing to be accounted for in the falling damage; I mean, an ant should die from falling, so this is clearly a problem with the falling mechanics, not the hp), but nowhere near as much as the other options.

anyway, the mook may be dumb, but the evil overlord generally isn't. leaving them a bunch in every room and let the heroes defeat them conveniently is not particularly effective, so the villain is likely to have some other plan. what I would do realizing those guys after me are high level - when appropriately high level opponents are not available - is to swarm the pcs with everything I have, try to cut their retreat and overwhelm them. because if they are allowed to kill some, heal, return tomorrow, i'll soon find myself with no mooks. if the strategy fails, the villain is likely to surrender or escape.

[Satinavian]

Even when the objective actually is "defeat the enemy's army", allowing them to retreat when "defeated" is usually a better option. History is chock full of military engagements where cornered/trapped (and significantly outnumbered) forces more or less curbstomped the attacking enemy. This goes to the morale factor that has been mentioned a few times, and which is often completely ignored in fantasy fiction and RPGs based on such. Soldiers who have no hope to retreat and no choice but to fight or die will tend to fight incredibly hard. They literally have no choice. And if your facing those (essentially "100% morale" forces) with soldiers who do have an option to retreat, or may be thinking "we've got this in the bag, so no point in me risking my own neck overly much", that's a recipe for disaster.

History is long. Do you really want to count the cases where inferior forces that couldn't safely retreat surrendered instead? That is the far more common outcome. And we have oh so many examples of the majority of losses of a battle only caused by a rout.

Correct. When you are the one attacking, hit and run tactics can be very valuable. Again though, you should probably have an actual objective. Sometimes, just "whittling down the enemy" or "keep them guessing as to where were really are, and what strength we have" is sufficient, especially when dealing with larger scale engagements. But small level stuff (like an adventuring party), you should usually have some achievable objective that is the target of the raid, or you're just advertising your presense.

But we were (originally) discussing the strategical options of the target of the hit-and-run strategy. And if your enemy does hit-and-run and you can prevent the "run" part and thus end the cycle, that is pretty much what you will try to do.

[Vahnavoi]

History is long. Do you really want to count the cases where inferior forces that couldn't safely retreat surrendered instead? That is the far more common outcome.

It's the more common outcome because the surrendering troops had at least hope of being spared that way. For contrast, in places where surrender was regularly denied or met with execution or other atrocities aimed at the surrendering party, warfare tended to become harsher and bloodier on both sides, with less quarter given. This was, for example, a difference between western and eastern fronts of the second world war.

And we have oh so many examples of the majority of losses of a battle only caused by a rout.

Yes, but we also have examples of generals deliberately feigning retreat to lure enemies into pursuit, then turning around and smashing the overextending enemy. And in Sunzi's Art of War, we have both an example of a general deliberately leaving an apparent escape route for the enemy, so that the enemy will flee and then will be easier to destroy in an ambush set on their escape rout, and an example of a general deliberately placing their own troops in a bad position with no way out, so that they will fight like cornered beasts. In Art of War, these examples are talked about as examples of using basic knowledge to build more advanced strategies, with the point being that a choice that might seem bad in isolation can still be valid as part of a multi-step plan.

So yes, majority of casualties happen in a rout. But we have to keep in mind what allows a rout to happen in the first place.

---

EDIT: going back to this for a bit:

Also, modern games aren't balanced around morale. As an example / tangent, people suggested The Monsters Know What They Are Doing blog for tactics to make the game more challenging, but one thing I noticed is that his monsters always run away fairly early in the fight, and I am pretty sure that as a result they are less effective than your standard big dumb bag o' HP who charges in and full attacks until dead.

Less effective for what?

The point of monsters running away early is that they're trying to live to fight another day - the same reason the players would engage in hit-and-run tactics and "15 minute workday".

What gbaji says about objectives applies equally to players and their opponents: both should have goals that extend beyond "kill everyone" or "reduce enemy resources by X%". Basically, think less like a game designer trying to hit a quota for player success, and more like an actual enemy strategist.

[Lacco]

Less effective for what?

The point of monsters running away early is that they're trying to live to fight another day - the same reason the players would engage in hit-and-run tactics and "15 minute workday".

What gbaji says about objectives applies equally to players and their opponents: both should have goals that extend beyond "kill everyone" or "reduce enemy resources by X%". Basically, think less like a game designer trying to hit a quota for player success, and more like an actual enemy strategist.

Maybe that would be the way: if players insist on 15 minute adventuring day, the monsters should insist on survival and run away all the time. Thus either the players venture deeper or don't get the rewards they expect.

I wonder how that would play at a table (or at bizarro world).

[Talakeal]

The point of monsters running away early is that they're trying to live to fight another day - the same reason the players would engage in hit-and-run tactics and "15 minute workday".

What gbaji says about objectives applies equally to players and their opponents: both should have goals that extend beyond "kill everyone" or "reduce enemy resources by X%". Basically, think less like a game designer trying to hit a quota for player success, and more like an actual enemy strategist.

Only in the very broadest sense, and if their only goal was to live and fight another day, they would have avoided combat in the first place.

Players do the 15 MWD so they can cast all of their spells, ensuring they win the fight without any casualties, get treasure and XP, and then fall back.

(Most) Monsters don't have spells. Monsters don't get XP. Monsters don't get treasure from losing a fight.

Thinking like an actual enemy strategist doesn't work because the game mechanics are stacked in the PC's favor.

Although, for the record, I place a very high value on verisimilitude in my games. One of the recurring problems in my group is that I don't think of it as a game and rather like a real setting. For example, I generally have a reason why the local NPCs haven't already killed the monster, which means that a lot of my PCs tactics which require the monster to be an idiot and wander into a trap won't work because if they did there would be no need for PCs in the first place. Commoners are just as capable of shooting a caged owlbear as PCs after all. The only way I could go further in this way would be meta-game on the monsters behalf in an effort to kill PCs and avoid harm.

I frequently get told on the forums to stop worrying about verisimilitude and instead worry about player fun, I really am not sure how doing the opposite would be helpful.

Maybe that would be the way: if players insist on 15 minute adventuring day, the monsters should insist on survival and run away all the time. Thus either the players venture deeper or don't get the rewards they expect.

I wonder how that would play at a table (or at bizarro world).

The players would demand XP for the defeated monsters and keep farming them.

One of my oldest horror stories involved the PCs invading a wizard's toward, and the wizard would periodically pop in, summon some minions, cast a few spells, and then teleport to a different floor. When the PCs finally killed him, they demanded full XP for each time he teleported away, because by 3.5 RAW you get full XP for enemies who run away.

[Vahnavoi]

Only in the very broadest sense, and if their only goal was to live and fight another day, they would have avoided combat in the first place.

Players do the 15 MWD so they can cast all of their spells, ensuring they win the fight without any casualties, get treasure and XP, and then fall back.

(Most) Monsters don't have spells. Monsters don't get XP. Monsters don't get treasure from losing a fight.

Please think more than one step ahead. Or in case of the first paragraph, one step behind. It's not given the monsters are instigators of violence. They might have opted to avoid combat, but players have brought combat to them. Don't presume infinite agency to pursue a goal.

In case of players, all those actions serve the purpose of living to fight another day. In the most literal sense possible, because they are amassing experience points and treasure in order to boost their chances in future fights.

The latter is a matter of game design. Many games, including all versions of D&D, allow for great degree of symmetry. The monsters can have all the same resources as player characters, meaning all the same considerations apply. Also, while they might not get treasure or experience from a lost fight, they can get treasure and experience from future fights, provided they survive. So, again, their motives can be much the same as the players'. If there's a great degree of asymmetry, you need to look in the mirror, because you are most likely the one causing it.

Thinking like an actual enemy strategist doesn't work because the game mechanics are stacked in the PC's favor.

If you're using your own system, why are you stacking the deck so much in players' favor? Additionally, what in your mechanics is supposed yo cause this? Simply having the deck stacked against you doesn't stop strategizing. Is the mechanical advantage supposed to be unknown to non-player characters, or what?

Although, for the record, I place a very high value on verisimilitude in my games. One of the recurring problems in my group is that I don't think of it as a game and rather like a real setting. For example, I generally have a reason why the local NPCs haven't already killed the monster, which means that a lot of my PCs tactics which require the monster to be an idiot and wander into a trap won't work because if they did there would be no need for PCs in the first place. Commoners are just as capable of shooting a caged owlbear as PCs after all. The only way I could go further in this way would be meta-game on the monsters behalf in an effort to kill PCs and avoid harm.

So you functionally already prefer to think like an enemy strategist. Why would bother to argue against the practice then?

I frequently get told on the forums to stop worrying about verisimilitude and instead worry about player fun, I really am not sure how doing the opposite would be helpful.

Remember who you are talking to. I am not an amorphous blob representing common forum arguments. I've outright told you that the verisimilitude you should ignore is that of your players, not your own. Remember also who you are talking about. Your players aren't average people with average sense of "fun". It's not given their preference of aesthetics is something you should bend over backwards to serve. I've outright told you to tell your players to suck it up or stop playing games designed and hosted by you.

But, there's another dimension to this, which is that your ideas of verisimilitudous strategy and actually good strategy don't necessarily match. It might be an eye-opening experience for you to go back to actual treatises on warfare (such as Art of War) or, more specific to games, actual game theory.

The players would demand XP for the defeated monsters and keep farming them.

You must have read this from me before: stop appealing to your players' worst instinct. This something you can shut down as a matter of rules (f.ex. "sorry, you only get XP for doing a thing the first time") or by calibrating monster recovery and XP rates so that it doesn't matter even if they try this.

To tie this to above discussion of morale, incapacitation and destruction: if enemy morale fails at 20% casualties (incapacitation) and they flee or surrender, that yields 80% of the XP possible for that enemy group. Further engagements can only yield fractions of the remaining 20% until the enemy has fully recovered, which can take days, weeks, months, years, whatever feels appropriate. And once the enemy is fully recovered, well, it's not given the fight will go the same way next time. Their morale might not fail at 20% this time, leading to a longer and costlier fight. And, of course, should it ever happen that the enemies stand to the last drop of blood or the players kill them all for some other reason, the farming stops.

If you want to be mean, you can then slap Angband-style double diminishing returns on top, meaning at some point the XP gain from fighting the same enemy over and over again does not even make the next encounter less risky.

Overall, it's quite easy to set a game so that this farming thing just isn't an issue.

One of my oldest horror stories involved the PCs invading a wizard's toward, and the wizard would periodically pop in, summon some minions, cast a few spells, and then teleport to a different floor. When the PCs finally killed him, they demanded full XP for each time he teleported away, because by 3.5 RAW you get full XP for enemies who run away.

What about this is a horror story? Sounds like a simple calibration error since, equally by D&D 3.x rules as written, player characters do not get experience points for enemies with a challenge rating that's sufficiently above their effective level. Indeed, what about this is even relevant, since you aren't using 3.x D&D rules?

[Sapphire Guard]

At some point, there's going to have to be a jumping off point from reality. Your average adventuring party isn't equipped to take and look after prisoners, and gameplay wise it would be annoying for a party member to have to sit out the adventure because they have to guard them.

Realistic tactics tend to be annoying to deal with, because they're designed to work, while gameplay tactics are designed to give the players at least a fighting chance.

A realistic gang of bandits are probably not interested in fighting at all, they want to get the maximum profit from the least risk, so they'd do things like 'I'll draw their attention, you grab a sack of flour and run, if they follow, kill the horse.' If a party of armed adventurers passed by, they probably wouldn't attack at all.

The players here are exploiting gameplay mechanics, in the knowledge that their enemies will not. But if you do a mechanical fix that makes that less effective, they will probably just double down and be even more cautious.

What we're trying to do is incentivise them to explore, but in doing that take risks. But you have to get the balance exactly right every session or they will one day actually push too far and get squashed. As of Day one, most of the party was taken out, you had one survivor to heal everyone else if I understand the journal correctly. Hard to make that happen every day.

The way to spoil the over cautious approach if you wanted to would end up being like WW1 era defence in depth, where you have a weak vanguard with strong defences that the party has to expend resources taking down, and then when they have shot their bolt hit them hard with the reserves... but that would be super annoying, because it might work.

[Talakeal]

If you're using your own system, why are you stacking the deck so much in players' favor? Additionally, what in your mechanics is supposed you cause this? Simply having the deck stacked against you doesn't stop strategizing. Is the mechanical advantage supposed to be unknown to non-player characters, or what?

Because players like to feel special.
Because it is tedious to track and have to whittle down meta resources and HP bloat from enemies who don't exist when they are off camera.
Because the game is unfulfilling for everyone involved if it ends suddenly without resolution.

The players tend to have an unusual concentration of supernatural abilities. That is known.

The rest of it is stuff handled on a mechanical level and mostly represents survivor bias, this is not something that is known to anyone in setting except for those few wizards who can read people's destinies.

The latter is a matter of game design. Many games, including all versions of D&D, allow for great degree of symmetry. The monsters can have all the same resources as player characters, meaning all the same considerations apply. Also, while they might not get treasure or experience from a lost fight, they can get treasure and experience from future fights, provided they survive. So, again, their motives can be much the same as the players'. If there's a great degree of asymmetry, you need to look in the mirror, because you are most likely the one causing it.

Only if you greatly restrict yourself. I would wager less than 5% of the monster manual has spells that recharge on a per day rest. And I would wager that those monsters who do are already balanced around going nova and casting their most powerful spells every fight.

Functionally, a monster that attacks, casts its most powerful spells, and then runs away and repeats the same day, is just a slightly easier version of having two encounters against two seperate monsters.

Also, monsters can't have the same access to magic items as player characters because then the power curve becomes exponential and unsustainable as every victory doubles the player's loot.



And yeah, I guess you could say I am causing the asymmetry in my system, but that's because I am trying to create a fantasy world with a variety and mythical monsters rather than just a collection of homicidal wizards.

So you functionally already prefer to think like an enemy strategist. Why would bother to argue against the practice then?

When I am playing the monsters I am thinking like a strategist.

When I am setting up the scenario, I am looking for one that will result in a fun adventure; not one where the PCs are murdered in their sleep without a chance to fight back or where the local militia has already killed all the monsters and tells the PCs to keep walking.

Monsters that run away are guaranteed to be a pain in the butt for everyone involved. The PCs will chase them down and kill them, and will not have fun doing it. It doesn't actually gain the monsters anything, they are still dead, all it did was save the PCs some resources in exchange for wasting time. (Honestly.... this sounds a lot like the 15MWD itself).

Now, obviously, this assumes a normal scenario. I have had several situations where it made tactical sense for the monsters to fall back and regroup for a future attack, and these few occasions are what the players always point to when they justify their genocidal take no prisoners scorched earth tactics.

Remember who you are talking to. I am not an amorphous blob representing common forum arguments.

No, of course not. It's just jarring to hear advice so opposite to what I am normally told.

What about this is a horror story? Sounds like a simple calibration error since, equally by D&D 3.x rules as written, player characters do not get experience points for enemies with a challenge rating that's sufficiently above their effective level. Indeed, what about this is even relevant, since you aren't using 3.x D&D rules?

It isn't especially relevant, although it is one of the reasons I don't get XP for kills anymore.

Why do you assume it shouldn't have been worth XP?

The wizard was two or three levels above the party, it's just that because they "defeated" him half a dozen times they demanded a ludicrous amount of XP for an enemy who was two or three levels above them.

To tie this to above discussion of morale, incapacitation and destruction: if enemy morale fails at 20% casualties (incapacitation) and they flee or surrender, that yields 80% of the XP possible for that enemy group. Further engagements can only yield fractions of the remaining 20% until the enemy has fully recovered, which can take days, weeks, months, years, whatever feels appropriate. And once the enemy is fully recovered, well, it's not given the fight will go the same way next time. Their morale might not fail at 20% this time, leading to a longer and costlier fight. And, of course, should it ever happen that the enemies stand to the last drop of blood or the players kill them all for some other reason, the farming stops.

If you want to be mean, you can then slap Angband-style double diminishing returns on top, meaning at some point the XP gain from fighting the same enemy over and over again does not even make the next encounter less risky.

Overall, it's quite easy to set a game so that this farming thing just isn't an issue.

Honestly, my system does do XP kills as a rule, so it's mostly academic, although for the purposes of a hex-crawl / mega dungeon campaign I am willing to entertain the idea.

I am curious what this would actually look like in practice though, especially how it would actually work to pace the game. To me it just seems like slower easier fights that give less XP and require more bookkeeping, so I am probably missing something.

At some point, there's going to have to be a jumping off point from reality. Your average adventuring party isn't equipped to take and look after prisoners, and gameplay wise it would be annoying for a party member to have to sit out the adventure because they have to guard them.

Realistic tactics tend to be annoying to deal with, because they're designed to work, while gameplay tactics are designed to give the players at least a fighting chance.

A realistic gang of bandits are probably not interested in fighting at all, they want to get the maximum profit from the least risk, so they'd do things like 'I'll draw their attention, you grab a sack of flour and run, if they follow, kill the horse.' If a party of armed adventurers passed by, they probably wouldn't attack at all.

The players here are exploiting gameplay mechanics, in the knowledge that their enemies will not.

All of this, yes.

But if you do a mechanical fix that makes that less effective, they will probably just double down and be even more cautious.

That has been my experience in the past, yes.

I need to figure out some method of actually making the reward consummate with the risk.

What we're trying to do is incentivize them to explore, but in doing that take risks. But you have to get the balance exactly right every session or they will one day actually push too far and get squashed. As of Day one, most of the party was taken out, you had one survivor to heal everyone else if I understand the journal correctly. Hard to make that happen every day.

Starting PCs are pretty fragile. They actually had a lot of resources left, they were just all beaten up and didn't have a way to translate those other resources into more vitality. I don't expect it to ever turn out quite like that again.

I don't imagine the PCs will ever get squashed; TPK's are all but unheard of at my table. Worst case scenario one of them dies and the others flee, they have to break into their massive potion trove, or they swallow their pride and surrender. Of course, they may be too stubborn to do that.

The way to spoil the over cautious approach if you wanted to would end up being like WW1 era defence in depth, where you have a weak vanguard with strong defences that the party has to expend resources taking down, and then when they have shot their bolt hit them hard with the reserves... but that would be super annoying, because it might work.

Interesting.

I did think of a system where the first encounter is worth 1/4 XP, the second 1/3, the third 1/2, the fourth 3/4, and then the fith and beyond give full XP. That might produce similar results.

[King of Nowhere]

Although, for the record, I place a very high value on verisimilitude in my games.

I also place a very high value on verisimilitude, and we do tend to come to different conclusions on what that would result. My opinion is that your idea of "verisimilitude" focuses too much on either the real world or stories, and neither of those is a good fit for the game mechanics. this alters what would be good strategical thinking.

I'm not going to make in-depths argument because it would take too long, but suffice to say, if the villains' tactics always result in the villain getting destroyed with no real risk for the players, then the villain is not using good tactics. if nothing else, if the villain has no chances to stop the party with his resources, he should try to flee. with as much loot as he can. so that could actually be an incentive to players in the right circumstances?
"you break the door to the central room of the complex. it is empty.
turns out, when you broke into the lair, you first faced some easy guards. you killed them easily, but their disappearance was noted, so the villain sent his best minions to kill you. you dispatched those too. then you went back to rest. the villain figured that if you slew his strongest minions easily enough, then he alone with his remaining minions doesn't have many chances, so he took everything and he ran."

As for dumb monsters, those cannot have much of a strategy, so no problem here. they rarely end up being dangerous, no matter how physically powerful, specifically because they can be outthinked and outmaneuvered easily. there's a reason man with his brain jumped to the top of the food chain despite a lot of animals much bigger and stronger than we are, and it's not just our capacity to craft pointy sticks.

I frequently get told on the forums to stop worrying about verisimilitude and instead worry about player fun, I really am not sure how doing the opposite would be helpful.

the forum is made of many people with different opinions. You are probably thinking of quertus here. but many other people tell you that you should apply more verisimilitude instead - namely, the kind of verisimilitude that would let enemies be more effective. basically, the same point vahnavoi makes here

But, there's another dimension to this, which is that your ideas of verisimilitudous strategy and actually good strategy don't necessarily match.

regarding xp, if there is a rule for assigning them, then that rule can be exploited. it doesn't matter how well the rule is designed. that's why i prefer informal ways of giving xp.
then again, I do have good players who are not trying to cheat the system and who do not accuse me of shortchanging them. maybe at your table it would not work. or maybe giving story milestones (you gain a level when you open the way to the lower floor of the dungeon) could be acceptable to them.

If they farm xp, you can also counter that if they are not in any real risk, then they should not get any xp.
on the other hand, this may encourage the players to intentionally be dumb to maximize risk and xp gain. which is not something I want to encourage. "I stab myself to give the monster a sporting chance, this will give me more xp" is not something I'd want to accidentally enable.

I did think of a system where the first encounter is worth 1/4 XP, the second 1/3, the third 1/2, the fourth 3/4, and then the fith and beyond give full XP. That might produce similar results.

This I don't like. it's just a completely arbitrary system to punish them for resting. it also encourages exploting it, trying to find some easy encounter first - you get almost no xp for the first encounter, so you may as well start with something that would not have given many xp in any case.
Yeah, it's like I said. Make a hard rule for xp, and players will try to exploit it. and the results will break verisimilitude anyway.

[Talakeal]

Busy now, but I am actually curious about how this playing NPCs differently plays out. Will post a longer story with questions and examples latrer.

I also place a very high value on verisimilitude, and we do tend to come to different conclusions on what that would result. My opinion is that your idea of "verisimilitude" focuses too much on either the real world or stories, and neither of those is a good fit for the game mechanics. This alters what would be good strategical thinking.

Some you are advocating for a "games rules as physics" approach lit-RPG style? If so, then yes, Quertus is just about the only person who advises me to have more "verisimilitude".

I really wish you would stop saying I really on stories, that isn't true. Narrative gaming blows screaming chunks to the moon, and story structure is the last thing in the world on my mind when designing a scenario or a ruleset. Now, I may use a story or a real-life anecdote when trying to illustrate a point, but my goal is never to recreate a dramatic experiance.

I'm not going to make in-depths argument because it would take too long, but suffice to say, if the villains' tactics always result in the villain getting destroyed with no real risk for the players, then the villain is not using good tactics. if nothing else, if the villain has no chances to stop the party with his resources, he should try to flee. with as much loot as he can. so that could actually be an incentive to players in the right circumstances?
"you break the door to the central room of the complex. it is empty.
turns out, when you broke into the lair, you first faced some easy guards. you killed them easily, but their disappearance was noted, so the villain sent his best minions to kill you. you dispatched those too. then you went back to rest. the villain figured that if you slew his strongest minions easily enough, then he alone with his remaining minions doesn't have many chances, so he took everything and he ran."

Is this fun for anyone?

Its not fun for me as a DM because I don't get to run the material I worked hard to come up with. It isn't fun for the players because they don't get to play the game or get any rewards.

Heck, it isn't even fun in character as the players haven't stopped the villain and the villain had to waste a buttload of time and money abandoning a perfectly good fortress to run away.

This I don't like. it's just a completely arbitrary system to punish them for resting. it also encourages exploiting it, trying to find some easy encounter first - you get almost no xp for the first encounter, so you may as well start with something that would not have given many xp in any case.
Yeah, it's like I said. Make a hard rule for XP, and players will try to exploit it. and the results will break verisimilitude anyway.

XP is always a completely arbitrary system that has little to nothing to do with verisimilitude.

Why is fighting a giant dragon worth more than a goblin?

If the answer is about challenge or danger or pushing oneself, why would it not also apply to the adventure as a whole?

Also, that assumes that:

A: The encounters are worth different amounts of XP.
B: That the order they are encountered in is the same order the multipliers are applied.
C: The players have the foreknowledge of what they will encounter and the ability to choose what order it is encountered in.

it's just a completely arbitrary system to punish them for resting

That is a very good point. I completely forgot about the last thread.

I should have said the first fight is worth normal XP, the second fight is worth double, the third triple, the fourth quadruple, and the fifth plus five times, that way you are rewarding pushing on instead of punishing resting.

the forum is made of many people with different opinions. You are probably thinking of quertus here. but many other people tell you that you should apply more verisimilitude instead - namely, the kind of verisimilitude that would let enemies be more effective. basically, the same point vahnavoi makes here

Ok, so serious question here: What makes you think that my enemies are ineffective?

Most of the advice in this thread is about enemies running away, which isn't more effective, just more annoying, and doesn't really solve the actual problems I am having with dealing with pacing and risk vs. reward in a sandbox game.

My players are certainly convinced that my games are too hard, and most threads the general impression I am getting from the forum community is that I need to town the challenge way down.