dnd-apothecary:

feebledungeons:

miasmicsiren:

feebledungeons:

acrimonious-heartwood:

feebledungeons:

PSA TO PLAYER CHARACTERS

You’re allowed to run away some times

PSA TO GMs

If you ever build an encounter solely built around being too much for the players, forcing them to retreat, always keep in mind the following:

1: Retreating isn’t fun. Winning against overwhelming odds, is very much fun however. Retreat in DnD is also very jank, disincentivizing players even more from even considering that option.

2: It’s very hard for players to gauge what would be too dangerous to engage (be it physically or social). If Steve the Figher gets hit by that superzombie there, and it does 15 damage, the players have no way of knowing if that was a critical hit, a really good damage roll, or the lowest possible damage the superzombie can do, **unless you are open about your rolls**. If your players don’t see the dice and the numbers, there’s no indication how strong a foe is, no matter how big and intimidating you describe them.

Some solutions:

1: Tell your players up front “In this campaign, i’ll occasionally drop in encounters where you are completely justified, and expected, to run away.” That way, players will be aware that your campaign has fights that they can’t fight.

2: Do your best to showcase the enemy’s power before it becomes too dangerous to turn tail. Let the ogre kick a fortification down. Give them an managable fight against a weaker version that they barely manage, to unveil a whole group. Kill a character that’s established to be on the same level as the group, or even stronger. Be obvious that these are really, really dangerous.

3: When your players say “Ok, we’re running away”, just agree and say “You ran away.” Or describe what happens during their attempt to escape. Trying to solve it via grid is just clunky, slow, and unreliable.

4: Don’t. Just running away just makes your players feel small and weak, for no good reason. Instead, give them goals they can achieve without directly engaging the overwhelming threat. Make the quest about saving the princess rather than killing the dragon. Evacuate civilians instead of fighting the entire enemy army. Give them something fun to do where “getting away with it” is part of a whole operation, not just a sad interruption of the adventure.
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Now, I’m writing this mainly about DnD, because in DnD, retreat is //jank//. If you’re using your own system, or a game where retreat is part of the main conceit of the game, like Call of Cthulhu, things might look different.

I was originally writing this about a Curse of Strahd encounter where the player ignored my heavy handed attempts to dissuade him from (at level 4) running through an easily avoided lightning field that had destroyed a stone sculpture with one lightening hit and, having been resurrected once already on his previous turn, flipping off Strahd instead of hiding but…

This is actually fabulous advice for GMs in general. Communication is key to let your players know that retreat is valid and expected if you want to run a consequence heavy game. Especially if you’ve not already established a horror-like tone.

You don’t get exp for running. More reason for players to not run.

Easy way around this: Treat running away as “accepting you’re not strong enough”, giving them roleplay exp.

100%

If you are running a story-driven game, you should award XP for story/role playing actions!

I saw your tags about how you like milestone leveling

And this is why I agree with that: milestone xp can be given for running away and kind of takes the pressure off of the “lost xp opportunity” of running from a fight

But also as a gamer in general: I rarely run away from anything in games and I know that bleeds over to dnd as well.

Running away in DnD can definitely be a tactical choice and not just a “we suck we can’t do this” kind of thing.