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As the title suggests, I am interested in seeing how other DM's adjudicate this level of NPC / Monster activity.
The Paizo people, thankfully, have incorporated a Morale section in most (if not all) of their stat blocks. This reads something like "If reduced to less than 30 HP, Boss-dude will retreat to area F7" or "The fanatic cultists fight to the death."
Now, the question arises: Do you follow these guidelines? Do you have every single critter opposing the PC's be fanatical/enraged/mindless and attack until brought to unconsciousness? Do you have baddies break and run when faced with obviously overpowering PC's?
For me, I try to have the bad guys react in a logical, consistent manner. Ogres, Orcs, and Trolls, as described in their entries, are crude, stupid, and prone to rages. They typically fight until they can no longer stand (with Orc Ferocity, that gets a little tricky sometimes.)
Other, more "stable" monsters, like Bugbears, Hobgoblins, or Boggards, will typically flee if more than half their numbers fall, or they witness at least one or two PC's able to "one-shot" them. They don't want to die, of course. If able, they will typically try to cover one another in a fighting retreat, but a general rout is also possible.
Humans (and by extension the other "demi-human" races) are a little bit trickier. Here, the individual NPC's character and morale counts for more than his race. Is she a sneaky, conniving rogue, out for her own and that's it? Is he a big, beefy fighter-guy convinced of his own invulnerability? With the AP's and other modules, it's great to have this stuff written in. For homebrew stuff, chalk up one more choice to make.
In a recent game (CoT AP, I will try to avoid any spoilers), the PC's engaged a large group of human rogues, with some Giant and Ogre backup. The PC's themselves brought in some assistance, more to destabilize the camp rather than provide actual in-combat assistance. At the end of the fight, however, some 12 rogues had been Blinded (some permanently) and subdued with great ease by the party's cleric (Sunbeams, BTW).
I had those 12 surrender (stuck in the forest, they can hear their Giant-buddy bite it, they just saw their Ogre backup go out in a Fireball in one shot, blind, offered a chance to survive...) and swear to follow the cleric's teachings. Basically, he was able to "recruit" a new bunch of mooks for the PC's side. Nothing else seemed to make sense, at the time.
So, the question is out there: DM's, how often do your baddies retreat/surrender to the party? If they do, how do you handle the aftermath, and if they don't, why not?
-t
The player I DM for are tenacious little SOBs. If it runs, it gets chased (usually very effectively)
The player I DM for are tenacious little SOBs. If it runs, it gets chased (usually very effectively)
^this. It gets kind of annoying sometimes. I want to move on, but they have to hunt down every gnoll, as if they were yummy XP candy. And I don't even USE xp!!!
Well ... I've had numerous effects. Sometimes it's chase 'em down and put 'em down, and sometimes it's just a matter of "breaking the ranks" and once broken, the enemies simply scatter like roaches - most survive, but only a few get taken out (by people w/ranged options, or the like). I've also had a group of gnolls that attempted to raid a caravan defeated, rounded up the survivors, and let free with supplies by a paladin - it was pretty awesome - he wanted information, and he kept his word to them. Later on, they returned with some more information - only for that paladin to hear, though.
As my rule, I still go by AD&D morale stats and use that as a base. I roll my D20 and either do it like a morale check, or sometimes I do a will-save instead depending on the situation and circumstances.
I always have my enemies react "within reason" and when it starts rolling downhill (minus mindless critters and undead) most things want to leave and get away (survival outweighs vengeance 9/10 times). Everyone gets full xp for "defeating" the enemies, though. I see no need to punish players for using their abilities to end up with a victory through means other than "kill 'em all!" In fact, with the gnoll scenario above, the PC paladin got a LOT of bonus xp for many things that were to his advantage (keeping caravaneers alive and unharmed under his presence/leadership, finding information he otherwise wouldn't have if he chose to execute the gnolls on the spot, and more for showing mercy and helping an enemy get a second chance -- something forgotten all too much in the game, IMO).
For me it depends on the situation. Generally low int enemies fight to the death, but if they are crafty i include an escape plan. Also when the battle is all but won and the enemies are nearly dead I usually let the players make a diplomacy or intimidate check to get them to surrender with bonuses depending on how wounded they are or how desperate their fight looks.
Ofcourse most of my best escape plans are often thwarted by by bloodthirsty players, but its fun to try sometimes.
Honestly, when i DM I rarely have a chance to make the monsters surrender or run. My players are of the opinion that the fight isnt over till one side or the other is dead. Because of that, they never run either.
I did have one major villan surrender, because I wanted to use her again. That really annoyed my players, because they wanted to kill her.(shes kinda a player favorite villan, they type they keep looking for in every dark corner) They had to accept her surrender though, because one of the players was playing a paladin, and it would be an alignment violation to kill a helpless captive. It was even more amusing when the paladin died soon after from wounds gained in that fight! Boy, that player was ticked. I dont think hes played a paladin since.
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I don't think I've ever had enemies surrender... But I regularly have enemies run away. If the party wants to take someone alive, they do non-lethal damage to that target from the get-go. If not, they get no mercy. So usually, when one target takes enough damage to take it down to it's last few HP, they make a break for it if it gets a turn. This is true for nearly any living creature in my game, excluding traditional "fight to the death" enemies like orcs and ogres.
I absolutely hate enemies that always fight to the death, no matter how hopeless it is though, and cultists irk me to no end. As a player, I've had to deal with cultists in every game I've ever played, and they are always used as complete fodder. No reasoning with them, no interrogating afterwords, it's just suicide pill then dead. That's why I started carrying around potions of Delay Poison. Three hours is enough time to question them, right?
Of course, I'm running a very undead-heavy campaign at the moment, so almost all of the battles are to-the-death.
Enemies who run in my groups tend to get chased down. Not so much because of XP concerns -- we give XP regardless of how an encounter is overcome -- but because we've had bad experiences with fleeing enemies pulling an MMO-style "bring a friend" swarm by running deeper into the encounter area and alerting their allies to our presence and location.
One particularly bad example of this was when I was running an open campaign at my FLGS and the party was invading a lair of kobolds suspected of raiding caravans from the local silver mine. They defeated the entryway guards fairly easily (though they got sliced up pretty good by the traps), and proceeded to the next chamber, which was full of nasty spore-bearing fungi. One kobold was clear across the room from them and ran away before they could get to it through the spore minefield. It then proceeded to run down the corridor (the only other exit from the room) past the guard station and into the kobold chieftan's hall. I wasn't really intending to trigger another semi-challenging encounter and a boss fight, but I really had no other choice, just by virtue of my not being able to explain why the other kobolds in those two rooms would ignore the presence of a panicked and bleeding comrade.
Surrendered foes tend to get trussed up and slept (or otherwise magically rendered helpless) and dealt with later, although surrenders aren't always accepted. I don't think we've ever had that directly bite the party on the rear, yet.
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99% of the time I just have them fight to the death. If they run I'm stuck with 10 minutes of PCs chasing them down and killing them anyway. Gets old and tedious. If they surrender they are likely to get dropped a cliff, drowned or used for target practice. Some players seem to feel EVERY last NPC MUST die. Yeah gets old.
What happens if your party gets beaten? That may never happen for some groups, but it is an interesting avenue for a crafty GM.
Something I like about Pathfinder is that in the Bestiary, there are explanations of why certain monsters (like CE bugbears) WON'T kill a group of players (to torture them later, sell them as slaves, get information, etc). IMO, a GM using this information and thinking with this mentality has more sophisticated campaigns and very interesting sessions.
However, if your party kills every creature you come into conflict with, what do you expect to happen to you when you lose and can't flee?
Personally, I use "morale" in every encounter. Mindless things fight to the death, animals flee if wounded badly, ambushers flee if they don't immediately gain and keep the upper hand, etc. If something can't flee then other factors effect its choices. For example, a beaten villain may surrender to a group with a paladin knowing that the paladin has to treat him fairly, which may give him an opportunity to escape later.
If a party had a reputation for killing everything, then it's perfectly reasonable that cornered enemies fight to the death.
The great majority of sapient enemies in my games will attempt to escape if the battle clearly turns against them and they think they have a chance. Of course, with DnD being DnD, one side can easily be destroyed or trapped in a single round and as there is no lifebars over people's heads, the fact that they are being overpowered often fails to register in the enemies' minds. As about surrendering, those creatures, who can realistically hope to be spared, surrender often. Those who have too much blood on their hands to expect a fate other than death, usually don't. Unless they are cunning types who think they can bulls*** their way to staying alive. Or simply cowards.
Note, that unless PCs are famous and their viewpoints on mercy and second chances are well-known, the decision will be based on the general treatment of someone like their enemies in the area. For example, goblins of the region where the current campaign happens are well-known man-eaters and demon-worshippers (imagine, say, Golarion goblins, except somewhat tamer, a whole lot smarter and actually being/treated as a danger), their relationship with humans and human-satellite races is the constant war of mutual extermination, so an average goblin from there would commit suicide rather than surrender. When, on the other hand, PCs (and the local city militia) recently fought a raiding party of giants, surviving giants were quick to surrender en masse, after their position became hopeless, as there was no such bloody history between them and humanoids.
Oh, and as about my PCs reaction to fleeing or surrendering enemies, they tend to pursue only major threats, and pretty much ignore small fry. They practically always accept surrender. Probably because they figured out that really bad villains do not surrender in my games. Except they apparently didn't figure out that some of my villains can bluff and hide the extent of their guilt and pretend to be relatively harmless, when things turn against their side. Still, I prefer not to make cases of excessive mercy bite PCs in the ass directly.
I do a mix; having the bad guys do whatever I think they should do in a given situation. Honestly, the most powerful ones (that aren't also crazy) usually have a way out if they can swing it at all - and I rewrite the encounters of published adventures to give them that backdoor. Why the heck wouldn't you fly away if you could, or d-door, or teleport, etc. if you were getting your butt kicked and still had some evil plans that needed executing?
That said, I don't try to frustrate my players by having every bad guy get away...but it has definitely made them more aware of potential escape attempts when the enemy's starting to look like he's done with the fight because they know not everybody's going to fight to the death.
M
I usually run monsters as written (low morale = it flees)but humans, demihumans and humanoids get to act according to their motivation.
It helps that we houserule hand-to-hand combat and make it more efficient against NPCs wearing no/light armour. PCs feel they can dish out lots of damage, take down the bad guys quick without killing them and vice versa. And not end up in a spiral of honor-killings.
(in warhammer RAW this was a problem - a strong PC's hits a thief they were supposed to catch. The PC got a critical - end of Thief)
I usually have baddies surrender or flee, unless they're too stupid/mindless/dominated or too fanatical. Just as in the real world, I like to think that most creatures would rather survive to see another day than face certain death at the hands of the PCs. Also, doing so is a good way to keep the action going and preventing hackfests with no immediate danger to the PCs. A running gag in my campaigns involves fanatics who realize the battle is lost (I.E. the DM would rather get on to other battles instead of watching the PCs stomp the remaining minions) shooting themselves in the head with a crossbow rather than surrender to the PCs... One memorable time this got a little wacky was when an evil treant decided to end his life and pulled out a ballista. I figured a crossbow was a bit too small to make it through his bark...
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Call it personal preference, but immersion is everything. Creatures should act and respond the way we might realistically expect them to. Very few creatures will knowingly fight to the death just because.
Breaking immersion for ease of play is some janky low-tier s@*$ and I would never recommend it.
