Last session, I had an encounter lined up which wasn't intended to be a straight fight. The monsters were a bit hard for my third level party, and I was intending to run a tense chase scene through a dark, storm lashed night (good atmosphere, eh?).
I telegraphed the encounter with a scene of devastation, which did seem to worry the players, and had them spot the monsters with enough time to pack up and get going.
Of course they didn't. Like every other obstacle they've encountered so far in the AP, they've hit it straight on. Fortunately, the monsters weren't too smart, I staggered the attack to give the PCs a fighting chance, which they (especially the rogue) made the most of, and managed to survive (just). I reckon one bad round though and it would have been a TPK. And this has happened before - the last big fight I had to play the bad guys at their worst (completely within what was described in the AP) to compensate for PC tactics which are either thoughtless or arrogant.
Question is - how do you GMs out there get your parties to back off from a threat? To bravely run away?
I don't want to be telling them what to do, but I don't want to have to filter every encounter to make sure its winnable. They're in a sandbox environment, where some stuff is going to be too tough for them for quite a few levels yet.
But its a fun campaign, we are all enjoying it, and TPKs aren't my style.
Baldy
|
By doing a near TPK...hit every time and for massive damage...like of your party is 3rd level, wizard or sorcerer should have somewhere around 18-24 HP. Make a monster take them down to like 2 hitpoints in one blow. Or have them always hit the heavily armored fighter, shrug off spells and damage. Make them terrifying to face head on. If they don't run, then they are stupid and should die to be honest. Or maybe they are just used to encounters being easy or intermediate. Players usually metagame thinking that their GM wouldn't throw something ridiculously overpowered at them, because the rules say so or something. Which is wrong.
This same thing came up recently in a game I am participating in. We just started the Carrion Crown AP.
Afterwards, the DM reveals that the AP recommends 'steering the PC's away' from that area until lvl 3 or 4.
As to how to do it, well, I would guess run as normal and murder (or knock out) a few PC's, then give them an out. Make the monster run away or disappear for some reason.
If you combine PC death (or disablement) with whatever you use to 'telegraph' a lethally dangerous situation, they should know when to run.
Of course, this is assuming your PC's are not suicidally brave or stupid. I know a few DM's who swear by killing somebody right off the bat to show they are serious.
'Course, those are usually home brew. Ideally the AP's won't have to many of these situations except early on. Good luck!
|
In short, you can't.
All you can do is encourage it. Describe it as overwhelming odds. Emphasize how powerful the hits are and how each seems like near misses with death.
But short of taking control of their characters, you will never get them to do what you want them to do.
Talk with your group out of session. Make sure they KNOW that running is an option. That not every encounter is expected to be winnable. They may be metagaming that 'he won't throw something at us we're not meant to beat'.
And if they go up against something that is too much for them, let it kill someone. Character death causes caution. Too much death can cause too much caution, but it IS a tool in the arsenal.
I have enough of a reputation in our gaming group for being a PC killing GM that my players aren't shy about running away. Of course I've got a player in the group who frequently plays a character who is less than heroic, and once he bolts, the rest tend to follow.
I was running the 4e "Keep on the Shadowfell" and the party ran away from Irontooth three separate times. Of course the first two times they lost a PC before they ran.
I think one reason I've never had a TPK is because my players are completely convinced that I'll do it if they don't run away when they should.
Add monsters they know they won't be able to defeat - if they start a fight with group of hobgoblins but see patrol of four trolls and troll chieftan (recognizable thanks to all the tribal markings and fetishes made of fallen heroes' bones) coming this way and getting closer and closer in each round of fight. Hell, replace chieftain with giant. They should get the hint.
I have enough of a reputation in our gaming group for being a PC killing GM that my players aren't shy about running away. Of course I've got a player in the group who frequently plays a character who is less than heroic, and once he bolts, the rest tend to follow.
I was running the 4e "Keep on the Shadowfell" and the party ran away from Irontooth three separate times. Of course the first two times they lost a PC before they ran.
I think one reason I've never had a TPK is because my players are completely convinced that I'll do it if they don't run away when they should.
+1
Early in my DMing, and with my current group, I ran a free pre-fab adventure that had a CR 5 monster as the end boss for level 1 characters. (The Burning Plague, a free WotC web download for 3.x.)
I ran it as written, including monster tactics, and it killed my brother's snooty Sun elf wizard.
He rolled up a new character as a barbarian that he still plays. (We're still in the same 3.5e campaign. We don't play often.)
His has been the only player character death, but the players know I play by the numbers, and if the dice say a character bites it, I'm not above having them bite it. We've had multiple characters drop below 0 hitpoints and once the barbarian, who was paralyzed and being attacked by a creature with four claws and a paralytic bite, was only saved because the NPC ally beside of him threw him back through a portal the party came through to the plane where they fought that monster. The PC human barbarian was unconscious, as was the NPC lizardfolk ranger with the party. (The PC half-elf ranger saved the lizardfolk that day, but he died in a later session.)
Session before last, my party encountered a Blood Golem on a tower linked by bridges. Rather than fight him, they cast Dark Way (Spell Compendium) and made a bridge around the outside of the tower to avoid him entirely.
Last session, the party ranger (who had been separated) ran into the blood golem alone and defeated him alone with the use of archery versus the melee monster. Then, after regrouping with the party and obliterating some skeletons, they ran into a gorgon. Some knowledge checks were made, and the party decided to bravely run away. The gorgon trampled in the first round but the barbarian made his save. As the gorgon swung around for another go, another Dark Way was used by the party's PC archivist and the ranger stood on it making sure everyone was past him. (He was delaying.) The gorgon used its breath weapon and hit the ranger. He failed his save, and the party started debating with me whether he would then fall through the Dark Way (max 1800 lbs per creature) into the murky depths below when the player said he had meant to be readying until the last person passed him, so he could follow. I allowed the events to change for two reasons: 1.) Delaying didn't make any sense, but readying an action to go when everyone else was through did, and the player seemed to genuinely have meant readying. 2.) It was easier than figuring out if his statue on the Dark Way would fall through it because I have no idea how much a stone PC weighs.
My brother says "You're trying to kill us!" I respond "I'm trying to give you the illusion that I'm trying to kill you." But he knows I play by the numbers so illusion of danger is a very real threat of danger.
Essentially, the trick to getting your players to have their characters fear what lurks in the dark is to let them know that you don't necessarily want it to devour them, but you will let it devour them if that's how the dice fall. You're not there to kill them, but you will let them die, in other words.
=======================================
On a side note, my brother has the "good fortune" to have actually played The Burning Plague, the free WotC pre-fab adventure, twice now. He apparently played it with some college friends after we played it. (He didn't know it was the same adventure until after playing in it twice.) I'm told that the second experience with the adventure ended with a TPK on the first or second room because the DM really was out to kill them, which has given him a better appreciation for the fact that I'm not really out to kill them, just to present and maintain the illusion that I am.
Another sidenote, that water that the ranger would have maybe fallen in if he was petrified? The description of it just says something I would paraphrase as "If players try to go through the water, make sure it is an undesirable thing to do, making the contents terrifying and deadly." Or something like that. Well, after a little exposure to the water, my players got kind of close to it and the archivist wanted to know what was really in there, so he started baiting the water. I wanted to make sure it was something suitably terrifying so I had a few tentacles come up on shore and had him make a knowledge check (he's all about the Knowledge checks) to know the creature he was witnessing was a shoggeth. I showed in the picture in the Pathfinder Bestiary and let him know the CR, which is over double the party's average level. So yes, now there's less mystery about what's in the water, but they're also not going swimming any time soon.
|
|
A group of trolls with either fire or acid resistance. Or both. An old DM of mine used to do stuff like that whenever he thought we were metagaming. If that doesn't scare them, something is wrong. Or, and this is slightly meaner, flat out kill one of their characters. Troll with a couple levels of barbarian can do this pretty well. If your players don't think that you'll kill one of them, they have no reason to fear fighting things they should run from.
As the afore mentioned rogue, I'd like to point out a few things the party were thinking of ...
1) we thought that the trolls would be faster than us over the uneven ground, which they knew and we didn't,
2) they had darkvision and we didn't,
3) four of us had a small chance against two of them, but one-on-one (which could easily happen in the dark, in the woods, on a storm lashed night if we got separated) we had no chance.
4) We weren't actually sure they were trolls, we actually suspected ogres,
5) we had a druid with Entangle, so we knew we could stagger their approach one way or the other.
In short, compared to what could happen if we tried to leg it, standing our ground was actually looking like the best thing we could do. Admittedly, I would not have been so sure of myself if I'd known that our druid and primary caster hadn't prepared any fire-based spells ... at the same time, things didn't go perfectly well for us, but a bit of tactical thinking went a long way there.
One thing is out of game, say to your players, "Retreat is a viable tactic. You will not be punished or lose XP for it." In fact, if players end up performing a "tactical withdrawal" make sure they get XP or some other reward (tangible or intangible) for still "bypassing the encounter"--and cleverly, no less. (IIRC, the rules don't necessarily say you get XP for killing things--you get XP for resolving encounters, with no specification as to how you must "resolve" them--you might point that out.)
A lot of players, generally speaking, think that all monsters are there to be killed. Maybe it's because they're in "video game mode" where often the only viable response is to kill something, maybe because past GMs gave that expectation, intentionally or no. Some players are overconfident, assuming they can handle whatever is thrown at them (I actually tend to be like that as a player). Other players are afraid they will somehow lose out if they don't face the fight. They have to understand very clearly that this is not the case.
Understand, though, that this can become a double edged sword. Relatively recently I got frustrated because my players' PCs fled a fight I was really hoping to see play out. But to be fair, things went very poorly for them in the first round (don't open a starting salvo when your party is still clustered together in cone distance), and their reaction wasn't unreasonable. And honestly, my primary motivation was that I thought the fight would be really cool. I was very excited about how I had set up the terrain and had put a lot of work into the setting and set up, and I was simply disappointed I didn't get to see the preparation I put into the encounter pay off. But that also comes with the territory--if you make it clear retreat is a valid tactic, this means the players will do it---so as much as you want them to run from something that you intended to be too hard, remember they may also run from something you want them to tangle with, and be prepared to adjust accordingly.
Another thing (something I have had to learn the hard way): if you want something to be extremely difficult, don't change it at the last minute. Not wanting to TPK is GOOD, but if you present something as immensely challenging, and then alter the encounter last minute to protect the party (like your staggering the fight into waves), then they are going to get overconfident not realizing what happened there.
If you really need to tweak the fight to avoid TPK, just make sure you keep the SENSE of danger high. After everyone is wounded and barely conscious--then, say, point out they hear the rustling and barking of scavengers, but that if you get through the path to the south you can disappear into thick bramble and cross the stream to avoid detection. That makes it clear to them they are in danger (without presenting a physical threat), but also clearly points out to them they have an escape route and should suggest that you are okay with them using it.
.
..
...
....
.....
Give them somewhere to run to - a place to hide/defend/use.
Then you have more narrative options for why the beasties don't chow down on them - or you can crank up the fight into a staggered encounter where the party are pushed from one defensive local to another.
::
Places you can make interesting/tempting to run to:
::
There are, of course, many many ways to run it but aye, the basic idea for me is to give them a tempting option to retreat/flee/aim for (TO THE GATES! CHEEESE IT! rather than expecting them to simply leg it.
..and of course, nothing is guaranteed but hey - it all helps! :)
Thanks for the responses folks.
The main thing I'll be taking away from this is to make sure the exits are clearly marked.
Regards
Baldy
kill them, all of them. My DM has over done this and now we run away from everything, doing it a little less will make it a more viable option.
Early in my DMing, and with my current group, I ran a free pre-fab adventure that had a CR 5 monster as the end boss for level 1 characters. (The Burning Plague, a free WotC web download for 3.x.)
Ah, that was the first adventure I ever ran!
I'm not sure if that adventure was tailored for Pathfinder or not, so the CR seemed a bit wonky to me.
Just remember if its intelligent monsters it doesn't have to be a TPK - Intelligent monsters will stabilize and keep PC's for dinner (live adventurer on a spit), slaves, or ransom. While the PCs suffer and plan for escape, you just have to keep reminding them that if they had made a tactical withdrawal they would not be in such an embarrassing position.
Never, ever forget one thing: Retreat is quite often difficult to do in Pathfinder. The halfling rogue or dwarf fighter will simply not outrun a troll. Or a group of harpies. Or a dragon. It's heavily dependent on enemy and group setup, and of course the precise situation.
You don't have to outrun the dragon, just the dwarf and the halfling ...
I've been in a few situations with my own characters where our DM expected us to run - and we pragmatically decided that our chances were actually better to stand and fight, since the only one really mobile was our flying sorcerer.
Yes, this was our situation (as we saw it) but marking the exits would be helpful!
What I did was give them sight of something nasty in time to avoid it. For example, they kept rolling a bulette. This was when they were level 3. They kept seeing it in the same area, at level 4 a couple of times, at level 5, and finally at level 6 or so they saw it again, and decided to deal with it.
However, there is a downside to this. Per strict RAW they should get exp for avoiding the CR 7. However, that doesn't really make a huge amount sense, they didn't chase it off or defeat it, they just ran a long way around (rightly so), so I gave them Brains XP for doing it (which was basically a 100XP each) for not being stupid.
So, to me, the easiest way is to throw something out there they can't possibly defeat. If they're level 3, toss out two bulettes and give them sight of them in the valley as they top the crest of a hill or something. They can obviously go attack them (most chirurgeons list this as suicide by Bulette on the death certificates), or just bypass them. If they do the smart thing, give them 100xp. If they attack, pull out new character sheets and hand them out, tell them to be working on their new characters when it's not their turn. I think the idea will hit home fairly quickly.
You don't have to outrun the dragon, just the dwarf and the halfling ...
One of my favorite shirts you can get on Thinkgeek here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/3814/
Tough love. Set them up against overwhelming odds, and if they're dumb enough not to retreat, have some/all of them get killed. It's a pretty drastic measure, but it is the best way to give your players a sense of danger for their characters.
As a player, I regard running away as akin to sacrificing the lives of the PCs in the heavy armor. Sometimes, that's what you have to do and by sometimes I mean only in the case of a certain TPK. The likelihood of a fighter in plate mail getting away from an encounter is almost nil.
If you want them to run away, you have to be specific and state that the PCs estimate that if they leave now, Joe the Fighter might make it out alive.
As a player, I regard running away as akin to sacrificing the lives of the PCs in the heavy armor. Sometimes, that's what you have to do and by sometimes I mean only in the case of a certain TPK. The likelihood of a fighter in plate mail getting away from an encounter is almost nil.
If you want them to run away, you have to be specific and state that the PCs estimate that if they leave now, Joe the Fighter might make it out alive.
...especially when you have a Paladin in the party that refuses to run away.
|
If players are going to be kind of stupid and "just" run away, sure, guys in plate and those with short squatty legs will end up getting caught...
So, why not let slip during the Knowledge checks that said beastie likes to eat food the ranger/whoever carries...toss down some scooby snacks as a food based diversion.
Or other stuff.
"Just" running away is kind of stupid and boring.
Nobody remembers the chase scene where you just kept running...EVERYONE remembers when Snickers the Halfling Rogue tossed some beef jerky and donuts on the soft ground near the cliff edge and you managed to elude the rampaging troll.
You don't have to outrun the dragon, just the dwarf and the halfling ...One of my favorite shirts you can get on Thinkgeek here:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/3814/
Heh. Good shirt. Sometimes a sacrifice helps the PCs figure it out. I had a 4th level Paladin in plate once. We ran into a no win situation. They were faster than me (or any of us) and I told everyone else: "Run." And held the enemy at a chokepoint for a couple of rounds. Everyone else ran like H3ll and lived. Even the annoying Halfling thief. I switched to an Assassin (1E AD&D - a rogue in current parlance) for my next character. Damned if I was going to do the noble sacrifice routine too often :)
As a DM I've found the odd tpk or near tpk to be very instructive as well. If it happens once, the PCs will remember it and it informs their tactics after that. Hopefully they're smart enough to do without that type of lesson... if not, let the dice fall where they may. Once should be enough.
Problem is that players are hardwired to think they can "win" every encounter, even a fighting retreat towards advantageous ground would be a bit of a challenge for them to do simply because they think they should be able to beat each encounter.
There was an Order 66 podcast episode that covered this but buggered if I can remember which one it was and it was only part of the episode... lets see if I can convince 3.5 to do a piece on it or find the article.
The result of APs in a sense? The players are conditioned to think every encounter is, or is supposed to be, winable at their level. Guessing at this, because I have an old style sand box game, complete with random encounters and areas that are, without doubt, unsuitable for some of the PCs that stumble into them. Not that there aren't plenty of signs pointing to the nature of the areas. I have any number of scenarios buried in the sand as it were, but following up on them, and continuing to do so, are player choices...
|
how do you GMs out there get your parties to back off from a threat? To bravely run away?
The primary problem here is that your players are acclimated to "level appropriate encounters" rather than a mix of easy/tough/impossible challenges -- and this makes your game world "thin," predictable and stale, rather than rich in variety.
First thing: start asking for relevant knowledge checks when players encounter things, then volunteer information.
Second, get them used to a wide variety of events. Introduce them to creatures both absurdly weak (inform them of this after the skill check), incredibly dangerous (say, a dragon so large it blots out the sun and incinerates an entire hillside), and soul-searing evil (fear aura emanating from an area which is so strong that everyone in the party is Shaken or Panicked unless they roll a 20).
Introduce your divine casters to Omen of Peril. (Alternatively, if you the DM have an NPC accompanying the party, they have the spell. Roleplay them as fretful and nervous when appropriate if they have a high wisdom.)
Only a complete idiot does not run away from overwhelming odds...also, haste and expeditious retreat...every heavy armor wearer worth his salt should have some kind of single use item of this sort on hand for emegencies...30 to movement speed, no matter for how short a while is still formidable.
That depends on what the odds are of successfully running away ...
As many people suggested, I beat them into submission.
My favourite way of doing it was to use a band of highwaymen. The party was APL 2, the highwaymen outnumbered them (mostly Warrior 1) but also had an L3 Druid and L5 Ranger leader.
They were given the usual "This is our road, pay the toll, we'll let you go" sort of thing. They refused, despite having heard rumours of these guys and knowing that they had taken a few caravans.
One of the players actually make an evil-metagaming speak assessment of how this must be the next plot-point and how this encounter would be balanced to their level.
I disagreed, but said nothing. They fought, got entangled, beaten down and all of them were knocked out....
They woke up in a cart, naked under a burlap sack which contained the rough leathers and hide armour that 4 highwaymen used to use before the nice upgrades they got from the party, a dagger each and a note thanking them and reminding them that the 10gp each toll would have been cheaper.
|
|
As many people suggested, I beat them into submission.
My favourite way of doing it was to use a band of highwaymen. The party was APL 2, the highwaymen outnumbered them (mostly Warrior 1) but also had an L3 Druid and L5 Ranger leader.
They were given the usual "This is our road, pay the toll, we'll let you go" sort of thing. They refused, despite having heard rumours of these guys and knowing that they had taken a few caravans.
One of the players actually make an evil-metagaming speak assessment of how this must be the next plot-point and how this encounter would be balanced to their level.
I disagreed, but said nothing. They fought, got entangled, beaten down and all of them were knocked out....
They woke up in a cart, naked under a burlap sack which contained the rough leathers and hide armour that 4 highwaymen used to use before the nice upgrades they got from the party, a dagger each and a note thanking them and reminding them that the 10gp each toll would have been cheaper.
Nice :D
I presume they started taking thing with a grain of salt afterwards yes?
I play a cavalier in my current group. An order of the sword cavalier (can't go against the party without losing order abilities). There have been many, many times when I (the player) would have liked my character to run away (attacked in the night by ghouls, my character was down to 3hp before he could even move and even then he still didn't have his plate armor on). The thing is, if even one of my party members doesn't run, neither would the cavalier. So go ahead, you gritty realism DM you, kill my character, but if you're going to stack the odds where I can't avoid the encounter and my character doesn't run, save me a few die rolls and just arbitrarily inform me that my character died in the night, paralyzed, with his eyes open, feeling every bite as he was eaten by ghouls.
Mind you, if I saw a bullette just over the horizon the cavalier would plead with his party members to take the scenic route (his high diplomacy rolls falling on deaf PC ears), sigh, and then charge valiantly to his death.
I'd prefer bullette digestion to ghouls, I think.
They woke up in a cart, naked under a burlap sack which contained the rough leathers and hide armour that 4 highwaymen used to use before the nice upgrades they got from the party, a dagger each and a note thanking them and reminding them that the 10gp each toll would have been cheaper.
Nice :D
I presume they started taking thing with a grain of salt afterwards yes?
Mostly. Of course, I had one party member who insisted that I set them up, but he got over his hurt feelings. However, the party learned pretty quick that they're not invincible and that drawing coin is a better deal that drawing steel.
As I do love to say to people when they get a sense of entitlement, "Yes, it's true, you are a special and unique little snowflake -- just like everyone else."
Interestingly, that party later did manage to defeat those highwaymen and get their stuff back -- the ranger got away and plagued them for a while. At the same time, they also started thinking about cost-benefit a lot more -- so much so that at like APL 10 or 11, when faced with a group of bandits demanding a bridge tax, they threw a handful of coins and kept riding. (The illusionist then used a Major Image to have an illusionary dragon explain to the bandits that they were in a rush or they would have taken them out, and recommended that they relocate before the party returned "at a more leisurely pace")
|
I remember one game I played in, back in the Living Greyhawk days. At one point, during the climax, we were all being soundly defeated, dropping into negatives. The bad guys didn't really have a problem with us, per se, and so gave the one person left standing the chance to surrender, as they left and went about their nefarious business.
The PC decided to surrender, and made sure we survived that day. One of the other players, his PC unconscious and dying, called out, "No way! Keep fighting, we can take them!"
Sometimes, saying no doesn't work. Sometimes, punishment doesn't work.
I wrote a Living Greyhawk adventure, and included lots and lots of contingencies in it because, in my experiences, PCs never, ever, take no for an answer. The muesum doesn't want you to stick around guarding the artifacts, because they have their own paid guards? Yes, fine, you can guard the artifacts, but you'll have to sneak back into the museum to do so after hours. Oh, look, the artifacts are stolen, and guess who's been caught sneaking into the museum? Yes, for the purposes of story, the artifacts were going to be stolen, but I didn't want them to have to be stolen from you. Got it? Well, enjoy jail for a while, meet the creepy death priest you subdued earlier, and sit in jail watching as he breaks himself (and you, incidentally) out. That's done, back to the adventure. I understand that particular sequence of events played itself out in the adventure time and time again. Attack the village? Fine, no problem, here's how to run it, you might even succeed, they're just a bunch of first level commoners. But... they're just a bunch of no-challenge first level commoners. Is that what you really want to do?
Of course, what's worse is the player who, in the face of overwhelming odds, fights futilely, and then complains when he loses, because how dare the GM allow that to happen?
Never, ever forget one thing: Retreat is quite often difficult to do in Pathfinder. The halfling rogue or dwarf fighter will simply not outrun a troll. Or a group of harpies. Or a dragon. It's heavily dependent on enemy and group setup, and of course the precise situation.
I've been in a few situations with my own characters where our DM expected us to run - and we pragmatically decided that our chances were actually better to stand and fight, since the only one really mobile was our flying sorcerer.
As a player I always try to have "run away" as an option. Depending on the character I am playing I either have that as a personal option, or as a tactic I've set up for the party.
For example, my druid is the group leader, and she will deliberately memorize "party retreat" spells. Examples of "party retreat" spells are the following:
Entangle (awesome run away spell)
Summon Nature's Ally (great because it's an at-will option)
Hide from animals (situational, but great in those situations)
Obscuring mist (also great, but requires some tactical coordination)
Fog Cloud (sort of a better version of Obscuring Mist)
Feather Step (really clever if you can also CREATE difficult terrain)
All of these will work on the "my halfling runs slow!" problem.
But there are other ways to deal with that which don't necessarily involve needing a druid, wizard or cleric to save the halfling's butt. The halfling himself/herself should always have a backup plan (like a potion of invisibility, maybe?) Also, hiding is always a good option for certain characters.
The bottom line is that if your character was a "real person" they would likely always have an exit strategy, unless the situation was truly unusual (stuck in a cave with the door blocked by a cave-in, for example).
When I'm in a party playing a self-interested character I always make sure that I can get away even if the rest of the party is too foolish to plan. Hiding and sneaking is a viable option for a sneaky skill-monkey. But a fly potion is pretty hard to beat. Especially if you combine that with an invisibility potion.
Question is - how do you GMs out there get your parties to back off from a threat? To bravely run away?
I haven't read the whole thread, so maybe this is late.
I got my guys to run away last week. I wanted to know where their breaking/retreat point was, and I found it. I hit them with a three-stage encounter: undead claws reaching up from beneath the murky sewage they were wading through. A few of them nearly drowned (the opening salvo was nearly a TPK: the inquisitor with the light source, and the cleric with channel energy, both got pulled under and held down). Then, just as they were starting to turn things around, some Grell came along and started playing tug-o'-war against the claws, using the PCs instead of rope. The Grell started taking off in opposite directions with their paralyzed prey. Then, just as the party started to turn the tide in that situation, I described a loud roar coming from down the tunnel, from something lurking just outside of the range of their light, and I had the Grell flee the scene in a panic.
That did it: nearly drowned, nearly ripped in twain, paralyzed, and almost carried off as food, they weren't ready to face whatever the Grell found so frightening. So they ran.
...until two rounds later when the fighter turned at the choke point to face the pursuers: three Seugathi, using Grindylows as their minions. The fighter dived in among them, full throttle. This forced the others to either leave him to his fate, or join in the melee, sacrificing the advantage of the choke point. The monk chose to assist, while some blind halfling NPC companions said, "Sayonara." Everyone else stayed nearby, attempting to serve as strikers from the choke point.
We left off with the party all strung out in an adjacent corridor, the monk grappled face down in the muck, and the fighter totally naked because the Seugathi's Aura of Madness convinced him he was burning up (I have my own table for confusion effects). He was pulled to safety, but his stuff is back in the muck.
TL;DR - I got the party to run away for a whopping two rounds.
Good points.Missed your post while I was writing. I agree - aforementioned fighter has invisibility potions, a fly potion, an item casting Expeditious Retreat once per day, and at least a bit of acrobatics to get away easier.
The problem is - that might help me against a bunch of archers. A bunch of brutes. It'll only delay the wizard. It won't even do that to a dragon. In many, many situations, its simply a nonoption. I don't run from archers, I get the sorcerer to cast wind wall, or just throw down a darkness or obscuring mist spell myself (racial and item), then close in and tear them apart in melee. I don't run from brutes, the group obliterates them from afar.
Its the complex encounters that require running, rarely the "group of archers" or "group of brutes" types, no matter how high level. And those complex encounters are exactly the ones where running away gets difficult without teleport.
Perhaps part of the confusion here is that I don't see "running away" as "fleeing in panic." I see it as "tactically retreating."
Also the level of the encounter matters. It is obviously more difficult to retreat from a dragon than it is to retreat from a gelatinous cube. However as you get to higher levels, your options for retreating should also improve. And there is always the option of the "sacrifice for the good of others" so that in a truly deadly situation you only lose one PC, not the whole group.
If the GM has truly set up an encounter so that you have no options to retreat, I would have some conversation with that GM to understand why they did so. Especially if the encounter was obviously overpowered and there was no retreat. That's pretty much the very definition of a GM deliberate TPK.
Back to the IronTooth scenario. My party attacked Irontooth in his lair three times, twice losing a PC and running away all three times. I could have made it a TPK, all I had to do was have Irontooth and his allies pursue the PCs relentlessly and refuse to stop until every PC was dead.
But that's not realistic. First of all, Irontooth was defending his lair, he wasn't out hunting PCs. Second, Irontooth and his gang are more powerful in their lair, they know the traps and the terrain and can use both to their advantage. Fighting in the open removes those advantages. Third, leaving the lair in pursuit of the PCs leaves the treasure in the lair open for opportunistic thieves or raiders, of which Irontooth is only too well aware.
So, to me, it was realistic for Irontooth and his gang to pursue the PCs for a couple hundred yards from the lair, and then spit curses and insults at the beaten curs and return to their lair to reset and create new traps and brag about how they had run off yet another group of adventurers.
In other words, they are pretty lazy and selfish and I play them that way.
I could go on with other scenarios. The bottom line is that even in the absolute worst case the encounter should have at least one way for the party to escape, a way that is telegraphed to the group so that they know how to escape. If they choose to ignore that option and fight to the death, then I'll kill them if that's how it turns out. But so far that has never happened. I've had a LOT of encounters where one party member sacrificed themselves to save the others, but so far every encounter has had a way out, and many parties have taken advantage of that escape path, even if it meant leaving a buddy behind.
In one of my games a couple of nights ago, the party (sorceress, ranger, and paladin, all first-level) was making their way through a cave in order to rescue a boy from town who had wandered into it, and retrieve an item of archaeological significance.
We came to the apparent end of the cave and witnessed a large group of goblins performing a ritual of some sort, to resurrect a powerful devil or demon "General" whom had been sealed in the cave for several hundred years. The paladin used Detect Evil, and was informed of the crippling headache she got as a result. We then watched the General pull a tree trunk from his chest (the remains of the tree that was used to bind him) and stand up, all claws and teeth and armour, biting off a nearby goblin's head and taking out four or five others with a swipe of his hand. The GM started counting down from 3.
Naturally, my inclination as a player and as a character was to try to rescue the child if possible and get out of there with a quickness. The other two party members attacked, and although it was apparent the attacks were ineffective, the GM told us that our enemy was still recovering. There was a hole in his stomach where the tree had been growing for 500 years, and he was thus much weaker than he normally would be. The ranger succeeded on a check to realize that the berries from the felled tree would be his weakness, so my character broke off a cluster of them and tossed them into the General's wound, succeeding by 1 on the attack roll. A sapling sprang forth and took root, the paladin used Smite Evil to land the final blow, and the day was ours.
I suppose it's a subversion in that we were victorious because we didn't retreat when we should have -- no telling what nasty things would have happened had our enemy managed to recoup his strength in full and gotten out of the cave.
I suppose it's a subversion in that we were victorious because we didn't retreat when we should have -- no telling what nasty things would have happened had our enemy managed to recoup his strength in full and gotten out of the cave.
Had you asked your GM afterwards if that was original plan or just going with the flow to avoid TPK?
When you started the description and said about goblins trying to revive fiend I thought that it would mean start of longer campaign with the fiend being Big Bad.|
|
This reminds me of a Star Wars Saga game I was in a couple weeks ago, in which the PCs are tangling with a Sith and his "pet" apprentice with a force-whip and almost untouchable reflex save (which, in Saga, also pulls duty as armor-class as the concepts are not separated).
The party's 7th-level NPC cop gunslinger (with 18s in prime stats) has pumped over 80 points of damage into the sith and knocking him down the condition track with each hit, yet he's taking it nonchalantly and just Second Wind eliminates most of the damage. Finally he sics "pet" on the gunny cop; and she shreds him down half in a single attack. For about the fifth time, he politely (if sneeringly) suggests we just leave before we really cheese him off.
My character was the "cleric" (lots of Vital Transfer force-powers and mondo hitpoint "sink") of the party, and I'd pretty much shot my whole reserve of healing on just one of the Jedi PCs who'd gone from full-up to unconscious due to 10d6 worth of Force Lightning twice in two turns.
All of the PCs in the party were 3rd-level at this point -- but most of the players were somehow under the impression that they could win this encounter even though the GM told us right at the beginning of the session that we were going to be getting our butts paddled good and proper during the "introduction" of a major reoccurring villain.
Had you asked your GM afterwards if that was original plan or just going with the flow to avoid TPK?
When you started the description and said about goblins trying to revive fiend I thought that it would mean start of longer campaign with the fiend being Big Bad.
I actually have talked extensively with the GM about the campaign, and the impression I got was that there are several more like the fiend in the campaign world. I think we were meant to win the battle, even if that didn't appear to be the case at first.
|
|
To the OP : do it Han Solo style. Have the PCs meet an advance guard/scouting party. Make it a really difficult, nigh lethal fight but have them win it, for example by having the enemies flee. And then have the main group of enemies appear in the distance, far enough that the PCs can realistically flee.
If they stay, it's TPK time (or surrender/nonlethal damaged into unconsciousness if you prefer).