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I always make sure to "subtly" remind my players that running is always an option when they're fighting things.
Though I do try to not toss the unstoppable death machine from hell at them unless the character in question is supposed to more "send them a message" or assert his superiority rather than straight up murder them.
I think that's pretty reasonable, particularly if there's no absolute need to fight said monster. So long as it's not happening too regularly, that is.
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Players can get pretty thick-headed about the running thing. I don't think you can expect them to run, rather I think you can hope that they will but expect that they will fight to the bitter TPK and then complain to their GM about it.
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running my players through rise of the rune lords...
yeah I laid all the hints they needed to retreat, they wouldn't until they were practically killed and dead...
yeah I expected them to run, but they refused.
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The creature 'wasn't targeting them specifically'. Was it attacking innocent people? If so, any heroic character should be expected to try to intervene.
I've read a number of threads here where GMs are frustrated by their players refusing to flee. There are several reasons:
Pathfinder trains you to expect CR-appropriate enemies - even when the enemy is too powerful this isn't usually obvious.
Most Pathfinder monsters are hard to escape from. (You provoke AoOs and they're faster than you.)
Unless everyone runs at once, you're splitting the group and dooming the allies you leave behind. And if you're going in initiative order, no-one wants to be the first one to run.
And many players are idiots who think that courage and persistence are enough to overcome all obstacles.
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I was so shocked that players wouldn't run, in my Eberron game several years ago, that I had to type up a freakin' mission statement and send it out to the players. (It was really only for the two players who stood their ground against a Huge dragon, because the rest of the players would run in extreme circumstances, but I sent it to everybody.)
Here are things that I should have made explicit a long time ago. Think of this as my "Metagame Contract" with my players. Please feel free to comment or suggest changes.
Although I edited it, I stole the idea for this and parts of it wholesale from a post online. Other DMs should feel free to steal it from me and edit it (or not) for their campaigns.
* The DM is never -- *ever* -- playing "DM vs. Player."
* Some encounters will not be winnable through combat.
* Sometimes the PCs will have to run to survive.
* Retreat will usually, but not always, be possible.
* Sometimes the PCs will have to surrender to survive.
* Surrender by PCs will usually, but not always, be honored by enemies.
* Sometimes the PCs will be insulted and even humiliated by enemies.
* The DM is not out to kill PCs. The DM dislikes killing PCs.
* PCs can die. Bad luck, bad tactics, foolish behavior, and even fair fights can kill PCs.
* Cool and heroic actions will usually not count as bad tactics or foolish behavior.
* Good storytelling involves setbacks, and those setbacks can sometimes be very serious.
* Good storytelling also involves PCs bouncing back stronger from serious setbacks.
* The ongoing goal for the campaign is good storytelling.
* The end goal for the campaign is success and heroism for the PCs.
I just set the tone tonight with a villainous lieutenant deciding to cut and run. If the bad guys can run, you can run.
I had intended him to take out a couple of NPCs important to PCs backstories, press the much lower level PCs , then flee as NPC allies evened the odds. But the dice were against him and he ended up looking much more incompetent than he actually was. He got entangled in a net, couldn't make the strength or escape artist check to flee, the low level PCs surrounded him, and he bugged out with invisibility and flight abilities. And the PCs still got victory shots on him by targeting the flying net.
(note to self: The phrase is "Well, I didn't expect that to happen", not "Wow, that wasn't supposed to happen")
But the positive thing is I think there's a tone set that battles aren't necessarily to the death. Fight on if you think you can win, and if not, flee unless it's worth dying over.
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If the bad guys can run, you can run.
I wouldn't count on the players following that type of rule. "If the bad guys can be cowardly murderers, we can be cowardly murderers!"
In this particular case we couldnt' outrun it (its 40 feet vs our 30 max) but still we fought it, realizing we probably wouldn't win.
You don't have to run faster than the T-Rex. You just have to run faster than the dwarf.
If the bad guys can run, you can run.I wouldn't count on the players following that type of rule. "If the bad guys can be cowardly murderers, we can be cowardly murderers!"
In this particular case we couldnt' outrun it (its 40 feet vs our 30 max) but still we fought it, realizing we probably wouldn't win.You don't have to run faster than the T-Rex. You just have to run faster than the dwarf.
I am amused by your juxtaposition :)
Here are things that I should have made explicit a long time ago. Think of this as my "Metagame Contract" with my players. Please feel free to comment or suggest changes.
Although I edited it, I stole the idea for this and parts of it wholesale from a post online. Other DMs should feel free to steal it from me and edit it (or not) for their campaigns.
* The DM is never -- *ever* -- playing "DM vs. Player."
* Some encounters will not be winnable through combat.
* Sometimes the PCs will have to run to survive.
* Retreat will usually, but not always, be possible.
* Sometimes the PCs will have to surrender to survive.
* Surrender by PCs will usually, but not always, be honored by enemies.
* Sometimes the PCs will be insulted and even humiliated by enemies.
* The DM is not out to kill PCs. The DM dislikes killing PCs.
* PCs can die. Bad luck, bad tactics, foolish behavior, and even fair fights can kill PCs.
* Cool and heroic actions will usually not count as bad tactics or foolish behavior.
* Good storytelling involves setbacks, and those setbacks can sometimes be very serious.
* Good storytelling also involves PCs bouncing back stronger from serious setbacks.
* The ongoing goal for the campaign is good storytelling.
* The end goal for the campaign is success and heroism for the PCs.
Great list. Favourited and copied.
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When 3.x was created it based it's encounters on a formula of each encounter depleting the PC's resources by 25%. This was established as the "norm." Encounters that MIGHT possibly end in a single PC death were expected to be final boss fights, the climax of an encounter. This was "necessary" to preserve balance.
Prior to 3.x it was not uncommon for demon lords, or vampires, etc. to appear in low level adventures. The player was expected to know when to run and when to stay and fight.
But 3.x took that away. The expectation now, is that as GM you should never, ever put anything before the PCs that they cannot kill with minimal effort.
I just love killing dumb players :)
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It is okay to expect your party to do anything, a player has just as much right to run as they do to fight on with all the consequences that come with those choices and sometimes one is more appropriate than the other. Sometimes it's the wrong idea to retreat from the goblin horde attacking the village square sometimes its the wrong idea to continue to fight frost giant you stumbled into in the wilderness. My answer to players is that this is meant to be a living world, not a videogame the lands have creatures that can and will overpower and kill you and they don't see the tiny town where you are wandering around and go "ohh no this area is too low level for me". Now grant it I don't like to slam my players with ultra high cr encounters regularly but sprinkling them in or letting them happen if we roll high on a random encounter helps sell the danger and life of a world that needs heroes like the PC's.
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When it's really, really, blindingly obvious that the PCs are going to die if they stay and fight, and they're only staying and fighting because they're PCs and PCs hate to be pussies, I'm not subtle about it at all. I'll ask for a Wisdom check, DC sometimes as low as 5, and any character that makes it knows that if they fight this fight, they'll die.
I really dislike killing PCs. TPKs actually send me into brief depressions. But without risk to the beloved heroes, IMO, the game isn't fun, so ...
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When it's really, really, blindingly obvious that the PCs are going to die if they stay and fight, and they're only staying and fighting because they're PCs and PCs hate to be pussies, I'm not subtle about it at all. I'll ask for a Wisdom check, DC sometimes as low as 5, and any character that makes it knows that if they fight this fight, they'll die.
I really dislike killing PCs. TPKs actually send me into brief depressions. But without risk to the beloved heroes, IMO, the game isn't fun, so ...
This. The other thing to impress upon your players is that being a hero doesn't mean being stupid or reckless. Remember that the greatest heroes have the wisdom to tell when a fight just cannot be one by normal means and sometimes when you see a giant chucking boulders the size of mini vans they should take that as a good indication that it's time to turn around. Secondly the point of play and being a gm is to create compelling storytelling and sometimes that might just mean a fight that they cannot win. In my current groups first session their 3rd level characters ran into a leviathan while out in the middle of the ocean and the thing literally broke the ship in half. None of them thought that was the proper time to fight the thing, they had bigger worries like finding a way off the sinking ship and sometimes that's the right thing to do. Suffice it to say that game was an absolute blast and watching both the foreshadowing of the leviathan and them fighting the giant vermin that clambered over the ship as they tried to find a way to escape was awesome.
It is reasonable to expect PCs to run-away. However, be careful to remember that what is obvious to you, the DM, is not obvious to anyone else. Neither NPCs, PCs, or Players understand the situation like you do. Mortals seem really stupid, until you remember that you're god.
Also, things that are obvious to the character are not obvious to the players, and vice-versa. This can often occur, in my case at least, when the DM knows what the scene is like, the Characters would know what's going on, but the DM, the narrator, neglected to give the Players important information about what's happening. For example, I'm currently participating in a PbP Skulls and Shackles game.
It's meta-gaming, but not in the usual manner. Instead of characters being smarter than they should, it's characters being dumber than they should. Also remember that they may not be running away because what is obvious to the Player is not obvious to the Character, and the Player may being trying to play true to character. This is especially true if the character is faced with a adversary that the player, either by bestiary or gaming-table knowledge, knows is too powerful, but character doesn't. Maybe they haven't encountered it before, maybe it isn't obviously dangerous, or maybe the fighter doesn't know the difference between an Allip, a Wraith, and a Shadow.
That's just general stuff. In the OP's specific circumstance, I'd ask the player why the Wizard fire-balled it when it was obviously more powerful and confrontation was not necessary. If the player's response is 'because it's there, therefore we should be able to beat it.', less sympathy. If it's more 'Wait, it was a what?! Man he never would have done that then.' be sympathetic. Remember the lesson of the Gazebo.
If they are going to be overrun, I as a dm give them a really solid hint in my best Gandalf voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meOCdyS7ORE
Or I paint it nice and clear, you can stay but given what you have.
No. If you build an encounter with the expectation that the players should run it's likely they won't be able to. Pretty much anything that the party can't hope to kill risks killing someone on round one if played fairly.
If monsters are played with all their abilities running is almost never an option. Most monsters are faster than PCs and once an equally fast enemy threatens you it's almost impossible to get away by the normal movement rules. You withdraw they charge. You run they get an AoO against your flat footed AC. Probably a trip if they're smart.
The rules just don't make running practical unless you're something like an all druid and monk party.
Stagger it, by that I mean stages of enemies. Or scouts are harassing them but something huge is close. Now is not the time to get surrounded and cut off. Fleeeeee!
E.g. botched stealth mission of level 2 party. Goblin scouts are engaging party, armoured fighter ogres are on the way.
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No. If you build an encounter with the expectation that the players should run it's likely they won't be able to. Pretty much anything that the party can't hope to kill risks killing someone on round one if played fairly.
If monsters are played with all their abilities running is almost never an option. Most monsters are faster than PCs and once an equally fast enemy threatens you it's almost impossible to get away by the normal movement rules. You withdraw they charge. You run they get an AoO against your flat footed AC. Probably a trip if they're smart.
The rules just don't make running practical unless you're something like an all druid and monk party.
Potential antagonists don't need to chase the PCs. They may be guarding something (their lair, their young, MASSIVE TREASURE), or have better things to do elsewhere.
Sometimes an evil monster just wants to be left alone, mkay?
It is absolutely okay to expect the PCs to run. However most published adventures don't rely on it to happen. I don't mean to offend anyone but in my experience most APs or adventures are 'tuned' rather low, towards a 15 point spread and assuming the players are rather inept or new to the game.
This isn't a bad thing, as it makes it more marketable when running the game with new players (people aren't dying, enjoying themselves and then go buy the next one), but it does seem rather boring when playing with people used to the system and who know the system well enough to make 'powerful' characters. This isn't to say there isn't a lethal encounter (and just about every AP seems to have one, check the forums for each AP) but it honestly seems like the APs we've run with our own group were pretty much 'steamrolled' with a few exceptional encounters.
Basically, in my opinion, there should be some sort of sense of failure possible, some sort of challenge. The PCs shouldn't 'expect' to always be victorious by virtue of being player characters. They should 'know' that failure is possible either through bad rolls or bad choices (IE not running). As a player, I'm really bored in a game where we always 'win' and there is no sense of urgency, or no challenge to the encounters. I'd honestly rather not play if that is how things are going to 'go' in a game. I put quite a bit of effort into building a character and a good deal of the 'fun' is seeing how the character fares in the game, if they can survive the challenges that crop up.
The short answer here is pretty much: If you have to ask, then no, you can't expect them to run.
The long answer is, you really need to actually consult with your players about. As a baseline, yes, it's absolutely possible to set up a situation where it is plainly obvious that the only options are flee or die (you have to be really blunt about it though, like adult red dragon flying around that hasn't spotted the first level party blunt).
Even then though, you have to consider the specific characters you're dealing with. Is anyone skeptical by nature? Do they assume impossible seeming odds are most likely some trick? i.e. That's most likely not a real dragon, just some kobold trying to scare us off with an illusion? Does anyone have a suicidal amount of self-confidence, or a full on deathwish? Is there anyone with any sort of self-sacrificial protect the civilians/never leave a man behind sort of outlook? (There almost definitely is.) Throw any of those in the mix and you're almost definitely going to end up with at least one death (and then probably more as people try to recover the body). Even if people have a generally good sense of self-preservation, you should always expect them to spend at least one round testing the waters before deciding if they're going to run, and it's pretty hard to peg that sweet spot where something can nearly kill someone in a round without full-on killing them that round or the next (especially if they happen to roll a 20).
The next consideration is whether you're making it clear that fleeing is even possible. Plenty of people have already pointed out how the mechanics generally punish anyone who attempts to do so with death, where exactly are they supposed to run to? If you're out in the open, you're easy to chase down. If you have access to a mass teleport spell, you generally can't use it while everyone's spread out all over. If there's a narrow tunnel the monster can't fit through, it can still probably squeeze or burrow or take the long way around or has some sort of ranged attack (I can't think of anything that would make for an unwinnable fight that doesn't). Plus hey, eventually the party has to sleep, and this monster will have plenty of time to ambush them while they're helpless and unarmored.
The real thing you need to discuss with your players though is whether they even want a game where sometimes the only option is to flee. Personally, when I sign up for a new campaign, my expectation is that I'm going to get to be the big shining hero, who's confident that no matter how bad things look, if everyone in the party is smart, and works as a team, and watches out for each other, we'll win out in the end and make the world a better place and all that. Really, the whole game is designed around the assumption that that's pretty much every PC. The whole concept of experience levels exists so you can steadily face increasingly dangerous challenges, all of which seem dangerous at the time. The world is full of monsters that can kill you or worse, generally inhabiting places anyone with a functional sense of self-preservation would never dream of setting foot in, etc. etc.
If I'm playing a character like that, being faced with a legitimately hopeless situation is probably going to break her. That's forcing me out of Big Damn Hero mode, and instead making me be the powerless mortal, running away from something I can't possibly deal with. Now again, personally speaking, that's not something I'm totally uninterested in, but generally I'll save that for horror games.
All that said, if all you want to do is foreshadow something as a big threat, just have it do its big bad threatening thing in view of the players but not stick around for a confrontation. Let's you demonstrate that they can't handle it yet, but in a more motivational sense.
Encouraging a strategic withdrawal is also possible. Room A contains terrain that really favors the PCs. Room B contains a fight that has them outclassed. Hope they're smart enough to make the connection.
Finally, there's the scenario where you're going for something like "the party is supposed to sneak past this demon army to destroy the magic circle that summoned them and thus banish them back from whence they came." There, you just want to be completely unambiguous that that's the scenario they're dealing with up front. If they go all Leeroy Jenkins from there, you can't say you didn't warn them.
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I remember the days before CR, and I'm really happy that it was introduced; it makes it much easier for the GM to estimate if the PCs can handle a monster. It prevents some mistakes (turning a Will-o'-Wisp loose on a level 4 party...)
If you're running a sandboxy campaign with CR all over the place, it's useful to tell the PLAYERS explicitly that there's no CR = APL guarantee in force. That they should invest in some tools (caltrops, smokesticks) that can help if they do need to evade pursuit.
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I have no problem with, shall we say, encouraging PCs to flee in the face of extreme adversity. However, I would like to relate a personal experience that actually brought my group's weekly game crashing down around our ears.
Background: the party had started at 1st level, and built up to 11th. This campaign was going for the long haul. Every single encounter was winnable, but never particularly easy (though smart play and good tactics often prevailed and made them seem easy). The party learned that we could and would win, if we were dedicated enough, and stuck to it enough. During this campaign, the GM had designed his own race of monsters that we fought on several occasions. Some of them were particularly nasty, and they frequently had class levels (ever fought a Sorcerer with Greater Invisibility that can fly and Dominate Person when none of the party has See Invis? Yeah, it's messy.) Every time we met these things, they attacked, we killed.
The End: The GM decided that he wanted to teach us humility. He did not do this by discussing it with the group, though. He decided to run an encounter, instead. Here's the set-up: the party have just left a mine, victorious after defeating some lesser monsters. On a ridge above the mine entrance was (invisible) a combat machine monster that alone was a serious threat to the party. In the trees near the mine entrance were at least two Sorcerer enemies (also invisible) who attracted the party's attention while the combat-machine waited to begin its assault. Oh, and backing all of these up was (also invisible) an 18th level Sorcerer.
There was no discourse, no gloating by the enemy, nothing except them attacking us (not to kill, I'll grant you). We fought back. Boy, did we fight back. All of the big guns came out. Our wizard unleashed hell, the cleric ran into the middle of the combat zone and used Invisibility Purge. Nothing worked. They were all out of range, still invisible, peppering us from afar with attacks designed to disable us, and we could do nothing in reply. Nothing. The wizard threw up See Invis, but couldn't overcome their Stealth rolls (note that the GM fiated that his 19 on the dice for the Stealth check beat the Wizard's natural 20 without even bothering to check the bonuses the wizard had to Perception).
Then the combat-machine charged. It got inside the Invis Purge area, and popped into view. By this time, the party were half dead, one of us was Dominated and about to attack the party, and we were starting to run out of resources (did I mention that these things had SR, too?).
That's when the GM said it. "Well, you defeated a CR 3 encounter inside the mine, so I though I'd see how you could handle an encounter that much above your level, too. You could just run away."
No. We couldn't. The Wizard could teleport himself and 3 others of us to safety, if we all got together. That would have left two of the party stranded there. The enemies we were fighting could all fly faster than we could move, and were invisible. We were in difficult terrain. Not to put too fine a point on it, we were screwed. Escape was not an option. Which left fighting to the bitter end.
We'd never surrendered. Up to this point every encounter had shown us that if we failed to win, these creatures would kill us, regardless of the fact that right now they were basically toying with us. Until that very moment the PCs had not even seen any of the enemies they were fighting in this encounter. The characters had no clue how outclassed they were. And the GM was expecting us to give up. To run. To sacrifice our characters to an "unknown outcome" (which our characters had every expectation would be death).
Sure, you can expect your players to run away. But it helps if you don't stack the odds so far against them and give them an in-world expectation that fleeing will mean death.
If you want them to use it as an option, be sure not to "close the door" behind them.
Heroic fight is heroic.
And PC's will go down fighting if they feel there is no other way...
Oh, and Kingmaker:
Party level 5-6
GM: "You see some 8 to 13 trolls in the distance. What do you do?"
Party: Hesitates and look at GM for guidance.
Gm: Waits (no class levels in a caster class, so no guidance).
Party: We make sure not to set up a camp fire tonight.
I, the GM, loved them.
I even made 2 or 3 stay behind the next day for them to feel heroic about. The rest of the 'herd' moved on.
It is reasonable.
But players are sometimes dumb.
So it can be important to remind them.
Normally I am one who challenges the often stated assertion that "players today aren't like players back in the old days."
In general I still believe that players today and players 30 years ago are really very, very similar.
But this is one glaring exception. The game as it is set up and played today does tend to set up an array of encounters that scale with the PCs and in many cases players have been trained by published modules or GMs following the encounter CR guidelines to expect a series of APL, APL +2 and APL +4 encounters which should be within the party's ability to survive if played properly.
For that reason something like the "metagame contract" described above is a good idea if you plan on expecting the players to run.
Also, I personally find "capturing the PC" story lines to generally be a very bad idea for a lot of reasons. But running away to fight another day should be on the table to keep the sense of mortality which provides tension for the story.
I really dislike killing PCs. TPKs actually send me into brief depressions.
My DMing has resulted in three TPKs over the years, and although I feel that players made bad choices, I also feel as though I failed them.
The problem, I find, is that there are some GMs who suffer from the propensity to do on-the-fly encounter scaling, which is one of the worst possible violations of suspension of disbelief one can have. Many GMs dial up or down the HP of monsters behind the screen, fudge rolls, etc, to ensure that the party is almost-but-not-quite beaten in every combat, on the false pretense that such combats are more exciting. In truth, they merely serve to set player expectations, and they cheapen the fights that were legitimately close calls.
An old acquaintance of mine does this routinely in his games, which led me to quit playing with him. We have a player in our current game who came from his game, and his PC got completely slaughtered last month by staying when he should have run. His encounter expectations were set by prior poor GMing. He appeared to be pretty put off by it.
So in some ways it's the responsibility of a good GM to train his players expectations towards good gaming principles, not purely to "expect" them to follow them.
Many GMs dial up or down the HP of monsters behind the screen, fudge rolls, etc, to ensure that the party is almost-but-not-quite beaten in every combat, on the false pretense that such combats are more exciting.
But it is important that the players sometimes feel as though they could have died, just as much as it is important they get to feel like bad asses sometimes. Isn't that correct?
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Silly level 7 heroes not realizing that the demon they encountered was CR13, and would therefore crush them, unlike a mere CR9 demon, which would have been completely appropriate to attack. It should have been obvious that this was the point where my script said they should run.
beej67, adjusting encounters on the fly is a skill every GM should have.
Like most things though, the difficult thing is to know when to do it and when not to.
In situations where I expect the party to have to run, I do my best to make it starkly obvious that running is going to be necessary. The Balrog in Moria situation is an illustrative example.
I also will call for wisdom checks if I feel the party is not reacting to the situation as I feel a real character would.
Having said that it occurs to me that I have not had an encounter that my current game's party has had to flee for quite some time.
In my current game the party encountered a group of bandits that clearly outgunned them. The point was to have them flee and build a personal animosity towards that bandit leader and eventually track him down and defeat him.
They ran, they stewed, they plotted and planned and eventually (after gaining two levels) they defeated the bandit lord. So it all worked out. But other than one army of demons that was clearly suicidal, they have not had to run since.
It's probably time to remind them that the world is a dangerous place...
No. If you build an encounter with the expectation that the players should run it's likely they won't be able to. Pretty much anything that the party can't hope to kill risks killing someone on round one if played fairly.
If monsters are played with all their abilities running is almost never an option. Most monsters are faster than PCs and once an equally fast enemy threatens you it's almost impossible to get away by the normal movement rules. You withdraw they charge. You run they get an AoO against your flat footed AC. Probably a trip if they're smart.
The rules just don't make running practical unless you're something like an all druid and monk party.
Sometimes an encounter that they can't win won't bother hunting them down. There are in fact enemies that would LET them run away.
Are you kidding? When my Shattered Star group started there were only 3 PCs. Their main tactic was retreat. :D
Now there are 6 PCs and I plan to include "sounds of battle" aggro. Should be fun!
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What I'm saying is--is it reasonable to expect players to understand when they are outmatched and to expect them to run away.Occasionally, yes.
Consider a party traversing the Mines of Moria stumbling across something they have no chance of fighting.
Just don't be subtle about it. Have a brave NPC say "Run, you fools!" Or something.
If you want them to use it as an option, be sure not to "close the door" behind them.
Heroic fight is heroic.
And PC's will go down fighting if they feel there is no other way...
You can all die here, I'm getting out of here!
-Skadi the fleet-footed scoutIt is bad enough that I keep hacking things up like a grunt, now you want me to face almost certain death? See ya!
-Mosca the I really don't want to have to kill everyone, I just want the gold, rogue.
Two characters of mine that would absolutely not fight to the death, role-played without possessing excellent morale and a death wish. With Skadi it came out more, but the I don't think the other players realised these chars would run from a really hard fight until I started doing it.
Back off, skirmish, then re-assess what next. All senseible, not always done.
Just don't be subtle about it. Have a brave NPC say "Run, you fools!" Or something.What I'm saying is--is it reasonable to expect players to understand when they are outmatched and to expect them to run away.Occasionally, yes.
Consider a party traversing the Mines of Moria stumbling across something they have no chance of fighting.
Or a really descriptive heavy dm can paint the picture nice and clear, and assuming they are not actually fearless, present the fears and dangers to the pcs, the threats and anxious thoughts, the sense of being closed in on, defeated, close to losing entirely because you simply cannot make enough moves to reverse the course. Despair, play it up as a dm. Then leave it to the players what they do.
Anyone who plays with me knows, because I tell them straight up, sometimes your character will be faced with a situation in which they cannot fight and expect to survive.
They can run, hide, negotiate, surrender, whatever, there WILL be another way out of the situation. Just not fighting.Mind you, players choosing to stand and fight when all sense would suggest running has lead to some amazing scenes and heroics. Sometimes the dice gods just want the players to win.
:)
Also some good deaths, brave deaths, death when standing up for something against terrible odds.
Sometimes an encounter that they can't win won't bother hunting them down. There are in fact enemies that would LET them run away.No. If you build an encounter with the expectation that the players should run it's likely they won't be able to. Pretty much anything that the party can't hope to kill risks killing someone on round one if played fairly.
If monsters are played with all their abilities running is almost never an option. Most monsters are faster than PCs and once an equally fast enemy threatens you it's almost impossible to get away by the normal movement rules. You withdraw they charge. You run they get an AoO against your flat footed AC. Probably a trip if they're smart.
The rules just don't make running practical unless you're something like an all druid and monk party.
Dare I suggest that even some foes may show honour on the field of battle, and not fill their rumps with arrows as they scamper and depart. Not everything is a killbot.
Played a real honourable knight once. We took so many captives, lol.