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I've been noticing a trend in the global battle between those of us being attacked by invisible perpetrators and our clever little ways to detect and outwit them.
Of all the times I have had to detect someone under an invisibility effect, only once has it actually been helpful and furthered our progress in the task.
Every single other time it's been a circumstance where our party is fighting an enemy who is scripted to poof and flee upon defeat, but our stubborn party doesn't want to admit the obvious truth as we spend an insane amount of time on needless rounds casting Glitterdust, closing doors, etc. until an hour later we're all blind and crawling through a house wondering if that damned invisible monster got away.
A) Why is it so popular for Paizo writers to make all of their baddies turn and run? How is it that EVERYONE we fight has an invisibility spell? Why does EVERYONE have a guaranteed success at fleeing the party? I understand personnel with important attachments to the plot, but even wild monsters are making this happen in painfully dragged-on scenarios where every agonizing round is spent trying to delay and kill/capture an enemy that will get DM-ruled into escape every time.
B) Fellow Party Members: KNOCK IT OFF. We don't get paid for every bug you squash, I don't see why we should drag on the END of combat just because dead and gone are not fungible for you.
WHEW!
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I, as a GM, have most of my enemies try to flee if they feel that there is little or no hope of winning a fight.
It is a a player that I fail in that department and fight stubbornly unless all my friend have already started to flee. And even with that defect I usually have a system to try to escape. I don't see why the NPC shouldn't do the same.
This is a fault of the adventure writer. There's nothing wrong with giving an intelligent foe a means of escape. But that means has to be in-line with the foe's power/background, and *not* a DM hand-wave.
In the game in which I'm currently a player, plenty of our sentient enemies try to run away when things turn against them. Not all of them are successful. There's nothing more fun for a player than foiling an enemy's attempt to get away.
I actually really like it when bad guys run. Particularly when it makes sense for them to do so. I feel like the opposite of this trope is more true than it needs to be and i'm not sure why so many things fight a losing battle until they die. A gm who runs enemies like they have a sense of self preservation is doing it right in my book. Party doesnt have to waste extra rounds/resources/gametime to beat down something that is just too stubborn to die quickly and still gets xp for having bested the encounter.
I also feel like the combat system isnt built very well to create the 'part offers an option to surrender/bad guy in a bad situation refuses to surrender thing.
If you spend an attack action not killing something in order to give it a chance to live, I find a lot of gms who use that opportunity to get in more hits and seal the fate of the enemy instead of taking the more interesting approach of giving the party a chance to capture enemies and question them. I also find a shortage of dms who would use an enemy's attack round to say 'I surrender please dont kill me' even when its *scripted* into an adventure path. But thats a beef of a different flavor.
The end result of both beefs is the same though... You want your party to stop being a bunch of murderhobos? Give them an option b. As an interesting sidenote, a party full of characters of the 'good' alignment might have a hard time justifying taking the loot off an opponent who surrendered, thus bringing down the party loot and helping to keep wbl in check. WBL can take a flying leap in my personal opinion but the same gms who hate murderhobo pcs tend to be the same gms who hate players with a lot of wealth and ironically seem to be the same gms who force the party to kill everything it meets.