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I guess the first thing to do would be to warn them from the beginning that your game has such encounters. Depending on your players' background This may be a new concept to them.
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If it's unwindable, then I'd suggest that you use batteries.
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I usually try to give a clear description of the encounter, with the heavy implication that brute force may not be an answer.
If the party continues to insist on combat; kill a few of them but don't pursue the survivors.
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Oh yes, also watch out for characters taking some sort of class based vow that will not let them run away without loosing class features.
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if brute force isn't an answer you just aren't using enough.
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It's actually rather tough to retreat in Pathfinder unless you have things like Teleport and even then, it's quite likely that you'll die before you get a chance to get it off.
How do you convince players not to fight their way through enemies who are too hard for them?
You have to make it abundantly explicitly clear and may even just need to straight up tell them "This guy is too strong to fight seriously right now and he's meant to be a sneak peek at whats to come."
Most folks walk into a game expecting that the DM wont be throwing encounters that are unwinnable. Personally I agree with that belief since the APL rules are there for a reason and I think it's a cheap method of making characters afraid without actually trying.
Sandbox games are an exception. You get what you get there and you are the arbitrators of your own fate. Knowledge checks and forethought are really important there.
EDIT: Like MeanMutton said, retreating is actually really difficult if the enemy doesn't want you to get away.
One thing that I did in the past was use the "Worf Effect". You find some super awesome bada** and have the big baddie utterly defeat HIM.
Historically, overwhelming numbers seems the best way to convey that you're not supposed to win this fight. Emphasis on 'overwhelming'. 12 city guards probably seems like a winnable fight for a group of well-armed PCs. 20 or 30, maybe not.
The problem with smaller numbers is that, for example, a level 3 Fighter in a breastplate with an axe doesn't look especially less scary than a level 12 Fighter in a breastplate with an axe. You only really notice the 9 extra levels of BaB, hit points, magic items, and feats once you pick a fight with them, and by then it's probably too late. Maybe try decking them out in super obvious items, or give the players a Sense Motive or Perception check to notice that this person could probably wipe the floor with them.
It's tricky, and it can be even trickier depending on your group.
For instance, in Rise of the Runelords...
Maybe knowledge checks would help out here? Just to give you a handle on how many hit dice a threat has?
Maybe knowledge checks would help out here? Just to give you a handle on how many hit dice a threat has?
The main problem with relying on checks for something like this is that there are times when everyone roles poorly, everyone.
I guess the first thing to do would be to warn them from the beginning that your game has such encounters. Depending on your players' background This may be a new concept to them.
This.
Also, my best advice... give them no REASON to fight this fight. There is a world of difference between an obvious random encounter in the middle of 3rd watch where a 1st level paladin will retreat from a couple wandering trolls... and having a +8 CR evil cleric about to sacrifice a child and expecting the same paladin to cut his loses and flee.
If your players are HEROES... then they by nature want to do heroic things. Rescue the kids, save the princess... the game is designed on them being the only ones between innocents and death. If the consequences of them fleeing are too great... then Heroes stand up to the threat.
You need to make it perfectly clear that yes... there are bad guys here, but it's OK to fight another day.
It's actually rather tough to retreat in Pathfinder unless you have things like Teleport and even then, it's quite likely that you'll die before you get a chance to get it off.
And this.
This is not a system designed for running away once battle is joined. The whole attack of opportunity thing... all medium characters running at the same speed... Smaller characters being slower... and most creatures being actually FASTER then you... or having bows and rays to finish you off.
MOST of the time the monsters have at least 10' reach, so even withdrawl means your going to take that last fatal hit. It's always a gamble between should I run... and take a hit for running and then ranged attacks at my back... or hope this last round of full attacks will be enough to win??
I remember fighting an Evil tree? Maybe an evil treant once at mid-level... first round of the battle, I did decent damage to it... It dropped me half my hitpoints. THAT's a heck of a decision to make at that point. Running means you probably die... and it was only 6 seconds after the enemy made itself known...
Just play the game with an even hand. If as a group the players do not have the wisdom to realise the odds are against them then I suspect their characters will have a short adventuring career. The next set of characters might fare better once the players realise that not every encounter is designed to be winnable by the party.
You may want to be kind and advise them at the start of the adventure that they should not assume every encounter is winnable through combat.
I find after your players have to retreat a few times it gets easier for them to do so later. I had a random purple worm encounter once in the middle of the desert, the party were on camels. They were 7th level. It was a run away type encounter (big slow monster mounted party) but they stayed and fought it from range. I was about to have it retreat under ground and when the barbarian charged it... lol swallowed whole. They had a raise dead scroll from the previous adventure... so now they are much more cautious. I do still warn OOC (and not as a group just one or two of them so they feel like they have inside information ) them if there are encounters in the area if you do the wrong thing you will definitely die.
Stupid question, but how are your PCs, let alone players, supposed to know a particular fight is unwinnable?
Your answer lies there. If there's no Knowledge check or other method that returns "is a CR X above you", then the PCs and players don't know until it's too late.
Problem is, if they succeed an learn a thing or two due to a high Knowledge check, they can't know the CR. So yeah, screwed.
Stupid question, but how are your PCs, let alone players, supposed to know a particular fight is unwinnable?
Your answer lies there. If there's no Knowledge check or other method that returns "is a CR X above you", then the PCs and players don't know until it's too late.
Problem is, if they succeed an learn a thing or two due to a high Knowledge check, they can't know the CR. So yeah, screwed.
Agreed. Adventurers are by nature... not-cautious. They're lives are in dangerous situations and often doing the impossible.
If you have 4 mortals... and a gigantic dragon breathing flame?? Logic dictates that the mortals should be running for the hills just like the rest of the villagers...
But the game is designed where SOMETIMES... the characters can kill a dragon. It's important to let the players have SOME indication what kind of game they're playing.
THE OTHER side of the coin... is that if the players get TOO used to running... it's hard to get them to stand and fight. I doubt you want to run a game where the players flee from everything that isn't CR -3 to them.
There was a bit of that in our Kingmaker Campaign. In that AP the players can raise armies and sometimes there are 'big' wars using armies... As a player, there were a LOT of situations where we weren't entirely sure if our pcs were meant to subtley do something... or if this was army time. In any other campaign, sneaking into an enemy camp and learning plans... was perfectly legitimate. In this one? Sneaking out two days from our army into a group of 400 seemed suicidal. We found out later there were a few things we missed because we played it TOO safe.
You have to figure out what type of game you want to run
Isn't there some way you could turn this scenario into one in which the PCs actually win? Players always have a lot more fun when they win.
Think of how much fun they'll have if you put an unbeatable monster against them, and they actually defeat it.
Let them fight... I feel that there is a tendency for GMs to become PC death averse...its all part of the game!
Its all about how you give the PCs clues by which they work out the difference between 'this is a scary & dramatic fight - time to be epic and heroic' to 'this will utterly squish you, run away'.
I had the opposite problem in a long running 3.5 game - the party kept deciding this or that encounter or location looked too scary now and they'd come back in a few levels - at times I was a bit at loss for ways to hint that the scary looking evil lair did actually contain a set of level appropriate encounters. Or that the evil werewolf shaman they'd sworn to kill was doing lots of stuff that would justify him levelling up, so was always going to be a CR of party level +2...
A variant form of the problem is how to get them to distinguish between a highly dangerous fortress that needs a Mission Impossible sneaky infiltration and one where 'just charge in before they raise the drawbridge' is fine.
Also, be careful about setting a different precedent: a fight you think is unwinnable might be winnable with tactics you haven't foreseen. Players can be an unpredictable bunch.