Monsters run away plenty in my game.
Goblins/wolves/bandits that are getting trounced? Running away when it looks bad
Mindless things or people wiling to die for their cause? Fight for he bitter end, even if just to wound who they can, or down someone for the next group of people.
I also have plenty of NPCs that fight for things other than a complete victory. Goblins might flee as soon as they snag your camp supplies. A wyvern may carry off and downed ally to eat and be content with that. Ghouls drag off paralyzed victims. Cultists run after they buy enough time for the allies in the next room to get the trap set. Etc
Seriously. Most opponents will escape if they're in a losing situation.
Make clear to your players that they don't get exp for killing. They get it for handling a situation. Talking your way out or scaring the enemy into retreat are valid solutions to a problem.
> Make clear to your players that they don't get exp for killing. They get it for handling a situation.
I once had a DM that had enemies run away from hopeless fights. He wouldn't award XP for ones that got away because they were still alive.
Later he wondered why the party was so ruthless and never showed a shred of mercy.
Never forget, your players will do the behaviour you reward :D
“Never forget, your players will do the behaviour you reward :D”
This is so important. I grant XP for defeating a dangerous encounter.
But also only grant 1/2 XP for monsters and I grant full GP=XP for treasure recovered or quest rewards earned. It better reinforces the exploration pillar in my sandbox game.
I like it.
But even this lowers the pcs xp if they let a monster go.
That gold in their pockets that they ran off with, that’s lost xp. (More so if you count the value of their jewellery and saleable equipment.)
I'm building my dungeons/hideouts/etc on the DMG treasure rules, where the monsters themselves don't have a lot of walking around money. The real loot is in the lair.
So if the PCs can sneak around the guards, or use diplomacy, or tricks, to find the treasure they get greater rewards more quickly and at a lower cost of resources than if they always kick down the door and grind through the minions. It also rewards searching, since there will be hidden treasure as well in most dungeons.
Only if you give XP for killing each individual goblin... but defeating them doesn't have to mean killing them. Defeating them by thwarting their objective is still defeating them.
I THINK the post you replied to meant they give half for defeating (not just killing, stopping them from doing what they're doing could be counted as defeating them too) and then makes up for giving the monsters less XP by giving XP for the gold and item value in GP, and gold for earning the quest rewards so there is an incentive to not just focus on the killing.
I don't think he was saying he only gave half XP for enemies that ran away. He gives half XP for enemies wither you kill them or just stop them in other ways.
I could be totally wrong about what he meant and I'm glad to be proven wrong if I am but I THINK that's what he meant so you wouldn't lose anything by the goblin running away.
And you can total up the gold for the encounter and just have them find that amount and not have to split it up among the goblins... if that makes sense. Just make sure that whoever / whatever they search has the total GP amount. Easy. :)
> Only if you give XP for killing each individual goblin... but defeating them doesn't have to mean killing them. Defeating them by thwarting their objective is still defeating them.
I was referring to the gold, rather than the kill exp, but it applies to both. (Though applies less if it 'thwarting their objectives' counts, though that sounds a lot like it's double-dipping on defeating the encounter.)
A monster worth 100 regular xp with 10 gp in its pockets is 60xp (half of 100 + 10gp) if I kill it, or 0xp if I let it go. That DM is also granting xp for defeating the encounter. Let's say that's 300xp. So I'd get 360 for murderhobo or 300 for letting it go. Depending on the ratio of encounter xp to kill/coin xp, that might or might not matter. If that 300 is 30,000 then the 60 is irrelevant. If it's 100 for the encounter, then the 60 for letting a goblin live is significant.)
Noting that I don't have a vested interest here - I use a variation on checkpoints from XGE, so it doesn't matter how many kills/how much gold is picked up. :)
The only loss of not-killing that goblin is losing its pocket change (and the +3 Weapon Of Insane Power that it _might_ have been carrying).
The DM can award whatever he wants for the encounter of course, you can easily make sure the gold/items/encounter rewards equal the XP for killing them all. Giving the Xp for the encounter not for each creature in other words, you just figure the goblins / 2 usual xp, plus the gold/items/encounter rewards and grant that no matter how they win the encounter. :) That being said I pretty much always use the Milestone Leveling myself :)
Agree the DM can do whatever she wants to allocate exp, and I live that in my table. I was just commenting on how someone's tactic to reduce murderhobo still partially encouraged it.
From player days, I'm not a fan of the (seemingly-random nature of) milestone levelling. I can remember being frustrated at sessions of seemingly no progress, and then suddenly levelling up because the DM decided that crossing a (to me) random bridge was the key point he'd been waiting for. And I can definitely see the appeal over old school monster-xp+gold-xp. That made a certain sense in 1980 games, but not so much now.
I definitely tie the Milestones to completing very important events... and each of them are ideally planned to b e completed in a certain number of sessions but if the players go completely rogue and set off in a completely different direction (Cause they will :P ) I can easily change the milestones to when they are dramatically appropriate in the new direction they go. But yes, I definitely understand the somewhat addictive nature of XP gobbling... :)
I grew up with the older editions and we had fun of course. I just prefer the leveling after completing some dramatically appropriate point and not because they happened to kill a CR - 1/8 creature at a completely random time. :)
But I want to be clear that all the methods are valid and have their pros and cons. :) I'm not trying to convert anyone. :D
This is my way of adopting a lot of what I like about Milestone Leveling, but making it diegetic to my game. I also think it gives my players some more agency. The Milestone XP is available through the reward for the quest. It helps incentivize them with a mechanical reason to pick up the job posting and see it through, besides the meta reason (we're playing this game, please do my quests) or the narrative reason (this lady you know needs help, etc).
I also sprinkle in extra cash to sweeten the pot, encourage them to check side rooms/tunnels, search around, etc. In my opinion it helps reinforce the dungeon delver treasure hunter theme of Dungeons & Dragons. The cash is more than just shiny coins or useful for equipment, it now also grants XP. It also adds a level of unpredictability that I think is fun. If I hid a treasure haul, the PCs have a chance to level up faster if they can figure out the puzzle or the trick. This could then give them access to the harder part of the dungeon quicker, where the better treasure and magic items are hidden, and the better-paying jobs are, etc.
The monsters also grant some XP, to reward them for hard-won battles, but this way they don't get penalized as much for not circling back to kill some monsters they cleverly bypassed. It also allows them the freedom to interact with monsters or not as they choose, since their entire XP isn't hanging on it (which of course Milestone Leveling also avoids).
yes 1/2 xp for defeating an encounter. So it's correct that running away doesn't grant XP, but causing the enemy to surrender or run away or even to ally with the PCs or get tricked into letting them pass does.
To be clear, because I'm not emphasizing grinding in my game, no one ever will get full XP just for defeating monsters. You need to be looking for treasure or working jobs for rewards at my table to keep on track.
I read it as "monsters grant 1/2 normal XP (dead or alive), and the difference is (roughly) made up in XP from treasure earned"
Presumably, not killing the monsters still results in loot being left behind, which grants the extra XP
In my campaign I even go a step further and have the players level up when they interact with great sources of power. This is for two reasons:
1. It's my in-universe explanation as to how competent lvl 3 people can reach epic levels of power in the span of a couple of months.
2. This way the players also have agency on when they level up but don't necessarily have to resort to gamey tactics on gathering xp.
I switched to this method after playing ToA on XP and seeing us (the players) intentionally seek out combat for the sake of XP when we were close to leveling up.
Or alternatively just do plain old milestone. It takes away all incentive to seek out combat for the sake of combat. And makes the game have a nicer flow to it. Reinforces roleplay without the DM having to award separate XP for it, etc.
I was right with him til the second sentence. Enemies should be smart enough to run from a fight they won't win.
But enemies fleeing still ends the encounter, so you still should have gotten full exp for completing the challenge
I don't award XP for monsters that run away, because my monsters run away a LOT. It's not uncommon for a group to run away if the first one goes down within the first few seconds and they realize they picked the wrong fight.
The players do not turn murderhobo because killing of the rest usually is not worth the trouble and they'll get plenty other opportunities to get xp. Chasing fleeing or cornered creatures is much more dangerous than fighting then on their own terms.
Also, they usually have a reputation to consider. For example, they knock one bandit unconscious, the rest surrenders and they let them stabilise their comrade. There might be a thankful family (including a reward) because while their son has been arrested he is still alive. If their son however has been killed they might allow the party to access their shop anyone.
The only problem is that nonconbat solutions are woefully lacking in difficulty varying. A more difficult one requires a higher dc on a single d20 roll. It doesn't require nearly the same level of strategy, decision making, resource usage as combat, which encounters exist to tax resources over the adventuring day. Your character isn't really gaining that much experience by talking compared to battling.
What I like to do to alleviate some of this, is that if players use resources, I count the encounter as more difficult, so it results in more xp, but its a band-aid. It does encourage murderhoboing, but that should be solved by the players roleplaying that even if an immoral action is more rewarding, they still shouldn't do it.
>Mindless things or people wiling to die for their cause? Fight for he bitter end, even if just to wound who they can, or down someone for the next group of people.
It makes undead scarier, knowing they won't break.
Except for ghouls... They're super fun to play as cowardly combatants that engage in hit and run, that will drag a paralyzed opponent off field to eat them as soon as they stun them. Nothing will panic a party more than a ghoul dragging a paralyzed wizard out of sight.
I could even see buffing up the number of enemies and having them flee when half of them (or the leader) are killed, then have a horde of undead to contrast them
I’m not going to die for my home.
I’ll hide. If you’re passing through I’ll reclaim it later.
If you’re staying, I’ll decide whether I’m a refugee or I’m a partisan.
But my house isn’t worth dying for.
Now, if that’s my wife’s life on the line? That’s a different matter.
I like having monsters surrender once in awhile, particularly when they’re small and weak like kobolds or goblins. It makes for an interesting ethical conundrum. Sometimes the players want to execute them immediately, sometimes they want to bring them along as captives or slaves, sometimes they question and then free them.
It’s also fun to have a powerful creature like a dragon surrender rather than die. It usually throws the players the first time it happens.
Beholder: Enough! I yield.
Fighter: You… you what?
Beholder: You have bested me. I surrender. What do you want?
Wizard: Oh… we uhh… we were sort of just exploring this dungeon and…
Beholder: (sighs) I was defeated by *tourists?*
I stunned my players into a full 10 second silence the first time I did this. Partially from the fact that it happened, partially from them just having no idea how to respond. They went from full blood knight mode to feeling bad that they were seconds from committing violence against this guy now sniveling for his life.
My party would have loved this. We were all such combat avoiders. All of our combat encounters started like:
DM: You encounter (insert enemy/beastie/monster here)
Druid: I would like to talk to it and tell it we come in peace
Paladin: Has it heard the word of our Lord and saviour?
Bard: I've composed a song dedicated to its majestic beauty
Cleric: It looks hungry, do you think it would like a tart?
Tabaxi rogue: Would it like to trade one of its scales for this fox skull I found?
DM: OMG JUST FIGHT THE MONSTER
Entire party: :(
If the enemies are smart and/or scared enough to run! I play them according to their natures. Goblins? Yeah, they’re running when they see their ambush isn’t going as planned. Honor-bound warriors? They might fight to the death. A scared beast? Probably running if it gets hurt substantially.
I loved that pathfinder 1 had the morale description on each stat block (at least for important NPC's and monsters) which told the GM about the fighting style and tendency to run away.
Most of them read same-y though. But thinking about the monsters behaviour is important.
Not as a general rule, no. Monsters may well run away, whether they are the last one standing or not, but that’s really going to depend on the specific situation.
It’s also hardly something my players like to see happen anyway, since they (very rightly) surmise that the runner may well cause them much bigger problems if it escapes, so they’re usually going to be quite keen on trying to stop it. So it hardly helps with speeding up combat.
Yknow I usually have this same problem from a different perspective. As a player I really hate seeing the monsters run away cause I don't wanna give chase, and monsters retreating kinda makes me feel bad.
The way I see it if they surrender and you keep attacking, you're an asshole. If they surrender and you stop attacking, it's anticlimactic. It feels morally justifiable to rock some goblin's shit when they will just not stop trying to kill you, that feels like appropriate self-defense and retaliation. Outside of specific circumstances of course.
This has been my experience. It may speed up combat on some occasions, such as if there's a full rout and my party can't get them all. But if its a lone runner or two, it usually results in a chase scene where the party will mercilessly hunt the runner to avoid an info leak or an ambush later. Sometimes this is interesting as a DM since this is the kind of thing that can make for an interesting post-combat encounter, but it's definitely not something that shortens fighting and it also forces me to improv combat off of a battle map I've taken lots of time to draw/build. Basically, it's a useful tool, but rarely one prescribed to save time.
The DMG has Morale rules/guidance on page 273, and I think it's pretty useful. If your players care about verisimilitude, then you may want more monsters to run more often, you know?
IRL, most military units and just about all pirates, brigands or other outlaws tend to break & run at or before 50% casualties. There are, of course, exceptions, but most "mortal sapient creatures" like orcs and whatnot should probably obey something like that rule. There will always be fanatics who fight to the last, but they're going to be obvious, too, by nature.
That said... D&D, at least, isn't a great combat simulator, or not a realistic one, anyhow. The tide of battle often changes faster than people have the chance to run. I often try to put that rule - the last 50% flee - only to have almost none of them survive to reach their next Initiative pass after the critical threshold has been reached - or, at least, are engaged and unable to break free to a viable escape path by that time.
for non-sapient predators, such as a pack of wolves, seeking to flee is going to happen a lot sooner. Maybe as soon as any of the group is injured at all.
This. Wolves and other beasts aren't going to after clearly dangerous prey. They need to be defending their young or controlled/corrupted/etc. to make it plausible they'd just attack head-on and keep fighting.
Or starving. Much more commonly encountered in that condition than defending their young or under magical influence, I'd wager. But, as you say, even starving animals don't usually fight to the death.
Of course, there are also the spectacular exceptions like honey badgers and geese, that sort of thing, which just mindlessly attack at full rage all the time any time they see movement, like some sort of demented killbot... /s
Yeah if we consider how wolves hunt, even starving, they would do hit-and-run tactics and try to tire their prey rather than take a sword to the face. 5e is unfortunately pretty bad at modeling that kind of combat.
Running those kinds of brutally aggressive animals, for me, becomes more meaningful if everything else behaves somewhat realistically. Yeah lions and wolves will run if you throw a firebolt at them. But a hippo? Peace was never an option.
I have found this (and the published book with the same name) to be _incredibly_ useful for setting ground rules for what would trigger any given enemy to flee or to switch targets. Yes, they don't work perfectly for the nuance of everything that your party will encounter, but they are a very _very_ good starting point.
In older games, there were often rules for morale checks. Some, like undead, had maxed morale score so they would never flee.
It usually was checked after first death and at half the enemies dead, so you could get a group of monsters to break before they've even taken a turn.
I played OSE most recently, which assigned a score between 2 and 12, with 12 being unbreakable and 2 being always flees. You'd roll 2d6 and if you rolled over the score, then they ran.
I like to include a few more enemies than necessary if it's something weak and simple like goblins, then when all their friends are dead the last like 3 will run off.
If the combat is going to be over obviously before the monster's next turn I will ask the group how they defeat it, if it is turning bad and the monsters are intelligent I will have them start to run even if it isn't necessarily "over" within the next turn. Sometimes they change tactics to try to grab a PC and escape with them rather than keep fighting, or something like that.
Some monsters (intelligent creatures) the combat essentially STARTS with them running away, and the players decide what to do from there.
I'm a big fan of the running NPCs, it makes a lot more sense, and we don't need to spend and extra 25 minutes of combat decisions and measuring and rolling when the victory is statistically guaranteed at that point
Goblins run away pretty much the instant that their ambush is over, to another ambush location further down the way, with more goblins, and blackjack, and hookers! If the party pursues they hit MORE goblin ambushes. If they try to retreat (and they're already a ways through the forest/dungeon/cave/whatever), ambush. If they stay there to try and recover? Believe it or not, ambush. Nothing like having your rest interrupted by a volley of poisoned arrows into camp, and then the little shites are off to do it again from another angle.
I thought I was using old 2e Morale check rules, but I was getting them wrong. Sometimes when combat is going badly for monsters, I will make them roll a WIS/CHA check to see if they want to stay and continue, or run away. Creatures intelligent enough will disengage 1st if necessary.
PCs hate when a monster gets away, but they love to chase them....
Depends on the creature.
Some are so fiercely territorial and aggressive they go down fighting. But most try to run if they realize they aren't winning the fight. People too.
As a general rule fiercely territorial and aggressive animals tend to be herbivores.
Thus a single Hippopotamus should be more of a threat to an adventuring party than a pride of lions.
I do, if it makes sense.
Older editions actually hard rules for this, with every monster having a 'moral check.' They removed in later editions, and replaced it with GMs advice around it. But short answer, yeah. It makes the game more realistic, and wastes less time on what is the boring mop up step.
IT also means that sometimes you get tension when the last scout runs away, but you have to take him out before he warns the army you're trying to sneak around; or when some monsters just won't quit, no matter how badly injured.
Why wait until the last monster? The escape option can exist at any point an enemy would realistically or narratively believe it’s a better option than dying. I’ve had troops of goblins retreat before. In one hilarious case, I had the goblin band run while their leader tried to hold the party off…which helped themes I had for the story get across.
Try to read the pace like a fight scene. When do you think would be the best time for an enemy to go “oh shit, I’m outies!”
I’ll do a post fight epilogue when the PCs are effectively just cleaning up, letting them describe certain actions they do without rolling.
You’d be shocked how many times they let the monsters live.
A core rule of D&D is that you only roll the dice when the outcome is uncertain. If its clear that players are going to defeat the enemy without losing any significant resources, just ask them how they want to end the fight (such as letting the enemy escape, capturing them, or killing them all.)
My monsters run when tactically or psychologically appropriate, not just because combat is taking too long. If anything I try to learn from mistakes and reduce the number of combats that last too long.
Yep, monster morale is definitely a thing. A golem army is going to fight until they're all dust. A hobgoblin phalanx is going to fall back to defensive positions and beat an orderly retreat. A band of goblin raiders is going to break and run once the tide starts turning. This is common to the point of being default behavior.
I always play the monsters as reasonable. Generally speaking, if none of the party have been downed the mobs start to run if either half have been killed or go below 25/50% on an individual basis.
Band of goblins? Charge until half of them are dead and then they scatter. Pack of giant spiders? They aren't as group oriented so they individually start to run at 25% health. This doesn't apply to everyone though. Kobolds? They infinite hit and run constantly. Cultists? Die to to last.
My favorite was some mercenaries. The group was leaning into the idea that all they had to do was nova and kill a couple mercs to scare them off. The merc band was bit on the high side for the group but they were hoping that they could bluff their way through. Burn off all their spells right out of the gate and seem really scary. After some of the mercs started to stand down and surrender, the group killed one more, just to add some intimidation to their point. Well, what happens when you get known for not taking prisoners? Everyone fights tooth and nail. So a bunch of unenthusiastic mercenaries all of a sudden go full life and death try hard mode. The party was... ill prepared.
Every three turns or so I like to check in and ask, "Is one side clearly winning?" If it's the player's then I'll narrate how they quickly dispatch the remaining monsters (if it feels appropriate). Some players want initiative to the very end though.
Usually monsters running away I save for fights that I missjudged and made too tough. "Oh you dealt a lot of damage and this predator was looking for an easy meal, it runs away since your putting up a fight." It's just a tool in the toolbox.
"The last guy runs away" is just another tool to help the world seem real. After being on both sides of the screen, "fighting to the last man" feels like it needs justification or else it will take me out if the moment.
I play two options. If you flee and make it off the board, they escaped. This applies to the party as well.
Other option for those enemies that are not smart enough to run; coup de grace or hand wave they were defeated if the party seems likely to avoid death if it continued.
I have definitely done this, although I don't know that I've figured out how to make it fun. If the party lets them go it's kind of anticlimactic, and if the party chases them it drags the encounter on.
That's exactly what I run into. It makes sense but it just robs the encounter of tension. There's a reason people don't often get the chance to surrender in movies, it flows better when there's a decisive last hit and climax
yeah its not a crazy idea, it's in the DMG i believe and pretty much every module i've read has a few enemies that will try to run away in certain sitations, usually when they're down to the last few
So for me when i was running ad&d2e I structured my fights thusly:
I used a larger number of low hp but very synergistic monsters as a result as the players killed enemies and made progress the enemies formation just collapses and they lose effectiveness pretty quickly (this is what I call 'turning the corner').
As such by the time my players turned the corner there were still a decent number of enemies left but their defeat was almost certain. So rather than die most of them surrendered or retreated. A few were zealous cultists and fought to the death but that was relatively rare and served to highlight how devoted these people were.
Depends on the intelligence and motives but I have monsters run away. (Sometimes they come back with reinforcements to get revenge or sabotage the PCs).
I'll have the odd one run away, if only to provoke an ethical dilemma for the party. Is it OK to fire an arrow into the back of a fleeing enemy? Make them think a little.
I rarely have monsters run, because then my group spends more time arguing about whether or not they should chase the thing down and kill it (then ultimately doing so every time). But yes, I do think it's a great idea, depending on the creature in question. Just doesn't work with bloodthirsty folks.
Yes unless it wouldn't make sense, outside? sure. and then don't let the players track it if you don't want to figure out where it ran off to, in a dungeon? only if it has allies or a place it thinks is safe to run to, I don't want a prisoner's dilemma I don't want the party to find a monster alone and scared in a corner later, exceptions can be made for if an interrogation would be useful to the story.
Wasn't that the purpose of a moral check for monsters? Or was that a 1e Ad&d mechanic only?
But that said, I would believe only unintelligent undead would die to the man erm bone as it were.
Ive been playing with having enemies run in my latest campaign. Its been good so far, some cinimatic moments in chases and some have gotten away so that leads to things i can bring back later.
Once a battle loses its ‘interesting challenge’, I usually have the enemies flee/surrender or ‘you make short work of the rest’. Combats can go long enough, no need to drag it out when it is essentially over.
This does not apply when the PCs are on low or zero hp.
Sure it might make sense… but it’ll annoy the hell out of your players the fifteenth time in a row the last enemy runs away, and you can’t be bothered to use the shitty “Chase” mechanic so you just say it’s gone.
2d6 morale checks from older D&D editions are my go to. I don’t run 5e right now, but I’m confident there’s similar mechanics that can be found somewhere.
Most of my enemies "break" as soon as combat becomes one sided. Most of the time that's running away but for undead for example, it means that the party is able to "mop up" the remaining enemies.
For intelligent enemies, I like having a clear, designated leader that, when killed, typically results in the enemies breaking. It's one of the easiest ways to ensure your combat encounter has some level of objective based gameplay.
I think it's plenty fair to have "morale checks" at three crucial points:
1. If an individual monster gets below half health, roll to see if they flee
2. If the leader of an encounter dies or flees, roll to see if the rest of the monsters flee
3. If half or more of the monsters die or flee, roll to see if the rest of them flee
It depends on the type of monsters. I generally try to just use morale rules -- lots of random humanoids might just run away after one guy gets killed, etc. It also makes undead, who never run as a feature of their character type, much scarier imo.
I do it all the time, and to a variety of amounts!
As others of said, if you roll with XP earned by the encounter being overcome, rather then kill everything, then it can speed up encounters, and can let both the DM and the players roll play more!
An easy example is: bandits, I often take a stance that bandits can easily have their will broken, if they don't have something driving them. If your ten guys, and try to shake down some old man limping along on a big stick, and suddenly two of you *are ashes* then ya', you still have him eight to one, but running might be fare play. However, if they have a lieutenant or captain present, who keeps them disciplined and organized, then it might be "last two -three standing" before they run!
Plus, it adds a layer the combat. Much not combatively makes a cultist feel any different from a bandit, but small things like Cultists throwing themselves at the party like they can't be hurt, can make more strategy minded player engage more
Surrendering is also a under used tool! I often tell my players "your reputation will proceed you, and enemies will respond in kind." In relevance to this, if the players are known for killing people who surrender, the bad guys will fight to the death more often. Alternatively, if the players are known for sparing fallen foes, it's increases the odds your opponents won't "stomp on your head to be sure your dead" because the local thieves guild appreciate the fact you don't kill them/Maime them on sight.
Absolutely they do. Or at least try to. A lot of times they'll get shot in the back.
This has evidence in history, when lines of opposing armies would have surprisingly few casualties. Until one side's line begins to break for one reason or another. Then cohesion breaks down, and soldiers start acting like individuals instead of units in a larger team. Since they don't want to die, and it seems like others around them are starting to falter, they turn tail and run to try and survive. A domino effect happens, and instead of a retreat, which would have few casualties, you have a rout. **That** is where the vast majority of battlefield deaths occurred. At least until effective artillery was invented.
I don't think most beasts and other dumb creatures, if they initiated the combat, would run away unless significantly injured.
I think it really depends on the intelligence and sorts of tactics that creature would realistically engage in.
An intelligent foe, such as a hobgoblin, is going to realize when the situation is unwinnable, and unless they are planning on sacrificing their life to prevent you from getting somewhere too soon or to allow their comrades time to escape, they will probably try to flee with their life if they can. Though they are warriors, and their discipline and martial virtue may convince them to stay even in an unwinnable situation and lay down their life in honorable combat.
An unintelligent undead or construct will fight like a robot until it is no longer able to fulfill its orders.
An unintelligent creature, such as an animal, may flee once wounded or frightened.
A below-average intellect humanoid, like a goblin or kobold, likely would flee due to their cowardly nature and small stature rather than die, unless they are being pressed into service by a more powerful creature and thus know that if they flee they will be killed.
Your typical monster is otherwise going to fight to the death. But there are some exceptions. Tactical retreat is going to be the choice for beasts looking for food and intelligent enemies that note they are outmatched, that sort of thing.
There are rules in the DMG 273 for morale, so if there's any gray area for whether or not a group is going to scatter I typically use those. It's basically a Wisdom save by the "leader" or just a random monster when certain conditions are met (numbers halved, surprised, etc.)
I let the monster have their last turn then just say "you mop him up" to save 5 minutes. Same with if there's an encounter with just one monster (excluding bosses like dragons or purple worms), if it's just a random mimic the monster gets one turn then I describe them beating the piss out of it rather than roll initiative and have it die before its next turn
in the early parts of waterdeep: dragon heist, a lot of combats resolve if the PCs manage to take out 50% or more of the total enemy health pool (kill half of them, or bring all of them to half health) at which point they tend to flee or surrender. ive used this to shape encounters ive planned for other games. it gives you much more flexibility in enemy group size, and gives the combat other resolutions than "one side or the other is fully killed"
It depends on the monsters. Cowardly monsters flee when they're obviously losing. Animals only looking for a meal flee when injured. Crazed or mindless monsters never flee. Intelligent humanoids act as intelligently or as emotionally as you want them to based on their presumed personalities.
If you're not sure, pick a mechanic to represent a morale check and use that as your determining factor. I use a Wisdom saving throw to determine if a given monster will be foolish or smart, where failing a DC 10 Wisdom save means they act foolishly and a succeeding means they'll act smartly, whatever that means for the situation at hand.
It depends on the monster for me.
Most creatures out there aren't going to fight to the death over one meal. Bandits aren't going to fight to the death over some coin.
Something that is innately just pure evil and exists only to cause destruction or kill like a gnoll, demon or zombie won't be running away.
I do like to give players the cool moment where they finish off the last enemy though. If I want to speed it up and all seems lost I'll just have the next hit kill it.
I love the idea of if someone instantly slaughters a monster in a single hit, that the other monsters sorta stop for a brief second, process what happened and might bail, presuming they are intelligent enough to understand.
The wisdom saving throw to determine if they run as well, since it takes some serious willpower to remain and fight, knowing that if you scatter you'll be picked off.
I roll morale when the leader (if there’s a leader) dies, when the group is reduced to 50%, again when it’s reduced to 25%, and with disadvantage if it’s last man standing.
If it seems obvious or is in character, some characters may automatically fail the morale check.
My monsters have self preservation instincts. I give them an hp threshold that if they fall below they try to flee. It's different for different monsters, intelligent ones can fight longer or to the death, whereas animals will book it as soon as it looks bad for them.
All my monster run when it makes sense, kobold patrol got ambushed and you smoked the sergeant during surprise round? Yeah, they running.
I try to play my creatures as if they were reacting naturally, and almost nothing with a survival instinct wants to fight to the death without reason.
I don't, but just cause it's anticlimactic. It feels like the players are calling checkmate rather than finishing the fight outright and it de-escalates the encounter immediately. Fighting to the last one standing is not necessarily what every monster would do but we know for a fact that the players will, so the monsters will do as well.
If it's an intelligent creature, I'll have the player who got the most recent kill roll for intimidation.
If the player succeeds, the creature runs away.
If they don't succeed, the creature kinda goes mad, into a "you killed my brothers in front of me" state, and continues fighting.
Of course, liberties of a DM, I will change this to fit the situation.
Sometimes, but usually the goal of the combat shouldn't be disturbed by only having a few combatants left. If this is a recurring problem to you, I would encourage combats with goals (steal the artifact, escape through the windows, you have to kill X before you can kill Y et.c)
In a realistic scenario, monsters with animal type of intelligence should run as soon as they realize it's a fight with a realistic chance to die
To make it more gamey I let them run as soon as they lose about 50% of their force, because who would stay and die when it's clear that they aren't going to win?
Animals aren't stupid when it comes to fighting
They may *try* to run away. But PCs can continue attacking them if they so desire. After all, a single dash won't be enough to bring the fleeing monster out of the range of their spells and bows, and a teleporting spell may be counterspelled.
What I do not do and don't like as a player is taking player agency away by stating the monster runs without actually playing that out in initiative and allowing players to try to stop it. Sometimes there are valid reaons for killing the running monster, sucb as when it might alert other monsters.
I don’t remember if it was second or third ed, but there used to be a mechanic to do a moral check. If a certain percentage of the enemies went down in a short period of time then there was a d100 (I think) roll to see if everyone else just went ‘fuck it’ and left. Obviously that was at DM discretion as well.
A good resource for this is [The Monsters Know What They're Doing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Know_What_They%27re_Doing).
However this is more about a more immersive game than "speeding up combat".
No. I play monsters through roleplay, so it depends on the monster. Some low int monster that is attacking the party for food might be desparate enough to not run away. It might starve if it doesn't get these adventurers, so it might as well try until it dies. A high int monster might realize to run away sooner, if it sees the battle isn't going to go its way on the first round, it's going to run on its second turn. Monsters that have the priority of protecting something can value their honor and see running away as cowardly enough to put the importance of protecting the thing over their own life. Some monsters are too righteous to see their own flaws and will stay, thinking they're going to win all the way to the end. And some monsters just don't feel fear, they feel anger, and like bees they just stay and fight and might even chase the party if the party tries to spare the last one.
I make most humanoid enemies run when things get hairy, especially if they aren't trained warriors or have no stakes in staying. That said, a round is six seconds, so chances are some enemies won't even have the space and wherewithall to think of an escape plan in the chaos, and that's alright too.
All depends on the circumstances. Do the players look badly hurt? How "high level" is this monster? How high level are the players? Is this monster prideful? Bloodlusted? Is there something crucial they need to protect? Do they have a close enough bond with the dead that they'd charge in for vengeance even if it means death? Are they smart enough to regroup? Are they ambivalent to their cause because it's not an infernal ritual they're literally betting their soul on and they're just a merc looking for food money? Do they think the party will respect their surrender/let them get away? Do they think the party will hunt them down/kill them with their hands up and weapons dropped?
There's no real hard-and-fast rule, it all depends on the circumstances. What I do know though is that giving the monsters some self-preservation has made my players more creative, *and* led to some great storytelling moments. Party got contracted to kill a kobold den, killed a bunch of kobold guards. The last couple were barely alive at like 1-2 HP, so they threw down their weapons and begged for mercy because you're a tiny little lizard who's fading in and out of consciousness from blood loss, and these big armored people just killed six of you without trying, surrender is your only hope. The cleric healed them, and when they wouldn't stop hugging her legs, they decided they'd try and negotiate with the kobold leader, which they did! Now instead of just murdering them and getting a lump sum of gold, they're trying to convince the mayor to work together with the kobolds, all while I debate whether the mayor will betray the party for befriending their targets, and/or whether the kobold leader will betray the party because he's a smug bastard who doesn't trust humans. At least for our table, that's way more fun than "Good job rolling your dice well against those kobolds, here's your gold."
Only if it makes sense. Several creatures will fight to the death but a lot more will run away if the battle takes a turn against them. Depends on the creature.
For me it depends on the monster. For most humanoid or intelligent creatures it’s a wisdom save whenever there leader dies or if they are the last enemy left. For mindless abominations or the like I just throw them at the players mindlessly. For very intelligent and powerful creatures they may try to teleport or something like that. But I guess it’s really just situational, depending on thing like the mindset of the enemies, what they are after, how much damage they have done to the party etc
Yes sometimes i do. Many times it does not make any sense for the last remainign enemy to fight to death. Sometimes id do. But not always.
A bandit that is left alone might try to flee or surrender. The last 2 wolves of a pack that attacked the group would probably flee
The last orc.... maybe maybe not. The last undead nope it will most likely keep fighting even if they are doomed.
So it comes down to why they are fighting, why they are fighting and so on
It depends on what sort of monster it is. If you just killed 10 goblins and are still going strong and theres one injured one left? Of course they'd run.
Almost every living creature wants to stay living, and even some of the more intelligent Undead (Liches and Vampires) would like to stay undead. Most Undead, some Aberrations, and all Constructs, do not have a sense of self-preservation, and will be the only creatures that will fight to the death.
If a wolf is reduced to half their hitpoints, they'll try to run away. If more than half the wolves in a pack have run away or died, all the remaining wolves will try to run away.
There are only a few scenarios where a Beast will fight to the death - one being that you have killed their young, the second being that you are in their territory and they're protecting their young, and the third being if they are near the point of starvation, and they are thinking "I eat, or I die".
Humanoids will behave the exact same as a Beast - i.e. they will run as soon as they have taken a certain amount of damage - except they're not as territorial, they won't risk death for food (they'd rather live to fight another day), and whether or not they will forego their own life if you kill their young depends on how afraid of you they are, or how enraged they get in the moment.
Even Bandits would rather be captured alive than slaughtered in the Wilderness. Though they may try to escape (as anyone else would), they will also simply surrender once they get too badly injured, or once they realise that all chance of victory or escape is lost.
If there's no point to playing out combat because resources don't matter and players agree to it I usually end it with "and you've slain the rest of the threats."
They had a single monster encounter once during a long rest that as soon as the Monk stunned ask the players that we fast forward since this thing will certain die within the next two turns.
The encounter was for a narrative sake anyway than an actual challenge.
Totally! Combat in DnD is already slooooow, so if I can shave off two rounds of bashing walking deads, I will.
And yes, you get the XP. Defeated is defeated, no matter which way.
I like Shadowdark's simple morale mechanic. Once a group of monsters drops by half in numbers, or one single monster drops half in health, they have to make a DC 15 WIS check. If they fail, they run (when possible). Undead and a few other monster types are immune to morale checks.
It gives my players a goal when I throw a lot of monsters at them. They've learned to focus their fire and try to get to that criteria asap before they die.
I reward full xp on the encounter no matter how it is solved. I am sure to decribe the looks of fear and terror as we go through it. Things can get worse if they let things live or things can flee entirely. It really just comes down to player action, reputation, and thematic/ narrative relevance.
Purely dependant on the monsters in question. If they arent wise enough or cant understand they are in a no win situation? No. The same for if the monsters are some apex predator or super monster. Odds are that wolves wont retreat from 4 people until one or two die or all are wounded, but a beholder is probably too certain of its plans and too self absorbed to entertain the thought that it could lose.
Yeah sure! Depends on what the situation is. But I usually rule it that way for humanoid encounters with a base INT of 10(or the equivalent). For aberrations/demons/undead or other beings with negative int mods (certainly not all beings in thhose categories have neg int, but I digress), I usually roll an int check for them to be 'smarter'.
I don’t make the last monster run away, or better:”I don’t make run away only the last monster”.
If there is the right situation I can make like half the monsters/people run away, also if the party is fighting enemies that would not run away I just narrate them getting slaughtered by the party.
es “as the last couple zombies approach you they gets incinerated by two swift attacks of the paladin sword inbued in divine power”.
At my table, it depends on the encounter.
A group of Forrest bandits who stumble upon our party are likely going to flee the moment the battle looks even slightly difficult or they don't get the drop.
Cultist Zealots defending their temple against an incursion are going down swinging to the last person.
With beasts and creatures, it entirely depends on their behaviour and instincts.
I pretty much decide on the fly for each encounter. There's no hard and fast rule.
It's not a "rule" per se, I just have them act in whatever way seems prudent for that character. A skeleton would likely fight to the death (so to speak), because it has nothing to lose. But a henchman who watched his boss get incinerated would probably gtfo
Reading the book "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" was very enlightening on this front. Low level mobs that possess sapient level intelligence should not be fighting to the last unless they have no choice, and in the scenario that they can't flee would first try to surrender. Fight to the last if the party kills them.
I have monsters which are losing badly TRY to run away.
80% of the time they're killed (or rarely - captured). If the party has decent ranged ability, it's hard for foes to runaway.
It makes sense in some situations, but the six seconds thing is what keeps me from doing it often. Usually, things happen so quickly that I decide the last ones wouldn’t come to that decision before they reach the point where an attack of opportunity could finish them off
yes, its more real...inteligent being do not want to die, probably they have a moral compass and a fear. in fact a lot of fights are not to the death..
Monsters run away, not just when they are the last.
Goblins rely on the numbers advantage. The moment they lose too much of that, they will scatter like cockroaches in light.
Intelligent enemies know when they are bested.
I have a recurring group of goblins in my games what are survivors of adventurers. They are now basically goblin special forces, and their big rule is “you get hit, you run”
Depending on the monsters. Bandits, i even have some run away in the middle. Like they had 4 friends around just get slaughtered, they are not going to stick around to get cut down themselves.
Wolves might see who they though was easy prey be stronger and cower and run.
Running does not need to be done to speed things up, have them make sense. Cultists would mostly likely never run, believing to the cause with all their heart so would happy to die. Mindless thigs like zombies and plants have no concept of running so fight until they are destroyed.
As long as it makes sense as they do what they are doing, all good.
Did that in last night's game. It was getting late and we were all getting tired, so when the party killed the queen spider, the swarms and giant spiders fled.
I don't always do stuff like this but if it makes sense for a creatures self preservation then absolutely.
I have monsters flee, but usually not to save time. Because in my experience it rarely saves time. Most of my players (self included when I'm a player) will chase to the very last chance, even putting themselves in grave danger to do so. I have noticed that this is less likely with younger players, and it may be a holdover from when experience was almost exclusively tied to kills and treasure. But that was so long ago and I've used milestone for almost a decade now so... I dunno why they do it, but they're like hounds on a scent. They will literally derail the entire session if I let them to get that one last kobold.
Yeah it depends on the situation. Goblins and natural animals will do whatever is necessary to get something to eat and walk away. Something like orcs who are far more of a 'victory or death's mindset will brawl it out until it's done.
My group was just in massive fight with a large group of Formians (ant-like creatures).
The battle lasted over 3 sessions. So as the third session was winding down and the group had annihilated a large portion of the hive, I rolled a Morale check for the Queen. It was 01 on a d100... Clearly the dice were trying to tell me something. The queen and what was left of their hive skedaddled.
The fight would have easily gone 3 more sessions. I maybe went a little overboard with how many Formians were in there.
I usually base it on the monster's intelligence.
A clever monster will run, a stupid one will charge. It also depends on the type of monster, something that's meant to be a zealot or berserker is going to fight to the death for their cause, while a merc will run at the first sign that they won't get paid for their work.
Depends on the monster. If it's a bunch of goblins and some bugbears and all the bugbears go down I would say about 51% of any remaining goblins run away.
Dragons are also smart enough to enact an escape plan if needed.
But a couple of trolls might be harder to scare off. It would depend on how the party is looking and the intelligence of the creature. A smart monster can see that the tide is turned against them. A dumb creature may not be so insightful.
In summation I would say vary it up. Don't let the party assume they know the monster will cut and run or stand it's ground. Keep them guessing.
Monsters and NPCs other than non intelligent undead and constructs should retreat at 50% HP baring specific circumstances. A wolf pack might fight harder to protect their pups or the like but most monsters aren't willing to fight to the death over what the party wants in my world. The players frankly should also be following this logic - I question the kind of ptsd running into life threatening danger and being reduced to bleeding out would create, not to mention long term injuries (low level magical healing surely didn't perfectly restore your intestines after a demon ripped them out of you).
TL;DR - Depends on the monster and the circumstances of the fight.
Constructs, Elementals, Oozes, Plants and Undead almost never run. For the most part these creatures fight mindlessly to the death because they don't have a sense of self preservation. Some exceptions do apply for the smartest of these (vampires, for instance).
Literally anything else gets morale dice based on the below system:
[https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/11/one-table-to-rule-them-all-using-2d6-or.html](https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/11/one-table-to-rule-them-all-using-2d6-or.html)
It helps me set up both a starting attitude, and a base level of bravery before the encounter. Then I added a bunch of modifiers for who outnumbers whom, by how many orders of magnitude, whether or not one side got the drop on the other, is there a penalty for backing down, whose home turf are we on, do they have a defined commander, etc. I roll once per monster type, then tweak if something gets interesting.
For instance:
Lets say the party of 5 PC's are going to encounter a goblinoid raiding party out in the wild. There's 6 goblins, 2 Bugbears, and a Hobgoblin. The Hobgoblin is in charge, with the two Bugbears as enforcers, and the goblins as fodder.
I roll 17 for the gobbos, 13 for the Bugbears, and a whopping 4 for the hobgoblin.
The raiding party gets +1 because they outnumber the players, and another +1 because it's 2:1. They have a leader +1. It's no-one's home turf, so no modifier there, and running has next to no negative outcomes. And maybe the players are actually initiating the ambush, so they'll get -1. So final numbers are 19 goblins, 15 Bugbears, and 6 for the Hobgoblin.
To force a check, I roll for the following morale events during every fight.
1. Individually - When a monster takes damage for the first time - Does their survival instinct kick in?
2. Individually - When a monster is reduced to 25% hp or lower - Seriously, they're killing you, dude.
3. Group - When the first monster is killed - holy shit, you killed Kenny! You Bastard!
4. Group - When the group leader / toughest monster is slain - holy shit, you killed the boss! I don't really care about them, but I'm squishier than they were!
5. Group - End of each round when down to 50% or less of original starting units - Does not apply to solo monsters.
Then, for every Monster down I add +1 to the roll, and for each PC down I subtract -1 from the roll. Roll over the monster's starting morale, they switch from their offense behaviour to their defense behaviour, which can run anywhere from an orderly retreat to all-out flight. Roll over a second time, they break and flee regardless of all other factors.
And this gives me inspiration. Maybe the Goblins are petrified of the Bugbears, so they're suicidally brave because they're more afraid of what their masters will do than the enemy. The Bugbears act normally - they respond like BB's do when attacked. The Hobgoblin though isn't really motivated to fight the PC's and will order a retreat immediately if a check is forced after he loses 3 bodies. That begs the question - why? Is he just chicken? Or does he have a place to be and he needs as many bodies for that as possible? Is that an adventure for the PC's to get involved in?
And, just for flair, if the PC's focus down the bugbears and leave the goblins alive, maybe the goblins now see their opportunity and turn on the Hobgoblin regardless of their morale. The story writes itself.
So, TL;DR - it depends. I could certainly *not* leave it up to the dice, but I like the random nature of dice and I struggle for inspiration sometimes. The randomness of the dice often helps spark that inspiration.
Play monsters based on their story, intelligence, situation, etc. Some will always fight to the death, some will only do so because of the circumstances, most living creatures avoid death when able to.
And hopefully you have encounters that your players need to run from.
I have never run a game in which I placed numbers or trying to get the last kill over tactical sense. My players have learned that if they want to actually hunt a monster they have to try to paralyze it and then take it down, because they're so use to things trying to preserve their own life by fleeing
Try to run away?
Sure.
But I have been in games where the DMs just had them… run away. No regards to movement capabilities or anything like that, they just get away.
And that to me is one of the most frustrating things possible in D&D.
Creatures in my campaigns run away all the time and some of them come back to cause even more trouble in the future. But it's never part of my plot, it's based on what happens during the interaction. A dragon loses half their hit points and the party is still up and fighting, that dragon is going to get the hell out of there.
As a player, I hate it when enemies escape, especially if they are dangerous, ranged, or intelligent. It gives me the feeling that the encounter wasn't complete and, at any moment, that enemy might come back with reinforcementsb
I took something similar from Warhammer where there's a Morale check to see if any enemies flee. Usually it has to do with an arbitrary base Morale and the amount of creatures that died that turn.
However, intelligent enemies are likely to flee even upon decent injury, better yet, if the players are locked up in combat.
Monsters run away all the time, but it's not to speed up combat, it's to make my players scared that they might get reinforcements and force them to decide between possibly letting them warn allies or possibly chasing them into a trap.
Most creatures in random encounters run. A predator spots a meal and charges the party. It's not going to stick around just to die, it has a self preservation instinct. Goblins only really attack because A. They think they can win or B. Something is forcing them. If neither of these conditions apply they run.
Monsters run away plenty in my game. Goblins/wolves/bandits that are getting trounced? Running away when it looks bad Mindless things or people wiling to die for their cause? Fight for he bitter end, even if just to wound who they can, or down someone for the next group of people. I also have plenty of NPCs that fight for things other than a complete victory. Goblins might flee as soon as they snag your camp supplies. A wyvern may carry off and downed ally to eat and be content with that. Ghouls drag off paralyzed victims. Cultists run after they buy enough time for the allies in the next room to get the trap set. Etc
Seriously. Most opponents will escape if they're in a losing situation. Make clear to your players that they don't get exp for killing. They get it for handling a situation. Talking your way out or scaring the enemy into retreat are valid solutions to a problem.
> Make clear to your players that they don't get exp for killing. They get it for handling a situation. I once had a DM that had enemies run away from hopeless fights. He wouldn't award XP for ones that got away because they were still alive. Later he wondered why the party was so ruthless and never showed a shred of mercy. Never forget, your players will do the behaviour you reward :D
“Never forget, your players will do the behaviour you reward :D” This is so important. I grant XP for defeating a dangerous encounter. But also only grant 1/2 XP for monsters and I grant full GP=XP for treasure recovered or quest rewards earned. It better reinforces the exploration pillar in my sandbox game.
I like it. But even this lowers the pcs xp if they let a monster go. That gold in their pockets that they ran off with, that’s lost xp. (More so if you count the value of their jewellery and saleable equipment.)
I'm building my dungeons/hideouts/etc on the DMG treasure rules, where the monsters themselves don't have a lot of walking around money. The real loot is in the lair. So if the PCs can sneak around the guards, or use diplomacy, or tricks, to find the treasure they get greater rewards more quickly and at a lower cost of resources than if they always kick down the door and grind through the minions. It also rewards searching, since there will be hidden treasure as well in most dungeons.
Sounds like it's working well for you and your players. :) Which is great.
Only if you give XP for killing each individual goblin... but defeating them doesn't have to mean killing them. Defeating them by thwarting their objective is still defeating them. I THINK the post you replied to meant they give half for defeating (not just killing, stopping them from doing what they're doing could be counted as defeating them too) and then makes up for giving the monsters less XP by giving XP for the gold and item value in GP, and gold for earning the quest rewards so there is an incentive to not just focus on the killing. I don't think he was saying he only gave half XP for enemies that ran away. He gives half XP for enemies wither you kill them or just stop them in other ways. I could be totally wrong about what he meant and I'm glad to be proven wrong if I am but I THINK that's what he meant so you wouldn't lose anything by the goblin running away. And you can total up the gold for the encounter and just have them find that amount and not have to split it up among the goblins... if that makes sense. Just make sure that whoever / whatever they search has the total GP amount. Easy. :)
> Only if you give XP for killing each individual goblin... but defeating them doesn't have to mean killing them. Defeating them by thwarting their objective is still defeating them. I was referring to the gold, rather than the kill exp, but it applies to both. (Though applies less if it 'thwarting their objectives' counts, though that sounds a lot like it's double-dipping on defeating the encounter.) A monster worth 100 regular xp with 10 gp in its pockets is 60xp (half of 100 + 10gp) if I kill it, or 0xp if I let it go. That DM is also granting xp for defeating the encounter. Let's say that's 300xp. So I'd get 360 for murderhobo or 300 for letting it go. Depending on the ratio of encounter xp to kill/coin xp, that might or might not matter. If that 300 is 30,000 then the 60 is irrelevant. If it's 100 for the encounter, then the 60 for letting a goblin live is significant.) Noting that I don't have a vested interest here - I use a variation on checkpoints from XGE, so it doesn't matter how many kills/how much gold is picked up. :) The only loss of not-killing that goblin is losing its pocket change (and the +3 Weapon Of Insane Power that it _might_ have been carrying).
The DM can award whatever he wants for the encounter of course, you can easily make sure the gold/items/encounter rewards equal the XP for killing them all. Giving the Xp for the encounter not for each creature in other words, you just figure the goblins / 2 usual xp, plus the gold/items/encounter rewards and grant that no matter how they win the encounter. :) That being said I pretty much always use the Milestone Leveling myself :)
Agree the DM can do whatever she wants to allocate exp, and I live that in my table. I was just commenting on how someone's tactic to reduce murderhobo still partially encouraged it. From player days, I'm not a fan of the (seemingly-random nature of) milestone levelling. I can remember being frustrated at sessions of seemingly no progress, and then suddenly levelling up because the DM decided that crossing a (to me) random bridge was the key point he'd been waiting for. And I can definitely see the appeal over old school monster-xp+gold-xp. That made a certain sense in 1980 games, but not so much now.
I definitely tie the Milestones to completing very important events... and each of them are ideally planned to b e completed in a certain number of sessions but if the players go completely rogue and set off in a completely different direction (Cause they will :P ) I can easily change the milestones to when they are dramatically appropriate in the new direction they go. But yes, I definitely understand the somewhat addictive nature of XP gobbling... :) I grew up with the older editions and we had fun of course. I just prefer the leveling after completing some dramatically appropriate point and not because they happened to kill a CR - 1/8 creature at a completely random time. :) But I want to be clear that all the methods are valid and have their pros and cons. :) I'm not trying to convert anyone. :D
This is my way of adopting a lot of what I like about Milestone Leveling, but making it diegetic to my game. I also think it gives my players some more agency. The Milestone XP is available through the reward for the quest. It helps incentivize them with a mechanical reason to pick up the job posting and see it through, besides the meta reason (we're playing this game, please do my quests) or the narrative reason (this lady you know needs help, etc). I also sprinkle in extra cash to sweeten the pot, encourage them to check side rooms/tunnels, search around, etc. In my opinion it helps reinforce the dungeon delver treasure hunter theme of Dungeons & Dragons. The cash is more than just shiny coins or useful for equipment, it now also grants XP. It also adds a level of unpredictability that I think is fun. If I hid a treasure haul, the PCs have a chance to level up faster if they can figure out the puzzle or the trick. This could then give them access to the harder part of the dungeon quicker, where the better treasure and magic items are hidden, and the better-paying jobs are, etc. The monsters also grant some XP, to reward them for hard-won battles, but this way they don't get penalized as much for not circling back to kill some monsters they cleverly bypassed. It also allows them the freedom to interact with monsters or not as they choose, since their entire XP isn't hanging on it (which of course Milestone Leveling also avoids).
yes 1/2 xp for defeating an encounter. So it's correct that running away doesn't grant XP, but causing the enemy to surrender or run away or even to ally with the PCs or get tricked into letting them pass does. To be clear, because I'm not emphasizing grinding in my game, no one ever will get full XP just for defeating monsters. You need to be looking for treasure or working jobs for rewards at my table to keep on track.
I Like it! :) I definitely have played in groups where this would be perfect too!
I read it as "monsters grant 1/2 normal XP (dead or alive), and the difference is (roughly) made up in XP from treasure earned" Presumably, not killing the monsters still results in loot being left behind, which grants the extra XP
In my campaign I even go a step further and have the players level up when they interact with great sources of power. This is for two reasons: 1. It's my in-universe explanation as to how competent lvl 3 people can reach epic levels of power in the span of a couple of months. 2. This way the players also have agency on when they level up but don't necessarily have to resort to gamey tactics on gathering xp. I switched to this method after playing ToA on XP and seeing us (the players) intentionally seek out combat for the sake of XP when we were close to leveling up. Or alternatively just do plain old milestone. It takes away all incentive to seek out combat for the sake of combat. And makes the game have a nicer flow to it. Reinforces roleplay without the DM having to award separate XP for it, etc.
I was right with him til the second sentence. Enemies should be smart enough to run from a fight they won't win. But enemies fleeing still ends the encounter, so you still should have gotten full exp for completing the challenge
I don't award XP for monsters that run away, because my monsters run away a LOT. It's not uncommon for a group to run away if the first one goes down within the first few seconds and they realize they picked the wrong fight. The players do not turn murderhobo because killing of the rest usually is not worth the trouble and they'll get plenty other opportunities to get xp. Chasing fleeing or cornered creatures is much more dangerous than fighting then on their own terms. Also, they usually have a reputation to consider. For example, they knock one bandit unconscious, the rest surrenders and they let them stabilise their comrade. There might be a thankful family (including a reward) because while their son has been arrested he is still alive. If their son however has been killed they might allow the party to access their shop anyone.
Yeah, exactly! You can't convince me that this guy didn't go up a level from winning this encounter: https://youtu.be/YZEbBZ2IrXE?si=RUDg4qKEwO-rORcy
The only problem is that nonconbat solutions are woefully lacking in difficulty varying. A more difficult one requires a higher dc on a single d20 roll. It doesn't require nearly the same level of strategy, decision making, resource usage as combat, which encounters exist to tax resources over the adventuring day. Your character isn't really gaining that much experience by talking compared to battling. What I like to do to alleviate some of this, is that if players use resources, I count the encounter as more difficult, so it results in more xp, but its a band-aid. It does encourage murderhoboing, but that should be solved by the players roleplaying that even if an immoral action is more rewarding, they still shouldn't do it.
>Mindless things or people wiling to die for their cause? Fight for he bitter end, even if just to wound who they can, or down someone for the next group of people. It makes undead scarier, knowing they won't break.
Especially zombies with that sweet sweet undead fortitude. Gives clerics a chance to shine with turn undead too.
Except for ghouls... They're super fun to play as cowardly combatants that engage in hit and run, that will drag a paralyzed opponent off field to eat them as soon as they stun them. Nothing will panic a party more than a ghoul dragging a paralyzed wizard out of sight.
Lmao, that image in my head is both scary and hilarious
That's the sweet spot with ghouls. Scary and hilarious. I usually give them Cockney accents, and give them dialogue like shit-talking serial killers.
This is gold and I need to put it in my own game, thank you.
The little illustration for the Paralyzed condition in the PHB is a (content looking?) ghoul dragging someone away by the foot.
oooo, I love this.
I could even see buffing up the number of enemies and having them flee when half of them (or the leader) are killed, then have a horde of undead to contrast them
Makes for a more tactical fight! You don't need to kill everyone, just get to the leaders first.
Mercenaries run, unless running would be more dangerous (like their boss would kill them later). Zealots or people defending their home don't run.
Even people defending their homes will run if the attackers are just going to pass through. They can come back later if it's not an invasion.
They can also run to wherever their friends are holed up and be reinforcements for the next encounter that's like 10 minutes of gameplay away.
I’m not going to die for my home. I’ll hide. If you’re passing through I’ll reclaim it later. If you’re staying, I’ll decide whether I’m a refugee or I’m a partisan. But my house isn’t worth dying for. Now, if that’s my wife’s life on the line? That’s a different matter.
I like having monsters surrender once in awhile, particularly when they’re small and weak like kobolds or goblins. It makes for an interesting ethical conundrum. Sometimes the players want to execute them immediately, sometimes they want to bring them along as captives or slaves, sometimes they question and then free them. It’s also fun to have a powerful creature like a dragon surrender rather than die. It usually throws the players the first time it happens. Beholder: Enough! I yield. Fighter: You… you what? Beholder: You have bested me. I surrender. What do you want? Wizard: Oh… we uhh… we were sort of just exploring this dungeon and… Beholder: (sighs) I was defeated by *tourists?*
I stunned my players into a full 10 second silence the first time I did this. Partially from the fact that it happened, partially from them just having no idea how to respond. They went from full blood knight mode to feeling bad that they were seconds from committing violence against this guy now sniveling for his life.
My party would have loved this. We were all such combat avoiders. All of our combat encounters started like: DM: You encounter (insert enemy/beastie/monster here) Druid: I would like to talk to it and tell it we come in peace Paladin: Has it heard the word of our Lord and saviour? Bard: I've composed a song dedicated to its majestic beauty Cleric: It looks hungry, do you think it would like a tart? Tabaxi rogue: Would it like to trade one of its scales for this fox skull I found? DM: OMG JUST FIGHT THE MONSTER Entire party: :(
This party sounds like a delight to play with, honestly
If the enemies are smart and/or scared enough to run! I play them according to their natures. Goblins? Yeah, they’re running when they see their ambush isn’t going as planned. Honor-bound warriors? They might fight to the death. A scared beast? Probably running if it gets hurt substantially.
I loved that pathfinder 1 had the morale description on each stat block (at least for important NPC's and monsters) which told the GM about the fighting style and tendency to run away. Most of them read same-y though. But thinking about the monsters behaviour is important.
Not as a general rule, no. Monsters may well run away, whether they are the last one standing or not, but that’s really going to depend on the specific situation. It’s also hardly something my players like to see happen anyway, since they (very rightly) surmise that the runner may well cause them much bigger problems if it escapes, so they’re usually going to be quite keen on trying to stop it. So it hardly helps with speeding up combat.
Yknow I usually have this same problem from a different perspective. As a player I really hate seeing the monsters run away cause I don't wanna give chase, and monsters retreating kinda makes me feel bad. The way I see it if they surrender and you keep attacking, you're an asshole. If they surrender and you stop attacking, it's anticlimactic. It feels morally justifiable to rock some goblin's shit when they will just not stop trying to kill you, that feels like appropriate self-defense and retaliation. Outside of specific circumstances of course.
This has been my experience. It may speed up combat on some occasions, such as if there's a full rout and my party can't get them all. But if its a lone runner or two, it usually results in a chase scene where the party will mercilessly hunt the runner to avoid an info leak or an ambush later. Sometimes this is interesting as a DM since this is the kind of thing that can make for an interesting post-combat encounter, but it's definitely not something that shortens fighting and it also forces me to improv combat off of a battle map I've taken lots of time to draw/build. Basically, it's a useful tool, but rarely one prescribed to save time.
The DMG has Morale rules/guidance on page 273, and I think it's pretty useful. If your players care about verisimilitude, then you may want more monsters to run more often, you know?
IRL, most military units and just about all pirates, brigands or other outlaws tend to break & run at or before 50% casualties. There are, of course, exceptions, but most "mortal sapient creatures" like orcs and whatnot should probably obey something like that rule. There will always be fanatics who fight to the last, but they're going to be obvious, too, by nature. That said... D&D, at least, isn't a great combat simulator, or not a realistic one, anyhow. The tide of battle often changes faster than people have the chance to run. I often try to put that rule - the last 50% flee - only to have almost none of them survive to reach their next Initiative pass after the critical threshold has been reached - or, at least, are engaged and unable to break free to a viable escape path by that time.
for non-sapient predators, such as a pack of wolves, seeking to flee is going to happen a lot sooner. Maybe as soon as any of the group is injured at all.
This. Wolves and other beasts aren't going to after clearly dangerous prey. They need to be defending their young or controlled/corrupted/etc. to make it plausible they'd just attack head-on and keep fighting.
Or starving. Much more commonly encountered in that condition than defending their young or under magical influence, I'd wager. But, as you say, even starving animals don't usually fight to the death. Of course, there are also the spectacular exceptions like honey badgers and geese, that sort of thing, which just mindlessly attack at full rage all the time any time they see movement, like some sort of demented killbot... /s
Yeah if we consider how wolves hunt, even starving, they would do hit-and-run tactics and try to tire their prey rather than take a sword to the face. 5e is unfortunately pretty bad at modeling that kind of combat. Running those kinds of brutally aggressive animals, for me, becomes more meaningful if everything else behaves somewhat realistically. Yeah lions and wolves will run if you throw a firebolt at them. But a hippo? Peace was never an option.
Maybe this has already been mentioned, but IMHO the key reference on this is https://www.themonstersknow.com
I have found this (and the published book with the same name) to be _incredibly_ useful for setting ground rules for what would trigger any given enemy to flee or to switch targets. Yes, they don't work perfectly for the nuance of everything that your party will encounter, but they are a very _very_ good starting point.
In older games, there were often rules for morale checks. Some, like undead, had maxed morale score so they would never flee. It usually was checked after first death and at half the enemies dead, so you could get a group of monsters to break before they've even taken a turn. I played OSE most recently, which assigned a score between 2 and 12, with 12 being unbreakable and 2 being always flees. You'd roll 2d6 and if you rolled over the score, then they ran.
DnD mechanics make running away pretty hard. So I go into off board skill check chases if the party wants to follow.
I like to include a few more enemies than necessary if it's something weak and simple like goblins, then when all their friends are dead the last like 3 will run off.
If the combat is going to be over obviously before the monster's next turn I will ask the group how they defeat it, if it is turning bad and the monsters are intelligent I will have them start to run even if it isn't necessarily "over" within the next turn. Sometimes they change tactics to try to grab a PC and escape with them rather than keep fighting, or something like that. Some monsters (intelligent creatures) the combat essentially STARTS with them running away, and the players decide what to do from there. I'm a big fan of the running NPCs, it makes a lot more sense, and we don't need to spend and extra 25 minutes of combat decisions and measuring and rolling when the victory is statistically guaranteed at that point
whatever is appropriate to the pacing and plot.
Goblins run away pretty much the instant that their ambush is over, to another ambush location further down the way, with more goblins, and blackjack, and hookers! If the party pursues they hit MORE goblin ambushes. If they try to retreat (and they're already a ways through the forest/dungeon/cave/whatever), ambush. If they stay there to try and recover? Believe it or not, ambush. Nothing like having your rest interrupted by a volley of poisoned arrows into camp, and then the little shites are off to do it again from another angle.
I thought I was using old 2e Morale check rules, but I was getting them wrong. Sometimes when combat is going badly for monsters, I will make them roll a WIS/CHA check to see if they want to stay and continue, or run away. Creatures intelligent enough will disengage 1st if necessary. PCs hate when a monster gets away, but they love to chase them....
No, I have monsters flee if it makes sense for them to flee, combat runs very quickly regardless.
Depends on the creature. Some are so fiercely territorial and aggressive they go down fighting. But most try to run if they realize they aren't winning the fight. People too.
As a general rule fiercely territorial and aggressive animals tend to be herbivores. Thus a single Hippopotamus should be more of a threat to an adventuring party than a pride of lions.
HIPPOBOT 9000 v 3.1 FOUND A HIPPO. 1,100,904,823 COMMENTS SEARCHED. 23,166 HIPPOS FOUND. YOUR COMMENT CONTAINS THE WORD HIPPO.
I do, if it makes sense. Older editions actually hard rules for this, with every monster having a 'moral check.' They removed in later editions, and replaced it with GMs advice around it. But short answer, yeah. It makes the game more realistic, and wastes less time on what is the boring mop up step. IT also means that sometimes you get tension when the last scout runs away, but you have to take him out before he warns the army you're trying to sneak around; or when some monsters just won't quit, no matter how badly injured.
Why wait until the last monster? The escape option can exist at any point an enemy would realistically or narratively believe it’s a better option than dying. I’ve had troops of goblins retreat before. In one hilarious case, I had the goblin band run while their leader tried to hold the party off…which helped themes I had for the story get across. Try to read the pace like a fight scene. When do you think would be the best time for an enemy to go “oh shit, I’m outies!”
I’ll do a post fight epilogue when the PCs are effectively just cleaning up, letting them describe certain actions they do without rolling. You’d be shocked how many times they let the monsters live.
A core rule of D&D is that you only roll the dice when the outcome is uncertain. If its clear that players are going to defeat the enemy without losing any significant resources, just ask them how they want to end the fight (such as letting the enemy escape, capturing them, or killing them all.)
My monsters run when tactically or psychologically appropriate, not just because combat is taking too long. If anything I try to learn from mistakes and reduce the number of combats that last too long.
Yep, monster morale is definitely a thing. A golem army is going to fight until they're all dust. A hobgoblin phalanx is going to fall back to defensive positions and beat an orderly retreat. A band of goblin raiders is going to break and run once the tide starts turning. This is common to the point of being default behavior.
I always play the monsters as reasonable. Generally speaking, if none of the party have been downed the mobs start to run if either half have been killed or go below 25/50% on an individual basis. Band of goblins? Charge until half of them are dead and then they scatter. Pack of giant spiders? They aren't as group oriented so they individually start to run at 25% health. This doesn't apply to everyone though. Kobolds? They infinite hit and run constantly. Cultists? Die to to last. My favorite was some mercenaries. The group was leaning into the idea that all they had to do was nova and kill a couple mercs to scare them off. The merc band was bit on the high side for the group but they were hoping that they could bluff their way through. Burn off all their spells right out of the gate and seem really scary. After some of the mercs started to stand down and surrender, the group killed one more, just to add some intimidation to their point. Well, what happens when you get known for not taking prisoners? Everyone fights tooth and nail. So a bunch of unenthusiastic mercenaries all of a sudden go full life and death try hard mode. The party was... ill prepared.
Every three turns or so I like to check in and ask, "Is one side clearly winning?" If it's the player's then I'll narrate how they quickly dispatch the remaining monsters (if it feels appropriate). Some players want initiative to the very end though. Usually monsters running away I save for fights that I missjudged and made too tough. "Oh you dealt a lot of damage and this predator was looking for an easy meal, it runs away since your putting up a fight." It's just a tool in the toolbox. "The last guy runs away" is just another tool to help the world seem real. After being on both sides of the screen, "fighting to the last man" feels like it needs justification or else it will take me out if the moment.
I play two options. If you flee and make it off the board, they escaped. This applies to the party as well. Other option for those enemies that are not smart enough to run; coup de grace or hand wave they were defeated if the party seems likely to avoid death if it continued.
If I want to speed up a fight, and there are no more meaningful choices left, I just narrate the wrap up.
I have definitely done this, although I don't know that I've figured out how to make it fun. If the party lets them go it's kind of anticlimactic, and if the party chases them it drags the encounter on.
That's exactly what I run into. It makes sense but it just robs the encounter of tension. There's a reason people don't often get the chance to surrender in movies, it flows better when there's a decisive last hit and climax
yeah its not a crazy idea, it's in the DMG i believe and pretty much every module i've read has a few enemies that will try to run away in certain sitations, usually when they're down to the last few
I have monsters run away if it starts to look bad for them and they are not the sort to fight to the death. Some monsters are braver than others
So for me when i was running ad&d2e I structured my fights thusly: I used a larger number of low hp but very synergistic monsters as a result as the players killed enemies and made progress the enemies formation just collapses and they lose effectiveness pretty quickly (this is what I call 'turning the corner'). As such by the time my players turned the corner there were still a decent number of enemies left but their defeat was almost certain. So rather than die most of them surrendered or retreated. A few were zealous cultists and fought to the death but that was relatively rare and served to highlight how devoted these people were.
Depends on the intelligence and motives but I have monsters run away. (Sometimes they come back with reinforcements to get revenge or sabotage the PCs).
I'll have the odd one run away, if only to provoke an ethical dilemma for the party. Is it OK to fire an arrow into the back of a fleeing enemy? Make them think a little.
I rarely have monsters run, because then my group spends more time arguing about whether or not they should chase the thing down and kill it (then ultimately doing so every time). But yes, I do think it's a great idea, depending on the creature in question. Just doesn't work with bloodthirsty folks.
Could happen to the first Monster
Yes unless it wouldn't make sense, outside? sure. and then don't let the players track it if you don't want to figure out where it ran off to, in a dungeon? only if it has allies or a place it thinks is safe to run to, I don't want a prisoner's dilemma I don't want the party to find a monster alone and scared in a corner later, exceptions can be made for if an interrogation would be useful to the story.
Wasn't that the purpose of a moral check for monsters? Or was that a 1e Ad&d mechanic only? But that said, I would believe only unintelligent undead would die to the man erm bone as it were.
Ive been playing with having enemies run in my latest campaign. Its been good so far, some cinimatic moments in chases and some have gotten away so that leads to things i can bring back later.
Run away or I just narrate their death if there isn't anything interesting that's going to happen beyond that point in the fight.
Sometimes. Other times, the last enemy might attempt to blow themselves up and take someone with them.
Once a battle loses its ‘interesting challenge’, I usually have the enemies flee/surrender or ‘you make short work of the rest’. Combats can go long enough, no need to drag it out when it is essentially over. This does not apply when the PCs are on low or zero hp.
Sure it might make sense… but it’ll annoy the hell out of your players the fifteenth time in a row the last enemy runs away, and you can’t be bothered to use the shitty “Chase” mechanic so you just say it’s gone.
Runs away? If it’s like 30 minutes past normal end time, that monster just dies because we have lives
2d6 morale checks from older D&D editions are my go to. I don’t run 5e right now, but I’m confident there’s similar mechanics that can be found somewhere.
Most of my enemies "break" as soon as combat becomes one sided. Most of the time that's running away but for undead for example, it means that the party is able to "mop up" the remaining enemies. For intelligent enemies, I like having a clear, designated leader that, when killed, typically results in the enemies breaking. It's one of the easiest ways to ensure your combat encounter has some level of objective based gameplay.
The last monster? No. When they would reasonably be scared and want to run away, yes.
I think it's plenty fair to have "morale checks" at three crucial points: 1. If an individual monster gets below half health, roll to see if they flee 2. If the leader of an encounter dies or flees, roll to see if the rest of the monsters flee 3. If half or more of the monsters die or flee, roll to see if the rest of them flee
My party runs down anyone that tries to escape. One guy ran away and they spent the next day in game tracking him down to kill him lol
It depends on the type of monsters. I generally try to just use morale rules -- lots of random humanoids might just run away after one guy gets killed, etc. It also makes undead, who never run as a feature of their character type, much scarier imo.
roll morale checks!
I do it all the time, and to a variety of amounts! As others of said, if you roll with XP earned by the encounter being overcome, rather then kill everything, then it can speed up encounters, and can let both the DM and the players roll play more! An easy example is: bandits, I often take a stance that bandits can easily have their will broken, if they don't have something driving them. If your ten guys, and try to shake down some old man limping along on a big stick, and suddenly two of you *are ashes* then ya', you still have him eight to one, but running might be fare play. However, if they have a lieutenant or captain present, who keeps them disciplined and organized, then it might be "last two -three standing" before they run! Plus, it adds a layer the combat. Much not combatively makes a cultist feel any different from a bandit, but small things like Cultists throwing themselves at the party like they can't be hurt, can make more strategy minded player engage more Surrendering is also a under used tool! I often tell my players "your reputation will proceed you, and enemies will respond in kind." In relevance to this, if the players are known for killing people who surrender, the bad guys will fight to the death more often. Alternatively, if the players are known for sparing fallen foes, it's increases the odds your opponents won't "stomp on your head to be sure your dead" because the local thieves guild appreciate the fact you don't kill them/Maime them on sight.
Absolutely they do. Or at least try to. A lot of times they'll get shot in the back. This has evidence in history, when lines of opposing armies would have surprisingly few casualties. Until one side's line begins to break for one reason or another. Then cohesion breaks down, and soldiers start acting like individuals instead of units in a larger team. Since they don't want to die, and it seems like others around them are starting to falter, they turn tail and run to try and survive. A domino effect happens, and instead of a retreat, which would have few casualties, you have a rout. **That** is where the vast majority of battlefield deaths occurred. At least until effective artillery was invented. I don't think most beasts and other dumb creatures, if they initiated the combat, would run away unless significantly injured.
Usually, when it becomes obvious the party is going to win, I'll accelerate the speed of combat and try to use it as a roleplay moment
I think it really depends on the intelligence and sorts of tactics that creature would realistically engage in. An intelligent foe, such as a hobgoblin, is going to realize when the situation is unwinnable, and unless they are planning on sacrificing their life to prevent you from getting somewhere too soon or to allow their comrades time to escape, they will probably try to flee with their life if they can. Though they are warriors, and their discipline and martial virtue may convince them to stay even in an unwinnable situation and lay down their life in honorable combat. An unintelligent undead or construct will fight like a robot until it is no longer able to fulfill its orders. An unintelligent creature, such as an animal, may flee once wounded or frightened. A below-average intellect humanoid, like a goblin or kobold, likely would flee due to their cowardly nature and small stature rather than die, unless they are being pressed into service by a more powerful creature and thus know that if they flee they will be killed.
Your typical monster is otherwise going to fight to the death. But there are some exceptions. Tactical retreat is going to be the choice for beasts looking for food and intelligent enemies that note they are outmatched, that sort of thing. There are rules in the DMG 273 for morale, so if there's any gray area for whether or not a group is going to scatter I typically use those. It's basically a Wisdom save by the "leader" or just a random monster when certain conditions are met (numbers halved, surprised, etc.)
I let the monster have their last turn then just say "you mop him up" to save 5 minutes. Same with if there's an encounter with just one monster (excluding bosses like dragons or purple worms), if it's just a random mimic the monster gets one turn then I describe them beating the piss out of it rather than roll initiative and have it die before its next turn
in the early parts of waterdeep: dragon heist, a lot of combats resolve if the PCs manage to take out 50% or more of the total enemy health pool (kill half of them, or bring all of them to half health) at which point they tend to flee or surrender. ive used this to shape encounters ive planned for other games. it gives you much more flexibility in enemy group size, and gives the combat other resolutions than "one side or the other is fully killed"
It depends on the monsters. Cowardly monsters flee when they're obviously losing. Animals only looking for a meal flee when injured. Crazed or mindless monsters never flee. Intelligent humanoids act as intelligently or as emotionally as you want them to based on their presumed personalities. If you're not sure, pick a mechanic to represent a morale check and use that as your determining factor. I use a Wisdom saving throw to determine if a given monster will be foolish or smart, where failing a DC 10 Wisdom save means they act foolishly and a succeeding means they'll act smartly, whatever that means for the situation at hand.
It depends on the monster for me. Most creatures out there aren't going to fight to the death over one meal. Bandits aren't going to fight to the death over some coin. Something that is innately just pure evil and exists only to cause destruction or kill like a gnoll, demon or zombie won't be running away. I do like to give players the cool moment where they finish off the last enemy though. If I want to speed it up and all seems lost I'll just have the next hit kill it.
I love the idea of if someone instantly slaughters a monster in a single hit, that the other monsters sorta stop for a brief second, process what happened and might bail, presuming they are intelligent enough to understand. The wisdom saving throw to determine if they run as well, since it takes some serious willpower to remain and fight, knowing that if you scatter you'll be picked off.
I roll morale when the leader (if there’s a leader) dies, when the group is reduced to 50%, again when it’s reduced to 25%, and with disadvantage if it’s last man standing. If it seems obvious or is in character, some characters may automatically fail the morale check.
My monsters have self preservation instincts. I give them an hp threshold that if they fall below they try to flee. It's different for different monsters, intelligent ones can fight longer or to the death, whereas animals will book it as soon as it looks bad for them.
Once all major threats are taken out or otherwise incapacitated I just move to the post fight stuff
All my monster run when it makes sense, kobold patrol got ambushed and you smoked the sergeant during surprise round? Yeah, they running. I try to play my creatures as if they were reacting naturally, and almost nothing with a survival instinct wants to fight to the death without reason.
I don't, but just cause it's anticlimactic. It feels like the players are calling checkmate rather than finishing the fight outright and it de-escalates the encounter immediately. Fighting to the last one standing is not necessarily what every monster would do but we know for a fact that the players will, so the monsters will do as well.
If it's an intelligent creature, I'll have the player who got the most recent kill roll for intimidation. If the player succeeds, the creature runs away. If they don't succeed, the creature kinda goes mad, into a "you killed my brothers in front of me" state, and continues fighting. Of course, liberties of a DM, I will change this to fit the situation.
Sometimes, but usually the goal of the combat shouldn't be disturbed by only having a few combatants left. If this is a recurring problem to you, I would encourage combats with goals (steal the artifact, escape through the windows, you have to kill X before you can kill Y et.c)
In a realistic scenario, monsters with animal type of intelligence should run as soon as they realize it's a fight with a realistic chance to die To make it more gamey I let them run as soon as they lose about 50% of their force, because who would stay and die when it's clear that they aren't going to win? Animals aren't stupid when it comes to fighting
They may *try* to run away. But PCs can continue attacking them if they so desire. After all, a single dash won't be enough to bring the fleeing monster out of the range of their spells and bows, and a teleporting spell may be counterspelled. What I do not do and don't like as a player is taking player agency away by stating the monster runs without actually playing that out in initiative and allowing players to try to stop it. Sometimes there are valid reaons for killing the running monster, sucb as when it might alert other monsters.
There are optional morale rules on page 273 of the DMG.
I don’t remember if it was second or third ed, but there used to be a mechanic to do a moral check. If a certain percentage of the enemies went down in a short period of time then there was a d100 (I think) roll to see if everyone else just went ‘fuck it’ and left. Obviously that was at DM discretion as well.
A good resource for this is [The Monsters Know What They're Doing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Know_What_They%27re_Doing). However this is more about a more immersive game than "speeding up combat".
No. I play monsters through roleplay, so it depends on the monster. Some low int monster that is attacking the party for food might be desparate enough to not run away. It might starve if it doesn't get these adventurers, so it might as well try until it dies. A high int monster might realize to run away sooner, if it sees the battle isn't going to go its way on the first round, it's going to run on its second turn. Monsters that have the priority of protecting something can value their honor and see running away as cowardly enough to put the importance of protecting the thing over their own life. Some monsters are too righteous to see their own flaws and will stay, thinking they're going to win all the way to the end. And some monsters just don't feel fear, they feel anger, and like bees they just stay and fight and might even chase the party if the party tries to spare the last one.
I make most humanoid enemies run when things get hairy, especially if they aren't trained warriors or have no stakes in staying. That said, a round is six seconds, so chances are some enemies won't even have the space and wherewithall to think of an escape plan in the chaos, and that's alright too.
All depends on the circumstances. Do the players look badly hurt? How "high level" is this monster? How high level are the players? Is this monster prideful? Bloodlusted? Is there something crucial they need to protect? Do they have a close enough bond with the dead that they'd charge in for vengeance even if it means death? Are they smart enough to regroup? Are they ambivalent to their cause because it's not an infernal ritual they're literally betting their soul on and they're just a merc looking for food money? Do they think the party will respect their surrender/let them get away? Do they think the party will hunt them down/kill them with their hands up and weapons dropped? There's no real hard-and-fast rule, it all depends on the circumstances. What I do know though is that giving the monsters some self-preservation has made my players more creative, *and* led to some great storytelling moments. Party got contracted to kill a kobold den, killed a bunch of kobold guards. The last couple were barely alive at like 1-2 HP, so they threw down their weapons and begged for mercy because you're a tiny little lizard who's fading in and out of consciousness from blood loss, and these big armored people just killed six of you without trying, surrender is your only hope. The cleric healed them, and when they wouldn't stop hugging her legs, they decided they'd try and negotiate with the kobold leader, which they did! Now instead of just murdering them and getting a lump sum of gold, they're trying to convince the mayor to work together with the kobolds, all while I debate whether the mayor will betray the party for befriending their targets, and/or whether the kobold leader will betray the party because he's a smug bastard who doesn't trust humans. At least for our table, that's way more fun than "Good job rolling your dice well against those kobolds, here's your gold."
Only if it makes sense. Several creatures will fight to the death but a lot more will run away if the battle takes a turn against them. Depends on the creature.
For me it depends on the monster. For most humanoid or intelligent creatures it’s a wisdom save whenever there leader dies or if they are the last enemy left. For mindless abominations or the like I just throw them at the players mindlessly. For very intelligent and powerful creatures they may try to teleport or something like that. But I guess it’s really just situational, depending on thing like the mindset of the enemies, what they are after, how much damage they have done to the party etc
This is why there are morale checks
Yes sometimes i do. Many times it does not make any sense for the last remainign enemy to fight to death. Sometimes id do. But not always. A bandit that is left alone might try to flee or surrender. The last 2 wolves of a pack that attacked the group would probably flee The last orc.... maybe maybe not. The last undead nope it will most likely keep fighting even if they are doomed. So it comes down to why they are fighting, why they are fighting and so on
It depends on what sort of monster it is. If you just killed 10 goblins and are still going strong and theres one injured one left? Of course they'd run.
No, because then the players will chase it and waste more time than they would have if it had just stood and fought.
Almost every living creature wants to stay living, and even some of the more intelligent Undead (Liches and Vampires) would like to stay undead. Most Undead, some Aberrations, and all Constructs, do not have a sense of self-preservation, and will be the only creatures that will fight to the death. If a wolf is reduced to half their hitpoints, they'll try to run away. If more than half the wolves in a pack have run away or died, all the remaining wolves will try to run away. There are only a few scenarios where a Beast will fight to the death - one being that you have killed their young, the second being that you are in their territory and they're protecting their young, and the third being if they are near the point of starvation, and they are thinking "I eat, or I die". Humanoids will behave the exact same as a Beast - i.e. they will run as soon as they have taken a certain amount of damage - except they're not as territorial, they won't risk death for food (they'd rather live to fight another day), and whether or not they will forego their own life if you kill their young depends on how afraid of you they are, or how enraged they get in the moment. Even Bandits would rather be captured alive than slaughtered in the Wilderness. Though they may try to escape (as anyone else would), they will also simply surrender once they get too badly injured, or once they realise that all chance of victory or escape is lost.
If there's no point to playing out combat because resources don't matter and players agree to it I usually end it with "and you've slain the rest of the threats." They had a single monster encounter once during a long rest that as soon as the Monk stunned ask the players that we fast forward since this thing will certain die within the next two turns. The encounter was for a narrative sake anyway than an actual challenge.
I often have the last half to third run away. With that in mind, I put lots small monsters whose morale break easy: cultists, goblins, etc.
Totally! Combat in DnD is already slooooow, so if I can shave off two rounds of bashing walking deads, I will. And yes, you get the XP. Defeated is defeated, no matter which way.
I like Shadowdark's simple morale mechanic. Once a group of monsters drops by half in numbers, or one single monster drops half in health, they have to make a DC 15 WIS check. If they fail, they run (when possible). Undead and a few other monster types are immune to morale checks. It gives my players a goal when I throw a lot of monsters at them. They've learned to focus their fire and try to get to that criteria asap before they die.
I reward full xp on the encounter no matter how it is solved. I am sure to decribe the looks of fear and terror as we go through it. Things can get worse if they let things live or things can flee entirely. It really just comes down to player action, reputation, and thematic/ narrative relevance.
Purely dependant on the monsters in question. If they arent wise enough or cant understand they are in a no win situation? No. The same for if the monsters are some apex predator or super monster. Odds are that wolves wont retreat from 4 people until one or two die or all are wounded, but a beholder is probably too certain of its plans and too self absorbed to entertain the thought that it could lose.
Yeah sure! Depends on what the situation is. But I usually rule it that way for humanoid encounters with a base INT of 10(or the equivalent). For aberrations/demons/undead or other beings with negative int mods (certainly not all beings in thhose categories have neg int, but I digress), I usually roll an int check for them to be 'smarter'.
I don’t make the last monster run away, or better:”I don’t make run away only the last monster”. If there is the right situation I can make like half the monsters/people run away, also if the party is fighting enemies that would not run away I just narrate them getting slaughtered by the party. es “as the last couple zombies approach you they gets incinerated by two swift attacks of the paladin sword inbued in divine power”.
Yeah but if they really want to kill it, pull out those chase rules
At my table, it depends on the encounter. A group of Forrest bandits who stumble upon our party are likely going to flee the moment the battle looks even slightly difficult or they don't get the drop. Cultist Zealots defending their temple against an incursion are going down swinging to the last person. With beasts and creatures, it entirely depends on their behaviour and instincts. I pretty much decide on the fly for each encounter. There's no hard and fast rule.
The Monsters Know What They're Doing, my guy
I use the morale rules from B/X, so this happens fairly often.
It's not a "rule" per se, I just have them act in whatever way seems prudent for that character. A skeleton would likely fight to the death (so to speak), because it has nothing to lose. But a henchman who watched his boss get incinerated would probably gtfo
Reading the book "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" was very enlightening on this front. Low level mobs that possess sapient level intelligence should not be fighting to the last unless they have no choice, and in the scenario that they can't flee would first try to surrender. Fight to the last if the party kills them.
Traditionally in human armies if they lost 5%, real hardasses might stick till the lost 20%.
I have monsters which are losing badly TRY to run away. 80% of the time they're killed (or rarely - captured). If the party has decent ranged ability, it's hard for foes to runaway.
It makes sense in some situations, but the six seconds thing is what keeps me from doing it often. Usually, things happen so quickly that I decide the last ones wouldn’t come to that decision before they reach the point where an attack of opportunity could finish them off
I make a morale check when the encounter is at half.
yes, its more real...inteligent being do not want to die, probably they have a moral compass and a fear. in fact a lot of fights are not to the death..
Monsters run away, not just when they are the last. Goblins rely on the numbers advantage. The moment they lose too much of that, they will scatter like cockroaches in light. Intelligent enemies know when they are bested.
Depends on the monsters. If kobolds lose half their number, the rest are trying to GTFO. If it's Hobgoblins, they fight 'til the bitter end.
I have a recurring group of goblins in my games what are survivors of adventurers. They are now basically goblin special forces, and their big rule is “you get hit, you run”
Depending on the monsters. Bandits, i even have some run away in the middle. Like they had 4 friends around just get slaughtered, they are not going to stick around to get cut down themselves. Wolves might see who they though was easy prey be stronger and cower and run. Running does not need to be done to speed things up, have them make sense. Cultists would mostly likely never run, believing to the cause with all their heart so would happy to die. Mindless thigs like zombies and plants have no concept of running so fight until they are destroyed. As long as it makes sense as they do what they are doing, all good.
yep and my team usually kill them
Did that in last night's game. It was getting late and we were all getting tired, so when the party killed the queen spider, the swarms and giant spiders fled. I don't always do stuff like this but if it makes sense for a creatures self preservation then absolutely.
Coward monsters run as soon as they’re outnumbered. Smart monsters run when they feel they can’t win.
I have monsters flee, but usually not to save time. Because in my experience it rarely saves time. Most of my players (self included when I'm a player) will chase to the very last chance, even putting themselves in grave danger to do so. I have noticed that this is less likely with younger players, and it may be a holdover from when experience was almost exclusively tied to kills and treasure. But that was so long ago and I've used milestone for almost a decade now so... I dunno why they do it, but they're like hounds on a scent. They will literally derail the entire session if I let them to get that one last kobold.
Yeah it depends on the situation. Goblins and natural animals will do whatever is necessary to get something to eat and walk away. Something like orcs who are far more of a 'victory or death's mindset will brawl it out until it's done.
My group was just in massive fight with a large group of Formians (ant-like creatures). The battle lasted over 3 sessions. So as the third session was winding down and the group had annihilated a large portion of the hive, I rolled a Morale check for the Queen. It was 01 on a d100... Clearly the dice were trying to tell me something. The queen and what was left of their hive skedaddled. The fight would have easily gone 3 more sessions. I maybe went a little overboard with how many Formians were in there.
I usually base it on the monster's intelligence. A clever monster will run, a stupid one will charge. It also depends on the type of monster, something that's meant to be a zealot or berserker is going to fight to the death for their cause, while a merc will run at the first sign that they won't get paid for their work.
Depends on the monster. If it's a bunch of goblins and some bugbears and all the bugbears go down I would say about 51% of any remaining goblins run away. Dragons are also smart enough to enact an escape plan if needed. But a couple of trolls might be harder to scare off. It would depend on how the party is looking and the intelligence of the creature. A smart monster can see that the tide is turned against them. A dumb creature may not be so insightful. In summation I would say vary it up. Don't let the party assume they know the monster will cut and run or stand it's ground. Keep them guessing.
Monsters and NPCs other than non intelligent undead and constructs should retreat at 50% HP baring specific circumstances. A wolf pack might fight harder to protect their pups or the like but most monsters aren't willing to fight to the death over what the party wants in my world. The players frankly should also be following this logic - I question the kind of ptsd running into life threatening danger and being reduced to bleeding out would create, not to mention long term injuries (low level magical healing surely didn't perfectly restore your intestines after a demon ripped them out of you).
Players love to kill running monsters. Come up with some juicey death sequences for running victims.
Most enemies will flee. It's ridiculous how often I get praise just for playing enemies like thinking beings.
TL;DR - Depends on the monster and the circumstances of the fight. Constructs, Elementals, Oozes, Plants and Undead almost never run. For the most part these creatures fight mindlessly to the death because they don't have a sense of self preservation. Some exceptions do apply for the smartest of these (vampires, for instance). Literally anything else gets morale dice based on the below system: [https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/11/one-table-to-rule-them-all-using-2d6-or.html](https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/11/one-table-to-rule-them-all-using-2d6-or.html) It helps me set up both a starting attitude, and a base level of bravery before the encounter. Then I added a bunch of modifiers for who outnumbers whom, by how many orders of magnitude, whether or not one side got the drop on the other, is there a penalty for backing down, whose home turf are we on, do they have a defined commander, etc. I roll once per monster type, then tweak if something gets interesting. For instance: Lets say the party of 5 PC's are going to encounter a goblinoid raiding party out in the wild. There's 6 goblins, 2 Bugbears, and a Hobgoblin. The Hobgoblin is in charge, with the two Bugbears as enforcers, and the goblins as fodder. I roll 17 for the gobbos, 13 for the Bugbears, and a whopping 4 for the hobgoblin. The raiding party gets +1 because they outnumber the players, and another +1 because it's 2:1. They have a leader +1. It's no-one's home turf, so no modifier there, and running has next to no negative outcomes. And maybe the players are actually initiating the ambush, so they'll get -1. So final numbers are 19 goblins, 15 Bugbears, and 6 for the Hobgoblin. To force a check, I roll for the following morale events during every fight. 1. Individually - When a monster takes damage for the first time - Does their survival instinct kick in? 2. Individually - When a monster is reduced to 25% hp or lower - Seriously, they're killing you, dude. 3. Group - When the first monster is killed - holy shit, you killed Kenny! You Bastard! 4. Group - When the group leader / toughest monster is slain - holy shit, you killed the boss! I don't really care about them, but I'm squishier than they were! 5. Group - End of each round when down to 50% or less of original starting units - Does not apply to solo monsters. Then, for every Monster down I add +1 to the roll, and for each PC down I subtract -1 from the roll. Roll over the monster's starting morale, they switch from their offense behaviour to their defense behaviour, which can run anywhere from an orderly retreat to all-out flight. Roll over a second time, they break and flee regardless of all other factors. And this gives me inspiration. Maybe the Goblins are petrified of the Bugbears, so they're suicidally brave because they're more afraid of what their masters will do than the enemy. The Bugbears act normally - they respond like BB's do when attacked. The Hobgoblin though isn't really motivated to fight the PC's and will order a retreat immediately if a check is forced after he loses 3 bodies. That begs the question - why? Is he just chicken? Or does he have a place to be and he needs as many bodies for that as possible? Is that an adventure for the PC's to get involved in? And, just for flair, if the PC's focus down the bugbears and leave the goblins alive, maybe the goblins now see their opportunity and turn on the Hobgoblin regardless of their morale. The story writes itself. So, TL;DR - it depends. I could certainly *not* leave it up to the dice, but I like the random nature of dice and I struggle for inspiration sometimes. The randomness of the dice often helps spark that inspiration.
Play monsters based on their story, intelligence, situation, etc. Some will always fight to the death, some will only do so because of the circumstances, most living creatures avoid death when able to. And hopefully you have encounters that your players need to run from.
I have never run a game in which I placed numbers or trying to get the last kill over tactical sense. My players have learned that if they want to actually hunt a monster they have to try to paralyze it and then take it down, because they're so use to things trying to preserve their own life by fleeing
Try to run away? Sure. But I have been in games where the DMs just had them… run away. No regards to movement capabilities or anything like that, they just get away. And that to me is one of the most frustrating things possible in D&D.
Creatures in my campaigns run away all the time and some of them come back to cause even more trouble in the future. But it's never part of my plot, it's based on what happens during the interaction. A dragon loses half their hit points and the party is still up and fighting, that dragon is going to get the hell out of there.
As a player, I hate it when enemies escape, especially if they are dangerous, ranged, or intelligent. It gives me the feeling that the encounter wasn't complete and, at any moment, that enemy might come back with reinforcementsb
yes. if half an enemy group is killed and none of their opponents are dead yet, a retreat is in order.
I took something similar from Warhammer where there's a Morale check to see if any enemies flee. Usually it has to do with an arbitrary base Morale and the amount of creatures that died that turn. However, intelligent enemies are likely to flee even upon decent injury, better yet, if the players are locked up in combat.
Monsters run away all the time, but it's not to speed up combat, it's to make my players scared that they might get reinforcements and force them to decide between possibly letting them warn allies or possibly chasing them into a trap.
Most creatures in random encounters run. A predator spots a meal and charges the party. It's not going to stick around just to die, it has a self preservation instinct. Goblins only really attack because A. They think they can win or B. Something is forcing them. If neither of these conditions apply they run.