How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Prior to D&D3, D&D had morale rules for NPCs and monsters, etc., were absolutely expected to often retreat or flee if things were going against them unless they were something like mindless undead. 't.

As long as we're talking about 3.x and retreating we should mention the way "Attacks of Opportunity" complicated retreating. AoO actually discouraged many kinds of imprecise swanning about in combat ("Roll for Initiative." "What do you do for your first action?" "I climb a tree.") but it was triggering an AoO by trying to break off combat that fixed in people's minds that it could be very difficult to do this successfully.

Gurps can make it pretty difficult too. Burning those 3 movement pts to spin around so you can run away full speed will generally give your opponent an attack you can't Parry or Block. Sometimes yu have to do something like encouraging disengagement by taking a Retreating Defense when you think the enemy is ready to flee.

Fleeing is always easier when you're not in melee but "hit' em hard and fast" is usually a good way to start off battles. I usually have non-engaged monsters roll IQ or similar stat to figure out that it's time to run but for the oens already committed to melee changing their minds can be difficult.

You could have monsters signal their willingness to flee by doing something like All out Defense with Retreat every Turn but that could just encourage aggression. After all, where did PCs learn to be "MurderHobos"? From running into endless series of "MurderNomads".