[4E] Running Away

[Finarvyn]

We had an interesting thing happen in our 4E game today, and I'm trying to decide if it's a glitch in the 4E rules.

It has to do with running away.

In this particular case, the party was ambushed by a group of kobolds. After several rounds of combat, the remaining two kobolds decided to cut and run. I waited until their turn and had them run with no warning to the party. In 4E a turn consists of two actions, one of which could be to fight and the other to move, or one can use both for movement. The kobolds took the "double move" and ran away as fast as possible.

However, most of the characters had an "action point" left, which gave them an extra action. They chose the move-move option to keep them running along with the kobolds, then played their "action point" cards to get a freebie attack to dispatch the fleeing monsters.

So, in this case it would appear that if characters retain their "action points" then it would be pointless for a monster to ever run away because the characters can outdo them.

Am I reading the rules wrong, or do the monsters just get hosed?

[coffee]

I don't know about 4e, but in 1e, if you ran away, your opponent would get a free attack on your unprotected back. Sounds like this works as such in 4e.

[vito]

Kobolds are dead meat out in the open. That is why they should always have some kind of small hidden escape route prepared ahead of time.
Being small creatures, kobolds are able to flee at full speed through areas that would slow their pursuers to a snail's pace.
Since kobolds are short, they can run through areas with low ceilings where larger creatures are forced to drop prone and crawl.
Since kobolds are narrow, they can zip comfortably through tight spaces that wider creatures would have to squeeze through.
Kobolds should also escape into darkened areas where PC visibility is impaired.
Some kind of concealing foliage or mist is also ideal.

What I'm saying here is that kobolds should have some kind of hidey-hole dug out if they want to be able to escape.

[Finarvyn]

I guess it just seemed strange that monsters can't really flee. Of the two who tried to run only one escaped and he did so when he had 23 of his 32 HP remaining when he fled so one hit wasn't enough to kill him, but if I'd waited until he was really hurt he wouldn't have made it.

There were some wooded squares on the battlemap. I suppose I should have let them run through them without penalty but slow the characters down.

[vito]

They can flee if the DM rules that they should be able to flee. Just houserule it.

[blackbarn]

If the players want to spend their action points just to chase down enemies they have essentially defeated, I don't see it as a problem. It's a choice, with potentially good and potentially bad consequences, like anything in any edition.

Personally, I'd save the action points for a more desperate situation, unless I had reason to believe the monsters were going to cause trouble later if they were allowed to escape. And if the latter was true, what's wrong with letting the players spend their action point resources to achieve a victory?

And if they run into something worse before they get more points, then they won't have that resource available...

[eris]

Oct 23, 2010 22:33:11 GMT -6 coffee said:

I don't know about 4e, but in 1e, if you ran away, your opponent would get a free attack on your unprotected back. Sounds like this works as such in 4e.

Only if you're willing and able to use Action Points, I think, otherwise you could keep up with them, but you wouldn't have the extra action to attack.

I'm always leery of rules like this, though. I try to be more common sense about things when I run games...if the Kobolds turn and run, I might give the PC's an extra hack at them as they start to run away, and I might not, just depending on the circumstances. Common sense says that if you turn your back and start to run, you leave yourself open to an attack, and it's true that there is an old saying that more soldiers have been killed from shots in the back than any other way.

[jonathan]

Keep in mind that running characters grant Combat Advantage to their opponents (which hurts the escaping Kobolds) but also receive -5 to all attack rolls (which hurts the PCs). Considering that the players used a limited resource to end the encounter, I don't see your scenario as a problem. Keep in mind that if the PCs had used their Action Points earlier in the fight that the Kobolds might not have survived long enough to even attempt an esacpe, and at any rate I don't think this was any more abusive than OD&D MUs ending an encounter with a single casting of Sleep.

Also, I thought most Kobold monsters have an ability to Shift as a minor action? If so, that should have given them an extra square of movement, which might have made the difference in their escape.

Finally, if you really wanted to focus on the escape as a stand-alone event, you could set it up as a skill challenge. Obviously the physical skills would have priority in an instance like this, but you could use Dungeoneering to find the best footing behind the Kobolds, or Arcana/Religion/Nature to use a minor spell/prayer/evocation to grant you a burst of speed or distract the monsters.

[doublejig2]

Oct 24, 2010 0:08:58 GMT -6 vito said:

Kobolds are dead meat out in the open. That is why they should always have some kind of small hidden escape route prepared ahead of time.
Being small creatures, kobolds are able to flee at full speed through areas that would slow their pursuers to a snail's pace.
Since kobolds are short, they can run through areas with low ceilings where larger creatures are forced to drop prone and crawl.
Since kobolds are narrow, they can zip comfortably through tight spaces that wider creatures would have to squeeze through.
Kobolds should also escape into darkened areas where PC visibility is impaired.
Some kind of concealing foliage or mist is also ideal.

What I'm saying here is that kobolds should have some kind of hidey-hole dug out if they want to be able to escape.

Agreed. And often, fleeing kobolds should arrive at a place with more kobolds...