Party encounters incredibly lethal monster in a place that it can't chase them efficiently

>party encounters incredibly lethal monster in a place that it can't chase them efficiently
>decide to take it head-on
>repeatedly tell them that any successful attacks don't seem to do much to it health-wise
>they keep attacking it
>two of them die
>finally decide to start running away from it after the remaining three get maimed

I give up Veeky Forums. This has happened one too many times. This definitely is my fault as a GM. How do I correctly describe an enemy encounter as way above the party's ability to just bull-rush it?

Also post encounters gone wrong.

was the monster in the way of their goal or did they have to go out of their way to attack it?

They were trying to exit a ruin they got themselves accidentally trapped in and the monster was supposed to chase them to the exit. Instead of them going to the outside, they turned around and decided to maul it.

Describe the monster frantically, and tell them something along the lines of "run if you want to live!"
You are within your rights as GM to literally tell the players what to do. They have no obligation to listen. Then when they die, it's definitely not your fault.
Common sense/listening-ability challenges like this are a perfectly valid type of encounter if used sparingly.

Should've probably upped the ante with falling stones or something until they get the point.

have your players had many other GM's or just you?

In my experience a lot of the time when a monster "you're supposed to run from" shows up what ends up happening is all that running away does is give the monster a bunch of free attacks on us as we run meaning it's going to be a TPK anyhow so screw it might as well just fight and pray for unbelievably amazing die rolls.

So if they've had games like that they might figure staying and fighting gives them ever so slightly better chances of survival than running and getting picked off like Co-Eds in a Slasher movie

I'm pretty sure they did have other GMs before me, but I doubt they got the idea they will get hit with free attacks. The demon-centipede was a good amount of distance away from them, so even if I was that cheap, they had no reason to turn tail and charge at it en masse. Besides, I think it's common sense to not attack something whose head is as big as a house by hitting it with a normal size sword.

>You are within your rights as GM to literally tell the players what to do.
Telling the players what to do is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but I think I'll start doing it. These guys really have no sense of self-preservation in the game.

I mean they were trapped in a vast ruin with a giant evil insect that eats people and where some traps were still very active. Besides, the previous two sessions were nothing but them trying to find the exit before they die from thirst.

They might be used to very linear one-route dungeons. Fleeing is usually the wrong idea, because you're going to have to kill this thing eventually.
Ensure you demonstrate branching, open dungeons.

Consider the following

If you discard your preconceptions on how an encounter 'should' go, any result is an acceptable result. Did the party act like retards and die? That is a consequence of their action, and all involved should be glad that their consequences have actions and they aren't just on the guiderails of the GM's plot.

Err, actions have consequences

you get it

How about don't throw challenges at the party they can't possibly beat just to stroke your ego?

Good on you for maiming and killing; all was as it should be for those who faced the infamous guardian beast in the wastes

You did make it infamous, yes? Fabled unkillable? Spoke of as ghost story to naughty children to evoke nightmares?

Or did you just say" it's real big guys watch out" m

So to clarify, you think the party should only come in contact with things they can successfully kill.

If you want them to actually beat it, allow them to roll perception/any types of knowledge checks until a weakpoint is exposed, or have its movement hindered every once in a while for free damage up to 1d4 rounds. If you don't want them to fight it though, describe it as much as you can, and have it starting to fall behind as they escape, so it doesn't seem like that they can never outrun it. Once our GM did too good of a job describing a monster (it was a giant snail) which did a shatload of damage all at once to the point where everyone just ran from it. So yeah, wording matters quite a lot if you're trying to get them to not fight it.

>What is reading comprehension?
user, O.P. clearly said here and here that the party were on their way *out* of the dungeon, and the monster appeared *behind* them, and they opted to turn around and attack it.

The 'linear route' would have been to run away from the monster and leave the dungeon.

New to the thread, but that's kind of dumb. There's almost always a pretty large informational imbalance between the GM and the PCs in a given game, and a necessary part of proper GMing is to manage that information flow. Said imbalance can lead to decisions that would not have been made if the players had access to the full amount of information the GM wanted them to have, and if it wasn't communicated clearly, that does lead to a "bad" result.

Fair enough, I'll prepare a few more ruins with more variations on their paths and locations. It could actually fit in with the setting we're going with too.

Fair enough, but now two of a party that has been building a very good dynamic and story for some months now are gone. All outcomes are good if they are the results of the players' actions, but now we have 2 dead protagonists with still open story arcs.

Not exactly a fable of ages, but it was a monster bigger than the largest animal they have ever known, armored with a bony, twisted carapace that scrapes loudly with every step it takes, visibly covered with the corrupting substance that turns everything in the countryside into an extremely violent and territorial killing machine.

I could have it be on fire too, but I think that would be not as subtle as the demon goo.

I was planning on it not being able to chase them effectively due to the many twists and turns in the path to the outside making it awkward for it to up the pace, but they just went right in front of it, so that went out of the window. Honestly, I thought that after they couldn't find any way to efficiently hurt it, they'd get the idea to just turn around and run away, but they just kept attacking.

I think next time I'll have the evil whatever carry the corpse of a really tough monster in its mouth to drive my point home.

As a long-time player, I have seen more of my fellow party members be willing to throw themselves to their deaths than have EVER voted to retreat and regroup. Video games have given people this preconception that unless you very clearly state that the monster is not something you can kill, the party will drag themselves through saw blades and cheese graters to kill it. Some will do it anyways even after you warn them because they think they're the big damn heroes and deserve to mulch everything thrown at them. And then when said monster DOES kill them, they complain that the DM is bullshit and putting them on rails and blah blah whine whine why am I not the big damn hero who kills everything put in front of him even if it's an end-game monster I'm supposed to stop later when I am suitably prepared.
Communication goes a long way into preventing this, but most of the time players are just fucking suicidal because they think that they can just beat everything into submission with a stick.

Good on you for showing them the error of their ways OP. I'm tired of sitting behind meat grinders when there's an infinite number of other solutions people can come up with.

>This definitely is my fault as a GM. How do I correctly describe an enemy encounter as way above the party's ability to just bull-rush it?
It's been said a few times already, but talk to your players openly and let them know that sometimes it's OK to run away if it seems like they bit off more than they can chew.

Yes and no, shitnuts.
Generally speaking, linear design for dungeons suggests a DM who can't prep efficiently. That means players will encounter all the material that's generated. To put it another way, if it spawns, you'll fight it. Players used to GMs like that will usually fight anything described nearby, under the impression that the fight will be thrust upon them anyway and it's better to have the initiative.

>skeleton
... REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEvenant

This amuses me

This pleases me.

You'll just have to level scale your monsters to something that can't kill them at their current level. I know what you're going for, you want a campaign that's as much about brains and choosing your battles wisely as about hacking and slashing, but you'll have to take into account whether your group actually has the brains to handle that.

This is my biggest problem with D&D: there's no way to guess how tough something is. That old man over there could be a feeble 4 HP commoner, or a wizard with as much health as fucking bullette.

People on Veeky Forums like to say that system doesn't matter, but it absolutely does: this shit wouldn't have happened in GURPS, where HP is precious and in any fight you could get shit wrecked, or in OD&D, where monsters are legitimately dangerous.

The problem is that nuD&D is all geared towards fighting and nothing else. It gives your players tools to fight with, abilities to fight with. upgrades to fight better, and then you have the gall to ask your players not to fight? Yeah right.

Swit h systems to somethi bff that encourages your players to act how you want them to, or start basing your campaign on how you know your players will act given the system. You'll be doing a favor for your whole group.

>In my experience a lot of the time when a monster "you're supposed to run from" shows up what ends up happening is all that running away does is give the monster a bunch of free attacks on us as we run meaning it's going to be a TPK anyhow so screw it might as well just fight and pray for unbelievably amazing die rolls.

This.

>monster gets free attacks all day while you flee
Are you literally just walking away from it at base speed? Because that's the exact sort of failure to think critically that OP's players are suffering from.

>repeatedly tell them that any successful attacks don't seem to do much to it health-wise
Tell them the attacks are literally being negated/deflected/like slapping a tank with a pencil etc.

Also, try describing the environment to be filled with bones of large animals or some old adventurers that perished, something so the players can get an idea of how tough this thing is by looking around

Are you in a system with attacks of opportunity on movement?
If so, this will never stop happening.

>Shit, we're getting slaughtered. We should never have attacked those guys, let's try talking our way out of this.
>GIVE US ALL YOUR TREASURE AND WE'LL LET YOU LIVE FOR NOW YOU SCUM!
>What do you mean they didn't accept our offer even though I rolled really well? Quit railroading us, GM.

I mean opportunity attacks in 5e can be brutal

I run games in a system where attacks of opportunity don't even exist, and enemies can't stop you from running away besides surrounding you, and this shit still happens.

Players are retarded

Dnd has the worst movement and chasing systems ever imagined.

I had my party chase and attack the BBEGs right hand man after he one shotted the NPC heal bot (npc was several levels higher) I gave them for plot purposes. then complained after the bad guy basically lured them into a hallway and TPKed them in the first two rounds of combat ( rolled nat 20... insta killing three members and maiming the other two )

I told them when they started to chase him that he's much stronger than them... Nope... I did nerf him after this group kept getting TPKed by him.... the next group were much better...by better I mean not retarded

>D&D Players are retarded
FTFY

It's hard to break the mental conditioning that running from combat is bad after you've been taught this lesson over and over again by losing characters to attacks of opportunity.

Of course it's also on the DM for using a shit system like nuD&D in the first place.

welcome to D&D, where not only do monsters often have much higher movement speeds than you but you will also soak attacks of opportunity for trying to run
may we never forget the monstrous crab

>what is disengage/withdrawal/equivalent action in a different system

Generally not worth it. The issue with those actions is that they don't get you as far as running and 90% of stuff is faster than you are.

4e's system is pretty nice. It's a series of opposed rolls (With success getting you some lead/getting away) rather than just 'I am faster so I win' as it's supposed to represent good usage of terrain rather than raw land speed.

It's still an option to move without triggering AoOs and is more useful if you're within the reach of multiple hostiles. Regardless, the narrative being hoisted up here that you're soft-locked into combat the moment a monster appears because of AoOs is silly.

Was it a flail snail?

Doesn't withdraw action like double your movement and prevent attacks of opportunity?

It's called plot you daft cunt. It's called players arnt gods you idiot. It's called sometimes your bitch ass gotta run. It's called not everything is an ego stroke, some people and monsters are just better than you.

DM should have been rough with them, make them learn that big monsters do big damage.

...

At least it wasn't a TELEPORTING DEMON.

Even when you run all the way back to town, it just teleports behind you and nothing personnels you in your sleep, and then kills all the NPC's.

Wake me up.

I have a similar problem with a player who thinks deception is diplomacy.
>I roll deception to get him to tell me what he knows
>ok, but what specifically are you saying or trying to lie about?
>I'm not really lying I'm just trying to get him to open up. I rolled 28 deception, what does he know?

Have you considered that he might be paranoid?

>Nobody just TELLS people things because they LIKE them! It's all a ruse!

This sounds eerily similar to a game I played yesterday.

Did you have a good reason for charging the monster?

Similar but not dead on. We had a one off where the party was being chased by a Kracken in a small labyrinth.

Some of us tried to kill it, most of us though ran.

I'm lucky, I guess. If it were up to my players, one of them would sacrifice themselves to buy the others time to get out of its sprinting range.

>incredible lethal monster
How do they know?
This is a problem with many systems I've been, you face a 14 ft troll and think it's the scariest and most dangerous shit ever but turns out to be piss easy, then face a 5 ft bald and naked humanoid and obliterates your entire party in 1 sec.

Nah it's because his deception bonus is way higher and he metagames like a little shit when he's had a couple drinks.

At least in 5e if you happen to have a Battlemaster in your party you can give them opportunities to use "Know Your Enemy" to avoid situations like this where the party has no idea how tough an enemy is