Running away

>While I don't chuck unwinnable encounters at the players, because that's being an arsehole

...

If you're gonna pull that shit I think i'd be good if there was an indicator that there will be unbeatable bosses out there first.

Why did you make an encounter that the players were meant to run from?

The players are here to play. Running away would be not playing. That's boring.

>The players are here to play. Running away would be not playing. That's boring.

Average D&D player.

Why? For the story user. For the roleplay. For the arc of the PCs getting stronger to return and defeat later.

Not that guy, but that sounds like bullshit

running away is still playing. there is still a challenge to overcome, the challenge being *get away from it*
it's the same as if you did a dungeon cave-in and the party has to do a bunch of rolls and saving throws to get out. except instead of a cave-in, it's a very powerful enemy

I make all of their encounters winnable. They're meant to be living the tropes after all. What is really frustrating is having a player who DMs too and saw an encounter and noped out because he didn't think he could win. I told him after I'd changed it all up to make it winnable, but I guess when you memorise the MM...

>I told him after I'd changed it all up to make it winnable
Eww.

This is one of those things that tells me if a DM knows how to use NPCs or not.

You can use them to indicate to the player what the sensible course of action is without just telling them and also they are great for demonstrating dangerous scenarios. Having an NPC guide explain that the magic crystals you are looking for are extremely volatile and can only be safely handled when submerged in water is better than "oh shit dude, your fighter just exploded because he grabbed that crystal too hard"

Equally appealing is having the dumbass yokel guard that tagged along get vaporized by explicitly ignoring warnings from other NPCs and casually dumping a bucket with one of the crystal into it on the floor.

The same goes for deadly encounters. If I know my PCs are going to be encountering something really dangerous I'll build up an NPC. Typically they are some mix of

>veteran
>wary
>likable
>has some useful solution to a problem in that particular dungeon or encounter
>cowardly
>has several player class levels

Basically the setup is "fuck, if that thing just splatted Sir Randolf of Calradia in one turn we should book it" without actually having the dragon roast a player character for double their maximum HP pool. If played well the party will immediately recognize the danger and not make the retarded assumption that an NPC was as much a mook as the goblin they killed yesterday and charging in headlong.

Which does happen but has happened less and less as I've gotten better at making and utilizing 'short timer' NPCs.

Not only does my group never consider running away, they get mad at me for having monsters and NPCs run away when the PC's get the upper hand on them.

>Or do they incorrectly assume every encounter is stacked in their favour?

If players are assuming this and it's not the case, you've failed as a GM.

RPGs are a communicative medium. You should make your intentions clear from the beginning that that is not the type of campaign you intend to run.

>Basically the setup is "fuck, if that thing just splatted Sir Randolf of Calradia in one turn we should book it"

Smart.

>Basically the setup is "fuck, if that thing just splatted Sir Randolf of Calradia in one turn we should book it" without actually having the dragon roast a player character for double their maximum HP pool.
I've tried this, but then I get accusations of GMPC creation and making shit too hard. Or the players randomly decide to try to murder Mr. Object Lesson becuase they think he might have something neat, since I've spent more than 30 seconds on him.

Only after they had stopped playing D&D for a while and realised they could die.

I let my players know at the start of the game that i don't balance every encounter for their party.
I try to make the strength of enemies make sense for the situation.
Sometimes they will go against guys who have no chance against the party.
Some encounters are evenly matched.
And sometimes I will introduce someone or something that is obviously far beyond the party's capability to handle.
And sometimes there are relatively weak opponents that are in a position that the party wouldn't fight them lest they face serious repercussions.

They usually can tell which is which and act accordingly. Except for my younger players.
Dumb teenagers usually go for the fights they can't win, lose hard, and drag half the party down with them.

Even D&D, the fastplay casual system of the tabletop RPG world, says to have 5% of encounters be unwinnable as a guideline. If people don't expect that they may have to run, whether due to hard encounters, them fucking up or bad rolls then they need to look at what the fuck they're playing.

My favourite one was when the group decided to confront the boss of a gang they were investigating without, you know, telling the local guard who hired them or even the people the gang had been shanking. Then they got confused why a fight in the middle of their HQ turned into a 4v14 brawl.

can't blame them m8, they grew in the era of instant gratification

...

Not necessarily the same thing, but in one recent campaign, my party and I happened to come across a golem. This golem, we were told, was being controlled by an amulet, and if we wanted to stand a good chance against it, needed to find that amulet and destroy it.
So I, thinking we should find that amulet, slid past the golem and ran off whole the rest of my party tried fighting the creature. This eventually led me to a secret door that led down into a dark room.

This dark room held seven to eight ghouls that were gnawing on a dead carcass and looking directly at my character.

In another scenario, a god appeared before me and my party, saying that he came from the godrealms to demand that our cleric return his holy sword to him. When the cleric refused, the god snapped his fingers and took the sword by force, at which point our cleric proceeded to initiate an attack roll on him.

Our cleric missed with a natural 19, and got literally nuthing-personelled down to -9HP. Had it not been for the heal spell of a newbie who joined our party in the middle of the quest, our cleric would have died.

My point is, sometimes it's very obvious where these runaway encounters come in. You simply just know. If you feel that electric buzz playing at the back of your brain when you encounter a dangerous fiend, take that as your cue to back down from that duel, or to run away from that door you shouldn't open.

>Tell me Veeky Forums, do your players ever consider...running away?
I just joined a game where they left me up a goddamned tree and ran away. so I did the sensible thing, I shot at the monster till it was close enough then jumped down off the tree and literally shoved a couple of Molotov cocktails down its throat

>my character just joined the party, up a tree with a bow
>party cleric gets downed being the distraction(out of spells had no backup weapon)
>party paladin having known him longer than my rogue gallops out and scoops him up
>they both fuckin leave my ass up the tree
>end up setting the ENTIRE GODDAMNED SAVANNA on fire to make my escape
>later encounter, the cleric gets actually for-real killed
>turns out he was trying to get the GM to kill him to start with a new character
>preceding fight included

WE WERE SUPPOSED TO LEAVE HIS HAIRY ASS ON THE PLAINS.
so as I feel is sensible, I will be sarcastically salty at them for some time.

I've had one game where our Cleric had to step out early so he had the Paladin next to him take control of his character for the rest of the session. This was AD&D so dying was more of a "when" than an "if". Two of our party members had already been slain so it was me (a fighter/mage), the Cleric, this guy's Paladin, and our thief. We, having normally played 3.5, overextended ourselves and pushed into the dungeon further than would be wise.

Eventually we were jumped by some fifteen crazed cultists. I, with my great stats, stepped forward to do battle with them. The thief (god bless his soul) also joined in the attack. We asked what the Paladin was going to do. He pulled out his sling and hid behind his shield and the Cleric. This was annoying of course seeing as he was the best armored. Nevertheless we fought on. The thief took some serious hits well I was lucky enough that my attackers rolled poorly. I in turn rolled well and things looked up. The Paladin remained in the back with his sling and refused to send the Cleric in to attack. Then the thief took an unlucky crit and that was all she wrote. I continued to fight, but it was clearly a losing battle and I was dying. I finally told the Paladin in plain language to have the Cleric heal me or we were all fucked. I'll never forget his response "*Clericplayer* would save his heals for me". I died. At that point the Paladin decided to run away only to be ambushed and killed. The DM decided the Cleric escaped so that we could form a new party with at least one original member.

So I've had people decide to run away, but only after they've sacrificed their entire party.

Not saying it didn't happen, but how would the paladin player ever get another game in that community ever again?

He was normally a nice guy, but sometimes became a dick in games. He had this weird overactive sense of personal survival. He never took risks and always tried to stay in the back. Be it Call of Cthulhu, Traveler, Shadowrun, and even Rifts he would always play the most defensive character. He and they guy who played the thief at the time often got into fights over it.

>If you're gonna pull that shit I think i'd be good if there was an indicator that there will be unbeatable bosses out there first.
I don't think that user was advocating being a dick DM. Having strong stuff in the world creates an atmosphere that can't be had otherwise. If the party can always beat everything they encounter, then it's a theme park.

That doesn't mean "drop an uber mob on the party and wipe them out before they have a chance to respond". Give them warnings, give them an out, make other (more intelligent) ways to solve problems available.

user, you had me cackling at
>they left me up a goddamned tree and ran away

>Basically the setup is "fuck, if that thing just splatted Sir Randolf of Calradia in one turn we should book it"
Reminds me of the bit from Enemy At The Gates with Ron Perlman. (That's not a bad thing)

>My point is, sometimes it's very obvious where these runaway encounters come in. You simply just know. If you feel that electric buzz playing at the back of your brain when you encounter a dangerous fiend, take that as your cue to back down from that duel, or to run away from that door you shouldn't open.
Sure. Depends a lot on the group too. I knew a shadowrun group years back I played with occasionally, with a DM that would kick you in the dick for any mistake. It was a rare session of his that didn't see at least one PC death. He rewarded perfect play, highly tuned builds, hyper-analysis of challenges, etc and you know what? His regular group LOVED him for it. They knew what they were getting, and for them the challenge WAS the fun - the constant peril was a pure adrenaline rush that couldn't be matched by a "lesser" game. But newer players that tried to join them would often come away very frustrated.

It wasn't really for me, though. I played with them a bit, lost a few PCs. Had a good enough time, but I personally found the intensity exhausting. I like *some* peril in my own games, but I tend to take a more narrative approach to dangerous shit than just a rug-pull. Fighting the thing in front of you might not always be the answer, but there always should be an answer available.

A WhFRP character of mine distinguished himself through charging headfirst into any fight the party got involved in.
One day however, we were investigating a cult, some villain summoned a demon!
My character ran yelling "Guards! Demon! Guards! Demon!"while the rest of the crew went trying to fight it and barely survived with some fudging until it was sucked back into the immaterium on it's own.
GM had my character show up with the guards rounding up the remaining cultists. All in all I was happy with how things played out.

as ever, I am glad to amuse.

and they weren't being A-holes about it.
it was legitimately in-character.

and I seem to be the slapstick comedy character for the group in any case. I entered the campaign when my dingy sailed through a portal and fell several stories through a religious armory.

>Paladin
>Hides behind a cleric healer for protection
>Does not offer assistance to a dying friend in need
>Selfish as fuck
>Cowardly as fuck
>Waits until his entire party is dead, then runs away
Why am I getting a vague sense that the thief player should have been the Paladin, and the Paladin player should've been the filthy thief?

I've run away from a couple fights after half the party died. Putting the PCs into fights they're supposed to run from is bad GMing, because a monster's appearance has nothing to do with its power and so the characters have no way of knowing it's a fight they can't win until they're already losing people.

>Presumably due to modern videogames and everyone's a winner culture
This is basically completely wrong.
It has more to due with the fact that you are unconsciously assuming D&D here even by posting the image you posted, and ever since 3e a lot of the time it’s difficult to make truly unwinnable encounters unless you deliberately use massively overpowered enemies on a lower-level party.
Basically it’s a rules system thing and the system you seem to basically imply here kind of discourages that sort of behavior through it’s combat system.

I have played multiple games where my players fucking bail on fights all the time (Traveller, Symbaroum, Warhammer Fantasy) because the PC’s were hurt, low on resources, and just decided to not fucking deal with the immediate problem and come back and fight it later simply because combat actually was difficult and had some pretty severe in-game consequences from taking injuries and even most even fights represented a huge risk on their part.

>That's boring.
then the players you have are not used to, or capable of, making it fun or interesting to run away.

I have had the good fortune of not having these problems

>Then the kind of group that actually starts monster hunting to build up their name after scouting out information on it.

I wish I could run a group like that, I'd need a LOT of basic cheap myths legends, and stories to pick and mix for them though

this is why caltrops exist, or crippling attacks...

>stupid players are being meta-stupid
wow...

>when you memorise the MM...
a double edged sword that. on one hand you can run improv games quick and lose, on the other you get frightened by meta-knowledge when you play

this isn't a case of running away, but...in one group in a game of Shadowrun, we had to get in and get out with a macguffin. well, one thing we did was trip the alarm and see what happened afterwards. an HRT van showed up with anti-mage, and drone support in under 5 minutes.
>"an HRT team is supposed to be capable of a party-wipe"
-the mage character
the actual security on the building was a fucking JOKE but we had no way of telling, and we faffed about for several days of in-game time trying like hell to avoid the HRT getting called before we just decided to go for it. we were too worried about not getting into a fight with something that much more hardcore than we were being paid to be...

see, thats just being whinny.
if a group of opponents loses half their number I start rolling confidence checks based on intelligence if any check fails the survivors start retreating, scattering, and occasionally kicking the weaker enemies over to buy time to retreat.

>everyone's a winner culture

Old neckbeard detected. Though you do have a point, with guys at least. Girls that actually play rather than lolz around, they seem to get it--but they want to fight anyways.

I don't have that problem, I have GURPS, which is notorious for brutal fights. It doesn't take the players long to go "Holy shit I whacked that guy for 7 HP...I only have 10. Fuck, better not get hit"

But, it's a problem, not just with players, but with the GMs. Videogame culture also plays a part in it.

Basically, you're going forward, there's an obstacle in your way, to go forward you must overcome the obstacle. Thus, the fight is inevitable; they must overcome the obstacle, therefore it is POSSIBLE to overcome it.

Emphasize that there are other options in the lead up.

Furthermore, you need to standardize exp handouts at the end of sessions. If the players don't think they'll get exp if they don't fight and win, then they will fight and get angry if they do not win. The paradigm must be changed from "Defeat Enemy to progress," to "Survive session and progress," or "Archive goal and progress"

That's not to say that you don't give them more exp for boss battles. You adjust exp payouts for danger and tension and whatever. And bonus for good rping.

>Putting the PCs into fights they're supposed to run from is bad GMing

Probably because video games are like, miles ahead in terms of game design compared to tabletop.

The amount of iterations, simulation speed, and industry size have allowed it so much more development and experimentation, it's fucking unreal.

Yes, for the reason I stated. But you're going to ignore my argument because you don't have any of your own.

I think it's more because if DnD and the way CR works. If they have any understanding of that they assume an encounter will at worst be "challenging".

I imagine there are plenty of GMs who are as invested in leading the players through their story as the players are in experiencing it. For this reason most players will not assume that any encounter is unwinnable or likely to end in their deaths. To kill the player characters, the focal point of the story, would be to kill the story itself.

To keep players from being murderhobo types i would on occasion put them up something along the odds of a fight with Godzilla.

Discretion, common sense, or sure death.

Ugh

>a monster's appearance has nothing to do with its power and so the characters have no way of knowing it's a fight they can't win until they're already losing people.
I think that's my concern, in many situations.

My players consider running away from visibly dangerous enemies. Once they managed to run away from a dragon by sheer luck.

>do your players ever consider...running away?
they do now

>Reminds me of the bit from Enemy At The Gates with Ron Perlman. (That's not a bad thing)
Worf Effect.
Throw a strong, combat capable warrior at an enemy and have the enemy push his shit in.

My party can never run away, because they have a dwarf with them, and she has 25 speed. Even if all the enemies have 30 speed (and 40 is very likely in the case of, say, werewolves), running away from ANY encounter means leaving her to die.

Players know full well that in real life, you don't win every time.

They want to have an experience where they do win every time.

I try to shoot monsters to death even in CoC. I'm not here to play sub so you can satisfy your power fantasy fetish.

Nah, it's not only about winning. Losing with dignity is okay too. Running away is a loss of dignity. So is staying and being raped to death, often, but at least you show balls.

>means leaving her to die
Yes and?

They're gettign better at figuring out the difference between a hard battle and a difficult battle and a deadly battle.

They only run when they're scared before the fight ever starts, and never run after it starts, which is fine - they accept that if they die, they are responsible for not caring about the situation enough to take a few basic precautions or simply getting the fuck out.

user here. I use a lot of mixed mythologies for it. Mostly I just pull from really obscure folklore, like the difference between a brownie and a boggart, and twist them to be horrifying aspects. Most of the time my hunter party would focus on the large things in between arcs. It was never the sole focus, but rather ice cream on the pie.

>Tell me Veeky Forums, do your players ever consider...running away?

Rarely.

Even if I make it incredibly obvious they are outnumbered and outgunned before the fight even starts, most players will plunge headlong into battle because that’s just the programmed response all players have when they encounter a potential threat.

>Using static running speeds instead of rolling to escape or chase
>Not leaving rations on the ground for monsters to stop and eat to give you a distraction

Pretty awful excuses ITT, desu.

DM's who have this problem should ask themselves how is it that their epic chase scene sounds worst to their players than a final stand. Let's face it, most people most of the time don't want to play Scooby Doo. Specially not if it's surprise Scooby Doo and they made a Conan instead of a Shaggy.

>Send them a powerful encounter
>Hint they should run
>They somehow manage to kill it
>Now they got gear way above their party level

Would you let them keep the gear or find a way to take it all back?

> >>If the players think they'll get no exp if they don't fight and win, then they will fight and get angry if they do not win.

To my understanding, this is the underlying problem.

In my fallout game players regularly run away from threats they perceive as too dangerous or just not worth it.

Their common sense is actually kind of irksome at times

>if a group of opponents loses half their number I start rolling confidence checks based on intelligence if any check fails the survivors start retreating, scattering, and occasionally kicking the weaker enemies over to buy time to retreat
Nope, you're That GM, stealing our loot and XP by having monsters flee.

All the fucking time. I run away if we're losing, I run away if it looks like trouble, hell I run away if we're winning sometimes.

I'm currently running a Twilight 2000 campaign ever since last winter. Running away is what players are doing roughtly 4 out of 5 times.

How about this:
>Players spend time and effort to account the amount of bandits in the canyon.
>They find out most of the spots - but aren't sure if that was all - and even had a glimpse into the compound itself
>They roughtly estimate they can see about 40 people and assume another 10 to 20 inside shacks and the small house in the middle.
>Party consists of 4 players in a gritty game and at this point they are already aware how easily it is to die
If they decide to attack anyway, it's their own fault they died in most stupid fashion.

>Enemies never, ever retreat, no matter what
Now THAT is That GM. My party would instantly call you out on such bullshit, since half of their act is intimidation through wiping things out and hurting rest until they hit tails.

>Giving exp based on killed enemies
We are not playing poorly designed cRPG, user.

Depends, the bandits might not be known for being an elite fighting force of highly trained battle-hardened warriors. They may just be people will to prey on others and using numbers and threat to get what they want. In which case, picking off some of the exposed ones might cause infighting and fear, and allow for a chance to whittle their numbers down through death/desertion, or maybe a chance to poison supplies, etc. Now, if they just waltz up the middle of things, letting the bandits get into place, and socially botch whatever negotiation they're trying, then they're probably just getting peppered with arrows and other things from behind cover until they die, with the bandits likely making sure they're dead before looting their bodies. Or they prepared with some illusions, anti-ranged-weapon effects, or are just willing to trust to such low odds because they see no other alternative for some reason you should probably ask about.

This is/was D&D canon, so on, it's no it's not cRPG, cRPGs got it from us.

Ah, I'm glad I'm of the Superior GURPS Master Race. Now if you'll excuse me, I will go and enjoy the mental delectability of calculus.

ugh
Ugh
U G H

My players are reminiscent of alcoholics and drug users in denial. "Of course user, we know when to flee a combat! We're not Stupid!" And then when a fight occurs between them and a clearly superior force they all act 'Okay, one more round of combat THEN we flee heh heh' 'Okay, we did pretty well last turn - now one more round of combat then we flee' and repeat. And due to retarded lucky dice rolls they always make it through which only enforces their belief that they can fight through anything.

>do your players ever consider...running away?

Yes. We play a system with very deadly combat. They have ran away on multiple occasions, they have offered bribes to avoid fights, they have used powerful illusions to frighten the enemy or avoid them. They do not often seek fights, but when they do they take significant precautions and preparations.

My players know that the world is not a nice place. We are not playing The Elder Scrolls, there is no level scaling. Sometimes the fights are easy, sometimes they are challenging and full of tension and danger, and sometimes they are better avoided outright.

I pull no punches. I fudge no dice rolls. They have flirted with death on many occasions, but thanks to their ability to assess danger and react appropriately (most of the time), they have managed to keep anyone from dying.

I'm actually rather proud of them.

>If you're gonna pull that shit I think i'd be good if there was an indicator that there will be unbeatable bosses out there first.
First session, flip through the monster section of your DMs book. Tell the players, "you're level one, most of this stuff is way higher."

In their defense, the guy my players were supposed to run from actually could have been beaten, but positioning issues resulted in the guy living. Thankfully, they managed to get the worst NPC in the party out, and they enjoyed that, at least.

...

I usually try to indicate through the environment/plot if something is too powerful for them. Whether they choose to flee and make it a chase scene or attempt to creatively defeat their foe in some intricate strategy or trap is up to them.

??
then you should have secured their lines of retreat, you have those vials of alchemical fire, you have an archer usually more than one, you have a rogue to flank the enemies, or a mage to put up a wall.

if you cannot deal with them running away, then you aren't playing your INT score, or you aren't smart enough to deserve it.

You could always apply level caps/penalties to use certain magical gear, that way they can keep it without breaking the game

I meant that as a sarcastic rejoinder for the sort of idiot "argument" I get. The system I usually run doesn't even give XP for combat at all.

really?

I must be defensive and cynical after all of the GET OUT OF HERE STEM ACADEMIC
I get from Veeky Forums, apparently people absolutely HATE when you get cleverer with things.
like rigging a warehouse to blow to take down an opponent to strong to take head to head

I've always tried to keep it in the back of my mind, but a few months ago we allowed another group member to DM a star wars game. Every single encounter was so hard it was clear we were intended to run away. Every planet we visited got butfucked in huge battles we had no chance of standing out ground in. It was beyond frustrating.

None of us ever want to run away from anything ever again.

I guess it would if the only enjoyment you find in tabletop RPGs is cranking out XP like a crack addict and nuking every encounter with your ((((((((((custom build)))))))))) that you found after lurking on some forum somewhere.

yeah. they are seriously considering grabbing their target and running, leaving the German Army to deal with the monsters that were after their target and are now pitching a fit in downtown Frankfurt

>Tell me Veeky Forums, do your players ever consider...running away?

Yes, I'm rather outspoken about my system of choice's chase rules. So everyone in my core group is aware of the option and how it would be handled. They're also completely aware that I have no conniptions with killing a plot in the event that the pcs most directly tied to that plot die without passing on the torch to the survivors (I always try to connect multiple pcs to avoid this, but hey sometimes that doesn't make sense and I'm not going to force the issue).

Wanting to find out what happens next is a hell of a motivation to not get beaten to death against a tree. Oh, and not playing systems with any cr style mechanic really diminishes the "this is balanced to be perfectly fair and/or in our favor" mentality. When someone in my group (if I'm gming or not) sees 20 enemies set before our 4 man squad, they're going to start thinking about dividing and conquering, setting up traps of their own, or leaving, charging head first in guns blazing is generally avoided.

All in all it really doesn't come up much. Unless you count not picking the fight to begin with. I like to let the pcs have the option of picking most fights.

No and they get angry if they lose or are somehow corralled into retreating. The most stupid example of this was during a siege, well, it wasnt even really a siege it was so one sided.
>orc warband is rampaging around
>some orc chieftan has united the orcs and now has a massive army
>party is in a tiny little mountain town near the orc hinterlands
>army has been spotted moving towards this town
>everyone is fleeing from villagers to the local nobility
>local militia captain even tells the pcs to leave
>"no, we want to investigate this sidequest in the area"
>pcs also want to pillage the town
>while theyre trying to steal tapestries the orcs arrive at the town
>give them a chance to escape since the orcs havent seen them yet
>there are at least 10 orcs on the table and the party is level 6
>pcs attack the orcs
>more orcs are spawning but the pcs seem glad about this because "we gun get moer luut and egspee"
>they obviously cant win so i pull some gm magic and have the hallway collapse because of some sort of catapult or just orcs destroying stuff; its not important since im saving the pcs life.
>most of the orcs are on the otger side of this barricade
>pcs finish off the orcs which are beside them
>decide to return to looting tapestries
>i start getting annoyed and tell them they see hundreds of orcs through the hole in the wall where it collapsed and that they really cant fight them
>pcs ignore me and presumably think i wont kill them
>they encounter more orcs after looting paintings and tapestries
>they make no attempt to avoid the orcs and charge a band of maybe 12 with a leader and knowledge of more orcs around
>i let the party die
they were furious after this but they damn well deserved it. Every npc was fleeing from a threat entire armies would shirk from but the pcs just assumed that they had player character invincibility and that they could fight tens of thousands of orcs just because theyre the pc.

>tropes
>x culture
>using the word salty
go back to r*ddit

>assumed that they had player character invincibility

if you had literally told them this ain't so, then fuck 'em :)

Tl;dr give the party redshirts

>I'm actually rather proud of them.
Is this what the game is supposed to be like? Has Veeky Forums taught me wrong?

So they're NPCs at level 1 after how many months of playing?

That is actually the perfect example of that idea.

>has a quirky trait
>has seen some shit
>proves himself to be capable and even saves the hero
>eventually dies to demonstrate a greater danger, his previous actions giving this much more meaning than if he was a rookie that didn't know what he was getting into

However you dont want your NPC to be so enticing that the party decides they HAVE to kill that HD 25 Bone Devil that just stepped out of the abyss.

Sounds like every victory they have is one they've really earned. Good for you user.

See, people say "muh Vidya gaem culture" ruins the players' judgement when it comes to knowing when to flee a battle, but it's precisely because I have played so many RPGs that I see it like this:

If I know for absolute sure that the DM is trying to throw out hints that we probably shouldn't be doing an action that we're doing, I won't pursue it any further and will make an effort to follow the DMs line of reasoning.
Sadly I have party members who are very stubborn when it comes to things like that.