Why D&D Monsters Didn’t Fight to the Death
The Topic of Today's Video and Audio podcast
I’m sure some folks, especially old school gamers, that monsters didn’t just stand around and fight to the death like in an MMO. They actually did things like run away, or beg for mercy. Why? because we had a Morale rule. I think it's overlooked with modern D&D and I think its worth exploring in today’s topic.
In this episode of The Black Notebook Podcast, I take a look at monster morale, why it existed, how it made dungeons feel more alive, and why it created better adventures. Sometimes the most interesting monster in the dungeon is the one that survives the encounter.
Did your group use morale rules? Let me know in the comments.
Audio only:
Video:
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I do use morale, but my players tend to chase and hunt down fleeing enemies. Even though this is becoming less effective as they get a reputation. Initially they saw that a fleeing enemy might come back with allies, might panic the others, etc. they don't care, they just kill.
They'll learn or they end up on hard mode.
Surviving monsters also help build conflict among your players. I like the idea of assigning personal objectives to characters based on their profile. That player gets more XP for accomplishing these objectives but the rest of the party doesn't benefit directly. The rest of the party also don't know these objectives (although they are intuitive enough to guess) so the player can tell them or not.
Example: A bandit survived a random encounter and offers a bribe. The Rouge wants to take the bribe and let him go, the Warrior want to take the bandit to jail and the Palidan is sworn to kill him. How do the players work it out? What deals do they make among each other to accomplish their own goals? Suddenly a dice roll there only to make travel seem mildly interesting has spiralled into a drama that I didn't even have to write.