A mechanic for group retreats in 5e

If a party cannot retreat safely (in this scenario we will say safely means with everyone alive) and there are few to no things they could instead do to keep their party safe, what do you instead suggest they do? TPK because they overestimated their ability with an encounter? That doesn’t sit right with me.

Of course turns are inherent to a turn based game, but the point of this idea is to basically lump all those turns together in order to attempt to circumvent that problem. Let me reiterate: this is not something targeted at every table.

There are plenty of tables out there who don’t approach combat the most tactically (planning their retreat order, having the necessary spells and resources to retreat at all times, etc) but at the same time aren’t really comfortable with their PCs dying in a manner that doesn’t satisfy them. In proposing this sort of mechanic, I’m aiming to address THOSE tables, who DO suffer from the leapfrogging problem that is faced by players in a traditional retreat scenario.

/r/dndnext Thread Parent