The Path to Victory: Arrive

By
Ryven Cedrylle
Published: November 16, 2009Posted in: Advice, Essay, Gamemastering
The Path to Victory: Arrive

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There are several variations of Arrive, but the basic theme is simple – ‘move to this square to win.’ There is a spot on the map that if the PCs can make it there, it ends the encounter.  Maybe they push the button on the arcane machine that causes it to meltdown and send everyone running.  Maybe planting a battle standard in a certain spot is a way to claim a relatively bloodless victory among ‘gentlemen combatants.’    However it works, your goal is to claim territory, not lives.  Add more tension with a time limit!
Escape
It’s going badly for the PCs.  They’re out of healing surges, out of ideas and out of luck.  You don’t want to TPK them…  this time.  What do you do?  Pick a square on the map.  Any PC who can get to that square escapes the battle with some amount of XP.  On the other hand, maybe the PCs were holding off a foe too tough for them until the innocents could be spared and now it’s time to get the heck out of Dodge.  The Escape condition lets PCs feel some sense of tactical accomplishment in the face of conventional defeat.  Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.  Follow this up with a good chase scene skill challenge for maximum effect.
Most of the time you’re not going to plan this victory condition in advance, but we’ll talk about a planned Escape scene in a moment.   The Escape battlefield looks like whatever other scenario you had written up, just with really  trashed PCs and a couple fewer enemies.  In fact, the October 16th, 2009 Official D&D Actual Play Podcast with Chris Perkins, Wil Wheaton and the guys from PvP and Penny Arcade is a very good example of a time when you might want to overtly give your PCs a chance to make a dignified fighting retreat.   Due to the sudden nature of this condition’s creation, it’s difficult to arrange the field tactically.  In general, though, there are a few guidelines to follow to make the most exciting Escape you can from what you have at hand.
Slow Enemies – your NPCs should be slower than your PCs.  They may not have any less Speed, they’re just not going to use it.  Most NPCs should stay relatively in place and open up with ranged attacks.  A couple melee pursuers are ok, but remember that you already made the decision to let them try to legitimately skedaddle.
Unfortunate Escape Square – to the extent that it makes sense, don’t place the Escape square in some random spot with nothing going on nearby.   The PCs should not just be able to take a double move and be done with it.  Good Escape squares are across pits or stationary traps, up ladders, or on the other side of that hoard of minions.  The PCs should either have to make a couple Skill rolls or bust out a unique movement power like Fey Step or Expeditious Retreat to surmount the final obstacle.  Not only does this add tension during the last couple rounds, it also gives you a reason to have the PCs’ pursuers delayed, thus allowing a daring escape.  Remember, the way out doesn’t need to be the way in.  If the PCs simply run back into the previous room, they haven’t Escaped.  They should instead go out through a storm drain or blow a new hole in the wall; something the NPCs weren’t expecting.
Dramatic Shoestring – Hopefully you haven’t blown all your NPCs’ push/pull/slide powers yet.  Wait until at least one PC has Escaped and then Pull or Slide the PC furthest from the Escape square.  In theory, your PCs should ‘never leave a man behind’ – you want to see if they’ll actually follow up with it.  If another character has to actually turn around and go back into the fray to cover for a round, so much the better.
Escape Is Still Victory or Failure is Fun – The PCs shouldn’t just be running from something, they should also run into something – just not something immediately lethal.  The next place the PCs end up should still be relevant to the story somehow.  This occurs in teen movies, for instance, when Nerdy Kid runs into the girls’ bathroom trying to escape the Bully only to overhear a conversation between the Love Interest and the Best Friend.    Now this is D&D obviously, but you get the idea.  The Escape zone should provide the PCs another method with which to acheieve their goal.
Those guidelines still basically apply with a planned Escape, so you want to build your encounter around them.  A couple enemies need to be able to Pull or Slide and most should be packing a crossbow or Eldritch Blast.  Avoid enemies that do a lot of shifting or teleporting.  Conveniently place a couple Minions near the escape square.  Since the point is to Escape and not Rout, there must be a time limit involved such that there is no way the characters could defeat all of those enemies in that short of a time.  In the unplaned Escape, the characters’ HP totals serve as your clock – when HP are high, there needs to be an external timing factor to encourage that Escape.
Escort
This condition is named for those times when you have to get the noncombatant NPC, a.k.a the Key,  to that special spot so he can work his mojo.  Conversely, it may be one of the PCs who is the Key and has the skill to do whatever it is in that space.  Either way, a specific person has to get to a specific point on the map, at which time the encounter ends.
Once again, this is really a battle against the clock, not against the NPCs.  A hard, plainly stated time limit is one way to go about it.  Another is to have most of the NPCs focus fire on the Key so that he or she will be dead or captured  far quicker than the PCs can Rout the enemy forces.  Thus unlike the Escape, you want a majority of mobile combatants that can get in and apply pressure with very little downtime.  Artillery seems like the solution here, except that it isn’t.  It’s usually easier to gain cover or concealment against ranged attacks than against melee, and cover for the Key means more time available to the PCs and thus a higher chance that they will go for the Rout over the Escort.  The attacking enemies need to be mobile enough to respond to the Key utilizing terrain yet be legitimately stymied by a couple good Defenders and maybe a Striker or Leader.  In short, the NPCs should engage the Key when at all possible and the PCs only when they have no other choice.  Finally, the Escort path shouldn’t be any more than about half the length of the battlefield.  When the players feel “so close and yet so far,” you’ve done it right.
Seize
Seize is a cross of Arrive and Defend, which we will see next time.  To Seize something, a PC has to Arrive at that special point and then stay there for a round or two.  During this time, the PC may have to rub out the magic circle, beat down the door or do some similar time-consuming task.   This gets trickier if the rounds of Seize have to be consecutive rather than simply cumulative.
Like the Stalemate, this encounter is basically first threatening your PCs with a grindfest and then offering them another option.  Also, whereas the difficulty in the Escort is getting to the destination, staying there is the difficulty of the Seize .  To this end, start with an easily-reached Seize point guarded by two or three good Brutes.  Brutes are bags of HPs with low defenses and medium damage output – precisely what you need for this scenario.  They also tend to have Push effects which are handy for dislodging that obnoxious PC from his Seize point as well as action-denying conditions like Daze and Stun.  Well-fortified Controllers with similar action-denying powers are good, too, but be sure you put them more or less out of reach of the melee characters and give them terrain defenses against the PCs’s spells and arrows.  Once the main PC arrives at the Seize point, he really only needs one action per round to perform the necessary activity, so being Dazed is actually a problem that the rest of the party has to deal with, i.e. keeping everyone else from using that Combat Advantage.  Be sure to knock the PC off of the Seize point at least once or twice, if only for effect.  Finally, consider upping the amount of ongoing damage versus initial impact damage. Seize encounters are going to be longer encounters to begin with due to trying to hold the Seize point and all, so the effect of ongoing damage becomes greater the longer the fight wears on.

There are several variations of Arrive, but the basic theme is simple – ‘move to this square to win.’ There is a spot on the map that if the PCs can make it there, it ends the encounter.  Maybe they push the button on the arcane machine that causes it to meltdown and send everyone running.  Maybe planting a battle standard in a certain spot is a way to claim a relatively bloodless victory among ‘gentlemen combatants.’    However it works, your goal is to claim territory, not lives.  Add more tension with a time limit!

Escape

It’s going badly for the PCs.  They’re out of healing surges, out of ideas and out of luck.  You don’t want to TPK them…  this time.  What do you do?  Pick a square on the map.  Any PC who can get to that square escapes the battle with some amount of XP.  On the other hand, maybe the PCs were holding off a foe too tough for them until the innocents could be spared and now it’s time to get the heck out of Dodge.  The Escape condition lets PCs feel some sense of tactical accomplishment in the face of conventional defeat.  Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.  Follow this up with a good chase scene skill challenge for maximum effect.

Most of the time you’re not going to plan this victory condition in advance, but we’ll talk about a planned Escape scene in a moment.   The Escape battlefield looks like whatever other scenario you had written up, just with really  trashed PCs and a couple fewer enemies.

In fact, the October 16th, 2009 Official D&D Actual Play Podcast with Chris Perkins, Wil Wheaton and the guys from PvP and Penny Arcade is a very good example of a time when you might want to overtly give your PCs a chance to make a dignified fighting retreat.   Due to the sudden nature of this condition’s creation, it’s difficult to arrange the field tactically.  In general, though, there are a few guidelines to follow to make the most exciting Escape you can from what you have at hand.

  • Slow Enemies – your NPCs should be slower than your PCs.  They may not have any less Speed, they’re just not going to use it.  Most NPCs should stay relatively in place and open up with ranged attacks.  A couple melee pursuers are ok, but remember that you already made the decision to let them try to legitimately skedaddle.
  • Unfortunate Escape Square – to the extent that it makes sense, don’t place the Escape square in some random spot with nothing going on nearby.   The PCs should not just be able to take a double move and be done with it.  Good Escape squares are across pits or stationary traps, up ladders, or on the other side of that hoard of minions.  The PCs should either have to make a couple Skill rolls or bust out a unique movement power like Fey Step or Expeditious Retreat to surmount the final obstacle.  Not only does this add tension during the last couple rounds, it also gives you a reason to have the PCs’ pursuers delayed, thus allowing a daring escape.  Remember, the way out doesn’t need to be the way in.  If the PCs simply run back into the previous room, they haven’t Escaped.  They should instead go out through a storm drain or blow a new hole in the wall; something the NPCs weren’t expecting.
  • Dramatic Shoestring – Hopefully you haven’t blown all your NPCs’ push/pull/slide powers yet.  Wait until at least one PC has Escaped and then Pull or Slide the PC furthest from the Escape square.  In theory, your PCs should ‘never leave a man behind’ – you want to see if they’ll actually follow up with it.  If another character has to actually turn around and go back into the fray to cover for a round, so much the better.
  • Escape Is Still Victory or Failure is Fun – The PCs shouldn’t just be running from something, they should also run into something – just not something immediately lethal.  The next place the PCs end up should still be relevant to the story somehow.  This occurs in teen movies, for instance, when Nerdy Kid runs into the girls’ bathroom trying to escape the Bully only to overhear a conversation between the Love Interest and the Best Friend.    Now this is D&D obviously, but you get the idea.  The Escape zone should provide the PCs another method with which to acheieve their goal.

Those guidelines still basically apply with a planned Escape, so you want to build your encounter around them.  A couple enemies need to be able to Pull or Slide and most should be packing a crossbow or Eldritch Blast.  Avoid enemies that do a lot of shifting or teleporting.  Conveniently place a couple Minions near the escape square.  Since the point is to Escape and not Rout, there must be a time limit involved such that there is no way the characters could defeat all of those enemies in that short of a time.  In the unplaned Escape, the characters’ HP totals serve as your clock – when HP are high, there needs to be an external timing factor to encourage that Escape.

Escort

This condition is named for those times when you have to get the noncombatant NPC, a.k.a the Key,  to that special spot so he can work his mojo.  Conversely, it may be one of the PCs who is the Key and has the skill to do whatever it is in that space.  Either way, a specific person has to get to a specific point on the map, at which time the encounter ends.

Once again, this is really a battle against the clock, not against the NPCs.  A hard, plainly stated time limit is one way to go about it.  Another is to have most of the NPCs focus fire on the Key so that he or she will be dead or captured  far quicker than the PCs can Rout the enemy forces.  Thus unlike the Escape, you want a majority of mobile combatants that can get in and apply pressure with very little downtime.  Artillery seems like the solution here, except that it isn’t.  It’s usually easier to gain cover or concealment against ranged attacks than against melee, and cover for the Key means more time available to the PCs and thus a higher chance that they will go for the Rout over the Escort.  The attacking enemies need to be mobile enough to respond to the Key utilizing terrain yet be legitimately stymied by a couple good Defenders and maybe a Striker or Leader.  In short, the NPCs should engage the Key when at all possible and the PCs only when they have no other choice.  Finally, the Escort path shouldn’t be any more than about half the length of the battlefield.  When the players feel “so close and yet so far,” you’ve done it right.

Seize

Seize is a cross of Arrive and Defend, which we will see next time.  To Seize something, a PC has to Arrive at that special point and then stay there for a round or two.  During this time, the PC may have to rub out the magic circle, beat down the door or do some similar time-consuming task.   This gets trickier if the rounds of Seize have to be consecutive rather than simply cumulative.

Like the Stalemate, this encounter is basically first threatening your PCs with a grindfest and then offering them another option.  Also, whereas the difficulty in the Escort is getting to the destination, staying there is the difficulty of the Seize .  To this end, start with an easily-reached Seize point guarded by two or three good Brutes.  Brutes are bags of HPs with low defenses and medium damage output – precisely what you need for this scenario.  They also tend to have Push effects which are handy for dislodging that obnoxious PC from his Seize point as well as action-denying conditions like Daze and Stun.

Well-fortified Controllers with similar action-denying powers are good, too, but be sure you put them more or less out of reach of the melee characters and give them terrain defenses against the PCs’s spells and arrows.  Once the main PC arrives at the Seize point, he really only needs one action per round to perform the necessary activity, so being Dazed is actually a problem that the rest of the party has to deal with, i.e. keeping everyone else from using that combat advantage.  Be sure to knock the PC off of the Seize point at least once or twice, if only for effect.  Finally, consider upping the amount of ongoing damage versus initial impact damage. Seize encounters are going to be longer encounters to begin with due to trying to hold the Seize point and all, so the effect of ongoing damage becomes greater the longer the fight wears on.

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About the Author

Ryven Cedrylle was introduced to 2nd edition D&D by his father at age 8 and has been hooked ever since. When not out somewhere with his nerd-loving wife, he spends an inordinate amount of time staring at small objects - primarily beakers, stars, books about religion and virtual gaming miniatures. Follow him on Twitter for previews of upcoming material and random nuggets of wit! There's also a guy Ryven knows who's trying to adopt a baby. Take a look at the site, see if you can help him out.