Is monsters picking up what's left of their goods and lives and fleeing to parts unknown - deeper in the dungeon, or, with access, out of the dungeon - okay in a megadungeon game?
It happens in Felltower and in the surrounding adventure areas - the Caves of Chaos, the Cold Fens, the Lost City, and the Brotherhood Complex, to list them all.
Is it fair? That's unclear. It does make sense.
Before we look at what options monsters have, what happens to delvers between sessions?
In town, the delvers have access to:
- effectively unlimited 250-point replacement characters or new characters (if a new player joins)
- replacement and upgraded equipment
- consumables of all sorts - ammunition, alchemical mixes, mundane mixes, poisons, spell stones, scrolls, and so on
- new spells, chosen to suit their current needs
- complete healing
- skill and advantage upgrades
In other words, the PCs leave the dungeon, and come back with at least what they brought last time, barring loss of a unique magic item or the permanent death of a lost PC. Both of those are rare. The last PC to die in a non-TPK situation and not come back was so long ago I can't even find one on the list. The last lost unique magic items were as a result of a TPK.
So, in general, the PCs come back better than when they left. At worst, they come back less well off, but better prepared. And always better informed, thanks to hearsay, Summon Spirit, and other things that explain the meta-gaming of the same players with different PCs or different players with 200+ session summaries in their heads and an easy-to-search blog at their fingertips.
The monsters do not have access to these open-ended resources. They don't have much, if anything, beyond what's in the dungeon already. That really means they have three options:
Stand and die. In other words, deal with the status quo. Accept whatever losses, and try again to defend themselves from delvers in place.
Reinforce, stand and die. They may possibly be able to heal (not all can), they may possibly multiply, or they may be able to set up better traps, etc. In practice, the only thing that can defeat a delver is a stronger opponent, and all the traps, alarms, and barricades in the world extend the lifespan of those using them by a few seconds or cost the delvers a potion or two.
Run. Take off for parts unknown, or deeper in the dungeon. Take with them what they can.
The players tend to look at all three in descending order of approval. Stand and die is the most popular. Don't use up any treasure, don't spend a coin, don't reinforce. Stay there with their treasure (which rightfully belongs to the PCs, just ask them, no matter what their disadvantages say they generally act this way.)
Reinforcements and rebuiling . . . the players dislike this. They'll gripe about it, mildly, usually, about how it's unfair that the monsters get weeks off between delves to reinforce and make the PCs do the whole defeating them over again. So much so that a considerable amount of time has been spent thinking of how to rest, hidden and safe, in the dungeon while they fully replenish FP, HP, ER, and so on before coming out to start the fight against the monsters before they can really do anything substantial. But they'll live with it, because I make them live with it.
Running . . . clearing out and leaving, especially taking their treasure, isn't popular with the players. But sometimes it's the only sensible reaction. Intelligent monsters won't stick around to just die if there is a better option. I don't apply this as often as I could, mostly because running during encounters is 100% suicidal for enemies who can't outrun Move 20+ (seriously) or become unseen without Invisibility (very, very rare). The PCs will run down and kill anything they possibly can. So running between sessions is often the only way to escape certain demise. Not everything can or will run - and that leaves the other two options.
Again, is this fair? Maybe not. Maybe the PCs have weeks off hurts them, because the monsters leave with their loot. But the PCs get a lot with those weeks off. I think it may not balance out but it's what it is.
As a player: this is TOTALLY FAIR. Unintelligent monsters might relocate or not, almost certainly wouldn’t fortify. But intelligent foes? Definitely. Vlad was surprised that some loot remained, which was very interesting and made him think that perhaps the Big Bad guy passed out and never recovered. But that’s totally unlikely. Plus, there must be more bad guys down there, so someone is going to reinforce or clear out. My suspicion is that the Gith decided to fortify and shore up lower down, and took what they could easily take (although I think the Master was the only one who made it out alive). Could that have been ALL of them? I doubt it, but I suppose it could be true.
ReplyDeleteOne of the downsides of single session delves (although we could have made the last one a multi-session delve had we wanted) is that it does give that time. Like last session: we hadn’t encountered anything really threatening and could have kept exploring but for the real life clock. But that was our choice not to extend it.
Anyhow, to the original point: there’s got to be reactions that make sense. Otherwise it’s a silly video game dungeon where everything is static, and that makes no sense. The enemies don’t want to die, either.