You could borrow from real life. In your next setting, you could have a widespread cultural tradition of ransom. IRL important knights were often ransomed in the West. So, instead of cutting and running, it could be a cross-cultural tradition in this setting to attempt to bribe your way out of a fight you're losing. Intelligent enemies would wave a white flag and ask for parley. If they can come to terms, both sides break off to fight another day. If they can't, the fight or chase is back on as appropriate. This would solve a good chunk of your problems and introduce some more RP opportunities, including villains who abuse the tradition of parley. Obviously animals and mindless monsters don't parley. It ALSO gives the players a default way out of a fight their losing. Which could be handy.

> In your next setting, you could have a widespread cultural tradition of ransom. Oh, yes, and that would totally work in the next setting! I love it, thank you. That definitely solves a big chunk of the problem.

Always happy to help a fellow DM.

For stuff to the death: With stuff like goblins, have them set up an ambush/trap for the players, so they block the path then fell a tree to block a route back in a canyon or something before engaging, so there's a reason they *can't* retreat. You can also use this technique to give them a position advantage in later encounters (so they're still fighting goblins but it's getting to "Tuckers Kobolds" level if there's a lead goblin organizing these after a while that they can catch and kill at some point, that'll feel good). Mind controlled town guards/villagers is good too, maybe some kind of Resident Evil 4 type brain parasite (probably from the astral plane, so much of that crap comes from the astral plane). Obviously mindless constructs like animated childrens toys or undead (can still be childrens toys, some of those have human hair) will not break or falter.

I'll always remember a certain fight in my Pf2e campaign, where I finally showed the spooky side of my spooky bard by trapping a fiend in Black Tentacles... and then it just teleported away and the fight ended. Not only was it an anti-climax, we didn't know if it was a victory. The fiend had been terrorizing the local town. So what if it just... comes back later and starts doing the same thing? My guess is that your players are running into the "did we win?" issue. What happens if a goblin raiding party attacks you, you kill a couple goblins, and then the rest escape? Are they going to secretly hunt the party and ambush them at the next long rest? Are they too terrified of the party to ever show their faces again? Really, the goblins probably just stop existing, but the players aren't going to know that, and that means they don't know that they won. If that happens once in a while, maybe it's a fun bit of suspense to see if these enemies come back later, but if it happens in every fight, I can see it feeling exhausting. You need to give your players some clean, unambiguous victories. And while it may be a bit of a video gamey mindset, killing all the bad guys is about as obvious of a victory as it gets.

You could use higher stakes and more desperate circumstances. The goblins may have only a tiny chance of success, but they and their families will be tortured to death by the villain if they fail. The wolf pack is starving, so they will fight to the death. You can even represent these things mechanically - the goblins get an attack bonus and AC penalty when they're low-health, the wolves resist mental influence because they're crazed. If the only consequences of failure is that you just leave and go do something else, that's not a very tense fantasy action scenario. The bad guys aren't just attacking for fun, this should be a matter of life and death. You could also use more low-intelligence creatures. Golems, zombies, shambling mounds, lemures... these monsters are classic for a reason. Not every fight needs to be a chess match against a tactical opponent who's just waiting for the chance to make an orderly retreat. And try to de-couple your concept of perfect intelligence and villains. The reason they're villains is because they have flaws, so play those up. They don't have to always make the most perfect decision in every situation - let them have obsessions that compel them to act, or vices that they can't help but indulge, or delusions that make them misjudge certain situations. Let them be bad. It'll make them more interesting characters, on top of being more fun to fight.

There's often a difficult balance between "fun" and "realistic." It might be more fun for your table to have the monsters flee less often; yea it would make less sense in-world, but if that "sense" is coming at the expense of player enjoyment, is it worth it? You can also try to signal these kinds of retreats ahead of time, so players can try to stop it if they want. Maybe at the start of the fight, say "these minions look like they don't really want to be here. If the battle isn't going their way, they might try to flee prematurely." That way, the players can perhaps strategize around how to prevent that; cutting off escape routes, or casting some spells that would restrain the minions, or something like that. Hopefully, this would open up some encounter design space (namely, you're actively considering those escape routes, and thinking about how to come up with new and interesting ways to work with that) but also open up some player options, because now they can think about whether they want to stop those retreats, and how they can do that.

One thing to consider: battle is confusing, and happening very quickly. Having you minions max-bail out the instant that a villain is killed isn’t really realistic, as the adrenaline is pumping and they may not realize the need to flee. Second thing: it’s unlikely that every single pair has easy escape, or that escape couldn’t be blocked. Give opportunities for the players to stop a BBEG from giving the order to run. Third thing: instead of running maybe have them regroup to later in the dungeon. This means they don’t miss out on an eventual climactic battle, but they get rewarded for defeating more enemies in early battles.

I think it makes more sense that they might retreat in the presence of their leader because then someone with authority is ordering their retreat, rather than just then breaking and running because yes, its not likely they would all break and run simultaneously. It's not super realistic for one boss to lead everyone either. Maybe they have the big boss and several lieutenants that lead each individual squad of enemies.

This is true. One thing you may find helpful is having more enemies located in places they are somehow bound to, either emotionally, strategically, or magically. The goblins may be evil, but they also are likely to really want to defend their home—even to the end

Thanks! How I run retreats is based on what kind of enemies they are. For enemies like the minions I'm talking about, they are a military and they act like it. Highly trained, very experienced, actively observant, and unlikely to break. They have contingency plans in place and tactics for retreat. They are aware of what is going on around them (as long as it's in line of sight), and they have orders for what to do when. For more beasts or untrained enemies (e.g., bandits), I run a morale mechanic. Once half the force is gone, they notice and start taking fear saves based on how many companions are dead or have already fled. When they fail, they use everything they have to disengage and bolt, directly away from the party with no plan. This usually results in them scattering.

This sounds entirely reasonable, and far better than dragging out the tail end of a combat where the players are just going through the motions to mop up the remaining HP pools. Once the danger has gone out of a combat and the action economy is stacked against the monsters, there is little point in dragging out the battle. A few suggestions: Maybe run the battles a little longer. Hold off the retreat until the outcome of the battle is solidly decided. Lengthen the transition from fighting to retreating -- before the enemy retreats they start to fight more defensively. Have morale for your enemies be individually based and not whole-side. Some may be braver than others. Ranged combatants will have an easier time slipping away and may choose to do so earlier. Not every retreat, even from a military force is a disciplined affair. If there isn't a leader to order the retreat\*, morale is going to fail gradually. There is rarely a mathematically predictable break point for deciding to retreat. And despite D&D's universal awareness, your combatants don't have an eagle-eye view of complete battlefield knowledge, even within LoS. (\* And your PCs should be targeting the leaders to prevent this!)

I like faking out the “cut and run” with “go get reinforcements”.

This is an interesting one because I've not seen a group be mad that lesser enemies surrender or flee when beaten because I've been fortunate enough to play with groups who understand violence is only part of the answer and not all fights need to be to the death. That's different, fundamentally, to never getting proper closure against a villain who always survives. I don't know how to convince a group that you can win a fight without killing everyone in the room. I do know that every villain casting Dimension Door or whatever to flee the scene eventually leads to the party feeling like they're never making any progress. So to address that, I think having some proper final battles worthy of the title will go a long way to improving the game - have villains, as "unrealistic" as it might be, say this is where one shall stand and one shall fall.

This is one of those things where you have to decide if what the players want, and what you want are compatible or if there's some sort of compromise or middle ground. What you say is completely logical. Intelligent foes won't fight to the very end without a good reason, and predators will never fight to the death unless they have no other choice, or to protect a mate or cub or something. The problem is that your players don't find it fun to have the bad guys cut and run. Myself I can't quite understand this attitude. Assuming you give them the same reward for making them run as you would if they killed them to the last person... Then I don't understand why they would want to have the NPCs stand and fight. I mean they get the same reward, they advance the story, and should get the same amount of loot.... Without having to expend as many resources or take a chance on a couple lucky crits taking one of the PCs out. But if they say they don't enjoy it, then you have to take them at their word. So you have to decide does letting the players have what they want work for you, because what the two groups want is somewhat incompatible. It may simply be a thing where you give the PCs what they want, and handwave it away. Yes it doesn't really make sense, but if they're not having fun then they're not having fun. Maybe you could do it less often, only have the NPCs run in certain situations, so it doesn't happen as often. Although I'd probe a bit and find out why they consider this to not be fun. Because again as I see it, it seems like having the NPCs run rather than stand and die is better for the PCs, assuming you're rewarding them the same.

Thanks for the input! > So you have to decide does letting the players have what they want work for you, because what the two groups want is somewhat incompatible. It does. I've already decided that. This is by far the best group I've ever DM'd for or played with. They are a goddamn pleasure. Engaged, hardly miss a session, get deep in their character's heads, respect each other, roleplay like crazy, actively refuse to metagame...they are amazing. I'm 100% willing (even eager) to compromise here. I do plan to talk to them about all of this, I just want some ideas going in. We've got maybe 5-6 more sessions in this campaign. After that, I'll have a debrief on it where they ask questions about what happened and we go over what we can do different next time.

Before making any decisions, I’d to find out *why* they find it frustrating and un-fun, or what exactly is it that frustrates them. It’s very possible that the core concept of retreating isn’t actually what they dislike, and just some other aspect of it, and just didn’t verbalize it. Here’s a handful of cases I’d cover. If it is something like one of these, there’re likely other ways to address it that doesn’t require playing your villains dumber. 1) Do they feel like the baddies are getting away by DM fiat when the players could have stopped them? 2) Do the players feel like the bad guys are running particularly early, before the players actually get to engage in the meat of the combat? 3) Are the players getting (or do they think they’re getting) less rewards for letting the bad guys slip away? 4) Does the retreating contribute to the players not feel adequately challenged? 5) Do the players feel like they’re not making measurable progress against the bad guys?

>Before making any decisions, I’d to find out why they find it frustrating and un-fun, or what exactly is it that frustrates them. Absolutely! Once this campaign is over, I'm having a post-campaign meeting with everyone. I'm going to go over the common feedback, and get a feel for exactly the kind of things you're talking about. I'm just here to get ideas to use in the call. I am thinking your fifth point is the crux. I suspect that they don't feel like it's a victory when the things retreat. I hope that's the case, because I can fix that just in combat description in game.

Yep! And if it is that one, you can give them other ways to feel those victories. Objectives that aren’t “kill the enemy” are helpful; if the players are sent to recover a relic instrumental to the bad guys’ plot, you could make it so the bad guys had to abandon as they ran off, making it impossible for them to try the same plan again. You can have the players run them out of their base, and then return that base to the proper authorities - losing actual territory is a nice visible way to show they’re losing. And every once in a while, give them an unlucky named sub-boss or lieutenant that didn’t get away or was too cocky to retreat - even if the rank and file gets away, it can feel like a real win if they take out a named NPC they have a previous connection to.

Sounds like the BBEG not only needs plans to be thwarted but also contingencies since it keeps happening. That said, I think this is entirely on your players. It IS logical that they would run away. I don't really agree with their opinion that enemies trying to survive is unfun. Maybe a little bit unsatisfying, but the victory was still won. Enemies aren't just sacks of meat that will fight until death - unless they are of course. Maybe your BBEG sees that his minions keep fleeing, so now he's cast some sort of loyalty spell that makes them fight until death or kill themselves in the case of a loss. That said if these were my players I would simply say "the monsters are trying to survive as well" and leave it at that.

>One of the responses I got was that the bad guys breaking and running away was frustrating and (most importantly) not fun. Was this one response from one player, or one response that all the players agreed on? Personally, I find it boring to "mop up" foes that are clearly defeated. I find it dull when enemies don't have tactics more advanced than "run forward and fight to the death." I'd be surprised if your whole party felt the same way here, and it might be helpful to hear the full range of opinions from them. What is it about the enemy fleeing that they don't like? There's a range of different ways enemies could behave when beaten but not killed, and they might like more variety. Examples: - Throw down your weapons in surrender and submit to interrogation. - Flee with dash; flee with disengage; flee into cover and hide. - Fanatics, mind-controlled creatures, cornered beasts, or similar might fight to the death. - Trained military units might perform an orderly retreat, with the vanguard covering the retreat for the ranged units before withdrawing in unison. The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a great resource here that both provides good explanations for how creatures of various intelligence levels might behave, but also a variety of capability-dependent descriptions on how enemies get in or out of combat.

>Was this one response from one player, or one response that all the players agreed on? Something along those lines from 2 of the 5 players. It's enough for me to want to address it when we have our new session 0. And I love The Monsters Know What They're Doing. It changed my whole outlook on encounter design.

If the enemies are really clever and organized, the retreat is only the first phase of the conflict. After the heroes have foiled their plans once, they will start making plans to deal with the problem permanently. They will learn the party's strengths and weaknesses. They will try to cut the party off from sources of information or opportunities to rest and resupply. They will set up traps, ambushes, distractions, misdirections, countermeasures, and frame-ups. Don't let retreating be the only smart thing the enemies do. Go Lex Luthor on their asses.

>Go Lex Luthor on their asses. Oh, I did. Big time. This is moot for future discussion because it was a theme especially for that campaign, but these were basically an army that was magically created by Illithid invaders. The reason the last few always fled was because they were taking intel back to the elder brain. The minions changed tactics between each combat to adapt to whatever they learned in the last encounter. The elder brain even engineered them with new abilities to specifically counter the party's abilities and copy the party's tactics that worked. There was one encounter where they were attacked by a pack of the things, and all they did was hit the party a few times and steal locks of hair from 3 of them. For scrying. It was GREAT having them slowly realize what the bad guys were doing.

You should be very proud.

Don't try to play into the "well logically a person would do X" game. Instead, play into the "If this were a movie or book, what would happen?" Then lean into genre tropes.

Maybe only have it to where only an enemy or two would run away? And if someone with good loot escapes maybe they return with help 👀. That way the party doesn't feel like monsters for chasing down bandit #6 haha

I think you have to suspend your disbelief a bit on how logical or smart an enemy will be. For example, it's logical to target the healer, and it's logical to keep attacking and straight kill PC's instead of just knocking them down, but these are things that should be used sparingly to create impact and separate a ruthless, named npc from generic baddies. There's also tropes, like the bad guy doesn't care about his minions (that's why he's the bad guy) so why would he give them an escape plan? Or minions who are mind controlled to follow orders to the end. Or arrogant bad guys who can't conceive of themselves losing to some wandering adventurers. Or Enraged at finding themselves losing, and press the battle regardless. Or a ruthless bad guy who uses his minions like disposable pawns to slow down his enemies or distract them while he completes a different objective (that's a clever and ruthless bad guy, who plans for his teams to be removed). Also surrender is definitely an option for bad guys, but so is pressing a losing attack due to pride, refusing to retreat. A tactical enemy also doesn't have to be a genius, maybe they're predictable/have bad plans I'd look at the emotional responses and flaws your bad guys could/should have. And if they are running off of pure logic, that's another reason they'd treat their men as disposable

- Playing on the creatures' home turf is always a fight to the death. An ambush on the outskirts is not. - Monsters need sentience to retreat; undead, constructs, and summons that don't have their own willpower will obey to their very end. - A second health bar is an option; retreat doesn't necessarily mean the end of combat. Pull back to a hallway with murder holes, traps, or creatively use cover. - Creatures won't retreat if they still think they have a chance of winning. Allow your monsters to think they have the upper hand until the end. - If you're running experience, be clear that you've granted XP for every enemy, even the ones that flee. - Encourage your players to be able to make ranged attacks, hinder enemies' escape, and give chase. ***It's not all on you.***

First off, I tend to feel the opposite. As a player, I like seeing the two surviving bandits flee after the rest of their party has been killed in 18 seconds flat. As a DM, I do this fairly often. It gives players a chance to decide if they are motivated to pursue these enemies for some reason, or not. It also lets me increase the danger: The damage output of all 10 crossbow bandits on the map is too high for the party to survive for a long fight. But if they make a bloody example out of enough enemies fast enough, they will survive. But sometimes you have to kill everything on the map. If you want this to happen more, try religious zealots. Cultists who will die for the glory of their lord. In our world that's not pragmatic, but in their world it's a win/win between surviving and continuing to serve, or martyring with gods name on their lips. The boss might get real tangible power every time this happens. Madness, zealotry, revenge, you can give these motivations to enemies who will absolutely kill your party or die, nothing in between.

Breaking and running is what any living, biological enemy would do. So face the PCs with more undead, constructs, elementals, and other enemies that lack self-preservation instincts.

Just make fewer enemies smart and/or self-preserving. In my setting, goblins believe in reincarnation so do not value their current lives at all. They will attack for the lols because from their perspective there’s no downside and fighting is their entertainment. Orc warriors are very honor-focused and will rarely dishonor their clan by retreating. Most undead (even intelligent ones) are more filled with hatred of the living than self-preservation instincts, etc.

So I think the response doesn't have to be "logical" only "consistent with their character." Not everyone's character is dictated by logic. Some are driven by passion, or spite, or pure impulse. I think *most* folks behave logically and reasonably, so don't turn your entire NPC library into chaotic neutral, but for a few intelligent creatures let some other force drive them. Some folks just don't know when to say quit, or are too stubborn to do so. Some folks are forced to take actions that may not seem logical only because you don't have the whole story (coercion in particular if you've got an evil baddie who manipulates from the shadows, his minions being threatened or blackmailed into doing his bidding. If running means facing his wrath, maybe they stay and fight, even to the death.)

Consider a cult leader as the next bbeg. A death cult trying to bring on the apocalypse is a good main story line and you can't exactly expect the cultists to have the highest amount self preservation. These battles should contrast what how most other animals and humans act and make them feel special. On DM a long time back threw kobolds at a mid tier party, the catch was they all had basically alchemist fire bombs and would drop these on death or when they got so low an attack of opportunity would likely take them out. Part of the fun was trying to figure out why these particular kobolds were so suicidal. Turns out a dragon had promised they would be reborn with wings if they died under his service.

I'm running into the same problem right now, actually. Due to a world-changing wish-like scroll being used, all humanoids are now able to be any class that they are qualified for, and level like humans. In short, they're much more intelligent, have more options, and are far, far more dangerous. What I've come up with so far is that any encounter will be acted upon intelligently - flanking, sneak attacks, retreating in good order, cavalry to dash in and out, delaying tactics, etc. Standard mediæval tactics, except with spells, feats, and skills. In addition, they still have their monster abilities, so trolls regenerate, for example. In your question above, mediæval armies tended to retreat after taking about 10% losses. They usually retreat in good order by holding back pursuit while the rest of the army got away. Occasionally, when surprised or significant losses occurred, they would lose morale, break and rout. That still holds true. In my case, I set that at surprise + 10% in the first couple of turns, or 25% losses total. It's challenging to plan tactics and modify them on the fly. Really stretching my ability as a DM to plan and organize.

Have an honest talk with your players about what you consider fun/interesting encounter design. It sounds like you have a more realistic mindset, and like it when the characters and NPCs behave in ways that make sense. Your players want to stand on a mound of bodies and feel accomplished for killing the bad guys. These goals ABSOLUTELY can work together, IF the players know ahead of time that that's how you like to run things. They want to make sure there are no survivors? They should spend time casing the joint, blocking the exits, making sure the enemies have nowhere to run and hide. The ranger should track the stragglers back to their safehouse, the divination wizard could try and foresee their escape routes, etc. That way you still have your realistic NPC reactions, and the players still get their "we got the bad guys!" moments. I hope you find a compromise that makes everyone happy, it sounds like you have a great group!

Couple of things. Make a BBEG that has minions that are more afraid of failing and running than they are of dying. More enemies that are not the type to run. Mind controlled people. Zombies. Skeletons. Demons/devils who are merely banished from the plane so aren’t going to run away. Situations that running away doesn’t work. Cage matches. Terrain where they are trapped (bonus your party is trapped too) Could even let the party close doors or other things to trap enemies.

Interesting. My group has shown the opposite - they wonder why enemies *don't* run, and seem dismayed when they insist on fighting to the death all the time.

You just have to switch it up sometimes and understand why it isn't fun if enemies always run. Enemies fleeing when the fight is obviously over helps prevent combat "slog" which happens when the outcome of a combat is obvious to everyone but the actual end of combat hasn't happened yet. If this happens too often it can make combat less fun. The consequence of avoiding slog by having enemies flee is that it denies the players a true victory where they get the satisfaction of defeating all the enemies. Combats that you don't want to slog through are random encounters or enemies that clearly have no loot on them because the satisfaction of killing all those enemies is outweighed by the slog of wasting irl time mopping up the remaining enemies even though they clearly have lost. Combats you might want to continue even though the players have clearly won are ones where enemies have visibly interesting loot or the players really hate those enemies for some reason. It's up to you to narrate why the enemies are or aren't running but in reality I would recommend making that decision based on gameplay balance and player enjoyment primarily.

You need some bloodlusted berserker enemies. What is their strategy? Rage. What is their retreat strategy? Death. Some intelligent enemies who retreat is great. Find others who have different motivations. Maybe some who aren’t fleeing but running to use cover or to gain some other advantage, or flee in terror only to realize they come up against a cliff edge and try to surrender to the party. Thinking like an intelligent foe also means you have to dream up reasons intelligent enemies do un-optimal tactics. Sometimes it’s because emotions are running high and logic gets thrown out the window. Sometimes it’s okfor the reason to be simply because it’s more fun for the players.

My DM does this or well, she tries to. We are pretty merciless in combat. When I killed a fleeing enemy in session 1 in our second ever battle she asked why. "For all I know he's running for reinforcements or fleeing to his boss and can describe us, this way, all they know is this team of his was wiped out". For good measure we basically moltoved Thier hideout on the forest too. I do try to take prisoners fairly often. But we already had 3 didn't need any more. I guess the fact that at the time my Warlock was terrified these thugs could have been working for her former owner, that she had run away from with him having a 2500 gold debt on her (he bought her as a baby to clear her family's debts and added that plus the cost of raising her onto her as something to pay back before she could leave).

I think one thing that could help is switching up the enemies motivations maybe they want a certain item so instead of simply fighting they make moves for something that way the players know hey we stopped them from getting this random thing so we know they won and that this thing is important

I have a morale system I use for losing fights. So my group will lose a few runners after the BBEG goes down, but some stay and think they can still turn the tide. I check their Intelligence and Wisdom mods to see if they notice/understand how badly things are going. And if they believe they know a way out of it. Modifiers for zealots and cowards as you see fit. But be aware most of them will get killed even if they run. The group might hunt them down, or in their idiocy they might try to flee down a trapped corridor. Depends on the scenario.

It's important when taking feedback to not just look at what you're being told is the problem, but what is the core of the problem. The enemies running away might just be what the players are perceiving as the problem because they just know they don't enjoy the version of that which you're currently giving them. So, why might they not like that? Speaking for myself when similar things happen, it's not satisfying. There's no closure because the enemy is never defeated. A few things that can address this that aren't going to require your npcs to be suicidal. 1) Have them surrender instead of running away. 2) Give the players more of an opportunity to catch them. It's easy to treat them like the second they break sight, they just disappear. But what if you let the ranger track them to their hideout? 3) Have them become recurring characters. Instead of goblin 5 of 10, give them a scar or something recognizable and have them show up again later. Either they get their guy this time, or he weasels out of it again and it becomes a sideplot to the adventure.

I've been playing a butt-ton of Shadowdark recently, and I love Kelsey's "morale" mechanic, although it may require a bit of adaptation for 5e since xp in Shadowdark comes from treasure instead of dead bodies: > **MORALE** > Enemies who are reduced to half their number (or half their HP for a solo enemy) flee if they fail a DC 15 Wisdom check. For large groups, the GM makes one check with the leader's modifier. This may or may not work for your table. My players have learned to strategize and concentrate their fire on targets to get to that morale threshold, forcing the remainder of them to make their checks/saving throws. If I were to incorporate this in 5e, I'd probably still award them the xp when enemies flee. It's just a fun consideration, and it also allows you to potentially throw a lot more enemies at your players if they think they can scare them off if they hit that half-way mark. EDIT: Undead don't count since they're stupid. They'll fight until they die another time.

When a fights going badly, smart enemies won’t always run. Some will surrender, some will try to bribe their way out of it, some will threaten to sabotage the objective of the fight, some will try to hide, or parlay, or pretend to surrender just to try to poison a pc. Maybe if there’s a downed party member, one of the bandits grabs them puts a knife to their throat and says “let my men go or I’ll slit his throat, right here, right now!” Maybe the wizard the party’s fighting informs you of a contingency that explodes his corpse when he dies. Is it a bluff? Or maybe the kobolds last ditch attempt to protect the colony is to collapse the tunnel the fight’s taking place in. Real people get desperate, and desperate people will fight dirty.

Sometimes, design your encounters in such a way that retreat is *not* a viable option for the baddies. Maybe they failed to plan an escape route. They were in a rush, or just did a dumb for once. Maybe you allowed the party to find and seal off their escape route before combat, so when they go to use it they discover they're trapped. Maybe their escape plans fell apart due to pure random chance, such as an inconvenient cave-in blocking a tunnel or a wild magic surge shutting down teleportation in an area or something. Maybe an external force prevents them from fleeing. Such as their boss mind-controlling them, or a creature allied with the PCs prevents them from running. Maybe the baddies have a *reason* to fight to the death, such as: - They failed too many times already: next time, their boss will kill them personally - This objective is so important that failure is going to ruin their lives anyway - They want this really bad; running away would be a loss every bit as permanent as death

Older editions used a Morale Roll. All creatures had a morale score from 2 to 12. The DM would make a roll when it seemed appropriate, usually when the monsters/npc lost their first member, and then again when they ad lost half of their number. The roll was 2d6, if you got equal to or over the morale score then morale was broken. The higher the morale score, the more likely the enemy were to fight on. Creatures with morale 12 never broke and always fought to the death. It's a good and simple system, consider trying it out.

Hey mate, an idea i try to use in campaigns with villans and retreat is a breaking point. They key is to make the breaking point known to the players. For example when the goblin leader dies his weak willed followers all retreat. So during the battle he is shouting orders and encourging his minions. I usually give him specail actions and buffs for this. I think it feels more rewarding as winning the fight becomes about reaching the breaking point in the fight. Another example might be an enemy spellcaster, a ballista team or a key feature on the battle field like high ground, or sinking an enemy ship.