On the back of a discussion in the DM thread I wanted to get a wider view of how people feel about being put in no win situations in DnD?
To clarify I mean situations that you are meant to escape from, run away, avoid to possibly return and fight another day when you have leveled, mcguffin etc.
To give an example, you witness a bbeg destroying a villiage and enslaving the people living there. You go to fight only to find his AC is far to high and his attacks do silly damage. So you need to get creative and try and escape. Maybe you get some villagers away as well, maybe you don’t.
Will you as a player realise that this is a battle you can’t win, will you retreat and lick your wounds to fight another day, or do you assume every combat situation is supposed to be winnable and therefore fight it out to a TPK feeling cheated by your DM when after you are all dead he tell you, there was no way you could beat this guy, why didn’t you just run?
I threw a gloomstalker at my level 4 players to scare them away from some very powerful magic items that are canonically in a certain place, so I think it’s alright.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It often times depends on the situation. If we are talking about a low to medium level party it’s not really a problem we/they know there is still lots of stuff out there that can toast them easily. When it’s a high or tier 4 party it’s different, short of gods and ancient dragons you are pretty sure your the baddest boys on the block and your a lot less likely to run. What is worse is when you come up on something you know you can’t beat and there is no where to run. Then you do your Alamo impression. BTDT
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
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"real life is a super high CR."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
At many tables, rolling initiative is a signal that the party is going into a winnable fight. This is common enough that it should be the default expectation and as a DM if you want to run things differently you need to either make it clear in session 0 or have a clear example very early on in the campaign illustrating what your expectations are.
For me, spending 20+ minutes on a combat that I know the PC's won't win just feels like a waste of game time and it's generally not fun for the players to roll a 17 on the die and miss. I will telegraph ahead of time that the foe is too strong for them to take on directly, or I will do a quicker narrative-style battle that still gives the players a chance to roleplay how they would react going up against an overwhelming force.
I kinda feel like stuff like this needs to be super telegraphed to the players and that's incredibly hard to do sometimes because what may seem OBVIOUS to the DM about the monster or BBEG being unbeatable may not be obvious to the players. They might just think they are going into a tough fight where they might try to strategize a bit harder than "we rush and attack it"
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Just to clarify this is an encounter I have played out I used as an example. The way it played out was a tense initial fight that the players (and then characters) realised they could not win, followed by an escape. BBEG was caught up in his thing, (ancient temple buried under villiage, had mcguffin he needed). The party had taken far too long getting there so had arrived to late to get the thing themselves.
This was the first time fighting bad guy, but they knew lots about him. They retreated, saved a handful of villagers, and then worked to save others. It was 6 months of real time before they where powerful enough to go toe to toe with him and defeat him.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
As a player and a DM personally I hate cut scenes I have left games where DMs insisted on them, it takes agency and rail roads.
As a DM my players know from session 0 not every fight is meant to be winnable by violence alone, some enemies can be talked down, others need to be run from. I have watched players have the most fun carrying out a daring escape from a situation, dragging the body of a fallen ally away because there isnt time to resurrect them. Burning through scrolls and potions to try and survive.
I have also had characters take a little too long to realize running away was the best option, and yes by this time they had burnt through resources, and yes maybe as a DM that was part of my intent because they where hoarding a little too much.
I make sure in these situations it is made clear to the characters how powerful the enemy is, I make sure they have a clear route and way to escape if they can’t think of something imaginative and I make sure that they are not the sole focus of the creature, so there is a narriative reason for it not chasing them down relentlessly.
You can't win as a fight, but that doesn't mean you can't still chase success.
This. If you want the players to go through an unwinnable encounter, I'll first assume you'll have a reason for the encounter happening but also that there is some kind of goal the party can strive for. If the outcome is completely fixed and nothing the characters can try will have any meaningful effect or change the result, there's really no point and you're IMO going to be much better off describing what happens and letting the players react to that outcome.
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I really don't like it. A similiar situation happened in one of my recent games where I was a player with the opposite result. We were in a very deadly situation (the DM didn't warn us beforehand) and we were rescued by an NPC that instant killed everything in one hit. Rather than feel relieved we just felt weak and crap. Literally all drama and tension left and I've never felt so unheroic in all my time playing D&D. IMO things like being captured should only ever be used to avoid death after a TPK.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
You can't win as a fight, but that doesn't mean you can't still chase success. It's a scenario where I as a player have lots of things I can choose to do and there are a pretty wide array of outcomes from better to worse that I'd be interested in pursuing. As it became clear I was outclassed, success would become getting as many people to safety as I could. Or maybe I would fight to the death (or my party dragging my body away).
Or, if in trying to save NPCs they turned out to be dumb as dirt rushing headlong into danger, I might break character and roast them as some sort of cathartic release for every video game tat made me protect an NPC who was painfully stupid and lacked any sense of self-preservation.
If there's something to accomplish other than just beating up every hostile, that should be made clear to the players beforehand. If an encounter is one where you can't win, I'm assuming that that includes via non-combat methods.
And @Scarloc_Stormcall: throwing an unbeatable scenario at the PCs is also railroading.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Just yesterday I threw a full-blown dragon turtle at a party of five 3rd level characters while they were sailing aboard a ship.
As the DM, I felt it was my responsibility to remind them that there were other options besides just slugging it out. They actually got really creative with their responses and actions and managed to all survive (although the ship was destroyed and they washed up on the shore of a mysterious and hostile island continent, but that is next week's story...)
As a player, I have always kept non-traditional solutions in mind, so I don't panic under such conditions. But that comes with trust that there will be another way out and that the DM will reward good roleplay and creative thinking.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
It does if another outcome was possible. Perhaps they could avoid capture by successfully running away.
If your plot absolutely requires the party be captured, you have to go to the effort of designing a truly unwinnable and unescapable encounter, not just an encounter you think is unwinnable.
Just yesterday I threw a full-blown dragon turtle at a party of five 3rd level characters while they were sailing aboard a ship.
As the DM, I felt it was my responsibility to remind them that there were other options besides just slugging it out. They actually got really creative with their responses and actions and managed to all survive (although the ship was destroyed and they washed up on the shore of a mysterious and hostile island continent, but that is next week's story...)
As a player, I have always kept non-traditional solutions in mind, so I don't panic under such conditions. But that comes with trust that there will be another way out and that the DM will reward good roleplay and creative thinking.
One time our party was attacked at sea by a dragon turtle. The cleric took a large sum of gold and dumped it into the sea and convinced the dragon turtle to go after the easy gold rather than continuing to fight us because while we weren't kicking its ass per say, we were putting up more of a fight than it expected and it went for the easy gold instead and let us go. It was a fun moment of creative problem solving for the cleric taking advantage of the nature of the threat, since dragon turtles aren't just mindless sea monsters.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
It does if another outcome was possible. Perhaps they could avoid capture by successfully running away.
If your plot absolutely requires the party be captured, you have to go to the effort of designing a truly unwinnable and unescapable encounter, not just an encounter you think is unwinnable.
If there are multiple possible outcomes, it's not an unwinnable scenario. You just need to be clear what the victory conditions are.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
It does if another outcome was possible. Perhaps they could avoid capture by successfully running away.
If your plot absolutely requires the party be captured, you have to go to the effort of designing a truly unwinnable and unescapable encounter, not just an encounter you think is unwinnable.
If there are multiple possible outcomes, it's not an unwinnable scenario. You just need to be clear what the victory conditions are.
Right. If you were suggesting using a cut scene, then there's no scenario at all. I think if you want to avoid railroading, and you want an unwinnable scenario, you need to actually design a scenario within the rules that at least could be played out to a TPK. Now if after a round the players are like, "We can see which way this is going. We don't have to play it out," then fine. But if they want a chance to use their abilities to change the outcome, they should have that option.
I don't think you'd really call running from a fight a win. A scenario that has multiple possible outcomes, but none of them are wins, is still unwinnable, but worth playing out.
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
It does if another outcome was possible. Perhaps they could avoid capture by successfully running away.
If your plot absolutely requires the party be captured, you have to go to the effort of designing a truly unwinnable and unescapable encounter, not just an encounter you think is unwinnable.
If there are multiple possible outcomes, it's not an unwinnable scenario. You just need to be clear what the victory conditions are.
Right. If you were suggesting using a cut scene, then there's no scenario at all. I think if you want to avoid railroading, and you want an unwinnable scenario, you need to actually design a scenario within the rules that at least could be played out to a TPK. Now if after a round the players are like, "We can see which way this is going. We don't have to play it out," then fine. But if they want a chance to use their abilities to change the outcome, they should have that option.
I don't think you'd really call running from a fight a win. A scenario that has multiple possible outcomes, but none of them are wins, is still unwinnable, but worth playing out.
For example, there are degrees of losing. Maybe the DM expects the party to be captured as the result of an encounter. But instead one PC gets away while the rest are captured. That has narrative implications for how the party can escape. The escaped PC can help the party from the outside somehow.
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On the back of a discussion in the DM thread I wanted to get a wider view of how people feel about being put in no win situations in DnD?
To clarify I mean situations that you are meant to escape from, run away, avoid to possibly return and fight another day when you have leveled, mcguffin etc.
To give an example, you witness a bbeg destroying a villiage and enslaving the people living there. You go to fight only to find his AC is far to high and his attacks do silly damage. So you need to get creative and try and escape. Maybe you get some villagers away as well, maybe you don’t.
Will you as a player realise that this is a battle you can’t win, will you retreat and lick your wounds to fight another day, or do you assume every combat situation is supposed to be winnable and therefore fight it out to a TPK feeling cheated by your DM when after you are all dead he tell you, there was no way you could beat this guy, why didn’t you just run?
I threw a gloomstalker at my level 4 players to scare them away from some very powerful magic items that are canonically in a certain place, so I think it’s alright.
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Out of the Abyss and A4 Dungeon of the Slave Lords is predicated upon the party being captured beyond their control.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
A CR 6 monster was able to beefgate a level four party? That really shouldn't have been a very difficult fight for them.
But back to the OP's question, I'm opposed to throwing unwinnable fights at the party. If they're supposed to lose, I feel that it's better to just have it happen as a cutscene. Being forced to spend several hours in a game with a fight that it turns out I could never win is frustrating, especially if limited-use equipment was expended (because when you're getting pounded is when you start reaching for the spell scrolls you had squirreled away).
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It often times depends on the situation. If we are talking about a low to medium level party it’s not really a problem we/they know there is still lots of stuff out there that can toast them easily. When it’s a high or tier 4 party it’s different, short of gods and ancient dragons you are pretty sure your the baddest boys on the block and your a lot less likely to run. What is worse is when you come up on something you know you can’t beat and there is no where to run. Then you do your Alamo impression. BTDT
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I can see that going two ways. There is a multi-page thread about taking away player agency in which some of the participants would cry tears about a cut scene capture of the party.
I totally get where you're coming from though.
For the OP, you can have the party witness the BBEG decimating a village and they will engage. Players generally hate running away and even if it is fairly obvious that they are outclassed, they will still jump into a fight. Either have the BBEG ignore their attacks and leave or have him kick their butts (without killing them) in one or two rounds.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
At many tables, rolling initiative is a signal that the party is going into a winnable fight. This is common enough that it should be the default expectation and as a DM if you want to run things differently you need to either make it clear in session 0 or have a clear example very early on in the campaign illustrating what your expectations are.
For me, spending 20+ minutes on a combat that I know the PC's won't win just feels like a waste of game time and it's generally not fun for the players to roll a 17 on the die and miss. I will telegraph ahead of time that the foe is too strong for them to take on directly, or I will do a quicker narrative-style battle that still gives the players a chance to roleplay how they would react going up against an overwhelming force.
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I kinda feel like stuff like this needs to be super telegraphed to the players and that's incredibly hard to do sometimes because what may seem OBVIOUS to the DM about the monster or BBEG being unbeatable may not be obvious to the players. They might just think they are going into a tough fight where they might try to strategize a bit harder than "we rush and attack it"
Forcing the party to play through an unwinnable scenario instead of handling it as a cutscene doesn't actually take away any player agency. It just takes longer.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Just to clarify this is an encounter I have played out I used as an example. The way it played out was a tense initial fight that the players (and then characters) realised they could not win, followed by an escape. BBEG was caught up in his thing, (ancient temple buried under villiage, had mcguffin he needed). The party had taken far too long getting there so had arrived to late to get the thing themselves.
This was the first time fighting bad guy, but they knew lots about him. They retreated, saved a handful of villagers, and then worked to save others. It was 6 months of real time before they where powerful enough to go toe to toe with him and defeat him.
As a player and a DM personally I hate cut scenes I have left games where DMs insisted on them, it takes agency and rail roads.
As a DM my players know from session 0 not every fight is meant to be winnable by violence alone, some enemies can be talked down, others need to be run from. I have watched players have the most fun carrying out a daring escape from a situation, dragging the body of a fallen ally away because there isnt time to resurrect them. Burning through scrolls and potions to try and survive.
I have also had characters take a little too long to realize running away was the best option, and yes by this time they had burnt through resources, and yes maybe as a DM that was part of my intent because they where hoarding a little too much.
I make sure in these situations it is made clear to the characters how powerful the enemy is, I make sure they have a clear route and way to escape if they can’t think of something imaginative and I make sure that they are not the sole focus of the creature, so there is a narriative reason for it not chasing them down relentlessly.
This. If you want the players to go through an unwinnable encounter, I'll first assume you'll have a reason for the encounter happening but also that there is some kind of goal the party can strive for. If the outcome is completely fixed and nothing the characters can try will have any meaningful effect or change the result, there's really no point and you're IMO going to be much better off describing what happens and letting the players react to that outcome.
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I really don't like it. A similiar situation happened in one of my recent games where I was a player with the opposite result. We were in a very deadly situation (the DM didn't warn us beforehand) and we were rescued by an NPC that instant killed everything in one hit. Rather than feel relieved we just felt weak and crap. Literally all drama and tension left and I've never felt so unheroic in all my time playing D&D. IMO things like being captured should only ever be used to avoid death after a TPK.
If there's something to accomplish other than just beating up every hostile, that should be made clear to the players beforehand. If an encounter is one where you can't win, I'm assuming that that includes via non-combat methods.
And @Scarloc_Stormcall: throwing an unbeatable scenario at the PCs is also railroading.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Just yesterday I threw a full-blown dragon turtle at a party of five 3rd level characters while they were sailing aboard a ship.
As the DM, I felt it was my responsibility to remind them that there were other options besides just slugging it out. They actually got really creative with their responses and actions and managed to all survive (although the ship was destroyed and they washed up on the shore of a mysterious and hostile island continent, but that is next week's story...)
As a player, I have always kept non-traditional solutions in mind, so I don't panic under such conditions. But that comes with trust that there will be another way out and that the DM will reward good roleplay and creative thinking.
It does if another outcome was possible. Perhaps they could avoid capture by successfully running away.
If your plot absolutely requires the party be captured, you have to go to the effort of designing a truly unwinnable and unescapable encounter, not just an encounter you think is unwinnable.
One time our party was attacked at sea by a dragon turtle. The cleric took a large sum of gold and dumped it into the sea and convinced the dragon turtle to go after the easy gold rather than continuing to fight us because while we weren't kicking its ass per say, we were putting up more of a fight than it expected and it went for the easy gold instead and let us go. It was a fun moment of creative problem solving for the cleric taking advantage of the nature of the threat, since dragon turtles aren't just mindless sea monsters.
If there are multiple possible outcomes, it's not an unwinnable scenario. You just need to be clear what the victory conditions are.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Right. If you were suggesting using a cut scene, then there's no scenario at all. I think if you want to avoid railroading, and you want an unwinnable scenario, you need to actually design a scenario within the rules that at least could be played out to a TPK. Now if after a round the players are like, "We can see which way this is going. We don't have to play it out," then fine. But if they want a chance to use their abilities to change the outcome, they should have that option.
I don't think you'd really call running from a fight a win. A scenario that has multiple possible outcomes, but none of them are wins, is still unwinnable, but worth playing out.
For example, there are degrees of losing. Maybe the DM expects the party to be captured as the result of an encounter. But instead one PC gets away while the rest are captured. That has narrative implications for how the party can escape. The escaped PC can help the party from the outside somehow.