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The Flee Action – A 13th Age Rule You Can Use Today

by Mike on 26 August 2024

13th Age is an awesome fantasy roleplaying game built by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet as their love letter to D&D. There's much to love in this book but today we're going to focus on one feature:

The Flee action.

Fleeing in D&D is a problem. Monsters get you locked down and by the time you know you should flee, two of your characters are down and the others are going to take a mountain of opportunity attacks if they try to run. Players already hate running from a battle, but often by the time they think they need to, they mechanically can't. By the time players realize they need to run, it's already too late.

13th Age has an elegant solution for this dilemma.

The Flee Action

Here's the flee action from the 13th Age SRD (known as the Archmage Engine):

Flee: Fleeing is a party action. On any PC’s turn, any player can propose that all the characters flee the fight. If all players agree, they successfully retreat, carrying any fallen heroes away with them. The party suffers a campaign loss. The point of this rule is to encourage daring attacks and to make retreating interesting on the level of story rather than tactics.

In short, if your group says they want to run, they run. They get away, carrying any downed characters with them – but at a story cost.

This is an easy rule for handling retreats – something players surely want to avoid but one which doesn't penalize them for mechanical idiosyncrasies like being locked down by potential opportunity attacks or dropped to zero hit points. It isn't a matter of the tactics or mechanics that let them flee – it's a matter of the story and what it means in the fiction.

The Cost of Retreating

Retreating has a cost. But we don't want this cost to be too severe or we'll still steer players away from the option of retreating. Instead, we want this cost to be interesting. We want it to move the story forward, just in a different direction. It doesn't end the situation, it begins a new one.

Here are ten example campaign shifts when the characters flee from combat:

A ritual succeeds and a portal to the hells is opened.
An important NPC is killed and the politics of the city becomes chaotic.
The villains acquire or complete the construction of a powerful artifact.
An unearthly horror is released into the world.
A new cult forms around a creature the characters didn't defeat.
Armies of disparate warbands now convene around a central warlord.
One of the two ships the characters had in their possession is destroyed.
The characters find themselves in darker and danker chambers below the site of their exit.
Prisoners the characters hoped to rescue have become thralls.
The Cult of the Black Harbinger activates the obelisks and discovers the doorway of the Black Cathedral.

Planning Costs Ahead of Time

When we're prepping a big dangerous battle, or a series of battles, we can ask ourselves:

"What happens if the characters lose this fight?"

It's one thing to assume the characters all die but what if they escape and the villain's plan moves forward? Fleeing from a battle shouldn't be the end of the story, it should be a new and interesting beginning.

Tell Your Players

The flee action isn't helpful if your players don't know they can do it. You may want to add it to your session zero checklist or your list of house rules and describe it as an option before the players need it. That way they always know they have this feature available to them if they want it.

If you don't think calling it the "flee" action will sit well with your players, call it the "retreat" action instead so they don't feel so bad using it.

An Easy Way to Focus Fleeing on the Story

This house rule for fleeing can be a great addition to our games. Instead of focusing on avoiding opportunity attacks or saving downed characters, shift the conversation back to the story itself. Let you and your players find a new path and a new angle in the ever-changing tales we share at the table.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a few of YouTube videos including City of Arches Campaign Paths, Lazy GM Kit 2024 – Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master, and Let's Build a Character with Tales of the Valiant.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Track magic item rewards per character. Don’t let a character fall significantly behind.
Let random treasure tools inspire your own parcels and rewards.
Keep character names in front of you. Track turns even outside of combat.
Keep the lazy encounter benchmark on hand to tell you if a fight is way too difficult or not. A battle may be hard if the total of monster CRs is greater than one quarter of total character levels, or half of total character levels if the characters are 5th level or above.
Prep handouts and secret villain notes. Use them to keep yourself and your players focused.
Clarify goals in open situations, heists, or infiltration adventures.
Give characters a home base.