Twilight Sparkle: Since we're not in danger and we lost the element of surprise anyway... I'm going to get rid of the glamour hiding my wings.
DM: Are you sure? You're going to get a lot of gasps and looks from the crowd.
Twilight Sparkle: I'll officially worry about that later.
DM: Just a little anticlimactic, is all.
Twilight Sparkle: Can I use Arcana around the impact site to determine what *exactly* happened when the Elements hit Discord?
DM: Sure, though maybe we need a better way to do "magical forensics" than just rolling Arcana–
Twilight Sparkle: <roll> Natural 20.
DM: Oh! Well, in that case: Yes, there are absolutely telltale teleportation signs. A "normal" teleport spell, at that, not chaotic space-folding.
Twilight Sparkle: Fascinating!
Rainbow Dash: Look, buddy. I get pulling out all the stops. But fleeing the boss battle?! *Come on! Where your honor?*
Back when I had a hedge headcanon (hedgecanon, if you will) that Discord was a corrupted Star Swirl the Bearded, I thought it would be interesting if in very dire circumstances Discord might fall back on "regular" magic spells rather than his chaotic omnipotence.
So once again, Friendship is Dragons is where I end up putting all my miscellaneous MLP fanfic ideas.
Notice: Guest comic submissions are open! Guidelines here. Deadline: February 20th.
There were two instances where the PCs destroyed the BBEG's machinations so utterly, that the villain actually gave up their ideas after fleeing.
One was a witch bent on revenge against a whole town that wronged her. After all her minions were slain, her books burned, her home destroyed in an explosion, she gave up and became a recluse hermit. This went on for over a year, when by chance the PCs found her and actually wanted her help with fighting off a different villain. At first she told the PCs to blow off, but around the third ask she reluctantly agreed. She then found a new purpose in pharmaceutical alchemy for the common people.
Another villain was a vampire countess who decided that it would be a great idea to just turn everyone into vampires because then there's no point to having vampire hunters. Well several PC fights later, she lost everything; her castle burned, land razed, her subjects turned (most were undead) and she filed for a winter home in the mountains. Almost two years later she crosses paths with the PCs again as they were looking for undead to help with curative experiments that the witch was doing.
The experiments failed to yield any results, but the vampire and witch actually became good friends and bonded over how annoying the PCs were. :3
Not going to lie, stories like this are rather wholesome to me. It's not too often games get a chance for leitmotifs like that to crop up, and honestly, the fact the players didn't hold a grudge/blackmail with death option is quite refreshing to hear.
Haha, nice!
I love your villains too. Those are some realistic (if extreme) motivations/goals. But hey, why wouldn't they be extreme? They're villains, lol.
One system designed for superhero play is actually set up to encourage villain escapes and captured heroes: At any point during a fight before the combat system says you lose you can simply declare a loss. The reason you would want to declare a loss is because it allows you to describe that loss while pushing the fight to the bitter end allows the winner to decide how they won.
So a BBEG that's losing a fight will take the L, meaning the heroes have wrecked his plans and forced him to flee with a cry of "next time Gadget! Next time!"
So... It should be but... Is that common? That the heroes reach the boss and he decide to flee instead of fighting? Discord did not even try to fight seriously, he just noticed that he was at a disadvantage and decided to flee away.
My real name IS "Dennis" (Guess what my mother was watching in the late 50s). Been using Wulfraed/Baron Wulfraed online for so long I'm more likely to respond to that than to my real name.
From the tenants of one chaos god I had a character follow: "Always be unpredictable. Even in unpredictability." Fleeing the fight with teleport may be a 'normal' thing, but they weren't expecting it.
So once again, Friendship is Dragons is where I end up putting all my miscellaneous MLP fanfic ideas.