Morale Checks in D&D

[canyonwalker]

Recently I've been thinking about how I use Morale Checks in D&D— despite how they were actually dropped from the rules years ago. I started thinking about it when I read a Gnome Stew article that kind of dragged morale checks a few months ago. And of course the topic has gained recent relevance as I've been running a D&D adventure the past several weeks. That makes it a good time to write about it.

A morale check is basically an answer to the question, "Does this monster stay and fight or does it run away?"

"Does it really matter?" you might ask. Yes, it does! In my 4 recent game sessions I've had decide in several situations if/when/how creatures would rather flee than fight. It was a mule running away from killer undead sheep in Session 3 that set up basically the whole tragi-comedy of Session 4 with the mule falling in a pit, a PC chasing after that mule losing his horse in the same pit, then a herculean effort to rescue at least one of the animals while monsters attacked from above and below ground.

Okay, so how does/did one determine morale?

Like I said, it's not even a thing... well, not a rule... in D&D editions of the past 20-some years. But before that, back in the old days of D&D (1980s and 90s) morale was a numerical stat creatures had and there was a mechanic for it, a numerical system, to calculate what happens.

Back in AD&D, dating to 1983, the morale system was both hideously detailed and ridiculously generic. Yes, that seems self-contradictory, but AD&D was able to square that circle in numerous places. 😅 With morale it was more than a half page of tables and modifiers— half a page in very small print, I should note— that a GM had to add up for every monster in every situation, starting with a base chance 50% of running away for all monsters (that's the part that was ridiculously generic). In addition to being too onerous it was also way too tilted in favor of monsters running away after a round or two of combat. While it might be realistic that opponents flee combat half the time it's not heroic. And this is supposed to be heroic storytelling.

D&D Second Edition in the early 1990s cleaned up the complexity by reducing morale to a single stat and specifying it for each monster in the manual. In the creatures' stat block it was like, "Morale: Steady (11-12)". The rules were that after certain trigger conditions occurred, like the creature taking damage from an opponent or seeing a companion killed, the GM would roll a d20 to determine if the creatures run away. While this was simpler that the previous version (no reading a densely typeset page full of text and tables) and less generic, most GMs in my experience continued to ignore it. When they did decide monsters run away it was almost always in service to a plot railroad. Like, "I need you to chase this monster to the next planned scene," or, "I need this monster to steal an item from you and escape with it because I screwed up and let you have something too powerful." 🙄

So, is the solution to these problems to junk morale checks entirely? Enh, not really. I do like the aspect of verisimilitude that opponents are not constantly fearless, that they will run away to save themselves if they perceive the risk of staying as too grave. While there isn't a set of written rules to guide me in doing this I consider the following factors:

• How bold is this monster, generally speaking? Trolls, for example, are really bold because they regenerate. On the other hand, sometimes the "monster" is a neutral-hungry creature that fights only when cornered. Elite soldiers will hold formation longer despite losses than raw recruits, who may break formation and run as soon as the first bad thing happens.


• What's this monster's motivation? A neutral-hungry monster attacked by the party is more likely to run away than an evil monster that attacked the PCs. Though an evil monster may play the move of "Run away and live to fight another day." And even a creature that normally avoids conflict may fight ferociously if defending a lair with young.


• How intelligent/clever is the monster? Smarter monsters will recognize sooner when a fight isn't going their way and will disengage to save themselves. Smarter monsters, or those that practice pack/group tactics, will also use moves like fighting retreats and regrouping, whereas less intelligent monsters may just turn and run.

All things considered, this would be a lot easier to figure out if there were a stat next to each monster, like in Second Edition. Such a rule doesn't have to be used slavishly— in fact it's best if it's not— but it'd be great as a guide. It'd be a help vs. having to make it all up on my own.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

I find that most D&D rules are great as guides, and not great if followed slavishly. Then again, almost all of my experience was with 1e or 2e.

[sorcyress]

I was coming here to say the same thing!

My first "DnD" experience was technically a homebrew rpg created by my da for me and my sisters, and he really embraced the idea of "guidelines". Talking with him later, I learned that he almost never actually looked at dice when he rolled them behind his screen, preferring to just riff off what we were doing to decide what happened next.

(Alas, I was a dice gremlin from a very young age, so I was never truly gonna escape the lure of the polyhedral entirely)

That being said, he was also already an incredibly experienced DM at that point, having done close to two decades already from D&D through AD&D eds 1, 2, and 3. Plus, he was running a game for three children (I was about 11 when we started which means my youngest sister was 7) and so his focus was less on perfectly balanced mechanics and minutia of rules, and more on "how do I make this feel fair and fun for folks without fully-developed pre-frontal cortexes".

~Sor

[some_other_dave]

Wow, your da sounds awesome!

[sorcyress]

I was very lucky to have cool parents growing up. Well, to have huge nerds as parents, but that's cool now, right? ;)

[canyonwalker]

There are a variety of things in early editions of D&D that most GMs ignored or simplified or customized to make the game more fun to play. The 3.x versions of D&D were praised for fixing a lot of the rules that were broken or underdeveloped, but there still remain a few rough spots that groups often fudge for the sake of playability. One of these is encumbrance... which I've been managing in a light-touch fashion in my current game. I'll write more about that in a separate blog.