Last night we got to see the chase logic play out. We screwed up one big thing here: the orc has aggressive and should have had +30 movement each round. As you'll see by the end of these rules, you aren't outrunning an orc without a swifter mount than a wolf, and we forgot that.
Chases are on page 252 of the DMG. I'm going to paste the important rules here:
Quote:
A chase requires a quarry and at least one pursuer. Any participants not already in initiative order must roll initiative. As in combat, each participant in the chase can take one action and move on its turn. The chase ends when one side drops out or the quarry escapes. When a chase begins, determine the starting distance between the quarry and the pursuers. Track the distance between them, and designate the pursuer closest to the quarry as the lead. The lead pursuer might change from round to round.
I spent some time simulating generic low level characters with this stuff some time ago, because my random encounter tables include things that will chase players and that cannot be beaten. Obviously, such creatures can be run from successfully, so I needed a system that would allow for this. The built in one does seem to accomplish this.
Anyway this thing points out to "track the distance between them". What I actually tracked was the distance from origin, because that requires only one number per participant (tracking three pursuers and three quarry as relative distances requires nine numbers, ick!).
Quote:
Participants in the chase are strongly motivated to use the Dash action every round. Pursuers who stop to cast spells and make attacks run the risk of losing their quarry, and a quarry that does so is likely to be caught.
During the chase, a participant can freely use the Dash action a number of times equal to 3 + its Constitution modifier. Each additional Dash action it takes during the chase requires the creature to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution check at the end of its turn or gain one level of exhaustion.
A participant drops out of the chase if its exhaustion reaches level 5, since its speed becomes 0. A creature can remove the levels of exhaustion it gained during the chase by finishing a short or long rest.
So this ropes in the exhaustion rules, which are very serious in 5e (that's why this rule lets you cleanse them all after a short or long rest, instead of just ONE per long rest). Exhaustion has different levels, and each one stacks with everything lesser than it (so at exhaustion 3 you have disadvantage on all three types of d20 roll and move at half speed):
1 Disadvantage on ability checks
2 Speed halved
3 Disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws
4 Hit point maximum halved
5 Speed reduced to 0
6 Death This is one of two ways the chase can end. Whomever gets to exhaustion 1 first has disadvantage on the DC 10 Con check and is going to tumble down the rest of the chart quickly. Hitting exhaustion 2 as a quarry means you are going to get back in combat order on a map with pursuers who have no such problem. Hitting exhaustion 2 as a pursuer means your distance will fail to grow and you will no longer be able to give meaningful chase.
Quote:
A chase participant can make attacks and cast spells against other creatures within range. Apply the normal rules for cover, terrain, and so on to the attacks and spells. Chase participants can't normally make opportunity attacks against each other, since they are all assumed to be moving in the same direction at the same time. However, participants can till be the targets of opportunity attacks from creatures not participating in the chase.
The first part of this makes it clear we are still in a combat sequence, but obviously one without a map. The second part is squishier as a rule- the DM must decide rather arbitrarily how "cover, terrain, and so on" works. A quarry would logically say "if there's something to position myself behind at the end of my dash I do it" and the DM has to arbitrarily decide how that works. My reading is that this won't work in grasslands and will have some arbitrary chance of success in cities or forests, but that's just because I need to come up with something.
Quote:
A chase ends when one side or the other tops, when the quarry escapes, or when the pursuer are close enough to their quarry to catch it.
If neither side gives up the chase. the quarry makes a Dexterity (Stealth) check at the end of each round, after every participant in the chase has taken its turn. The result is compared to the passive Wisdom (Perception) scores of the pursuers. If the quarry consists of multiple creatures, they all make the check. If the quarry is never out of the lead pursuer's sight, the check fails automatically. Otherwise, if the result of the quarry's check is greater than the highest passive score, that quarry escapes. If not, the chase continues for another round.
Ok this is the second way the pursuit ends. At the end of each round, every quarry (in this case resolved as wolf-goblin pairs) made a Dexterity(Stealth) check. On success, it would escape, and you'd be left looking for tracks later.
The chase section isn't over- it provides things that can give advantage or disadvantage to the check, and a bunch of complications I would definitely be interested in and would have started using if the chase continued (it wasn't going to- the goblins and wolves were good at stealth and would escape before their Con ran out, but the goblins had no hit points and would die to missile fire with normal luck, so either way it wouldn't be a long scene).
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Ok so, this chase mechanism is technically simple but it ends up being complex because it's the combat sequence with the following modifications:
Distance tracking instead of a map
Dash action is capped softly with your Con, with a diversion to the Exhausted condition once that runs out
Free stealth check to escape at the end of each round for each quarry
Some complication tables we didn't need but certainly would use
The complexity comes from it being initiative based combat, which is D&D's big complex minigame. Participants must correctly use their other abilities (such as Dis'Kolandir's short teleport, which ended the sequence pretty well, or Skattebo's extra movement bonus action, which we all forgot about).
It's been several months since I did my dive into this. At the time I found two types of content mostly:
1- "The fifth edition chase rules confuse me!"
2- "The fifth edition chase rules suck, use these houserules instead"
There are people on reddit who have boiled it down to exactly how it actually works (official rules of course have more players interested in them than houserules). Once the 5.5 DMG came out, I checked out the rules there, but except for wussing out on some of the complications it's the same deal.
What I wanted to see was "I used (these houserules) and chases are much better now". The rules I'd expect would take into account explicitly many common factors, make me do a minute of formulae, and then provide me with one or two rolls that produce any of the following outputs:
-All quarry escape
-All quarry rounded up and combat begins with an effect that prevents escaping by the quarry
-Any intermediate situation where one or more escape and one or more fall into the second situation.
Bonus points if the non-existent thing also handles the case where the quarry split up (my test party cleric would get wrecked pretty often if he was the one followed by a single fast deadly melee enemy).
No such product with happy consumers exist. I am left assuming that everyone makes do with the official rules (which we used, and aren't bad), but also I believe that in general parties fleeing isn't common enough to care about.
Any opinions on the chase rules? I think the existing ones are shaky but I don't think they rise to the level of "lets houserule it". I think they are good enough. If anyone has an opinion to the contrary, I'm totally willing to consider something else.
