Last game three PCs charged into combat (well, snuck into combat) and went head to head at 1st level into the face of 4:1 odds. The results were predictable.
One commenter on Twitter noted "they should have run away."
Now, there are two ways to take this. One is that they never should have entered combat to begin with. +Tim Shorts noted that yes, this was the right call, but he'd never had a combat in the game and so wanted to see what it was like. In short, he provoked a losing battle to see what would happen.
Well, he found out.
Edit: They found out and got dismantled with grace and graciousness. They rolled poorly, and did not complain when the orc horde came screaming down on them. So this "well, he found out" sounds way, way more pejorative than it is meant. He wanted to find out what combat was like, did find out, and we all learned about tactics and emergent behavior in the process. Even me. Or perhaps especially me.The other way to take it was that once things started to go poorly, they should have withdrawn. I'm wondering how viable that is. I think that as long as each PC decides to run the heck away while their foes are about two moves (usually about 60', but not always) away this might have worked. But I see no way, really, for a bunch of fighters to extract themselves from melee in the face of a determined foe, unless they have a speed advantage.
I'm not saying this is wrong. In fact, I believe that the typical battlefield archaeology reports will tell you that yeah, the majority of the casualties were taken when one side turned tail and ran.
But it seems to me that's darn hard to actually run away in D&D-style games unless you really plan on it beforehand. Once things are already going badly, you're basically in it unless the foe lets you out.
Does this match your experience? Who's been chased, killed, and eaten?
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