Quote Originally Posted by Tajerio View Post
Players, of course, will never let their enemies retreat, because those enemies have loot.
And that's the inherent problem of D&D, which carries over to the whole d20 system. It's not a problem for a high-risk dungeon crawler with frequent and quick character replacement. That's what it's designed for. It does become a problem when you try to use the system to play out the PC's dramatic life story. The story tells you to do one thing, the mechanics tell you to do another thing. There is an inherent mismatch and conflict.