What is fair

I am an experienced GM however I have been on the bench for several years & I'm runnig D&D 4E for very little just running some modules right now. When the PCs flee an encounter in a dungeon in order to go back to town for rest & resupplies. Would it be fair to resupply my forces to make up for loses & if so by how much? & should I use the same type of creatures? or something different?

Personally.. the way I run it is like this: I ask myself "how long did it take to go back to town, resupply, rest, do whatever they wanted to do?" and then I ask myself "what could these creatures/bandits/whatever accomplish in that amount of time?" In the case of rogue mages from a wizard guild summoning demons and stuff.. you could end up having MORE things when they come back.. If it's just a few brigands with not many connections in the world, it could be just them. If it's other random cave/dungeon dwelling monsters, it's a safe bet that you could probably just reset the encounter and have it start from the beginning, possibly with different placement of monsters and such at the start.

That all depends on how long they are gone for. If they take 3-4 days to come back you should be able to bring in tougher reinforcements because the monsters in the dungeon have had that much time to call for help. You could also set up traps and the like consistent with the prep time. If they have prep time so do the monsters. Otherwise your giving them an easy way to win all future encounters, do some damage run off, come back pick away again.

It all depends on the enemy, and what they think of the attack they just endured. I've had some humanoid tribes call back hunting parties, set additional traps and alarms, and set ambushes...strategies to specifically counter tactics that survivors reported the PC's used. Some will team up with neighbors (the old Keep on the Borderlands module even outlined such contingency plans, and made use of an ogre mercenary who occasionally teamed up with the goblins living nearby). I've also had smaller humanoid groups completely bug out...with their loot. Less intelligent creatures may just like their wounds and try to recover. More intelligent groups...or those that can figure out where the PC's went, could launch counter attacks. Just figure out the intelligence, resources, and organizational ability of your villains, and...keeping with what works best for your campaign, let them take the appropriate action. Will they build traps, alarms, ambushes? Do they have additional manpower in the field? Can they hire mercenaries, assassins, magical assistance? Do they have healers? Will their casters shift their spell lists away from "daily use" combinations to "pure combat" lists?

in my opinion it is not about beeing fair, but give the players the feeling that their decisions matter. as troy or jarrod said, figure out what the creatures would and could do, and do it. But give your players clues before they do it, so they have an idea what could happen. in the end it is your decision, just be sure to have fun with it and let your players have as much fun as possible!

PC's don't exist in a vaccuum, the world moves on even if they aren't present.

Don't ask what is fair. Ask what is cool, and do that.

The PC's do exist in a vacuum, you are telling a shared story where they are the stars on the stage. So what you need to ask yourself is will adding another encounter or two make a more interesting story, will the new encounter offer something new and fun maybe some crazy trap the monsters set up, or bring in some new kind of monster to mix things up?

Taking a few idea in this topic that work for my game: 1) The World is always in action, it's up to you to figure out what happen when they are gone. 2) As for myself : If they are attacking a camp and they do more than 40% casualty, when they come back, everything's gone. 3) In a cave or a dungeon, I raise by 1 the CR of the remaining fiends.

outside the box solution, the monsters are really upset. they trail the heroes back to town and attack the town. they burn halfof it down and tell the townspeople to come out and give them up or the town is finished. give em a taste of their own medicine. go back to the safe place to restock to return to the dungeon filled with monsters and loot just waiting to be killed indeed. when the town lies in smoking ruins the leaders blame the heroes.

It's funny to see how the original poster clearly sees D&D as a roleplaying GAME and pretty much all the other posters see it as a ROLEPLAYING game. I too like to emphasize the roleplaying aspect and therefore would just tell Don D. to roleplay the situation. The GM is responsible of roleplaying all the NPCs. What would those NPCs of yours do in that situation?

Trollkin said: outside the box solution, the monsters are really upset. they trail the heroes back to town and attack the town. they burn halfof it down and tell the townspeople to come out and give them up or the town is finished. give em a taste of their own medicine. go back to the safe place to restock to return to the dungeon filled with monsters and loot just waiting to be killed indeed. when the town lies in smoking ruins the leaders blame the heroes. Very cool idea, I'm even a bit envyious that I didn't think of that.