Or you let them try a persuasion check, because that's a normal thing for a player to attempt.
I disrespectfully disagree ...
Its normal thing for player to come up with what they would like to do ... but its also normal thing for DM to keep those things in check.
Rogue cant roll for Sleight of Hands to steal a Moon.
Commoner cant Persuate king to give him the crown and title.
Barbarian cant roll Atletic to snap grown tree in half with two fingers.
Wizard cant roll Arcana to invent spell that would instantly kill everything in the dungeon.
Those are things that simply are-not-possible ...
And its your responsibility as a DM to set bar on what is possible, and what isnt.
Succeeding doesn't make him do what they want, but it makes him look more favorably on them and maybe not arrest them for high treason or something.
If that is how you want to DM ... its your choice.
All i can say is that i would walk away from such table, bcs it smells like railroading ... and i dont like railroading.
When i roll for something, its bcs i want that thing to happen ...
When you dont want that thing to happen, simply dont let me roll ... by allowing roll, you allowed the thing to happen ... that is whole purpose of that roll.
I mean ... w/e really ... do it this way, if you want to, you will learn in time ...
Just do a favor to yourself, and each time you give your players this "different" outcome ... ask them after the session end, how they felt about it ... and if they wouldnt rather preffer you to simply tell them that is not possible and move on.
You may be surprised.
Apparently it weakens it a bit in the boss fight.
Dont seem to be so "apparent" when i needed to ask, does it?
---
The fight on the roof after finding Nightsong
Thats the first fight ...
In a tabletop game you probably wouldn't have any idea of how many HP he had left
Indeed ...
But here you do ... so it should be taken under concideration.
See thats the problem with Video games ...
You DO know that he had only 2hp left, when you hit him with your 2d6+7+10+1d4+2d8 ...
You DO know that you killed him, that is how things work.
And so if writers dont want to you kill him just yet, they simply cant let you get him to 0HP ...
Luckily for them ... they have all the power they need to make it the way they want to ...
Sadly for us ... they (for some reason) refuse to use it. :-/
the GM might at most say "he's taken a few scratches" or something
Honestly? That would be even more infuriating.
I mean that dude just gulped half of my spellslots and other resources ... almost beaten my tank and i dont have much to heal myself with anymore ... surely he didnt just took "a few scratches"
He probably just got some massive healing spell cast on him in the time it takes you to get down there - after all, it only takes 1 round to cast Heal.
Another good explanation that only swap one problem with another.
I mean sure ... he could heal ... shame he forgot how to do that for rest of the fight huh?
Speaking of wich ... kinda shame that more enemies dont heal themselves, certain Necromancy spells (or arrows) feel quite pointless, when they dont. :-/
I mean ... "enemy can no longer hear in this round" ... yeah great, but they dont anyway, so what exactly does that achieve?
Anyway ...
You are missing the point ... he wouldnt be beaten bcs there is no way to heal meanwhile ... he would have missing HP in order to reflect your players effort!
They just finished fighting him, few minutes ago ... if he is now standing here in full strength, what purpose did that previous fight served? What was that for? Nothing thats what.
BUT!
If you instead get his HP from his both phases together ...
You completely change how it whole feels.
Right now you have:
You killed him (0HP, you know that) > except you didnt ... he run ... you find him > you killed him again (0HP, you know that) > except you didnt ... he transforms ... you killed him again > congratulations he is finaly dying.
Instead you would get:
You beaten him a lot ... he run ... he is beaten, since you beaten him previously > you beaten him even more ... he transforms in furtile atempt to destroy you at any cost ... you kill him (0HP, you know that).
Doesnt that feel better?
It does to me.
But for me, I think he was on about 33% health when he ran.
Hey, i can be wrong ... after all im just a human.
