Ever felt that one character was one to many? Well, you're in luck. All you need to do is form a party containing just one monster (or illusion) and D)rop that character from the party. You now have an empty party that you can go exploring with.

There are a few things to note, of course:
If you get involved in a battle and don't successfully run, one enemy will attack (who?), and you will get a game over.
Intra-party combat will also yield a game over.
Standing on a damage square will also yield a game over.
The old man at the review board will be missing.
You can get a friendly monster to join if you're lucky.

Of note is that I believe the chance of running away is determined by the level and luck of the first party member. (Who is the first party member in an empty party?)

So it game-overs you when you have "monsters" still alive, but no characters? Sad.

Running away in Bard's Tale 1 (tales of the unknown etc) was the "saving throw" of the first member of the party, which factored in luck, class, level, and some items. A paladin in slot 1 was thus a big benefit.

In Bard's Tale 2, the Destiny Knight, it was some kind of average of the saving throws (levels) of your party. Possibly limited to the "front row".

In Bard's Tale 3, I have no idea, but I sort of doubt they went back to the single-slot model.

it's a shame your monsters cannot equip speedboots.

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if you have only one monster alive (or in your party in the first place) and then D)rop it (I believe you press 'd' to do this) the game does not game-over, allowing you to explore with an empty party. Having just a monster alive will not trigger a game over (and can actually be useful if that monster is a Familiar summoned from a figurine).

The original Bard's Tale, I believe (would need to check), does game over if you only have a monster, but that game handled things differently.

I meant in combat, not instantly.

It would be much cooler if you could just run around having fights with no characters.
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Overall, I was always afraid to use the Drop action, because I had no idea what the game would do. Save my character as gone forever? Let me pick them up again in the guild? In Bard's Tale 2, I even Saved all the NPCs to the guild, including the princess, the flying creature, and a few Snare denizens. What manias drive my actions?

If you have monsters and no normal characters alive, the game will let you fight, though you will have no one to issue commands to.

There is actually a good use for this. Put a Familiar (created with a figurine, not found as a wandering monster) along with your party that just got wiped out, and then go into Intra-Party Combat. After a while, the Familiar will cast Heal All, and your party will be revived.

Just remember to create the Familiar and save it to disk before hand.

By the way, allowing a wandering monster to join your party will give you a non-empty party, allowing you to fight battles without instant game-overs.

Cool!

OOOH

I misunderstood from the start. You meant to drop the monster. I was confused because you said "Drop that character" and typically character in RPG-land means a humanoid-type, NOT a monster (Classically in D&D character and monster were two non-overlapping sets, where everything not a character was a monster. Mechanically, a character had a class and the STR/INT/etc stats, and monsters had neither.)

Anyway, pardon all my dumb comments that came as a result.