Hey, sorry for neglecting this for so long.
In case it isn't obvious, I would definitely counsel Slthm (I mean, your spellcaster who's low on ammo) to preserve the ammo and not kill off a retreating enemy. Unless the enemy is carrying some ridiculously useful thing, the only tangible benefit to killing them off is experience points (if the DM doesn't give full xp except for defeated monsters). Since there's a real risk of dying before having the chance to use those experience points, my priority would be to save resources for survival, and not worry about the XP that get away.
(Incidentally, I was thinking that a DM could adopt the following XP reward scheme: the party gets XP for surviving their first encounter with _any_ foe. You ran away? Kudos for not sticking around like dummies. You sneaked passed it? Excellent use of stealth.
Where's the rub? You only get XP for your _first_ encounter. If you run into that critter again, then no more XP. And while you probably won't run into the minotaur guarding a treasure at the bottom of the labyrinth too often (maybe once coming in, and once coming out), you probably _will_ run into a certain hobgoblin raider, or an orc wizard with a skull-mask...and won't those recurrent characters feel even more exasperating when you _know_ they won't boost your character's stats, no matter what you do to them?)
So, from the points you've made regarding "beating the bushes", it sounds like _now_, in a dungeon situation with a somewhat noisy party, sending a reasonably tough guy out ahead (and I was of course thinking Barik here, although right now the golem might be a useful if cloddish substitute) seems sensible. (I think we executed this idea in the crypts at the front door, to good effect.) I agree that the front person could be ambushed, but that's sort of the point: ambushing _part_ of a party doesn't put _all_ the party in a disadvantaged position, which is the goal of an ambush. If the ambushers are being shot with arrows by a pursuing party, they're going to have a harder time of it than if they immediately jumped into melee with everyone.
Perhaps more later.
