One of the things I like from Fate is the concept of Conceding. It gives players the option to give up.

So when you have bad rolls or the situation is going real bad, you can concede. You all decide what that looks like. You don't get whatever you wanted in the conflict, but you decide if that means you're just left for dead, or you fall into the river and are swept away, or what. You get one or more fate points, too. Because this is written into the rules, it doesn't feel as cheaty as it would in DND for a player to say "I don't think we can win this. Can we say we escape somehow?"

You can always choose to fight to the bitter end, but then you don't really have anyone to blame but yourself.

DND is an old game and it's just missing whole concepts like this that I think would make a better experience.