How to make those you don't like very dead.
1. You've just entered combat, how can you win?
If a person flee's, you must just type fast and get back into combat as fast as you can. No way around it. There are infinate strategies for catching someone, and killing them, so I'll just list a few.
A. Mage
Ahh! You've signed up for a difficult task! You are a mage (or mage reclass), and decided you want to kill this person here. Ok, here is a list of hints.
1. Use every tick. If you can't think of another spell to cast, at least acid blast (or some damage spell). Something is better than nothing.
2. Dispel first. If you spell down a person, then dispel, you are quite likely to dispel your own maladictions (don't laugh, I've seen it happen).
3. Curse right after dispel. By cursing, you lower your opponents saves, thereby increasing your chances of landing the rest of your spells. It also lowers their Hit, thus making them miss you more often (which is always good). Finally, if they do decide to flee from your overwhelming power, they won't be able to recall while cursed, so they'll have to retreat on foot (or teleport, but you can't stop that).
4. If you have problems landing your curse, try faerie firing. This makes weapons hit them more often, Plus supposedly lets your spells get through a little easier.
5. Blind. This makes their hit go down, but more importantly, it doesn't let them get anything from their bags (or anything they've dropped) thus if you're using fiery weapons, you can blow up their only means of spelling themselves back up while in combat. Being blind also helps you catch a person fleeing (but don't count on it.. a lot of people can run away just as fast blind as seeing). However, the other person Also cannot gate out of combat while blind, which is a favorite tactic of some.
6. If you're fighting another spellcaster, wearing saves gear helps a lot. Also, after landing that curse and blind, try a couple energy drains. This halves both their movement and mana. A few energy drains later, the person you're fighting is feeling a bit "drained".
7. If you think the person might escape, you may wish to try to make sure they can't make it back to their clan hall. If you're beating on them pretty easy, try a slow (maybe two slows if they have a haste), a plague, and an energy drain or two. The slow makes them use up lots of movement while fleeing, the plague makes them lose movement (or at least not regen it) during a tick, and the energy drain ensures that they're already low on movement when they're fleeing.
8. A good tactic for most times is if you're spelled up, just dispel, curse, then acid blast. No matter what, if you're about their size, an acid blast every round Will hurt them big time.
9. Warriors and thieves have problems if they're feeling weak. Funny how they drop their weapons. If you plague/poison and weaken a warrior, quite often they'll just start dropping their weapons for you. This obviously helps quite a lot in defeating them.
B. Warrior/Thief (combined, many similar strategies)
1. Not many strategies. If you're fighting a spellcaster, stunning weapons will mess up their spells. Stunning weapons will also reduce the chance the person you're fighting can flee. Watch out though, with stunners toned down, they don't work all that often.
2. Fiery weapons work wonders against clerics (and anything vulnerable to fire). As a cleric, I would usually get quite used to being able to cure any blinds against me. It throws their concentration off if they get fireblinded.
3. Time your bashes. No reason to bash in the middle of combat if the person just did a failed dirt kick or some other spell. Once you have more experience, you'll be able to know when a person is likely to flee, and then bash. Especially when a person is nearing death, I like to bash soon as they get into awful (which is usually when they start really pounding flee). Make sure your %'s are up on bash, etc, because if they're almost dead and you fall flat on your face, they'll be into the next continent before you get back up.
4. If you're fighting kender, make sure your hit is high. High means that if they taunt you, they could be knocking off -11 off your hit. Plus pretend they're going to curse and blind you, there goes another -6 or so. So with -20 overall (just assume for the worst), you want to have at least a +25 hit over that. So if you're fighting kender, try to get around a +45 hit or more. Dam doesn't matter much, if you're hitting them, they're in trouble.
5. Dirt kick, disarm works great against other warriors also. Get their weapon while blind, and they're down one weapon. Makes them more willing to stay around and die, to hope to get their gear back. If someone flee's without their weapon, I usually laugh if they want it back.
6. If you're a barbarian, don't warcry unless you have to. If a mage charms you, warcry is one of the very few ways of getting away from combat. Supposedly approximately 1/3 of the times you warcry, it will break the charm. (I've never seen it happen) Otherwise, if you're charmed, call for help and tell them where you are, and where you're heading. Quite often mages take their charmed people to a scarr/brash type person if you're not big enough to kill them yet. No matter what, calling for help is always a good idea.
7. Know your opponents weaknesses by heart. Know what they're vulnerable to. Know their size, know what spells they'll have to cast on you, etc.
C. Clerics.
1. Read Mage tactics, most will work as Clerics.
2. Heat metal is your friend. Many people under-rate this spell. A blind, then a heat metal almost always does the trick. You will most likely want them cursed too, because heat metal is one of the more difficult spells to hit correctly. Once the heat metal goes through, quickly get all (hope you have enough items and weight). The person will often sacrifice themselves to you to get their gear back, or will at least stick around to try to finish the fight.
3. Blizzard/Firestorm/Swarm all help once the person is near death. Cast it, and no matter how far they flee, they'll still be hurting big time (and quite often will die).