Round about

[Draig]

In my current campaign I, as a DM, have had a pretty well balanced dose of both battle and RP encounters. However the past 2 sessions we've had a few members of the group have been completely avoiding encounters, whether by avoiding that scenario entirely or using a skill or two to get out of it, normally I would praise this however it leads the other half of the party to become spectators. What are some good methods to keep all players involved without any player feeling "railroaded" into an encounter?

[Kalegkos]

In my current campaign I, as a DM, have had a pretty well balanced dose of both battle and RP encounters. However the past 2 sessions we've had a few members of the group have been completely avoiding encounters, whether by avoiding that scenario entirely or using a skill or two to get out of it, normally I would praise this however it leads the other half of the party to become spectators. What are some good methods to keep all players involved without any player feeling "railroaded" into an encounter?



First of all why don't the other half of the party join the RP part? It's better and harder to RP than to hack and slash. So my opinion first of all would be to make the half of the party RP too. Then if that doesn't work make your NPCs to attack the PCs. For some reason. Make them bandits or whatever. Give them tasks that they have to fight. In a dungeon or in a mage's tower to retrieve some books or something like that. With all the traps and the encounters they will get there is no way they will not fight.

Or get them attacked from a guild, or something like that, because they are doing pretty well with guilld's opponents. I don't know if that was useful. Hope i helped :)

[sonofzeal]

In my current campaign I, as a DM, have had a pretty well balanced dose of both battle and RP encounters. However the past 2 sessions we've had a few members of the group have been completely avoiding encounters, whether by avoiding that scenario entirely or using a skill or two to get out of it, normally I would praise this however it leads the other half of the party to become spectators. What are some good methods to keep all players involved without any player feeling "railroaded" into an encounter?
PCs often have tricks to "solve" certain situations. Often these are tricks they've invested in. Let them work - which I see you have.

In exchange, try tailoring a few encounters towards the strengths of other party members. If you've got a Fighter with Great Cleave, have the party swarmed by goblin. Not attacked by a large number, but outright swarmed from all sides. Goblins are fast and sneaky, so it shouldn't be too hard to start off. There's relatively few Wizard spells that can deal effectively with many enemies interspersed with allies. The Cleric might be able to toss out something like Recitation to help tilt the odds. But when there's enemies on all adjacent squares, that Great Cleaving Fighter will feel like the king of the world. Then he won't mind as much when other characters have their moments of glory.

If everyone gets a turn feeling awesome, and the DM still gets opportunities to legitimately threaten the party on occasion, everything's good.