Theres more than one way to skin a cat, or an encounter

[bjoern]

As much as we would like to think that all the books make D&D3.5 a hard and fast system, it still requires the human touch to iron things when it gets fuzzy. Here is a situation that my group encountered last session and it got me thinking about what it actually means to "defeat" an encounter.

The setting was on a main street of a small town (20' wide) with buildings on both sides and a couple small streets (10' wide) intersecting the main street.

Our group was 5 PCs all level 6. So ECL 7 if I'm not mistaken.

Suddenly, 5 human mobs (CR8 each) come barreling through the main Street and the side streets. It was described to us as what it looks like on TV when the people in Spain (or wherever it is) run from the bulls. Just a tidal wave of people.

Using various means of spells, items, skills, we all manage to get off the ground level and into a nearby roof or balcony . Were not all on the same spot as when it happened we werent close to each other so we just went up wherever was closest to us.

Within a few rounds, the mobs passed by and out of town.

We are all of good alignment of some kind or another. Did we "defeat" the encounter? Obviously we couldn't just fireball them in order to win the encounter as it was obvious they were running away from something and killing them would be outright evil.

I imagine there should be some kind of reward involved, since if we hadnt used our resources to get out of the way, we would have been trampled to death.

So what do you think? Does the way you beat an encounter influence the reward?

[Fax Celestis]

Well, this begs the question: do you get XP for circumventing or mitigating a trap? Because that's basically what you did here. I wouldn't treat this as a combat encounter, but rather as a single-fire trap (or a few traps), and if use CR calculations for those instead to determine XP rewards.

[bjoern]

Well, this begs the question: do you get XP for circumventing or mitigating a trap? Because that's basically what you did here. I wouldn't treat this as a combat encounter, but rather as a single-fire trap (or a few traps), and if use CR calculations for those instead to determine XP rewards.

Yeah, you would have to put some kind of limit on it. That's where the human touch bit comes in, with kind of a veto power.
Otherwise you could just walk to the front door of a dungeon and say.
"I walk away" "I've avoided all traps in this dungeon , where's my xp?"

Lol

[Harlot]

I'd treat this solution as 'fleeing an encounter'.
You do not engange the enemies, but flee to fight another day. Which I applaud as a DM, but regardless,
I only give XP for slain monsters/enemies, nothing else.
So if your question comes down to: 'Would you reward XP for this approach?', then my answer would be no.

[Zanos]

I would aware full experience. The party used resources to circumvent a threat effectively. As Fax said though, this is more like a trap than a fight since the mob wasn't coming after them specifically.

Only awarding experience for killing stuff encourages and rewards bad behavior. In this case, "We won't get experience unless we kill all these people!"

[Chronos]

You removed the challenge posed by the encounter, therefore you should get XP for it. This is not like running away from a more conventional monster, because first, that ordinarily leaves open the possibility that the monster might still chase you down and eventually cause you problems, and second, it ordinarily prevents you from accomplishing whatever your objective was that put you into contact with the monster to begin with. Here, though, the mobs, having passed, are unlikely to take any further interest in you, and your objective was presumably to reach whatever they were fleeing from, which you were still able to do.

[Jeff the Green]

This is what I say in my houserules:


XP will be awarded for two things


Solving encounters

This is regardless of means, assuming that:

Doing so is non-trivial (e.g. running away from a grey ooze in a featureless plain doesn’t count, but running from a green dragon’s lair does),
This actually solves the encounter (e.g. sneaking past the green dragon to steal a plot token counts, but sneaking past the green dragon doesn’t count if your quest is to stop it from terrorizing a village), and
The solution negates the encounter for the foreseeable future (e.g. running from a green dragon’s lair into its forest doesn’t count, but running to the lair of its neighbor, the gold dragon, does)



Achievement of significant goals



In general, if the party had to be clever, expend resources, or struggle through something to accomplish a goal, it should count as an encounter and they should get XP. In this case your goal was to not get killed by the mob and you had to be at least marginally clever and expend resources to accomplish it. Actually, I might be inclined to give a bit of extra XP because you also achieved a secondary goal: don't kill people you didn't have to.

[AMFV]

I would aware full experience. The party used resources to circumvent a threat effectively. As Fax said though, this is more like a trap than a fight since the mob wasn't coming after them specifically.

Only awarding experience for killing stuff encourages and rewards bad behavior. In this case, "We won't get experience unless we kill all these people!"

But why even have people if they aren't there to be cut down by my adventurer's mighty blade?

[Kol Korran]

My usual approach is to first ask:
- What are the party's goal in this situation?/ What do they aim to achieve?
- What sort of obstacles stand in their way? (This gives me the items that I need to calculate XP for)

If the party managed to achieve it's goal, they get the XP for the obstacles no matter what how they did it.

As to your examples:
Fleeing fro ma crowd
- Goals: Stay alive and not be deterred in the course of exploration/ adventure/ shopping.
- Possibly secondary goal (Depends on the party): Avoid killing these people.
- Obstacle :Big mobs.
You managed to achieve your goal, so you get XP.

Entering the dungeon to complete your quest
- Goals: Complete quest.
- Obstacle: The dungeon and all that's in it.
Just turning away wouldn't achieve the goal, so you don't get any XP.

Note that there might be many ways to conclude various quests in ingenious ways:
- Kill The troll king: Somehow lure him out or wait till he goes on a raid and kill it OUTSIDE of the dungeon.
- Get The McGuffin: Find the most direct route, or use teleport, charming, bribery to get and grab the thing with minimum fights, maximum cunning.
And so on and so on...