How do players avoid Combat?

[Redrhino10]

To keep a long story short, our recent Dark Heresy (2nd edition) campaign started with our 5 man team trying to infiltrate a small military location to stop a ship from taking off into atmosphere

However we ended up being found by a small search party (which took a long time to kill) and then we were attacked again trying to enter the base.

The ship took off before we could stop it because we got caught in too many firefights.

Afterwards I spoke to the GM and his thoughts were that we "didnt need to fight" and implied that fighting was not the best course of action

To put it simple, how can you avoid fighting in an RP game? Is just "running or hiding" the only options? I feel like there must be something our GM was implying for us to do

[dream]

R-U-N :smallsmile:

Just that simple. Doing it while taking defensive action is even better. If your PC has something important to do, do that and avoid everything else.

My take.

[LibraryOgre]

Run is a good option. Avoid, lie, distractions.

[Eisenheim]

Was there an option to enter the facility openly, perhaps wielding your inquisitorial authority?

[Yora]

If running and hiding is not an option, talking often works great. Except when you're breaking into a secure military facility and get caught by guards. Then surrendering might be a more probable outcome.

[comicshorse]

Sneak, hide, assassinate (it doesn't count as combat if they never get to shoot back)

[Knaight]

There are a bunch of ways to avoid combat. In your example, it might have been possible to talk your way out of the situation. It might have been possible to avoid the situation entirely with a more informed approach. Preparatory bribes or similar might have let you slip through while the people you bribed misdirected the search team. So on and so forth.

[Yora]

Or shot rockets at it during liftoff, when it's still moving very slow and unstable while close to the ground. Though that might not have been what the GM had in mind... :smallamused:

[Earthwalker]

Nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

[Telwar]

If running and hiding is not an option, talking often works great. Except when you're breaking into a secure military facility and get caught by guards. Then surrendering might be a more probable outcome.

This.

My group talks. A lot. And we're *reasonable* people, for a bunch of murderhobos. Our DM has to literally force fights on us. He's posted on other fora for ways to get our party into combat, in various games. It's kind of amusing.

[kyoryu]

It helps if conflict isn't defined in terms of combat. "These guys are between you and where you want to go, and want to kill you" is pretty much leading towards a combat solution.

I start with - what do I want? Who wants me to not achieve that, and why? What do they want? How can I either get them what they want, or get them to let me get what I want?

[Jay R]

All day long, every day, you interact with people without engaging in combat. How? You assume that combat isn't the primary option, and you talk.

Most players, and therefore most PCs, can't seem to get past the "assume that combat isn't the primary option" step.

[Raimun]

Sneaking. It can be successful against most everything.

Talking? If you really wanted to talk a non-imperial enemy out of fighting you, it's rather likely the enemy in question can't be reasoned with. At least by anyone on your side. Especially in the freakin' 40th millenium. And if they uncharacteristicly want to talk things out? That's a bad sign and a great opportunity to be branded as a heretic.

[TeChameleon]

There can be a lot of ways of doing it; misdirection, sneaking, diplomacy, threats, bribes, running away from one threat into another threat that doesn't like the first threat...

Put it this way- the avoidance of a combat encounter that I am probably most proud of involved my D&D 4e Assassin wandering off from his main group and discovering the enemy campsite. After sneaking in and assassinating the commander (which the DM totally expected from me), I then proceeded to use a couple of magic items to hide the body, boost my bluff, and disguise my character as the now-deceased commander. Then, shooting for irony points, my character proceeded to run out of the tent in panic, shouting that the camp had been infiltrated by Changeling spies (which my DM did not expect :smallamused:).

Cue utter pandemonium, with my character slipping out during the mayhem, pausing only to give contradictory passphrases to whatever authority figures he happened to pass, just to increase the confusion.

He then rejoined the main group (covered in other peoples' blood, as per the usual. My Assassin was a bit worrisome :smalltongue:), who took one look at him and decided they didn't want to know. At the end of the day, what had been supposed to be a fairly stiff combat encounter murdered itself without the majority of the group ever once laying eyes on it, and the few survivors continued the spread of a rumour that my group had been encouraging to destabilize the enemy organization.

I think we actually did that entire sub-campaign with almost no combat, not even really deliberately. We just ended up with a party that lent itself well to subterfuge. Well, that and silent precision killings :smallconfused:

If I had been in your position in the Dark Heresy game, the stuff I would have tried, or at least considered, would be... hmm.
Explosions on the other side of the base from your point of entry (or, depending on the competence of the opposition, explosions on all sides of the base, to at the very least force them to spread their forces thin)
HALO infiltration (er, that'd be the High-Altitude Low-Opening parachuting manoeuvre, not the games with the Master Chief etc.)
Falsified distress call(s)
Xeno attack (Falsified or otherwise)
More firepower during the firefights (Maxim 34: If you're leaving scorch marks, you need a bigger gun- see here (http://schlockmercenary.wikia.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenar ies) for some generally good- and usually rather funny- advice on...well, being a maximally effective mercenary :smalltongue: Oh, and if you decide to read the webcomic these come from- and it's really rather good, even if the early art is on the hideous side- make sure you have a good chunk of time set aside; the author hasn't missed a single daily update since it started on June 12th, 2000)
A cache of the locals' intoxicant of choice, left for one of their patrols to 'find'
Feint attacks on their furthest-flung patrols that would be easily beaten off (in hopes of putting them in a celebratory mood)
Co-ordinated sniper attacks from elevated positions to eliminate patrols


... and, well, you get the idea. Sorry, my last game was a fairly mirrorshades Shadowrun one, heh. Lots of sneaky-sneaky and plotting.