Designing Out of Combat Encounters for the Whole Party

[Potato_Priest]

So, one thing that I've recently come to understand about the way that my groups usually do gaming was that while combat encounters tend to focus on cooperative action between players, and everyone participates due to the nature of initiative rolls, out-of-combat encounters can often (but not always) just involve one player doing things and solving the problems. This is especially true in social engagements, where either through roleplaying or dice rolling, one or two players will usually do the talking for the whole party and negotiate for what everyone wants.

Personally, I think that this may occasionally be responsible for player symptoms classically dismissed as "munchkinry" or "roll-playing". D&D is supposed to be a cooperative game, but when only the combat encounters involve cooperation between the whole party those are the encounters that people are going to want to have.

So, what guidelines do you guys have for making noncombat challenges that engage everyone, not just the utility wizard, the skillmonkey, and/or the face? Do you impose a turn-based system in your out of combat challenges? What do you do to make these scenarios best solved by teamwork rather than utility magic or skill checks?

[Waterdeep Merch]

So, one thing that I've recently come to understand about the way that my groups usually do gaming was that while combat encounters tend to focus on cooperative action between players, and everyone participates due to the nature of initiative rolls, out-of-combat encounters can often (but not always) just involve one player doing things and solving the problems. This is especially true in social engagements, where either through roleplaying or dice rolling, one or two players will usually do the talking for the whole party and negotiate for what everyone wants.

Personally, I think that this may occasionally be responsible for player symptoms classically dismissed as "munchkinry" or "roll-playing". D&D is supposed to be a cooperative game, but when only the combat encounters involve cooperation between the whole party those are the encounters that people are going to want to have.

So, what guidelines do you guys have for making noncombat challenges that engage everyone, not just the utility wizard, the skillmonkey, and/or the face? Do you impose a turn-based system in your out of combat challenges? What do you do to make these scenarios best solved by teamwork rather than utility magic or skill checks?

I've tried a myriad of things. Turns, entire subsystems, specifically calling on the more quiet players to make sure they get to participate.

The most important thing, though, is to find out what skills and abilities the entire party has from the very beginning. Then design things in such a way that the best methods for overcoming them require a little something from everyone, and no one's left out in the cold.

Everyone's got at least 4 skills, surely there's at least one where they're either the best? If not, see if you can find reasons why you'd need two different people using the same skill in tandem to accomplish a task, like having the barbarian and the fighter work to lift up a heavy stone door so the rogue can slip in and jam the frame.

[Tanarii]

Skill challenges. Especially ones involving multiple solutions to problems, group checks, and the entire mechanical side being hidden in the background.

Here's something that inspired me on using them:
https://critical-hits.com/blog/2016/08/16/skill-challenges-in-5th-edition-dd/

The key is to start with "what's the ongoing challenge here" and end with one of several resolution states and outcomes for the on-going challenge. It doesn't work so well for a single specific challenge.

In fact, that's a pretty good guideline overall. Consider multiple little pieces of a challenge to be part of a larger challenge. If the challenge is to figure out who the bad guy really is, it can be made up of lots of small challenges: running away, giggling a lot, eating scooby snacks ... uh, sorry, wrong game.

[Tiadoppler]

It depends a lot on what sort of out of combat challenge is happening.

General advice:
Avoid a culture of combat min-maxing at your table. This helps PCs be a little bit less specialized towards specific challenges.

If an encounter has no interesting way to fail, let it be roleplayed out as a cutscene rather than a series of skill checks.

At the beginning of a long social encounter, ask each player what their general activity will be. Embrace Schrodinger's Plot Elements. If the Barbarian wanders out into the courtyard while the boring Bard is speaking eloquently with the King, he should have a chance to see something/have a relevant bit of information thrust in front of him. A Wizard reading a book in the corner should be able to assist the Bard with knowledge checks, or might notice a subtle enchantment. A Ranger could see that the King's favorite hound is acting strangely.

If this is an urgent/time sensitive skill challenge, go into initiative and have each player make choices. This is best for things like: escaping a collapsing lair, climbing a steep and tall cliff, jumping stone-to-stone to cross a raging river. Things where it matters exactly when and where people are doing specific actions.

Work with the players' personalities. Sometimes a player would prefer not to be the center of attention and is happy listening to the story without constantly participating.

[Emay Ecks]

Skill challenges. Especially ones involving multiple solutions to problems, group checks, and the entire mechanical side being hidden in the background.

Here's something that inspired me on using them:
https://critical-hits.com/blog/2016/08/16/skill-challenges-in-5th-edition-dd/

The key is to start with "what's the ongoing challenge here" and end with one of several resolution states and outcomes for the on-going challenge. It doesn't work so well for a single specific challenge.

In fact, that's a pretty good guideline overall. Consider multiple little pieces of a challenge to be part of a larger challenge. If the challenge is to figure out who the bad guy really is, it can be made up of lots of small challenges: running away, giggling a lot, eating scooby snacks ... uh, sorry, wrong game.

Gonna have to agree with this. I've used skill challenges in my game to great effect for outside of combat challenges. Chasing a thief down in a crowded city, navigating a boat through a major storm, trying to lose pursuers in a dense jungle, etc. They all work wonderfully with skill challenges and get the entire party to participate and think creatively.

[Jamesps]

I'm currently running a game where I've pretty much just fallen into a solution for keeping players involved in noncombat challenges. The game is a city campaign and the players are usually on some sort of timeline. Things are going to happen, the players know they're going to happen, so they have limited time to prepare for them. This results in the players splitting up the workload so they can get more done before the next thing that happens. Each individual player is thus often faced with a challenge that they might not be the best suited for, but they happen to be the only one available and have to make due with whatever abilities they possess.

For this sort of game though it's important that challenges not be mandatory sucesses. The players might gain an advantage by succeeding (or lose an advantage by failing), but they can still progress through the adventure. This will help avoid the mindset that only the most suited set of characters handle any given challenge.

TLDR: 1) Put the characters on a time crunch
2) Give more noncombat challenges than they have time to handle individually
3) Allow for failure

[Waterdeep Merch]

3) Allow for failure

This is an incredibly important point. If the game can't progress until a specific skill check is achieved, cut that part out. Or at least allow for multiple other ways of achieving the same thing. Try not to let any particular roll cause extreme consequences, either. You'll scare players off of trying to succeed unless they're in their limited expertise zone. It's okay if some methods work better, easier, or are more rewarding, but it's not okay if there's only one way forward and failure means death.

[Malifice]

So, what guidelines do you guys have for making noncombat challenges that engage everyone, not just the utility wizard, the skillmonkey, and/or the face? Do you impose a turn-based system in your out of combat challenges? What do you do to make these scenarios best solved by teamwork rather than utility magic or skill checks?

Im loathe to use turn based action resolution outside of combat (and dynamic traps).

For environmental or social challenges, its often enough for the party to plan on how to deal with it, and then resolve it free-form.

Exception being where time matters. Then I might roll initiative, and go in turn based order. IMG on a players turn they only get approx 3 seconds to declare action, and then if they havent told me what they are doing they take the Dodge action and their turn ends.

That adds a sense of urgency and focuses the players.

[BW022]

...
So, what guidelines do you guys have for making noncombat challenges that engage everyone, not just the utility wizard, the skillmonkey, and/or the face? Do you impose a turn-based system in your out of combat challenges? What do you do to make these scenarios best solved by teamwork rather than utility magic or skill checks?

My advice is to not bother trying to make a single encounter where everyone needs to participate. Your encounters become so complex and it then becomes so easy for someone to think of something you didn't to 'foil' some elaborate plan. IMO, it is simply better to just put in lots of difference non-combat encounters which give various players a chance to shine. If players get overlooked... you can then simply add another encounter where they have to participate.

For example, if you have a ranger, rogue, paladin, and a wizard... easy enough to have a series of four smallish encounters -- the players find a recently murdered body in an ally... the ranger finds some tracks, the rogue sneaks into a building, the paladin deals with the city guard who wander buy, and the wizard needs to deal with the arcane ward on the door. Of course... it may not go that way, but at least the encounters are setup that way and if the paladin don't get a chance to do anything... maybe put in a symbol on a hilt which only she would know.

However, if you are trying to come up with encounters where folks must work together... separate them in a way that they need to do things simultaneously and can't help each other. I wouldn't recommend doing this that often as it will seem contrite. Examples:

Pillar Puzzle There are four pillars in a room with a series of mechanical dials. They are 20' apart. Moving the dial (correctly) on one allows the second to be moved, but each must be held in place or it resets. Each player effectively takes turns and there is a limited amount of help each can give.

Chase Players are all chasing someone -- preferably across something interesting such across a busy harbor full of small boats. Go into initiative and don't give players more than a few seconds to decide (and limit cross talking). Lots of "Your turn what do you do." Have things like moving boats, upset fishermen, nets, etc. Toss in small, but helpful, ability checks (dexterity, perception checks, etc.) to different players at different times. This can also work in say a horse race, saving people from a burning building, a collapsing tunnel, etc.

Surprise Reactions Have the players surprised and (either in initiative or around the table) do a quick "You see X. What do you do?" Don't allow talking and make the stakes fairly high.

Separate Tasks Come up with a group of tasks which need to be done fairly quickly and allow the team to separate. For example, the group randomly foils and assassination attempt and finds a note listing five people who need to all die at 4pm and their locations. Players have to separate and rush through the city to save each. Include different (quick) encounters for each. This could be something less urgent such as needing to gather information quickly, needing to search different streets quickly, etc.

[MrStabby]

Not quite the same thing but splitting the party can help.

My campaign is basically a series on dungeon crawls held together by an overarching plot.

In town, when the PCs get back - I ask them what they want to do and where they want to go. There is little collaboration but everyone gets some spotlight, a good chance for an individual challenge and usually a plot hook for a personal quest (which might have been what they were sorting in town anyway). It isn't elegant but it works for us.

By ticking these boxes in town, it takes a little pressure of having these in the dungeons.