Quote Originally Posted by brian 333 View Post
Actually. We never even thought of that. Our elf was trying to find a way around this huge cesspool when the otyugh body-slammed him. After sneak-attacking our elf we didn't consider talking to it to be a viable option.

But your option would have been better than mine: fireballs are easily evaded when you live submerged in muck.
Sounds like "combat encounter with alternative negotiation path" sort of a thing. If I had to guess, either the coins were just a lucky roll, or the players were meant to "find" the coins while fighting it, at which point they would be expected to react to that new information and weigh profit of combat vs profit of talking it down/tricking it and getting the coins as a bonus.