Not Fighting

[HMS Invincible]

What situations have you guys avoided combat and considered it a good idea? I know the obvious ones: running away from larger forces, stealthing into a dungeon.
Is it a good idea to try nonviolent ways to end an encounter? I always feel like I'm losing out if I end it peacefully.

I play 4th ed if anyone asks.

[Tsotha-lanti]

D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions. You lose out on treasure, and you may even lose out on XP if your DM is vicious.

It's just part of the "adventure, fighting, experience, and treasure" paradigm. Many games don't have anything to do with that one, but it's pretty much built into D&D. You can play a campaign where combat XP and looting treasure aren't a big factor, but that's going to be very different from the default and standard.

[Godna]

I talked down the Bandits raiding a shops in such a way they we got paid a total of 3 times (once by all the sides involved) and Everyone Liked us including the non-involved town people.

[Talic]

While that's good, Godna, typically you'll receive better payment from killing all three groups and taking all their stuff.

This is not to say that non-violent solutions don't have their perks.

It's nice to have allied areas, places you can go without risking death, merchants who will deal with you.

In addition, sometimes theft works better than violence.

Sneak into the dragon's lair, pilfer his Orb of Orbyness, and get out! No need to use all the scrolls and expendables that you'd use fighting it!

[Forbiddenwar]

AS an entire game, not fighting is very hard. I mean every one has disagreements and once in a while people turn to violence.

However, many successful characters have been played in D&D by trying to talk first and only fight when strickly necessary. And D&D 3.5 experience system (sorry don't know 4.0, but imagine they didn't change this) is based around that. It isn't did you kill everyone, but do you succeed at the encounter where there was a chance of failure that determines whether or not a character recieves treasure and experience.

Now, a lot of this depends on the DM, talk it over, say you want your character to go this way. See how he/she feels.

As a DM, I once had a brief adventure with nothing but skill checks, (traps and such) roleplaying and puzzles. No combat. It's a good change in pacing.

[MichielHagen]

The way we play the game the question is not "what would give me the most profit", but we do what the characters we play would do.
And no, not all of our characters are greedy, selfish and without moral.

[Talic]

However, the OP's tone seems to suggest he believes there's less benefit in "good" than there is in "bad".

One of my points is that goodwill, and safe havens... Those have value.

[GolemsVoice]

While we mostly just go the violent way (we're not openly hostile, but, as somebody already said, D&D is a game where characters are made to fight) we once avoided a fight with a world-weary beholder mage (who would have been a tough find for us) by convincing him that he has nothing to lose when he let's us go. Our DM awarded us less XP than we had gained had we fought him, with the justification that combat would have been much more difficult. He was very likely right about that, but it annoyed me somewhat.
But again, D&D is built around fighting things. I'm not saying this is a negative thing, as I like it and enjoy a good, fast paced story with lots of combat, but take the combat out of D&D and tell me how many of your class features/spells are still useful. (There will still be many spells left, as there is literally nothing you can't do with magic, but I think you get my point). So, in a game of D&D, it's ok to choose the simple solution over a long and complicated one, but that's just D&D.
Of course, if you enjoy D&D as a game of political intrigue with very little if any fighting, have it your way, there is nothing barring you from enjoying D&D this way.

[Zen Master]

The basic paradigm here seems to be that enemies have useful stuff.

In my games, luckily that's hardly ever the case. I can honestly say that I've never killed an enemy because I'd gain more from that in any game, ever. Usually, avoiding violence is difficult, but rewards more xp - while combat is usually easier, but yields little of any worth.

Little of any worth, because random sub-villains have no gear the players have any use for, and there isn't really any market for second-hand armor and weapons whose previous owners obviously fared poorly using them.

In the Eberron campaing I'm currently GM'ing, there is a level of a dungeon controlled by an insane artificer. Seems like a likely target for valuable loot, but really, he's rebuilding himself part by part, so most of his stuff is highly individual - however, negotiating with him (difficult, he really is quite insane) may convince him to produce some things for the players.

Further into the dungeon is a level occupied by dwarves from the elemental plane of earth. They are there for flavor, and will yield little of anything - whether killed or negotiated with. However, as long as they remain alive, they can give information on the remaining two levels of the dungeon.

[The_Werebear]

When I DM, I usually try to have the nonviolent solution be the more difficult, but rewarding one. Of course, this requires having a group that is willing to work with me. DnD in generally really isn't built for complicated diplomacy and negotiations, and Fourth Edition is even less so from my play experience.

[Kiero]

D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions. You lose out on treasure, and you may even lose out on XP if your DM is vicious.

Not "vicious", but "an idiot".

[Cheesegear]

I play 4th ed if anyone asks.

That's your problem. Right there. 4th doesn't really go into the whole out-of-combat play much.

[Voidhawk]

In this long running (3.5 base but with a lot of homebrew) campaign I'm part of we keep ending up leading armies. The first one we led to help battle this group of sentient undead that were attacking this country to the south we were allied with.

Anyway, the face of the party is Lawrence, a LG human bard/paladin, which has the intresting consequence that our army fought less than any army ever. Whenever we met an enemy army we could talk to, we negotiated, gave stirring speeches, cajoaled, and downright bribed (I'm CG) them into taking the least violent course, for the good of everyone involved.

One notable time this happened was when we bumped into a large force made entirely of sourcerors (roughly a thousand), sacking a town. We drive them from the town, drew up our plans of attack for the main force, and then rode out to talk to them and see what could be helped.

Now, our DM had made the leader the most clear-cut bad guy ever: he beleived that the strong should rule over the weak, simply because they were strong . Lawrence doesn't give up easily, so he just keeps trying to get the guy to stop what he's doing and solve this peacefully, but the guy is having none of it, getting louder and louder, more and more annoyed. Then Lawrence appeals to his duty to his men, saying if he continues like this they'll all get killed (which they would: earlier we'd secreted under the ground they now stood on a largish contingent of sentient undead dwarven slayers... we negotiate, but we're very deadly ).

At this point he proclaims in a loud voice that his men's lifes are his to do with as he pleases... que murmurs of worry as the sourcerors realise who they're following. A few more sentences showing just how little he actually cares for them, and when he points at Lawrence and shouts "Fire!" they fire... at him. He gets a thousand Magic Missiles to the back of his head. Splotch

We loot his body (well, goo with stuff inside), and the sourerous army disbands, with a good proportion of it (about half) deciding following us actually sounds like a good plan. There's now a long running joke that when we loot an army, we actually loot the ARMY, not just the stuff. I mean, whats the Gp value of 500 sourerors?

[Premier]

D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions. You lose out on treasure, and you may even lose out on XP if your DM is vicious.

This statement really, really needs a qualifier. Like, "4E D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions". For Dungeons & Dragons at large, it's simply not true. 1st edition AD&D, for instance, was explicitly designed to encourage avoiding combat if possible while acquiring treasure.

[Tsotha-lanti]

This statement really, really needs a qualifier. Like, "4E D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions". For Dungeons & Dragons at large, it's simply not true. 1st edition AD&D, for instance, was explicitly designed to encourage avoiding combat if possible while acquiring treasure.

I don't recall anything about non-combat XP in my red-box D&D at all. That game was all about smashing monsters and taking their treasure.

3.X and 4E are both equally badly suited for non-traditional D&D play. AD&D may be marginally more suited, but not by a lot. Edit: 4E specifically has a skill challenge mechanic with rules for XP gained. Other than that, same focus as 3.X. /edit

Heck, the number of letters they got in Scale Mail going "My PCs are killing barmaids for XP, what do I do!?" in the AD&D days...

[Tempest Fennac]

I remember reading that you gained 1 Exp. for every GP you found in earlier editions. Admittedly, that would probably require fighting for most classes.

[J.Gellert]

On occassion our group has talked enemies out of combat whether through bluffing, intimidation, or bribery.

90% of the time this was a ruse to get a surprise round on them. The other 5% we were going to spare them, but they said or did something to change our mind in the last moment. Of the last 5% of people we actually were going to spare, most ended up dead or crippled for life because the drow assassin kept trying to sacrifice them.

You don't have to kick every puppy if you are evil, but an evil party in the middle of a bloody war= win.

Bonus points if you understand, from the way he talks or acts, that a specific NPC is meant to survive to promote the DM's plot, but you go ahead and kill him anyway.

[Rhiannon87]

In the game I'm running, the PCs keep trying to negotiate with the various enemies they find in dungeons. And not the bosses, either; they're arguing with 2HD mooks about their life choices and if they should maybe think about another occupation.

The game I'm a player in, we tend to end up in combat more often than not, but that's largely because we're currently being hunted by assassins/bounty hunters, so it's not so much that we're seeking violence as it seeks us. But we have managed to talk our way out of combat a few times. I'm actually hoping that will happen more, once there isn't a price on our heads.

[saimol]

As far as i understand it, if you get less treasure/xp when you decide not to kill mobs, then your DM is doing it wrong.
It is said im DMG that you get xp for defeating encounter, not for killing it, so if you talk out of the fight you have efectively defeated the encounter and get full xp for it.
As for treasure - there are just so many ways to add treasure players were 'supposed' to get by killing mobs. If you can't think of anything better just add another chest to the next room, though a person with such limited fancy shouldn't even be the DM.

[Mando Knight]

That's your problem. Right there. 4th doesn't really go into the whole out-of-combat play much.

Although it does actually have a rule system for awarding non-combat XP. They're called Skill Challenges.

[Rhiannon87]

As far as i understand it, if you get less treasure/xp when you decide not to kill mobs, then your DM is doing it wrong.
It is said im DMG that you get xp for defeating encounter, not for killing it, so if you talk out of the fight you have efectively defeated the encounter and get full xp for it.

This is also why you get XP if you do enter into combat and make the thing surrender or run away. You defeated it, you get XP. The rules were non-specific as to how that defeat comes about.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I remember reading that you gained 1 Exp. for every GP you found in earlier editions. Admittedly, that would probably require fighting for most classes.

And in AD&D 2nd edition, rogues got extra - and advanced fastest. If your adventures included any notable treasures, the rogue would catapult up levels and become the party's strongest combatant very fast.

This one got pretty hilarious when you tried to play Council of Wyrms. Dragons, in order to advance age categories, would need a hoard with a GP value equal to the XP value required for their next category. (Bigger dragons required less XP for each category; so white the least, gold the most.) Of course, absolutely nowhere was it stated that you didn't gain the standard 1 XP/GP. So, essentially, there was no point tracking XP, only GP. And whenever the entire party had enough to go up a category, the game was supposed to skip forward the 10, 50, or 400 years required... making the differences in XP required completely pointless!

That setting was the worst combination of bad idea and bad execution in D&D history.


Incidentally, for 4E, note the Intimidate rules. Basically you bloody all the opponents, then make one Intimidate check to end the fight in their surrender.

[Piedmon_Sama]

My Half-Orc Druid got his shoulder slashed open recently, because he rushed in to help a crazed warrior who'd just had his legs broken via voodoo doll---the party was trying to bring said warrior into custody alive, and my Druid was too eager to tend his injuries to realize he was still armed and dangerous. It was hilarious when I said I was running in with my healer's kit, the DM was like "....are you sure?" and I realized what I was about to do was pretty stupid but I decided it was in character for my Druid (he's young and naive and is really reluctant to use lethal force). Almost got critted and killed on the spot.

He then had a pretty strong argument with his teammate Psychic Warrior (who'd been entrusted with the magic doll) over attempting to treat a dangerous enemy, and they got so hot that Beogar (the druid) has already decided in his mind to keep the next enemy they face alive and bring them to custody just to prove his point.

It's not exactly "not fighting," but I think it's pretty unusual for D&D characters to only resort to lethal force when absolutely necessary (something Beogar, at level 3, hasn't really had to do yet).

EDIT: More on topic, as a DM I explicitly tell my players that if they try to fight every single thing that crosses their path, eventually they won't win. I like my campaigns to have a tinge of horror while still remaining manly action material (think Aliens, or The Thing,) so sometimes I throw things at them like an incircling army of skeletons they just have to Tumble/Overrun their way through, or an easily outrunnable zombie Grey Render that respawns everytime they kill it.

It's been.... slow learning. D&D Players do not like to be told they can't do something, IME. Anytime I try to alert them that their weapons and spells won't save them, it seems their kneejerk reaction is to dig in and fight to the bitter end. Is it because of player/character dissonance? Pride? Conflicting genre expectations? I dunno, I understand they want to play Big Damn Heroes but not at 4th level, dammit. >_>

[kc0bbq]

My group got through an RPGA module as pacifists, and RPGA modules are munchkin and kill events. Every goal and optional goal was achieved. It was a thing of legend, too bad I chose not to attend that particular convention. :( For some reason this really made the judge upset, I'll never understand why. I mean really, really mad, as in personally insulted. Most of the RPGA judges we get have even more fun than we do.

[Roderick_BR]

D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions. You lose out on treasure, and you may even lose out on XP if your DM is vicious.

It's just part of the "adventure, fighting, experience, and treasure" paradigm. Many games don't have anything to do with that one, but it's pretty much built into D&D. You can play a campaign where combat XP and looting treasure aren't a big factor, but that's going to be very different from the default and standard.

Technically, by RAW, your DM need to give your XP awards, no mater how you end an encounter, as long as you "win" it (no, running away is not a victory). Rescuing someone even without trashing the BBeG is still worth the villain's CR in XP, for example, or talking the leader of an invading force into not attacking, delaying the war for some days.

But yeah, you do lose on treasure. I tend to reward extra XP for innovative ideas to make up for it.

[Devils_Advocate]

That's your problem. Right there. 4th doesn't really go into the whole out-of-combat play much.

That's better than, say, 3E's Diplomacy skill, which encouraged non-violent solutions, but not in a good way.

Has any edition of D&D given plenty of good detail to social interaction outside of combat?

[valadil]

How much you fight depends on your GM and the type of game he's running. If you know you're getting into a kick down the door and beat up the monsters type game, you'd be ill advised to play a pacifist. My goal in GMing (which I don't always live up to) is that combat should be a last resort rather than the point of the game. Players should have the option of letting the game devolve into combat, but risking their lives is punishment rather than entertainment.

[Cedrass]

D&D is not built for nonviolent solutions. You lose out on treasure, and you may even lose out on XP if your DM is vicious.

It's just part of the "adventure, fighting, experience, and treasure" paradigm. Many games don't have anything to do with that one, but it's pretty much built into D&D. You can play a campaign where combat XP and looting treasure aren't a big factor, but that's going to be very different from the default and standard.

By RAW it isn't sure, but my group tends to analyze encounters and decides:
- Ok, would our character fight this battle?
- How are our chances of survival?
- Do I really want to waste resources fighting those guys?

Nowhere in the process of taking the decision do we take into account XP or treasures, because our DM (or me if I'm the DM) will give us that treasure in a way or the other. And we get the XP for "winning" the encounter.

For treasures what I do is take note of what they would have got, and stuff it in an other treasure. They still get their loot, and didn't have to kill to have it.

Of course it's not to say we discourage battles, after all that's what D&D is for, we just also encourage to think about other solutions and whatnot.

[Jayabalard]

I don't recall anything about non-combat XP in my red-box D&D at all.

That's not the same thing as 1e AD&D; 1e AD&D gave exp based on treasure acquired.

I'm pretty sure that the red box basic D&D did as well, but I haven't looked at it in ages.

[Tsotha-lanti]

By RAW it isn't sure, but my group tends to analyze encounters and decides:
- Ok, would our character fight this battle?
- How are our chances of survival?
- Do I really want to waste resources fighting those guys?

Nowhere in the process of taking the decision do we take into account XP or treasures, because our DM (or me if I'm the DM) will give us that treasure in a way or the other. And we get the XP for "winning" the encounter.

For treasures what I do is take note of what they would have got, and stuff it in an other treasure. They still get their loot, and didn't have to kill to have it.

Of course it's not to say we discourage battles, after all that's what D&D is for, we just also encourage to think about other solutions and whatnot.

This can certainly work; I've run D&D campaigns with no magic treasures at all (Dark Sun, Ravenloft), hardly any magic treasures (Dragonlance), and the "you get your WBL from your employers" model, and combinations of these. However, I find it's not quite perfect; after all, most of the players expect to do looting and treasure-hunting, and if they get X treasure regardless of how much they chase it, it can feel a bit disempowering.

I plain prefer games that don't assume you get magic items or that treasure is worth anything other than ensuring a living. (AD&D doesn't quite qualify; look at the number of enemies you need magic weapons with various plusses to even fight...) I'm not that worried about whether the game assumes there'll be fighting; in cyberpunk games, for instance, you know you'll end up fighting, but you have no incentive to and a lot of incentive to avoid it.

You can run any game any way you want, but that's self-evident; systems, however, support various activities and approaches to various degrees.