Defeating Encounters Nonviolently

[Trekkin]

I was talking with a friend with whom I game regularly, and the subject of defusing combats came up; we had, in the games we each DMed, created scenarios we'd thought the party would resolve in combat that were instead negotiated around, and ascribed to differing views on how to adjudicate XP rewards for such a feat. It was his viewpoint that, because it's a less permanent solution involving less risk for the players, the XP rewards should be less than for a violent resolution, while I felt that defeating an encounter is defeating an encounter, and the XP reward should be the same. That said, I could also see a third viewpoint that creatively determining a solution that's better for the party than combat (since no one is at risk of death) should be worth more XP than simply fighting.

So now I'm curious where people stand on this. If an encounter is worth X XP as a combat encounter, how much would you award for resolving it diplomatically or through bluffing/trickery, as a rule? If it depends on specific factors, what might the most impactful of those factors be?

[Shadowknight12]

I would never award less experience for defeating an encounter non-violently. I may award less XP for temporarily avoiding a confrontation, but I would award at least full XP if the confrontation took place and it was ended, through any means necessary.

I might award extra XP to encourage non-violent ways to defeat the encounter if I have an agenda to pursue (i.e., RP encouragement) or if I was particularly impressed by the solutions the PCs came up with. Having said that, I would also award extra XP for a player on a violent combat if they take risks, engage in interesting RPing, make decisions that might not be the wisest but are in keeping with their character, and so on.

Basically, I don't let "violence" or "non-violence" be a factor in deciding how much XP to award. I award XP based on the effort the player is making to make the game fun for everyone.

[Mastikator]

The fact that using non-violence means you can't loot their body can be an argument (from a balance point of view) that they should receive MORE experience.

[Dr.Epic]

Max out and take a lot of feats for Bluff, Diplomacy, and/or Intimidate.

Also, illusion and enchantment spells would also be useful.

[Trekkin]

Max out and take a lot of feats for Bluff, Diplomacy, and/or Intimidate.

Also, illusion and enchantment spells would also be useful.

How does that impact how much XP one would receive for defeating an encounter by those means?

[prufock]

Normally, I award XP as normal for overcoming a challenge. If that involves killing monsters, reasoning with enemies, disarming a trap, or forcing everyone to go home via domination, that all counts.

One caveat is how permanent the solution is. You might trick the guards into letting you into the keep, for instance, but they can still be a challenge in getting out. In this case, I'd only award experience once they are no longer an issue. Similarly, you can convince the big bad to join your cause, but he might be just using you to further his own ends. Again, he's only "defeated" if he is no longer a threat.

[jackattack]

As long as the "defeat" involved some form of interaction, even if only a stealth-vs-perception roll-off, I say award the experience in full.

However, now you face the issue of recurring encounters. Say a party snuck past an orc encampment. Later, the party bribes the same orcs to let them pass without a fight. Finally, the party decides that they want to kill the orcs and take their loot.

Should the party get one experience award for defeating one group of orcs, or for three experience awards for defeating three encounters?

[Coidzor]

The fact that using non-violence means you can't loot their body can be an argument (from a balance point of view) that they should receive MORE experience.

Alternatively, less so that their rate of experience growth doesn't outstrip their acquisition of new and useful gear by too much.

Presupposing such is tracked at all.

[Traab]

Id say it depends. If the noncombat method permanently deals with the encounter, then full exp might work. For example, your party wants to cross a river, but the only bridge is guarded by two ogres demanding all your money as a toll. You can either kill them, or talk your way across with bluff or diplomancy. That would get full exp. But if you scare them off with intimidate, they are likely going to calm down and want to kick your butt later, so only partial exp, and make a note to have two ogres show up at the worst time possible and ambush the party.

To try and avoid diplomancers or other such annoying things, remember to point out that talking your way past encounters may get you levels, but you get no loot, and no gear drops. So enjoy being a level 20 rogue with two rusty daggers.

[jackattack]

If the GM wants the party to have loot (because the players will enjoy it, or because they will need it to progress), he can always award it to them in other ways.

Whoever sent them on the quest might give them a bonus for not calling attention to themselves by being violent. A local official or ruler might reward them for settling a problem in the area without unnecessary bloodshed. A high ranking cleric or wizard might give them enchanted gear because they have shown themselves to be responsible enough to be trusted with it.

Loot can also be instantly transferred out of the pockets of creatures and NPCs and into convenient chests, vaults, and hiding places.

[Sudain]

Loot can also be instantly transferred out of the pockets of creatures and NPCs and into convenient chests, vaults, and hiding places.

Heck yes! This is one of the DM's best tricks.

Id say it depends. If the noncombat method permanently deals with the encounter, then full exp might work. For example, your party wants to cross a river, but the only bridge is guarded by two ogres demanding all your money as a toll. You can either kill them, or talk your way across with bluff or diplomancy. That would get full exp. But if you scare them off with intimidate, they are likely going to calm down and want to kick your butt later, so only partial exp, and make a note to have two ogres show up at the worst time possible and ambush the party.

I disagree - I'd give them full exp. The problem (or encounter) is to cross the river. Regardless if they talk their way across, scare the ogres or crush them, see them driven and hear the lamentations of their women they have solved the problem and should be given full exp. If they solve it in such a way as to leave loose ends such that the ogres might come back for example; then that's their problem(as you noted. ). If they were supposed to get across the bridge without attracting attention, then I would still give them full xp(They did cross the bridge successfuly) ; but I would certainly implement repercussions for their lack of stealth (likely in the form of organized/buffed/numerous/frequent encounters/patrols).

I always attempt to give extra xp if the party does something awesome(I usually judge this by how many people are smiling and laughing), regardless of the result. This is a game, after all. :)

[jebob]

The problem with awarding full XP is next time they come to cross the river, do they still qualify for full XP? Perhaps a solution would be to give them half XP if its reasonable that they'll meet the ogres again. Next time they cross the bridge, give them half of whats remaining, and so forth. If repeatedly intimidating the ogres has the same effect as killing them, they should get the same XP overall.

I'd also say everything depends on the difficulties and effects of the courses of action. If you came across a level one bandit who asked for a million gold pieces, it should be treated as a level one encounter despite the million gold bribe. The CR of an encounter should be the difficulty of the easiest solution its reasonable for the players to think of.

[Dingle]

I play a lot of WoD games, and we don't even count encounters. We generally get XP for completing objectives.
And we can pick our encounters somewhat by how we try to go about it.

[TheThan]

Personally I believe defeating an encounter is defeating an encounter, regardless of how the party goes about doing it. so it doesn’t matter if they use violent, non-violent or some other creative means of defeating the encounter; they’ll still earn the appropriate Xp rewards for that encounter.

If players get worried about being low on wealth, I will make that up over the course of the adventure. I also believe that not all encounters are capable of being resolved in any way. Take for example a basic highwayman ambush. The PCs have money, and the thieves want it and are willing to risk their lives for it. Talking them down probably isn’t going to work. But talking down the guard stationed at the city gates is far more likely to actually work.

if these situations still exist after the party has defeated the encounter, they they are simply another encounter, though the next time they may be worth less experience. I mean if they bribe the guard to let them pass, when they go back that way, the guard will be worth less experience to bypass because they have already dealt with him already and know how to get around it; even if they choose a different solution to the problem.

[Knaight]

I would view the whole "encounters to defeat" paradigm as one that encourages violence. Move out of that, and suddenly it stops being an issue, and experience can be dispensed with entirely, sidestepping the original problem.

[Trekkin]

I would view the whole "encounters to defeat" paradigm as one that encourages violence. Move out of that, and suddenly it stops being an issue, and experience can be dispensed with entirely, sidestepping the original problem.

How does one move out of that paradigm? When I say "encounter", I usually mean "some relatively self-contained chunk of an adventure that's completed in one go", and use that as a metric for determining how much out-of-game time an adventure is likely to take and how long something is going to feel. How, then, are adventures organized without relatively discrete encounters in order to sidestep this?

[Serpentine]

This is a question I've pondered, and is something that's been pretty relevant in my games (most recently, the party dealt with a hive of beholders and baby beholders by... bravely running away ...and also with Irresistable Dance () and Confusion and the like).
I don't really have an answer. Thus-far I've pretty much been dealing with it on a case-by-case basis. Chances are, though, if I award them less experience, it'll be made up in roleplaying experience.
The issue of loot balance, by the way, doesn't really seem to be an issue. I've lamented before on here how little interest my players seem to have in it, no matter how much detail I put into it*, and just the last game one of them outright said "I don't really care about treasure anyway".

*although sometimes the descriptions are entertaining. They still talk about the suspect caravan the dragons must've ambushed, full of child-themed stuff. The Draconomicon random treasure tables are weird sometimes...

[hewhosaysfish]

I would view the whole "encounters to defeat" paradigm as one that encourages violence. Move out of that, and suddenly it stops being an issue, and experience can be dispensed with entirely, sidestepping the original problem.

How does one move out of that paradigm? When I say "encounter", I usually mean "some relatively self-contained chunk of an adventure that's completed in one go", and use that as a metric for determining how much out-of-game time an adventure is likely to take and how long something is going to feel. How, then, are adventures organized without relatively discrete encounters in order to sidestep this?

It's not encounters as a unit of adventure design that are under scrutiny but adventures as the basis of xp awards.
One way to move away from that might be to take Dingle's suggestions on board.

I play a lot of WoD games, and we don't even count
encounters. We generally get XP for completing objectives.
And we can pick our encounters somewhat by how we try to go about it.

To assign xp to an objective rather than on the encounters that the PCs face on their way to the objective.

To be "fair", the xp award should perhaps be assigned to the objective (before play) based on the difficulty of the encounters you expect the PCs to face.

So a group of PCs who tried to sneak into a warehouse over the rooftops to avoid the guard-dogs outside would get the same xp as if they had just charged the building, screaming, and tried to headbutt the doors/wall open... but for a lot less work/risk.

The idea is that by arranging the rewards in this way then the player's goals ("Get XP") now necessarily coincide with the character's goals ("Get the MacGuffin from the warehouse; don't get bitten by a dog") rather than potentially conflicting with them ("Well, we managed to sneak in and grab the MacGuffin okay but if we sneak out the same way we won't get any XP: so instead let's run around the building, punching out every guard-dog we can find!")

Mild digression:

Spoiler

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Of course, this all assume that one subscribes to the view of xp as a reward offered to players to incentise clever, engaging or otherwise successful play.

If one regards xp as a being an attempt to numerically represent experience (like the name suggests) then it makes less sense that you can improve your fighting skill through experience without experiencing fighting. Although, in DnD a fighter could get better at fighting by sneaking and a rogue could get better at sneaking by fighting, so maybe it's best not to think about that too hard.

And it's interesting for me to note that I've played in one RPG where a character's skills were improved by using them rather than by the player arbitarily spending points that had been awarded to them. Based on that setup, one might be tempted to assume that the players would prefer to initiate combat where-ever possible, in the hope of improving those all-important combat skills.
Oddly enough though, things didn't work out that way in Call of Cthulu. I wonder why that was?

[Jay R]

"Defeating the encounter" is a generic phrase, that says nothing about what they did, or how important it was, or how difficult it was.

If you slip past the monsters without fighting them, no points. You avoided doing anything.

If you slip past the monsters, picking their pockets and getting away, good thief points; nothing for the paladin.

If you convince the monsters to ignore you, fair number of points.

If you convince (or con) the monsters into leaving that area, you've savd all their future victims. Serious points.

If you tricked the monsters into going and attacking the next set of monsters, you get great points.

If you convert the monsters to your religion, and they go join the army on your side, bigger points for the priest and paladin than for the rest.

When awarding points, the essential questions are:
How important was it?
How difficult was it?
How risky was it?
How successful was it?

Followed by: How cool was it? and Do you want them trying to do this next time?

[Sudain]

Jebob

The problem with awarding full XP is next time they come to cross the river, do they still qualify for full XP? Perhaps a solution would be to give them half XP if its reasonable that they'll meet the ogres again. Next time they cross the bridge, give them half of whats remaining, and so forth. If repeatedly intimidating the ogres has the same effect as killing them, they should get the same XP overall.

TheThan

if these situations still exist after the party has defeated the encounter, they they are simply another encounter, though the next time they may be worth less experience. I mean if they bribe the guard to let them pass, when they go back that way, the guard will be worth less experience to bypass because they have already dealt with him already and know how to get around it; even if they choose a different solution to the problem.

Jebob - I would treat it like TheThan suggests, a different encounter. If it's a repeat encounter like the guard in TheThan's example then I agree lower the xp reward(possibly to 0). Afterall there is no difficulty involved anymore. That's not to say if they run into the same setup in a different part of the country with different people that that would still be lower xp.

I like the way hewhosaysfish described the issue:

To assign xp to an objective rather than on the encounters that the PCs face on their way to the objective.

So a group of PCs who tried to sneak into a warehouse over the rooftops to avoid the guard-dogs outside would get the same xp as if they had just charged the building, screaming, and tried to headbutt the doors/wall open... but for a lot less work/risk.

[Roderick_BR]

The Dungeon Master Guide says that XP is awarded for winning an encounter. It does not say it NEEDS to be combat only. It even gives several examples of encounters other than combat.
Negotiating a pacific retreat against a dragon should give as much XP as defeating it.
Whoever, the DMG also mentions that easier or harder encounters should have the XP adjusted accordingly. If the negotiation is as hard as a a direct battle (said dragon may get bored and just eat the party. a noble may remove his support to the group's army, losing a huge advantage in an incoming war) you may keep full XP or even more XP if there are more aggravating situations (the dragon is not known for being patient with business, etc). While easier solutions may be worth less XP (like bribing a group of thugs so they don't play the alarm, that would alert more powerful enemies to attack the party, and these thugs are all the happier to get some coin and look the other way).
In general, I just give the default XP for the encounter's level.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

My group doesn't keep track of experience numerically, every few sessions, the DM just tells the PCs that they've leveled up when it "feels right".

That said, I tend to award extra experience (or at least give levels more freely) for creativity in problem solving. In one encounter, I expected the players to get into a long, drawn-out fight with a band of kobolds fighting from cover with ranged weapons, superior numbers and a sorcerer using summoned monsters to try to force the PCs out of cover. Instead, the party used the wizard's familiar to scout the area and found the kobolds and then the gnome and wizard both used Dancing Lights paired with a well placed thunder stone to make the kobolds think the cavern was haunted and scare the majority of them away. If we tracked experience specifically, I would definitely have given bonus XP for creativity and team work on that situation (as it is, they leveled up a little earlier than I'd planned, so it had the same result.)

[The Reverend]

I had a past dm that liked to encourage non violent winning, some members of our group were particularly prone to violence, by not providing enough rest and keeping the number of encounters per day up so we quickly ran out of our best abilities.

[Dimers]

I've lamented before on here how little interest my players seem to have in it, no matter how much detail I put into [treasure] ...

My last gaming group referred to randomly rolled magic weapons as "funny-shaped lumps of gold".

When I say "encounter", I usually mean "some relatively self-contained chunk of an adventure that's completed in one go", and use that as a metric for determining how much out-of-game time an adventure is likely to take and how long something is going to feel. How, then, are adventures organized without relatively discrete encounters in order to sidestep this?

Lord_Il_Palazzo ain't alone in removing XP from the game entirely. As long as the DM and the players have approximately the same expectations* for how quickly a character should gain power, it works a lot more smoothly than numeric XP awards, or character points or whatever. There's no showboating for roleplaying XP, no experience gulf between the guy who thinks up brilliant ideas and the guy whose fun just comes from rolling dice, no picking fights just for experience, less recordkeeping to distract from gameplay ... it's nice.

Of course a story will still have "discrete encounters", because everything doesn't happen in one unending storm of action. But you don't have to determine what starts or ends an "encounter" or how much an "encounter" is worth in terms of PCs getting better at what they do. You can still use events to measure the flow of a game.

* And if they don't, well, someone's going to be disappointed anyway, so no benefit there.

[Rorrik]

I have a house system that award xp for good roleplaying and clever ideas. Personally, running away from an enemy and giving him the slip to bypass the encounter wouldn't give any xp, while using stealth and other character related abilities grants xp depending on the situation. As far as encountering the enemy again, I'm in the boat with those who say it's their problem.

[TooManySecrets]

According to the rules (at least in 3.X, I can't speak for 4E as I don't know it as well), traps count as an encounter and nobody is suggesting that the only way you should gain XP from a trap is by smacking it with a stick until it breaks. Expanding upon that, page 50 to 51 of the DMG gives examples of rewarding different types of encounters, not only combat ones. It's simple enough to expand it to include defeating one type of encounter through a different means than the suggested one.

[GeekGirl]

Basically, I don't let "violence" or "non-violence" be a factor in deciding how much XP to award. I award XP based on the effort the player is making to make the game fun for everyone.

This, this +1000 I just wish I could get my players to try more diplomatic solutions some times :P

[Calanon]

This, this +1000 I just wish I could get my players to try more diplomatic solutions some times :P

You would love to play with me then

Neutral Evil Necromancer that likes to solve his problems peacefully so he can go back to researching spells (I will still slaughter you with Necromantic power if you leave me with no choice)

Diplomacy is an easier option then fighting. Why roll a million dice to solve my problems when I can just roll 1?

[GungHo]

I give full XP for "defeating" the encounter, however they do it, though like Dingle notes above, encounters for me -- regardless of whether I'm playing 3.5E (mostly), SAGA Edition Star Wars (occasionally), or WoD (hardly at all any more) -- are really more objective-based. Still, if they meet the objective, whether they slaughtered everyone or whether they yapped their way through, if I intended for them to get 500xp, or whatever scale you use, I give out that amount of XP.

My differentiator is in story-based reprecussions. If it's reasonable for people to notice, people will react to how the party decided to handle something. Maybe they did leave behind a dangerous enemy who will continue to be a threat. Maybe the regent appreciates the party's restraint for bringing his subjects to heel rather than killing them. Maybe the former enemy now has a chance to become an ally because he respects the party's honor. It really depends on the situation, and I may resolve the same type of situation several different ways depending on whether or not I had chorizo burrito or a sausage biscuit that morning.

That being said, if they took a path that turned out to be a hell of a lot more work for them than what I expected them to go through for 500 xp, or was a lot of fun for everyone, I might raise my rates. I'm stingy about a lot of things, but XP ain't one of them.

Hell, there have been times at the end of a session where I just said, "ok, a year passes and you all went up a couple of levels" because the story worked better that way.