What is a Deadly Social/Exploration Encounter?

[Amnestic]

And would you, as a player, be satisfied with them?

Much is often said about using social/exploration encounters in addition to combat to drain resources. That's all fine and dandy, but in order to drain resources they need to be challenging, and so I started to consider what these would look like. Now before we go any further, lets confirm exactly what deadly means:

Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.

A deadly encounter (regardless of what kind of encounter) "could be lethal for one or more player characters", the party (hypothetically) risks defeat, and they will presumably require significant resource expenditure to bypass without dying. What does a social encounter that risks death look like? Or an exploration encounter? Furthermore, how long should such an encounter last for? Is it expected to last game time equal to combat?

And, if you're a player who "fails" such an encounter (whether due to poor dice rolls or sub-optimal tactics/preparation) would you be 'satisfied' with a character death or even a TPK?

I ask, because I've been giving it some vague thought, and I'm not sure the game's expectations are built for it. From running the idea in my head I think if I were faced it as a player it might come across a little as 'rocks fall, everyone dies' by the DM, but that's just my initial thoughts. If the wider playground has suggestions for what would make a cool social/exploration deadly encounter, please do make mention of them, would love to incorporate more such interesting ideas beyond just combat.

[sithlordnergal]

A Deadly Exploration encounter is pretty easy to make, you just need to make a good trap/puzzle. Tomb of Annihilation has several excellent examples that I enjoy using in my homebrew games


For example, one trap/puzzle is a room that spins, and is seals shut once they enter. There's a door on one end that the players can escape through, but its closed. At the start of every turn that players are in there, they have to make a Dex save to avoid 2d10 damage, and they take half on a success. The DM also rolls 1d20 for a special random effect at initiative count 10. These effects can knock players unconscious, give semi-permanent Blindness, or deal extra damage, with a range of 2d10 to 10d8.

Its on the players to figure out how to escape this trap before they die, and they have a few options. One option is to try and solve a riddle that the party normally finds before running into this trap. If they solve it, they'll learn you need to cast Knock three times on the closed door. They can also attempt a couple of difficult Athletics checks. The DC is 26, and I believe you need multiple successes to escape that way. Each attempt is basically your Action. Finally, the party can try to break down the door. the door itself has 17 AC, 50 HP, damage threshold of I believe 5, and is immune fire, piercing, poison, psychic, slashing, and thunder damage.

Unless they have three spell casters with Knock at the ready, they're going to be stuck there for a few rounds. Which will force them to spend some resources healing up, on top of anything else used to survive/escape the trap.


As for a Deadly Social encounter...maybe meeting with a hostile ruler? The party has to convince this ruler to do something, but if they insult the ruler they could be executed? I dunno...I'm not great with Social Encounters that eat up resources because all the resources you'd normally use have caveats that let the target know they're being targeted.

[stoutstien]

You don't need deadly social encounters. You need far reaching and impactful consequences from important social situations. You insulted someone who holds a grudge that has nothing but time and money? Congratulations your name is slandered in 3 nations and you can't get the time of day from anyone regarding your inquiries.


On a slightly different note don't go out of your way to punish players if they aren't the silvered tongue person that they are envisioning thier PC is. It's your job to tell them stuff as you are the sole source of information they have.

[Pixel_Kitsune]

Deadly Social Encounter?

A Masquerade Ball hosted by the Empress where the party learned there will be an assassination attempt. They aren't nobles and couldn't get legit tickets so they've stealthed in.

Now the party has to fit in, find the assassin or find a way to let the Empress know where she'll believe them. Failure to stop the assassination and they could be put to death as conspirators since they are uninvited and gained entrance illegally. They have to keep up appearances, have to infiltrate the social elite and if they fail they'll be put to death.

[greenstone]

Examples of deadly social encounters?

One or more of the party's friends or allies (or maybe one or more of the party members) have been arrested and sentenced to death. The party must now negotiate for their release.

The party have been cursed in order to force them to complete a job (or possibly they have been infected with the plutoxin-7 virus). At the end of the job, their "employer" decides not to lift the curse. Now they have to bargain for their lives.

The party have encountered a sphinx. A massively powerful supernatural beast they have no hope of defeating. Worse still, it is bored. "Entertain me, worms, or I will eat one of you."

The party are on a *shudder* escort quest. A group of thugs have accosted them in the street. The party knows they could handily defeat the thugs, but if they fight then their escort will almost certainly die in the fighting. So, they have to defuse the situation without violence.

[Cheesegear]

A deadly encounter (regardless of what kind of encounter) "could be lethal for one or more player characters", the party (hypothetically) risks defeat, and they will presumably require significant resource expenditure to bypass without dying. What does a social encounter that risks death look like? Or an exploration encounter?

A deadly exploration encounter results in "Death by misadventure."

- A fall from a very great height.
- Temple of Doom traps.
- You ate the purple berries. They taste like burning.
- Death by Exhaustion... Exhaustion can kill you. How often does that even come up?

However, I often go with "remove from play", rather than character death. A petrification trap doesn't kill you...But you're changing characters for a few sessions until you get a Greater Restoration.

Just think; If you failed a Skill Check or a Saving Throw, three - maybe two - times in a row, you died.
What does that look like?

Fail an Athletics check three times and you're dead. Climbing, swimming, etc.
Fail an Arcana check three times and you're gone. Plane Shift trap, get Blade of Disaster'd, etc.

Keep in mind that the DCs also have be high, 20-25+ range.

And, if you're a player who "fails" such an encounter (whether due to poor dice rolls or sub-optimal tactics/preparation) would you be 'satisfied' with a character death or even a TPK?

Depends on the tone the DM is running with. The DM has to set the tone. No. I wouldn't be satisfied with "Welp, looks like you failed your check three times, you're dead." There would have to be a lot of build up for me to accept dying to misadventure. The DM also has to make it clear that they're not ****ing around. Players should be told not just to have a backup character in mind, but to have it ready.

It also depends on whether or not you think you're special. But again, that's for a thread about power fantasies.

If the wider playground has suggestions for what would make a cool social/exploration deadly encounter

I don't think - by their nature - that social encounters can be Deadly...Unless the social encounter devolves into a Deadly combat. In which case you died to combat.

The Duke isn't having any of your ****. He doesn't believe you, and the more you press the issue about his brother, the angrier he gets. You've insulted his family twice, in public. He doesn't care how right you think you are, your insolence can't set a precedent. He calls his Guards and you're dead.
...Woah, woah, woah. DM, hold up. What happened to "Roll Initiative"?

In order to skip the combat phase of the scenario, the creature killing the party has to be so far-and-away stronger than the players that you shouldn't even bother.
...A social encounter with a Deity goes badly. Death by Deus ex Machina, literally.

[NichG]

A deadly social encounter can result in a character's social existence being killed, even without combat. A character could for example end up having to prove their innocence when framed for a serious crime, with a failure resulting in their being declared an outlaw and traitor. That doesn't mean they're instantly executed, but it could mean that no guards shall let the character into a city, no licensed merchant will do business with them, all formal associations - guild ranks, etc - will be dissolved, and so on.

There are also social encounters whose consequences can effectively be deadly to many, many people. There's an invading army, you need to get your ostensible allies to commit forces to the march now to intercept it but there's some thorny issue in their court thats pinning their troops in place until it's resolved. Fail and that invading army ends up torching your home city off-screen while you're still trying to get them to march. Doesn't kill the character, but definitely can have life or death consequences.

[sithlordnergal]

Depends on the tone the DM is running with. The DM has to set the tone. No. I wouldn't be satisfied with "Welp, looks like you failed your check three times, you're dead." There would have to be a lot of build up for me to accept dying to misadventure. The DM also has to make it clear that they're not ****ing around. Players should be told not just to have a backup character in mind, but to have it ready.

It also depends on whether or not you think you're special. But again, that's for a thread about power fantasies.

The bold part is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for DMs. Do not spring instant death traps on players from out of nowhere. Make sure you make it very clear that whatever they're doing can, and will, instantly kill them if they screw up. To grab two examples from my own games:

I ran Tomb of Annihilation. I made it very clear early on that this campaign is designed to murder you. I made sure to remind players that these traps are deadly, and can instantly kill a player at full health if they are unlucky. And even then, the Ranger was not happy when their character died unexpectedly from a single failed Dexterity save, despite being at full HP and having advantage on the save. Or when their later character was permanently removed from play because they got really, really unlucky and was sent to Victorian Era England after using a special machine.

Currently, I am running a homebrew game. The players are about to make an expedition into the old 3.5 version of the Negative Energy Plane. You know, the version where you make like a DC 20 Con save every round or lose a level, and if you reach level 0 you instantly die? Going there in 5e. I have made sure they know that they need to have Negative Energy Resistance, or they will die. Immediately. In about 1 minute.

[Sorinth]

And, if you're a player who "fails" such an encounter (whether due to poor dice rolls or sub-optimal tactics/preparation) would you be 'satisfied' with a character death or even a TPK?

So long as it isn't a single save or die then I don't think it would be a problem. For example if there's a blizzard and a failed Survival check means freezing to death I probably wouldn't be satisfied, but if this was a days long challenge with multiple checks and decision points and it lead to freezing to death then I would be as satisfied as a combat death.

[KorvinStarmast]

A deadly social encounter?

You meet the queen, and somehow manage to piss her off. She sends assassins after you.
NPC assassins. (See 5e MM)
Four of them.

Deadly social encounter.
You meet with the local burghermeister.
He's actually a Rakshasa.

Deadly social encounter.
You meet an illusionist who looks like a bartender.

[Tanarii]

One that requires expending all your SR resources and 1/3 of your LR resources.

IMX most exploration or social encounters I've seen, even though they might have serious consequences, are only Easy in resource usage terms. At most 1/3 of SR resources or 1/12 of LR resources used, if even that.

However the DMG has a suggestion for Hard rewards that are alternative to the resource based encounter model under the milestones XP alternative: "When awarding XP, treat a major milestone as a hard encounter and a minor milestone as an easy encounter." The downside to using that is you're extending the effective adventuring day ... unless you switch entirely to the Milestone XP model.

Also I found a okay system for rewards for Skill Challenges in 5e that rewarded based on the number of successful tasks needed, which included the level(s) of spells that should be needed to bypass the need for check(s) to count. But again, in terms of actual resources spent it was nowhere near the combat model, so it effectively extended the adventuring day.

[Cheesegear]

You meet the queen, and somehow manage to piss her off. She sends assassins after you.
NPC assassins. (See 5e MM)
Four of them.

Theoretically a combat encounter...A combat encounter the party can't win.

Deadly social encounter.
You meet with the local burghermeister.
He's actually a Rakshasa.

Theoretically a combat encounter...A combat encounter the party can't win.

Deadly social encounter.
You meet an illusionist who looks like a bartender.

Not sure what the end goal is. More information required.

As I said previously, a social encounter that devolves into a combat encounter...Was a combat encounter all along, that merely could have been avoided.

[sithlordnergal]

And, if you're a player who "fails" such an encounter (whether due to poor dice rolls or sub-optimal tactics/preparation) would you be 'satisfied' with a character death or even a TPK?

As a DM who occasionally runs instant death traps, the players who die to them usually aren't satisfied. Especially the more vicious ones where you only get a single save to survive the trap or you die. They accept it cause I make sure they are aware of the instant death beforehand. But even then, they aren't too pleased when their level 8 character fails one Dex save and takes 24d10 damage, where if they drop to 0 they are instantly killed.

[Cheesegear]

As a DM who occasionally runs instant death traps, the players who die to them usually aren't satisfied.

I find that no player is ever satisfied when they die for any reason.
It always sucks. But it is part of the game.

If my DMing style was that characters could only die if/when their players were okay with it...I don't think anyone would die, ever. But that's not how the game works. That's how LARPing works. But D&D and LARPing aren't the same thing.

[sithlordnergal]

I find that no player is ever satisfied when they die for any reason.
It always sucks. But it is part of the game.

If my DMing style was that characters could only die if/when their players were okay with it...I don't think anyone would die, ever. But that's not how the game works. That's how LARPing works. But D&D and LARPing aren't the same thing.

Yeah, most players aren't satisfied with character death outside of exceptional circumstances. Though they tend to like death via instant death traps even less than death by combat. X3


...though I did have a funny experience where a player has their character on the brink of death, and finds it hilarious. But that's because of the fact that they and the rest of the party accidentally stumbled into an unexpected answer for a trap I had made. The trap was supposed to curse anyone standing in a hallway when it went off, causing them to be vulnerable to the golems in the dungeon, which are the only combat encounters. Additionally, the golems only attack creatures suffering from the curse, or any creature that harms them. figured it could make for some interesting combat encounters.

...instead, only one player entered the trapped hallway, and was the only one cursed. Then, when they met the first golem, everyone missed their attacks, and the Golem knocked out the cursed player due to a Crit on round one. Since the golem had no more targets, it went back to being peaceful, and the party put two and two together before anyone else attacked it. The cursed player is now being kept unconscious at their own request for most of the dungeon, with the party giving them one hit point to help with non-combat puzzles before knocking them back out. XD

[Unoriginal]

Deadly social envounter: a trial, and Primus is the judge.

[Chronos]

The big problem with deadly non-combat encounters is that non-combat encounters are usually a lot more abstracted than combat encounters, in D&D. In a combat encounter, there are lots of rolls for attacks, and lots of rolls for saves, and rolls for damage on each of those, and many opportunities to use all sorts of resources, and one single high or low roll hardly ever matters, but instead just tallies against a resource track (Hit Points). Things are extremely unlikely to end up in an absolute Worst Case Scenario, and whatever happens, the party has multiple opportunities to see how things are going and to change their tactics in reaction to that.

The default for non-combat encounters, however, is that they're resolved with a very small number of dice rolls, often only one. Which means that if a bad result is even possible at all (and if it isn't, you shouldn't even be asking for that one die roll), it has at least a 1 in 20 chance of happening, probably more. And if that bad result is death or something similarly dire, then you're going to screw over your party without giving them anything they can do about it.

Now, this isn't set in stone: It's possible to set up more complicated non-combat encounters, with multiple rolls and resource tracking and so on. But there's very little guidance for that in the rules. And even when one does see a relatively complicated non-combat encounter, it's still usually simpler than even a simple combat. What resources are you going to expend in your talk with the duke? Maybe one casting of Enhance Ability (Eagle's Splendor). If you think it's a really, really important meeting, worth using lots of resources on... you still can't expend more spells than that, because that's probably the only spell you have that's relevant.

[Hytheter]

Who said there are supposed to be 'Hard' or 'Deadly' non-combat encounters in the first place? Those categories appear under the heading 'Combat Encounter Difficulty', in a section of the DMG entitled 'Creating a Combat Encounter.' The 'Adventuring Day' appears in this section as well. Non-combat encounters aren't 'Hard' or 'Deadly' in the game sense and aren't intended to substantially contribute to the day's encounter budget.

You can certainly create a 'deadly' social encounter in the conventional sense - you failed to persuade the king and so he has you beheaded! now that's deadly - but that's not a 'deadly encounter' in the game sense. The game sense concern resource attrition and there's just not that many resources to pump into most social encounters whether you would want to or not. A typical exploration encounter is similar. It is possible to create one that consumes resources like a combat encounter but the end result is likely to be contrived and/or highly elaborate; there's a lot more design overhead than a combat encounter for the same result.

That's not to say simple social and exploration encounters don't contribute to resource attrition at all. It's just they they contribute with little chips over the course of the day rather than in one big chunk like a fight does. A few lower stakes encounters that can be bypassed with a few checks and maybe a spell slot can be good for pacing too rather than just having a constant slugfest from start to finish.

[KorvinStarmast]

Who said there are supposed to be 'Hard' or 'Deadly' non-combat encounters in the first place? Those categories appear under the heading 'Combat Encounter Difficulty', in a section of the DMG entitled 'Creating a Combat Encounter.' The 'Adventuring Day' appears in this section as well. Non-combat encounters aren't 'Hard' or 'Deadly' in the game sense and aren't intended to substantially contribute to the day's encounter budget.

Good point.

Being poisoned by the elf ambassador happened to four of our party members in a previous campaign. The soup was poisoned, the elves hosting us had taken the antidote before dinner during cocktail hour.

Another deadly social encounter:
Seduced by a Medusa. (Hmm, that's the name of my next album).

@Cheesegear:

As I said previously, a social encounter that devolves into a combat encounter...Was a combat encounter all along, that merely could have been avoided.

In your opinion.
You aren't the OP, so I don't much care if you like my suggestions or not.
They are for the OP. That's who is looking for suggestions.

We had that happen, the four assassins, some years ago.
The first indication of the assassins being in the vicinity and having been assigned to us was four crossbow bolts, coated in poison, that arrived (Three of the four hit). After that happened (ambush!) the DM then had us roll initiative. But only two of us were still standing at that point. It was a very short battle, and we all fortunately made various death saves but the assassins stripped us, and bound us, and had us transported to the Queen's dungeon.
Yeah, she was pissed.
Our agenda/schedule of events was to include being flayed, tortured, and having skin peeled from us by her various henchmen. That's what the jailer told us.

Next scenario was, of course, the attempted jail break.

[Hurrashane]

I find that no player is ever satisfied when they die for any reason.
It always sucks. But it is part of the game.

If my DMing style was that characters could only die if/when their players were okay with it...I don't think anyone would die, ever. But that's not how the game works. That's how LARPing works. But D&D and LARPing aren't the same thing.

My DM treats character death as "your character only dies (permanently) if you're ok with it." And I've had a character die. I didn't even have a backup character I wanted to play. But my character died saving the rest of the party and it felt fitting that their story could end there. We also had a TPK in a previous campaign, but as we didn't want our characters to die (the story they were part of wasn't over) all but one of them got turned into vampires (they died to a vampire) and the last party member had to recruit allies to go kill and then bring back their former friends.

[Unoriginal]

Other idea for deadly social encounter: having a fiddle contest with a Devil.

If you win you get a giant fiddle made of gold plus what you wanted. If you lose you get a smaller fiddle made of silver, and the Devil kills one of you.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I would define a deadly social encounter less literally than most have so far. It's all about the stakes. What if one player (not the whole party) could be:

Shunned. PC is exiled from a public space, denied the chance to purchase anything, and anyone who acknowledged their presence is also subject to shunning.

Run out of town. Covered in tar/pitch and feathers, tied to a length of wood, carried to the limits of the community, and dropped off.

Declared an outlaw. PC has no recourse to the law, and anyone can do anything to them without legal consequence.

Branded. Given a permanent mark of shame and possible reduction of CHA score.

Disfigured. Like branded, but with mechanical consequences beyond CHA reduction.

That which does not kill you doesn't always make you stronger.

[Telok]

Main issue with non-combat encounters having any level of danger is that the system is set up to bypass the ac vs damage vs hp balance that combat uses to make sure PCs survive & succeed. It makes a "dangerous" non-combat scene like a regular combat scene where everyone has ac 15 and its all one-hit-KO attacks.

Combat doesn't work because of attacks being limited to a +4 to +15 range, it works because you have goid stat+prof attack vs 15-25 ac mitigated by level scaling damage vs hp and the players have hardcoded rule tools to manage their ac & hp. Non-combat you only have ability vs dc (same as attack vs ac but with lower PC bonuses and no extra attacks) but 100% effects instead of damage vs hp. Also unlike combat characters can't default to their best stat +prof 99% of the time, people will get stuck with non-prof int/wis/cha checks vs the usual 15-20 dcs.

So to have good non-combat dangerous encounters that gice xp you need to either make them more like combat or invent a new game structure/subsystem. Or you can just narrate & make it all up as you go, depending 100% on your GMing skills to make it work.

[Ionathus]

My real problem with deadly social encounters is that no matter what you put in place, the method of judging failure will always feel arbitrary.

In combat, it really doesn't matter how many times your PC fails until they lose all of their hitpoints. They can whiff 12 attacks in a row and still be standing because the monsters were focused on attacking elsewhere.

But if I come up with a clever social ploy during, say, a trial scene where our party is accused of treason, I can whiff 3 Insight or Persuasion checks and die (if it's badly set up).

In order for a social encounter to have "death" as a consequence, you have to build in a buffer system like hitpoints. Something that tracks failure in a predictable and clear way to the PCs, and shows them roughly how well it's "going."

If you don't put in a ton of extra work to make it clear that they're not just living or dying based on your whims, it's going to piss somebody off. That's why people don't hate dying in combat so much: you know exactly what went wrong to lead to your death, and you don't spend a ton of time obsessing over "how the monarch/magistrate would react in the moment, on that day, if the wind is right, and it's a Tuesday, and the DM is feeling generous."

[NichG]

Well the trick is generally to have things be choices between consequences, where consequences compound naturally in such a way that there can be dead ends where a player would say 'yeah, I have no options left'.

Like if you say 'you can walk away now, OR you can bet your life on this single check that you have a 60% chance of succeeding, OR you can try to improve your position and your chances at a 50% chance of increasing your entanglement with this situation that will obligate you to resolve it (but you get the improved position regardless)', then if the player takes the 60% life or death roll its something they've picked, not something you decided to apply to them.

Telegraphing clearly what choices mean is important whenever anything really significant to the player's future experience of the campaign is on the line, be it combat or social or exploration or whatever.

[Willie the Duck]

And would you, as a player, be satisfied with them?

Much is often said about using social/exploration encounters in addition to combat to drain resources. That's all fine and dandy, but in order to drain resources they need to be challenging, and so I started to consider what these would look like. Now before we go any further, lets confirm exactly what deadly means:



A deadly encounter (regardless of what kind of encounter) "could be lethal for one or more player characters", the party (hypothetically) risks defeat, and they will presumably require significant resource expenditure to bypass without dying. What does a social encounter that risks death look like? Or an exploration encounter? Furthermore, how long should such an encounter last for? Is it expected to last game time equal to combat?

And, if you're a player who "fails" such an encounter (whether due to poor dice rolls or sub-optimal tactics/preparation) would you be 'satisfied' with a character death or even a TPK?

I ask, because I've been giving it some vague thought, and I'm not sure the game's expectations are built for it. From running the idea in my head I think if I were faced it as a player it might come across a little as 'rocks fall, everyone dies' by the DM, but that's just my initial thoughts. If the wider playground has suggestions for what would make a cool social/exploration deadly encounter, please do make mention of them, would love to incorporate more such interesting ideas beyond just combat.

I don't think we need to be overly restrictive in our reading of things. Yes, some encounters need not be combat; and yes, combat* encounters are divided into Easy/Medium/Hard/Deadly ; but that does not mean that non-combat encounters need to specifically meet the same criteria. I think that if a social encounter would likely require the same resources to best, and has potential failure-consequences similar to that of a deadly combat encounter (and given the potential non-permanence of death in D&D, there can be consequences on par with it), it ought to be considered the same 'level' as a deadly combat encounter.
*the source I'm looking at specifies that these are distinctions for combat encounters, correct me if I'm wrong

I think an example might be a gala with the Duke/Duchess -- the PCs are there to make a favorable impression and start negotiations towards building a keep on some land they own. There are rumors that there might be a thief (or assassin) there. There are, and they would like to pin whatever they do on the PCs. Also, one of the PCs is unwelcome, but needs to be there. Copious amounts of divination, obfuscation, and movement spells will all help thwart the criminals, keep the needed PC undiscovered, and gain whatever information might help sway the Duke/Duchess's favor. Success means they can start, extreme success and they might start working towards actual titles, failure a ranges from a lack of progress to ongoing negative reputation (to being jailed or worse if they end up causing unjustifiable bloodshed or they get framed for something).

[Corran]

If the wider playground has suggestions for what would make a cool social/exploration deadly encounter, please do make mention of them, would love to incorporate more such interesting ideas beyond just combat.

I've got both a social and an exploration (well, sort of) challenge that happened during the same session and led to character death. This turned out to be bigger than I expected.

Spoiler: many words

Show

The campaign at some point (fairly early on) turns into a race for seven keys (oh yeah), that unlock some hidden volt where there is treasure and a mcguffin. Classic stuff. There are rival groups going after the keys, and we had crossed paths with two of them already at that point in the campaign. One group (group newbies) are friendlies. They didn't have a key yet but we agreed that if both of us could collectivelly collect all seven keys, we would unite forces and share the loot (how do you share one mcguffin though, I do not know; and we'll never find out, as that group most likely died since our sendings stopped connecting). With the second group (group scumbags) we have a fierce rivalry. At that point we had fought them two times. The first we won (easily I might add), and ended up sparing the lives of two of their members who didn't succeed at fleeing. The second time we lost (they caught us in bad condition), they stole one of our two keys (we managed to keep one hidden), but they let us live to even the score of the first encounter. Anyway, the party is up to two keys again after that last encounter with group scumbags and we are going for the third.

The third key is at the hands of an orc chieftain named Volgo who lives in a nearby island somewhere. We learn about the location of that orc tribe (specifically on which part of the mountains they lived), and travel by boat on the closest human settlement, which is the port town of Eee (trololo). We learn that the humans there are paying gold and silver as a tribute to Volgo. And wouldn't you know it, this day is that day of the month when they go there to submit their offereings. So, we offer to take the tribute to Volgo, promising to kill him when we get to him. Easy peasy. It's not hard to convince the local human ruler to allow for this plan, as we are level 8 at that point so naturally we behave like we are the kings of the universe. I remember our paladin laughing when a concern was raised about us stealing the tribute, and saying that his full plate alone was worth more. So, with a little bit of convincing mixed with the right amount of threats from our more edgy pc's, and also thanks to the hillarious amounts of overconfidence we were exhibiting, we took off with the loot wagon and headed towards our next victim and the third key, which would be surely ours.

Our group is at level 8, and consists of 5 characters (fighter, paladin, ranger, cleric and finally the most brave, handsome and cunning of them all, a sorcerer).

Volgo (the orc chieftain) lives in an abandoned castle, but his tribe extends and occupies a large part of the nearby mountains and numbers many, many, many, many orcs. We realize that the situation was not as we expected as we start coming accross the orc population a long time before we reach our final destination, which is the castle. We pass by orc herdsmen, groups of hunters, lots of small camps with tents and even some makeshift houses where the mountain allows, lots of small or larger openings in the mountain where from orcs come and go (pressumably cave entrances to the inside of the mountain), we pass by a long abandoned by humans mountain village where orcs leave now. This is not just some small tribe leaving in a cave or something in the mountains. This is a very large orc population that could fill in a whole city, but instead extends all the way across this mountain path, at the end of which is the ruined castle where their chieftain resides. This is a deadly social encounter. Yes, it's unlikely that you will get attacked if you make sure that you dont give any provocation, but the danger always exists. What happens if you say the wrong thing? What happens if you respond to a provocation likewise? What happens if you respond to non deadly violence with a provocation or with violence yourself? This party stands only on level 8, and our only AoE's are the sorcerer's fear and stinking cloud, and the cleric's spirit guardians (which is very susceptible to concentration). Character death is lurking, and possibly TPK if the whole group joins in the stupidity.

The orcs are not aggressive towards us, we dont even get a strange look. A group of what appears to be orc hunters say something pressumably in mockery about us as they are passing by, but it's in orcish. At this point the DM asks if any of our characters speak orcish. None of us can. The DM bursts in laughter. Not a good sign. Our fighter is determined to pick up a fight. So he starts cursing at the orcs in common and in dwarvish. The orcs dont seem to understand (turns out that the orcs who lived in the mountains without having much contract with the humans of the lowlands did not have much use for the common tongue), but they respond with what appears to be curses in orcish and with insulting gestures. It's not unreasonable to assume that the orcs wouldn't hurt us if slightly provoked. After all it's only natural that they have instructions not to hurt the humans when it's payday. Yes, it doesn't take 5 people to drag a wagon, but what's there to gain by risking a good deal by killing humies? Maybe they fear Volgo more than they care to teach manners to the fools who chose to provoke them in their home. Or maybe they dont. And if their pride/anger/whatever of enough of them outweights their discipline/fear, that's very likely a character death, to say the least, that you've got there. Our DM chose the former (not to imply that he was often pulling punches, because he was not). But if I were the DM, I'd f****** roll for it.

Someone (I think it was the cleric) wondered if all orcs didn't know common. Nah, their chieftain must know. He is the chieftain after all. Turns out he didn't. We learnt that when we met him. When we arrived at the castle's inside yard, a group of orc warriors had us follow them (eventually with a hand motion). They led us to their chieftain's "court", where he was waiting. He talked to us in orcish. We didn't get it. We greeted him in common. Silence. We asked around the room which hosted about a dozen of the chieftain's warriors if anyone could speak common. Silence again. Then the chieftain told one of his warriors something, and that warrior left the room, closing the door behind. Now we were just standing there in silence. I loved how the DM played this out. He actually waited 10 minutes, without having an NPC do anything. This is a deadly social encounter. It's natural to assume that the orc left to fetch someone who could speak the common tongue. But what if he left to fetch reinforcements? What if the chieftain was wary of the adventurer types (yep, we didn't even diguise ourselves as townfolks or something, we just marched all the way and into that keep with all our geat showing), but at the same time he wanted to releive them of all their valuables? What if the players cannot wait for 10 minutes doing nothing, and choose to try to overcome the language barrier? Misunderstandings are even easier to occur and even easier to escalate to violence when you dont share a language. And players can panic too. What we did, is among the things I am most proud of, from all the dnd campaigns I've played. We waited in silence. Not just in character. Out of character as well. After the first or so minute passed I knew this was a trick. I dont know if the DM was baiting for something more than just awkwardness to happen (such as by having the orcs in that room respond harsher to anything perecived as danger or lack of respect), but I knew it was a trick, because the DM waited characteristically before asking us for the first time if our characters do anything. I had to cut off the cleric's player mid sentence with the suggestion of all of us staying silent and watching the DM (the end justify the means I suppose, lololo). And we all did that. We sat there, in absolute silence, and stared intensly at the DM. The poor dude tried his best. "Your characters are just staying there, doing nothing? Okaaaay....". Not a word.
"Time is ticking....". Not a word.
"What is everyone's passive insight score?". Not a word.
We weren't sure what the stakes were, but it had become apparent that this was a trick. And we were determined to win. By being patient. (Well, hopefully. I was begining to worry, but I had commited to silence and there was not going back).

10 minutes later, the door opened, and an orc woman wearing the trappins of a shaman entered the room. Everyone seems a little started seeing her. She must be feared. Indeed, she was the tribe's shaman. And she spoke the common tongue, albeit a bit broken. And she was the chieftain's wife. And it was hate from the first glance. Her name was Puma, and she would die soon. Regretfully, not agonizingly enough. She translated for and to the chieftain. The chieftain wanted to know our purpose for being there. He didn't believe we were just there to transfer the tributes, because we looked like glory seekers, so he wanted to know if we were there to fight a great opponent. We bulls***** him a little, but in the end he told us that he could guess that we were there for his key. He didn't seem to know how valuable it was, but he knew it was valuable. The reason he could guess, is because earlier in the afternoon, another group very much like ours was here, bargaining for it. And yep, from the descriptions we were given, they were undoubtably group scumbags. The reason he summoned us to him when we arrived, was the same reason he always summoned anyone looking capable enough. To try to convince the glory seekers of killing the dragon. Yep, it turns out that higher in the mountains, a dragon had made her lair. And that dragon demanded tribute from anyone an all living in her land. Humans and orcs paid alike. He offered us the same deal he offered group scambugs. We kill the dragon, he gives us the key. Group scumbags had accepted and they had moved towards the mountaintop, where the dragon's lair was. Apparently they had a headstart of about 2 hours or so it seemed. The mountaintop was about half a day's journey. We could catch up, but we would have to harry up. But before we went, we had to make sure. We asked to see the key, and at the chieftain's command the shaman obliged and produced a small box out of thin air. She assured us it was safe and challenged us to open it. None of us could, and she told us it was impossible to open or destroy by whatever means, and that only a certain phrase could open it. We thought of tricking her to open the box so that we could take the key and run (we had a rough plan, and it wouldn't be impossible), but the chieftain refused the box to be opened for anyone who had not proof that the dragon was dead. Very well, we would kill their stupid dragon for them, the real enemy was group scumbags and time. Before exiting we remembered to ask what kind of dragon it was, not that it would really matter, we were determined to beat the scumbags and we wouldn't let a stupid dragon to get in the way. Turns out, it was an adult red dragon. Problem...

Perhaps the direct approach was not the best one here after all. We said that we need a little time to think it over, which was ok with the chieftain. We approach Puma the orc shaman when she was in the castle's yard. After she assured us that no one else there could understand common, we suggested (in the most indirect way possible) that we would like to negotiate with her seperately. She accepted, but (obviously) she insisted that we do so then and there. The negotiations were very brief. She would give us the key in exchange for 6 potions of longervity. We managed to get her down to 5 easily enough (though I burnt one luck die for this stupid roll), but that was it. She named her price and moved to leave. We asked her if she had made the same deal with group scumbags. She said no. And left. We rolled insight. Something was fishy.

Finding enough potions of longervity promised a less epic death, but that was better than fighting a dragon. Unless... We contacted group scumbags via sending, told them we knew they were in the island of Sorrow, and that we were willing to meet and discuss up close the possibility of joining forces to take down that stupid dragon. They sent us back a nasty reply that I cannot type. We had concluded that they had made a deal with the shaman and that they were on their way to procure potions of longervity, but just to be safe, we decided not to mention anything about it. We sent to group scumbags again that they should reconsider, and that we should at least meet in a way that wouldn't put our keys at risk, just to discuss the possibility of a temporary alliance and of finding an agreeable way to determine who gets to keep the key after we succeed at slaying the dragon. They replied that they were happy to let us try, and they would get both the dragon's and our key (ha, they still thought we had one) when they slayed the dragon. After a while they sent to us, that a meeting was not out of the question. They just needed some time to talk it over among them. They asked us to give them 8 hours to decide. We agreed, and thought that they were in need of a long rest.

We were not happy with any of the solutions so far. Teaming up with the scambugs was something we didn't want and it was too risky anyway. Going against the dragon on our own was suicide. And going on a search for potions of longervity seemed boring and desperate. So, like the great adventurers we were, we decided to make out own solution. We would kidnap the shaman and force her to give us the key. But she was nowhere to be found, and we couldn't ask the other orcs for directions. So, we would require another meeting with the chieftain. That would ensure that the shaman would be there to translate. We would then lock and bar the heavy doors of the hall from the inside, we would kill the chieftain and his warriors (eh, they were not that many inside that hall at least), we would knock the shaman unconscious and then we would escape. I'd use dimension door and I'd take the unconscious shaman with me (I spent some time figuring out where it would be a good place to teleport), the cleric would disguise herself as an orc and she would seemingly retreat the fighting, but actually she would come to my location to help me escape with the unconscious shaman. The ranger would leap off from a window from inside the castle and would descend the dangerous mountainside using his skills to avoid or kill any pursuers. And the fighter and the paladin would escape with the horse we brought with us with the wagon and the paladin's mount, lotr2 style (apparently now the plan to kill the dragon involved horses and we had to show the chieftain...). When clear of our pursuers, we would reunite a little outside port Eee (shouldn't risk going in there not in full force since group scumbags were around). But first, we would ask the chieftain to give us some warriors to help us slay the dragon. Fifty sounded ok, and if he had, we would give killing the dragon a try.

Unfortunately the chieftain was not willing to anger the dragon (another luck die spent on this attempt), so I said "My breath stinks". I waited for the shaman to translate, and faced at the larger concentration of orcs and cast a stinking cloud, as my allies began casting spells, swinging weapons and shooting arrows. We managed to knock the shaman unconscious before she has the chance to act, as was our plan. The fighter was a GWM. He attacks an orc warrior twice. First hit, big damage. Second hit, big damage. "Is he dead?", he asks. DM: "He is almost bloodied". 9 more of this guy in the room this time, plus the chieftain, plus whomever else will start showing up as the seconds will go by. It becomes apparent, thankfully early on, that this is a fight we need to flee. And we do so, for the most part successfully. The fighter died fighting bravely till the end while surrounded, after his horse was brought down. No time for tears though.

Once in a safe distance and on our way to the meeting place, the shaman (who is manacled) begins to wake up. Me and the cleric sit her down and we make it simple. She gives us the key, or else. Cleric is not sure if to roll for deception or intimidation. The shaman replies that if we kill her, then we'll never get the key. I tell her that I dont care. Because getting the key is not as important as making sure that group scumbags dont get it. So killing her is still a win for me. But if she hands it over to us, at least she gets to live, because this will give me one more reason to gloat at my enemies so this is a preferable kind of victory. DM tells me to roll for intimidation. I dont want to, and I describe how my character speaks very in a very gentle and collected way (in an low attempt to avoid rolling, and thus possible failure). DM rightly insists, at least if I care about her handing over the key after what I said. I curse because I almost never train intimidation (how often do you need it anyway?), and this character was not an exception. But the dice gods are good, and I roll high. Puma stats crying. She then says that she cannot give us the key, but she can offer the next best thing. She summons her stupid box and speaks a phrase in orcish that makes the box produce a clicking sound, which apparently unlocks it. I ask her what the phrase meant. "Puma live forever", she replies. The cleric opens the box. No key inside. But it has a note. "We really hope that it's Alsemero, Jacob, Magnum, Souffro and Whisper reading this. But whoever you are, we [the sumbags] wish you a wonderful day." She confirms that group scumbags exhanged the key with 4 potions of longervity (the b******* came prepared somehow it seems; I guess, to be fair, they must be doing something while we were collecting our 2nd key). I look at my spell sheet to see which spell can inflict the most amount of pain. My only spell that deals damage is chill touch (thanks to tailoring my spells around a green dracnic theme and being good at sneaking at tricking). I am thinking of flying her up and dropping her to the ground, but I am wary of being seen by any nearby orcs and I dont want to spend the slot (DM tells me I cannot lift her anyway, but his opinion does not matter to me at that point). The cleric solves my dilemma by sticking a knife through her eye. The DM asks for the cleric's character sheet and changes her alignment. Now our party no longer has a non-evil pc. One of us, one of us!

Group scumbags has the key and at that point they are about 2 hours away from us. What hurts the most was not that we lost a pc, or that we were so narrowly beaten to the key. But that they had the nerve to suggest that we wait for 8 hours for their answer, so that they win some time and put more distance between us. And that we fell for it. When Puma walked into the hall the first time, everyone looked a bit surprised to see her. That's because she looked significantly younger than she did the previously that day. But damn if we ever caught on that. Nor did we realize what was going on when she so easily negotiated handing over the key to us. We just thought that this is the classic dilemma where the DM presents you the choice to work with your rivals to achieve something you wouldn't be able to on your own. Because, who the heck collects potions of longervity anyway!

We regroup. We learn from the paladin that the fighter didn't make it. But there is not time to lose. We head to the port. On the way we bump into the mayor who had trusted us to kill Volgo. "Get us a ship, fast!". Annoyed, he starts insulting us for running away (he thinks we are fleeing), but we have no turn to waste on him. On the harbor we quickly learn that group scumbags boarded a ship that sailed away about 1 hour ago. We seek to hire a ship, hopefully a faster one. I want to fly behind team scumbag and not to wait for a ship. I can steal the key below their noses, it's only a little risky (since I was very successful at these sort of things in this DM's game so far, but if I do, then this makes up for everything (our hurt pride included). We start looking at ship speeds, which in turn becomes a question of the direction in which the wind blows, which then becomes a question of the weather conditions. DM rolls. Storm, a big one and ugly. This makes the negotiations with the captain of the little mermaid harder. I throw a suggestion: "Catch that ship and we'll reward you beyond your wildest dreams, we are good for it. That's but a taste", I throw him a punch with 300 gold coins (Tiamat forgive me, I totally planned on taking it back). The captain agrees. DM lets us know that there is a chance that our ship sinks; same for the Gorgon, the ship carrying our enemy). S**** this. I keep two 2nd level slots intact, turn all my other slots to sp, and turn all but one my sp to 3rd level spells. I learn the general direction in which their ship was heading from the captain of the little Mermaid. One hand into the air, and I shoot up. My plan is to travel in that direction and ascending high enough to spot their ship's lights or something.

That's sort of an exploration challenge, right? The DM is fair and warns me. He tells me what I need to roll for survival to keep in the correct direction, he tells me by how much my successes have to overcome the failures to be in distance of noticing their ship, he tells me what I need to roll for perception if the ship has a light source and what if it doesn't. Lots of things need to go my way, but the DC's are not high, and I've got a luck die remaining, 40 or 50 minutes of flying time at my disposal and a thirst for vengeance. Hand to the sky, and off I go! The ranger shouts that I could carry him with me. He has a point, he is good at perception. But aboard the ship, since it wouldn't be combat, he would be a burden. The ranger is a pal, so I tell him. My character would be willing to take you along, but at the moment we notice the ship, he would drop you into the water to board the ship alone. The DM says that the chances of surviving the storm if thrown in the middle of the open sea would be small. I ask the ranger if he is willing to take a blow for the team. We agreed to pretend that my character didn't hear him.

Now, theoritically this challenge is not too deadly if the weather doesn't force concentration checks (it didn't in my case), as I have a good idea when to stop and head back the way I came. One nice touch that I did steal and would recommend, is to roll the important checks (survival and perception in this case) without learning the result. This way your decision making is not influenced by things you shouldn't know. Also, to not let anything be revealed by allowing or not asking for a roll (eg I was rolling for perception every time after my second roll of survival, whether the ship was in seeing distance from me or not; this way I couldn't know if the ship was example far away because I was moving in the wrong direction). So I rolled all my dice openly at the table but without me looking at what they rolled (I asked for them to tell me when it would be a good point to use my luck die, which was during my first survival check). Long story short, I rolled poorly, instead of backtracking I decided to risk it by continuing to search for the ship, I landed into the sea, convered my remaining slots to sp and then back for one last 3rd level slot which I still used for searching the ship. Eventually ending again into the sea and this time for good. Couple of athletics and constitution saves later, along with a few desperate perception checks from the other pc's as their ship was on the pursuit, my poor sorcerer died.

Was I happy with it? Noooo. I really wanted to get on that ship and find a way to trick the scumbags. But after a week or so it was just a fun session to remember. Our pc's didn't have the chance to go against group scumbags before the campaign eventually ended. The group scumbags were actual pc characters of another group that the DM was running the same campaign for. Our stories did not really interact, but the DM liked to use our groups as antagonists in the other party's story. We had not made our appearance yet at that point at their story, but we were to be team evil (hehe). They ended their campain with 3 keys. We ended ours with 6 4! I guess we showed them in the end!

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I think exploration challenges are best when they are given as a choice. Sort of, do you want to avoid the orcs and the Balrog by cutting though the mountains? It is better if cutting through the mountains also means you are saving time and that time is important, otherwise there is no real choice if both choices likely mean death.

I have a one shot, that I've run for 6 different parties so far (for two parties multiple times but this doesn't matter). It starts with the pc's in a tavern, reading through the available quests on the notice board. There is a quest posted by the local druid who asks for help dealing with ants! And there is a second quest that looks older and it's from the local lord, who promises a big reward if anyone can come up with information about his wife's stolen pearl necklace. Soon enough the tavern's door bursts open and a man shouts about goblins having attacked him at the forrest path near the old mines. He made it alive but the goblins took prisoners the rest of his travelling companions. Now, this is set that way so that the players feel more strongly towards accepting this last quest, which is about goblins in an old mine. The quest that the druid will give them is to use a spell on them that will shrink them in size, so that they can enter the ants nest and save his friend the ant queen by the ants seeking to overthrow her (but with the silly twist the the queen ant is rediculously evil). The ant about the pearl necklace is the least prefered, but IMO ends up the most interesting, and in the one time I had to run it for a group's second try ended up taking two sessions.

Every group so far has taken the goblin quest. When they finally enter the abandoned mine, they come accross a chasm. The players know that the goblins are inside and they can even spot (DC 13) two (recently; medicine check DC 8) dead goblin guards hidden close to the entrance when they arrive close. I tell the players that any character with a STR of 16 or higher can pass if unencumbered (no armor), but everyone else must succeed at a DC 10 athletics check to make it to the other side. I do that for a few reasons. Firstly, cause I am interested if the players change their mind and go for another quest (hopefully the one about the lost pearl necklace). Secondly, to see if they think about it more. The goblins must have a way to cross. And in fact they do, and that's a very long piece of wood that they use as a bridge. Of course they dont leave it there for anyone to see, but they keep it two rooms away with only 3 goblins along the way, and one of them is easy to kill. I want to see if they think to send one pc ahead to scout and hopefully come back with that "bridge". I doubt this is a good enough sample for anything, but I'll throw the results (I keep them in a file). Out of 6 first-try attempts at the mine, 0/6 parties decided to abandon the quest for another one. 1/6 parties thought to have a character that managed to get to the other side investigate a bit before anyone else crossed, and that was after the second pc that tried failed and died. Out of 22 pc's having gone through this, 8 have died in the chasm. Three rooms later there is a cage where there are prisoners, the ones captured by the goblins. There's a 3rd level open hand monk, a 3rd level thief rogue who has hidden a dagger on him still, a wild magic sorcerer (whose arcane focus is on one of the goblins outside -he was not caught and managed to trail the goblins but his rescue attempt failed), and a moon druid (all their hp halved, moon druid additionally down to only 1 wildshape). Players can choose one of them if they lost their character in the chasm, but whoever is not chosen is apparently too injured to fight and will instead head back to the village to try and bring reinforcements. The moon druid was always picked, had to drop his wildshapes down to 1, and since then the one player whose pc died went for the monk (though I doubt this means anything).

You meet the queen, and somehow manage to piss her off. She sends assassins after you.
NPC assassins. (See 5e MM)
Four of them.

Yep. It wasn't the queen, but we did antagonize the wrong person who did exactly that in our current campaign. He later explained that he was not trully after us, but he just wanted to check if he had any reason to worry. I believe that.

[Tanarii]

Who said there are supposed to be 'Hard' or 'Deadly' non-combat encounters in the first place?

DMG 261:
As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure.


So the default is you measure them by the same resource drain / chance of character death as described in the section on combat encounters.

[Unoriginal]

A social encountet that has 90% chances of killing the campaign: have the PCs find a Deck of Many Things.

[pulpexploder]

Deadly exploration encounters have been covered, but there's still some debate on deadly social encounters. A social encounter that leads to combat is a deadly combat encounter; we need an encounter with no combat that's deadly.

Here's a scenario.

You're drunk and trying to impress the barmaid, and you're actually making some progress. She's spent time talking to you and has asked if you're staying here tonight, noting what time she gets off of work. Then you sit on the barstool and fail the Acrobatics check (because you are very drunk), and you're so surprised that you rip this massive rancid far, loud enough to quiet all of the bar patrons. Eyes wander around, looking for the culprit, and when you try to get up, the strain makes you fart again, louder than the last time.

Then you smell it. Rotten eggs mixed with sweet wine and onions and cheese. People surrounding you get up and leave without paying their tabs. One halfling woman starts dry heaving and runs out the door.

You climb to your feet, still woozy, and lock eyes with the barmaid for a few awkward seconds. "It's alright," she says half-heartedly, but then you stumble forward and vomit right down her shirt. The barkeep runs over and tells you to leave, noting that you're banned for life. Your hero keels over and dies from embarrassment.

THAT is a deadly social encounter.