Combat NPC vs NPC fights : Should I just fake them?

[Lord Vangarel]

If it's a major npc then its treated as a normal fight, if there's lots of monsters vs npcs slightly off screen then I'll handwave a lot of it. If the fight is totally off screen I pretty much always handwave it.

[Jhaelen]

It depends on the npcs role:

If the npc is supposed to support the party, I'm doing it by the book.

If the party is supposed to ensure the survival of the npc or if it's their employer, I treat her a plot device and an additional 'hazard' during encounters.

Sometimes I also include npcs just to showcase certain monster abilities, e.g. by turning them to stone, disintegrating them oir turning them into undead. Let's call them red-shirts

[ThirdWizard]

Depends on the situation.

If the NPC is an equal of the PCs fighting alongside them in combat, yes, roll it.

If the NPC is an equal of the PCs fighting in a separate battle, holding back another threat, or doing something where the PCs will probably not get involved with the NPC's battle, but might get involved, then I figure average damage on both sides (accounting hit %, crit chance, etc.) and just subtract average damage from each side per round, throwing in the occasional special ability when appropriate.

If the NPC is a temporary henchman or follower, a sidekick, or some other non-important role, but is participating alongside the PCs for some reason, I calculate out average damage and apply it every round on their turn. I also don't keep track of their hp, assuming they die in two or three hits.

If the PCs are not involved directly, and won't be, I describe the fight shortly and cinematically in one or two sentences before moving on.

[Janx]

If 2 NPCs fight in the woods and no PCs are around to see it, did the dice rolls make a noise?

I use rules to resolve things for PLAYERS. If the players aren't involved, I don't need rules, because players wouldn't know if I followed them or not.

Generally, if I put a NPC into the party, I'd let the players drive it, at least for combat. I HATE rolling attacks against myself. Players LOVE rolling attacks against the GM. So let them do the work.

[Mallus]

Originally Posted by Janx

I use rules to resolve things for PLAYERS.

This.

I don't use the game rules to run something akin to a Rand Corporation simulation of Middle Earth. That would be silly. However, in situations like a PC-free duel between NPC's I'd probably assign simple percentages for victory make a roll or two so I'm not purely determining the outcome (and thus can still be surprised by it and forced to react to the results).

edit: also, the DM can't fake a fight between NPC's, anymore than a DM stating that the party awakes one morning to rain is faking the weather. What the DM narrates is by definition real and true.

Or the DM is faking everything, which is also true from a certain perspective.

[Lizard]

One addendum I wish to make is that even if the fight is wholly handwaved, it should be "believable" within the context of the world. If the Lord High Knight Commander has been established to be, say, a 15th level fighter, saying he was killed in a barroom brawl by a common drunk should make the players VERY suspicious, and if they track down the drunk, they should find he was a Rogue 10/Assassin 8, or that the Knight was poisoned and the "drunk" was a stooge to throw people off the track, or something. This isn't true just of D&D, but of any game with any sort of "power imbalance". If you want Doctor Armageddon, world-smashing villain, to be dead (or.... IS HE?), saying "He died when the entire (NPC) League Of Legends attacked him in his orbital fortress" should work; saying "He was shot by a rookie cop during a bank hold up", doesn't. (Unless, of course, it's a CLUE!)

You don't need to roll out every round, but you should at least make sure the fight outcome is somewhere in the plausible range. There's "handwaving", and then there's hammering a square NPC peg into a round plot hole.

[Dausuul]

For me, it really depends - my goal is to make the fight fun and interesting. If there's only one NPC (or a handful of minion NPCs), and his actions don't take a lot of time, I might run him as a normal combatant. I might also hand the NPC off to a player to run.

If there's a large number of NPCs and/or some of them have a lot of time-consuming abilities, I'll pair them off with a suitable set of opponents and handwave it - "Okay, these guys are gonna be busy duking it out over here for a while."

Typically, these fights end with the allied NPCs beating their foes right about the same time the PCs beat theirs.

[The Human Target]

Originally Posted by DeusExMachina

If the NPC is actually an ally and in the party so to speak, yes, I'll keep track, but if it's not an ally and the pc's don't influence it directly too much I just decide who wins based on factors like what is good for the story and what makes sense...

Pretty much this.

Even if I'm not running the combat (or skill challenge or whatever) I may still roll some dice to mess with the PCs.

[justanobody]

When the PCs are directly involved the dice come out for all parties involved.

If the PCs sneak by some fight then it goes off as the story dictates, and the PCs enter at the moment where the HP are at for those already in the fight.

Just as soon as the PCs enter into the fray everything is rolled and kept track of rather than making it up for the story as the PCs can change the story at any/every step/action.