The stakes of combat need not be death.Then don't have fights, have something else that has stakes involved
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you need to have stakes.
The stakes of combat need not be death.Then don't have fights, have something else that has stakes involved
<snip>
you need to have stakes.
Deadliness is not synonymous with difficulty. You can have a difficult fight with low stakes, or an easy fight with a (small) chance of TPK.Encounters should be deadly, be it monsters, traps, assassins...what have you. Talking to the local bartender should not be deadly though.
The stakes of combat need not be death.
To build on what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] said. Difficult can mean different things:
Thematically/emotionally challenging: You can save the day, but only if one of the PCs agrees to sacrifice his/her life; or you have to choose between preserving your PC's honour or doing jutsice, but can't achieve both; etc. This is probably the least common sort of challenge in RPGing, but personally I think it is one of the most important forms of challenge that players can face.[/indent]
Different tables will want to have different sorts of difficulty - or, perhaps, even none at all - in their RPGing.
Of course not!But do difficult encounters have to be confined to combat? I don't think so personally.
Does the monster think it is a fight to the death? If so, then it sounds to me like a fight to the death.
Even against monsters, fights can end with surrender, or parley.In order to defeat this monster, you must....
TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS!!!!!!!!!!!
I'd reiterate - why do the stakes have to be death?The meat and potatoes of the adventure however will always be--at least when I am DM--a creature or character that can certainly kill everyone and only smart playing and strategy will lead to victory. Otherwise I don't know what would be the accomplishment of winning or why anyone would warrant even a single XP from winning a fight they had no chance of losing.
Earlier this year I ran a session of In a Wicked Age.There is no greater stake than love!
I'd reiterate - why do the stakes have to be death?
There's no connection between "no chance of losing" and fighting to the death. PCs can lose fights without dying - they get captured, they yield to a superior opponent, they suffer shame, etc. In real life people fight without death being the outcome, and perhaps even moreso in genre fiction.
I've been taking seriously that this thread is in General, not D&D.That's all that the basic mechanics address