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Do You Think Encounters Should be Difficult?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7526055" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Even against monsters, fights can end with surrender, or parley.</p><p></p><p>And fights needn't be against monsters (in the strict sense). They can be against other people, for honour or truth or other values.</p><p></p><p>The AD&D Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures had generally applicable rules for duels of honour (subdual, vanquishing). So even D&D hasn't always regarded the stakes of combat as death.</p><p></p><p>I'd reiterate - why do the stakes have to be death?</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7526055, member: 42582"] Even against monsters, fights can end with surrender, or parley. And fights needn't be against monsters (in the strict sense). They can be against other people, for honour or truth or other values. The AD&D Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures had generally applicable rules for duels of honour (subdual, vanquishing). So even D&D hasn't always regarded the stakes of combat as death. 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. [/QUOTE]
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