Non-combat encounters

[Percivellian]

In your games, do you ever have encounters with villains that don't result in combat? Do they ever play out as a battle of wits, or an exposition scene? DMs, when you want to run an encounter like this, how do you go about setting it up, and keeping it interesting? Players, how much do you enjoy these kinds of encounters compared to hacking and blowing up your foes?

Thank you for satisfying my curiosity,

Percy.

 

[Romnipotent]

Depends, as a player I've walked up and said "I challenge you to a game of chess!" then he attacled me... most unkind for a Blackguard

Another time I walked up to this BBEG and just said, "It might be better if you just come with us." then he peered behind me to see a sorcerer holding two balls of energy of pure arcane might (heh), a Druid changing shape, the fighter listing off command words to activate his sword and shield, and a rogue... wait wheres the rogue...
He just sighed and put his hands out, we'd come prepared. Most oftenly they will fight to the death, but this was that twisted moral side story BBEG trying to recover his wifes lost soul.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

It usually turns into a confrontation where the party stops combat to negotiate so that they can get away or so that they can try to get someone to interrogate. Sometimes I've had these sorts of encounters with villains that the party didn't know were villains. It's usually fairly brief. I'm not as clever as my villains, and I get enough matching wits with my boss at the office who thinks it's his duty to insult me daily, so I tend to move on to more fun stuff. That said, I think the occasional villain bantering or even dealing with the party when interests converge temporarily is a lot of fun.

 

[VirgilCaine]

In order to get this to work, you have to give the PCs a reason NOT TO KILL THE BAD GUY. AN OBVIOUS ONE.

Like in a movie I saw, an escaped con had the only matching blood type for this cops kids nasty disease. Sure, the cop had lots of chances to kill the con, lots of reasons, also, but he obviously couldn't do it.

Also, see Princess Bride.

 

[Impeesa]

I've had one that was still a combat encounter, really, but the enemy never engaged in hostilities at all. I was running a two-session mini-game while a friend was in town visiting. It was basically the original Diablo transplanted to Spycraft. When they reached the very bottom of the old temple underground, the room containing Diablo's soulstone, they had just caught up to Cpl. Albrecht (name should sound familiar to the hardcore Diablo fans out there). When they burst in, they startled him, breaking his concentration so he gave in to the whispers and rammed the gem into his forehead. Diablo starts to assert his form over his new host.

So the encounter plays out like so: The PCs empty out hot-loaded magnums as fast as they can on their turns, while the enemy's body just looks tortured as it grows. His defenses (AC, DR) were rising every round he stayed up - and so was the will save DC to not move down a step (shaken -> panicked -> catatonic). Sadly, I only 'took out' one PC (knocked her down to catatonic with fear), and the whole thing was very rushed when we actually played it out, but I maintain it was a cool setup. Lord of Terror, indeed.

Moral of the story: PCs will beat the hell out of anything, whether it fights back or not.

--Impeesa--

 

[reanjr]

Plenty of exposition scenes. Not so much battle of wits. My players aren't armed for that kind of combat.

I don't really set anything up. If it just happens to happen that way, it happens. If it doesn't, then someone usually dies.

 

[Greylock]

I do appreciate encounters with foes, even major ones, that do not result in combat. I really, really do. And I hope for the love of gawd this thread is read by my DM before our next session. I really, really do.

 

[Piratecat]

Quite a few of my encounters with foes don't devolve (or escalate) into combat. Most recently, I handled this in a fairly fun way.

First, I emailed all my players but one particular one and said "a bad guy is going to show up tonight, but it's just in a dream that this other player is having -- it isn't really happening. I want you guys to be normally angry with the villain at first, but gradually start to agree with him and argue on his behalf with each other. As the dream goes on, you'll get more and more certain that the bad guy has the right idea."

Then when the chosen PC was doing something where he might drop off to sleep for a few minutes (taking a bath, in this case) I had the bad guy show up with no warning at all. It went beautifully; the PC screamed, everyone else rushed in, and they faced off united against the bad guy. Ten minutes later, everyone was arguing that the bad guy made sense, and the female paladin was flirting with him. That's when I told the PC that he wakes up, still in the bath, with no one around.

Of course, the conversation was legit - the bad guy has a way to get into dreams - but it was a fun way to play with the player's mind and let the other PCs play devil's advocate.

 

[LondonReign]

Sure, of course. Usually the set-up was that the PCs didn't know if it was a bad guy or not, so they had to be cautious.

Instance #1: The are hunting for someone they *think*, from other clues, may have killed their contact, but they can't be certain...only circumstantial evidence points to this person, and they can't even be sure that the killing wasn't justified in some way. Thus, when they actually track this person down, a conversation (rather than melee) breaks out. Of course, that one eventaully lead to a fight that took down one of the PCs before they routed the bad guy and forced him to flee for his life.

Instance #2: The PCs are investigating a disturbance along a river when a huge creature swims up, emerges from the water, and yells at them. I show the PCs a picture of a monster they had never seen before (ormyrr, 2nd edition picture) and they have no idea whether to fight, flee, or negotiate. In this case, the ormyrr actual offers them a reward to track down the nasty kobols that have been disturbing the apiaries he has been cultivating.

So in general, it works best for me when the PCs don't know if they are facing friend or foe.

 

[Darkness]

I like social encounters in a setting where violence would antagonize a third party neither the PCs nor their enemy can afford to make their enemy (or let it they're its enemy).
I fondly look back on numerous wonderful encounters of this kind in Vampire: The Masquerade. But it works in D&D just as well - e.g., the enemy is a nobleman who has the king's favor. Thus, openly attacking him almost anywhere in civilization is very, very risky.

Meeting the enemy to exchange prisoners and/or items is interesting too. Usually, the enemy they'll meet there is just a lieutenant of a greater evil, of course, but these guys often make the best nemesis anyway.