D&D General Why are we fighting?

[Micah Sweet]

Ok, gaming story time.

We were playing Dungeon of the Mad Mage. On one of the levels (I'm avoiding spoilers here), we met a Drow outpost - the main town of the drow was somewhere else. Now, we went in, crushed the outpost and kept one of them alive. And, when I say crushed, I mean it. I don't think we lost so much as a hit point. Now, my very frightening Paladin of Asmodeus tells our prisoner that we will release her to return to her people. We don't want to fight, but, we will if we have too. Just stay out of our way. We've just proven that you are no match for us, we're not interested in you, just stay out of our way.

So, we do a few things, spend some time doing stuff, and then wander into the drow town (mostly by accident since we were pretty much just aimlessly wandering looking for something else). Of course, the entire town comes out to attack us. Tries to mob us.

The entire fight, I'm saying (both in and out of character), We had zero interest in this fight. This is entirely your fault.

Wound up spending most of an entire session dice rolling our way through the fights.

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Now, how I would have handled that is entirely different. The released drow, terrified because we just obliterated all the others with ease, goes back to her people, tells them to give us a wide berth and be really polite if we do happen to venture close.

But, of course that didn't happen. Silly me for forgetting the cardinal rule of D&D which is that you must kill every single thing you meet, otherwise, you're just wasting your time.

I'd argue that it's very much a failure of the DM's imagination if they cannot think of why the defeated bad guys stay defeated and don't monkey's paw every single thing the party does.

Ok, but is every situation like that? Is that scenario even that common? "Punch the tough guy in the nose and he'll leave you alone" doesn't work every time, and not every enemy is one BBEG and a horde of intimidated followers who can be turned away with a threatening gesture or rousing speech.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That is why I like the Influence Action in One D&D along with the default attitude for NPCs. You could work up a set of morale rules from there.

I don't actually care for the way the new edition is planning to codify skills. Feels like they want to force the DMs hand.

 

[Oofta]

I don't actually care for the way the new edition is planning to codify skills. Feels like they want to force the DMs hand.

It's one of things I've been ranking low and will ignore if it's still in the next release. Assuming I switch to the new release of course.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Ok, but is every situation like that? Is that scenario even that common? "Punch the tough guy in the nose and he'll leave you alone" doesn't work every time, and not every enemy is one BBEG and a horde of intimidated followers who can be turned away with a threatening gesture or rousing speech.

If that’s how you dm, that’s why pcs never let anyone live.

If you don’t care, rock on. But if you get annoyed when players kill prisoners, the reason they do so is the alternative is fighting them all over again. Which removes the victory AND means there’ll be another combat that’s even easier, thus boring, and was totally avoidable. Except the dm wants pcs to be unrealistically nice in a world where most npcs are stupidly petty and combative.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If that’s how you dm, that’s why pcs never let anyone live.

If you don’t care, rock on. But if you get annoyed when players kill prisoners, the reason they do so is the alternative is fighting them all over again. Which removes the victory AND means there’ll be another combat that’s even easier, thus boring, and was totally avoidable. Except the dm wants pcs to be unrealistically nice in a world where most npcs are stupidly petty and combative.

So the things I mentioned above that aren't always true, need to be true in order for PCs to not kill everything they see? Is that what you're saying? Because otherwise I don't understand how this is a response to my post.

 

[jmartkdr2]

So the things I mentioned above that aren't always true, need to be true in order for PCs to not kill everything they see? Is that what you're saying? Because otherwise I don't understand how this is a response to my post.

It depends on the impression the payers have of the world - which means you need to start with npcs behaving the way that gets the results you want. You can’t subvert a trope until it’s been well established.

If the first prisoner betrays the party, that’s the last prisoner they’ll ever take.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's an old issue. I'm reminded of some of the discussions I participated in, ~25 years ago in the USENET newsgroups, particularly rec.games.frp.advocacy. The problems of both PCs and NPCs fighting to the death and never trying to surrender or flee, problems with GMs trying to set up scenarios where the PCs are expected to surrender, and problems with game mechanics that are weak on breaking away and escaping combat. GMs were expected to wing that last, with all the problems of unsatisfactory arbitrariness that involved. Even the pure Gamist guy's answer was that it should be intuitively obvious to everyone when a fleeing group has broken combat - no crunchy mechanics needed there.

Was that Brian Gleichman? If so, he was being a little blase; the issue is when one side wants to flee, and the other side decides its a good time to run them down and not have to deal with them later.

It was a problem with games in general, not just D&D. For PCs fighting to the death, the consensus was that if everyone in the party is still able to fight, then it's too soon to try to run, and if a PC goes down (or is even just slowed by injury) then it's too late to try to run. The right time to run never happens, and no one could come up with a fix for that.

Its an intrinsic problem; usually disengaging makes it easier to be attacked, so even if you're taking a beating disengaging as long as everyone is functional it seems like a bad idea. But as you say, most groups are not leaving someone behind, so...

 

[overgeeked]

It depends on the impression the payers have of the world - which means you need to start with npcs behaving the way that gets the results you want. You can’t subvert a trope until it’s been well established.

If the first prisoner betrays the party, that’s the last prisoner they’ll ever take.

That’s not my experience. If any prisoner ever betrays the PCs ever…that will be the last prisoner the players ever take in any game ever. Same with any general NPC betrayal. Ever have a quest giver betray the PCs. They’ll never trust another one ever again.

 

[Incenjucar]

That’s not my experience. If any prisoner ever betrays the PCs ever…that will be the last prisoner the players ever take in any game ever. Same with any general NPC betrayal. Ever have a quest giver betray the PCs. They’ll never trust another one ever again.

That's when you start leaving giant clues that they just slaughtered a reformed being.

Give them a diary with the last entry, "Today some adventurers showed me the error of my ways. I only hope that, when they release me, I can repay their kindness somehow. Perhaps I can talk my tribe into doing something for them to aid in their quest." etc.

 

[jmartkdr2]

That’s not my experience. If any prisoner ever betrays the PCs ever…that will be the last prisoner the players ever take in any game ever. Same with any general NPC betrayal. Ever have a quest giver betray the PCs. They’ll never trust another one ever again.

Fair point: players bring expectations with them. One dm can make a murderhobo, but it takes years to unlearn that.