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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5299581" data-attributes="member: 4937">1) The party is being foiled by good-hearted and well-meaning people who just see things differently than they do.  There are plenty of matters of ethics, morality, and perception that good people can differ over.  "Blow them up" is here not a solution because it means hurting innocents and coming into conflict with the very people they wish to help and protect.ex. The PC's have to enter into the tomb of a great hero to precure a magical mcguffin.  The tomb is well protected by the extremely honorable local villagers, who aren't convinced of the need to descrecrate the tomb or of worthiness of the PC's.2) The party is being foiled by a rival who has considerable favor and respect by the public and/or people in places of power.  The rival need not be evil.  He just might not like or trust the PC's, perhaps for reasons that are quite valid.  Direct violent conflict with the rival will only confirm to everyone that the rival was right to distrust the PC's.ex. A highly placed minister serving the king has set up, duped, or framed the PC's.  Killing the minister does not help get the players out of trouble, nor does killing his soldiers.  Evasion, investigation, and diplomacy are far better strategies.3) The party is faced with a threat that they can only overcome with the aid of another enemy.  Simply antagonizing that enemy only makes matters worse.ex. A tribe of centaurs that ill-trusts humans and has been in sporadic conflict with them, must be recruited to fight off an impending goblin invasion.  Without this aid, the village is unlikely to be saved.  4) The problem is such that combat can't solve it.  Usually this is a 'man vs. nature' scenario.  For example, the problem might be one of survival - ship wrecked, lost without equipment in hostile terrain, etc.  Or it can be conflict with some sort of wide scale natural phenomenom - weather, plague, earthquakes, etc. - but in a magical setting the definition of natural is extremely broad and can include everything from the depredations well meaning but niave or foolish deity to embodied curses.  To solve the problem the PC's will have to leverage their non-combat powers and abilities.ex. The PC's have to survive and then deal with the aftermath of a tsunami.  While some combat is involved, the majority of problems require more mundane skills.5) The problem involves creating something, not destroying something.  For example, the party might be called upon to make shelters for helpless innocents caught in some disaster.  Or the party may need to perform some sort of mundane labor.  Or the party may need to craft a particular set of articles in order to activate a needed magical mcguffin.  I find occasional scenarios of this sort very interesting as a DM because it highlights to the players the limits of what they might otherwise believe is their exceptional power.  In such scenarios, usually the players find they are rather inadequate compared to normally 'helpless' NPCs.ex. In one adventure, the parties discover that the trouble with the kobold tribe is due to the fact that a recently dead town leader had negotiated a secret arrangement where the kobolds were paid off in exchange for peaceful coexistance.  The arrangement would not have been popular with the locals who would rather exterminate the little buggers.  The adventure was actually precipitated by an unscuplous successor who had been charged with carrying on the treaty instead pocketing the resources and selling them.  One possible solution to the adventure (and arguably the easier than digging the kobolds out of their home) is precuring the missing resources (keg of beer, barrels of apples, wheels of cheese) and reinstating the treaty.</blockquote>

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