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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jor-El" data-source="post: 5270407" data-attributes="member: 93132">Excellent topic, and an even more expert analysis.  I've faced some of the same issues as a DM myself, and I think alot of it stems from the "Gotcha DM's" that many have played under. I've had players that absolutely refuse to split the party under any circumstance, because they expect that I'm going to spring something unbelievably nasty (and deadly) on them as soon as they do. I've also had the problem of players using the "detect evil" as the catch all excuse for if they should kill something or not.  "It's evil, so it doesn't matter, let's just kill it."  Even when said evil creature isn't necessarily their enemy, and in fact, might be an important NPC that they need some kind of help or info from.  The best solution is to just talk to your players, either before the campaign, or the first time these situations come up, and just explain that you're not trying to pull a fast one on them, and that sometimes, not everything is there to fight and kill.  Another solution is to award more XP for non-combat situations, so the PC's don't get hung up on "we have to kill it to get the XP", which is also a driving force.  I try to award XP for certain story achievements, but realize that unless I give them a tally of it, they tend not to notice. I think I may start emphasizing that more when I award XP at the end of a session so they get the idea that combat isn't the only way to gain that XP, and sometimes more might be gained by avoided combat/killing.</blockquote>

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