D&D 5E (2014) Do you have fights that are *supposed* to happen?

[Psikerlord#]

For me if all depends on the situation. Yes, sometimes the fight comes to the PCs and they will end up having to battle. But mostly the PCs can do and try whatever plan they like.

In 5e it is very easy to improvise as DM. It's probably the best thing about the game and allows for easy side treks etc which is totally awesome.

 

[Sunseeker]

Sometimes fights come to you and your options are A: run away, B: fight. Diplomacy doesn't always work and I dislike it when players think a Nat 20 means they "win" at whatever they were attempting to do. Generally speaking my players want to fight stuff, so it's not a problem. Sometimes they want to talk their way out of things. I set up situations where fights can be resolved peacefully and where diplomacy can devolve into a fight. It really just depends on how the players approach things and the interests of the NPCs.

I don't mind if players decide to avoid, or engage in a fight that I otherwise had planned to work in reverse. Whats important is resolving the problem. If you can resolve it peacefully, great, if you want to resolve it with blows, okay. Each one has ramifications in the world.

EX: my players were passing by their home city on their way back from some questing and heard the situation there had gotten worse. So they approached the city wherein they weren't recognized and were barred from entry and so my players tried to fight their way through. Given that it was a party of 3 against an entire city guard, they eventually were fended off. Their attack on the city however convinced the already paranoid King that outsiders were planning to destroy him and his kingdom, which actually made the situation they intended to resolve worse​.

 

[MechaPilot]

This is a hard poll for me to vote in.

As a DM and a player, the general dynamic that I use and see in most campaigns is the one where you can avoid some encounters, but some generally have to happen. Now there tends to bit a bit of flexibility as to which ones have to happen depending on player choices, but there are some encounters that are just going to happen.

However, campaigns.

One of my favorite campaigns was a courtly intrigue campaign I ran for 4e. There was very little actual combat involved, usually a result of fending off assassins, or highway bandits when travelling between cities. A lot of the combat on the road was actually done by proxy, with the players controlling the NPCs that guarded them while travelling. Other than that, the closest thing to combat that the PCs faced was being challenged to various types of duels (and I used the skill challenge mechanic to resolve those). I had a tremendous amount of fun with that campaign, and the PCs could have and did go through that campaign with only a sprinkling of actual combat encounters.

Of course, I've also run a war-time campaign where the PCs were conscripted to fight for their home nation. That campaign was very combat heavy, as one would expect during war-time, and there was very little avoidance of encounters because the PCs were ordered to fight by their commanders.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I'm the kind of DM that creates a challenge and I don't bother thinking of how the players are likely to solve it - just make sure there are at least a couple things that could lead to a solution (i.e. you can at least choose between fighting a monster and trying to avoid the monster, or you could try to get the thing you need from NPC A or manage a work-around through NPC B, etc.).

I find not bothering to assume how the players will approach a specific situation results in me not being surprised by the players when they do whatever it is that they end up doing.

Even when I have hostile monsters that are trying to engage in combat as soon as the party realizes they are there, combat is not the only way to defeat the challenge those monsters present.

 

[Roadkill101]

I pre-determine a placed creature(s) initial attitude towards intruders (i.e. players) when planning an adventure, using the Encounter Reaction table from B/X. Any resultant combat is a matter of how my players handle the situation and the nature in which the encounter occurs. I try to avoid setting up any un-avoidable fights, however some creatures may be impossible to reason with (such a mindless, raging demon). Any random encounters have the creature(s) in question attitude determined on the spot.

 

[Henry]

My players generally don't maneuver their way through a week of work, resolving people's problems, paying their bills, saving lives, and building things, to skip a chance to crush their enemies, see them driven before then, and hear the lamentations of their loved ones.
I've seen fights resolved peacefully or bypassed by skills or cleverness, but in my experience it's rare to find a group who wants to go more than one session doing pure RP or peaceful resolution.

 

[Green1]

Ask 5 folks, get 5 answers!

To quote the Architect out of The Matrix, the problem is choice.

It is impossible to have all things written up for all possibilities. A good map of stuff in the region is a good idea to have with you and there are generic MM stuff. But, you are not going to have an entire world statted. (Take that back. I knew one guy who had statted an entire small city's entire population in 2e. But, that way lies madness)

Yes, if the campaign contains ANY combat (and just diplomacy games are fun, done right), there is some NPC or creatures that are destined to be fought. These things are in the world and may need to be taken care of for the party's agendas.

But choice... The choice of rather an encounter will happen or not depends on the motivations of PCs and NPCs. I would like to hope I give my PCs a lot of leeway into determining what is a threat or take actions to choose threats or anticipate it somewhat. There are situations that a fight WILL happen. But, there are always possibilities around it. Some chances, though, may be slim.

If you want to get somewhere and you are low level, for instance. A few zombies are in the way of the chalice of whatever the party is dead set on. No avoiding it unless you have power that makes the zombies meaningless except as flavor. And you can just say forget the chalice and go off being bandits, too. Town gaurd after you for stealing? Your PC made the choice to steal.

Choice. Any DM that railroads needs to seriously consider adding more sandbox. A lot of work, but more rewarding if you can pull it off.

But, I do say there is room for not much choice. One shots and convention sized sessions need a bit more linear structure to keep things moving for time constraints. It is unfortunate, but the nature of the beast.

 

[Hussar]

My players generally don't maneuver their way through a week of work, resolving people's problems, paying their bills, saving lives, and building things, to skip a chance to crush their enemies, see them driven before then, and hear the lamentations of their loved ones.
I've seen fights resolved peacefully or bypassed by skills or cleverness, but in my experience it's rare to find a group who wants to go more than one session doing pure RP or peaceful resolution.

Yeah, this. Sure, trying to talk your way through encounters is fantastic, but, I'd hardly expect that to be the norm. It's cool when it works, but, if it always worked, that would be kinda boring.

Sometimes, I just want to squish imaginary baddies.

 

[I'm A Banana]

One interesting thing is that a lot of DMs pretty much railroad their parties into some fights, and a lot of players even expect that to some degree. This would seem to challenge the received wisdom that railroads are bad things - at least when it comes to having to get into some fights, a lot of players seem to expect a bit of a railroad on occasion, so there's little reason for a DM to work hard to avoid them. They probably shouldn't ALL be inevitable (but some players certainly expect that, too!), but some fraction of them can be and nobody's getting their expectations thwarted. Sometimes, when you're facing a charging orc berserker that's crossing the rope bridge, "I cut the bridge and send him plummetting" isn't going to be a real option you can take. Lack of choice or agency isn't always a big deal.

Also interesting is the MASSIVE discrepancy between large quantity of DMs who are basically cool with players taking any encounter in a noncombat direction, and the low number of players who expect that to be the case. One would think those numbers would be closer - seems like there's a good chance of some players presuming that a given encounter is one of those little railroads they're fine with, when, in fact, the DM's more open to other solutions than they think!

And it might be important to note - I'm more interested in what you have the ability to do as a player than what you end up doing. If you had the option not to fight (even if it may be a challenge to talk the charging ogre down), but you end up fighting some stuff anyway, then you still had the very real option to resolve that differently (often more "efficiently," since skill checks don't cost resources). If that charging ogre was going to attack you no matter what you said or did to it, then you never had a choice but to roll initiative - and apparently that's pretty much as expected some times.

 

[CapnZapp]

Your poll lacks a choice for players playing the game because they LIKE combat.

Your issue is a non-issue for these players: "why would I want to AVOID combat, isn't fighting 90% of why we play this game?"