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

[I'm A Banana]

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?"

See my post above - liking combat or wanting to choose it often isn't an option 'cuz that's not really what I'm interested in. I'm interested about when the DM is going to MAKE you fight vs. when you can get out of it, if you want. If you don't want, but still have the option, then you still have the option. If you don't want, but don't have the option, then you still don't have the option. The option (and the expectation of the option) is what I'm curious about.

 

[Leatherhead]

In my groups (DM and player):

Fighting the enemy is always "Plan B". Mostly because fighting is really dangerous. Like really, we don't pull punches in a fight for our lives and neither does the enemy, often times there are large swaths of collateral damage.

"Plan A" Is whatever hair-brained scheme we thought of in order to not fight. Sometimes bluffing/diplomacy, sometimes stealth, sometimes poisoning the water hole and giving everyone the runs. Sometimes it even works!

"Plan C" is whenever we stop fighting early in order to capitalize on a gimmick we figured out mid-fight. This almost always works.

 

[delericho]

So how about you? Do you have fights that are supposed to happen, that will basically happen even if the party tries to avoid them?

No, not as such. I have fights that I expect to happen, but that's in the sense of "I estimate the probability of this at 50%+", not "I demand that this happen!"

As far as possible, I try to prepare for players to approach a situation in four distinct ways: they can fight, they can try to negotiate their way through, they can try to evade the encounter entirely, or they can try to trick their way through.

(Obviously, not ever situation will allow all the options - it's generally hard to negotiate with a rock!)

 

[ExploderWizard]

Something that hasn't been brought up is the XP factor. The effect of combat on character advancement can be a huge determining factor on how much of it players want. If combat challenges provide the bulk of your XP, of course being more bloodthirsty makes perfect sense. Removing the meta-game motivations for combat would give a more unbiased view of players entering combat frequently for its own sake.

Some will still dive right in because its fun. Others might not want to be as reckless if advancement isn't linked to combat as strongly. In default 5E, I love going into combat as a player if the standard XP system is being used. In old TSR editions, with treasure as the prime XP source, I am less interested in combat that has little chance of providing a good loot haul.

XP matters.

 

[Minigiant]

When I dM I have some encounter which are 90% going to be fights due to the nature of the individual. Situation were the checks and resources to have nonviolent encounters aren't impossible but they are hard and failure creates an even harder fight.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Something that hasn't been brought up is the XP factor. The effect of combat on character advancement can be a huge determining factor on how much of it players want.

Yeah, but I'm not interested in how much players want combat, I'm interested in when they don't have a choice but to engage in combat, whether or not they want to. If they want to and they don't have a choice, nobody minds, but if they want to and they DO have a choice, it implies that maybe there's more efficient ways of handling encounters, and if they DON'T want to and DON'T have a choice, it can lead to feeling like you're being railroaded.

 

[Remathilis]

I tend to run a more story-based campaign, and there are some encounters that effectively are "slay the bad guy" and the players are glad to do that. That said, lesser encounters with minions and random monsters can be (and sometimes are) avoided.

 

[I'm A Banana]

One way to think about it:

Your players are involved in a McGuffin hunt where the McGuffin is being held in a dragon's lair. The DM plans out the dungeon, the encounters, the combat terrain, budgets the XP, the whole nine yards.

Before the party even sets foot in the dragon's lair, do you have some fights in that lair that you will make happen almost no matter what the players do?

• Do you make the party fight every encounter? If they find a shortcut to the dragon's lair, do you then move the McGuffin go be in whatever the last room they clear is? Or is the dungeon a straight shot through pre-planned encounters to get to the McGuffin where they can't choose to go around an encounter?
• Do you make the party fight at least the dragon? If they find a shortcut to the dragon's lair, is all the effort you went to making the encounters and terrains in the rest of the rooms content they can just skip over? But will the dragon attack them no matter what they say or what they do? If they send in a rogue who sneaks successfully, do you have the dragon wake up anyway? If they try to flee, does the dragon pursue them and force combat? Is the McGuffin only released after the dragon's death? And if they try to get an NPC army to trigger that death, does that have a chance to work?
• Do you allow the party to avoid every encounter? If they sneak into the dungeon, find the shortcut, grab the McGuffin, sneak out, and hide from the dragon's vengeance, is that something that you'll accept without forcing a fight?

Very old-school D&D seems pretty cool with the last notch on that list, but judging by the few respondents here, it might be the case that most players don't expect that the game is run that way (and a lot of DM's do indeed run their game in such a way that some fights are inevitable).

 

[EdL]

The key word in the first two choices, and the reason I voted that way, is PROBABLY. Which, judging from the OPs last few posts, is not what he ment.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Something that hasn't been brought up is the XP factor.XP matters.

I didn't bring it up because their shouldn't be a difference in how much XP is gained whether you beat those monsters in combat, avoid those monsters (knowingly, of course), or engage those monsters in some interaction that ends favorably, or some other way in which the challenge of "there are some of these monsters here" is played through and the party isn't defeated in the process.

That much has even been said in the rulebooks, with varying levels of clarity, for many editions now.