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

[cmad1977]

I think everyone's answers can be distilled down to the following:
'Sometimes'.

 

[Quickleaf]

What happened to Kamikaze Midget?

Statistically, I fall somewhere between...

As a DM, I'm cool with the party avoiding some encounters, but not others (like boss fights).

AND

As a DM, I'm cool with the party doing this campaign as pacifists, if that's what they want.

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?

My players are sufficiently bloodthirsty that I don't need to go out of my way to put fights in their path. Bodies are going to hit the floor one way or the other.

I do try, when designing "significant"/interesting/narrative-driven encounters in advance, to dream up a few alternate methods of problem resolution, even if it's just a quick note to myself.

A good example was a sentient giant spider the PCs came across called the Mother of the Hollow. PCs were investigating infestation of giant wolf spiders in a village, forest gnome ranger spoke to a swarm of spiders and learned about "the Mother", then PCs tracked spiders back to lair down an unstable fissure beneath a dark magic tree.

My notes were basically:
1) Fight? "the Mother" giant spider (sentient, lair actions, and a creepy personality), a lot of giant wolf spiders, the spider swarm they let go, and web traps
2) Negotiate? "the Mother" is originally from Underdark but was trapped in the fissure lair after quake, and might turn over cocooned corpses & treasure in agreement to leave if PCs can gain her access to Underdark again ...future complication/ally?
3) Circumvent (morally dubious)? what about collapsing unstable rocks onto spiders, thus trapping possible cocoon victims down there? what about dealing with the tree spirit to turn spiders against "the Mother"?

In fact, the party ended up going with #2, albeit with a hefty helping of "gambling as a distraction" from the halfling PC! We dubbed that "chapter" Gambling in the Dark

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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? Or are you cool with your epic evil dragon being asked to kindly leave the town alone by the bard who rolls a 20?

The epic evil dragon isn't going to leave on a mere Persuasion check, but it could be persuaded that the bard was going to join up with it, if he was really going to do so. (Otherwise it would be a Deception check, and note BTW that a natural 20 on an ability check can still fail--crits only happen on attack rolls.)

That's not the only way the non-fight narrative could play out, though. You could also spend your time rallying allies to fight the dragon off (friendly dragons, Couatls, or even just a large body of regular troops) and send them off to war while you stay home and knit.

Or you could poison the dragon's food to incapacitate it and then drown it. (It might not work but I wouldn't mind if you tried. No guarantees.)

I have to admit that I am more comfortable DMing the combat resolution than the 100% diplomatic approach, and when I have a player who takes the diplo approach to everything and cuts deal with the bad guys, I quickly run out of material (because it requires instantly fabricating motivations and entire networks of relationships between bad guys). But I won't stop players from trying to do it, especially on a smaller scale.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I do find that thinking of non-fighty solutions helps me flesh out motives and context more robustly. Thinking of the motives for the monsters gives some interesting possibilities - the bugbear war chief might just want to overthrow the ogre over the next hill; the dragon with the McGuffin might value gold over the magical item; the demon who wants to destroy the world might have no trouble believing that the party sorcerer wants to burn the world just as badly as she does.

And while a 20 isn't always a success, bounded accuracy certainly can mean that a 20 beats even a vastly difficult DC.

 

[sleypy]

This was an odd question to answer. I would have a different answer if it was GM (instead of DM). I don't think I have had a player play a pacifist in D&D for any reason other than for a mechanical gain. D&D would be very low on my list for players that don't want combat.