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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6703881" data-attributes="member: 5834">I've never had players that look to avoid fights. My players like to fight. They prefer to solve problems with combat. I've had plenty of fights they could have avoided, but they often end up starting fights that aren't necessary. Their propensity to want to kill everything has led to problems in campaigns where they fail to gain allies that could help them or they kill an NPC they didn't have to kill or that NPC has to run. In the most recent Tyranny of Dragons module, one of the PCs ended up driving off an ally that was supposed to help us because he tried to start a fight with the ally. Combat is the most fun part of the game for my group and the one activity they are all equally capable of participating in.That being said, I do have fights the players can't avoid if they want to stop the evil from happening. The evil tyrant king that was trying to take their kingdom wasn't going to stop due to negotiation. I do not allow social skills to work in situations where the opponent has zero interest in allowing them to work no matter how good the social skill is. In that particular instance the players did not initiate the fight, the evil king did. He hired a hit team and went after them. There are often instances where the only way to avoid the fight is run and let the evil guy do his evil. My players rarely choose that option. I see it as unrealistic to allow players to always avoid a fight. Sometimes enemies use violence and the only option for avoiding a fight would be running. The players always have the option to run and let the bad guy win, but they rarely choose that option. Hell, they rarely choose the negotiation option when that is available. Even if they negotiate, they usually feel they are negotiating from strength and engage in threats. If they are clearly more powerful than an opponent, I'll let them win through intimidation. Yes. I do have fights they can't avoid with any method other than running. I would find a game that did otherwise to be lacking in verisimilitude. Rather than citing the numerous real world examples where there was no choice but to fight, I'll just say sometimes evil people give  you no choice but to fight and there are a lot more than evil people in D&D that won't stop unless they are violently beaten.I'm not going to vote on the poll. None of them fit how I feel. "Supposed" to fight is a word I don't care for because players always have the option to try something else including running. I prefer "the villain will not be deterred other than by defeating it in combat." That is how I see it. It has more to do with the motivation of the villain than my motivation as a DM or the players ability to avoid the fight. If my players said, "We want to work for the villain and offer our services." They could do that and avoid the fight and get paid. They would be part of the evil after that. Since they tend to play heroes, they don't want to engage in that behavior. That has nothing to do with "supposed" to fight.</blockquote>

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