D&D General Do You Run NPC vs NPC Battles? Why?

[Swarmkeeper]

Curse of Strahd has a nice way to deal with NPC v NPC action.

Spoiler: Wizard of Wines Fermentation Vat combat scene

Specifically, at the Wizard of Wine Winery, there are four Swarms of Ravens in the rafters of the wine who help the characters by each taking out one twig blight each round of combat. No rolls, just gets narrated. And, it helps speed up the combat as there are 24 twig blights.

Beyond NPC allies, I do believe a three-sided battle - NPCs vs NPCs vs PCs - can be a fun and interesting twist to "standard" combat. Through experience, however, I've found that to pull it off most effectively, the spotlight needs to move quickly past the NPCs if they are attacking each other. IME, it is only truly worth rolling when the PCs are the ones being targeted. The players don't want to sit through the attack and save rolls of NPCs vs NPCs. Those rolls are decidedly an order of magnitude less on the the tension scale. The DM just needs to make a narrative judgement call and move on quickly to something that directly involves the players. I mean, players do get excited when an NPC takes out another NPC as that often gets the party closer to their goal but the players don't really want or need to see the NPC v NPC sausage getting made...

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If there are NPCs in battle alongside the PCs, I'll assign an average damage output for them per round and leave it at that.

If it's solely NPC vs. NPC, that happens in the background. If the outcome is in question, I'll just roll a d20 to decide who wins, or even just flip a coin.

 

[Li Shenron]

For testing purposes, I have occasionally run battles between NPC & monsters since 3e, but never during an actual gaming session. If it ever happens that the PCs are witnessing someone else's battle, I narrate it but I don't actually run it. If I were undecided about the outcome, I might roll a few dice but still definitely not going to run it by the rules.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I have done this a few times in the past to familiarize myself with the rules. At the gaming table I just make dirty words up when it comes to Non Player Character versus Monster/Non Player Character, and I'll fake-roll some dice to make it look pretty.

 

[guachi]

I've never done this kind of thing for D&D specifically but it's exactly the kind of thing I'd enjoy doing. I'd play board games by myself and play both sides. But if I did I'd never do it during a session. I mean, I enjoy reading Enworld but I'd never do that during a session, either.

If I have NPCs working with PCs in a fight I've had luck having the PCs run the NPCs. The players seem to have fun getting to do something different during combat.

 

[Larnievc]

So, as a DM I sometimes I find myself playing out battles between NPCs and/or monsters if I have the time.

For example, the previous session of my current campaign ended with a barbarian NPC ally running off to do battle with some monsters out of sheer bloodlust. Today, I had some free time and decided to go ahead and run several rounds of combat between this NPC and some monsters so that when the party catches up with them at the start of the next session they'll join a battle in progress.

For another example, earlier in the campaign the party encountered a squad of tired, injured duergar with little inclination to fight and a dead ally nearby surrounded by the remains of kruthiks. At home I had run this squad of duergar against a number of kruthiks, and their status in the actual session was derived from the results of this battle.

I guess I do it because 1) it helps me familiarize with tactics or test out homebrew creatures, 2) it helps the world feel more real, and 3) it's fun to play out the fight and let the dice help decide what happens (such as if the NPC that ran off has been wrecking all-comers or has bitten-off more than they can chew).

This isn't something I have the time to do often, but I probably would do more if I did. I'm curious if this is something other DMs ever do and why.

Not me. I narrative the naughty word out of npc combat so the wrong one doesn’t die or we waste too much time in session.

 

[Eventhorrizon]

Do I ? No. Would I?

Only if I was positive the Players would enjoy it, and rarely even then.
If you can manage to get the players invested enough in an NPC that they care about how a fight they are not taking part in turns out then go for it, but that is far easier said then done. I would expect Players to interfere if they cared about the out come so it would never stay a true NPC VS NPC fight. If the players didnt care about the out come, then this is the worst thing you could possibly do.

Allot of ideas you can get away with rarely as a novelty but if you use them too much will become grating fast. Unless you are positive the players would want to watch the fight play out, I would advise dont do this.

 

[Lanefan]

For me it depends how important the outcome is to what might happen next.

I once ran a situation where the PCs stumbled onto an in-progress three-way battle between some Ogres, some (known-to-be-hostile) Humans, and some [other creatures I forget now]; the immediate backstory being the Humans and Ogres were fighting over the right to hunt and eat/enslave the other creatures, who in turn were fighting back against both.

I expected the PCs would pick a side to support and dive in, but no: instead they took cover, watched, and waited for an easy-to-mop-up winner to emerge. This meant I had to, in the name of both realism and random chance, play out the whole combat round by round and narrate what the PCs saw, much like a play-by-play commentator.

The end winner (and only survivor) was a single Ogre; who the PCs immediately charmed, cured up, and took in to the party as a meat shield.

Most of the time, though, if it matters I'll just roll a situationally-modified d20 each round for each side.

 

[Yora]

No need to run the game mechanics for stuff that doesn't involve the PCs.
If I need to know the outcome of a fight between NPCs that isn't obvious, I can roll a dice for each side, perhaps give one side a bigger dice if it's more powerful, like 1d8 against 1d12.

 

[GMMichael]

I run NPC vs. NPC battles so my players can enjoy spoony classics like this: