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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sniffles" data-source="post: 2408916" data-attributes="member: 30035">I think it's great that you treated combat and non-combat options equally, but it does seem to have resulted in making your players reluctant to take obvious risks. This sounds like time for the carrot-and-stick method.The carrot is showing them a great reward they can obtain, but to obtain it they must take an equally great risk. The stick is showing them that choosing not to take the risk will have consequences other than not getting the reward. If they choose to negotiate with the villain instead of fighting him, this gives the villain a foothold in someplace the PCs wouldn't want him to have any influence. If they decide to let the monster alone because they think it's too tough for them, the monster destroys a village or kills an NPC who's close to the characters. They might still choose to keep avoiding combat, but if they know their actions always have consequences in the world their PCs inhabit, they might have second thoughts about being so cautious.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>