I guess we can just chalk it up to differences in playstyle, then. . . In my games, the most common foes are humans (or other sentient races) with a sprinkling of "monsters" in order to keep them monstrous and awe-inspiring.
Yeah, there are differences, I just don't think they are THAT much different. We did discover that defeating humanoid opponents with classes is way too easy and rarely used them as enemies. Although we played a lot of Living Greyhawk where we had no control over what opponents we'd encounter and they'd vary dramatically. In addition to our home game, of course.
I'd like to address a couple of the specific examples.
The PCs often call for people to surrender, take prisoners, interogate, etc. . .
My players do as well. But evil people in my campaigns are Evil. They sacrifice their allies to save themselves, would rather die than see their plans fail, are unthinking brutes, are overconfident, are insane, and so on. They have every flaw that you see in movie villains. Most of them would rather die than tell the PCs any information if captured. The rest will lie to save their lives or don't know anything.
Often the PCs still take prisoners because they don't just want to kill everyone. But between bonuses to hit that are so high that taking the -4 to do nonlethal is no big deal and Merciful weapons, it is no real deterrent. Besides, it only proves my point that attacking(even for nonlethal) is a better option to defeat enemies than the other options.
- A bar brawl against drunk and surly locals
They've been in this situation. Attack with their weapons for nonlethal damage was the order of the day. Disarm and trip were wasted rounds when you could knock them all out and wake them up with healing spells while tied up later.
- Against normally peaceful lizardfolk who have a human captive. How do they save the captive, not raise the ire of the LF tribe and get the bottom of the confusion? The fight had an on-going negotiating factor, fighting to subdue and confusion between the PCs are to how to handle it.
An interesting situation. It likely would be handled by my players by either never starting a battle at all OR if given no choice, they'd simply hit every enemy in sight for non-lethal damage until they were all unconscious. While giving them a chance to surrender and making diplomacy rolls each round to try to stop the fighting.
- Against twistedly transformed foes that exploded into a caustic burst a round after death, requiring careful strategy in fighting them and being able to get out of the range when one was defeated.
It depends on how much damage they did and to how big of a radius. Once the first one hit and they knew how big they exploded, I don't see the group having any problem killing one, then spending the next round getting out of the area, then going back in to attack another one. Either that, or they'd simply take all the damage and have the cleric heal them back up to full the round after.
But I don't see the use in the other combat maneuvers here either. Bullrush is the only one I could see being handy, to move them away from the casters. Maybe a grapple and moving them away would also be useful. Grapple was our solution to an enemy that had similar burst damage in the past.
- Against a hopping/flying small dragon that would swoop in for attacks and then move away again.
Yeah, by necessity, they'd be forced to attack only once with readied actions. Either way, they'd be unlikely to use any other action. Maybe a grapple if someone in the group thought they were capable of succeeding.
- An ambush against a band of goblins and wargs in a wooded and hilly area, where they could afford to let none get away, requiring them to chase down the foes that fled and could lead them into their own possible ambush.
Guess I'm not seeing how this is resolved by using any of the other options either. If you hit and kill an enemy in one hit, it doesn't get the chance to run. If it runs, you can either run at the same speed as it until it stops or you can charge it if it doesn't get far enough away. If you run into another ambush, you kill everything that attacks you and move on.
You'll find that most players I've played with when faced with ambushes are actually happy to have them. Once I played with a group of players that were warned that they would be ambushed along the way to their destination. They discussed the situation for almost an hour of real time. In the end, the best plan they came up with was "We walk into the ambush, when they attack us, we kill them". And it worked. The battle was over in 2 rounds with the PCs taking minimal damage.
- A combat against skeletons in a room with an evil magic stone pulsed with evil energy causing vile damage every few rounds.
I guess you could smash the stone. It depends how much damage it did and how far it reached. Standard procedure in this case is:
-If it does less damage than the cleric can heal in a round, then ignore the damage and pretend it isn't even there
-If it does more damage than the cleric can heal in a round, then smash it or lure the monsters to a location that was safe to stand. Rule number 1: If the enemy can hit you, you can hit it. Use ranged weapons if necessary, but do damage as quickly as possible.
- A running battle fleeing on horseback from a bulette
In this case, we'd have to figure out why they were running. If they were running because they were too weak to fight a bullette, I'm fairly certain any player I know wouldn't be attacking at all. They wouldn't be using disarm, sunder, trip, bullrush, or grapple in this circumstance for sure.
If they were capable of defeating the bullette, they would have jumped off their horses and charged it in order to keep full attacking it until it was dead.
- a fight against guardians of tower seeking to keep the PCs from entering, but not using lethal force, led to both a fight to subdue and lots of grappling and bullrushing and overrunning to get past the obstacles.
Non-lethal pretty much always reads: if I take -4 to hit, I can take them out with damage to me(OR time to pull out my Merciful weapon). You can certainly attempt grapples and bullrushes. But, as I pointed out in the math, that even with the -4 to hit, it is better to full attack for 2 rounds and knock an enemy out with damage rather than spend two or three times as many rounds grappling him.
- A fight against a possessing shadow creature that used your own allies and companions against you.
Any time there is a possession or charm the procedure is to go full defensive until the cleric or wizard frees the person. As soon as the monster is in a state that allows it to be attacked, keep full attacking it until it dies.
- A battle in a shrine to a dark insect god that required navigating a maze of hedges to find the summoning circle where a young boy was tied to be the meal for the fiendish giant preying mantis to be summoned, where flanking archers atop tall stone pillars made movement dangerous.
Nothing that can't be solved with ranged weapons and full attacks. Although, I'm wondering in particular why movement was dangerous due to flanking archers.
- A battle in the treetop platforms of a bandit hideout, where bullrush was very useful in getting rid of foes by making them tumble over the side.
Almost every circumstance that I've found where an enemy could be bullrushed off of something, it was just as effective to attack for damage(if not more). The only time it is more useful is against enemies with more hitpoints than you can get through in one round who are significantly weaker than you are, standing next to a drop far enough down to kill them who you don't want to loot afterwords. It's a rather rare circumstance.
