How do you add more combat to a campaign?

[sithramir]

My first thought was Demons -- they never negotiate (unless they are up to something), but Kugar beat me too it.

Also, revenge melodramas are nice... negotiations are just preludes to a fight.

It doesn't seem to have been stated yet. A lot of monsters just don't speak the common language. I'd throw in something like that. Plus just because they are diplomatic doesn't mean battle doesn't still happen. Many people when they here perfectly good sense lash out just because they don't know how to handle being wrong..

Demons are always fun...

Perhaps some war is going on and they attempt to join? You definitely aren't going to diplomatically solve 20 soldiers charging at you very well..

 

[Angcuru]

Give the paladin a magical helm of alignment reversal and bloodlust. Watch the heads fly.

 

[Khorod]

1) Curse of Monster Agitation- all animals, beasts, and so on within 10 miles are attracted to the party. Once they see people they go berserk rabid manhunter. It is the party's new side goal to find a Druid powerful enough to remove this curse and set them at the new enemy.

2) New Villainous Wizard Mastermind has observed the party, and deemed their speaking skills a threat. He begins to move against them using two types of people- one, magically buffered fanatics in his service, and two, slick talkers better than the PC's to convince everyone else the PC's are no good liars!

Seriously though, the key is to lay off the reasonable, real-world, role-playing intensive justifications of the game world. Have a couple recurring enemies that won't back down, have random encounters by punks who have heard of the PC's and want to prove their skillz. If you can tie it all together in a conspiracy it will give the players the promise of future plotting and intrigue once they cut through the 'red tape'.

 

[BSF]

Well, without knowing your campaign ...

Hmm, do you have Fang & Fury? Have a powerful Vampire move into town and start turning a few people. I like Fang & Fury because you have a bit more variety in your vampires/vampire spawn. Still, there is no reason why you couldn't take one right out of the Monster Manual.

You are dealing with social undead. So, there can be plenty of attempted diplomacy. But, let's face the facts. Anyone converted is ... undead. If you want to save them, you have to take them out first. Have the master vampire take out a few friends, allies, total innocents, that sort of thing. Enough to really get the group incensed. Maybe the master vampire is a diplomat from a different kingdom. Killing him outright could risk diplomatic repercussions. Of course, leaving him "alive" is kind of ... repulsive. What kingdom uses a vampire as it's diplomat?

Just a few thoughts. Maybe something there will catch your attention.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

If in doubt, just let a few guys burst through the door and try to shoot them with crossbows.

If they are captured alive and questioned, it turns out they have been hired by a stranger in a bar. Now watch the PCs guess who hired them...

 

[astralpwka]

When I want combat and buckets of blood:

Only a couple of the creatures in the combat are equal with the ECL of the group, CR wise. The rest are a bunch of filler 1 to 3 HD creatures that the party can slaughter with one hit, mowing through them like LotR main characters...

 

[Crothian]

Well tonight we had some combat. Started out with a planned combat encounter with Possessors (see Philip Reed's Possessor book). After that they did run into encounters that had no combat, though they could of. Then they decided to take a left turn and go investigate White Plum Mountain. They haven't gotten there yet, they island it is one is invested by plant monsters and these cannot be negotiated with. So, lots of combat and quite a few close calls.

 

[BSF]

Well tonight we had some combat. Started out with a planned combat encounter with Possessors (see Philip Reed's Possessor book). After that they did run into encounters that had no combat, though they could of. Then they decided to take a left turn and go investigate White Plum Mountain. They haven't gotten there yet, they island it is one is invested by plant monsters and these cannot be negotiated with. So, lots of combat and quite a few close calls.

Hey! Is that going to be _the_ White Plume Mountain? Now that was a fun module.

 

[takyris]

When some of my players watched a little too much anime and began spending hours of real time declaring that they were standing on a cliff holding their sword and staring relentlessly at the dark sky overhead, thinking about whatever wish-fulfillment backstory they'd come up with involving redeemed succubi and lillends fighting over them, the game began to drag a little in terms of "combat encounters and plot elements uncovered per session".

I was able to effectively kill two birds with one stone by initiating a new house rule: Every time a PC starts to self-consciously brood, ninjas teleport in and attack. Sometimes the ninjas (or ninjae, as we prefer to refer to them) had random-energy-metamagically-substituting-fireball wands.

Really a self-correcting check-and-balance system. The brooding gets too obnoxious, the ninjae make it happen less often, and since the ninjae don't appear except when brooding happens, they never interfere with actual plot events.

 

[Darklone]

Crothian, I had a similar discussion on another board lately... but it started from the question whether people yield and surrender in D&D combat or not.

Usually our battles end deadly, but if you're going for a more diplomatic end, have the enemies attack and after one or two rounds give up and parley.