Keep out of combat in D&D? Why?

[phloog]

I must vehemently disagree.

Look how elaborate skill challenges have become in 4e. The chapter on building noncombat encounters in the DMG is 24 pages.

By contrast the chapter on building combat encounters is only 18 pages.
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Sorry, but the page count arguments I always find laughable. You say compare combat encounter pages to non-combat encounter pages - other folks have talked about page counts for COMBAT versus skills or some other facet in the Player's Handbook. It's weak because the bulk of the combat rules are in the PH, and it's weak because when they talk page counts 'for combat', they ignore the fact that almost all the powers and abilities in each class are combat related. So maybe there are only XX pages on the specifics of combat in a given book, but when I look at, for example, the Rogue class...the base class goes from page 116 to 126. Considering Utility items and such, it looks to me like this is about eight more pages "on combat".

I'm not suggesting that 4e is nothing but combat, only that attempting to measure the amount of material about combat by counting only those pages that are in a section labeled "Combat" is inaccurate.

 

[Snoweel]

I wasn't talking about the amount of rules.

I was talking about the amount of material on building encounters.

 

[mmadsen]

I don't think of most dungeons and lairs as having effectively infinite numbers of guys, spawned in when needed for patrols.

Who does?

I mean, if you want to clear out a monster camp, you're pretty much going to be killing most of the guys anyway, right?

If you want to clear out a monster camp, you want to kill most or all of the monsters. If you succeed in clearing a monster camp, you actually do kill most or all of the monsters. If you try and fail to clear a monster camp, which is what I described, then you obviously do not kill all or most of the monsters, and they can come looking for you.

What they do says quite a bit about the monsters -- and your DM.

Killing them when they're patroling is still killing them. So thinning out the enemy by fighting its patrols seems like a better deal than fighting everyone 5 minutes from their barracks/main camp.

If they know your force killed, say, four hobgoblin sentries, then ran away bleeding, they will presumably search for you in groups of more than four foot soldiers.

That was my point. When the initiative was yours, you barged into a cave and overwhelmed whoever was there. Once they took the initiative to hunt you down though, they wouldn't volunteer to meet you with a lesser force. It's up to you now to arrange that, oh so cleverly...

Or you could attack, retreat, then attack again while their force is invested in large patrols, if you just want something in the location.

Indeed.