No combat in a whole session

[Umbran]

It isn't the norm, but it hasn't been all that rare in the groups I've played with either.

 

[Feathercircle]

Our Planescape campaign has been going on for... I think a little over half a year now, and we've entered combat all of twice. One of those combats lasted two sessions, and the other was over in approximately one round. Negotiation is far more normal for us.

 

[Lord Judas]

In the game I am running (1 year) we had a non-combat session (3-4 hours). I do like to try to get in one combat per game as a rule fo thumb. It breaks things up and allows the more combat oriented Pcs to "flex their muscles" a bit.

 

[Sammael]

It is quite common in my current FR campaign. I'd say that about 20% of all sessions have been combat-free, and another 30% only had one combat.

In my experience, non-challenging combats are meaningless to the players, and challenging combats take way too long to run. A few sessions ago, I had two combat encounters that took a combined time of 4 hours to finish. By the end of each combat, neither the players nor I had any concentration left.

 

[fusangite]

It really depends on the system. When I run D&D, there is combat in 4 out of every 5 sessions -- that's just a genre concern. I mean why are you playing D&D if not to encourage people to resolve their conflicts violently?

When I'm not running D&D, there is combat in 1 out of every 5 sessions. D&D is predisposed by both genre and mechanics to resolve situations through violence but even then, sometimes characters do important investigative, political or social stuff that eats up a whole session and the GM's planned combat is put off a week or two.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Our Birthright game had several sessions without combat, or with very little, though it sounds like we were a bit more active than TroyXavier's.

One session consisted entirely of the party conducting archaeological exploration of a pre-Deismaar site just north of the Gorgon's Crown, and then dealing with the traps and logic puzzles of this particular site, which happened to be an abandoned lair of one of the Lost. There was no combat for the entire session, but the traps were INCREDIBLY rude. Picture a rogue, polymorphed into a spider monkey, disarming traps in a 6" wide airshaft.

Another two sessions dealt with the takeover of Alamie by a Vos barbarian horde (I believe these were from Tales of the Hero Kings); never has an invasion been so welcomed, as when the invaders, instead of attacking, throw bags of gold at the defenders. One session had the party, at the request of the half-elven mage (who ruled Tuornen, a neighboring nation that had split off from Alamie years ago) do a recon-in-force to try and rescue the princess, which wound up not having anything happen. Another was at a ball that said Vos barbarian was throwing, which wound up having lots of intriguey stuff. In fact, we almost missed the adventure, not having noticed or cared what was going on.

However, most of the rest of the sessions had some form of high-octane combat, even the archaeological dig sessions.

Brad

 

[rumblehed]

depends

That really depends on what we're doing as a group. It's not uncommon for my players to spend days gathering information and getting to know the local NPC population of an area before any kind of combat.

 

[knitnerd]

Last week we went a whole night without any combat at all. I don't think we've done that more than a couple of times in 15 years of play (while playing D&D anyway). Is this as rare an occurance for you as for us?

Last night was the first time in ten months of playing, unless you consider the dwarf fighter falling under a spell and trying to rape the Drow priestess, the Drow priestess using a translocation spell to redirect the dwarf to the male elven rogue, the dwarf blaming the elven rogue when he realises what he is doing and beating him up and the rogue stabbing the Drow priestess who started the whole thing. But no enemies to fight.

 

[Kilmore]

Last night was the first time in ten months of playing, unless you consider the dwarf fighter falling under a spell and trying to rape the Drow priestess, the Drow priestess using a translocation spell to redirect the dwarf to the male elven rogue, the dwarf blaming the elven rogue when he realises what he is doing and beating him up and the rogue stabbing the Drow priestess who started the whole thing. But no enemies to fight.

That sir, I shall use.

Last night, the DM warned us that there would be no combat. At our gaming table, that seems to be a warning to keep our dice warm, because that means that SOMEONE is going to get stupid at some point.

 

[Shemeska]

Not rare for me and mine

No combat in my game today. Some time spent in Sigil, the gatetown of Silvania, some random prime world, and a domain sequestered within the 978th layer of the Abyss... and no combat at all. At most I think we had a number of spot checks, a sense motice check, and a single fort save (bad idea to detect evil when standing 5 feet from an outcast archfiend).

We spent several hours of that time doing nothing but having IC chat between the PCs with only a little input from myself. This isn't all that rare for us, but depending on the circumstances we might have games like that alternating between weeks of combat after combat. Both are enjoyable.