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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9673581" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I still find this idea of "encountering" such a strange way of conceiving things. If you are sneaking past something, surely you have "encountered" it?Certainly. I have a great deal of respect for any GM who actively sits down and checks their processes to make sure that those processes actually do cultivate the kinds of player behavior they wish to see. It's a far, far too common problem for GMs to do things they think they must do because of naturalism/realism/etc., or mistaken beliefs about appropriate challenge, or the need for "sufficient" challenge, or various other things, but which actually end up teaching lessons the GM actually would not ever want to teach the players. The widespread use of black-box GMing and all too common failure to actually talk about issues, rather than trying to "fix" them with rules or unspoken processes, just exacerbates the issue.As I have mentioned here and elsewhere, I always think of the GM who posted a thread here a year or three ago, talking about how they used gridded maps to help the players perceive the world, and the players saw that as "oh crap, it's a fight we can't avoid, better set up for it". The net result was a GM who felt deeply frustrated at seemingly "murderhobo" players who would never even consider nonviolent solutions, and players who felt deeply frustrated at seemingly a "meatgrinder" GM who forced them through unavoidable high-difficulty combats over and over. I don't mean to call this person out, to be clear--they had discovered the issue and were looking for ways to fix it, which is always a laudable thing. Just proof positive that even an experienced GM operating in good faith and actively trying to do something helpful to their players can still run aground on a conflict that went unspoken.Er...no. 4e explicitly rewards players exactly as much XP for sneaking past, negotiating through, or otherwise resolving encounters without direct combat. You've allowed your biased perception of contemporary editions ("everything is combat and combat is everything", more or less) to occlude what [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] actually said. 4e very explicitly supports players choosing to engage with a potential combat encounter in any way they see fit because it rewards them 100% of the experience so long as they do, in fact, get past the encounter--whatever method they use to do so. Negotiation, bribery, stealth, deception, intimidation? Doesn't matter, all of those things are valid ways of getting through the obstacle. Indeed, IIRC, the 4e DMG specifically instructs you to be open to and supportive of players taking unexpected or unorthodox approaches, so long as they can adequately explain why it should be possible, and willing to face befitting consequences should their attempt fail.</blockquote>

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