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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gimby" data-source="post: 9674497" data-attributes="member: 49875">On the subject of Encounters and Bypassing them - instinctively as a GM I think of "bypassing" to mean avoiding a fight - there's an assumption that I don't think is uncommon that we are generally referring to combat by Encounters.It might be worth considering an example.Let's presume we've got a fairly standard D&D party of Rogue, Bard, Wizard, Fighter and Cleric.  And for the sake of this example, they've also got a large cask of wine that they've picked up as they had been reliably informed it would be a good bribe for the monster.The party, for whatever reason, wishes to enter a cave guarded by a monster.Let's consider two cases.In the first case the monster is an Ogre (so for 5e, CR2)In the second case the monster is a Hill Giant (so for 5e, CR5)Let's also assume that for our purposes that the two monsters have the same overall senses, mental statistics and overall personality (which is why this pair - I know they aren't in 5e but they are fairly close and are overall similar in default personality - the 3e ones are closer)We can then suppose a number of methods for the party to get past the monster - they could both be bribed with the wine, distracted by an illusion in the same way, persuaded or deceived with the same difficulty (it'd be reasonable that the Giant is harder to intimidate, but we could imagine a slightly bolder Ogre or more cowardly Giant if we like).  The point is that the difficulty of getting past the monster is identical in all ways aside from combat.  So, if we assume that the system we are using gives xp rewards for getting past the monster (as all 3+ editions do) then how much should we award? Should it be dependant on the method chosen?  Should we have a Combat CR and a non-Combat CR? (4e sort of does this - we might class getting past the monster without fighting as a lower level Encounter and use that to determine the appropriate DCs and rewards, it's not really well spelled out in the text though)Let's say the character party successfully bribes the monster (they've done their research, come prepared and this is very plausible for what we know of both monsters) with the cask of wine - the actions they take are the same, the costs are the same, the risks are broadly similar (we could assume the monster would be angered by the characters entering their cave and might be a problem in future, but that's hardly a given).  Is this Encountering the monster, or Bypassing the Encounter?</blockquote>

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