Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5202253" data-attributes="member: 4937">Some thoughts on training players out of 'attack everything on sight'.The tactic of attacking everything on sight has several origins that reinforce each other.1) D&D tends to have short combats where going first is a big advantage.2) DMs like to get the most from their monsters, and tend to over favor 'ambush' in their imagination. 3) Most monsters are there just to kill and take their stuff, so the players are just being reasonable in most cases.  DMs rarely reward negotiation, evasion, or other tactics - no XP (from most DMs) and you don't get the stuff.  Even NPC's that aren't intended as fodder for the PC's are often best exploited by simply killing them and taking their stuff.The outcome of this is that in some groups, players always attack at first sight.  As a DM you can't blame players for doing this, because they are doing what works for them.To train PC's out of that behavior, you have to reward other tactics and that means setting up tactical situations where winning is not easily accomplished with a straight foward attack.For example:1) Negotiation: The PC's need to get from point A to point B, but something has created a strong fortified position blocking the path and they have a clear view of the surrounding terrain (meaning that they are hard to ambush).  Attacking the position is difficult but not lethal, because the main advantage of the defenders is the strong position - not high HD or big attack bonuses.  This situation favors negoation, and the defenders are in a position to parley because they can't easily be overrun.2) Evasion: The PC's have a durable and near perfect source of concealment (they are in a dense jungle, for instance), when they encounter something that they clearly can't overcome.  Ideally, this encounter is with something that the players recognize and now from the monster manual.  The classic here is a collosal dragon outside its lair, currently occupied with eating a mastadon or other large creature that doesn't prompt the PC's to heroicly intervene.  The dragon clearly has no special interest in the PC's.  This situation favors evasion, because the PC's don't have anything to gain and everything to lose by getting involved.  Once you introduce a situation like this, you can begin introducing situations where evasion is warranted despite a more active interaction with the creature.   An example might be something like a maze of twisty passages and a slow moving, obdurate, fire breathing golem.3) Stealth: Present a situation similar to #1, except that the inhabitants aren't open to negotiation (or negotiation has failed).  Allow an open attack if the players want.  Since its a static position, the PC's are free to control the time and pace of the battle - that is, they can run away without fear of pursuit.  Include in the design of your encounter opportunities to use stealth.  For example, a secret passage can be located at some distance from the fortification that lets it be entered, partially, or wholly bypassed.  The inhabitants regularly let allied parties pass through, and the players can disguise themselves as allies of the gate owners or bribe a group to let them join them.Remember to allow for oppurtinities to gain treasure independent of this encounter and remember to reward full experience for solving the encounter by something other than combat.  In fact, when I do a situation like this, I tend to give full XP for solving the encounter in the most expedient fashion, and only partial XP for fighting through it.  That is, I reward the characters according to how much the players have learned, and vica versa.  While you don't want to do that all the time (favoring non-combat solutions has its problems as well), the fact that you might sometimes do that encourages players to look at all their options because they know that alternative solutions might in fact sometimes recieve greater rewards.</blockquote>

Verification