Combat on trial

 I don't like fighting in RPGs.

Heresy! How can I play Dungeons & Dragons, a game all about hurting strange animals with sharp implements, and not like fighting?

I have a couple of reasons why I don't like fights. For the first thing, traditionally many fights were for very low stakes. The orcs are in the room, and you want to get past the room. The bandits want your money, and are terrible at threat assessment. The owlbear is hungry, and you're made of meat. None of these have any sort of emotional heft. You're further incentivized to violence because your enemy has two valuable commodities - experience points and treasure. Experience points in particular led towards multiple 'disposable' fights, since you had to get enough of them to go up a level. In the move towards milestone levelling, this part of the problem is starting to go away, at least. Furthermore, many of the alternatives to fighting aren't very well developed. You could make a Persuasion check or an Intimidation check? Or you could give up some treasure, which is making negative progress - you're losing what you have, and not getting what they have. Finally, the stakes in combat are normally pretty inconsequential. Running away at low levels doesn't work, because an attack of opportunity could easily be lethal, and there's nothing to stop your enemy from running after you, thus forcing you to run again and provoke another opportunity attack, and another, and another... Because of this, all fights tend to be to the death, and a consequence of this is that they tend to be strongly weighted in favor of the players.

So my problem isn't with fight scenes - it's with the sort of casual, meaningless, disposable and ultimately forgettable fights that many RPGs feature. A fight with emotion, risk, and stakes - those are wonderful! One of my minor goals in Dragons of Tirenia is to address this. Fights are rare, but tend to be more dangerous when they happen - or to have completely different stakes than just the heroes' lives. Villains may threaten the opponents, or knock them senseless, or let them flee, rather than killing them. Or they may not even be interested in hurting the heroes - they may simple have conflicting goals, and can use other methods to achieve their end than violence. In my campaigns, I might only have a fight every second session or so, but it's a big, dramatic set-piece when it occurs. Many of our adventures that we're working on feature very little fighting, but the fights, when they do occur, are more significant. The heroes will be pushed to their limits in order to triumph.

That's what makes them heroes, after all.

Image: 'David and Goliath.' Guillaime Courtois, c.1650.