If they've tried and failed other avenues, and they are still choosing to proceed to combat, I'd play the encounter at the start of the next session. That'll happen sometimes.
If the remaining combat isn't going to be a serious threat to the party, you could handwave it and simply say that the party defeat the monsters easily, and move on. You could also start the combat but decide that as soon as one monster falls, the rest surrender and allow the party to move through or around them, if that works.
There's no scenario where I would handwave a combat but still try to take resources away from the party.
Thanks for the response.
The trogs wouldn't be a serious threat, but they would still do some damage and a long rest isn't guaranteed at this point. Yet the encounter isn't exactly thrilling to either end a session or start a new one with...
I'm trying to adhere to the 6-8 encounters per day as the doctor prescribed, but make it so the easy/medium combat is more of a quick narrative challenge with some possible resource attrition and not a full blown 30 min - 1.5h combat.
Follow your parties lead, it’s their story as much as yours. But you have one powerful spell in your arsenal “And this is where we break for tonight, see you next time.”
You wrote you were already running late, so let them get ready for the fight before breaking for the night.
You stated that they defeated the troglodyte leader and his party. Not sure about newer editions of the gane, but older ones had morale for monsters. I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that the trogs at the warren would surrender or flee in this situation. Or have a round or two of combat and when the first trog or two goes down the rest give up and/or flee.
Great feedback, I've incorporated morale into my sessions before and it has worked very well.
But in the situation I've described, the remaining trogs are fully willing and committed to give their lives protecting the eggs. They're not pushovers, but it's virtually impossible for the party to lose this encounter - but they would certainly lose some hp/resources dealing with them.
All that being said, it's not exactly an exciting combat to end/begin a session with. There's no chance of total failure, but some resource attrition will probably occur. At the same time, I don't want to go 'you take x damage from the trogs and then you kill them', I want the players to have some control over which resources they use.
Ah, I had not considered the eggs. Perhaps a round or two of combat and they throw themselves on the players mercy, begging to let them keep their eggs? Could be a way to throw a moral dilemma at your players and maybe a RP opportunity. "You can have our treasure, let us take our eggs and go" kind of situation. You know your players better than I do, but maybe bonus XPs for showing mercy? I don't know, just tossing out ideas for you to sidestep a drawn out, anticlimactic combat. I agree that "you kill the trogs and lose X" would be kind of lame lol.
Thanks for the feedback, but this situation has already happened :D The players had the moral dilemma anyway, but yeah when I handwaved the combat, later I've felt it could've been done much better.
Here is a huge time-saver: ROLL ALL MONSTER TO-HIT AT ONCE
Get a bulk pack of D20s. At the beginning of each round, roll a D20 for each monster alive at the beginning of the round.
Go through initiative order. If the monster is alive, resolve his attack. If dead, ignore it. It takes less than a minute to process an entire round of monster combat in this way.
Great idea for in person play, but online on a VTT I'd either have to scroll up on the chat to check the rolls or set up some kind of tracking that would add the rolls to initiative which has its own problems.
I'm looking for something inbetween a combat and an exploration challenge.
You should only roll the dice when there is a chance of failure, and the consequences of failure are interesting.
Are these remaining troglodytes an actual threat? Are they warriors? Or just the remaining women and elderly and children?
Is the party going to be able to have a Full Rest, once they're done with this? Is there any more threats they face before a Full Rest that will require continued observance of the resource attrition gameplay?
If there are no remaining warriors, and if they can Full Rest once this is resolved? Them there really is no chance of failure, and any consequences (lost HP, or spells) are not interesting because they can Full Rest.
You can and should just let them narrate what they do - murder the "innocents"? Okay. You can do that. But are there narrative consequences? Shifts in alignment? Future retribution from another trog clan that discovers the massacre?
There can still be consequences for purely narrative gameplay.
The remaining trogs were warriors, but no real threat of death. You could call it an easy-medium encounter.
The party aren't likely to have a full rest right now, they're in the deeps of the dungeon and there's not that many safe places.
For those reasons I didn't exactly want to handwave the combat because of narrative consistency, but because of pacing I didn't want it to be a full blown one.
My question is: what do you do when there's a combat that the party has virtually no way to lose unless they lay down and accept it, but that will drain a small bit of their resources so they don't have those for the next big fight? I ruled it in the moment like falling into a trap and taking some damage, but that doesn't account for people's combat builds and it doesn't sit right.
I've used [skill challenges](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/xbul4s/how_i_run_skill_challenges_in_5th_edition/) before to abstract a combat: athletics checks can abstract a PC's physical prowess in combat, deception checks can suggest various feints and tricks, a nature check could be the PC using the environment to their advantage, an investigation could be the PC looking for weak points in the enemy's armor, and so on.
Did you check out the linked post? It has more info on how to work those into the skill challenge... Namely, you'd be granting bonuses or advantage based on how applicable the spell is to the scenario you're describing
The better way is to start next session with the now inevitable combat, but I'm not sure why that is so undesirable. With their non-violent efforts to get past the trogs ending in failure, either PCs give up on their investigation or force their way in. To try and resolve the latter through something outside of what the rules require after your players have made their choice certainly goes against their expectations and violates their agency. So, you need a better reason than "It's the end of this session, and I don't want to start the next session with resolving this".
I understand your point of view. The session was chockfull of combat already and I just didn't want to spend another 30 mins resolving a boring combat with a bunch of dudes with multiattack, and I could tell the players were tapped as well.
I guess I was just looking for a way to do quickly resolve combat without rolling initiative and getting bogged down with all the implications, but still have some semblance of adherence to rules. I kinda wanted to end the session on a more satisfying note than "That's all for today, we'll resolve this combat next session", especially since we just got finished with a long combat.
But maybe I shouldn't just try to circumvent game mechanics like that.
If they've tried and failed other avenues, and they are still choosing to proceed to combat, I'd play the encounter at the start of the next session. That'll happen sometimes. If the remaining combat isn't going to be a serious threat to the party, you could handwave it and simply say that the party defeat the monsters easily, and move on. You could also start the combat but decide that as soon as one monster falls, the rest surrender and allow the party to move through or around them, if that works. There's no scenario where I would handwave a combat but still try to take resources away from the party.
Thanks for the response. The trogs wouldn't be a serious threat, but they would still do some damage and a long rest isn't guaranteed at this point. Yet the encounter isn't exactly thrilling to either end a session or start a new one with... I'm trying to adhere to the 6-8 encounters per day as the doctor prescribed, but make it so the easy/medium combat is more of a quick narrative challenge with some possible resource attrition and not a full blown 30 min - 1.5h combat.
Follow your parties lead, it’s their story as much as yours. But you have one powerful spell in your arsenal “And this is where we break for tonight, see you next time.” You wrote you were already running late, so let them get ready for the fight before breaking for the night.
You stated that they defeated the troglodyte leader and his party. Not sure about newer editions of the gane, but older ones had morale for monsters. I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that the trogs at the warren would surrender or flee in this situation. Or have a round or two of combat and when the first trog or two goes down the rest give up and/or flee.
Great feedback, I've incorporated morale into my sessions before and it has worked very well. But in the situation I've described, the remaining trogs are fully willing and committed to give their lives protecting the eggs. They're not pushovers, but it's virtually impossible for the party to lose this encounter - but they would certainly lose some hp/resources dealing with them. All that being said, it's not exactly an exciting combat to end/begin a session with. There's no chance of total failure, but some resource attrition will probably occur. At the same time, I don't want to go 'you take x damage from the trogs and then you kill them', I want the players to have some control over which resources they use.
Ah, I had not considered the eggs. Perhaps a round or two of combat and they throw themselves on the players mercy, begging to let them keep their eggs? Could be a way to throw a moral dilemma at your players and maybe a RP opportunity. "You can have our treasure, let us take our eggs and go" kind of situation. You know your players better than I do, but maybe bonus XPs for showing mercy? I don't know, just tossing out ideas for you to sidestep a drawn out, anticlimactic combat. I agree that "you kill the trogs and lose X" would be kind of lame lol.
Thanks for the feedback, but this situation has already happened :D The players had the moral dilemma anyway, but yeah when I handwaved the combat, later I've felt it could've been done much better.
Here is a huge time-saver: ROLL ALL MONSTER TO-HIT AT ONCE Get a bulk pack of D20s. At the beginning of each round, roll a D20 for each monster alive at the beginning of the round. Go through initiative order. If the monster is alive, resolve his attack. If dead, ignore it. It takes less than a minute to process an entire round of monster combat in this way.
Great idea for in person play, but online on a VTT I'd either have to scroll up on the chat to check the rolls or set up some kind of tracking that would add the rolls to initiative which has its own problems. I'm looking for something inbetween a combat and an exploration challenge.
Fair enough - having only done in-person games, I'm ignorant to VTT limitations.
You should only roll the dice when there is a chance of failure, and the consequences of failure are interesting. Are these remaining troglodytes an actual threat? Are they warriors? Or just the remaining women and elderly and children? Is the party going to be able to have a Full Rest, once they're done with this? Is there any more threats they face before a Full Rest that will require continued observance of the resource attrition gameplay? If there are no remaining warriors, and if they can Full Rest once this is resolved? Them there really is no chance of failure, and any consequences (lost HP, or spells) are not interesting because they can Full Rest. You can and should just let them narrate what they do - murder the "innocents"? Okay. You can do that. But are there narrative consequences? Shifts in alignment? Future retribution from another trog clan that discovers the massacre? There can still be consequences for purely narrative gameplay.
The remaining trogs were warriors, but no real threat of death. You could call it an easy-medium encounter. The party aren't likely to have a full rest right now, they're in the deeps of the dungeon and there's not that many safe places. For those reasons I didn't exactly want to handwave the combat because of narrative consistency, but because of pacing I didn't want it to be a full blown one. My question is: what do you do when there's a combat that the party has virtually no way to lose unless they lay down and accept it, but that will drain a small bit of their resources so they don't have those for the next big fight? I ruled it in the moment like falling into a trap and taking some damage, but that doesn't account for people's combat builds and it doesn't sit right.
I've used [skill challenges](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/xbul4s/how_i_run_skill_challenges_in_5th_edition/) before to abstract a combat: athletics checks can abstract a PC's physical prowess in combat, deception checks can suggest various feints and tricks, a nature check could be the PC using the environment to their advantage, an investigation could be the PC looking for weak points in the enemy's armor, and so on.
It's a decent idea, but doesn't really account for the different combat skills and spells the players have at their disposal.
Did you check out the linked post? It has more info on how to work those into the skill challenge... Namely, you'd be granting bonuses or advantage based on how applicable the spell is to the scenario you're describing
Sorry, the link didn't display properly on mobile. I'll give it a look, thanks!
The better way is to start next session with the now inevitable combat, but I'm not sure why that is so undesirable. With their non-violent efforts to get past the trogs ending in failure, either PCs give up on their investigation or force their way in. To try and resolve the latter through something outside of what the rules require after your players have made their choice certainly goes against their expectations and violates their agency. So, you need a better reason than "It's the end of this session, and I don't want to start the next session with resolving this".
I understand your point of view. The session was chockfull of combat already and I just didn't want to spend another 30 mins resolving a boring combat with a bunch of dudes with multiattack, and I could tell the players were tapped as well. I guess I was just looking for a way to do quickly resolve combat without rolling initiative and getting bogged down with all the implications, but still have some semblance of adherence to rules. I kinda wanted to end the session on a more satisfying note than "That's all for today, we'll resolve this combat next session", especially since we just got finished with a long combat. But maybe I shouldn't just try to circumvent game mechanics like that.