Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Will there be non-combat encounters?

    • 810 posts
    October 20, 2020 6:52 PM PDT
    Obviously the cities will have quests and noncombat encounters, but will they play a part in the world? I have always seen Pantheon as trying to get back to the roots, which were aimed at AD&D at the time of EQ, but I assume would be expanded to the tabletop mindset. I am sure this is largely just wishful thinking, but it made me realize I have not seen anything on minor social encounters. Do you walk past the stranded grandma or do you fix her wagon? Do you stop a fight between two factions peacefully with your high charisma, intimidate them into standing down, pick a side and fight, flag down a guard, or do you simply let it happen? These sort of events are what I feel really shape an adventurer.

    They have always displayed combat and even displayed the quest dialogue a bit, but have they talked about non combat encounters? Will adventurers be allowed to be horrible people and steal grandma's jewelery?
    • 63 posts
    October 21, 2020 9:18 AM PDT

    Since we know that they are giving each character a sizeable database that will house many flags for actions/achievements completed that will cause NPCs to interact with you in different ways... it would be cool if little non-combat encounters existed and added flags to your character in accordance with your choices. For example, if you decided to steal grandma's jewelery, it would be cool if you had a flag that caused some NPCs to know about it and occasionally you might encounter an NPC saying something to you like "Oh, hello there Playername. I've heard about what you did to Grandma in the next town over. I hope you aren't here to steal from any of our town's elderly citizens?"

    • 334 posts
    October 21, 2020 5:00 PM PDT

    A npc guild of thiefs \ shadow world for example ?

    • 810 posts
    October 22, 2020 4:39 AM PDT

    @snocap the potential is certainly there for all sorts of things, but unless I missed it following the game I have not seen them talk about the noncombat encounters and events. 

    They frequently talk about NPCs fighting NPCs so I assume the zones will lead into cool events that will make use of their system.  This is enough for a great game, I am just curious if they have plans to make the non combat come into play.  EQ and others often had the "watch a play" sort of option.  You overhear a conversation or see NPCs doing things.  I am more of meaning what would amount ot time wasting quests to develop the PC.  You get nothing noticable out of them outside of character development. 

     

    Besides, if I make an evil PC who would steal from grandma he wouldn't leave witnesses...


    This post was edited by Jobeson at October 22, 2020 4:45 AM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    October 22, 2020 7:25 AM PDT

    Jobeson said: Obviously the cities will have quests and noncombat encounters, but will they play a part in the world? I have always seen Pantheon as trying to get back to the roots, which were aimed at AD&D at the time of EQ, but I assume would be expanded to the tabletop mindset. I am sure this is largely just wishful thinking, but it made me realize I have not seen anything on minor social encounters. Do you walk past the stranded grandma or do you fix her wagon? Do you stop a fight between two factions peacefully with your high charisma, intimidate them into standing down, pick a side and fight, flag down a guard, or do you simply let it happen? These sort of events are what I feel really shape an adventurer. They have always displayed combat and even displayed the quest dialogue a bit, but have they talked about non combat encounters? Will adventurers be allowed to be horrible people and steal grandma's jewelery?

    In earlier streams, during the discussion portions, they seemed to say that there would be non-combat encounters.  In the later streams in Faerthael, they showed a couple.  Specifically with a spirit in the woods and a Spriggen.

    With this in mind, I am presuming yes.

    • 96 posts
    October 22, 2020 8:02 AM PDT

    I'm certain that the Perception system will cover this concept quite well. Until we see more perception quests and triggers/flags, it's hard to tell how deep this will go. 

    • 51 posts
    October 22, 2020 10:13 PM PDT

    I certainly hope for a rich set of non-combat quests. One of my favorites from EQ was the enchanter "treasure hunt" where you had to collect coins from 10 different cities to combine them into a spell scroll. Each city presented its own challenges. Some cities I had to use illusion/invis to sneak around. Others involved diving underwater. Lots of fun. 

    • 810 posts
    October 23, 2020 1:02 AM PDT

    @Hauskat Quests like that are my bread and butter.  I love the small goals such as learning a spell that spiral into grand adventures.  I didn't do a great job of describing it but when I say non combat encounters I mean events that I wouldn't even call a quest. On the table top side I see them as RP building encounters.  You don't get any xp or valuable reward, but you iron out your character's motives and desires.  The perception system may largely be this sort of thing, but it is not the impression I got.  The spriggen event felt very questy as a clearly unusual event from daily life, effectively just an introduction to perception.  I am more wanting fairly simple, rewardless events.

    To help everyone else understand my motives behind the question, I plan to play on an RP server.  There are RP people who make everything up and play pretend, this always irks me for not aligning with the game world (I'm PRINCESS BATMAN!) but there are tons of RP people who simply think, "What would my adventurer PC do?"  Sadly even though actions speak louder than words, actions are often simply not available as most games will make helping grandma a clear quest, hell she would probably give you one of four magic items and a sack of gold. 

    I love running the non combat encounters of D&D for how you interact with the world.  90% have no meaning at all and tabletop obviously has an unlimited number of options compared to an MMO game world, but they are what really help define the PCs, even one of four options is nice to see.