Tell me about your interesting Non-Combat encounter ideas!

By RodianClone, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

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I want to run more interesting non-combat encounters! Combat is both fun and easy to handle, but I want alternatives.

Negotiation, chases, espionage, survival, exploring, hunting, racing.. I don`t know. Whatever type of cool or fun encounter you can come up with that isn`t directly combat. How would you run it, both narratively and mechanically?

I am very interested in running fun social encounters and I want to know how to run a cool chase scene.

How would you do it narratively and mechanically? Would you mix rp and dice rolling in a social encounter or would you focus more on oe or the other?

Edited by RodianClone
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A non combat encounter can be mechanically very similar to a combat one. You just choose a different skill to roll. For example, exploring a derelict ship you would use allthletics to climb/jump between broken sections of a corridor. Mechanics to restart the engines or Hotwire a door. Occasional fear check because of sounds and lack of lighting. Maybe resilience of a section of ship has thin atmosphere and your players don't have breathers.

As for social encounters that will depend on your players if it is mechanical or role play. Mechanically it could be swaying the crowd toward you using a leadership role, etc, Never, ever, use dice against players in a social encounter - it goes into 'my character wouldn't do that' territory. Always let the players control the situation at least let them feel that way. If a opponent is trying to influence them, have them pander to a crowd to make the players look bad if they don't acquiesce or be vague and give the players half truths and pander to their greed and/or goals role play wise.

As in combat, a good trick is to Pavlov your party. Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate when a bell is rung by associating getting fed with the sound of the bell. Do this by subtle rewarding the players to choose their own, or allies, despair or threatening roles. If a player does that to their ally reward them. This will keep you from burning out and doing it enough will condition, or Pavlov your players to do it without getting the reward.

Posted at

A non combat encounter can be mechanically very similar to a combat one. You just choose a different skill to roll. For example, exploring a derelict ship you would use allthletics to climb/jump between broken sections of a corridor. Mechanics to restart the engines or Hotwire a door. Occasional fear check because of sounds and lack of lighting. Maybe resilience of a section of ship has thin atmosphere and your players don't have breathers.

As for social encounters that will depend on your players if it is mechanical or role play. Mechanically it could be swaying the crowd toward you using a leadership role, etc, Never, ever, use dice against players in a social encounter - it goes into 'my character wouldn't do that' territory. Always let the players control the situation at least let them feel that way. If a opponent is trying to influence them, have them pander to a crowd to make the players look bad if they don't acquiesce or be vague and give the players half truths and pander to their greed and/or goals role play wise.

As in combat, a good trick is to Pavlov your party. Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate when a bell is rung by associating getting fed with the sound of the bell. Do this by subtle rewarding the players to choose their own, or allies, despair or threatening roles. If a player does that to their ally reward them. This will keep you from burning out and doing it enough will condition, or Pavlov your players to do it without getting the reward.

The first part sounds a lot like skill challanges in dnd 4e. I like it, I could even give the narrative control to my players and let them come up with the challanges within the larger challange to reach the main goal. Both failure and success should be interesting, but that is kind of what narrative dice do all the time. Cool.

As for never rolling dice against players in social encounters, I have a thread on that topic too. They can roll and that is fine, opposed checks works fine for that. But last time I did that, my players wasn`t sure if they liked that they knew how hard it was to know if the npc was lying to them or not, or knowing how good the said npc was at lying, so it seems they actually want me to roll those kinds of things to keep the mystery. They didn`t want to knoe if they succeeded or not; was he bluffing or not?..

Yes, I am familiar with Pavlov and the bell is only one thing he tried with the dogs, the one thing he is most known for and has become iconic in behavioral psychology(is it called that in english?..)

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Would you mix rp and dice rolling in a social encounter or would you focus more on one or the other?

I change the focus from mission to mission. It really depends on the adventure. Here are some examples from my campaign.

From The Scrapheap King


Since the PCs must have succeeded on an Underworld or Streetwise check to unlock this option, they know the location of Black Seraph territory in Blue Sector. Once they arrive, they’re immediately surrounded by 6 swoop gang members, 3 of who are human, with 2 Selonians and 1 mangy-looking Drall also in the mix. A tall, narrow-eyed human woman, sitting on a what looks like a heavily modified Flare-S swoop glares at the PCs.

“This is the wrong place to go when you’re slumming it in Blue Sector,” she grunts out.

“I think these little nerf herders must have made a wrong turn,” a bald, brute of a human man, with heavily muscled, tattooed arms, and scraggly beard.

Have the players roleplay a bit with the swoop gang, then inform them that they’ll need to make a Hard (♦♦♦) Streetwise check (Underworld is not a suitable option for this situation). They have a maximum of three attempts. Each failed attempt adds a ■ to the roll. If the party succeeds, they’ll be allowed to leave Black Seraph territory, but no help against the Scrapheap will be offered unless they can also succeed on a Hard (♦♦♦) Charm, Deception, Negotiation, or Streetwise check, with only one attempt per type allowed. Each failed attempt adds a ■ to the next roll. If any Despairs are rolled due to optional GM Destiny use, the swoop gang attacks. If successful, Sunny offers her hand and states,

“I’ve got plenty on my plate right now, so there’s no way my gang and I are heading to the Scrapheap. But if your plan works, you’re definitely going to have those slaghoppers on your tail. Bring ‘em our way, and we’ll sort ‘em out.”

After failing one check after another, the players managed to win the Black Seraphs over on the last attempt.


In another adventure, set on Corfai, I had the players check out a dance at a winter resort. I used a blend of Scandinavian cultural expressions (Swedish dance music, Norwegian dancing) to set the tone.

And for a complete change of pace, the crew once took on a deadly bounty hunter… in a pie-eating contest.

For something with more mechanical crunch, a friend and I created an encounter based on the crew going head-to-head with enemy hackers.


From Without a Trace

While most party members will be involved in standard combat, each team will also need someone well-versed in Computers. They’ll engage in a mode of combat of their own, pitting their skill against enemy hackers.

Buffer Brawl
This simulates the struggle between the PCs and rogue enemy hackers attempting to access Broker data. Attacks are made via the Computers skill, which do strain damage to the opposing side. While the Computers checks aren’t actually doing damage to the participants, the strain inflicted simulates the stress of opposing hacking attempts.

Strain per attack = Intellect + each success pip.

Soak = Willpower

Hackers have already introduced a rogue program, requiring an active defense of the system.

Only one PC can actively participate, but another PC can offer the assist maneuver

Difficulty set at hard. Checks are competitive.

Focused programming maneuver: adds boost to next roll, can take two strain to add additional boost.

Triumphs: See existing EotE crit table and adjust as you see fit. Be creative!

Double Despair: “out of ammo”. The PC is locked out of the system for a turn.

Enemy slicer has rank in “Fire Wall”, creating an adversary upgrade

Exceeding strain threshold forces the PC to make a Discipline or Cool check to recover strain. If this fails, the PC has been confounded by the enemy hacker and can only watch in frustration as data has been accessed.

Transfer and delete: Imperial hacker has one free upgrade.

PCs have to be actively fighting the hacker or he will access the data. “Are you willing to step away from the computer knowing that an enemy slicer is engaged?”

Imperial Slicers: one with 4 Intellect, the other with 5 intellect. Open percentage roll and highest roll gets the tougher opponent. Once parties are decided, the main Computers proficient PCs will roll.
4 intellect: Natural Slicer,
5 intellect: Natural Slicer, Master Slicer

Edited by verdantsf
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Gambling can be a very fun scenario. Can also be very tense depending on what the party is betting. We had a player try to gamble away the ship once. Firefight came out of that, unfortunately.

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When they are in a cantina have 2 girls get in a fight with the PCs in between them.

Have a little lost girl ask for help...when they are in a time crunch...Do this to a Jedi. Hey mister Jedi I lost my mommy..Help the girl or get that encryption code from the Imperial defector before they are killed by the assassin...

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Seems wrong to me that hacking into an Imperial Mainframe could be resolved in one roll, but shooting the flunkies that guard it could take dozens.

So, what I aim to do about this is to use the number of successes as a gauge for progress through a list of tasks deemed necessary to reach the end result, without getting too crunchy about divvying up and identifying each step.

Now that I've put that mechanic into place, I can apply it to trying to seduce a Baron's wife, breaking into a Hutt's contacts database, or fast-talking past a CorpSec customs patrol.

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The PCs had to swap the restraining bolts of croupier droids in a casino for modified ones, tilting the chances slightly in favour of the guests to ultimately ruin the owner. The shortcut would've been reprogramming the maintenance droid and giving it the bag of bolts. - Stealth, Skulduggery, Deceit, Mechanics, Computers

They had to buy a confiscated ship at a foreclosure auction, when the former owner had been framed for murder, because they needed to get at the smuggling compartments. - Mechanics, Deceit, Coerce, Charm, Negotiate

They had to find valuable cargo on a lawless backwater, when the delivery man didn't show up: Find the ship (already being dismantled by Ugnaughts), find the delivery man (killed by a swoop ganger after a bar fight), find the cargo (taken by the murderer's gang, brought to their hideout, and sold to a visiting spacer), negotiate with the guy who bought the cargo.

Finding and haggling over a landing berth at the wheel during a major event; exploring the Old Duros Sector on Nar Shaddaa, searching for a good place for a hideout; moving contraband to their ship and off planet in a city with heavy Imperial presence and checkpoints at all main thoroughfares and junctions.

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I had my PCs run a three sided negotiation with an Arconan businessman who was fronting for the Alliance, a crime lord who was almost cartoonishly decadent, and the local inhabitants who wanted both groups to respect their beliefs when it came to using the local water supply. All parties involved were at least a little dirty, the PCs had to figure out who to trust, and as they got further into the story the ISB got involved.

Very fun session, not a shot fired.

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I was thinking about environment effects like sand storms, snow storms, maybe having to scale buildings, sneak into places and leave no traces, etc.