To wrap up this series on non-combat encounters, I’m going to share an excerpt from the GMH providing advice on how to actually use non-combat encounters in an adventure. My previous excerpts have covered how to construct non-combat encounters of various types, but this advice is more about when and how to work a non-combat encounter into an adventure.
Advice on Using Non-Combat Encounters
To be clear, there are many ways to design a non-combat encounter beyond the three general kinds discussed above and their variations, and you as a GM can and should experiment with them and try out new twists and ideas. But with these basics in mind, the next question is: how can non-combat encounters add to a campaign?
For starters, non-combat encounters are for modeling complex situations: simple tasks like opening a lock, jumping across a gap, or recalling information about a monster don’t warrant a non-combat encounter. Instead, reserve non-combat encounters for situations with multiple moving parts, requiring multiple skill checks to resolve and offering players the chance to show off their out-of-the-box thinking.
But this still leaves several ways to work non-combat encounters into the structure of your campaign:
Discrete Encounters
The simplest way to add non-combat encounters to your campaign is in the same way as combat encounters. This as a discrete encounter that the players start, run through, and finish before moving on to the next stage of their adventure, and the examples of non-combat encounters on the previous pages are designed with this structure in mind.
Resource and contest encounters are fairly straightforward, and you can employ them regularly in this capacity. Nodal encounters are more complicated, requiring more prep time, and are more like set-piece combat encounters—and should be used with around the same regularity, at once or twice per adventure.
Interleaved with Combat Encounters
Large and complicated non-combat encounters—particularly nodal encounters—can be broken up into phases separated by combat encounters, keeping the PCs on their toes.
Resource and contest encounters can be broken up by a combat encounter at the start or end of each non-combat round. This can model a desperate forced march, coming under periodic attack from enemy forces, or a series of formalized duels or battles with each side having opportunities to tilt the odds in their favor ahead of time. You can have the results of the non-combat encounter influence the details of the combat encounters, or vice-versa, or both.
As mentioned above, combat can be a consequence of failing a nodal encounter, or of failing to resolve specific nodes. Nodal encounters can also just have some nodes in the flowchart be combat encounters, allowing the PCs to resolve them by winning the fight. These combat nodes can be blockers, complications, or bonuses—and they can be influenced by various other complication or bonus nodes, giving the PCs additional enemies to fight, or allies or weapons that they can use to gain an advantage.
Combined with Combat Encounters
It’s also possible to combine combat and non-combat encounters, creating something with aspects of both. This is easiest to do with resource and contest encounters, but with enough planning and thought, a nodal encounter could be worked into a combat encounter (but it would probably need to be a big set-piece encounter).
A mid-combat resource encounter might give players a limited number of rounds in which to do something that affects the wider combat encounter, like seal off a source of enemy reinforcements, or prevent cultists from summoning their eldritch master. To accomplish this, the PCs would need to come up with a plan, and then make the appropriate skill checks. Depending on the setup, this might require them to reach certain places on the battlefield by fighting through enemies.
A contest encounter combined with combat would likewise require the players to succeed on certain skill checks faster than an opposing team (likely the enemies in the encounter) can do the same, with the added twist that the outcome of the contest affects the combat. The non-combat part of the encounter might allow one side or the other to seize control of a powerful weapon by fighting over its control stations, or to summon a powerful monster to aid their side in combat. As with resource encounters, making the necessary skill checks can require the combatants to be in specific locations, which for contest encounters turns into a kind of king-of-the-hill scenario.
Woven Through an Adventure
Finally, it’s also possible to weave a non-combat encounter through an entire adventure, or even a whole campaign. In this structure, the PCs (and their opposition, as applicable) would get to make their skill checks at narratively appropriate points in the adventure (say, after achieving certain plot-relevant goals) instead of in a regular turn order.
Making a resource or contest encounter work as part of an adventure will likely require careful attention to the passage of time, with checks being made every day, week, or month (depending on the time scale of the adventure). This could be used to model a looming threat, like the arrival of a hostile army that the PCs must prepare to fight, or a research effort where the PCs and their opposition are vying to decipher a code or piece together a historical mystery. The outcome of this encounter can then influence details of the adventure’s climax, like how many enemies the PCs have to fight or whether the PCs or their enemies arrive at the site of the final battle first and have the advantage of being on the defensive.
Nodal encounters are even better suited for weaving through an adventure, though, especially if the adventure is non-linear. The nodes of the nodal encounter can be hidden at first and revealed as the PCs progress through various parts of the adventure; completing the nodal encounter can then require backtracking and revisiting earlier parts of the adventure once the PCs discover and resolve nodes later in the adventure that make earlier nodes feasible to resolve.
Up Next
Well, that wraps up the GMH’s material on non-combat encounters (or at least what I’m sharing here: the GMH contains additional examples of each type of encounter that I’ve omitted here for brevity). I hope this illustrates the sort of advice that the GMH provides for GMs who want to write their own content for adventures in Aetrimonde; I’ll be returning to GM mechanics later on, to discuss similar advice for designing combat encounters, adventures, campaigns, settings, and so on.
But for now, I’m going to be moving on to a new series, covering a fourth sample character! Since the first three were a martial, spiritual, and arcane character, that leaves one origin I haven’t covered yet: the divine characters, who gain power from a deity or creed. And, based on the first three characters (the tough Fighter, deadly Skinchanger, and protective Artificer), I know which of the divine classes I’ll be covering: the Inquisitor, whose denunciation renders their foes helpless before the displeasure of the gods.
Stay tuned!
Aetrimonde 
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