DnD: How to deal with Peacemongers

So this is basically the opposite
of the problem most groups face.

I think trying to turn enemies into allies is perfectly acceptable. Personally it makes me feel warm amd fuzzy. It's a lot more fulfilling and heroic than just slaughtering everything that lifts a finger against them.

>becoming the whirling vortex of mind-warping power at the center of a hegemonizing swarm. All must serve! Let none die honorably today!

It's what I'd expect from a gross BBEG. But are they going to be the subtle, diplomatic, corrupting kind, or the straight up pseudo-telepathic kind?

Seconding demons and devils. They're literally made of evil, and (based on 3.5 lore) each one was an evil soul born in hell/the abyss as a dretch/lemure, who then had to fight their way up the ladder over the course of hundreds of years or millenia to reach their status as bearded devil/pit fiend/vrock/whatever. They're too far past the chance for redemption, but will gladly use it to manipulate the PCs into their plans.

Ok, misunderstanding and: great Idea!

Nobody said they would thereafter help them. Nobody said the PCs did attack them first.

What the PCs do is pretty cool and I dont want to change it. (In fact it is great and I had a lot of fun with this behaviour) I just want to be able to deal with it in a better way, when it should not work.
Stop trying to find the person who is guilty. Noone is. There isnt even a problem. I Just want to get better at what i am doing.

agreed! Its a cool thing they do.

You could expand on this in such a way where they could continue to befriend people the devils have corrupted and bring them to the light, so you're not just stomping on their good time, but they still have actual combat now and again.

I'm personally a big fan of Berserk's demons. They wait until someone reaches their point of utmost despair, and offer them the power to fix it in exchange for something they care about, usually the souls of their loved ones. In a TTRPG, it could give a chance for more dramatic RP, as it seems like your group really likes that aspect. How do you turn someone back to the side of good when they already sacrificed their best friend for necromancy powers (to bring their son back to life)?

Plus, mindless or animal intelligence enemies always work, as they simply can't be reasoned with. Zombies, giant spiders, giant spider zombies, the works.

>obligatory "Have you tried not playing D&D?"

Roll with it.

Let them make friends. Let them talk even major villains out of their plans. Let them be a truly positive influence to the world. Be prepared to be flexible with your game and what happens with it.

Just give them more depth and have it be about more than just diplomacy rolls. Peaceful solutions should be harder than combat, not easier.

>I want to convince them that this particular enemy realy needs to go down.

Have an enemy that is going to do something the PCs won't like to someone other than the PCs. PCs try to befriend the enemy. The best they can get is a promise to let the PCs live, the enemy still wants to do whatever it was going to. If they are really persuasive, the enemy says they won't do it, then does it anyway.

For example:
- PCs are following a group that is going from village to village, looting and pillaging as they go. PCs see the results before they encounter the enemies
- PCs catch up to enemies. Enemies promise to leave PCs alone.
- If the enemy leader gives a promise to change their ways, it doesn't even have to be a lie. You could have him change his mind, but I'd go with his minions killing and replacing him because he's 'no fun'.

how about you explain what your players doninstead of speaking in riddles op?

Well you could make it clear to them that some people and monsters are best killed or at least apprehended, maybe a reoccuring murderer that keeps telling the PCs he wont do any more mug-rape-killing but keeps doing it anyway, like many real life shitstains would.

Just have the enemies fake them out. If a bunch of adventurers are going to be naive enough to trust them, they should take advantage.
The goblins like them so much that they bring them into the feasting room to eat with the rest of the tribe.
Once they're in the room with all the goblins and their bugbear leaders, the doors are barred and they attack.

Why force them to do something that they enjoy less than what they're currently doing?

Have you tried not playing D&D? Seriously, maybe your group doesn't want to play murderhobos.

Players will always try a peacefull solution first.
Even if it is way harder, they will try to be peacefull.
I want an intrument to show my players that one particular encountar cannot be solved peacefully (even if most others can)

>Undead
>Not the best friends anyone can make
Good job being racist you mother fucker.

All of the monsters in undertale are dangerous and stupid or outright murderhobos and genociding them them is entirely justified.

That said, he's right OP. Let your players make friends with evil fuckers and make them suffer the consequences.

I was trying to put my finger on the type of deliciously evil, over-the-top cruel villain that keeps luring you in with peaceful truce only to crack your skull again.
At first, I thought: The Joker.
But then I remembered these little bastards.
Pic related

Apply these assholes to one of your races, OP.

Make them piss in your PCs' cheerios just for the lulz, then try to kill their dog.
That's how you get villains that need killing.

>All of the monsters in undertale are dangerous and stupid or outright murderhobos
>implying pappy is dangerous
>implying that doesn't refuse to hurt you
>implying that the only thing he wants isn't to be your friend
>implying he doesn't even try to be your friend in the last moments before you murdered him.

All shit like this prove once again that skeletons are the best friends kids could have and this thread is full of racist fuckheads

>>All shit like this prove once again that skeletons are the best friends kids could have and this thread is full of racist fuckheads

Dont fear! I will make the evil fucktards in my game to be kobolds. They are truly evil little fuckers without any sign of humanity! Not like Skelletons! (Skellys are cool - I am not racist!)

he beats you with bones and locks you up to deliver you to a racist murderhobo lesbian fishgirl

"stupid and dangerous" fits him just right

also, i cant be racist since i identify as a trans-skeletal myself you shitlord

>he beats you with bones and locks you up to deliver you to a racist murderhobo lesbian fishgirl
Uhm no senpai, he lightly throws down with you to try to show you that it's not safe for you to continue forward, if you lose to him three times he just gives up and lets you continue on because he realizes there's nothing he can do to convince you to stay where it's safe.
It's almost like you didn't play the game

Also point of note, he's the only fight you can lose and not get a game over meaning he's the ONLY one pulling his punches so as not to actually hurt you. Even Toriel who actively tries to miss you is still throwing enough heat at you to kill you if it does hit you.

You kidnap my thread and I`m not even mad. I realy wanna play undertale now.

>I realy wanna play undertale now.
So do I. Even though it'd involve doing just what I was fighting against and ripping them all away from their happy ending.

The temptation is great.

Don't bother, the skeleton is the best part of the game and he's only in the first 30 minutes or so.

You talkin' shit about us kobolds?
Get that racist!

What are you two?
Is one of you the evil sibling of the other?
ShoulderAngel and -Devil?
Or are you just samfagging?

How about you let them play the way they like, and you instead present numerous social and diplomatic issues for them to work and overcome in order to wrought peace.

If you have any worth as a GM, you can accomplish this. If they decide someone NEEDS to die, let them decide this on their own, instead of having their hand forced.

samfagging

They are both devil. One of them is subtler.

I'd show how the enemies are evil

Maybe in one adventure they are searching for a group of bandits. They see the destruction of the villages. When they catch up to them they discover the bandits are worse than previously thought like cannibals and cultists.

Enemies like constructs, abominations, animals, anybody that doesn't speak their language.

Really you should let them be peacemongers when it makes sense and when they work for it. Having players that try to intelligently solve encounters can be a great change of pace.

Oh well and I thought I befriended them.

>If they need, they hold them at blades edge and restart the befriending process.

allaboutbirds.org/dinner-guests-how-wolves-and-ravens-coexist-at-kills/

Yeah, I'd get their friends fighting bitterly with each other, with the party trying to play peacekeepers. Naturally, the reasons why they fight shouldn't be resolved in 5 minutes.

...

...

The party I GM has managed to make a LOT of friends that way, funny enough. When it comes down to it, most people just... don't want to die or get maimed.

How'd they keep their new-pressed friends loyalty?

Talking to them about their situation, chasing them off to let them live for another day, using their huge years-long forged toolbox of skills and powers, concerted effort in using social skills, appealing to the misery of their life situation and desperation with a solution, and tons of little outliers like accidental drugs and art, divine intervention, localized darkness nukes, terrascaping hellish places, blatant lies, eating contests, imprisonment and slow wearing down of ideals, cutting off armies from their home dimension and then letting them live in the outlands knowing they can't attack and win, seduction, cheating royal power through soul magics, superhuman skill in combat to try to force a Trigun kind of situation, inducing crippling crises of faith, and deicide.

However we have all quietly subconsciously agreed we want to fuck shit up, so their penultimate adventure right now is in an abandoned city full of RE7 style horrors who can't die. So they can kill AND diplomacy as they figure out the deal.

Some good posts in this thread. I agree with those suggesting undead and demons etc.

It's not always easy to portray evil, especially in a group that seems to be thinking, reasoning beings, but you have to be like the 19th century Brit writer and show the reader that there are, indeed unthinking, unreasoning things that lie on the outside of the borders of civilized society, and even worse....there are thinking, reasoning beings whose hearts are full of malice and who will bear no remorse if they destroy the lives of good people.

I think the trick here is to make enemies who don't have a sense of agency:

>Animalistic- like the Tyranid, this massive swarm of creatures have no higher thoughts than "eat everything" and cannot be communicated or reasoned with

>Believer- pic related, everything you say will be ignored as lies against their perfect evil god. They will willfully ignore even direct evidence that anything He says is wrong. And what He says is to smite unbelievers like yourself.

>Mechanical- eg the Terminator in the first movie. Your enemy is smarter than you, stronger than you, faster than you, and totally dedicated to your destruction. It doesn't have conflicting priorities or self interest, your death is its highest goal and it will do anything to accomplish that.

>They are so consequent and good at it
First, learn to fucking english.

Shout out to star control for doing this really well.
>"We were slaves, and we did unspeakable, horrific things to escape our chains. So long as any other sapient creature exists there is the possibility of us being chained again. This will not happen."
>"You can fight and be exterminated, or help us kill everything in the universe, followed by yourself."

I just don't get this perspective at all. Violence is a last resort. It's what you do when you have nothing else left. To my mind, being a "peacemonger" is synonymous with being successful.

Why do you *need* to force the players to fight something? What's wrong with letting them be effective at finding non-violent solutions, if those solutions are plausible and clever? Why, exactly, are you trying to force some variety of violent confrontation?

This is why I love my group, they have the perfect balance of bloodlust and compassion.

Encounter a group of raiding goblins, they go after the abusive leader and try to help them find a way to live peacefully (or as much as possible) with the nearby village.

Their base is currently an old farmhouse where the goblin tribe lives at, where they are trying to teach them how to farm..... well, they got the digging part down at least.

Eh, that's a simplistic copout IMO.

What's realistic is rational, nice enemies who have agency, they just happen to fundamentally disagree with you. Aka the stereotypical Nazi, ISISfag, communist, etc who hug their wife and kiss their children goodbye before heading out to kill the enemies of the realm for lebensraum/Allah/the revolution.

In a philosophical sense, non-violent solutions are premised on a disparity of complexity. Great when you can get it, but fundamentally dependent on a fallacy of the excluded middle.

When disagreements are serious and it's not clear who has the bigger stick, violence ensues. Peace demands deleting at least one of those complexities.

Exactly how you do in real life. Listen to them scream not all muslims on twitter while bombs are literally going off all over the world in coordinated attacks by islamic death cultists

>I just don't get this perspective at all.

Neither do I.

>see thread
>see Nanoha posts
Nicely done.

As for op's issue, have you tried making a gigantic backstabbing asshole?

How about horrifyingly twisted elementals, Can't really tie up an elemental properly, it doesn't want to talk you you, it only wants destruction, sure you can befriend it, but you've gotta go through the pain in the ass process of purifying it back into a normal elemental, and even then, it's a freaking elemental it probably doesn't like you unless you're aligned with its element.

>They try to avoid all fights and try to make friends with obvious enemies, such as beastmen and goblins.

Same as the answer for all Dnd questions, realistic consequences.

make them have unique motives that the PC's need to appeal to in a logical way in order to sway them.
honestly I would switch spots in an instant in terms of playstyle. I have a group of friends that murder first and ask questions later and it drives me up the wall. I have a non-lethal talk down route for practically every encounter but no one ever even tries to feel it out, and there are some good benefits to them, but no one even tries to work with the npcs. this is even true when a major players life is on the line; even one of the PCs.

I'm actually pretty curious how you set up conflicts that even can be socialed out of? In our first world paradise with hospitals, electricity and microwave meals we still can't resolve problems with talking. In a horribly racist society with rampant famine, a million magical equivalents to nuclear war, a classier divide large enough to birth huge and cheap armies, a history creating tense factions and implausibly diverse cultures and their varied standards of justice resolving anything without genocide should be near impossible. X group has no food so they start pillaging Y group who they view as less than human, Y group hates X for religious reasons and jumps at the chance to declare war with their own propaganda and biological weapons. They both want the party as mercinaries and you will be denied food and shelter, and possibly mobbed, if you deny. What do?

Though there are a ways to nab yourself power and wealth from this, how the FUCK does one friendship this conflict away? A skeleton hoard, one of the villagers apparently being a werewolf, an evil wizard experimenting on a slum and the aristocracy turning a blind eye to it, a dragon. How do you fix this with a social roll??? How???

>enemy pretends to agree with them
>uses their trust to further its own agenda and cause more havoc