In the ideas thread, I suggested that people be able to end combat in more ways than just "flee". I didn't want to spam the ideas thread with discussion on it though: the idea itself is enough, and discussion was getting lengthy, hence this thread.
A game can have a combat system without requiring you to fight every creature you meet to the death. You can spare them. Heck, they might even spare you.
NetHack, the Ultimas (uncluding Ultima Online), Deus Ex, and many other games allow you to complete the game without killing, despite their combat systems. Bethesda claims that other than random encounters, every encounter would be resolvable without combat in Fallout 3, including the endgame.
The act of "passing the combat on to someone else" by sparing an evil dude is a moral choice. If the children of evil dudes ever feature in the game, should we be required to massacre them, too? Otherwise we're just passing that combat on to someone else.
This is not incompatible with the Larian games. Receiving evil orders from an evil mad undead dude does not automatically cause people to become irredeemably evil themselves, and even being irredeemably evil does not cause people to want to fight to the death even when they are clearly losing horribly and near death.
Clearly, some think nonfatal combat isn't important, and prefer monty haul dungeonbashes to scenarios that have any moral depth. I can understand that, and respect it as an opinion, but I couldn't feel more differently about what RP is about. It isn't about combat, nor about phat lewt.
Diablo is a bland, soulless game for me after about the third randomly generated, monster-packed room. As you progress through the levels, things do vary: the scenery, layout, types of attacks and colour of the monsters you harvest... and that's it. Oblivion's dungeons and wilderness encounters are no better. But a very similar game, NetHack, along with Deus Ex, the Fallouts and the Ultimas, all remain replayable, purely because they allow me to explore not just the world, but through my non-scripted choices of how to play the game, to explore myself.
One argument against allowing people to have more options than kill/die/flee is that it takes effort on the part of the game designer. Allowing a "surrender" option requires coding in a response, for instance: does your opponent keep fighting, or take your weapons and release you, or take you directly to the camp that you were trying to infiltrate, but lock you up? But I don't feel that this "Game designers shouldn't have to think" argument holds any water whatsoever. If it did, we'd still be playing Pong.
A "spare opponent's life" option is the one I really want, though, as it adds a huge moral dimension. What do you do if the opponent keeps fighting, even though he's crazily weaker than you? Just walk away with him following you and attracting other foes by hammering out a tattoo on your backplate? Smack him upside the head and try again? Try for a "disarm" or "stun" move? Cast a sleep spell? Lure him into a net trap?
Or just kill him anyway? There's nothing to say you can't play a rpg as if it was a dungeonbash. I just argue that you shouldn't have to, and any combat which just has "kill or be killed" as the options is lazy game design.
