As a rule, Dungeons and Dragons is a combat simulator. Everything in the rule book is presented to facilitate the encounter, and slaying, of monsters in exciting and exotic locales. New gear? Great, go kill monsters. Level up? Good, now you can slay yet stronger monsters. 

Of course, that's not how a great many players see it. Thanks to shows like Crit Juice, Sneak Attack, Critical Role, and Dimension 20, there are more people than ever playing the game the way they perceived it with their show of choice. Most often, that means more role play, more drama, more socializing, and less combat. 

Wizards of the Coast seems to have recognized this, and with every revision to DnD 5e, the game seems to embrace non-combat more and more. If you're on Twitter, this is pretty much all the 5e discourse is about…

Long ago my own DnD show started, now under the moniker The Inn at the End (formerly Chaotic Amateurs). We firmly decided that we were making a radio program, that it would be fun and fast first, and crunchy second.

This was when my own preference for role-play-heavy scenarios started — when I realized a good group could make it more fun than it had any right to be. We could share breathless and emotionally profound moments with each other, or laugh like maniacs at something only our group would ever understand. 

Recently, my podcast — The Inn at the End — had a chance to play several one-shot adventures in quick succession. Long-form campaigns often mean you're married to your character for some time. You can feel boxed in, like maybe you made a choice you'll regret. So I took the chance to experiment with "extreme" characters.

Starting with a wizard named Tycho, I created a character around pacifism. There are few if any classes that can facilitate a "pacifist" character. Illusionist Wizard comes to mind. But I felt divination suited what little I knew about the adventure a lot more, so divination wizard it was. 

You might be asking yourself what the hell a "pacifist" might look like in DnD. My own personal ground rules meant that I would carry no weapons, wear no armor, or utilize offensive spells against any creature. It was easy to fill my spell book with divination spells, those weren't offensive, in fact only one exception comes to mind - Mind Spike - a 2nd level divination spell that emulates something of a psychic attack. Regardless, I had a lot of room for others and was forced to compromise a bit. Firebolt, for example, is a notoriously offensive cantrip. But it's notable because it can ignite flammable material. So learning Firebolt, I simply forbade myself from using it on creatures. More than once I used it to hamper pursuing enemies by burning their sails, or confound them by starting fires at a distance.

Want more character inspiration? Try out our article Flavoring Your Characters: Physics as Magic!

Naturally, there were a lot of painful moments as Tycho grew more and more powerful and learned more and more spells. I spent a lot of time in combat casting control and illusion spells. Fog Cloud irritated my party just as much as it did their opponents. My elected spells meant I was far more useful outside of combat, gaining intelligence with low-level stuff like Detect Magic, Identify, and Find Familiar. And Minor Illusion came in handy to allow me to hide when combat erupted all around me. 

It wasn't perfect. But it was fun.

It wasn't until Tycho had access to 3rd level spells that the potential really began unfolding. Spells like Fly and Leomund's Tiny Hut got plenty of use in our party. And Clairvoyance is a divination wizard's bread and butter, it allows you to collect intelligence up to a mile away. Incredibly useful when trying to avoid fights. 

People gush over the level 6 feature for the School of Divination, Expert Divination, and rightly so. It allows you to recover lower-level spell slots when you cast higher-level divination spells. This is a powerful feature for a busy adventuring party, allowing your utility to extend much further than a wizard of another school. 

But the level 2 feature, Portent, is incredibly powerful, especially at lower levels. It allows you to roll two d20s and save them for later use, subbing your portent rolls in when you need a favorable outcome. And it's not just for use on yourself, any creature you can see can be forced to adopt your saved Portent roll. 

It may seem like a silly feature, it only lets you save two dice rolls after all, but even a middling roll can be the difference between deflecting a killing blow or wasting a powerful spell. 

This was no more apparent than at the peak of Tycho's one-shot adventure, dubbed "Beyond the Boiling Sea". Tycho and his adventuring party disturbed the sacred waters beyond the Boiling Sea and attracted the attention of its guardian spirit, a legendary Kraken. 

The Kraken ravaged our ship and dealt immense damage to the party in a single turn. But Tycho had an incredible portent saved up, a 1. Casting polymorph, Tycho was able to force the Kraken to fail an otherwise unlosable wisdom save; Krakens have +11 wisdom saves. Even with a spell save DC of 16, there was a 75% chance of blowing Tycho's only level 4 spell slot. 

Instead, the Kraken was forced to adopt a d20 roll of 1, 12 total, and was forced to polymorph into a goldfish for over an hour. 

It wasn't much time, but it was enough to save the party from certain death AND maintain Tycho's ideals of pacifism. And certainly one of the COOLEST moves I've ever pulled off at the table. 

I haven't really had a chance to play Tycho, or a character like him since we completed that journey. But I would do it again in a heartbeat. It might be worth exploring to see what other classes can offer a pacifist build. Wizards are obvious, but what about a druid? A cleric? Paladin doesn't seem likely. What do you think? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

If you'd like to hear the results for yourself, Tycho's pacifist adventure is available for download wherever you get your podcasts or by following this link to the Inn at the End podcast.

Have you tried any challenging character types, such as The Pacifist? Let us know in the comments!

Thank you for stopping by the Inn at the End, don’t forget to subscribe to this blog and, if you’re into podcasts, be sure to check out Inn at the End on your favorite podcast app.

Grab your sword and keep on adventuring!

The Inn Keeper thanks Rett for this week’s communication. You can find out more about Rett and his varied talents and projects by navigating to rettisaweso.me.

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