Impromptu D&D 5e games are going well

Basically monsters and traps in the game I've/we've run can be popped in at any moment, so there's been no prepping of the dungeon - just spontaneous 'I think a monster would be over there!' stuff.

Must write up some non violent encounters and suggest them into play, otherwise the violence becomes normalised and then it ceases to be of interest.

I've basically got two methods of dealing with non violent activities - each time you pass a skill check of 15 or higher (and sometimes on 12 or higher) you note down you passed a skill roll.

You can find target wheels or combat training animated mannequins.

With the wheels, if you have a skill point you can cross it off and make an attack against the wheel. If you hit it's AC 15 and do 5 or more damage, you get 10 XP. If you miss, you get nothing. As stated previously on this blog training wheels can be found in various ruins.

With the mannequins these were used for training troops and so can also be found in various ruins. Each is effectively a skeleton. You need five passed checks to animate one into combat. Getting a surprise round is very difficult to achieve: A dex (stealth) check of 20 or higher and they don't spot you and you get the surprise round. Probably only a rogue could manage this). And you need an amount of mannequins that would make for a medium difficulty combat. Remove that number of checks from your sheet. PC's can pool their passed checks for this purpose.

If they knock all party members to zero hp, they cease attacking but they will not stabalise you, so it's likely you'll die. OR if the GM says they do before the combat begins, in the event of everyone being knocked down they will attempt to stabalise you (straight roll vs 15) with their weird fingers but your HP maximum goes down by one until either you donate 500 gold at a temple of a god that favours you, or perhaps it can never be recovered (it's probably the latter, but were not going to make you feel comfortable about this result). The mannequins have, over the years, gone a bit chaotic and rogue, so they tend to attack anyone who is around - it's not really possible to have someone who is 'out of the combat' to just come in and stabalise the party if they all get knocked to zero - the mannequins stay active for some minutes after their opponents are laid low and will attack anyone else who comes into sight. Hopefully they are of the sort that stabalise their former opponents! Generally it's possible to tell which models will or wont do that by looking at them.

The manequins only activate if the players have sufficient skill passes to activate them and decide to do so. Over time the mannequins repair themselves and reform, but this can take some time (weeks or months, even - up to the GM). They grant the same XP an equal number of skeletons would grant.