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I'll second Call of Cthulhu, or just about any horror game for that matter. Fighting the monsters is generally a very bad idea.
GURPS can be combat-heavy, or not, depending on the campaign style. Regardless, GURPS combat tends to be very deadly, meaning that nonviolent solutions to problems tend to be preferable.
If you're looking for a mechanics-light, role-playing heavy game, it's hard to top Amber Diceless Role-Playing. Since that game is set in Roger Zelazny's Amber multiverse, you don't have to limit yourself to playing with the main characters of the books: by its nature, you can set your campaign anywhere, in any genre or time. ADRP is long out-of-print, but its successor, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, retains the mechanics in a new game-world.
Seconding the vote for Amber Diceless (or Lords of Gossamer and Shadow). Even when you are in combat, it's told more as a story than a mechanic, so it feels more like RP. Also, xp isn't based on combat, so there is no reason for the players to push towards it.
I haven't played much Reve de Dragon, but I don't recall any combat for my character.
Ars Magica, any of the World of Darkness series (except of Werewolf perhaps) and 7th Sea all have great potential for combat-lite games without feeling like 2/3 of the game's engine is lost.
Numenera has no rewards whatsoever for combat. XP is solely for discovery, and is a currency to be used for roleplaying. Numenera
It is a masterpiece of design, in my opinion.
I haven't played much Reve de Dragon, but I don't recall any combat for my character.
Ars Magica, any of the World of Darkness series (except of Werewolf perhaps) and 7th Sea all have great potential for combat-lite games without feeling like 2/3 of the game's engine is lost.
I had a friend regale me with how much he loved 7th Sea, but never managed to get a game going. I would love to try it some time. Something about the making actions more ridiculous decreasing their difficulty is just fun. You don't just disarm the guy, you send his sword into the nearby bush while carving a Z on his chest so you get bonuses to the rolls.
World of Darkness and Shadowrun can both be played just fine with an emphasis away from combat.
I have a feeling Shadowrun isn't going to be what he is looking for. Lets face it, you design your characters in it to survive when shit hits the fan, and it isn't as much fun if shit doesn't hit the fan at least every other run. The players will still min-max as much, or more, in my experience with shadowrun, even if they rarely get into combat.
Combat does tend to be more interesting when slaughtering all opponents isn't the answer to your problems though.
Incidentally, Jenna Moran of Nobilis fame recently managed to Kickstart another diceless RPG that apparently uses the same rules set as Nobilis, called Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. I didn't back the Kickstarter, but from the sounds of it it's basically heart-warming pastoral fantasy with a focus on slice-of-life play. I've been on a huge Golden Sky Stories kick recently and the two games sound very similar conceptually, so I'm definitely going to be checking this out when it comes out.That sounds pretty awesome. I'll have to check it out.
I backed it but haven't gotten around to reading the pdfs yet.