Well, there are these creatures called 'NPCs', who can be defeated through 'talking'. This often entails the use of the dread 'Diplomacy' skill, sometimes the alternative 'Bluff' or 'Intimidate' skills can be used instead.
OK, silliness aside: For out of combat encounters, if you still want interactions with sentients, put in a friendly NPC who can give the PCs some useful information if approached in a non-threatening way. Whether it's a gruff ranger who's up for a bit of campfire company or a little old lady shopping at the market, there's nothing wrong with talking to people to learn things. At higher levels, those rangers and old ladies might even help out with a potion or two.
Non-Combat encounters are tricky. I've planned several in my homebrew campaigns. They rarely, if ever go off as "non-combat." Here's an example:
The PCs are headed through a megadungeon. Granted, this is a ruined city with certain areas CRAWLING with monsters. Still I've told the players that sometimes there are neutral or even some good aligned monsters/NPCs in the ruins.
They are moving between areas. Through the early morning mist comes four Fetchlings; the players fail to ID them as such so to the party they are "Pale skinned humanoids, clad in black clothing with a shadowy darkness seemingly cloying to their frames." The party asks if they're armed to which I reply that they ARE, but their weapons are not yet drawn.
Unbeknownst to the players I'd planned this as a way to introduce a band of Fetchling freedom fighters they could ally with. As soon as I mention weapons, the party scatters into Stealth. The Fetchlings fail their Perception checks. Next thing I know a party of 4th level Bada$$es are raining blows down on 4 level 1 NPC warriors.
Three fetchlings die instantly. One survives and flees, deeper into the ruins. The party tries to kill him, wounds him with a couple low-damage Magic Missiles, and the dude escapes. Later the party meets the ACTUAL freedom fighters who ask if the party met their "scouting party" earlier. Several Bluff checks ensue.
My point is: make sure your players KNOW definitively that they're supposed to at least start the encounter out of combat and try to resolve it without battle. One way to do that is by making a fight impossible:
- Natural hazards: raging rivers, huge chasms, mudslides and tsunamis can't be attacked. Try adding some of these in and make them into Chase scenes, stand alone set pieces or to add a bit of gusto to a fight scene.
- High powered monsters: the party of 5th level characters rounds a bend in the dungeon and finds... an adult red dragon (CR 14 fight). In no uncertain terms the players should realize that fighting here is foolish here in the extreme. However the dragon, with its 16 Int and DC 16 Suggestion at will speaks calmly to the party in Common. It explains that it just ate it's last "Treasure hunters" and it's looking for a fresh party. If they do a little quest, the dragon may just let them live...
- Traps: seriously. Think of a Haunt: you trigger it, get a Perception check and if you make it, you have a Surprise round to do something about it or run. What if you applied the same rules to binary traps? The level 1 noobs are sneaking along a cave tunnel and the rogue blows her Perception check. Suddenly she hears a "Click" under her foot. Everyone make another Perception check. The rogue and the Inquisitor make it and watch the floor begin to open beneath the rogue and fighter. The rogue, continuing her bad luck at the dice rolls a 9 for initiative; she'll be going only AFTER she needs to make her DC 20 Ref save. The Inquisitor however gets a 15 and makes a Partial Charge on the rogue; he's going to try and Bull Rush the rogue over the 10' opening. There's a moment of tension followed by the Inquisitor succeeding on her Bull Rush with a 17! The small-sized rogue is hurled to the far side of the pit even as the fighter falls into the hungry darkness below!
I'll leave you with another Non-Combat encounter that actually worked in my game. A 3rd level party got portalled out of a dungeon to a swamp several miles away. They slog through the swamp failing a couple Survival checks and carving their way through random encounters. They then find a small ruin and explore it only to take several rounds of damage and get charmed into doing a quest for a very distraught dryad.
Said dryad has lost her daughter. She sends the party deeper into the ruins where they will meet a Forlarren. The dryad demands the girl be returned tonight, before the rise of the full moon, so that her daughter's sinful nature can be redeemed by a divine power. In the midst of all of this the party realizes: they're low on spells, have no more healing and will probably die in the effort.
Enter: the Lyrakien Talespinner
A Lyrakien Azata is a fey-like outsider with gossamer wings that likes tales and is sort of a divine bard. The little spirit greets the party on the doorstep of the lower halls and challenges them to a performance contest. If the party wins they'll regain their strength. None of the PCs are bards or have the Performance skill. Instead the players go around re-telling of some of their more epic fights. One of the players was admittedly REALLY good and just went for it in character.
I added GM fiat to the Lyrakien's "Traveler's Friend" ability. Normally this just removes Exhausted/Fatigued. Instead I played it of that the PCs and the outsider were swapping tales, drinking fey mead and eating from a divine cornucopia for 2 hours. During this time the Lyrakien was moved by the barbarian's tale and invoked her own power. Suddenly as the haze and feasting cleared as if they had been dreaming the Lyrakien spoke one final prayer and disappeared. As the smoke cleared it was as if the players had slept for 8 hours and not only healed 2 HP/level but also could regain their spells and such.
It's okay, I admit to being silly.
For non-social, non-combat encounters, you're looking at traps, puzzles, and environmental hazards. There are many books on traps out there, some for puzzles too. The best ones allow the whole party to participate, rather than just one person with trapfinding or a find traps spell. These also depend on the nature of your group-some groups love puzzles, some loathe them.
For environmental hazards, you can do these at lower levels, but at higher levels, the PCs will have spells to negate the issues of any heat/cold/storm/snowfall/avalanche.
You can, however, do things like weird magical phenomena. Fairy rings, planar conjunctions, and whatnot, where the party comes into an area where things just plain aren't right.
Haunts, as Mark suggested, can be a nice diversion from the expected encounters.
And - if handled well - Chases. Allows a lot of your non-typical Skills to get some use!
I ran a "Rescue from a Burning Building" scenario that went quite well! Increasing DC's as the fire grew, and the time-limit before the building would collapse. You have to mainatin a sense of urgency for Chases to work well.
My players were once indicted by the government for procuring a dangerous artifact for the purpose of resurrecting a potentially evil dead god and had to persuade the councilers to sway the vote in their favor.
The bladebound magus's sword was framed for murder in a society that gives civil rights to intelligent items and the party had to solve the mystery.
The party got thrown into a prison that's like Portal where they had to solve puzzles and obstacle courses in order to escape, including one where they had to use an experimental potion to gain a mimic's shapeshifting ability and hide from a hydra.
The party had to disguise as entertainers in order to crash a dinner party.
Cyrad and Myotin: so in some of your situations, what do you feel kept your players from just launching into combat? Or for that matter using magic to just leave?
If I'd given my players a "framed for murder" rap, they would've immediately checked for exits or else tried to fight their way out. My point is: you have to know your audience.
Otherwhere: I've been interested in running a "rescue from the burning building" scenario myself. Can you talk about how it went?
If you want to run non-combat encounters of a non-social nature you have to somehow involve the whole party. This is always the tricky thing for me. I mean combat is easy: there's a very identifiable goal (defeat the enemy) and everyone has SOME kind of combat action they can perform to add to the success of the group.
What do you do when you have an "escape from a prison" scene and you have three characters who are uber-specialized in Perception, Knowledge skills and Climb and then one guy has some hidden lockpicks, Disable Device, Stealth, etc?
Now I'm not saying it's impossible, you just have to be willing to coax and communicate with your players. You also have to be receptive to what they're trying to accomplish. I've stretched and even broken the rules on Aid Another to turn set piece traps and obstacles into whole-party events.
Instead of just having the rogue pick the lock and disable the door trap players have used Perception to help the rogue listen to/feel tumblers move in the lock for a +2; use Knowledge skills to ID the maker of the trap and explain common techniques and engineering flaws for a +2; Survival to check for tracks or movement patters through the area for a +2.
Since that isn't normal I had to tell my players I'd allow them to try anything and then give them examples. Unfortunately I've had to change out players several times so I don't have many folks who play with me that know me really well. They're also very rules-heavy. Still, its worth putting it out there for the one or two times people really get into it.
Come up with a problem that doesn't have one simple solution. If the problem would require some modern technology or a group of skilled people a few weeks to fix, that means it is probably a good idea for a mid-level adventure. If it requires a whole fleet of modern equipment or a small army to solve, that means it is probably a good challenge for a higher level party.
If you keep the problem general, you force the PCs to identify the problem (gather information), figure out solutions, and then face troubles making that solution happen.
For example, the problem is that the people in the village are running out of food. Every year, the villages farms have been producing less and less. This is because the villages once steady stream has been disrupted by several groups of evil humanoids messing with the forests in the hills above the village. They are messing with the forest because a druid who once maintained balance has been possessed and is trying to lure a dragon back to the forest by building a shrine, etc. etc.
Cyrad and Myotin: so in some of your situations, what do you feel kept your players from just launching into combat? Or for that matter using magic to just leave?
For the first scenario, most of the players wanted to keep a good relationship with the local government. They already had a good relationship with the mayor of their home town and didn't want to ruin it. There was also the possibility the players could actually have the government help them with the god resurrection if they did a good enough job, but the players decided to take the "safest" approach and simply assure the council that there's nothing to worry about.
For the second scenario, I took away the magus's sentient sword. By the time she got it back, I left a clue that an already established arch-nemesis is somehow involved in the adventure, which kept the party interested enough to see through the adventure. This adventure also had an infiltration mission that, if the party simply barged into, it would have put them in even worse position with the law. It also helped that the party really liked this homebrew society I created.
For the third scenario, the party needed to rescue an important NPC. For the Hydra encounter, the hydra was significantly more powerful, making it risky to simply kill it.
For the fourth scenario, the party needed an item from a party guest. They weren't invited to the party. If they barged in, they likely would have gotten the authorities called on them.
In all four scenarios, there was:
1) A reward for completing the scenario.
2) A consequence for abandoning the scenario.
3) A consequence or reduced reward for going murderhobo on everything.
I once used a "message post". Old tree next of roadfork and good camping site for bigger group of traveller with couple of altars, with thousands of tags, messages and items left by travelers as either sacrifices or forgotten in many years.
I also like to use other "past encounters", marks and trails left by other travellers, old fights or accidents. Head on post, broken wagons, small impact crater with crushed body in middle of it, used campfire still warm and smoking, faraway noices.
One good was also couple of sleeping monster blocking the road. Players weren't sure if they could kill them before they wake up, so they just sneaked between.
Also, traders. I don't remeber where it started, one of my players in Jade Regent bought a apartment, then in way to the next city he traded it for farm in magical forest, that was traded for 'authentic & unique' still wet treasure map from drunken dwarf, which was traded for very valuable weapon.
In the last one, he found base camp of people trying to find treasure of Gorum's Tankard and he organized auction to sell his map. I rolled 3 random weapon for different buyers and each of them claimed that their own weapon was the most valuable and said that player must make desicion by description. He was lucky and still believes that the map was real and he got the real treasure of Gorum's Tankard.
Catching a runaway chicken
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Otherwhere: I've been interested in running a "rescue from the burning building" scenario myself. Can you talk about how it went?
It went surprisingly well, I must say!
I'd read how much players hate chase scenes in PF on the boards here, but wanted to try it with my group to change things up a bit and they loved it! It allowed them to: feel heroic without resorting to combat; and to use skills they seldom, if ever, used - like: Escape Artist (to squeeze through broken passages, where beams had fallen, etc.). It gave the Monk an excellent chance to display the benefits of his using ki to high jump (to get to a second floor without risking the burning stairway); one of my players had a potion of Fire Resistance, which he used here rather than saving for later; the Dragon Disciple with his 24 STR would carry unconscious victims out, up to 4 at a time. All-in-all, I think they rescued nearly 30 people in about 1 minute (10 rnds) before the inner structure collapsed.
Once the campaign ended, that was one of the events they all remembered favorably.
That, and the Haunt that I used at another location. Again, it gave them a challenge that was not combat nor social, had unusual threats and challenges, and we spent almost 2 full sessions on it when I thought it would be a simple diversion. LOL Never assume.
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Catching a runaway chicken
There's actually a really fun encounter like this in The Tomb of Haggemoth, which is rife with non-combat encounters. In this case, instead of a chicken, there's a decanter of endless water stuck on "blast" with a key tied to it.
Dire Destiny Books was planning a new book about non-combat encounters, but it got scrapped when Paizo announced "Ultimate Intruige" was coming. I can share one idea, though:
I've had some success ripping off a mechanic from "Dread" and using a Jenga tower. First, set the tower, but be sure to pull 6 or 8 blocks out near middle.
You set a goal (Say, clearing a rockfall or sneaking through a guarded area) then you set a number of "successes" that the party must achieve to avoid a consequence (rocks fall, bridge collapses, guards charge in, etc). Usually 6 or 8, but maybe as high as 10.
Each party member must contribute a check of some kind (say, a STR or Stealth check), or else pull a block from the Jenga tower and place it on top. If they make the check, then that counts as "1 success". If they fail, they pull a block. If they decide to pull a block without making the check, and don't topple the tower, then that also counts as "1 success"
The DC for the checks always starts at 5 or 10, and then goes up by 5 with every "success".
If the tower topples, the whole party suffers the consequences.
Peculiarities can be fun if used sparingly. E.G You open the door to a bare 20' square room. Suspended from the centre of the ceiling is a small vial of what looks to be mercury.
Spend the next 30 minutes smiling nonchalantly as the party hypothesise what it is and what they should do.
Similarly describe unimportant features like fountains. Players will take an age searching for non-existent secret doors etc.
Add some red herrings like a personal diary that contains no useful information but has plenty of things that read like clues. E.G 'i must visit the willow to see what Barric was hiding.