Hate

[Glorelendil]

If he was aware that he could have ended the confrontation without violence, and picked a fight anyway, I would have given a shadow point.

[Majestic]

If he was aware that he could have ended the confrontation without violence, and picked a fight anyway, I would have given a shadow point.

It's probably close, but in my mind their choice to come to the aid of the innocent in this case, especially the way they were threatened by known thieves and sell swords (to the Dwarf, who was from that area) mitigated things somewhat. As did the approach the heroes took, choosing to be careful not to do more serious injury to the men (i.e., they fought them very much different than they would agents of the Shadow).

[Otaku-sempai]

Rather than tell players what their options are, I prefer a chips-fall-where-they-may approach. I'll let players do whatever unimaginative thing they want, then when they're wiped out or when they have completely failed, I'll ask them, "Why did you do the thing that you were obviously going to fail at?" The answer is usually something like, "Because you put such-and-such in front of us. We were obviously supposed to do that." Then I'll ask, "Why didn't you try this alternate approach, which seems obvious in hindsight?" Their answer is invariably, "Ohhhhhhhhh!" They never make that mistake again.

Once exposed to this tough love, I find players start coming up with all sorts of imaginative solutions to problems. They just needed to realize that they were expected to THINK.

Early on, when the players are still becoming familiar with the mechanics of TOR, it might be appropriate to lay out some options. Once everyone is familiar with how the game works, it might be a better time for the "let the chip fall where they may" approach.

[Majestic]

And just to be clear, having not used the Awe maneuver before, the player probably didn't know all the details on how the situation could be resolved by the non-violent approach. Nor did he know they were Craven.

As LM I threw out to the group (after the thugs tried to chase them away, then offered to cut them in) that they could either go with Awe or fight.