Combat in the megadungeon

Another truism I've heard about old-school megadungeon gaming is that combat represents a failure. You've somehow managed to fail at getting treasure through cleverness or stealth or sneaking. Getting it through combat is already paying a price you didn't want to have to pay.

My own experience with old-school systems and even retro-clone megadungeon delving is, basically, that this is not quite true.

Combat is risky, but it's also a very effective means to an end.

The critical aspect to me is, it's the end that's important. You want treasure. Not all of it will be unguarded. You won't be able to get maximal loot without combat. Not every access point to deeper levels will be unguarded, not every treasure will be plunderable without conflict, not every treasure-gifting puzzle is solvable before wandering monsters show up.

Plus, in many game systems, combat gives XP. Even if treasure exceeds or dwarfs it, it's not zero, so there can be a benefit to fighting when you can win with minimal or negligible cost.

Additionally, no matter how careful you are, how stealthy you are - you'll have to fight sometimes. It's hard to sneak in a dungeon, and basically impossible with a large group depending on light to see and spoken words to communicate.

But again, if you don't have to fight, or if fighting comes with a cost but not a reward, you want to avoid it if possible.

I think I can get behind this statement:

If the answer to "Should we fight this?" isn't "we literally have no choice*" or "hell yes!" then you don't want to fight it.

Monsters you can basically execute instead of fight, monsters with disproportional amounts of loot (dragons, especially in old-school D&D games), monsters that have high intrinsic XP values but low intrinsic threat to you - those are going to be "hell yes!" if you're high on resources.

So combat isn't automatically a bad choice. It's just a risky one, and one that comes with costs. You want to avoid combats that aren't going to net you more than they cost you (immediately, and long-term). But you don't want to avoid it at all costs, just when it's cost outweighs its benefits.

* I mean this literally. Not "we convince ourselves we have no choice" or "argue we probably should do this." I mean, Move 12" monsters vs. Move 9" PCs / Move 8 monsters vs. a Move 5 party, attacked by surprise, etc. No choice.