One of the reason I liked Exalted with a default mode of “PCs bolostomp 99% of the setting” is that it removes the incentive to kill problems a lot of the time. After the fifth or sixth time the PCs butchered their way through a small army, their handful of Dragonblooded or spiritual leaders and basically proved themselves King Shit on Killfuck Soulshitter mountain they… begin to feel pretty secure for most challenges.
I mean, the reason you kill antagonists who want to kill you is that they may succeed. If it’s evidently clear that even if the bandit chief runs away and returns with ten times the number of men you’ll just be burying ten times as many bodies, the PCs don’t feel any particular need to kill him anymore. It would be like killing a kitten who is trying to eat your thumb. Plus, it stops being ‘fun’ to engage them as they aren’t challenges.
This complacency makes it all the more shocking when the 1% of Actual Damn Threats shows up. I literally had one PC who was insanely combat-optimized spare his opponent not because he wasn’t a threat, but because he was. His exact words to the NPC were “Good try, come back in a few years and maybe you can have revenge.”
Exalted can successfully turn your PCs into Hisoka. It’s amazing.