Yeah I think this would be really tough. But I remember running into a small group of people dedicated to pacifism and I wonder if a pacifist character might actually be able to join them and maybe find some interesting quests that aren't possible otherwise. Anyone know?

I always try to not kill as many NPCs as I can, but I'm not interested in a totally pacifist run...

I assume a pacifist run means you can lie, cheat, steal and abuse people to your heart's content, but neither you nor any summoned monsters nor followers can kill anybody?
With this in mind, I imagine exceedingly high stealth, theft and lockpicking skills are a must, with or without magic or technology to do any such jobs for you where applicable.

I think you are allowed to knock out people rather than kill them. And I believe exceptions are made for undead and beasts (wolves, etc.). Somewhere in the manual it talks about how it's possible to finish the game without killing anyone but it sounded like the developers felt obligated to include it and didn't really have their hearts in it.

High charisma and persuasion would probably also help with a pacifist run.

Intelligence also figures in for using that persuasion to get non-combat results on some quests.
Perhaps a magician, then, who uses many spells at a time? But that adds willpower to the mix. Then again, Black Necromancy can be exceedingly helpful for interrogating dead people you find.

How can one avoid combat in random encounters? While not necessary for a pacifist run, one will be avoiding combat most everywhere else anyway, so attempting to generalize the approach might be an efficient thing to do.

Yeah.Manual says somewhere that a player needs fatigue damaging weapons to finish the game without hurting anyone.Zombies,beasts and other animals can be killed,I guess.
Seeing the number of unavoidable battles and dungeons,I think that a "fatigue-damaging" brute would work a lot better than a skilled diplomatic,since you can't avoid Molochean Hand ambushes. Me too.I was just curious about this pacifist thingy written in the manual.

I was hoping for sort of a NINJA VANISH! approach to getting out of forced combats. Anything for that? Charm or slowing spells on your enemies, invisibility or mid-combat stealth on yourself, outrunning your problems, convenient use of the Teleoprt spell, that sort of thing.

Some things I've read about but never personally tried:

Air form spell good for running past creatures you don't want to fight

Master prowler can go invis at any time and sneak past anything.

Invisibility spell works quite well apparantly.

Here's a link to the closest possible attempt, someone got the least amount of kills required in the game (2 gate guards at the end).

http://terra-arcanum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=17073&highlight=pacifist