Handling defeated foes: dead or unconscious, and what to do about it?

How does your group handle defeated foes, especially humanoid or otherwise sentient ones? Do you default to framing all enemy defeat in combat as dead enemies? Do you give your PCs the option at every potentially lethal blow to make the decision: dead or unconscious? What about unconscious enemies? Do they remain unconscious until, essentially, the PCs are no longer within their sphere of influence (excepting important NPCs that may play a recurring role)? What about foes taken prisoner? Does keeping a captured but powerful defeated enemy sedate/docile become a challenge (possibly a skill challenge?) or otherwise a constant thorn in your PCs' side while they travel to turn the foe over to some greater authority?

Here are the relevent rules bits from the Compendium: "When an adventurer reduces a monster or a DM-controlled character to 0 hit points, he or she can choose to knock the creature unconscious rather than kill it. Until it regains hit points, the creature is unconscious but not dying. Any healing makes the creature conscious.

If the creature doesn't receive any healing, after a short rest it is restored to 1 hit point and becomes conscious....

Monsters and characters controlled by the Dungeon Master usually die when their hit points drop to 0, unless an adventurer chooses to knock them unconscious. Adventurers generally don't need to stalk the battlefield after a fight, making sure all their foes are dead."

Anyway, just curious how other groups handle such matters and if any interesting outcomes have resulted from defeated but living foes left behind or captured.

I always made sure players knew they had the choice, and sometimes they left NPCs alive, usually to try to get information out of later, and sometimes they killed them outright. Kinda depended on the adventure and the monster.

My players are very not "Murder Hobos" and making sure every adversary is dead is not on their list. My daughter loves having her charismatic fleet footed rogue, convert potential enemies into friends. A goblin and an other world Assassin for instance, but also a druid and a faerie dragon.

Sometimes (very, very rarely), I'll insist on a result for a given foe :
- if I can't see any way in which the effect could not be lethal
- if I really don't want the NPC to die AND the players' character really shouldn't want the NPC to die (don't scream at me, it is a rareisim thing, but it has happened twice for me - in 20 years...)

Otherwise (i.e. "always"), it's the players' call.

I take it as a personal challenge, because I am not good at roleplaying the informative/uninformative NPC out of hand - I often reveal too much, or end up not saying anything worthwhile when I should have (which I figure out 3h later...) But, you know, that's how you grow! (I'm hoping! It's been ... a while now, and I'm not seeing the improvement... But the hope is alive! )

The big thing I try to do is make defeated foes defeated foes. They're not going to "break free and murder them in their sleep" or something to that effect. They will try to run away, or something if the players are telling me by their actions that they're kind of hoping they try, but otherwise, they'll act as defeated foes.

But I'm not going to lie and say that the table sees defeat in the same way : I always find it fascinating when players prefer to have their character die than give up an important (not critical simply costly, or powerful) item, but seem to expect a defeated foe to hand over everything and anything - including oaths of allegiance, eternal servitude, etc. It can create some friction and disagreement, but then again, nothing so important that we stop playing!

Great response, [MENTION=22362]MoutonRustique[/MENTION]! I won't scream at you for a little deus ex machina, though it does raise some questions about DM Force and player agency. I wonder if those rare events may not have been handled differently, instead of by you in the moment by the players later and when the NPC becomes relevant again:

Player A: "Shoot, it's too bad we killed X three months ago (in game time); she would have been perfect in this situation."

Player B: "What if that knife wound the rogue finished her off with only appeared to do so? What if she actually survived, crawled off, and began plotting her revenge against us."

DM: <wicked cackle>

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] - thanks for the not screaming

A situation such as you describe is actually one I love : when players take agency into the world, but at the same time not forcing event A or B. They have a stake, but no one actor (as in "person involved in the game" gets to dictate major outcome.)

In my particular situations, the two times I canceled a PC action of killing an NPC was when the PCs had been asked by "Powers that Be" within "Rooms of Truths" and then divinely scrutinized as to REAL intent - i.e. this part was role-played only after OoC talk of me asking their characters' true and honest intent, being very clear and upfront about this being a situation in which the truth would be known (as these were deity level entities (party level 4)). And at the moment of the act, they couldn't offer any kind of rational for such a 180 in their belief system in the 3 hours since they were magically searched, plumbed and geased - by Gods...

As for certain NPC death, it's usually along the lines of : the NPC was pushed into a pool of acid, and after the player's like "I didn't want to kill him" - then why did you want him to fall in the lake of acid? "... well..." Yeah, no. That guys dead.

I know there are narrative to solution to the last one, but they require the player saying that don't want to kill the NPC, when they push him over : i.e., when I ask "Do you want to throw him into the lake of acid? Or just use the acid as extra damage?" And the answer is : "Splash [Samuel Jackson catch-phrase], SPLOOSH!" - then yeah, that dude is outside the realm of "The PC can decide what happens from his "lethal" blow".

Garthanos said:

My daughter loves having her charismatic fleet footed rogue, convert potential enemies into friends.

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This is pretty awesome. It reminds me of an early CRPG that gave you a real possibility of turning most NPCs into combat allies, just by "smile"ing at them.

The notion that you can beat up on someone with a pointy object for five rounds and then decide if he lives or dies, though...causes a little indigestion. What I'd like to know, though, is how an opponent gets within one damage die of his life, and doesn't either flee or beg for mercy. "Lethal or non-lethal" shouldn't really be a question for PCs to ask in the midst of battle. It should be more like: "kill, chase, or accept surrender?"

DMMike said:

The notion that you can beat up on someone with a pointy object for five rounds and then decide if he lives or dies, though...causes a little indigestion. What I'd like to know, though, is how an opponent gets within one damage die of his life, and doesn't either flee or beg for mercy. "Lethal or non-lethal" shouldn't really be a question for PCs to ask in the midst of battle. It should be more like: "kill, chase, or accept surrender?"

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W/o getting into a whole thing about what hp mean, etc, etc - this kind of thing hinges heavily on your preconceptions about the game. And they're things that can lead to two tables playing the same game (i.e. mechanics) but not at all the same "game" (i.e. overall methods and systems).

Plus, with the damage values as they are, in most respects, ALL regular foes are, as soon as initiative is rolled, effectively "one hit away from 0 hp"*

*i.e. they won't get to act again before going to 0 hp.

Sometimes it’s the blade. Sometimes not.


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MoutonRustique said:

W/o getting into a whole thing about what hp mean, etc, etc - this kind of thing hinges heavily on your preconceptions about the game.

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But why? /sarcasm

Very possible most of that 30 seconds could be just setting up for the finale