Coup de Grace vs. Players -- Mean DM or Fair Play?

[Bump2daWiza]

My players know that death is not a rarity in my game sessions. I don't fudge rolls or coddle my players. I figure my NPCs would do everything they can to survive. Killing a fallen PC is fair game as far as I am concerned.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Going to have to go with the folks who say "When it's appropriate." It's rare--very rare--but if I have an intelligent foe with particular reason to want a specific PC dead, and the opportunity arises, yes, he's going to CdG.

 

[mmu1]

I try to avoid using CdG when I DM - my NPCs will almost never risk AOOs to finish off a PC, and they won't waste actions hitting someone who's already down when being threatened by someone else.

However, if - for example (a 3.5 based example) - a PC fails a save against Hold Person, or lets himself get cut off and surrouned by a pack of Ghouls and paralyzed, and none of the other characters move to help in any way, then chances are good he will get hit with a CdG.

(Our group has two games running - one DMed by me, another by someone else, and we both share this outloook - and only one PC died that way in almost two years. On the flip side, it has resulted in people being less cavalier about the well-being of incapacitated party members.)

 

[jfilesi]

As a player, I would agree with the argument that it's situation dependent. In my 4ed game where we're running through KotS, getting CDG during the early couple of kobold encounters would have made us generate characters and work them into the storyline through the various hooks pointless (Our GM dislikes the you-all-already-know-each-other type of storytelling). In our other 3.5ed Eberron game (run by the same GM whose gone out of his to introduce new players into the story a couple of times), we were basically storming a weapon's shop for supplies that a group of escaped prisoners had holed up in during a zombie massacre. In this case, it makes sense that the NPCs we were fighting would CDG us; especially after our cleric yelled out to our rogue to make sure the first couple "were completely taken care of" so she could perform her only remaining mass heal spell. Luckily, a couple of us got dropped from distance and the other time one of us went down the attacker was immediately surrounded.

 

[Derren]

because in real combat, unless the players who are down are showing signs of life (and there's no reason they should be), this sort of behaviour would be extremely rare.

In the real world maybe, but in D&D with lots of healing magic and especially adventurers being able to basically regenerate this would be a standard tactic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In the real world maybe, but in D&D with lots of healing magic and especially adventurers being able to basically regenerate this would be a standard tactic.

You might want to read my more recent clarifying post. To do it they'd need both to be fairly sure that the PC wasn't dead and was going to get back up, and sure that damaging his unconscious/dead body was what would prevent him from getting up, and I'm not sure that's a logical assumption in many cases.

 

[Brisk-sg]

I normally reserve the threat of CDGs to being used to 'up the ante' of some battles.

For example, in our first 4th edition adventure, the party reached the big bad (an elvan mage) of the adventure with most of their healing surges and daily powers used.

The elven mage got the upper hand, and had dropped all but one of the party members, who had already used his encounter, daily powers, and action point. The mage was hurting, but had more hit points then the player, who was one hit away from death. Things were looking bad for the party, with a TPK being a very real threat.

I wanted to avoid a TPK, but I didn't want to just give the players the win. They had to earn it, so, the villian (being villianous), threatened to kill one of the downed party members if the remaining hero did not come out and surrender. I offered the PC the chance to think of some way to save his companion, and I offered an action point for him to use to pull it off. Sadly, after thinking about it for a few minutes, his response was 'Couldn't think of anything, I am just going to attack him with my bow.'

Of course the villian carried out the threat, and killed the PC.

 

[Trickstergod]

Trickstergod - I agree with most of what you're saying, but you seem to slip up in the same spot as the others, which is the claim of "no metagaming at all!". How much metagaming is questionable, but unless you can reliably address

1) How do the enemies know the guy who is lying on the floor and blood is coming out of isn't dead? This at least should require some kind of action-based perception check, perhaps as much as a standard action perception check unless you're ruling that people always roll around and moan/bleed in a very obviously living way.

How do the players know the same when they shove a healing potion down the character's throat? Not to mention that the opponents certainly can see what sorts of wounds have been inflicted - and a potentially fatal, probably can be cured sort of wound will likely look different from a wound that means dead, dead, dead. A crushed skull, sword through the heart, partially decapitated head - these aren't too hard to spot.

And, again - do you require player's to roll Perception to know whether or not they can cure a downed ally? No? Then neither should the average opponent need to.

Besides, if an opponent wants to make sure someone's dead, why are they going to waste it checking really hard? They're not. They're just going to kill the guy. Maybe they just killed him twice, but so what? An opponent isn't going to waste his time checking to see if the guy on the ground is breathing or not - not when he intends on stopping said breath. Already stopped? No loss.

2) How do they know that just hitting him more will "keep him dead"? It's not entirely logical. Do they know when enough is enough? There are plenty of PCs who a non-brute mob could CdG and NOT bring to the point of death. Do they know to hit him again? How do they know that?

It's not like these are fancy questions that aren't going to occur to anyone. I can see "KILL THE LEADER!" regarding Clerics/Warlords (as the latter will be at least shouting at the guy), but "Just stab him more!" seems a bit of a leap unless you've seen him get up at least once.

Not really. A gut wound probably won't be immediately fatal. Bleeding to death usually isn't instantaneous. Crushing someone's skull typically will be. A Coup de Grace isn't just stabbing someone more - it's sticking a sword through someone's heart. Going for the vitals. It's "Making sure."

So long as an opponent is aware that the ability to get people back on their feet exists, "Making sure" is a perfectly valid response.

I offered a number of examples where going for a killing stroke isn't the best course of action, but it still stands that it's a completely valid one.

 

[GSHamster]

Just as a point of order, if the "Big Bad" was escaping by the typical means of the DM's Fiat (quite a picture), and the DM didn't plan on giving the players a fair chance to stop him getting away, I'd consider this absolutely crappy behaviour (unless the players could raise Mr Deadguy, which in 4E they probably good by the time they met a serious villain), and hate the DM, not the character.

Very good point. I am assuming that the villain is escaping fairly.

 

[Jasperak]

Having been on the receiving end of a CdG during a demo back on the D&D game day (June 6th?) I can say I have no problem with it. My Dwarven fighter went to save the children and got stuck in a fight with the two statues, alone. While I fought valiantly, the ceiling was collapsing. I had a chance to escape. I didn't. I turned to defend the children. I took down one of the statues. I stood in between the children and the last statue. It turned me into dwarf goo.

Best character death I had this decade and perfectly appropriate. The DM offered me 100 XP in his next game, though I cannot remember if it was because it was a cool play or if it was because my dwarf was his first kill.