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Coup de Grace vs. Players -- Mean DM or Fair Play?
- Thread starter Boarstorm
- Start date
Depends on how the PC is unconscious I guess, also it depends on how unique the PCs are with there regenerative and healing capabilities.
In 3e, I rarely CDG, downed people did not pop up on there own and the range of almost dead and dead was 10hp and chances are you were not 1 hp into it. Hold person and other CDG opportunities had hard set durations like rounds per level of caster. I assumed the foes knew that when mr big cast hold, the dude was frozen for 30 seconds. So they would usually ignore the PC until round 4 and then CDG if no one moved in to defend the held PC.
3.5 hold spells were random in duration and I CDG more since foes did not know how long the spell would last. Still rarely if ever CDG when down from wounds.
In 4e sleep has a random duration so in that situation I expect to use CGD. Down form wounds, I really don't know how I'm going to do it yet. So far I have not been using it, but so far Pcs have moved up and made some statement to the effect of they are guarding him.
My basic thoughts though are knocked down form wounds might just mean you got your bell rung, and you may be back up in fighting form in seconds. You can easily be healed from spells throwing you back into the action. Bot of which lead to the logical action of intelligent foes being making sure someone is dead, since coming back from the dead requires a ritual.
My basic tactics i think i will use is, if it wont provoke an AoO because no one is watching the dropped PC it will be done. If anyone pops up from spells the healer gets focus fired as much as possible without the NPCs soaking up too much punishment from AoO.
In 3e, I rarely CDG, downed people did not pop up on there own and the range of almost dead and dead was 10hp and chances are you were not 1 hp into it. Hold person and other CDG opportunities had hard set durations like rounds per level of caster. I assumed the foes knew that when mr big cast hold, the dude was frozen for 30 seconds. So they would usually ignore the PC until round 4 and then CDG if no one moved in to defend the held PC.
3.5 hold spells were random in duration and I CDG more since foes did not know how long the spell would last. Still rarely if ever CDG when down from wounds.
In 4e sleep has a random duration so in that situation I expect to use CGD. Down form wounds, I really don't know how I'm going to do it yet. So far I have not been using it, but so far Pcs have moved up and made some statement to the effect of they are guarding him.
My basic thoughts though are knocked down form wounds might just mean you got your bell rung, and you may be back up in fighting form in seconds. You can easily be healed from spells throwing you back into the action. Bot of which lead to the logical action of intelligent foes being making sure someone is dead, since coming back from the dead requires a ritual.
My basic tactics i think i will use is, if it wont provoke an AoO because no one is watching the dropped PC it will be done. If anyone pops up from spells the healer gets focus fired as much as possible without the NPCs soaking up too much punishment from AoO.
MichaelSomething
Legend
My DM did hit my downed character with a CGC and killed him. I actually didn't mind since it did make sense for that enemy to take that action. As long as it makes sense its okay.
You also has to take in account on how hard it would be to raise a character. If it's reasonalbily easy to raise a dead character, then killing them isn't so bad. If your running a "if your dead, YOUR DEAD" type of game, you should be more careful with that. My DM more or less just instant raised all the dead PC after one battle for the sake of conveince. I did give up an expensive (and good) item to pay for it though.
You also has to take in account on how hard it would be to raise a character. If it's reasonalbily easy to raise a dead character, then killing them isn't so bad. If your running a "if your dead, YOUR DEAD" type of game, you should be more careful with that. My DM more or less just instant raised all the dead PC after one battle for the sake of conveince. I did give up an expensive (and good) item to pay for it though.
FireLance
Legend
In my games, I go with the convention that most creatures just die when they go below 1 hp. So, most of the time, when the monsters or NPCs reduce a PC's hit points to 0 or less, they don't expect him to get up. If one of the other PCs manages to get the dying character up, the typical reaction will be to prioritize that that character as a target to prevent him from doing it again rather than to CGD dying characters. If a dying PC rolls 20+ on his death save and gets up by himself, his opponent might hit him again when he's down "just to make sure he stays dead", but he could just as easily shrug it off as a fluke and pay no special attention the next time he goes down.
The above only applies to dying PCs, though. Sleeping, held or otherwise helpless PCs are fair game for CDGs.
That said, I recently reviewed the rules of CDG in 4e, and it turns out (surprise, surprise) that they are slighly different from, and in some ways, less deadly than, 3e:
1. A CDG is not an automatic hit. A helpless target gets -5 to all defences and is prone, which grants combat advantage to adjacent melee attacks, but the attacker could still roll low. If the attacker had a 50% chance to hit previously, he still has a 15% chance of missing, or a 25% chance if he is not using a melee attack.
2. A CDG automatically kills only if you deal damage equal to half the target's bloodied value (although getting hit for extra damage when you're already dying is never a good thing). Otherwise, a CDG is "just" a critical hit and deals maximum damage for the attack (plus other bonuses for a critical hit). Thus, CDGs are only really dangerous with encounter and recharge abilities, or if your opponent has a seriously damaging critical attack. At least for the PCs, they will not always be facing enemies with high crit, vicious or vorpal weapons.
3. You can't CDG if you are not adjacent, so you must be right next to the target even if you have reach. This is not always possible or advisable, especially for artillery or controller type opponents.
The above only applies to dying PCs, though. Sleeping, held or otherwise helpless PCs are fair game for CDGs.
That said, I recently reviewed the rules of CDG in 4e, and it turns out (surprise, surprise) that they are slighly different from, and in some ways, less deadly than, 3e:
1. A CDG is not an automatic hit. A helpless target gets -5 to all defences and is prone, which grants combat advantage to adjacent melee attacks, but the attacker could still roll low. If the attacker had a 50% chance to hit previously, he still has a 15% chance of missing, or a 25% chance if he is not using a melee attack.
2. A CDG automatically kills only if you deal damage equal to half the target's bloodied value (although getting hit for extra damage when you're already dying is never a good thing). Otherwise, a CDG is "just" a critical hit and deals maximum damage for the attack (plus other bonuses for a critical hit). Thus, CDGs are only really dangerous with encounter and recharge abilities, or if your opponent has a seriously damaging critical attack. At least for the PCs, they will not always be facing enemies with high crit, vicious or vorpal weapons.
3. You can't CDG if you are not adjacent, so you must be right next to the target even if you have reach. This is not always possible or advisable, especially for artillery or controller type opponents.
dontpunkme
First Post
The players in the game I GM consistently CDG helpless opponents. Generally speaking, most monsters don't CDG. If the PCs are fighting the truly evil then CDG and worse fates can and do happen. The evil cleric/wizard will order a minion to CDG a downed PC and then raise them as undead. Fighting a demon or intelligent undead? You bet its going to try.
Wyrmshadows
Explorer
Parlan
First Post
The difference though is that the game is more fun when the players know whether a PC is "just mostly dead" and can be saved by a healing or whether he's "all the way dead".
Nothing sucks worse than blowing a round of actions and a healing potions to save the fighter who's already "all the way dead" but you just didn't know it.
And I'd rather have an action sequence like this, "Ok Bob, the BBEG just dropped you. You're unconscious. BBEG looks at your neck as if he's considering slitting it, just to be sure, but then he notices Sara's PC bearing down on him and apparently decides he'd better handle her first.
Oh wait, Sara, you're going to retreat and leave Bob all alone with the BBEG? Are you sure?"
Than like this:
"Okay Bob, the BBEG just dropped you. Oh, and don't bother rolling to stabilize. He spends an action point to lop off your PC's head. It's too bad you spend so much time on your backstory. What's your next character going to be?"
PCs get to know more metagame details just b/c they're PCs.
Wyrmshadows
Explorer
The social contract I have with my players is that we all understand that we are running a heroic fantasy RPing game and one of the risks heroes face is the risk of death. I've (on a rare few occasions in 23yrs) attemted to pull puches on players when logic dictated they should die and my players cried foul.
As a player I would feel the same way. If my PC is actually facing death at the hands of the villians thenvictory is that much sweeter. If ultimately only the bad guys can die and I have some form of narrative protection, I just can't see the point.
YMMV of course.
Wyrmshadows
When my PCs are dropped into the negatives in 4th edition, I give them an option similar to the one they have when they drop an enemy. When they go down they can chose to either be unconscious and/or otherwise obviously out of the fight (broken/severed limb, sword in the abdomen, etc...) or they can be currently unable to fight due to a (hopefully) temporary condition (stunned by a blow to the head, in shock due to a dagger in the shoulder, etc...).
If the first option is chosen, they roll to stabilize as normal and allies can stabilize them in the normal manner, but they cannot go back to positive hit points for the duration of the fight. Depending on the nature of the of the injury suffered, lasting penalties might apply.* In this case, CDGs almost never occur, because the character is no longer a threat to the enemies.
If the second option is chosen, stabilization and the regaining of hit points is done entirely by RAW. In this case, because the character is still obviously a threat, albeit a diminished one, enemies CDG with the frequency I (probably erroneously) imagine combatants would in the real world, which is to say they do so when it is in their best interest.
*It is always entirely the choice of the player as to whether the character suffers any lasting injury and the nature of that injury. They tend to chose this option when it is narrativistically appropriate (they've fallen a great distance and twisted an ankle, they've taken a crit from the greataxe wielding foe while already bloodied, etc...).
If the first option is chosen, they roll to stabilize as normal and allies can stabilize them in the normal manner, but they cannot go back to positive hit points for the duration of the fight. Depending on the nature of the of the injury suffered, lasting penalties might apply.* In this case, CDGs almost never occur, because the character is no longer a threat to the enemies.
If the second option is chosen, stabilization and the regaining of hit points is done entirely by RAW. In this case, because the character is still obviously a threat, albeit a diminished one, enemies CDG with the frequency I (probably erroneously) imagine combatants would in the real world, which is to say they do so when it is in their best interest.
*It is always entirely the choice of the player as to whether the character suffers any lasting injury and the nature of that injury. They tend to chose this option when it is narrativistically appropriate (they've fallen a great distance and twisted an ankle, they've taken a crit from the greataxe wielding foe while already bloodied, etc...).
Gailbraithe
First Post
A few months back the DM of the campaign I play in did a coup de grace on a player character. The PC had been caught by a Hold Person spell in the first round, and was CDG'd the next round. The other three members of the party were all active, unwounded, and we outnumbered our foes (two gnoll barbarians and a gnoll priest). Also, the PC was currently altered self so that he looked like a gnoll. I should also point out that we, the players, had never CDG'd a single monster in our careers, and had been fighting these gnolls quite honorably (my PC is a LG Knight) for several weeks in game time.
It didn't make tactical sense, it didn't make role-playing sense. It was just one of the most disgusting examples of a DM bitch slap I've ever seen. It was so clearly vindictive and mean that it almost ended the game entirely.
In the campaign I DM, I never CDG downed, let alone held, characters unless the entire party falls in combat, and the monster simply wouldn'[t take prisoners. Even if the cleric keeps popping them back up -- then they just focus on killing the cleric.
The CDG mechanic is useful for killing people in their sleep with a dagger in the throat, giving a nice end-run around the abstraction of hit points, but using it in combat on PCs is needlessly aggressive and antagonistic.
It didn't make tactical sense, it didn't make role-playing sense. It was just one of the most disgusting examples of a DM bitch slap I've ever seen. It was so clearly vindictive and mean that it almost ended the game entirely.
In the campaign I DM, I never CDG downed, let alone held, characters unless the entire party falls in combat, and the monster simply wouldn'[t take prisoners. Even if the cleric keeps popping them back up -- then they just focus on killing the cleric.
The CDG mechanic is useful for killing people in their sleep with a dagger in the throat, giving a nice end-run around the abstraction of hit points, but using it in combat on PCs is needlessly aggressive and antagonistic.
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