Is a coup de grace an evil act?

[Infiniti2000]

If there is a possibility that spell expires before fight is over I think that it is stupid not to CDG enemies if you can't do nothing else. good != stupid and getting killed because of not CDG is stupid.

Well, IMO, that's the "game" attitude and not the role-playing attitude. You kill them in a game because there are no consequences and no feeling and nothing else to worry about. The only thing you are worrying about is if that creature will return to plague you again. What you are saying is that it's perfectly okay to go get killed by a new creature of the exact same stats, but if the old one lives and does it then you're stupid. IMO, you really need to rethink your comments on this one.

Alignments just sucks most of time and even more if you don't know how they work in a campaign you are playing.

It totally depends on the group. I like to think that our group handles alignment very well (for either DM running it). Alignment only enhances the game for our group, it doesn't suck at all.

 

[DonTadow]

Well, IMO, that's the "game" attitude and not the role-playing attitude. You kill them in a game because there are no consequences and no feeling and nothing else to worry about. The only thing you are worrying about is if that creature will return to plague you again. What you are saying is that it's perfectly okay to go get killed by a new creature of the exact same stats, but if the old one lives and does it then you're stupid. IMO, you really need to rethink your comments on this one.

It totally depends on the group. I like to think that our group handles alignment very well (for either DM running it). Alignment only enhances the game for our group, it doesn't suck at all.

I agree with your opinion of the comments but allignment can be murky especially in this situation. Is the guy all of a sudden neutral because he fears the enemy will attack him again. Heck, I think that a lawful good person can get away with it if properly role played.

"In the name of my god, I submit your soul to him for judgement, so that you can be redeemed".

 

[Infiniti2000]

Well, certainly a lot of it depends on the circumstances. More importantly, alignment almost by definition is highly subjective. I was only cautioning versus the idea of "kill it or it'll come back" attitude, and quite frankly that works for any alignment, including evil. Killing a defeated enemy is not necessarily good or evil, but IMO a majority of the times it will be tainted with evil -- not entirely evil like killing babies evil, but on the side of evil.

But, there are always counterarguments. Someone who believes in "an eye for an eye" may very well think that it's not evil. In fact, it's hard to convince someone who is evil that they are evil. It's a slippery slope.

 

[farscapesg1]

I don't see coup de grace as being evil. The world of DND isn't as "politically correct" as our real life.

If you want evil, then it would be things like;

- stripping him of all possessions, tying him up, and leaving gagged him by the roadside where someone might not see him for days

- hobbling him like on Misery (Steven King movie) and leaving him to find his own way back for help

- tying him up and taking him back to the village for trial, by dragging him behind the cart all the way.

(by the way, I don't condone any of the previous "punishments" )

It really depends on the group that you are playing in. If they want to take the stance that good morals are very important to follow, then it could be considered evil. I usually take the stance that trying to impose all of today's morals on the game is like trying to impose real-life physics on the game. It just doesn't work all the time. Just because we say slavery is bad doesn't mean that it has to be bad in a campaign setting, for example.

 

[Corsair]

Does your DM have problems with hacking people to death with longswords? How about fireballs? How about keen falchions with large amounts of power attack?

Does your DM think it is evil to kill someone who tries to kill you? If not, why does it matter HOW you're killing him? If that initial sleep spell had been a cloudkill (no save, no SR, instakill on low HD critters) would you have been evil?

 

[Hejdun]

Hang on, you couped an evil human who tried to kill you, in the middle of a raging fight, who could very easily have woken back up to threaten you, and your DM says it's evil?

Evil would be cutting off his arms, legs, and tongue and letting him bleed to death in the wilderness. You can justify this in a number of ways:

1 - You defeated him in a fair fight (though if he ambushed you, it actually wasn't fair), and you made sure he couldn't come back to hurt you or your party, or for that matter, any innocents on the road that he would kill if you let him live.

2 - He tried to kill you. He failed. He shouldn't have tried to kill you.

3 - He's evil, and killing evil creatures is good, therefore killing him was a good act.

4 - He's in violation of the law, and he's attempted murder (and he's probably murdered in the past anyways), so you're simply enforcing justice in the simplest manner possible.

5 - He was a threat to the group's survival that needed to be put down to ensure your survival. Defending yourself isn't evil.

 

[Chupacabra]

So I dont get my DM mad at me let me clear something up: he did not countermand my action and refuse to let me CDG the sleeping bandit (who was a half-orc, btw). Rather, he told me that my declared action was evil and it would have some consequences, etc. I balked and the table got into a discussion of it for a minute or so before I begrudgingly put away my weapon and performed some other action. He never said "no you cant do that".

If it makes any difference, we thought that we were facing around 10-12 foes when combat first started. I figured that if I did not CDG this bad guy, he would wake up before the combat ended, arriving fresh to the battle while we were wounded. Heck, as a first level wizard, i figured that I would be dead by round 3 or 4 or so. I had lost 3 of my whopping 5 hit points before the combat officially started.

PS - the next round of combat after the whole "CDG = evil" discussion, when my party's cleric (who was a staunch critic of my CDG declaration) whomped a bad guy with his mace I asked him if he was using a non-lethal attack. He wasn't. Surprise, surprise, he was striking to kill.

Maybe I'll stop casting sleep and just focus on evocations.......

 

[Infiniti2000]

If it makes any difference, we thought that we were facing around 10-12 foes when combat first started. I figured that if I did not CDG this bad guy, he would wake up before the combat ended, arriving fresh to the battle while we were wounded. Heck, as a first level wizard, i figured that I would be dead by round 3 or 4 or so. I had lost 3 of my whopping 5 hit points before the combat officially started.

It makes a big difference, actually. Your motivations are clear that your intent was to survive, not kill helpless people. I'd say that your actions are probably also influenced (and I'm reading between the lines here so please correct me if I'm wrong) by your DM's poor roleplaying in such situations. That is, even if the bandit wakes up, why would he rejoin the fight and not take the opportunity to flee? Or, maybe just continue faking his asleep. If the DM always has such opponents wake up and rejoin the fight then, to some degree, you as a player are trained to kill everyone, for good or ill.

What you did, given the new information, is therefore not evil. It's a survival response. In such a case I agree that you should start focusing on pure killing spells.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Infiniti, I think a lot of what you said is right on the money, but this comment:

More importantly, alignment almost by definition is highly subjective.

...is untrue. Alignment in real life is highly subjective. Our real life interpretations of in-game scenarios are highly subjective. But in standard D&D, alignment is exactly the opposite. It's objective. It exists regardless of whether people believe in it, it is defined concretely regardless of what culture is defining it.

Of course, because players have a subjective sense of morality, it's very important for the DM to define what the objective morality is for his world.

 

[was]

While I wouldn't consider it to be 'good', it is not necessarily evil. It depends on your character's motivations. Did he kill the guy so that the bandit would never again harm an innocent or was he just angry that he was shot?