D&D General As GM, do you have bad guys kill downed PCs?

[iserith]

It is a game, though, and metagaming such things is part of play. Do you track the PC hit points for them and just tell them how they feel? HP are, after all, a purely metagame concept and don't actually reflect anything in the narrative. (Well, I guess the last one does...)

As well, in a game based on make-believe, there's an explanation for anything. All the player has to do here is make up a fictional reason why they delay helping a dying comrade. Portray it as a gut-wrenching choice the character has to make in the moment of truth, a risk they have to take in the face of impossible odds for which they'd never forgive themselves if they chose wrong. Or whatever else is satisfying. Concerns over "metagaming" are defeated every time by applying imagination.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It is a game, though, and metagaming such things is part of play. Do you track the PC hit points for them and just tell them how they feel? HP are, after all, a purely metagame concept and don't actually reflect anything in the narrative. (Well, I guess the last one does...)

As well, in a game based on make-believe, there's an explanation for anything. All the player has to do here is make up a fictional reason why they delay helping a dying comrade. Portray it as a gut-wrenching choice the character has to make in the moment of truth, a risk they have to take in the face of impossible odds for which they'd never forgive themselves if they chose wrong. Or whatever else is satisfying. Concerns over "metagaming" are defeated every time by applying imagination.

@iserith has the right of it from my POV... I understand why people metagame it, I just prefer it when there's an attempt to see the scene from the narrative and imaginative perspective rather than purely the mechanical one. At least try to rationalize your metagaming if you're going to do it. It is a game of imagination after all.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Ditto. And not just in character, but also the best option at that moment from the perspective of whatever creature it is.

In the heat of battle, npcs and monsters are going to do whatever logically makes sense to them right at that moment according to their intelligence and nature.

 

[Eltab]

Sometimes. Depends on the situation:

Hungry animals that are big enough will Swallow Whole or carry off downed PCs for food.
Hungry but smaller animals want to chase the group off their new meal.
Intelligent opponents protecting turf want the PCs to go away.
But intelligent opponents protecting home / BBEG will try to permanently solve the problem.
BBEGs usually have a way to get some value out of a slain adventurer / PC later, so if coup de grace is tactically sound they will.