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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Attacking defenseless NPCs
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7626261" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>We took, "suitably bound" as helpless, which allowed the classic hostage situation, though even this was not really endorsed by the rules since bound targets got saving throws in 1e. I don't think any DM in 1e ever really endorsed, "has been grabbed" (itself not an easy thing to resolve in 1e) as "helpless". </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, repeatedly gone over by both Umbran and myself, so we are all on the same page here.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think this is a good point, and my typical response to this sort of thing is that every single time I've ran into complaints about this one, it's a DM complaining (explicitly or implicitly) how D&D's rules prevent them from easily railroading the players, since the players - when threatened - ought to act afraid and meekly submit to the NPCs and they just don't. And invariably this is all wrong because "realism" and they've got house rules to solve the problem.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I've heard of DMs in 4e and 5e applying some ideas like that to the game, for example with a character that makes an attack which could kill a target being allowed to narrate the fictional positioning of the character, thus allowing the game to handle capturing targets better and not requiring all lethal combats to have lethal ends. </p><p></p><p>However, in the case of "knife to the throat", a HERO style "covered" status doesn't really address the general problem since you are still just holding 1d4 damage, the threat of which isn't necessarily significant. (Which gets to a problem of how D&D handles surprise attacks generally, which could bring in a discussion of the Thief class and it's silo'd off supremacy in surprise attacks. But let's not go there, because fundamentally all this attempt to rewrite the D&D combat system is missing the point.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7626261, member: 4937"] We took, "suitably bound" as helpless, which allowed the classic hostage situation, though even this was not really endorsed by the rules since bound targets got saving throws in 1e. I don't think any DM in 1e ever really endorsed, "has been grabbed" (itself not an easy thing to resolve in 1e) as "helpless". Yeah, repeatedly gone over by both Umbran and myself, so we are all on the same page here. I think this is a good point, and my typical response to this sort of thing is that every single time I've ran into complaints about this one, it's a DM complaining (explicitly or implicitly) how D&D's rules prevent them from easily railroading the players, since the players - when threatened - ought to act afraid and meekly submit to the NPCs and they just don't. And invariably this is all wrong because "realism" and they've got house rules to solve the problem. I've heard of DMs in 4e and 5e applying some ideas like that to the game, for example with a character that makes an attack which could kill a target being allowed to narrate the fictional positioning of the character, thus allowing the game to handle capturing targets better and not requiring all lethal combats to have lethal ends. However, in the case of "knife to the throat", a HERO style "covered" status doesn't really address the general problem since you are still just holding 1d4 damage, the threat of which isn't necessarily significant. (Which gets to a problem of how D&D handles surprise attacks generally, which could bring in a discussion of the Thief class and it's silo'd off supremacy in surprise attacks. But let's not go there, because fundamentally all this attempt to rewrite the D&D combat system is missing the point.) [/QUOTE]
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