Can fiendish animals coup de grace?

[Jarrod]

I'd go with the following:

Certain classes of animals will perform a coup de grace. This may be because of inbreeding, training, or other reasons. However, each animal within that class will _always_ coup de grace before going on to another opponent; it's the way they work. Chew until unmoving, then bite throat out. I'm thinking attack dogs.

Certain other classes of animals will beat on someone until they appear dead and then move on. Note the "appear": either being unconscious or having a good bluff check would work. I'm thinking bears.

Adding the "fiendish" modifier complicates things, because a fiendish animal would have two sets of motivations: the base animal and the fiendish part. The question is, does "fiendish" have its own motivations when it comes to coup-de-gracing someone. I, personally, don't think so; but that's me. I would have a fiendish animal act the same way as a normal one. YMMV.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

As a rule of thumb, I would never have animals do maneuvers that provoke AoOs. They are diehard survivalists (pun intended) that will go to great lengths to avoid injury.

I know that the cheatah chokes it's prey on the ground away from the thrashing legs. To me that is a CdG but D&D does not have rules for death throes so from a pure mechanical point of view there seems little point.

I would think that 1 hit would see a normal beast scampering to lick their wounds. A fiendish animal would behave in a similar fashion but take slighty more risks to do evil.

 

[Hypersmurf]

A rabid badger might ignore other creatures in favor of mauling the corpse of the first person it got angry at.

Hell, that's how I play my barbarian

Basically, when he's raging, he'll finish his full attack on the same opponent... even if the first hit dropped the guy and there are three other targets in reach.

All at max Power Attack, naturally

-Hyp.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Consider fighting dogs: when a fighting dog gets ahold of an enemy, they'll sometimes stay on the enemy well after the enemy is dead. This isn't a "smart" tactic, but fighting dogs aren't bred to be "smart": they're bred for a psychopathic desire to fight.

Fair enough, but this does fall under my exception for "psychopaths." Extrapolating, I'll gladly add in another exception: being trained to CDG.

Both instances, however, differ substantially from what I understood the original question to be asking ... namely, whether or not an otherwise normal fiendish animal, encountered in a more or less natural state, can or would CDG.

Consider rabid animals: rabid animals often display extreme sexual or territorial aggression, with little or no regard for their own safety. A rabid badger might ignore other creatures in favor of mauling the corpse of the first person it got angry at.

I don't disagree. Again, "rabid" falls pretty solidly into my "psychopathic" exception.

Consider normal animals: normal animals are probably not going to be attacking humans in the first place, and probably aren't going to hang around once it becomes clear that the humans are going to hurt them. Lots of the animals that a PC fights, therefore, are not normal, and may be rabid or otherwise loco.

Well, "normal" animals in D&D are considered to be more aggressive and less fearful than normal animals in RL. (This is actually addressed by the designers somewhere; possibly in the Monster Manual.) One could conceivably cite this intentional difference between reality and fantasy as a reason to make CDGs by animals -- fiendish or not -- more prevalent.

Personally, to the extent that I buy into D&D animals being more aggressive at all, it's only so far that they're more willing to fight, and more willing to fight for longer. Otherwise, my animals generally behave more realistically than D&D suggests. (For instance, a brown bear in my game might very well run away after having been the target of a thunderstone, unless it's rabid or otherwise supremely pissed off. And a normal animal will only fight to the death if defending young or if it otherwise has no choice.) But that's personal preference, and, as I implied, actually outside "D&D animal behavior" as it seems to be intended.

As an aside, to reveal my personal bias, I'm pretty much against DMs using CDG on PCs in general. I once had a beloved 12th-level PC CDGed by a 3rd-level warrior. The warrior knew, utterly, that he was going to die at the hands of the rest of the group in the next round, yet chose to CDG rather than run or surrender. CDG is not a heroic way to die, and thus is rarely good for D&D. When I have a villain who uses CDG, I make every attempt to demonstrate his propensity by having him CDG a handy NPC or whatever. In any event, my players now know that an enemy who CDGs is really, really bad news.


Jeff

 

[frankthedm]

You made the Right Choice, the players were just trying to BS thier characters from dying.

 

[glass]

Adding the "fiendish" modifier complicates things, because a fiendish animal would have two sets of motivations: the base animal and the fiendish part. The question is, does "fiendish" have its own motivations when it comes to coup-de-gracing someone. I, personally, don't think so; but that's me. I would have a fiendish animal act the same way as a normal one. YMMV.

Just to throw another thought out there, I've always thought of fiendish animals being carnivorous even if there base creature is not.


glass.

 

[Pielorinho]

Ultimately, as I said before, this isn't a rules question, and I'd be astounded and a little contemptuous of a player who argued with a creature's action. Just as I'd never tell a player who attempted a CdG, "No, you wouldn't do that," my players may not tell me what a monster would or would not do.

If I use a fiendish monster, it may be the result of a wizard's evil experiment; it may be a result of an icky woodlands coupling between a bear and a lonely demon; it may be a creature born and raised in Hell; it may be the feverish nightmare of a druid, given form. How the creatures acts will depend on my rationale for its existence.

We might similarly ask whether a fiendish dragon would CdG. The fiendish dragon in a recent game I ran had no intention of doing so, however; instead, it interrogated the PCs about the nature of existence, about whether it could be said to exist, and other such questions as Rosecrantz and Guildenstern might entertain.

Creatures have different motives and will act in different fashions.

As for humans/humanoids not CdGing, I do think DMs need to think carefully about this and about an enemy's motive. Again, someone who's fighting for non-hate reasons (money, power, fear of a commander, etc.) is as unlikely to CdG as a normal animal, in my opinion. A cultist driven by bloodlust, a schmoe whose older sister was killed by the PCs, a trained assassin are likelier to CdG. But the norm, IMO, is to attack until an opponent is down, and then move on to the next standing opponent.

Daniel

 

[Plane Sailing]

As I see it, animals have an Int of 1-2. Fiendish creatures always have an Int of at least 3 (inside the human range - just!).

Thus they are more like fiendish "animals" rather than fiendish animals. Mentally retarted psychopathic nutters is the way I affectionately like to think of them... Certainly they would be capable of CdG (just as a human or half-orc with Int of 3 would be able to)

 

[Alpha Polaris]

That makes me feel bad for every player I've ever seen, and also users of the PHB glossary, because I've never seen a single one of them pronounce it properly. (Namely, the "c" at the end is not silent.)

Which "c" are you talking about ? If it's the "p" in "Coup", actually it is silent. The proper (french) pronounciation would be something like "koo de grass" with the "e" in "de" sounding like the one in "often".

 

[Pielorinho]

Which "c" are you talking about ?

Coup de grace.

Daniel