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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6562722" data-attributes="member: 42582">My one clear memory of this happening in a campaign was quite a different context from what the OP describes.The PCs were attempting to make contact with an exiled god. The gate to the prison plane in which the god was trapped was a powerful angel (a solar, in D&D terms - the scenario was Bastion of Broken Souls, adapted to Rolemaster). As per her instructions from the Emperor of Heaven, she was refusing to let the PCs pass through, and prepared to fight them to stop this. But one of the PCs made the case about the stakes of the situation - making contact with the exiled god was necessary to learn how to stop the souls of newborn humans being stolen away by dark powers - and persuaded the angel that she was being used as a pawn in an unjust compromise that had been reached between the Emperor of Heaven and the Lords of Karma. The angel then allowed herself to be killed by the PC in question.Mechanically, this took the form of a skill check (I can't remember now which one, but the Rolemaster analogue to Diplomacy in D&D). The DC was very high, but Rolemaster has a mechanic whereby a roll that fall short by only a modest amount permits a re-roll at a bonus - and with these bonuses the player was able to make a successful roll.In an earlier Rolemaster campaign we had a PC magic-user whose schtick included inflicting victims with depression by toying with their souls, but I can't remember now whether this ever got to the stage of victim's killing themselves. Mechanically, this was a series of spell effects that inflicted Depression crits (an optional crit table, from Rolemaster Companion III as best I recall).In pure mechanical terms, persuading an NPC to kill him-/herself does not need to be any more difficult, or resource/playtime intensive, than killing him/her directly. I think the issue is more about maintaining the verisimilitude of the gameworld.</blockquote>

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