Coup de grace... A moral stand point...

[Ilen]

Your character has sworn an oath, hypocritical or not he would stick to it, that is assuming he would stick to it in the first place.

Really, you can have a character that swears not to hurt the helpless who makes sure to slaughter the women and children of a goblin tribe when they finished off the warriors or what have you, in fact you can have him do anything you want, hypocritical or evil or not.

Anyway, many people are hypocritical in life and seem to get along just fine, I don’t see why a character wouldn’t.

Personally I'm of the opinion that a Coup de Grace is more of a neutral act.

 

[Drawmack]

This is a completely situational call.

I'll give an example of each both involve Zook the good aligned gnome/rogue (don't ask me).

The party was attacked by a mage that was using silent spell and still spell so she was basically blasting the party without moving or speaking. When they got her unconscouis Zook said that there was no way to make her harmless since she didn't have to talk or move to cast spells, like the party's spell caster so they should kill her while she is down. I let this go because that made sense it wasn't evil it was self defense.

Another time the party meets a horde of orcs. The wizard casts sleep and the party starts killing. That was against his alingment they should have hi tailed it out of there instead of killing the orcs.

 

[apsuman]

I will add my comments and they really apply to any campaign

DnD has combat. Your games may have more or less, but there is a reason that there are so many rules governing what you can do in combat. Given that, before you start a campaign and for every new player you bring into the fold, the DM and all the players need to get this whole good/evil, law/chaos thing worked out.

I believe in the alignment system. But it ONLY works when everyone (outside the game) can agree upon some really basic tenets.

The campaign setting I usually play in are sort of a medieval earth with magic. Meaning that there are no "authorites" and no "judical" system that modern civilizations would recognize. Due process is nonexistant. There is nobody to turn the evildoers into.

So, when good characters can kill bad guys has to be resolved before it gets ugly in the game. While it might differ from one culture to another in your game, serious what we would call felonies would warrant death. "You murdered my brother so I will kill you." Even paying someone (not an assassin) to off a bad guy would be ok with me, sort of a vigilante justice, or street justice attitude. Significant property crimes would be handled by any existing court/judical system. "You stole my horse, I will send the king's men after you." Minor crimes again would fall to the street. "You stole a chicken from my slaughterhouse -- I will not server you or any of yuir kin until my debt is paid. And then I still won't serve you."

IMHO, coup de grace on a helpless bad guy is not evil. I would let a paladin do it. The only question is why is this the bad guy? Is he really a BAD guy?

Once combat starts, unless an opponent surrenders (and maybe your characters sould give them the chance after the fight turns favorable) death is acceptable. I consider it an honor thingy.

g!

 

[kreynolds]

Killing is very rampant, and you get rewarded for a creatures death.

The biggest misconception is that you must kill your foe to get XP, and that simply isn't the case. You just need to triumph over your foe. Even running your foes off earns you XP. When a player realizes this, they are less likely to just kill everything they run into.

There is a ranger in one of my games that will only kill if he has no other choice (or if he gets pissed off). Otherwise, he just beats his foes down into the dirt.

 

[mikebr99]

Re: Re: Coup de grace... A moral stand point...

The biggest misconception is that you must kill your foe to get XP, and that simply isn't the case. You just need to triumph over your foe. Even running your foes off earns you XP. When a player realizes this, they are less likely to just kill everything they run into.

There is a ranger in one of my games that will only kill if he has no other choice (or if he gets pissed off). Otherwise, he just beats his foes down into the dirt.

Hey k...
Do you have some kind of morale rules that you use to decide when a foe(s) turns tale and runs?

 

[Kai Lord]

Re: Re: Coup de grace... A moral stand point...

The best solution is to avoid the problem altogether, by having mooks die as soon as they hit 0 hp.

Think of movies like Star Wars, FOTR, Conan, Indiana Jones, The Magnificent Seven, or six million other action flicks. Nowhere do you get people groaning and moaning in pain as they bleed to death from wounds. When the bad guys hit the dirt, they're done for, and you can get on with the derring-do stuff.

I'd say we saw a nice little Coup de Grace performed by Aragorn on the Uruk-hai captain at the end of FOTR. The warhammer dude in Conan the Barbarian definitely didn't die at 0 hit points when he was impaled by Conan's trap. They had a nice little moment where Arnold watched him bleed to death.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Is it hypocrisy if you've sworn not to harm the helpless?

A decision to adhere to a morally justified oath or code of action is not morally equivalent to a decision to the act (or inaction) itself. Such oaths and codes have value in themselves for moral reasons.

So, to clarify my previous statement, the thing that would be hypocritical would be to claim that attacking the helpless creature was immoral in its own right, when it became helpless through your lethally-intended attacks, and to still maintain that those attacks were moral, assuming that the circumstances had not otherwise changed. It may well be immoral to do so, but only if attacking was immoral in the first place. The mere fact that you have partially achieved your aim of killing the creature, to the degree that it has just become much easier, does not in itself change the moral status of the act.

Of coure, this is all assuming that we're basing our discussion on some sort of ethical reasoning. A being's moral status is clearly not subjective in D&D (alignment exists), and extrinsically-defined codes of morality are equally valid to ethical reasoning as a basis for your campaign's moral system. But in the former case we don't even need to discuss it.

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Re: Coup de grace... A moral stand point...

I'd say we saw a nice little Coup de Grace performed by Aragorn on the Uruk-hai captain at the end of FOTR. The warhammer dude in Conan the Barbarian definitely didn't die at 0 hit points when he was impaled by Conan's trap. They had a nice little moment where Arnold watched him bleed to death.

And neither of those were mooks. Not only that, but Lurtz was still able to show aggression after being impaled.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Coup de grace... A moral stand point...

And neither of those were mooks.

But now do you not have a circular definition? All mooks should be easily dispatched, and a "mook" is discerned in terms of what a "non-mook" is: anyone who cannot be easily dispatched.

Which is not to say that you don't have a useful statement if reformulated: "the great majority of opponents should be easily dispatched; let us call such opponents mooks."

 

[hong]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Coup de grace... A moral stand point...

But now do you not have a circular definition? All mooks should be easily dispatched, and a "mook" is discerned in terms of what a "non-mook" is: anyone who cannot be easily dispatched.

Kai, stop with the big words that you don't understand.

Which is not to say that you don't have a useful statement if reformulated: "the great majority of opponents should be easily dispatched; let us call such opponents mooks."

Exactly.