Coup de grace or not coup de grace?

[Jack7]

PCs don't waste time on coups de grace because monsters almost always stay down once dropped, and in battle every moment counts; it's idiotic to go around slitting throats when there are opponents still up and fighting. I figure monsters are used to dealing with other monsters and take the same attitude. To them, a foe who gets dropped to zero is a foe who's out of the fight.

There are a few easy ways to deal with that.

If you are fighting a truly lethal foe, then you just stay on him til dead. In combat against truly dangerous opponents your job is not to temporarily disable an opponent, it is to kill him. Anything short of that leaves you and your comrades exposed to potential future danger from a foe who should have been killed the first time around. Also unless you finish him the first time there is no absolutely guarantee you can do so later.

If you attack a guy, drop him or disable him, then move on to the next guy and in the meantime reinforcements arrive or the whole scenario is part of an ambush, and you never get to finish what you started, meaning you only have to reface that same foe after he is evacuated and likely at least partially recovered. Always finish a killing job if killing is the aim. If you don't then the enemy won't necessarily make the same mistake. If you are fighting enemies you can subdue or reason with or simply overwhelm it doesn't matter, I mean enemies who intend to kill you and are good and determined at that.

The second tactic is to employ weapons that are good killing weapons, not just good fighting weapons. Killing a man doesn't take that long if he is helpless or really disabled, but if you have to face him again after he has survived one clumsy, half-hearted attempt at taking his life he's plenty pissed off, wont' make your mistake his next time round, and most importantly has already passed Intel off about you to his comrades. If he has any intelligence at all he won't repeat his first error, meaning you're likely looking at ambushes, being outnumbered, traps, and other precautions. If a guy got into a killing fight with me and didn't finish the job then that's his tough luck, cause he won't get a second time around like that one. I'll make sure he's dead before me, and I won't leave it to chance or lack of conclusion. I'd set traps, track him, reconnoiter, make sure he's heavily outnumbered, fights on my terrain and under my best conditions, is ambushed, and is finished long before I'm spent.

(Now if you play a game where monsters are basically mindless automatons, who never learn from mistakes, and can't think or don't bother to, never adapt to circumstances, and are basically rpg versions of pre-programmed expendables, then it doesn't matter either. But if you play against enemies who are adaptable, learn their lessons, are observant, adopt new tactics and strategies, and pay attention to what's going on around them then it's best to kill them before they learn a new trick, not after. It's not the being near dead that makes a smart opponent dangerous, it's the living through being near dead that makes a smart opponent really dangerous. He's come back into the game with a new realization about how serious a situation killing really is, and he don't intend to waste all that hard won education. A mind is a terrible thing to waste for most creatures when they really come to understand it can be cut out of their skull if they are slack and inattentive about what the other guy intends. And truth be told, as a little sidenote, I personally think this is a real weakness in many role play games. Such games approach killing, being killed, and trying to avoid being killed in a silly and anything but serious fashion. But it's been my experience that most everything that does real killing is quite serious about the endeavor and doesn't really screw around like it's a game to them. It seems to me that if you're gonna role play combat, then killing ought to be the very most serious, not the least serious, aspect of that kinda enterprise. But that's the way I look at killing, and not being killed. It's not something you go about halfway or in any old fashion. Your life and the life of your comrades may very well depend on how serious you are about it, and on how good at it you are. And I know it's nothing more than a game, but it is after all game combat, not game debating or game diplomacy.)

Another thing you can do is when one man is not very good at fighting, or hangs back, or is not otherwise engaged then that's your "kill man." If a fight really is too hairy that you can't take ten seconds to finish off a foe, then the kill man offs every downed or helpless foe. A spear is a good weapon for this purpose, put it through the eye, or the heart if you know where that is, or use a good hammer to split skulls. But if your party has a man who isn't good at fighting or tries to stay out of direct combat then make him your mop-up guy. If you're fighting foes you know you gotta kill, then have a kill man, and train him to kill efficiently and fast. A good, efficient kill man can finish off several downed enemies in short order and is always worth his weight in blood. The other fella's blood, not yours.

 

[amysrevenge]

So what are your 'rules' for using coup de grace on your player's PC's?

My rule:

As long as there is one PC still standing, I will never ever ever use CdG on a fallen PC. Once they are all down, then I'll either capture them or CdG/kill all of them, depending on the story (that one has only ever come up once for me - they died horribly).

 

[nightwyrm]

I play it depending on the enemies the PCs are facing. Undeads, predatory animals and other relatively mindless things will kill you and then drag you off to be eatened. Critters with normal intelligence will tend to focus on enemies still moving. Very intelligent enemies who sees dropped PCs getting back up will make sure to finish off downed PCs.

 

[Agamon]

I have no problem with how downed PCs can get back up again. If one chooses to look at it as, "stabbed through the chest, down for the count, oh wait, he's fresh as a spring chicken again," then yeah, it's pretty silly. But that's not how I view it. One can have the wind knocked out of them, or be in enough to pain to drop to the ground before finding their legs again. Confusion over HP abstraction strikes again, it seems.

As for the OP, unless there's a reason to make sure the downed opponent can't get up again, there are usually more immediately dangerous fish to fry.

 

[Kalthanis]

I'm not saying my way is best, just letting you know how I do it.

When in a fight and a player goes down, I usually make a quick check when the assailant's turn comes back around. Was he threatened? If so, then he's got better things to do. An arrow shoots past his face, he goes for cover. A fighter swings an axe at him, he engages. But if nobody has done anything to threaten him, my intelligent NPCs will spend the time to deliver an extra knife to the chest or something. This is, after all, someone who was trying to kill him, regardless of the moral issues at hand.

My players have figured this out. Now when a party member goes down, it is a small rush to get to his aid before the opponent can do any more lethal damage. Slightly dramatic.

On the other comments that have cropped up here, in my thoughts for a lower level campaign I have given consideration to giving a condition of Stunned (save ends) after waking. This is the same campaign that would see Fort checks for damage over CON to prevent Dazed/Stunned.