Coup de Grace vs. Players -- Mean DM or Fair Play?

[Trickstergod]

The difference though is that the game is more fun when the players know whether a PC is "just mostly dead" and can be saved by a healing or whether he's "all the way dead".

Nothing sucks worse than blowing a round of actions and a healing potions to save the fighter who's already "all the way dead" but you just didn't know it.

It still stands that if the opposition wants to make sure a PC is dead, the way they're going to do it isn't by checking for a pulse or to see if they're breathing.

It's by taking a dagger and shoving it through their eye. So it's a moot point, anyway - if an opponent is dubious enough to check if a PC is really dead or not, that opponent is just going to murder the PC, anyway.

In the various fantasy LARPs I've played in - where it's really impossible to metagame if someone on the ground is bleeding out, faking dead, or actually dead - the way things always run is stabbing the guy with a lethal blow while he's on the ground, not to go to the extra effort of checking for vital signs.

This means occasionally corpses get run through.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Personally, I think it is almost never a good idea to use CDG.

Why would I want to take a deliberate action to kill one of the PCs (thus losing all the plot threads and background currently associated with that PC and making the campaign that little bit more impoverished) when I could capture the PC or do something else that drives the campaign onward while preserving all the plot threads? Also, I prefer for my players to have exciting and memorable adventures with PCs that they like.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big softie. In fact in a recent Con game, one of my adventures had a greater mortality rate than all the Call of Cthulhu games put together

CDG tends to make for a much more adversarial relationship with DMs in my experience, because unlike attacks where the damage falls where it may, the DM makes a clear decision to finish of this character. Works for some gamers, obviously, but I think that the 4e DMG advice is good advice.

In our 3e campaigns neither players nor DMs used CdG at all, and the games were none the worse for it.

OK, I can think of one exception - when the bad guy has a hostage and says "let me escape or I'll kill him" and the PCs attack him anyway. i.e. threat of CdG (as plot device) isn't so bad as long as it is not overused.

That's my opinion.

Cheers

 

[CountPopeula]

I think it depends on the enemy. Hobgoblins and trolls will give you the business end of an axe in your head, Drow and Illithid will just make you wish they had.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

what can i say? Sometimes you just have to put your foot down.

stick of pain!

 

[Jonathan Drain]

I generally leave coup-de-grace to after the fight, and even then only if all PCs have dropped or fled. Monsters generally focus on more immediate threats before finishing off defeated enemies.

 

[Arnwyn]

The big question you should ask is "Why would this creature perform a coup de grace when other options are available?"

The answer I usually supply is that, barring a particular animosity, the NPC monsters are usually going to shift targets to the currently active threat PC and leave the PC to bleed out.

Pretty much exactly how we do it. Works great for us.

Personally, I think it is almost never a good idea to use CDG.

...for your particular group. (Demonstrably false for our group.)

 

[Quickbeam]

IMHO executing a CdG on a PC is both fair and mean.

I typically don't do it, but occasionally an NPC will have reason to hate a specific PC enough to warrant such malign attention.

Cheers, -- N

Agreed. I typically only use the CdG on my players when there is a compelling reason during the encounter to do so. Some of those reasons include:
** a personal vendetta
** ravenous hunger to feast upon the fallen PC
** failure to perceive remaining PC's as a credible threat

As a rule though, random (intelligent) monsters in my games do not hunker down to finish off fallen characters when other PC's are still attacking them. They continue reacting to the immediate threat of still-attacking heroes.

 

[Alcamtar]

IMC, you reap what you sow.

If PCs routinely coup-de-grace monsters, then monsters will casually coup-de-grace PCs. If PCs exercise restraint, so will the monsters.