Dragon Article: To Live Defeated

[Stumblewyk]

(Found here: Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (To Live Defeated))

The article contains alternative means for a group of PCs to handle enemies without killing them.

"Great!", you might say, "my players don't have to go on a pogrom and slaughter the entire population of the orc village. No more goblin or kobold genecide in my game!"

Except...well...the moralist in me screams in agony while reading this article. After reading some of these suggestions, I'd almost PREFER that my PCs kill everyone and everything than some of these options. If there were alignment penalties in 4e, I'd be handing out alignment shifts like candy if my players tried most (if not all) of these.

I understand not everyone is going to have the same level of moral objection to this article that I do, but holy crap is this a dark article. Yowza.

 

[Runestar]

I can't access the article (not being a subscriber), but just reading the sample entry on blinding your foe has left me feeling somewhat uneasy.

That said, I am sure that must be a ritual to cure blindness or something.

It seems more viable as some sort of downfall the villains bring upon themselves (eg: the lightning bolt intended for you rebounds back in his face, blinding him), and the PCs decide there is no need to finish him or bring him to justice as he has been punished enough.

Rather than a punishment the PCs inflict.

It is not without precedent though. In Rurouni Kenshin, he has maimed one of his foes as a way of disabling them (causing them to no longer be capable of wielding weapons) as an alternative to killing them.

 

[Zephrin the Lost]

Yeah, this is pretty much not at all what I was expecting from the tagline.

I remember having a big to do in a 3.5 game when the paladin I was running didn't want to execute enemies who had surrendered/been captured, but I'm betting that offering to maim or cripple them wouldn't have been an perfect solution for the other players OR his deity!

--Z

 

[NexH]

I agree. I was unpleasantly surprised when reading "Not evey villain the heroes overthrow deserves death" only to be followed by "Some deserve worse".
The subtitle "How to defeat—rather than kill—your enemies" seems, to me, also misleading.
I was also stumped by the suggestion that these punishments are appropiate for those with a code against killing; by the description of most the punishments, I guess these codes are not founded on moral grounds.


On another aspect, the implicit suggestion that recovery from some bodily mutilations should be as rare as coming back from the death struck me as strange, to say the least.
While I appreciated the caveat that some kind of punishments should be reserved for higher tiers of play, it seemed nonetheless genereous (or over the top) to allow the option of campaing-wise momentous effects such as "Torn from history" or "Eternal torment" at zero extra cost for the character.

 

[Stumblewyk]

I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only person uncomfortable with this article. Don't get me wrong, I'm not clamoring for censorship or something about this. I just find the article to be vastly different in tone than what I've come to expect from Wizard's recent handling of Dragon.

Many of these options are fates worse than death, IMO, and wholly outside the purview of good, or even unaligned characters. I'd reserve these kinds of actions for PCs of evil alignments only in my game. And since I seem to remember seeing something early in the development/release of 4e about the game's focus being on Good and Unaligned characters, reserving the Evil alignments for monsters and villains, I find this article perplexing...

 

[Runestar]

I guess the overarching idea was "You don't want to kill the villain, but how do you ensure that he does not make a comeback and hurt more people?"

But once they elaborate on the villain's subsequent fate, it just seems so...I mean, having to eat filth? Call me a wuss, but I did not need to know that. Having watched a documentary where children in impoverished countries do just that, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemies!

Boy, this makes BOED/BOVD seem so tame by comparison!

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Fealing uneasy? Yes. A good article nevertheless? Yes.

Some options are even great for good characters. Go into the mind and cut someone off from using magic. (A terrible fate for an evil spellcaster, but hardly evil...)

Transmuting into an object be fully aware of it? Used as a whetstone? Evil.

 

[Thaumaturge]

Maybe it's just because I DM Dark Sun, but there are a few villains in my campaign who deserve fates like these.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Osgood]

I was hoping this article would help the classic what-to-do-with-the-enemy-who-surrenders debate, but I agree that many of these options are horrific.

I think some of these are decent alternatives to killing, but the author's angry and vengeful spin on things is the issue. "To the Pain" only worked in the Princess Bride because it was a bluff. Taking the overall concept and putting a more merciful or even accidental (I wasn't trying to permanently cripple him, it just happened) spin on it would help the good-aligned PCs.

These ends all seem designed around the BBEG, but that is never where my group has a problem.... it's the random goblin or bandit who cowers and pleads for his life, claiming (possibly truthfully) to have only signed on to feed his family.

As a DM I try to encourage mercy by almost never having a freed enemy come back to haunt the party (unless dictated by the story), and even had the former-enemy help the group or even become one of their greatest allies. If my team had kicked Filge the necromancer in the head until he was no longer capable casting any magic, he never would have come to their aid and helped defeat Kyuss in the final battle and prevent the Age of Worms.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Dealing with foes surrendering and pledging for their lives is something very very difficult to handle for the PCs.

I think it is a good way to encourage beeing merciful and not vengeful. The article really is not for Players, but more a tool for DMs who want to show how really really cruel a foe is...