Feigning Death

[Lady WolfStorm]

Hello all,

I have a situation. I have been hosting a game every other Friday for about 2 months or so now. The game is a Dragonlance campaign, and consists of a Kender race. Something happened last night that I thought I'd ask the general consensus. Being Dragonlance and Kender doesn't really affect the outcome.

Last night, our band of heroes came across the Shattered Temple. The storyboard goes that an Ogre comes running in and bashing one of the statues near the players. The statue is that of the Goddess Mishakal, and one of the PCs was a cleric of Mishakal. He made it a point to confront the ogre, so I had to make up an Ogre confrontation since it was not part of the storyline. Mind you, these PCs just got to 3rd level, so one ogre is a match for the PCs. The kender in the party has the least amount of hitpoints, and the great club the ogre had did just enough damage to bring the kender's HP down to exactly 0 on the Ogre's turn.

At 0 hp the kender tries a bluff check to "feign death" and succeeded, falling to the ground.
When it was time for the kender's turn to act, he attempts to stab the ogre while laying on the ground, and then feign death each round of combat. I have one player who thinks that this cannot be done. As I think about the reality of it, it probably couldn't. I would like your opinion on this issue.

I probably should have done this a little bit differently. For one, I should have done a sense-motive check each time the kender did this, along with an increase of favoritism to the ogre since he is consistantly prodded. Ogres are not too bright, but if they keep feeling a stinging sensation and it appears to not be coming from one of the active players, the ogre might switch to poking the "dead" character.

 

[Stalker0]

The funny part about your situation is that the second time your kender tried to feign death, he wasn't faking.

By the book, once you make a strenous action (like attacking) while your at 0, you drop to -1 and go unconscious.

However, I think your ruling on feign death was fine for the first situation, an ogre would likely believe he killed a small kender with a single blow.

 

[Lady WolfStorm]

One thing I did forget to mention was that upon the Kender's *FIRST* action after feigning death was to drink a potion, so he did have a few hps and stablized at the time he did the "attack/feign death" combo.

 

[irdeggman]

Something is wrong here (at least in how I read the post) in the number of actions taken.

Bluffing in combat is a standard action.

The kender can only make a bluff attempt or an attack attempt in a round.

So after the attack attempt - he is no longer bluffing being dead, which means the ogre gets an attack.

Standing up is a move action that generates an AoO. (The kender fell down when feining "death" and thus is now prone to start his next action).

If instead the kender is attacking while prone he is at a -4 penalty for being prone and has a -4 AC penalty for being prone.

And don't forget the AoO generated by drinking the potion in the first place.

 

[shilsen]

I'd only allow someone to bluff being dead if they took no actions and just lay there. Since the character is clearly visible to the enemy (unless you've house-ruled away the lack of facing in 3e), drinking a potion will immediately make it clear that he's not dead. And making an attack as well.

 

[nittanytbone]

The first bluff was fine -- it would fall under one of these conditions "The target wants to believe you (-5 to opponent's sense motive)," or "the bluff is believable and doesn’t affect the target much (+0)."

The later bluff checks were a problem. First, using a bluff check in combat is a standard action. Second, once the bluffer started attacking again, the bluff immediately becomes "The bluff is hard to believe or puts the target at significant risk. +10 OR
The bluff is way out there, almost too incredible to consider. +20." Even an ogre with poor wisdom should be able to see through that at a +20 bonus. Even if he doesn't see through it, he might hit the body with a maxed out power attack once just to make sure that its dead.

 

[Bryntryst]

There is actually a feat that allows a character to perform this exact action in the PHBII. Without it, I would go with what Shilsen said.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Definitely allow feigning death.

I'd call for a sleight of hand check to drink the potion without being noticed?

But after the first attack, the ogre would not believe the bluff.

He could try feigning again, but I'd give the ogre a fairly sizable bonus to the sense motive check. And he might just take a swing anyway, just to be sure.

 

[glass]

Definitely allow feigning death.

I'd call for a sleight of hand check to drink the potion without being noticed?

But after the first attack, the ogre would not believe the bluff.

He could try feigning again, but I'd give the ogre a fairly sizable bonus to the sense motive check. And he might just take a swing anyway, just to be sure.

Agreed on all counts.


glass.