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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7313608" data-attributes="member: 42582">In our 4e games we just follow the rules - when the final blow is stuck, the striker can decide whether it is fatal or not.The PCs in my game have often taken prisoners. How the prisoners respond is something to be determined from the context and details of the ingame situation. But my bottom line is that defeating an enemy has to count as a victory for the players, not a loss - so a defeated NPC/creature will generally stay defeated.I can remember Heroic tier instances of taking hobgoblins and goblins prisoner, and extracting promises from them to renounce violence. We've always assumed that those promises are honoued.<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?312367-Actual-play-another-combat-free-session-with-intra-party-dyanmics" target="_blank">Here is a report</a> of a Paragon tier instance of an interrogation following a capture: it was resolved as a skill challenge, which - on this occasion - the players lost.I have allowed Intimidation checks to do psychic damage (from memory, this was a feature of the resolution of the version of Heathen that I ran in my game). But I've also used skill challenges to resolve attempts to defeat enemies by suasion rather than force. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?301282-Actual-play-examples-balance-between-fiction-and-mechanics" target="_blank">This account</a> of the PCs taming a bear provoked a surprising amount of controversy!My approach to this sort of item is not that it repesents or informs the rules, but rather that, at a table which applies the rules in a certain way, it might be useful.I would put the Basket of Everlasting Provisions in the same category. Some tables just ignore rations, or run games where rations don't matter. If you're not at such a table, and yet you want rations to not be an issue, the Basket provides an ingame excuse for that.My table has used the Basket of Everlasting Provisions, but probably wouldn't both with Gloves of the Bounty Hunter, as we just don't apply the game rules around unconsciousness with that degree of rigour.I should add - this "looseness" of the 4e mechanics (that each table is free to take it's own approach to how various mechanical systems, and especially some of these more maginal ones, correlate to the ingame/fictional situation) is one of the things that seemed to infuriate detractors. There must be a truth about what happens when someone is reduced to zero hp, dammit!</blockquote>

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