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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Shaft" data-source="post: 2023449" data-attributes="member: 25737">If you drug them though, the conflict ends there. Killing them while they are staggered won't bring any "good" to anyone.  The scene will be left a conflicted, muddled mess.  Slaves go free.People go to examine slavers... find out they were poisoned then killed.  No explanation or clear intent to the murders.  The slavers are not given a chance to fight back... and the authorities are now convinced that this travelling band of warriors have basically stolen slaves from rich slavers by killing them.  Party goes on to other mission, other slavers in other parts of this country are also still buying slaves (more slaves for them I guess), and your party has a huge stain on their hands.  I really appreciated Morrow's post on responsibility and idealism.  Yes, the ideal says that these men should be thwarted right away, left to bleed out, while the slaves get their poetic justice and leave.  However, there is always a responsibility. Sometimes, you just have to feel that death isn't the way to go in certain situations, or certain times.Maybe the slavers will die in a future campaign, if the party ever comes back to free the land when they are more epic heroes (and still alive too, of course <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ).  Maybe they'll die when they attempt to defend their keep despite the poison.  But killing them all sometimes just isn't the solution. You kill terrorists right away because the art of terrorism is to kill and kills some more without ceasing. Slavers buy slaves without ceasing as well, and people suffer... but there is still the lame opportunity, that sad window in which something can be done, or slaves can still live out their lives (although one has to question whether they should want to go through with it, etc.). And, to ambiguously touch on religious parable, and without getting too specific... men who have been absolute murderers and lusty adulterers (at the same time), have become kings and holy men, revered and read. Now, whether you agree that it should have been that way is another debate not worth discussing in this thread (I'm just making an example, battling over said won't encourange any good talks). But that's just an example.  The man, in an idealistic world, should have been taken outside, gutted then quartered on the spot. And yet, he became the holy leader.  The slavers don't deserve necessarily to become kings (believe me, Im not saying they should become leaders), but sometimes sparing the enemy and slipping his riches from under him is the best thing you can do in a certain situation.  PC's that needlessly struggle or kill just so that John the Slaver can't have slaves (meanwhile his thirty cousins you didn't meet are actively still doing it), may be going through unnecessary troubles. It's worth considering, given alignment, and ethical issues.  My advice, as an outsider reading the story, would be that the PC's don't do anything "extra", such as killing because "it would satisfy your moral juices".  I'm not saying that stopping slavers from getting slaves is worth nothing or bad... but it's worth considering over.  Poison-only, in this situation, sounds like the way to go.  If you can't defeat your enemy cleanly and end the conflict with your sword right away...then the sword isn't the way to go... for now.</blockquote>

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