Is kicking a helpless offender unconscious brutal?

[sellars]

Actually, I think it made a great discussion. Look at it this way: Out of the scores of threads we moderators read every day, you got two of us interested in contributing to it. I don't see anyone being insulting, but it's an interesting topic and therefore takes may be a little heated. "Heated" is okay; "you are an expletive deleted for playing this character this way" is not.

Oh, it is that bad! It's only that when things get heated, I feel the need to put a disclaimer in the topic, because I don't want to offend people (IRL I'm sooo LG )

Were I playing a LE character, I would have at least broken his dominant arm before questioning him, and them dumping him in the street. IF I left him to be found at all.

Now that's evil!

 

[sellars]

They why on earth did you kick him?

You know, I really don't know I believe we were unarmed at the start of the encounter, and in the heat of the moment this seemed like the best thing to do.

Even more smart would have been to take away some of his hit points first using a weapon normally, and after thus softening him up, you deal a nonlethal blow or two to take him down. This makes him far easier to take down later, if you need to.

Now THAT is nasty! cutting someone to pieces deliberately, before making a final blow to render him unconsious. That is what I would call brutal violence

 

[argo]

Even more smart would have been to take away some of his hit points first using a weapon normally, and after thus softening him up, you deal a nonlethal blow or two to take him down. This makes him far easier to take down later, if you need to.

So, you were using far less than optimal tactics against a supposedly dangerous foe. Why then shouldn't the bard figure you were doing it because it was fun to kick someone when they were down?

So let me get this straight. Taking a few swings at a guy with your keen flaming burst greatsword and then finishing him off with a single punch is somehow more humane than kicking him into submission because it takes fewer rounds to acomplish? :\ Even with the conceit that HP loss due to weapon dmage may be "near-misses" rather than outright hits that is still bad bad metagamming.

This is simply the fault of the game system which does not handle subduing foes well. Understandable considering that the system is geared towards slaying nasty monsters in 10x10 rooms. Sure beating someone into unconsciousness is going to be brutal no matter how you cut it but Brutal != Evil. Taking unnessicary pleasure in brutality may be evil but simply being brutal is closer to neutral than anything else.

 

[billd91]

They why on earth did you kick him? Even assuming that you had no magical solution to hand - fists and feet do lousy damage, unless you happen to be a monk. If you really felt that he was that dangerous, but didn't want to kill him outright, you should have used your normal weapons to do nonlethal damage. You take a negative on your to-hit roll, but they guy is pinned down and not going to be dodging much. Hitting should be easy.

<snip>

So, you were using far less than optimal tactics against a supposedly dangerous foe. Why then shouldn't the bard figure you were doing it because it was fun to kick someone when they were down?

It's all this line of reasoning that I'm disagreeing with. It is not at all 'sub-optimal', when you're sitting in a shop in the middle of town, to grapple, kick, and use your fists rather than your weapons. Sure, you may do less damage than if you used lethal weapons, but then you're not also making yourself quite as vulnerable to overzealous constables trying to keep the peace.
Imagine if that would-be assassin has a powerful friend (or organization) who can bribe the local authorities with enough money to get the PCs railroaded to the gallows for his death. I'm not saying a certain amount of string pulling couldn't also happen if you just beat the assassin up, but you generally don't head for the gallows for delivering a beating.
There's optimal metagaming, sure. There's also better use of common sense and they don't necessarily agree.

 

[argo]

To fruther illistruate the point: I recall being in the same, but totally opposite, situation not too long ago. It was an OA game and the party was a bunch of LG nobles of the empire, a real golden-boy squad. A couple of Lion Samurai, a Crane Ijatsu master, a Dragon monk, you get the idea. Anyway we have been hearing rumors of growing evil in the countryside when we encounter a Samurai who we know to have an honorable reputation and who has recently reutrned from said countryside rampaging through the capital. He is in complete rabid-dog mode; screaming, attacking anything, ridding his horse to exhaustion and the presence of taint is very strong. Obviously his brains have been scrambled by some major bad ju-ju. Anyway, rather than stop him with lethal force (which is what the DM expected, I think) we instead decide to try and subdue him hopping both to learn more about evil-things-in-the-woods and maybe help the poor sap. Long story short we wind up with the monk pinning him on the ground while one of the samurai tries to punch him out and the others watching. It takes us about five rounds of this pummling to put him down and by about the second round we are all looking at each other nervously, we took issues of honor and personal conduct very seriously in that game. But in the end we sort of whitewashed the whole encounter with the metagame understanding that the rules just didn't cover that situation very well. It also helped that several party members afterwards went on to risk mind and soul in a dremscape ritual to help cleanse the poor guys spirit and that ended with his assisted sepuku.

The point? Beating him senseless worked for our LG group because of how we rp'ed our reaction to it. It sounds as if Sellar's group is also rping prety well, what with the whole LE v CG thing going on and all. But there is nothing intrinsicly evil about a brutal beating if a simple killing would also be acceptable under the same scenario.

Just MHO.

 

[Mallus]

...that's why my brother an I (in the game, not my real brother) are plotting to kill that bard, without taking the blame.

Question: has the bards' player completely given up the character? If so, then plotting to kill a popular bard out of spites makes for some fine evil story [That's one of the joys of running w/evil characters. They tend to make so much trouble for themselves that the campaign can almost run itself...].

On the other hand, plotting to kil PC's is something that usually ruins games. Or is your group OK with that? I like PC conflict, but I draw the line at PvP. Its just isn't fun for me.

 

[Gnarlo]

If you were a paladin, I'd tell you to use different flavor text, but I'd still fundamentally support your actions. "We apologize for the necessity (whack) of rendering you unconscious (whack), but your actions have (swat) led us to believe that you may have hidden (thud) assassin's tools about your person."

Reminds me of an old episode of Batman (the TV show) in which the Dynamic Duo burst into the villian's lair and Batman tells them (as near as my 20+ year old memory of it can) "I must ask that you cease immediately and surrender to us, or we shall be forced to pummel you severely about the head and shoulders."

That was the exact time my mother walking through the room stopped, looked at the screen, and in an epiphany blurted out "Oh, I get it! This show's not supposed to be serious!"



Back on subject, I agree that it was pretty brutal, but well justified in the perceived circumstances of the game and under the DM's direction of how to knock people out.

 

[Rel]

I come to ENWorld because I like the people and because I almost always learn something. What I learned from this thread is that tossing a basket of vermin at someone, as a means to end their life, is hideously unreliable and is very likely to get your ass kicked at the very least.

I also think that "punk-ass-scorpion-tossers" would make a great cat call against amatuerish assassins and also a good band name.

In short, this has been a very educational visit to the boards. Thank you.

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

given my characters would have lifted him up by the collar and punched him into the wall....

 

[takyris]

I come to ENWorld because I like the people and because I almost always learn something. What I learned from this thread is that tossing a basket of vermin at someone, as a means to end their life, is hideously unreliable and is very likely to get your ass kicked at the very least.

True dat, man. "Oh no, not 1d6 tiny vermin taking +0 melee attacks at me for potential 1d2 Strength damage, Fort13 resists!!!! Nooo... oh, wait. I'm a D&D hero. Screw that."

I bet there's a way to improve them, though. Maybe if you cast "Greater Magic Fang" on a scorpion's stinger and then fire it from a hand crossbow? Heck, as a DM, I'd let you do that to a bunch of scorpions and have them be considered ammunition. And with a repeating crossbow...

Or maybe a druid//rogue who wields a pair of scorpions and uses them like punching daggers. And then he can sneak attack with them, and power attack too, since they're "natural weapons"!

I think that in Eberron, the shuriken was originally going to be replaced by the scorpion (you can throw multiple ones at once, but only get Strength/Sneak Attack bonuses once per attack), and there was going to be all kinds of cultural detail about the scorpions as weapons that have since grown into living creatures... but they opted to go with the Warforged instead.