Kill All the Hostages! (We'll bring them back...)

[Hand of Evil]

Build a world myth. How long does a person have to be dead before they move into the light, cross the styx? Does some ritual have to be perform? If the ritual is not doen they become undead? What do the god(s) have to say about all these people moving back and forth? How about wills?

Building a myth will keep things in line and you will not have to make special rules and the players will understand the reason for things.

Now somethings I would do. Make the girls some form of demon, the bad guy made some deals with the otherside. Or have them become outcast from their families, because in a world where undead are common do you ever trust someone that comes back from the dead?

Work on a myth for dealing with the dead, the undead, and reason for bring them back.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Although you can't go back, I think the easiest solution would be to have had the girls "choose" to not come back because they like the after life (or hate the life where would-be heroes callously kill them).

This is the most appropriate action to take in a world where you have easy access to Raise Dead (e.g. party member has it).

It means that they still have to live with the consequence of their actions and hopefully it will lead to guilt for them.

One other possibility is for the local goddess of mercy or justice to curse them so that they can't recieve divine healing until they have made atonement. Bit of a mallet, but it certainly seems like they are behaving in a thoughtless and callous way, uncaring about hurting innocents - pretty evil, really.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I also killed Raise Dead and Ressurectoon - two of the worst spells in the how game imho

I sit on the other side of the spectrum. I think Raise Dead and Resurrection are integral parts of the D&D experience, and that without them, the game is far too lethal to expect any kind of long-term character development. I'd hate to be in a game as lethal as 3e without any way to get my beloved PC back. But YMMV.

Bit of a mallet, but it certainly seems like they are behaving in a thoughtless and callous way, uncaring about hurting innocents - pretty evil, really.

The PCs are only acting thoughtlessly and callously if the world they live in sees killing someone and then raising them as such. In a world with Raise Dead readily available, and seeing as the girls were hostages of the villain, I'm not sure that's the case. After all, though they had to go through the experience of death, the end result of that death was that the girls were no longer hostages of the villain.

In such a world, under such circumstances, the deaths of the girls might be viewed as a tactical maneuver. The heroes knew they could bring the girls back, and by attacking the villain then and there, they prevented him from escaping with hostages, perhaps to use them to harm even more innocents.

I think the most important thing here is that the players understand the nature of the actions involved, and what the consequences are. If the players know that death is often a life-changing experience, causing severe phychological scarring, then their casual treatment of death may be considered evil. But if the players are under the impression that death is simply a "holding action" until the Raise Dead spell kicks in, then it's unfair to punish them now for that assumption.

Simply put: IMO, the rules need to be clearly defined before the PCs/players are punished for breaking them.

 

[Henry]

Do you like the outcome, Cloudgatherer? If not, it still wouldn't be right to "slap" the players for creative use of the tools they have at their disposal.

If you do feel unsure about the resolution, I like MythandLore's solution the best - it is the most helpful after-the-fact info here and leads to all sorts of possible ramifications.

Also, What God/Alignment does the Priest serve? I can also imagine his church would not be happy with the negative press generated by the pain and injury of two helpless girls (unless they were serfs or peasants...) and would likely reprimand him.

Also, I loved their idea about the favor. In a couple of month's real time it would be nice to see that favor being called on...

P.S. - It would be REALLY be interesting to see Sagiro's take on this situation...

 

[Plane Sailing]

The PCs are only acting thoughtlessly and callously if the world they live in sees killing someone and then raising them as such.

I respectfully disagree with this post-modernist viewpoint.

I can't imagine any heros from literature or film behaving this way. It is what the bad guys do, it is what separates the good guys from the bad guys.

D&D is even *more* of a world of absolute morality than the one which we live in - after all, good and evil are literal detectable forces!

 

[Deadguy]

I respectfully disagree with this post-modernist viewpoint.

I can't imagine any heros from literature or film behaving this way. It is what the bad guys do, it is what separates the good guys from the bad guys.

D&D is even *more* of a world of absolute morality than the one which we live in - after all, good and evil are literal detectable forces!

Post-modernist? All that Lord Pendragon was pointing out that that is theoretically what the rules allow. Indeed just look to other threads (now and in the past) that have arisen precisely because in principle D&D allows for essentially limitless raising from the dead.

The follow-up is this. Every DM must give some thought as to how, if at all, the raise dead and similar spells are limited. If the DM makes no comment, then all you have to go on is the rulebook and that doesn't forbid the choices made by the PCs in this thread.

As for being unable to imagine heroes doing such a thing, I would suggest that you read some Tom Clancy - I am quite sure his heroes would happily go the sacrifice and raise route! Otherwise, it's hard to appeal to myth - D&D (as we have settled) is drawn from mythic concepts, but it isn't the world of myth (if that really has any meaning).

 

[Methinkus]

I was in a similar situation once with a group of mine. It was in some module that I bought for $2. A mage falls in love with his queen and confesses, she very gently turns him down and announces that she is pregnant with the kings child, so the mage runs off, takes control of a tribe of orcs and develops a spell to change the heredity of the baby. He waits for it to be born, kidnaps it and runs off again.

Enter the PCs.

They ride off to capture the evil mage and eventually fight there way into his stronghold where the mage confronts them face-to-face, with the child in his arms. He reveals the whole story to the PCs, colored to make him appear to be the victim, and they ask for a moment to mull over their decision. The mage more than happily indulges them and moves to a far corner of the room to play Patti Cake with his precious little son.

The players discuss the issue in character for a few moments when the rogue announces his intention to end the whole controversy be killing the child and framing the mage, saying that “they can afford to raise him later, the brat IS a prince after all,” To stunned to reply, the other PCs watch as he yells “HEY YOU” to the mage and hurls a dagger at the baby, killing it.

Fierce battle later they are left with a dead mage no one cares about and a baby that naturally doesn’t want to be raised. They were forced to leave that kingdom as swiftly as possible. There was a lot wrong with that adventure.

 

[Rel]

I'd just like to mention the other side of the issues being raised (pardon the pun) here. Given the situation as presented, the bad guy has two hostages and wants the nasty artifact. Assuming the party has the power to kill the bad guy (they did kill him after all and if he was more powerful than them in the first place, he would just push them down and take the item), at the moment, only two innocent lives are at stake.

If they give him the artifact (let's assume it wasn't broken) the bad guy gets more powerful, he may or may not release the hostages and more lives are at risk because the bad guy is now more powerful thanks to the nasty magic item. Furthermore, the evil villan has learned that taking hostages is fun and profitable and will likely work in the future with these same "heroes".

But they didn't give him the artifact. Instead, they attacked and killed him, killing one of the hostages in the process. They bring her back to life and she is a bit more sickly from now on than she was previously (I'm assuming that she was 1st level and lost a point of Con in the raising process). The other girl was already dead (proving that the bad guy was negotiating in bad faith) but they raised her too and she will also not be as healthy as she once was, but is a lot more healthy than she was while DEAD.

The moral of the story: Don't negotiate with terrorists if you have the power to bring people back from the dead. Go in, guns blazing and kill the terrorists, regardless of the costs. Word will get around that taking hostages has no value (unless you have a means to make sure they stay dead) and is a useless tactic against the party. Ergo, less hostages will be taken and fewer lives will be in danger.

 

[Tzarevitch]

My gaming group had a strange encounter last session.... (10th level party: Bard, Rogue, Cleric, Fighter)

A "bad man" took two girls hostage (one in early 20's, the other a child of 8 or 9 years). The party had an item he wanted (the party had stolen it in a previous advenure), and he was going to use the hostages as leverage to get the item back.

So the "bad man" rides in on his horse, holding the older hostage by the throat with his sharp claws. The party begins to negotiate with him, but during the discussion, the party reveals the item isn't the "real item" (it actually is the real item, but the party broke it, dispelling its magic, and put it back together using make whole). As the bad man started to ride off, the party's negotiator signaled for the elven rogue to open fire on him.

The elven rogue had a +3 longbow and +3 arrows courtesy of the party's cleric and greater magic weapon. His first arrow hit the girl (I gave the bad man the lowest cover for holding the girl in front of him, although I could have given him more), dealing near fatal damage. The rogue then fired again, yet again hitting the girl, killing her. As the bad man started to ride off, the elven rogue then killed the horse and engaged the bad man in melee combat, eventually killing him with party help.

Now there's a second hostage, a young girl, still missing. The next day, the raise the girl slain by the elven rogue, then go to retreive the younger girl, who they find dead. They then raise her too....

I'm a little mixed about this adventure. On the one hand, they killed one hostage, let another die by not getting to her in time, and then brought them back to life. I definitely didn't award any "objective XP" for the mission, but I'm pondering how the "public" would react. Killing hostages is a "bad thing", but bringing them back is a "good thing", right? The party was repentant for their actions, the bard promising the two girls a favor anytime in the future, the cleric raised them from the dead, and the rogue is taking public responsibility for the debacle.

Needless to say, it was one of the stranger adventures they've had so far....

There better not be any paladins or good characters in that group. Don't let the PCs get off making relatively trivial amends for what they did. The rogue in particular, killed an innocent person simply to get at the baddie.

I can see if the PCs were unable to stop the baddie from killing the hostage, but the rogue actually killed one of them willingly and it sounds like none of the others objected. He hit her the first time, then did it again and killed her. That is manslaughter at least in modern jurisprudence. Under medieval criminal codes that is murder. The fact that they raised her later might mitigate some of the penalties, but it doesn'd absolve them of the crime. Note also that it is not the girl's choice whether or not to pursue muder or manslaughter charges, that is the local law's decision.

Also, I can't see why the cleric's deity (unless he is an evil deity) would be anything less than livid at the conduct of the cleric and his companions at willfully killing an innocent person because it was more convienent than coming up with a better plan. I would have the deity consent to raising the girls then impose a idvine quest for the PCs to learn the true value of an innocent life.

An even better idea could be for the deity to have demanded that the PCs journey to the land of the dead and retrieve their souls themselves, sort of greek hero-style. Since the girl's have already been raised, they can still be sent on a quest into the "underworld" to recover the soul of some other slain innocent. Let them see first hand what the dead go through and by implication, what they forced the girl's soul to go through before they raised her.

In the future, you could also come up with some reason why the dead person can't come back then let the person's restless ghost haunt them until they make amends. Above all, don't let good or neutral PCs get off lightly for doing such things.

Tzarevitch

 

[Cloudgatherer]

I got the impression there were no witnessess. Was that the case, Cloudgatherer?

Only the party, the antagonist, and the hostage witnessed/enganged in the battle. The hostage was killed by two quick successive arrows, so she did not know who shot her. However, they did not hide the end result, the hostage died in the "rescue" attempt. The party's rogue also went into town to purchase a couple diamonds (gee, wonder what he needs those for). So the people of the town know what happened, and the party is being honest about it.