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

[hong]

Nope. Instead you get hounded by the law and by scruffy bounty hunters and, if your offense was grave enough, you are hanged by the neck until dead or decapitated or drawn and quartered or tortured until dead or ....

Let me ask you. If you're going to come down _this_ hard on an unintentional killing, where the PCs have done their best to make amends, how do you handle situations where PCs _deliberately_ set out to kill innocents?

 

[hong]

There's one flaw in your example from Speed (an example I thought of earlier, in fact). The police officers are not talking about shooting and KILLING the hostage. They are talking about shooting the hostage TO WOUND, incapacitating the hostage so that the hostage-taker cannot use him or her as a shield. And that's exactly what Jack did in Speed.

D&D doesn't have mechanics for "wounding shots" (except for a few dubious feats in S&S). Expecting players to use tactics that aren't allowed for in the rules is risky at best. Penalising them for not doing so is being vindictive.

 

[Wolfspider]

D&D doesn't have mechanics for "wounding shots" (except for a few dubious feats in S&S). Expecting players to use tactics that aren't allowed for in the rules is risky at best. Penalising them for not doing so is being vindictive.

Thank you for pointing this out, but I am well aware that D&D does not have these kinds of rules. If you look back at the post I was responding to, Mistwell was comparing the scenario with the rogue with a scene in the movie Speed. I was just pointing out some flaws in this comparison. Please do not accuse me of suggesting something "vindictive" without taking the context of what I said into consideraton.

In any case, you pointing this out just shows even more that the comparison Mistwell made has little bearing on this scenario.

 

[Wolfspider]

Let me ask you. If you're going to come down _this_ hard on an unintentional killing, where the PCs have done their best to make amends, how do you handle situations where PCs _deliberately_ set out to kill innocents?

I bring out the dragons....

 

[LostSoul]

Consider the effect that coming down hard on the PCs will have on the _players_. Do you want them to continue doing crazy, swashbuckling stunts? If so, be prepared for the dice to fall where they may, and don't penalise them overly much for a bad roll.

Good point.

 

[Wolfspider]

Consider the effect that coming down hard on the PCs will have on the _players_. Do you want them to continue doing crazy, swashbuckling stunts? If so, be prepared for the dice to fall where they may, and don't penalise them overly much for a bad roll.

Well, if I were going for a swashbuckling kind of atmosphere in my game, then I would have fudged the roll and allowed the rogue to strike the villian instead. As I've said before, never let a bad roll get in the way of a good story.

However, Cloudgatherer does not seem to share this DMing philosophy from what he posted here--he let the dice fall where they did, and thus the girl died at the hands of the rogue. His world seems more grim and gritty than swashbuckling by this token.

EDIT: Clarified comment

 

[Masked]

or...

Gosh. All I would do is have the event irrevocably change the lives of the girls. They'll no longer be satisfied with a "normal" life. Did we come back from the dead to live mindless lives without adventure? They'll set out as adventurers and hopefully the PCs will come across them later.

Meanwhile, the relatives of the girls and much of the town is either terrified or angry with the party. My daughters ran off and it was all because of you four! Stay away from them, they're unnatural!

Anyway, at least the party didn't just saw "Darn, the girl's dead ... let's find something else to do."

 

[hong]

Well, if I were going for a swashbuckling kind of atmosphere in my game, then I would have fudge the roll and allowed the rogue to strike the villian instead. As I've said before, never let a bad roll get in the way of a good story.

As a rule of thumb, the only time I'd fudge a roll is if a _PC's_ life is in danger. A story in a roleplaying game is created by the events that unfold; it doesn't have a pre-planned storyline. And the amount of fudging that goes on is independent of what sort of atmosphere you want in your game. You can have a grim-and-gritty world with lots of combat, and still fudge all the time because you don't want the players to be making up new characters every session. Conversely, you can have a plot-heavy campaign without fudging, if combats tend to be rare and don't feature high-powered enemies with insta-kill abilities.

However, since Cloudgatherer did not share this philosophy, I have to work with what he gave me. His world seems more grim and gritty than swashbuckling by this token.

I don't think it's possible to know what Cloudgatherer's campaign is like, based on one mishap.

 

[Wolfspider]

Gosh. All I would do is have the event irrevocably change the lives of the girls. They'll no longer be satisfied with a "normal" life. Did we come back from the dead to live mindless lives without adventure? They'll set out as adventurers and hopefully the PCs will come across them later.

Heh heh heh. I like this.

 

[hong]

Re: or...

Gosh. All I would do is have the event irrevocably change the lives of the girls. They'll no longer be satisfied with a "normal" life. Did we come back from the dead to live mindless lives without adventure? They'll set out as adventurers and hopefully the PCs will come across them later.

That is cool.