D&D 5E Killing a Teammate

[Lanliss]

But if you follow the expected model of 4-8 encounters per day, that's still a lot of adventuring. Based on the pace of the game, that could still be one or two sessions. Sometimes the party can rest, sometimes they can't.

Yes, it's a stretch. An exaggeration. But they're not completely different situations from the perspective of someone in the world.
In both cases, you can bring the person back given enough time. You can save your friend.
The difference is one of scale. If it's okay to murderer your friend to stop them from being an inconvenience for a couple months, the why not do the same over a couple weeks? Or why not a couple days?


It might be hard and they might have to make the sacrifice, but shouldn't they at least try?
And that sounds like a good story. Of struggling but failing to save a companion. Or choosing one companion over another. Or choosing to fail in a mission to save a friend. That's a story and memorable element of a game and far, far more interesting than just murder.

Is it evil? Kinda. Evil can be just as simple as putting your needs above someone else's. It's not that they're unwilling to sacrifice themselves for their catatonic friend, but that they're not even willing to try to save them. Anyone can be good and noble when it's easy. That doesn't count. It's when you make the right decisions when things are hard that sets your alignment and shows what kind of person you are.


We weren't given that information. We have to work with what we were told, and what the OP presented was the party immediately moving to murderhobo the situation.

The OP did not say they immediately went for murder. It can be read that way, but I would assume they at least asked about alternatives, rather than deciding, without consulting DM or the Player of vegetable, that they should kill vegetable. Also, I said it could be considered evil, depending on their in-character reason for the kill. As I said, if their only excuse is really "I don't wanna" then yeah, that is evil. But there are situations ingame where I feel the choice is acceptable.

 

[Jester David]

The 4-8 encounters will not get you to level 9 that fast early levels come fast but the XP requirements grows exponentially between levels. We know the characters are at level three rough estimate they are sitting at about 900-1000 xp to get to level 9 they need 48,000 xp yea not going to happen in 1-2 sessions from at their current level unless the DM is throwing out free xp (cough cough the dreaded meta gaming) . If I had to wait for other players to get from level 3 to 9 while other people played and I did nothing but sit around and my character gets nothing yea I tell the DM to go suck donkey balls.

I'm not advocating that one playing not having a character during that time. An NPC or replacement character is a must.
Nor am I advocating that the DM should make no story adjustments and play things exactly as they would had the character made their save.

I'm just advocating that "the player will be bored and the other players inconvenienced" is not grounds for character assassination.

 

[Mirtek]

I don't even see the big issue here.

"Our brother in arms had his mind drained by an unspeakable aberration and we could do nothing but put him out of misery" is an awesome Underdark death, that highlights the alieness, horror and hopelessness of the world below.

Much more memorable than just "stabbed to death with a pointy thing" which could happen from any human raider on the road in bright daylight.

Sure, losing a PC in any way sucks for the moment, but without the occasional evening of things going south, the evenings of victories eventually become dull

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But I still think that friend or not, a paladin and a cleric would put the focus on helping if that is in fact feasible.

Which is an entirely separate question, and not entirely obvious. In the most-likely scenario, they try to make the character comfortable for the three days before she dies from dehydration, and then they move on. If it really is as hopeless as it seems, then a mercy-killing is significantly preferable, unless they really want to hold out hope for some Deus Ex Machina (which would also be perfectly in-character to hope that, especially if they spend most of that time praying). It depends how interventionist your deities are.

In either case, it shouldn't take more than an hour to play out.

 

[iserith]

Even if they are "metagaming" by the standards of certain posters, who gives a flumph?

If anything, this shows "metagaming," at least in this case, is good because the players are obviously trying to address a problem that impacts the fun of the group. If "metagaming" was a thing to be vociferously opposed, then should the player should suffer in silence lest she and the other players be accused of being "metagamers?"

Nah. It's not even a concern in this situation. It's a wonder it was even brought up.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

In the game I'm running, the fighter was hit by an Intellect Devourer's Devour Intellect ability, so she now has an Int of 0 (though the rest of the party managed to kill it before it could do anything more). The party is currently level three. The players are arguing that they should kill her character or let her die naturally, since they won't be able to restore her until they hit level nine and can cast greater restoration, and they won't be able to reach a settlement to hire an NPC caster for at least a few months in-game (probably eight to ten sessions). I'm arguing that that would be an irredeemably evil act (killing a helpless ally), and would cause the Paladin to fall and the cleric to have to choose a new deity.

I'm not against any mercy killing, but the character is just effectively stunned until they reach level nine or get to a settlement, so I can't see any justification for them killing the character.

Frequently if one can't find an acceptable solution then one is looking at too few options. Here's a better one: the PCs take the disable fighter to whatever type of facility in the campaign world would provide extended medical care, which could be a temple, hostel, asylum, hospital, or whatever. The fighter character is then retired and the player brings in a new character. If there's no such facility around, then they come across a village/tribe/whatever that is known to be friendly that they can hire for the same service.

Or the party encounters an NPC caster during the course of the adventure who can cure the fighter and will do so in exchange for a service.

And I agree that killing an ally or abandoning him to die would be evil, with repercussions for a cleric or paladin.

 

[hejtmane]

Frequently if one can't find an acceptable solution then one is looking at too few options. Here's a better one: the PCs take the disable fighter to whatever type of facility in the campaign world would provide extended medical care, which could be a temple, hostel, asylum, hospital, or whatever. The fighter character is then retired and the player brings in a new character. If there's no such facility around, then they come across a village/tribe/whatever that is known to be friendly that they can hire for the same service.

Or the party encounters an NPC caster during the course of the adventure who can cure the fighter and will do so in exchange for a service.

And I agree that killing an ally or abandoning him to die would be evil, with repercussions for a cleric or paladin.

I say that depends if your Deity is this a god of war then they may look at it as a more honorable death. If you are a more Japanese/Spartan type ideology that would be the more honorable death. This has tons of solutions that can play this out many of ways and I am not a big deity guy myself for many reasons. last i looked not every cleric is Lawful good not sure on Paladins outside vengeance I have to look at their code again.

 

[Lanliss]

I say that depends if your Deity is this a god of war then they may look at it as a more honorable death. If you are a more Japanese/Spartan type ideology that would be the more honorable death. This has tons of solutions that can play this out many of ways and I am not a big deity guy myself for many reasons. last i looked not every cleric is Lawful good not sure on Paladins outside vengeance I have to look at their code again.

IIRC devotion Paladin requires protection of the innocent and helpless. Oath of ancients requires that you preserve light and life in the world, but destroy perversions of that light(might be wrong on that part). Vengeance is pretty obvious, but PC vegetable most likely did nothing wrong to pally, so vengeance would not apply. Cleric has options however, due to the any deities, as well as how those deities might interpret a given situation. OTOH, I do not personally agree with forcing the Paladin fall rules upon a player, since that would be the only class with such a punishment. Cleric can change deities, but only the Paladin gets stripped of all powers whenever the DM feels like it.

 

[Unwise]

I'm just thinking about the Paladins and Clerics we have had in our group, as how they handle it would be quiet different between them.

We had two fierce nature Paladins, I think they worshiped Tempest and Umberelle. A life at 0 int would be an a front to nature to be ended. One of them would have regarded the weakness as unbecoming to the point of unholiness. Both were viking-like, I can't picture them thinking their god wants them to wipe a coma victim's bottom.

A Cleric of Knowledge - he actually had a phobia of Intellect Devourers, he would consider 0 int a fate worse than death and freak the hell out about ending it if it could not be cured reasonably. He would risk a huge amount to restore a persons knowledge though.

A Vengeance Paladin of the night goddess - Would not jepodise the mission by carrying around the victim. Heck, she was quick to throw other peoples lives away in the pursuit of her holy war.

A Paladin of the Red Knight - his main thing was about championing civilisation itself, he was a general at heart. The decision would come down to maintaining the tactically sound thing to do (which could be to maintain morale by dragging around the victim, but its unlikely). The Art of War was a holy book for this guy.

A Life Cleric Jedi - all life is connected to to take the victims life would be to lose part of our own, so he would not mercy kill in almost any circumstance.

My point is, real characters in real games just don't marry up to the "A cleric would never do that, that is evil" type stuff I am hearing here. Sure you can say that all these characters are bad-wrong-fun and not being played properly, but in my experience they were fleshed out decently, made sense in the narrative of the game and the world, and were far more interesting than "I'm a cleric therefore I do X".

On a side note, as a DM, if my game narrative means that the table is going to be discussing RL politics, religion or euthanasia, then I need to take a second look at where the game is going and maybe hand-wave some stuff. People separate a fair few things from themselves and their characters, I suspect this is not one of them.

 

[Draegn]

Has either the cleric or paladin prayed and asked for divine intervention?