D&D 5E Killing is bad: how to establish morality

[Shiroiken]

First, I would like to say the "murder" dilemma has been around a long time in D&D. Many early adventures had non-combatant monsters present in various lairs (usually females and whelps), and players were often put into the situation of deciding whether to cut them down or let them survive (potentially to have the next generation cause the same problems later). There were never any good solutions for this, nor were there ever intended to be. Alignment shifts were a serious thing (loss of level in AD&D IIRC), so people had to consider the consequences of their actions carefully.

Second, you shouldn't necessarily impose modern morality in your fantasy. There are things are absolutes in a fantasy universe that don't hold true IRL. We don't have evil dragons that can destroy huge swaths of the land with few people capable of challenging that. Most of us don't live a few miles away from bandits and evil humanoids that want to raid and pillage our homes. Hell, it's hard to get some people today to agree on whether killing is moral or not (the pacifist vs. soldier argument, or the death penalty argument for example).

Finally, I think it's a matter for each group to decide what they want out of the game. For me, it's immersion. I get into the role of my character, whatever that might be, and while I generally try not to make disruptive characters, I play the character to the fullest. If he has few or no qualms about killing, then I'll wade through the blood of my enemies with a grin on my face. If he's a tactician, he'll probably try to take the leader alive for questioning. If he's more squeamish, then I'll probably try to avoid causing loss of life, but I probably won't object to someone else "cleaning up" after me (to avoid party conflict).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It might be interesting to run a game of D&D where XP is earned exclusively for two activities:

(1) spending gold (on military training, RP-related offscreen goals, etc.),
(2) notable achievements/quest awards (negotiating a truce, stealing the Fire King's shadow, etc.)

I wonder how greatly that would change the stories that occur during play.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The Luke who threw away his lightsaber rather than kill Vader is the same Luke whose arms were red to the elbows with the blood of stormtroopers and Jabba's goons.

Not exactly. Remember how he set his lightsaber to "stun" mode before engaging Jabba's goons? That's right, during that whole fight it doesn't slice a single goon in half--it just knocks them off the skiff.

And he doesn't even kill the Wampa in the snow cave even when it's trying to eat him! He just cuts off its arm and runs away.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I think that you have to determine what you consider "murder" within the parameters of your campaign. Certainly most D&D games are going to pit the PCs against villains of all kinds, from horrible unrepentant monsters to misguided innocents, and everything in between.

The rules do allow for any killing blow to instead render a target unconscious rather than dead. So mechanically, the PCs can literally capture any and all of their foes without killing, and can do so without any change to the difficulty.

So if you want them to do that rather than kill, you need to give them reasons to do so. Simple ones to get the ball rolling would be to have a mission to capture a bad guy because someone hires them to do so. Or he has info they will need to extract from him after capture. These are pretty specific, but can serve as a starting point. The information one works well because once they capture and extract the info, then what do they do with the captive?

This could be a good spot to introduce the idea that there may be repercussions if they slaughter a captive (madness or taint as you suggest).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

...it's hard to get some people today to agree on whether killing is moral or not (the pacifist vs. soldier argument, or the death penalty argument for example).

True, but there are SOME areas of broad agreement. For example:

A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the highway outside Washington, DC.

Nothing was moving.

Suddenly, a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"

"Terrorists have kidnapped the entire US Congress, and they're asking for a $100 million dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and set them on fire! We are going from car to car, collecting donations."

"How much is everyone giving, on an average?" the driver asks.

The man replies, "Roughly a gallon."

We all come together on the morality of killing when it counts.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

First, if this is what you want, then D&D is the wrong system for you. D&D is about killing things and taking their stuff.

I disagree. I've never really played DnD that way.

but that does remind me of one way that a DM can take some of the incentive to kill away. Don't give XP for monsters. At all. Also don't refer to them as monsters, unless it's like, aberrations and the like. Use "enemies" or even just "NPCs", even in out of game conversation.

Instead, give XP for completing quests, hitting milestones in character story arcs, making new contacts, allies, patrons, etc, solving problems, stuff like that. Hell, give them XP when you give them inspiration.

Just don't give them XP for killing, even when it's a good thing (like killing aberrations in battle).

 

[Fanaelialae]

The rules do allow for any killing blow to instead render a target unconscious rather than dead. So mechanically, the PCs can literally capture any and all of their foes without killing, and can do so without any change to the difficulty.

Keep in mind that, by RAW, this only applies to melee attacks meaning that spells and ranged attacks can't be made nonlethal.

Although adding that as a house rule wouldn't be a bad idea for this type of campaign. After all, the A-Team regularly used both guns and explosives against the bad guys but never killed anyone. Attacks simply caused demoralization, or non-life-threatening yet incapacitating injuries. There's no reason why a D&D campaign can't play by the same rules.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

<snipped for space> Just don't give them XP for killing, even when it's a good thing (like killing aberrations in battle).

Alternatively, you can give XP for killing whatever foes are faced because that is overcoming the challenge they present (so the same as completing a quest or solving a problem), but give a significantly greater XP reward for overcoming the challenge presented by means that do not involve killing.

The results are the same as far as player mentality encouragement goes - but with the potential downside changing from the players feeling "shorted" to the level advancement pace picking up (which I've always found to be the less harmful of the two).

That's actually even been a rule in D&D before; in the Dark Sun boxed set, psionicist characters were awarded a value of XP for each psionic strength point spent to defeat foes, and a larger value of XP for each psionic strength point spent to avoid combat (undercut, in the sense of encouraging the players as a whole to avoid killing, by awarding warrior types additional XP for defeating monsters, but hey - that's AD&D for you, pulling itself in both directions at the same time and acting like that makes perfect sense to do).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Alternatively, you can give XP for killing whatever foes are faced because that is overcoming the challenge they present (so the same as completing a quest or solving a problem), but give a significantly greater XP reward for overcoming the challenge presented by means that do not involve killing.

The results are the same as far as player mentality encouragement goes - but with the potential downside changing from the players feeling "shorted" to the level advancement pace picking up (which I've always found to be the less harmful of the two).

That's actually even been a rule in D&D before; in the Dark Sun boxed set, psionicist characters were awarded a value of XP for each psionic strength point spent to defeat foes, and a larger value of XP for each psionic strength point spent to avoid combat (undercut, in the sense of encouraging the players as a whole to avoid killing, by awarding warrior types additional XP for defeating monsters, but hey - that's AD&D for you, pulling itself in both directions at the same time and acting like that makes perfect sense to do).

I find that if you're upfront about what is rewarded with XP and what isn't, and you're awarding XP liberally for things like gaining new contacts or allies, and all the other stuff I listed, players don't feel shorted, because they are leveling just as often, if not quicker.

Taking xp out of the killing things part of the game simply makes killing things not a goal in itself

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Keep in mind that, by RAW, this only applies to melee attacks meaning that spells and ranged attacks can't be made nonlethal.

Melee spell attacks are okay too. It doesn't have to be a melee weapon attack. Technically, you can knock someone out with a Greenflame Blade or Vampiric Touch.

Yes, it's weird. Not really any weirder than knocking them out with a battleaxe, but still weird.

In a game where ranged combat tends to dominate, the fact that melee attacks are the only way to guarantee an enemy's survival is actually quite an interesting niche. If you have the chance to catch an unknown force by surprise (e.g. a man you find lurking in the catacombs, or a troops of riders on horses who seem to be following you through the grasslands), and you have the chance to crush them during the surprise round, you probably want to knock them out with melee damage instead of Fireballing/Eldritch Blasting/Sharpshootering them into oblivion, because they might turn out not to have been hostile after all.