Looting bodies. Eww.

[ssampier]

It's part of D&D

Rightly or wrongly, looting dead bodies is part of D&D, which I believe began with its minature roots. Why is looting a dead body inherently different from looting an undead grave or destroying an army of kobolds et al (insert evil monster here)?

Besides, death has little meaning in a world where the dead spring to life again through Raise Dead and Resurrection spells, or walk again as undead.

 

[Gez]

Oh, you want to hear about indignation, have one of your players die and not one of the other party members do anything with the body! No right of passage

"You do not have the right of passage! Stay here in your damn body (even if it's now full of uncomfy draughts because of all those holes), you bloody soul; step up and walk! Lazy bastard! We still have other monsters to kill, you know? And we still need a meatshield!"

Sorry, it's just it's a funny mistake.

Thew problem isn't moral justification. The problem is having the stomach to deal with blood and guts and gore. How evil the guy was before you rammed him through with a polearm isn't hte question. The question is whether you lose your lunch cutting one of the fingers off his still-twitching dead hand to get at the diamond ring that won't come off.

I am of the opinion that, after having fought pretty monsters like this one, or this one, the PCs become a bit blased about all this and are not grossed out easily anymore.

 

[Ace]

Damn You townies crack me up, I slaughtered my first chicken when I was 6!
All this talk of roadkill just get out on a farm during lambing season, seeing dead things isn't anything major (even less so for Adventurers trained to kill things and who have probably been hunting deer and pig (at least) all their lives).
True dead humanoids are slightly more disturbing than a side of beef but I'm sure you'd get use to it after seeing a few.

And besides whats a really dead corpse or two after you've faced rotting masses that actually fight back..

Damn strait!

 

[Krieg]

The only reason we don't hear about it nowdays is our troops have much better equipment and pay than the enemy most of the time, but you can bet the enemy loots our dead soliders.

I can tell you from first hand experience that *we do search the bodies of the bad guys. However, it isn't to steal wealth from the dead, rather it is to acquire any material that may be of intelligence value.

It also isn't only a matter of western/professional militaries being better paid & equiped. There is also an institutionalized stigma against mishandling enemy dead. There are still plenty of folks who would rob the dead blind if they thought they could get away with it.

BTW if you monitored footage of the Iraq war you probably noticed a lot of US servicement with "acquired" AK-47's. Those were primarily personnel who's primary weapon was a sidearm rather than rifle....where do you think those AK's came from?

Finally what do you think happened to the corpses of the Iraqi's KIA during the first Gulf War? They weren't just left out in the desert to rot. US military graves registration units located, identified, collected & prepared them for their final disposition.

It isn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but it is unfortunately a necessary aspect of war.

* In my case "we" refers specifically to the US Military, although I do know that the British handle it similarly. Most professional militaries are also very similar in this regard.

 

[alsih2o]

These would be people used to seeing their dinner alive. A more direct connection to the land provides a different view on "icky" than a more urban lifestyle.

 

[tonym]

I once unintentionally stopped the looting of corpses in my campaign. After several long adventures, the PCs' magical items had become SO powerful and SO cool--and the PCs had accumulated SO much money--that the PCs no longer bothered to loot anything from anyone they killed.



Tony M

 

[Crothian]

Rightly or wrongly, looting dead bodies is part of D&D, which I believe began with its minature roots.

No it isn't. No where in the books does it tell PCs to loot the boidies of the dead.

 

[Capellan]

Not too different to what people were doing a century or two ago; things like "Let´s go to that unexplored continent, filled with terrible diseases, wild animals, hostile natives and generally uncomfortable, to see where this river comes from"

You misspelt "gold"

And I'm in the "it's a non-issue" camp. It's clear from history that people who are inurred to violence are quite comfortable looting the dead, so I see no reason that PCs can't.

Unless, of course, they're in a setting where corpses are seen as spiritually unclean (as in OA), in which case there are means to compensate, as Janx outlined.

 

[Felix]

No where in the books does it tell PCs to loot the boidies of the dead.

True.

But, treasure and equipment are part of the reward for defeating an enemy, yeah? Equipment especially can be a major factor in the difficulty of overcoming the challenge. And if the DM decides to put the reward the PCs are pursuing while risking their lives on the enemy's body, then don't be suprised when that body gets stripped.

Don't want looting? Send loin-clothed human barbarians with stone spears after the PCs; put the reward elsewhere. But if it's put on the enemy, it'll bloody well be coming off the enemy's corpse.

 

[Crothian]

True.

But, treasure and equipment are part of the reward for defeating an enemy, yeah? Equipment especially can be a major factor in the difficulty of overcoming the challenge. And if the DM decides to put the reward the PCs are pursuing while risking their lives on the enemy's body, then don't be suprised when that body gets stripped.

"If the DM decides..." that's the key point. A DM can make sure the players get their treasure in a number of ways, looting is only one of them. My only point is it is only part of D&D is one makes it that way.