D&D 5E My group is questioning everyone.

[Hand of Evil]

Always...

[video=youtube;Q5UG7ISJfP0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q5UG7ISJfP0[/video]

 

[Agamon]

I had a druid character who liked to knock out foes instead of killing them. Once they were K.O.d, she'd bury them up to their necks and leave them there so nature could judge whether they should live or die.

How psychopathic. Was her name Dextra?

 

[MechaPilot]

How psychopathic. Was her name Dextra?

Nah. Her name was actually Joelle; she lived in a forest in Ravenloft. She was also very back-to-nature even for a druid in that she was a nudist, which made for some very funny moments.

It also required some rule tweaking in that she couldn't benefit from armor, but we found a way around that.



Out of curiosity, who is this character named right hand that you are alluding to being psychotic? If that's a literary reference, I don't believe I read that book.

 

[The_Gneech]

My players have really taken to capturing their intelligent foes to turn in for a reward if there is one. I like it, myself, but I can see how trying to RP every mook who's been captured could get old fast. I think the best compromise is to play out the first few, then summarize beyond that. Important baddies (bosses, etc.) should still be roleplayed, and will probably have more useful information anyway.

There's an entertaining take on captured foes in the movie Sanjuro– the prisoner undergoes a certain amount of Stockholm syndrome and eventually roots for the samurai heroes to win, to the point of jumping up and down and cheering with them when they get good news until everybody remembers he's supposed to be locked up, so he coughs awkwardly and goes back to lock himself up in his cell. On the other hand, his being there works the other way around as well, reminding the samurai that their opponents are people too, and reminding them to be merciful.

-The Gneech

 

[MechaPilot]

That's a good thing, if you ask me. In real life, true heroes don't do a lot of killing. Whenever I play anything but chaotic evil characters, I make a point of not killing when it's not strictly necessary (usually in self-defense or legitimate defense of others). While I love D&D, the amount of slaughtering of human-like creatures that goes into your typical adventure (my own adventures included) is really weird. Makes me think that players don't spend a lot of time thinking about the meaningfulness of the choices their characters make, and I think that should be a huge part of playing.

I honestly like the idea of seeing parties where killing intelligent creatures isn't the go-to answer. Yes, sometimes there isn't information to be gotten. But, nevertheless, the change to be made when the party is refusing to automatically slaughter everything in sight might not be on the "punish them for not killing" side, but rather on the DM's side. Your average humanoid opponent (goblins, orcs, random thugs) are 'bully' fighters who aren't going to come back after someone who brought them down to unconsciousness in what's basically a fantasy mugging.

Your players want to interact with NPCs rather than killing them all? There are worse problems to have. Seriously, this is a good thing. Don't punish them for it.

I have to agree with all of this. I've seen so many PCs slaughter even humanoid enemies with impunity that it's always nice to see a PC not try to kill an enemy outright or rationalize the slaughter of children because "they're monster babies."

 

[GSHamster]

Out of curiosity, who is this character named right hand that you are alluding to being psychotic? If that's a literary reference, I don't believe I read that book.

Dexter, a serial killer from the television show Dexter.

 

[MechaPilot]

Dexter, a serial killer from the television show Dexter.

Ah, okay. Thank you. I have heard of that, but I've never seen it. Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't catch that. I suppose I was just expecting the reference to be to something from a fantasy novel or something.

 

[Lanefan]

So unless the players have other methods of extracting information, they soon catch on that there's no point in capturing anyone alive, unless they want to hold them for ransom or something. Note that these other methods (charm, mind-reading, diplomacy etc.) can generally be done without combat -- certainly without knocking someone out.

Frequent m.o. around here is the foes get knocked out during combat (usually via 'sleep' spell at lower levels) then one gets tied up, woken up, patched up if necessary, and charmed. The rest get their throats slit.

(you should have seen their faces when a bad guy went to 0hp fell off a 40 ft. cliff and then rolled a 20 and got up with 1 hp).

There is something very, very wrong* with any rule or combination of rules that allows someone to topple off a cliff, free-fall to the bottom with no way of slowing down, and end up healthier than they were at the top.

* - as in unbelievably, putridly, vomitously, pitiably, laughably wrong.

Lan-"hit point recovery by jumping off a cliff...yeah, 5e needs better healing rules"-efan

 

[Dausuul]

Frequent m.o. around here is the foes get knocked out during combat (usually via 'sleep' spell at lower levels) then one gets tied up, woken up, patched up if necessary, and charmed. The rest get their throats slit.
There is something very, very wrong* with any rule or combination of rules that allows someone to topple off a cliff, free-fall to the bottom with no way of slowing down, and end up healthier than they were at the top.

* - as in unbelievably, putridly, vomitously, pitiably, laughably wrong.

Lan-"hit point recovery by jumping off a cliff...yeah, 5e needs better healing rules"-efan

The guy would have gotten up the next round whether he fell off the cliff or not. It's the natural 20 on a death save that got him up, not the falling damage. Falling off a cliff makes the chances of that worse, not better, since he takes 4d6 falling damage and gets an automatic failed death save as a result.

 

[Joe Liker]

Frequent m.o. around here is the foes get knocked out during combat (usually via 'sleep' spell at lower levels) then one gets tied up, woken up, patched up if necessary, and charmed. The rest get their throats slit.

Since charming a prisoner uses up player resources, I have no problem with that. What really bugs me is when people mercilessly slay all but one, knock the last one out, question him with torture or the threat of torture, and then agonize over whether it's morally correct to kill him at that point. Never ceases to amaze me.

There is something very, very wrong* with any rule or combination of rules that allows someone to topple off a cliff, free-fall to the bottom with no way of slowing down, and end up healthier than they were at the top.

* - as in unbelievably, putridly, vomitously, pitiably, laughably wrong.

Lan-"hit point recovery by jumping off a cliff...yeah, 5e needs better healing rules"-efan

Hit points are not strictly an indicator of health. Just remember it's an abstraction, and everything will be OK.

People have been known to fall out of airplanes (without a functioning parachute) and survive. Probably not 5 percent of them, but it's possible.

In this case, the bad guy would have taken two automatic failed death saves when he hit bottom. The odds were not in his favor. He just happened to get lucky (and in D&D, "lucky" = 5 percent). But let's be clear -- 4d6 damage (average 14) is not all that much. This situation is no stranger than the player character who gets knocked out, takes a boot to the chest while he's down, then rises the next turn (having rolled a 20) to wreak bloody vengeance.

In practical terms, death saves are not in the game for the sake of realism. They are there to give people one last chance, because dying is not fun. If the lack of realism really bothers you, it wouldn't break the game if you took out the "roll 20" part of the rule. Your group will miss out on some heroic (and, apparently, villainous) comebacks, but such are the decisions a DM must face.

(In fantasy fiction, by the way, I wouldn't be surprised if slightly more than 5 percent of villains who fall off cliffs managed to survive.)