negative consequences - need advice

[Conaill]

Either way, CdG was NOT an option in this scenario. At most, you could count the girl as "pinned", which means she's immobile, but not helpless.

Anyone know if sneak attacks are possible on a pinned opponent? Considering "sneak" attacks are really attacks to a vital area, I would think that's the appropriate mechanism here. (Of course, if the hostage taker is not a Rogue he wouldn't be able to cut her throat. Heh!

If sneak attack is *not* possible in this situation, there's no way the hostage taker could actually kill the girl in one stroke. 1d4 knife damage does not a dead hostage make. That's just screwed up D&D physics for you. Guess your player was just counting on being able to take out the guy before he could finish off the girl...

 

[Umbran]

Either way, CdG was NOT an option in this scenario. At most, you could count the girl as "pinned", which means she's immobile, but not helpless.

Actually, I'd make that the GM's call, not ours. We don't have quite enough details to make such an assertion. If the woman was still feisty, and could kick up a fuss, then a CGD would not be possible. If, however, she'd had a knife at her throat for a while and lapsed into passivity, had been beaten, or the like, she may have been effectively helpless.

 

[Moto Jojo]

There has been some really useful feedback for me so far, thank you all. I'm a lot less annoyed with myself now, and am using this situation to learn some pretty useful DMing lessons. I've talked with the player a bit to try to understand how she viewed the situation. The main problem seems to have come from her just not perceiving the threat as credible. Apparently, my acting last night just didn't make her buy that the thug was a threat (which seems wierd to me no matter how bad the acting, but ahh well). I suppose that means I should make a point of supplementing npc chatter with more out of character descriptive stuff to make sure things are clear.

I asked another of the players for his assessment of the situation (the one member of the party who was at the table, but whose character was not there), and he took the situation seriously, but obviously wasn't able to contribute anything. So at least I know I wasn't completely negligent in describing the scene... I just need to make a bit more effort to help Player A perceive things as the rest of us do.

Our session ended for the night right after this situation played out in the tavern, so fortunately things are still set up for me to have the npcs react to the rash nature of the rescue. The players are just passing through, and I don't know that I intend to keep the traumatized woman around to have flashbacks, though I really like that idea. I'll have to give it more thought and see if I can work her in. I can certainly have the players be reminded of this incident a few weeks down the line as they bump into someone in their nearby home town who witnessed the event, who then brings it up in front of other npcs the players know and respect.

As for the various rules questions on slitting the girl's throat: The reason this got wonky on me was that in the heat of the moment, to keep things going without me rolling and consulting my papers, I just described the throat cut and didn't apply any specific rules as I did it, though a coup de grace was the most appropriate thing. The part with him lunging at the pcs after slitting her throat was more descriptive than anything - he didn't actually move that round after he slit her throat, I just said it to let the players know he wasn't just standing there as he finished. In the future, I plan to use coup de grace rules properly, so that I can save myself second-guessing like this. As Squire James suggested, I intend to explain to the players my goof there, so that they know that the next similar situation might not play out the same way.

Again, thanks very much for the replies. It's so nice to get thoughtful posts. *