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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 48693" data-attributes="member: 177">I will chime in with the others - as I was reading your description, the first thought in my mind was "Lethal Weapon".  My first guess was that the player felt the scene was designed to run like an action movie, where the hero's charisma is what saves the day.That being said, let me be a rules-lawyer for a moment...By your description,"Lead Thug snaps and cuts the girl's throat, lunging around the bar to attack the players, calling his buddies into action." Based upon that description, the healing spell should very likely work, by the rules.There seem to be two possibilities - 1) Lead Thug takes an attack on the hostage, does enough damage to down her, then takes a move towards the party and a free action to call out to his buddies.  In this scenario, Lead Thug probably does not actually do enough damage to bring the woman to -10 hit points.  So, a cure the next round will likely save her.2) Lead Thug takes a Coup de Grace action on the hostage (this means an automatic critical hit, more likely to yield enough damage to bring the hostage below -10 hit points, and a saving throw to avoid death even if the hostage survives the damage).  But Coup de Grace is a full round action.  The PCs would see it happening, and would get a round of action before the thug would get to move and call for his buddies.  If the party was within about 30 feet, they might even get to make a move and attack the thug.  If they down him before the round is up, they might save the girl.What you describe Sounds more like scenario 1 than scenario 2.  By the rules, you did the right thing.  And being consistent with the rules is a good thing.  In either case, the way you set it up, the PCs have a decent chance to save the hostage by violence.  Now, I stop rules lawyering... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Just because it was set up so that the party could save the woman by violence, that doesn't mean they should do it that way.  Using violence in a tense situation you don't understand is unwise, to say the least.  There are any number of possible repercussions...As others have suggeested, the woman may well be horribly upset that the party risked her life that way.  The townsfolk may agree with her.A better story - The Thugs may have friends.  Perahps they'd be content if the thugs had lived.  However, with them "dispatched" the friends may want to take revenge - on the woman, the townsfolk (for letting the party intervene) and/or the party.  Have the Thug's friends specifically tell the party, "If you had just let them talk Joe down, it'd have been okay.  But you just had to kill him.  You brought this upon yourself!"Or, re-write the Lead Thug's story slightly.  While people thought he had killed the militiaman, he was innnocent.  He was trapped in a bad situation, scared out of his wits, and just wanted to get out alive, and chose a wrong way to do it.  Now the real murderer is found, and either friends of the Lead Thug and/or the Law are after the characters for the now obviously wrongful death of the thug.  Mark's suggestion of a bard siging songs of what the party did works very nicely with this last one, I think <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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