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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9727390" data-attributes="member: 29398">If cinematics happen, they happen, but I'm not going to try to force them.Persuasion can be, and I include offer of paid employment under "bribe".  I long ago ruled that a corpse can't obfuscate or lie when hit with Speak With Dead, as such actions require the corpse to be able to think for itself and corpses usually can't do that.  Therefore, any answers (which can't be longer than just a few words) given will reflect what the corpse actually knew when alive.Now the corpse's knowledge may have been incomplete, inaccurate, or have since become out of date; or it may not have had the desired knowledge at all, but that's different.   The corpse can't lie or obfuscate unless there's something very strange happening (usually involving divine interference).If the party's been reliably told there's a full crew of 45-plus-officers on board yet on arrival all they see is two guards standing watch, that should be a pretty big clue that something's not right and - I hope! - they'll start wondering where the rest have gone.  Same as if they arrive and see 100 pirates carousing on deck instead of the half-that they'd been told about: what's going on?In either case their choices are to a) carry on and hope for the best or b) renew their info-gathering efforts and find out why things have changed.Ah.  I see hit points as an intrinsic property of the creature: if a pirate has ten hit points max when his buddy attacks him he also has ten hit points max when a PC attacks him or when a kitten attacks him or when nobody's attacking him.4e had foes' mechanical properties change based on who-what was attacking them, which completely blows up internal setting consistency when it comes to game mechanics.  The same Ogre (let's call him Bob) would be an Elite if facing a level-1 party and a Minion if facing a level-15 group, where to me Bob is Bob and always has 45 hit points (unless he's taken damage) no matter what and has the same combat capabilties against any foe because that's just who he is.Going in I thought the trap might knock out one or two and-or maaaybe kill one, but a crit-20 is a crit-20 (and crits in our system can get real nasty!) and I don't pull my punches.  I seem to recall they'd had chances to notice the trap but either didn't due to bad luck or didn't because they didn't even try; that party were often more concerned with keeping eyes on each other than on anything around them - it was a very knife-in-the-back sort of crew.Where I'd not trust my own honesty if, having sprung the trap, I then pulled my punch such that less damage was done and fewer or none of them died.</blockquote>

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