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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7332606" data-attributes="member: 16814">This.  The DA comes along well after the cops have done the arresting and charging.  The order of events here would be this:Anyone the cops can determine were involved in the altercation is arrested.  Charges will vary from attempted murder for the shooter to conspiracy and aiding and abetting before and after the fact for everyone else.  That's the starter -- it's enough for the arrest so they likely won't go further immediately.The characters will be taken into court for arraignment on the attempted murder charges in a few days.  By this time, the cops will have all of the statements and will have identified the characters and added any easy details they have to the record.  The DA will read over the arrest material, and present the charges to the judge and ask for bail.  If there's lots of details that the characters are dangerous, or have been in trouble before, or are flight risks (not local, have money, etc.) then the bail will be set very high.The cops will open an investigation.  The results will feed to the DA, who may decide to add charges.  Likely, these charges will be threatened as part of a negotiation to get guilty plea deals from the characters.  If the characters refuse pleas, the DA will actually have to review the material.  Given what you've presented, it's not solid that self-defense will be acceptable.  Why were the players at the location the fight occurred?  What was their meeting with the bad guy for?  If you're engaged in some shaky business and things go south and you shoot someone, that's not self defense.  Gang bangers don't get to claim self-defense because a drug deal goes bad and the other side pulls first.  If there's a plausible theory that the characters were engaged in illegal activity at the time of the fight, self-defense is going to be a very hard affirmative defense -- they'll have to admit to the particulars of the illegal activity (and that's a confession, folks) to establish that the activity wasn't related to the altercation.Likely, given how games work, the characters were trespassing and likely engaged in breaking and entering.  Any evidence (even circumstantial) that the prosecution can bring will serious undermine the defense of self-defense.  Also, as a note, self defense is an affirmative defense, which means that the defendant has to affirm they committed the action in question but that the circumstances mean it wasn't criminal.  So, they can't claim they didn't do it, and even if they did it was self defense.  Although, at this point, with the statements to the police already made, it's going to be hard to walk back that you didn't do it.All said, I think you have attempted murder, aiding and abetting, practicing medicine without a license, and kidnapping.  You likely have trespassing and a host of other smaller crimes involved in the lead up to the fight.  I'd be shocked to learn that the party was in the right leading up to the fight.  Also, it really doesn't matter if the bad guy is a raging nutcase and a clear danger -- the law really doesn't check to see if the victim deserved it.  Sentencing might, but the conviction won't.-----Now, all that said, the legal system is NOT FUN.  I'm not sure using the legal system or a close approximation of it in game would be fun.  My suggestion would be to have the characters arrested and arraigned with a big bail, but introduce a fun lawyer character that works some magic behind the scenes to get the characters off -- although now on the scope of the police -- in return for some unspecified payment later.  If this can tie into something in the campaign already introduced, like now owing a favor to a mob boss they crossed paths with before, that's even more fun.  Use the law as a huge hammer, but offer an out with a cost, so to speak.  But, for goodness sake, don't play out the legal system.  I'd rather chew glass.</blockquote>

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