Greetings,
I would like to discuss the possibility of getting Coup De Gras against player characters officially limited or virtually eliminated in Pathfinder Society Organized Play.
I usually play a elven spell slinger type, and I didn't have to deal with the issue of the sleep spell personally. However, recently I started playing a Dwarven Fighter (the first Dwarven + Fighter I've ever played), and I often find myself completely asleep for the final battles.
It seems sleep is a popular choice for bad guys in the Organized Play adventures, and why wouldn't it be? The heroes are almost guarenteed to be effected by it, so why would it not be a top choice? (The other way around though, as a player the sleep spell is rarely... Undead, plant types, elven enemies, constructs, and so many other enemy types are not effected by sleep that a wizard of mine who relied on the sleep and color spray spells a bit too much got killed, and we lost half the party because that wizard couldn't pull his own weight in combat.)
For enemies of the party, sleep is a great spell! Only elves among the player's choices of race are unaffected by sleep, and the strong fighter types often have a low will save. Sleep is a party killer! (I've seen it happen, personally, twice... and I've heard of it happening a few other times in Organized Play. In 3.5 sleep and color spray were my two favorite low-level spells.)
So, why not eliminate sleep?! Multiple reasons. First, removing sleep from the bad guys bags of tricks seems like cutting off the nose to save the face. Second, there are adventures with baddies who already have sleep, and they may not work without it or may need rewrites.
So, why LIMIT or "virtually eliminate" coup de gras? Because it, combined with sleep doesn't give a player a chance to put up a fight.
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Let me explain to you what has happened to me twice:
We're a low level [1-2] party: We reach the main bad guy, and the new players decide to all bunch up (despite advice to the contrary). Some bad guy surprises the party with a sleep spell, all the fighters get knocked out, and then before anyone else in the party can act another bad guy runs up and Coup De Graces the fighter types that are laying on the ground. My fighter takes 11 points of damage, and with a 14 on the die misses the fortitude save of 21 by 1 point. Instantly dead! That's it! That gave my fighter only a 1/4th chance of survival, and no decision I could have made after the adventure started could have saved him (except quit the adventure and go home). I could have decided to not go on the adventure, but then I wouldn't be playing would I?
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It is the fighter's job to be in the front of the pack, in order to protect the weaker spell throwing types who stay towards the back or middle. Knocking the fighters out with sleep certainly creates chaos and causes the party a problem... The party often fails the mission... But at the expense of the fighters, who's job it is to knock down the door.
Now, if this were all real life the fighters are of course expendable. The fighters are the grunts, and grunts go in first, and grunts get killed... However, this isn't real life and the fighters are controlled by players who may never wish to play a fighter in organized play again (like myself) because the chance of survival is much higher as an elven wizard than it is as a dwarven fighter. (If the fighters die, the elven wizard simply runs away. Too bad for the fighters, they're dead.)
So, the whole party loses the final boss battle... The wizards get away with their XP and the loot, but the [non-elven] fighters never stood a fighting chance. The [non-elven] fighters were killed in a Surprise Round BEFORE ANYONE IN THE PARTY COULD ACT. No chance to get woken up, no chance for another player to step in front of them, pull them back, or do anything in an attempt to rescue them. The [non-elven] fighter is just dead before he gets to swing a sword, curs at the bad guy, or anything. Elves are unaffected and can attempt to run away, those with high will saves like clerics, wizards, and monks usually pass the check and can also attempt to flee, but the fighter does not get that opportunity. The fighter just gets put to sleep and then immediately dies.
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Now, now... You may say that traps can kill a player character, and that is true. However, traps can be avoided. Rouges in a party can disarm traps, fighters who kick in a door without it being checked for a trap know take it upon themselves while the rest of the party stands clear, or even if injured badly in a trap the party can bring a fighter back from negative hit points... And, besides... Most traps don't do enough damage to kill a fighter out-right.
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Now, before anyone tries to say I'm the type of person who would suggest eliminating anything that could kill a character, I would like to say that statement would be wrong.
It is not that the characters can die that bothers me. Pathfinder Society Organized Play points out many great reasons why characters are and should be allowed to die. Without the risk of death, there is no adventure. Dying is apart of adventuring.
It is not that death exists, it is that I believe every player and his or her character should be given a fighting chance. Players should be able to make decisions (other than to be part of the adventure or not) that effect whether or not their character survives. A player's character shouldn't be out-right ambushed and killed (sure it happens in real life) with no chance to fight back. It is the same as a GM in a home-brew game simply telling the player his character is dead, because the GM feels like the character needs to die. It can happen in real life, and in a home brew game a GM can simply kill a player's character if he wants to, but that doesn't me a GM should just kill a player's character because he feels like it... especially at the expense of the fun to everyone involved.
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What I'm saying is, for the character, the only choice that could have saved their life was to not get out of bed that day. In an RPG, that is wrong... In real life, things happen: People die from air planes falling out of the sky; people get hit by cars or trucks just walking on the side walk; in real life... real life things are unfair. ... Role Playing GAMES are not real life, and they have rules that attempt to make things 'fair'. Role playing games are about having fun... A player shouldn't have had the only choice of "Play in this adventure or not play in this adventure" in order to save his or her character. If that is the only choice, then players will stop playing in the adventures... less people will show up to Organized Play, and Organized Play will dwindle because players will feel they have no chance of survival.
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So, what do I suggest?
No Coup De Gras on player characters as long as someone in the party is left standing... And even then, a chance for those who are left sleeping at the end of combat to be captures and pay a ransom (a cheaper resurrection fee) to bring the characters back into play. A standard ransom can be based on the character's level (in role-playing terms his value would be based on how successful he has been to the Pathfinder Society... Higher level characters have been more successful, and thus are considered more valuable)... Perhaps a simple stripping of all gear from the character, and then a short blurb about how the character escaped from some dungeon or prison cell.
Sure, characters are going to die and death should be part of Organized play. Sometimes your going to be surrounded by a bunch of undead, attacked by a construct, some man eating plant, or some other thing that doesn't care about ransoms. I said it before, and I'll say it for clarity again: I don't want to eliminate death. I just believe players should always be given a fighting chance. If a spellcaster can cast sleep, than that spellcaster is smart enough to want the players for something else... such as a ransom, or to torture, or whatever. The NPCs on that spellcaster's team should also be smart enough to know this, and thus they should NOT WANT to coup de grace a player character. The NPC casting sleep should always want to capture, and not risk the killing... If they NPC wanted to kill the players, than a fireball, ray of frost, magic missile, or some other spell would likely be their choice... and even then a spellcaster who burns a player to near-death might decide to revive and ransom the character instead.
Low-level characters can't afford resurrection, and a bad GM (in a home-brew game) kills his players' characters over, and over, and over without ever letting them reach level 3.
In a society game the GMs are supposed to be more like impartial judges (than in a home brew game - and I believe all of my society GMs have been). The GMs in Society don't write the adventures, they just run them. Their decisions do have an effect and decide the fates of players' character though, and some GMs may feel it is more tactically sound to attempt a kill on a sleeping player than to attack the standing one five feet away, while other GMs may decide it is more tactically sound to attack those standing (and then there is always the lay out of the battle board it's self)... I'm saying we make a rule and tell all GMs that the NPCs will choose to attack the standing, not the fallen when given any choice... And while we can explain that a person is more concerned about the character with the crossbow pointed at them, more worried that a wizard who might cast a fireball than a sleeping fighter swing a sword, and thus not be concerned about the sleeping characters... We can also know that out of game it is to give the players a fighting chance. If the party leaves a sleeping party member, then that member is immediately put into holding for ransom... even if it was only a minute. (The party can't withdraw to allow the sleeping spell to wear off, for the sake of the sleeping spell to wear off. If you leave a fallen comrade, they are removed as a threat to the enemy.)
Characters put to sleep in the surprise round(or even first round) of combat aren't given the chance to run away, aren't given the chance to use diplomacy, aren't given a chance to role-play. Character put to sleep in the surprise round (or first round) of combat aren't given a chance. In a home-brew game the players are at the mercy of a GM, but in society a fair GM and all the players are at the mercy of the adventure. The rest of the party can fight, flee, or surrender. At higher levels you pick feats, gain abilities, and purchase equipment to increase your characters survival. If a high level character dies you can sell your gear or cash in PA to get the character resurrected. At low level you can't prepare for every situation and you can't sell all your gear to get a resurrection. Shouldn't everyone in a role-playing game, at any level, be given a fair chance to survive or a choice to bring their character back into play? Lose some loot, maybe some PA, and get back into the action!?
- Sasuga
