As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
Depends on the intelligence of the monster in question. You can probably justify mindless undead or animals whacking away with auto hit normall attacks instead of coup de gracing, but anything else should be slitting their throats.
If you had 3 helpless and coup de gracable either the dice went very long or you threw them into something they weren't ready for.
As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
I think any number of things can happen that can keep them alive without having to worry if the enemy uses Coup de grace or not. If the enemy is intelligent they might take them hostage and demand ransom for release (if lawful), or take them slap them in a holding cell to await being sacrificed during a ritual. If not intelligent, a group of beings antagonistic to the PCs enemies might come a-hunting (the enemies of my enemies etc). A natural occurance, such as a storm if above ground or earthquake if below, might drive off superstitious enemies.
I was in this very same sitaution once as a GM. I choose poorly and it ended the campaign.
Roll for it.
Wat where the NPC's goals and/or emotional state at the time?
In other words, as a GM, part of what you do is "role play" the NPCs, and not just roll play them. :)
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I once had a PC helpless with a rogue all over him. We all knew it was coming and even the player nodded when the rogues turn came back around. 1d4+3d6+4= 10. 10. The player rolled the fort save and survived with more hp's left than the coup de grace did. The hooting lasted a long time.
Back to your dilemma. I wonder how 3 characters found themselves in that situation. Was it a combo of bad luck/bad decisions? or was the set up so overpowering that they were lucky more of them weren't helpless?
I think you have to examine the motives of those who were holding the proverbial hammer. Were they out for blood, defending their homes or had they gone blood thirsty after the party had done some heinous (from their perspective) deed?
If they were more of the take prisoner types then that is what I would have them do. If they were the mindless killer types then that is what I would have them do. Motivation is the key.
As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
Good way to answer this is.... What would the players do if it was the other way around.
Player who normal CdG would have a reputation of doing this, and the bad guys should do the same to them.
Player who normal do not GdG, but take prisioners/hostages, would have the reputation of doing so, and the bad guys should do the same to them.
In other worlds, what goes around, comes around... treat your PC the way they treat the NPC.
Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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I would think you have to take the entire situation into account:
Did you still have a PC standing (you indicate you had 3 helpless, but a traditional party is 4 PCs)? If so, then no Coup de Grace. Your bad guy should probably concentrate on the one left standing, as he is an immediate threat. Remember, a coup de grace is a full round action, so the bad guy will probably have to take a round to get in position, then another round to perform the coup de grace. That's a lot of time if there's still an active enemy around.
Is your bad guy an assassin, specifically targetting the PCs? If so, coup de grace away. It's the bad guy's mission. If not, the bad guy may be focusing on incapacitating the entire party, taking them hostage, or simply fleeing while he has the chance.
How intelligent is your bad guy? If he's mindless, he'll probably just keep hacking away. If he's more intelligent, he may take the opportunity to coup de grace, providing there isn't an immediate threat (like a 4th party member) waiting to take his head off. The exception, of course, is if your bad guy's a ghoul. Their tactics are to paralyze, then kill and feed - meaning a coup de grace is well within their capabilities and is a viable tactic regardless of other circumstances.
Is the bad guy alone, or with a group? If the bad guy has minions or companions to distract other party members, he may be more inclined to do the coup de grace. If he's alone, he will probably incapacitate the entire party before performing any coup de grace's.
How will you players react? This is probably the most important consideration of all. If your players rebel openly to the idea, you may not want to do the coup de grace. Instead, use a different tactic like those proposed by the other posters on this thread. If the players are mature enough to handle PC death, then the option to coup de grace is viable if the circumstances warrant it (see my suggestions above). In any case, you don't want to "ruin" the game for your players if it is within your power to do otherwise.
Hope this helps!
As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
My answer to your question is another question: Would it have been good for the adventure and campaign and the players fun to kill those three helpless characters?
My view of a DM's job is to always make the characters think they are about to die. Note that does not mean you actually have to kill them, just make them think they are always in mortal danger, to keep excitement high. Most of the time, BARELY surviving a combat is better and cooler for he players than dying and being brought back.
Occasionally, killing a PC can bring back lost fear of combat if the players have had too easy a time of it, but I think PC death should be used sparingly (and I am going to bet I am in a small minority here).
RPG's are not a competition between the GM and the players. It is a shared cooperative creative experience and the game, in it's best incarnation, works to that end.
All of this is of course my opinion, others may have very different views of how RPG's should be run.
But CDG should be used only by intelligent, evil beings bent on slaying the characters so they can never come back. Everyone else generally will be happy with getting away or robbing them or fighting them off or even capturing them for whatever other purpose.
Note that CDG is not used in our games by any good aligned character. Slaughtering a helpless foe is definately not a good act in our games.
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As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
Insufficient data.
But, I would rephrase the post. You did not have the PCs at your mercy (as GM, they are always at your mercy). An NPC had them at his/her mercy.
Its probably just a slip of the keyboard but it sounds like it's GM vs PCs territory, rather than: GM adjudicating a world which the PCs explore.
As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace. What do you think?
The general rule of thumb that I use is that an opponent will consider a coup de grace as a reasonable tactic if said opponent is a BBEG, but it likely won't happen during underling battles. (And of course, the opponent must be reasonably intelligent.)
In my opinion, there would be a few things to consider:
- Would the bad guy do it? This really depends on his personality and the general mood of the campaign.
- Did the players "deserve" it? If it's just a few unlucky saving throws or a high-CR encounter that went awry, I'd probably find a way around doing it. If it's the end result of a chain of bad decisions, it's thumbs down.
- Would the players do it? This comes back to the general mood of the campaign. Karma.
- Would your players forgive you? This trumps the rest. No amount of "it was fair" or "that's what the demonic ninjas would do" is worth players walking home dejectedly or not turning up again.
Imprisonment, ransom, maiming would be decent long-term options, but quite often it just takes a few rounds/minutes until reinforcements arrive, in which term some gloating and an improvised death trap are some of the tropes to grasp for.
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It all depends on how intelligent the mosnter is. If the mosnter in the encounter is mindless than he will go for it. If intelligent it all dpends of the encounter is going in favor or the creature. If going for a coup de grace subjects him to a whole bunch of AOO than no. I also recommend using it once in awhile. Too much and it can annoy your players. That bein said sometimes a CoG is what is needed to rein a problem player. In one of my previous games a player kept charging ahead of the group without and buffs or discussing any tactics with the rest of the group. Eventually he found himself surronded and died from a CoG. After it happened a few times he finally took the hint to nit rush ahead all the time.
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I once had to coup de grace the character of a friend of mine because the rest of the party was screwing up (they subdued him with nonleathal damage because he was confused, then continued the fight elsewhere, leaving him behind). But as the enemies were both intelligent and evil (advanced bearded devils) I didn't really have a choice. Luckily he made his DC 76 fortitude save by rolling a natural 20.
IMHO you should do what is logical for the creature, without metagaming. Remember that the creature's main objective is likely to be to survive the fight, not to just inflict maximum hurt on the party. So he may well leave downed opponents to deal with later so that he can concentrate on the active threats. After all, he probably assumes he can win this battle or he wouldn't be fighting it. Easy enough to deal with helpless folks after the fighting is done when you win.
On the other hand, if their helpless condition is more temporary and they are likely to come out of it in a round or two, the smart thing might be to off the unlucky PCs while he has a chance rather than fight them again in a couple of rounds.
If the bad guy doesn't think he can win the fight, he might try and execute a coup de grace before escaping so that he won't have to deal with that same guy in the next fight. However, only a true fanatic will be willing to sacrifice a chance to escape from a hopeless fight in order to take a full round action to off somebody.
You also want to take into account the ethos of the opponent, and possibly how he expects/hopes to be treated if he is in such a helpless condition. If the PCs have mercilessly dispatched his companions previously in such situations, they should expect the same. If they have shown mercy and taken prisoners and treated them well, there's a chance (but no guarantee) the enemy will reciprocate.
That all addresses how I would do it in a no punches pulled campaign. As to whether you should be a nice DM and pull some punches now and then, that depends highly on the style of play in your campaign. I pull punches like this occasionally, but not often. Usually when I do it is either because they ended up helpless through no fault of their own (e.g. bad encounter design on my part or horrendously bad luck) or to avoid a TPK.
The key for me is to play the NPCs realistically, and not either stupidly merciful or stupidly vindictive.
Note that CDG is not used in our games by any good aligned character. Slaughtering a helpless foe is definately not a good act in our games.
That's also debatable, not every creature is worthy of "fair play", nor is it tactically sound to let certain creatures regain full combat effectiveness, just so you can continue beating them to death the slow and painful way.
Motivation and Combat Situation both play a big role in the decision, Alignment and Honor come afterwards.
A greedy npc yet stupid npc may try to randsom the npcs if they are all taken prisoner after taking all of his gear.
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At the level my current campaign is at, CdG is a waste. A full attack on a dead creature (AC 5) is significantly more damaging.
In a game a couple of weeks ago, an assassin was able to flank a party member with a full attack -- OUCH! About 100 hp later and the party member would've gone down if they'd even just stubbed their toe... A full round action would've been silly -- a single attack can take the PC negative in a big way.
I agree with the above posts that say the NPC should be RP'd as much as possible: motivations, tactics, strategy, etc. That means taking into account their goals, the number of remaining party members, the number of accomplices, the terrain (can they afford to take the action and still get away?), whether they think they should run away and plot to ambush the PCs later, and so on.
I once had a villain attack the PCs and a henchman lost a +1 dagger as loot. The PCs thought it was great (they were low level at the time) and the rogue kept that dagger throughout his entire career as a "keepsake" of that combat. What he didn't know is that the villain and his henchman had planned it so that they could track the PCs wherever they went... The party never did figure out how the NPCs always knew they were coming. :)
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My players wouldn't respect me if I pulled punches when it didn't make sense. Still, since using Pathfinder/3.5, I've only conducted two enemy coup de graces on players. Both involved poor choices by the players and enemies who had no reason to play nicely. Still, I don't like to kill off player characters, and I analyze my bad guys beforehand. Maybe they don't want to waste a full-round action on a helpless enemy and go for another target. Maybe they want a captive.
But when it makes perfect sense for the enemy to perform a CDG, and they don't, I think it cheapens the experience.
I agree with much of the above. My personal rule is that intelligent creatures do not generally coups de grace unless each threat is eliminated/contained. For instance if three PCs are on the ground bleeding to death and the fighter is still alive and hacking monsters up then the NPCs would not coups de grace until the fighter was subdued. If the rogue is still alive and the other three PCs are on the ground dying and the rogue runs down a corridor to safety then the NPCs would coups de grace since the threat is contained long enough to handle it.
Of course if the NPCs have alterior motives such as interrogation, servitude, or good old fashioned torture then they should leave the PCs alive, but only if it somehow benefits them.
Finally, you as the GM have to ask yourself if it is your fault that they are in this position in the first place. As Gilfalas said, it is not YOU against THEM. If they die then nobody wins. If you put them up against something that they clearly could not handle then you might want to arrange some kind of reprieve. Have the NPCs take them prisoner or have them parley with the remaining PC. Find a creative solution that keeps them alive.
If, on the other hand, they got themselves into this situation then it is also your duty as GM to finish them off. Once I was playing with a party that was planning on entering a venerable Black Dragon's lair. They did not have a healer and I SPECIFICALLY reminded them that they could "hint, hint," purchase healing potions from the local temple. They chose to ignore the suggestion and walked in there without any magical healing whatsoever. One player even said and I quote "There are bound to be healing potions in it's lair somewhere." Sigh...I did not lose a minute of sleep over that TPK.
Note that CDG is not used in our games by any good aligned character. Slaughtering a helpless foe is definately not a good act in our games.That's also debatable, not every creature is worthy of "fair play", nor is it tactically sound to let certain creatures regain full combat effectiveness, just so you can continue beating them to death the slow and painful way.
Or letting them painfully bleed to death. I mean, it's a friggin' "blow of mercy".
As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
Did the characters have a GOOD chance of surviving? I mean somethings to consider... Were they out in the "wild" and would have become beast/bug food within a few hours? Wild animals would just see them as a quick and easy feast, heck some domestic animals would too. Was there a PC left who could and would come back to try and rescue them within a short amount of time? Did any of them have fast healing/regen or any other way to recover and help the others?
If they didn't have a reasonable chance of survival the CdG is nothing more than speeding up the inevitable result.
As a GM the hard decision for me is to know when i should proform a coup de grace (death Blow) In my pathfinder game i had three PCs at my mercy and i debated when i should do the coup de grace.
What do you think?
There is no univeral right answer for this. It depends on your group. My current group is hard core so it would not be an issue, but I have played in groups that would really get mad if I did it. Some players have a sense of entitlement that what is good for the NPC's is not good for them. In short it depends on how well your players take character death.