I swear. It's like people don't even think anymore.An excellent example.
*gasp* TROLL!
I do feel a need to respond to the "NPCs would focus on the threat" argument here against coup de grace.
The argument seems to be "NPCs should ignore the unconscious character and instead focus on the active threats, so coup de gracing a down character is cheap metagaming or something."
In the real world that might be a valid argument.
In a world where some invisible dude hiding behind the shrubbery can wiggle their fingers and the next round the "down" wizard is tossing off maximized, empowered, quickened fireballs..... that "down" wizard is still a HELL of a threat, even unconscious.
And intelligent NPCs would realize that.
Not that I coup de grace PCs... I can't remember ever doing it. I just don't accept the argument that GMs shouldn't do it or that it makes no sense tactically.
It actually makes a hell of of a lot of sense tactically.
I would still disagree in part. yes that wizard could potentially be a threat soon. However the ranger that is STILL shooting arrows at me is a threat NOW.
When your players down a monster do they spend an action coup-de-gracing that monster or do they move on to the next threat?
Also, by leaving that dying player dying you now require someone to fix it, if they want that player fixed.
Okay so the cleric can either bring back the dying player into action OR he can channel smite the grave knight the party is facing. If the grave knight spends an action killing the dying player he is not only losing the chance to kill the cleric, but he now is ABSOLUTELY going to receive that channel smite.
I think the smart bad guy will now move on to kill the guy who could heal the goodguy back into the fight.
If the party has a cleric that wizard will be doing worse things than shooting arrows at you.
I can't count the number of times bring PC's back into the fight has swung the momentum back to the party's side. If they had been killed the party would surely have lost.
Taking one standard action to get someone back into the fight is not a bad thing. It is not like in real life where you have to continually protect a wounded person, and the wounded person can not protect themselves. The comparison is not even close.
If the graver knight is that close to killing the cleric then he should have killed the cleric before he killed the wizard.
If the cleric is not close by then you kill the wizard, and then kill the cleric if he enters into melee to make sure he can't bring anyone else back.
My players don't kill the monster because the monsters don't have healers to bring them back, but if I do have a healer they normally focus fire on the healer first, and I allow heal checks in my game to see if someone is alive. If they are down, but not out they are killed first.
I can guarantee that if I kill a party member the fight gets a lot easier for the bad guys than if I don't and allow him(the PC) back into the fight later on.
It's a question of threat management.
If the archer can do more damage to me before my next turn than the "down" wizard, then I should go after the archer. If the "down" wizard can do more damage to me before my next turn than the archer, then I should coup de grace the "down"...
Thats pretty reasonable. I mean you could ague that if the wizard is revived he will get an AoO when he stands and potentially another when he casts a spell.... but you have a good point.
That being said: I still don't kill the downed player, I move on. I think that it makes enough tactical sense that I can justify it. It still feels cheap to take out the player when they are inoperable. I'll kill a player with a trap, I'll kill the player with a monster, I kill a player by executing them for a crime if they get caught and can't manage to escape! but for some reason taking a player out like that feels cheesy.
*gasp* TROLL!I swear. It's like people don't even think anymore.An excellent example.
Successful Troll suggest fellow poster not metagame so much.
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wait are we talking about someone with 1hp or someone with 0 or fewer hp? At 1 hp I kill the guy, at 0 I try to take out the next guy. If I get everyone in the party to 0 its still a tpk. I don't need to absolutely kill each one, I just need to incapacitate them all.It can make sense tactically if the party has no way to heal its members. If the party has a cleric it is better to finish the PC off since the bad guy is already there(by the victim) anyway. You don't have to worry about a channel or cure spell bringing him back into the fight. You also cut down on the party's action economy for the duration of the fight in many cases.
That idea of leaving someone wounded does not work so well in the game. Wounded people in real life are less effective. In the game whether someone has 1 hit point or 100 they are just as dangerous*, so once they get at least one hit point they can kill you. If you kill them now, they stay down.
*That is why blasting is generally considered to be a lesser option for casters.
The point was that if the person is at -1 and the get a heal then are no less dangerous than someone at full hp. If you kill them the problem is solved. You(as the GM) may not need to kill them. The NPC's do need to kill them to make sure they don't keep getting back up.
I am not advocating coup de grace as a style of gaming, but from an NPC standpoint it is a good tactical decision. I guarantee that if you finish players off the fight will be harder for them, therefore it is the better tactical decision.
Losing one action to prevent any further actions by the enemy is the ultimate debuff, and puts you on the plus side of the plus-minus scale.
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Successful Troll suggest fellow poster not metagame so much.*gasp* TROLL!I swear. It's like people don't even think anymore.An excellent example.
*gasp* TROLLS!
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Since you didn't seem to want to consider your statement critically after being prompted, here's the problem with it.
There are plenty of reasons to CdG a character. There are plenty of reasons not to. There are plenty of reasons to play a high lethality game. There are plenty of reasons to play a low lethality game.
Suggesting other people aren't thinking just because they favor a different option is just as much an example of not thinking itself.
So in regards to the question of killing a downed player: I as a GM do not coup-de-grace the pc, its cheap and it also makes little combat sense.
It varies whether it makes sense or doesn't.
What you want to avoid is the DM playing the game against the players since that's not the role of the DM. Nor is it to simply tell a story. The role of the DM is to present the world to the players, describe what their characters see, adjudicate the rules, and most importantly to roleplay the NPCs.
Sometimes it makes sense for the NPC to take the coup-de-grace action. If that's the case then they do it, if it's not the case then they don't. It should not be because the DM feels like it would be 'more challenging' or that 'so and so was stupid so this will show them' or the flip side. Sometimes it doesn't make sense for them to do so.
In either case going against the nature of the NPC disrupts any immersion you might have in this game, as it puts on the table 'out of character' issues and addresses them inside the game. It's a mistake.
One case where I had an NPC do a coup-de-grace was in 3.5 where the party was fighting a fiendish beholder. Not only an evil beholder mind you, but a fiendish one! Mechanically all of the beholder's attacks are free action eye rays, so it really has it's full round action available whenever it wants as long as it's not moving or double moving, etc. The party melee fighter had closed with it, jumped at it to attack, did some damage, fell and then was put to sleep by the sleep ray.
The rest of the party is not threatening the beholder, it's decidedly evil and cruel, it has a full round action available to it, and that smite good just looked so tempting to it as it would never otherwise have a decent use for it.
Now it happens that the player rolls a natural 20 for his fort save vs death (out in the open and everything), but if he didn't then the death would have been on the heads of the party and not the DM. They could have...
Wow. I actually think the role of the GM is very different than you. I think the role of the GM is to provide a scenario in which everyone can have a good time. To be honest with you I don't let anything get in the way of that. Its really the primary purpose of playing the game. Yeah, that involves all the stuff you said, and if in your game that means killing doing what you do then good stuff. However, its pretty ridiculous to say "shame on you". Thats insanity. People run games for their group of players. In some games that means when you roll up a character in a campaign you play that character the whole way through because thats FUN. In other games it means rotating through characters like your going the stands at a baseball game and thats FUN too!
But to pretend like the way you run your game is superior to other people and that by not killing a downed player because it ruins your sense of immersion (while you players are drinking their soda and rolling dice to simulate combat) is preposterous. I put my spin out there- I don't like to kill players in a way that, to me, seems cheap. If I was a player and a GM killed me that way thats okay, its their game. Lets just not get preachy (barring my OWN proselytizing above) about how a game should or should not be run.
It's a question of threat management.
If the archer can do more damage to me before my next turn than the "down" wizard, then I should go after the archer. If the "down" wizard can do more damage to me before my next turn than the archer, then I should coup de grace the "down"...
Thats pretty reasonable. I mean you could ague that if the wizard is revived he will get an AoO when he stands and potentially another when he casts a spell.... but you have a good point.
That being said: I still don't kill the downed player, I move on. I think that it makes enough tactical sense that I can justify it. It still feels cheap to take out the player when they are inoperable. I'll kill a player with a trap, I'll kill the player with a monster, I kill a player by executing them for a crime if they get caught and can't manage to escape! but for some reason taking a player out like that feels cheesy.
Oh, I understand completely, and I can even agree with this approach, to a point. And as I said, I don't think I've ever coup de graced a PC in combat, or if I did it was so long ago I don't remember it, but that is probably because my players view me as a potentially lethal GM and they do their best to never leave a party member in a situation where a coup de grace can be applied in the first place.
Choosing not to coup de grace a PC because it feels cheesy is pure metagaming. Not saying it's good or bad, it simply is what it is. In an ideal RPG scenario, the choice should be made from the perspective of what the NPC would do, not what the GM feels is cheesy or not.
Which is why I don't consider GMs who coup de grace to be unfair or in any other way playing "wrong." It's just a playstyle choice.
As I posted early I think some NPC's or monsters will kill and should kill downed players and others won't. There are strategic reasons not to but those aside it may happen (have never done it) but when the time comes the jerk assassin of the hungry monster that has picked off one of the weaker members of the heard will deal the death blow. But this works both ways. An animal that relizes it has bitten off more than it can chew will flee. Heck most animals just growl and threaten unless they think they can win. This also means that bandits might take prisners for ransom, they sure as heck won't fight to the death unless forced to. They will sound retreat and run when they realize the party can take them. Sometimes characters die. Move on, quest for a rez, get rezzed by an enemy and get really messed with.
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Just a note,
In my games, I try to make it explicit, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
New group I started off in a new campaign last year, first thing they wanted to do after fighting some neutral lizardfolk bandits was to finish off the bandits that were down, CdG them. I made it know, ooc, that they could do that if they wished, but that as GM I would be keeping track of their reputation. And if they got a reputation for being 'kill them all' type opponents, then eventually any opponent that did some research on them, or recognized them, would treat them as 'kill or be killed' enemies. That is, CdG them as soon as they went down, giving no quarter, etc.
After thinking it over, they decided to just leave the downed bandits and loot the bodies, then run off. Over time, they've developed reputations for not kicking someone when they're down, and it's affected some of their fights, even if they don't know it. There are enemies they fought that were willing to parley on either side, due to the groups reputation for accepting surrenders and not slaughtering the losers every time.
So, as a GM, that goes into my calculations for NPCs, it's not that the bandits are altruistic and care about killing the PCs when they're down, it's that they are selfishly keeping their rep for not being ruthless murderers so they have some breathing room if they get cornered by the cops, or lose an ambush, or whatever.
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To the op:
The biggest factor to come into play here is the general level of lethality you want in your game (mine defaults to med/high).
If you decide to go with "anything goes" style of play (you and your group having that understanding) then you would need to consider secondary factors when it comes to "CdG or not to CdG" -
Type of creature
Creature motivation
Type of creature is critical - a bandit may or may not CdG a downed for for multiple reasons - not that bloodthirsty, the victim can be captured and sold as a slave, etc.
A demon or a hellhound on the other hand may just rip out the downed PCs throat out just to watch the blood spray on his friends faces
again, it depends
Creature Motivation - A demon, even a raging demon doesn't play chaotic stupid. If there is a chance for it to gain eternal freedom or take down a fallen foe if it has any smarts (and can fight it's impulse) it will go for the freedom - and then take out the downed foe on the next round (after smashing the thingamajig that is threatening its freedom).
I have had run bandits who mercilessly killed downed foes (had one not just CdG a player, but he took an extra round to hack his head off!) and then I have had bandits who beat you down and take all your stuff and let you live (so you can spread the word about how bad-ass they are). The latter may seem stupid, but some PCs have grown to respect less than ruthless NPC rivals and have enough sense to rank their foes on based on threat, lethality and sheer evil - and how they will deal with those threats when it comes to blows.
Ex: My current group of players have been dealing with an evil Gnoll Ranger as part of a menagerie of threats facing their patch of civilization They realized that the Gnoll is working indirectly with the BBEG. The thing is the Gnoll's main focus is to protect his stretch of forest from the human and BBEG predations and he is a vicious bastard. Once they figured that out they were even able to talk to the Gnoll (think the scene in Heat with De Niro and Pacino having their face to face) and figure out a way to make him more neutral in the big picture. So things are not so black and white and vary from situation to situation. If he had fought them early on without the understanding and communication he would defiantly have CdG them if he dropped any of them in a fight – now, now I’m not so sure what he would do if he had to end up fighting the PCs. Nothing is static.
CdG is not the "default" of the game so don't be pressured to do things any other way other than what you are comfortable with. For more "heroic" types of fantasy gaming CdG may just not fit thematically - it doesn't mean that PCs don't die, it just means that they don’t get their throats slit when they are down. This isn't a case of Deux Ex or fiat or fudging as much as it is about play style or heroic vs. gritty tropes. Don't CdG if it doesn't fit the feel of your game - doesn’t' mean that you want to run a soft ball game, or are a weak DM, you just don't like it - similar to other R or NC-17 type actions occurring in your campaign. It’s not for everybody.
Anyway
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Actually CdG is the "default" of the game. I don't have to tell you that I am going to be using CdG in my games ahead of time. If I tell you I am running a Pathfinder game then it is assumed that CdG will be there as well so technically it is the "default" of the game along with any other rule I have mentioned.
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No, you're going by your own interpretation of 'by the book', which varies with each person.
Ehhhhh no. Going by the book is going by the book. I mean it's not complicated in any way. The designers have built the game with a default in mind, which means just open the book and go with what's in there. They have also laid out some further things suggesting that DM's can add or take away anything they like but there is still a default setting.
CdG is just as much a part of the rules as charging, or being able to take a step as a free action. Now you can if you want to but most DM's don't have to go through each and every rule to clarify with his players what is allowed and what isn't. If I tell you I am going to run a Pathfinder and I leave it at that then you can assume that I am going to play the game by the default, which is by the book, and that CdG will be present because it's a rule just like any other in the game.
I'll give a counter example: in one game i attend, NOBODY EVER DIES. It's a long running campaign that has a core group of friends that started playing in college, and we are all in our late 30's now. I joined the group about 3 years ago.
There's no fear of death, and it's annoying. I used to think it was a 'high level' thing, but we recently rolled up 2nd level characters, and it's no better. Monsters and NPCs inexplicably forget to use the items that we find on their bodies after combat ("Oh boy - a potion of Haste and a wand of Magic Missiles! Good thing they didn't use those against us in combat!"). NPCs designed by the DM are routinely horribly leveled, in regard to feats and skills (me: "I'll try to Spot any bandits hiding along the road; ugh, dammit, I rolled really bad, a 9". DM: "You're in luck! You manage to spot the bandits crouched behind some trees!" me: "oh....erm.....awesome?").
It's like having an overly protective and overly generous parent: there's no real thrill or sense of accomplishment sometimes because you almost always know that nothing bad is ever going to really happen. Blah.
I'll give a counter example: in one game i attend, NOBODY EVER DIES. It's a long running campaign that has a core group of friends that started playing in college, and we are all in our late 30's now. I joined the group about 3 years ago.
There's no fear of death, and it's annoying. I used to think it was a 'high level' thing, but we recently rolled up 2nd level characters, and it's no better. Monsters and NPCs inexplicably forget to use the items that we find on their bodies after combat ("Oh boy - a potion of Haste and a wand of Magic Missiles! Good thing they didn't use those against us in combat!"). NPCs designed by the DM are routinely horribly leveled, in regard to feats and skills (me: "I'll try to Spot any bandits hiding along the road; ugh, dammit, I rolled really bad, a 9". DM: "You're in luck! You manage to spot the bandits crouched behind some trees!" me: "oh....erm.....awesome?").
It's like having an overly protective and overly generous parent: there's no real thrill or sense of accomplishment sometimes because you almost always know that nothing bad is ever going to really happen. Blah.
I think there is some balance to be had. I'm in a group of 30-somethings playing as well.
I think that GM is being a little excessive by not letting people die and being kind with the rules. I do like to reward people for doing something creative, even if its a bad roll (not just trying to spot some dudes but something truly creative).
As far as CdG goes, I do think there is a certain amount of playstyle there, but I already talked about that in the thread. Saying that because a rule is there it must be used is like saying that because a npc has bluff he MUST feint. I would say the he CAN feint, but he may choose not too, really depends on the character.
I know some people really pride themselves on being lethal GM, and really punishing their players. I take pride in the fact that every person I have played with has had fun. All the people I play with also feel that I am a fair arbiter of the rules. I take pride in creating interesting encounters that people really have fun playing in.
I mean, anyone can make a game where they can kill the PC's, but to make a game where the players feel engaged and interested where they are important to the game, thats what counts.
This brings a PFS game I GMed a short while ago into a new perspective. When I was a player I once coup de grace'd someone, all 5 other people at the table gasped in SHOCK.
I was running a scenario recently with a particular sorcerer who had color spray, she knocked the Eidolon and the fighter unconcious is an instant.
She went down, and the cleric of the group, praying for her survival, healed her. She stood up and color sprayed again, the party then made sure to not only knock her down, but coup de grace her brutally so that it couldn't happen again.
If my (moderately low int) PC's could make the decision to end the threat, why wouldn't the NPC's think that way too? Especially as Evil characters.
I think there is some balance to be had. I'm in a group of 30-somethings playing as well.
I think that GM is being a little excessive by not letting people die and being kind with the rules. I do like to reward people for doing something creative, even if its a bad roll (not just trying to spot some dudes but something truly creative).
As far as CdG goes, I do think there is a certain amount of playstyle there, but I already talked about that in the thread. Saying that because a rule is there it must be used is like saying that because a npc has bluff he MUST feint. I would say the he CAN feint, but he may choose not too, really depends on the character.
I know some people really pride themselves on being lethal GM, and really punishing their players. I take pride in the fact that every person I have played with has had fun. All the people I play with...
Yes it is all about balance, you're right. It seems like a fairly basic concept, but I guess the happy medium is difficult to find (which can be said for pretty much everything in life sometimes...!).
I think arguements on this topic come up far more often than the actual situation. I mean as a player or DM in hundreds of fights this has come up I think only once that I can remember (though I remember tell the DM he should have killed me). Yet because here on the boards thousands of us discuss it when it comes up. Personally I hate thinking my DM played against character to keep me alive.
I see that people tend to interpret lethality in two extremes, where I see high lethality as a situation in which you might as well bring another character sheet with you every session, and each encounter, which might not even be very important in the scheme of things poses a serious risk of death...
And some people view low lethality as a situation where there is no such thing as failure, and they could do cartwheels around the enemies and wait for the DM to make the enemies commit suicide because the party always wins.
I can see how preferring one mode, the other seems horribly wrong.
Let me say that I do not see low lethality as an excuse to act reckless or braindead. There's no reason to hold back if the players are reckless. Encounters are a drain on party resources (just character life should not typically be one of those resources), leading up to some sort of climax (where perhaps it would be appropriate to have a risk of death).
I like to play the Big Damn Heroes that can take on most challenges if they put some thought into it. I don't want to have to spend most of combat doing total defense or running away, it's just not as fun for me.
As people have pointed out though, different people, different preferences. See what your party has fun with. I think the lethality of the game is something that the GM and the players should come to a consensus on, as participants of the same game.
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Actually,
I had it come up in a game.
I was playing a Dhampir Oracle of Steel, very asian themed, in a Forgotten Realms game. We came across a two-headed snake with con based poison. The GM hadn't realized that PF made poison so nasty, especially con based poison. I got hit 3 times, failed my Fort save every time. Someone poured delay poison down my throat. But in the mean time, my 11 CON had dropped to 3 CON. And, I was at negative 5 hp.
I died. I didn't realize it until after the game, because I'm so used to needing to be at -11 to die, but there it was, -5 < -3, so I was dead. I told the group, and the GM insisted on hand-waiving it away. I basically ended up retiring the character instead and making him a semi-npc who didn't go adventuring anymore (permanent lung condition due to the poison, needs daily medication, like Raistlin).
But it kind of bummed me out. I'd have rather been reincarnated, or ressurected, or anything but handwaved to be alive despite being dead. Really kind of sucked a lot of the fun out of the game.
When players are taught that it is safer for a character to be bleeding out at the feet of someone that supposedly actively wants them all to be dead.. well that's what's really preposterous.
Why would it be safer? Why would the players' characters even think that should be the case?
You might have fun with it... and that's great. You could also have fun reading a book, and that's great too.
But don't confuse things, there's far more to this game of ours than a typical board game. And don't get me wrong, board games can be fun.. but a roleplaying game adds another dimension and can be much more than a board game. Perhaps you disagree.
James
I think you missed the point of what I was saying.
From the way you are writing, and perhaps I am confused here, it sounds like you believe that if a GM is not CdG his PC's then he is playing a lower standard of game. It also sounds like you believe that this makes that game shallow, uninteresting, and no longer a roleplaying game.
My point is not about the roleplaying, I do a fair amount of that in may games. I 'm talking about insinuating that someone else's game is less than yours because they don't play in the same style that you do.
I don't have a problem with PC's dying, I don't even have a problem with GM's who decide to kill a downed player. Those are stylistic choices.
It seems like elitism, "Roleplaying adds another dimension and can be much more fun than a board game." What does that mean in the context of what we are talking about here? My choice of game style is that a PC get's killed when he is taken out by a badguy while he is on his feet. I wouldn't kill a player in their sleep, I wouldn't poison them if they had no chance to do something about it, and I wouldn't CdG them in a fight. There are probably exceptions to all of those.
I mean if we are talking about immersion why do people build CR appropriate encounters? I suppose I am metagaming by giving my players the opportunity to win in most any fight- I'm the GM my JOB is to metagame. Really the players should never have a chance, the orc tribe should just hire a hill giant to take them out at 1st level. But we don't do those things. However you and your players like to play is cool with me, have fun I don't care. But I would just ask that you not tell someone that what they are doing is less of a game because you have developed some arbitrary standard.
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I died. I didn't realize it until after the game, because I'm so used to needing to be at -11 to die, but there it was, -5 < -3, so I was dead. I told the group, and the GM insisted on hand-waiving it away. I basically ended up retiring the character instead and making him a semi-npc who didn't go adventuring anymore (permanent lung condition due to the poison, needs daily medication, like Raistlin).
But it kind of bummed me out. I'd have rather been reincarnated, or ressurected, or anything but handwaved to be alive despite being dead. Really kind of sucked a lot of the fun out of the game.
If it was Con damage and not Con drain then it wasn't handwaving.
Diseases, poisons, spells, and other abilities can all deal damage directly to your ability scores. This damage does not actually reduce an ability, but it does apply a penalty to the skills and statistics that are based on that ability.
The thing is, these NPC's I'm role playing are really figments of my imagination.... so I actually DO make them do things.
And anything that occurs on their part is a result of my design as a GM.
I think we have already established that it can be reasonable for a badguy not to spend a full round action killing a pc.
So, if I choose (because these characters aren't real so I must choose what I believe their actions are) to have the bad guy kill a pc rather than moving on to a current threat thats 1/2 role-playing and 1/2 interpretation.
I could say that its metagaming or out of character for the badguy to assume he did NOT kill the pc. Isn't it out of character for you're bad guy to know how many hp your players have? If you had a badguy drop a player to -25 would he then use that same full round action to "kill" the dead player just to make sure?
In a lot of ways it makes sense to have them move on. The assumption that choosing to play in a certain style is a lack of role playing is rather presumptuous. My psychotic killer can waste time stabbing dead people one they are all dead.
I have not angered enoug people today. All of you are having badwrongfun.
You, personally, find it 'cheap' to do this or that. I would use the word 'unsporting' as it seems to fit how I'm reading it. The problem being that it's not your sensibilities, but a myriad of unrelated NPCs that have suddenly developed this universal honor code...
-James
I guess I just figure my players can suspend their disbelief, in much the same way I ask them to suspend their disbelief when it comes to magic, and dragons, and vampires...
I hope this isn't coming across as "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE" out there, I think we're having kind of an interesting discussion- hopefully thats on both sides
Since you didn't seem to want to consider your statement critically after being prompted, here's the problem with it.
There are plenty of reasons to CdG a character. There are plenty of reasons not to. There are plenty of reasons to play a high lethality game. There are plenty of reasons to play a low lethality game.
Suggesting other people aren't thinking just because they favor a different option is just as much an example of not thinking itself.
*hands TOZ a tissue*
There there, it will be o.k.
I'm trying to be nice. There's a lot of angry comments going around.
Why can't we just all agree that if we're having fun we're all winning?
:D
Though, if I'm trolling, I have the courtesy to do it with one account ;)
EDIT: I should've hugged over tissued.
EDIT: I should've hugged over tissued.
HUGBEES!
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If it was Con damage and not Con drain then it wasn't handwaving.Diseases, poisons, spells, and other abilities can all deal damage directly to your ability scores. This damage does not actually reduce an ability, but it does apply a penalty to the skills and statistics that are based on that ability.
He told me at the time it was reducing my Con. So he may have made a mistake and meant damaging it. As I said, he was new to PF at the time.
Either way, it was still handwaving because we both believed he was dead, and he stated flat out 'Oh, I do not want to kill anyone, so you lived anyway'.
Granted, he may have still been technically alive, but the spirit was to ignore the death, which is kind of like shooting a guy who had a heart attack a minute earlier isn't technically murder, even though you didn't know he was already dead at the time. You got away with corpse desecration, but it wasn't the crime you were going for.
I think that saying it can either be in character or wildly out of character is too extreme. Given those two options which would I rather? Obviously that he act in character. That, however, is not really the issue. For the NPCs and for PCs it is a much more gradient thing. What is your interpretation of what that character would do is so subjective. If the paladin strangled a sleeping baby that is cut and dry. If the paladin has the helpless dying bad guy at his feet and chooses to end their life without trial that is getting more gray, a paladin killing a demon in combat is cut and dry too.
When I say that they choose to move on to another threat that is a legitimate choice for that npc to make, really for a lot of reasons. I could even design the encounter so that the NPC have better things to do with the party than kill the (slavery, torture, leverage). I could even say that NPCs always trying to kill the party is poor role playing because of how value able the party could be alive! Now if was acting truly randomly he might choose to spend a full round action passionately kissing the downed player. I'm not advocating that, I am simply taking a different interpretation of their tactics then you are.
The method I choose to use and the interpretation I make is certainly influenced by me not wanting my kill that player in what seems like a cheap or unfair manner. I think my ayers would agree with me. If I chose to kill them then I could certainly justify that, but it would not be as much fun for anyone at the table, and as we have pointed out this is a game.
To answer your other question, which feels like an exaggeration of what I have been saying, I would not sweep a characters abbé rant actions under the rug. I would bring consequence to their actions, which certainly could result in something much less Convenient than player death.
Sorry for errors typed on an iphone
But as a GM, the role is to keep the story going. If an NPC gets a lucky shot on a PC who happens to be central to the story at the time, the I call Bull. As a GM, I have enough worries trying to keep everything together, and fudging the roll in that case would be better for the party as a whole. But remember how often you save them, then have fate come back to bite them in the end.