When do you attack downed characters?

[Rogue Eidolon]

Just to give a good example of when I had some intelligent NPCs call for a killing blow--

The party quickly proved themselves to have a cleric with Fast Channel and a Phylactery who could heal ~50 damage per round to the whole party in an 8-9 (This was a large percentage of everyone's maximum health) and another cleric who didn't have such good channels but had the healing domain (so not only were single target heals empowered, but he also had Rebuke Death specifically to wake up unconscious allies) and was just before the channel cleric in init.

The enemies (mostly archers) started by targeting damager types, and KOed two of them, but the channel cleric intervened and got them all to nearly full. Then they targeted the channel cleric, knocking him out (they didn't know the other cleric was a cleric yet). Of course, the other cleric woke the channel cleric who double channeled, bringing himself (and everyone else) to maximum health. At this point, the lead enemy called out to his men "Men, I don't like it, but we can't win unless we kill that one--" pointing to the channel cleric, "He heals them faster than we can attack."

Despite giving that order, there was only one chance to actually attack the downed channel cleric during the fight--it was on a late iterative and I managed to miss. No one actually died, but the players and characters knew that they had pushed the NPCs to those extremes.

[redward]

Rogue Eidolon wrote:

At this point, the lead enemy called out to his men "Men, I don't like it, but we can't win unless we kill that one--" pointing to the channel cleric, "He heals them faster than we can attack."

I quite like this. It gives the players a warning that the NPCs will be shifting tactics and allows them to adjust (or not).

[The Beard]

I ran into a very interesting conundrum a little while back. I was running a scenario, and one of the fights specified that one of the enemies would tunnel vision the party member that "looked" the strongest. In other words, implying appearances/equipment being the factor over actual PC level. Normally that wouldn't be a problem. ... Except I was GMing for a group of nothing but squishy characters. None of them were wearing anything that could be discerned as threatening to a mouse, let alone a group of armed and (surprisingly) well organized thugs. It made selecting targets difficult. I wound up having to make a judgment call and sending that particular mob after the person that hit it the hardest.

Now having said all that, let me add this: There are evidently times when circumstances will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible to follow the tactics presented to the letter. All someone can do is adhere to them to the best of their ability at that given time. So if the group happens to retreat after losing several (not yet dead) party members, even if the enemy tactics don't SAY to kill them, I should think it goes without saying that they would. I have yet to run across NPCs whose tactics say to take prisoners. ... But I have heard it's happened before.

[Don Walker]

For those enemies that react to everything the party is doing, sometimes it seems that they know more of what is going on than they should.

While a GM needs to know everything, it does not follow that the bad guy should have access to all this knowledge as well. Combat is chaotic. A lot is happening at the same time. While we, as players, take turns, the reality is that everyone is acting at the same time.

Unless the bad guy's Perception bonus is pretty high, I would give them a chance not to notice something a particular character is doing that gives the party a significant advantage. And then it would depend on if that particular foe could understand what exactly that character is doing.

A lot of this is subjective and players will meta-game to varying degrees as well, so it hopefully all irons out in the wash.

Still I have been at tables where standard Goblins and Skeletons use genius level tactics.

[Jeff Jutzi]

So here is a home game scenario of which I'd like your input ... I haven't quite decided what to do yet ...

Mindless, flaming skeletons (pathfinder) have downed 3 of the 4 characters. The last character (very intelligent) goes to get help. His thinking is the skeletons are mindless (appropriate knowledge checks were made and shared) and will therefore ignore the unconscious characters.
This is my dilemma:

-- If the creatures were intelligent they would coup de grace the down characters without hesitation ... these creatures however are mindless

-- If you start your turn next to a flaming skeleton you take fire damage. Well, the three down characters don't get turns (they are stable but very much unconscious)

-- The creatures are tied to one room and thus, do not pursue to withdrawing character

-- What would you do? Leave the unconscious characters alone or kill them? Or, have the skeletons move around each hour and see if they end their turn next to a down character?

My decision will be for the most realistic scenario. I'm leaning towards the skeletons being mindless and therefor they will ignore the characters, although they could end up randomly moving to the PCs and causing them burn damage ... just want to get your views on this scenario ....

[WalterGM]

Hey Jeff!

Sounds like your players are in quick the pickle! I'd like to point out that this on the Pathfinder Society messageboards, so the posts above were how to adjudicate standardized scenarios for a massive player base, and may not be applicable to your current situation.

However, here's my opinion as a homebrew GM.

In general, when I GM a home game I want to do two things: tell a great story and make sure everyone has fun. Usually killing the entire party doesn't help either of those goals, especially when it's a non-climactic fight (like the one you mentioned). What I'd consider is having the skeletons do something like chase the retreating PC, turn off their fire auras (why not!), or capturing the downed PCs for their evil master (maybe they have one?). Even though they are mindless, they can still be controlled intelligently by an even greater bad guy.

So I'd consider non-TPK options like that before deciding to end those PCs adventuring careers.

[Sniggevert]

Mindless...but they're evil because of an unnatural hatred of life and all things living... Also, even if you're unconscious you're going to end up moving/breathing/twitching at some point, when the skeleton would realize you're still alive and need to be stopped.

The burning for "Start of a Turn" would be every 6 seconds outside of combat the skeleton was within 5' of a downed character. At the very least, they'd be next to the last person that dropped I'd think since you said they wouldn't chase the runner.

All in all, leaving downed party members near threats is a hazardous, and nearly always fatal, situation.

EDIT: And ninja'd by a nicer, calmer, wiser GM than I ;)

[N N 959]

Jeff Jutzi wrote:

So here is a home game scenario of which I'd like your input ... I haven't quite decided what to do yet ...

Similar to what Walter said, look for plausible ways to not kill the party. I would suggest having the creatures all retreat to one area of the room. Maybe there's an alter there or some sort arcane symbol to which they are naturally attracted. If the players are in danger of gaining consciousness, allow them to remain motionless and not draw the attention of the skeletons. Or, you can roll opposed Stealth v Perception, but the danger there is that if the players fail, then you're left with having to have the skeletons attack...so I'd forego the rolls.

You could also just have the skeletons stop moving. Or, move to some corner of the room where noise from other NPC's can be heard.

[Jeff Jutzi]

All very great inputs :) Thanks all for your time and keen insights :)
With much respect
Jeff

[kinevon]

As mentioned, since the skeletons are in the room for a specific purpose, like guarding something, when the last viable threat runs away, they should probably move back to their guardian positions.

That probably won't leave them next to any of the downed PCs, but it is possible that one of them got dropped near the thing the skeletons would have been guarding....

[Ring_of_Gyges]

Realism is all well and good, but it is only one of a range of virtues you should be trying to cultivate at the table. Compelling stories, people having fun, the game moving forward smoothly, a satisfying narrative, etc... can all conflict with realism and (for my taste) realism can lose out.

Hit points aren't realistic, levels aren't realistic, Frodo and Sam walking into Mordor isn't realistic, civilizations with Divination magic not mastering physics in a generation isn't realistic. They're all beloved tropes though.

Killing characters is an OOC downer, kicks that player out of the rest of the game, generally isn't a satisfying story, killing someone while they can't act is bad gamism, etc... If you have to bend an NPC's motivations to prevent PC death I think it is almost always worth doing.

Maybe they want to focus on the still active PC's, maybe they want hostages/prisoners/people to question/aren't psychopaths and try to avoid killing/etc... When it comes to the behavior of flaming magic walking skeletons you've got infinite latitude to have them behave however best suits the game.

[LazarX]

Mergy wrote:

I've attacked a downed character with iterative natural attacks.

It was a fast zombie owlbear who had already taken a five-foot step and therefore had no one else to attack. Do you think I was wrong in my approach?

Did the owlbear have live targets that could be a threat? If the answer yes, than yeah you were. If the target dropped DURING an iterative, that would be another story. Otherwise why did it do a 5 foot?

[Sniggevert]

LazarX wrote:

Mergy wrote:

I've attacked a downed character with iterative natural attacks.

It was a fast zombie owlbear who had already taken a five-foot step and therefore had no one else to attack. Do you think I was wrong in my approach?

Did the owlbear have live targets that could be a threat? If the answer yes, than yeah you were. If the target dropped DURING an iterative, that would be another story. Otherwise why did it do a 5 foot?

Read 5 posts down from where you pulled that year old quote from.

The owlbear moved to be next to a target to be able to attack. The target did drop DURING the owlbear's attack routine that round.

[Robin the Boy Wonder]

Holy necro, Batman!

[DnArturo]

How about this scenario - A singularly strong melee type undead is taking on the party and is engaged with the fighter. The fighter goes down. The summoner's lion idolon steps over the downed fighter to protect him and engage the undead. The undead continues to attack the downed player anyway despite being covered by a lion, siting the "attacks one person at a time" rule of engagement. Fighter dies.

Does the rule of engagement "attacks one person at a time" continue even after the PC goes down and another valid target is occupying the same square?

[Dresden10589]

DnArturo wrote:

How about this scenario - A singularly strong melee type undead is taking on the party and is engaged with the fighter. The fighter goes down. The summoner's lion idolon steps over the downed fighter to protect him and engage the undead. The undead continues to attack the downed player anyway despite being covered by a lion, siting the "attacks one person at a time" rule of engagement. Fighter dies.

Does the rule of engagement "attacks one person at a time" continue even after the PC goes down and another valid target is occupying the same square?

That's one of the main ways we protect our allies if we can't heal them in my area, so I would say no. As long as there's a valid target adjacent, I tend to go after that first. Now if no one comes to that PC's rescue (and I always warn them that they need to STAT,) then the mindless undead is probably going to start feeding.

[Jukka Särkijärvi]

Eh. I've attacked downed PCs in precisely two circumstances: when a PC goes down in the area of a swarm that then has no reason to move from its space, and when enemy casters use AoE spells. Usually, the enemies have better things to do. If I ran into a situation where a PC keeps getting healed bouncing back up like a jack-in-the-box, I would consider an enemy putting them down so they stay down, but such a situation has yet to come up in a Pathfinder Society game for me and it's a rather mean thing to do.

[Matthew Pittard]

I have an interesting story here:

I had a party in Citadel of Flame get to the end and due to a combination of bad luck and such were getting hammered. They withdraw back some distance however one party member went down and was effectively abandoned as the party bolted back the way they came. Now the party member had stabilised and I noted a spell which Ive rarely used. Bleed.

Now the character had auto stabilised in the first round and the BBEG was left with the character. So she wandered up and touched the character and BLEED occured. The looks at the table were pretty nasty, but I enforce a strictish no metagaming normally and they couldnt know. THey did however get back to the character just in the nick of time.

In regards to CDG, Id only do it If the group is in no way able to stop me. If even one person still has actions to spare then its not a great idea to spend a full round of actions just to crit someone.

[Under A Bleeding Sun]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

When they get knocked down, and then get up again, then its time to really keep them down.

Pretty much this. If someone is massively healing people or some other way unconscious people keep getting up, and there are intelligent NPC's they'll make sure people stay down.

AOE's can get downed PC's.

The other is starving animals. They drop a pc, their gonna eat him. Most the time they just want one meal, why keep fighting?

[Auke Teeninga]

Yeah, it's like this thread. It seems to die, but it keeps on popping up!

Please lock it! ;-)

(Years back I ran a game and a trio of advanced bearded devils did a coup de grace on an unconscious dwarf for 77 points, but he managed to make the DC 87 fortitude safe (with a natural 20!) and even now the player doesn't stop talking about it!)