I've been considering GM'ing a game for PFS for a little while now, and I was wondering if there are any illegal GM tactics? Such as attacking an unconscious PC.
Also if not illegal any heavily frowned upon tactics?
Thank you for your time
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The main thing is that everyone play by the same rules, and everyone has fun. If you and your players both enjoy very unforgiving tactics, you are welcome to them.
I think for the general body of players, attacking unconscious PC's very rarely occurs if their are still active ones threatening the baddies.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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You should keep to the tactics written in the enemy's stat block. Before deviating from that, consider two things:
1. Would it make sense for this NPC/monster to do it? An intelligent enemy might change his tactics based on who he/she/it is facing. NPCs might also bear a grudge against a character, and focus on them out of spite, etc.
2. Will it be fun for the players? That doesn't mean you should always pull punches so you don't kill players, but if someone is new, the bad guys probably shouldn't coup-de-grace him. For more experienced players, go crazy.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Well, you're supposed to GM the scenarios as written. Obviously, if circumstances invalidate written tactics* then you'll have to adjust as best you can, given what you know about the baddies and their motivations.
The topic of attacking a downed PC comes up every now and then. A good rule of thumb is that intelligent enemies behave intelligently. If four people are attacking me, and one of them drops unconscious, I'm going to focus on defending myself from the other three, not leave myself open to assault for a round just so I can CdG and make sure he's DEAD. That is, unless one of those three casts a spell on the guy I dropped and he gets back up. I won't last long if my enemies keep getting back up, so at that point I become more interested in making them stay down: i.e., killing them dead (if I have an opportunity that wouldn't put me at even more risk, of course). Remember, the baddies' goal is (usually) to win the fight, not score a kill.
"Circumstances invalidating written tactics" does NOT mean that the party has 3 different rogues with evasion and so you change the BBEG's spell list to include Will-based save-or-suck spells instead of the blasting spells they're written with.
far as I know, there isn't any illegal gm tactics. Just ones people won't like.
*Attacking an unconscious PC, regardless of reason, is generally frowned upon by players.
*Stealing items permanently hurts PCs a lot more in PFS than home games because in a home game, you can have an attempt to get it back. Generally not so in PFS, especially with time limits in scenarios. If it's just like steal in combat, but PCs win and get item back, then it's not so bad.
*metagaming
*and yes: follow the scenario is written (it was a long time ago, but the magus in one scenario had Acid Touch prepared, but the gm changed it to Shocking Grasp because "he's not a magus unless he has that." I almost died from it. If it was a acid touch as written, wouldn't be a big deal.)
(these are my opinions)
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Well, you're supposed to GM the scenarios as written. Obviously, if circumstances invalidate written tactics* then you'll have to adjust as best you can, given what you know about the baddies and their motivations.
The topic of attacking a downed PC comes up every now and then. A good rule of thumb is that intelligent enemies behave intelligently. If four people are attacking me, and one of them drops unconscious, I'm going to focus on defending myself from the other three, not leave myself open to assault for a round just so I can CdG and make sure he's DEAD. That is, unless one of those three casts a spell on the guy I dropped and he gets back up. I won't last long if my enemies keep getting back up, so at that point I become more interested in making them stay down: i.e., killing them dead (if I have an opportunity that wouldn't put me at even more risk, of course). Remember, the baddies' goal is (usually) to win the fight, not score a kill.
** spoiler omitted **
Speaking specifically about the NPC killing a downed character, I think it can also depend on a couple other factors as well.
An evil NPC is probably more likely to kill a downed PC than a neutral bad guy. Chaotic more likely than Lawful (depending on the situation).
I think Jiggy's example is a good version of how to play someone whose tactics are to 'fight to their death'/ However, I think that an NPC whose tactics say they will try to run at a certain point are more likely to outright kill (or at least threaten to kill, if the conscious PCs dont back off) an unconscious PC than the 'fight to their death' guys under most circumstances.
I feel like that came out kinda rambley. Did it make sense? :P
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The important thing to remember is you're trying to create a fun experience for the players. Yes, player deaths sometimes happen. But you shouldn't go out of the way to make them happen.
Also, remember your NPC's motivations. I had one scenario where an NPC knocked 3 PCs unconscious and sent the pregen cleric running away from a failed fear save. The NPC seemed to have completely won the battle, but since she was a slaver, I didn't have her start killing people who were on the ground. She acted the same way a PC would after winning a fight - disarm your unconscious enemies and heal yourself. Then the feared cleric got back and channeled energy to heal the whole party, and the battle was back on. When they eventually killed that bad guy, the whole table was cheering from the hard fought victory. If someone had died, they wouldn't have been nearly as happy.
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Ah yes. . .I suppose it was in error to make an assumption one knows to follow the tactics presented in the encounter unless they become invalidated by PC tactics.
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I guess, if it really called for it, but I'm pretty sure the living and attacking guy's going to present more of an interest than coup de grace'ing a player. There's no scenario I know of that calls for that kind of tactic, so I wouldn't be, to put it bluntly, such an ass to people who are there to enjoy themselves. If you were to do that too often, you'd ruin the idea that PFS is there for, introducing the game to new players.
New players don't come if regulars refuse to play.
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Hey if the guy is fighting to the death I could see it. A cleric outnumbered coupe de grazing a person under hold person is fair game. If it was my life and pathfinders came at me and I had a chance to remove a threat permanently I would take it.
Having an unintelligent creature do it I think is over the line. I have had unintelligent undead attack a player when they dropped, but the tactics were to keep attacking the nearest living creature.
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Fromper said it very well. Play the NPC logically, with reasonable behavior and tactics. Focus on setting the players up to have fun. It is supposed to be a heroic fantasy game. Let somebody be heroic! Lots of stories have the main characters wind up in captivity. It is just part of the story. Evil NPC's don't have to kill everything in sight. Leave them alive for questioning, sell them into slavery, keep them for evil summoning/ceremony/or something else, keep them to feed to monsters, whatever, but all of those alternatives give the layers time to escape and continue their mission. There has to be time for the evil NPC to flaunt how smart he is in a speech that is both irritating and long - time enough for the good guys to..........
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Hitting a helpless person should be done with great care. I had players 'play dead' when the odds seemed overwhelming and I rewarded this by looking for other targets.
But there can't be a fixed and hard rule as it always is circumstantial.
I think in all my many games in PFS I only 'coup de graced' a character once - and this was slow motion and took 3-4 rounds - slowly eating his brain.
The reason it happened was circumstances (group triggering multiple encounters at once, half the group incapacitated due to own fault, the victim failing his save) and the utter failure of his remaining comrades to take out that monster (fast enough).
This was a monster that I don't think ever survived combat round 1 before. Once it had started eating the brain of the helpless victim there was no reason at all (apart of it being dead) that it should stop.
It was tragic comical as one player threw a net over it - keep on munching brains - yeah - and then tried to trip it - keep on munching - yeah - before changing tactics.
This was a situatiuon where I felt hitting the helpless was the right thing to do. And the player of the dead character felt the same way. The only time in PFS when I was thanked after the game by a player for killing a character as having created an epic death moment.
Off course it helped that the dead character was played by an experienced player and wasn't his first (or second) character and the hapless bystander 'causing' the death was a brand new player - learning that PFS can be deadly.
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I don't disagree with anything posted. I do have to say that certain spells ask to be coupled with things like coup de grace. For example, hold person. This spell doesn't last long, and makes the person helpless for probably less than 1 round to maybe 2 rounds. This is why hold person is scary, really scary. With that said, the party has always stopped my monsters from getting a coup de grace off.
With that said, you get some table variation on the length that a coup de grace takes. With 90% or so of GMs it's a full round action, and is resolved like a normal full round action such a full attack, run, or withdraw. With 10% or so, they treat a coup de grace as a 1 round action, like a 1 round spell. I've never seen these 10% of DMs treat other full round actions like 1 round spells, which I guess is to discourage coup de gracing at their tables.
Coup de grace is a very viable tactic for GMs. If you wish to scare your players but not instantly kill someone, hold someone that is more than a 5 foot step away from an enemy so the enemy is forced to move over to them. Another option is to make sure that the players know that the enemy is within a 5 foot step of coup de gracing their friend, but make sure the other monster isn't next in the initiative order, or is within reach of a melee pc who could somehow stop them. Especially new people need this information.
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Every time I coup de graced I annouced it the turn before. I am not a ruthless DM, but if players do not protect eachother then someone may die. It is a team game not a 4 individuyals vs the world. A coup de grace provokes and thus someone can disarm or grapple the person shutting down the attempt.Can't grapple as an AOO without Grab feature.
Could sunder, disarm, trip as the AoO with varying degrees of utility.
Could reposition, bull rush, or grapple before they get there, probably giving them a better target than the vulnerable PC.
The problem with trip is that a -4 to attack won't matter when it's an auto-hit and auto-confirm.
The problem with disarm, and really any maneuver, is if you don't have the Improved Feat you'l provoke, and any damage from the AoO will add to their CMD. So you may end up doing nothing.
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Just be careful you don't throw him off a cliff by mistake...unconscious is treated as 0 str 0 dex and both factor to CMD, so effective +14 to your normal maneuver.You don't reposition the coup de gracer, you reposition the victim.Yeah, that should work. And with a +4 bonus to your attack and a -5 penalty to the helpless body's CMD, you should be able to get a few extra squares out of that.
Can't reposition into a square that would be dangerous (like off a cliff).
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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[idea]If you can't reposition someone into a dangerous area, then just have the barbarian grab a gnome and start repositioning him back and forth as you walk down the hall. This is called "searching for traps". Any trapped area will be dangerous, and your reposition will suddenly fail. Take measures to get around that spot, then continue the gnome-reposition-sweep.[/idea]
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 16
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The problem with disarm, and really any maneuver, is if you don't have the Improved Feat you'l provoke, and any damage from the AoO will add to their CMD. So you may end up doing nothing.
Opponents won't automatically take their AoO every time. Unless they have Combat Reflexes, they know that using their attack of opportunity (and being "drawn out of position to strike again") leaves them vulnerable to further combat maneuvers.
Fortunately, many foes aren't bright enough to think of that, so they'll take their attack of opportunity when you move past them and take them into flank. This leaves them unable to stop your disarm attempt.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Me like trap find idea. Me not work with gnome or halfling much, though, so me not have right tool to "Jiggy search" area.
Ha! I love it!
Maybe next time my local VC is GMing, I'll keep a straight face while I announce that I'm "Jiggy-searching", then watch his reaction as I explain it.
Bonus points if Andy (or Jon, my other local VL) is at the same table and pretends to insist it works. ;)
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Me like trap find idea. Me not work with gnome or halfling much, though, so me not have right tool to "Jiggy search" area.Ha! I love it!
Maybe next time my local VC is GMing, I'll keep a straight face while I announce that I'm "Jiggy-searching", then watch his reaction as I explain it.
Bonus points if Andy (or Jon, my other local VL) is at the same table and pretends to insist it works. ;)
Only if you can convince Dianna to let you do that with Juju Jenko
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Both drag and reposition only state that "foes" and "opponents" are valid targets. Further, only "enemies" dragged do not provoke attacks of opportunity when moved.
Additionally, if an opponent provokes by beginning a coup d'grace maneuver, only they are a valid target -- not their victim who did not provoke. Dragging or repositioning the attacker away from your ally is a legitimate way to save them from a coupe d'grace. Dragging your ally is not.
I can't buy that ... if I'm next to my buddy and not the bad guy who is about to slash his throat, doesn't it make sense for me to grab my buddy and pull him back? Why wouldn't that be allowed?
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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1) This may be the right time for the simmering irritation I hold for my companion's annoying tendency to pick his teeth after meals to explode into a full-bloom hatred and malice. One of us will die today, and my sense of mealtime propriety demands that I retain the right to kill him myself.
2) There's a teamwork feat that allows people to switch places with an ally as a move action.
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Contributor
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...It seems very anti-player to not have any way to move your paralyzed/unconscious/stunned ally out of danger. What mechanism would you suggest?
If the Combat Maneuvers aren't valid mechanics for moving paralyzed/unconscious/stunned allies—and Will Johnson's argument that they aren't seems sound to me—then the only thing to do might be what I always do in these situations and turn to that most well-thumbed of Core Rulebook pages, 183, and trusty old Table 8-2: Actions in Combat.
Reviewing it, the closest thing I see that works is "Move a heavy object" or possibly "Pick up an item" depending on unfortunately non-defined values for "heavy" and "item." But, both are Move actions that provoke Attacks of Opportunity, and I think I could figure out a ruling for these situations based on those table entries and the would-be rescuer's current encumbrance and carrying capacity.