My group rarely has the players announce that they're outright killing all the enemies, but we assume that to be the case unless stated otherwise. Basically it's a "We don't want enemies coming back to bother us easily" sort of thing. We don't want to have to state that we're killing everything because that makes us feel bad, but after an incident years ago where one GM TPK the party because of an enemy they didn't explicitly kill that really wanted vengeance...and well now they all die unless stated otherwise.
Some scars never heal.
But what you're doing sounds fine. You're not setting up conditions to kill the PCs, you're just making the game world more interesting. Sure you've toughened up the enemy, but the players are also tougher and can in theory handle the challenge. You're not ambushing the PCs in a place filled with traps that they thought should be safe and orchestrating a (derailing) TPK end to the campaign.
This is 100% not a problem for my current table...
They burn EVERYTHING.
Corpses are looted, piled, and burned. Everything from bandits to trolls. Doesn't really matter to them... if they had to fight it and it is still there after the battle, it is burned.
As is most of gear that they don't take as loot.
If anything, my table is borderline TOO thorough.
I think a stabilized and recovered enemy adds to the campaign - if you pull that only once or twice. The trope of the reoccuring villain gets annoying if used too often, and you might want to reserve some uses for other forms of comeback: Raise dead, undeath, teleportation etc..
And personally, I'd make the comeback after stabilization a rather easy (but hopefully otherwise interesting) encounter. No need to teach my players to kill all survivors and destroy all corpses - I don't want this kind of gore in my campaign.
It doesn't have to be explicitly stated or explained in detail, if you don't want extra gore.
My table rarely describes what they are doing other than making hand motions for dumping out a bottle with some "bloops" and then someone says "whoosh"... I am aware that they are dumping oil and then setting it alight, and we move on without me screaming for all the bodies that weren't fully dead.
It is only as gorey as you make it.
I think a stabilized and recovered enemy adds to the campaign - if you pull that only once or twice. The trope of the reoccuring villain gets annoying if used too often, and you might want to reserve some uses for other forms of comeback: Raise dead, undeath, teleportation etc..
And personally, I'd make the comeback after stabilization a rather easy (but hopefully otherwise interesting) encounter. No need to teach my players to kill all survivors and destroy all corpses - I don't want this kind of gore in my campaign.
BBEG in my campaign we're regularly killed, then raised as a zombie, then killed again, and the corpse burned, and the ashes dissolved in acid.
We didn't want anything less than a True Resurrection being able to bring someone back, so we'd definitely "salt the earth" so to speak. Once we were able we did things like trap the soul. Once we even killed them, hauled their corpse back with us, cast raise dead on them (they decided that yes it would be a good idea), and then we cast flesh to stone on them repeatedly until they failed. And then hid their statue on an antimagic demiplane.
We do not f&@* around. We may also have trust issues.
Edit: To clarify, we didn't create the demiplane, just used it as a repository. We weren't high enough level to have trap the soul yet, and this was the best alternative we could find.
The rule of thumb seems to be you don't track neg hp unless it's an important npc or the like. Second edition (which handles dying differently, but also doesn't have player characters die as soon as they get to 0 hp) explicitly says to just have most NPCs die at 0, but I don't think it says in first.
As DM, I find it humorous when one member of the party wants to keep at least one stabilized but below zero hp enemy around to heal and question, but other members of the party (usually the rear guard) get enthusiastic about mopping up all the downed enemies. Then the party "leader" returns from chasing down the last of the bad guys, ready to question some enemies, only to find that the party has killed them all. "I thought we were going to save some for questioning?" "Ooops!"
They also squirm a little about what to do with foes after they've interrogated them. Its like, its fine to kick open a door or invade a monster's hunting grounds, encounter them, and obliterate that monster right off, but if said monster is helpless at the players' mercy they don't exhibit the same level of murderhobo tendencies.
I know we're getting a little off topic here, but my groups constantly struggle with this issue. My groups are all predominantly good, and usually there is at least one Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good character in the mix. This situation results in the party debating if they should just kill prisoners (all the Chaotic characters try to justify this course of action), release them with some type of promise to leave the area ("or the next time I see you, no mercy!"), or try to take them to whatever 'authorities' are around. I usually treat the first action as evil (not Chaotic) and don't let them do that unless they start to slide towards evil (which has other consequences), the second has mixed results (usually better if the enemies are Lawful), and the last doesn't work well if the "authorities" are days and days of overland travel away. But we have this problem all the time, in every group I've run or played in, for the past thirty years.
I think the session we had on Sunday is illuminating.
The party:
- Lawful good elf animal/healing cleric. Tries, with varying degrees of success, to be the voice of conscience for the duo. Yes, this is a two-player game.
- Sometimes, a neutral good "pixie" (reflavored gnome with magical wings) conjurer.
Don't you dare tell her she's anything other than a pixie, though.
This is the Evoker's rules of engagement.
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1. If you are not a PC or class pet creature, you are obligated to act productively in combat, even against self-interest, unless explicitly ordered otherwise.
2. Enemies must never be allowed to retreat, unless it cannot be prevented. After all, even the dumbest animal that's been driven off MAY be simply going to fetch reinforcements.
3. All defeated enemies will first be considered for possible enslavement Diplomacy checks to recruit, with all allies in a threatening position in case "revival equals gratitude" doesn't do the trick. This is why I said ostensibly lawful good.
4. All defeated enemies will be considered for their valuable loot and body parts. Also for food value, if such food would be eaten by civilized humanoids.
5. Everything else will be burned. If fire will not burn, then use acid (unless they're cultists of Jubilex, in which case acid would be ironically respectful.) He often forgets to allow dead creatures to be used for food for his interminable menagerie.
----
Also, regardless of the actual situation, the Evoker also has a tendency to decide what an encounter's reward is, and to work exclusively toward that even if doing so would be chaotic evil. But that's a story for another time.
Once we even killed them, hauled their corpse back with us, cast raise dead on them (they decided that yes it would be a good idea), and then we cast flesh to stone on them repeatedly until they failed. And then hid their statue on an antimagic demiplane.
We do not f%!% around. We may also have trust issues.
Edit: To clarify, we didn't create the demiplane, just used it as a repository. We weren't high enough level to have trap the soul yet, and this was the best alternative we could find.
Now I want to use this as a backdrop. The PCs stumble across this demiplane centered around a castle keep that's filled with old statues. As they hunt for their macguffin, they start to make their knowledge checks identifying the statues as statues of villains that disappeared after they encountered a legendary adventuring party that's now retired or that was killed. If they figure out what the statues are, they could realize that one of the villains should have a key piece of lost information that they need for the current adventuring party's overarching quest.
My table also has a habit of eating fallen enemies.
Essentially, no matter what, it gets purged with fire. Sometimes it even gets consumed afterwards.
Quite thorough, they are...
Now I want to use this as a backdrop. The PCs stumble across this demiplane centered around a castle keep that's filled with old statues. As they hunt for their macguffin, they start to make their knowledge checks identifying the statues as statues of villains that disappeared after they encountered a legendary adventuring party that's now retired or that was killed. If they figure out what the statues are, they could realize that one of the villains should have a key piece of lost information that they need for the current adventuring party's overarching quest.Once we even killed them, hauled their corpse back with us, cast raise dead on them (they decided that yes it would be a good idea), and then we cast flesh to stone on them repeatedly until they failed. And then hid their statue on an antimagic demiplane.
We do not f%!% around. We may also have trust issues.
Edit: To clarify, we didn't create the demiplane, just used it as a repository. We weren't high enough level to have trap the soul yet, and this was the best alternative we could find.
Well, we did definitely fill it the demiplane with statues. It just sort of became routine because we didn't want to risk anyone coming back to haunt us.
So basically every group's leader we encountered got turned to stone and locked away. There were probably hundreds of statues of enemies.
Most of them probably weren't that dangerous to us as we continued to level and they didn't...but the whole idea was to never give them an opportunity.
It comes up a fair amount when I'm gaming. I have a lot of GMs who like to have their bad guys recover and Raise each other, so making sure they are dead and won't come back is often a concern. I have had a character that was a Cavalier, Order of the Penitent, so she would make sure we DIDN'T finish off most of the monsters.
You actually played a Penitent Cavalier? And played it right? Wow. I only see Order of the Penitent come up in super cheesy BS builds that all but completely ignore the premise of the Order... most of them are quite the opposite, in fact, and are focused on CdG/Throat Slicer-type nonsense.
You deserve a firm handshake and commendation.