"Coup de Grace: As a full-round action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace (pronounced “coo day grahs”) to a helpless opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are adjacent to the target. You automatically hit and score a critical hit."
the Cleric held hostage would be considered helpless.... etc.. 40 damage is nothing for a 10th level char.
other items:
Han solo shot first - surprise round rules, allow sneak attack, etc.
hostage situation - coup de grace rules
castle guard - sneak/stealth, sneak attack (guards are normally low level and can easily die to a decent attack.
fireball on a banquet - most citizens are low level...
I think the rules pretty much has everything covered. not sure your issue
TxSam88 is right about the coup de grace. Not only is the coup de grace an automatic critical the target has to make a fortitude save of 10 + damage dealt or die outright. Even a character with 100 HP may have trouble surviving a coup de grace from a lower-level character. A character with a long sword with a +3-damage bonus will do on the average 15 HP, but the target now has to make a DC 25 fortitude save or die. If the cleric has a 14 CON that gives her a 10% chance of surviving even if she has 40 HP. If the damage is above average or the cleric has less than a 14 CON, she needs to roll a 20 to survive.
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I think their understanding of the rules is just fine, Alex. They're simply responding to the scenario you presented.
You brought up the coup de grace. If the NPC isn't bound or pinned (the latter assumes the BBEG has the Throat Slicer feat) to begin with in this scenario, then CDG is a moot point.
Nor are they assuming anything about the attacker-target dynamic. You said the BBEG is 10th level, and that the NPC is 5th level. They've both pointed out that, if this specific BBEG is performing a coup de grace on that specific NPC, it's going to be very difficult for her to survive.
If the BBEG has lackluster physical ability scores and/or is trying to perform a coup de grace with a weapon that is likely to do very little damage (and thus limit the Fortitude save to something easily achievable to the NPC), then--with respect--you should probably provide that information in advance.
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@Alex_Iscariot you don’t seem to have a grasp of what the game is trying to simulate. RPG are not trying to simulate reality, they are trying to simulate movies and stories. Players are supposed to be the heroes of the story, not the ordinary Joe on the street. From the sounds of it you are building your NPCs using the same guidelines as the PC’s.
An NPC 5th level cleric with a basic NPC Array and favored class bonus into skills will have about 19 HP not 40. This assumes an 8 STR, 10 DEX, 9 CON, 11 INT, 16 WIS, and 12 CHA.
You also specified out of combat. A character in a grapple is not out of combat. You are trying to fix something that is a design feature not a problem. A 1st level warrior is not supposed to be a challenge for a group of 5th level characters.
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Thank you, your grand experience has done nothing but led me to believe that a Coup de Grace can be performed on someone that isn't helpless. My players will be thrilled when a level 1 rouge runs up to them and Coup de Graces their high level characters because the rules mean nothing anymore.
Helpless: A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (–5 modifier). Melee attacks against a helpless target get a +4 bonus (equivalent to attacking a prone target). Ranged attacks get no special bonus against helpless targets. Rogues can sneak attack helpless targets.
Yes there are rules for grapple (confusing, frustrating, group breaking rules) but the progression really is quite clear. Is person A helples yes/no, if yes then you can coup de gras, if no then you can't.
Your own original post say's "Example: The BBEG (LV10) has the party's beloved Cleric NPC (LV5) held hostage before the fight" now either they are constantly trying to break out of a grapple i.e. in combat not out of it or they are restrained and unable to escape putting them in the held, bound or "otherwise completely at an opponents mercy". Possibly the first one but definately the last one as you have said they are at the BBEG's mercy long enough for entire social scenes to occur.
This is admitedly a DM field judgement but you did make it fairly clear in this case the hostage is at the BBEG's mercy. You don't have to be sleeping, paralyzed, tied up to be helpless. Its not even a gray area like being grappled by a being so much stronger/other benefit you have no chance of escaping and whether that's helpless.
Thank you, your grand experience has done nothing but led me to believe that a Coup de Grace can be performed on someone that isn't helpless. My players will be thrilled when a level 1 rouge runs up to them and Coup de Graces their high level characters because the rules mean nothing anymore.
Then you don’t understand what is being said to you.
A character cannot, under the rules as written, perform a coup de grace on another character who is merely being held prisoner. Nor can he do that to someone merely grappled. A coup de grace can only be performed on a character who is helpless, which involves one or more specific conditions—or the GM’s fiat. The Throat Slicer feat reduces that requirement to a character being pinned.
If you don’t like the odds of your NPC dying from a coup de grace, then don’t put her in a situation where she can be classified as helpless. It’s literally that simple.
I also think people aren't really reading my initial situation correctly and think that I am trying to CDG the cleric in the example.
To be clear:
A grappled person is not helpless. Period. The grappled condition and the helpless condition are two separate things.
In my example, the cleric (or anyone to be honest) is being held in a grapple by the BBEG. To add tension to the situation, I am asking for input from other DM's in making the scenario more dangerous.
Using the rules of the game, the most the BBEG can do is make one free attack on their victim, using an unarmed attack, natural attack, or a light or one handed weapon. Unless the BBEG is a rogue, this damage is minor. Because the damage is minor, there is no tension in the scene, no risk to the players that their friend might die, because the rules of the game made an unrealistic result of what is supposed to be an intense situation.
Now obviously if combat started and the cleric was still grappled, the rules would continue because they would try to break away when it was their turn, and the BBEG would be distracted by other combatants rushing him. Up until that point though, cinematically, his sword to the throat of the cleric should be much more dangerous than RAW.
*And while Throat Slicer is a fun feat, it would require the cleric to be bound (by rope or something similar) or pinned, neither of those are done by simply being grappled.
Before combat the cleric is not "grappled" - they are held, if they are held, they are helpless. helpless people can indeed be CDG'd
Your description of the encounter is the classic one where the party opens the door and the BBEG is standing there with helpless maiden held in front of him with a knife at her neck. In this scenario she is "Held" which is one of the possible states which causes then to be "helpless"
The BBEG has a readied action to CDG when/if the party initiates combat.
So before combat begins, he can indeed kill the held person and most likely kill them.
""Helpless
A helpless character is paralyzed, __held__, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (–5 modifier). Melee attacks against a helpless target get a +4 bonus (equivalent to attacking a prone target). Ranged attacks get no special bonus against helpless targets. Rogues can sneak attack helpless targets.
As a full-round action, an enemy can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless foe. An enemy can also use a bow or crossbow, provided he is adjacent to the target. The attacker automatically hits and scores a critical hit. (A rogue also gets his sneak attack damage bonus against a helpless foe when delivering a coup de grace.) If the defender survives, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or die. Delivering a coup de grace provokes attacks of opportunity.
Creatures that are immune to critical hits do not take critical damage, nor do they need to make Fortitude saves to avoid being killed by a coup de grace.""
Yep, under the Helpless condition, which also mentions how CDG works.
And yes, the requires GM caveat to determine the difference between Held and grappled. The main point being "completely at an opponents mercy" which is pretty much the scenario you describe.
Alex, a lot of what you're asking about is going to come down to GM determination precisely because the game is not a comprehensive simulation. I'd humbly offer that a lot of this will also vary depending on each specific situation... and that in many (if not most) cases you'll have the power to set the stage and thus plan in advance for what systems make most sense for you.
Yes, these systems will need to be scaled to your party's requirements. Past a certain level, falling down a 3-story building stops being potentially deadly, for example. Accordingly, you may find that things like falling damage need to be adjusted. The same can be said about a number of other sources of non-combat damage: when the amount involved becomes nothing more than an inconvenience... you have to make it more than that. Let the players how you want, e.g., suffocation to work if you want it to be more stressful than "with a CON of 11, I can fight for 11 rounds before I have to start making CON checks."
The same holds for empowering PCs. If the whole point of the game is to focus less on tactical, round-by-round combat, the rules may not offer as much support... but the game itself empowers you to adjust them to what makes sense. If, for example, you don't feel that low-level/low-HP NPCs best capture the cinematic flavor of a rogue stealthily slaying opponents, you, as the GM, can decide whether or not a guard with an exposed neck, and whose back is turned to an unnoticed rogue, is any less helpless than a sleeping individual.
To your more specific situation, you're right... at this point I'm genuinely not sure what you're driving at with the coup de grace. With respect, on the one hand you say people are incorrectly thinking you are trying to coup de grace the cleric NPC... but then you talk about how she can't be coup de grace'd, and then argue that not enough damage would be done for it to matter. From my perspective, it certainly seems as if we're talking about the feasibility of the BBEG performing a coup de grace on the cleric, the likelihood of that killing her, and thus this serving as a source of tension/worry/concern for the PCs. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry for contributing to the confusion.
If I'm not wrong, however, you, as the GM, get to decide just how helpless the cleric is. You're describing her as being grappled, which means the PCs have arrived while she is struggling against the BBEG, who has the upper hand against her but is not in complete control (as evidenced by the two still grappling with each other). In reality, the cleric could be pinned, tied up, or hanging upside down from the ceiling with her entire body wrapped in adamantine chains and the BBEG's life-stealing dagger pressed against her throat. It's your choice. But even if it's just a guy with a Strength score of 14 and a plain old short sword, if he coup de grace'd her, the DC would be an average of 21--giving the cleric a 20% chance of making it (or better if she has a Constitution bonus). If, on the other hand, he's using a punching dagger, a hand-axe, or another weapon with a x3 crit multiplier, the average DC becomes 26 and the cleric most likely needs a natural 20 to survive.
The rules aren't going to help you there, really. There've been past discussions of it, and they largely boil down to the coup de grace stuff above, and plain GM fiat. At some point, though, it comes down to realizing that some types of story beats just won't work well in Pathfinder, especially at higher levels.
If you want that moment to have dramatic tension, just stabbing the NPC won't cut it. They need to be doing something grand enough that the PCs can't deal with it. A scroll of Destruction or Disintegrate. Drop them into a a vat of acid. Banish them to another plane. Feed them to a pack of werewolves. Anything that doesn't rely on something as mundane as stabbing someone to death.
You'll hit a point where the PCs have the spells and resources they need to raise the dead, at which point most hostage scenarios lose a lot of their tension. Travel will become moot due to teleportation or flight. Long before that, most 'PCs vs. environment' stories are trivialized by Endure Elements and the like. You'll need to up the stakes beyond what would be a threat to normal humans like you and me.
Exactly!You are not wrong, and I think that is where it comes to a matter of balance. I'd like my players to be able to rely on the same rules being applied no matter whose side it is. The GM playing the BBEG shouldn't have an unfair rule advantage over the player who wants to do the exact same thing a couple sessions later when the tables are turned.
I think the thing to remember here is that “fair” and “unfair” come down to what the GM is trying to achieve in a given situation. In this case, the coup de grace is simply a vehicle used to convey the imminent deadly threat the BBEG holds over the beloved NPC. Whether it is a direct equivalent to when the PCs try to use a coup de grace as a threat to enemy in NPCs is entirely hypothetical. What really matters in that moment is whether it drives the rogue to end the threat without entering conventional combat (in which the PCs have no guarantee of getting to the BBEG before he slices the cleric’s throat).
Now, if the PCs capture an important NPC, for example, and use him as a human shield to get out of some dire situation by putting him in an equally helpless position and threatening to kill him… AND the people they’re facing have a reason to care about their captive, that’s when you have a thematic obligation (IMHO) to treat the scenario the same way you hoped your PCs would.
The BBEG having someone tied in chains with a life-stealing dagger at their throat is only going to have one outcome (for the most part). I want to put a situation into play where the players' choices, whether they try to use diplomacy to talk down the BBEG or give time for the rogue to sneak around to try pulling the helpless victim away, have an ultimate affect of the outcome.
I completely get that. The point of the examples I gave was to illustrate that you, as the GM, have the power to make the NPC as helpless as you like, not to advocate for an unavoidable outcome. The point is that you’re not obligated to start at the grappled condition. It’s up to you to determine how helpless the NPC needs to be to (A) make the threat of death at the hands of the NPC plausible and (B) force an outcome other than “roll for initiative!”
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Depending on level you could have the cleric already dead and her soul in a soulstone. The party do as told they get her soul back to raise dead, otherwise well good luck finding the lead lined box its hidden in. However as others have said the game simply doesn't lend itself to certain plots past a certain point because its not intended for gritty harsh combat. There are other systems that do that better. DnD/Pathfinder is more for high fantasy and people who are more than human. I think you want more lord of the rings where a highly skilled warrior takes three arrows to the chest and dies while pathfinder that only works at lower levels after that the guy laughs, beheads his foes and drinks a potion before heading on to face the real threat of an elder wyrm red dragon as he wants some spending money for another seaside castle.
Either your going to need to do what one GM I had did when they told a player "NO! You cant' stick a short sword in your head and hide it with a top hat as a concealed weapon. I don't care that it does d6 and you have 10 HP, HP are an abstract representation of your ability to avoid damage, if you stick the sword in your head your not avoiding damage and will kill yourself." or work with the system to figure out ways to still challenge your party.
The wrinkle in all this is that Pathfinder is based on a system that generally doesn't want a PC to one-shot something of comparable power. I do think the game can accommodate much of what you're asking for, but it needs to be re-tooled to some degree. It also comes down to how invested your players are in shaping their characters to succeed in a more clandestine setting.
A lot of what you're asking comes down to how you want to adjudicate four key things:
1. The stealth skill
2. The surprise round
3. When someone is helpless
4. "Environmental" damage
Furthermore, you might take into consideration more niche aspects of the game, and certain optional rules:
1. Poisons, and to what extent they can either facilitate death, unconsciousness, silence--or otherwise stopping the target from getting to the "roll for initiative" phase of the game
2. The grappling combat maneuver (and associated feats), and to what extent its rules set can be used to simulate related effects--like keeping someone from shouting out an alarm or garroting them
3. The optional Called Shots rules--and to what extent they can add another dimension to the effects the PCs are trying to inflict on opponents
If you really want the players to be worried about the consequences of combat, drop the Armor as DR and Wound Threshold rules on them, or even Gritty Mode.