We were fighting a fast healing boss, and the boss went down pretty quickly. There were still some minions to deal with, but the boss had a nasty attack I was worried about, and I couldn't see his initiative because the GM seemingly hid the token (I've had a GM do that before). I saw an opportunity to bring the boss from dying 1 straight to dying 4, preventing him from getting another turn.
The other players shut me down on the basis that attacking an unconscious creature is evil, and that PFS1e even called it out as warranting infamy. I tried countering that this creature has demonstrated his fast healing, so attacking him before he recovers is kind of the whole point. Like staking a vampire before he wakes up.
It ended up being moot when the GM chimed in and said that the token wasn't hidden. The boss was actually dead since the GM didn't use the dying rules for that creature. That is his prerogative, but I thought fast healing creatures were meant to use the dying rules.
So two questions:
1) Is attacking fast healing creatures while they are down often considered morally wrong?
2) How often do GMs have fast healing creatures just die at zero Hit Points?
Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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There's no hard and fast rule saying that attacking a downed creature is infamy-worthy: The question is extremely context sensitive.
1)
I think it boils down to: "Is the creature still a threat? If yes, stabbing it again should be fine."
If it's some sort of bloodthirsty monster that attacked you just to kill and eat you (not necessarily in that order) like a trollhound or something, you kinda do have to kill it even though it's unconscious because it will just renew it's attack.
Is it a reasonable creature that you could probably negotiate with and that might surrender, but still clearly hostile for no good cause? Seems like a grey area, like Aspis agents or bandits or enemy soldiers: They are the instigators, and you can't be sure they won't fireball you the moment they open their eyes, despite the fact that they probably should realise they've lost and they should surrender.
Is it an intelligent creature that's not directly hostile but the conflict is more of a misunderstanding/you're the instigators? Such as you got framed, or the guards assume you are up to no good, or society sends you to smuggle stuff into/out of a country, or the attackers are misinformed/controlled/confused? Probably not a good idea to stab them when they are down.
2)
Hard to say, "how often". I think it depends on the situation. Does the team have some other healer and/or does the fast healing creature have access to additional healing? Maybe it could get up, as there is a chance it could get back into the fight. Does it have to rely on just the fast healing to continue the battle? Probably would not get up, because it would: Spend an action picking up a weapon, spend another to get up, probably a third to either attack once or move - and the next hit is going to drop them back down anyway. An intelligent combatant would probably just surrender at that point.
There's a flipside to this coin, though: If your action (to stab an unconscious creature) is BAD, then leaving them to die should be equally bad: the decision to take action or not to take action and whether they are the same is an age old philosophy question, and it could be argued that if you cause the creature to die because you stab it and that's BAD, then your allies choosing NOT TO HEAL/STABILIZE the creature and cause it's death that way should be equally BAD.
There are exceptions, but generally speaking: If I'd give you infamy for 'ensuring that the creature is dead', then it implies that you the pathfinders aren't supposed to kill those creatures, and I'd apply the same infamy for the PCs that intentionally attack with lethal force or that fail to prevent them from dying. I would absolutely use the dying rules in that instance to give the PCs a fair chance to save the dying NPCs.
For context, the boss was a legacy red cap, established multiple times within the scenario to be pure evil. But my questions were not specific to the one scenario.
Thanks Tomppa for your response. Very intensive.
And was attacking unconscious creatures explicitly defined in the rules as an evil act?
Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Toledo
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It's not an evil act to give an enemy a quick/merciful death, it's responsible. I have several LG characters (paladins, warpriests, monks and clerics) that make it a standard practice to ensure that those who oppose them are put down for good.
And yes it is ultimately the GM's call as others have said.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Finland—Turku
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Yeah, no. Killing defenseless people that you've already incapacitated isn't Good, and a paladin that murders people after they've already won the fight would be at risk of alignment shift and falling from grace. Of course, this is extremely context sensitive - in some situations/opponents it can be justified - but as a general rule, you shouldn't kill people that no longer pose a threat, especially as pathfinders Are Not a judge & jury & executioner. Does the paladin also kill enemies that have surrendered? No? What makes it Okay to kill an unconscious person but Not Okay to kill one that surrenders?
It's a complex issue within an RPG, though: In combat, it's reasonable and expected to kill your opponent as they are trying to kill you. After combat, patching up your downed foes and tying them up brings up all sorts of other issues, such as: If you're in the wilderness and just leave them there tied up and they die, are you responsible for the deaths? Bringing them with you will become a logistics problem. Killing them once they've surrendered is clearly murder and not Okay.
These are probably some of the reasons why 2e just assumes that any opponent that hits 0 hp dies, and when enemies surrender or get captured, the aftermath of prisoner handling is often just handwaived.
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Just to point out that it's not so clear cut/one rule fits all situations:
Torag - anathema to show mercy to the enemies of your people
Ragathiel - edict to destroy evil doers
Mother vulture - edict to kill without mercy if it benefits your community
Kalekot - edict kill the guilty to protect the innocent
And you can have Champions (and Paladins) of any of those.