Why beat a dead horse?

[alexandraerin]

I've described the Inn Campaign as being story-heavy and roleplay-heavy, and I'm going to be playing around with things in order to try to encourage more of a narrative flow in the game even during battles. To this end, I've written a blog post on the Wizards of the Coast community site about the different ways an enemy, reduced to zero hit points, may be "defeated". It might be useful reading for anyone who doesn't see their characters as "fight to the death" types.

The TL;DR summary is that when I'm DMing and you reduce an enemy to 0 HP, your choices for what this means aren't normally limited to "dead" or "unconscious". The enemy can be disarmed, pinned to the wall, forced to concede your superiority... there are no skill checks or "called shot" penalties involved because the net result is the same as it always is when an enemy drops to 0 HP: it's out of the fight.

What happens after the fight can be different depending upon what state you leave an opponent in, but the immediate result is as tautological as long cat being long or (if you roll high enough on your Nature check to realize this) cave bears living in caves: defeated enemy is defeated.

Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

This has a lot in common with a post on another LJ I follow, here: http://robin-d-laws.livejournal.com/431755.html

[imaginedechoes.livejournal.com]

I plan to make use of this!

[luke-licens.livejournal.com]

This actually brings up another set of issues, particularly with Good aligned parties. Namely, "What do you do with the prisoners after you're done with them?" Granted, this is the sort of thing that should get resolved through roleplay, but it should also be something players consider before they decide to spare the enemy.

It's one thing to slay the foe in the heat of battle, it's something else to leave them bleeding out or unconcious in the Desert of Despair, it's another thing entirely to slaughter a helpless prisoner, and it's generally a bad idea to let them go on their merry way after you finish questioning them and they know how much you know (or don't know).

I think I've got a big ranty post in here, somewhere, but maybe I should save it for my own journal, instead of holding a discertation in your comments. I'll link it if I ever get it sorted out. ;)