I play smart NPCs

>I play smart NPCs
>enemies always fight to the death, never surrender or run away and throw themselves onto PC's swords like lemmings

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It takes a smart person to know they'd never get away alive when fighting a PC, even IF they surrender.

fpbp

Whenever my mooks get hit they crumple. Just last session, one of my players was surrounded by mooks and got out unscathed because of a couple lucky rolls. They were grappled and everything.

Highlights of that encounter were:
Bear familiar biting the bandits in the dick
Metal Elementalist using a move metal spell to drive someone's axe into their own forehead
Killing some big ass dude in two turns.

Then they should remind the PCs that executing a prisoner of war is an evil action. Even basic mooks have preservation instincts and families.

>"It was self defense! It's okay if I kill them!"

My players don't give a fuck. There aren't any alignments for them to align with in GURPS

>not crafting scenarios where enemies can use suicide bomber tactics to kill of PCs to keep them from getting to cocky

You can't break Geneva Conventions in setting that has no Geneva to begin with. "no quarter" has been viable military practice for centuries and it's equally fit for any fantasy setting

That sounds like a really fun videogame.

>executing a prisoner of war is an evil action
When you're 3 weeks from the nearest civilized town and moving through territory infested with dangerous monsters you don't have the luxury of taking prisoners.
You can either kill people or let them run free.
Binding their arms and legs and leaving them behind amounts to killing them, possibly in a much more gruesome way than a clean execution would. Allowing them to leave without their arms might result in their deaths too, but at least it gives them a chance. However, it also gives them a chance to come back and attack you when you're sleeping.

>no artificial alignments
>video game

If anything alignments make it MORE like a video game.

Is this the part where you pretend that good treatment of prisoners was invented in the 1900's and was never practised, encouraged or praised prior to that time?

>my character has no moral code because there aren't any rules for it
How plebby.

The point I'm making is that a group of bandits will want to stay alive. If they get in a fight they can't handle, they'll run away or surrender, or maybe offer to share their profits or some crucial information on the next location. They aren't video game enemies waiting to give their XP and loot to the party, they're part of a living world.

Oh I agree completely. I always hate having to cut through every single moronic asshole who thinks that he'll fare better than his 20 friends who went before him.

If we're talking real life, that's obviously a hyperbole.
If we're talking in game, I'll double down on willful ignorance.

Bandits shouldn't really be attacking adventurers very much anyway.
The mere sight of plate armor or wizard staffs should put them on their toes. The chance of losing one or more of their friends should be more of a concern.
>But the adventurers look rich.
They also look well-armed.
Fucking animals are smarter than most random encounter bandits.

>he's never heard of aggro radii
>he's never heard of artistic license
>he's never heard of metanarrative contrast
Ha.

In real life the vast majority of armed conflicts end with most of one side retreating and prisoners being valuable for ransom

Correct. There are no meta rules for morality in GURPS because that's fucking stupid. Morality is subjective, and is enforced by members of the gameworld. I am playing dungeon fantasy, and some of the players do get divine powers, so if they betray their faith they get them taken away. But beyond that, the only "rule" is not to get caught because if my players get caught for any of the atrocities they commit it will be a noose about their necks: strung up for all to see.

>I ransom the guards for 50 XP each

>"I make smart and tactical NPCs, that's the key to my compelling stories"
>Just adds +10 to every roll and defense
Goddamn it

>Morality is subjective
Psshh... careful with those edges, kid *tips fedora*

>not awarding XP for winning the encounter regardless of tactics
>being this shit of a DM

>If your creatures always fight to the death, your games are too combat-oriented, and probably contain very little role playing. Morale is an important factor in all good roleplaying games.
- Frank Mentzer's Immortals box set, 1986

It's kind of interesting to see the death of the reaction and morale checks over the course of D&D's history, really. These days the assumption is pretty much always that you're attacked on sight and fight to the death.

Blame video games for that.

It is fairly subjective. Not too long ago, people thought that slavery was morally right and actually a SERVICE to the people enslaved. No telling how a fantasy world would really be. Perhaps it's a magicracy where wizards rule the world and deem non wizards as sub humans who deserve death because they are corrupt bastardizations of true men. To the wizards, it morally correct to stomp them into nothingness with fireballs. Perhaps even the gods agree wholeheartedly. How do you convey this with an alignment system?

>How do you convey this with an alignment system?
By not using the D&D alignment system?
Shit, you could use Morality from WoD.

My gm is surprisingly good about DND alignments, hell he even allowed a paladin to shift away from their designated alignment(which in this case was CG, paladin of freedom) on the basis that he was so overwhelmingly good that whatever force gave him his powers(didn’t worship a god) overlooked it. In a sea of piss sometimes people can properly use those shitty rules and not just lolyoufall or whatever.

Or not an alignment system at all, like GURPS. Which is what I use.

I mean D&D alignment is codified.
There is wiggle room for individual situations, but has a number of bullet marks defining XYZ situations.
In D&D, slavery, ie forceful bondage is evil, period, the only exception being if you are actively working to redeem the individual and treat them with the highest compassion.
flat out does not work, if you are following the precepts that D&D alignments espouse, so why are you trying to shoehorn it in?
I mean, hell, I did some redemption acts as a paladin in my last game, and the DM told me flat that it was a thin line to walk between trying to "redeem" them and holding a captive so I could brainwash them.

Smart enough to realize surrender isn't an option, but not smart enough to use that knowledge to make sure there's a back-up plan? Even if that back-up plan is just running away? The inherrent desire to live is strong, m8. There's a reason why it's called "fight or flight', not "fight and fight and fight some more".

That wasn't the question being asked, so why are you adding a meaningless comment?
The poster wants to use an alignment system, telling them not to is scarcely worth the time spent reading your shitpost.

True and it was only a shift from CG to NG so it wasn’t a very dramatic shift in the grand scheme of things but you are right about it generally being fairly rigid.

What poster wanted to use an alignment system? Are you following the same conversation that I was participating in? I was , , and .

I think I might go too far in the opposite direction.

>One mook gets one-shotted
>Other mooks just look
>Throw up their hands and say "fuck this, we're not getting paid enough"

See I wish my gm did stuff like that instead of enemies not having much character besides “bandit #5” or “officer of the law who just decides to run right at the party in an incredibly hostile manner while not indicating they are an officer” just to make us feel bad and fuck with the paladin.

One benefit of morale systems has always been that you can have huge-ass battles without it being much of a slog or excessively deadly through sheer force of numbers.

If you only need to kill half the goblins for the rest to flee, or even just one, then that makes it that much easier to defeat them. It also means that fighting forty goblins isn't necessarily that much more difficult than fighting four.

Nah, that's probably alright. You might want to stick in some tactical retreats and whatnot as well, and include individual mooks fleeing if they're wounded badly enough, but morale in general is good for games.

Just make sure that you don't have any other perverse incentives going on, like only giving XP for monsters that are killed. Ain't no way the PCs are going to let anyone go in that scenario.

Disgusting. Morality is subjective, but kindness isn't.

Eh mostly true but some may see mercy killing as a kindness while others see it simply as murder

Never said such. I don't like my players being evil, well not at first. But it grew on me as it never gets worse than "comically evil" (though there is some heavy manipulation, and there has been a few torture scenes). I was planning for a "good guy" campaign, or at least "Neutral"

But that's what happens when you don't set player expectation correctly.

This. My players even went out of the way to permanently cripple an NPC they captured and drag her around the city in a wheelchair. Getting into fights with PCs means you either kill them or die fighting. If they take you prisoner they usually just question you then chop you head off. Exception is my dad. He let goblins and kobolds go free without weapons, or brought them to town and tried to find work for them to do.

Yes, but what idiots would play such bloodthirsty characters?

90% of players.

>good treatment of prisoners
>bandits, raiders, pirates, or cultists being normal npcs that people fight
> prisoners of war....

Look being a bandit in most places gets you a summary execution. Being a religious non conformist that either picks a fight over that matter or has a fight picked with him over it is only a little better off then a bandit if they surrender.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sacred_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

If you are fighting someone who has a legitimate authority behind them then yes, taking them as a PoW makes sense. However when a plot line calls for war is it not very common to make a point that the other side is very very much in the wrong? You need to make the players have a reason for their PCs to care passed just money, right? There is a good chance that you as a DM have already removed legitimacy from the other side. They are the evil army of darkness that must be stopped at all cost.

Of course the players are going to kill the BBEG underlings at that point. It does not matter that they surrendered.

I play smart NPCs and they do run away.

>there's lots of differing ideas
>that means that none of them are right or wrong.
That's fucking retarded user. Just because there's different moral standards doesn't mean that there's not a right one. Relativists out.

>Exception is my dad. He let goblins and kobolds go free without weapons, or brought them to town and tried to find work for them to do.

Your dad is a good roleplayer. Your players, and you, are edgy cunts.

Oh fuck not this story again

>Forgiving people who dared try end your life and taking you away from the people that is most important to you (family, hometown, lovers)
Once you enter combat your life is forfeit, and nobody wants enemies you let go in hopes of being altruistic to turn up somewhere else later and cause more death or inconvenience.

>Once you enter combat your life is forfeit, and nobody wants enemies you let go in hopes of being altruistic to turn up somewhere else later and cause more death or inconvenience.
That sounds pretty convincing up until you realise that means every fight is war to the knife.
Remember what Sun Tzu said: Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.

>Binding their arms and legs and leaving them behind amounts to killing them, possibly in a much more gruesome way than a clean execution would
Not necessarily true. It's possible to bind someone such that they can get free after an hour or two of wiggling and rubbing against things.

In fact, if you don't watch or anchor someone, that's the likely outcome unless they're literally manacled. Most rope will not stand up to prolonged sawing with a rock.

You're right my dude, perhaps the exception to the rule would be to advise against fighting desperate opponents, there's no need to track people down who already got away

It's not universal, if your opponents don't have any idea who you are, your past deeds don't exactly matter.

Sort of. You don't get a second surrender out of people if you spoiled the first. You also don't get ANY surrender from a surrounded foe most of the time. Give your enemy an out, and push him just hard enough that he takes it. That way you're saved the expense of actually killing him.

Unless you can't afford to leave an enemy behind you.

I need to hear the rest of this.

Oh yes, trying to shunt something as nuanced as morality into a grid that more or less does nothing but track how much of an asshole you are is what makes tabletop games LESS like a video game.

We should all try to model our games after Bethesda and Bioware games, they know how to write good stories that truly immerse you in the atmosphere.

>huge-ass battles without it being much of a slog
I Run Reign a bit and most fun my players had was with mass battles once they figured out how the moral system worked with mooks. One of them took up a berserkerish fighting style where every kill was so brutal made a morale attack on anyone who could see so normally ended up forcing a bundle of mooks to run in terror every kill.

>he's never heard of common sense
>he's never heard of self-preservation
>he's never heard of basic cowardice
Ha.

I mean, maybe? If you're on an elite sneaking mission doing sentry removal, I suppose.
In ordinary overland movement type scenarios, beating the shit out of someone (with or without tying them up) usually takes the wind out of their sails sufficiently that they won't be able or willing to try again until your long gone (if ever).
Example: If you beat the shit out of one guy, his two mates will see that you're leaving him be on the floor, maybe run off, and come back for their compatriot later. They're not likely to do anything else. If you kill their wounded companion, they know you're fucking murderers and they won't try and show you their backs. Great, now you have to kill two whole dudes more.

Or they could go get more mates and try and ambush you. There's no universal solution to the problem.

I mean, if you hang around long enough, yeah. They're not catching you up with their friend all fucked up that's for sure. I mean, not unless you play some shitty game with instant healing.
Then you just have to meta the fuck out of your DM to get the edge.

Unironically, blame 3rd edition.

Earlier editions of D&D had you and the rest of the party playing a group of adventurers who delved into dank tombs and hidden cave systems purely for the promise of dosh, with combat being deadly to encourage people to skulk around and steal treasure than attempt to kill everything on sight (especially since monsters gave much less XP relative to the amount you'd get for treasure).

Nowadays though, combat is by far the default when it comes to earning XP, so the game had to account for this by making everyone more capable at combat, which ironically made fed into a lot of the reasons why martials are comparably weaker than their caster counterparts in terms numbers and versatility.

4e made this more obvious, which caused severe cognitive dissonance which put a lot of people off if they came off of 3rd edition while 5e successfully hid its more combat focused nature behind rules that were simpler and more narrative from a casual glance.

>trying to apply Sun Tzu to party combat
There's a reason he named it "The Art of War" instead of "The Art of Tactics." Sun Tzu wrote for generals, not lieutenants. None of his principles are applicable to a single fight between handfuls of men, where a single man's inclinations can redirect events entirely.

Yeah, they could also tell you to go fuck yourself and let their friend bleed out on the ground while they both gang up on you anyway

Bottom line is you really can't predict the way someone will behave unless you permanently incapacitate them somehow, and if you're in a messy fight where if you pull your punches you might just die by not facing reality and trying your best to kill them, then they might face it and kill you

*trying your best not to kill them

>Yeah, they could also tell you to go fuck yourself and let their friend bleed out on the ground while they both gang up on you anyway
Why?
>you really can't predict the way someone will behave unless you permanently incapacitate them somehow
Not true in a conversation, not true in bed, not true in a fight.

>executing a prisoner of war is an evil action
Says who? The Geneva Convention? Whats that?

You're the enemy, you'll have a chance to escape and kill us through attacking us or giving away vital info, and at the very least are a constant liability as we need to keep men to watch you and give you enough sustenance to not die. Killing you is neutral at worst, get fucked.

Slavery coupled with racism would put you squarely in Evil territory, much like how Orcs are usually Evil because they go out of their way to burn, rape, and pillage innocent villages because their god told them that everything that the humans had were stolen from them.

Now, if it were a caste system where slaves were treated fairly (as in, a master was expected to treat them like family, were not allowed to excessively harm them, etc.) kinda like how the Romans treated indentured servants and the like, then you might have a point.

The consequences for retreating might be worse than risking their lives trying to kill you.

>Doing difficult things makes it too hard to be Good
Get fucked yourself. "Good" implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Good characters make personal sacrifices to help others. That means taking in prisoners (those acting in good faith, anyway) and offering them succour.
Speaking of succour: yo momma.

They might be drunk, enraged, want revenge, people don't act rationally 100% of the time

The argument was never if keeping prisoners was good, it was whether or not killing them was evil.

Typical choir boys, unable to do anything without autistically screeching while holding their assholes agape and sucking themselves off.

However, people will generally not want to piss off someone who just cleaved their friend in twain in one swing out of self-preservation.

>Why
"Was that Tim? Man, fuck Tim. This is what you get for waking me up for watch by pouring cold soup on my crotch."

They might be all those things. They will also be SOUNDLY DEFEATED. You just don't have to execute them. If they surrender, as other anons said inconvenience them and move on. If they flee, they flee. They're not likely to catch you up when they're A) all fucked up from combat B) fleeing in some direction likely tangential to where you're going C) demoralised by knowing you can fuck them up.
If they do come back on you it's unlikely and a risky shot on their side. It's worth it in the long run to take the easy way out and let bandits run home to lick their wounds.

Plus: Bandits who've had their shit kicked in by you will leave you alone next time more often than not. New bandits moving into the same area will not know you from Adam and will attack for sure.

>bandits
>friends
Bandits should use tanglefoot bags, nets, ranged attacks, and numbers advantages against heavily armed PCs. They are self-serving opportunists. They are not calculating pussies who never fight properly or die because that shit is even more boring than the videogame move-into-melee-and-attack.

>killed some of their friends or family
>absolutely none, 0%, of them are going to try and come back for another fight
>can move faster than your army and meet up with allied forces and give details on what the experienced fighting your forces

Decapitate them all, put their heads on pikes to demoralize enemy forces and show that there is absolutely no mercy to those against you, move on, and conquer. Vlad did, quite literally, nothing wrong.

You're also leaving bandits behind that can target other travelers.

>Decapitate them all,
Waste time and resources
>put their heads on pikes to demoralize enemy forces
Galvanise resistance
>show that there is absolutely no mercy to those against you,
Turn allies and neutral kingdoms against you
>move on, and conquer
I mean, TRY to.

>Vlad did, quite literally, nothing wrong.
There was the bit where he brained his son over board games, though.

Shit man, morality is hard

I mean it arguably depends on the circumstances.If you're fighting a clearly defined enemy army/kingdom/whatever then yeah sure, killing first and asking questions later would probably be the reasonable default thing to do unless there's some special exception.

If you're just in a tussle with some two-bit bandits even if the fight gets a little escalated it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to just stop at beating the shit out of them (Unless they're the hyper-violent "rape and pillage" type of bandits).

Depending on their temperament I'm sure some terse threats after beating them half to death would at the very least make them think twice the next time they thought about bushwhacking travelers.

Yeah he is. I usually took after him and tried to take prisoners and even almost got into a fight with the thoroughly-recognized alpha male leader of the party because he wanted to execute a prisoner. Actually talked him out of it for once.

>apocalyptic campaign
> PCs go to hospital to get medicine for their ailing settlement
> hospital held by another group, I called them bandits but they really werent
> led by 20 year old girl with two makarovs and AK74u, she was meant to be recurring villain
> they end up catching her after a PC shoots the .50cal the bandits had been avoiding firing, attracting a giant worm to burrow up and destroy half the hospital
> they end up defeating the girl and knocking her unconscious
> guy says he severs her spine
> rolls like 6 raises on a Healing check
> uh ... ok
> spine is severed so her legs don't work
> explain to player that she can no longer move or take care of herself, including bodily functions
> he is totally okay with this
> wants to give her a "new life" back in their village
>they drag her around in a wheelchair
>another character starts taking care of her
>they get her back to their village to learn that she is slowly dying of a spinal infection
>the character that did it hands her a folded note saying that he is sorry for what he did
And as bad as it sounds, that was actually one of my favorite campaigns, that we got really absorbed into the roleplaying of. Like a good movie where the room seems to fade away and afterwards you feel disconnected from reality.

I fondly remember the time when we one-shotted all mercs but one, and convinced him to join us. We paid him and pointed out that this was much better than his previous job that he was certainly not getting paid enough for.

Hey, we recently had a trio of goblins that we managed to convince to find honest work.
Your dad sounds like a great player to have.

Seriously, players.
>Go out of my way to stress that this is a setting where death is an inconvenience, resurrection is routine, subtle vendettas are common and long running, permadeath is super rare, etc
>Players instantly and repeatedly jump to permamurder because "Otherwise they'll just come back and fuck us later"
The fuck is with players and this level of paranoia?

I used to be all about sparing as many people as possible, then a friend pointed out how immoral it was, so I mostly chilled on it.

>think that my game will have smart npcs who surrender and whatnot
>have my bad guys be the subvertive cloak and money types so the actual goons who'd know anything and willing to negotiate for it stands out
>players slaughter these guys first and capture the dumb meatshields with too weak morale
>the others are killed by "accidents" caused by the spellcaster casting one roll I win spells on people handling full throttle cars and live explosives.
>"lol why all the bads suicidal??"

Kek, for reals

>They are self-serving opportunists.
And what part about letting the heavily armed murderhobos pass and attacking some easy pray instead is not self-serving and opportunistic?
Just because you want to break the law, doesn't mean you have to be stupid about it. There used to be a law against suicide. So should evil characters all slit their own throats?

>If you only need to kill half the goblins for the rest to flee, or even just one, then that makes it that much easier to defeat them. It also means that fighting forty goblins isn't necessarily that much more difficult than fighting four.
I heard that historic armies typically routed when 5-10% of their soldiers had been killed. Adjust according to whatever race you're throwing at the PCs.
But fighting 40 should always be more difficult than fighting 4, even if they break rank quickly, unless your PCs are seriously overleveled for the encounter. But if the goblins know they're outmatched you could have a few of them steal the supplies of the group while everybody else is busy fighting.

It's a non-good act. It won't bump you down to evil, but that sort of behavior should lead you down the dark path of the neutrality.

>>Players instantly and repeatedly jump to permamurder because "Otherwise they'll just come back and fuck us later"
But that's the natural response.
Who the fuck wants an endless war?
What you need to do as the GM is emphasize is the stigma and the efficiency of the police who will come after you if you end somebody permanently.

The only way bandits would have access to equipment against heavily armored and prepared foes, as opposed to travelers and small-time merchants, is if they are expecting your group or something as dangerous.

And even then you have to take into account that you are fighting one of two possible groups of bandits. A party ready to ambush, and a party defending a fortification (or the next best thing) they use as a base or loot hoard.

Maybe they are waiting to jump on the royal caravan that carrier the tax money and think you are the scouting party or part of the guards
Maybe you came across the ambush party and they are gonna silence you so you don't mess up their plan
Or maybe you came across their base and they'll fight to keep the location a secret

The point being, that in any other case they will let a moderately armed party go throught because they are not worth the risk and effort. An ambush party of thieves would pass from attacking anything they can't overwhelm unless they feel they can make it with some part of the loot and run away.
All that equipment you described? That would impede them running away with loot as quickly and would make it easier to track and pursue them.

tl;dr
Low level party being ambushed by highwaymen? Plausible
Said bandits trying to mug a group of visibly high-level adventurers? No
Said bandits carrying equipment meant to deal with the power disparity? Cool, i hope there was a justification for that. Like them waiting the party, or waiting for something as strong as the party
Said bandits carrying a fucking ballista hidden on some bushes that would be very convenient if they were trying to rob a group of people with a guy that can turn into a bear? Ehhh... Where do they keep it? How do they maintain it? How can they operate under the radar with that much firepower?