Why did 5e do away with coup de grâce's?

Why did 5e do away with coup de grâce's?

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Ez mode way around bosses and a cheap way to kill PCs, I imagine

for sale: game mechanic, never used

it would be a major buff to classes that have lots of crowd control (eg. casters) and a relative nerf to classes that rely solely on damage (eg. martials) because it offers a way to bypass an enemy's HP entirely.

My aching ass it was never used. Rogues straight up abused coup de grâce's.

this

A dungeonmaster coup de grace-ing PCs is just a dick dungeonmaster if you aren't already rolling an extremely high-fatality campaign

Because TTRPGs these days need to be more video gamey to make them more accessible to people that are not familiar with them.

If there is a way to solve an encounter that isn't doing hitpoint damage, that alternative approach needs to be nerfed to the ground and made unviable like status ailments and instadeath effects in video games to keep things balanced.

It's unfair to make the most simple approach to an encounter not be the best approach in every possible scenario.

You sound like a fag who posts on /pol/

You act as if video-gamey is a bad thing, and you also act as if that's how video games work, when it isn't

Video games are simpler than tabletop games by their very nature, but most of them follow the same idea that tabletop games do, where more complex actions lead to better results

You sound like people who are easily baited by fags who post on /pol/

You sound like faggots who bring up /pol/ when it has nothing to do with the discussion and proceed to complain about /pol/ shitting up Veeky Forums.

They kinda still exist but are baked right into combat now. Here's how it works in 5e:

When you're at 0 HP, you're Unconscious, which is a condition with its own effects. While Unconscious, attack rolls against you have advantage (roll your attack twice, and take whichever result is highest), and if the attacker is within 5 feet, it's an automatic critical hit if it lands.

While you're at 0 HP, you have to make Death Saving Throws until you reach either three successes or three failures, whichever comes first. If you take damage while at 0 HP, that counts as a failed death save. If you take damage from a critical hit (like from what I described in the previous paragraph), that counts as two failed death saves. In addition, if the damage you take exceeds your max HP, that's instant death.

These rules apply to the PCs. They can also apply to NPCs if the DM really wants to use them, like for important NPCs, or if the enemy party has a healer and can revive dying allies to bring them back into the fight.

This way, rather than walking up to a downed enemy and declaring a coup de grace, you just say you're attacking, and the rest is built into the system. People talk about how hard it is to die in 5e, but if the DM is playing the enemies sufficiently smart, it can get pretty harsh. Imagine if your rogue got downed by a hobgoblin's swing, and has already failed one death save. On that hobgoblin's next turn, he could walk over to the fighter to continue fighting, or he could just give that son of a bitch rogue that sneak attacked him a throat-stab and see how he likes it.

>playing tabletop with a GM who would argue with "i stab the helpless foe through his eye"

Do people actually do this? There's something to be said for trying to cheat around having certain feats by saying "oh i do this thing" but even a child can finish someone off stabbing them in their throat if they are already unconscious or restrained.

>if it's not 3.5, it's a videogame

Go back to your hole.

how do you abuse "kill the guy who is already incapable of fighting back"? You don't get to CdG someone by sneaking up behind them, they have to be **helpless**. As in "unconscious" or "totally paralyzed", not just unaware or tied up.

methinks you were playing that rule wrong your whole life.

Most crowd control in the previous editions did not render an opponent in a vulnerable enough of a state to be one-shotted.

The real problem with the mechanic is it almost never a viable tactic for the player because it is inefficient in the action economy, which is less of a concern for NPCs who are more likely than the party to engage in suicidal tactics which are non-optimal for their own survival but will inflict maximum damage on the players.

There isn't any reason for a wolf to not tear out the throat of a downed and isolated humanoid and in fact this is its' instinct. Likewise with parties of zealots who know they face certain death but don't care or whatever other justification you need. Almost by definition adventurers are far more survival oriented and are as such are going to behave in a tactically optimal way which means saving the finishing stroke on already downed opponents until after all threats have been neutralized at which point we no longer care about combat action economy or really mechanics at all.

look at this noob

>The real problem with the mechanic is it almost never a viable tactic for the player because it is inefficient in the action economy, which is less of a concern for NPCs who are more likely than the party to engage in suicidal tactics which are non-optimal for their own survival but will inflict maximum damage on the players.
nice meta-DM
He has a point about the "bypass the HP is HARAM"

this is very nice, mr. DoubleDub

This person fucking gets it.
Both 4th edition and 5th edition were designed such a way in order to nerf spellcasters, and almost all recent nerfs in 5th edition had been to
"spells that noobs bitch about being overpowered on a daily basis."

1. If you concentrate all these ways to bypass encounters in the hands of a single character archetype, and give nothing to the others, it's a problem. It's not a matter of nerfing, it's a matter of consistent worldbuilding.

2. 4e has coup de grace.

For plot-focused GMs, coup de graces will be "divinely intervened" against for any character who you would want to use them on, rendering them functionally non-existent.

For Just-Roll-With-It DMs, you don't need a rule saying that if you successfully garrote someone in their sleep they die.

Therefore the only functions of the coup-de-grace rule were to instigate table conflict and mandate magitech inflation so that everyone important can have alarm spells.

99% of humanoid NPCs have low enough hp that a crit (which is automatic against unconscious or paralyzed targets) is enough to kill them in one hit anyway, especially if you're talking about someone with sneak attack.

The only time I used CdG was with an Inquisitor in PF built around using a scythe+castigate+a feat chain that let him CdG as a swift action.

Because a 4-door is just more practical.

wat

"Everything I don't like is /pol/" - new Veeky Forums

This desu

In my groups, we used coup de grace a lot. It made every cc spell a potential instakill.

>Most crowd control in the previous editions did not render an opponent in a vulnerable enough of a state to be one-shotted.

True, cc isn't enough in and of itself, but if you can get a monster alone and vulnerable, you can usually arrange to get him into a position to get coup de grace'd.

They nerfed hex?

Worth adding to this that having advantage (which attacking an unconscious or paralyzed character will give you) is one of the conditions that allows for a character to use sneak attack. So the Rogue sneaking into someone's room to stab them in their sleep has advantage, sneak attack damage, and an automatic critical hit if for some reason the DM bothers making them roll at all.

Maybe 5e caught it flat-footed.

3.PF was the one who started the "tabletop video game" schtick. We didn't have these issues in older editions of D&D because people back then were smart enough to say "okay, you have a knife to this guy's throat, so if you push it in he's practically dead."

Nowadays, most people started off with 3.PF or 5e, so they're used to seeing "you can, but..." for every action that doesn't carry a requisite feat chain with it, which only encouraged people to view tabletop from the lens of someone playing a shitty RPG where logical actions like picking up a barrel and kicking it towards someone cannot be done simply because the programmers didn't think to allow those types of actions to occur.

lololololololololololololololol

>he didn't abuse the shit out of paralysis and unconsciousness

Spit on the casual

It's like you never had to fight a troll without fire or acid

>logical actions like picking up a barrel and kicking it towards someone
This is wrong on so many fucking levels. It's incredible how little realismfags understand about reality.

Spell casters were intentionally made op af by design in 3-3.5. It was shit design with trap feats and shit because "hur dur if you're not gonna min max you deserve to be shit."

>argument nowhere to be found

>MuhMEMEs
why you being a prick? killjoy

???

Spell casters were made intentionally op in editions prior to 3 you fuckwit. 3 and 3.5 tried to unsuccessfully fix this. It's the PF dev team in the present day that tries to unironically justify trap options, caster supremacy and all the other shit that is wrong in every edition of D&D except 4 (not that it's good either. Just bad in a different way).

I don't get why Video Game is a fucking insult in reference to Table Top RPGs when ttRPGs inspired several fucking genres of videogames and many of the trends people bitch about started in table top in the fucking first place.

I fucking agree.

Fuck.

What's unrealistic about taking a barrel and rolling it towards someone?

It's a trope from old pulp western novels, in real life it just breaks your toe.

You realize we're talking about tabletop games right? Weren't you the one claiming the OP was a realismfag, so why are you acting like one?

>Weren't you the one

No, I'm a random guy answering your question on the driveby. Also mocking spergs for complaining games are "unrealistic" when they get their whole worldview from movies is a time-honored tradition.

They still exist it's just instead of instant death its an auto crit.

"This game is so unrealistic, by which I mean it doesn't describe a Jackie Chan film"

People made that same complain about 2e coming from older editions.
Just accept yourself as the next step in a decades long line of baseless accusation hurling grognards, play "muh best edition cause it's the one i started with," and shut up.

Didn't they take a lot longer to get rolling prior to 3.5?

>3 and 3.5 tried to unsuccessfully fix this
By gutting all of the fighter's features and nonweapon proficiencies while buffing wizard HD size, using softer spell concentration rules, buffing their spells per day to twice that of anything seen before or since, and making Familiars a class feature instead of a spell that needs casting with toad giving 2 points of additional Con?

Oh yeah, definitely were trying to keep martials and wizards balanced.

At least paizo had the sense to stick weapon specialization back in under the name weapon training.

Yes. Fixing spell casters wasn't the only priority in the development of 3e which ironically caused them to become even more broken than they were before.

How are you THIS bad at combat?

AKA the casualization of the hobby. This is why we need gatekeeping.

Amusing how you don't say he is wrong, and your only argument is that it is somehow bad to examine a mechanic in terms of it's actual usage.
Players didn't use CDG outside of very specific situations, whereas GMs were far more likely to do so.

>This is why we need gatekeeping.
I don't care if you're being serious, or merely pretending to cause a fight. Fuck off back where ever you came from, faggot.

>Never used

Literally level 1 adventures revolved around 3 things: Barbarians, Sleep Magic and Coup de Grace.

Nearly all low level opponents have weak will saves and It's why undead occupy the cr 3-15 range more than anything else.

>Muh safe space
Fuck off faggot. Reddit and tumblr are that way.

Aren't you the one demanding "safe spaces" by insisting on gatekeeping and trying to chase off dissenting opinions? Or are you simply looking for an echo chamber?

Echo chambers, please.

>gatekeeping
>not making a "safe space" yourself

KYS
Y
S

They are not very heroic, or exciting.

Well, fair enough.

>3.PF was the one who started the "tabletop video game" schtick
Epic meme my fellow 4e bro

What's the point listening to dissenting opinions that differ from those of mine when I already have all the right opinions?

>not recognizing diablo edition
forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-228755.html
Here's circa 2005. 2008 was the release of 4e.

If my saved files weren't horribly out of order right now, I'd also have a clip of some article-writing AD&D2 player complaining about all the things 3.0 scrapped and changed for arbitrary reason and how "I don't know what it is but it's not my D&D." Saving Throw changes were one of the big ones. Feel free to post it if anyone else has it.

Huh. I didn't realize "badwrongfun" was being used as early as 2005. I wonder how old it is.

Damn, has a Pathfinder faggot ever been so BTFO?

Seems like you never played Pathfinder with some real hardcore rules hagglers. Motherfuckers know how to really fucking find any opportunity to get someone in a helpless position.

Hell, most monsters have multi-attack. They can send you down and crit against you for two death saving throw failures at the same time.

Oh yeah like what?

Perhaps it is simpler to balance the game around inevitable "fair" arena combat. It's a shame adventure design has regressed since TSR rather than progressed.

Have you ever considered playing the greatest kicking simulator in the world: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic?

To be fair, the change from AD&D "effect-based" saving throws to 3.PF's "avoidance method-based" saving throws was one of many things 3.5 did to fuck over martials.

> Because 3.0 is finally a point buy customizable game with inherent balances; about the pinnacle of evolution for roleplay in one direction (the other direction is the simple unconstrained freedom to do whatever the hell you like because the GM will sort it all out - which is the polar opposite of balanced play).
>inherent balances

Holy fucking shit, Ron Edwards might be right. 3rd edition really does cause brain damage.

>Why did 5e do away with coup de grâce's?

The only person stopping you from instantly killing an incapacitated character whom can't defend themselves otherwise is your DM.

>Why did 5e do away with coup de grâce's?

It's unfair and unbalancing that a martial could potentially kill my low-con caster with a single attack. That's why.

But if your character is low-CON and incapacitated, one attack means your chances of survival are already pretty much gone.

>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.

Not a lot of haggling here. If they aren't any of those listed statuses or otherwise have a Dex score of 0 at that moment then I see no reason for you to CdG.

Power Word: Kill yourself.

Doesn't matter. I play casters. That means the system is supposed to be set up so I can't lose.

>Missed the point

Jesus senpai, being paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious and/or completely at the mercy of your opponent is not hard to get. Color Spray can be utilized in this way in level 1 with multiple targets in 2-8 rounds. If your creative enough(I know it's hard to do that), you can find a way to get your opponent in those conditions.

What the fuck are you on about