Making D&D morality less repulsive.

[PoliteNewb]

Thermopylae is a great example. Eleven thousand Greeks, and about 2000 of them died. A quarter million Persians, and about 20,000 of them died. A grueling fight to the finish where people were fighting "to the bitter end" in a meat grinder that dragged on for three fucking days, and casualties were under 10%.

-Username17

But that still isn't saying anything about survivability after being sworded. All you've established is that of the 11,000 Greeks who fought, 2000 got sworded and died. That DOESN'T mean the other 9000 got sworded and lived just fine. How many of the 9000 were never wounded? How many fled or surrendered? How many took crippling injuries? How many died within the year, or even within the month, from those injuries?

Hell, you could just as easily infer from those numbers, "For every guy you kill, 4-5 more will break and run". You would end up with a 100% lethality rate and have pretty much the same numbers (2000 dead, 9000 not dead).

Look, I can agree to making it easier to not kill guys...that's entirely reasonable, that you shouldn't take a penalty to deal nonlethal damage. Or even simpler, say that on being reduced to 0 or -10 HP, you are dead or incapacitated, at the winner's option. But that is a very different animal than what was posited. If you're positing nonlethal damage as a default, you are saying you can take 99% your HP in damage and wake up the next morning and you're peachy keen. Actually, it means you can take ALL your HP in damage and suffer nothing worse than taking a nap.

The idea that swords and battle axes don't deal potentially LETHAL damage is retarded. Unless you're treating HP as an even bigger abstraction than they already are.

[Soda]

This lethal vs nonlethal argument is boring. "Any attack can deal lethal or nonlethal damage at the attacker's discretion at no penalty." There.

I can see keeping track of both lethal and nonlethal damage would be extra work, so how about..
"All hit point damage is totaled together. If the attack that dropped you was lethal, you're dead/dying. If the attack that dropped you was nonlethal, you're unconscious."

[sabs]

How about..

Don't be a retarted DM?

Why are your orcs fighting to the last man?
Why, when the 3 toughest guys in their ranks dead, or bleeding out on the floor, are the other 3 bandits not running?

You want to simulate realistic morals? Why does every single NPC always fight to the death even against unsurmountable odds?

[kzt]

Thermopylae is a great example. Eleven thousand Greeks, and about 2000 of them died. A quarter million Persians, and about 20,000 of them died. A grueling fight to the finish where people were fighting "to the bitter end" in a meat grinder that dragged on for three fucking days, and casualties were under 10%.

However that doesn't have a lot of connection to what you said up-thread. "Sword fights in RPGs are almost universally dozens or hundreds of times more lethal than actual historical sword fights." People who don't actually get in the fight usually don't get killed. Just because you got the t-shirt for being there doesn't count.

For example, if you look at the list of people who are said to have been in sword fights with Miyamoto Musashi you'll see it had a pretty high casualty rate.

[FatR]

Thermopylae is a great example. Eleven thousand Greeks, and about 2000 of them died. A quarter million Persians, and about 20,000 of them died. A grueling fight to the finish where people were fighting "to the bitter end" in a meat grinder that dragged on for three fucking days, and casualties were under 10%.

-Username17

Thermopilae is a non-example. We don't really fucking know anything about this battle, except that it happened, Greeks were defeated, some of their contingents refused to retreat for a certain reason and were wiped out.

Looking at much better (although still quite poorly) documented battles of Hundred Year's war, by modern assessments it was the rule rather than the exception for the losing side to have 50% or more of the men that actually took part in melee fighting killed or taken prisoner. The winning side, of course, took much lesser casualties, but still, swordfights where people on both sides actually were determined to swordfight obviously were damn lethal.

[tzor]

Why are your orcs fighting to the last man?
Why, when the 3 toughest guys in their ranks dead, or bleeding out on the floor, are the other 3 bandits not running?

{Sarcasm On} Oh no! We cannot have that! That would regress role playing mentality back to the days of first edition AD&D (where there were actual rolls to see if the monsters panicked and ran away). Clearly we have gone beyond those primitive days. {Sarcasm Off}

Of course where was a time when the PC's were generally faster than their adversaries ... they ran away and got shot in the back. 3E was nortorious for screwing over the one who runs away.

[Judging__Eagle]

Haven't even read all of your post Lago, but the whole "default dropping" point not being when a creature "dies" is exactly the sort of method I'm aiming for myself.

Killing someone is not unnerving, it's downright traumatic. Games that merely gloss over killing produce players who are shitty roleplayers, or players who play murderous characters.

Honestly, killing is something that should be reserved for characters and their players who have chosen to be killers.

In all seriousness, "Coup de Grace" is an ability people have to pick up; and even then, only if their Form->Trained->Mental list of abilities includes an ability with the "Murder" tag. Everyone else simply beats up and chops at their enemy, but they're targets aren't necessarily going to die from their injuries.

If anything, people tended to hang on a long time after being severely injured... which is why most medieval armies would coup de grace dropped enemies if they could; to remove any possibility of survival.

The fact that in D&D people don't default to CdG as the normal after battle action shows that the game truly isn't anything close to a simulation of "medieval" combat by any stretch of the word.

[Neurosis]

Several of these are things that I do anyway while I'm DMing, even if they're not features of the game. I'm speaking specifically of enemies that can be reasoned with, retreat/surrender, etc. It hasn't really effected the number of, say, orcs that my PCs kill.

At first, I thought this thread was about how morally stupid ALIGNMENT was, which is a pet peeve of mine.

[PoliteNewb]

If anything, people tended to hang on a long time after being severely injured... which is why most medieval armies would coup de grace dropped enemies if they could; to remove any possibility of survival.

Dude, you didn't deal someone a coup de grace ("grace blow" or "blow of mercy") to make sure they were dead because you were a murderous bastard. You did it as a kindness. Because dying of peritonitis after having a spear put through your guts kinda sucked, and odds were you weren't going to get better from that.

Now, in a setting with magical healing, that changes the equation a bit.

[Vebyast]

If anything, people tended to hang on a long time after being severely injured... which is why most medieval armies would coup de grace dropped enemies if they could; to remove any possibility of survival.

Dude, you didn't deal someone a coup de grace ("grace blow" or "blow of mercy") to make sure they were dead because you were a murderous bastard. You did it as a kindness. Because dying of peritonitis after having a spear put through your guts kinda sucked, and odds were you weren't going to get better from that.

One of the few battles I've studied specifically, Agincourt, was almost exactly like JE describes. The French men-at-arms (in plate, dismounted) advanced on the English lines (mostly longbowmen; the entire force was basically unarmored). The English maintained a decisive advantage because the French had only brought forward their men-at-arms, because the French had had to slog through a few hundred yards of knee-deep mud in plate, and because the French in the back of the formation crushed forward and prevented the mass from moving or fighting effectively.

The unarmored English longbowmen fought in groups of two to four, generally with mallets, hatchets, and swords. They'd pull men-at-arms out from the side of the French crowd one at a time. A mallet guy would get around behind the French guy and hit him on the head hard enough to stun him, or they'd trip him, or they'd stab him in the back of the knee. While the man-at-arms was bogged down in mud, they'd then cut his throat or stick a dagger through the eye slits in his helmet. A few men-at-arms weren't CdG'd, but they still suffocated because they landed facedown or just sunk into the muck. The English generally refused to accept surrenders and the French were at a large disadvantage, so even minor injury meant a CdG.

TL;DR: French men-at-arms suffered astonishingly heavy losses (7k-10k dead out of about 15k total), almost universally by coup de grace after being stunned, tripped, hamstrung, stuck in mud, or being crowded by the guys behind them.

Now, in a setting with magical healing, that changes the equation a bit.

Agreed. My original suggestion was to coopt the "nonlethal damage" track as a sort of "noncritical damage" track that would still be crippling, but would not cause instant death. A PC would be able to heal noncritical damage about as fast as you or I could heal bruises. As you point out, magical healing, regeneration, fast healing, and people that can literally walk away from being dipped in magma (10d6 damage? No sweat!).

[Spike]

Agincourt is not exactly a great example either, as the French Knights apparently refused to help their fellow knights because they didn't want to lower themselves to fighting peasants, and thus remained queued up to fight the handful of English knights at the head of the line.

Thus, instead of two roughly comparable equals whacking at each other you've got one guy with great gear and lots of training being mobbed by a bunch of average schucks with, essentially, farm implements.... who had a lot more of the armored guys to deal with after the first, and thus didn't have a lot of time to waste risking their lives subduing people for ransom either.

So you have a bunch of things that throw off your lethality calculations similar, if better studied, then Thermapolae

[fectin]

What was wrong with this?

[*] The game should default to non-lethal damage. Yes, I know it creates the 'I knocked the orc out with my +2 Reaving Longbow' silliness, but if you give players the default assumption that their enemies live if defeated and that you actually need to go out of your way to kill them, players will be a lot more thoughtful about it.

Why not just expand negative hitpoints to some huge value? (Say, max hitpoints.)

It seems like it solves all the lethality problems just fine; if you're down, you're not getting back up, but it's much harder to kill by accident (I might say 10+maxHP to account for low level, but the same idea).

That also makes all the necromancy spells that feed off dying people much eviller; you're not just hastening a (very likely) death, you're actually killing otherwise viable people.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Thus, instead of two roughly comparable equals whacking at each other you've got one guy with great gear and lots of training being mobbed by a bunch of average schucks with, essentially, farm implements.... who had a lot more of the armored guys to deal with after the first, and thus didn't have a lot of time to waste risking their lives subduing people for ransom either.

The English longbowmen were not 'average schucks with farm implements,' they were career soldiers with very creditable military gear.

In Ken Burns' Civil War documentary, one historian talks about how unbelievably bloody the civil war battles were, what with people engaging at Napoleonic distances with post-Napoleonic rifles. He mentions that 10% casualties had been the previous standard for a bloodbath, and that the Civil War had ~30% casualties in multiple battles.

[Vebyast]

So you have a bunch of things that throw off your lethality calculations similar, if better studied, then Thermapolae

The important part wasn't the lethality calculation, which I should have made more clear. The important part was the method: disable, then CdG.

Additionally, there were a bunch of French prisoners taken, by some accounts several thousand. Most were executed later that day in retribution for a raid on the English baggage train; only about 1600 French survived as prisoners, mostly nobles.

---

I agree - hugely expanding the survivable negative-HP range would work pretty well. To make this even more effective, you could let people "pull their shots" as a sort of inverse power attack. Normally this wouldn't work, because you'd have to get within 10 of the correct value, but with the negative-HP expansion it would be a viable tactic.

[violence in the media]

How about..

Don't be a retarted DM?

Why are your orcs fighting to the last man?
Why, when the 3 toughest guys in their ranks dead, or bleeding out on the floor, are the other 3 bandits not running?

You want to simulate realistic morals? Why does every single NPC always fight to the death even against unsurmountable odds?

I think that's partially an artifact of 3.x encounter design. Many times, there's only a single monster. And, if that creature elects to cut and run after taking 1/2 of its hit points in damage, that's just translating the rest of the fight into marking off arrows or magic rays. It's using actions to (often ineffectually) escape and is not threatening the PCs, giving them time to leisurely shoot it to death.

With opponents that are actually supposed to appear in groups, relative to the party level, killing 1 or 2 of them to provoke retreat/surrender from the rest is usually a non-challenge.

I'm kind of with tzor on this one, I miss the morale roll to determine when the enemies have had enough.

Regarding lethality, I've been using these rules in the game I'm currently MCing and they seem to have helped. The PCs get a little bit of an extra consciousness buffer to stay an active participant (depending on the Fort saves) and a whole lot of buffer before "you're dead!" Because of this, I've noticed that the party really doesn't have to worry about any single PC dying, as they can always cure up if there's enough healing available. So far, it has worked out pretty well.

[Roy]

How about..

Don't be a retarted DM?

Why are your orcs fighting to the last man?
Why, when the 3 toughest guys in their ranks dead, or bleeding out on the floor, are the other 3 bandits not running?

You want to simulate realistic morals? Why does every single NPC always fight to the death even against unsurmountable odds?

Mostly because you can't run in D&D. You will only die tired.

As such, it takes extenuating circumstances to even consider it. "I can cast Dimension Door." counts. "I am absolutely sure these people are not trying to kill me, even though D&D is a game about Murdering Hobos but I am in extremely bad shape and there is no way I can possibly win this." counts. Nothing else counts.

Now the latter situation actually did come up, in large part because most of the damage he took was nonlethal. And you know why that is?

"You can do lethal or nonlethal damage, at your option with no penalty."

Apply that to weapons in addition to unarmed strikes, and make most foes non evil and you'll get that effect. Otherwise you won't. Full fucking stop.

[RobbyPants]

Part of it depends on what you're fighting. If the monster has a faster speed or some means of bypassing obstacles (flight/incorporeal/etc), then you're screwed. If they have reach or are otherwise in a position to hit you with a lot of AoOs, you're potentially screwed.

If you can make it past those situations, then so long as the monster doesn't have a good ranged attack, then you can probably make it. At lower levels, humanoids typically have javelins, so sprinting away will only get you hit by one volley.

Sadly, waaay too many monsters fall into at least one of these groups, so, you're quite often screwed.

[sabs]

So we're back to D&D is a shitty system

Check.

[Lago PARANOIA]

When I say 'pacifist' I didn't actually mean 'does not hurt people no matter what'. I clarified this in the post you replied to, but sorry for the confusion. I meant to say 'action hero who upholds modern humanist values', but I couldn't think of a good term for this. So I will say 'action hero who uphold modern humanist values' from now on.

Firstly I gave no view on morality in the part you quoted for this. I said that A) People like killing stuff. That's why GoW gets off to having blood and gore.

I'd be MUCH more insulted to have a game where you light someone on fire and they lived through it for no other reason than because there is a soft, no death, cushion to rely on.

Really?

That's the default state of affairs for the violence in speculative fiction that doesn't wank to Darker and Edgier. When Johnny Storm fires fireballs at some badguys, no one actually wants to see their graphic burns or flesh melt off unless they're reading a MAX version or whatever. No one actually wants to see Superman splatter a mook because he misjudged the strength of his punch unless they're watching a Family Guy parody or something. No one wants to see Copperhead turn into a bleeding, writhing tumor because Captain Atom blasted him with a beam of pure radiation.

Or to put this into perspective, there are two Punisher comics. They're both really violent, but one's rated PG-13 and the other is rated R. The violence is depicted much more realistically in the R-rated one along with the character's method of killing/hurting being more low key. Punisher MAX's (the ultra-violent one) most over-the-top method of violence that we got to see the results of was Frank Castle using a flamethrower on someone. The 'mainstream' Castle has in no particular order blew off the bottom part of Wolverine's skeleton, sicced angry polar bears on people, and even dropped a nuke on someone this one time. Frank is LESS violent and kills fewer people in the MAX comic but everyone says that that version is more evil than the mainstream Frank.

Why is this so? Again, that goes back to the compartmentalization. People detach themselves from the violence and killing until something smacks them in the face then oftentimes they have the 'OMG what have I done?' reaction. The more violence and gore that goes on, the more compartmentalization that happens.

This is why Kratos, despite having a body count in the dozens (many of them innocent people even), didn't really have anyone complain about his behavior until he sacrificed someone to open a door in the first game. And even though his gameplay bodycount could easily reach the thousands if you played GoW straight through, a lot of people had the 'OMG I can't play this anyone' reaction when they were killing Neptune's wife even though the game was not exactly being subtle about how evil the protagonist was before that.

Most players to the game don't actually want to kill people in a way you can't casually depict on a PG-13 movie. Seriously. As a DM, go into some graphic-but-realistic death descriptions a couple of times like a foe's bowels spilling out or have some mooks begging for their lives but still getting in the way of some objective like 'get this treasure chest'. Do it more than once or twice and see how much your PCs like it. They won't, trust me.

And I don't see how you can KEEP jumping back between "people are ignoring what's going on" and "people are going to be horrified at what they are doing because this brings it in their face"

Once again, it's compartmentalization. It's why a bad guy who flashbacks to decapitating a little girl for the lulz (even though it's his one and only murder) is viewed as a worse person than the wise-cracking assassin-for-hire who shot five people in the head for some hookers and blow--even though any sane moral metric would say that the latter person is more evil than the former. This is why many gamers seem to be fixated on totally random shit that happens in a story, like the aforementioned GoW moments. Or why a lot of people get all wobbly-kneed when The Sorrow or Liquid Snake specifically call them out for the killing.

Or is this all just going to result in a "not dead" stamp you place on creatures and things the player's beat? If this is so do the things not get up and seek revenge? Do these things just stop what evil things they were doing/planning on doing because you came and beat them up? You beat up a bunch of reavers and leave. Great so they wake up a while later and keep being reavers. You "can't" kill them because there's a pacifist in your party. You're not going to reason with them, they are reavers.

Like I said, I don't support pacifism as a universal tactic. It won't do a damn thing when the reavers or KKK comes a-knocking other than endanger other people in addition to yourself.

Likewise, while I'm generally okay with the story of a random police officer having to shoot down bank robbers who had their guns blazing (even if they kill all of them), it's less acceptable for me to hear the story of The Flash speed-punching one of them to death to intimidate the rest into surrendering. Even though the latter ended up with a smaller bodycount.

You're playing heroic fantasy-era heroes, though. This generally puts you at the power difference of Batman vs. random mooks in my opinion; while I wouldn't begrudge Batman the stray killing or two, if Batman racked up a bodycount in the dozens while on normal patrol for no real reason then something's wrong with the writing.

I'm still missing the moral problem of killing guys who attacked you. Yes, people use the quintessential bandit encounter or evil goon squad or whatever. But those kind of encounters aren't "your PCs encounter a bunch of unwashed guys eating their breakfast" and you proceed to slaughter them...it's "a bunch of dudes leap out of the woods and try to stab your kidneys". You can, and should be able to, murderize guys like that without feeling too many qualms about it. Self-defense is completely moral.

I don't think self-defense automatically justifies violence. Imagine if you had a gun and you were randomly attacked by someone with intent to kill you; they broke into your home while you were sleeping let's say. Which is the most questionable--or are they all equally justifiable?

• A team of robbers with guns.
• A team of robbers with knives.
• Bodybuilder with a gun.
• Bodybuilder with a knife.
• Average guy with a gun.
• Average guy with a knife.
• 8-year old kid with a gun.
• 8-year old kid with a knife.

Or if that doesn't work for you, imagine that you stumble onto some crooks in a restricted area for some top secret project. You have the legal authority in abstract to arrest and kill these men in self-defense if need be--which is good because some of the group in the back starts shooting back at you when you tell them to halt. So you pull out your firearm and shoot back and manage to even some of them before they surrender. Which would be the most questionable--or would they all be equally justifiable?

• You are Joe Average police officer.
• You are a SWAT-team leader and you have a full squad of armed men that are backing you up. Instead of trying to talk them down (which might not even work, because they're already shooting) you just shoot them.
• You are Batman, who was somehow granted by a legal authority to kill people in defense of life or limb. They could technically hurt you, but you've faced down much worse odds before without a scratch. Instead of trying to talk them down or take them down nonlethally, you kill them with your gadgets.
• You are Superman, same day. They couldn't hurt you even if you wanted them to. Nonetheless, you kill them anyway.

Again, I'm not against the idea of heroes having to kill. If some guards are in front of the ritual chamber where someone is about to inflict a zombie apocalypse on the world in the next 2 minutes, you go with what's fast. Which if the power difference is not in your favor, means you having to kill them in order to avert a worse tragedy. Even if these guards are literally being mind-controlled into service and would love nothing more than to help you take down the Necromancer.

But again, encounters have a lot of filler in them and/or the DM has to often come up with violent conflict on the fly. It's just too much to ask DMs to arrange every battle so that there isn't moral hypocrisy if the PCs do what's convenient and encouraged by the rules. The rules and setting should take a lot of this burden off of the DM's shoulders. And by far the easiest way to do this is to make damage nonlethal.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The 'monsters surrender or retreat' method isn't a solution, it's just a stopgap.

Even if you avert the entire slaughter of a guard regiment by breaking their morale, you still might have had to kill X number of people to make that happen. Regardless of whether it is actually possible for the losing side to successfully abort a battle in D&D nowadays, the fact remains that you will still have some corpses to answer for.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Finally, I know that there's some resistance in the playerbase about portraying orcs as 'generally good, as long as you bring them out of their poisonous culture', but to me that's the best reason why we should do it.

Beauty Equals Goodness is something that has to be repeatedly beaten out of the skulls of human beings. Not just as a 'learn to ride a bicycle forever' thing, but as a lesson that needs constant reinforcement. And while I agree that some people might be unconsciously alienated at having this lesson crammed down our throats, I say it's our duty as D&Dizens to make it so.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Dwarves are good and not pretty. Drow are pretty and not good. Just saying.


I'm all for getting rid of the 'pretty races' idea as far as humanoids are concerned. I've said in the past that elves and orcs should be a single race.

[PoliteNewb]

I don't think self-defense automatically justifies violence. Imagine if you had a gun and you were randomly attacked by someone with intent to kill you; they broke into your home while you were sleeping let's say. Which is the most questionable--or are they all equally justifiable?

• A team of robbers with guns.
• A team of robbers with knives.
• Bodybuilder with a gun.
• Bodybuilder with a knife.
• Average guy with a gun.
• Average guy with a knife.
• 8-year old kid with a gun.
• 8-year old kid with a knife.

As you described, I find all of those EXCEPT the 8-year olds to be equally acceptable. If someone breaks into my house with the intent to kill me (which you stated they have) and the ability to kill me (which all of the examples except the 8-year old have), I feel completely justified in my decision to kill them first.

Would it be better to stop them without killing them? Yes. But I do not have the capability to do that without incurring a substantial risk, moreso than simply shooting them. And I do not feel obligated to take that risk, when the violent situation is one they have created, by coming to my home to kill me.

Or if that doesn't work for you, imagine that you stumble onto some crooks in a restricted area for some top secret project. You have the legal authority in abstract to arrest and kill these men in self-defense if need be--which is good because some of the group in the back starts shooting back at you when you tell them to halt. So you pull out your firearm and shoot back and manage to even some of them before they surrender. Which would be the most questionable--or would they all be equally justifiable?

• You are Joe Average police officer.
• You are a SWAT-team leader and you have a full squad of armed men that are backing you up. Instead of trying to talk them down (which might not even work, because they're already shooting) you just shoot them.
• You are Batman, who was somehow granted by a legal authority to kill people in defense of life or limb. They could technically hurt you, but you've faced down much worse odds before without a scratch. Instead of trying to talk them down or take them down nonlethally, you kill them with your gadgets.
• You are Superman, same day. They couldn't hurt you even if you wanted them to. Nonetheless, you kill them anyway.

Similar to above, the enemy must have both the intent to kill you and the ability. So:

1.) If you are an average cop, the odds of you being killed by gunfire are fairly high. You can shoot back without qualm, so long as you take care not to shoot innocent bystanders.

2.) If you are part of a SWAT team and are in a position where you are relatively protected from gunfire (due to personal or vehicular armor), I feel you should not resort to immediate reprisal...but if your life is threatened, you stop the threat, THEN talk to the others.

3.) If you are Batman, you could be immune to their weapons (depending on what kind bat-armor you're wearing) AND have the capability to take them down nonlethally without substantial risk to yourself (something an average cop or person does not)...therefore, Bats should probably try something else first.
OTOH, if you are not "super-awesomez" Batman, as presented in some forms, but are just a highly trained guy in a suit with a boomerang, yes, you can kill them...because they can kill you.

4.) If you are Superman, they have no ability, so you have no call to kill them. If, however, you saw that their stray shooting could kill some schoolkids...yes, you can super-punch their heads off and not feel too bad.

Since I don't generally play high-level D&D, my characters are seldom placed in situations where they enemy does not have both intent and means to kill them, and innocents around them.

(EDITED to add: And when they ARE placed in those situations...the enemy usually recognizes that the PCs have the intent/ability to kill, and they respect that fact by surrendering. This is especially true because in most cases, there are no legal niceties...they are relying on the PCs sense of honor and decency not to simply chop their heads off, and it is in their best interest to become very compliant, very quickly.)

It's just too much to ask DMs to arrange every battle so that there isn't moral hypocrisy if the PCs do what's convenient and encouraged by the rules. The rules and setting should take a lot of this burden off of the DM's shoulders. And by far the easiest way to do this is to make damage nonlethal.

*shrug* Opinions vary, and I can accept yours. I just disagree. In that A.) I don't feel it's too much to ask, and B.) I find making damage nonlethal comes with it's own ball of wax and forces the DM to make different justifications.

To go along with your Batman/Superman example above, your intent seems to be simply to make players wring their hands more often about killing. I just don't see that as a valuable design goal for a game involving swords, lightning bolts, and giant fire-breathing lizards.

[MGuy]

@Lago: I agree with your assessment that people will get uncomfortable if brought face to face with their own moral failings. I still feel however that non-lethalizing combat as a default still brings a host of problems, especially if it is only done to fulfill the wants of a very niche type of player. By your own words the only way that people will feel bad at all about stomping all over some goblins is if the situation is set up in a fashion to force the PCs to question their actions. If the moral imperative of kill or not kill is to be brought up I believe that specific groups should ask themselves what they want to do about it if its an issue.

In a hack -n- slash game like DnD the default idea is to kill stuff, loot corpses, save the day. Leaving every tom, dick, and bad guy alive after a fight will only cause, if not more than an equal amount of, issues as just outright letting people kill them in the first place. If a player's character should care at all about not killing stuff then there are plenty of ways to avoid it in DnD and it would be more worthwhile, if you want to make the game less about killing, to enhance the non-combat parts of the game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

(EDITED to add: And when they ARE placed in those situations...the enemy usually recognizes that the PCs have the intent/ability to kill, and they respect that fact by surrendering. This is especially true because in most cases, there are no legal niceties...they are relying on the PCs sense of honor and decency not to simply chop their heads off, and it is in their best interest to become very compliant, very quickly.)

Of course this might not hold true for groups like deserters, guards deep within a castle, tribesmen defending their land, etc.. Or you might be one of the few hero groups to, you know, actually act like modern heroes who uphold humanistic values and there's no way for them to know that.

It suddenly doesn't make it okay for you to kill them just because their attitude was bad and they fight you anyway--only if their decision to fight you and ignore your surrender attempts put you in physical danger. Otherwise Superman would be justified in lasering the heads off of cornered and hostageless bank-robbers who still insist on shooting him.

To go along with your Batman/Superman example above, your intent seems to be simply to make players wring their hands more often about killing. I just don't see that as a valuable design goal for a game involving swords, lightning bolts, and giant fire-breathing lizards.

If the moral imperative of kill or not kill is to be brought up I believe that specific groups should ask themselves what they want to do about it if its an issue.

I don't see why if you want to play around with lightning bolts and dragons you inherently need to wrack up a body count that would make The Punisher gawk. Maybe for the grim-and-gritty games, but Eastern and Western comics (to say nothing of cartoons) have been already doing this for decades.

If people are genuinely okay with having their protagonists kill early and often that's one thing. I'd like to reiterate, Punisher is my favorite comic book and while the comic goes into great depth trying to keep his hands clean, I wouldn't wash my hands of the series if it was accidentally implied that he killed a bunch of innocent people (which he has done in a few comics).

But again, for the most part I genuinely think people are not as okay with playing amoral bastards as it seems. Look at the No Russian and Neptune's Wife thing again--and those are games that go out of their way to rack up the ultraviolence. Most people are only okay with the not-specifically-breaking-your-mental-comfort-zone violence and killing because of detachment.

Why do I bring this up? Because when someone is detached to that extent it means that they're not thinking about what they're doing. If their attitude is 'I genuinely want to play an immoral bastard and I'm aware that my character fits no definition of good person and I'm not going to try to justify it' then that's fine. Because it means that they're thinking about what they're doing. If you only get offended about your moral hypocrisy or failings when (or because) someone brings it up, that means that you weren't. It means that there's some cognitive dissonance or Grey's Law-level ignorance about what the player is doing, which is not good for a roleplaying game.