Quote from: rawma;878693I'm much more bothered by not being able simply to cut the throat of someone who is sleeping but has 50 hit points.

Two things here.

1: What implies that you allways unerringly can? This is a fantasy setting where everything and its cousin twice removed are out to kill you messily. You think anyone on a world where monsters literally crawl out of the woodwork and rugs can kill you is going to sleep heavy? Im surprised anyone sleeps at all. :eek: Real world history has shown that trying to kill someone in their sleep is not a guarantee of success.

2: Who says you ca not kill someone in one go no matter their HP if unconcious, restrained, etc? Just ask the DM if you can?

But be aware that if you do it. So will the enemy. Exactly this came up in a session. The wizard slept a group of enemies and wanted to slit their throats.
I said "Ok. But be aware that from now on that may happen to you. You forfeit any right to complain if/when it happens.".

NEXT did have the rules in there during the playtest up to the last packet. But not for instakills from full HP.

Coup de Grace
When a foe is unconscious you can use your action to perform a coup de grace against an unconscious creature within 5 feet.
Requires an attack roll.
If you hit, the attack is automatically a critical hit.
A creature already at 0 hit points dies.

Encounter circumstances can be the difference between life and death sometimes. A while back in my 5E campaign, the party engaged in combat with a gang of roided-up mutant trolls. The combat took place in a ravine where the trolls had their lair.

These trolls had constructed traps around their lair which contributed to the difficulty of the encounter. The paladin who was already seriously wounded earlier in the encounter, fell into one of the spiked pit traps. He died at the bottom of a spiked pit while the battle continued above. The party was having a rough time of it, and no one could get to the paladin before he expired.

It is fairly easy to stabilize a fallen companion provided you are able to get to them. This particular battlefield took away that assumption.

When I do 'coup de grace' house-ruling in MOST of my campaigns (I might have some ultra-gritty ones where I'd just say "ok he's dead"), I say that a hit against a helpless opponent automatically hits and does maximum damage, and any class with a 'backstab' does maximum backstab damage.

Is this really a problem with the game? Doing a coup-de-grace seems pretty straightforward circumstantially.

Even if you don't kill someone out of hand, you could always maim the shit out of them. But if you're KO'd and the enemies win and they intend on killing you... well does it matter?

Conversely, who is doing a Coup-de-Grace in the middle of a fight with more combatants still going? I guess it could happen but I'm not sure what the buggaboo is about?

Kill/maim them if they're down - give them their two "wound-levels" or whatever. Or just be done with it, if coupe-de-grace is the intent. Is it a "rules" thing or a flavor thing that is troubling thing?

edit: if it's about sleeping/helpless people - fuck it, make it an autocrit. Just be consistent.

Quote from: tenbones;879423Is this really a problem with the game? Doing a coup-de-grace seems pretty straightforward circumstantially.

Even if you don't kill someone out of hand, you could always maim the shit out of them. But if you're KO'd and the enemies win and they intend on killing you... well does it matter?

Conversely, who is doing a Coup-de-Grace in the middle of a fight with more combatants still going? I guess it could happen but I'm not sure what the buggaboo is about?

It happens sometimes. There's a lot of reasons why someone in the middle of a huge and dangerous fight might take an extra few seconds before risking himself again, under the excuse of 'finishing off' an opponent.

Of course, it happened more often in real life than it does in an RPG, where players tend to think more strategically about wanting to end the battle as quickly as possible.

Killing a human is relatively easy.
Killing a human *now*, in the manner you specify, possibly without making any noise is not so easy.

In the heat of battle, a free hit against someone doing max damage or something like that is one thing.  Taking the time to ensure a definite kill via heartstab, throatslit, skullpulp, whatever is something different.

Against an unsuspecting opponent you have a definite advantage, but unsuspecting is going to turn into suspecting very quickly, and getting a one-shot instant kill isn't that easy, even for the pros.

Against a sleeping opponent, well he's dead, but that's not the hard part, the hard part is making sure he expires quietly.

So in any flavor of D&D it ranges from "dead, no roll" to "make a normal hit and damage roll" to everything in between.

Quote from: CRKrueger;879885Against a sleeping opponent, well he's dead,

History says otherwise. Sleeping? Bound? People have survived attempts to off them.

The better question is. What does the individual DM in a game want to deal with? Insta death sleepers or something else? Choose something and stick with it. If the players can so can the monsters.