Quote from: Bren;981404Did I miss where the OP said that the opponent was too badly hurt to recover? Or were you thinking this was that other thing that Misericorde were used for?

"he finished the guy off."  Not going to waste healing on you, not going to let you bleed to death, not going to let you lie here wounded until the scavengers start plucking at your eyes, not going to drag you back to town.

Do you leave a wounded enemy in an unsafe area to die by misadventure, or do you finish him cleanly?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981508"he finished the guy off."  Not going to waste healing on you, not going to let you bleed to death, not going to let you lie here wounded until the scavengers start plucking at your eyes, not going to drag you back to town.

Do you leave a wounded enemy in an unsafe area to die by misadventure, or do you finish him cleanly?

To be fair -

In medieval history, if someone was so wounded as to be unconscious, it was extremely likely that they were going to die shortly of blood loss and/or infection if left in the wilderness. Heck, they were likely to die of infection anyway regardless of how well cared for they were, given medieval medicine. In a typical military campaign, more soldiers died of disease than anything else. However, in a fantasy world, this isn't a given. Many fantasy worlds are less gritty, and feature less infection and disease as well as having healing options. So the excuse that they would die anyway might have less force.

Still, if it's anything like medieval, killing an opponent who attacked you isn't generally considered murder. For example, in the Icelandic sagas, murder was specifically a secretive killing. As long as you were open and honest about having killed someone, it wasn't murder - even if you went and attacked them for no just cause. As long as you announced the killing to the first person you saw afterwards, it wasn't murder.

Right, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.  In the middle ages they wouldn't blink at finishing off a wounded guy who had ambushed you.

I'm assuming, since it was an ambush, that it was a relatively remote area, so it would take some expenditure of resources for the wounded guy to not die.  I am also assuming that the wounded guy was wounded enough to be "down," basically helpless.

"Heal an enemy who tried to kill me?  Are you NUTS?  But because I'm not a total bastard, I'll give it to you quick and clean."

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;981353He knows I won't tell him what to do but he wanted to talk about it. I wonder what more I should say.

"Well, what do -you- think Buttons would do?"  

And then, as a good impartial GM, you advance the world around them.  Who found the body (or rather, bodies), and what would they do in response?  While Buttons is emotionally struggling (and kudos to a player trying to actually explore the idea of "I just killed a guy!!!!" as something other than an indifferent murderhobo), it sounds to me there could very well be a posse after the party at this point?

What you say is what the NPCs do.  

A player trying to be lawful feeling more guilt for his lawfully-okay but perhaps morally questionable (by some standard) act than the surrounding world sounds like a reasonable outcome and a decent role playing outcome. Have the NPCs react as they would ("I don't see what the problem is," "you killed someone trying to kill you," "Would you stop calling that murder? I just did the exact same thing during that fight and you're implying that I'm a murderer too!," "I understand how your past means you hold yourself to a higher standard than the law does, but really, that guy was going to be dead by now regardless," etc.). See what that makes the player decide to do with Buttons.

Quote from: san dee jota;981521"Well, what do -you- think Buttons would do?"

Christ, yes, because that's the only metric that matters.

Seriously, this thread is full of bullshit that has nothing to do with the fundamental question asked in the original post: the character's belief system says this is wrong - what should he do now? The rest of this nonsense about when killing is justified or merciful or in the wilderness or in the Middle Ages has exactly fuck-all to do with that. The questions the player must answer, as the character, are these: what do my moral and ethical precepts say about this, and how tightly am I going to hold myself to them?

And play this shit out - don't worry about it over a frappacino at Starbucks.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;981508Do you leave a wounded enemy in an unsafe area to die by misadventure, or do you finish him cleanly?

You are still making assumptions about the opponents' state of health vis a vis was this mercy or simply ruthless expediency. And the two choices you listed are not the only two choices. For the sake of argument, one might want to staunch the bleeding or patch him up enough so as to question him to find out if the attack was just some accidental run in with some fanatical inner-outer whatever they ares  or if this was an ambush specifically directed against the group. And if the latter, who was doing the hiring and/or directing.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981524The rest of this nonsense about when killing is justified or merciful or in the wilderness or in the Middle Ages has exactly fuck-all to do with that.

It's a thread. There's drift. You should get out and actually play some RPGs or something.

Quote from: Bren;981526You should get out and actually play some RPGs or something.

And you should kiss my entire fucking ass.

Two factors that added to Buttons' problem:
1: The effectiveness of magical and clerical healing in this high casualty/low fatality campaign. If there are people around with healing powers, wound trauma isn't going to kill anyone who is still breathing and the guy was still breathing, and there were two healers in the group. So this wasn't exactly a mercy-killing.
2: The extremely lawful nature of Glon' Dwarf society and the fact that HB's background and experience makes him really want to be a good citizen.

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https://sites.google.com/site/grreference/

Patch him up and send him home for a show trial and public execution.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;981533Two factors that added to Buttons' problem:
1: The effectiveness of magical and clerical healing in this high casualty/low fatality campaign. If there are people around with healing powers, wound trauma isn't going to kill anyone who is still breathing and the guy was still breathing, and there were two healers in the group. So this wasn't exactly a mercy-killing.

So in this society, healers are supposed to heal people even if those same people tried to kill them 30 seconds before?

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;981533Two factors that added to Buttons' problem:
1: The effectiveness of magical and clerical healing in this high casualty/low fatality campaign. If there are people around with healing powers, wound trauma isn't going to kill anyone who is still breathing and the guy was still breathing, and there were two healers in the group. So this wasn't exactly a mercy-killing.
2: The extremely lawful nature of Glon' Dwarf society and the fact that HB's background and experience makes him really want to be a good citizen.

So from what I'm understanding, it isn't just the character's personal convictions that are at issue. He wants to be a good citizen, and apparently this killing was a crime according to dwarf society.

What is the law in this case? i.e. If he was being a good citizen, what does the law expect citizens to do with downed attackers? Are they expected to heal them, take them prisoner, and bring them in to the police for trial? Or are they expected to let them go?

Quote from: jhkim;981541So from what I'm understanding, it isn't just the character's personal convictions that are at issue. He wants to be a good citizen, and apparently this killing was a crime according to dwarf society.

What is the law in this case? i.e. If he was being a good citizen, what does the law expect citizens to do with downed attackers? Are they expected to heal them, take them prisoner, and bring them in to the police for trial? Or are they expected to let them go?

Yeah, some more discussion of this sort of thing would have been helpful.  Knowing what the laws of the land actually were makes a difference.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981531And you should kiss my entire fucking ass.

What you do with your ass is your business, but I'm not getting involved with kissing or fucking it. Thanks for the thought though.

Quote from: Bren;981547What you do with your ass is your business . . .

And business is good, thanks for asking.