Thats the impression I got too.

Its the OPs whole defense of the situation and setting that feels off kilter somehow. Its like he doesnt want advice. He wants some yes-men to say "Yes all is well." But all isnt well because the way he describes the setting makes the situation sound contrived when it very likely isnt.

To the OP: Its your setting and players. And it is up to you to figure out what to do now based on what you know as the DM of the overall situation once the player makes their choice.

Tell the player to make a choice based on the PC's gut feelings at the moment and live with it. Good or bad.

WillInNewHaven - Your examples are of medics are in the modern world, which are based on international cooperation like the Geneva Conventions (in the case of war) or an established professional police force.


Historically, these sorts of agreements in war were generally applied among opponents that both respected them. For example, the Germans in WWII generally followed the established rules of war among European countries for the treatment of wounded and prisoners. However, the Japanese in WWII did not respect these conventions, and in response the U.S. gave less respect to Japanese wounded and prisoners than they did to Germans. I could see that there might be such a code among dwarves. If the PCs were overcome by their attackers, might they have been healed, captured, and ransomed? If they weren't, and they expected to be murdered if they fell - then responding in kind would be more the norm.

Likewise, respect for the rights of criminal murderers is a product of having a safe society with constitutional rights and a professional police force. In the absence of these social structures, it's far less likely for there to be a code of treating attacker's wounds. (Also, in practice, cop killers tend to be dealt with particularly harshly.) Medieval societies usually worked around citizen enforcement of laws rather than professional police, and the enforcing citizens were not held to the standards of modern police.

You forgot to say that you also would like to ride in unicorn rodeos professionally, and get paid for it in blow and hookers.

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?

The funny thing about all this, and I say this as someone who did not even know "Story Games" were a thing until a couple months ago, and who only had a vague notion that the "OSR" was anything more than "old versions of D&D tarted up with better-organized manuals," is that these pretentious blowhards are making it sound like "the industry" has left D&D behind when in fact D&D and Pathfinder together comprise the lion's share of this teeny, tiny, $35m industry in terms of sales. Add in the various 3rd-party supplements, toss in the similar-but-not-quite D&D games like 13th Age, and you've got all these story games fighting over something like $5m in revenue, maybe less.

Tell him or her to put on big boy pants and make a fucking decision, ie, roleplay the gawdamn character.

What kind of mewling asshole needs help with this shit?

Addendum: And why the fuck is this being handled out-of-character? Why isn't the character talking with the other adventurers? With a priest? With a lawyer? In-fucking-character?