Putting Out of Misery.

[Otherworld Odd]

Last night I was playing a game when we came upon some tortured and starved individuals deep in a dungeon. It seemed like they were inches away from death, to be honest. But when someone made the suggestion that if we're completely unable to heal them in any way, shape, or form (Which we were), we should put them out of their misery. This was responded to with "Putting someone out of their misery would NEVER be an option for a good aligned character."

This brings me to the playground to ask you guys if you think putting someone out of their misery wouldn't be a good thing to do in any situation at all.

Personally, I believe that if there were no option to end their misery, it would clearly be better than letting them finish dying naturally. Only with their approval, that is.

[Loki Eremes]

Maybe a CHAOTIC good character would think of that...but is not an option, unless that npc asks the PC to kill him.

Thats my way of thinking.

But again, we re talking about killing someone innocent.
If he is strugling for his life... you, as a good aligned character, would never propose doing that.

[herrhauptmann]

Ooh, mercy killings.
This can be done several ways. You can try and make it as merciful and dignified as possible. Hear their last words, take last requests, etc. Would also include laying out the dead for burial, or cremating them afterwards rather than leaving the bodies to rot. Track down the relatives and bring them the ashes, or bring them to the graves (and back, don't wanna abandon someone in the middle of the underdark).

Alternatively, someone could find that woodcutter who took off his own foot through negligence and say "What kind of life can he live like this, even if we take him back to town for healing? Better he dies now than suffers later."

Can be lots of good roleplay here if you play a good or even lawful character.

[Yora]

There's a desire demon in Dragon Age that has mind raped a templar into believing she's his wife and three zombies are their children. She feeds on his life force, but in his mind he lives a happier life than he ever had as a templar. When you attack the demon, the templar will fight to the death to defend his family. If you leave them be he will be drained until he dies and the demon possibly move on to her next target, with whom she'll play the same game.
That's ones a really tough descision how to act appropriately. :smallamused:

But killing someone who will die anyway with no chance to do anything but lying on the ground in pain really shouldn't be a problem. If the person is able to request to be left alone to die a few hours or days later, a good character should probably respect that. But "the best for a person" is not neccesarily the same as keeping a person alive for as long as possible. When it does not cause additional pain to a person and doesn't give any personal benefit to the person doing it, I don't think there are many acts that would be considered evil. And this case isn't one of those.

[SurlySeraph]

Depends on the tone of the campaign. In most games I'd give them food and try to come back to carry them out of the dungeon and build a sledge to haul them back to town as soon as whatever imminent threat we were dealing with was resolved. In GRIMDARKLAND, getting their permission and then killing them means you won't come back in an hour to see them being horribly tortured or eaten by rats or whatever, though they'll come back as undead to attack you no matter what.

Morally speaking, a good-aligned character should try at least a bit to save them, or at least make them comfortable before their inevitable death. Unchaining them is bare minimum. Give them food and water, feed them if you have time and they're too weak to feed themselves, take them outside the dungeon if you have time and it's not at the North Pole or surrounded by soul-eating wolves or suchlike, and try to get them to a hospital, good-aligned church, or suchlike if at all possible.

[AnswersQuestion]

If they're doomed to die immediately, putting them out of misery won't be a bad thing.

But for abyss' sake make sure they do want to be put out of misery first.

[Tengu_temp]

A mercy kill can be an option for a good character - when the subject wants to die, or is in such torment that he's unable to make a decision on his own and there is absolutely no other way of helping him.

[Draz74]

Someone who thinks mercy killings are always bad clearly has no experience with real-life medical situations.

[Loki Eremes]

Someone who thinks mercy killings are always bad clearly has no experience with real-life medical situations.

Please, dont bring to this thread actual, real, medical situations, is not the same. There are human rights that dont exist in a medieval game.

We re talking about D&D moral Axis.

and for both of the situations, the answer is the same: if your a good person, let the dying one choose, not yourself.

Just put in the other shoes. If im seriously injured, pain everywhere, and cant talk properly, maybe it is a good act to end my suffering. BUT I WANT TO LIVE.

[Callista]

If there are absolutely no other options, then it isn't a matter of good or evil; it's a question of what the character personally believes about what amounts to euthanasia.

(Careful about bringing in real-world stuff here, people. We do NOT want a big explosion of political crap, OK? Thanks.)

For an example of a strongly Good person who made a decision like this, look at Sturm Brightblade in Dragons of Autumn Twilight. His alignment is LG, strong Law and strong Good, growing only very slightly less Lawful as the character develops.

Spoiler for Dragons of Autumn Twilight, just in case anyone hasn't read it yet who wants to:
Sturm found himself in a situation where a comrade had been horribly injured by acid to the point where death was certain, but would take some time to actually come; healing was impossible. The person in question was in severe pain and semiconscious. Sturm made the decision to mercy-kill his companion to spare him the pain before inevitable death. He never actually did so; but it was clear that he intended to do so. He immediately stopped when it became evident that there might still be hope.
In any case, Sturm's strongly Lawful bent seems to allow him a good deal of detachment that isn't shared by more chaotic individuals; he can step back mentally from the situation and make decisions with his head rather than following his emotions, which of course would generally be screaming, "This is my friend! I can't kill him!" I think a Lawful individual would be more likely to mercy-kill someone; but it depends a great deal more on the individual than it does on the alignment.

Any alignment can make the decision to mercy-kill someone; but it is heavily limited by personality. Someone with a great deal of respect for life--Good-aligned, in other words--would try everything possible to save the person's life before even thinking of a mercy-kill. Someone with an Evil alignment might use a mercy-kill to get rid of wounded that would otherwise slow them down, or even simply as an excuse to kill someone.

In the situation the original post details, all options have not yet been exhausted. It should be possible to make Heal checks to try to make them more comfortable, give them some food, and try to retrieve them and get them to a healer when it became possible to do so. In Real Life, we have an equivalent for this--hospice care, where dying people basically get medical treatment that aims at easing suffering. A Heal check should allow this kind of thing just as it allows normal medical treatment.

Regarding people who have been severely injured and will suffer permanent disability: From what we've learned about real-life permanent disability, subjective quality of life tends to be roughly equivalent to quality of life without a disability when surveys are taken of people who have had some time to adjust; subjective quality of life is not greatly correlated with severity of disability. (I say "subjective quality of life" to mean emotional/social factors reported by people themselves rather than rating scales that include things like independence from others.) This implies that in cases of severe injury, the suffering is temporary rather than permanent, and any kind of mercy-kill would be highly inappropriate.