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View Full Version : Resolution and Mercy(?)



Typewriter
2011-02-15, 05:37 PM
So, original threads:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=183532
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=185334

Summary:

I was playing an evil character, and got stabbed by a player despite the fact that we had been lifelong friends, and he didn't know of any evil acts I had performed in game. He stabbed me for ignoring a woman who proclaimed herself as a god (in a heavenly environment) and picking up the item we had come for, because the woman said, "Stop what you're doing. You've been lied to."

A week or two later, I retired the character in favor of party cohesion(character wanted to kill his character, was no longer enjoying the character), and I overheard the player talking about how evil my character was, and how they were probably going to have to fight him for it later. None of this was true, my character was evil in nature, not in action. He would gladly defend the weak by killing those he thought were threats, and didn't care about confirming facts before acting. Torture is OK, as long as you have good reasons, etc. A good guy, but not very good at being good (burnt down a church because his dreams told him the church was opposing him. Found out later they were a good church.).

So I blew up at the guy because I was tired of his meta-gaming and the fact that he wouldn't stop making stuff up about my character that was untrue.


Since my last post I talked to Mr. Stabby in an e-mail and got his 'in-game' justification for attacking me, and while I didn't really agree with it all, I told him I could understand getting to the point where he'd want to stop me, but why did he try to kill me. Why not try to grapple me, or trip me, or disarm me, or even do subdual? Who cares if you're bad at all of those things, trying one of them would have made more sense.

So, peace. Yay.

The other night one of the party members characters decided to betray the party. He stole the artifacts and went to flee, but as he did so he noticed goblins sneaking up on the parties location. He yelled a final warning and took off.

We woke up and noticed the artifacts (we have two now) were missing. Mr. Stabby says that, in character, he thinks that the party member that's running away is actually being kidnapped by Goblins, and that they probably have the artifacts as well, so he jumps off the small cliff we were on to pursue.

Leaving the Bard, Cleric, and Barbarian to fight off around 9 goblins (6 of which are casters). Oh, and the cleric is the party member he's sworn himself to protect. Above all else.

So he cant' see the party member (who is a rogue with good stealth), so he decides to have his mount use scent to track her down. He catches her(male player, female character), and realizes what's going on, and demands that she come back with him. She pulls out the artifacts, and he proclaims that he's charging her down.

At this point, I point out that his Cavalier order loses their abilities for a day if they break their code, and one of the tenets of his code is mercy to those who betray him. I ask the DM if he would lose his abilities when he chooses to run her down, or after he's dealt the damage, but he interrupts. He's doing subdual damage because of what I had told him in e-mail.

So he declares her as his challenge target, activates power attack, and charges her with a lance. In Pathfinder taking subdual damage when you've already taken max subdual causes the damage to become lethal.

He deals so much damage to her, that it wraps around and becomes partially lethal. And this is mercy.

The barbarian shows up (the barbarian owned the 2nd artifact), and he tells him what she did. The barbarian grabs her by the hair, and the two walk back together, the barbarian dragging her over every sharp rock or ledge he can find. Mercy me!

The bard(me) and cleric would have died, but I was able to charm/suggest/etc. etc all the goblins. Once back together we kill the goblins one at a time in a nearby cave, and go to sleep (after I 'suggest' to the barbarian that he should wait until morning to deal with the rogue, since he's about to attack the cleric (rogues brother in game) for not waking her up right then).

The barbarian wakes up and kills the Rogue in her sleep.

The DM is unhappy because he didn't think the rogue should have been killed over what was, essentially, a minor offense. And he seems to think the rogue could have still wound up rejoining the party after this.
The rogue is unhappy because he just wanted his character to die, and it took 4 hours(that's how long all this took) of us talking about his character while ignoring him sitting there saying, "Someone just please kill me. Say one of the rocks killed me, something. Can this just be over?" until someone finally killed him.
The barbarian is neutral because he didn't really want to kill a fellow PC, but he knew the Rogue wanted it.
The cleric is having an in-game crisis, and nearly used necromancy to ressurect his sister as a corpse.
Mr. Stabby is defensive because attacking party members has now appeared as a trend, to which he says isn't his fault.
And I?

I'm amused as hell. I tried to tell them nearly a month ago that letting one party member get away with this kind of BS was only going to lead to trouble, and now the campaign is all but over, with an expected wrap up in the next couple sessions.

Did he show mercy? I think it's arguable, but this kind of action is totally in line with this players past experiences. For example he played a Knight in 3.5 once and constantly broke his code since the mechanical punishments he received were so minor. And that was his justification for why he broke his code so often.

Should he have tried to track her down? When the one he was sworn to defend was under assault? He justified it by saying that the cleric said the orb was the most important thing, so that's why he did it, assuming it's with the rogue, and running in that direction no less than 6 seconds after realizing it's missing just kind of seemed....odd.

And he couldn't have tracked the Rogue. He had nothing to present to his mount with her scent other than a trail that was covered in goblins and other such critters, and he has no empathic link, so there's no way he should have been able to track. Of course, I didn't realize this until I looked it up 2 days later, but still...

Anyway, I figured that since I'd been detailing the events thus far, I may as well go ahead and post what is essentially the resolution.