Vow of Non-Violence Help

[333]

So I was working on a character build that includes a couple of Sacred Vows (I know that there are more optimized options, but I like the flavor!) including Vow of Non-Violence and Vow of Peace. I have a few questions for you guys, so I'm not blindsided by unexpected consequences of what I believe is a reasonable change: Removing the penalty to my party caused by killing helpless foes.

Normally, friends of a Vow of Non-Violence character take -1 morale penalty to attack rolls for an hour after killing a foe who is defenseless or helpless, if their pacifist friend is within 120 feet. Just because I want to play a pacifist who takes prisoners and tries to reform them doesn't mean my entire party wants to. Now, I want to fix this, without unbalancing anything, or changing the intent of the feat.

Obviously I'm not going to stand there and watch as my allies execute a bunch of disabled goblins, but in my mind that is my character's cross to bare, so unless my friends make a vow to me, I don't understand why they should be obligated to follow my vow. I'm sure my group and my DM will agree with my logic, but I want to be sure this won't have any unexpected side-effects mechanically.

Also, in your opinion, what constitutes a defenseless or helpless foe? In my mind, a helpess foe is one who can take no action to defend himself, either because he is bleeding out, unconscious, tied up, mind controlled, etc. But defenseless is a bit trickier. Is a naked goblin running at the parties tank helpless? No, he is free to move and attack as he chooses. Is he defenseless? Well, unless he's a monk or has a wizard friend who buffed is AC, then yea he probably has no defense. Should I ask the fighter not to deal lethal damage against a foe just because they have no armor? What do you guys think?

TL;DR
Would Vow of Non-Violence be broken if it didn't apply a penalty to my allies?
What constitutes a "Helpless or defenseless foe?"

[Fouredged Sword]

As a DM, I ran with the "Helpless" condition or otherwise completely knocked out of combat. I ran with it being as party friendly as possible.

Really, it shouldn't be an in combat problem from the game perspective. It's a out of combat problem to deal with the living prisoners AFTER the bloodletting is done, as you can't just preform summery judgement on the spot, or even turn them over to a power who may end up killing them (almost everyone).

[Segev]

The RAW actually define "helpless" to literally be "susceptible to a coup de grace," if I remember correctly. This is, I believe, the mechanical definition for Vow of Nonviolence. Assuming you trust your DM, any corner cases should be subjectively obvious to all involved and should likely be something you can discuss with him if it's not clear.


As for negating the morale penalty... Does your party Face have a high Bluff score? Let him use that on you to get you to look away and, when you return, buy the story about the guy just bleeding out naturally, or waking up and attacking, or what-have-you. Provided you're not with a party who will make your personal preference to take people alive utterly futile, you should need this "little white lie" tactic only once or twice a level, at most. Usually, things die in combat, not just get K.O.'d. So as long as you let your party "convince" you to go "look for help" or something, they can do the deed when you're not in radius.

[Studoku]

The penalty's there to stop the technical pacifist who never raises a hand against his enemies but will happily allow or even encourage his allies to kill or torture. I agree it's dumb though- it's your feat and you should be the one who takes penalties from it. That raises its own problems though.

Have you talked to your DM and the other players about this? Even if you remove the penalty or take it yourself, you're still that guy who has to police the party. In this case, you're forcing them to do something which can be completely impractical- you can't take prisoners in a dungeon crawl for example.

If you really want to play a pacifist or a character who doesn't like violence, don't take feats that force you into an archetype. Just roleplay it. This not only lets you define how far your character is willing to go and allows you to potentially change when forced.

[Karnith]

What constitutes a "Helpless or defenseless foe?"
Well, helpless is a defined game term, if that helps at all. Per the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/conditionSummary.htm#helpless):

A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (-5 modifier). Melee attacks against a helpless target get a +4 bonus (equivalent to attacking a prone target). Ranged attacks gets no special bonus against helpless targets. Rogues can sneak attack helpless targets.(Emphasis mine)

And, in my interpretation, "defenseless" in this context leans towards "unable to defend oneself," and would be more or less synonymous with helpless as defined above. So, in your example, a naked goblin is still capable of fighting with you and your party, weak as it may be, and hence would not be defenseless (even though it lacks some conventional defenses).

[Telonius]

The word "Defenseless" appears twice in the SRD, in the "Dream (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dream.htm)" and "Nightmare (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/nightmare.htm)" spell descriptions:


The messenger is unaware of its own surroundings or of the activities around it while in the trance. It is defenseless both physically and mentally (always fails any saving throw) while in the trance.


You are defenseless, both physically and mentally, while in the trance. (You always fail any saving throw, for example.)


"Defenseless" is never further defined. But in those instances it seems to be a more severe state than Helpless, which allows saving throws at a penalty.

So basically, don't hurt anybody with the "Helpless" condition, and don't hurt anybody who happens to be casting Dream or Nightmare. :smallbiggrin:

[dspeyer]

A helpless character is paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent’s mercy.

This sounds like it would include a paralyzed psion, who is still entirely prepared to TPK on his next action.

[Fouredged Sword]

Sometimes the party barbarian just decides to ubercharge anyway, and eat the penalty for the team.

[Slipperychicken]

And, in my interpretation, "defenseless" in this context leans towards "unable to defend oneself," and would be more or less synonymous with helpless as defined above. So, in your example, a naked goblin is still capable of fighting with you and your party, weak as it may be, and hence would not be defenseless (even though it lacks some conventional defenses).

That's going to enable absurdity like getting away with mowing down civilians because they can theoretically make attack rolls against you.

[Sapreaver]

If you're going with vow of peace, ask your DM if you can take Divine Sanction from this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15624439#post15624439). No more needing to cart around prisoners

[RogueDM]

That naked goblin still has his Dex bonus to AC!

And those unarmed citizens are innocent, not defenseless. Mowing them down would certainly constitute a violent action, and an evil one... They aren't helpless, but also not hostile. Ya know, Would an unarmored and unaware (read as: flat footed) foe be effectively defenseless? On second thought, you have to give those villagers fair warning before trampling them.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, so warning that this is verging on a pet peeve for me (wow, really dating myself there).

The whole, entire idea of almost everything in BoED is that you gain specific mechanic benefits and drawbacks in exchange for agreeing to a certain role play conceit (being extremely exalted good, sometimes generally, sometimes specifically).

So, if the OP wants the benefit without/with less of the drawback and is thinking of ditching part of the role play conceit (it's okay for me to be non-violent, as I can just leave the violence to my friends), then I'd suggest homebrew of some kind (there has been some on this subject, I believe) is probably better than scuttling the entire point of BoED (being extremely good).

On the general point of "I'm exalted good, but y'all can do what you want," I think, morally speaking, this raises some issues. While clearly it's not incumbent on a good person to force their views on others, it rather defeats the purpose if you give everyone around you carte blanche to act as they will. The concept of non-violence is that life is sacrosanct, and destroying it is to be avoided at all costs. Not shifted onto your friends. Not somehow interpreted around (the unarmed scared goblin can hurt me if it tried).

There are plenty of functional, if difficult, ways to deal with enemies besides slaughtering them. And that's the whole point. It's impractical. It's difficult. It's hard. One does good because of the principle, not because of its general effectiveness or expedience. If being exalted good was cool and fun and easy, that's a good sign that one isn't doing it right.

So, basically, I say suck it up. If you are going to deal with Sacred Vows, you better be hilt-deep into goodness, cause otherwise what's the point? Homebrew something less restrictive, and nerf the difficult role play requirement is probably all around a better idea than trying to be exalted good-lite.

[Slipperychicken]

And that's the whole point. It's impractical. It's difficult. It's hard. One does good because of the principle, not because of its general effectiveness or expedience. If being exalted good was cool and fun and easy, that's a good sign that one isn't doing it right.

This. This so much.

[Darth Stabber]

Just avoid the "vow of mary sue". It is not worrth the effort. I would rather give my players access to the BoVD than than BoED, mostly because it enforces stupid good, but also such "paragons of all that is good and holy" are grating on my last nerve. Especially considering how sanctimonious and "letter of the rule" they tend to be. Assuming you have a mature group, start them off as "evil", and tell them to act effectively, you might actually get a "more good" group.

Example

I'm running an "evil" campaign right now, and the players are playing more intelligently than ever before, taking prisoners, interrogating them and letting them go when the intel proves useful (thus establishing a reputation that being useful = living), not using undue force (because it's a waste of resources), not killing the helpless (they might know something useful), and various other things that could be construed as "good" (though mostly for neutral or evil purposes), and does these "good" actions with far more consistency than most ostensibly "good" parties. Now they also have a horde of undead followers, caused the threat to the world that they are trying to stop, and kill without remorse, but that's also true of half the "good" parties i've seen.

Now all of these players are mature and in their mid to late 20's, so my experience might vary. But I have this sneaking suspicion that given a lack of "alignment oversight" will cause players to behave in a better manner than most.

[ericgrau]

It's "defenseless" as in "self-defense" not as in "armorless".

Defenseless means being unable to fight back against your onslaught. Not merely a lack of AC/saves/hp, but a lack of any chance of standing up to your party's threat. Most civilians are defenseless from the get-go. Stronger foes must be disarmed or incapacitated or etc. before they are defenseless.

[Slipperychicken]

Most civilians are defenseless from the get-go.

They might technically have a 10^-16% chance of winning, but I would still consider them defenseless against most PC parties.

[Gerrtt]

On second thought, you have to give those villagers fair warning before trampling them.

The last panel may be of assistance here. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0024.html)