Should He Be Dead?

[Heikold]

So I was running a Pathfinder Society game this evening and a player nearly died from a nasty crit. He was at -11hp and only needed 3 more points of damage to finish him. Two allies healed him and got him to just about conscious so that he could get away.

A few rounds later however, I realised that the NPC has two attacks and I’d only done the one. Using both attacks was in his tactics.

I rolled the dice to see and it was a hit for 7 damage. He should have died.

I haven’t done the report yet and my instinct is to say “well it was my mistake, **** happens”, but the player keeps saying that he feels guilty as he knows his character should be dead.

What do I do?

[legomaster00156]

You're handling it correctly. For whatever reason, just say the monster thought he was already dead and didn't bother attacking again.

[Rynjin]

There is no tactical reason for a monster to attack a downed enemy; they should have gotten to use their Move action afterward (since you can abort a full attack in the middle and if only one attack was launched it only actually eats your Standard) but that's the only real mistake here.

As a GM (even with your hands tied by PFS standards) you have some modicum of input over an enemy's tactics so long as they don't explicitly deviate from the statblock's tactics section. Unless it says something like "Takes the time to finish off downed enemies" (as a particularly hungry Ghoul might, as an example) and you ignored that you did nothing worth reporting.

Neither would you necessarily have been in the wrong to kill the PC by launching that second attack either, mind, but you went with the former.

[zlefin]

since it's a formal game environment; contact whoever your contact is at PFS and let them decide what to do. they're bound to have a rule that covers this kind of case.

[Geddy2112]

My rule is once dice are rolled things have happened. So as soon as the NPC was done attacking, once the next person acted there is no going back on the events.

We all make mistakes. DM's fail to have NPC's use attacks. People in fights misjudge an enemy as being dead vs downed.

I do agree it is probably more in character for the NPC to stop attacking the downed target and focus on the other threats, rather than continue to stab them and ensure they are dead.

Going forward, I try not to tell players when I make this kind of mistake, so they don't feel guilty about it.

[GrayDeath]

So I was running a Pathfinder Society game this evening and a player nearly died from a nasty crit. He was at -11hp and only needed 3 more points of damage to finish him. Two allies healed him and got him to just about conscious so that he could get away.

A few rounds later however, I realised that the NPC has two attacks and I’d only done the one. Using both attacks was in his tactics.

I rolled the dice to see and it was a hit for 7 damage. He should have died.

I haven’t done the report yet and my instinct is to say “well it was my mistake, **** happens”, but the player keeps saying that he feels guilty as he knows his character should be dead.

What do I do?

Say it aint so?! You are not honestly contemplating abetting a Murder on your fellow player, are you? ^^


Never gets old, that one. ^^



More serious: You forgot it, the dice fell, thats it. Redoing stuff is only ever a good idead if you botched a major Rules and/or Plot point execution. Otherwise it jsut leads to too much hassle for too little "gain".