> I'm agreeing with Jane. Just about everything on fighting hand to hand -
> with
> or without weapons - has focused on surviving first.
>
> Now whether that is the same when you have war objectives as well... I'm
> not
> sure how those balance out. But most fights are until the other person
> stops
> trying to kill you, from my understanding.
I'm going to rephrase my assertion - if the weapons are out, death is "on the table" - you've moved to a level of conflict where serious injury/death is a distinct possibility (in the context of the game).
And again - you *can* stop short of killing once a person is defeated, but you don't *have* to. it's like how most injuries and death on the ancient battlefield were inflicted after one side "lost" - they happened during the rout after the collapse of one side's battle-line, not during the main melee.
I agree with Robin that the heroic stories don't usually show the hero callously killing their defeated opponents, but on the other hand we've hand 30 years of D&D and other RPGS, and 20 or so years of computer games where that is *exactly* what has happened, and players are attuned/desensitized to the death of paper opponents. I don't think that mere rules will reverese that trend - if the player wants to make sure his hero's enemies are dead, he'll kill them unless the rules absolutely forbid it - and then we'd hear screams of "Railroading" or similar. We can point the way, but we can't force. (Page 76 is (to my mind) a "force", not a "show").
RR
He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad
R. Sabatini, Scaramouche
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