Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

[Lucius]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

This 'Victor' guy writes a lot of history books!

 

From what I hear he must be spoiled rotten too

 

Lucius Alexander

 

To the palindromedary belongs the tagline

[phoenix240]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Plus, IIRC, Binder doesn't HAVE a Killing Attack slot in his weapon. So, technically- by the rules- he CAN'T kill someone with his weapon.

 

Sure, I suppose he could Entangle someone, and then push them in front of a bus or something, but...

 

Well, nitpick wise it a Normal Attack can kill a character. An 18d6 EB vs a 2 Def 8 Body will smear them. But where do meta considerations like the rules come into discussions like this is an interesting point. "Logically" Binder could kill someone with his weaponry in a number of ways or at least facilitate their lethal injury (entangled winged flyer falls to her death). But rules wise he "can't". Does that make it impossible in the reality of the game world?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I'd classify the "entangle the flyer who falls to his death" approach similar to shoving the entangled hero in front of a bus. The fact is that Binder is a lot less lethal than most Supers, heroes or villains. I suspect every Super on the hero team inflicts far more potentially lethal damage (normal or killing) than Binder does.

 

Why can't he suffocate someone by covering his face with glue? I don't know. Perhaps his glue is no airtight, and it remains possible, though uncomfortable, to breathe through it. Spidey routinely webs up a villain's face to blind him, yet I've never heard of a story where the target can't breathe.

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I'd classify the "entangle the flyer who falls to his death" approach similar to shoving the entangled hero in front of a bus. The fact is that Binder is a lot less lethal than most Supers, heroes or villains. I suspect every Super on the hero team inflicts far more potentially lethal damage (normal or killing) than Binder does.

 

Why can't he suffocate someone by covering his face with glue? I don't know. Perhaps his glue is no airtight, and it remains possible, though uncomfortable, to breathe through it. Spidey routinely webs up a villain's face to blind him, yet I've never heard of a story where the target can't breathe.

There was one story, can't recall the specifics, but I believe it was the Beetle that altered a web that Spider-Man had wrapped someone in so that it didn't fall apart in an hour and the person died.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

as i recall it wasthe chemicals in the web fluid deteriororating with age that caused the web ot not evaporateon schedule killing the trappe dcrook

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

That was what Peter was left to believe.

[fbdaury]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Smaller communities tend to want to help each other more and if that means serving said community by joining the incredibly small military doesn't sound like that bad an idea.

 

Keep in mind "most" =/= "all". Most = <50%. Further exacerbated by the fact that you don't get to vote in some places, unless you serve.

 

Uhm, not to be contrary, but outside of Starship Troopers, where exactly do you need to serve to have the right to vote? I don't know, off-hand, of any country where military service isn't either: A)Mandatory, often with induction at the wrong end of a rifle OR B)Completely voluntary.

[fbdaury]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

As to Binder, since there is no mention in his writeup of his glue being permeable to oxygen, I think it fair to think that the only thing stopping him from gluing an opponent's head to kill them is that he chooses not to- if he had a slot on his sheet that listed one of his entangles blocking the sight sense group with the sfx of "Gluing target's head/face" (and having checked, neither his 5th or 6th ed writeups have such a slot) I would be willing to concede that he can safely bind an opponent's head without them suffocating but since the character clearly does not do so would indicate to me that he does not do so (even though it might be a smart tactical move) because he Knows it can kill them and doesn't want that kind of trouble, making summarily executing Binder all the worse since he is a villain with clearly lethal capacity who simply chooses not to exercise that capability (although if he survived then I highly suggest to OP that you add a NND RKA Does Body attack to his sheet for the next encounter with the team- defense being environmentally sealed armor, forcefield defense or not needing to breathe).

[LordOmega]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I think that if your characters are killing the bad guys most of the time they tend not to think of other options because killing is easier.

[fbdaury]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I think that if your characters are killing the bad guys most of the time they tend not to think of other options because killing is easier.

 

"When all you have is a RKA, everything just starts looking like a target?"

[massey]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Killing is situation and genre-specific. Look at the real world where people do kill, and where sometimes we laud it as a good thing, and sometimes we denounce it as a bad thing. Shoot Hitler good. Shoot baby bad. A crazy guy with a bomb gets shot by a cop and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. A guy selling pot gets shot and people say police used too much force. So there's disagreement in the real world over when and how much force is appropriate. The same will be true in a game.

 

Binder is a Silver Age-esque villain. He glues people to the ground. He hits guns with glops of goop so they don't fire. It's sticky enough to hamper movement but not to stop breathing. It doesn't harden enough so you can't breathe. He's a bank robber but he isn't a killer. Therefore it's generally not appropriate for Captain Bodycount to swoop in and hit Binder with a 9D6 RKA.

 

In most campaigns and most genres, heroes should use lethal force less frequently than police. If a cop wouldn't be justified in shooting a guy, you sure as hell shouldn't use it. Mostly heroes shouldn't kill because they aren't in danger of being killed themselves. They don't need to kill to save a life. Now if you prefer an Authority style game, where the villains slaughter babies, their only attacks are killing attacks, and they all have 50 PD/ED, 0 resistant and 10 Body, then yes, you're probably going to be killing people.

[Tech]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I don't think anyone's mentioned: If the player character keeps going around killing off the GM's villains, the GM's going to retaliate and nothing's going to keep that PC alive/around.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

The key question is, is the Character killing villains because he finds it less of an exertion than trying to bring them in alive (and I presume, reduces the paperwork?) or is the character killing villains only when it makes sense to do do given the context of the situation? CVK is a different consideration. Heroes should, by default, at least be reluctant to kill. Killing other people does weird things to your thinking, and can be very traumatic (unless you're sociopathic, in which case YMMV). Most people recognize this on a gut level and will do anything to avoid actually killing someone.

 

If your hero is killing out of convenience rather than unavoidable necessity, he is no hero.

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I don't think anyone's mentioned: If the player character keeps going around killing off the GM's villains' date=' the GM's going to retaliate and nothing's going to keep that PC alive/around.[/quote']

 

The Harbinger of Justice was Steve's character. Why don't you ask him about that?

[Doctor Agenda]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I liked the way there were consequences for that action, Erkenfresh.

 

I've never been as convinced as some that killing can't be 'heroic,' though.

 

It's not very 'Four Color Super Heroic,' that's for sure. But if I were a super hero in a world where devastatingly powerful super villains recurrently escaped from custody after every time I stopped them, only to wreak more havoc once again, causing more property damage and probably loss of innocent lives, I might give a lot of thought to 'finishing off' those villains once and for all, if I found any of them unconscious at my feet after yet another battle.

 

And I'm not sure, under those circumstances and given those assumptions, doing so could not be considered 'heroic.'

 

I'm surprised there's not an anti-hero who specializes in taking those guys out.

[massey]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

The Harbinger of Justice was Steve's character. Why don't you ask him about that?

 

And that's a genre issue. The Punisher and similar characters exist in genres where killing villains is okay. You can gun down Bank Robber #46 and next week he's going to appear again as Bank Robber #47, wearing a leather coat and ski mask this time instead of a blue jean jacket and hood. Rapists, murderers, gangbangers, drug dealers, all appear as targets for the gun-toting vigilante. They aren't supposed to live until the next session.

 

These types of player characters traditionally lack true super powers. It's "okay" for them to kill because 1) they're killing bad people who traditionally commit violent crimes, and 2) they can be killed by the villain relatively easily. While the actual character sheet might have 4 levels of combat luck and a bulletproof vest, story-wise he's still fairly vulnerable to a punk with a Saturday Night Special. If he doesn't shoot them, they'll shoot him. Even then, the characters are anti-heroes. You go to a completely different style of game if you've got Captain Powerhouse ripping the arms off of a 15 year old gangbanger.

[massey]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

I'm surprised there's not an anti-hero who specializes in taking those guys out.

 

They dealt with that issue in Kingdom Come (obviously on the side of "it's not good to kill"). There have been comic characters who did exactly that. It's just not the most popular characters.

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

And that's a genre issue. The Punisher and similar characters exist in genres where killing villains is okay. You can gun down Bank Robber #46 and next week he's going to appear again as Bank Robber #47, wearing a leather coat and ski mask this time instead of a blue jean jacket and hood. Rapists, murderers, gangbangers, drug dealers, all appear as targets for the gun-toting vigilante. They aren't supposed to live until the next session.

 

These types of player characters traditionally lack true super powers. It's "okay" for them to kill because 1) they're killing bad people who traditionally commit violent crimes, and 2) they can be killed by the villain relatively easily. While the actual character sheet might have 4 levels of combat luck and a bulletproof vest, story-wise he's still fairly vulnerable to a punk with a Saturday Night Special. If he doesn't shoot them, they'll shoot him. Even then, the characters are anti-heroes. You go to a completely different style of game if you've got Captain Powerhouse ripping the arms off of a 15 year old gangbanger.

Frank Castle co-exists in the same U as Spider-Man, Captain America, Fantastic Four.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

And that's a genre issue. The Punisher and similar characters exist in genres where killing villains is okay. You can gun down Bank Robber #46 and next week he's going to appear again as Bank Robber #47' date=' wearing a leather coat and ski mask this time instead of a blue jean jacket and hood. Rapists, murderers, gangbangers, drug dealers, all appear as targets for the gun-toting vigilante. They aren't supposed to live until the next session.[/quote']

Punisher and Wolverine live in the same universe as Spiderman, Captain America, and dozens of other "no kill" heroes, so I'm not sure how you can claim it is a genre issue.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Darn, I type too slow...

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Nah, you just had to throw Wolverine in too.

[Zen Archer]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Nah' date=' you just had to throw Wolverine in too.[/quote']

 

And he's another good example too. I don't think the meta-issue in this case is genre as much as popularity.

[fbdaury]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Everytime that a conversation like this comes up, it seems that I have to be the one to point out that some characters even with a full CVK have killed in a comic- post-Crisis Man of Steel Superman executed three pre-Crisis (and far more powerful) Kryptonians even after he had already stripped them of their powers using Gold K. The reasoning was simple- they actively threatened that they would find a way to get their powers back, come to his Earth and then kill EVERYONE once they got there- a feat they had pretty much completed in the bubble-dimension Earth that this all occurred on. Superman struggled with the decision but knew this would be his only way to be certain that they could not follow through on the threat. And then, out of guilt and remorse afterwards he went a bit MPD and started blacking out and fighting crime as the new Gangbuster. So yeah, he killed in desperate circumstances but even though no one would know on his Earth, and no one would fault him either, he drove himself crazy with guilt over what he had done.

[Sundog]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Punisher and Wolverine live in the same universe as Spiderman' date=' Captain America, and dozens of other "no kill" heroes, so I'm not sure how you can claim it is a genre issue.[/quote']

 

Just because something exists within the same "Universe" doesn't mean it's in the same genre. It would be easy to set, say, a TV series based on drama in the halls of power in New York City, and another be a Police Procedural also in New York - and have the lead roles be portrayed as being two brothers, with plenty of casual crossovers. One universe, two quite different genres.

[Greywind]

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill

 

Ah, but by that token there shouldn't be any cross-overs with the Punisher unless the actual heroes were looking to take the murder in.