Low XP From Executing Prisoners

[TroubledWaters]

The entire party receives 25 XP each for each prisoner freed, yet putting them down only gives 1 XP each.

This can create situations where parties can be OOC disappointed if one of their members kills the prisoners, even if that were an action they would be IC in favor of.

Would the team please look at the reward discrepancies between different choices with the prisoners? I'd like to set them on fire without the guilt of reducing my party's XP.

[Ork]

I can't imagine a scenario where 75 xp per dungeon matters. Remind your party they need to kill 2 literal monsters to recoup the loss, and then corpsebash them for their weakness.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

You would get more from PKing another player than you would from saving the NPC, so Ork is onto something here I think.

[Kalthariam]

Probably because they are a trivial enemy, and thus you don't really learn or gain anything by killing them. Except I suppose the satisfaction of you doing so as an evil character?

Kinda like killing a sewer goblin at epic levels. It's trivial and pointless, thus you don't really get anything out of it, you just get the barest minimum possible.

[Hazard]

I can't imagine a scenario where 75 xp per dungeon matters. Remind your party they need to kill 2 literal monsters to recoup the loss, and then corpsebash them for their weakness.

This is the correct answer.

[Dreams]

Just do what the character would do and enjoy whatever consequences arise from it!

[Algol]

Honestly I'd love an option to lasso them, for evil RP purposes.

[Shrouded Wanderer]

Troubled has a point.

As much as 75xp or 125xp doesnt matter so much. The fact that the choice presents an optimal outcome sort of pushes everyone to the specific choice.


If the choice to free the prisoner granted 1xp, nobody would even touch the NPCs at all, but they do to optimize the run, and are forced to take the one option.

There should be an equity with the choices. Freeing a prisoner doesnt and shouldnt give you any more or less experience.

The fact the choice is there indicates that the designers of that encounter wanted people to stay in character and make a choice based on their characters morals in a way giving extra xp as a reward for making the arguably "good guy" choice sort of pigeonholes characters to be good guys in a way, doesnt it?

Also what Agol said. There should be an intimidate check as well so that we can force them to fight for us as henchmen. Theyd be worthless but it would be fun and hilarious

[In Sorrow We Trust]

hmmm.

[AstralUniverse]

You can also free the prisoners and RP that you're taking them as prisoners back to church of Bane or wherever you base your evil corp(tm) at. No one would mind.

[Paint]

There's something inherently dark and hilarious about advocating better xp rewards for killing slaves and prisoners, even if it does, arguably, make sense from a gameplay standpoint. Even so, it seems so inconsequential that it hardly matters.

Anyways, I used to kill prisoners and slaves on one of my characters and then loot their corpses.

[TurningLeaf]

Should affect alignment points

[-XXX-]

Should affect alignment points

It used to, but eventually all mechanics that influenced a character's alignment without any DM supervision got changed.

[Watchful Glare]

Give 75xp for executing them instead of releasing them. Flip it on the good aligned characters.

[Ork]

Killing these slaves is powerful because it IS a suboptimal choice. You're displaying that your prime concern is how your character would approach the situation - not how much XP you get out of it.

Notable other examples include removing yourself from a party because of another character's actions. Looting all the gold and explicitly emoting taking more than your share. Regrettably these have become more 'hes an ashole player' than 'hes an ashole character'. Is the line between OOC and IC almost indistinguishable to the modern arelith player?

[Richrd]

I mean you could compare the two this way.

Freeing the prisoners is like "Quick, now is your chance to get out! We have dealt with the monsters / are dealing with them while you escape!"
A genuinely good deed I can imagine being done not only by good PCs but those in the neutral alignment too. If not for the deed itself then at least to further weaken whoever you are assaulting, to deny them the prisoners.

But killing the prisoner? I mean come on, it's some starved hobo who's skin and bones, barely surviving with the scraps fed to them (that is if they were fed any at all). And they've probably been declared dead by anyone who could have been missing them anyways. Killing one of them would be akin to kicking a puppy, aka. caricature levels of evil. The kind that twirls their mustache and says MU HAH HAH HAH out loud.

It makes sense for one to give 25 exp while the other is just 1 ... maybe the game is trying to just show you which decision has more weight behind it.


EDIT:

Is the line between OOC and IC almost indistinguishable to the modern arelith player?

Yes.

[chris a gogo]

Im alittle confused by this post.

The complaint is you only get 1 XP from killing the defenseless unarmed cowering prisoner.
But if you go there to rescue them you get more, it seems perfectly reasonable, even if your playing the baby eating bishop of bath and well it's odd behavior to randomly kill the prisoners of the things your there to slaughter.

[God_In_Action]

It's perfectly simple: different alignments should be broadly comparable so that it doesn't skew people's choices but enables them to RP their character without being influenced by the great God Expee.

So clearly the solution is to remove all exp gain for any interaction with prisoners! Right?! (That's sarcasm, but you can't argue that the evil option is fine to give 1exp because "the RP is what matters" if you would also be against reducing the exp gain from 25 to 1 for freeing them because "the experience is what matters).

But really this is a bit of a moot point. There is an evil option available which gives 25 exp, and that is asking for the prisoner to pay to be released. It's pretty damned evil to extort money from a prisoner to let them go, evil enough even for all you kitten murdering Cyricists out there.

[Hazard]

It's perfectly simple: different alignments should be broadly comparable so that it doesn't skew people's choices but enables them to RP their character without being influenced by the great God Expee.

So clearly the solution is to remove all exp gain for any interaction with prisoners! Right?! (That's sarcasm, but you can't argue that the evil option is fine to give 1exp because "the RP is what matters" if you would also be against reducing the exp gain from 25 to 1 for freeing them because "the experience is what matters).

But really this is a bit of a moot point. There is an evil option available which gives 25 exp, and that is asking for the prisoner to pay to be released. It's pretty damned evil to extort money from a prisoner to let them go, evil enough even for all you kitten murdering Cyricists out there.

There's a reson not to choose the 'pay to release' option. Sometimes they give you some clunky junk like a pick axe or something.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

Give 75xp for executing them instead of releasing them. Flip it on the good aligned characters.

update from sorrowkitten
=============
new quest: killing 100000 prisoners now grants automatic level 30 and a full set of hard 5% gear