Topic: Healing your torture victim

[DangerMan]

During a session last night the players were torturing an unfortunate foe - a captured neng. The poor half demon had no more than a few hit points left when interrogation started and soon went unconsciouss. Players opted to heal him back to consciousness and continue the torture. Now, this raises a few questions about utility spells and unwilling targets, as utility spells only work on "caster, a willing target, or a target incapable of resistance".

When is the target "incapable of resistance"?

When unconscious due to negative hit points? When sleeping? How about having sustained 99% of hit points and having a total of -90 due to various injuries?

[yammahoper]

Ha, that's funny.

Healing spells always work. 

Make them Class H.

[DangerMan]

Ha, that's funny.

Healing spells always work. 

Make them Class H.

Maybe I will... But sometimes a NPC would rather just die, than spill the beans. Then again, allowing U-spells to work on sleeping or dead targets opens up the pandoras box of abusing teleport - so making them class H is probably a good idea.

Funny? Maybe :-) But bringing him back made perfect sense - I would have done the same. I got really funny when the next interrogation maneuver showed an UM100! PCs are back on track!

[yammahoper]

Oh, I've seen it before.  Even had a party cast lifegiving on officer prisoner after fumbling the interrogation mnv and dying of heart failure.

Information I NEEDED the party to acquire, btw.  Amazing how successful a mnv will be when the GM needs it to be.

[markc]

 I think the official answer in the past is that the target has the right to have the spell fail even if they are unconscious, ie they have to agree.
MDC

[Cory Magel]

We did one better back in our D&D days.  The Cleric resurrected someone we were "questioning".  In retrospect the GM didn't want us getting the information he had, but when we accidentally killed him then decided to resurrect him and the GM looked horrified and said in a questioning manner "Noooo!?!?!" he admitted defeat.

What if you just got surprise clubbed over the head by a foe who WANTED to torture you but hit you too hard and killed you, so they are bringing you back to torture you?  Do you know it's that foe trying to bring you back and not a friend?

What if you don't want to die and are killed by a foe, then it's that foe bringing you back to life would you allow it on the off chance you might somehow escape them?

So I think the questions are...

Does the dead character have a choice?
...and...
Does the dead character know the situation?

Pretty much a GM call if you ask me.  And, really, one that could depend heavily on the outlook of the 'afterlife' within the GM's world.

[markc]

And IMHO with resurrection it depends heavily on the Deities desires and outlook not the person casting the spell.
MDC

[Vector Z]

Healing spells are a must in any self-respecting torturer's toolbox

[markc]

IMHO herbs are better as they do not get a save vs their use.
MDC

[yammahoper]

I think being dead or souless qualifies as "unable to resist".

[rdanhenry]

However, Lifegiving works on the soul. For Lifegiving, I'd say you have three possible sources of veto: the god powering the spell, the soul of the departed, and whatever power has custody of the soul of the departed (possibly that soul's personal god, possibly some god specifically charged with keeping the dead).

[yammahoper]

I don't think a soul has a choice.  The body is funtioning and the priest calls the soul back.  If souls had a choice, there would be very few undead in any world.

[Marc R]

Most of that magic is channeling, not all, but there might be religious implications of using magic for this reason.

I personally hate "The aura always knows" answers. . . .

My personal rule is that with the conscious, can choose to be willing or not. . .the unconscious are always willing.

This avoids the issues of "We need to teleport, but joe is unconscious so he can't give permission so we can't.". . .caster can just cut your unconscious throat, if they want to teleport you into a volcano or heal you, same difference in my book.