Combat! (Killing Curse on Supernaturals [Answered]

We don't do PVP in the game and when we do it is negotiated between the players as flavour. IF we do use a sheet in PVP Scenarios then everything has hit points. If you were to hit something with a death curse I don't believe in 'instant kills' and i'm about 90% sure the other guardians don't want it in our game either.

You can go with your gut instinct if you like on combat, as we don't use it in our game we don't have rules for it.

We are running a non-combative social game, so we have no need for actual combat rules. I'd personally prefer stuff like this be taught to students in-character with speculated knowledge, so its fair to ask questions about it for teaching purposes, but will it come up in game? We don't want it to; unless you intentionally are looking for trouble in our two pvp areas. The killing curse 'could' work if the other player is killed with good story and by consent between two players, we're not going to allow one-shots in HBN as we very pointedly explain in the house rules that we don't want PC combat.

If someone wants to conduct an IC combat class and teach what could kill something based on what knowledge the Wizarding world believes (eg speculates), that's fine. If you're killing NPC's in a PVP area, we could let it slide if it is for a good story/plot.

Not sure how else to explain it, I will leave this to the other guardians to discuss from this point on.

Thank you for your time, Helena. I reread the rules, and I'll keep everything you've said in mind when I'm plotting out the Battle League scenarios and other things.

I think you're worried about me using the curse on another player, when I'm concerned about using it on ST-controlled creatures. You're thinking about the metagame, and I'm thinking about verisimilitude, and that's why we aren't communicating well. If you say that encountering dangerous creatures in-game is unlikely, I understand. With the Battle League, I'm not trying to gets PCs in danger, I'm trying to give a realistic perspective on well-considered combat tactics in the HP/HBN universe. This necessitates that the character (who has plenty of combat experience) be able to communicate to students which tactics will keep them alive, and which ones will get them killed, and to actually know what she's talking about.

Thinking my position over in terms of the metagame, I have to say that this is really a character issue: Professor McGriffin is an empiricist. She attempts to prove or disprove everything she thinks and believes, and she's been a fighting mage for 20 years. Voldemort had plenty of creatures in his service, and so she has had plenty of opportunity to test the Killing Curse on everything from giants to acromantulas to shielded humans to maybe even dragons. If she's thinking about the limits of the curse, she's going to look for every scrap of evidence she can find about things the curse failed to kill. It can be assumed that it kills normal things, so she limits her search to powerful magical creatures. Note also that she had access to the great minds of the Order, and its incident reports, broadening her knowledge base. Phoenixes? They are known to be reborn after Killing Curses. Dementors and Lethifolds? Not even alive to begin with. Dragons? Relatively straightforward to test. Basilisks? Here's where there's no way to be sure, the creatures are so rare. If it can/can't kill dragons, though, she can give it a better probability of being able to/not being able to kill basilisks.

I'm trying to demonstrate the way she thinks. She doesn't speculate, she tests and reasons from the results of those tests. If she never met a dragon while fighting Voldy? It wouldn't take much doing to anonymously bribe an unscrupulous dragon tamer in Romania to attempt the curse on an adult dragon in "self defense". She doesn't care a whit about dragons, she considers them to be nothing but stupid and dangerous beasts based on studies of dragon behavior by people like Newt Scamander. They're useful for their body parts, and nothing more (from her perspective, that is).

Bringing it all back to the issue at hand, my point is that if Quinn believes the Killing Curse will work on a dragon, and tells the students this fact, she isn't speculating. She has come to that conclusion through tests and logic. And that means that in terms of the overall meta of Hogwarts by Night, I need to know if it will actually work, so that I know what the results of her past tests would have been.

--

As for your point, other Peeves, her in-character response would be that it's only Unforgivable for use on people. That part is established in canon. Using it on a dragon is just good tactics, in the same way that using a gun to shoot a rabid bear is good tactics and using a gun to shoot your neighbor is unforgivable. A child can pick up and point a gun at both a bear and their neighbor, but you wouldn't say that in the situation with the bear the child should instead sit down and die, would you? The point of a battle club is to teach the students how not to die in battle, and the Killing Curse makes an excellent tool for not dying in battle. One of the very best, in fact.

If McGonagall and the Ministry say that Quinn can't teach the spell itself (i.e. the casting aspect), that's perfectly reasonable. She can still tell the students how useful it is, and how once they graduate she will be happy to teach it to them then, and how it will work on x and y creatures but not on z creatures because yada yada undeath yada yada.

--

I definitely don't want to disrupt the game in any way, and I hope I'm not coming off as combative. It's important to get these issues hammered out before actual storylines get going that are related to them, I think.

Well, I'd rather not wait 3 1/2 months to determine a significant aspect of the character, when it could be worked out or she could be altered in the next week or so. If she needs to have less... large-scale goals, if she shouldn't be an empiricist or a fighting mage, those parts can be scrapped and I'll start again.

Respectfully, pushing it back when we aren't going to change our minds between then and now doesn't seem to be very useful. I'm perfectly happy to comply with whatever the guardians think is necessary, but it would be nice to get it worked out as soon as it's reasonable to do so.

Alright, easy enough to fix. Proposal for new lore: use of the Unforgivable curses literally eats away at the caster's soul, even if used on unintelligent creatures. If they weren't already corrupt, only mages in truly desperate need would use them. Either way, they are not to be taught to children, whose souls can be especially vulnerable to Dark influence.

The waiting was referring to putting off possible metagame problems until later when there's no reason not to fix the friction now. My point was, if the character needs to be altered on a base level, I would rather not wait for months to do so, because then once the change comes into play we would need to retcon whatever she has been doing in the meantime (if that makes sense).

--

As for the difference between the Dueling Club and the Battle League... "Dueling against a single opponent in a controlled environment is an entirely different situation from fighting for your life in a real battle." <-- This is the perspective Quinn takes on the sport of dueling.

Dristan and I have already talked about him and his expertise being a key element of the Battle League, along with Prof. Kestrel if she is willing to accept the invitation to assist.

EDIT: And any of the other professors, of course! Everyone is welcome, Quinn is no tyrant.

Ok...I did research. I looked around. I read what everyone is saying. Here is how I think this should go and only Rose can repeal what I am about to say...

The Unforgivable Curses earn a trip to Azkaban. While their use was allowed during the Wizarding War, that War is OVER. And before, I understand that the law WAS only against using it on humans. HOWEVER. Hermoine Granger is in the Ministry now and she is the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. Hermoine, who seeks to have equal treatment on non-humans, like goblins and house elves. She, and A LOT of people after the war, would lobby to make the curses ILLEGAL. No loop holes, no exceptions. For the students to learn about it is one thing. Teaching them how and using it at all, is another.

And it's not about the metagame. It's the story. There are a NUMBER of different ways to wreck someone's day WITHOUT using the Curses. So for right now...unless Rose says otherwise...

THE UNFORGIVABLE CURSES ARE ILLEGAL AND ANY USE OF THEM AT ALL IS A ONE WAY TRIP TO AZKABAN

-bows- Thy will be done. Her own use of the curses will remain secret, and she won't deign to teach their use to the students. If they ask, she will spin them the story of the curses corrupting their souls.

(Morte, the problem with "just don't use them" is that it's 100% metagame. If they are in-universe the best tools for the job, they are the tools to be used. If, in-universe there are no exceptions and every use is illegal, that's an entirely different matter. The verisimilitude has been settled.)

Thank you all for your time. I'm sorry to cause friction. My obsession with verisimilitude borders on OCD sometimes... If it becomes a major problem, I will excuse myself from the boards, but I think this exchange was reasonable on my end. If it was not, let me know.

-shrug- If using them means life and victory, and not using them means death and defeat, the choice is clear. Not openly teaching them to the students is one thing, not using them herself is another.

Of course! These are merely hypotheticals, not anything I expect to come up in the game itself. Helena made it clear that that is not the style of RP you're going for. But it could happen in the world, and that's what is important. Not the metagame, but the universe the character exists in.

That's what this whole thing is about. I'm not expecting to actually fight dragons IC, but the character would have done the tests to determine the best possible way to defeat a dragon, just in case the circumstance arose and it became necessary. Constant Vigilance, as a wise man once said.

This is the plan.

Maybe I need to ask Helena for a Journal thread, so that I can write a journal of in-universe empirical tests, threads of logic and contingency plans. That way, I can refer to it if the mess ever actually hits the fan somehow, and I can legitimately say that the character planned for as many eventualities as possible ahead of time. It would be a fun writing exercise.