[Raellus]

I find the Killing Blow (see below) rule to be a little odd in that it attempts to strictly limit player agency by forcing a roll to execute an action based on solely on willpower. I agree that there should be some sort of a psychological penalty for doing something so taboo (e.g. the +1 stress point seems reasonable), but blocking the action based on a failed roll just seems unnecessarily restrictive and arbitrary. Taking the Killer specialty seems like an expensive way to avoid these restrictions.

KILLING BLOW
A person who is incapacitated by damage is defenseless. If it’s a human being and you want to kill them outright, you must fail an EMP roll (roll one base die only). If the roll succeeds, you simply cannot force yourself to commit the deed. Even if the roll fails and you do kill the victim, you suffer 1 point of stress – killing in cold blood is not easy. If you have the Killer specialty (page 49) you can kill defenseless enemies without these negative effects.

At the risk of sounding sanguine and immoral, does the mechanic of having to pass an EMP roll before being allowed to deliver a killing blow seem reasonable to you?

Not to say that, as a player, I would ever want my PC to do this, but there might be circumstances where it's justifiable (a "mercy killing" to end the suffering of an untreatable, badly wounded enemy, for example). By the same token, as a Ref, I would make sure that if my players' PCs committed any unlawful killings, there would be IG consequences to contend with down the line (the OPFOR would commit even more resources to hunting them down, for example).

The Killing Blow rule seems even more odd given the following rule in the Ranged Combat section.

DEFENSELESS TARGET: If your target is in the same hex and immobile or unaware of you, you gain a +3 bonus.

So, the rules give you a bonus to physically take action against an incapacitated NPC, but then forces an EMP roll to actually carry it out. Why so many hoops? I don't quite get it.

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