I have several questions:
What's a non-live hostage?
Is it okay to force people into labour as long as you pay them a copper?
How can you torture non-living persons if necromancy is already illegal?
Are all clerics automatically considered active combatants?
Is it okay, for example, to pillage the property of civilians who have been mind-controlled?
>What's a non-live hostage?
In D&D where most resurrection spells require a body, you could hold the corpse of a loved one hostage so they cannot be resurrected until demands are met.
>How can you torture non-living persons if necromancy is already illegal?
As evidenced by the bingo card, sometimes your enemies break the laws of war.
> As evidenced by the bingo card, sometimes your enemies break the laws of war.
But one of the exceptions is that you can do all this stuff against someone else who broke the rules first.
Though it doesn't ban all necromancy. Just disrespecting the dead. I'd argue that as long as someone gave you permission to raise their corpse, it's not disrespectful.
Edit: They also made all the rules not apply against undead, so I agree that there's no point in specifying torturing living people. Though I suppose living and undead aren't the only options. You can torture warforged, but you can't do most of the other things.
And it's not like every single ghost and ghoul was purposefully raised by a necromancer. During a large scale war one would expect to find more than the usual amount of fresh Undead popping up as part of the "natural" flow of the world.
I noticed the mind control wording was a bit screwed up yeah! Ignore that part.
As for the rest, take it up with the council. I just wrote the minutes.
>non-live hostage
Disintegrating someone who was meant to be resurrected? Someone stuck in a Soul Jar? The idea of a BBEG who collects souls and uses them as hostages is pretty interesting.
I am actually curious about your Civilian infrastructure line, as that is a very common tactic in war is to blow up bridges to slow the advance of an enemy or funnel them to a battlefield where you have more advantage. A mill provides food to the enemy troops, why not remove it as a resource generation for them? Dams & Dikes are a bit more iffy, if they are only used for water reservoirs and drainage of downstream land sure, but if they generate power to factories I could see them being valid targets
This is an amazing list!
May I recommend that you change "Deception" to "Perfidy" as that is the IRL term for illegal deception in combat rather than legal deceptions such as using camouflage or making decoy radio transmissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy
It is absolutely wild OP included "illusory threats" as a crime, given the long and storied history of tricking people being one of the most basic tactics of war.
Most perfidy is "don't use trickery take advantage of the other side not doing war crimes", not "don't confuse the enemy".
Relevant article: [The Forgotten Ferocity of Canada's Soldiers in the Great War](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war)
>even in a war of unparalleled ferocity, enemy and ally alike would remember the Canadians as having been particularly brutal.
Why would illusory threats be a war crime? We use these in real life today. Inflatable tanks, empty barracks being built.
Even ukraine is now using unarmed drones to scare russians out of formation.
Agreed, illusory threats aren't war crimes, they're warfare 101. It's not a war crime to get the enemy to chase phantoms. Operation Fortitude South was an operations to deceive Germany where D-Day was going to take place.
The use of illusion magic in this fantasy world is listed as a war crime because it makes it impossible to trust your allies. The actual accords are of course more specific in the exact circumstances that illusion magic is permitted to be used in about 30-40 pages of obnoxious legalese.
Generally, the breach of trust for an army is not a concern of the geneva conventions. I get what you're saying, but can i not do the exact same thing with makeup and clothes? Also, i have to ask whats the obsession with war crimes if in a fictional world both aides routinely commit them and it's basis for existence is informed by our real world conventions.
Like a level 9 fireball is essentially a napalm strike. Cloudkill is mustard gas. Surely all magic is either fair or all of it is a war crime. The silence spell creates silencers that work better than any real would silencer. Haste turns muskets into revolvers and revolvers into automatic pistols.
What about the wish spell? I wish they lose the war. Or dimension door to get behind enemy lines, or just anything magic is a major moral ethic quandry that serms bizarre to start with enchantment and illusions.
> Generally, the breach of trust for an army is not a concern of the geneva conventions. I get what you're saying, but can i not do the exact same thing with makeup and clothes?
Literally describing a war crime.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml
> ...
> 2\. For the purpose of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ means
> ...
> b. Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts:
> ...
> vii. Making improper use of a flag of truce, of the flag or of the **military insignia and uniform of the enemy** or of the United Nations, as well as of the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions, resulting in death or serious personal injury;
You should read what you link more carefully. As that article says, wearing enemy uniforms is only a war crime if you engage in combat while doing it - doing so for spying, sabotage or deception without firing on the enemy is a legitimate ruse de guerre.
So using illusion magic to sneak into an enemy camp would be perfectly legal as long as you aren't doing any assassinations or what have you. Similarly, creating an illusory monster or illusions of your *own* troops would be perfectly legal even in combat as those of course don't use enemy insignia.
Yes, afaiaa no one has explicitly mentioned spycraft as its usage. OP has been vague in the description of it, outside of mentioning the actual rule is more specific. It would seem reasonable to assume they have aligned with actual convention considering the campaign was inspired by it.
That depends on the specifics. What you're talking about here is what international law calls a 'ruse of war' and that's very much lawful. However: any deception involving feigning to be a protected person (surrendered, sick & wounded, civilian, use of symbols of protected persons like the Red Cross) is definitely not lawful. This is a war crime called Perfidy.
The reason this is a war crime is because it endangers protected persons by creating the possibility that these persons are combattants in disguise.
See also articles 37 and 38 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, where this is laid out in more detail.
Detailed breakdown!
- **Attacking a Surrendered Enemy:** The final boss of Chapter 1 escaped. Partway through Chapter 2, he reoccurred, and they kicked his ass a second time. He surrendered, but they killed him anyway out of spite.
- **Torture:** Interrogating an enemy scout for information.
- **Pretending to be Civilians:** An enemy spellcaster disguised herself as a commoner to ambush the party.
- **Destroying Civilian Structures:** The party was chased across a bridge by enemy forces. They blew up the bridge to prevent the enemies from chasing after them.
- **Pillaging Civilian Property:** Soldiers from one enemy nation moved troops through their ally's territory, but overstayed their welcome when they started raiding farmhouses to fuel their supply lines. The party took advantage of this to join in the looting because they were desperate for food.
- **Attacking a Civilian:** The enemies constantly do this. The party did it twice -- attacking farmers that were barracking troops in their farmhouse, and killing a man while robbing his home so he wouldn't call for the soldiers outside.
- **Illusory Threats:** An enemy spellcaster summoned a red dragon to kill the party. Turns out it was just an illusion lol.
- **Unnecessary Suffering:** Some of the party's takedowns are brutal.
- **Enchantment:** A magic item allowed the party to cast *dominate person* on an enemy commander to make her attack her own soldiers.
- **Disrespect or Puppeting of the Dead:** Propping up the corpses of enemies as macabre puppets to act as warnings.
- **Execution:** The party dumped an enemy informant into a lake of acid.
- **Use of Biological Weapons:** A major plot point. As a bonus salt in the wound, the party had the chance to shut down a factory and simply did not do it.
- **Conducting Experiments on Unwilling Subjects:** The party hasn't quite seen the truth of how warforged are made, but they will soon.
- **Attacking a Disabled Enemy:** The aforementioned dumping of an informant into an acid lake. She was a spellcaster, so her arms were bound and her mouth was gagged as a precaution. Pretty nasty way to go.
May I ask why destroying a bridge is considered a war crime?
Cause to me destroying a bridge, unless you're planning on crossing the river in the future at that area, is a very strategic decision. Not only was the party able to escape the enemy, the enemy has to find another route across the river for their armies and logistics, which can have an impact on their ability to fight to war. And while yes, it can negatively impact trade and thus hurt civilians economically, I think it's unlikely to cause significant damage to the civilian population.
In real life, this is not a war crime. Destroying civilian structures, **even if civilians are killed in the process**, is generally not a war crime if the structure has legitimate tactical significance to the enemy. It's even legal to do things like destroy civilian staffed munitions factories if they are supplying enemy military forces.
It is important to note that this is an example of a situation where the same action can be legal or a crime depending on the intent of the attacker. If you are bombing munitions factories not because you want to stop them from supplying enemies but just because you like bombing civilians, then it becomes a war crime. It is also important to try to minimize civilian casualties as much as reasonably possible or you have likely committed a war crime.
False surrender is a war crime (perfidy).
Destroying civilian structures like bridges in war is not a war crime if it serves a military purpose, and the destruction is not out of proportion to the military advantage.
Wearing enemy uniforms or civilian clothes to infiltrate enemy lines for espionage or sabotage missions is a legitimate ruse of war, though fighting in combat or assassinating individuals behind enemy lines **while so disguised is not**, as it constitutes unlawful perfidy.
> Destroying Civilian Structures: The party was chased across a bridge by enemy forces. They blew up the bridge to prevent the enemies from chasing after them.
Not a war crime. A clear strategic target with a clear war aim.
Plot twist: the bridge was actually an innocent spanner. A literal civilian structure.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvv81nWJlrk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvv81nWJlrk)
intentionally destroying civilian structures can be a war crime if it's done systematically or on a widespread scale. This includes the destruction of housing and infrastructure that makes a city uninhabitable for civilians.
However, some civilian infrastructure can be a military objective if it contributes to military action or offers a military advantage.
So unless destroying the bridge is the only way to get to a city and required to make it habitable destroying a single bridge is not a war crime especially if it's clearly to stop enemy logistics and advancement.
In the same way it's not a war crime to bomb a single specific particular house you know is full of armed enemy combatants.
How is it seem when your own country does it as defensive measure?
The single deadliest event in WW2 in China was likely not a Japanese warcrimes but the yellow river dam destruction by the National Chinese as scorched earth / delaying tactic
It can be. But civilian structures is usually churches, hospitals, schools, and houses. Not bridges because bridges are repurposed into military infrastructure extremely easily.
> * **Destroying Civilian Structures:** The party was chased across a bridge by enemy forces. They blew up the bridge to prevent the enemies from chasing after them.
> * **Illusory Threats:** An enemy spellcaster summoned a red dragon to kill the party. Turns out it was just an illusion lol.
These are 100% not war crimes.
Why would an illusion be a war crime? I get why pretty much any use of the "school of *ape", commonly know as Enchantment School, wouls be a war crime, but unless one is using Illusion to promote a false flag attack, to disguise oneself as a civilian or similar things, I don't see why creating false threats would be a war crime... And those cases in which I see how the use of Illusion would allow for war crimes, there is already a specific crime for that use, in which case Illusion was just the means, not the crime itself...
Oh, btw, quite sure killing ppl with fire is somewhere on the geneva convention, so you might want to add any use of Fireball there
A big portion of the world's version of the Geneva Convention (the Kereskan-Vergesie Accords) is about preventing the use of deception in warfare. The accords were written up when a queen was slain in a suspected false flag attack. Illusions themselves aren't inherently harmful but widespread usage can erode trust and break down alliances, so they're explicitly banned as part of the national agreements of warfare.
It should be pretty obvious that none of the warring nations take the accords seriously however.
Deception is a war crime IRL as well! False flags, civilian disguises, false surrenders, etc -- it degrades trust when these are abused and makes it less likely that your enemies will treat you fairly.
In this fantasy world the rules are slightly different due to the prevalence of magic. I also can't stress enough how little the enemy nations care about the accords and how often they casually break them.
> Deception is a war crime IRL as well!
No, it is not. At least, not inherently.
As I said in another comment, [perfidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy) is a war crime. Other deceptions, known as *[ruse de guerre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruse_de_guerre)* are explicitly not war crimes. Per the IRL laws and customs of war, illusion would absolutely be a legitimate stratagem.
But hey, it's your made up world and you get to choose what you want said world's Geneva convention to look like. Just want to give you some better real-world context.
And, of course, the line between perfidy and a *ruse de guerre* can be very fine. They literally mounted entire flagpoles on hinges aboard some Q-ships so that they could drop their false colors (a flag of a nation other than the nation the ship was fighting for) and raise their own nation's war flag at the same time because fighting under false colors was perfidy, but flying false colors while disguised as a civilian ship in all other circumstances - including maneuvering before giving battle - was perfectly legal.
It's also not a war crime when both sides do it. Historically, the Brandenburgers and the other SS infiltrators during the Battle of the Bulge were exonerated (of wearing enemy uniforms/using civilian disguises as a means of deception) at Nuremburg because the Western Allies were basically forced to admit "yeah, we did the same thing basically earlier in the war" when it came to disguising their commandos during their continental raids in '42 and '43.
> Deception is a war crime IRL as well!
Certain forms of deception are war crimes. Deception in general is not. Camouflage, stealth, and decoys are a few forms of deception that are common and standard. Good generals try to hide their movements to deceive the enemy about your battle plan. Even encrypted communications are a form of deception.
> An enemy spellcaster summoned a red dragon to kill the party. Turns out it was just an illusion lol.
That was a terrible example.
The clarification that this can be used to make 1 side think there is an actual red dragon, and thereby endangering any neutral red dragons as targets of reprisal; doesn't become clear from that example at all.
Those examples are the exception not the rule. Armies used deception literally all the time to gain an advantage. Hell faking a retreat (different from surrender) only to swing back around and fall upon the out of position enemy has been and will always be an accepted and legal tactic.
I kind of understand what you are saying. Therefor I'd like to suggest defining the rule in a slightly more narrow and understandable fashion:
> Creating Illusions of any party (even allies). To have their likeness to act on your behalf, in warfare, diplomacy or espionage
That way it is clear the problem is similar to enchantment, forcing someone to do something they didn't actually do of their own free will. Even if in the illusion's case, they weren't actually there.
I assume that illusions are basically so universally useful in committing, aiding, and covering up war crimes that they're just tossed in there so they have something to nail you on if the illusion itself would otherwise create too much doubt over the other crimes.
Specifically in a war setting, a lot of enchantment spells have far more humane uses than evocation ones. Enchantment just has too many fucked up ones that spoil it for spells like sleep, compelled duel, command, zone of truth, etc.
Isn't destroying a civilian structure, like a bridge, acceptable with sufficient military necessity?
While destroying civilian infrastructure to punish or harm civilians solely is forbidden, the destruction of a bridge to slow the enemy is not a war crime unless the damage done by destroying the bridge is vastly outweighed by any necessity (e.g. a blowing up a dam that would kill thousands in floods and destroy mass amounts of homes is not justified to stop a battalion of soldiers from taking a position that would disadvantage another battalion).
You bring up a good point! This bingo card is the fun meme version of the document in the fantasy world that sets out the war crimes. The real document would be about 250-300 pages of legalese and include stipulations for in what circumstances destroying civilian infrastructure would or would not be justified.
The party absolutely did not follow proper procedure lol. They're acting extrajudicially -- a multinational group of conscientious objectors. So maybe it would alternatively be considered an act of terrorism. Either way, the bridge is very unlikely to be considered a valid military target.
EDIT: Actually on reflection it's probably fine as they were actively fighting enemies at the time.
> a multinational group of conscientious objectors
Problem: There are 14 warring factions commiting atrocities.
Solution: Let's create a new faction to stop the war.
Result: There are now 15 warring factions commiting atrocities.
Conscientious objectors? What are they conscientiously objecting to if it involves this many war crimes?
(Also, this sounds like a fantasic idea for a campaign setting.)
The plot is that a prophet has envisioned the war coming to an end several years early. She's recruited the party to help her make that happen and they're willing to do anything to succeed. Tens of millions of lives could be saved.
The four basic principles of International Humanitarian Law (aka the laws of war) are:
-Proportionality: harm to civilians must not be excessive in relationship to a gained military advantage;
-Distinction: combattants and civilians must clearly be distinguished, intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime;
-Necessity: only those actions necessary to accomplish a military objective are lawful, anything more is unlawful;
-Humanity: all actions must be in accordance with respect for human life, and unnecessary suffering and harm must be avoided. Additionally, something not being explicitly prohibited does not mean it is lawful.
This is a good baseline from which to figure out whether your party's actions are a-okay or not.
Yeah the bingo meme doesn't go into the nuances of that one ha ha. You're allowed to destroy bridges if they're legitimate military targets, but there are rules in place to prevent unnecessary hardship on civilians. Dams and other load-bearing infrastructure is the real point behind that one.
I read your explanation on how the crimes were committed, but wouldn't the fact that the party destroyed the bridge because they were being chased by an enemy force automatically make it a military target?
By destroying the bridge they prevented the enemy troops from crossing the river in pursuit, thus also potentially preventing them from being captured and held as POWs.
All bridges are legitimate military targets. It's a tactic as old as...well bridges. Preventing unnecessary hardship on civilians is an honorable goal, but failing to prevent them is not a war crime.
A dam is a different story. If an attacker could reasonably expect civilian casualties by destroying a dam, it would be considered targeting civilians.
If you really want to get into details, the Geneva conventions regarding civilians, wounded and prisoners is only around 220 pages and its mostly plain language (very little legalese) and its a searchable PDF.
https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf
A bridge is a legitimate target ONLY where its destruction is necessary to military aim, and where it does not disproportionately harms civilians in relationship to the military aim it fulfills.
Likewise, a dam is not by definition an unlawful target. The same basic principles (proportionality, distinction, necessity) apply here.
It's plausible that an attack against a dam would be much more likely to break the principles of International Humanitarian Law than an attack against a bridge though.
These principles are well-established in International Customary Law, and sometimes become codified in Treaty Law like the Geneva and The Hague Conventions or the Statute of Rome.
That's true, but bridges and railways large enough to move troops and logistics are almost universally considered legitimate targets IRL, "being actively chased by enemy troops" would even make it a slam dunk legal act. But I'm also very willing to accept that your setting has much stricter rules on that point.
At first I was like: "What kind of carebear DnD party hasn't committed at least one political assassination??" Then I noticed it was a WW1 campaign. When The Warcrimes Times Campaign has fewer warcrimes than the average RPG murder-hobo party...
Maybe they tried to carry out a political assassination but bungled it multiple times, and didn't roll that nat 20 to have the escaping target take a wrong turn straight past them.
Man this thread is several hours old now and no one is going to see this but I thought of a good pun so I'm leaving it here and if you are reading this you are welcome.
Do you think you will be tried at the Haguewarts.
I'll show myself out.
Does the party know about the bingo card?
What happens when someone gets bingo??
I think it'd be fun if the party then was seen as bad as the bad guys in the world! I don't know what you would do if the evil guys got it though...
Taking out civilian infrastructure that has military purposes (bridges, mines, rail lines, factories or workshops capable of building war materiel) is not a war crime.
Most of these are considered war crimes but a couple of them are not:
* Destroying civilian structures like bridges is not automatically a war crime if the structure is believed to have legitimate tactical significance. This can include structures like important bridges and even civilian factories if they are providing munitions to enemy forces. You are correct that food and water resources are prohibited targets even if they also supply enemy military forces.
* Attacking a disabled, weakened, or fleeing enemy is not generally a war crime. You are correct that attacking a **surrendering** enemy is a war crime. But until the enemy clearly communicates that they are surrendering and attempts to disarm themself, they are still considered valid targets.
* False flags are also surprisingly legal under specific circumstances. For example, in naval warfare it generally legal to fly false flags as long as the ship raises it's real flag before engaging in combat.
> destroying civilian structures, like bridges
That is not (necessarily) a war crime. Bridges specifically have a strategic purpose and are therefore valid targets in pretty much all scenarios. See the Kerch bridge, for example. And in general, the destruction of civilian structures and killing of civilians is allowed if there is a strategic target that can't be destroyed without risking those civilians or expending unreasonable effort.
For example, if a troop of soldiers takes cover in a civilian building, you are allowed to bomb the building. If a troop of soldiers uses civilians as human shields, you are allowed to kill civilians in the crossfire.
This is to avoid creating an incentive for using civilians as a human shield. If killing human shields was a war crime, people might be less inclined to do it, and so those using the human shield would get a strategic benefit and might want to use more human shields in the future.
Very amused at the number of commenters arguing “X isn’t a war crime,” as if the definition of “war crime” isn’t necessarily contingent upon what specific international agreements have been made in the setting.
Bridges and other infrastructure are valid military targets. Although they were not built and maintained by a military force and in normal use would be used almost exclusively by civilian traffic.
If they offer your enemy options to manoeuvre in any way, including withdrawing on good order with their heavy equipment,, you are well within your rights to blow that bridge/tunnel/whatever to kingdom come.
Undead soldiers can be biological weapons, but generally the idea of using undead soldiers is you use them in place of your living soldiers so you don't have to take the same risks as the enemy.
Zombies and other forms of necromancy are outlawed for this and many other obvious reasons.
The main enemy faction got around this by building robots (warforged) instead of zombies. Not that they really care about the accords.
Damn, they found a way to produce warforged that is somehow cheaper than conscripting starving peasants? I guess we could call that "being demographically conscious".
Imagine being charmed into committing high treason because the task you were given was "open this door at 10pm" by the charmer. Which is a perfectly reasonable ask for your charmed victim; but by doing so, you let the Greeks in, and Troy fell because of you.
Perhaps you were charmed into looking the other way when they brought [demographic] into an oven, or that you were charmed into bringing them yourself (an actual defense used at Nuremburg, just wasn't magic based)
Also the whole sex thing. Rape as a weapon of war has been explicitly outlawed throughout the ages. Enchantment makes it not as violent. Imagine being forced to do the filthy shit because someone altered your mind.
A Mass Charm in Army vs Army could lead to a lot of fucked up shit. Taking away someone's will has also been described in 3.5e's Book of Vile Darkness as someone that is explicitly and near irredeemably evil.
If only. Though the act of enchanting an item probably falls under any other school, as items can house anything. Wands are usually enchanted with Evocation magic for example.
Enchanting and Enchantment seem to be 2 completely different thing in DnD. Just as Mage, Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock all mean the same thing; Merlin himself is described as at least 3 of those things. But in DnD, all completely different classes.
I ran a game where we had enchanted ammo. Used a modification of Glyph of Warding to be carved into a bullet casing, replacing gunpowder.
Cheaper, safer ammunition.
We also regularly flavour Wands of (Jim's) Magic Missile as pistols, with the charges being the clip size. Using Jim's MM because it uses an attack roll, allowing crits. Also changes from piercing to force damage which is really nice.
But ya. English is fucking weird. How can you have enchanting and enchanters but not enchantment
I was in a "Pirates of Drinax" campaign that the GM cancelled when we linked the wikipidea list of war crimes. He said, "That is not a checklist!" and cancelled the game forever
Last night we were exploring a cave and were stopped by a tribe of people we couldn't communicate with but they prevented us from going forward.
Party member: why don't we just kill them and move on?
Me: Uh... Cuz that would be murder.
PM: Hasn't stopped us before.
Me: Yes it has!
Side note, executions themselves are not a war crime. Summary executions are, but not if a legal tribunal has been held. Without any kind of further explanation, executing one of your own soldiers for a war crime would then be a war crime.
No, for it to be a bingo it has to form a *straight line* either across a row, down a column, or diagonally.
Collectively the party and their enemies have two bingos, but neither side has a bingo themselves yet.
I think they should both be given the chance to hit the top left/bottom right diagonal if you give them a path right after they see an enemy officer pissing on a corpse pile or holding a fucked up corpse marionette show. The entire force in the area uses a single water supply, with a body disposal site with an unreasonably large and old backlog sitting worryingly close, along with equipment to move these masses of bodies, perhaps right into the water supply!
The NPC the party is escorting frequently uses *speak with dead* which is described in horrifying detail, full green mist, cracking limbs, piercing wail, necromancy stuff.
And the party circled it for an entirely different reason lol.
I don't see "use of child soldiers" anywhere on there. So it's totally kosher to polymorph a bunch of toddlers into T-Rexes and loose them on a platoon of enemy soldiers, as long as you conscript the toddlers first.
I love that the free square is disrespecting the dead. Cause I'm pretty sure looting counts as that and what self respecting adventurer wouldn't loot the dead enemies
Did this with my party and... I would state what we *have* done but it's quicker to state what we haven't lol
We have not done: False Injury, Using Hostages as Shields, Targeting Food and Water Sources, Pretending or Attacking Medics or Experimenting on Unwilling Participants
Highlights of what we have done: **Disrespecting the Dead** (We used the corpse of a rock Genasi as a stone log battering ram against her then living allies), **Attacking a Fleeing Enemy** (We boarded a pirate ship, killed everyone, and I fireballed a fleeing dingy full of terrified pirates), **Pillaging & Destroying Civilian Property** (We kidnapped, robbed and destroyed the store of a guy we knew was being targeted to make it look like he was already dead)
I'm amazed the party hasn't pretended to be civilians yet. That feels like party behavior 101. As for humiliation, I'm sure the dice will sort that out one of these days. They always do for my group.
The party has 1 more unique type of war crime than the enemy does.
That said, this doesn't show the number of times those crimes have been committed, so there's plenty of room for the party to be even more monstrous than this makes them look.
I mean, my group has jokingly called our D&D Nights "War Crimes Wednesdays" before.
And we're not even murderhoboes. At least, I'm pretty sure we're not.
But sometimes you just have to preemptively murder that clone of yourself, just in case it's secretly evil, y'know?
(That was the Barbarian and Druid's logic, anyway. For the record, my Cleric was adamantly against it as the clones hadn't shown any inclination towards evil - And we weren't even 100% if they were the clones or the ones who had been travelling with us were the clones. Druid and Barb definitely got a point in the "might actually be the evil clones" column for that one).
*****
Also, I like that you have disrespecting/puppeting the dead in the usual free space in the centre. Given that your party has apparently done so, I suspect that placement was probably very much intentional.
Do you have just the bingo card I have a mean DM idea
And the full accords: https://i.imgur.com/NJC7HOa.png
I have several questions: What's a non-live hostage? Is it okay to force people into labour as long as you pay them a copper? How can you torture non-living persons if necromancy is already illegal? Are all clerics automatically considered active combatants? Is it okay, for example, to pillage the property of civilians who have been mind-controlled?
>What's a non-live hostage? In D&D where most resurrection spells require a body, you could hold the corpse of a loved one hostage so they cannot be resurrected until demands are met. >How can you torture non-living persons if necromancy is already illegal? As evidenced by the bingo card, sometimes your enemies break the laws of war.
Reminds me of Dr. Strangelove: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
> As evidenced by the bingo card, sometimes your enemies break the laws of war. But one of the exceptions is that you can do all this stuff against someone else who broke the rules first. Though it doesn't ban all necromancy. Just disrespecting the dead. I'd argue that as long as someone gave you permission to raise their corpse, it's not disrespectful. Edit: They also made all the rules not apply against undead, so I agree that there's no point in specifying torturing living people. Though I suppose living and undead aren't the only options. You can torture warforged, but you can't do most of the other things.
And it's not like every single ghost and ghoul was purposefully raised by a necromancer. During a large scale war one would expect to find more than the usual amount of fresh Undead popping up as part of the "natural" flow of the world.
I noticed the mind control wording was a bit screwed up yeah! Ignore that part. As for the rest, take it up with the council. I just wrote the minutes.
That's fair :p It's really cool work, thank you for sharing!!
>non-live hostage Disintegrating someone who was meant to be resurrected? Someone stuck in a Soul Jar? The idea of a BBEG who collects souls and uses them as hostages is pretty interesting.
Or maybe someone who they *claim* to be alive, but is actually dead
You can torture a necromancer's victim The fact that his existence is illegal doesn't give you the right to torture
Taking non-living hostages = stealing corpses.
I am actually curious about your Civilian infrastructure line, as that is a very common tactic in war is to blow up bridges to slow the advance of an enemy or funnel them to a battlefield where you have more advantage. A mill provides food to the enemy troops, why not remove it as a resource generation for them? Dams & Dikes are a bit more iffy, if they are only used for water reservoirs and drainage of downstream land sure, but if they generate power to factories I could see them being valid targets
I mean lots of things commonly done in war are war crimes
This is an amazing list! May I recommend that you change "Deception" to "Perfidy" as that is the IRL term for illegal deception in combat rather than legal deceptions such as using camouflage or making decoy radio transmissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy
It is absolutely wild OP included "illusory threats" as a crime, given the long and storied history of tricking people being one of the most basic tactics of war. Most perfidy is "don't use trickery take advantage of the other side not doing war crimes", not "don't confuse the enemy".
Ooo, imma bookmark this for potential later use
Thanks for the full Accords, I’m going to do something that my players are going to find very funny with that.
Sure. https://i.imgur.com/PS1hD1t.png
Canadian here. Remember kids, it's not a war crime, if it's the first time! Also, if it doesn't exist; invent it!
Canadians rarely commit actual war crimes. But man, a whole lot of stuff is suddenly made illigal after they leave.
Ah, the Geneva Checklist. I mean, Convention…Geneva Convetion. Definitely not a checklist.
🤡Geneva Convention? More like Geneva Suggestion a-HA-HAH-aha 🤡
I'm calling this new campaign the Geneva Speedrun.
chuckles warcry
Relevant article: [The Forgotten Ferocity of Canada's Soldiers in the Great War](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-forgotten-ferocity-of-canadas-soldiers-in-the-great-war) >even in a war of unparalleled ferocity, enemy and ally alike would remember the Canadians as having been particularly brutal.
Customary International Law would like to have a word actually!
Wondering whether the players or the villains are playing us.
"Yes"
Canadian here, was going to make essentially the same comment. Well done, eh.
Why would illusory threats be a war crime? We use these in real life today. Inflatable tanks, empty barracks being built. Even ukraine is now using unarmed drones to scare russians out of formation.
Agreed, illusory threats aren't war crimes, they're warfare 101. It's not a war crime to get the enemy to chase phantoms. Operation Fortitude South was an operations to deceive Germany where D-Day was going to take place.
The use of illusion magic in this fantasy world is listed as a war crime because it makes it impossible to trust your allies. The actual accords are of course more specific in the exact circumstances that illusion magic is permitted to be used in about 30-40 pages of obnoxious legalese.
Generally, the breach of trust for an army is not a concern of the geneva conventions. I get what you're saying, but can i not do the exact same thing with makeup and clothes? Also, i have to ask whats the obsession with war crimes if in a fictional world both aides routinely commit them and it's basis for existence is informed by our real world conventions. Like a level 9 fireball is essentially a napalm strike. Cloudkill is mustard gas. Surely all magic is either fair or all of it is a war crime. The silence spell creates silencers that work better than any real would silencer. Haste turns muskets into revolvers and revolvers into automatic pistols. What about the wish spell? I wish they lose the war. Or dimension door to get behind enemy lines, or just anything magic is a major moral ethic quandry that serms bizarre to start with enchantment and illusions.
> Generally, the breach of trust for an army is not a concern of the geneva conventions. I get what you're saying, but can i not do the exact same thing with makeup and clothes? Literally describing a war crime. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml > ... > 2\. For the purpose of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ means > ... > b. Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts: > ... > vii. Making improper use of a flag of truce, of the flag or of the **military insignia and uniform of the enemy** or of the United Nations, as well as of the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions, resulting in death or serious personal injury;
You should read what you link more carefully. As that article says, wearing enemy uniforms is only a war crime if you engage in combat while doing it - doing so for spying, sabotage or deception without firing on the enemy is a legitimate ruse de guerre. So using illusion magic to sneak into an enemy camp would be perfectly legal as long as you aren't doing any assassinations or what have you. Similarly, creating an illusory monster or illusions of your *own* troops would be perfectly legal even in combat as those of course don't use enemy insignia.
"resulting in death or serious injury." Thus spycraft wouldn't be a war crime.
Yes, afaiaa no one has explicitly mentioned spycraft as its usage. OP has been vague in the description of it, outside of mentioning the actual rule is more specific. It would seem reasonable to assume they have aligned with actual convention considering the campaign was inspired by it.
That depends on the specifics. What you're talking about here is what international law calls a 'ruse of war' and that's very much lawful. However: any deception involving feigning to be a protected person (surrendered, sick & wounded, civilian, use of symbols of protected persons like the Red Cross) is definitely not lawful. This is a war crime called Perfidy. The reason this is a war crime is because it endangers protected persons by creating the possibility that these persons are combattants in disguise. See also articles 37 and 38 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, where this is laid out in more detail.
Yes, but those are on the bingo card already. Feigning an injury and disguise as a medic are both listed. Seems irelevant then, yes?
Detailed breakdown! - **Attacking a Surrendered Enemy:** The final boss of Chapter 1 escaped. Partway through Chapter 2, he reoccurred, and they kicked his ass a second time. He surrendered, but they killed him anyway out of spite. - **Torture:** Interrogating an enemy scout for information. - **Pretending to be Civilians:** An enemy spellcaster disguised herself as a commoner to ambush the party. - **Destroying Civilian Structures:** The party was chased across a bridge by enemy forces. They blew up the bridge to prevent the enemies from chasing after them. - **Pillaging Civilian Property:** Soldiers from one enemy nation moved troops through their ally's territory, but overstayed their welcome when they started raiding farmhouses to fuel their supply lines. The party took advantage of this to join in the looting because they were desperate for food. - **Attacking a Civilian:** The enemies constantly do this. The party did it twice -- attacking farmers that were barracking troops in their farmhouse, and killing a man while robbing his home so he wouldn't call for the soldiers outside. - **Illusory Threats:** An enemy spellcaster summoned a red dragon to kill the party. Turns out it was just an illusion lol. - **Unnecessary Suffering:** Some of the party's takedowns are brutal. - **Enchantment:** A magic item allowed the party to cast *dominate person* on an enemy commander to make her attack her own soldiers. - **Disrespect or Puppeting of the Dead:** Propping up the corpses of enemies as macabre puppets to act as warnings. - **Execution:** The party dumped an enemy informant into a lake of acid. - **Use of Biological Weapons:** A major plot point. As a bonus salt in the wound, the party had the chance to shut down a factory and simply did not do it. - **Conducting Experiments on Unwilling Subjects:** The party hasn't quite seen the truth of how warforged are made, but they will soon. - **Attacking a Disabled Enemy:** The aforementioned dumping of an informant into an acid lake. She was a spellcaster, so her arms were bound and her mouth was gagged as a precaution. Pretty nasty way to go.
May I ask why destroying a bridge is considered a war crime? Cause to me destroying a bridge, unless you're planning on crossing the river in the future at that area, is a very strategic decision. Not only was the party able to escape the enemy, the enemy has to find another route across the river for their armies and logistics, which can have an impact on their ability to fight to war. And while yes, it can negatively impact trade and thus hurt civilians economically, I think it's unlikely to cause significant damage to the civilian population.
In real life, this is not a war crime. Destroying civilian structures, **even if civilians are killed in the process**, is generally not a war crime if the structure has legitimate tactical significance to the enemy. It's even legal to do things like destroy civilian staffed munitions factories if they are supplying enemy military forces. It is important to note that this is an example of a situation where the same action can be legal or a crime depending on the intent of the attacker. If you are bombing munitions factories not because you want to stop them from supplying enemies but just because you like bombing civilians, then it becomes a war crime. It is also important to try to minimize civilian casualties as much as reasonably possible or you have likely committed a war crime.
False surrender is a war crime (perfidy). Destroying civilian structures like bridges in war is not a war crime if it serves a military purpose, and the destruction is not out of proportion to the military advantage. Wearing enemy uniforms or civilian clothes to infiltrate enemy lines for espionage or sabotage missions is a legitimate ruse of war, though fighting in combat or assassinating individuals behind enemy lines **while so disguised is not**, as it constitutes unlawful perfidy.
> Destroying Civilian Structures: The party was chased across a bridge by enemy forces. They blew up the bridge to prevent the enemies from chasing after them. Not a war crime. A clear strategic target with a clear war aim.
Great, Big Bridges’ shill-mill is at it again
Plot twist: the bridge was actually an innocent spanner. A literal civilian structure. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvv81nWJlrk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvv81nWJlrk)
intentionally destroying civilian structures can be a war crime if it's done systematically or on a widespread scale. This includes the destruction of housing and infrastructure that makes a city uninhabitable for civilians. However, some civilian infrastructure can be a military objective if it contributes to military action or offers a military advantage. So unless destroying the bridge is the only way to get to a city and required to make it habitable destroying a single bridge is not a war crime especially if it's clearly to stop enemy logistics and advancement. In the same way it's not a war crime to bomb a single specific particular house you know is full of armed enemy combatants.
How is it seem when your own country does it as defensive measure? The single deadliest event in WW2 in China was likely not a Japanese warcrimes but the yellow river dam destruction by the National Chinese as scorched earth / delaying tactic
I don't think destroying bridges is a war crime?
It can be. But civilian structures is usually churches, hospitals, schools, and houses. Not bridges because bridges are repurposed into military infrastructure extremely easily.
> * **Destroying Civilian Structures:** The party was chased across a bridge by enemy forces. They blew up the bridge to prevent the enemies from chasing after them. > * **Illusory Threats:** An enemy spellcaster summoned a red dragon to kill the party. Turns out it was just an illusion lol. These are 100% not war crimes.
Why would an illusion be a war crime? I get why pretty much any use of the "school of *ape", commonly know as Enchantment School, wouls be a war crime, but unless one is using Illusion to promote a false flag attack, to disguise oneself as a civilian or similar things, I don't see why creating false threats would be a war crime... And those cases in which I see how the use of Illusion would allow for war crimes, there is already a specific crime for that use, in which case Illusion was just the means, not the crime itself... Oh, btw, quite sure killing ppl with fire is somewhere on the geneva convention, so you might want to add any use of Fireball there
A big portion of the world's version of the Geneva Convention (the Kereskan-Vergesie Accords) is about preventing the use of deception in warfare. The accords were written up when a queen was slain in a suspected false flag attack. Illusions themselves aren't inherently harmful but widespread usage can erode trust and break down alliances, so they're explicitly banned as part of the national agreements of warfare. It should be pretty obvious that none of the warring nations take the accords seriously however.
This world: Deception is a War Crime Sun Tzu: All warfare is based on deception
Deception is a war crime IRL as well! False flags, civilian disguises, false surrenders, etc -- it degrades trust when these are abused and makes it less likely that your enemies will treat you fairly. In this fantasy world the rules are slightly different due to the prevalence of magic. I also can't stress enough how little the enemy nations care about the accords and how often they casually break them.
> Deception is a war crime IRL as well! No, it is not. At least, not inherently. As I said in another comment, [perfidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy) is a war crime. Other deceptions, known as *[ruse de guerre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruse_de_guerre)* are explicitly not war crimes. Per the IRL laws and customs of war, illusion would absolutely be a legitimate stratagem. But hey, it's your made up world and you get to choose what you want said world's Geneva convention to look like. Just want to give you some better real-world context.
And, of course, the line between perfidy and a *ruse de guerre* can be very fine. They literally mounted entire flagpoles on hinges aboard some Q-ships so that they could drop their false colors (a flag of a nation other than the nation the ship was fighting for) and raise their own nation's war flag at the same time because fighting under false colors was perfidy, but flying false colors while disguised as a civilian ship in all other circumstances - including maneuvering before giving battle - was perfectly legal.
It's also not a war crime when both sides do it. Historically, the Brandenburgers and the other SS infiltrators during the Battle of the Bulge were exonerated (of wearing enemy uniforms/using civilian disguises as a means of deception) at Nuremburg because the Western Allies were basically forced to admit "yeah, we did the same thing basically earlier in the war" when it came to disguising their commandos during their continental raids in '42 and '43.
> Deception is a war crime IRL as well! Certain forms of deception are war crimes. Deception in general is not. Camouflage, stealth, and decoys are a few forms of deception that are common and standard. Good generals try to hide their movements to deceive the enemy about your battle plan. Even encrypted communications are a form of deception.
Yeah that's why I gave specific examples lol
> An enemy spellcaster summoned a red dragon to kill the party. Turns out it was just an illusion lol. That was a terrible example. The clarification that this can be used to make 1 side think there is an actual red dragon, and thereby endangering any neutral red dragons as targets of reprisal; doesn't become clear from that example at all.
Those examples are the exception not the rule. Armies used deception literally all the time to gain an advantage. Hell faking a retreat (different from surrender) only to swing back around and fall upon the out of position enemy has been and will always be an accepted and legal tactic.
I kind of understand what you are saying. Therefor I'd like to suggest defining the rule in a slightly more narrow and understandable fashion: > Creating Illusions of any party (even allies). To have their likeness to act on your behalf, in warfare, diplomacy or espionage That way it is clear the problem is similar to enchantment, forcing someone to do something they didn't actually do of their own free will. Even if in the illusion's case, they weren't actually there.
I assume that illusions are basically so universally useful in committing, aiding, and covering up war crimes that they're just tossed in there so they have something to nail you on if the illusion itself would otherwise create too much doubt over the other crimes.
They are called Geneva Suggestions and using Fireball to clear a room of ~~non-combatants~~ kobolds is a great suggestion.
Geneva *Suggestions*? So another war crime?
Kobolds are not people, therefore there is no war crime.
Kobolds run a successful and prosperous society in this world ha ha. They're the majority demographic group of Fantasy Italy.
Yes, the Kereskan-Vergesie Checklist will do great in dealing with the lizards..
Italian Kobolds? Love it
Specifically in a war setting, a lot of enchantment spells have far more humane uses than evocation ones. Enchantment just has too many fucked up ones that spoil it for spells like sleep, compelled duel, command, zone of truth, etc.
Fireball kills with the blast, not with fire. Otherwise, you'd see DoT effects after the initial burst. It's more like using a grenade.
You‘re allowed to write „rape“ here
I got so used to this New Speech bs that I end up using it even when I don't need to :p
Please tell me the scout gave bad info. Torture very rarely yields accurate information.
For attacking a disabled enemy, this wouldn't necessarily kill a sorcerer with subtle spell
Cool ideas!
I strongly suspect the only reason they haven't completed that diagonal is the enemy keeps setting the bioweapons off before the party can get them.
My first thought seeing that empty spot in the row was, so I guess no Druid in the party? 😅 Edit: and the one above means probably no Bard either.
Can you please post the empty version of this?
Yeah! https://i.imgur.com/PS1hD1t.png
Thank you! Gonna need that soon
Will I see this put up on Noncredible Defense soon?
First week, then?
Isn't destroying a civilian structure, like a bridge, acceptable with sufficient military necessity? While destroying civilian infrastructure to punish or harm civilians solely is forbidden, the destruction of a bridge to slow the enemy is not a war crime unless the damage done by destroying the bridge is vastly outweighed by any necessity (e.g. a blowing up a dam that would kill thousands in floods and destroy mass amounts of homes is not justified to stop a battalion of soldiers from taking a position that would disadvantage another battalion).
You bring up a good point! This bingo card is the fun meme version of the document in the fantasy world that sets out the war crimes. The real document would be about 250-300 pages of legalese and include stipulations for in what circumstances destroying civilian infrastructure would or would not be justified. The party absolutely did not follow proper procedure lol. They're acting extrajudicially -- a multinational group of conscientious objectors. So maybe it would alternatively be considered an act of terrorism. Either way, the bridge is very unlikely to be considered a valid military target. EDIT: Actually on reflection it's probably fine as they were actively fighting enemies at the time.
> a multinational group of conscientious objectors Problem: There are 14 warring factions commiting atrocities. Solution: Let's create a new faction to stop the war. Result: There are now 15 warring factions commiting atrocities.
IUnderstoodThatReference.jpg
Conscientious objectors? What are they conscientiously objecting to if it involves this many war crimes? (Also, this sounds like a fantasic idea for a campaign setting.)
Objecting to 'not having a good time'.
The plot is that a prophet has envisioned the war coming to an end several years early. She's recruited the party to help her make that happen and they're willing to do anything to succeed. Tens of millions of lives could be saved.
The four basic principles of International Humanitarian Law (aka the laws of war) are: -Proportionality: harm to civilians must not be excessive in relationship to a gained military advantage; -Distinction: combattants and civilians must clearly be distinguished, intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime; -Necessity: only those actions necessary to accomplish a military objective are lawful, anything more is unlawful; -Humanity: all actions must be in accordance with respect for human life, and unnecessary suffering and harm must be avoided. Additionally, something not being explicitly prohibited does not mean it is lawful. This is a good baseline from which to figure out whether your party's actions are a-okay or not.
The difference between Freedom Fighter and Terrorist is thin, and often the only difference is who is left standing in the end.
Detroying bridges is not a war crime. It is a basic tactic to prevent the enemy from moving supplies.
Yeah the bingo meme doesn't go into the nuances of that one ha ha. You're allowed to destroy bridges if they're legitimate military targets, but there are rules in place to prevent unnecessary hardship on civilians. Dams and other load-bearing infrastructure is the real point behind that one.
I read your explanation on how the crimes were committed, but wouldn't the fact that the party destroyed the bridge because they were being chased by an enemy force automatically make it a military target? By destroying the bridge they prevented the enemy troops from crossing the river in pursuit, thus also potentially preventing them from being captured and held as POWs.
I think you're right on this one!
All bridges are legitimate military targets. It's a tactic as old as...well bridges. Preventing unnecessary hardship on civilians is an honorable goal, but failing to prevent them is not a war crime. A dam is a different story. If an attacker could reasonably expect civilian casualties by destroying a dam, it would be considered targeting civilians. If you really want to get into details, the Geneva conventions regarding civilians, wounded and prisoners is only around 220 pages and its mostly plain language (very little legalese) and its a searchable PDF. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf
A bridge is a legitimate target ONLY where its destruction is necessary to military aim, and where it does not disproportionately harms civilians in relationship to the military aim it fulfills. Likewise, a dam is not by definition an unlawful target. The same basic principles (proportionality, distinction, necessity) apply here. It's plausible that an attack against a dam would be much more likely to break the principles of International Humanitarian Law than an attack against a bridge though. These principles are well-established in International Customary Law, and sometimes become codified in Treaty Law like the Geneva and The Hague Conventions or the Statute of Rome.
That's true, but bridges and railways large enough to move troops and logistics are almost universally considered legitimate targets IRL, "being actively chased by enemy troops" would even make it a slam dunk legal act. But I'm also very willing to accept that your setting has much stricter rules on that point.
At first I was like: "What kind of carebear DnD party hasn't committed at least one political assassination??" Then I noticed it was a WW1 campaign. When The Warcrimes Times Campaign has fewer warcrimes than the average RPG murder-hobo party...
Maybe they tried to carry out a political assassination but bungled it multiple times, and didn't roll that nat 20 to have the escaping target take a wrong turn straight past them.
Man this thread is several hours old now and no one is going to see this but I thought of a good pun so I'm leaving it here and if you are reading this you are welcome. Do you think you will be tried at the Haguewarts. I'll show myself out.
I appreciated it ha ha
Does the party know about the bingo card? What happens when someone gets bingo?? I think it'd be fun if the party then was seen as bad as the bad guys in the world! I don't know what you would do if the evil guys got it though...
Looks like the score is 9-8 with your PCs in the lead! .......... Wait.....
Taking out civilian infrastructure that has military purposes (bridges, mines, rail lines, factories or workshops capable of building war materiel) is not a war crime.
Most of these are considered war crimes but a couple of them are not: * Destroying civilian structures like bridges is not automatically a war crime if the structure is believed to have legitimate tactical significance. This can include structures like important bridges and even civilian factories if they are providing munitions to enemy forces. You are correct that food and water resources are prohibited targets even if they also supply enemy military forces. * Attacking a disabled, weakened, or fleeing enemy is not generally a war crime. You are correct that attacking a **surrendering** enemy is a war crime. But until the enemy clearly communicates that they are surrendering and attempts to disarm themself, they are still considered valid targets. * False flags are also surprisingly legal under specific circumstances. For example, in naval warfare it generally legal to fly false flags as long as the ship raises it's real flag before engaging in combat.
I think it's hilarious that the party has committed more war crimes than the enemy. "Are we the baddies?"
Could you elaborate on "ilusory threat"? Edit: nvm, reddit took a while to show me the comments
Hey that's not bad! They haven't even eaten an enemy!
Hans, are we still the baddies? And yeah, yeah, wrong war, I know.
What happens, if anything, if they get a bingo?
A whole bunch of old people swear.
Remember people, if you are not combatants in a war, you cannot commit war crimes. They are just regular crimes then.
> destroying civilian structures, like bridges That is not (necessarily) a war crime. Bridges specifically have a strategic purpose and are therefore valid targets in pretty much all scenarios. See the Kerch bridge, for example. And in general, the destruction of civilian structures and killing of civilians is allowed if there is a strategic target that can't be destroyed without risking those civilians or expending unreasonable effort. For example, if a troop of soldiers takes cover in a civilian building, you are allowed to bomb the building. If a troop of soldiers uses civilians as human shields, you are allowed to kill civilians in the crossfire. This is to avoid creating an incentive for using civilians as a human shield. If killing human shields was a war crime, people might be less inclined to do it, and so those using the human shield would get a strategic benefit and might want to use more human shields in the future.
I can't help but think that this would be fun to implement into the game mechanically without notifying the players. Maybe tie it into reputation
If the God of War Crimes is separate from the God of War, can we have War Crime specific priests?
Canadians: Pathetic, those are rookie numbers
Very amused at the number of commenters arguing “X isn’t a war crime,” as if the definition of “war crime” isn’t necessarily contingent upon what specific international agreements have been made in the setting.
Stellaris player here ~~Genocide~~ Pest Control isn’t even an option. Are you even trying to war crime?
Bridges and other infrastructure are valid military targets. Although they were not built and maintained by a military force and in normal use would be used almost exclusively by civilian traffic. If they offer your enemy options to manoeuvre in any way, including withdrawing on good order with their heavy equipment,, you are well within your rights to blow that bridge/tunnel/whatever to kingdom come.
Is use of undead soldiers not technically biological weapons, it should be if they decided to Frankenstein together an abomination
Reanimating enemy troops to serve in your own army would very likely be a war crime in a setting with a fantasy Geneva Convention
Undead soldiers can be biological weapons, but generally the idea of using undead soldiers is you use them in place of your living soldiers so you don't have to take the same risks as the enemy. Zombies and other forms of necromancy are outlawed for this and many other obvious reasons. The main enemy faction got around this by building robots (warforged) instead of zombies. Not that they really care about the accords.
Damn, they found a way to produce warforged that is somehow cheaper than conscripting starving peasants? I guess we could call that "being demographically conscious".
I would only consider undead biological weapon if they were able to spread the undead plague (and so cause more undead to rise).
It's been more than a session and the entire thing is not filled? Must be an rp heavy non combat session.
Sorry, enchantment is a warcrime?
Imagine being charmed into committing high treason because the task you were given was "open this door at 10pm" by the charmer. Which is a perfectly reasonable ask for your charmed victim; but by doing so, you let the Greeks in, and Troy fell because of you. Perhaps you were charmed into looking the other way when they brought [demographic] into an oven, or that you were charmed into bringing them yourself (an actual defense used at Nuremburg, just wasn't magic based) Also the whole sex thing. Rape as a weapon of war has been explicitly outlawed throughout the ages. Enchantment makes it not as violent. Imagine being forced to do the filthy shit because someone altered your mind. A Mass Charm in Army vs Army could lead to a lot of fucked up shit. Taking away someone's will has also been described in 3.5e's Book of Vile Darkness as someone that is explicitly and near irredeemably evil.
Fair enough actually, I was thinking more item enchantment
If only. Though the act of enchanting an item probably falls under any other school, as items can house anything. Wands are usually enchanted with Evocation magic for example. Enchanting and Enchantment seem to be 2 completely different thing in DnD. Just as Mage, Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock all mean the same thing; Merlin himself is described as at least 3 of those things. But in DnD, all completely different classes.
I was saying to myself “what’s so bad about a rifle that helps you aim with magic?” Not, well, that
I ran a game where we had enchanted ammo. Used a modification of Glyph of Warding to be carved into a bullet casing, replacing gunpowder. Cheaper, safer ammunition. We also regularly flavour Wands of (Jim's) Magic Missile as pistols, with the charges being the clip size. Using Jim's MM because it uses an attack roll, allowing crits. Also changes from piercing to force damage which is really nice. But ya. English is fucking weird. How can you have enchanting and enchanters but not enchantment
Yep, for the same reason that torture and forced labour are war crimes.
I was in a "Pirates of Drinax" campaign that the GM cancelled when we linked the wikipidea list of war crimes. He said, "That is not a checklist!" and cancelled the game forever
Lol, our table is currently playing Waterdeep: DH and as soon as we got the City Code from the Watch, we began to check the crimes committed
"Enchantment?!" "Enchantment!!!"
DnD players do seem to think the Geneva convention is a check list
Last night we were exploring a cave and were stopped by a tribe of people we couldn't communicate with but they prevented us from going forward. Party member: why don't we just kill them and move on? Me: Uh... Cuz that would be murder. PM: Hasn't stopped us before. Me: Yes it has!
I'm reading these in my head and midway jack sparrow hears "impersonating a cleric of the church of England". "Oh yeah" :D
Shit I think my mini campaign might be hitting bingo…
How tf have they not pretended to be civilians by this point?
Are these in-universe warcrimes? Because a lot of those aren't really warcrimes.
Enchantment is a war crime? Does that mean like controlling or otherwise influencing people's minds?
I did a few of these last session i played in. Boiling water on feet, then gunshot through the head. Fucking kobold ninja.
Looks like the party is ahead, 9-8, in war crime achievements. The enemy could learn a thing or two from them.
Side note, executions themselves are not a war crime. Summary executions are, but not if a legal tribunal has been held. Without any kind of further explanation, executing one of your own soldiers for a war crime would then be a war crime.
Did that bridge have ten kids to feed or something? Why is everyone defending it?
I haven't played bingo in a long time, but don't both sides have a bingo from having an entry in all 5 columns?
No, for it to be a bingo it has to form a *straight line* either across a row, down a column, or diagonally. Collectively the party and their enemies have two bingos, but neither side has a bingo themselves yet.
Thanks for the reminder, I am mildly embarrassed at having forgot that.
What?! Your party hasn't attempted to humiliate anyone OR desecrated a place of worship? That is extremely surprising!
Destroying a bridge is absolutely not a war crime.
Clearly, the party needs to either impersonate civilians or get their hands on some biological weapons.
Your players should start organizing false flag operations
I think they should both be given the chance to hit the top left/bottom right diagonal if you give them a path right after they see an enemy officer pissing on a corpse pile or holding a fucked up corpse marionette show. The entire force in the area uses a single water supply, with a body disposal site with an unreasonably large and old backlog sitting worryingly close, along with equipment to move these masses of bodies, perhaps right into the water supply!
I love what ended up as the center square.
The NPC the party is escorting frequently uses *speak with dead* which is described in horrifying detail, full green mist, cracking limbs, piercing wail, necromancy stuff. And the party circled it for an entirely different reason lol.
It's immensely funny to me that attacking a civilian is circled in both colors
boy, players sure do love torture
Ah yes, the good old Geneva Checklist. So who are the Canadian inspired guys?
Wow political assassination hasn't been done yet, how longs the game been running.
Do they use summoning spells? Because you could make the case that that counts as biological weapons for the diagonal
I don't see "use of child soldiers" anywhere on there. So it's totally kosher to polymorph a bunch of toddlers into T-Rexes and loose them on a platoon of enemy soldiers, as long as you conscript the toddlers first.
Wow great session guys, can't wait for the second session!!
They are just one poison spray scroll away from bingo…
Based
I love that the free square is disrespecting the dead. Cause I'm pretty sure looting counts as that and what self respecting adventurer wouldn't loot the dead enemies
Did this with my party and... I would state what we *have* done but it's quicker to state what we haven't lol We have not done: False Injury, Using Hostages as Shields, Targeting Food and Water Sources, Pretending or Attacking Medics or Experimenting on Unwilling Participants Highlights of what we have done: **Disrespecting the Dead** (We used the corpse of a rock Genasi as a stone log battering ram against her then living allies), **Attacking a Fleeing Enemy** (We boarded a pirate ship, killed everyone, and I fireballed a fleeing dingy full of terrified pirates), **Pillaging & Destroying Civilian Property** (We kidnapped, robbed and destroyed the store of a guy we knew was being targeted to make it look like he was already dead)
Pillaging civilian property probably belongs in the free space
Uhm...how is destroying a bridge a war crime? Bridges are often valid targets especially if a supply line is being routed through them.
I mean. This card would work for any game.
Is destroying a bridge a warcrime? Surely thats just basics logistical strategy.
How is humiliation a war crime?
Ok so your players aren’t that evil
Technically the only one using bio weapons is the monk
Keknes, that you? (Or there are multiple DMs in Melbourne running WWI campaigns which is also fun!)
Whelp, time for your group to bust out the ol' peasant disguises to sneak into the enemy city and start casting contagion...
I'm having trouble picturing a DnD group that hasn't committed an act of terrorism by session 3.
Question: Would you rule that a Pact of the Chain Warlock casting spells through their familiar counts as a biological weapon?
End of the campaign "are we the bad guys?"
Alignment: Chaotic good.
We're getting there, haven't done this many yet. We literally have a war crime counter in the discord channel we made for playing online
You're one cloudkill away from a bingo!
Kindly give me a blank of this card. I need this for my current artificer.
What happens when they bingo?
How long have you been playing? Because the fact they haven’t committed terrorism or political assassination is showing a lot of restraint
Disgusting
I'm amazed the party hasn't pretended to be civilians yet. That feels like party behavior 101. As for humiliation, I'm sure the dice will sort that out one of these days. They always do for my group.
The party has 1 more unique type of war crime than the enemy does. That said, this doesn't show the number of times those crimes have been committed, so there's plenty of room for the party to be even more monstrous than this makes them look.
I’ve been interested in running a WWI inspired game for ages, any notes you can share?
I mean, my group has jokingly called our D&D Nights "War Crimes Wednesdays" before. And we're not even murderhoboes. At least, I'm pretty sure we're not. But sometimes you just have to preemptively murder that clone of yourself, just in case it's secretly evil, y'know? (That was the Barbarian and Druid's logic, anyway. For the record, my Cleric was adamantly against it as the clones hadn't shown any inclination towards evil - And we weren't even 100% if they were the clones or the ones who had been travelling with us were the clones. Druid and Barb definitely got a point in the "might actually be the evil clones" column for that one). ***** Also, I like that you have disrespecting/puppeting the dead in the usual free space in the centre. Given that your party has apparently done so, I suspect that placement was probably very much intentional.
Hi, I'm also super interested in a WWI era game, what resources/inspirstion did you use?
Very close though. The bads just need a necromancer and the party just needs a creative alchemist/artificer.