"Trolling kills" of the enemies bother the hell out of me

I'm playing 8.0.0 Standard version, and I love the game, except that there's one detail that makes me sigh epicly and severely ruins the fun.

I call them the "trolling kills". It means that the enemies target the dying characters, even though they have living opponents that pose immediate threat to their well-being. I was just fighting against a troll, and I had it surrounded by five characters. One of the characters fell, but it was ok; it was like only -1 or -2 hp, nothing serious. I attacked the troll with everything I had. Then came the next round, and the troll chose to attack the downed opponent, instead of the gang that was beating the living shit out of him. My immediate reaction was this:

Spoiler

I thought it was just a glitch, but this is happening again and again. It's not common, but whenever it happens, it pisses me off. You could say that the troll wasn't smart enough, but opponents with average-ish intelligence do the same.

Can someone please explain this to me? Other than that, this mod is simply brilliant and I really appreciate all the hard work, but is there some way we could stop having trolling kills? Please think of a better noun for these unfortunate events, ok? Thank you!

 

If your character has more than one attack per round and he drops a foe to neg HP, the next attack he will make will be to finish off the unconscious foe.

The same with the cleave action, he will cleave a new adversary and then return to strike the downed one to finish it off if he has any attacks left.

 

I know this, but we are talking about separate rounds. Apparently I failed to be clear with the OP, so I will clarify:
Round 1: An enemy drops a character with a melee attack or series of melee attacks.
Round 2: Enemy or its allies have a whole new turn. There are one or more other characters that pose an obvious and immediate threat to the enemy's existence, but the enemy chooses to use its attacks to attack the downed character that poses no harm at the moment. The downed in question was felled in the previous round.

This is different from the cleave feat and having more than one attack per round. Those are game mechanics, and should be taken into account in the fight. When they happen, it's all right. However, "trolling kills" are just plain nuts. I will clarify more:

Trolling kill = The act of an NPC enemy using full attack action to attack an unconscious character/ally when a better option is available. Attacking a live and standing opponent is not a trolling kill and neither is the use cleave feat or equivalent.

 

You were clear in your original post, I was merely stating how at other times a similar action takes place.

I can tell you that myself, when I drop a troll I usually follow up with a killing blow to prevent his re-entering the fight.

I do find your point to be valid, but I don't feel it is any more bothersome than the enemies making a bee-line for my spell casters, although I do take out their spell slingers first if I can.

 

Are you using summons / animal companions / familiars (out of backpack)?

Can you point to any specific encounter where this happens? If you can upload a save demonstrating the issue it would be helpful.

From what I remember that kind of behavior should be quite rare.

 

In certain battles, I make sure the downed enemies are dead, so opposing clerics just cant go around healing them. Maybe it is by design. If it is pissing you off when they do this, then they are making the game harder for you. That is their job in the game.

 

I don't use animal companion and familiars. Sometimes I use summons, but the dying characters had no active spells going on. Actually the most eagerly slain character is a halfling rogue who has no animal companion/familiar/summons.

This has happened twice with gnolls in the moathouse ambush by Zert/Turuku. I can try to upload a save, but I have just one question:
Should I have the save before or after a trolling kill? If it's before, there's no guarantee that the enemies will behave the same way in the next round. If it's after, then you will not see what has happened. I just don't know what kind of save would be best to demonstrate the issue. Before/after/in the same round immediately it has happened?

It's rare, it's true. My characters are at 3rd level right now and this has happened four times:
1. Random encounter with a troll. I had it surrounded, but it chose to attack a halfling rogue from round to round despite it was dying.
2. A battle with the gnolls in the moathouse. A gnoll was standing in grease, and instead of trying to move away from the grease, it attacked a downed wizard. The gnoll was free to move, no one was stopping it. The wizard hadn't cast the wizard!
3. Turuku's (and Zert's) gnoll was facing a female paladin who was severely punishing him. Instead of fighting aganist the paladin, it turned and attacked a downed halfling rogue.
4. The last but not the least! Turuku's gnoll was fighting a fierce melee fight against my group, but suddenly it disengaged from battle while drawing admirable amount from AoOs, and moved to attack a downed hafling rogue. She had been lying there for some time. This was by far the most amazing episode so far.

 

@Sitra Achara !
I have a save attached to this post. I made the save immediate the sea hag needlessly killed the downed halfling rogue. There were better option available.

 

I remember this from the temple bugbear and ogre fights. It IS annoying when they do it, but as others have pointed out, it is also a valid strategy, and players do it all the time. So there is nothing really wrong. The real underlying problem, for which there is no easy fix, is that there is no good way to manage aggro in ToEE, unlike in some more modern roleplaying systems. They should have kept Taunt and made it affect who the Tauntee chooses for opponent.

 

Probably because he is usually the weakest char in range?

 

In my experience, all gnolls exhibit this behavior. On that basis, I propose "carrion kills" as a better name.

 

I had a wizard once who was charged by a 100% healthy Temple Bugbear, who dashed unscathed through all of my fighter's Opportunity attacks. The wizard bopped him on the head with Lareth's Club and killed him with one blow. Imagine if computer games got as frustrated with us as we do with them.

 

Damn, I've never seen that kind of meme. It's from Kummeli, finnish comedy series. Kinda off-topic but just had to say it

 

If I may say, I believe that there is no creature in real life or in fantasy who would, by default, ignore an active opponent in close combat in favour of an unconscious opponent.

There are exceptions, of course, such as finishing of an unconscious spellcaster and ignoring "weak" melee etc., but none of the cases I've seen have made such sense. Basically it's always like this: Elmo and my paladin doing lots of melee damage, and one their victims just trolls me by killing off the weak halfling rogue who never gets anything done.