Quote Originally Posted by N/A
in an issue of KoDT, the party ended up hiring their own army of beggars to overbear their opponents so they could Coup de Grace them
Yup the infamous 'beggar mob rule'.

For those who dont know - in the Hackmaster game the players were playing there were two obsucre rules hidden in the books.

1) Mobs automatically overbear their targets

2) A group of 15 or more beggars is a mob of beggars

So they hit on the idea of recruiting hordes of beggars to take down dragons, towns, etc. I wonder if there will be a Bag War with Haley's bags of holding....

It seems like your happy medium is below D&D's heroic mark. There are other games that are well suited for that sort of thing
I prefer it that way, as too much heroic gets cheesy, to little is no fun. As for really gritty - get the old Cyberpunk games. If you lived for more than a few sessions without being shot, eaten, mangled, insta-killed, etc you were doing very well. ;)

As for my D&D opinions about heroic, they're very much influenced by the Ravenloft campaign series (old version, not the cheesy later version). Heros had to work damn hard to be heroic, otherwise they were just another person trying to survive. (eg: similiar to Call of Cuthulu).