[michaelx386]

> a common strategy was to make the nobledwarfs accommodation floodable with lava

I've not played Dwarf Fortress for a while, but were there any consequences to killing the nobledwarfs like that? The game is so comprehensive I'm wondering if the creators considered that strategy.

[popeshoe]

As far as I remember it just makes his family and friends upset, and anybody who witnesses the death, which is usually always preferable to him going mental and sentencing your master metalworker to death because he refused to make -=* platinum trumpets*=-

[blueskin_]

He gets sentenced to prison, which is inconvenient, unless you don't have any space for him, then he gets sentenced to hammering (exactly what it sounds like), which is what kills or maims him, but it is possible to survive. Giving important dwarves (or just-sentenced ones) armour, removing Urist McHammerer's hammer or replacing it with a nonlethal one, or just walling him up somewhere are all viable strategies to keep important dwarves alive, but kill^H^H^H^H arranging an Unfortunate Accident[1] for troublesome nobles is arguably easiest.

[1]http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Unfortunate_accident