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[aaOzymandias]

How does he really work? I get hat they are the ones that uphold law and such, but sometimes it seems rnadom.

I just assinged one, and the first thing he did was hack two other dwarves to bits. Goodbye my only legendary jewler, and other random guy.

It might not have been a good idea, but I gave him a clownite axe. It was very effective at severing limbs...

I am thinking of taking him off the captain of the guard and putting him in my axe squad, since he came with osme decent skill (new immigrant).

[Ahrimahn]

Dwarven Law is totally broken and should never be allowed to start. Practically everything is punishable by beating's and one of the greatest causes of beatings is the failure to follow a nobles mandate which if you have a noble that likes types of leather from animals that only produce skulls or alcohol from halfway across the universe you will happen all the time. If you want him at all pick the weakest dwarf in the fort and give him no weapons his beating's will be far less severe.

[CapnUrist]

It's not entirely broken, just severe. There are two ways dwarves become criminals: violating production orders (which is somewhat random, as no matter what the item mandated was, most of the time the dwarf selected to be punished will have no skills related to its production) and tantruming, which results in vandalism, building destruction, and fights. There are two possible punishments for crime in a fortress: beatings and imprisonment. If there is no where to imprison criminals, all sentencing reverts to beatings. Your sheriff or fortress guard will mete out justice however they can, with whatever they have on hand.

In order to make justice less lethal, you can do a few things. First of all, build a jail. The simplest jail is a room with some ropes, chains or cages in it, designated as a room from one of the cages/ropes, and set to be "used by justice". It's advised to keep your prisoners happy, since if they keep throwing tantrums, they'll never get out of prison. Therefore, since you want your prison to look nice, chains are the best choice, usually of some valuable material so the prisoners have something nice to admire. Adding beds, food and booze stockpiles, and even a chair and table can keep prisoners happy (and if your manager or bookkeeper get imprisoned, they can still work if there's a chair available). Even smoothing the walls and floors helps. With any sort of jail in place, your guard won't have to resort to corporal punishment all the time. (Things like murder and multiple offenses at once will still sometimes warrant a beating.)

Secondly, the cotton candy axe you've handed your guard captain was a death sentence for those dwarves. A warhammer of the same material is next to harmless, usually only bruising its victims. They'll heal quicker, and you won't have to worry about their friends getting upset and asking for a beating of their own.

What happened was those dwarves had been selected for punishment by a noble, probably your mayor, when you missed a couple mandates, or they had been tantruming and knocked something over. You can check the crimes your dwarves have committed, as well as any unfulfilled punishments that are lines up, by going to the status menu ('z') and opening the Justice menu. When you assigned a guard captain, he went out to deliver the punishments that had been long overdue.

[Ahrimahn]

There is one situation ive noticed where the captain of the guard proved useful and that is when a tantrum spiral is starting you put the dwarves pissed enough to be attacking other dwarves in cages and the rest dont get punched or have their stuff broken. In other words their only real use is for declaring martial law.
EDIT: stupid not good wordsmith that I am forgot to put in the point of my statement.

[CapnUrist]

I'm not sure I completely understand what you meant there, Ahrimahn, but the justice system actually helps prevent tantrum spirals in my experience, if managed properly. Instead of allowing angry dwarves to run amok, punching people and deconstructing bridges, they're contained until they get over their bad thoughts, then released back into the fortress to get back to work.

The worst time to assign a captain of the guard is after your dwarves have started to tantrum, especially without a jail in place, because that will only cause the spiral to speed up. Build your jail before your dwarves get upset, and it'll prevent a lot of headaches.

[ral]

I always assign a captain of the guard and give him a full squad, but I leave them all totally unarmed. Arming any of them with cotton candy sounds like an extremely bad idea, unless you're talking hammers and even then it might not be such a good idea. I tend to want them to have some lethal ability, just not instant death ability.

And make your prison cells fancy with a bed, chair, table, food and drink stockpiles, chain made of expensive metal, and possibly other stuff to help unhappy campers become happy again. Sure, they deserve to be thrown in a miasma-filled pit strewn with rotting goblin corpses but unfortunately that's counterproductive..... Unlike reality, "restorative justice" seems to work in DF.

[zephyr_hound]

Adamantine warhammers are absolutely not harmless, at least in .23, I gave one to my captain of the guard and the two beatings he meted out were both fatal, one of them instantly (took the guy's head off!) and the other one after a few minutes due to suffocation from a broken neck. I don't know why the beatings even occurred since I did have a perfectly good jail with more than enough cells.

Either meet the mandates every time/kill nobles who make impossible mandates, or don't appoint a captain of the guard. I'm not even convinced about having one unarmed, since my dwarves are capable of killing things with punches to the brain quite often.

[aaOzymandias]

I got a pretty outright bitch dutchess that has a fetish for pig iron items, and clear galss items. The two things I have very little of. I am looking into glass production, but I got no iron other then what I import. And pig iron items? All I am trying to do is make steel form pig iron, and pig iron from iron to appease her. Sometimes it works, but I am importing this stuff, so I do not have it at hand... At least her export ban mandates on the same stuff works out nicly.

This fort is actually comming close to 15 years. Not too shabby for my 3. fort in DF I think, and I am hoping to get a monarch soon.

All the dwarves are happy in my fort, except her. I have bascially engraved everything, even my excecution chamer were I build goblin cages for practise for the new recruits. Funnily enough she got real happy after my two dwarves got hacked to bits.

But one thing is certain, I am reassigning my captain of the guard to my axe squad now. I might make another dofus the captain eventually... but if it is only to appease my dutchess... I mean, everyone in the fort is happy as can be, except her, and she is the only one that has thrown a tantrum in the 7 years since I kind of lost 50 dwarves to a failed attack.

And yeah, lol! the cotton candy axe was a bad idea. I had the impression that the captain iof the guard was this kind of elite squad in defending my fort, and being so dedicated that they would also uphold law and order in my own fort. But the several pages report of him hacking away at my jewler showed me how wrong I was. not just one hack, but pages of it...

[MonkeyHead]

My fortress guard are always marksdwarves with wood or bone crossbows. Lethal enough when used to shoot bolts, nigh on harmless when beating metalcrafters.

[aaOzymandias]

Good idea! I do need a marksdwarf squad evnetually

[blue sam3]

Adamantine warhammers are absolutely not harmless, at least in .23, I gave one to my captain of the guard and the two beatings he meted out were both fatal, one of them instantly (took the guy's head off!) and the other one after a few minutes due to suffocation from a broken neck. I don't know why the beatings even occurred since I did have a perfectly good jail with more than enough cells.

Either meet the mandates every time/kill nobles who make impossible mandates, or don't appoint a captain of the guard. I'm not even convinced about having one unarmed, since my dwarves are capable of killing things with punches to the brain quite often.

Either you have done some modding, the dwarf in question was freaking superman or there's some quirk with .23 that I've forgotten about. In .31.25, at least, they are basically harmless. If you don't want to waste good stuff on him, a featherwood training weapon is similarly weak.

[CapnUrist]

Adamantine warhammers are absolutely not harmless, at least in .23, I gave one to my captain of the guard and the two beatings he meted out were both fatal, one of them instantly (took the guy's head off!) and the other one after a few minutes due to suffocation from a broken neck. I don't know why the beatings even occurred since I did have a perfectly good jail with more than enough cells.

Either meet the mandates every time/kill nobles who make impossible mandates, or don't appoint a captain of the guard. I'm not even convinced about having one unarmed, since my dwarves are capable of killing things with punches to the brain quite often.

Odd, in 31.25 they have almost no weight, so it's like getting beaten with Styrofoam. As for why the beatings were ordered, I dunno how it was done in .23, but as of now I've seen beatings assigned for more serious or frequent offenders (such as my engraver who destroyed a bridge, punched three people and killed a goat).

[aaOzymandias]

Apparently my justice screen under z have about 14 dwarfs who was on the list of getting a beating. All but two of them are now dead...

[Wyrm]

Dwarven Justice: Even death won't save you from a well-deserved beating.

[Quietust]

I got a pretty outright bitch dutchess that has a fetish for pig iron items, and clear galss items. The two things I have very little of. I am looking into glass production, but I got no iron other then what I import. And pig iron items? All I am trying to do is make steel form pig iron, and pig iron from iron to appease her. Sometimes it works, but I am importing this stuff, so I do not have it at hand... At least her export ban mandates on the same stuff works out nicly.

If a noble mandates the production of metal items, make bars. The one place where this gets particularly annoying is with mandates for bismuth items, since the only thing you can possibly do is smelt some bismuthinite.